Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 14

May 10-11, 2025: A Works Progress Administration for the 21st Century

[On May 6th,1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the WorksProgress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied ahandful of WPA histories, leading up to this weekend post on why we need a 21stcentury revival!]

I’m notgonna lie, I planned the main focal points for this series long ago, before thestart of the new Trump administration (another inside baseball blog detail)—andgiven that the new administration’s #1 priority has been cutting federal jobsand programs and departments, it seems beyond silly to even suggest somethinglike a Works Progress Administration in 2025.

But here’sthe thing: I’ve spent a good bit of the last decade-plus of my career arguingthat we can’t cede concepts, ideas, ideals over to the MAGA types. Not patriotism,not America,and, yes, not federalworkers. So there’s no way I’m gonna let Elon Musk, his DOGE lackeys, andthe ostensible President dictate how we think about federal workers andprograms in any way, much less in the worst possible ways that they’ve beenarguing for in both words and actions over the last few months. Not when we’vegot so many models of the best of federal workers and of America through them,with the WPA a whole host of prime examples.

So yes, Ideeply believe we need a new WPA for the 21st century. The fact thatwe most definitely will not get it during this administration only makes memore certain that we need to argue and fight for it, and all such ideas thatrepresent our highest ideals, moving forward.

Semesterreflections series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 9, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: Wartime Evolutions

[On May 6th,1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the WorksProgress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21stcentury revival!]

On twodistinct but interconnected ways the WPA evolved in the early war years (beforeRooseveltdiscontinued it in December 1942), and what we can make of the combination.

I hadn’treally thought about it this way until researching this series, but thanks tothe WPA (and other New Deal programs, but especially the WPA) the U.S. was far betterprepared for the transition into a nation at war than otherwise would have beenthe case. As historian Nick Taylor puts it in his book American-Made:The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work (2008), “Only the WPA, having employed millionsof relief workers for more than five years, had a comprehensive awareness ofthe skills that would be available in a full-scale national emergency. As thecountry began its preparedness buildup, the WPA was uniquely positioned tobecome a major defense agency.” Long before Pearl Harbor, it did indeed occupy thatposition, with between 600,000 and 700,000 WPA workers transitioning to defenseprojects in the second half of 1940. And after the U.S. formally entered thewar, those efforts only ramped up across the country, as literally illustratedby this photograph of WPA researchers preparing an air raid warning map forNew Orleans on December 11, 1941.

Of course, “defense” came to mean something much more specific and farmore divisive and discriminatory in the days and weeks and months after PearlHarbor, and unfortunately the WPA also occupied a central position and role inthose far different wartime efforts. Indeed, the WPA’s last major project,undertaken throughout its final year of existence, was the construction, maintenance,and staffing of the concentration camps at which Japanese Americans were incarcerated.The infamous Manzanar RelocationCenter in California, for example, was estimated to be “manned just about100% by the WPA.” And Harry Hopkins himself, subject of a good deal of deservedpraise in earlier posts in this series, praisedwartime WPA administrator HowardO. Hunter for the ”building of those camps for the War Department for theJapanese evacuees on the West Coast.” The camps were a federal construction project,and a tragically sizable one at that, so it stands to reason that the WPA wouldundertake this effort—but at the same time, this is another side of the WPA Ihadn’t known about prior to researching this series, and certainly not one Iwas happy to discover.

Obviously I’m not going to be able to boil all this down in any succinctway in this final paragraph, but I’ll say this: I’ve written and talked andthought a great deal in recent years about the worstand best of America (a phrase I found myself using constantly in my recent podcast, for example);and I can’t really imagine a more clear and dramatic representation of that phrasethan the WPA, the same social relief organization that helped save so manyAmericans and the nation as a whole to boot, working on one of the most exclusionaryand horrific projects in America’s collective history. Our history is so messy,and, as Trip from Glory put it so evocatively, “ain’t nobody clean.” I could end every serieson this blog with a version of that sentiment, and maybe I should.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 8, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: Iconic Individuals

[On May 6th,1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the WorksProgress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21stcentury revival!]

On threeiconic and inspiring figures linked to the WPA (alongside the many many artistswho became associated with it, like JohnSteinbeck and ZoraNeale Hurston!).

1)     HarryHopkins: I wrote a bit about Hopkins in yesterday’s post, referencing hisexcellent quote about artists needing to eat too. But Roosevelt’s CommerceSecretary was influential and instrumental inthe New Deal far beyond just its artistic and cultural programs, and one ofthe main ways he did so was as aprincipal architect of the Works Progress Administration. By that time Hopkinshad had a longand varied career, all of which I’m sure played into his New Deal and WPAefforts, but I would especially highlight his first professional jobs, asa social worker, including his stint as executive secretary of the Board ofChild Welfare. The WPA made clear that federal social programs were crucialforms of social work, and I have to believe a good bit of that emphasis camefrom Hopkins.

2)     JohnGaw Meem: The WPA’s programs and jobs spanned many different aspects ofsociety and culture, but at its heart were architecturalprojects, including countless building and transportation projects thatremain in use to this day. Those projects required tons of workers across awide variety of roles, among them the architects and other creatives whoimagined and designed these buildings, bridges, and more. One particularlyimpressive example of a WPA-supported architect was John Gaw Meem,the New Mexico architect who helped keep traditional Southwesternarchitecture and art (influenced by Mexican, indigenous, and Anglo presencesalike) alive and thriving in the 20th century. It’s impossible toknow how many such architects and artists might not have been able to continuetheir work without the WPA and the New Deal, but it’s clear that our societyand nation would be infinitely impoverished if we didn’t have the work they produced.

3)     HallieFlanagan: Yesterday’s post focused on the WPA’s artistic and culturalprograms, those comprised by the Federal Project Number One. Harry Hopkins wasinstrumental in creating those programs overall, and not coincidentally one ofhis college classmates and friends at Iowa’s GrinnellCollege, Hallie Flanagan, became a central figure in these artistic programs,and specifically the FederalTheatre Project. Flanagan eventually became a successful target of theconservative fears and attacks I also highlighted yesterday, but I don’t wantto give them further credence by dwelling on them at least here. Instead, Iwant to note just how fully she and the FTR supported the work of Americandrama, from the political and social realism of the great Clifford Odetsto the Modernist experimentation of young Orson Wellesto a central emphasis on AfricanAmerican playwrights and productions (through the Negro Theatre Project).Contra those conservatives, I can’t imagine a more essentially and inspiringlyAmerican figure than Hallie Flanagan.

Last WPApost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 7, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: The Arts

[On May 6th,1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the WorksProgress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21stcentury revival!]

On threequotes that together help sum up the creation and arc of the WPA’s vital artistic and culturalprograms.

1)     “Hell, they’ve got to eat, too”: FDR’sSecretary of Commerce HarryHopkins was one of the most vocal and influential architects of both theNew Deal overall and the cultural programs comprised by Federal ProjectNumber One specifically. And I really love Hopkins’s blunt quote aboutwhy a New Deal organization like the WPA should fund artists and their work. Asthe second quote will reveal, that wasn’t the only motivation behind creating FederalProject Number One, but it’s a really important emphasis nonetheless: that artistsare both workers and people like everyone else, and needed the same collectivesupport that all Americans did during the Depression.

2)     “The immediate concern of the idealcommonwealth”: Again, there were also other, more philosophical layers to the creationof Federal Project Number One, and they were nicely summed up in the program’smission statement, and particularly the second of its main two main ideas: “thatthe arts, no less than business, agriculture, and labor, are and should be theimmediate concern of the ideal commonwealth.” Of course I entirely agree, andmy favorite word in that quote is “immediate”: that the arts are in no way aluxury or a higher-order concern, but a vital focus, never more so than in ourdarkest moments.

3)     “A dangerous promotion of race mixing”: Suchwas oneof the attacks directed at the Federal Theatre Project by conservatives inCongress, attacks that led not only to the defunding of that project andFederal Project Number One in 1939, but in many ways the end of the New Dealoverall. On the one hand, those attacks and fears were as nonsensical as theyalways have been, will be, and are. But on the other hand, it’s most definitelythe case that artistic and cultural works do help us move toward a more perfectunion, one that is genuinely inclusive and fully reflects our foundational anddefining diversity. For the years that they existed and thrived, the WPA’s artsprograms embodied and amplified that crucial goal.

Next WPApost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 6, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: My Column on Federal Workers

[On May 6th,1935, Franklin Roosevelt estab-lished the WorksProgress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21stcentury revival!]

After Ibegan drafting this blog series (inside baseball incoming for how long in advanceI often draft blog series!), I decided to dedicate one of my SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columnsto federal workers under the New Deal, including a good bit of focus on theWPA. I’d love for you all to check that column out, so I’ll offer thathyperlink in lieu of today’s post and see you tomorrow for more WPA Studying!

Next WPApost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 5, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: EO 7034

[On May 6th,1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the WorksProgress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21stcentury revival!]

On threesignificant elements of theExecutive Order that established WPA.

1)     Building on the Past: While EO 7034 did inmany ways create a new government agency, it didn’t quite do so officially;instead the WPA explicitly took the place of an existing agency, the FederalEmergency Relief Administration (FERA). Partly that shift was to make practicalquestions like leadership and funding for this new organization as smooth andstraightforward as possible; the EO makes clear that “the Federal EmergencyRelief Administrator shall serve also as Administrator of the Works ProgressAdministration,” for example. But I would argue that replacing FERA with WPAwas also quite importantly symbolically, as it reflected the defining andimportant idea that these works projects—including, as we’ll see later in the week,artistic and cultural projects of all types—were part of the government’sDepression relief efforts.

2)     A Focus on Relief: That organizational shiftwas far from the only way in which the EO overtly and centrally linked the WPA tothe concept of relief. Section 3a of the EO notes that one of the WPA’s “powersand duties” will be “to assure that as many of the persons employed on all workprojects as is feasible shall be persons receiving relief.” For the prior twoyears, organizations like FERA and many other early New Deal programs hadfocused on precisely that mission, providing relief of many different kinds toAmericans suffering from the Depression’s catastrophic and widespread effects. TheWPA was one of many programs that became known as the “SecondNew Deal,” but details like the EO’s section 3a illustrate that despitethis evolution, the New Deal would continue to focus on the goal of relief,even (if not especially) through these new projects.

3)     Wages and Working Conditions: Like most ExecutiveOrders, 7034 didn’t go into great detail about specifics, leaving those for thefollow-up work of the WPA (on layers to which, again, the rest of the week’sposts will focus). Which makes one particular specific section very telling: thefifth and final of the “powers and duties,” which authorizes the WPA “toinvestigate wages and working conditions and to make and submit to thePresident such findings as will aid the President in prescribing workingconditions and rates of pay on projects.” That framing is ambiguous enough to allowin the abstract for less than ideal working conditions and wages, of course;but when we remember the FDR was considered in his own era and has been perceivedever since as one of the mostpro-labor presidents in American history, it’s clear that this section wasmeant to give this federal program the ability to guarantee better working conditionsand wages than might otherwise have been possible.

Next WPApost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 3-4, 2025: April 2025 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

March31: Foolish Texts: A Fool’s Errand: For this year’s April Fool’s series, IAmericanStudied “fool”-ish cultural works, starting with Albion Tourgée’sironic and powerful Reconstruction novel.

April1: Foolish Texts: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”: The series continues withlessons and limits from an English classic rock anthem.

April2: Foolish Texts: Nobody’s Fool: Two AmericanStudies takeaways from one ofour quirkier and more affecting films, as the series fools on.

April3: Foolish Texts: This Fool: Three Latino cultural works that can contextualizethe recent sitcom about Los Angeles cholos.

April4: Foolish Texts: Fool: The series concludes with a trio of pop cultureadaptations of Shakespeare, inspired by Christopher Moore’s 2009 novel.

April7: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s Pool: For the centennial of Fitzgerald’snovel, a tribute series kicks off with a tragic dip that’s as difficult to pindown as the man taking it.

April8: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Three Phone Calls: The series continues withthree calls that illustrates the novel’s portrayal of Modern technologies.

April9: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Foshay Tower: The building and entrepreneurthat bring an American icon to life, as the series reads on.

April10: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s American Dreams: Two contrastingbut also interconnected ways to analyze the novel’s ambiguous title character.

April11: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Novelist-Narrators: The series concludeswith a link to my 2011 American Literary Realism article on thisinnovative narrative technique.

April12-13: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Fellow GatsbyStudiers: And here’s aspecial weekend post highlighting a ton of great work from fellow studiers ofthe novel!

April14: Kyle Contexts: Younger Siblings: A series inspired by my awesomeyounger son’s 18th birthday kicks off with prior posts on badassyounger siblings in American history and culture.

April15: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU: The series continues with three significantstages in the evolution of the nation’s preeminent civil rights organization.

April16: Kyle Contexts: Musical Crossovers: A handful of examples of historicmusical crossovers, as the series celebrates on.

April17: Kyle Contexts: Track & Field Fighters: Five moments when trackstars (like my younger son) dealt with and overcame challenges (like my youngerson has).

April18: Kyle Contexts: Chinchillas: The series concludes with three ways tocontextualize my son’s favorite cute animal.

April19-20: Kyle Railton’s Guest Post on the OJ Simpson Trial: And I couldn’tdedicate a series to Kyle without re-sharing his excellent Guest Post!

April21: EarthquakeStudying: San Francisco in 1906: For Charles Richter’s 125thbirthday, an earthquake series kicks off with two distinct, equally inspiring responsesto one of our most destructive disasters.

April22: EarthquakeStudying: Three Other California Quakes: The series continueswith one striking detail about each of three major 20th centuryquakes.

April23: EarthquakeStudying: The Indian Ocean in 2004: Three cultural works thatcan help us remember one of the most devastating natural disasters in history,as the series shakes on.

April24: EarthquakeStudying: Haiti in 2010: Two interconnected ways toAmericanStudy a Caribbean disaster.

April25: EarthquakeStudying: Movies: The series concludes with takeaways fromthree blockbuster films about catastrophic quakes.

April26-27: EarthquakeStudying: Charles Richter: For his 125th birthday,the very strange things I learned about Charles Richter, and what we do with suchprivate details about public figures.

April28: Ending the Vietnam War: The Mayaguez Incident: For the 50thanniversary of the symbolic end of the Vietnam War, a series on culturalrepresentations of that conclusion kicks off with a maritime crisis turnedmilitary incident.

April29: Ending the Vietnam War: First Blood: The series continues with what aniconic film speech gets wrong about the end of the war, and what it gets veryright.

April30: Ending the Vietnam War: Miss Saigon: Two bravura sequences that revealwhat a musical can and can’t do with history, as the series rolls on.

May1: Ending the Vietnam War: “Galveston Bay”: Two ways an underrated Springsteensong importantly adds to his body of work about the war.

May2: Ending the Vietnam War: Da 5 Bloods: The series concludes with onefraught and one vital meaning of “unfinished business” in Spike Lee’s recentfilm.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

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

May 2, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: Da 5 Bloods

[On April 30,1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace inSaigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. Thatconclusion has been represented frequently & complicatedly in Americanmedia, so this week for its 50th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of such representations!]

On one fraughtand one crucial meaning of unfinished business in Spike Lee’s recent film.

In Da 5 Bloods (2020), oneof Spike Lee’s more underrated joints (due at least in part to its release directlyonto Netflix duringCovid), four Black Vietnam vets (Norm Lewis, Delroy Lindo,Clarke Peters, and Isaiah Whitlock Jr.) return to Vietnam nearly half acentury after the war (along with one of their sons, played by thenup-and-coming, now-disgraced Jonathan Majors) in search of both the remains oftheir charismatic squad leader (the always-great Chadwick Boseman) and aburied cache of stolen gold that he helped them hide before he was killed. Ashe so often does, Lee combines multiple genres (in this case a war film, aheist film, and the “one last roadtrip with old friends” genre, among others),defying easy categorization and creating a sprawling and messy but always compellingand at times transcendent work that is well worth checking out if you haven’thad the chance.

In termsof its depiction of the end and aftermaths of the Vietnam War, I’d say that Lee’sfilm focuses on the idea of “unfinished business,” in two distinct ways. Themore obvious is also to my mind more problematic, as the film’s premise echoesthe narrative of the ubiquitous POW/MIA flagsthat have, at least at times over the last few decades, been used as coverfor extremist anti-government rhetoric (seriously, check out that RickPerlstein column if you aren’t familiar with that movement’s appropriation ofthe flag). In particular, Lee’s film gets dangerously close at times tostereotyping (if not downright racist) depictions of its Vietnamese secondarycharacters—of course Lee has never been shy aboutgrappling with uncomfortable questions of prejudicebetween as well as toward various communities, but at its best in his worksthese themes implicate all the characters; whereas in Da 5 Bloods, theanti-Vietnamese prejudices sometimes expressed (or at the very least implied)by his protagonists are much more one-sided. The worst of the POW/MIAnarratives implies that the war itself is “unfinished business,” and there aremoments in Lee’s film where we feel the same.

But there’sa second way to think about “unfinished business” in Da 5 Bloods, and Ithink it’s a significantly more meaningful as well as productive lens. Morethan 300,000Black Americans served during the Vietnam War, comprising more than 16% ofthe armed forces (despite numbering less than 12% of the US population at thetime), yet I would argue that our collective memories and representations ofVietnam vets have not done anything like justice to that community. To do sowould also require us to put them in conversation with Black soldiers duringWWI and WWII,and the broader question of AfricanAmerican military service—itself a frustrating bit of national “unfinishedbusiness” to be sure. But such complementary broader frames shouldn’t overshadowthe specific stories of Black Vietnam War soldiers, casualties (like Boseman’scharacter), and veterans (like the other four main characters), stories that, despiteour consistent cultural focus on the war and its aftermaths, remain largelyuntold. Lee’s film represents a crucial starting point for rectifying that omission. 

AprilRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Representations of the war you’d highlight?

May 1, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: “Galveston Bay”

[On April 30,1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace inSaigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. Thatconclusion has been represented frequently & complicatedly in Americanmedia, so this week for its 50th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of such representations!]

On two importantways that one of The Boss’s most underrated songs adds to his body of work.

The novelistTim O’Brien is certainly in contention, but I don’t believe any Americanartist has created more cultural works depicting the Vietnam War overall, and definitelynot its aftermaths in the United States specifically, than Bruce Springsteen. “Bornin the U.S.A.” is without question the most famous (and the mostfamously misunderstood), but I could dedicate an entire week’s series toother Bruce songs about Vietnam vets, from “Shut Out the Light” to “The Wall” to “Brothers Under the Bridge(95)” and more. Springsteen has been working with vetsfor almost half a century now, and I think it shows; despite his own lack ofexperience with the war (compared to O’Brien for example, himselfa Vietnam vet), Bruce has consistently depicted this community and itsexperiences with nuance, sensitivity, and impressive attention to detail. Takentogether these songs constitute an important body of late 20thcentury cultural and historical texts.

We have tobe willing to be analytical and critical about such texts, though—yes, even ifthey’re by Bruce Springsteen—and it’s fair to say that they’re pretty thoroughlywhite, or at least that they elide any questions of race and culture for andaround the community of Vietnam vets. That’s one reason why I think Springsteen’smoving and beautiful song “GalvestonBay” (1995) is one of his most frustratingly underrated songs: it depictstwo Vietnam vets from two distinct races and cultures, white U.S. soldier BillySutter and South Vietnamese soldier Lee Bin Son; and, more complicatedly andimportantly still, it portrays Billy as joining the Ku Klux Klan’s efforts toattack South Vietnamese immigrants as, after “the South fell/And the communistrolled into Saigon,” “the refugees came/Settled on the same streets/And workedthe coast they’d grew up on.” By this point in the song Billy has been welldeveloped as a multi-dimensional human character, so he’s not a caricatured racist,and that’s precisely the point—any white Americans, even those who’ve servedtheir country honorably as Billy and the vast majority of Vietnam vets (whiteand otherwise) did, are susceptible to these white supremacist narratives andthe violence that they can produce.

That’s oneimportant way that “Galveston Bay” complicates, challenges, and ultimately addsto Springsteen’s body of Vietnam War songs. But the second is more significantstill: it reminds us that even in the United States (that is, not just in Vietnam),the war connects to the Vietnamese community, a seemingly obvious point but onethat is missing from many, many depictions of the war, Vietnam vets, andrelated histories. Of course Vietnamese American artists can tell that story inparticularly meaningful ways, a long list that includes such recentmasterpieces as Viet Thanh Nguyen’s TheSympathizer (2015) and Eric Nguyen’s ThingsWe Lost to the Water (2021), among many others as I . But as I hope this blog has always illustrated, Americanculture (like our identity, community, history) is additive, and Springsteen’ssong likewise engages in thoughtful and compelling ways with the VietnameseAmerican experience in the aftermath of the war, including Lee’s impressiveresistance to the KKK’s racial terrorism—and how those actions and Lee himself,in the song’s surprising and amazing climactic moment, change Billy Sutter forthe better.

Lastportrayal tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Representations of the war you’d highlight?

April 30, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: Miss Saigon

[On April 30,1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace inSaigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. Thatconclusion has been represented frequently & complicatedly in Americanmedia, so this week for its 50th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of such representations!]

On twobravura sequences which reveal what a musical can do with history, and onedefinite limitation.

I haven’thad the chance to see a lot of musicals live (Rentis the most notable exception, and remains to this day one of my favoriteexperiences of live art in any genre/medium), but I did see and enjoy MissSaigon on Broadway in themid-1990s. I can’t say I have particularly specific memories of much of itthese three decades down the road, but one moment definitely still stands out(as it did at the time as well): the end of Act I, when an actual helicopter (orwhat sure seemed like one to those of us in the audience) lands on stage at theculmination of a dreamsequence about the evacuation from U.S. troops and personnel from SouthVietnam in 1975. That was without doubt the most extreme and chaotic thing I’veseen in a live performance, and I’d say those tones were exactly right for a depictionof what had to be a profoundly chaotic situation on the ground, for the evacueesto be sure but even more so for all those being left behind (like the musical’sheroine Kim, in whose dream about the moment the audience is located).

Nothingelse in Miss Saigon was as striking as that helicopter moment, but thesecond Act does feature its own bravura sequence, one depicting a victoryparade of North Vietnamese forces and leaders through the streets of Saigon (juxtaposedwith significant and eventually tragic developments for the musical’s SouthVietnamese main characters, including Kim and her young son). I don’t remember thismoment as clearly by any means, but I do recall a very full stage with its ownchaotic cacophony of tones—the celebratory mode of the parade, mixed feelingson behalf of its South Vietnamese audience overall, and an unfolding violent encounterfor Kim and those close to her. And that too to my mind captures the multiple layersof the aftermath of the war in South Vietnam and Vietnam as a whole, the variedand contradictory emotions among different communities and even withinindividuals in such a place and time. Too much of our focus in the U.S. hasbeen on the war and its aftermath from our perspective (understandably, butnonetheless), so there’s a great deal to be said for the musical’s extendedfocus on Vietnam after the evacuation and fall of Saigon.

A numberof late 20th and early 21st century musicals have beenadaptations of earlier works (Rent is an update of Puccini’s La Bohéme,for example), so it’s not particularly surprising that Miss Saigon wastoo, in this case an adaptationof another Puccini opera, Madame Butterfly (1904). But I would saythat fact reveals a significant problem with Miss Saigon, and not justthe obvious that Puccini’s turn of the 20th century vision of Asia(through his titular Japanese heroine and the opera’s settings alike) is quiteoutdated at best and Orientalistat worst. After all, even if it weren’t, it’s set in Japan around 1900, notVietnam in 1975, and there’s simply no way that an adaptation of a work about theformer could ever be as specific to the histories of the latter as would beideal for any work of historicalfiction. I don’t know that a central goal of Miss Saigon is doingcomplex justice to those histories necessarily—but given how much better westill need to remember the end and aftermath of the Vietnam War, I’m glad forthe ways this musical can help us do so, and frustrated by its storytellinglimitations.  

Nextportrayal tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Representations of the war you’d highlight?