We seem to have entered a kind of twilight world where it’s not easy to take either victory or defeat seriously unless there’s a pretense of cynicism, or a claim to being “on the inside" of some great game. There’s even a kind of ideological petulance and demoralization about the liberal reform project that realigns conservatives with the multicultural left, binding intolerance and impotence into an ironically self-directed schadenfreude... while the financial nebulous remains a terrifying cipher.
But we’ve been here before.
In 1939, as we approached the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of a war against a seemingly irresistible totalitarian vision, songwriters Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg wrote a ballad that virtually personified the reanimation of Western liberal democratic culture after an interminable demoralization. The song appeared twice in the MGM musical The Wizard of Oz: first as Judy Garland mused in the barnyard of Dorothy’s dustbowl farm, and again after she’d been magically transported to a land ruled by a benevolently omniscient fake. The dustbowl version is far more moving than the Oz version (pardon the subtitles, but it had the best sound quality).
If you’d like to hear the second version, as a point of reference, it’s here. The second performance has a jaunty pretense of “good times” that’s irritatingly unconvincing, both from a theatrical and an historical perspective. Israel Kamakawiwo Ole' performed a version of the song recently that also seems a little 9/10 for my taste. It’s nice, though.
My favorite version of the ballad (so far) is Eva Cassidy’s. She performed it in a small dive in Washington, DC during the 1990s, probably not more than a few blocks from where I lived at the time. Her matchless voice is cast in breathtaking relief as she performs with scraggly hair against the backdrop of a brick wall. As much as I like Garland’s signature version I just find Cassidy’s guileless performance more comforting and inspiring.
What’s your favorite version of Over the Rainbow?