"Short Cuts" and American Life and Society in Early Nineties

Prior and during the time Altman's Short Cuts was developed and shaped, Americans experienced over a decade of Republican administration, represented by Reagan and Bush, extreme right wing national policies, and an ill economy. On 9 November 1989 with the fall of Berlin Wall, America and whole world experienced one of the most extreme changes in the history of the twentieth century: the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new post-Cold war era. Hardly anyone could have foreseen the end of communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe during that time. The demise of the Soviet Union left the United States the sole remaining superpower, a position that carried its own risks and problems. With this extreme change of dichotomy between the two world powers, on which was the base of the national and international politics for more than fifty years and also a major coping mechanism for the people by splitting between the Good and Bad, God and Evil, Communism and Democracy, in late 1980s and early 1990s it came to a break down of the known structures which were experienced as very frightening by American people. I wonder if Short Cuts was an attempt by Robert Altman in the early 90s, to comfort all these anxious and helpless people, who were "confused, and who couldn't understand why things happen to them, what happened to them and asking themselves why? What did we do wrong? What if this did not happen and that happened?"

The Robert Altman's Short Cuts and American Society and American Life in the Early Nineties is an attempt to examine all these notions and understand what is about Short Cuts making it to become such a timeless and unique movie.