Where's Busby Berkeley When You Need Him?

The New York Times finally asks the question I've been asking for several years now.

Unfortunately I think this article really misses the point by miles. From box office returns this fall, Americans now want escapist fantasy, just like they supposedly did during the Great Depression. This may be true about current tastes, but like most commentary about the 1930s, it gets everything utterly and completely wrong. For one thing, the 1930s were the heyday of Warner Brothers gritty, "realistic" crime dramas, like many of the movies Paul Muni made. On the whole, movies of the 1930s explicitly embraced the communal suffering of the times, and discussed it in obvious story terms even in comedies. They were, in effect, the opposite of escapism, which would have been very "unrealistic" to audiences straggling in from the streets.

The Times story mentioned, among other things, Gold Diggers of 1933, which I've discussed in my Kitty Foyle write up as one of my favorite all-time movies. Gold Diggers is certainly lightweight on the surface level, but the opening song is misunderstood today. "We're in the Money" is not a Roaring Twenties-style statement about winning the lottery and becoming suddenly privately rich. If you listen to the lyrics, it's really a rallying cry to the entire public to pick up their spirits in very dark times. The "we" of the title and chorus is actually everyone---you, me, and the guy and gal standing in the bread lines. The women of the Gold Diggers series who were seeking wealthy husbands did so because it was their only avenue to escape wretched poverty. The movies of the times pulled no punches about this reality.

This is exactly the kind of honest, open expression about economic times that the country, especially anyone on television and writing for newspapers like the Times, is still unwilling to face. We're still living in cartoon superhero land (Hank Paulson with a cape with save us!). The tune we have been singing is "We in Denial." We have a long way to go before we reach the forthright clarity of Gold Diggers.