Music vs Movies

Since the dawn of time when people told stories around campfires or made paintings on cave walls we humans seem to have a need to tell stories and a desire to let our imagination escape from whatever our day to day reality is. Music has always been with us in one form or another and the primal bang of a drum still affects even the most stoic of us in one way or another. Movies or the idea of motion pictures was made possible by technology but evolved from tribal rituals, stories told at gatherings, to Community Theater and later what we now see projected on a screen. Sound and stories acted out for our entertainment have always been with us in one form or another.

Now you can love movies and you can love music, it's not a matter of one or the other, but which moves you more? People often identify music with a particular era or time in their lives and movies give us a cultural frame of reference and a means of escape for a couple of hours; but which art form allows you to turn your brain off and makes the outside world disappear for however briefly? For me it's music. 

I love the idea of an individual or a group of individuals working together, developing their craft and producing sounds from their voice or their instruments that connect straight to you and take your mind off whatever has been going on that day, or can move or inspire you to action. Surely no movie has ever brought about as global a reaction as say Band Aid's 'Do They Know it's Christmas' did in 1984/85. A song that inspired USA for Africa's 'We Are the World' and Northern Light's 'Tears are Not Enough', as well as hugely popular twin benefit concerts in London and Philadelphia. 

That being said movies can have a longevity that few 20th century songs have, the popularity of films such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and The Ten Commandments remains enduring to this day and is passed down from grandparents to parents and our own children. It would be unfair to compare film to the ongoing although limited appeal still of classical composers such as Bach and Beethoven however classic cinema's arguable historic equivalent - the plays of William Shakespeare do remain popular (although in a limited way) to this day. 

My main issue with movies is that I have trouble turning off my brain. Music allows me to do that, film engages me negatively and disturbs me more often than not. So much so that I rarely ever go to the movies and one day should make a trivia board game called "John Hasn't Seen It". I like silly comedies, such as the old Woody Allen films like Banana's or Play it Again Sam, I enjoy the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films and a few other silly ones, as well as a few classic westerns and older World War 2 films but that is pretty much it. I find that modern films have become ultra graphic relying on special effects and shock rather than acting and storytelling; movies as well have become less historically accurate, wanting to 'take an alternate' point of view deviating even more than they used to from what actually happened in the event they are portraying. 

Movies also initiate in me the impulse to wonder "what kind of person wrote this crap". Now that goes for music too, there is a lot more garbage than good stuff out there, fair to say. However most music is not mindlessly violent and lyrics still rely on metaphor (however crass) rather than being in your face. Anyone seeing the John Ford classic The Searchers would remember the scene where John Wayne's character Ethan looks into the burned out house where his brother's family were killed. The horror of what he saw was vividly portrayed by the expression in John Wayne's character's face, without saying a word he said everything you needed to know. Few actors and fewer directors would use such subtly today; instead you'd be treated to a graphic panorama of corpse's and gore just only for the purposes of a 'shock' moment, a director who’s never seen such a bloody scene in real life wanting to be ‘realistic’.

I cannot seem to get my head around what prompts people to sit down and write much of what we see on the screen and am still further mystified by why people view it as entertainment. Even a film like Star Wars - and I admit this is more an issue with my failure to turn off my imagination than anything else – the scene when the two storm-troopers go onto the Millennium Falcon to search it and are shot and killed by presumably Han Solo and Luke Sky-walker, how come there were no marks are their armour, would not stripping the bodies of their uniform been a hugely traumatic experience - especially for Luke seeing what would have been two dead young faces frozen in fear and pain, being stripped naked then having their clothing (likely with pictures of loved ones inside) caused both of them to throw up over themselves and break down. Now I know any time I've watched interview or spoken with soldiers who have examined and searched enemy dead in real life, it was hugely traumatizing and moving, most had to stop the camera's to collect themselves. But in Star Wars or other movies it's as routine as going to the store for a jug of milk. Also what happened to the bodies of the two storm-troopers, were they rotting on the Falcon for days or were they coldly jettisoned in space, was there a brief ceremony for them the way soldiers in real life pay respects? Why would we find something like this entertaining?

You see now how my brain thinks, why I just don't bother going to movies, and can't get my head around them. Probably just a John thing but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

As far as music goes, there are certain artists, certain voices and combinations of instruments that allow me to turn my mind off, that put whatever else went on that day out of my head and fill it with something I can't even explain. Loud of soft, fast or slow music seems to connect with me, with the human soul in a way no other art form can. Yes movies can make you laugh or cry, but can they bring you out of your seat and dance? Nobody has a party and puts on a movie, they instead turn up the tunes, open a few drinks and enjoy themselves. 

That is another thing in music's favour for me. Although you certainly can enjoy movies alone or with others, they're essentially not an interactive medium, you sit and watch. You may talk about it after but interacting during it takes away from the experience. Music on the other hand can be a foreground thing, as in watching a band or listening to the radio or can be a background thing enhancing the mood at a get together, with certain songs bringing back mutual recollections. 

Both movies and music are cultural touchstones that reflect where society is at the time in it's thinking and it's values but to me, If I had to choose between never seeing a movie again, or never hearing another song, I'd give up movies over music. That being said I'm glad we have both – I just have my own preference. 

Palm Sunday & Paris 1942

Today is Palm Sunday the day Jesus returned triumphantly to Jerusalem riding a donkey down streets lined with hopeful crowds waving palm fronds in welcome. Many believing they were witnessing the coming of a Messiah who at the very least would free them from Roman occupation. Within a week much of the crowd would turn against him, his followers would be divided, he would be betrayed, executed and rise again.

It’s a familiar story, but you can’t fully understand it without understanding what was going on in the Jerusalem of the day. What was it like to live under occupation and why did so many, so willingly cooperate with their Roman occupiers. Occupation by a foreign power is something North Americans don’t generally worry about and have little to no experience of, but if we cross the ocean to Europe there is much we can learn from relatively recent and seemingly unrelated events such as the Nazi occupation of Europe in the early 1940’s.

Just as we grew up with the Easter story, most of us have some knowledge of the events of the Second World War and mythically heroic tales of resistance to Nazi rule. If not from literature then from films and carried on by Hollywood into a later era in similarly themed movies like Red Dawn. The truth though is far more sinister, like those conspiring in the background against Jesus there was far more complexity and subtly to the reactions of Parisians to German occupation in we’ll say 1942.

Occupation tears the fabric of a people apart. Loving families betray each other; a father in law that adores the man who married his daughter would often willingly turn him in to the Romans or Gestapo knowing his loving son-in-law would face torture and certain death just in order to save his daughter and grandchildren from punishment. Otherwise faithful wives in destitute households prostituted themselves to German officers and Roman Legionaries to make ends meet. Likewise with the education system now overseen by the conquerors children unwittingly told on their parents for suspected subversive activities resulting in a late night knock on a door and disappearance to a concentration camp. Fear, desperation and humiliation could and often did tear even the tightest bonds of family and friendship apart. Just as Judas swore he would never betray his Lord (and probably meant it at some level) friends and families that swore undying love broke apart under the strains of fear and coercion.

Where you could not trust your family and friends a member of the resistance often had to turn to the lowest rungs of society for trust and safety. The smuggler or dealer who knew the back alleys and hidden trails, the fraudsters and forgers who could create false papers to guarantee safe passage; occupation jumbles up the pieces of society and soon the doctors, teachers, lawyers, and magistrates who choose to resist find themselves dependent for survival on the very segments of society that would have once avoided and shunned.

Yes in both eras there was resistance; Barabbas was a Jewish resistance leader released as a good will gesture by Roman governor Pontius Pilate and considered a Zealot a religious based group fighting Roman authority. Although not documented in the Gospels there were undoubtedly other resistance groups ranging from faith based ones to ordinary bandits who likely as is often the case fought each other as fiercely as they did the Romans. As in Nazi occupied Paris betrayal was the norm and fear your day to day companion.

Today we romanticize the French resistance but it too was divided. There were groups based on ideology; communist resistance groups, socialist ones, ones who wanted to re-establish the previous order and even Royalists who saw an opportunity to return France to a pre revolution monarchy. Initially primarily made up of former French soldiers who escaped surrender then later ordinary French men and women joined; they fought the Germans, but rarely in open battle (as that would certainly result in their destruction) and like their ancient brethren in occupied Judea the French resistance groups fought each other at times as hard as they fought the Nazis, each side jockeying for an advantage when their eventual liberation came about.

And yes many under occupation join forces with their oppressors. The Romans employed locally recruited Jewish forces – notably under King Herod – as front line forces to battle the resistance just as many French – particularly in the autonomous ‘Vichy’ south joined and fought alongside the Germans. It is worth noting that the first American ground forces killed in any number in the fight against the Nazis came during the Operation Torch landings in North Africa where American troops landing in Morocco and Algiers first came under fire from French Vichy forces. Once again allies fighting nominal allies before gaining on the real foe.

Paris and Jerusalem had very different endings; Canadian, American and British forces landed in Normandy, France on D-Day June 6^th, 1944 and began the liberation of Europe. Paris was declared and open city and the German commander ignoring orders from Hitler to destroy the capital withdrew with scattered resistance from an organization called the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). In Judea, the resistance grew, place names like Masada became legend in the Jewish faith and the Romans destroyed the Holy Temple. Eventually Rome fell and Jerusalem it seemed waited for another occupier to come along.

Throughout all this something changed, a small scattered and afraid group of followers of an executed Jewish mystic grew a collective backbone. A new faith later named after its inspiration called Christianity grew, it’s followers suffered torture, jail, persecution and execution, and yet they did not so much as throw off the shackles of occupation but rise above them. A believe grew that regardless of who he was you could love your neighbor, that we were important, we are loved as individuals and there is something better waiting for us after this world. That a loving God would give up his own son to the end that all that believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life. That is the light that came out of the dark of occupation. Out of a world where friend turns against friend, of families divided, of suffering, cruelty and injustice that we are worthy, we are loved and better days lay ahead.