He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers.
“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can.”
—The Great Gatsby
I am with Nick Carraway in this memorable exchange with Jay Gatsby – you cannot repeat the past. Yet the hype around upcoming sporting events, TV shows, books and especially movies suggests that not only can you repeat the past, you can plunder it again and again for even better experiences.
The new Star Wars entry, The Force Awakens, is a case in point. Ticket sales have broken all records so there is no arguing with its enormous success. Nor is it a bad movie. It is very well made and filled with exciting scenes from beginning to end. The franchise is so lucrative I am sure we will see more where it came from. But does it surpass the experience in 1977 of seeing the original Star Wars (later confusingly subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope)?
I remember very clearly watching a segment on NBC’s Today Show around the time of this first movie’s release. Battles in space screeched across the television screen and I was amazed by what I was seeing. The clarity of the images, the beauty and reality of the scenes were so totally new. I knew I had to see this.
I was not disappointed. The story was simple: good battling evil much like an old-fashioned Western like High Noon. The villain Darth Vader dressed in black and the good guys were beleaguered underdogs fighting a hopeless battle for truth and goodness. Go Rebel Alliance!
When I watched The Force Awakens I did not have that extraordinary feeling of wonder I had watching the first Star Wars. And I wondered why. Yes, that was thirty-nine years ago, but that is the point. All of us are moving through time. As we grow older, the wonder fades because we all have seen “that show” before. Who doesn’t want to recapture that sense of wonder that comes with the freshness of youth and first experiences? Is the Disney Company making the implied promise that this new film surpasses the one from 1977? Technically, they may have an argument. But I stand unpersuaded. Like Nick Carraway, I believe you cannot repeat the past. 1977 is gone; the memories live on, even though they may have begun to blur. We must live by the truth: time is relentless and even the strongest must fall before its powerful grip, as described more than three thousand years ago:
Show me, Lord, my life’s end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is,
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
The span of my years is as nothing before you.
Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.
—Psalm 39: 4-5
Even Nick Carraway could not have said it better.