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Sunday, December 12, 2021

A great film and a parable

 Last Wednesday my 12-week course on Generations in Film, 1938-2021, came to an end  I gave it via zoom (alas) for the Harvard Institute for Learning and Retirement, where all sorts of retired professionals can teach whatever they are interested in.  Very few of us are academics and I only heard about it through a friend I met in a film group.  I had taught the course to Boomers and Xers at the Naval War College and to Millennials (once) at Williams College.  This time the 18 students were Boomers and Silents, including several old enough to have clear memories of V-J Day. It went very well.  None of us, alas, could find much cause for optimism as we contemplated the immediate future of our country as it tries to emerge from the crisis which, in my opinion, is now two decades old.

As I have have, I chose to end the course by returning to the beginning--the last crisis--with the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.   I have always loved using this film because its three main characters, played by Walter Huston, Humphrey Bogart, and Tim Holt, beautifully represent three different generations.  The film dates from 1948 but the novel that inspired it is 21 years older.  Huston represents the post-civil war Missionary generation, Bogart the Lost generation, and Holt the GIs.  They are the counterparts of today's Boomers, Xers, and Millennials. Huston--the elderly, experienced prosecutor Howard--blew me away the first time I saw the film on a dark January night 55 years ago at the Brattle theater--the first Bogart movie I ever saw. He has tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and understanding.  He is always doing, but also commenting on what happens, and he knows what to look for.  Not until Strauss and Howe's books came out did I realize why the impact was so great--I had never seen a fully adult example of my own Prophet archetype (which includes both Missionaries and Boomers) before.  

Midway through the movie, when the three prospectors have struck gold in the wilds of Mexico, is a scene that captures the three generational types perfectly.  I used it in this 30-minute summary of the 1929-45 crisis.  Each of them, in succession, talks about what they plan to do when they get back to civilization.  The Missionary wants to sit back and enjoy his last few years; the Lost is totally focused on his appetites; and the GI wants of make things grow.  

Yet it occurred to me as I prepared for this year's final class that it fit the mood of the moment for another reason.  Here I must post a spoiler alert: I'm going to have to give away the plot of this masterpiece. If you haven't seen it, you might want to find it streaming for a couple of dollars and enjoy it first.

Howard, the missionary, warns the other two early on that the "noble brotherhood" among prospectors only lasts until they find gold.  After that they fall out over the division of the spoils.  This plays out, of course, after they start heading back to civilization with $105,000 in depression among them.  They encounter some local Indians who need assistance, and Huston manages to revive the chief's child, who has nearly drowned. The Indians insist that he (but not the others) accept their hospitality for a few days, and Bogart and Holt set off with all the gold on their burros, promising to wait for Huston when they reach town.  Bogart almost immediately suggests that they cut Huston out entirely, and Holt, always loyal to the group in good GI fashion, refuses.  They immediately become enemies and Bogart tries to kill Holt.   He succeeds only in wounding him, although he does not know it, and Holt makes it back to the Indian camp while Bogart goes on alone.  Holt and Huston set off in pursuit, but before they can catch up, Bogart is killed by bandits just a few miles from the town he is trying to reach.  The bandits don't understand what the sacks of gold dust on the burros are, and they cut them open with their cutlasses for spite.  The gold dust blows back to the mountains, and Huston and Holt discover the ruin of their dreams a few hours later. 

What hit me with the force of revelation this time was that the whole story was a parable of the last 90 years of American history.  Down and out in 1931 like the three prospectors, the American nation went in search of great things, first by trying to rebuild society under the New Deal, then to defend and extend democracy in the Second World War.  We struck it rich not only economically but politically and socially, achieving between 1945 and 1980 or so the most egalitarian society in modern history.  But our unity began to break apart in the late 1960s and we have never regained it.  As the GI generation died off, our economics and politics degenerated into a struggle for our parents' legacy, the gold strike that we inherited and have now squandered.  The prospectors went to war with one another when there were only two of them left--a nice symbol of the polarization that has destroyed our politics.  

At the end of the movie, Huston and Holt have hit bottom once again, but Huston, as always, immediately puts things in perspective.  He doesn't have to return to civilization at all--he can live out his days as the guest of the Indians, who idolize him.  And Holt? "You're young!" says Huston.  "You've got time to make three or four more fortunes."  I keep hoping that the United States has hit bottom, but I have been disappointed again and again.  We remain addicted to money, to resentment, and to conflict.  Eventually we shall have to turn the corner and start moving towards real regeneracy.  I hope we will still be the same nation, territorially, when we do.


3 comments:

Eric Rollins said...

It's time we start to take the logistics of a Civil War and/or possibly successful divorce among the States seriously, if only to describe the nightmare it would be to dissuade us all from participating. You would know better than I the specifics of the last time this continent manufactured a separate country within itself, and what that logistics looked like. We're talking new trade treaties with all foreign countries, development of a new Constitution, the development and construction of, or commandeering of, buildings for new national capitals and institutions. Taxation practices and implementation - which we would all have to assume would be severely limited - as any new nation on this continent would inevitably be borne of a principle to not tax anyone, to invite corporations en masse, enticed via lower taxes, abolition of almost all taxes, etc. Will it even have Supreme Court, or will it just move right ahead to an "executive branch is the only branch we need and will serve as law-making and law-adjudicating body on top of the law-enforcing body" as we all know they want to make the United States anyways? Also - I have to assume the current US Military has made it a lot more difficult for possibly seceding states to siphon off regional militaries from the national military a la the US Civil War of the 1860s. This new country would presumably have to develop their own new military from scratch - or at least I hope we've designed it that way. That wouldn't be very easy. Or cheap...That all just scratches the surface.
The New York Times has an opinion piece that “We’re Edging Closer to Civil War”, which was about the author drawing parallels between today’s abortion debate and the slavery debate of the early 19th Century (!!!). Again - I feel painfully pandered to. We're not even in an economic crisis (Depression) or an economic reckoning (canceling the institution of slavery)! What is the desperation here? Is it all purely ideological, and superficially so at that? Would not US Civil War II require the mass mobilization of almost all males aged 18-60 for military service? The last time that happened - and I'm generalizing and perhaps assuming - most males 1) had tangible familiarity with a musket and 2) had tangible familiarity with military training through their local militia participation. Modern national war mobilization would immediately put a very small percentage of the population with almost all of the firearms and all the military training, plus these would be extremely powerful and deadly weapons at that - especially compared to Civil War era weapons. There would be no Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh...there would be Auschwitz and Dachau. The only thing preventing the inevitability of a private police state running the country is the commitment of national, regional and local military / police forces to the US Constitution and not nutty individuals / friction groups, but that's always been true (Ku Klux Klan?). Without that - the extremists will falter. Please tell me how close we are to that type of scene - and I'll really start to get worried. The Times Opinion author says, “And this war won’t be only about the subjugation of Black people but also about the subjugation of all who challenge the white racist patriarchy.” I challenge him, and all writers, to have the guts to describe what that “subjugation” will actually look like – that is how you will get the moderates to really act.

Energyflow said...

Obviously you are rewriting history backwards through current experience. History will always be different tomorrow! Actually it seems that this nugget of wisdom is a universal archetype in fact. Trojan war is a good example.Troy film with Brad Pitt. Hero Achilles, general Agamemnon ( like xers or lost), Priam old King( prophet archetype). Children ran around frightened were like silent generation. But it takes a repetition of history to make us really see this pattern and believe it with our own eyes as you have done in art and real life but only because research has made you aware of the pattern.

Bozon said...

Professor

I have to thank Mr Rollins for opening a door to further speculations....

"...The Times Opinion author says, “And this war won’t be only about the subjugation of Black people but also about the subjugation of all who challenge the white racist patriarchy....” Eric Rollins

Such a conflict, if it can start, and it will start, will now spread as well as BLM and The 1619 Project have now spread, and won't be just about only dumb American whites and disgruntled coddled and excluded American mulatto negroes at all anymore, once under way....

There are billions of the disgruntled of color; envious starving and desperate Africa negroes who would not give coddled American mulatto negroes the time of day; post colonial Hindus say a billion, who hate negroes more than they hate whites and Gandhi's views proved it; post colonial Chinks who also hate any non Chinks especially Asians, of any color especially Uighur Muslims, bloodthirsty Muslims of all stripes, many of them black Africans, who would slit the throats of all other infidels for a bowl of goat meat in a desert oasis tent; the list goes on....

Have a great day thinking about this expansion of a so called America-only Second Civil War.

All the best