[lit-ideas] Against Eternal Youth
- From: "M.A. Camp" <macampesq@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:15:32 -0500
Against Eternal Youth
First Things ^<http://print.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0508/opinion/green.html>|
Aug/Sep 2005 | Frederica Mathews-Green
Excerpt:
Im a fan of old movies, the black-and-whites from the 1930s and 1940s, in
part because of what they reveal about how American culture has changed. The
adults in these films carry themselves differently. They dont walk and speak
the way we do. Its often hard to figure out how old the characters are
supposed to beas though they were portraying a phase of the human life-cycle
that we dont have any more.
Take the 1934 film Imitation of Life. Here Claudette Colbert portrays a
young widow who builds a successful business. (Selling pancakes, actually.
Well, its more believable if you see the whole movie.) Shes poised and
elegant, with the lustrous voice and magnificent cheekbones that made her a
star. But how old is she supposed to be? In terms of the story, she cant be
much more than thirty, but she moves like a queen. Today even people much
older dont have that kind of presenceand Colbert was thirty-one when the
movie came out.
How about Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, smoldering away in Red Dust? They
projected the kind of sexiness that used to be called knowing, a quality
that suggested experienced confidence. When the film came out Gable was
thirty-one and Harlow ten years younger. Or picture the leads of The
Philadelphia Story. When it was released in 1940, Katharine Hepburn was
thirty-three, Cary Grant thirty-six, and Jimmy Stewart thirty-two. Yet dont
they all look more grownup than actors do nowadays?
Characters in these older movies appear to be an age nobody ever gets to be
today. This isnt an observation about the actors themselves (who may have
behaved in very juvenile ways privately); rather, it is about the way
audiences expected grownups to act. A certain manner demonstrated adulthood,
and it was different from the manner of children, or even of adolescents
such as Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.
Today actors preserve an unformed, hesitant, childish quality well into
middle age. Compare the poised and debonair Cary Grant with Hugh Grant, who
portrayed a boyish, floppy-haired ditherer till he was forty. Compare Bette
Davis strong and smoky voice with RenÈe Zellwegers nervous twitter.
Zellweger is adorable, but shes thirty-five. When will she grow up?
In a review in the Village Voice of the film The Aviator, Michael Atkinson
dubbed our current crop of childish male actors toddler-men. The conscious
contrast between baby-faced, teen-voiced toddler-men movie actors and the
golden ages grownups is unavoidable, he wrote. Though DiCaprio is the same
age here as Hughes was in 1934, he may not be convincing as a
thirty-year-old until hes fifty. Nobody has that old-style confident
authority any more. Weve forgotten how to act like grownups.
Maybe forgotten isnt the right word, for the Baby Boomers fought adulthood
every step of the way. About the time we should have been taking on grownup
responsibilities we made a fetish of resisting the Establishment. We turned
blue jeans and t-shirts into the generational uniform. We stopped
remembering the names of world political leaders and started remembering the
names of movie stars ex-boyfriends. We stopped participating in fraternal
service organizations and started playing video games. We Boomers identified
so strongly with being the younger generation that now, paunchy and gray,
were bewildered. We have no idea how to be the older generation. Well just
have to go on being a cranky, creaky appendix to the younger one.
--
Cheers,
M.A. Camp, Esq.
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