I was driving home Thursday night, revelling in the recent extension in the curfew, able to be out getting groceries in the dark for the first time in 2 months. This was doubly exciting, both for the relief of the restriction but also, given to last minute achievements, a return to a familiar routine of being out when reasonable and organized people had already left the store and were already at home.
I came in on the second of a series of three about the falsehoods purpotrated on screen about race and sexual orientation. I am constantly aware of the myths told in tv and books and in the media about females and medical realities, but this was a reminder of the myths I was aware of, and others that I had no idea about. There was vocabulary to describe what I had understood but couldn't label. It was an important education.
I loved black and white films, and I feel like I watched every Katherine Hepburn movie that was ever made, back when libraries still rented reels, and my teacher dad still had a film projector to borrow from work, and my parents still had a projector screen in the closet to pull out when needed. I loved the footwork of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the cheeky tomboy characters "Kate" would sometimes play, and later the controversial films that educated me in the debates the world was having when my homogenous world still wasn't discussing them, like teaching evolution in Inherit the Wind (with Spencer Tracy), interracial marriage in Look Who's Coming To Dinner (with Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier), and antisemitism in A Gentleman's Agreement, although Ideas goes on to explain that there was more to that movie than meets even the careful eye, as it was meant to be about homosexuality, but that couldn't even be brought yet to screen.
The Ideas program explores the stories beneath the stories, is worth a careful listen.
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