Lightbulb Over Head Blog

It has been a long time since I last felt patriotic. The sound of “Proud to be an American” makes my skin crawl and decidedly ashamed to be an American.

That feeling of my stomach turning is so far from the joy I got from marching in the Memorial Day Parade in Chicago as a child. I would innocently dress up my pink, purple, and white tricycle with red, white, and blue streamers. I remember my mom and dad twisting the small silver wires to make a white dove with real feathers bought from some arts and craft store roost beneath my seat. It was truly a glorious vehicle to behold.

We would march, ride, rollerblade, and walk through the city with drums rat-a-tat-tatting all the way the way to the park. They thundered so loudly in your heart and when you closed your mouth, you could feel the sonic vibrations in your teeth. Additionally, I remember these colorful packs of jelly candies that they gave out every year when we got to our final destination in the park. They did acrobatics and someone important gave a speech. That was always the boring bit as a child, but I was way too busy eating my jelly candy and giggling with my friends from the neighborhood to care much.

I also have fond memories of going to Connecticut in the summertime to celebrate 4th of July with my father’s side of the family. Our current patriarch, my dad’s oldest brother Jack, invited every member of our clan to his house for the weekend and we would set up a volley ball net and I would swing on the swing that hung from the massive branch of the  giant oak tree out front. There was also a fish pond in the backyard and a big log that I would climb across and pretend that it was the gateway to another world. We would cook burgers and laugh and when the evening settled down, we would all watch a classic movie like Sunset Boulevard or Psycho. It was a time to feel the love of family and reunite and refresh. It almost felt like New Year’s Eve in the sense that I sort of measured my childhood years by the arrival of the 4th of July.

As I grew older, these small acts of patriotism faded. I grew out of my tricycle. The Connecticut house burned down. I began going to summer camp in North Carolina and I simply began to loath family dinner parties and the baggage of having that one evening to give people information and updates on my life by which they could measure my progress from the previous Thanksgiving or whenever we had spoken last. I enjoyed seeing people of course, but I always felt tremendous pressure. As an actress, I wanted to make my parents proud of what I was doing or I wanted to be seen as successful in an industry that is “hard” if not impossible.

My innocent idolatry of the red, white, and blue became like some distant memory.

The closest I came to patriotism was watching Independence Day when Bill Pullman gave the big speech before the epic battle with the Alien race that wants to take over Earth.

In that movie as a whole and especially during that speech, there is a collective sense of community and duty in the face of death. It connects American independence with the rest of the globe. I think I was attracted to it because as I was growing up, I really felt like America was an island. I was very blessed to be able to travel around the world to Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Turkey, and Greece. I was exposed to other views of America from outside of our borders. I remember that I was roaming the streets of Paris as a child and looking into the glass window of a Patisserie. The owner of the shop rushed out and ushered me away to my American parents who were just down the block finishing their French morning coffee and croissants. The shopowner was not happy to have some American child poking around his window and pushed me towards my father before stomping back up the street and into his store.

When I was doing a theater exchange with some students from England, they were very welcoming but wouldn’t stop pestering us about how in God’s green earth President George Bush had been re-elected. I had to remind them that none of us, who were in our junior and senior years of high school, were old enough to vote. However, nothing I said could assail them. They wanted to know how our country could have been so dumb.

As a liberally minded young American, I became increasingly upset at many of the topics brought into the spotlight during the Bush Administration. In my mind, so many of them were connected to religion. Many of the protests against gay marriage focused on the fact that the Bible “tells us” that marriage is specifically for a man and a woman. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Why should the Christian God dictate what our citizens of varying religions should do? So many Bible Thumpers were in arms over A Woman’s Right to choose. I agree that this is a sensative subject, but I just don’t think that anyone should be able to dictate what I can and can’t do with my body. The rate of teen pregnancy is increasing in our country and more and more and our young men and women are starting families before they are ready. On top of this, the administration wanted to stop stem cell research, research that could help to find a cure any number of diseases that our world faces. In a way, stem cell research gives new life to these “pre” humans by using them to advance our knowledge and understanding of the human body and the development of new medicines and treatments to help us thrive and save lives.

After 9/11, I was devastated just like everyone else. It was just such a horrible tragedy. I could try to quantify my emotions and the events that followed it, but that is not really the subject of this article. However I will say that somewhere inside of myself, there was a tug on the string of my patriotism. I think it would have blossomed if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the mass marketing of everything blindly patriotic that poured from middle America. Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked down on it all, but honestly, as I said at the outset of this peice, the song “Proud to be An American” makes my stomach turn because it is so mind-numbingly broad. Words like freedom and liberty are so much a part of our collective conciousness that they begin to loose meaning with every use. I think we take them for granted as does that song. It employs almost every one and manages to fill up verses and choruses while actually not saying much of anything at all. America as a whole became so inarticulate after 9/11 that I became desensitized to the American flag. It was on bookbags, pins, T-shirts, miniflags, keychains- EVERYWHERE. The flag itself became a pop sensation. No wonder no one took us seriously. No one takes Britney Spears seriously.

Near the end of Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s musical, 1776, John Addams wonders on the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Independence if anyone sees America the way he does. I am including the lyrics here for anyone who has not seen the show. I am including the sequence here for your viewing pleasure.

I began to feel a bit like Addams in this number. “Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care? Does Anyboy See What I See?” I saw the lifeblood of true America dying a little each day.  I saw our liberties being questioned and taken from us one by one.

This year, everything changed for me. Barack Obama was elected our 44th President of the United States of America. As a Chicagoan, I knew he was the man for the job almost immediately after I heard he was running. I knew it would be a hard road, but for the first time in a long time, I hung on to a hope for this country. I invested in current events and our national progress. Instead of writing off this war as an egregious nightmare created by the Bush Administration, I saw a man capable of ending our part in the turmoil and I what’s more, I listened and I felt connected to those lost, and those still fighting.

I know that in recent articles I have been disparaging about the spirit I sometimes feel while living in New York City. However, I haven’t mentioned that the true strength of our community sometimes shines so brightly that I am left gaping in awe. I have felt it several times, but I will tell you that on Election Night 2008, New York City came alive. Cars zipped through Bushwick in Brooklyn with loudspeakers chanting Obama’s name. People smiled at each other in the East Village and waved American flags not because thats what they were obligated to do to support our country but because they were moved to raise our country’s iconic colors. In Time’s Square, the lights shown with hope and triumph, and not with amusement park neon.

In his iconic speech from Election night 2008, Barck Obama reminded me that we are not a collection of red and blue states, but that we are forevermore the United States. I realize that I am capable of prejudice, that in this post I have called middle America uncultured, and called recent national patriotism into question. I have pointed many fingers. I know have a lot to learn and I am not saying that I don’t believe it can come from being exposed to opinions from other parts of our great Nation. But today.

Today we stand United. Today, I am proud to be an American. Today somebody is there. Today is our Independence Day.

If you haven’t seen Disney Pixar’s Up, then you are a bad person. You need to accept your faults and find the nearest toddler you can get your hands on and use him or her as an excuse to go to this movie. Or if you’re secure enough in your inner child, go by yourself.

The film is extremely layered and more complex than most Disney movies. Sure, it has its fair share of adult jokes to entertain parents and the most perfect portrayal of what dogs would say if they could talk that I have ever witnessed (I won’t repeat any of it here because it will truly ruin it for people who want to see the movie), but the themes in this movie are what make it so special. I will be discussing parts of the film in detail, so SPOILER ALERT for anyone who cares, but honestly I think reading this would only provide a lens through which to view the film.

Firstly, it contains a poignant vignette detailing the childhood and relationship of Carl Fredrickson and his wife Ellie. As children, they vow to adventure together to Paradise falls in the footsteps of their hero, explorer Charles Muntz. The children grow up and end up getting married and building their dream house, all the while saving up for their adventure. But life often comes with curve balls and they never quite get around to seeing their goal through before Ellie dies and Carl is left with their house full of fond memories and dreams of Paradise Falls. This part of the movie could honestly stand on its own. The story telling is winning and perfect. Bright and funny, you fall in love with the children versions of Ellie and Carl before they fall in love with each other. The depiction of Ellie is particularly articulate. A firecracker, she helps a stifled young Carl to come out of his shell and includes him in her adventurer club.

When I was younger, my best friend Pam and I used to create clubs just about every day. We had soccer clubs and spy clubs and God knows what else. I know we would have had a great relationship regardless of these childish enterprises because we’re like sisters, but I think those clubs did have a very special way of keeping our imagination and impulsive sense of adventure at full throttle. It was very believable to see the relationship between Carl and Ellie bloom from the seeds of their adventurer club to the full bloom of life long love because in my own life, I have grown into such intimate sisterhood with my friend Pam. By intimate, I mean to say honest self deprecation and the examination of the soul rather than some torrid lesbianic affair that the word “intimate” brings to mind for some people. So keep it in your pants, gents.

During the montage of the relationship between Ellie and Carl and her ultimate end, the story tellers gave us specific visual cues to hold onto; the way Ellie always has to set the little, red, ceramic bird on her mantle at the right angle, the mail box that Ellie and Carl put their hand prints on, and most importantly, Ellie’s adventure book which she shares with Carl on eve of their first day as club-mates and presents him with on her last day on Earth.

The first half of the book is filled with Charles Muntz idolatry and drawn pictures of her dream house resting at the top of Paradise Falls. The second is labeled with a title page that reads:

“The Things I’m Going to Do.”

During the powerful montage, Ellie and Carl strive to do those “things” but other things always get in the way and Carl is wracked with depression when he realizes that his wife will never get to fill in those pages. I think we all dream about the things we’re going to do. When we’re children, we’re allowed, encouraged even, to dream up elaborate lives and goals for ourselves. I often think about where I am as opposed to where I thought I’d be. I’m not old enough to be a sage, but I do know that life takes you places you didn’t necessarily think you would go. I also have my journals from my clubs with Pam and they are similarly half full. I never did join the CIA or play soccer in the Olympics so after a while I ran out of things to record from my life as a Secret Agent with a cover as a famous professional athlete.

I was surprised to find that the screenplay writer, Bob Peterson, was not afraid to touch the subjects of Ellie’s miscarriage and personal tragedy at the very outset of the film. I knew I loved this film during the transition from the sepia tones of the sensitive and tender scenes of their wedding and renovating the house and colorful shots of the couple painting the nursery for their expected child, to the stark shot where Ellie finds out she’s miscarried, followed by the shot of a concerned Carl watching her from the window as she is seated in the yard. There was something about the oddly placed wooden dining room chair sitting on the grass and her hair gently wafting in the breeze that was so sad and so intimate. There was also a collective gasp when Ellie died. A little girl sitting in front of me poked her mommy in the arm and exclaimed in disbelief, “She died!?” It brought to mind the first time I saw Bambi. However, when Bambi’s mother dies its a good way through the film. This was within 10 minutes of the start, and yet we as the audience had already felt the weight of a lifespan of love and loss.

For Carl, Ellie lives on in their house through her pictures and the chairs sitting side by side that the couple had enjoyed in their living room, her picture on the wall, and her adventure book. Unfortunately, as is the case with many lonely, elderly folks these days, he ends up facing the reality of a nursing home. Rather than cave and leave his beloved house behind (which he talks to as if it is an incarnation of his dead wife), he opts to spend his last dime and use every remaining helium tank and balloon from his balloon cart to fly his house and his memories far away from his hometown and the waiting nursing home attendants.

This image was so gorgeous and poetic to me. He packs all of his grief, loss, and stubborn habits into his house and takes off with them, leaving the world behind and ready to live cloistered in them for the rest of his life in solitude and peace. When he escapes, he’ll be able to dwell as much on the past as he desires rather than facing the changing modern world springing up around him.

Little does Carl know, his nemesis, a young “eagle scout” who constantly tries to give unsolicited aid to the elderly is stuck on his front porch.

The two characters embark on an adventure to Paradise Falls where they nurture and enrich each other in ways I certainly didn’t expect. Of course it was predictable that the kid would breathe new life in Carl’s stale existence, but what I didn’t expect was the portrayal of the boy named Russell.

He wasn’t just a lively kid that reminded Carl of his wife and how they had acted together as children. Russell was the victim of a broken home. His mother was dead and his father left. Russell describes his memories of his father pinning on his scouting badges and how he hoped that getting this final “Aid to the Elderly” badge would bring him back. I was struck by the brilliant writing of this monologue that exposed how memories of someone aren’t always exciting. They’re just the little important boring things about existing with a person that you remember after they are gone, whether they leave you by choice or they are taken from you.

I relatively recently got out of a long term relationship where I was truly in love with someone. The things I remember and miss aren’t necessarily trips we took or the highs and lows of our time together. I remember waking up next to him and snuggling close, or the way he draped his arm over may waist when we watched Lost on my laptop at night, knowing that I would almost immediately fall asleep- Just the little things that make a house a home.

When they land at walking distance from Paradise Falls, the man and the boy begin dragging the house towards that “promised land” as it floats above their heads. In a moment, instead of being a vehicle, it becomes an obstacle that Carl must contend with and eventually let go of. I found that it was such a perfect metaphor for loss.

You let loss carry you for a while. Then you carry it until you’re ready to let it go.

Watching this play out on screen was such a joy, both in the sense that I giggled and in the sense that I cried. I truly recommend this movie, and for me, seeing it in 3D at the Regal Union Square was worth every penny.