Fight the Good Fight

A few years ago, I watched a documentary on television. It was about Apollo 13. At the time, the Ron Howard film had yet to be made. The incident occurred roughly around April 14, 1970. There's even a line from the film that says they can defer their taxes.

Watching the documentary, I was amazed at never having heard of this event in history. The story of a space mission gone wrong, with scientists from NASA trying desperately to figure out how to get Apollo 13 back to earth, after a mishap in space. Although the film recaptures this moment, it was less of a surprise because I had already seen the documentary. Yet, it was as tense as any moment that I've seen on television. I had never heard of the event in my classes, undergraduate or graduate, or from my parents.

For the rest of America who didn't know of the event, Apollo 13 must have been quite unbelievable, and more so because it really happened.

Often times, movies are escapism. We watch movies to go to fantasy worlds or situations, visiting places we'll never see, or meeting people that we'll never really meet. But occasionaly, film tries to serve as dramatic history lesson.

Given my interest in Brokeback Mountain and the competition that Good Night, and Good Luck gave it at the Venice Film Festival, I was intrigued what this film was all about.

To be fair, I've seen a storyline like this before, and alas, it's Star Trek. In the fourth season of ST:TNG, in an episode titles The Drumhead, an investigation is started when a mysterious explosion occurs. The purpose is to root out enemies of the Federation. It's one of the few episodes that involves hardly any special effects, whose purpose was to be a trial procedural.

In the early 90s, there was a great deal of activity in Usenet, where a variety of newsgroups were spawned, including rec.arts.startrek or something to that effect (the name changed over time). One regular contributor was Timothy Lynch. I probably would have noticed his posts since he was prolific, yet even-handed. Other posters like Michael Rawdon and Atsushi Kanamori seemed to dislike nearly every episode. I noticed even more since he had been at Cornell roughly when I was there. He had since moved to Caltech to do physics, and then decided after a while to teach at a private school.

I recall that he was very impressed by this episode, but as much because of its context in history, referring to the efforts by Senator Joseph McCarthy to root out communists, and the red-scare that ensued from this, where people would accuse others of being communists. Elia Kazan, who directed A Streetcar Named Desire and ushered in an era of movies with method actors like Marlon Brando, was one of the key figures who turned others in when the red-scare lead to the blacklisting of many in Hollywood. When he was honored at the Oscars recently, there were still many who resented what he did.

People wonder if such a thing could happen today. Certainly, it may be happening on a much smaller scale, with those of Middle Eastern descent being accused of collaborating with terrorists. However, it hasn't registered with the same kind of fervor as the red-scare of the forties.

Having now watched the preview of Good Night, and Good Luck, which seems to summarize the entire film. Edward Murrow, noted journalist, whose reports from Europe during World War 2 made him a kind of superstar back in the states, heard that McCarthy was planning to go after him. He had collected information on McCarthy over the years, and decided he would go after McCarthy, despite his ability to ruin others. This occurred in the mid-fifties, so is only some fifty years ago.

David Strathairn plays Murrow, and brings another history lesson to the silver screen. Occasional reminders like this tell us that once upon a time, there were people who generated fear in the pursuit of patriotism, and that at times, this paranoia lead to lives being destroyed. Although this represents only one facet of Murrow's life---he continued to represent and uphold journalistic integrity for many years after the McCarthy trials, it is a key event in American history, and one that ought to make it to the screen.

It's sad that history is often told through this medium, but there is, after all, so much history, and most of us don't spend a great deal of time reading about it. I applaud those who do, and who make the effort to popularize it. I can't bring myself to criticize those who don't read history, because if you criticize them, then you can criticize those who do read it for not doing other things. But if it takes a film to make people more aware of history, then that's fine with me.