They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Imagine a society where, with the exception of a small ruling class, the citizens are poor and miserable. A society on the verge of collapse, where some desperate people accept humiliation in order to survive, and others are willing to exploit their despair. Okay, I know—unheard-of things, science fiction—but this is the setting of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) by Sydney Pollack, the best film I’ll never wat…

The post-war Baby Boomers, upon entering adulthood in the 1960s, carried the unique burden of being the first generation reared in an age of seemingly boundless progress and prosperity. For them, the harrowing trials of their parents and grandparents—the breadlines, the Dust Bowl, the existential dread of the Great Depression—felt like relics of a distant, almost mythic past. Their understanding of that era was filt…