Celebrating Liberty and Freedom from "Cats"

 Newly home from summer vacation in Vermont's beautiful Champlain islands, I was looking for a way to observe the 4th of July with my family. I've written here before about how the air from the original "America 250" campaign had been pulled from its sails, diverted and diffused. Purchasing a bag of Washington cherries with the logo on it at the Dekalb Farmers Market in preparation for watching Morocco take out Canada in the afternoon's World Cup match seemed like the most patriotic thing I could do yesterday morning. The cherries were, indeed, delicious.

Nevertheless, I still wanted to plan a thematic movie to enjoy with our dinner of homemade Chinese cuisine from a menu of recipes in Fuschia Dunlop's Every Grain of Rice.  I wasn't in the mood for the space alien fervor of "Independence Day" or the earnest striving of "1776." "National Treasure" remains a comedic possibility, but that didn't feel quite right either. Instead, I pushed for Don Bluth's "An American Tail" having been inspired by Jason Farago's close read of the statue of liberty in the New York Times. With its depiction of the spirited French pigeon, "Henri," which I now realized was a nod to the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the movie centers the construction of the statue as a solidification of the quest of its immigrant family protagonists for a life free from "cats." The story of the construction of the "Great Mouse of Minsk" to scare away Warren T. Rat's gang of cat thugs offers a reminder that the realization of the dream of liberty and justice for all takes work and ingenuity.

There is no shortage of news stories about the triumph of intimidation right now. I read this morning about a Muslim woman who drew the wrath of Greg Abbott and conservative podcasters in Texas for wording on an invitation to a private pool party to celebrate the festival of Eid in May. But this has got me thinking about Norman Rockwell's four freedoms again, especially the "Freedom from Fear." There is a reason why so many great movies have plots that revolve around the difficulty of ousting powerful thugs (from High Noon to Roadhouse to BlackkKlansman). Establishing a culture that refuses to allow powerful people to throw their weight around, that refuses corruption rather than accepting it and its erosionary consequences, is difficult and exhausting. Few people want to be Gary Cooper. But can we summon our inner Grace Kelly? I hope that, looking back on this from fifty years in the future, I can say that we did.