 |
| A doomsaying movie: relevant now? |
-Clive Owen as "Theo Faron" in the movie "Children of Men" (2006)
Our new world of limited activity just persists with no certainty over whether anything resembling normalcy is really on the horizon. (Maybe the precise term is "normality.")
The American people have been an optimistic lot over the recent past. Gone is the defeatism that hovered in my formative years. I grew up in a time when nobody thought the stock market would go surging up on a steady basis.
I mention the dispirited time of my youth as a reminder that sometimes the news and world events can become a bummer. It must have been worse in the '30s and '40s. I was not around then, cannot relate much to that. But look at humanity's background, lots of distress.
In our modern age through the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, our instincts have tended toward positive spin. We have seen "conflict resolution" implemented. Not that the basis for conflict has faded away, it's just that we now have systems to prevent prolonged discomfort or confusion. My blunt take would be, that winners and losers are identified quickly to promote orderliness, then the losers just have to mosey on and find another gig. There is more pain in the background than we might think.
We don't even want to talk about discord on any level. And it's nice to have a positive and optimistic sheen as a guiding tenor. But issues and problems remain to be confronted. So in the case of the current pandemic crisis, painful as it is, we simply must think about the worst things that can happen. It's not being negative, it's just being realistic. Realism can help us anticipate problems in a sober and albeit fearful way, but it toughens us and can help us adapt.
We have gotten used to a pretty sunny world. As a young person I could not have imagined - I would have been dumbfounded - seeing a world where the common folks had near-total faith in the stock market. A world in which they'd assume far more "up" days than down in the stock market, in which a down day is just written off as "profit-taking" and an assumed upturn will come with the "bargain hunters." Haven't heard the latter term lately, actually. It was standard cliche fare on the business TV channels for a long time. The commentators developed their niche in the media ecosystem where they did and said things according to a formula. All of cable TV news has developed that way, into an ecosystem that took some time to find its legs.
After a while, what's the point?
So this morning I might be inclined to tune in the "Morning Joe" program on MSNBC. You would think that most serious news-hungry people would find this show ideal. It is becoming surreal, however. That's because for three hours we're likely to hear in constant unrestrained fashion, all buttressed by facts, about the absolute absurdity of Donald Trump and his presidency. He is president even though he had no experience in government or the military. So we let him slide into that spot by virtue of his savvy gained in entertainment media.
He gets led along by Fox News and the whole Fox template of grotesque reactionary thought. And he actually proceeds with actions and words not based on a serious background of what he could learn at the highest levels of government. Surely there are sage folks populating the rarefied level of government, yet Trump acts as if they are not his counsel. Instead Trump is a total clown, just bursting forward with the most impulsive thoughts, often for little more reason than to be combative.
And he knows he has a cheerleading section across the nation of people who favor him like they would their favorite professional wrestler. And it is far beyond having any amusing quality any more.
So I could have watched "Morning Joe" this morning with Joe, Mika, Mike Barnicle and others, but I'm wondering if it's a waste of time. Three hours is a long time. I could take it all in, and digest a virtual litany of absurdities that come forward from Trump and his Republican Party in general. Yes it's all so mind-boggling. We see the people on the TV panel expressing disbelief and consternation and literally laughing sometimes, yet we have a pandemic now. Nursing homes are being assaulted by the virus and the stats of the deceased build and build. If nothing else, are you not affronted by the idea of the deceased being statistics? My late mother spent six weeks in a nursing home.
Humanism and Jesus Christ
The urgency does not seem sufficient. All the Christians who on Sunday profess to at least pay lip service to (Christ's) humanistic ideals - where are their voices? Oh wait, sometimes the reactionaries weave in "humanism" with a set of undesirable principles. They talk about "the libs." They decry "big government" and assert personal responsibility as they sit idly by while the deficit goes into the stratosphere and the Federal Reserve goes absolutely bonkers with what it is doing, "buying up everything." Money gets printed as if it's Monopoly money.
Were we not conditioned for such optimism in these contemporary times, we'd have a real fear of inflation, yes even hyper-inflation.
We can listen to "Morning Joe" and the nonstop well-informed rants about Trump - the man, his habits and his way of thinking - and what happens? The day goes by, then we rise again the next morning for the same routine, "Groundhog Day" style. On and on it goes with no apparent movement building up across the nation for redress, for a restructuring of government so it is run by capable, learned and humble people, people who do not demand to stand in front of a TV camera for 2-3 hours every day, yes even on Palm Sunday.
And Trump's supporters are the type who believe in "smaller government?" We have never had such an activist government and Federal Reserve. Our leaders pull levers that amount to little more than a sugar rush. They know that a few well-chosen words on a given day can "juice" the stock market a little, stanch the bleeding. And because our U.S. society has been through such an unprecedented epoch of optimism, we are woefully and tragically slow to see what might lie ahead of us. We cannot predict with certainty at all about the virus.
Our optimistic nature wants to suggest the best scenario. It is messy and distracting to have anything truly ominous hover. But our generally rosy state of mind will restrict us, for being able to truly cope if something on the scale of an apocalypse starts happening.
Presaging on big screen
I remember a movie of about 15 years ago about a pandemic that resulted in women not being able to give birth to children. So society was literally breaking down. Disorder and panic grew. This visit to the Morris Theater was when Curt Barber was still in charge there. Thanks to Curt for keeping the place going for so long. It became a co-op after his tenure. The marquee is empty today as I write, as social distancing has precluded the activity.
The movie was authentic in the picture it painted, made it seem such a thing could happen. It was sobering and riveting, so it hovers in my mind today. It's the worst that could happen. Let's see, the name of the movie was "Children of Men" and it came out in 2006, my last year with the Morris newspaper. For a long time I attended the movie every Friday night at the Morris Theater regardless of what was playing. A ritual for ending the week I guess, not that I didn't work on Saturday and Sunday too. But Friday was an exhausting time as I would load the Ad-Viser free advertiser into the Morris newspaper van. I could be sweaty! The Ad-Viser no longer exists.
I remember "working" on Curt to try to get the movie "Polar Express" here. It did come and of course I don't know if my lobbying figured in. The passing years have been good to "Polar Express" as it has risen to classic/standard holiday fare, where there's so much competition BTW. At first I was troubled by the movie - seemed too much like a drug-induced fantasy, and the kids seemed prone to having violent things happen to them. Revising such thoughts, we must persuade ourselves it's fantasy and that joy prevails at the end. Today I enjoy it, particularly where the elves sing "Rockin' on Top of the World!"
"Children of Men" was based on the 1992 novel by P.D. James. The cast includes Michael Caine who I will never forget from his role in "Zulu," the riveting historical story from the big screen in 1964. I can't help but think, sadly, that scenes from "Children of Men" might in fact become reality here. Ignoring the possibility will only hamstring us. We need a deadly serious government. We need leaders who don't have to be on TV at all.
Addendum: Will history someday judge that humanity took a tragic turn with the re-election of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell over Alison Lundergan Grimes in 2014? Grimes is precisely the type of young caring female leader who ought to come to the fore now. Yet people streamed into polling places to vote for McConnell. "Alice Through the Looking Glass," yes.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment