Want to start a war? Maybe a musical biopic will help?

I must admit that I am not always a hard-nosed, cynical, sceptical pragmatist. Once in a while a sloppy, sentimental side to my nature emerges - and is culled as quickly as I can manage it. No emotions - FACTS, FACTS, FACTS! There, I feel better already!

Anyway yesterday evening I ran out of work for the first time in a fortnight. Short of ideas, I went down to the cellar and dug out a video (yes, not a DVD - our video recorder just about still works). Plenty of good stuff still down there, British anti-Thatcher satire from the 1980s, sports coverage from the same era, tons of wildlife programs, and some old, even ancient (!!!!) Hollywood classics.  Dug out one of the latter - James Cagney in "Yankee Doodle Dandy".

Allowing for its era it is a fun movie, in which Cagney plays the part of Vaudeville star turned Broadway star and producer, George M. Cohan. Some of the stuff is interestingly quite accurate. Some of it, on the other hand, is a typical Hollywood biopic of the period. Put the two together - for example his sister, Josie, did die quite young (mentioned in passing in the movie and not that important), but was older than him, not younger.

Conveniently excluded are mentions of his first wife (Cohan married twice) and the fact that he had four children! In the movie he never had kids - given how sentimental people (though not me personally) get about kids at times that seems a weird omission. Check out the later biopic of Al Jolson - you will find that the number of marriages and the presence of children in the star's life also are different in fact from in the movie - wonder why Hollywood in the 40s had this thing about not showing kids in biopics?

The movie is heavy on patriotism. Given the time that is not surprising. Cohan had written "Over There" in the First World War, and the patriotic anthem "Grand Old Flag" earlier than that, and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (American spelling - deliberate!) for his contribution to the American spirit. This was though in 1936, before the Second World War started. The movie conveniently moved this to the start of 1942.

The point to bear in mind though is something lost in history. Americans had been very reluctant to participate in the war, and even with Pearl Harbor (see previous note), selling it was still an exercise to be carried out. Films like "Yankee Doodle Dandy" showing a great patriotic composer and performer like Cohan (brilliantly portrayed by Cagney at his peak, for this he won an Oscar), all helped in this exercise. If some convenient changes of history were needed in the name of entertainment, then so what?

So the significance is? Few can fail to justify the entry of the United States into the Second World War, and all of us (including most people in Germany) can be thankful for the massive sacrifices that Americans made at that time. To remember the war was already well underway, the conflict needed to be resolved and the source of evil removed.

Similar to Bosnia and similar to Afghanistan!

But not similar to Iraq, nor Iran! The source of evil in those countries may have needed or need to be removed, but there was/is no existing conflict, and the potential to use harsh peaceful means to (have) resolve(d) them existed/exists.

Anyway convinced as I am that the world is going to get stuck with US President Romney from 2013 (which will lead to the US going into recession, higher unemployment, increased public debt - check this out with any neutral economist, and also see what his sort of policy is doing to the UK) and there will be a war with Iran, there is also the fact that this will need selling.

Even given the alleged "liberal bias" in Hollywood, I am sure that a biopic might prove a great selling point. Quite who could be the subject is a great question, but I am sure there will be no trouble finding people to help with the movie - Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, Jon Voight ....  Of course personally I will not be going to go and see it myself, but then the sloppy sentimental side of my nature is hoping that we do not end up with a President Romney. For that matter the hard-nosed cynic in my nature tells me that economically the world does not need that either, but given the US Presidents that I have had to watch in action from over here in my life time (Nixon, Reagan, Bush jnr) ....

Postscript (December 10th, 2021). Of course I was wrong in expecting that Romney would win the election (thankfully!). Now if they had tried that idea, who knows?