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| Elaine Benes in Seinfeld |
Elaine Benes was right: "Quit telling your stupid story about the stupid desert!"
In a famous episode of Seinfeld (aren't they all?), Elaine put her job on the line over her intense dislike of the 1996 Oscar-winner, The English Patient. Over the past few weeks, it's been easy to mock how irrelevant the Oscars and Hollywood in general have become, but a look back on the values of this Best Picture winner made in 1996 shows how far removed from old fashioned American values we already were then.
It doesn't matter that the film was a period piece set in the years leading up to the Second World War until its end, the values of it are decidedly the era of egocentric "end of history" analysis that brainwashed a few generations into thinking that globalization was an inevitable weather pattern, there was nothing we could do about it, and not to worry because it's overwhelmingly good.
1990s America (Hollywood) - maybe the last successful decade we've had, where community and family and the overall trajectory of the country still felt secure - awarded this as its Best Picture of the Year that had the benefit of hindsight while promoting values far removed from the values that won the Second World War.
Now consider a great film: Casablanca - made at the height of that war, when its outcome was still very much in doubt - is told with a confidence and value-set that almost assumes its victorious outcome. Premiering in late-1942, what makes the film particularly remarkable is that it was considered an ordinary assembly-line Hollywood picture of its day, despite its A-list stars.
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| Casablanca (1942) |
Rick Blaine is a quintessential American original whereas "The English Patient" (who is Hungarian), László Almásy, is a "citizen of the world."
One of the film's most memorable lines is: "We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men." That is not a line born out of shared sacrifices abroad and Rosie the Riveter and silent, stoic, and resilient children at home. That is the dialogue not of the 1940s values, but of the 1990s where globalization is eternal and final, tech optimism reigned, and we'd probably never have a major war again... or something.
The romance that is central to both films is told mostly or entirely through backstory, and again settles on radically different conclusions.
Blaine's individualistic streak is evident throughout the film, yet by the end he arrives at the honorable end that serves the war effort. The culture churned out those ethics, built on community and obligation, which allowed its ordered liberty and individualism to strengthen the civics of a nation, whether through the little platoons of Tocquevillian democracy, or through the cultural ethos that produced so much greatness that it overcame flaws without coming undone. Rick Blaine was admirable because he was selfless in the end.
Rick Blaine was admirable because he was selfless in the end.
Whereas Almásy sells out his country and his friends in pursuit of "love," which is really just an infatuation with a married woman.
With its glorious shots of the desert and sweeping romantic score, there is no doubt that The English Patient is technically impressive and designed to win you over, not just cinematically, but in its values, too.
This, too, is another area where Casablanca triumphs, which ends in sacrifice for something greater than yourself for many of its characters, not just the lead. This is what the ethos of globalization infecting the 1996-made period piece gets wrong. It is the people within the countries, the families and communities and nations that make up those boundaries and lines on a map if you're doing it right. It is the social trust and sense of mutual obligation we have to another that counts at history's pivotal moments. And whether we are at one such moment or not, stop telling your stupid story about the stupid desert indeed, and let's get on with rebuilding our social trust and sense of mutual obligation to one another, and eschew the rootless and unmoored society of users, strangers, and libertines.
Troy M. Olson is an Army Veteran, lawyer by training, and co-author of ‘The Emerging Populist Majority’ available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club and co-founder of its Veterans Caucus. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, and OAN. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children, and is the 3rd Vice Commander (“Americanism” pillar) of the first new American Legion Post in the city in years, Post 917. You can follow him on X/Twitter and Substack at @TroyMOlson
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