Depressing times in American media. Iowa Republicans have booted reporters out of the Senate floor. The national GOP has announced that it’s now a party rule that whatever crazy-as-a-loon orange-haired Russian tool it happens to nominate in 2024, that addle-brained old nincompoop won’t deign to debate because debates are so beneath King Donald.
I don’t foresee the future, but it seems that the instinct to enact empty-headed authoritarianism is a viral disease that democracies can suffer from now and then. Maybe a few decades ago we though that young democracies, like Germany post World War I, were the most prone to such maladies. Today, we’ve been running a dangerous experiment that shows older democracies are at risk, too.
Well, I don’t know what to say about it. The Republican repudiation of open media coverage and robust political debate will prove, I hope, to be their undoing. But I don’t know. We’ve had too many signs of late that too many in the body politic are willing to be duped, and rivers of money still flood into and warp our politics.
I temporarily give up. I yield.
Not for good (nor for evil, for that matter). It’s just that on this media blog, while I might comment on politics now and then, I’m just not in the mood today. Not that I plan to stay silent, because I think every citizen in a democracy owes some attention to politics, and dropping out due to disgust is a cop out. When the going gets tough, the tough still need to speak and vote. As Anna observes in “Frozen 2,” in your darkest hour when hope seems fleeting, your best choice is to just do the next right thing.
It's just that I just don’t feel I have much to say that explains or illuminates these current troubling trends. I feel a bit adrift in a red state that used to be purple, and I hope that purple may reign here again.
So, on to a completely different topic. My wife and I have a tradition of watching a movie each week, our Friday night film. Sometimes, it’s with a 5-year-old grandchild, sometimes on our own. We sometimes pick an old favorite, but often watch something we have not seen before.
And our most recent three movies were quite nice—two-thirds new, one-third familiar but fun anyway.
I recommend all three movies, although they are very different from each other. In reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent Friday, they are:
“The French Dispatch.” Don’t go into this wondering what the story or plot is, this is not a clearly linear tale. It’s a set of shorter stories, meta stories because they supposedly represent magazine articles that appear in the final edition of a fictional publication of decades ago. That magazine very much looks like vintage New Yorker, and I loved that style—the cartoon illustrations a pleasurable bit of visual flair. The stories are weird, quirky, sometimes drag on a bit, but are also amusing. The movie is a bit too cute in a way, depending a lot on cleverness, camera angle and unexpected humorous detours. Yet, it still works for me. I wouldn’t rate it as one of my favorite movies, nor even my favorite whimsical movie. Yet I found myself wishing I had seen it in a theater. It’s gorgeous, nonlinear, irreverent—my one critique is that it does lack a bit of humanity since it’s filled with caricatures rather than characters. Still, it is worth the watch. As long as you don’t expect a plot.
“Brave.” This came out 10 years ago, but I don’t recall hearing about it then. I was probably just too busy. It’s a Disney-Pixar movie, and Pixar rarely has a miss. This one is a particularly good hit. A young Scottish princess objects to being the object of competition by male suitors, and ends up competing for her own freedom. Along the way, she gets entangled with a witch who turns the princess’s mother into a bear. Kid and grizzly mom (I know, no grizzly bears in Scotland, it’s just a nickname) learn more empathy for each other. It’s a pretty movie (Pixar), but also a pretty good movie. You care about the characters. I love that most of the characters are trying to do the right thing as they see it, but still end up in conflict. Even the “evil witch” isn’t really evil, but instead is just a force of nature that wreaks a little havoc. I found the three naughty younger boys annoying, but in a way that three naughty younger boys often are. They are still, in both human and bear form, key allies of good. It’s a good movie, with noble messages about the need for family to actually listen to each other. And don’t trust abandoned sweets.
“Yellow Submarine.” An extended 1968 psychedelic Beatles music video, it was the choice of the grandson. He’s something of a Beatles fan—when he was 3 and we had to travel across the state with him, he insisted on listening to “Lady Madonna” roughly 10,000 times. One of his favorite current bands is the Mona Lisa Twins because they sing so many songs he likes—Beatles songs. So the movie was perfect for him (it was his choice), but I also have a special relationship with “Yellow Submarine.” It was one of the three defining musicals of my childhood. My earliest memory of the family going to a movie was to view “The Sound of Music.” An annual family tradition was the Christmas time airing of “White Christmas,” important to me partly because my father served in World War II. And then, when I was 10, came the magic of going to a movie theater (a rare treat) in the Lyons district of Clinton, Iowa, to view “Yellow Submarine.” Of the three musicals, I’ll watch and enjoy any of them today—but the one I’ll enjoy most is the one that makes the least sense—it’s that freaky, colorful, beautifully drawn animated Beatles music video. It may be only a “Northern Song,” but I’m glad my kids watched a VHS copy of the movie now and then, and that now I have a DVD for occasional viewing when I’m in the mood (or a grandchild is in the mood) for the vanquishing of Blue Meanies.
These days, a major problem in the real world is an Orange Meanie, and although defeated, he still waits at the edge of Pepper Land, ready to stomp on our butterflies. We may need a bit more than love and music to vanquish him now. But at least it’s good to take a break, pop in a disc, and let some movie magic take my troubles away for a brief time once a week.
