Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask led the nonfiction best-seller list,
closely followed by The Sensuous Woman in the number three spot. These
two popular handbooks about sex promulgated open and forthright discus-
sion for a mass readership. Better Homes and Gardens Fondue and Tabletop
Cooking also appeared on the nonfiction list, indicative of an increasingly
casual and even communal sensibility that had seeped into everyday
middle-class life, here expressed in a popular culinary fad. Meanwhile,
Erich Segal’s Love Story held the top spot on the fiction best-seller list, and
was the basis of a film that would be released by the end of the year, though
he actually sold the screenplay before he produced the novel.
Environmental awareness was also growing, with decisive events
emerging from both populist movements and the U.S. government. The
first Earth Day was celebrated in April, culminating nearly a decade of effort
by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and other activists to draw atten-
tion to environmental issues. Inspired by anti-war teach-ins, the sponsors
of Earth Day conceived it as a grassroots effort to offer protests and educa-
tion on behalf of environmental concerns. The Environmental Protection
Agency, federal watchdog for environmental affairs, was created in Decem-
ber, and the Clean Air Act established guidelines for limiting automobile
emissions. These events signaled widespread interest in marshalling collec-
tive action on behalf of conserving natural resources.
Hollywood movies that both targeted and represented the anti-
establishment youth culture had emerged in the 1960s and now were com-
monplace. Youth culture, countercultures, alienation, student uprisings,
the generation gap, free love, Black Power, the establishment, and anti-
war protests invaded the screen. Such issues are evident in countless films
such as The Strawberry Statement, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, Get-
ting Straight, Alex in Wonderland, Hi, Mom!, Five Easy Pieces, Up in the Cellar,
Watermelon Man, R.P.M., WUSA, Zabriskie Point, The Revolutionary, The People
Next Door, and Brewster McCloud, as well as two prominent feature-length
documentaries, Woodstock and Gimme Shelter. Many of the fictional screen-
plays were accompanied by police sirens, student chants, cracking skulls,
and popular music ranging from poignant to pretentious and featuring
everyone from Melanie to Buffy Saint-Marie. During key scenes, the screens
were punctuated with jerky hand-held shots, rack focus, or pulsating
zooms. It is only a slight stretch to say that they all look and sound the
same, one heavy wig-out from joy to despair. These narratives, with their
obvious gestures to social relevance, were so common that in his consumer
guide to movies on television, Leonard Maltin describes the largely
unknown Homer in precisely these terms: “Well-meaning but cliché-ridden
1970 — MOVIES AND THE MOVEMENT 25