“Wild in the Streets” as Prescient Sociopolitical Satire
Do you really want a man in his sixties running the country?
JACK WEINBERG DEFINED THE SIXTIES: In November 1964, he did an interview for The San Francisco Chronicle about the Free Speech Movement. According to Weinberg, the reporter was making him angry with his line of inquiry: “It seemed to me his questions were implying that we were being directed behind the scenes by Communists or some other sinister group. I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don’t trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings.”
The phrase “We don’t trust anybody over 30” was an overnight sensation. (In modern parlance, it went viral.)
That was 1964 and there is a good chance that he knew exactly the kind of effect that it would have on young people around the country (although he denies it). He might not have had a clue that it would also have an effect on non-political movers and shakers in Hollywood with a bent for sociopolitical satire. At least one movie seems to have used those six words as the basis for its plot — Wild in the Streets.
Black humor is a sub-genre of comedy in which laughter arises from cynicism.
