A Little Perspective
The Brat Pack Documentary Gave Me a Lift!
I recently watched Andrew McCarthy’s new documentary about The Brat Pack. I found it an interesting watch. It had, for people of my age, nostalgia, interesting existential questions, reflections about Hollywood and media, and the hopefulness that only perspective can bring.
McCarthy met with folks who were associated, like he was, with a group of young actors in the 1980’s who were called the “Brat Pack,” a pun of sorts with reference to an older version of Show business populated with the likes of Bogart and Bacall, Sammy Davis Jr., and the “chairman” Frank Sinatra. The new name was given to a new Hollywood “it” crowd (or so it seemed to be cohesive crowd to audiences and the public) by journalist David Blum in an article in New York Magazine.
The documentary explores what the name meant, and why the author used it—was he taking a cheap shot on the young actors or was it a valid description? I found it interesting as McCarthy travels to actors with whom he once shared a screen (three decades before) on a quest to learn of their own experience being branded as amongst a pack of brats, that most of the actors never felt like they were in any such group. The reason is that there was no cohesive group to speak of. The association was almost all professional with many of the actors leading very different lives from their co-stars. Some of the actors felt pained by the article. To them, it was as if, the article by Blum pigeon-holed them into a sort of adolescent party, filled with entitled kids who had stardom handed to them. They felt slighted, as if their hard work and devotion to the craft of acting meant nothing to the public, or anyone else.
I will not go into speculation about any of this. I am sure it was painful for them when they were branded brats in their youth. I am sure it created insecurities and anxiety. I am certain that the journalist thought he was going to sell well with his cuteness and creativity. And I am certain that audiences love to look back at the past as we all do, so this sort of study is very welcome to audiences wishing for a bit of nostalgia. But what impressed me was Andrew McCarthy’s feelings. He once hated the article. He felt it unfair. It hurt him professionally to be associated with the Brat Pack, he believes. But in retrospect, gifted with time and life, he now looks back on this association with gratitude, and warmth. He even shares in a rather deep and insightful (psychologically speaking) conversation with fellow “Brat Packer,” Demi Moore. It was full of laughter, enlightenment, joy, and perspective…oh beautiful perspective! And for me, as a viewer I felt the pull of inspiration, the allure of this perspective—what hard time, experience, season of life will I look back on later and feel gratitude for, rather than angst or pain? Most certainly, I will look back on many hardships and see them not simply has hard or painful, but see them as having done something meaningful inside of me. But it is not only that hardship produces growth in us, or that it makes us more effective, or something like that. I imagine I will look back and see things I missed along the way, so busy was I with worry. Maybe I’ll look back and see a new that my life (when I thought it was tough) was not ALL hard; it is most certainly more than one thing!
Perhaps this is why there is the spiritual practice of memento mori—remember your death. To remind yourself that you will die, to call to mind how brief your experience is within cosmic time, to humbly admit how inconsequential to the whole your one experience is….is a practice that puts your life into a perspective for good living. For Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, memento mori helps you to keep things in perspective so you can more ably get through what seems hard; it also helps you to live life ethically. For the Christian tradition, recalling your death (thus reflecting on your being as finite, contingent, creaturely, and needy) spiritually tethers one to the source of life, ethically prepares you for a good funeral, psychologically aids in walking through anxiety and hard times, and experientially grounds you in the present in a positive/faithful way. With our minds evolutionarily biased toward negative things, so that we may protect ourselves from harm, it might seem strange to think of the very thing that is most harmful to our life—our death. But it is not a contradiction, it is just a paradox, revealing something profound about the sort of existence we have, of which death is but one part, yet it is a part that if we live faithfully toward, it can make life more meaningful.
I am thankful for McCarthy’s documentary today, because it reminded me of the power of perspective. It called me out of my quotidian worry and took me into the future when I will look back upon today with its very unique trials, and it told me, “one day you will look back on this time and smile for good days gone by!” It told me that maybe I should, presently, be thankful for those “prickly people” who seem to trouble my day, because I suspect one day I will tell stories of them with fondness in my heart. But the documentary pulled me beyond a future retrospective gaze, it took me to my body’s demise—my death. And I was reminded of this spiritual practice that has done so much good for me. Because, when I live in light of my future death I begin to review everything in my life: the messy room, opposing points of view, other people’s poor behavior, ignorance, the reading on my scale, my bank account, a diagnosis, and even missing garbage day.