Mr. Holland's Opus: We Used to Know Who We Were

If you ask an American under 40 to define American culture, you may find yourself confronted with the world-famous Gen Z Stare. Many will stall out completely. "I mean, like, you know... it's whatever." If you get one who fancies himself a right-wing edgelord, he may be slightly more coherent. "It's based, man. We go hard, you know. Cuz it's either go hard or go home." But the majority, having been indoctrinated in our now-embarrassing public schools, will list off an inventory of sins, slavery being the first and foremost, followed by the lack of accommodation for disabled queer folx or whatever else their professor emphasized that semester. Native Americans might get a mention, but I'm not sure if that's fashionable this year.

Two full generations have been taught that cataloging America's failures is the same thing as understanding America, and the results are exactly what you'd expect. A cohort of dead-eyed idiots embarrassed and ashamed to be American while being unable to even explain what it means to be one.

In the wake of 9/11, journalist Leonard Pitts Jr wrote an op-ed for the Miami Herald ostensibly addressed to the perpetrators of that heinous attack: Let me tell you about my people...

It was perhaps the last time in living memory when any American was treated to a positive and accurate description of who we are and why we are great.

But before that horrible day, a day we honestly never recovered from, we had a longer, more complete explanation of what American culture is and who Americans have always been. It came in the form of a 1995 Richard Dreyfuss movie about a high school music teacher.

Mr. Holland's Opus often gets filed under the category of boomer slop, mostly by the aforementioned right-wing edgelords. Boomers are bad; they have an overly rose-colored view of their own virtue, ergo anything taking place in the 60s and 70s is bad. That's the entire indictment, because a movie set in the past that likes its own people must be propaganda, whether for the country or the people who were young adults during Vietnam.

And I suppose in a way, it is propaganda. The movie had an agenda, alright: to remind young Americans of who we are as Americans, and how we, above all other humans, have the ability to be heroes, in ways big and small.

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