8 ms·

The Empty Nostalgia of ‘The Sound of Music’

62 points by tintinnabula 10y ago

bshimmin 10y ago
Just watched the Sound of Music with Ivanka and the kids. Good movie, very successful! Shows family values and when America was great! This is so perfectly Trump. I've only seen it once under considerable protest and after quite a few glasses of wine, but I detested The Sound of Music. If I need "the vague threat of Nazism" and the golden age of something or other, I'll take Casablanca any day.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  I'm not sure I should admit this here but I quite like The Sound of Music.
  - m_myers 10y ago
    I rather doubt that liking one of the most popular musicals ever made is a minority opinion even on HN.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- js2 10y ago
  Just to be clear, the author was mocking Trump: "Indeed, it’s easy to imagine our new president, a person who might be said to have confidence in confidence alone, tweeting something about the film: ..."
- bjornlouser 10y ago
  "I am seventy, going on infamy... I know that I'm naive"
technofiend 10y ago
I'm ambivalent about the movie but consider it a cultural literacy requirement: you have to watch it once so you can talk about it.
- germinalphrase 10y ago
  I'm thirty and have never talked about TSOM in a meaningful or public way. Really, my only memory associated with the film is my father humming Edelweiss to comfort me as a child. The film may clearly have that importance for others, but hasn't played that role for me. Which makes me curious what other art/media are important enough to stand in as a cultural literacy requirement? Perhaps, "The Matrix"? I've used it as an entry point for real conversations.
  - ashark 10y ago
    I was so ignorant of the movie I didn't even know there were Nazis in it until reading this article. I've already thought of several major pieces of media that were probably influenced by it, just based on the article's description, not counting parodies and more direct references. I definitely ought to have watched it, and now I will.
  - phillmv 10y ago
    >Which makes me curious what other art/media are important enough to stand in as a cultural literacy requirement? The cultural cannon is rather large and you're likely steeped in it whether you realize or not! Pierre Bayard rather humourously explores this in "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read" https://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/1596915439 https://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/15969..., to wit: The important thing behind the cannon isn't that you necessarily have consumed every bit of the media but that you at least know what position it occupies in the culture and your position relative to it - what signals your peers send when they discuss a given piece of art. The most accessible example of this is watching The Simpsons or Family Guy: most of the time you see them make pop cultural references they're, arguably, pointing to entries in the cannon.
jasode 10y ago
Instead of the useless title "So Long, Farewell", the webpage's html has a meta <title> which better describes the author's thesis: <title>The Empty Nostalgia of ‘The Sound of Music’</title> My tldr: the author Kate Guadagnino describes her changing assessment of TSOM from being obsessed with it to being dismissive of it. The obsessive stage included being hooked by the songs' earworms and reading a book bio from the actress playing the oldest child. [js2 corrected] The dismissive stage is noticing that the Nazi depiction is too tame and not historically accurate of all their evils. In other words, she now sees the movie more like critics who derided it including Pauline Kael and Joan Didion. I think I've captured the essence of her essay but I didn't find it to be interesting. Perhaps other readers who upvoted the story to the front page can tell me if I missed something. To me, an analogy would be writing about not listening to Prince's song "1999" because she's come to the realize that annihilation from nuclear war is a terrible thing. She saw the photos of Hiroshima victims and was horrified by the layers of burned skin peeling off. Therefore, to write a song that has bouncy major chords with a dance beat about nuclear destruction is "empty". Even though she loved the song as a teenager, she will now bid "farewell to '1999'" and tell us all about it. Or one could write an essay about no longer visiting the Disney amusement ride, "Pirates of the Carribean" because it trivializes the real violence in the 1500s[1] of slavery and murders (including beheadings). I think the author wants to convey that switching the perspective about TSOM from the naive innocence of "songs with hooks" to a more enlightened criticism of "inaccurate Nazis" as a maturation. I disagree and think it's perfectly reasonable for people to continue watching TSOM reruns for the "doe a deer a female deer" and not care that it doesn't try to be a Ken Burns documentary film. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Caribbean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Caribbean
- js2 10y ago
  The author is upset by the Trump presidency. The film, which used to be escapist for her, no longer is. Instead, it's become more like salt in a wound. She's not going to watch it again while he's president, and instead try to make better use of her time, reading and writing, and showing up for others instead. The piece in fact, is more about the author than the film. :-) Also, the book is by Charmian Carr (Liesl). The lead actress is of course Julie Andrews. edit: I want to thank you for your tldr. I'd initially only skimmed the article, but your tldr got me to read through it in earnest and I'm glad I did.
yardie 10y ago
I saw it in grade school as a kid and I saw it again last year on Netflix. I liked it. It has aged well compared to re-watching a lot of other shows and movies from my youth. It was filmed from the point of view of a child. Of course they wouldn't know much about how terrible the Nazis were. Hell most of the adult world didn't know how terrible they were. I'm sure the Baron just told them these guys are terrible without mentioning the ovens and medical experiments and kept it moving.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  I think the movie portrays them pretty accurately, from Captain von Trapp's perspective in 1938: thuggish, low-class, irresponsible, violent, and regrettably alluring to the young. The really foul stuff hadn't started yet -- and you'd have to know a lot more about the Nazi inner circle than von Trapp did (or cared to) in order to know that it was coming.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Reprising https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183: It's true that the Nazi regime got worse (very) shortly after 1938, but it's not true that Nazi Germany prior to 1938 was only superficially bad. The history of the era suggests that Nazi Germany in 1938 was like North Korea in the 1970s: a functioning murderous fascist dictatorship.
    - pvg 10y ago
      This is a point that probably isn't made clearer by analogy since 1970s North Korea was well ahead of 1938 Nazi Germany in totalitarianism (and camps).
    - clock_tower 10y ago
      I wasn't meaning to say that they were "only superficially bad", but that they were extremely ill-omened -- the sort of organization that was capable of almost anything, and that no gentleman would associate with. But, as you point out, they were very bad very early -- Roehm and the Sturmabteilung were purged in 1934 (!), and Kristallnacht was late 1938 (while restrictions on Jewish store owners etc. were earlier). "North Korea in the '70s" sounds about right -- I'd underestimated just how quickly things happened with that regime. The mere "no gentleman" phase was probably over before they came to power...
subpixel 10y ago
I never realized that the film was made years after John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" was released. I've seen the film once, but have probably listened to the album a thousand times and the title track gives me goosebumps every time.
- donretag 10y ago
  The original Broadway production was in 1959, with Coltrane's version in 1961. I prefer Coltrane's version, but I love the musical as well.
andrewclunn 10y ago
Kid's movies that touch on adult subjects, but at a simplistic level that apes at understanding... Like Marry Poppins and Women's suffrage. It's in books too, like The Whipping Boy, where oppression by the nobles is a whimsical journey of discovery. How to introduce children to adult concepts through art, without creating a false narrative that presents over-simplified half truths? Not sure what the answer there is, but The Sound of Music definitely falls into that... von-trap (couldn't resist the pun).
coldtea 10y ago
The song Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, mentioned in the article too, is the theme song of the "Man in the High Castle" Amazon series...
- jhbadger 10y ago
  Where its placement seems as bizarre as in the anecdote about Reagan playing it for an Austrian official mentioned in the article. Unless the makers are implying that Edelweiss is a genuine folksong in the "High Castle" universe.
  - cpr 10y ago
    See iak8god's comment above debunking that cheap shot.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    Embarrassingly enough, I always thought "Eidelweiss" was a show-tune arrangement of a real folksong... It sounds like I'm in good company. :P
    - shoover 10y ago
      All the more credit to Rodgers and Hammerstein.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Actually it makes perfect sense. It has the nazi connotations (Edelweiss being a Germanic name for flower that grows in the German speaking countries --including Germany--, and being modeled after Austrian/German folksongs, the lyric "Bless my homeland forever", the impassionate delivery, etc) and the anti-nazi connotations (from its function in The Sound of Music). Here's an article examining it in this context: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/edelweiss-an-american-song-for-an-american-dystopia/417285/ http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/ede...
    - 10y ago
iak8god 10y ago
Did anyone else think the following seemed implausible? > Thinking it was a real folk song—and the Austrian national anthem to boot—Reagan famously played ["Edelweiss"] for the Austrian president at a White House state dinner in 1984. It turns out this is at least a gross exaggeration, as Reagan's remarks at that dinner show: > Your visit is a celebration of something real, tangible, and enduring: the friendship between the people of Austria and the people of the United States. At one point in "The Sound of Music," the character who plays Baron von Trapp sings a song about the edelweiss, an Austrian flower. And before the song ends, the lyrics become a prayer for Austria itself. It is a prayer Americans join in—"Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow—and bless your homeland forever." - http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=39575 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=39575
- solidsnack9000 10y ago
  Maybe many stories about Reagan as fool are legends. The Buffoon Prince.
leepowers 10y ago
TSOM is the WWII generation looking back on the struggles and evils that defined their world, and finding hope and beauty in it. The von Trapp family does not defeat evil, they escape it - an archetype that maps neatly onto the cold war era where evil persisted (the USSR) even after it had been defeated (the Allied victory). It was also escapism from the turmoil of the mid-60's, including the unfolding, slow-motion disaster of Vietnam. It's no mystery that millions of Americans flocked to a romanticized version of the last great and good conflict that occurred during their lifetimes. The escapism of TSOM is still apropos, especially during times of conflict. If you believe the world is a hard, cruel, unjust place, why would you only watch movies or read books that feature hardbitten themes and tragedies? Wouldn't you want to take a break and forget and clear your mind for a while? It was the WWII generation's proximity to struggle that made them susceptible to escapism. > Most likely I will not watch The Sound of Music again for a long time, four or maybe even eight years, and that’s okay. Ahh, I see, this is about president Trump. It's remarkable how much people will let an election define them and dictate how they will live and entertain themselves. Scratch that, it's not remarkable, it's absolutely crazy.

62 points by tintinnabula 10y ago

Just watched the Sound of Music with Ivanka and the kids. Good movie, very successful! Shows family values and when America was great! This is so perfectly Trump. I've only seen it once under considerable protest and after quite a few glasses of wine, but I detested The Sound of Music. If I need "the vague threat of Nazism" and the golden age of something or other, I'll take Casablanca any day.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
I'm not sure I should admit this here but I quite like The Sound of Music.
- m_myers 10y ago
  I rather doubt that liking one of the most popular musicals ever made is a minority opinion even on HN.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
js2 10y ago
Just to be clear, the author was mocking Trump: "Indeed, it’s easy to imagine our new president, a person who might be said to have confidence in confidence alone, tweeting something about the film: ..."
bjornlouser 10y ago
"I am seventy, going on infamy... I know that I'm naive"

technofiend 10y ago

I'm ambivalent about the movie but consider it a cultural literacy requirement: you have to watch it once so you can talk about it.

germinalphrase 10y ago
I'm thirty and have never talked about TSOM in a meaningful or public way. Really, my only memory associated with the film is my father humming Edelweiss to comfort me as a child. The film may clearly have that importance for others, but hasn't played that role for me. Which makes me curious what other art/media are important enough to stand in as a cultural literacy requirement? Perhaps, "The Matrix"? I've used it as an entry point for real conversations.
- ashark 10y ago
  I was so ignorant of the movie I didn't even know there were Nazis in it until reading this article. I've already thought of several major pieces of media that were probably influenced by it, just based on the article's description, not counting parodies and more direct references. I definitely ought to have watched it, and now I will.
- phillmv 10y ago
  >Which makes me curious what other art/media are important enough to stand in as a cultural literacy requirement? The cultural cannon is rather large and you're likely steeped in it whether you realize or not! Pierre Bayard rather humourously explores this in "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read" https://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/1596915439 https://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/15969..., to wit: The important thing behind the cannon isn't that you necessarily have consumed every bit of the media but that you at least know what position it occupies in the culture and your position relative to it - what signals your peers send when they discuss a given piece of art. The most accessible example of this is watching The Simpsons or Family Guy: most of the time you see them make pop cultural references they're, arguably, pointing to entries in the cannon.

jasode 10y ago

Instead of the useless title "So Long, Farewell", the webpage's html has a meta <title> which better describes the author's thesis: <title>The Empty Nostalgia of ‘The Sound of Music’</title> My tldr: the author Kate Guadagnino describes her changing assessment of TSOM from being obsessed with it to being dismissive of it. The obsessive stage included being hooked by the songs' earworms and reading a book bio from the actress playing the oldest child. [js2 corrected] The dismissive stage is noticing that the Nazi depiction is too tame and not historically accurate of all their evils. In other words, she now sees the movie more like critics who derided it including Pauline Kael and Joan Didion. I think I've captured the essence of her essay but I didn't find it to be interesting. Perhaps other readers who upvoted the story to the front page can tell me if I missed something. To me, an analogy would be writing about not listening to Prince's song "1999" because she's come to the realize that annihilation from nuclear war is a terrible thing. She saw the photos of Hiroshima victims and was horrified by the layers of burned skin peeling off. Therefore, to write a song that has bouncy major chords with a dance beat about nuclear destruction is "empty". Even though she loved the song as a teenager, she will now bid "farewell to '1999'" and tell us all about it. Or one could write an essay about no longer visiting the Disney amusement ride, "Pirates of the Carribean" because it trivializes the real violence in the 1500s[1] of slavery and murders (including beheadings). I think the author wants to convey that switching the perspective about TSOM from the naive innocence of "songs with hooks" to a more enlightened criticism of "inaccurate Nazis" as a maturation. I disagree and think it's perfectly reasonable for people to continue watching TSOM reruns for the "doe a deer a female deer" and not care that it doesn't try to be a Ken Burns documentary film. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Caribbean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Caribbean

js2 10y ago
The author is upset by the Trump presidency. The film, which used to be escapist for her, no longer is. Instead, it's become more like salt in a wound. She's not going to watch it again while he's president, and instead try to make better use of her time, reading and writing, and showing up for others instead. The piece in fact, is more about the author than the film. :-) Also, the book is by Charmian Carr (Liesl). The lead actress is of course Julie Andrews. edit: I want to thank you for your tldr. I'd initially only skimmed the article, but your tldr got me to read through it in earnest and I'm glad I did.

yardie 10y ago

I saw it in grade school as a kid and I saw it again last year on Netflix. I liked it. It has aged well compared to re-watching a lot of other shows and movies from my youth. It was filmed from the point of view of a child. Of course they wouldn't know much about how terrible the Nazis were. Hell most of the adult world didn't know how terrible they were. I'm sure the Baron just told them these guys are terrible without mentioning the ovens and medical experiments and kept it moving.

clock_tower 10y ago
I think the movie portrays them pretty accurately, from Captain von Trapp's perspective in 1938: thuggish, low-class, irresponsible, violent, and regrettably alluring to the young. The really foul stuff hadn't started yet -- and you'd have to know a lot more about the Nazi inner circle than von Trapp did (or cared to) in order to know that it was coming.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Reprising https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183: It's true that the Nazi regime got worse (very) shortly after 1938, but it's not true that Nazi Germany prior to 1938 was only superficially bad. The history of the era suggests that Nazi Germany in 1938 was like North Korea in the 1970s: a functioning murderous fascist dictatorship.
  - pvg 10y ago
    This is a point that probably isn't made clearer by analogy since 1970s North Korea was well ahead of 1938 Nazi Germany in totalitarianism (and camps).
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    I wasn't meaning to say that they were "only superficially bad", but that they were extremely ill-omened -- the sort of organization that was capable of almost anything, and that no gentleman would associate with. But, as you point out, they were very bad very early -- Roehm and the Sturmabteilung were purged in 1934 (!), and Kristallnacht was late 1938 (while restrictions on Jewish store owners etc. were earlier). "North Korea in the '70s" sounds about right -- I'd underestimated just how quickly things happened with that regime. The mere "no gentleman" phase was probably over before they came to power...

subpixel 10y ago

I never realized that the film was made years after John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" was released. I've seen the film once, but have probably listened to the album a thousand times and the title track gives me goosebumps every time.

donretag 10y ago
The original Broadway production was in 1959, with Coltrane's version in 1961. I prefer Coltrane's version, but I love the musical as well.

andrewclunn 10y ago

Kid's movies that touch on adult subjects, but at a simplistic level that apes at understanding... Like Marry Poppins and Women's suffrage. It's in books too, like The Whipping Boy, where oppression by the nobles is a whimsical journey of discovery. How to introduce children to adult concepts through art, without creating a false narrative that presents over-simplified half truths? Not sure what the answer there is, but The Sound of Music definitely falls into that... von-trap (couldn't resist the pun).

coldtea 10y ago

The song Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, mentioned in the article too, is the theme song of the "Man in the High Castle" Amazon series...

jhbadger 10y ago
Where its placement seems as bizarre as in the anecdote about Reagan playing it for an Austrian official mentioned in the article. Unless the makers are implying that Edelweiss is a genuine folksong in the "High Castle" universe.
- cpr 10y ago
  See iak8god's comment above debunking that cheap shot.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Embarrassingly enough, I always thought "Eidelweiss" was a show-tune arrangement of a real folksong... It sounds like I'm in good company. :P
  - shoover 10y ago
    All the more credit to Rodgers and Hammerstein.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Actually it makes perfect sense. It has the nazi connotations (Edelweiss being a Germanic name for flower that grows in the German speaking countries --including Germany--, and being modeled after Austrian/German folksongs, the lyric "Bless my homeland forever", the impassionate delivery, etc) and the anti-nazi connotations (from its function in The Sound of Music). Here's an article examining it in this context: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/edelweiss-an-american-song-for-an-american-dystopia/417285/ http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/ede...
  - 10y ago

iak8god 10y ago

Did anyone else think the following seemed implausible? > Thinking it was a real folk song—and the Austrian national anthem to boot—Reagan famously played ["Edelweiss"] for the Austrian president at a White House state dinner in 1984. It turns out this is at least a gross exaggeration, as Reagan's remarks at that dinner show: > Your visit is a celebration of something real, tangible, and enduring: the friendship between the people of Austria and the people of the United States. At one point in "The Sound of Music," the character who plays Baron von Trapp sings a song about the edelweiss, an Austrian flower. And before the song ends, the lyrics become a prayer for Austria itself. It is a prayer Americans join in—"Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow—and bless your homeland forever." - http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=39575 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=39575

solidsnack9000 10y ago
Maybe many stories about Reagan as fool are legends. The Buffoon Prince.

leepowers 10y ago

TSOM is the WWII generation looking back on the struggles and evils that defined their world, and finding hope and beauty in it. The von Trapp family does not defeat evil, they escape it - an archetype that maps neatly onto the cold war era where evil persisted (the USSR) even after it had been defeated (the Allied victory). It was also escapism from the turmoil of the mid-60's, including the unfolding, slow-motion disaster of Vietnam. It's no mystery that millions of Americans flocked to a romanticized version of the last great and good conflict that occurred during their lifetimes. The escapism of TSOM is still apropos, especially during times of conflict. If you believe the world is a hard, cruel, unjust place, why would you only watch movies or read books that feature hardbitten themes and tragedies? Wouldn't you want to take a break and forget and clear your mind for a while? It was the WWII generation's proximity to struggle that made them susceptible to escapism. > Most likely I will not watch The Sound of Music again for a long time, four or maybe even eight years, and that’s okay. Ahh, I see, this is about president Trump. It's remarkable how much people will let an election define them and dictate how they will live and entertain themselves. Scratch that, it's not remarkable, it's absolutely crazy.