STACY'S AMERICAN DREAM

American Dreams with Roots

If you haven't watched yet, check out Who Do You Think You Are? It's the NBC program that traces celebs' family histories. OK so it's a shameless ad for Ancestory.com, but it's still a riveting show. American Dream Girl can't stand Sarah Jessica Parker, but couldn't keep her eyes off her as she found out her ancestors were invovled in the Gold Rush and the Salem witch trials. And this last week's show with Emmitt Smith finding out that his great, great, great ... grandmother was a slave who had the courage to keep her family together was nothing but amazing. Every American Dream has roots whether they go back 20 years or two centuries and this show makes you ponder that and more. This Thursday Lisa Kudrow, also a producer of the show, searches her own family history which intersects with the Holocaust. The show airs Thursdays at 8. You can also see a preview of NBC.com.

American Dreaming in the Classroom

To me the best place to cultivate the American Dream is in the classroom, but unfortunately so many have also been crushed there. I remember one of my high school teachers making a comment on a creative writing project which almost stopped my future career in its early-stage tracks. But for our new students at the NLS, I'd like to say welcome and let's try to make at least some of your writing dreams come true.

The American Dream Meets Gypsies Tramps and Thieves

How lucky was I recently to be at a second-hand children's clothing store to witness first hand someone taking their first step in the their version of the American Dream, even though for many it would seem a nightmare.

This woman has dreamed of becoming a Cher impersonator. That's right a woman who wants to be a Cher impersonator, not a man. We heard she would be at this clothing store, so we thought we'd stop by. It was just weird enough to make it worth going out on a sleety New Hampshire night. So we get into this store and someone had laid out a tray with brie, wine and boxed chocolate chip cookies.

In the front I see some tweens I know, and they're giggling and turning red. Then I look up and see a woman - a rather short woman - with a long, black straight wig. She's wearing purple harem pants, a gauzy lavender top and spiders-have-dropped-dead on my eylids, false lashes.

With absoluely no word of explanation or stage patter, the woman began to sing. Scratch that. She began to lip sync "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves." It was, in a word, weird.

I didn't want to laugh or roll my eyes, so I shopped, pretended to be wildly interested in camo Doc Martins. I could see shoppers who had just entered the store and snicker. I could see people watching out of politeness and looking madly uncomfortable.

And it occurred to me that this woman had enormous courage and while everyone else was busy snickering and feeling embarrassed for her, she was busy putting herself out there and doing something about her desires, no matter how strange they seemed to others For that day, the Sher lip syncer was my hero.

The American Dream's crazy heart

So back from the movie, "Crazy Heart" a total acting tour de force on the part of Jeff Bridges. One has to wonder when actors have so many smoking scenes if they are really inhaling. Man he sure looked like it. So this one is pretty clear. The Amerian Dream soaked in whiskey and nicotine. Bad Blake our hapless anti-hero should be totally unsympathetic. He squanders his American Dream, not to mention his career, reputation, four wives and a child. In the end as it does so often in Hollywood and one hopes in real life, love is transforming, but not in the way you think it will be. As the title song says, "Falling feels like flying for a little while." The real art in this movie is that you like Blake and root for him from beginnig to end, even when he does somethign as heinous as lose the young son of his girlfriend as he takes him to a bar. But the American Dream is often about the underdog. We like to keep that one-foot-after-another fantasy going. If you just try hard enough ............ That kind of thing. But country music, authentic, non glam country music is at the heart of this film. And it could easily be argued that no genre talks to the American Dream more.

More dreams through films

Off to see "Crazy Heart" as part of my marathon weekend.

The American Dream through cinema

To me the closest thing to dreams are films. So after a marathon of movies this weekend, I wonder what that says about the American dream and dreams in general. I watched the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," Steven Soderbergh's "The Informant" and the three-part Masterpiece Theater's version of Jane Austin's "Emma." I know Austin is not American, but I needed a woman's version of a dream somewhere.

So first the gratifying Coen brothers' production. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1019452/OK so there's been a lot of back and forth about whether this was really a modern-day version of the Job story. I say, it doesn't really matter. It's nice coming to a movie with literary allusions in our pocket, but they should be accessible to everyone, whether they're familier with those allusions or not.

Being a secular Jew myself, I was particulary interested in this version of the American Dream even though it does verge more on nightmare and the allegorical. I particularly loved the opening sequence with the couple in the shetl visited by what is either a spirit who has moved into the body of an old man, left unattended during the shiva period, or just an old man who people thought were dead. Who do we believe? The wife who believes he's evil incarnate, or the husband who feels he is a real man who did him a kindness and for that is rewarded by being stabbed in the throat by his wife. Who do we believe indeed? That is the driving force of "A Serious Man" and of the American Dream of course. Do we believe that if we just don't "sin" we won't be punished? Or do we believe that God or destiny is capricious and will punish for no reason at all.

"The Informant,"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130080/ on the other hand is really a meditation on the American Dream with the protagonist - played masterfully by Matt Damon - wrapping his American Dream of greed and false pedigree in layer upon layer of lies. Interestingly enough, even though we know he's a lying rat, we always hope that the latest untruth he utters will be the last. We hope that his motives are pure even though we know and see time and again that they aren't. Perhaps that talks to our dream of wanting everyone, including ourselves, to be better than our human frailities.

Finally "Emma." OK so this was the easiest film to watch of the three. It's eye candy all the way and on the surface seems easier to swallow than a man tormented by undeserved punishment and another by greed. But really, emotionally, I fould this to be the hardest dream to follow. There's Emma's agoraphonic father, who is so worried about losing his daughter - not to just death and destruction - but to marriage itself. He's kept his girls at home after their mother died and at first this is seen as a virtue in light of poor Jane and Mr. Churchill who were sent off to live with aunts when they lost a parent. But at closer examination we see his motives are selfish. He'd rather have Emma cloistered and lonely than lose her caretaking. The dreams in Emma at first blush look merely like the adolescent dream of the perfect romance, but particularly in this interpretation, we see how dreams are easily cast aside in a class-bound society where one dare not love above their station. And as Americans, 200 years after Austin wrote her novel, we may feel that we're above this classist prejudice. But don't kid yourself. It exists. But rather than class based on blood, it's class based on money and acquisition. One can argue then that the upside to the bad economy is the equalizing effect it has.

Emma sets herself up as an expert on people's "dream, hopes and aspirations" while constantly missing the mark, not only on the feelings of others, but her own heart as well. Which begs the question. Can we speculate on anyone's dreams but our own?