Approaching Places in the Heart as a text “open” to divergent ideological interpretations, this essay argues that the director's skillful manipulation of the romantic formula enhances the film's appeal to a broad audience. In particular, the essay suggests that the film offers complex messages about feminism and the farm crisis. These ambivalent messages sustain, rather than resolve, the tensions in viewers between the moralistic and materialistic dimension of the American Dream.
Places in the heart: The rhetorical force of an open text
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