I was over at my parents the other day watching a movie with them and my sisters based on a true story about a young amateur golfer named Francis Ouimet during the early 20th century who managed against huge odds to win the 1913 US Open tournament while competing with major pros, including the famous Harry Vardon.
Hail the Underdog!
It proved to be an excellent movie that managed to make the tournament a nail biting roller coaster ride while simultaneously expressing a range of human frailties and ethical heroics. By the end my sister asks me if I was crying. I said I was teared up at the expression human goodness...when you get to witness good men or woman doing the right thing. That always gets to me. Its why I teared up when I knew that America had elected Obama. To wit:
I Feel Good: Elevation, Positive Thinking & The Persistence of Racism
By Jessie
Everyone, it seems, likes a story with a happy ending. It may be a particularly American cultural phenomenon or part of human brain structure. But the rather relentless focus on cheerful positive thinking is also getting in the way of confronting the persistence of racism in the U.S.
In the U.S., the prevailing narrative about race is that "racial dynamics have been transformed," first by the Civil Rights Movement and most recently - and finally - by the election of President Barack Obama. We see this meme repeated again and again by mainstream news media, in popular movies (e.g., "Blind Side" and the entire genre of "white savior" films), and in personal conversation. There is something in this narrative that speaks to both a human desire for "elevation" and the American quest to be "positive."
Roger Ebert, film and social critic, explains that he's never moved to tears by sad moments in movies, just during "moments about goodness." Ebert describes the feeling this way:
"What I experience is the welling up of a few tears in my eyes, a certain tightness in my throat, and a feeling of uplift: Yes, there is a good person, doing a good thing. And when the movie is over, I don't want to talk with anyone. After such movies I notice that many audience members remain in a kind of reverie. Those who break the spell by feeling compelled to say something don't have an emotional clue."
This is the feeling that the movie "Blind Side" was supposed to evoke. Ebert doesn't mention the Sandra Bullock movie, but touches on race when he goes on to compare that feeling to the way he - and lots of other people - felt in Grant Park the night President Obama was elected.
In an article at Slate.com by Emily Yoffe, "Obama in Your Heart," she describes a study about "the emotions of uplift" conducted by Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at UC-Berkeley, who had studied physical responses in test subjects who are deeply moved -- what psychologists call "elevation." Yoffe writes:
Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology"-what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration."
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