Nashville

"Nashville: A Shadow Play of What We Have Become and Where We Might Look for Wisdom" is a self-described "talk about a movie" about the film of the same name, directed by Robert Altman. It was published in Vogue in June 1975 and reprinted in 2014 in Altman by Kathryn Reed Altman and Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan.

Summary

Nashville movie poster

Calling his article a "talk about a movie" rather than a review, Vonnegut remarks that he used to think machines would destroy us, but Robert Altman's film Nashville makes him wonder if the movie camera could "rescue or at least refresh" us instead. Films have become a "shadow play" of light projected through ribbon to show what America has become and where it might look for wisdom. He calls it one of the few examples he's seen of the arts being "useful in times of trouble." The country music world becomes a model for American culture, observed by a British documentary filmmaker whose "brilliance and sophistication" gives her no ability to understand the United States. Vonnegut was struck at the end with how "discontinuous" American culture is with the rest of the world, especially because it is of "recent invention, inspired by our random opportunities to gain money or power or fame." Because the culture is so new, individual and collective pasts must be invented and faked, causing Americans to "lose touch with, among other things, the planet and their fellow men." It is a culture that, if not producing insanity, at least permits lunatics to pass undetected. Their simplified understanding of the world allows these lunatics to find killing others reasonable and natural.

Robert Altman and Lily Tomlin, 1976

When Vonnegut studied anthropology, he learned that all cultures can be rewarding to those within them while also absurd to outsiders. It has made it hard for him to criticize cultures, including his own, but the American way of life has become so dangerous and uninterested in survival that Americans have been "rendered terribly unsafe by things we have agreed to believe." The movie is filled with catchy songs telling Americans that "We must be doing something right to last two hundred years" and other inane messages like "It don't worry me." Americans need to "invent some deeper things," and this film is evidence that it can. Two of the best performances came from Henry Gibson and Lily Tomlin, who provoked only empty laughter on Laugh-In not long ago. America needs more than "silly songs and empty laughter." It needs to recognize that it gives power and wealth to people who do nothing for, or even actively damage, human dignity and the survival of society. Otherwise, common people will simply copy that behavior. The coming American bicentennial, while producing a made up "Mickey Mouse history," should also be producing greater economic fairness, taking power and wealth from dangerous lunatics. This is hardly a new idea, what is new is that in a society whose leaders are so devoid of ideas or understanding of their own people, artists and filmmakers especially can use their powers of observation as the new source of cultural strength and responsibility.