Movie Martyrs

Last weekend, the minister at the church I've been attending used the storyline of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" as his sermon. This reminded me of another movie-with-a-moral, "Mr. Holland's Opus."

I truly hate "Mr. Holland's Opus". The main character, Mr. Holland, wants to be a composer, but he also needs a job, so he beomes a high school teacher. His teaching style can only be described as a series of magic tricks. For example, a student plays the clarinet only in shrill squeaks, and Mr. Holland says, "play a sunset" and suddenly she can play a beautiful melodic line. Imagery is good, but it can't replace the nuts and bolts of technique. It's as if you told someone who doesn't speak English to write a sonnet, and said, "think of the ocean" and they miraculously produced Shakespearean verse. No one would believe that, but for some reason people think musical ability is some mystical talent from on high, rather than a learned skill, so the scene doesn't look ridiculous to most.

Never mind that he'd rather be composing, never mind that he has the worst attitude towards his students humanly possible, he manages to miraculously transform his high school music program into a great one. Lemme tell ya, even with a great attitude, turning around a failing school program would be hard enough. I can't imagine the results if you didn't care.

Ok, putting aside the fact that the movie is completely divorced from reality, it does have a message to impart. After years of being a music teacher, Mr. Holland has never found the time to be a great composer. He feels like kind of a failure, but then his students show up at some retirement banquet or whatever, and play a piece of his music. They tell him "We are your symphony." Boohoo, weep weep. Then they play the most godawful piece of music ever written. In an act of mind-boggling hubris and ignorance, he titled it "An American Symphony." Never mind that thousands of symphonies have already been written by American composers, some of which are considered fundamental parts of the canon of musical literature. At one point, he has some rock guitars play some crappy melody, so I guess you're supposed to think "whoa!!! Look at him innovate and combine genres!" even though rock guitars have already been used in symphonic music (and without sounding like muzak, like they did in this case). Even though the symphony has been infused with rock, jazz, blues, Indian music, Latin dance music, etc. by various composers already.

So really, it wasn't any great tragedy that Mr. Holland didn't become a composer, because he sucked! Wait - I dont' think that's the idea the writers were going for. They meant to say that he made a much greater impact on the world by teaching others and giving them confidence than he would have done by focusing on his art. I'll admit, some people need to hear this message - they have such grandiose ideas of what they're capable of, that they miss the good they can do right now, in their community, and with their families.

But a lot of people, especially women, are guilted into giving up their dreams with this kind of fable. They enter helping professions or stay at home with their kids, letting other people or their children be their "symphony" or their "novel" or their "invention" or their "programming language" or their "work of art".

Some people might get a lot out of this message, or the message in "It's a Wonderful Life," another heavy-handed morality tale (which is, admittedly, better done than "Mr. Holland"). I, however, spend that whole movie wishing George would just leave the town that he's propping up with his selflessness, and go out and see the world like he's always dreamed of doing.

Making sacrifices for the greater good is noble. However, sacrifice in and of itself is not neccessarily noble. The sacrifice is only as good as the good it does for the cause.
The problem with these morality tales is not that they suggest that some people need to work toward more practical dreams, it's that they are often used to support the idea that EVERYONE should. A professional musician or composer is not a lesser person, morally, than a teacher. And could George of IAWF have done more good if he had gone out into the world, and brought his small-town values to a job as CEO of a large company? Maybe not, but in the black-and-white, everything-happens-for-a-reason world of the movie, it's not even CONSIDERED as a possibility.

Artists and dreamers are not inherently selfish. That an artist helps her fellow human beings in an indirect fashion does not make her work less noble. In the same way, a person who follows his dreams and leaves his small town for larger things does not neccessarily diminish his community. He may not be working with or teaching them directly, but may indirectly inspire those he left behind to accomplish greater things. For a person like this, his "symphony" will indeed be a symphony.