Word: petrodollars
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Arab as Plutocrat. The gas lines of the '70s fueled the image of overpowerful sheiks, shifty in kaffiyehs and sunglasses, plotting the petrodollar domination of the world in grim melodramas like Marlon Brando's The Formula (1980), Richard Gere's Power and Jane Fonda's Rollover (1981). There is an ironic precedent for such pop paranoia: the anti-Semitic myth of the all-powerful...
...moral here: that money was the root of all Ewings. But, really, Dallas was what it criticized. Endlessly fascinated with the lives of the rich and pretty, the show looked rich and pretty too, like a Black Forest cake. With sumptuous production values and characters who spent every available petrodollar, Dallas elevated conspicuous consumption to a secular religion: gaud almighty. It introduced viewers to the Greedy '80s, by establishing as a pop icon a Texas oilman who believed it's not what you get that matters, it's what you can get away with. In that age of winks...