This clip is offered in hope of making available an English-language version of "Young Americans" (YA) of higher visual quality than seems to have been available online, together with comments (below) that may enhance appreciation of YA as dramatic art.
Questions that may be worth asking about YA episode 8, part 5, include:
-- The ending given Pratt is deliberately ambiguous: it is uncertain whether she will continue to heal after leaving Rawley and Fleming, or revert to the downward trajectory of emotional despair and self-destructive behavior that on which she first arrived at Rawley. Her kindness toward Bella offers grounds for hope, but her statement that, upon returning to New York, she will do "everything I'm not supposed to do" as soon as her mother is gone offers commensurate grounds for concern. What Pratt gets is a fighting chance at emotional recovery. That's the best available outcome, because she must leave the sources of her healing, Rawley and Fleming, in order to cease her gender deception, and she must, for her own good, cease her gender deception as soon as she has a fighting chance at continued emotional healing without Rawley and Fleming. That outcome also exceeds in goodness any reasonable expectation one might have had for Pratt when she arrived at Rawley: it is nothing short of miraculous. More importantly, it is the outcome that must be given to YA's Everyman figure: our redemption is never assured but always uncertain. YA repeatedly emphasizes that certainty about outcomes, about "success," is not what we need. To want it while recognizing its unattainability is to despair -- the sin that drives Pratt to cross-dress. To want it without recognizing its unattainability leads to complacency, the sin that drives Will Krudski to Rawley. Nevertheless, the scene in which Pratt leaves Krudski's Eden is movingly tragic. Externally, she seems to be back where she started when we first saw her, a "raven at my window with a broken wing," dressed all in black, riding her bike, wearing a cocky smile that masks rather than expresses her feelings. It's quite a tear-jerker. Might 17th-century Puritans have read the final book of "Paradise Lost," or ancient Greeks have heard the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, with emotions such as those that Pratt's final scene in YA evokes in us? How is "retelling classic stories" in new ways needed to build community over time -- cultural continuity? Is the recovery of youthful passion with which YA is concerned limited to one's own individual youth and passion? For what is the crew team a metaphor in YA, and why is it so emphasized?
-- "Who said it's over?" Pratt's parting question to Fleming may be the best line in YA, in large part because of its ambiguity. How does its naïve meaning differ from its "grown-up" meaning?
-- "God, I'm going to miss you," Fleming responds. He will indeed; his sacrifice in committing emotionally to a plainly doomed relationship with Pratt after the cotillion exceeds even his sacrifice of his commitment to exclusive heterosexuality during the cotillion. How is full appreciation of the naïve "child-like" meaning of children's stories, including a "teen" story like YA, necessary to understand their "grown-up" meaning? How are the two are complements rather than substitutes?
-- Krudski's newfound understanding, per his closing voice-over, that all of life is a gift, past our power to merit or repay, is not only what enables him to accept Calhoun's generosity, but also what warrants Krudski's continued receipt of a scholarship to Rawley. Yet we must try, although we cannot hope, to merit and repay what we are given: how does Krudski do that? Who are the ultimate beneficiaries of what Rawley gives him?
-- Ultimately, YA's characters are fictional, and redeeming them is a tool for redeeming us. From what does YA seek to redeem us? In a largely post-Christian culture in which it now falls chiefly to art rather than to faith to inspire us to love one another, what are the implications of YA's most conspicuous feature: it's rejection of "realism," its preference for normative over descriptive truth, its revival of myth, its creation of a "true dream"?
The two still shots at the start of this clip are of Elsie Russell's "The Loss of Eurydice" (1994), and of the crew team photo from YA episode 5. The photo portrait at the end is of YA's creator, Steven Antin. The lute tune played during those still shots is Hans Neusiedler's "Gassenhauer" (a tune heard on the street, c. 1536). The xylophone polyphony played at the end is Carl Orff's "Gassenhauer nach Hans Neusiedler" (1935), from which Hans Zimmer's "True Romance" theme, YA's musical theme for its Pratt/Fleming scenes, previous episode recapitulations, and most crew rowing scenes, is adapted.
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YA 1_1 HD, in English, with critical commentaryby IckyGrub1,000 views
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