Clap Yea

Play It Backwards June 28, 2011

I first read Michael Medved’s landmark book Hollywood vs. America, nearly twenty years ago. You can read an excellent review here.  I then  had the opportunity to hear Mr. Medved speak and still count my autographed copy a favorite.

While reading this book I began to recognize the difference between popular culture and the very different world of family I  had personally experienced. I liked my parents and siblings.  I loved where we lived and knew that material things were not the substance of who we were.  We grew up with not much but everything.   Not much in terms of fancy cars, boats, or houses, but everything in joy, work, and meaning.

I suppose the addition of years, responsibility, children and life also played into the creation of new attitudes, but I found the first reading of Medved’s book compelling.

At the time I was working with a company producing movies specifically for family entertainment, and needed to better understand for the families who we served what was happening in the larger context of impact,  indoctrination, and acceptance of non-traditional values.

I am an Idaho product of the 60’s brought up on John Wayne and Cheyenne Bodie.  I even have a cousin named Bodie who raises the finest natural grown (organic) beef in the country.  You can see why my cousin Bodie Clapier is the real deal here. Scroll down to the pictures.  You will see we Clapier’s were country before country was ever cool. So it’s only natural that heroes like Audie Murphy, John Wayne, and Roy Rogers would certainly vanquish the bad guy and protect the virtue of the women.

Some will say that honoring virtue is a quality for a former time.

Others add that people never lived that way.

But I know that they did, and believe that now we must and that society will be better when we do.

While my coming of age was coming, I was a fan of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, brilliant singers with pertinent social sensibilities.  I still am.  The first time I ever heard Our House, I played and replayed it for hours.  I was a young teenager, beginning to feel my oats as Uncle Gene would say, and in love with love.  I projected all the simplicity and beauty of their voices and that song into my yearning for my own home.  I was growing dissatisfied with the home of my childhood.  I was on my own at 17.

But while the beauty of their voices lifted me.  I will never wish the journey that David Crosby’s self indulgence took him on and hope that he has finally found peace and good health.  The man sure can sing.

I remain a George Carlin fan even when the bile of his cynicism stole all his joy.  Al Sleet, the hippy, dippy, weatherman and cast of crazies broadcasting the news remains hilarious.

My favorite Carlin moment however, came when he recreated Queen for a Day, a television show where people would describe the horrendous story of their lives.  The winning contestant was crowned “Queen” and received a slew of gifts.

Among the delights of the woman Carlin parodied were comments like this while pleading her case as most pitiable:

“We are living in a no parking zone.”

“We have to move everyday because of the alternate side of the street regulations.”

“They towed away my oldest boy the other day.”

Perfect.

And when asked what she needed if she won.  Her answer?

“A set of golf clubs.”

It wasn’t until the 70’s that Hollywood lead our culture in an upheaval directed at turning traditional values upside down.  Even today, many of our most popular movies have a “bad” guy who is played as a sympathetic character.  Here is an interesting list.

I believe that art should inspire, uplift, enlighten, and edify.

Popular culture believes and acts in such a way as to challenge, mock, question, and tear down.

Many times the most defiling artists are the most recognized and lauded.  I want to stand that notion on its head.

In a world where bad is portrayed as good, lust as a substitute for love,  sex an audition for the prom, cheating honorable as long as you get away with it, adultery as a justifiable remedy for poor relationships, and truth as an outdated concept at best and an impossible standard at worst because it generates exclusion, it is time for a new choice.

We can never destroy.  We can only embrace good and realize that the the way to peace, joy, and happiness is not found in right or wrong.  I can never dictate your journey.  I only know, from my personal experience, that goodness is found in doing right while removing error, seeking truth while discarding baggage, and surrounding ourselves with stimulus, friends, and contemplations that support a similar journey

Popular culture and much of mediated popular culture disguises the generation of happiness in a cloak of despair.

It’s time to play it backwards.