(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . How Movies Shaped How I See the World [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-13 This piece will soon serve as my weekly op/ed in newspapers in the very red congressional district in which I ran as the Democratic nominee in 2011-12. Most of my columns challenge my Trumpian neighbors. But occasionally I communicate with them on other levels, and in ways that invite them to see me differently from the very negative way they’ve been taught to regard Democrats. This one which utilizes a bit of cultural history to paint a picture of the world is one of the latter kind, which tries to open a space in which we are not divided. **************************** I have always loved movies, and they have left their imprint on me. The movies of my young years (mostly 1950s) helped form the contours of my image of the human world. Westerns I especially loved the Westerns that dominated story-telling of that era. For one thing, I loved how it explored what it meant to have a world in which the rule of law was tenuous at best. They presented an anarchy that required the hero to wield a gun (often reluctantly). The frontier, where the white hats and the black hats squared off against each other. Those interactions – it was said that the nation was processing the demands of the Cold War – rehearsed aspects of the the dramas in our world insightfully enough that I learned something about the regrettable truth that sometimes a fight is what righteousness requires. Also I liked the integrity of the hero with a white hat. (Marshall Kane in High Noon would not leave the town to the gangsters, even though he was entitled to leave with his beautiful bride. When, years ago, I saw that gangsters were gaining power in the America, I was troubled by how like the townspeople in High Noon, and how unlike Marshall Kane, a lot of otherwise good people were acting.) And not least there was the majesty of the landscape. (One image – an ending with our hero looking West toward the Rockies lived in my mind as a sacred landscape, a Garden of Eden.) The Western helped establish a spiritual feeling about the beauty of the earth. World War II Movies Born in 1946, I came to awareness during the years that the nation was processing the profound experience of World War II. Movies about that global conflict – as well as documentaries appearing on TV – were part of that processing. At the same time, America was focused on the Cold War that embroiled the whole planet in a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Those two combined to implant in my mind the image of humankind engaged in a global struggle over its destiny. WWII’s war between the democracies and the fascists powers looked like a world-spanning chess-match. The complexity of that global battle also, like chess, taught the importance of good strategic thinking. And, just as chess pieces come in white and black, that war was unusually conducive to being seen in terms of a battle between Good and Evil. The movies themselves usually depicted action at a small scale – platoons, or perhaps whole battles – and one of the values that they conveyed was the importance of teamwork. And the importance of courage. Religious Movies The 1950s were also a time of blockbuster spectaculars depicting religious themes—both Old Testament (like The Ten Commandments) and the New (like The Robe, Quo Vadis, and Ben Hur). It is no wonder that movies are such a powerful artistic medium, in view of how they bring together into one simultaneous experience the artistry of so many media that can move us: artistry in language, in story-telling, in visuals, in music. When the credits run, we can see that one movie is the collaborative product of a great many creative individuals, all orchestrated by a guiding hand. When those individual artists are of high quality, the result for the audience can blow one open. So it was for me, on a few occasions, with a few well-made movies that strove to inspire people at a religious level. There was a moment in The Ten Commandments that lived especially vividly in my memory. (Well, beside the occasion when Moses has his transformative experience with the Burning Bush, being transformed from being a fugitive from the dominant power that seeks to kill him into Prophet of the Lord who returns to the Egypt he’d fled to command that power to let His people go.) The most memorable moment was when Charleton Heston, as Moses, raises up his rod and calls out “Behold His mighty hand!” while the strength of Almighty God divides the wars of the Red Sea to allow the oppressed slaves to escape the onrushing army of the oppressor. That thrilling feeling has ever since fed my yearning to see such a Power for the Good deliver suffering humanity from Evil. Then there was the moment in Ben Hur – the precise moment when Jesus dies on the cross –when an extraordinarily dark and angry sky – wielding lightning and strong wind – expresses a cosmic rage at the evil that had been done. I’ve held onto that image because it feels so meaningful – even comforting -- to conceive of the world as a place that cares about how we’re doing in the human world. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/13/2152697/-How-Movies-Shaped-How-I-See-the-World Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/