It seems like there is a gradual relief from the recession the country has been experiencing for the past couple of years, the city of Fairlawn in Greater Akron can certainly vouch for that. The city's revenue has risen as of the past year, mostly due to the diversity of corporate headquarters in the city. An added bonus is that health-care costs will also not be risen for the coming year. While wondering of the possibility of long term effects, we can only hope that this trend will continue. As with good news and bad news, it is an ample moment for reflection, and sometimes, a movie can help reflect on our current circumstances as well. A great movie that can offer that to us, especially to our circumstances now, is 1935's Alice Adams.
The movie stars Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Evelyn Venable, Frank Albertson, Charley Grapewin, Hedda Hopper, and Hattie McDaniel. Based on the Booth Tarkington novel, the movie is about a lower middle class woman (Hepburn, as the title character), who dreams of making her way in society and being accepted by "better people." Her parents, Virgil and Mrs. Adams ( Fred Stone and Ann Shoemaker), try to understand her efforts and try to support her. Virgil doesn't get her desire, and wonders if she is happy and proud of who she is, and Mrs. understands perfectly. Alice invites herself to a high society dance, with her brother, Walter (Frank Albertson) as her date. Alice wants to be a favorite of the Palmers, Mr. and Mrs. (Jonathan Hale and Hedda Hopper) and their daughter, Mildred "Georgette" (Venable), but is snubbed and reduced to being a wallflower. To make matters worse, she finds her brother hanging out with the servants rolling dice. Her only glimpse of light is meeting Arthur Russell (MacMurray), who takes interest in her. Alice, being of high society conscious, knows that he is richer than God, and writes him off. She comes home, and cries her eyes out. Incidently, she meeds Arthur outside of the bank one day, and a romance develops. Alice puts on an act pretending to be rich and indirectly invites him to dinner at her house. Now, Alice has to expand the act, cover up her family's true economic status, and impress him. Her parents resentfully agree to help her, and ask their neighbor, Malena Burns( McDaniel) to help them out as well, even though she also resents having to play rich for poor white people. Will the illusion work out and will Russell buy it? Watch it and find out.
Now, the relevancy of the movie is that our current recession has depressed us, yet we socially still want to look and maintain the idea that being rich is somehow better than not. Like Alice Adams, we want to pretend to be something we are not to get ahead, even if it costs us what we are as a people and as a nation. We want to have material wealth, and all the pretty shiny things in life, but we do not appreciate hard work and the people who are not rich who can provide basic necessities. We cradle the rich and make them golden calves that mere mortals cannot touch. While recovery and relief seem to be in the economic forecast, most of us are not happy with seeing change as a process and not an event that will magically fix everything. Maybe providing the basic necissites is good enough. Maybe the love and support of the people around you makes you rich enough. Maybe the hard work and sacrifice those before you have done to make life easier and better for the next that doesn't come in the form of inheritance and easy money is the true wealth. Watch this movie, think about this.
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