Further Reading
Belton, John.American Cinema/American Culture.2d
ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005. An introduction
to American cinema and its relationship to Amer-
ican national identity.
Giannetti, Louis, and Scott Eyman.Flashback: A Brief
Histor y of Film.4th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 2001. Contains an excellent chap-
ter on American cinema in the 1980’s, specifically
with regard to the influence of President Reagan.
Levy, Emanuel.Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of Ameri-
can Independent Film.New York: New York Univer-
sity Press, 1999. A thorough and excellent discus-
sion of independent film in the United States.
Mar y Hurd
See also Academy Awards; Action films;Back to the
Future;Blade Runner;Blue Velvet; Brat Pack in acting;
Empire Strikes Back, The;E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial;
Epic films;Fast Times at Ridgemont High;Fatal Attrac-
tion; Film in Canada; Ford, Harrison;Full Metal Jacket;
Ghostbusters;Heaven’s Gate; Horror films; Hughes,
John;Little Mermaid, The; Multiplex theaters; PG-13
rating;Platoon;Raging Bull;Raiders of the Lost Ark;
Rambo; Science-fiction films; Scorsese, Martin; Se-
quels;sex, lies, and videotape; Special effects; Spielberg,
Steven; Stone, Oliver; Teen films;Tron;Wall Street.
Flag burning
Definition Form of protest using symbolic speech
by desecrating the national banner
A controversial demonstration outside a political conven-
tion in 1984 triggered a five-year legal battle in the courts
over whether or not the desecration of the American flag was
protected under the First Amendment.
On August 23, 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson, a mem-
ber of the Revolutionary Communist Party, was ar-
rested for violating a Texas law forbidding the mis-
treatment of a state or national flag in a manner
intended to offend those who might witness the act.
The day before, he had set a stolen American flag on
fire outside the Republican National Convention in
Dallas, as one of approximately one hundred protes-
ters angry over the nomination of Ronald Reagan
as the Republican candidate for president of the
United States. The first court that heard the case
found Johnson guilty, fined him two thousand dol-
lars, and sentenced him to a year in jail. However, the
Texas Court of Appeals overturned this ruling, argu-
ing that flag burning is a type of symbolic speech and
is thus protected under the First Amendment.
Whether or not a person has the right to burn the
American flag was an issue that divided many Ameri-
cans, and it was widely debated. The case made its
way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a famous rul-
ing was eventually made on June 21, 1989: InTexas v.
Johnson, by a margin of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court
ruled the freedom of speech does extend to such
symbolic speech as flag burning and thus made all
flag desecration laws then extant invalid. The swing
vote in the case was Associate Justice Antonin Scalia,
who joined the majority opinion.
Congress disagreed and reacted swiftly. In an at-
tempt to craft a constitutionally permissible law,374 Flag burning The Eighties in America
Gregory Lee Johnson, the respondent in theTexas v. Johnson
flag-burning case, holds an American flag sent to him by an anon-
ymous supporter.(AP/Wide World Photos)