In case anyone thinks I'm from Alpha Centauri I'm bringing it right down to earth with a mashup of 2 films: Countryman from.1982 (prev); High School Musical from 2007.
WHITE GOLD
It strikes me the lyrics to the Poly Styrene number are quite naïve and truthful. Water shapes the world we live in. The Ice Giants still live in the North.
She wants presumably to fly a plane away from.the modern deluge of mental effluvium. Countryman starts with a scene of a light plane flying and crashing into the swamp. Country befriends the two survivors who the regime hunts as "CIA operatives" for corrupt political motives.
The scenes of fisherman Country feeding and preaching to the two Americans are joyful. He says naively,
"I just live my life. I run, I fish. I love the cow, the birds."
To him the plane is an invader that nature struck down. The same will happen to rockets that fly to the moon.
Country has "guidance" from the strength of earth and sea and plant and bird. The natural grotto of rock and raptor has psyche. The witch doctor inhabits the same plane (I Do Voodoo, Lee Perry.)
The strength of guidance has the naivety which we totally lack, stuck in our world of induction (sun, reason) and endless words (head, ego). Country lives in his body with the sea (Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea).
The scenes of Jamaican life are extremely polyglot and obviously the guys all get on, sharing the same patois. This racial mix is what attracted me to the second film, High School Musical.
To be honest, I would never watch this Disney effluvium and happened to have it to hand by sheer fluke. At the end I realized it was on the same level as Fosse!
It's essentially about smart types who get on even with cultural disparities. The plot revolves round 3 types - the academic or "brainiacs", the basketball and cheerleaders, the stage singers and dancers.
The good thing about the film is it's very dramatic, with no fighting (Countryman has one fight scene, shot as a sort of dream sequence). It's not too cute either, and the communal rush of joyful action has a truly American joi-de-vivre and spirit.
The question is, why can't communes be more like that, and as they are in Countryman with the amiable "Jaman" lecturing the kids on the nature spirits in our midst?
The answer has to be that we're led by disreputable politicians, as in Countryman, who spread false rumors. I'm thinking of Putin and Xi of course, but what does Biden do apart from $pend?
Joe related a story where he said to Putin, "I don't think you have a soul." As true as that probably is, what does he think Christ was doing in the temple? (I know he also said he's not Wall Street; unfortunately money recognizes no streets).
"We're different in a good way," says one of the characters in High School Musical. The fall out and bad blood between Efrom and Hudgens drives the story, and it is resolved by drama between their followers.
What I mean is the drama is between different types of people (academic, singers, sporty) who resolve their differences. They don't necessarily like eachother as Sharpay is still a self-centered shady-dealer. But where there is drama their is a communal psyche. The song and dance routines exhibit this tremendously..
Drama is the resolution, and drama depends on having different types in the commune (mingling). This gives the routines an anarchic zest (even though of course perfectly rehearsed).
This is the exact opposite to a society where resolution means doing without differences. Politicians $pend and $peak in the name of sameness. Efrom in an interview has a line where he says it's difficult to move your lips while dancing (lip-synching). A community is a physical area, first and foremost, and physical action comes first.
Carrying a spade, swinging a net, climbing a tree, herding (see Cider With Rosie). It's the Lil Abner syndrome. The good old boys and the Dukes of Hazard. A commune is physically musical in some sense, and from.this emanates a sense of psyche. Harlem and Detroit.
Politicians are essentially undramatic people (Merkel could be a marrow). If Putin is a "robber of the Russian soul" (as opposed to Russian queen), Biden may not be in the same class, but he implicitly robs the land of its communal drama.
I realize he only follows-on others since the 60s. The reason is that policy wonks don't deal in drama: to them that is a euphemism for unrest. No it's not; it's just life.
Without drama that resolves itseld musically - through the psyche of the commune - we are left with pure information. A police mentality (see also Lloyd Price's memoir of desegregation in Louisiana via song, Lawdy Miss Clawdy prev.)
The police exist to police communes, and it's unfair on them to ask to be more socially-political. The basic problem is only a dramatic society can resolve itself in a self-governing capacity.
Without the drama there is a society in name only. Politicians then use these words to advance their nefarious cause of $pend and $peak.
I'm not saying they are deliberately bad people; they are a certain type. They are spokespeople for an inductive system of logic as opposed to psyche.
Psyche is visible in the sense of musical symmetry and metamorphosis of line. In other words, the physical world can have psyche if it is allowed to self-govern.
The mirror of illusions or induction (of straight lines or light) cannot see this outside realism.
Politicians are simply spokespeople for this illusion, be it Xi, bin Salman or Baerbock (the possible post-Merkel Green). They are people of the head, the ego, attracted to the straight-line illusion of words and numbers. Despite Modi, India still has its physical realism of communal squalor that speaks of life.
..as opposed to endless words of wonks. Neither of these two films are overburdened by speech and both are classics of different types.