General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI've been watching Fiddler on the Roof for about the fifth or sixth time…
Its a wonderful, terrifying movie about the world in flux, the world about to explode, tradition against modernity, heartache and sorrow and the possibility of tomorrow.
And the music is top notch as well.
As I watch this movie I hear my fathers voice in the background, not the father who I knew for a few short years, but the father that was drinking his way into hate and prejudice, telling me the Jews own everything, the control Hollywood.
His family is from that part of the world, the part of Central Europe where the boundaries of Ukraine and Poland flowed back and forth for centuries, where the Jewish folks were always treated as second or third class people.
Whenever he would get in those dark moods I would say that yes Dad, the Jewish people are in the entertainment business, but when they started in, show business was looked down upon and no respectable person would want to choose that as a way to make a living.
I have no proof of this; I just concocted the argument to shut him up.
He was also the same man that wouldnt let us watch the 60s sit com called Julia which featured African American actress Dyane Carroll as a widowed nurse with a small boy. It was a gentle nudge designed to start featuring minorities on the networks.
Anyway, I digress.
FOTR is such an interesting look at fast things can change, how outside pressures inserts it selves in even the most isolated communities.
That part of the movie where Tevye is warned by the local Russian Apparatchik that a Pogrom is coming. When it comes on the night of the Tevyes daughters wedding; my heart breaks. When the Apparatchik shows up to stop the violence inside the wedding, he is so sad and says what all people who follow; it was my orders
I think about all the barriers we construct to define ourselves only to find that we exclude far more than we include.
But now and then, a moment comes along and pulls us together.
What I take from the movie is to treasurer those moments that you have as best you can and to try to find how to accept all those things that happens to us that we cannot control.
Maybe we are in one of those times that we have to pull together. We have to look at ourselves and say is this really what we want for our future?
I know people always say that elections are important, some more than others. But this election is one of those life changing moments for our country.
Make no mistake about it, if Rick Santorum gets himself elected, we will see more turmoil and I fear violence as one part of the country looks toward their traditions for protection and the other looks ahead to the future.
As Tevye turns to meet his future, there is an optimistic lilt in the air. He had someplace to go, he was heading off to the New World in New York.
The best place we have to go is the Voting Booth to make sure the people so intent on resurrecting the fifth century are defeated.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Cemented my love of musicals. The emotion of the film was overwhelming.
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)of leaving his shtetl and moving to New York. Where do we go now?
RKP5637
(67,108 posts)CaliforniaPeggy
(149,620 posts)A musical with bite...
And a big heart.
And yes, the music is top-notch.
Barriers ...we build them to protect ourselves........from what?
Barriers are for the fearful. For those who do not trust the world...for those who see the world through distorted lenses. For those who would return our country to the fifth century...
We are progressives, and we want our country to grow in beauty, in equality, with opportunity and freedom for all. There is no room for exclusions or fearfulness for us...
Great post, Chris...
Thank you.
BootinUp
(47,145 posts)WCGreen
(45,558 posts)captures the essence, to me at least, of the Jewish outlook on life.
Warpy
(111,261 posts)when I did stage lighting as "ugh, show people." Landlords didn't want us for some weird reason (hey, we were gone most evenings and at the workshop during the day and fell into bed and slept like rocks when we got home, we were ideal tenants) and suburban types treated us like we had leprosy unless they were trying to get a kid on the stage.
I can't imagine what it must have been like 80 years earlier and only "fallen women" went into the business, seamstresses to chanteuses.
So yeah, you were spot on. They went into showbiz for the same reason they'd gone into the lending business in the Middle Ages: good Christians felt it all beneath them.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)He's now a sophomore at university, studying Russian and history, and will spend next year in St. Petersburg immersed in Russian language. He adored FOTR. In his gap year, he went to Eastern Europe by himself, backpacking, speaking no Russian. Started in February in Kiev; had many experiences.
NNN0LHI
(67,190 posts)Anyone who doesn't realize this is only whistling past the graveyard.
Don
lunatica
(53,410 posts)fear it because you will lose all that's familiar and keep change at bay for a while, or you can embrace the possibilities and the potentials that come with change and be part of the dynamics of that change.
I think most people experience both.
Dragonbreathp9d
(2,542 posts)All! Day! Long!