The movies, of course, were right in step with the polarizing of our culture. That summer saw the release of THELMA & LOUISE, Ridley Scott's film about the title woman (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon), who kill a man that rapes Thelma, and hit the road. Along with being a hit, it also divided people on whether Thelma & Louise were feminist icons or offensive vigilantes. Also that summer came John Singleton's debut film BOYZ IN THE HOOD, about young black men struggling to stay alive in L.A. Later copycat films seemed to copy the plot while either adding cynicism or exploiting the "gangsta" image, but at the time, Singleton seemed to be saying, "Look what America is doing to black men." And finally, though not as well-known, Spike Lee's JUNGLE FEVER, co-starring Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra, took an angry look at interracial dating. All of these films tapped into the zeitgeist and became topics of discussion.
But there was more controversy than from those films. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, released in February that year, became a huge hit, made Anthony Hopkins, as memorable villain Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a star, and became only the third film in Oscar history to sweep the top five Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay). It also was derided by gays who felt the other villain - serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) - was an example of gay-bashing, the family-values coalition, which felt the film glorified Lecter, and, strangely enough, feminists, who targeted Jodie Foster's FBI agent. But all of that, as well as the controversies mentioned in the previous paragraph, was a mere warm-up to Oliver Stone's JFK. The film, which was Stone' theory of what really happened on November 22, 1963, was attacked long before the film had been completed, and when it was finally released, journalists, particularly from The New York Times, fell over themselves trying to tell us why the film was evil because of its very existence, since it wasn't true. Of course, as in the earilier cases, that didn't stop audiences from flocking to see the film.
