Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 15

June 9, 2025: Revolutionary War Figures: Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys

[On June14th, 1775, the Continental Army was formed at the SecondContinental Congress in Philadelphia. So for the 250th of that momentousmilitary moment, I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of iconic Revolutionary Warfigures, leading up to a special weekend post on that historic anniversary!]

On the less than noble side to one of the Revolution’s folk heroes.

This is a tough post for me to write: Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys might not have the national reputation of the Concord Minutemen, but intheir native Vermont and throughout New England they’re definitely folk heroes; and I know thatmy Mom grew up (just outside of Boston) as a big fan. And there’s no questionthat their May 1775 surprise capture of Fort Ticonderoga represented one of the Revolution’s most significant victories, not onlytactically but also symbolically; this was only a month after Lexington andConcord, with the very status of the Revolution still up in the air, and thevictory at Fort Ticonderoga thus helped make clear that America’s war effortwas to be a serious and ongoing one.

I’m not here to challenge those histories (as far as I know Ticonderoga wasall that and more)—but the Green Mountain Boys didn’t come into existence in1775, and the details of their founding and virtually all of their otheractions are far less admirable. Not to put too fine a point on it: the Boyswere a local goon squad, organized by Allen and compatriots in 1770 to intimidate New York landowners into leaving the area (thenpart of New Hampshire) and ceding the so-called “Wentworth” land grants to locals. Asfar as I can tell the Boys didn’t generally take violent action, preferringthreats and intimidation, but at least one genuinely violent event resultedfrom these conflicts: the 1775 “Westminster massacre,” in whichapparently only one or two landowners died but many more were affected. Moreover,the Boys didn’t graduate from these local acts to Revolutionary ones so much astemporarily pause for the latter—as early as 1778 Allen and company were back in Vermont and focused once again on the land grant battles (aswell as the distinct possibility, one Allen negotiated for with the British forsome time, of Vermont becoming aseparate British province!).

So what would it mean if we remembered these different sides to Allen?Those who critique “revisionist history” would argue that I’m seeking toundermine his heroism, to tear down an American icon, and so on. Part of myresponse would be that both elements must be included in any accurate historyof the man, his military importance to the Revolution as well as his more shadylocal endeavors. But another and more significant part would be that Allenoffers a far more historically meaningful portrait of the Revolutionary era, amoment in which hugely defining and world-altering events existed side by sidewith the most petty and minor (and at times, indeed, ugly and divisive)conflicts. If anything, an awareness of that history makes the defining eventsthat much more impressive still—in 1775, the 18th century equivalentof the Sons of Anarchy biker gang played an instrumental role in a victorywithout which there might not be a United States.

Next Revolutionaryfigure tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Rev War figures you’d highlight?

June 7-8, 2025: What’s Next for Kyle

[This pastweekend, my younger son and co-favorite-GuestPoster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wiped awayproud Dad tears, this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of texts and contextsfor this momentous occasion—leading up to this special weekend post on what’snext for the new grad!]

After themulti-year, multi-part, multi-emotion process that is the college search, withjust a few days remaining until the May 1st deadline, Kyle committedto the University of Michigan! I’d say that I don’t know what makes me prouder,that he’ll be attending one of the nation’s top public universities or that he navigatedthe process and decision so thoughtfully, but the truth is I didn’t need any ofthat to be as proud as punch of my amazing, inspiring younger son. You know I’llkeep you all posted on all that’s next for both him and his brother!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?

June 6, 2025: GraduationStudying: That Sunscreen Speech

[This pastweekend, my younger son and co-favorite-GuestPoster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe awayproud Dad tears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contextsfor this momentous occasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s nextfor the new grad!]

On threeparticularly stand-out moments from MarySchmich’s famous 1997 column (long falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut,and eventually turned into ahit song by none other than Baz Luhrmann):

1)     “Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimesyou’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’sonly with yourself.” I’m not sure I know a more apt phrase than “Comparison isthe thief of joy.” This is an incredibly hard piece of advice to take, and we’reall gonna fall short of it plenty no matter what. But I do believe in doing ourbest to judge ourselves against our own journey, rather than what we see ofothers’ (which is never how they would see their own in any case, of course).

2)     “Get to know your parents. You never know whenthey’ll be gone for good.” Man alive do Ifeel this one in June 2025, just a couple days after what would have been myfolks’55th wedding anniversary. I most definitely got to know my Dad,and will always be eternally grateful for all that I learned from him. But thesecond sentence of the quote is still profoundly true nonetheless—there is noway to prepare for losing a parent, you got to go there to know there (one ofmy Dad’s favorite quotes), and all we can do is our best to make the most ofevery second we have with those we love.

3)     “Wear sunscreen” (which is the speech’s firstand last piece of advice). As someone who grew up in the generation locatedsmack dab in between the prior total lack of skin health awareness and thesubsequent extremely knowledgeable sense of the sun’s dangers, I certainly agreewith this advice in specific terms. But what I also like about it is that, amidsta speech that largely emphasizes living in the present and not worrying overlymuch about the future (perspectives I mostly agree with—“Noday but today,” indeed), this deceptively simple phrase reminds us thatlife is long, and we want to make sure that our long lives are as healthy inevery sense as they can be. Graduates can feel invincible, at least in their ownskin (ie, probably not as much in the larger world in 2025), but the truth is we’vegot to take care of that skin to truly make it last.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?

June 5, 2025: GraduationStudying: The Graduate

[This pastweekend, my younger son and co-favorite-GuestPoster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe awayproud Dad tears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contextsfor this momentous occasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s nextfor the new grad!]

On one aspectof the iconic1967 film that hasn’t aged well, and two that still feel very relevant.

In a 1997 columnrevisiting The Graduate for its 30th anniversary, Roger Ebertapologizes for his initial 1967 review; more exactly, he apologizes to the characterMrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) for having initially sided with “thatinsufferable creep,” Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock, over her, whom he nowsees as “the most sympathetic and intelligent character in” the film. I firstsaw the film around that same 1997 moment and very much agreed with Ebert’slater take, and moreover saw Benjamin’s relationship with Mrs. Robinson’sdaughter Elaine (Katharine Ross) as similarly creepy rather than romantic (heessentially stalks her for much of the second half of the film, and I don’tblame her for looking rather nonplussed as they pull away together on thatclimactic bus). Elaine is also ridiculously quick to forgive Benjamin forhis extended affair with her mother, which he is still in the midst of when hefirst goes out with Elaine. Basically, both romantic relationships and theportrayals of the main female characters in this film are a mess, and at thevery least come out looking far different in the 21st century thanthey apparently did in 1967.

On theother hand, one aspect of Mrs. Robinson’s character has aged very well: the Simon & Garfunkel songnamed after her that was written (or rather adapted)for the film (Paul Simon had a slightly different, not-yet-recorded song-in-progresscalled “Mrs. Roosevelt” that director Mike Nichols convinced him to revise). “Mrs.Robinson” is a fascinating glimpse into American culture in the late 1960s, onethat certainly begins as an ode to a suburban married woman amidst a midlifeaffair but that evolves into a far broader and deeper examination of a societyin the midst of deepening and destructive malaise. The final verse about Joe DiMaggioand the disappearance of shared heroes gets the most attention, but I would highlighta series of lines in the penultimate one: “Going to the candidates’debate/Laugh about it, shout about it/When you’ve got to choose/Every way youlook at it, you lose.” While of course those lines could still be from theperspective of the title character, I would argue they ring even truer for anew graduate, someone emerging into a future where it feels that there are nogreat choices (something about which, I’ll be honest, I worry a great deal whenit comes to both of my sons and their generation).

Andspeaking of graduates and their choices, I would argue that the film’s singlemost iconic line has also aged all-too-well into our present moment. At agraduation party at his childhood home, Benjamin is cornered by family friendMr. McGuire, who says to him, “I want to say one word to you. Just one word…Plastics.”When Benjamin asks for a bit more, McGuire simply adds, “There’s a great futurein plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?” It’s safe to say thatBenjamin does not, in fact, think about it, but it seems to me that we as anaudience are meant to—not because there’s any there there, but instead quitespecifically because there’s not. In a moment when young people, and especiallyyoung men around the age of high school and college graduates alike, areapparently devotinga great deal of their time, energy, and resources to the mystical and to mymind entirely fabricated world of crypto and bitcoin and the like, seeking tofind a great future in these largely unexplained and (again, to my mind)unsubstantiated concepts, we would do well to collectively revisit this 1967scene and consider just why it feels so silly.

Lastgraduation connection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?

June 4, 2025: GraduationStudying: Du Bois’s Speech

[This pastweekend, my younger son and co-favorite-GuestPoster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe awayproud Dad tears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contextsfor this momentous occasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s nextfor the new grad!]

On two ofthe many vital 2025 lessons from a 1930 speech to high school graduates.

I wrote agood bit about W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1930 address “Reflectionsupon the Housatonic River,” delivered to the graduates of Searles HighSchool (in his hometown of Great Barrington, MA), in this priorpost. In lieu of a full first paragraph here, I’d ask you to check outboth the speech and my post if you would, and then come back for a couplefurther thoughts.

Welcomeback! One of my favorite things about Du Bois (a very long and competitivelist, as readers of this blog know well) was how much he loved rivers, and hislove of the Housatonic River of his childhood in particular contributed to the publicationin his NAACP magazine The Crisis of the first poem by none otherthan Langston Hughes, as I discussedin this post. He opens his speech with a recognition that that love, andthus the speech’s titular subject, might seem silly, that “on hearing thesubject of my speech, some of you may have thought of it as a joke.” But it isanything but, and not just because of his personal affiliation with andfondness for this particular river. Instead, the central subject of Du Bois’sspeech is an overarching argument for taking better care of our rivers and all ournatural spaces, an impassioned plea that, as he concludes his speech, we “shouldrescue the Housatonic and clean it as we have never in all the years beforethought of cleaning it, and seek to restore its ancient beauty; making it thecenter of a town, of a valley, and perhaps—who knows?—of a new measure of civilizedlife.” Never has that call been more necessary than here in the summer of 2025.

Suchenvironmental conservation is a key part of Du Bois’s speech, but I would arguethat he makes the case for it through an even more overarching concept: that ofwhat we collectively owe to the communities that we are part of. Earlier thisyear, the film historian and American Studies scholar VaughnJoy focused her excellent reviewof High Noon on the defining American debate between the individualand the community. Like both Vaughn and me, Du Bois was a lifelong advocate forthe communal emphasis, for the idea that we are all profoundly connected to oneanother and the concurrent concept that society only functions at all (muchless approaches its more perfect unions) when we seek to strengthen suchcommunal connections. And he also ends this moving speech, just before thatquote about rescuing and restoring the river, with an appeal to his audiencebased precisely on that sentiment, through the lens of the high school fromwhich they all had graduated: “And so I have ventured to call to the attentionof the graduates of the Searles High School this bit of philosophy of living inthis valley.” If America is to survive, and certainly if has a chance to thrivein the years ahead, we must all hang together, not just out of necessity butout of such communal connection.

Nextgraduation connection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?

June 3, 2025: GraduationStudying: Crummell and Douglass’s Debate

[This pastweekend, my younger son andco-favorite-GuestPoster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe away proud Dadtears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts for this momentousoccasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for the new grad!]

[Note: Thispost was part of a 2013 series, and I’m sharing it largely unchanged, exceptfor a few updated links. The rest of the week’s series is newly drafted, but I couldn’tresist adding this graduation-focused moment into the mix!]

On the impromptudebate, between two of the most impressive Americans, that exemplifies one ofour most complex and crucial questions.

One of my mostcommon topics in this space, including in thislate August series, has been the challenges and yet the importance ofremembering our darkest American histories. As I wrote in that week’s thirdpost, no national histories are darker nor more important for us to betterremember thanthose of slavery; that’s why, whatever its flaws or limitations, I’m onboard with QuentinTarantino’s project in his latest film, Django Unchained. Yet inarguing for that importance, I can and should recognize the fact that it’ssignificantly easier for me to say than it is for African Americans, for thosewho own darkest histories and heritages are directly tied to these nationalhorrors. For that community, it’s fair to ask whether remembering the historiesof slavery is as important as trying to move beyond them and into a morepositive future; and indeed, in the decades after emancipation and the CivilWar many prominent African American voices argued precisely for, if notforgetting slavery, at least not focusing on keeping its memories alive.

Perhaps theleader of that movement was Alexander Crummell,the priest, philosopher, professor, and political activist whose impressive 19thcentury life and career spanned abolitionism, black nationalism and thedevelopment of the Liberian state, and many other causes. In the years afterthe Civil War, Crummell came to feel that only by moving beyond the memories ofslavery could African Americans achieve success and equality; he developed thattheme with particularly clarity in “TheNeed for New Ideas and New Aims for a New Era,” his 1885 commencementaddress at Storer College, the newly founded freedmen’scollege in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. In the audience was none otherthan Frederick Douglass, a trustee of the college and one of the few men whocould equal Crummell’s longstanding prominence in the African Americancommunity, and Douglass apparently objected vocally to Crummell’s arguments.Unfortunately no specific transcript of Douglass’s comments exists, butthroughout this era Douglass certainly argued the opposite of Crummell’scritique of “fanatical anxieties upon the subject of slavery”; for Douglass,instead, that dark history “couldbe traced [in American identity] like that of a wounded man through a crowd bythe blood,” and so must be followed and engaged with.

If we approachthis debate from a scholarly perspective, as I did when I used the exchange toopen a chapter of myfirst book, it seems clear enough that Douglass was right, that it’s vitalto remember even—perhaps especially—our darkest histories. But for thoseAfrican American college graduates in the audience, just as for all AfricanAmericans in the era—and, in less immediate but still present ways, for alltheir descendents—the question was and remains far from simply academic. Obviouslythere is value, practical as well as philosophical, in remembering the worstparts of our pasts, for individuals, for communities, and for the nation. Butas Crummell noted, to dwell upon such memories can make it significantly moredifficult to live in the present and move into an even stronger future. So thekey, perhaps, is to remember without getting lost, to engage without giving into the most limiting or damaging effects. Easier said than done, of course—butboth Crummell and Douglass, and many other inspiring and influential voices,give us models for such work.

Nextgraduation connection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?

June 2, 2025: GraduationStudying: George Moses Horton’s Poem

[This pastweekend, my younger son andco-favorite-GuestPoster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe away proud Dadtears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts for this momentousoccasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for the new grad!]

On twoways in which biographical contexts greatly enhance a seemingly simplegraduation poem.

When readin a vacuum, George Moses Horton’s “The Graduate LeavingCollege” (1845) is a tender and sweet depiction of the final moments in acollege student’s career before he departs that educational institution which hasof course also become his community and home. A couple of word choices reallydrive home the bittersweet tone: calling this cohort of students “the pensiveseniors”; and describing their final rest before the departure “one more transientnight.” Although the poem’s last word is “joy,” suggesting that the graduate’sreturn to his childhood home is not without its pleasures as well, theoverarching tone is one of happy but nostalgic remembrance and leave-taking, ascaptured by the first stanza line “My eyes let fall a friendly tear.” Again, a tenderand sweet depiction of this experience eventually shared by most every collegestudent, and indeed by every graduate of every kind of educational institution(and, yes, by their proud papas as well).

But whenwe add in the details of Horton’s quite amazingbiography (which I first learned about when I taught him in my 19thCentury African American Literature course a few years back, and which Ican’t do full justice to here so please do check out that first hyperlinkedpiece from the University of North Carolina’s Special Collections folks), thispoem becomes significantly more interesting still. To quote a particularly relevantpassage, which follows sentences about Horton being enslaved near Chapel Hilland developing relationships with the campus and town alike: “He earned moneyfor himself through selling romantic poetry commissioned by UNC students. Thesepoems were acrostics: the first letters of the lines spell out the subject’sname. Horton composed poetry in his head and recited the poems while others transcribedthem.” “Graduate” is not an acrostic nor does it focus in any overt way on aspecific individual, and so likely wasn’t one of these directly commissionedpoems—but it of course reflects Horton’s relationship to UNC, his understandingof both the experiences of college students and of this pivotal communal moment.

Yet it alsoreflects more than that. Horton remained enslaved until the end of the CivilWar, but for the four decades before that moment consistently used his poetryto argue for his freedom; such as his first poem, “On Libertyand Slavery” (1828), which he published in the Lancaster (MA) Gazettewith the help of UNCfaculty member Caroline Lee Hentz. “Graduate” makes no mention of slavery,nor is there any direct evidence in the text that its author is an enslaved person.But when we know that he was, and know moreover that his poetry was a principalmeans through which he expressed the layers of his identity that slavery couldnot circumscribe, then I believe we have to see one of his most striking formalchoices—his use of the first-person pronouns “I” and “my” in the opening stanza—ina new light. Here at the opening of this poem, one seemingly connected to theUNC students whom Horton got to know well during his time around Chapel Hill,Horton imagines himself as a college student, and one graduating to all that’snext, and even better, in what lies beyond that experience. At once a bittersweetdetail, and a reflection of the ideals of education and graduation alike.

Nextgraduation connection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?

May 31-June 1, 2025: May 2025 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

May5: The Works Progress Administration: EO 7034: A series for the WPA’s 90thanniversary kicks off with three significant elements of the Executive Orderthat established it.

May6: The Works Progress Administration: My Column on Federal Workers: Iwanted to make sure to include as part of this series one of my recent SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columns on federal workers duringthe Depression.

May7: The Works Progress Administration: The Arts: The series continues withthree quotes that together help sum up the creation and arc of the WPA’s vitalartistic & cultural programs.

May8: The Works Progress Administration: Iconic Individuals: Three iconic& inspiring individuals linked to the WPA, as the series labors on.

May9: The Works Progress Administration: Wartime Evolutions: The seriesconcludes with two distinct but interconnected ways the WPA evolved duringWWII, and what we can do with the combination.

May10-11: A Works Progress Administration for the 21st Century:Unlikely as the idea is in May 2025, a special follow-up post making the casefor a new WPA!

May12: Spring Semester Reflections: Major American Authors of the 20thCentury: For this year’s Spring semester reflections series, I paid tributeto my late Dad’s presence in my courses, starting with a Langston Hughes poem Itaught the day after he passed.

May13: Spring Semester Reflections: American Literature II: I also taught Gatsbythe day after Dad passed, so shared how a debate I had with him helped shapemy teaching.

May14: Spring Semester Reflections: First-Year Writing II: The seriescontinues with how I got to feature my Dad’s work in my FYW courses.

May15: Spring Semester Reflections: Graduate Research Methods: My Dad’s focuson psychoanalytical theory isn’t my own, but I found a way to include it in myGrad course nonetheless.

May16: Spring Semester Reflections: Student Tributes to Dad: The seriesconcludes with a handful of moving tributes to my Dad as a teacher from formerstudents.

May17-18: What’s Next: And a weekend follow-up post highlighting three thingsI’m looking forward to in the Fall semester!

May19: Malcolm X’s 100th: The Autobiography: For Malcolm Little’s100th birthday, a series on cultural representations of Malcolm kicksoff the complicated layers to his own text.

May20: Malcolm X’s 100th: An Opera: The series continues with twodistinct and equally important ways to contextualize the opera X (1986).

May21: Malcolm X’s 100th: Lee’s Film: Three interesting contextsfor Spike Lee’s epic 1992 biopic, as the series marches on.

May22: Malcolm X’s 100th: A Cameo in Selma: Malcolm isn’t a mainfocus of Ava DuVernay’s film, but his powerful scene reflects the film’s overallgoals.

May23: Malcolm X’s 100th: One Night in Miami: The series concludeswith a recent film adaptation that embodies the important goal of humanizingour heroes.

May24-25: Malcolm X’s 100th: Malcolm in 2025: A special weekendfollow-up post highlighting three lessons we can learn from Malcolm in 2025!

May26: 2020s Blockbusters: Top Gun: Maverick: A Memorial Day series on recentsummer blockbusters kicks off with a problem & a possibility with ourcultural moment of ubiquitous sequels.

May27: 2020s Blockbusters: Inside Out 2: The series continues with twodistinct ways to contextualize the highest-grossing film of 2024.

May28: 2020s Blockbusters: Jurassic World: What’s not new in the recent JurassicPark films and what is, as the series explodes on.

May29: 2020s Blockbusters: Barbie: What I liked a lot about the recent mega-blockbuster,and what I loved.

May30: 2020s Blockbusters: Live Action Disney: The series and month concludewith three ways to explain the large and growing corpus of live-action remakesof animated films.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

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

May 30, 2025: 2020s Blockbusters: Live Action Disney

[Moviegoinghas unquestionably changed a great deal in recent years, but there is still aplace for the summer blockbuster, and I believe there always will be. So forthe unofficial kickoff of another summer season, I wanted to AmericanStudy ahandful of recent such blockbusters!]

On threeways to explain the large and growing corpus of live-actionremakes of animated films (besides, y’know, the oodles and oodles ofmoney they make).

1)     Nostalgia: I began this week’s series with apost on sequels/reboots/new entries in franchises and nostalgia, and it seemsentirely clear to me that that widely shared and very human emotion is also aprimary motivation for remaking beloved animated films, often in ways that hewquite closely to the original despite the shift to live-action. Not sure I needto say too much more about this item than that!

2)     Disney and IPs: I don’t want to sound entirelylike one of those old dudes yelling at the clouds about this, so let me start bysaying that I’ve enjoyed a number of the Disney-funded films and TV shows inboth the Star Wars and Marvel Universes. There’s no necessary reason whyworks that are part of existing intellectual properties can’t also be enjoyableand engaging and even interesting cultural texts, after all. But nonetheless,the Mouse’s trend of squeezing every last drop out of every IP they own is, atthe very least, exhausting, and I don’t think we can minimize that goal when weconsider these remakes of prior Disney projects.

3)     Artistic Vision: Tim Burton. Kenneth Branagh.Jon Favreau. Bill Condon. Marc Forster. Guy Ritchie. Robert Zemeckis. Barry Jenkins.Those are just some of the talented directors who have made live-action Disneyremakes over the last couple decades. I’m sure they were well-compensated fortheir efforts, and I’m also sure that none of them would list the Disney remakeat the top of their career achievements. But that doesn’t mean that they didn’tbring their own artistic vision to the projects, and make them significantlymore unique than they might otherwise have been. If we’re going to have suchmovies—and it seems clear that we’re going to—they might as well be made bytalented folks seeking to do their own thing while still (of course) operatingwithin the project’s parameters. Which, ultimately, describes the ideal summerblockbuster, no?

May Recapthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Summer blockbusters, recent or otherwise, you’d analyze?

May 29, 2025: 2020s Blockbusters: Barbie

[Moviegoinghas unquestionably changed a great deal in recent years, but there is still aplace for the summer blockbuster, and I believe there always will be. So forthe unofficial kickoff of another summer season, I wanted to AmericanStudy ahandful of recent such blockbusters!]

On what Iliked a lot about the recent mega-blockbuster, and what I loved.

In lieu ofa first paragraph here, I’m going to recommend that y’all check out anexcellent August2024 podcast episode, of Liam Heffernan’s America: AHistory podcast and featuring guests Jon Mitchell and Vaughn Joy, on boththe 2023 Barbie film and all thingsBarbie. Take a listen if you get a chance, and then come on back (orstay here first, whatever works for ya) for my own thoughts on the film.

There’s alot I enjoyed about Barbie, which made me laugh out loud a number oftimes (no easy feat, as folks who know me can attest) and ultimately moved medeeply. The most moving element is the one I’ll dive into in the finalparagraph, so for this one I’ll talk about a corollary to the humor—just howconsistently and thoughtfully the film took me by surprise. I don’t know what Inecessarily expected from a movie about the world of Barbie dolls, but I knowfor sure that to my mind virtually nothing in this film was predictable—and yetas I watched it pretty much every one of those unexpected elements also feltnatural, made sense within the world and story that was being created and portrayed.I think that’s really a miracle when we’re talking about a film based on a toy,which is what made it so silly when a ton of other toy-basedmovies were greenlit (or at least considered) in the aftermath of Barbie’smega-success. Maybe the PollyPocket movie will be just as thoughtful and unique and effective, but boyhowdy do I doubt it.

Interestinglyenough, the thing I loved about Barbie, and the element that moved medeeply, was in fact directly connected to the fact that this was a filminspired by a toy. Nearly 13 years ago I bloggedabout toys targeted at girls, and while I was focused there on new toyslike the girl-centric Legos, the truth is that dolls have been girl-centeredtoys forcenturies at least. And at least in American history, no doll has been moresuccessful and enduring than Barbie, making this particular toy an easy andunderstandable target for those who want to critique the gendering of toys andchildhood. That’s a perspective that the film certainly shares at times, butultimately it moves in a very different direction, considering how both Barbieand the film’s human characters (especially the mother-daughterduo at the story’s center) have to navigate these issues of gendered expectations,ideals, limits, and more. That led up to one of my favorite movie moments in along time, Barbie’s conversationwith her creator Ruth Handler, which, to round off this post, was bothentirely unexpected and profoundly moving.

Lastblockbuster tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Summer blockbusters, recent or otherwise, you’d analyze?