"The heart has its reasons which reason knows not" -Blaise Pascal
These films shine a radiant light on one great perennial "Reason of the Heart" - We share a common humanity! How far can great classic films carry us on the rocky road to greater social, cultural and political unity on high school and college campuses? The answer is - just as far as our human longing for solidarity and capacity to imagine the transcendent can take us! The films of Hollywood's Golden Age - made in the decades of the mid- 20th century - give us timeless aesthetic and ethical puzzle pieces for understanding our human condition in this very troubled time we are living through. These films open up classical inquiry concerning who we are and how we can live together in civil society.
President Lincoln encouraged us to understand our human nature to a deeper degree than what is usually expected today. When he addressed the people at Gettysburg he said, "We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." Lincoln's concept of our shared human nature is dramatized in classic movie storytelling. In his course at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and 60s, political philosopher Leo Strauss would remind his students that: "as Aristotle put it, the city comes into being for the sake of life, but it exists for the sake of the good life." Consider how we can witness the struggle for justice in a jury room in 12 Angry Men, or rediscover in Sidney Poitier's first film, No Way Out that all of us are called to be defenders of human dignity.
Classic Cinema Civic Education
To Help Rebuild Our Society's Social Capital...at the Intersection of Community and Culture
In a recent article in the Atlantic, After Babel: How social media dissolved the mortar of society and made America stupid, Jonathan Haidt, NYU professor of psychology and author of The Righteous Mind, presents the image of the Tower of Babel to help us across the generations understand visually what it means to live in a society where bonds of civic unity vital to survival are disappearing.
Professor Haidt describes us as "people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension". He speaks of the Tower of Babel as a "metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left, and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families."
Regaining greater unity and civic friendship amid the ruins of Babel: Golden age five star films are the building blocks
There is one highly visible quality in great golden age movies that gives them the potential to bring us together again in our polarized public square. That ingredient is the storytelling power of great classic films to elevate our hearts and minds - transporting us across political and cultural chasms of division and hatred.
"We are built for cooperation, not just competition"
-Political philosopher Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
The narratives of these great classic films offer a timeless vision of solidarity - an Ethic of Community. Our civil society cannot ultimately endure if as human beings we are merely clusters of atomized, autonomous selves. According to Sacks, "A society of individualists is unsustainable. We are built for cooperation, not just competition. In the end, with the market and the state but with no substantive society to link us to our fellow citizens in bonds of collective responsibility, trust and truth erode, economics becomes inequitable , and society becomes unbearable."
Consider how the aesthetics of classic moviemaking dramatize a uniting moral vision: we are all together in our common humanity, living together as parts of the whole. We need concrete stories with characters we SEE acting with EACH OTHER and these stories, taught in any educational setting, or shared at gathering places in our communities, serve as a balm for wounded souls. Who better than James Cagney playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy to help us clear out the cobwebs of group identity politics?
What Does it Mean to be an American? James Cagney - Yankee Doodle Dandy
Our mission to engage in the rebuilding civic friendship is captured in the 4th of July 2022 Turner Classic Movies celebration of Yankee Doodle Dandy, directed by one of the greatest moviemakers of the golden era, Michael Curtiz. TCM host Ben Mankiewicz introduced Yankee Doodle Dandy with the observation that the film represents "what it means to be an American." This meaning comes - even for young people stuck in an internet age - through the workings of our moral imagination as we are both entertained and inspired in the film experience.
Overcoming Our Tribalized Politics with the Wisdom of Frank Capra in
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - Recovering the view that politics as rooted in community and a shared human nature
One of the surest ways to to push back on group identity politics in our postmodern era is to dispel in our minds and hearts the false narrative of "us vs. them." But how can this be done? We need to engage in one- on- one conversations with each other beyond our tribalized comfort zones. Civil discourse is a moral obligation for all who do not believe that "we win, you lose" cataclysmic election cycles should define our sphere of citizenship as acting persons. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington elevates our spirits while dramatizing our shared nature as social beings. The film affirms we live best and flourish together in civil society as families and communities. Capra made this film in 1939 when our nation was on the verge of World War II. Through his genius, we grasp the classical Aristotelian view of politics as rooted in human nature - the way of life of a people. This idea of political community as our common life together is introduced in the beginning scenes with the selection of a new senator made by the Governor's kids at the dinner table.
A vital lesson in history from World War II...
A closer look at human nature in the filibuster sequence...
The government of the people, by the people and for the people is not a lost cause as long as enough citizens are willing to stand up no matter what the cost...
Featured in this study guide from Educational Guidance Institute are lesson plans including vocabulary and essay-writing, and application of Moral Foundations Theory as Professor Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind presents it. With Haidt's template, we are able to deepen our moral perspective as we experience the film and its themes together.
"Moral communities are fragile things, hard to build and easy to destroy. When we think about very large communities such as nations, the challenge is extraordinary and the threat of moral entropy is intense...if you don't have moral capital, then you won't foster values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, and technologies that increase it." -Jonathan Haidt
Rebuilding Moral and Social Capital with It's A Wonderful Life
The Ethic of Community vs. The Isolated Self
“...the more you emphasize common goals or interests, shared fate, and common humanity, the more [people] will see one another as fellow human beings, treat one another well, and come to appreciate one another’s contribution to humanity.”
-The Coddling of the American Mind
This 1946 classic gives us a blueprint for understanding the concept of a common life lived through the Ethic of Community. This cinematic affirmation that human beings are social by nature is vital for many in our rising generation who endure heart-breaking isolation and deep challenges to their mental health. Across the generations, we can examine together - in any educational setting and in any campus or community event - the elements of community we see in Bedford Falls versus the isolation of self we witness in Pottersville. For decades, the American Film Institute has placed It's A Wonderful Life at the top of their list as the number one "Most Inspiring Film of All Time."
Confronting Meta-Tribalism in 21st Century Politics with the
Great Ideas of Justice, Truth, and Human Dignity
No Way Out (1950) and 12 Angry Men (1957)
"Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings, but to human nature of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part."
-18th Century Statesman Edmund Burke - Reflections on the French Revolution
"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
-James Madison, Federalist Paper 51
No Way Out piloted by Educational Guidance Institute at Westfield High School
Some years ago, No Way Out - Sidney Poitier's first film and an original story written and directed in 1950 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz - was piloted in EGI's Project Heart to Heart at Westfield High School in Northern Virginia. Two Westfield teachers facilitated discussion sessions in both regular classroom periods and in our after-school program during Black History Month.
Through this pilot, we learned that classic movie storytelling works well in equipping high schoolers to grapple with tough and complex issues like racism. One student, initially very skeptical of the value of Black History Month, later commented on the deeper meaning of human dignity he had picked up, especially in the final scenes of No Way Out.
In a recent class discussion of No Way Out (part of a course of study on classic film offered at Holy Trinity parish in Northern Virginia), high school students engaged in a lively discussion on the issues of racism and moral choice vs. conformity to "get along."
The universal idea of human dignity dramatized in No Way Out
"I can't kill a man because he hates me"
12 Angry Men: Truth and Justice in the Balance
20th Anniversary Celebration of Turner Classic Movies with Robert Osborne
In 2014, I was blessed to be invited, along with 19 other classic movie fans, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Turner Classic Movies and introduce 12 Angry Men with TCM 's late beloved host, Robert Osborne. Shortly before this momentous event, EGI had piloted 12 Angry Men in a hugely successful youth night with both middle and high school students participating. It was a dream come true to discuss the educational power of classic film in teaching and learning with Robert Osborne; his kindness and gentlemanly manner put us at ease. Robert Osborne's classical intuition seemed to allow him to integrate cultural history, personal memory and aesthetic sensibility so naturally into all of his commentaries.
With the publication in 2015 of The Coddling of the American Mind, we have became sadly aware of the toxic impact of social media on the human psyche in general and on the immature minds of young people in particular. Here are the 3 harmful untruths uncovered by the authors, featured in our Braver Angels Film Discussion -on YouTube as Braver Angels - 12 Angry Men .
The two slides above and below are part of a set of slides on 12 Angry Men featured in our Braver Angels Film Club discussion. This set of slides to introduce and discuss the film is provided to educators and others interested in the renewal of "civics 101" for high school and college students in any educational setting (see resources listed at the end of the article). In the slide below, we see three characters who play smaller but vitally significant roles - highlighting the importance of everyone's participation in preserving the civic virtues of Justice and Magnanimity in a free civil society.
Civic Virtue : The Care & Defense of the Common Good in 3 Western Classics
High Noon, Shane, and The Big Country
"Cherishing civic friendship requires a willingness to believe that there really is such a thing as a common good, that there are such things as objective goods and evils, and that the human moral intellect can get a grip on these things." - J. Budziszewski
The Making of High Noon and the Failure to Defend the Common Good in the Era of the Hollywood Black List
J. Budziszewski, professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, in the quote above. raises the crucial question. Before we and our fellow citizens can join together in solidarity to defend the common good of our communities, enough of us must have the knowledge that there is such a thing as a common good. Especially in the midst of a crisis, friends might choose their own interests over loyalty and solidarity. Carl Foreman, screenwriter for High Noon, learned this while living through the crisis of the Hollywood Black List in the early 1950s. This reality concerning human nature is a theme in The Federalist Papers : self- interest will often sadly be more powerful than solidarity when questions of justice and moral responsibility for the common good are at stake.
Glenn Frankel describes Foreman's experience stating, "During all of this time, Carl was putting the finishing touches on the dialogue in the High Noon script. He found himself inserting words that he was hearing from his so-called friends, especially in the church meeting scene. There was a heavy whiff of betrayal in the air.
'It was now happening to me, rather than to friends of mine and it was all falling into line...A lot of the dialogue was almost the dialogue that I was hearing from people and even in the company...you could walk down the street and see friends of yours recognize you, turn, and walk the other way.' "
(Carl Foreman as quoted by Glenn Frankel in High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and The Making of an American Classic)
Carl Foreman's unforgettable characters depict emotions we recognize in ourselves and each other in our own lives. When a crisis emerges in the midst of our political community, emotions like fear, political self- interest, and bitterness can become stronger than moral courage, statesmanship and loyalty in genuine civic friendship.
"It said something about human nature which apparently never changes in that there is a man who is in desperate trouble and is asking for help and nobody is there to help him-everybody having very good personal reasons of his own which is what happens every day and has never changed...you see it time after time and this is what I think makes it a timely movie."
Director Fred Zinnemann in commentary on High Noon
Shane and The Big Country : Modeling the Care and Defense of the Common Good in Fragile Political Communities
George Stevens' Shane and William Wyler's The Big Country, shine out as classic westerns that vividly depict the perennial struggle for the common good. These westerns teach civic lessons similar to those we also see in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence , 3:10 to Yuma and The Magnificent Seven. One lesson shows that citizens experiencing a crisis must choose solidarity over personal autonomy for the political community to survive. In Shane, at the funeral service for one of the settlers, the character of Shane (Alan Ladd) along with his friend Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) not only provide a vision of community but also pledge to help rebuild the homestead burned down by the tyrannical ranch boss who is trying to drive them out.
In The Big Country there is a narrative of destructive tribalism that carries deep civic lessons for us today. In whatever political scenario that appears on the political landscape, it is the calling of each person to make the crucial moral decision in concrete circumstances in which they find themselves. The characters of Burl Ives and Charlton Heston change from aggression to reflection which transforms them into moral decision makers. The Big Country stands out as one of the few Westerns in which a woman's role in the film narrative is morally decisive. Jean Simmons plays Julie Maragon, whose grandfather owned the Big Muddy (the body of water that can be a resource that serves everyone, or a means of power for tribal warfare).
William Wyler on set with the cast of The Big Country
“[Law] is spread through the whole human community, unchanging and eternal, calling people to their duty by its commands and deterring them from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.”
- Cicero, De Re Publica
“There is in nature a common principle of the just and the unjust that all people in some way discern, even if they have no association or commerce with each other.”
- Aristotle
Reclaiming Moral Courage in the "Arts of Preservation" - Key Largo, On the Waterfront and Bad Day at Black Rock
In Teaching as a Conserving Activity, Neil Postman, professor of media ecology at New York University, gave us precious wisdom imparted over four decades ago...
"...we have lost the arts of preservation. Without at least a reminiscence of continuity and tradition, without a place to stand and observe change,...we can easily be swept away---in fact we are being swept away....."
Sharing and studying great classic films together is a mode of moral inquiry suitable for very diverse citizens and future citizens in the classroom and informal social gatherings. In our politically polarized era, we see claims from both the right and the left to define - in mostly abstract terms - the political "meaning" of history. Engaging in the cinematic study of life in Civil Society through great films of the golden era gives us an opportunity to humbly and intentionally practice, in Neil Postman's words, "the lost arts of preservation."
In all three films - what is being depicted and "preserved" is a robust understanding of human conscience and what moves the human person to moral action.
At the cultural and historic tip of The Upswing with
A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and Judgment at Nuremburg (1961)
Reflections on the Cultural and Historic Moment of 1960...
I was a sophomore political science major at Whittier College in California in 1959, the same season of time when Chicago native Lorraine Hansberry was valiantly bringing her play, A Raisin in the Sun, to the attention of New York producers. At last, producer David Susskind brought it with huge success to the Broadway stage. One year later, in the spring semester of my junior year, I found myself a part of the historic events in the early civil rights movement as an exchange student to Howard University in Washington D.C. That same semester, two pals from Whittier, my roommate Lesley and our friend Jim, were exchange students at Fisk University in Nashville Tennessee. This was an amazing time in America, the very "tip" of what Robert Putnam calls, The Upswing. As I have said so many times, the sensibility of the Great Idea of fighting for true justice as everyone's civic duty was strongly present in the cultural matrix of that year 1960. This kind of cultural sensibility is mysterious, but I know first hand it can definitely be felt by many. Of course, at Whittier College with its Quaker tradition still strong in the late 1950s, this Great Idea was visibly normative on campus.
Can it be that a cultural sensibility is now present in America to build the Great Idea of greater unity and confront hatred in our tribalized politics?
Two days after Martin Luther King visited Howard, a group of students heeded his call and chartered a small bus that sat adjacent to Rankin Chapel. Several days before King's visit, my friend Lesley had written to tell me about her participation in a Nashville lunch counter sit-in. Lesley spoke of a Fisk senior from Chicago, Diane Nash, who was leading the effort there. I was crossing the square on the campus that is near to the chapel when a friend called out from the bus: "Hey, Onalee, do you have the guts to get on this bus.? We are going to march in front of the White House." Intuitively, I just went over and got on the bus. There were about 15 of us in that first White House demonstration of the early civil rights movement - March, 1960. Back at Whittier my senior year, I have to be honest and say Lesley and I would show off a bit too much, frequently breaking out into singing "We Shall Overcome." 1961, our senior year, was the year that the film version of A Raisin in the Sun, playing in theaters all over the nation, taught us the meaning of family and community through the genius of Lorraine Hansberry.
Pulitzer prize winning psychiatrist, Robert Coles, in The Moral Life of Children, has a chapter entitled, "Movies and Moral Energy." I learned about Coles' use of great films in his interviews with young people when he was the featured speaker at a conference at the University of Virginia. The famous anecdote Coles shares in his "Movies and Moral Energy" chapter is about little Ruby Bridges who experienced white people spitting at her as she walked to the newly integrated elementary school in New Orleans. Ruby told Coles that if the white people persecuting her could see A Raisin in the Sun they might feel differently about her. With this inspiration, EGI's classic film study project began in 1992.
Reflections on the "Reasons of the Heart"
Judgement at Nuremberg and Dr. Heinrich Rommen
The above picture (right) depicts young Nazi-resistance fighter Sophie Scholl. Realizing the real nature of Hitler's regime, Sophie resolved to stand up against it. Sophie and her brother Hans formed the White Rose movement and she is quoted as saying, "Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did." Eventually, Sophie and her brother were found out by the Nazi Regime and were executed on February 22nd, 1943.
Judgement at Nuremberg was an expanded version of a Playhouse 90 television production that aired in 1959. Abby Mann won the Academy Award for Best Writing. In the film's final scenes with Spencer Tracy, Abby Mann's screenplay captures the essential moral truths that were at stake in the Nuremberg War Trials.
"There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth... and the value of a single human being!"
-Judge Haywood played by Spencer Tracy
The fundamental belief that every single human being has value and dignity captured in this stirring speech at the film's close, is in the arc of WWI and WWII's history. I was blessed to be a graduate student participating in the amazing Just War Seminar (1962) , taught at Georgetown University by the renowned political philosopher, Heinrich Rommen.
Restoring Civic Bonds of Affection With 2 More Films from Jimmy Stewart: Call Northside 777 (1948 ) & Carbine Williams (1952)
“We are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.” - G. K. Chesterton
Yuval Levin, in A time to Build, calls for our society's institutions to be worthy again of our trust - the people's trust. However, this renewal depends on enough of us discovering anew - the classical view of human nature. As acting persons with free will, we are capable of moral choice.
"Renewal is always a possibility because our social life is generational...The rising generation is only starting out and young people can receive their inheritance as either a burden or a resource."
-Yuval Levin, A Time to Build
Both films were made in the years after World War II, and before Jimmy Stewart would embark on a series of westerns in the 1950s with Anthony Mann. All of Stewart's westerns carry the philosophical poles of fatalism and radical individualism, with the great classical ideas of free will and moral choice at the center of the stories. Yet, there is a special quality of authenticity to Call Northside 777 and Carbine Williams owing to the films' source material based on real people and events.
In these films we see the classical view of human nature in a narrative of moral realism that was taken for granted in the decades of the mid 20th century - the idea that there is a human nature and that it is a nature we all share. This is the strongest philosophical foundation for civic education in our polarized society and the lessons cannot come from any "authorities" in the political tribes of today. The authority must be found in a timeless understanding of what it means to be a human person.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times": A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities dramatizes the truth that we are linked to each other by deep bonds of personal, public and historic ties across the generations. Consider how Charles Dickens introduces his masterpiece:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Recently, a film course for high school students (originated by EGI) saw one of the most successful discussions of Classic Film in its three year run. The film was 1935's A Tale of Two Cities. Students discussed themes such as: Forgiveness vs. Vengeance, The Value of Friendship, The Dignity of the Human Person, The Reign of Terror, and The Nature of Good and Evil.
EGI's Civics 101 Classic Film Study Project can be implemented in any educational setting. Please feel free to contact me and I will be happy to chat with you on how to get started!
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