I may sound flippant but I can't check the New York Times website without feeling like all the oxygen has left the room. It feels so surreal watching the market crash from across the world, because while I know it is really happening, I am so removed. I imagine that I will come home to shantytowns and hobos knocking at my back door asking for work. Yes, I have to apply to trope of the Great Depression to wrap my mind around this mess.
To get myself in the mood for what might be a few years of abject financial depression for the United States, here are my top 5 movies that take place during the Great Depression and the lessons I can learned from them:
O Brother Where Art Thou? (2002)
Inspired by Homer's classic "The Odysessy" this film tracks three escaped convicts on a quest through the deep South to recover buried treasure. Featuring one of the best soundtracks, ever, this movie gives me hope for music in the future. Maybe sorrow and financial ruin will wake people up from the sugary pop coma that's been dominating the charts for all too long, and the emo poseurs will realize how truly trite their whiny diatribes are, and we'll enter a new era where the Wiyos,
The Purple Rose of Cairo 1985
Reality will be suspended as movie characters walk off the screens to woo lonely movie-goers. If this is the case, I am a bit worried about the January re-release of "The Dark Knight". As much as I would LOVE to resurrect Heath Ledger, I am not sure the world is ready for a real live Joker.
Paper Moon (1973)
A Father/Daughter con-spree through the Midwest seems like a pretty good option for a girl graduating in 2010 with degree in Anthropology.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
If all else fails, I can escape, right? Just wait for a tornado, or more like a hurricane to sweep my house from its crumbling foundations in the US and transport me to a better, brighter land. Accompanied by my trusty pup Alice/Flower (she has yet to be given a definite name) I will sing and dance my troubles away until the devasted, McCain controlled America that I used to call home is nothing but a distant memory.
I couldn't think of a 5th movie worthy of this list. Help?
3 comments:
I suggest the classic John Ford flick, "The Grapes of Wrath." (1940). The rest of the list is great. I'm a big fan of "O Brother..." also.
I was going to suggest "The Grapes of Wrath," too, although I think that Papa Fonda is overrated. To me, the epitome of escapism in the Depression was the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers series of flicks, so I'll add the best two of the bunch: TOP HAT and SWING TIME, although FOLLOW THE FLEET does have a youngish, saucy Lucille Ball. All eight of the major movies in the series are formulaic, but the costuming, set design, music and dancing are all pretty great. Another favorite of mine (Geez, I could go on forever) is DINNER AT EIGHT, a piece of whimsy done at MGM with Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, and the lovely Billie Burke. Billie Burke has a wonderful speech about her tomato aspic spoiling, which is worth the price of the video/DVD.
I have been through a market crash in NYC in October 1987 (child's play compared to the mess of 2008), when I was a young wannabe flapper (I wore hats, though not cloche--they don't suit my face)and party planner, 42 stories above Fifth Avenue in a bottle green tower opposite Saks. We were expecting people to throw themselves out of the windows then, since many of them had lost their shirts, but they didn't. We were also afraid that we were going to lose our jobs, disposable as we were, but silly us, we didn't make enough money to make it worth their while. We continued planning parties--and the band played on--including one at Tavern On the Green, where Zippy, the Roller-skating chimp, made a surprise appearance that I wasn't willing to pay for--talk about escapism--we thought it was only relegated to Hollywood, but lo! it was in New York, too. What a circus! Those years in my life were simply too long ago and not true!
The surreality of being safely cocooned away from the current credit and subprime mortgage crisis with the presidential election looming is palpable, I know. But certainly there are some wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee red flags that tend to pop out of the solar plexus and strangle like the gestating baby aliens birthing themselves in ALIENS by popping out of their victims' diaphragms, dripping ooze, goo, and blood. Sarah Palin, Mr. McCaincient, and all the rest of them are enough to jar anyone into action, no matter where he/she lives. You are not as far removed from everything as you think you are. You'll be home soon enough and you do have your absentee ballots, I hope. You can still be heard, no matter where you live. On this, I have been assured.
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