There was a time when I was quite the movie buff. In fact, I spent an inordinate amount of time watching movies, considering all that I had going on in my life. Now I’m not saying that I watched a lot of different movies or many highbrow, award-winning movies or even went to the movies frequently---just that I spent a lot of time watching movies. The fact is that I watched a lot of the same movies over and over, thanks to the magic of the newly unleashed VCR—an invention that revolutionized the parent/child experience in the mid-eighties. So now, years later, my sons and their father and I can reference our favorite movies in family gatherings with just a single line and have us all rolling with laughter—leaving others puzzled, I’m afraid. There’s “Let me go, Bull!” from Backdraft, “The sun is shining, but the ice is slippery!” from The Shadow, and “Drink your milk! Take your nap!” from Baby’s Day Out. And of course, when they were really small there were the Disney movies, strategically released by the powerful Disney machine and then withheld to build demand. Hmmm…do you detect a little cynicism there? Maybe. Even though I do love some of them, there are others that, for me, have a little underlying creepiness (remember the air conditioner in Brave Little Toaster?) And I’ve always felt that there’s something perhaps a little darker in the business end of that empire than the innocence depicted in their movies.

Dumbo was one of the movies that seemed, at least on the surface, to be suitable fare for the youngest children. Remember the story? A sweet baby elephant separated from his mother finds a staunch supporter and friend in Timothy Mouse, who encourages Dumbo to overcome his fear, eventually triumphing with his unique talent to win the admiration of those who once belittled him. But even that movie had its shadow side. I have a distinct memory of watching the nightmarish “Pink Elephants on Parade” scene in the movie, where at the end the elephants race around and around in a circle faster and faster until they kind of explode, and the scene transforms into a beautiful, peaceful, pink sky at dawn. I remember that scene particularly because it seemed to so perfectly depict how the real world felt to me at the time—things were feeling more and more out of control and seemed to be going faster and faster to the point where surely it, too, would just have to explode so we could then have some peace.

That scene has been in my mind lately because there’s something about right now that feels that way—maybe even more so than in the late eighties and early nineties. And even though we may not voice it, I do think we feel it—like there’s just so much tension in the air and we’re stretched so tightly that surely, we can’t stretch much further before something snaps, or worse--explodes. In fact, I think we’re already seeing the snapping—in the mass shootings, and the standoffs, and the wild unpredictableness and rewriting of all of the rules in our politics now. And in a world in which some are still living who witnessed an explosion like no other back in the 1940’s, it’s no wonder that even that possibility would be hovering in our consciousness. It’s as if the polarization and the resulting stretching apart of the different elements in our society are such that release—in some form or another—surely must come soon. But the thing is, while some don’t seem to care what or who or how much is destroyed with that release, others of us are hoping that we can somehow get to the pink dawn with all of us and the world intact.