June 13, 2019

Hot Damn: Classic Hollywood Stars Dance to “Uptown Funk.”

It happened.

I let myself, yet again, be swayed by the “suggestions” served to me on social media: “Oh, you liked this? Then you’ll like this, too! Trust us. Muhahaha…”

Okay, so the “Muhahaha” might be pushing it a little. But, to be fair, in my mind I imagine them sending me that purple smiling devil emoji along with each suggestion.

What’s terrible is when they’re right.

It’s deflating when you realize that your devices and accounts are learning your taste in music and movies and news a little too well for your own comfort—isn’t it? Thankfully, the suggestion I was just offered cheered me right up in spite of that.

I literally cannot imagine the time and effort it took to edit these clips together for our enjoyment, but I’d like to throw out three cheers and a thank you to the soul who did.

I briefly considered not sharing this video because of the controversial “blackface” seen in some of the movie scenes. Looking back now, it seems as if one couldn’t turn around in classic Hollywood without running into a derogatory, clichéd, racial scenario.

But this clip made me smile. It made me laugh. It made me want to get up and dance, too.

It also made me uncomfortable and frustrated. It left me wishing we knew better.

It made my happy heart dip deeper into emotion than I’d bargained for when I first clicked that innocuous “play” button.

And then I realized I wanted to share this clip because I was uncomfortable.

I want to share this clip to show that the heart can expand in a million directions and hold just as many dueling emotions. I want to share this clip so that we never forget our past, because how can we move forward without making damn sure that we’re not repeating our own history? We can only do better by facing the uncomfortable—not by turning our backs.

What better example than this to show that the human race has galloped forward by leaps and bounds in the time between when these movies were made and this song was written? And we can keep doing it, one step at a time.

So, thank you to the creator of this clip. Thank you for the ups and the downs and the rhythm and the blues. May this bring you a cheerful smile and a pep in your step.

I present to you this incredible masterwork of video editing:

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