Field of Dreams and the 1960s

My "Top Posts" highlights continue in anticipation of my 5th anniversary this July. Each day I will be posting an intro with a link to one of the pieces I consider my best. Today I'm featuring an in-depth analysis of "Field of Dreams", focusing on its relationship to the 1960s and the baby boomer generation.

As always, please don't link to or attempt to comment on this intro page, which is a temporary bump and will be deleted when a new "Top Post" is featured tomorrow. You can link to, comment on, or recommend the original post, also linked below.

Yesterday's Top Post, if you missed it, was "The Big Picture: The Movies & me", a memoir of my love affair with cinema.

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“Ray Kinsella, child of the sixties, builds baseball field and at end of movie meets his dead father.” 
         -Japanese tagline for Field of Dreams, paraphrased by writer/director Phil Alden Robinson

Beloved for its family drama, revered for its sporty caché (at least among those who can forgive a rightie Shoeless Joe), Field of Dreams is generally less recognized for its cultural-historical importance. It was one of the crucial films signifying a late 80s trend: the ascension of the baby boom generation to Hollywood's height of power, accompanied by a burst of 60s nostalgia which helped (re-)define the era for a generation. Preceded by "thirtysomething" and "The Wonder Years" on TV, big hits like The Big Chill and smaller films like Running on Empty (among others) in the cinema, as well as cultural events like the 20th anniversary of Woodstock and the release of the Beatles catalog on CD, Field of Dreams arrived at a crucial crossroads. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was crashing down and a new world was being born - for many in the West, the first time such a sensation had arisen in two decades. Meanwhile, the baby boomers were all hitting or approaching 40, many heading nuclear families and holding professional jobs they never would have foreseen, or so we were told.

The Reagan era, encapsulating a strong reaction to the 60s counterculture and New Left, was coming to an end, with President Bush half-heartedly promising "a kinder, gentler America." As the Wall crashed, and conservatism tentatively relaxed its hold on the American consciousness, pop culture experienced a renewed burst of creativity. New filmmakers like Spike Lee and Oliver Stone emerged to point a light at the country's darker aspects; TV suddenly grew adventurous and subversive with "Twin Peaks" and "The Simpsons"; postmodernism exploded from an academic subculture into the dominant media approach; meanwhile, a reversion to authenticity in mainstream rock was just around the corner. At the center of all these phenomena (except for the last) were baby boomers, who after plugging away and working their way up had finally emerged as mainstream trendsetters. Not only did they point the way forward; they also looked back at their own history, which was ripe for mythologization and nostalgia after a decade in the "dated" bin. Field of Dreams, with its attempt to synchronize America's National Pasttime and the Age of Aquarius, its yearning to fuse  youthful dreams, old traditions, and adult responsibilities, may be the quintessential film of this moment.

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#WatchlistScreenCaps, 5/10 - 5/14

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 5/7 - 5/8 (viral video edition)

Here are the last ten viral videos I watched (in honor of expanding this viewing diary to include YouTube clips; see here for terms of inclusion), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 5/1 - 5/7

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

As you may have noticed, I'm now including YouTube videos which opens up a can of worms. To qualify, the clip has to be self-contained (no "SNL" sketches unless they are created as stand-alone shorts like some of the Andy Samberg ones, and I'm leaning toward excluding excerpts from public speeches).

And no commercial - unless the commercial could stand alone as a very short film (like, say, some of Ridley Scott's early promos). That last point may seem like splitting hairs, especially because I'll include what are essentially home movies, but hey, you gotta draw the line somewhere...

Music to My Ears: #iPodAlbumPlaylist

Since March, I've been making my way through a massive, 600+ song "album playlist" on my iPod. It includes both perennial favorites and LPs I acquired from friends without listening to them before. After each album finished, I tweeted a picture of the cover and a link to my favorite track. Now that the playlist is done, I am featuring the entire lineup here.

The playlist was shuffled by album, so the order is entirely random.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 4/23 - 4/30

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

Press Play features my De Palma video w/ Kevin B. Lee interview

My video essay "directed by De Palma", featuring clips from Hi Mom, Carrie and Scarface has just been highlighted on the video essay site Press Play, accompanied by an interview with me conducted by the great video essayist Kevin B. Lee (fair warning: the video contains strong violent and sexual imagery from the De Palma's work, and is NSFW):

"directed by De Palma" & interview with Kevin B. Lee

Since creating this video four years ago, it has remained the online work - video or otherwise - I am proudest of, so if you haven't already, definitely check it out. And if you have, follow the link anyway for the brand new interview, in which I discuss my own nascent ideas about video essays with Lee.

Movie Marathon (#WatchlistScreenCaps 4/22)

Between 8am, April 22 to 2am, April 23, I watched seven features, four shorts, and one featurette in a movie marathon, ranging from fantasy films to documentaries, from kids' cartoons to the dark avant-garde. Below are the screen-caps from the films I viewed, accompanied by basic info and an epigrammatic caption. Links are to my own posts on a given film.

Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here.

Visions of Filmmaking: 2 quotes from Truffaut & Godard

 Overheard in the documentary Two in the Wave (2010)

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 4/2 - 4/20

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

Boston, You're My Home

Boston skyline, August 31, 2009, taken from my cell phone

I feel compelled to write something. It isn't relevant to anything and offers no new information or perspective on today's events, so I'll try - and probably fail - to keep it short. But I didn't want to remain silent, because Boston is a city that has meant and continues to mean so much to me, so I wanted to mark the tragic bombing of the Boston Marathon somehow. I lived far longer in New York, currently reside near and work in L.A., and even when I "lived in" Boston for just over two years, my actual address was in Malden, a separate town on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. And yet no other city feels like "home" to me the way Boston does. So I'll share my memories, pointless as they may be. They're personal, and that's something. I hope any fellow New Englanders will share their own; at moments like these they are all we've got.

Pyaasa

Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
When I searched for happiness, I was lost in streets of sadness
When I sought songs of joy, I heard songs of sorrow.
Every torment doubled the pain of my heart
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who were the fortunate ones who got the love they sought?
Companions came, stayed awhile, then left me all alone.
Who can spare the time to clasp the hand of a falling man?
Even my shadow eludes me as it fades away.
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
If this is called living, then I'll live my life somehow.
I shall not sigh, I'll seal my lips, I'll dry my tears.
Why should I fear grief, when I have encountered it so often?
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?

I entered Pyaasa blind, knowing only that it was considered one of the classics of Indian cinema. I haven't seen any other Guru Dutt films (in fact only afterwards did I realize Dutt himself played Vijay, the poet protagonist who struggles against a hostile world) and haven't seen a great many Indian films; only recently have I been making a conscious effort to explore this rich corner of the cinematic globe. I wasn't even sure when Pyaasa was produced, only locating it in the late fifties when a young character referenced his graduation from college in 1952. The viewing experience is often enriched by such ignorance, as it certainly was here. In any case, despite many distinctly Indian touches - including, of course, the casual breaking-into-song outside of what we would consider ordinarily musical scenarios - Pyaasa's story and themes are universal, and I found its pathos in many ways more relatable than the world presented on American screens in the 21st century. Pyaasa is as moving and enchanting as ever, a powerful fusion of cinema's illusionistic and reflective tendencies. Laced with dazzling musical numbers, sumptuous sets, comedic asides, swooning romantic interludes, Pyaasa is also penetrating in its social critique, empathetically embedded in the perspective of the downtrodden, and at its heart is, well, heart: a genuine, earnest investment in what is being offered to us.