What gives, with that American bum and his trumpet? I seem to remember a certain storyline from my childhood, almost a cliche of early American TV and film. Put simply, a jazz musician must learn a lesson. He’s incredibly talented, but success inflates his ego. He squanders his gift on excess, abuses colleagues, neglects his adorable, adoring girl. The lesson? Talent comes to nothing without humanity and humility. Wasn’t America glimpsing, through that horn-blower, its fundamental flaw – that being a soulless winner makes you a loser? The US possesses a strange directness in revealing its weaknesses, and an uncanny flair for predicting its downfalls, via TV and movies. Some claim this was so for 9/11. What if America unconsciously utilises elements of its entertainment media for collective self-analysis, or even to predict its future, the same way some people dream? “Humbug!” you reply; “anyway, the future’s unknowable.” But wasn’t it Albert Einstein who said that Time (our separation of past, present, future) is merely a “stubbornly persistent illusion”? Meanwhile, America goes on blowing its trumpet assuming the world will follow. As more of the planet joins in, who has really understood the tune? Moreover, with so many apocalyptic American films around, shouldn’t we worry?
© Mario Petrucci, 2013
