Euro

In the great 1996 movie Blue, the composer of a symphony for European Unification is killed in a car accident, along with his child, leaving his wife a widow. Her response is to reject her entire former life. Too injured to go to her husband and child's funeral, she watches it on television, and hears the still incomplete symphony played.  Everyone who meets her and finds out about her family wants to know something about it.

The importance of the Symphony implies a remarkable sense of importance for the concept of Unification itself. As a modern American, it's not a concept that's easily understood. One might see from it how vital the Federalists in the 1780s really thought a strong central government was. Of course, one could also look at Blue and see Unification as being important to the intelligentsia, the intellectual class. (We find out later that the composer was very well off, with an estate surviving him.)

All this started from hearing Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers," which takes its name from an international game show from the postwar era. The idea that World War II was SO destructive that wounds had to be healed a decade or so later may have reinforced the need for a structure like the EU to prevent war from happening again. Or perhaps it was the natural tendency of Civics to work in groups that led to both the game show and Unification. And perhaps some reaction to that by Gabriel - a Boomer - results in the rather ominous tone of his song.