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During this time of year, as school begins to wind down and thoughts start turning towards vacation and post season little league play, another phenomenon takes hold. That would be to all the TV watchers, the dreaded re-run season.
Now that you actually have time to watch TV you have virtually nothing worth watching. Sure, there are little specials scattered here and there. Of course, if they are your cup of tea or bowl of goat eyeballs as it were, the reality shows that continue to plague our airwaves will probably be on every night.
On Tuesday night, CBS offered up one of those rare specials, the American Film Institute’s “100 Years of Film: The Top 100 Heroes and Villains.” The list was compiled by a group of experts from the film community and was broken up in to two groups: 50 heroes and 50 villains.
For any film aficionado this type of special can be a bit frustrating. As they go through the list of films you find yourself wanting to watch your own copy of the movie they are highlighting. Even worse, is if you don’t have a particular film, you find yourself wanting to rush out and buy it, not wanting your collection to be incomplete. I’m sure the latter emotion is something that hasn’t been lost on the show’s producers or the advertisers selling the DVD’s during the commercial breaks.
Even if you aren’t hardcore in your film viewing habits, I’m sure it would still be an enjoyable special to watch. Even though I know many people have never even heard of, no less seen, over half of the movies that were featured.
In our society, the fact is that most people do watch movies. Movies are generally the topic of discussion around the water cooler at work, at parties, and at an informal exchange between friends. It is part of the fabric that makes up American life, as we know.
The heroes and villains that were depicted in the special are role models to many. Granted some people who take it too far are unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality. Fortunately the majority can and they can see things in a character that they either want to emulate or aspire to, at least as far as the heroes are concerned.
With the film communities long love affair with “real life stories” many of the heroes that people look up to are “enhanced versions” of their real life. Gandhi, Lou Gehrig, General George S. Patton, and T.E. Lawrence are all great human beings whose lives were portrayed in film. Their lives, like the movies, were larger than life, so it is a perfect collaboration. That is not to say that looking up to fictional heroes like Superman, Tarzan, and Robin Hood isn’t as good. Nowadays, as long as someone is looking up to anyone who is a hero, is golden in my book.
You see, unfortunately, too many people seem to be seduced by the villains. I like a good bad guy as much as anybody and many I find more compelling and fun to watch during the course of a film. But just because I like to view the dark side in a movie doesn’t mean I want to live it. Sadly there are too many people that do, and if you look around in your day-to-day life you will see many of the films’ most notorious villains.
For example, how many of you have a boss who is a carbon copy of Captain Bligh from Mutiny on the Bounty? In my employment history I have had more than one who threatened to hang me from the highest yardarm or have me keelhauled for the slightest infraction. Believe me when I tell you if I could set them adrift in a dingy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean I would have.
Let’s see a show of hands now. Who amongst us has never been pulled over by Darth Vader? I thought so. Even if you weren’t in the presence of the embodiment of all evil your adrenaline was probably telling you otherwise. There is something about the demeanor of most traffic cops, especially at night, that gives you that same helpless feeling that someone in the grips of Lord Vader must feel.
My kids will never be able to relate to this, due to the fact that all of the teachers they have had have been absolute gems, but when I was growing up my teachers were not exactly what I would call warm and nurturing. In fact my best recollection of my teachers in the third, fourth, and seventh grades were Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, The Wicked Witch Of the West from The Wizard of Oz, and Dr. Szell from The Marathon Man. Leave it safe to say my early memories of grade school are not pleasant ones.
I haven’t gotten there yet, but I have been told by many reliable parental sources, that when my daughter begins dating for real the guys who I will be greeting at the door will be a combination of Cody Jarrett from White Heat, Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver, and Norman Bates from Psycho. Oh goody, I can hardly wait.
If any of these characters are not familiar to you, I can only suggest a trip to the video store. The only way to know your enemy is to know his roots and to see how they were dealt with on screen. If I only had remembered the water thing from the Wizard of Oz when I was in fourth grade, maybe I could have had a teacher like Arthur Chipping from Goodbye, Mr. Chips instead.
The Bush Speaks: I've got very good relations with President Mubarak and Crown Prince Abdullah, and the King of Jordan, Gulf Coast countries. May 29, 2003 to reporters.
-BD’s response – Dubya, I think you mean the Persian Gulf, you know the one in the Middle East, not the Gulf Coast of Texas and Florida.
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