Very Random

Once again, I looked to my roommate to help brainstorm a topic for a blog. I, once again, tell her it has to relate to the American Dream. Once again, she is completely wrong in suggesting a topic. “Uh, marrying a doctor,” she says. Marrying a doctor, winning the lottery, becoming a movie star are all not embodiments of the American Dream! Or at least not what the American Dream was initially supposed to be.

The way in which things evolve fascinates me. Could it be that the American Dream just no longer applies to the mainstream population? I mean, people can still work hard and advance their position. But that’s not a primarily American phenomenon anymore. People probably do that no more often in America than they do in other countries.

How long did the true, Horatio Alger American Dream apply? And was it even relevant to that time? The American Dream may never have existed in real life. It could have always solely been an idea, something that we wished was real, yet societal issues prevented. Of course a few people here and there lived the American Dream, but they could have simply been random cases on which it wouldn’t be fair to generalize.

Also, what is the American Dream today? It seems, from talking to friends, that the current American Dream is more of a “get lucky” and “get rich quick” dream. People don’t really want to work, they want to be discovered. They want to walk down the street, get spotted by an agent, and be the next Gisele. I mean, it could happen.

The chances are unbelievably slim, however, and perhaps the chances of the true American Dream being fulfilled are also very slim. Now that I think about it, this idea is explore in Assassins. We are told our whole lives we can be whatever we want to be, which is true to an extent. Not completely true. Why feed us a dream that cannot be realized?

Because I’m on the subject of Assassins, I actually really enjoyed that musical. I liked the music, the characters, and most importantly, the message. I don’t think it’s trying to persuade you to sympathize with the assassins as critics have said, but rather uses the assassins to personify an idea. A criticism of the American Dream. The dream that Assassins implies is not real, and I believe may have never existed.

That was a little scattered.