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This chapter discusses the consolidation of a canonical narrative of the American past and the fostering of a distinctively American culture in the present that required defining which people and events were truly American. Choosing the appropriate ancestors and casting ethnic minorities as picturesque peasants, popular writers participated in the process, reshaping the way that Americans imagined and moved through their cities and, more broadly, their nation. The members of ethnic minorities found opportunities in the commodification of their cultures that often gave them ways to make a living and to retain some aspects of their own heritage. Occasionally the racialized notions of culture that supported slumming also offered a prominent, symbolic place in the local and national communities. Such were the ambiguous consequences of replacing the dream of “the tangible republic” with that of “the noble spectacle.”

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the study, which comprises five films that offer complex and sophisticated treatments of the linked themes of nationhood and history. One of the most visible manifestations of the changing narrative can be found in the resurgence of films that take the American past as their subject. The book then raises the issues of the interpretation of history by fiction in contemporary films; cinema’s ostensible distortion of historical reality; culture’s willingness to substitute glossy images for historical understanding and insight, and the powers that underlie the idealized construction of nationhood. It explores the reshaping of our collective imaginary relation to history, and to nation.