GELFAND ON … CULTURE-A few years ago I learned much to my surprise that the students I was mentoring didn't use wrist watches. Apparently the smart phone has made that item obsolete for this generation.
Imagine my amusement when this same fact was memorialized in a recent TV commercial for Jack In The Box, where a young woman refers curiously to Jack's "clock bracelet." In my world, it's possible to achieve this same level of Jack's time warp by absorbing myself in the experience and culture of a century past, in this case by viewing a film made in the year 1927 but about the events of 1917.
It's both an emotional ride and an ice cold shower. Let's toss in a couple of names for dramatic foreshadowing -- Richard Barthelmess and Ray Turner -- and talk about the deeper meaning.
This isn't actually supposed to be a movie review. It's about present day American attitudes and the seed stock they sprung from. The movie is just our time portal.
The film shown at the Silent Movie Theater the other night was The Patent Leather Kid. As in some other effective movies of the late 20s, this film looked back to the moment right before America entered the war in Europe, that war that we now refer to as World War I. In fact, the film clues us in by informing us that it is New York City and the year is 1917.
I'll dispense with the usual movie stuff and give you a three sentence summary. A boxer with a seemingly promising career is making a name for himself in a cynical profession. Our slightly narcissistic young protagonist more or less ignores the front page headlines -- America Enters War in Europe -- because he is more interested in getting to the sports pages to read about himself. It's a depiction of a more innocent time, one in which it was acceptable to be charmingly self-centered without getting much involved in political issues.
At least, that's the way this young man would like to go through life. But life won't let him.
It's an interesting point you can find in films made after The Great War (as it was called back then) -- that prewar patriotism, and in particular its militaristic outgrowth, was not necessarily assumed. Instead, young men who are living their own lives find out about the war and are gradually indoctrinated into the idea that they should enlist in the army. It's common for films of that era to depict an assortment of attitudes ranging from outright indifference to jubilantly patriotic bragging. The films show how social pressure was applied to the young men and their girl friends. To those of us in this modern age, it's surprising how often the female lead is presented as the scolding presence who reminds her young man of his patriotic duty.
Historians and pundits like to use terms like isolationism and insularity to refer to attitudes that didn't survive the two world wars. In American life as depicted in films, we see that earlier attitude. The pundits may call it isolationism, but at a human level, it is depicted as thousands of young men trying to get on with their lives, being wrenched brutally into a nightmare of flying bullets and explosives.
The one aspect of prewar attitudes as depicted in American film -- an attitude that is remarkably different from our current cultural attitude -- is that it is OK to be indifferent to fighting and killing the enemy. Most films of that era that I have seen show a mix of men whose attitudes are all over the place -- those who are eager to win medals, those who are entirely uninterested in getting involved in the military, and those who are downright scared.
You can also infer that a change in the national attitude has taken place between 1917 and 1927. There is sympathy for the dead and wounded, but not a lot of going back to the prewar attitude of non-militarism. You can tell that because, however these movies begin, they typically develop and ultimately end with men being tested by war, rising to the occasion, and overcoming their own limits.
That may be formula, but it can only exist commercially in a culture that has adopted the wartime attitudes as truisms.
In other words, we see a militarism that suffuses American culture due to the advent and execution of the European war. Once you've freed the genie of militaristic patriotism dipped in blood, it's hard to go back to an insular America.
As in so many other war films, this is not a glorification of the military, or of officers, or even of the idea of war. It's just something that America has to do, and the humble American rises to the occasion. It's actually akin to the English idea that every man is expected to do his duty. In fact it's reflected in All Quiet on the Western Front, depicting the other side.
If you are going to take the plunge and immerse yourself in a different culture, a different era, and a different mind set, there are a couple of ground rules. Just like 3D movies shown on an IMAX screen are a different technology than television, the Silent Screen is a different art form. It has different rules of engagement with the viewer. Emotion is expressed by action and by facial expression. Hand gestures have to take up some of the slack. And perhaps best of all, the viewer's imagination puts thoughts and words into the characters on screen.
Sometimes that style of art will seem a little strained to the modern viewer. Some scenes will seem overly theatric. The female lead cannot just shout, "I hate you!" She has to depict it by motion and expression in a way the audience can understand. So it will sometimes look different from what you might expect to see on Cheers, and a few audience members will laugh. That laugh is wrong, because it is not in response to humor. It is in response to a difference in artistic style -- paradigm, if you will -- and is inappropriate. It is strangely rude.
In other words, to really understand the attitudes and fears of the time, you as the viewer have to be able to set aside your own expectations about dramatic style and plot structuring. What a modern day television writer could do with a few spoken words was not available in the silent era, and it is up to the players and the director to use their art to communicate using the moving image.
One attitude that it won't be possible to sponge out of many of these old films is racism. The character played by Ray Turner is the Black sparring partner for our boxer, a man who later enlists in the army and shows up near the end to visit our broken hero. He is given almost nothing but stereotypical scenes to work with throughout the film.
In fact if you visit his page on imdb.com (the Internet Movie Data Base), you will read the story of an actor who played what was available -- shoe shine boys, railroad porters, doormen -- in a career that took on demeaning characteristics. It is slightly remarkable that Ray Turner managed to humanize his character in The Patent Leather Kid, considering the limitations he had to face while working in film.
Racism seems to have been an acceptable form of humor in the Silent Film era. In fact it may have been more than acceptable, more like an expectation. We see it in great comedies by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and it is certainly present in this film.
Richard Barthelmess was himself a box office draw who was well known in his era. He had a big success early in his career working for none other than D.W. Griffith, playing opposite Lillian Gish in Way Down East. He was one of the nominees for the very first Academy Award given for best actor a little later in his career. He is all but unknown today except to film historians, but his work has to be recognized as part of the cultural influence that resulted in the modification of American attitudes in the post-WW I era.
There is one more issue that is jarringly obvious to the time traveler who immerses himself in the silent film era experience. It is pretty obvious that Hollywood took politics and social trends fairly seriously. The way that The Patent Leather Kid deals with a young man's initial reluctance to participate in the war is shown as his own character growth, a growth that parallels the evolution in the national attitude. The repeated scenes in which young men are berated for being slackers (that's the word that's used for somebody who is not whole hog into the fight) drive home the point.
I would compare that element of the national culture circa 1927 with television in the post-September 11 era. The television show Friends bracketed the pre-911 and post-911 eras. You can go back and look at the shows in syndication, and I don't think you will see a lot of nagging on the part of the female characters for their male friends to enlist.
Our culture has reevolved into an attitude something more like the pre-1917 attitude shown in old film. We have a more distant relationship with those who fight for the United States because we are not forced to join them. The existence of a military draft in 1917 is a significant part of this film's plot because it was a huge change in the national culture.
Our modern post-draft era seems to have drifted backwards towards an attitude in which a class distinction is drawn between the soldier and the civilian. We moderns are a little more nuanced and frankly ambivalent, but the difference is noticeable.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 3
Pub: Jan 7, 2013