WWII Pilot Sends His Best

Most of my days at work are spent with eyes locked on a screen watching old newsreels. The World Wars, the 1918 quake, people dancing the Charleston... to a Gen-X’er like myself, it’s as if these moving pictures are from the beginning of time. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say that to my generation and younger, black and white footage like this is not considered real.

No, really. These flickering black and white images are so foreign to what we know as film – so completely devoid of the texture our eyes are trained to expect, that unconsciously these films don’t register on our brains as being anything more than a grade school cartoon. The people moving within them might as well be drawn by a pen.

And yet, every now and then an image leaps out and I’m reminded that the pictures and the people I’m watching are quite real indeed.

There are several examples of this happening, but the greatest one was last week while watching World War II American pilots on bombing runs.

At first it was all pretty standard stuff... “Flying Fortress” bombers in flight, bombs dropping and explosions on the ground. There was a shot of the back of the pilot’s head, his face with a wry grin, then another shot of his hands at the controls. The pilot then lifts his left hand off the rudder and places it forward on the dash with his middle finger extended.

Yes! He "flipped the bird" on camera!

I felt like I’d found one of those dirty flash frames in a Disney movie. This was British newsreel from 1943. Over 60 years ago! This guy, someone’s great great grandfather, and his message is an historic transmission to the future.

It just goes to show that the mischievous spark we have is not an invention of our jaded "modern" culture, or some ironic cynicsm inherited from the baby boomers. Whether it's "giving the finger" to the camera or holding "rabbit ears" behind someone in a serious portrait, clowning around is as old as society itself.

Who knows... maybe a study of cave paintings would reveal evidence of a pre-historic "wedgie."