Did anyone else out there see the Tom Cruise movie, "Legend?" He was a young stud then, trying to save the princess and the last white unicorn from the evil Demon of Darkness (or some such epithet) who wanted to plunge the world into darkness. Now before you start thinkining I'm drawing some kind of corny parallel between young stud Obama and, well, you know-- I'm not. I just want to share with you how that movie made twenty years ago changed my life and how its theme does, indeed, parallel this election. If you please...
From imdb.com:
Legend is
A magical adventure which features elves, demons and other mythical creatures. Darkness, the personification of evil, plans to disperse eternal night in the land where this story takes place, by killing every unicorn in the world. Although he looks unbeatable, Jack and his friends are disposed to do everything to save the world and princess Lili (who Darkness intends to make his wife) from the hands of this evil monster. Written by Chris Makrozahopoulos {makzax@hotmail.com}
Now, what made this movie so memorable and special to me was a one minute dialogue exchange that went a little something like this:
Jack (or Tom Cruise): But why does he want to kill the unicorn? What makes the unicorn so powerful?
Gnome, Fairy, Elf, or whatever it was: The unicorn represents HOPE, and once you take away the HOPE of a people YOU CAN CONQUER THAT PEOPLE. (emphasis mine)
I have always been a revolutionary thinker. I found my Afrocentricity in college, spent a winter night outside on the campus lawn in a shanty made of cardboard to protest apartheid (1985), took straight C's my senior year in the education program because my advisor/professor thought I had lost my mind-- "Done cut your hair all off, wearing those African clothes!" (1988), grew my dreads before they were stylish, taught my students Black history while my colleagues warned me against doing so-- "You gonna get in trouble teachin' that black stuff!" (In 1996, no less), and generally tried to understand the human condition from my position as the grandaughter of a slave. Many afternoons I found myself in tears at the apparent hopelessness of my students' lives, and the condition of the world in general.
When I came across this movie sometime in the late 90's, that one line rocked my world. I recognized the inherent truth in that statement, and based my entire life around NEVER LOSING HOPE, lest I be conquered, perhaps by my own hands. When I see people feeling hopeless, whether it be about their financial condition, their health, their relationships, the MSM, faulty voting machines and voter purges, or the blood, sweat and tears invested in an election like this one possibly being for naught, I say,
DON'T GIVE UP HOPE!! DON'T FALTER OR BE FAINT OF HEART!! WITH HOPE THERE IS ALWAYS THE CHANCE FOR A BETTER DAY!!
Without it, we are conquered.
Obama touched that cord that has been strumming inside of me for years, and at once I understood.
Peace
Bonus video for all my folks on Dailykos: I f you've seen it 20 times already, I apologize!
http://vodpod.com/...