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It happens. An story idea I thought was important and I did the work on is blocked by a Force Divine that is yelping at me at a high rate of speed, “You gotta do this, not that.”
And I say “I can’t, looky I really worked on this…” and the Force Divine says, “Save it for next week, kid. We got business here.” And I say “Yeah, but…” and I am lost before I pronounced the “t” in but. So this is free form and we’ll see where it takes us.
I was at lunch with a 20ish year old person and a 40ish person. We were talking about movies. The young lady said that she had never seen Casablanca or The Godfather. Never heard of them. The 40 year old asked, “Ok, you’ve seen the movie, “Taxi Driver, right?”
“Oh yeah, with Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah right?”
Uhm, No. Seriously no. Internally I’m going “This is not right, she is supposed to know. Casablanca is a movie she has got to know.”
That poor kid. We tried to force fed her our lists of the five mandatory movies she must see. We could only agree on three of them, Casablanca, Gone With The Wind and Citizen Kane. I think she also should see What Dreams May Come. That is a hard sell to people who see Robin Williams and think it is going to be a laugh riot. It is a deep, luscious movie.
Ok, the Force Divine says I’m getting off track.
After lunch and back at the Salt Mine I thought about it. "Why should she see Casablanca? What does that film offer an adult in 2008? And what is it that we were trying to communicate to her about seeing the movie?"
I think what we old fogies where trying to do, unconsciously, was to transmit the feelings and the various cultural lessons that a film can give a person. That film was jammed packed with romantic love, lust, honor, scum bags and second chances.
Culture is the shared values and beliefs of a group of people. Not just the day to day grunt living but what we aspire to and hope to become. Movies, music and dance are cultural transmission devices. The ancestors had the Griot tell stories and family histories around a fire. Cave painters want us to know how that horse looked thousands of years ago. Madame Butterfly is breaking your heart because she fell for the wrong man.
One of the definitions of culture, is all the knowledge and values shared by a society. Another is the acculturation or the behavior patterns that might help or inspire a person during rough times.
I’m going to continue to use Casablanca as an example but you might have one or two films that taught your something. So if Casablanca doesn’t do it for you then by all means pick your flick. Here is a look at the trailer of the movie.
What I Learned From Rick, Ilsa and Victor
It was not the intent of Warner Brothers Pictures to convey idealized American cultural values. The intent was to entertain and make money. Despite their best efforts the movie serves a higher purpose. Casablanca transmits (to me) the following values:
- The power of love and the ability to love more than one person at a time
- Commitment to an idea or cause
- Sacrifice of self for a higher good
- The different models of patriotism
- Moving forward and getting on with your life.
And please forgive me for being American centric. I know that many cultures and citizens from around the world have the same or similar values. It was an international cast and I can mangle La Marseillaise with the best of them.
Each One Teach One
So here is the sneaky culture secret that is not a secret. All of us are teachers. All of us transmit and exchange culture values. When two different cultures meet there is an exchange; sometimes for the good and sometimes it can be challenging. But all of use intentionally or not absorb a certain set of values from dominant cultural clues, pop culture and our own community cultures.
We take what we need and kick out those parts that don’t fit. Movies, radio and television are current mass media transmission devices. We now add bloggers and social media to the mix.
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