Thomas Jefferson in Paris

Thomas Jefferson waxes poetic on the French Revolution

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“It is impossible to conceive a greater fermentation than has worked in Paris, nor do I believe that so great a fermentation ever produced so little injury in any other people. I have been through it daily, have observed the mob with my own eyes in order to be satisfied of their objects and declare to you that I saw so plainly the legitimacy of them that I have slept in my house as quietly through the whole as I ever did in the most peaceable moments.... I will agree to be stoned as a false prophet if all does not end well in this country.”

-- Thomas Jefferson

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Mr. Chernow figuratively shakes his head over what he sees as the tangled contradictions of Jefferson’s mindset regarding the French revolution, as though Jefferson must have been looking at the affair through a specially fitted pair of rose-colored glasses, something to help screen out the blood.

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To Maria Cosway, Jefferson hazarded a small joke about decapitating aristocrats - “The cutting off heads is become so much a la mode that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders” - and he left little doubt that the French Revolution was a worthy sequel to its American predecessor: “My fortune has been singular to see in the course of fourteen years two such revolutions as were never seen before.”

-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”

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In fairness to Jefferson, the American revolution was a bloody affair, too. However, Jefferson was mistaken in supposing that the French revolution would end as quickly and tidily as the American one.

Movie Theaters

There has been some discussion on whether movie theaters are in a decline, and here is an interesting comment on whether people ever actually favored and wanted the public experience of going to a theater to see a movie.

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"Films were never communal just because people wanted a communal experience‒it just happened to be the economic model that made the most sense. You could sell a lot of tickets and show the film at the same time to everyone. On a nickelodeon, of course, which predated movie theaters, only one person could watch the movie at a time. Nobody said, ‘We want to sit in a hot room together!’ That’s just how it was. But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. You know, this myth that people will always want to go out to the movies, they’ll always want a communal experience‒I don’t know that that’s necessarily true. … I always prefer to go to an empty theater‒I’d rather go to an eleven o’clock matinee than an eight o’clock show, so I don’t have to be there with all those people. The seats are uncomfortable, when there’s lots of people there you can’t get up so easily, so I prefer to go with less people there."

-- Paul Schrader

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Daily Fun

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