Moving Forward in Reverse

It's always a clear indication of how well a post will turn out when you re-write the first sentence fifteen times. With that said, I decided to fool myself into believing that these sentences right here - yes, the ones appearing on the page before and including this one - are actually the beginning of my piece. You see, it's next to impossible for me to dive right into a little article with a witty but relevant one-liner. Rather, I just ramble until I've used enough words that only by the simplest laws of probability does one bear any significance to what it is I plan on saying. Feel free to try and figure out what that word may be, and if you should happen to discover it, let me know (I'll just start every piece from now on with that particular word and we'll be on our merry way). But, now that the beginning's out of our way, let's get started.

(I should start by warning you that the "strange" occurrences which happened to me recently are hardly strange - but I'm not going to.) A strange thing happened to me recently. A few days ago I found myself laying down trying to develop my next brilliant idea. And, like most of the finer philosophers, I chose to watch tv. Flipping around for a little while, I finally decided to indulge my inner-nostalgic and landed on some old black-and-white movie. Making a long story short (yes, I can actually do that), it was a heart-warming tale of manners, relationships, and the general goodness of humankind taking place in a time when men wore suits around the house, and women wore hats at places other than NASCAR events. I realize that it takes more than a pressed suit and dolled-up bonnet to express the values and culture of a completely different era, but it does indeed say quite a bit. Needless to say, the class of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, the grace of Loretta Young and Donna Reed, and the golden aura of a golden age left me with a very profound feeling.

A few days later, still feeling very much attached to the films I'd seen, a friend and I talked about belonging to different eras - not necessarily feeling out of place in modern society (I'm not exactly experiencing slit-your-wrists angst), but more or less feeling innately drawn to a different generation, a different way of life. It was recalled to me, after I confessed my fantasy of somehow living in a Frank Capra movie, that life was certainly not depicted truthfully through cinema, especially back then. Yes, naturally this makes sense to me seeing as that I generally wouldn't enjoy watching three hours of some fool's mundane life, but qualities of the times somehow always find a way to shine through. But, was it the purpose of cinema to offer people escapes from a miserable reality? Did women obsess over Cary Grant because men just weren't like that in the real world? I have a hard time believing that every mild-mannered silver-screen star was pure fiction. There just seemed to be an abundant respect that very few people exhibit today, understandably so. But, at the same rate, I can't help but admit that I want to live in a time that didn't really exist. Are we so futile of a human race that treating each other with dignity was once just a Hollywood fable? Considering all of this, it's still true that watching these films induces me to be a better person. I want nothing more than to don my suit, tie, and fedora, call for a New York City cab, open its door for my graceful wife, and travel around town performing acts of selfless charity for others. Something tells me I might be a rarity modernly speaking, and if I have no one else but Frank Capra to thank for that, so be it.

Keeping on the same track, I couldn't escape the thought that perhaps I wasn't born in 1927 for a reason. Besides celebrating my second birthday just in time for an economic meltdown, I might very well be numb to the characteristics of the day. Being so far removed from that era might well be the only reason I can recognize those differences in behavior. In that sense, I'm relieved, but it proffers a strange scenario that seems to reign very true: a vast number of us live our lives wishing for simpler, bygone days, never taking the examples offered by history to improve our lifestyles. Was life better back then, possibly, but that's the paradox. It seems better only because it's not now. Perhaps in sixty years people will watch our movies and emulate our times, wishing they could walk away from their modern problems and into our days of simplicity, but is that the proper way to honor the legacies left behind - I think not. By no means will wearing a fashionably old-fashioned hat do justice to a time we feel deserving of justice, but only by a living example, through modern adaptation, can we attain that. Old black-and-white movies probably weren't reflective of their times. But we can certainly make them reflective of ours.