A recent re-watching of A Night at the Opera reminded me of an earlier viewing that encapsulates for me what the American century was all about.
I was in Boise Idaho, about a decade ago, right around the time the Egyptian theater was refurbished. Part of it's re-opening celebration was a movie festival of movie shown there during it's hey day.
It was there that I saw a Night at the Opera. The theater was empty (since it was a week day matinee) , but as the movie began I started to imagine it filled with the local farming families that must have made up the audience back then.
What awe it must have been to have the world unfurl before their eyes, with black and white images of far way places, people, and contraptions.How can we in our 21st Century saturation understand how new this must have been to them?
As the movie continued I kept thinking about the farmers, and how they had come to find themselves in an Egyptian themed picture house in Utah. From what I've read most were originally from the Basque country who settled in Utah in search of a better life.
Then there it was - the American Century encapsulated.
It was a music skit featuring Chico and Harpo. It was at the end of a Italian dance number complete with a spaghetti dinner and peasant dress. The skit begins as Chico plays piano for some children that have gathered around him. The reaction of the children in genuine. No one is acting in the scene. The laughter is real. After a few minutes Harpo takes over playing with the piano to greater laughter. He soon moves to the harp. When he starts playing the harp the children stop laughing. Not because they are bored, but because of they were transfixed by the music. And I imagined the farming families also stop laughing when Harpo began playing his harp.
I also stopped laughing and watched in awe of a Jewish vaudevillian playing harp for Hollywood stock players dressed up as Italians in an Egyptian motif theater full of Basque sheep herders- the American century in all it's glory.
The reason this observation is in a technology based blog is because the 20th Century in the U.S. was a time of innovation like no other. The breadth of it was so great it's easy to get lose in minutia of the details. Sometimes it's nice to take a moment to just go wow.
