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Title: Status Anxiety
Review: Mildred Pierce is a 5+ hour HBO series about the lengths people will go to to prove to themselves and others that they possess an uncommon fineness of spirit (even though artistic and other forms of hard won success provide no such evidence). In James M. Cain's universe everyone seeks some kind of elusive (economic, artistic or other) status but no one ever finds it and thus no one is ever fulfilled by anything and this turns everyone against each other. Any fine qualities that may exist are trumped by petty ones. There is no alliance that is not tainted by envy or resentment or disapproval. This vying for status is not unique to the American experience but Cain identifies a particularly American brand of existential insecurity and distrustfulness that isolates individuals and drives them to construct their own private universe of one.
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