So, the other night I was watching This Is Cinerama. There's a lot to talk about when it comes to the film itself but right now I want to spend a bit of time on one of the special features included with this film: The Breakdown Reel.
The Breakdown Reel is essentially five minutes of filler meant to be projected during a technical difficulty. Given the complexity of Cinerama (three projections on a curved screen with seven channels of sound) there was a real possibility of a breakdown. Or a reel possibility.
One of the investors behind Cinerama was Lowell Thomas. (Another was Merian C. Cooper, the director of King Kong.)
If you've ever seen Lawrence of Arabia then you'll remember the squirrely American reporter who shows up to publicize Lawrence in order to whip up war excitement back in the U.S. (and presumably make a quick buck.) That reporter was based on Lowell Thomas (1892-1981), who made his name following Lawrence and General Allenby in the Palestine Campaign in the First World War. After the war, Thomas made a name for himself (and quite a few bucks, slow and fast) traveling around the world and presenting a slide show and film about Lawrence.
Thirty years later Lowell Thomas was one of those famous voices and not only was he a prime investor in Cinerama, he was also the narrator for This Is Cinerama. And that brings us back to the Breakdown Reel.
It begins innocuously enough. Thomas describes why sometimes things go wrong with projecting a film, talks about the amazing sound and talks a little about the very highly regarded members of the orchestra for the film. He periodically stops to announce that it looks like they're ready to begin again and then says that it looks like they're not ready yet so he's going to tell some more stories.
And this is when it gets...interesting. Because Lowell Thomas shares two stories about presenting his Lawrence film in the 1920s. In the first anecdote he talks about presenting his film in the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo. Apparently the venue had an open courtyard and there were coconut trees nearby. And monkeys. The monkeys pelted the audience with coconuts. It was "very embarrassing for me and also embarrassing for the audience." The monkeys were not embarrassed, because they were monkeys.
The second anecdote though, is a doozy. He was in Bombay for a chunk of time showing his film.
"It was the year that Gandhi started his famous non-cooperation movement and his followers were [slight pause] full of life and wanting to start trouble anywhere and I was telling the story of Allenby and Lawrence at the Royal Opera House in Bombay for several weeks and Gandhi's followers in their little white Gandhi caps used to come each night and the would scatter about in the audience and then they would create disturbances. The English superintendent of police in Bombay decided to do something about it. So he scattered his policemen throughout my audiences and whenever a Gandhi-ite would create a disturbance up would get a policeman nearby and start a real ruckus with him. Can you imagine what a problem it would be for anyone trying to tell a tale standing on a stage under those circumstances? Well, you have all sorts of weird experiences when you're presenting a film. And now, back to our Cinerama adventure."
Wow.
Let's unpack this story a little bit because it is of great relevance to us today.
Lowell Thomas is telling this story in 1952. It is 4 years after Gandhi was assassinated and 5 years after India's independence. The story he's telling was from thirty years in the past at that point.
First, look at what he refers to Gandhi's movement as. "Non-cooperation." I want you to think about that. What weren't they cooperating with? Imperialism? Occupation? Oppression?
Non-cooperation. These days we are shown Gandhi as a paragon of non-violence and we are expected to uphold some mythical standard of pacifism in the face of whatever is being shoved down our gullets because "Gandhi was non-violent" but look carefully at this account and the terminology being used. "Non-cooperation."
Now look at that pause. It is a brief second. But you can see Lowell Thomas struggling to avoid saying something really horrible. Seriously. He comes up with "full of life" but you can see him wanting to say something entirely different and then restraining himself. But you get the gist of what he meant to say when he goes on to say that the Indians were looking to "start trouble anywhere."
Does that kind of rhetoric sound familiar?
Have you been told to be more civil lately?
Have you been told to be more civil because it's what Gandhi would have done?
This is what people who were around when Gandhi was an activist had to say about his movement.
They were troublemakers. They were "creating disturbances."
I could talk more about the way he refers to the protestors as "Gandhi-ites" and the obviously dismissive nature of the phrase "little white Gandhi caps." I mean, if you just want to show people a textbook example of slightly genteel racism, well...here it is.
And then notice Lowell Thomas's obvious pleasure when the British police decide to "do something about it." He chooses his words carefully when he says that the police "start a real ruckus" with Gandhi's protestors but even in euphemism the point is clear. Go back and watch Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982) which is, after all, relatively sanitized and imagine what kind of "ruckus" Lowell Thomas is imagining the British police starting with these Indian protestors and activists. Is it the ruckus where people are merely clubbed in the head or is it the ruckus where people are shot and killed.
Now let's come back to present day. We are told that Gandhi was a paradigm of non-violence and we should comport ourselves like Gandhi when we protest injustice. We are told this by the inheritors of Lowell Thomas's mantle. We are told to be civil...like Gandhi. But here's a time machine hidden in the special features of a 2018 release of a 1952 film to remind us that the much vaunted civility which we are expected to maintain is the same as the "cooperation" which the oppressors of the past expected from the people they were oppressing.
British cops starting a real ruckus. Very droll, Mr. Thomas.
Again, this is 1952. This is the much vaunted civility of the past. Little white caps. Ruckuses. Non-cooperation. I wonder if anyone bothered actually listening to the story on this breakdown reel.
Well, I did. I'm glad I did.
And that last bit of serious narcissism where Lowell Thomas asks for our empathy in imagining how hard it was for him to give a talk while people where being clubbed by cops in the audience.
It must have been so difficult for him.
But he managed to make it. Lowell Thomas endured his troubles, whether it was coconuts or ruckuses.
And think again for a second about how he had two stories of tribulation in the subcontinent and how one of those stories was about wayward monkeys and the other was...SERIOUSLY?
I feel like I just got hit in the face with a baseball bat that has "symbolism" scratched into it.
What are you laughing at, Lowell Thomas? The only way anyone would see you recounting these "hilarious" stories would be if your rotten Cinerama system broke down.
So laugh it up.
Now, just hold that smile a second, Lowell Thomas. Let me take your rotten bloody picture for the rotten bloody newspapers.
