>Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 >From: Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen@mindspring.com> > >A Hard Days Night >by Mitchel Cohen > >It is hard to imagine today that most adults in the US in 1964 were >horrified by the length of John, Paul, George and Ringo's hair, let alone >the disgust my relatives displayed when those first clanging bars of John >Lennon's rhythm guitar blasted out of the innovative "detachable speakers" >of my Sylvania portable phonograph. (The other day my almost 12-year-old >daughter, Malika, who lives with her mom on Long Island, insisted that >there was no such word as "phonograph." "Okay, 'stereo,'" I responded. "No, >don't you know ANYthing? It's a 'CD player'," she informed me.) > >I was 3 years older than my daughter when the Beatles released their movie >"A Hard Day's Night" and rocked into America, their pictures on the front >page of the NY Times. "You can't tell if they're girls or boys," my >grandfather said scornfully, and most everyone a generation older than me >agreed with him. "By the time you get to be 20 you'll have grown out of >it," I was told repeatedly. > >So last Sunday evening I, at 51 and refusing to ever "grow out of it," made >my way down to the Film Forum with my friend Cathryn after marching in the >Free Leonard Peltier rally, to see the newly reminted "A Hard Day's Night." >Every show at the Film Forum is sold out an hour beforehand. The 180-seat >theater is jammed, mostly white faces, some children, some 20s and 30s >folks, but also many my age and even older. As I watched the 13-year-olds >on the screen scream and cry and faint whenever one of the Beatles shook >his mop-top, or glanced in their direction, I occasionally would turn >around to watch the audience watching themselves 37 years later. My >question is not "When did we lose such innocence?" but when did we get so >Grown Up (ugh!) and repressed? > >Of course every time the film flashed on the irreverent John Lennon >everyone's eyes would mist -- in my case come gushing those tears. Some >quietly mouthed the words to the songs. But few in the theater sang out. No >Rocky Horror here! No one got up and danced. No one screamed along with >their 37-year-ago selves in the film. We're grown up now. We can't let this >move us, or at least not let anyone see! > >Of course, in the film, the Beatles were so ... well, so INNOCENT! THIS is >what all the adults were afraid of?! As for us, I don't think we ever LOST >our innocence. It was trampled, beaten and shot in the back of the head >execution-style. And not only by Vietnam, the murder of Malcolm X, and >Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, and the Black Panthers and Young >Lords, and Agent Orange, and AIDS, and police brutality, and the CIA, and >and and. Our innocence was massacred as much by the little things, the >petty negotiations of everyday life -- there are so many little dyings what >matter which of them is Death? -- all the scaling down of Dreaming that >today's much harsher music responds to. > >Every person wants to do something meaningful in their life, and WITH their >life. Cynicism is the result of all the doors for doing that being slammed >in one's face, and knowing ahead of time that that will happen, no matter >what kind of a job (or no job) you have. I had the interesting experience >the other night of being toured by a friend after the Manhattan Greens >meeting through the newly appointed Hudson Hotel. Everywhere, people >dressed in their chic-est black garments -- everything black -- spilled >various body parts out of them, competitive advertising, trying to get laid >by someone who might actually care about them. This desperate loneliness >dressed up as "sophistication," as cynicism, is not really the opposite of >"innocence" but a way of coping with its repression. > >Quite a different scene at Strawberry Fields in Central Park on December 8, >the 20th anniversary of John Lennon's murder. Thousands of people >pilgrimmaged to 72nd Street and Central Park West across from the Dakota >hotel where the smartest, sassiest Beatle had been assassinated. Yoko left >a single lit candle in an upstairs window. I tried to find the exact window >from the street but couldn't. I tried to find the exact spot where John was >shot down -- that was easier, it was covered with flowers and letters. (Why >spoil the intense feeling by "remembering" that the flowers come from >factory farms in Ecuador that have displaced thousands who had been growing >crops to feed people?) "It was 20 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper told the >band to play ..." The gentle, anti-macho, loving spirit and Beatles' songs >filled the park -- all as the Mayor and his Park's Commissioner refused to >extend the 1 a.m. curfew and threatened to mass arrest the hundreds of late >night lingerers and songsters. Half a dozen circles, hundreds of folks in >each, sang different Beatles' songs -- except for that exact moment when >John had been shot, slightly after 11 pm, when by some magic EVERYONE >looked up, hugged each other (no one told us to do this!) and began singing >"Imagine" acapella, and then stood in silence, in wonder. That, and the >amazing, powerful spirit at the Mumia and Peltier marches and rallies that >weekend, where thousands of young folk demanded, DEMANDED, that the >government free America's political prisoners, are signs that the cynicism >that has replaced innocence is at least not as trenchant it might seem at >first glance, or at reports coming out of Florida. > >"A Hard Days' Night" is, from this vantage after all these years, a silly >movie with fantastic music. No violence, no sex (just flirting), no >pervasive cynicism, no hint of the intense bombing of North Vietnam that >had begun the year the film was first released or the civil rights movement >that had swept the South the previous years. Only John Lennon in the >bubblebath (a close look reveals he was actually wearing shorts, alas! >Sure, I looked!) -- the one truly remarkable scene, for me -- in mock >German accent sinking British warships -- alone worth the price of the >movie. And, of course, She loves you, STILL! ... yea, yea, yea! > >Mitchel Cohen >Brooklyn Greens / Green Party of NY >2652 Cropsey Avenue #7H >Brooklyn NY 11214 >(718) 449-0037 >mitchelcohen@mindspring.com
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