Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 139

May 10, 2021: Spring 2021 Moments: Jericho Brown and the Power of Poetry

[The Spring 2021 semester seems to have been the most challenging for my students of any in my 20+ years of college teaching, and I know for sure it was the most challenging for me. I’m not gonna pretend I have clear reflections or lessons I can take away from it, but what I do have are striking individual moments that reminded me of why we do what we do in the classroom. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of those, and I’d love to share your favorite Spring 2021 moments—or other semester reflections—in a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

One of the most difficult parts of teaching this semester was balancing the few students who were able to be in-person with those who were streaming classes (and those who could only watch the recordings after the fact); it was especially challenging to find ways to generate discussion in those settings. Some of my best class discussions happened when I spontaneously came up with a text or topic we could have in front of us together, with no expectation of students having been able to do readings ahead of time or the like. And perhaps the single best was when we began our two weeks with Langston Hughes in my Major American Authors of the 20th Century class: I decided that morning to start by watching Jericho Brown’s TED talk, and then we used it to talk about the elements and power of poetry. One of my favorite few minutes of the semester, and really of any semester.

Next moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Spring 2021 moments or reflections you’d share?

May 8-9, 2021: Victoria Scavo’s Guest Post on Gender Roles in Italian American Culture & Literature

[Victoria Scavois a graduating senior at King’s College, where she worked with my friend and her fellow Guest Poster Robin Field. I’m really excited to share her voice and writing in this excellent Guest Post, and look forward to hearing a lot more from Victoria in the years to come!]

Are Women the Reason that Gender Roles Are Still Reinforced in our Young?

Victoria Scavo

King’s College, Class of 2021

I am what my strict Italian family calls a “good girl.” As I am cooking and cleaning at warp speed they say, “They don’t make them like her anymore.” When my female cousins choose to sit around on the holidays rather than help the rest of the women in the kitchen, I cannot help but think something along the lines of: “Disappointments. Every last one of them. Who do they think they are while sitting around gabbing with the men in our family?” While I think these things, I also call myself a feminist. I believe in gender equality. The question remains: how do I call myself a fighter for equality while I simultaneously tear down women and perpetuate the unfair, gendered expectations on them?

The suffocating gender roles that have been afflicting women since time immemorial are well and alive in 2021—and it appears that women may be contributing to the problem. While we live in a society that is much more supportive of gender equality, the vicious cycle of gender roles that we are fighting to dismantle are somehow still ingrained in the ways we govern ourselves. A 2020 survey by Gallup confirmed that 58% of women feel obligated to do the laundry, 51% feel responsible to clean and cook, and 50% believe it their chore to raise the children. Interestingly, these “female” responsibilities are still encouraged in the Italian culture, whether Italian mothers realize it or not. Known for the iconic movie The Godfather, Mario Puzo is one of many writers to depict the Italian immigrant lifestyle through his work. Puzo does something quite unexpected with The Fortunate Pilgrim that he does not do with The Godfather: he focuses on the women’s stories. Beyond the lure and glamorized lifestyle of the mafia are the inner workings of Italian families primarily held together through the women that embody and encourage the gender roles we know today.

Despite The Fortunate Pilgrim being over 50 years old and set 100 years ago, the gender roles portrayed in the book are alive today. Puzo gives a detailed look at the degree which women run Italian households through the characters of Octavia Angeluzzi and Lucia Santa Angeluzzi-Corbo. While the men are expected to work and bring money home, the women do the cooking, cleaning, and child raising. Additionally, they also must be at their husbands’ beck and call, leaving little time for their own selfcare. One notable scene in the novel occurs when Frank Corbo finally comes home after being away for weeks. He left Lucia Santa to fend for herself and her six children without a second thought, which greatly pained Lucia Santa. Rather than addressing the unsaid feelings between them, Puzo narrates, “She rose and went to the door where he had left his suitcase, as if he might not stay, and put it in the farthest corner of the room. Then she made him a quick omelet to go with his coffee.”Lucia Santa’s friend, Zia Louche, sees Frank and immediately gets up and gets him a cup of coffee.2 This notion to serve and satisfy the men is ingrained in these women. They prioritize their duties over anything else in fear of disappointing men or causing gossip among the community paesanes, as Italians would say.

The concept of a “good Italian girl” is emphasized in The Fortunate Pilgrim when the old Italian women gossip about the younger girls in the neighborhood. For Lucia Santa, the ideal wife for one of her sons would perform her womanly duties without complaints. This good Italian girl should make life easy for him and know her place. Contrary to this image would be the shameful girl who is promiscuous and unruly; she is the one all the women criticize for not conforming to the high expectations. While Puzo’s book may be fictional, this mindset is quite real and has transferred through many generations of Italian women, continuing to oppress women with sexist, outdated ideals.

In today’s society, the belief that women can do and be anything is often encouraged and supported by most women and men. While it may not seem surprising to see men now assuming the roles that are often attributed to women, it is important to remember how long of a time it took for this to occur. According to Pew Research, stay-at-home fathers made up 17% of stay-at-home parents in 2016; indeed, this percentage has most likely increased since 2020. In Puzo’s book, Lucia Santa seems to want this type of progress for her daughter Octavia, which is why she allows the scandalous marriage to occur between her Catholic daughter and the Jewish fiancé. Lucia Santa feels a sense of pride and security knowing that her daughter would not be forced to live the life that she wants for her future daughters-in-law. Women knew how suffocating and toxic it was to push other women to conform to those sexist standards, but it was commonplace for them to resume those roles. These were not times where they had the platforms to fight for change and liberation—all of that came much later.

Lucia Santa’s hypocrisy when it comes to the expectations for her daughters-in-law versus her own daughter explains the continued problem of why gender roles still have such a hold on women. While Lucia Santa imposed the gender roles on her daughter and then wanted better for her when it came to marriage, she still transferred a certain mindset to her daughter of what a “good” woman is versus a “bad” one. This mindset is still being taught in Italian culture today, except it has concealed itself as a form of womanly independence. I can relate to this issue considering my own mother had me standing on a chair at five years old learning how to wash Tupperware properly. My conditioning only grew from there, and by thirteen I was cooking and cleaning alongside my mother and grandmother while my dad and brother watched. While my father does participate in the cooking and cleaning on special occasions, he views it not as something that should simply be done, but as a favor to my mother, as if he is helping her workload. Likewise, my brother is expected to help out around the house, but not to the extent that I am. When he chooses not to perform certain chores, it is excused because he is a boy. When I try to do the same thing, I am reprimanded and given extra duties to make up for my disobedience.

In my mother’s eyes, teaching me these basic life skills and responsibilities aids my independence. She never wanted me to be reliant on anyone, especially a man. Little did she know, I also unconsciously learned the expectations of what women “should” be doing. Reading Puzo’s book was an enjoyable experience for me because I could relate on a personal level to the Italian culture. Some might feel that the Italian culture is often stereotyped, but stereotype or not, I love it. It is real to me and reflects my own family. What I did not expect from Puzo’s novel was how my own life was illuminated in Octavia’s character. Her anger and frustration were something I could relate to, for I also was running my household from a young age. When discussing my feelings regarding my upbringing with my mother, she was surprised to see how in a way she did unconsciously teach and reinforce gender roles in our household. Interestingly, she said to me, “One day you’ll have a family of your own, and you’ll think you’re being progressive in how you’re raising them. You’ll be trying to do better than your parents did. Then one day, you’ll have a conversation with your children and realize you screwed them up too.” We laughed at her comment and realized how parenting styles are not perfect, but they can be worked on. When I think about how I will raise my children, I can say 100 things I would do differently in hopes that I will be more progressive and stop the toxic cycle of gendered expectations. It all comes down to this thought: until women stop holding each other to toxic standards, gender roles will continue to be reinforced in younger generations. We have to do better for the sake of the younger minds of the world.

Works Cited

Brenan, Megan. “Women Still Handle Main Household Tasks in U.S.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 14 Jan. 2021, news.gallup.com/poll/283979/women-han....

Livingston, Gretchen, and Kim Parker. “8 Facts about American Dads.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 30 May 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06....

Puzo, Mario. The Fortunate Pilgrim. Ballantine Books, 1964.

[Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think?]

See Brenan for further information on how household task are split amongst women and men.

See Puzo, Chapter 6, Page 88.

See Livingston for more facts about American dads.

May 7, 2021: Mexican American Voices: Chavez y Huerta

[For Cinco de Mayo, a series on a handful of impressive and inspiring Mexican American voices. Leading up to a special Guest Post from an inspiring young scholar and voice!]

On the inspiring lives and legacies of a pair of labor leaders.

First of all, I want to cede this first paragraph to a wonderful recent piece, historian Joel Zapata for the Washington Post’s Made by History blog on contemporary lessons for labor and economic activism we can learn on Cesar Chavez Day. Check it out if you would, then come on back.

Welcome back! Whenever I discuss Chavez, I try also to highlight his colleague Dolores Huerta. That’s not only because she is frustratingly less well-remembered in our collective memories and narratives (although that is the case, and I have to believe gender is a significant part of that disparity), but also and especially because the two of them have a great deal in common (as I briefly discussed in this Saturday Evening Post Considering History column). To quote what I wrote there: “Dolores Huerta, the daughter of a migrant laborer father and a mother who ran a hotel and restaurant for migrant workers, founded the Agricultural Workers Association in 1960 when she was just 30 years old; two years later she joined forces with Cesar Chavez, the son of two migrant laborers and then the Executive Director of the activist Community Service Organization, to co-found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA).” In both family and heritage and their lifelong organizational and leadership roles, Chavez y Huerta were very much a matched pair.

They’re even more than that, though. One of the most frustrating of the many frustrating layers to our contemporary conversations about the Mexican American border is the constant refrain, even from those who support the rights of immigrant arrivals of all types, that what’s happening at the border constitutes a “crisis.” Seeing all those arriving individuals, families, and communities as fellow humans in desperate need of help and solidarity should itself be enough to reframe how we perceive and respond to this unfolding history, of course. But if it’s not, all we need to do is look at the immeasurable contributions of individuals like Chavez and Huerta, two Americans born to migrant arrivals and without whose presence, activisms, and legacies the nation would have been significantly impoverished.        Those activisms and legacies themselves have a great deal to teach us about how to engage with communities of immigrants, migrant laborers, and Hispanic Americans (among others)—but it is their lives and identities that perhaps have the most to teach us, if we can only, finally, learn.

Special Guest Post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Mexican American figures, voices, histories and stories you’d highlight?

May 6, 2021: Mexican American Voices: Sandra Cisneros and Esperanza

[For Cinco de Mayo, a series on a handful of impressive and inspiring Mexican American voices. Leading up to a special Guest Post from an inspiring young scholar and voice!]

On two childhood experiences that a classic short story cycle gets perfectly right.

I teach the opening couple dozen short stories from Sandra Cisneros’ short story cycle The House on Mango Street (1984) in my Ethnic American Lit course for a reason: the identity and perspective of young Esperanza Cordero, first-person narrator of the book’s many short short stories, are deeply informed by her cultural heritage as the daughter of Mexican American immigrants. For evidence, I point you to the book’s fourth story (and the first in which we meet Esperanza by name), “My Name,” which foregrounds the cultural, linguistic, and immigrant issues and experiences that will continue to impact and influence Esperanza’s childhood across the cycle. Yet precisely because Esperanza is a child and then young adult throughout the book (which begins when she’s about 9 and ends as she prepares to leave for college), Cisneros’ stories also engage consistently—and about as well as any American literary works ever have—with some of the most shared and foundational aspects of childhood.

One of those is childhood friends. From Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in their respective Mark Twain novels to Scout and Dill in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, there have been plenty of childhood friendships in classic American literature, but to my mind none have captured the rhythms and rituals of childhood play among peers nearly as well as does Cisneros in stories like “Our Good Day” (set at a moment when Esperanza and her friends Rachel and Lucy are inseparable) and “And Some More” (when they and Esperanza’s sister Nenny are in the middle of an argument and hate each other). Partly what distinguishes Cisneros’ stories and depictions of friendship from those others is her use of pitch-perfect dialogue, creating the voices and conversations of these young girls in a way that’s both thoroughly natural yet helps advance her book’s themes at the same time. But those dialogues, like everything in House on Mango Street, are framed by Esperanza’s narration and voice, and the closing paragraph of “Our Good Day” reflects how wonderfully that narration shapes these moments of friendship: “Down, down Mango Street we go. Rachel, Lucy, me. Our new bicycle. Laughing the crooked ride back.”

If such moments of friendship (at its best and at its worst) represent one way to define childhood, another way would be to see it as a series of small realizations, seemingly minor epiphanies about the world through which our perspectives gradually expand and mature. One of the best examples in House on Mango Street is in “Darius & the Clouds,” in which Darius, “who doesn’t like school, who is something stupid and mostly a fool, said something wise today.” The kids are looking up at the clouds and naming their shapes, and Darius, pointing to “that one there,” says, “That’s God. … God? somebody little asked. God, he said, and made it simple.” Like many of the characters in individual Cisneros stories, Darius will largely disappear for the rest of the book—but clearly the character and moment were meaningful for young Esperanza, and they become one of many such stories in which her perspective shifts and grows, often directly impacted by those same childhood peers and neighborhood friends. By the end of Cisneros’ unique and wonderful short story cycle, Esperanza has been profoundly changed by all those moments and stories—and so have we.

Last Cinco de Mayo post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Mexican American figures, voices, histories and stories you’d highlight?

May 5, 2021: Mexican American Voices: José Enrique de la Peña

[For Cinco de Mayo, a series on a handful of impressive and inspiring Mexican American voices. Leading up to a special Guest Post from an inspiring young scholar and voice!]

On a couple takeaways from a controversial but apparently authentic memoir.

In 1955, Mexican journalist and historian Jesús Sanchez Garza self-published La Rebellion de Texas: Manuscrito Inedito [Unpublished] de 1836 por un Oficial de Santa Anna. Garza’s book comprised the first published edition of the purported Texas Rebellion diary of JoséEnrique de la Peña, a Mexican colonel and amateur historian who had served with Santa Anna’s forces at the Battle of the Alamo (among other military engagements); Garza framed the 100-page diary with another 150 pages of introduction and supporting materials. The book didn’t garner much scholarly attention at the time, but in 1975 Texas A&M University Press published an English translation, With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution. Although there was a good deal of initial skepticism about the diary’s authenticity, subsequent work by both historian James Crisp and a team of researchers led by Dr. David Gracy has confirmed that the diary is in fact a legitimate primary source; the manuscript is now held at the University of Texas-Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History.

A great deal of the controversy over Peña’s diary stemmed from one particular detail, a historical twist that is also one of the book’s most compelling takeaways. It had long been assumed that Davy Crockett died fighting at the Alamo, as did most of the Texas Republic combatants there. But according to Peña, Crockett was taken captive by Santa Anna’s forces after the battle, held for a short time, and then executed ignominiously. Even in his own lifetime Crockett had become a larger-than-life, mythological American figure; by the late 20th century, thanks largely to the 1950s Disney TV show but also to John Wayne’s performancein the 1960 film, his legend had only grown. Peña’s far less glamorous version of Crockett’s death seemed to many suspicious historians like an attempt by Garza to capitalize on the Crockett legend, contributing to doubts over the book’s authenticity. But it’s possible to argue something quite different—that in fact it was the scholarly doubts which reveal the enduring and troubling power of the Crockett legend. After all, Peña’s story of Crockett’s death is simply an accurate reflection of the realities of war, and its brutal and destructive effects for those who participate in it; that might not gel with the Disney ballad version of Crockett, but it locates him within the histories to which he was undoubtedly connected.

Moreover, focusing on the small section of Peña’s diary devoted to Crockett only replicates our American tendency to think of the Alamo solely in terms of the Anglo combatants and the Texas Republic. Whereas the most ground-breaking and impressive side to Peña’s book is precisely that offers a Mexican perspective on the battle, the war between Mexico and the Texas Republic, and that whole contested and crucial era in North American and border history. For example, Peña’s role as an aide to Colonel Francisco Duque of the Mexican army’s Toluca Battalion meant that he saw extensive action on the front lines during the siege of the Alamo, as that famously heroic battalion led one of the chief columns of assault on the besieged fort. On a very different note, Peña took part in the Mexican army’s chaotic retreat to Matamoros after Santa Anna was captured at the Battle of San Jacinto; that retreat was so infamous that its commanding officer, General Vicente Filisola, was charged with cowardice for ordering it, and Peña published an anonymous newspaper article (signed “An Admirer of Texas”!) critiquing Filisola and the army’s conduct in the war’s closing stages. These and many other details open up very different sides to the Texan war of independence, and reveal the historical importance of this long-lost, controversial, and compelling Mexican memoir.

Next Cinco de Mayo post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Mexican American figures, voices, histories and stories you’d highlight?

May 4, 2021: Mexican American Voices: Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton

[For Cinco de Mayo, a series on a handful of impressive and inspiring Mexican American voices. Leading up to a special Guest Post from an inspiring young scholar and voice!]

I’ve made the case in a number of prior posts and pieces for why we should better remember and read the Mexican American novelist and activist Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton. So for this post I’ll direct you to a handful of them:

1)      This post for the American Writers Museum blog on why we should all read her novel The Squatter and the Don (1885);

2)      This one for HuffPost on why Donald Trump in particular should read it;

3)      This one for CNN framing Ruiz de Burton as part of my book We the People’s arguments on exclusion and inclusion in American history;

4)      This one as part of a trio of Saturday Evening Post Considering History columns on Mexican American stories and texts;

5)      And this one for the blog, pairing Squatterwith George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes (1881).

Next Cinco de Mayo post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Mexican American figures, voices, histories and stories you’d highlight?

May 3, 2021: Mexican American Voices: Gloria Anzaldúa

[For Cinco de Mayo, a series on a handful of impressive and inspiring Mexican American voices. Leading up to a special Guest Post from an inspiring young scholar and voice!]

On what a stunning autoethnographer reveals about the US and us.

I’ve written about Mexican American writer, scholar, and activist Gloria Anzaldúaand her amazing book Borderlands/La Frontera in multiple prior posts, and wanted to dedicate this first paragraph to highlighting them in case you’re able to check them out (the first hyperlink above is the most in-depth of those posts, just FYI).

Welcome back! One of the best reasons to better remember and read Anzaldúa is just how fully both her book and her perspective challenge not just exclusionary definitions of American identity, but really any narrative that seeks to define America as something homogeneous. While it might seem that the “borderlands” of her title refers to the particular region in which she grew up (the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, located as fully in between the United States and Mexico as any place can be), or even the Mexican-American border overall, my argument (which I advanced in both a chapter in my second book, Redefining American Identity, and part of the Mexican American chapter in my fifth book We the People) is that Anzaldúa helps us see the entire United States as a borderlands. She does so through one of the most multi-layered texts I’ve ever read, a book that utilizes literatures and languages, history and culture, religion and myth, autobiography and communal stories, and more to create this profound new vision of the nation, one all Americans should at least consider.

Anzaldúa’s subtitle is The New Mestiza, and I would say something parallel about this figure/identity—that while she might seem to be referring to particular individuals or a specific form of heritage, her argument instead is that in the late 20th century all of us are in a number of important ways “mixed.” Given just how much our collective conversations seemed unable to grapple with Barack Obama’s multi-racial heritage and identity—and I’m thinking here not just of the Birtherism and racism on the right, but the much more general and often celebratory tendency to define him as “the first black president”—I would argue that we very much still need strategies for engaging with the concept of “mixed” identities. And again, while of course particular individuals (with our 44th president and, yes, my two sons as examples) seem to literally embody that complex combinatory heritage, Anzaldúa makes a persuasive case for this mestiza form of identity as not just widely shared, but indeed the defining experience of late 20th century humans. Here in the early 21st century, we could all benefit from better remembering and reading that challenging and crucial perspective.

Next Cinco de Mayo post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Mexican American figures, voices, histories and stories you’d highlight?

May 1-2, 2021: April 2021 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

April 5: NeMLA Recaps: Opening Address and Keynote Event: A series recapping the 2021 NeMLA conference kicks off with two ways of thinking about creative and cultural work—and making the case for organizations like NeMLA!

April 6: NeMLA Recaps: Grace Sanders Johnson’s Talk: The series continues with one specific and one universal inspiration I took from a wonderful Special Event.

April 7: NeMLA Recaps: Three of My Chaired Sessions: The first of two posts highlighting the six phenomenal sessions I had the chance to chair at NeMLA 2021.

April 8: NeMLA Recaps: Three More of My Chaired Sessions: And the second of those posts highlighting my chaired sessions.

April 9: NeMLA Recaps: A Few Other Highlights: The series concludes with a few other awesome panels I watched in my last year as American Area Director.

April 10-11: NeMLA Recaps: Virtual Conferences: A special weekend post on what virtual conferences can’t do, what they can offer, and how to keep the latter as we move forward.

April 12: Latin American Invasions: Nicaragua: A series for the Bay of Pigs invasion’s 60th anniversary kicks off with two historical conflicts that are all too representative.

April 13: Latin American Invasions: The School of the Americas: The series continues with three telling stages in the history of a longstanding, controversial US government institution.

April 14: Latin American Invasions: Granada: Fictional and symbolic wars on and off the big screen, as the series rolls on.

April 15: Latin American Invasions: Panama: What it would mean to truly grapple with our history of alliances with brutal dictators.

April 16: Latin American Invasions: The Bay of Pigs: On the invasion’s 60th, the series concludes with three lesser-known figures who reveal its contours and aftermaths.

April 19: RadioStudying: Amos and Andy: For NPR’s 50th bday, a radio series kicks off with blackface radio and what makes it distinct from other such stereotypical performances.

April 20: RadioStudying: NPR: The series continues with three programs that illustrate the network’s evolution and variety.

April 21: RadioStudying: Alan Freed: Two contrasting sides to the pioneering DJ and how to bridge the gap, as the series (rocks and) rolls on.

April 22: RadioStudying: Sports Radio: Two lessons I learned from many years’ worth of commutes hate-listening to sports radio.

April 23: RadioStudying: Songs about Radio: The series concludes with quick takeaways from a handful of the many great pop songs about radio.

April 24-25: Kate Jewell’s Guest Post: A Love Letter to College Radio: My latest Guest Post, from my FSU colleague who’s also finishing a vital book on college radio!

April 26: Classic FilmStudying: Birth of a Nation: For Citizen Kane’s 80thanniversary, a classic film series starts with how to re-view racist classics.

April 27: Classic FilmStudying: The Wizard of Oz: The series continues with a couple ways to read the surprisingly celebratory core of the Depression-era film.

April 28: Classic FilmStudying: Casablanca: Two ways the iconic film resonates in the age of Trump, as the series screens on.

April 29: Classic FilmStudying: Stewart, Wayne, and Valance: Two mythic Hollywood lives and legacies, and the film that purposefully complicates both of them.

April 30: Classic FilmStudying: Citizen Kane: The series concludes with two very American problems with one of our most important films.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

April 30, 2021: Classic FilmStudying: Citizen Kane

[May 1st marks the 80th anniversary of Citizen Kane’s release. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some contexts for Kaneand other classic films, and I’d love your thoughts on them all and other films you’d AmericanStudy!]

On two very American problems with one of our most important films.

Since its release in 1941, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane has consistently been defined as one of the most innovative and significant American films; in recent decades it has almost always occupied one of the top spots in film critics’ and scholars’ lists of the best American films (or even best films period) of all time. There’s no doubt that Welles’ film pioneered a number of film techniques that quite simply changed the game when it came to filmmaking, on technical as well as story-telling levels, and I both defer to and (based on my limited knowledge) agree with my more informed fellow FilmStudiers on those aspects of Kane. But at the same time, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation(1915) was also a pioneering and innovative film, and yet one that featured a deeply troubling set of themes and perspectives on which film scholars and historians can now agree. I’m not arguing that Kane is anywhere near as problematic as Birth (I know of few mainstream American films that are), but Welles’ film has at least a couple prominent—and telling—flaws nonetheless.

For one thing, Citizen Kane represents one of the most overt cultural depictions of the Great Man theory of history I’ve ever encountered. It’s true that Welles’ Charles Foster Kane, a media tycoon modeled in large part on William Randolph Hearst, is far from an idealized hero, but that’s not what the “Great” in the Great Man theory implies—indeed, the theory suggests that both the strengths and weaknesses of these singular and influential historical figures have been the dominant forces in our communal stories. They’re “Great” in the sense of size and significance, and Kane embodies those qualities: his life at every stage, from the most inspiring to the most corrupt, exercises an over-sized influence on his society and world. The problem with that narrative isn’t just that it reinforces the egotism and delusions of grandeur of men like Hearst (and contemporary ones like, y’know, the Donald), but also and most importantly that it portrays American history as a battleground between a few towering figures, rather than the far messier, more democratic, and most of all more accurate concept of encounters and conflicts and connections between cultures and communities. Men like Hearst were part of that history to be sure, but as participants within it, as we all are.

[SPOILER ALERT for Kane in this paragraph.] And then there’s that sled. I know that the film’s final revelation, that the great mystery of Kane’s dying word that drives the movie’s investigations into his life turns out to be just a nostalgic longing for a long-lost childhood toy, is likely meant to be ironic, and could be read as undercutting the narratives of Kane’s Greatness. But I have to admit that to my mind the Rosebud reveal undercuts the film itself at least as much. So someone on his death bed was thinking back to his life and longing for the simpler pleasures of childhood? A man who seemingly had everything was missing a symbol of what he had lost along the way? For one thing, Captain Obviousapproves. And for another, the answer to Kane’s mystery humanizes the character in only the most superficial ways—again, it’s an obvious and certainly universal way to imagine self-reflection and –definition, but it elides a deeper examination of the historical and social forces that have truly defined Kane’s life and identity, and that a different mystery plot (such as that at the center of John Sayles’ far superior film Lone Star, for example) could open up for viewers. Great but frustratingly limited—that defines both Charles Foster Kane and Orson Welles’ film about him.

April Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Thoughts on this or other classic films?

April 29, 2021: Classic FilmStudying: Stewart, Wayne, and Valance

[May 1st marks the 80th anniversary of Citizen Kane’s release. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some contexts for Kaneand other classic films, and I’d love your thoughts on them all and other films you’d AmericanStudy!]

On two Hollywood lives and legacies, and a film that purposefully complicates both of them.

John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, both of whom spent many years in and connected to the Boy Scouts, had remarkably parallel childhoods and young adulthoods in many other ways as well. Wayne (his birth name was Marion Morrison) was born in a small Iowa town to parents of mostly Scots-Irish heritage, raised Presbyterian, played football and participated in debate and journalism in high school (his family had moved to Glendale, California by that time), and wanted to attend the US Naval Academy but ended up pre-law at the University of Southern California instead. Stewart was born in a small Pennsylvania town to parents of mostly Scottish heritage, raised Presbyterian, played football and edited the yearbook in high school, and nearly attended the Naval Academy but ended up an architecture major at Princeton University instead. Both men likewise began acting in a serious way while still very young, with Wayne appearing in his first film at the age of 19 (after losing his football scholarship and having to leave USC) and Stewart joining the prominent Cape Cod theater group the University Players while he was still in college.

Perhaps the only significant biographical divergence between Wayne and Stewart occurred during World War II: while it seems that Wayne wanted to serve in some military capacity, he did not do so, touring the South Pacific with the USO but otherwise continuing to make films (many of them about the war); Stewart, on the other hand, flew numerous combat missions for the Air Force between 1942 and 1945, putting his burgeoning Hollywood career entirely on hold for the duration of the war. While each of those military histories is of course individual and complicated, there’s also at least a bit of an irony in comparing them to the two men’s subsequent film careers and overall Hollywood legacies: Wayne became more and more associated with themes like war, violence, and an idealized form of uber-masculinity, a narrative that still endures to this day; while Stewart became connected to more thoughtful and sensitive alternative images of masculinity and movie stardom, perhaps especially due to the first film he made upon resuming his career post-war, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). While of course life and art almost always diverge, it’s fair to say that in this case both men’s artistic legacies have often been linked directly to perceived aspects of their personal lives and identities, links that their respective wartime experiences at least render more ambiguous and uncertain.

The one film that the two men starred in together, John Ford’s classic 1962 Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, interestingly and importantly investigates many of these precise questions and themes. In some ways, Valance relies upon the two men’s stereotypical images: Stewart plays a lawyer and politician whose intellectual identity seems challenged (but whose career has been enhanced) by a famous duel in which he apparently shot and killed a notorious outlaw; while Wayne plays a rough and tumble rancher who was the outlaw’s actual killer and has stoically kept that fact quiet to benefit his friend. Yet on a deeper level, Ford’s film offers a direct challenge to both the Western genre (one in which Ford and his frequent collaborator Wayne worked so often) and the idea that we can trust mythic narratives of identity at all. The film’s most famous line—and one of the more famous in Hollywood history—comes near the end, when a newspaper reporter learns the truth about the shooting but decides not to reveal it to anyone; as explanation he says to Stewart’s character, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” It’s a great line, but an incredibly complicated one, and I don’t believe we’re necessarily meant to accept it as the right perspective—or at the very least, it asks us to investigate legends and consider what facts and truths might lie untold beneath those mythic stories. A question that certainly applies to the lives and legacies of both John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart.

Last FilmStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Thoughts on this or other classic films?