OK film fans, today is the birthday of great American painter and illustrator Norman P Rockwell. Growing up my grandmother had an amazing coffee table book of his Saturday Evening Post covers and I would spend countless rainy days pouring over the pages; gazing at his endearing snapshots of a bygone era. He covered just about every topic you could imagine, from the silly to the heartbreaking. For me, he's the definition of nostalgia for simpler, more peaceful time. I'm a sucker for nostalgic films, but as I've stated before, I feel nostalgia should be limited to culture and not extended into beliefs about our humanity, for it is a fallacy to think things were ever really simpler and more peaceful.
Good Night and Good Luck is a slap in the face of nostalgia. It's an unapologetic look at a specific issue from our past, McCarthyism, and shows us not only how little we've advance in 50 years but how much we have regressed. As my guru thoughtfully points out, "The movie is not really about the abuses of McCarthy, but about the process by which Murrow and his team eventually brought about his downfall (some would say his self-destruction)." It's this thought, co-written and directed so elegantly by George Clooney, himself the son of a newsman, that I feel nostalgic for now more than ever. And seeing as this is my blog, allow me proselytize.
We live in a time when reality TV makes stars of buffoons, our news programs have the bite of a puppy and not a pack of wolves and our politicians fear no reprisals from them. In 1954 Edward R Murrow's news program See It Now criticized Joe McCarthy and his Red Scare tactics. The thought now, that a news program would directly question the actions of a dubious Senator and engage its audience in an intelligent, logical dissertation outlining their argument against his policies, is unfathomable. It simple doesn't happen anymore.
Instead, we have "news" programs that pass self-aggrandizement as public edification and the hypocrisy is shocking in comparison to their origins. Murrow was able to help bring McCarthy down by simply holding his own words and deeds up for all Americans to see, while eloquently defending himself against McCarthy's one note defenses. McCarthy was a charlatan, a shallow and petty man hiding behind fear and hate that Americans, with Murrow's help, soon saw through.
But the sad truth, as prophesied by Murrow himself in a milestone speech from 1958, is that television, and news shows in particular, are no longer the watchdogs of society they used to be. They are hollow spectres, mere shadows of their former selves. They lack both the skill and the desire to take the torch passed to them, leaving its few remaining embers to flicker in various online news sites.
As Murrow stated in the speech I posted above, "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful. Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, 'When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.' The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival."
We no longer can count on the news we see on television to offer us insight, they can barely tell us the truth. Instead, we get misplaced longings for nostalgia from inept, unqualified, muckraking 3rd rate PT Barnum hucksters; men whose modern day panacea consists of nothing more than the desire to divide Americans for their own personal gain. Their scare tactics draw a remarkable parallel to the topic covered in this film. And what's more, they have no respect for what men in their profession were capable of and did as a virtuous testimonial of the righteousness of facts over opinions. But as the line goes, in my favorite song from the soundtrack, "I've got my eyes on you." I hope you do too.
No comments:
Post a Comment