AS BOMBS continued to fall over Kandahar and Kabul, as troops were flown into Afghanistan to combat the Taliban, nearly 40 million Americans held their breaths and watched as the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the New York Yankees. This was the largest television audience of game seven of the World Series in 10 years. Similarly, another 17 million or so Americans tuned in to the Emmy awards the same night. We are fortunate this is the case - we are still able to find a sense of an older, pre-Sept. 11 reality in entertainment.
The comfort we can find in this entertainment is not meant to diminish the gravity of what has occurred since that awful Tuesday, but certainly to bring us a sense of mundane routine that we should embrace, if only for our sense of unity and strength as Americans. Let's hope the entertainment industry continues to warm us with distraction as the war in Afghanistan wears on.
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We now are being force-fed media attention on anthrax, the war in Afghanistan and the cleanup efforts in New York and Washington, D.C. It's difficult to find a U.S. news outlet that has diminished, even slightly, its coverage of these things - and understandably so. Entertainment, however, breaks through this boundary, almost forcing itself into the news amid headlines about fear-instilling envelopes and special forces troops. The entertainment industry has so long been a part of our cultural landscape, even a war can't put it on the back burner. Rather, as has been the case in the past, the industry is taking a more important role in providing us with an outlet of escape from whatever we're feeling, be it fear, anger or frustration.
The entertainment industry in wartime has long been a constant source of comfort and stability for Americans. At the beginning of the United States' involvement in World War II, movies like Disney's "Pinocchio" and John Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath" hit theatres. Hollywood quickly shifted gears, though, from pumping out principally entertaining and literary-type films to ones with a grounded sense of patriotism and quality control. These movies allowed that generation to escape, albeit briefly, from the reality of the war, while at the same time reassuring them that a positive outcome would come about. For example, the 1942 movie "Flying Tigers" provides a setting for John Wayne to battle the Japanese over China. Sure, if you examine the world stage today and compare it with that in the film, it seems ridiculous, but this movie served its purpose - it showed audiences power and strength in the U.S. military. Other movies released in the same vein around this time include "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca" - two of the best-known films ever made.
The Vietnam War provided material for many films, including "Apocalypse Now," "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Full Metal Jacket." Though some regard these films as controversial and historically skewed, they nonetheless provide us the opportunity to re-examine this period through cinema, piquing our interest or inviting us to draw our own conclusions about the Vietnam War.
The point is that we should expect similar things from Hollywood in the coming months. War has a way of upping the ante in the entertainment industry. Entertainers are forced to examine the quality of their work closely, and to provide their audiences with relief from the stress of war. The viewing public wants reassurance and release, and the entertainment industry is poised to provide it.
The tension that people are feeling and their need for release may mean that entertainment on the light-hearted side will be very successful in the coming months. "Harry Potter," slated for release in the United States and the United Kingdom on Nov. 16, is being compared in terms of earnings potential to "Titanic" - some speculate it will surpass its all-time earnings record. Filmmakers realize that historically, movies tend to serve this kind of outlet role for people, and so we can expect quite a spectacle from this already much-hyped film. Similarly, movies such as "K-Pax" and "Monsters, Inc." have enjoyed immense popularity since their release a short while ago. We should look for competition to heat up in the film industry as filmmakers hurry to get their work out in theaters to compete with movies like these.
The entertainment industry always will play an important role in the American way of life. Through the years the movie screen has brought us happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain. It is now up to the entertainment industry, however, to provide us with a product that will both keep us content with our reality, and at the same time happy to escape from it for a few hours.
(Austen Givens' column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at agivens@cavalierdaily.com.)
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