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Photo by Jane Scherr |
Oliver Stone Commencement Address; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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Photo by Jane Scherr |
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This is what I think; I might be presumptuous, but this is what I think movies are for in our culture, or at least what movies should aspire to. A coming together of our tribe. Drama as catharsis, as release, as reaffirmation of the power of the spirit. Films, I feel, should be like the great Hindu and Buddhist ideographs I saw on the temple walls of Southeast Asia. Massive paintings and murals telling the common tales, well-known tales of danger, fear, death, heroes, elephants, love, the birth of children and new kings, new dreams. They worship dreams. Holiness in art, ritual, entertainment.
I tried in my own way, with Born on the Fourth of July and JFK, to tap into the national American conscience of the '50s, '60s, '70s. I tried to show that and I hoped to bring together the nation by depicting a national event and showing how it divided this country, and how it could also heal. But I feel the wounds are still too fresh. The film was attacked in many intellectual quarters from both the left and the right, for being false or simple-minded.
I sometimes think that America, unlike the Sioux or the Buddhist societies I've seen, is torn by too many opinion-makers that divide us into a quarrelsome Athenian society where individual artistic achievements are suspect as attempts to enrich ourselves, or as political propaganda statements. If art exists as spiritual revival for the country or the tribe, then it must include controversy, because art must challenge the thinking and fashion of the time and of society. Art must peel back the lie. Often the official lies, as you know, are confused in our history books with the truth.
In our culture I often find the artistic is denied, the concept of catharsis is
secularized. All meaning is over analyzed. The truth of the time of a
working-class boy, Born on the Fourth of July, losing his legs in
Vietnam and being angry
about it, or a young president, Kennedy, being
assassinated for a viable motive is just too sentimental or too controversial
for our opinion-makers, our cutting-edge magazines, our secular newspapers.
Very rarely, in my experience, can a movie break through this secularization
of thought, this barrier of repression in our culture. The news must be made by
journalists. History must be interpreted by opinion-makers and scholars. Drama
is, in our country, a political weapon. Hitler taught us how, with his mass
theatrical lies. This century, with Stalin and Hitler and Madison Avenue and
Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, the political image-makers and their line of
puppet presidents with smiling faces have taught us that the bigger the lie,
the more likely that people are to believe it. We have, I believe, confused
art, the spiritual basis of art, with media. Media as hysteria, media as
propaganda, the skin of events only. We have taken the Hindu wall paintings and
stripped them of religious and spiritual meaning, for our propaganda
purposes.
This is frightening if you consider all the implications, because it puts us in a realm of 21st-century human beings who will not really be in touch with themselves. We'll be cybermen and -women, artificial intelligence moving on fast-forward. It will probably be exciting but we may not be in touch with who we really are in our essence, our primal essence. I sometimes wake up and wonder how to make it through another day of belief. I feel as many of you might, stripped of spiritual meaning, of a place in the world. Sometimes we hear the earth is shot and the species is going to mutate into weird beings with plastic lungs, dying for food. The waters are dying. Progress itself is now suspect. Why do we breathe, why do we procreate? My generation, I think, is facing the most depressing moment in time. The question is why survive, why? Except finally because it is all we know.
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