One
difficulty in
thinking about America is that, from the beginning, there’s never been anything
to measure it by, no precedents, no frame of reference. That is our strength,
but it’s also how we’ve managed to hide from ourselves. Russians are Russians
no matter what kind of government they have, but America is a “dream,” an
“experiment,” an “American way,” a floating, shifting thing difficult to
address, much less know. I’m too restless to teach, but if I ever did, what
sort of curriculum would be fit departures for discussion? I’d begin with
films. Not our 10 greatest films artistically (though a couple rate as art),
but 10 that show us at our most exposed.
1. High Noon — A town full of frightened people who back down and
accede to evil, and an equally frightened man (Gary Cooper) whose sense of
honor won’t let him cop out. He wins his personal battle but loses faith in his
community. Nothing has changed; the townspeople will be just as chicken next
time. In the last scene, the disgust on Gary Cooper’s face when he throws his
badge into the dirt is the price many Americans have paid for heroism.
2. The Birds — Even in our loveliest, most out-of-the-way places,
there is a sense of an impending, irrational, implacable danger — we feel so
guilty for something that we fear even the birds may turn against us.
What else can explain our constant need for scapegoats; our growing public
fear, though crime statistics have gone down steadily for years; and our
willingness to believe even the flimsiest lies if they offer temporary surcease
from our pervasive, floating, unstated terror?
3. The Gay Divorcee — The eternally popular Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers
musicals were made during the worst years of the Depression. Something lovely
and reckless in the American character is always ready to believe that a song
and a dance will make everything all right; that the pretty, silly lyrics must
surely be true; and that if only we can find love, the rest of our problems
will solve themselves. Every one of us knows better, but that doesn’t seem to
matter. Europeans are amazed by this trait of ours, but I can’t help thinking
it speaks well of us — for without a certain suspension of disbelief about
love, life loses its essence and savor.
4. The Godfather I & II — The most damning fact about the
Godfather movies is that we take them seriously at all — for they are
impossible to take seriously, much less sympathetically, unless you’re willing
to believe that evil is redeemable as long as it’s done with consummate style.
This is why we voted for Reagan and Clinton, and why we like to think that
movie Westerns say more about the West than all those constricted, dull,
gossipy, prejudiced, small, Western towns. We watch these stylish, merciless
men do heinous things, and are we offended? Are we appalled? No. Underneath it
all, we’re charmed. From Public Enemy in 1931 to Pulp
Fiction in 1994, we’re charmed! And what does this say about us? That, as a
people, we are merciless — or morally insane, which amounts to the same thing.
For it takes little but style to short-circuit our reaction to evil.
5. The Civil War — Watching all umpteen hours of this documentary,
what amazes me less than the carnage is the language. West Point-educated
generals and ignorant privates, presidents and housewives, farmers and
statesmen, aristocrats and slaves, are quoted right beside each other for many
hours, yet the quality of the language is consistent. The elegance and
profundity of Lincoln at Gettysburg is the pinnacle of these expressions, and
yet it’s not so far removed from the simple soldier (convinced, rightly, that
he’s about to die) writing his last words to his wife. Few of these people
were, by our standards, “educated.” They were taught, basically, by each other
— most for only two to five years, in small classes, in backward structures,
by people who didn’t know much more than they. Their most common text was the
Bible, and maybe a little Shakespeare. They didn’t know from literary theory or
standardized spelling, yet the vivacity, grace, and directness of their speech
would put a similar contemporary cross-section of Americans to shame. (They
were also willing to die more readily than we are. I can’t help wondering if
that enlivened their speech.) Since even in the age of computers speech
is how we relate, it makes one think that those folks knew something
about education that we don’t.
6. Frankenstein — We love monsters. And we love the monstrous. We are
a country of monstrous size, monstrous resources, monstrous appetites, and a
monstrous history, and from Frankenstein and King Kong to Freddy we’ve seen a
sweetness, even an innocence, in monstrosity. Frankenstein is created by the
very talent that’s enabled us to become powerful: science. Therefore he is not
responsible for himself, he’s the monster-as-victim. His strength is his curse.
He cannot love without destroying. The eerie beauty of his face, his
unspeakable baffled grief at his own actions, and the rage that compels him to
kill again, are an ode to the helpless compulsions of strength. Even the hate
others feel for him is tempered by their fascination, as the world is obsessed
by America even as it despises us.
7. Thelma & Louise — In a free country where wage-earners can’t
speak their minds from 9 to 5; in a classless society, where to be a woman (or
anyone) with a high-school education is to be doomed to servitude — in such a
place, liberty and even individuality are bound to be seen as outlaw qualities.
To be free is to be criminal, but to be criminal is to be doomed. Our films
have always equated true liberty, and even self-discovery, with doom — and
nothing says more about us than how much the average American identifies with
this equation. In the end, Thelma and Louise are happy to pay with their lives
for a few days of liberty and companionship — which measures how bound and
lonely they’ve really been all their lives. In the end, we’re happy to see them
die because it is a choice — and we, who accept so slavishly what we’re
given (whether it’s a political candidate, an education, or a job), make so few
true choices, that to see these women live out Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty
of give me death” is almost a happy ending.
8. A Woman Under the Influence — If Marilyn Monroe had borne the
children she wanted, this might be her version of family values. Gena Rowlands’
blond beauty-in-a-housedress, her frantic lyricism, her ruthless sweetness, her
sudden spells of lucidity and practicality — this is what happens when the
images and hopes of “the movies” are locked inside the head and heart of a
person bound to the daily demands of how we really live and speak. There is no
bridge between the dream and the reality except madness. Madness and betrayal.
And nothing is resolved. She goes mad, is institutionalized, then simply comes
home — not cured, merely rested. Then must go mad again, for she has no other
choice, no other possible rhythm. (What good can psychology do her, when it can
neither expunge the dream nor change the reality?) She’s tolerated, finally,
only because everyone around her shares the same unbearable tension, though to
lesser degrees, between their reality and their dreams. It is the story of
people who’ve signed on to a dream they can neither escape nor fulfill — “the
American dream,” from which no one can wake. Yes, Marilyn Monroe as
hausfrau. While all her man can do, in the face of such inner power, is
work and grouse and care — and, helplessly, love… love the embodiment of the
dream in the only form in which it can possibly accept his embrace. It’s either
that, or watch TV. And the only false thing about this film is that it portrays
suburban life without TV.
9. Gone With the Wind — The only way to see this film as it truly is,
is to imagine it in photograph negative, black for white: Sidney Poitier as
Rhett, Billie Holiday as Scarlett, Ella Fitzgerald as Melanie, and Denzel
Washington as Ashley, with Roseanne or Lucille Ball as Mammy. All the silly
slaves (for all but Mammy are constantly stupid) would be white, all the
Confederate lads and lassies black. Yes, some hypnotist should put us all in a
trance in which we played GWTW in our minds’ eyes with this cast. I
believe that would be the only way for most whites to experience the
overwhelming racism of this (and almost every) film. When we came out of that
trance, we would know what a racist trance we live in every day.
10. The Mack Sennett-Charlie Chaplin short silent comedies — Made
mostly in 1914, this is not the whimsical Tramp of the later, more artistic
films, but an almost inhuman blur of fantastic, inconsiderate, relentless
energy that knows no bounds nor any authority except itself. This is comedy as
intrusion and assertiveness: The Tramp insists on having whatever he wants, on
butting into any situation he fancies, regardless of the degree of disruption
— and then running, running, running, from cops and every other form of
officialdom, uncatchable, untouchable. It is comedy as unfiltered, unfettered
desire. No plots, not really. Nothing but mishap and chase. No one who sees
these films can be surprised at our desire to have it all without consequences.
We have only to remember that it was the popularity of these Sennett-Chaplin
comedies, more than any other single factor, that made “the movies” an American
institution — for Chaplin played not a man but an imp, a voracious comedic
symbol of the hungers that have driven us to the brink. n
This article appears in November 8 • 1996 and November 8 • 1996 (Cover).