Word: brigadoon
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Newcomers to the Internet are often startled to discover themselves not so much in some soulless colony of technocrats as in a kind of cultural Brigadoon -- a flowering remnant of the '60s, when hippie communalism and libertarian politics formed the roots of the modern cyberrevolution. At the time, it all seemed dangerously anarchic (and still does to many), but the counterculture's scorn for centralized authority provided the philosophical foundations of not only the leaderless Internet but also the entire personal- computer revolution...
...baby boomers' cultural powerlessness, during the 1950s, when a big Hollywood musical appeared every few months. It's incredible, in retrospect, that An American in Paris, Royal Wedding, Show Boat, Singin' in the Rain, April in Paris, Calamity Jane, The Band Wagon, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Kismet, Oklahoma!, Brigadoon, Guys and Dolls, High Society, Funny Face and The King and I all appeared in movie theaters in a single 2,000-day period...
Instead he is trapped in time. He wakes up the next day to discover it is still Feb. 2. The same people he saw on Groundhog Day say the same things; the same unforeseen snowstorm blows into town; Punxsutawney is Brigadoon. Phil is angry, then reckless, then depressed, then suicidal. Yet he can't die, he can't escape. He can only change. So in the dozens of Groundhog Day replays, he puts his familiarity with the town to humane use: a child falls from a tree and, because Phil knows it will happen, he can catch...
...Hollywood comes down with a long siege of the cutes, languishing in the Brigadoon innocence of its cheerful folkways. And The Doctor, after a good hour or so, goes all dithery -- devoutly Californian -- as Hurt discovers the meaning of life by dancing in the desert with a terminally ill patient (Elizabeth Perkins). He resolves to support another patient's rightful claim in a malpractice suit. This redemptive ploy, also used in Regarding Henry, must be Hollywood's new prescription for wellness: to atone for one's success...
When composer Frederick Loewe looked back on a career with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner that included Brigadoon, My Fair Lady and Camelot, he reportedly said he could not get over how easy he and his partner made it all seem. Loewe was right, but in retrospect the most startling thing about the team's success is that their creativity was far from unique. In the heyday of Broadway musicals, nearly every season brought a landmark production, often two or three. The 1946-47 season that introduced Brigadoon, for example, also provided Finian's Rainbow. The 1956-57 season...