A Blast in the Past

Last year, Liz and I watched Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris," starring Owen Wilson and Amy McAdams.  We saw it again a few weeks ago as part of a church youth gathering celebrating French cuisine and a movie.

It is a movie about a successful Hollywood writer who is trying a career change -- writing his first novel.  But it is not coming easy, so he travels with his fiancé (and her parents) on a business trip to Paris, a city that he loves.  To gain inspiration, late one night he goes on a walk through the city.  Unexpectedly he travels back in time to the 1920's, an era he admires and idolizes.  He encounters Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway, to name a few.

 

The nostalgia of this era draws Owen Wilson's character, Gil, to return each night at midnight, in search of new characters to help complete his novel.

A recurrent theme of the movie is how various characters have different takes of which era is the greatest.  For Owen Wilson's character, Gil, it is undoubtedly the 1920's.  For another character, Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard, it is the Belle Epoque, an era she considers Paris's Golden Age. As Gil and Adriana go further back in time, they encounter others (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin and Edgar Degas) who think the greatest era is the Renaissance period.  Is seems as though each character thinks an earlier time was better than the one they are in -- be it the 1920's, Belle Epoque or the Renaissance.

The movie ends with Gil realizing he can't live in the past.  But the experience forces him to leave his fiance (who thinks he's nuts) for a local Parisian woman who shares his love of music from the past.

Gil and I both share a love for writing, and a fondness for music and other things from an earlier era.  As a result, I'm fond of the decades between 1940 and 1960.  It's easy to think life was easier, less stressful and more enjoyable.  I'm sure my parents wouldn't agree, since they lived through the Great Depression, raised four children on a single income, fought a world war, and were missing many of today's modern conveniences like dish washers, disposable diapers, computers and television.

I wonder why it is so many people are always wishing they were in a different era?  Undoubtedly, nostalgia has a way of painting the past in faded colors which mute many of the harsh realities of daily life.  My memories of life as a child are mainly of playing neighborhood games like kick the can, riding my bike, playing football in the street, shooting baskets in the driveway and reading comic books.  What kid wouldn't enjoy that?

If I was an adult, those wonderful memories would undoubtedly be colored by work, paying bills and worrying about the kids.  Just like today.   It's not that I'm unhappy in the world as it is today.  I love the progress we have made in medicine and technology (yes, even I am succumbing to it).

We have tried to do a lot with our boys during their childhood -- from vacationing and getting involved in our community.   Participating in sports and music. And we've even helped them travel alone to Europe, China and South America.  I know their childhood was a lot busier than mine, which may be why I enjoy the 50's and 60's so much.  Those decades seem like a much easier time, with less to worry about and less to get your head around.

But despite the assumption that my youth was a much simpler time, I do think some things really were better back then.  Like music and television.

I've always liked the music of the 40's and 50's, sung by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby.  All of Me (1947), I Get a Kick Out of You (1953), and Chicago (1957) are some of the best songs ever written.  They don't write music like Black and Tan Fantasy by Duke Ellington's and his orchestra, or Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin anymore.  It must have been fun dancing to their music on a Friday and Saturday night down at the Concordia Ballroom when it was new.

Try doing that with today's music.  Sure there's still some good music being played, but how much of it is going to survive 70-100 years?  Rap?  Forget it.  Today's R & B?  It all sounds the same.  Where's the elegance, the style?  Good luck trying to interpret the meaning of some of Lady Gaga's songs.  Try grooving to the beat of Rocko's U.O.E.N.O remix with Wiz Khalifa and Future  (I don't even know what that means, much less who they are).  And if you're really brave, invite mom over to listen to some tracks from the likes of bands like Obituary, Carcass, Deicide, Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel.

Too much of today's music seems to reflect dark, depressing themes that express the hopelessness of today's youth or their attempts to rebel against a society that has them under its thumb.  I'm not saying some of what they say isn't true.  I'm just not a fan of it.  With the exception of a few bands like Brian Setzer, Jamie Cullum  and Michael Buble, today's music spends too much time in bed having sex or wallowing in the gutter.  What has happened to romance?

 

Television is something else that's changed.  The other night, PBS had a special on Carol Burnett and her eleven years of being at the top.  Maybe I'm a sucker for comedy, but that show was the epitome of good comedy, great singing and wonderful dancing.  Her guest list included the who's who of show business.  I wonder if my kids even know what a variety show means anymore?

Many believe the 50's, 60's and 70's were the "Golden Age" of television.  It certainly was for me.  You only had three networks -- ABC, NBC and CBS -- and networks seemed to put everything they had into it.  I remember sitting on a Saturday night for great shows like All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.  Not a bad way to spend a few hours, huh?

Sunday nights featured Walt Disney, Lassie, Bonanza, and The Ed Sullivan Show which featured greats like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  Some other greats included the Adams Family, Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Munsters, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone.

I've tried watching some of these shows with my boys and they don't seem to enjoy them nearly as much as I did.  I suppose they aren't sophisticated or "real" enough.  Even boring.  I still enjoy the simplicity of the Andy Griffith Show, the goofiness of I Love Lucy and the classy talents on display in variety shows like The Carol Burnett Show.  But I fear I am a dying breed.

One of the things those shows had going for them was the writing.  Today's writing has become cliché and predictable.  I swear TV series just change characters and keep recycling the same bad jokes or sadistic crimes.  I have found a few shows that I like with my sons, like Frazier, Justified, The Good Wife, Game of Thrones and Homeland.  They all feature good writing and interesting characters.  But those shows are far and few.

And what has happened to comedy?   Carol Burnett recently said that the early comedy shows of the 50's and 60's didn't need politics or vulgarity to be funny.  They were just great shows with great writing.  But today?  Kids think Comedy Central, Two and a Half Men, Family Guy and South Park are funny.  Seriously?  What are we -- a bunch of 15 year old boys?  Reality TV and lame sitcoms have taken over the medium and left us with really bad people behaving like a televised version of Facebook or Twitter.

But like Owen Wilson's character Gil in "Midnight in Paris," I too can't live in the past.  My head is firmly planted in the twenty-first century (the Anno Domini era) even if my heart belongs somewhere else.   Fortunately, I can watch old episodes of Gunsmoke and Get Smart whenever I'm feeling nostalgic.  Or dance with Liz to the beat of Helen Lewis and Her All-Girl Jazz Syncopators.  And I can never get enough of Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club orchestra or Mel Torme's Mel-Tones.

Yeah, I'm a small percentage of an even smaller percentage of the 7 billion people living in the world today.  But I'm ok with that.  As much as I'd like to, I know I won't find a way back to the 50's.  Somedays I try to image the material Norman Rockwell could work with if he would illustrate our lives today on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.  Somehow it just wouldn't be the same.