Word: canyon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Thomas Moran's The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone...
...didn't really lose it until we were delivered to an IMAX theater to watch a tourist movie on the Canyon. Here we had one of the great natural wonders of the world, the story of which began billions of years ago, and all that these intrepid filmmakers could think to portray were four 19th century cowboys navigating the Canyon's rapids...
...fairness, I should mention that the film did begin its story slightly earlier: the audience was favored with a view of the Canyon's earliest human settlers. That is to say, we were shown a host of naked actors trying desperately to look primitive while running around in caves and grunting. The film ended with the James Earl Jones-style narrator proclaiming sonorously that the Grand Canyon gives us a glimpse of the immortality within each...
Leaving aside the obvious observation that when someone stares into the Grand Canyon, humility rather than arrogance might be an appropriate response, this film and its kitsch counterparts diminish the experience that these parks are meant to provide. Turning the Grand Canyon into a theme park ride complete with logo does its visitors no good service. The Grand Canyon need not be packaged neatly with cliches and background music so that its visitors leave with a smile. Far better that they experience the Canyon without a commercial buffer and leave with that beautiful combination of inspiration and bewilderment that comes...
...left the Canyon optimistic, however, because I was traveling with two terrific kids who looked at me after the film had ended and said, "that was cheesy." It was indeed. But they saw far more than the filmmakers chose to show them; they walked away, though only small children, with new understanding. I would not be surprised if, looking back years from now, they see something familiar in the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever...