Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 119

December 31, 2021: Year in Review: New Novels

[It’s been another year, that’s for sure. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to highlight a handful of things that have made me happy this year—and, yes, to complicate and analyze them, because I yam what I yam. I’d love to hear your year highlights and takeaways as well!]

On two wonderful new novels from familiar voices, and one from a writer I’m just encountering.

1)      The Night Watchman: Louise Erdrich has been publishing for nearly forty years, and I’ll always have a soft spot for her first novel, the magisterial Love Medicine (1984). But she has never rested on the laurels of that stunning debut, and over those four subsequent decades has continued to evolve as a writer (while building a literary universe to rival Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha). The Night Watchmanfeels like it’s both in conversation with some of the best of that career and staking new ground at the same time, and makes clear that Erdrich remains one of the truly towering American novelists of this and any era.

2)      Harlem Shuffle: While Erdrich’s four-decade career has been defined (at least to a degree) by continuities, Colson Whitehead’s quarter-century career has been marked by striking shifts, with every novel engaging (and also exploding, or at least radically repurposing) different genres and literary traditions. Whitehead’s latest Harlem Shuffle is no different, using tropes of crime and heist fiction/stories to tell a family story of race and community in 1960s New York. After the truly painful read that was Nickel Boys, Harlem Shuffle is far lighter and more fun while still connecting to many of the same histories and issues, a reflection of Whitehead’s truly unique ability to reinvent himself again and again while remaining true to his craft and mission.

3)      Libertie: As those hyperlinked posts illustrate, I’ve written about Erdrich and Whitehead many times in this space, but this is the first time I’ve highlighted Kaitlyn Greenridge, mainly because I haven’t yet had the chance to read her acclaimed debut novel We Love You, Charlie Freeman (2016). I’ll be rectifying that gap soon, though, because I greatly enjoyed Greenridge’s second book, the historical novel of race, gender, family, and identity in 19th century America Libertie. I’m a sucker for great historical fiction, and Libertieis one of the best historical novels I’ve read in years, capturing so many layers of its period and world while dealing with themes that remain powerfully relevant in our own moment. Can’t wait to read more from this awesome author I added to my list this year!

December Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2021 stories you’d highlight?

December 30, 2021: Year in Review: James Bond

[It’s been another year, that’s for sure. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to highlight a handful of things that have made me happy this year—and, yes, to complicate and analyze them, because I yam what I yam. I’d love to hear your year highlights and takeaways as well!]

[NOTE: SPOILERS for No Time To Die in this post.]

On a subtle but striking moment in the latest James Bond film.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given that it’s a profoundly British film series that only occasionally intersects with American settings or issues, I’ve only written about James Bond at length once in this space: this decade-old post on the most American, and one of the most problematic (even though I love a lot about it), of the films, Live and Let Die(1973). (I did include another and less problematic favorite Bond film, The Living Daylights, in this post on Afghanistan, which is the one aspect of that film which doesn’t hold up well.) Live and Let Die is no more about race in America than Moonrakerwas about space exploration during the Cold War or The World is Not Enough was about the need to divest from fossil fuels; Bond isn’t Bourne, nor do us fans expect it to be. But Live and Let Die does utilize racial images and stereotypesquite a bit, in unnecessary and deeply frustrating ways.

The Daniel Craig era as James Bond, which began with 2005’s Casino Royale and came to a close with this year’s No Time to Die, purposefully sought to modernize the films in a variety of ways, with racial representations among them. For that latter issue the Craig films did so most overtly through the casting choices for two of the series’ original and most longstanding characters, MI6 secretary Moneypenny and CIA agent Felix Leiter, with British actress Naomie Harris and American actor Jeffrey Wright playing the two across the Craig films. When Wright’s Leiter first introduces himself to Craig’s Bond in Casino Royale, he even turns this identity question into a clever joke: “I should have introduced myself, seeing as we’re related. Felix Leiter, a brother from Langley.” And in an important scene in the next film, Quantum of Solace (the only other Craig film in which the character appeared until No Time to Die), Wright’s Leiter once again calls Bond “brother.”

No Time to Die returns to and concludes a number of threads from throughout the Craig films, with Leiter’s character and arc among them: he recruits Bond into the film’s originating mission and subsequently is murdered by Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen), a U.S. State Department employee secretly in league with the film’s villain. Later in the film, Bond has the chance to exact revenge by killing Ash; when Ash pleads for his life and calls Bond “brother,” Bond replies (before killing Ash), “I had a brother. His name was Felix.” Bond has always been known for his badass one-liners before and after kills, and this could be seen as simply the latest in that long series (and not the best example in No Time to Die, which comes late in the film and I won’t spoil here). But as I remember it at least, this is the first time that Bond has reciprocated Leiter’s term and called the agent his brother, and he does so here even more clearly than in those other, more jokey and casual uses. The moment isn’t about race at all—which at the same time, like the casting of Wright in this pivotal role, makes it a small but important step in racial representation in the Bond films.

Last review post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2021 stories you’d highlight?

December 29, 2021: Year in Review: Ted Lasso

[It’s been another year, that’s for sure. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to highlight a handful of things that have made me happy this year—and, yes, to complicate and analyze them, because I yam what I yam. I’d love to hear your year highlights and takeaways as well!]

On one obvious and one more subtle way the megahit show challenges our current narratives.

I was late to the party when it came to watching Apple TV’s super-smash show Ted Lasso, and so am likewise late when it comes to writing about the show (at least in this space, but I didn’t even share many of my thoughts about it on Twitter, which really puts me behind the times; even Ted himself has a Twitter presence!). Indeed, with season 2’s dozen episodes dropping weekly this past summer and fall, it felt at times like every pop culture and journalistic outlet and website, and even every individual writer about such texts and topics, was responding to Ted, often with compellingly unique angles and takes on a show that rewards such multi-layered attention to be sure. (Seriously, I could spend hours finding additional worthwhile articles and conversationsto hyperlink in this first paragraph; I look forward to the inevitable, competing collections of Ted Lassoessays that will certainly be published in the not-too-distant future.)

So what on earth could I have to say about the show that hasn’t already been said (and said and said and said), you might ask? Or, more exactly, why am I dedicating one of this week’s five posts to such well-trodden ground? My answer to the second question, and perhaps to the first as well, is two-fold. For one thing, Ted was a hugely important part of my year, and for a reason that, well-covered as it might be, remains well worth highlighting: Ted’s deceptively simple optimism. As someone who has thought and written a great deal about critical optimism, I would say that I have found very few contemporary cultural works that really embrace and model that perspective, but Ted Lasso most definitely does. There’s been a lot of talk about how the second season’s various twists and revelations challenge or undercut Ted’s and the show’s optimism, but I would argue that’s because we mostly define optimism as the blandly and superficially cheery variety, rather than the hard-won, critical type that Ted has clearly worked to model and still is at Season 2’s end.

(NOTE: Serious Season 2 SPOILERS in this parargraph.) That’s why Ted meant so much to me this year, and why I knew I wanted to include it in this week’s series. But I do also have a take on one of the most complex and controversial Season 2 plotlines: the shocking evolution of fan-favorite Nate from beloved Season 1 underdog to bullying Season 2 villain. I’ve written a good bit in this space about one of the most central trends and tropes in 21stcentury TV (and cultural) storytelling: the anti-hero. Hell, one of the most acclaimed 21st century shows is entirely focused on how a nice guy becomes such an anti-hero. Yet whatever individual viewers think about the Walter Whites and Dexter Morgans of the world (and I’m not much of a fan), they are clearly the protagonists of their respective shows, and so there’s at least some degree of built-in empathy in how we watch their anti-heroic exploits. Whereas Nate the Great seemed like a straightforwardly heroic character in Season 1, and then gradually in Season 2 that rug was pulled out from under us and he was revealed to be at best an anti-hero (and perhaps again a villain, although eye of the beholder and all). That’s a really interesting way to both use and yet challenge a familiar TV trope, one more reason why Ted Lassois worth continuing to watch and write about!

Next review post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2021 stories you’d highlight?

December 28, 2021: Year in Review: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

[It’s been another year, that’s for sure. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to highlight a handful of things that have made me happy this year—and, yes, to complicate and analyze them, because I yam what I yam. I’d love to hear your year highlights and takeaways as well!]

On two strikingly and importantly thoughtful layers to the hit Marvel show.

As part of October’s SitcomStudying series I wrote this post about Wandavision, perhaps the best (in terms of consistent quality from start to finish, anyway) and certainly the most thought-provoking of the three Marvel TV shows to drop in the last year-plus. The boys and I also enjoyed the hell out of Loki as it aired this past summer, and I would gladly ride or die for Alligator Loki. But when it comes to AmericanStudying, there’s no question that the third of those three shows, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, has the most to say about American history and identity. Indeed, for a show created by a company and brand so committed to global relevance (and domination), and of course one now owned by the corporate juggernaut that is Disney to boot, I was really pleasantly surprised by just how deeply Falcon connects to a number of AmericanStudies threads and questions. Here I’ll highlight the pair of such threads that most stood out to this AmericanStudiesViewer.

The more obvious such thread, but still a surprisingly central and nuanced one, were the show’s interconnected themes of race, American history, and heroism. Of course those questions were linked to African American actor Anthony Mackie’s titular Falcon (the superhero alter ego of Sam Wilson), particularly through the lens of the character’s (and actor’s) potential adoption of the Captain America role after the passing of Steve Rogers. But even more complicatedly and crucially connected to those themes was an unexpected character, Isaiah Bradley (played pitch-perfectly by Carl Lumbly), an African American Korean War veteran turned supersoldier who was in line to be the second Captain America until racism not only took away that opportunity but turned him into an imprisoned and abused lab experiment instead. Bradley asked some very tough questions not only of Sam but of the audience as well, forcing us all to take a long look at whether and how our superhero stories (like our narratives of heroism overall) have had and continue to have room for Americans of color—and leading to a very well-earned and moving final scene in the show’s concluding moments.

That was the best stuff from Falcon, and the main reason why I’m writing about it in this week’s series to be sure. But the show featured another contender for the title of Captain America, former Marine turned complex hero John Walker (played with impressive nuance by Wyatt Russell), and that character likewise raised a series of compelling and not-easily-answered questions for the show’s characters and audiences alike. Those questions unquestionably connected to the threads about race, as the white Walker was presented as the U.S. government’s clear preference for the second Cap instead of the Black Sam Wilson (and, through the historical comparison, the black Isaiah Bradley as well). But Walker’s ultimately flawed and failed Captain America also raised questions about one of my favorite current topics, patriotism: what it means to have an individual symbolize a nation, what political as well as cultural work such symbols can and should (and shouldn’t) do, and what happens when the realities fall short of the ideals. Pretty heady stuff for a superhero show, and one more reason why The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is well worth AmericanStudying.

Next review post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2021 stories you’d highlight?

December 27, 2021: Year in Review: The Braves

[It’s been another year, that’s for sure. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to highlight a handful of things that have made me happy this year—and, yes, to complicate and analyze them, because I yam what I yam. I’d love to hear your year highlights and takeaways as well!]

On nostalgia, rituals and names, and the need to move forward.

The magical 1991 Atlanta Braves season remains one of my favorite memories and experiences to this day. Everyone talks about how they went “worst to first,” but I think it’s important to add that we’re not just talking about 1990—the Braves had been one of the worst teams (if not the worst team) in baseball for at least 5-6 years (ie, most of my childhood fandom) prior to their stunning turnaround. So while they didn’t win the World Series in 1991 (although they came about as close as it’s possible for a team to come without doing so; I don’t recommend Braves fans watch that hyperlinked game, though), each in every one of those October baseball moments felt as surprising and stunning as the next. And each and every one of them was inextricably linked with the Tomahawk Chop, the newly adopted fan celebration that I’m quite sure 14-year-old Ben was performing right alongside all those other fans throughout those magical moments.

Fast-forward to 2021, and this season’s almost-as-surprising and even-more-successfulAtlanta Braves playoff run. I loved sharing that run with my sons, who are very similar in age to 1991 Ben (if not nearly as lifelong baseball fans—but they’ve adopted the Braves as their MLB team, so it was a deeply meaningful shared sports experience nonetheless). But not only were we not chopping along with the Braves fans, the continued presence of the Chop (which is not limited to the Braves, but still most fully associated with them for sure, and in any case two wrongs don’t make a right) provided a very definite and frustrating blemish on what should have been an unalloyed positive in this difficult year. As someone who also grew up a Washington Redskins fan, I get the way in which our nostalgia (such a powerful force in sports fandom, and one we can and do pass along to our kids) can make it seem that changing such longstanding rituals or elements is destructive. But not only is it really, really not, it’s the rituals and elements themselves that are damaging in both these cases.

In one of my adult learning classes this past semester, I dedicated a class to racism and anti-racism in sports, and we talked at some length about team names and mascots. In response to a student question about why the name “Cleveland Indians” is racist, given that many Native Americans themselves have returned to the term “American Indian” in recent years, I offered two answers: treating a community and culture as a sports symbol is very strange (we really don’t do it with any other cultures, and certainly no other current ones); and in cases like that one, it’s impossible to separate that potentially neutral name from far more blatantly racist imagery like the rightfully infamous Chief Wahoo. The same is true with the name “Braves”—it’s impossible to separate it from ongoing racist elements like the Chop, as well as historic ones like Chief Noc-A-Homa (seriously). I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this latest Braves World Series win than with doing away with the Chop—but changing the team name (I’m personally partial to ) would be a great step as well.

Next review post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? 2021 stories you’d highlight?

December 25-26, 2021: A Special Holiday Wish

[As ever, a holiday week series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves—this time focused on some of the communities and folks I love most. Leading up to this special post on a holiday wish for us all!]

On a simple shift that could change a great deal.

Because my upcoming year in review series will focus on more upbeat topics, I wanted to take this holiday post to engage briefly (as I also did at a bit greater length in one of my recent Saturday Evening Post columns) with the current, divisive debates over education in America. I don’t imagine I have to spell out for even the most casual or occasional reader of this blog where I come down on the question of whether we should be teaching histories and issues of race, racism, white supremacy, antiracism, and so on. Indeed, in many ways, I find the voices raised in opposition to such teaching to be a profoundly frustrating combination of breathtakingly ignorant of what actually happens in classrooms (of every type and at every level) and strikingly direct in their embrace of the most mythologized, whitewashed visions of the nation and its histories and communities (guess we should have read the writing on the wall when the 1776 Commission Report was released, on MLK Day no less, and directly attacked “universities” as “hotbeds of anti-Americanism…that generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country”).

I likewise shouldn’t have to state how wrongheaded, and just plain wrong, I find that image of our universities and those who teach and work in them. But I will add this: I find it profoundly frustrating that so much of the time it feels as if inspiration is one of the very last concepts or effects associated with academic or scholarly history (or academic/scholarly work of any kind). While I don’t think many of us are teaching disdain, much less hate (not toward the United States and not toward anything or anyone else either), I do think that at times our collective scholarly emphases (in our teaching, in our writing, in our public scholarly voices and perspectives, and so on) can veer a bit more fully toward the hardest and most painful (and even, yes, the most pessimistic) sides of our histories, our stories, our issues. All of which are certainly crucial to remember, to teach and learn, to engage and understand—but all of which, I believe and have argued across multiple projects now, also have to be balanced by ideas and goals like critical optimism and critical patriotism.

There are lots of vital voices doing that work already, of course, and so my holiday wish, AmericanStudies Elves, is that we learn from those voices and work who are modeling thoughtful, nuanced, critical optimism and patriotism. Voices and works about American history like Christina Proenza-Coles’ American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World(2019). Voices and works about education like Kevin Gannon’s Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (2020). Voices and works that offer models for where we go from here like Eddie Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own (2020). As we keep doing the hard work, fellow Elves, let’s make sure we’re doing hopeful work too.

Year in review series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What wishes would you beam out to the Elves?

December 24, 2021: Wishes for the AMST Elves: A New Driver

[As ever, a holiday week series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves—this time focused on some of the communities and folks I love most. Leading up to a special post on a holiday wish for us all!]

One of the somewhat less fun parts of parenting—not a very competitive list at all—is recognizing that your kids will gradually and inevitably move out into the world, a world that can threaten and hurt them in so many ways. Much of that danger is emotional or psychological, but some of it is quite literal, a fact I have found myself contemplating with some regularity as I’ve waited to pick the boys up in the high school parking lot. I don’t have any worries about how my thoughtful and sensitive older son will drive when he gets his learner’s permit in a week (and then his full license in six months)—but I can’t say the same for the many teenage drivers with whom he’ll be frequently surrounded. So AmericanStudies Elves, the first and most important of today’s wishes is that he stays safe on all the roads he ever travels down; the second, less important but certainly present, wish is that his Dad finds peace with all that he can’t control in his sons’ world and lives.

Special holiday wish this weekend,

Ben

PS. What wishes would you beam out to the Elves?

December 23, 2021: Wishes for the AMST Elves: A Developing Debater

[As ever, a holiday week series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves—this time focused on some of the communities and folks I love most. Leading up to a special post on a holiday wish for us all!]

One of the most fun parts of parenting—a very competitive list!—is watching your children develop and pursue interests and passions. Sometimes they take you by surprise, as was the case with my older son’s volunteering for Boston mayoral candidate (and now mayor-elect) Michelle Wu this past year. But sometimes they are clear and perfect fits, and that’s the case with my younger son and his evolving successes as a new (9th grade) member of his high school’s debate team. I recommended he try debate because I’ve never known anyone who is more passionate about, nor more talented at, argumentation (and I say this as a relatively argumentative chap myself). And I knew how much he was taking to it when, in the midst of his second day-long tournament, he showed me a handwritten spreadsheet with all sorts of info about claims, counterclaims, responses, and other categories he was already well on his way to mastering. Who knows where it will take him, but in any case, AmericanStudies Elves, today’s wish is that he keeps finding challenge and joy in this new activity, and all that he gets to experience and do in high school.

Last wish tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What wishes would you beam out to the Elves?

December 22, 2021: Wishes for the AMST Elves: Ilene Railton’s Novel

[As ever, a holiday week series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves—this time focused on some of the communities and folks I love most. Leading up to a special post on a holiday wish for us all!]

As part of this year’s Valentine’s week series on short stories I love, I highlighted the short stories and creative writing in progress of my favorite writer, my Mom Ilene Railton. While all those short stories to date are excellent and I hope you all get a chance to read them in published form at some point, Ilene has over the past year moved more fully into work on a novel, a truly exceptional book that combines mystery and memory, memoir and collective history, and more in ways that echo some of my favorite mystery stories, from the novels of Ross MacDonald to the film Memento to the third (and best) season of True Detective. If ever a first novel deserved to be published and find an audience, it’s this book—so AmericanStudies Elves, today’s wish is that Ilene Railton’s stunning debut book becomes part of our cultural landscape in the next year!

Next wish tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What wishes would you beam out to the Elves?

December 21, 2021: Wishes for the AMST Elves: Digital Yoknapatawpha

[As ever, a holiday week series of wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves—this time focused on some of the communities and folks I love most. Leading up to a special post on a holiday wish for us all!]

In this early August post on my Dad Steve Railton’s AmericanStudies web projects, I highlighted the third and newest such project, Digital Yoknapatawpha. I’m a huge fan of all three websites, and for far more than simply filial reasons—these projects to my mind embody the best of what Digital Humanities work can be, do, offer, and mean. And DYis perhaps the best and most important yet, not only because it’s so fully collaborative and features so many voices and perspectives, and not only because it can help us keep the complex and important works of William Faulkner in our collective memories and conversations, but also because it really models how technological resources and multimedia elements can be wedded to literature and culture, to reading and analysis, in ways that should be at the heart of our continued work as educators. For all those reasons, AmericanStudies Elves, I wish for a very bright future indeed for Digital Yoknapatawpha.

Next wish tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What wishes would you beam out to the Elves?