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Values and Art
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10665 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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1 / 1986 |
1,780 Words |
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James Cooper
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The inherent longing of mankind to experience idealism and patriotism has held precedence throughout the history of recorded civilization. During the nineteenth century the Germans had a word for it: "Sehen."
In the struggle to unify their nation the collective efforts of the German artists, writers, composers, and intellectuals were greatly responsible for creating a unified national spirit and a cohesive culture strong enough to meld eleven hundred separate principalities and city-states into one huge industrial nation.
A hundred years earlier, a gifted French artist named Jacques--Louis David had similarly electrified his fellow citizens with a series of nationalistic paintings that literally transformed the moral and civic climate of an archaic monarchial society into a modern state. Crowds streamed through Paris to catch a glimpse of the Oath of the Horatii when it was first exhibited. Until then the culture of France had been awash in a sudsy bath of mythology promoted by its arcane ruling class that sapped much of the nation's strength. What David restored to the people of France was their sense of national destiny and moral purpose.
Several years ago, William Manchester's book Goodbye to Darkness expressed doubts whether America still possessed the spiritual toughness to defend itself as it had in World War II. He attributed what he perceived as our current national weakness directly to the collapse of American cultural values during the 1960s and 1970s. He concluded that the reason we were able to defeat the combined resources of the Axis powers was because even through the darkest days of the war we never doubted the validity of our national values or goals. In retrospect he marveled at the simplicity of faith that his generation held so dear; which largely had been formed and reinforced by the mass media of his time: radio, books, and motion pictures. In his book Manchester warned that only forty years after the great victories of World War II, we are in danger of becoming the paper tiger that the communists have always hoped we would become.
How such a transformation could occur in a nation that has known such success in the past is a question that confounded and worried him. It was an issue that once appealed to Manchester's close friend and idol John F. Kennedy, about whom Manchester most recently wrote a moving biography, One Brief Shining Moment.
If Manchester's generation, maturing during the period before the Second World War, had few doubts about the moral fiber of their nation, the current generation has been offered few certitudes. What many critics miss in their quick condemnation of the violence in the current film Rambo is that his pop culture hero has struck a much needed patriotic response in the hearts of young Americans who are searching for those tried and true values that their parents abandoned so blithely during the cultural revolution that characterized the decade of the Vietnam War. This longing for national values by young people today is an observation that President Reagan has noted more than once in several recent public remarks.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the climactic moment in the film when the hero, played surprisingly well by Sylvester Stallone, replies forcefully to the question "What is it you want?" posed by his commanding
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