Carter and Love of Movies 3.14.23
As most of my friends know, our youngest son Carter loves movies. He has for as long as I can remember. I will never forget when Elizabeth got a call from Carter’s 3rd Grade teacher informing her that the class was studying Roman history. The teacher, who at the time was dating one of my subordinates at work, knew Elizabeth and me socially. And because of that familiarity, she felt comfortable calling Elizabeth to tell her what transpired next in her class. The teacher informed Elizabeth that during the discussion of Roman history Carter’s friend Jake told the class that he had seen “Gladiator” with Carter at the Franklin’s house. Now, Jake was always a talker and was good at embellishing his stories. So, the teacher at first dismissed this assertion because she knew the Franklins and she knew that they would never allow 3rd graders to watch a movie as violent as “Gladiator.” But then Carter and another one of his friends in the class corroborated Jake’s story. They even said that Mr. Franklin had watched the movie with them!
So, the teacher felt compelled to make a phone call to let Elizabeth know that her son and his friends were spreading misinformation to the class and that it may spread to the parents of other children. Elizabeth then told Carter’s teacher that Carter and his friends were correct – that I had indeed watched “Gladiator” with Jake, Christopher and Carter and that I had asked the parents first if it was ok. The teacher did not know what to say. Elizabeth explained further. Yes, the movie is violent, but because it is historical in nature and contained no bad language or nudity, we and the other parents were ok with the boys watching it with Mr. Franklin.
I am not sure what that teacher, who eventually married my co-worker, thought of us after that conversation. However, she eventually had three sons of her own. And if her opinion of us was less favorable after that conversation, I would bet that her opinion of us improved as her sons grew older.
Carter would go on to instill in me the love of movies – to the point where I would search out anything to do with film – like pulling Elizabeth into the German Film Museum when we were in Frankfurt, Germany. Carter would go on to minor in film studies at JMU and attend the NYU Graduate Film School and earn a master’s degree in Cinema Studies. Maybe watching “Gladiator” with me when he was in 3rd Grade helped jumpstart his love of movies. But I am sure there were several events that created in him the love of art and film. But the following excerpt from his essay to the UNC Graduate School of Library Science, which he will be attending, may offer some clues.
“Since 1998, I have been on a mission to collect and archive physical media; I just didn’t realize it until the summer of 2016. In 1998 I received my first DVD: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. In 2010, I bought my first film on Blu-Ray: John Frankenheimer’s Ronin. In the past year, I have started to collect 4K UHD Blu-Ray discs. Although the picture and sound quality that can be stored on these discs has vastly improved in the past 25 years, the essence of what these discs are remains the same. They are documents. Documents that you can touch and feel, but also documents that you can organize and group together in different ways so that the media can exist in dialogue with each other. By archiving and displaying various modes of visual media together, one can attempt to tell the story of audio/visual media from the silent era to the streaming era.
I didn’t realize the power of physical media until I volunteered at the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA during the Summer of 2016. I was aware that the Library of Congress kept a National Film Registry to preserve films that were deemed culturally important, but my eyes were opened to the true mission of the center when I volunteered to work in the storage vaults, helping to catalog tens of thousands of various bits of media on film that had been donated to the library. I saw the hundreds of VHS tapes, video game cartridges, and compact discs that were donated to the library every week and suddenly realized the scope of the mission and the vital importance of organizing and indexing. By building a collection and making it accessible and navigable we can make it possible for future generations to gain knowledge and experience culture. I realized that I have, in some ways, been a librarian for most of my life.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, my sense of mission for contributing to the collection and indexing of the world’s knowledge was brought into a sharper focus. Suddenly, my giant collection of DVDs, Blu-Rays, and 4k UHD discs became a vital aspect of day-to-day existence. I had almost by accident, compiled a film and television library that I was making use of nearly every day. I realized that I was playing a very small role in the ongoing struggle to preserve cultural products for future generations. Collecting, archiving and presenting cultural material is to fight against cultural oblivion and collective amnesia. It is absolutely vital in the process of transferring knowledge from generation to generation.
With the emergence of Tik-Tok culture and the streaming wars, a sense of impermanence and evanescence has crept into our culture. Instead of something being created and lasting forever, cultural products can now suddenly vanish. Even television series produced less than five years ago are being removed from streaming services and simply disappearing. Like the snows of yesteryear, gone from this earth.
The ongoing struggle is not about simply preserving culture, but also storing and presenting it. There isn’t anything appealing about moldy old books rotting on forgotten shelves. Too long has the past been presented as something in fading black and white. The experiences of millions of souls exist in volumes that are within our reach, we only must make up that distance and meet the past head on in an effort to understand and apply lessons to our own time.”
Much wisdom in the above. Thank you, Carter.
