Rockwell's "The Runaway"

In Rockwell's "The Runaway," Rockwell shows a portrait of a happy society, with a picture of little kid looking up adoringly at the police officer, a figure of authority. This picture focuses on a police officer peacefully talking to a kid, one who does not look to be in any fort of distress. Here, Rockwell ignores how life in America is-not peaceful, not calm, but distressed in the backdrop of the Cold War and the Red Scare. Rockwell instead focuses on how America used to be-if it used to be seven year old runaways calmly talking to a police officer in a diner, that is, rather than trying to that the boy home, or for the boy to show dislike of authority. Rockwell's "The Runaway" overlooks the fundamental rift that was rising in America throughout the 1950's-an emerging counterculture that was concerned not with how things were in America but rather how they are.