This is then through the individual destiny of Winslow Leach that Brian De Palma develops his critique of the society he lives in. He only translates what he experiences in the film industry to the music industry. ​Since 1967, Hollywood has known what is often called the American New Wave, in other words The New Hollywood era. The majors’ system of the previous decades, a very codified and restricting rule of the studios, has become obsolete and directors and actors have taken part in the broader political, social and cultural revolution of the 1960s. But if contestation and hope were the driving force behind 1960s American cinema, the 1970s are the decade of disenchantment. In 1974, with Phantom of the Paradise, Brian De Palma becomes one of the emblematic directors that will embody this disillusionment.

At the end of the 1970s, New Hollywood directors start to sign with majors again and the counter-culture slowly becomes reintegrated into the mainstream production system. Hollywood has managed to absorb dissidents and to devitalize them. De Palma himself experienced the absorption of his work by the industry with the first film he directed for a major, the Warner Bros. Because he was accustomed to independence in the realization of his previous films, the shooting of Get to know your rabbit in 1972 is a disaster and he is eventually fired from his own project. In 1974, Phantom of the Paradise thus becomes a way for De Palma, through the fate of Winslow, to demonstrate what the counter-culture of the 1960s and the New Hollywood are doomed to become: something buyable and marketable. Another product of the consumer society. The ironically-named label Death Records becomes a metaphorical representation of Hollywood and Winslow Leach an alter-ego for De Palma.