I woke up in the middle of the night last week and turned on Turner Movie Classics (TCM). At the time it was the 1954 film Brigadoon. I had heard of it but never seen it. It’s about two guys on a hunting trip in Scotland who discover a place in mid-18th century Scotland where people live like it’s the mid-18th century. But it exists in the middle of the 20th century. One of the characters, played by Gene Kelly, falls in love with one of the townspeople, Brigadoon. She’s a beautiful woman played by Cyd Charisse.
I know it’s fantasy in the obvious sense of the word. But there is another sense in which it is fantasy, a sense known to anyone familiar with the last three centuries of economic history.
I only caught the last 20 minutes, but in that time we see Cyd Charisse in a gorgeous dress and looking stunning like she stepped out of a 1950 issue. Vogue.
Do you see the problem?
If the village really dated from the mid-18th century, it wouldn’t look like this. She wouldn’t have nice clothes and she would probably have rotten teeth, just to name two.
One day I wanted to write something for a think tank in which I highlighted the “hockey stick,” the graph that shows GDP per capita in the modern world from 1000 AD to today. The think tank person told me that the vast majority of their readers are familiar with the hockey stick. I suspect there is at least a sizable minority who don’t.
Go ahead and have your Brigadoon fantasy, but know that if you were the character played by Gene Kelly, the Brigadoon himself would not be attractive and you certainly would not be attracted to the woman he fell in love with.
Here is Don Boudreaux who explains it in more detail in a 5 minute video.
The photo above is of Cyd Charisse.
