COVER -> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
CITY LIGHTS & CIVILIZATION - One of my favorite film scenes is from Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. The Little Tramp has made a rich friend who, unfortunately, only recognizes him when he (the rich friend) is very drunk. During one of their encounters, the rich man and the Tramp are driving down a road of the city. The Tramp gets very agitated about the rich man's driving and exclaims: "Hey! Watch out for that bus!.... Hey! watch out for that truck!" and finally, "Hey! Watch out for your driving!" The rich man turns to him, nonplused, and says: "Am I driving?" (It's an old chestnut, reworked many times.)
I first saw City Lights with Lynda. It was on our list of favorite films.
I've been shocked, when speaking of this marvelous Chaplin classic, to meet blank faces.
But then, my ex-wife, Debbie, had not seen one of my other favorite film classics, Casablanca, when we met.
As my assistant, Kevin, pointed out to me this week, I often make cultural references which most people find obscure. It has to do with my voracious appetite for films, books, the arts in general. During that conversation I had made references to James Baldwin and Lawrence Durrell, both writers he had never read or even heard about...
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Lots of people refer to John Guare's wonderful "Six Degrees of Separation." Ask how many of them have seen the play or the subsequent film.
This is disappointing in that it demonstrates how many cultural references are just "cocktail party" references. Guare's work makes multiple wonderful cultural references which would leave most people blank-faced.
When people I talk to go blank-faced over Shakespeare or Twain, how can I expect them to recognize references to Aeschylus or Livy? I often feel like one of the medieval Irish priests who is translating texts into Latin, knowing that 99.9% of the world will never be able to read them.
When a reference to some silly fact about Britney Spears is more recognizable to my audience than one from Homer's Iliad what am I to think about the future of our civilization? (There! I got around to the "civilization" tie-in, in case you missed it.)
At least in theory, I am supposed to have the opportunity to "converse" with the best and brightest minds on our planet via this "miracle" called the Internet. My suspicion has become that I have only gained the opportunity to converse with the people who can afford and like to use computers. If the digerati are representative of the state of our civilization, I'm ready to go to sackcloth and ashes.
And, as someone with a deep and passionate love for the history of the human race, civilization and art, I'm weary with dealing with pedestrians every day.
Feel free to scream "Elitist!" at me right now.
But I don't agree with you.
What I believe I am cataloging is a tragedy. If the education of your children does not teach them about our past, how to live as a functioning person on this planet, what is its purpose? Just asking.
IF you buy into the commodification of existence, and pass that message on to future generations, how have you not been complicitous in destroying the spiritual life of us all? Again, just asking.
I've been focused on the spiritual life we share these past few weeks, I believe, because I have felt that my own was under assault. I shall be less explicit about these concerns in future.
But for now, right now, I want you to focus on our civilization. I trust that is not too much to ask.
RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: Hehehe! O jaded ones. Try this site out. WeClife.
