Last Sunday I had the pleasure of touring Ellis Island. I was initially not too keen on going. It was a rainy day in New York, it was cold as early May days can be in the North East, so reluctantly I got off our tour boat and walked down the gangplank towards a large historic building grumbling with each footstep as is my habit, when I am doing something I particularly do not want to do.
How wrong I was. Within the ceramic and wood walls lay stories of families, struggle and true heroism which gave rise to the American dream. I found myself being bombarded with images and emotion in what can only be equated to the womb of America, its true birthplace. I personally do not think that Nations are built from documents or a small group of idealists, I believe that Nations are built by the collective yearnings of people who are striving for something better, something true.
At Ellis Island, I saw the beckoning promise and the bravery of those that placed themselves on a month-long voyage, gambling their future on the promised whispering of an emerging Nation, The United States of America.
These people who waited five or six hours for entry into the USA , not knowing what lied ahead for them for themselves and their families, were heroes. Heroes in the truest sense of the word.
I contrast this with my viewing Captain America, Civil War. While I was thrilled to see hordes of people go to the movies, I found the film ponderous and hard to relate to. The action was shown in a bizarre stroboscopic sty ling’s which probably evolved out of some tinkering with the 3D process. The characters really had not relate-ability, and I can only imagine if a viewer was not familiar with the Marvel universe, the movie would be totally confusing. Every hero and also and anti-hero at the same time and in the end it was not a satisfying experience.
In the past, our most iconic and sustaining movie heroes, have always been ties to a firm concept of what America was all about. John Wayne rode hard and was never without a gun; Jimmy Stewart had his slow drawl and an inherent sense of decency, as did Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper. Humphrey Bogart when he played Rick Blaine in Casablanca was an ultimate American hero.
Something happened in the 1980’s make our movie heroes prior to the 1980’s to lose their place in American culture.
In the 1980’s the United States moved from an era of middle-class prosperity and power and effective bipartisan politics in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to the polarized politics, starkly unequal democracy, increasing inequalities in the American economy and a middle class stuck in an economic rut. A malaise descended on the Nation
Heroes like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet arose with one common trait. Their singular ability to create wealth for themselves.
The huge power shift in Washington, D.C., that began in the late 1970s under the tepid rule of Jimmy Carter. It expanded under the Reagan years, who further skewed government policy in favor of the wealthy and corporations. With the rise of shareholder and crony capitalism that, since the 1980s, have purposefully cut the middle class out of its fair share of U.S. GNP, increased productivity and looming corporate profits a cloud of cynicism has descended on the Nation.
Hollywood movies historically have portrayed a heightened reality that borders on myth-making. That’s why America’s film industry is still the world’s most profitable: Its purpose has always been to entertain. It also unifies, inspires and evokes the collective will of the people from which it springs from.
In this country , after the Vietnam war, the pure American action hero lost a huge amount of it veracity. My Lai and the acrimony created by the war revealed an increasing gulf in the American nirvana. After the film “Bonnie and Clyde”, the movies and their heroes took a cynical turn. No more were the heroes on the screen black and white, shades of gray prevailed. A cynical, tragic and hopeless that seeped into the movies after Vietnam inspired some of the greatest movies in cinema history, The Godfather films, The Conversation, Taxi Driver, and many others. While creating many cinematic masterpieces it also created a vacuum for the traditional American hero.
Enter the superhero era, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg began turning out films who featured heroes who were other worldly and other than Indiana Jones did not have a basis in the American experience. At one-time movie heroism appealed to the best in us, after the Reagan-Bush era, our heroes basically appealed to the rabid mercenary in us. Heroism and fame became a commodity. Our society has mixed up cynicism with heroism. This perspective gave birth to the more than puzzling Kardashian’s and has evolved into a bitter and acrimonious political landscape.
We did a search for my wife’s relatives and their entry into this country while at Ellis Island. We discovered her families entry into this great Nation and their first steps in making their own American dream. It was more than inspiring and deepened a sense of connected-ness to the original American dream.
It is time again that movies celebrate what makes this Nation great. It is time to celebrate a true sense of National self. It is now time that movies brought us together.
