Muffin Movie

Of course, the movie had Chinese subtitles instead of English. Luckily, I was able to follow most of what went on from L’s helpful history over tea, and her whisperings in the theater. Also, by now I’m more than used to getting by on 90% facial expression and guessing what would make sense.

Even for me, it was hard not to idolize Muffin on the big screen. They choose a strong, handsome, famous actor who portrayed Muffin as a gallant young man with strong ideas and the convictions to make his dreams happen. When Muffin spoke, the people around him either chanted his words or burst into song.

The movie went into detail about his first marriage, romanticizing the love and connection with long pauses, watching fireworks, and soft background music. (In real life, this wife was killed for her connection to Muffin, and he went on to marry three more times.)

L told me that every major part in the movie was played by a very famous actor, all of whom worked for free to show their devotion to the C party. I can’t imagine a way in which American Nationalism could cause an all-star cast to work for free.

Looking around, I also had a hard time imagining getting crowds and crowds of Americans to see a movie made about our founding of Democracy, even with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie staring as whoever’s responsible and his wife.

As L studied English, she was forced to memorize a tremendous amount of American History. She knows more about the Mayflower and Boston Tea party than I do, and I’m from Cape Cod. She told me, “Ugg, why did my teacher make me learn all these things! They are useless! No one, not even Americans, want to talk about these things.” I told her, not only do we not want to talk about it, most of us don’t even know it anymore if we ever did.

How different might Nationalism be in our country if history made it onto the big screen and was part of people’s Saturday plans?