Roffman and Purdy describe the social problem film as politically rather tame, arguing that “there is no direct relationship between the problem film and social change” (304). However, they posit as an exception to this paradigm “examples of isolated reforms—in chain-gang regulations after Fugitive” (304). Chain Gang’s lack of narrative closure at the end, which suggests the failures of a malfunctioning society, approaches, they argue, a sincere and radical criticism of Great Depression politics and culture.

Roffman and Purdy’s reading of the film demonstrates a counter-argument to my own. Despite Chain Gang’s uniquely bleak ending, historical evidence refutes Roffman and Purdy’s claims. Warner Brothers, who enjoyed a longstanding political collaboration with President Roosevelt, released the film a week after FDR’s election to office. In a production context, I group Chain Gang with other films that propagandize the New Deal Administration. Its criticism of Depression society condemns Hoover’s failures thereby aligning a potentially desperate viewer’s political energies with subsequent New Deal propaganda campaigns.

Chain Gang’s historical misreading of the southern penal system, which Roffman and Purdy also overlook, reinforces its function as New Deal agitprop. By depicting the South’s cultural backwardness as antithetical to modernity (epitomized by industries like Hollywood), Chain Gang fosters a dichotomized interpretation of malfunctioning Depression American society. According to the film’s logic, anti-modern Georgia opposes modern Chicago, whereas evidence suggests that the South’s convict labor and subsequent chain gang penal systems evolved in with Northern industry. The film annihilates the chain gang’s profound complexities framing it as purely antagonistic in a typical codified Hollywood good-cop/bad-cop conversation.

In other words, I strongly disagree with Roffman and Purdy’s historical reading of the film’s politics.

Doherty’s history contextualizes Hollywood production efforts during its pre-Code era, from the publication of the Production Code in 1930 to Joseph Breen’s rigid enforcement said Code in 1934. Doherty separates the history into different modes of transgression, exploring sexual innuendo in Mae West films, eroticization of foreign and “primitive” cultures in films like King Kong, the alignment of Hollywood with the sympathetic gangster figures particularly in the WB crime films, and the political implications of the social problem film, paying special attention to Chain Gang.

Although Chain Gang used its own portrayal of brutality as a publicity gimmick, Doherty emphasizes theater owners’ hesitation about the picture due to its bleak themes and unhappy ending. ““My personal opinion is that I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang would do 25% more business if it had a happy ending,” complained a theater owner.” Motion Picture Herald warned the film's producers against portraying the gruesomeness of the chain gang too explicitly. For example, the notorious sweatbox punishment torture device depicted in Sullivan’s Travels and Cool Hand Luke is omitted from Chain Gang’s diegesis. These measures were justified “for fear of alienating a feminine portion of the patronage in particular.” If Chain Gang participated in a historical moment which established political stability during shaky times and fostered a profound alliance between media and government, then – like the film’s failure properly to address racial issues – women’s purported exclusion from its political energy reveals the patriarchal culture it fostered.

During these years, a prevalent freight-train riding youth culture also emerged. Children and teenagers left impoverished homes to ride illegally on freight trains across America. Doherty groups Wild Boys of the Road, a “politically subversive” film from 1933 which explores youth freight train culture, with Chain Gang. He asserts that “adults of the Great Depression understood perfectly why their children were acting up. Given the present, who could blame them for behaving as if they had no future?” From its title, I AM a Fugitive, which engages the present moment, to its temporal overlap with legal struggles over Burns’s extradition, Chain Gang exploits this “futureless” mythos thereby paradoxically enabling the New Deal’s future political success by responding to the public’s bewilderment regarding its own future.

Muscio describes Roosevelt’s collusion with Hollywood: FDR overlooked Hollywood’s oligopoly in exchange for its help propagandizing his administration. Hollywood’s investment in the New Deal facilitated Roosevelt’s assertion of political and economic stability (at least for the already dominant industries), counteracting voices that demanded more revolutionary political changes. In these senses, Muscio depicts Roosevelt politics as rather conservative, in spite of their expression of / appeal to liberal ideologies.

Since Chain Gang was released a week after Roosevelt’s election to office, and in light of the striking myth-making similarities between Chain Gang and Roosevelt’s platform (e.g. emphasis on the plight of the forgotten man), and considering Warner Brothers’ especially friendly relationship with Roosevelt, it seems absurd to argue that Chain Gang did not play a strong role in aligning American popular culture with New Deal politics.

Muscio also takes into account the emergence of sound technology and studio self-censorship codes’ roles in facilitating and defining Hollywood’s relationship with Roosevelt. She cites Lizabeth Cohen’s argument that “the talking audience for silent pictures became a silent audience for talking pictures” (75). Although the critical implications of the industry’s transition from silent to sound warrant more nuanced readings, Muscio’s arguments stress 1932 technology’s essential role in manipulating American political culture. The sound film, by approaching what audiences perceive as verisimilitude, sutures its viewer into becoming a voyeur, all the while naturalizing its own artifice. This basic understanding of sound technology’s impact on traditions of film receptivity in America suggests the singularity of the emergence of the New Deal’s and thus Chain Gang’s historical moment. Chain Gang’s aesthetic, narrative logic, and social arguments articulate a dynamic synthesis of cultural, technological, and political forces unique to 1932.

The Hays Code, which too facilitated Hollywood’s control over the market, further engendered the film industry’s alignment with the government. In the context of Chain Gang, a pre-Code film – i.e. post-Production Code, pre Joseph Breen’s rigid enforcement of said Code – the dynamics of a political and market codified aesthetic generate many ambiguities. Chain Gang’s iconoclastic renarrativization of Hollywood formulae, which actually transgresses censorship regulations in a fairly typical way for this period, aligned its viewer’s plight with the studio’s thereby establishing Warner Brothers as the “socially-conscious studio.” This image facilitated WB’s maintenance of industry control over mounting societal tensions that posed threats to Hollywood and fostered a space in American culture for the popularity of New Deal politics.