Reference point

The industrial era had a positive effect on American life: there was a mass production of goods and there were plenty of job opportunities. Technology and the inventions that came with it helped us to finish the home chores sooner and it helped us become more efficient employees.

Yet when technology entered the war zone people began to see how our advancement brought us fear and death. With WW1 and the travesties it brought, many people became disillusioned. Death and destruction bring on the mirrored glasses and people begin to question their identity as an individual, among the masses, and one united as a nation.

Who are we in this world? What’s important in this commerce driven, power hungry world? As individuals or groups, do we choose to play the game, resist it, or find a middle ground? Modernists may have seen the flaws of traditional values and how they no longer hold true in an industrialized society but it’s the post modernists who feel that what is true now may not be true later on. Truth becomes an ever-evolving answer never remaining constant. Morality is personal and the governing bodies provide disillusionment since they are either corrupt or are filled with empty promises.

It’s the struggle of who is right and who is wrong that the answers usually become blurred. Both parties may 

bring valid points where the opposing party will always see a flaw. And it’s this issue of what is truth, what is reality that brings to mind most of today’s “witty” “smart” films.  In Annie Hall we don’t know what is fact and what is fiction. You may agree that it’s a loosely based autobiographical film of Woody Allen and his inability to be in a long lasting relationship or not.

What is interesting is the use of cartoon scenes of Alfy and Annie in one scene, to the out of body experience during sex to represent the lack of interest in sex, to Alfy going back in time to when he kissed a girl in class and he’s the adult version of himself in that time frame as opposed to being a kid. It’s reliving these moments in such a way that we, to some extent, have viewed our past experiences in a twisted way.  I think that it’s a representation of how we sometimes refer back to our own personal history from an emotional  or dejected view that one’s “truth” may not be true at all. You can replay those memories, those moments in life to the way you may remember them but it may not be how it actually happened.

Which is what I think most of do when it comes to social issues. What may be accurate right now may not be true later on.  Facts may be skewed and emotions are played with, thereby turning reality into something else. History may be a reference point to what happened then to learn what we could do to prevent any future harm, but it’s the person viewing that history through their own lens that one’s own personal views causes the information being read to be misconstrued.