A few too many years ago, I told my parents I’d chosen History as my university major. They congratulated me. Then they asked what I planned to do with that degree—what I could do with it—because they weren’t sure. Neither was I. But I did study History, and never regretted it, and today, I blog about silent movies for free.
My parents didn’t question the value of history per se, just the wisdom of devoting one’s most productive time to studying it. If one did so, they felt, one ought to make a good living. They weren’t sure History allowed for this, and looking back, they were right to be concerned. But as an 18-year-old, idealistic in my own way, I opposed studying something for practical purposes. Enlightenment was the thing, and to dilute it just for the sake of paying rent revolted me. Despite the fact that my parents were paying the bills, I felt no need to justify my preoccupation to them, or anyone else. I wasn’t wise back then, but at least my un-wisdom was ferocious and uncompromising.
This paints a bad picture of 18-year-old me, doesn’t it? Sometimes I don’t like that kid. And he reminds me a bit—maybe a lot—of the protagonist in Urban Twirl, a minute-long Canadian silent, created by Newfoundland and Labrador-based filmmaker, Martine Blue. All this young woman wants to do is hula-hoop in peace; but the Newfoundland wharf on which she’s camped is too bustling. Her observers, in their own ways, wonder why she’s doing it, and she, in her own way, hates them for it. Embedded here are issues of acceptance and intolerance, the worst of which seems to boil out from her.
