Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, an event that is the focus of the new movie Amazing Grace. The film tells the story through the career of just one key player in this effort, the British politician, William Wilberforce. Here are two film reviews, by John Powers (3/15/07 - 6:39) and Kenneth Turan (2/23/07 - 2:48).

Musings

• Powers's piece ends with speculation abut our own moral blindness today. What makes such speculation so difficult? Why is it so much easier to see the moral blindness in the past?
  
  
• On Talk of the Nation (2/22/2007 - 30:08), the film director's Michael Apted and Eric Metaxas, the author of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, discuss many of the contemporary parallels with Wilberforce's struggle, especially those that involve talking truth to power and going against entrenched interests. Which, if any, of these parallels do you see as valid?
  
  
• Here is a feature by Liane Hansen on John Newton's hymn, "Amazing Grace" (12/29/2002 - 10:39). What is the connection between the song and the abolition of the slave trade? Also see the brief entry at Wikipedia.
  

The 1950s

Here's a twist for AudioLinks101, a link to a video slideshow, Take Me Back to the Fifties.

Baby-boomers, now turning sixty, grew up in the 1950s, and this slideshow reveals some of the intense nostalgia some people have for the period.

Musings

1. What are some of the aspects of life in the 1950s that seem most attractive to the creator of the slideshow? What, if any aspects, seem attractive to you?
   
   
2. The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture says that the 1950s "continues to be perceived as the ultra-American decade." (You can read the full article here, where this assertion is, in part, challenged.) Part of the assertion that the 1950s represent some sort of ultra-America has to do with the perceived conformity of the decade--a widely felt pressure for people to look and act "normal." Do you see any of these pressures in the slideshow? What are some of the negative aspects of such pressures? What's are some potential problems with too much concern with being normal?