Director Douglas Sirk's 1956 social melodrama Written on the Wind reflects the ideology of its period, but the film may also be seen as a criticism of American dream of materialism. Film critic Roger Ebert called Sirk a sly subverter of American postwar materialismö whose sly subversion skewed American popular culture, and helped launch a new age of irony (Written on the Wind). The 1950s United States is often referred to as a period of stifling conservatism and sexual repression, a time of faith in the greatness of material goods, in the nuclear family (and fear of the nuclear bomb) with father as the head of household and woman as mother/homemaker as reflected in 1950s TV shows such as ôLeave it to Beaverö and ôFather Knows Best.ö But it was also the period of rock nÆroll, of civil rights protests, of Playboy magazine, the Kinsey reports, the pill, and the start of serious questioning of traditional gender and sexual roles. Viewed today, Sirk's ônarrative attitude in its balance of style and story in Written on the Wind seems less florid melodrama and more a criticism of American ideology of the 1950s (Schatz 246). According to Ebert, Sirk's style conceals the filmÆs message.
The basic plotline and characters are melodramatic, but the themes of romantic love and the American success ethic are approached with irony, making the subject matter not ôa celebration of the American dream, but as an articulation and ultimately a criticism of itö (Schatz 246). Sirk used the melodrama genre as a ôfertile ground for social commentary because one could depict not just a love story, but one where the social circumstances condition the love. The structure of society in which this happening of love is embedded is just as important as the love itselfö (Halliday 52). Written on the Wind is the story of a wealthy Texas oil family and how they destroy themselves and others around them. In terms of social commentary of the period, the f...