Brightly-Colored Brick Pits

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com
April, 2013

Brightly-Colored Brick Pits

On Saturday night ABC, in a worthy annual tradition, once again broadcast Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.  Loud, long, and somewhat bombastic (“So let it be written.  So let it be done.”), the film is dismissed by the more precious sort of cineaste but beloved by everyone else.

In 1956, filmmakers understood the difference between color and monotone – when they made a film in color, the COLOR was capitalized (metaphorically).  The red in Pharaoh’s crown was definitely RED, and the blue of the queen’s dress was most assuredly BLUE.

The tendency now is to make color films as if the world had never been blessed with rainbows.  Most contemporary movies and tellyvision depressants inflict on the viewer a sad little palette of colors redolent of charcoal on cheap paper in art class. Gloom and diminished lighting are art; colors are plebeian.

And let the people say “Existential.”

The reality is that the world is in color -- the flowers this spring, for instance, have been taking Technicolor™ classes.  Lovely!  Monotone is good for what was once known as socialist realism (industrial scenes), and Georgia O’Keefe employed black-and-white to study forms, but Creation really is in color.

As for the brick pits in Goshen, not so much color, but that’s not God’s fault.  Pharaoh was practicing his own form of socialism realism – the people laboring in the heat and filth while he and his family lounged under the awnings in their cute little outfits.  Thank goodness that sort of thing never happens in a republic.

Charlton Heston as Moses is a multi-generational favorite; most movies on religious themes enjoy a brief spasm of popularity and then disappear into some storage unit in West Hollywood.  Every three or so years a new film based on some point of Jewish or Christian heritage is promoted with all the clanging and crashing of Moses presenting Ethiopian loot to the Egyptian court, and the ‘net is asludge with reviews gushing “this is the way it must have been!”  Congregations hire the film for showing in the church hall and enthusiastic fans put up posters and hand out flyers after divine services.  The magic lantern show is a two weeks’ wonder and is then forgotten.

The brick pits of Egypt are now the multi-story factories of the far east in which acid-burned hands labor long hours in heat and dust and chemical fumes to make for us  shoes and garments and plastic boxes that light up and make noises.  

Where is their Moses?

And where is their filmmaker?

-30-