Pages

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Offsite Post: ‘“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” Captures the Essence of Americanism’

 

Art, as they say, is a mirror, and the saying holds true for the 1986 pop-culture ‘classic’ movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Its characters and plotlines reveal the essence of modern America with remarkable clarity.

Ferris Bueller, the teenage boy at the center of the movie, is the quintessential modern American:  determined to ‘pursue happiness’ (Declaration of Independence), he has no problem ignoring all rules and authorities to obtain it:  skipping school, deceiving parents, etc.  This plays out geopolitically with the US ignoring and/or undermining international treaties, moral traditions of other countries, the rules of warfare, and so on to obtain whatever they are after.

Authority figures in the film are portrayed as either hopelessly naïve and irrelevant (like Ferris’s parents, who believe his performance that he is ill so he can stay home from school) or utterly tyrannical (like Ed Rooney, the dean of Ferris’s school who is determined to catch Ferris in a lie and punish him).  This is also very much akin to the US view of political authority:  There are only those two options:  Political authorities are either wicked, uncontrollable tyrants or toothless puppets of the people (autocracy vs. democracy, in Pres. Biden’s terminology).

Ferris’s best friend Cameron, who is dragged into the action by Ferris, is another illustration of the US attitude toward authority.  Deathly afraid at the start that his father will find out that his prized Ferrari was driven about town by he, Ferris, and Sloane (Ferris’s girlfriend), by the end of the movie he has been transformed into the typical rebellious American who is ready to confront and win his independence from any kind of restraining force.  It’s 1776 within the family, and it is glorious!

Jeannie, Ferris’s sister who is angry that he never gets in trouble for his constant rule-breaking, symbolizes virtue, morality, and conscience.  It is remarkable that she is corrupted by the end of the movie (after some advice at the jail from a drug addict, another American man ‘pursuing happiness’), as she comes to Ferris’s aid just as Rooney is about to expose his lie that he has been sick all day.  And this is presented in the film as a praiseworthy change that we should cheer!  The charade of modern America’s morality is thus stripped away:  Virtue for the US is the ability to smugly flout whatever rules they wish, and to enjoy doing so by strangling the cry of conscience.

Is it any wonder that, more and more, countries in the world with even a shred of traditional religious sensibility are beginning to question their friendship with the United States?

How can the US create close ties with them again?  With stacks of cash?  That might work on a few, and for a time, but certainly not with most of them, or for very long.

What is necessary is a transformation of the peoples of the US and their government, a step back into their more traditional past.  Prior to their war for independence in 1776, the 13 colonies that later became the United States were basically extensions of European Christendom in North America.  After that war, the new States became post-Christian – not all at once, it is a process that has been ongoing, though there have moments that accelerated it such as the Northern Yankee Revolution of 1861-5 and the CIA-driven cultural revolution of the 1960s.  Nevertheless, 1776 is the dividing line, after which the States exchanged Christianity (in the attenuated forms in which they knew it) for an idolatrous worship of Liberty.

In order to regain the trust and friendship of the more traditional countries of the world that they are alienating – with the Global South, i.e., by far the greatest proportion of the world’s population, the United States will have to rediscover and nurture anew their Christian roots.  . . .

The rest may be read here:

https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/ferris-buellers-day-captures-essence-americanism

Or here:

https://katehon.com/en/article/ferris-buellers-day-captures-essence-americanism

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

No comments:

Post a Comment