John & I watched South Pacific - my favorite version, the television movie with Glenn Close.Two scenes leapt out at me as relevant for this moment in time.
First, is a scene where Glenn Close - as Nellie Forbush, the Navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas - is tormented by her unthinking, ingrained bigotry. She could accept that the man she loved killed someone, but not that he had two children by a Polynesian woman. She had no explanation for her feelings, just acknowledge them.
In 2014 America, that scene plays out for me in a different light than when I first saw it in 2001. Nellie's anguish over her feelings - which her head knows are unfounded, irrational - reflects so many people I know or have contact with online, especially on Facebook.
Alas, unlike Nellie, they can't admit to it.
With good reason. Intellectually, they know that bigotry is wrong. And, unlike in the Forties & even the Sixties, Polite Society looks upon being openly bigoted as at least unsavory. a social taboo. Which is a problem, because what is hidden, denied, grows stronger. And blacks are just as guilty of entrenched bigotry as whites, a difference being that America's power structure - on every level - favors European Americans.
The other scene that grabbed my attention was Joe Cable singing You've Got to be Carefully Taught. No need to comment more - the words speak for themselves. And, sadly, still rings too true with too many, over 50 years after its first performance.
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