Not to worry.......Lassie will do the trick in Iraq.
Movie spin sanitizes U.S. image
By Jerry Large
Seattle Times staff columnist
I like Lassie as well as the next person old enough to remember the heroic collie.
But I'm not sure she is the face of America. The 1943 "Lassie Come Home" is one of the movies a congresswoman wants to show to foreigners in a bid to improve their image of America.
We are so much more than that.
Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., thinks classic movies could show Iraq-obsessed foreigners the true America. So she introduced a bill to make DVDs available at U.S. embassies around the world.
She mentioned "National Velvet" and the musical "Meet Me in St. Louis."
Is the best of us left in the 1940s?
The congresswoman wants only films that show us at our best. No war films, she said, and nothing about slavery.
A news story quoted a professor who said such films would give people a sense of America's values and history.
Is someone lost in the land of Oz? Wake up, Dorothy, wake up.
America is a messy mix of contradictions in its values and a flood of histories flowing into each other.
America is not a monochrome 1940s movie.
Then again, maybe America is too messy. Nations and individuals put a lot of effort into cleaning up their stories. Simple stories are useful and easily digestible.
When I read Watson's statements, I thought about the approach of Juneteenth.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day in 1865 when the last slaves got word that they were free.
Juneteenth has long been a day for celebrating the end of slavery. With freedom being such a deep American value, you'd think everyone would be out marking the day.
The end of slavery was a profound event for the entire nation. In April, Washington made it an official state day of remembrance.
Rep. Watson herself was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a celebration in California's capital.
Slavery is one of the parts of our history, many Americans would just as soon forget. Get out the blemish cream.
But would we ask that some Americans sacrifice the history that shaped them to make the whole look prettier?
Who is it we want those foreigners to see?
Does the real America wear Nikes or Tony Lamas, drive Chevys or Toyotas?
Does the real America live in a condo, a ranch house or a tiny apartment?
What does a real American look like? A real American has no accent, whether he lives in the Bronx or Atlanta or Tucson, because he speaks plain English — unlike everyone else.
She worships in the true American faith, which is well, everyone knows, because there can only be one, right?
An essential definer of America is its diversity, and yet we are too often inclined to edit its story down to one narrative, with one set of characters.
That's un-American, or else very American.
Is there a movie, or two or three, that convey a truer picture of us at our complex best? What's on your list?
I'll bet even Lassie had fleas.
Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.
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