Talking About Ragtime and Reds

 The movies Ragtime and Reds are two movies I have not seen in years. The latter I saw twice in the theater, and Ragtime I saw on HBO back in the day (like 40 years ago). I have not seen either in decades. Nowadays, I think of Ragtime as James Cagney's last movie (there was something on TV, but I'm not counting that), and for Reds is the greatest anti-Communist movie ever made. 

I read John Reed's book, Ten Days That Shook The World, soon after seeing the movie; it covers the Bolshevik Revolution before Lenin took over the soviets. It seemed to me that the democratic soviets would inspire an American to think this was the future. Reed did not live long enough to see Communist Russia. In the movie, it is Emma Goldman who sheds light on the anti-democratic future coming to Russia.

I read several things by E.L. Doctorow before Ragtime. Going to prison let me catch up with that one. I suppose no one reads Doctorow nowadays. Too bad.

Redtime is an old essay from Film Comment. It being Fall, I may be getting too sentimental, but it seems to me we have substituted flawed movies of reality for silly superhero pyrotechnics. I am also left wondering if the disappearance of these films from our consciousness has not made propagating the ideas that would now destroy American idealism easier. The deeper we got into costumed fantasies, the further we got from our history, letting those who misrepresent that history a free rein.

sch 10/18