The Past as Future: Family and the American Home in Meet Me in St. Louis

132 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW SERAFINA BATHRICK THE PAST AS FUTURE: FAMILY AND THE AMERICAN HOME IN MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS In 1932, Ernst Bloch develops theoretically the concept of the "nonsynchronous or uneven development" (Ungleichzeitigkeit) of cultural and economic phenomena. [Ernst Bloch, "Ungleichzeitigkeit und Pflicht zu ihrer Dialektik (Mai 1932)," Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), 104-126] . His broadened analysis further develops Marx's notion of "uneven development," only briefly explored at the end of his introduction to the critique of the Political Economy. Although Bloch is referring to a phenomenon that helps explain the dynamic whereby Right Wing ideals and goals successfully reach three specific groups in late Weimar Germany , his argument is relevant for an examination ofways in which popular art forms in late Capitalism may also base their appeal on the fact that consciousness develops "unevenly"; that a continuing "pastness," a particular regard for early forms of human interaction and wholeness wUl be held up as a promise and a reassurance during times of crisis. Bloch argues that bourgeois youth, the peasantry, and the middle classes in Germany are all vulnerable to the uses of myth made by the Right: those which recall and idealize pre-industrial relationships of people to work and to nature, and thus permit each of the above groups to feel rooted in an earlier, better way. For the disUlusioned youth came promises of a world wherein romantic enthusiasm could permit self involvement and a youthful indulgence not possible in contemporary times. For the peasantry was the assurance that they could regain and maintain their old status as a class united and essentially in control of their own means of production. The appeal of a "natural way" played easUy on the traditions and memories shared by a group for whom the cyclical year provided a calendar that insured an unchanging natural unity. Among the middle class, the Right was able to exploit an insecurity, a "homesickness" produced by institutionalized postwar city life. The return of Medieval myths and a renewed focus on images of hate contributed to and was based upon the determination among the white collar class to remain distinct from the proletariat. The function of this dynamic is observed by Bloch as a frightening truth that helps explain the operation of Fascism and the way in which it could and did relocate the sources for frustrated anger with present contradictions by reviving for each of these groups a sense of their past which they carried deep within them and desired to reclaim. The dialectical moment, which is BATHRICK 133 of importance to us if we are to find in Bloch's theory a method of inquiry applicable to American culture, can thus be found if we understand that inherent in the concept of "Ungleichzeitigkeit" resides a moment which points backward and forward, and wherein both modes spring from a common ground. That is, both share the same impulse for a better world, one where more total human and work relationships were or wUl be possible. In essence , both orientation to the past and that to the future affirm and hearken to a human community undestroyed by Capitalism. Bloch's model may in fact prove useful when we examine why and how a popular Hollywood film treat the idyUic American famUy. By looking closely at the film itself, with some reference to its historical place in the late war years, we can perhaps uncover examples of "Ungleichzeitigkeit" as they function within the film text to give it a particular complexity which Bloch's dialectical model can accomodate and explain. Meet Me In St. Louis was an immensely popular MGM production released in December 1944. There is no question that the film's appearance at Christmas time six months before the armistice, contributed poignantly to its meaning for an American audience. "Someday we all wUl be together, if the fates allow"—the songs, the sentiments, the affirmation of famUy unity and love could not have touched a more optimistic but fearful audience. James Agee called the film a love story "between a happy famUy and a way of living." Surely most Americans appreciated a movie that salvaged, reconstituted, and redirected...