Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 164

July 21, 2020: Historical Fictions: Kindred

[Earlier this month, I began teaching my graduate American Historical Fiction: Practice and Theory class for the fifth time, this time entirely online. So this week I’ll briefly highlight (busy with teaching and all) a handful of exemplary historical fictions and related contexts. Share your own favorite historical fictions or authors for a boundary-blurring crowd-sourced weekend post, please!]Today’s nominee for an amazing American historical novel is Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979).The premise of Butler’s science fiction historical novel is simple enough: a 1970s African American woman suddenly finds herself time traveling back into the antebellum South, where she becomes (or rather, is) a slave. But without spoiling the many amazing places where Butler takes her story from there, I’ll just say that she is centrally concerned with some of the most genuinely historical and American themes: family and legacies, race and its continuous yet shifting presence and meanings, love and hope and hatred and death, community and identity in our past, present, and (it is science fiction after all!) future. One of our most unique, significant, and compelling American novels, historical or otherwise.Next historical fiction tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other historical fictions or authors you’d highlight?

July 20, 2020: Historical Fictions: An Overview

[Earlier this month, I began teaching my graduate American Historical Fiction: Practice and Theory class for the fifth time, this time entirely online. So this week I’ll briefly highlight (busy with teaching and all) a handful of exemplary historical fictions and related contexts. Share your own favorite historical fictions or authors for a boundary-blurring crowd-sourced weekend post, please!]On two proposed sub-genres and how they respectively balance history and fiction.
One of the central questions with which any scholar or reader (or even any writer) of historical fiction has to engage is what works in the genre hope to accomplish. There are lots of potential answers to that question, but the fundamental divide is, it seems to me, between accuracy or authenticity on the one hand and effectiveness or readability on the other; between, that is, doing justice to the historical details and periods and events on which a particular novel focuses and doing right by the readers who have picked up said novel. Obviously the choice is not an either/or, but I would argue that as a matter of emphasis and priority these are two very different starting points; and I would go further and argue that much of what we have called historical fiction over the years has chosen very fully to focus on creating entertaining novels for which the history is a backdrop, rather than on creating historical worlds for which the novel is a foreground.
If that has been the emphasis much of the time, it’s an entirely understandable one; readers who seek historical accuracy can always turn to works of historical narrative and scholarship, after all, and a historical novelist who does not connect to his or her readers is likely to produce few sales and a short career. So long as the historical focus is not being explicitly falsified or mythologized, as I have elsewhere argued that the historical details surrounding Reconstruction explicitly and destructively (to the book’s contemporary moment and for our overarching national narratives) are in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a historical novelist focusing mostly on creating compelling characters and story rather than on exploring all of the nuances of that historical world. But if and when a novelist makes that choice, I think it would be very useful for us to have a separate generic category in which we could place the resulting work: not historical fiction but, perhaps, period fiction? If we were to employ that second category in that way, it would allow the term “historical fiction” to be used solely for those novels that do work to create historical worlds first and foremost—and would hopefully likewise allow us to make clear that many such novels and novelists have been able to do so without sacrificing any of their engaging and entertaining qualities in the process.
At or near the top of that list, for me, are the novels in Gore Vidal’s American Chronicle, a series which Vidal has been writing since the late 1960s and which now includes at least six novels (which I will list in chronological rather than publication order; not included here is the recent The Golden Age [2000], only because I haven’t read it and so don’t feel able to comment on whether it’s really part of the series or not): Burr (1973); Lincoln (1984); 1876 (1976); Empire (1987); Hollywood (1990); and Washington, DC (1967). The novels certainly vary in quality, and the more recent novels in the series seem somewhat more explicitly driven by Vidal’s own contemporary political agenda and purposes (a charge that, from what I can tell, applies even more directly to Golden Age); it’s fair to say that a decent percentage of even the kind of genuinely historical fiction about which I’m writing here does feature such central political purposes, and while they don’t necessarily diminish the texts’ success at creating historical worlds, they do often provide the lenses through which we view those worlds. But the earlier books in Vidal’s series, and most especially Burr, are among America’s most fully realized and successful historical novels: both because of how richly they construct their historical worlds (Burr imagines no fewer than three such worlds: the Revolution, the turn of the 19th century, and the 1830s); and because of how immensely readable and fun they are. To coin a phrase, Burr made me laugh, made me cry, and made me think long and hard about—and in fact even do further research into—its historical and national subjects and stories, and that’s a pretty successful historical novel if you ask me.Next historical fiction tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other historical fictions or authors you’d highlight?

July 18-19, 2020: AmericanStudying Watchmen: Student Perspectives

[Along with Bosch, another acclaimed show I’ve finally had a chance to check out during lockdown is HBO’s Watchmen, and it lived up to the hype. Among its many strengths, I’d emphasize in particular its remarkable depth when it comes to American history, and this week I’ve focused on five sides to those themes and threads. Leading up to this special weekend post sharing student perspectives on the show’s graphic novel source material!]As I’ve mentioned a couple times this week, my Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy class this semester finished, as it always does, with Watchmen. By that time we were having our discussions remotely, through a Google Doc, so I’ve got a number of written student perspectives on the graphic novel saved. With their permission, and made anonymous, here are a few of those thoughtful, compelling readings, all of which could be linked to the show as well:1)  “Stepping away from the characters for a moment, let me return to the world at large. Most of the story takes place in New York during the height of the Cold War. The fear of potential nuclear war was so thick, it could be cut with a knife. But people overall seemed hopeful that nothing would happen, that changed with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Such immense horror was sent thundering through the populace at large, that everything began to reach a boiling point that wouldn’t be reached until the end of the book. Moore wrote into existence such a surrealist and horror inducing world with the assistance of Dave Gibbons’ art that you began to feel as if you were right there. It is difficult to describe it, and honestly, the movie and TV show cannot even begin to properly and effectively replicate it. Upon rereading the first few books I noticed so many intricate little details hinting at the future. Such foreshadowing was such a massive question mark when first reading, but so incredibly obvious upon a second viewing.”
2)      “Despite dealing with far more death and darker subject matter than other stories there is hardly any blood in Watchmen, with many scenes being left up to interpretation in terms of carnage aside from very specific scenes such as Comedians death and when the Squid attacks. This is very much meant to punctuate the scenes at play and show their weight. The novel is seemingly bloodless before the squid but when it arrives there are death bodies of men, women and children littering the streets of New York. It is also to note than aside from Dr. Manhattan there is not a great deal of high concept science fiction or fantasy at play. But when the squid comes it is something out of a pulp science fiction novel, almost looking like something that does not even belong in the novel to begin with. Ozymandias could have had a nuclear explosion or something of that nature but decided to go with something the people of the world had never seen before so it would be inevitable to think Dr. Manhattan, whose reputation had already been damaged, would do it. Moore’s Watchmen has been the shining example of how to handle these sorts of high stakes, realistic stories but in my opinion none have even gotten close to being on the same level. It is an extremely detailed book which is not even a traditional comic book, but rather a comment or satire on comic books. The only reason it is grouped in with other comic books is mainly down to style and some subject matter. If it is a traditional book it would have also been considered a classic. It is more enjoyable and I find more detail with every read and it is a story I will never get tired of.”
3)      About “the political side of Watchmen. Politics is a difficult topic to discuss, as there are many ideas and arguments, and there is rarely a time where most people can agree. And Moore doesn't seem to care much about appealing to all people across the Political aisle. The Watchmen themselves are completely flawed themselves. They take matters into their own hands, believing that they somehow have the right to conduct law and order. And many times, their actions are disgusting and could most definitely be considered war crimes. And the end of the book shows this self righteous attitude when Adrian Veidt decides to kill millions of people. However, this free group of superheroes are not so free, as it is shown that they are used by the United States government to win wars. The Vietnam war for example, could itself be considered a war crime carried out by the United States, and Moore reflects this in his novel to an even greater extent when the United States, in this universe, wins the war with the help of a super being and an almost villain like character, the comedian. I think that Moores reflection of the Vietnam War in his story encapsulates what America would have as an imperialist power if they had the resources like Dr. Manhattan. Moore makes it a point to have a American news reporter say, ‘We repeat: the superman exists, and he’s American.’”  4)      “Alan Moore’s Watchmen is a landmark achievement in graphic novel and superhero storytelling. For the past several years, superhero stories have dominated literature, television, and real-life popular culture. It’s easy to see Watchmen’s influence in all of it- from similar conflicts (should the law interfere with godlike entities?) seen in films such as Batman v. Superman and Captain America: Civil War, the overall darker tone of the story, and even the direct adaptations (The 2009 theatrical film and the 2019 HBO series). Yet, many would argue that Watchmen’s biggest influence was that on stories telling alternate history. This has been a storytelling device for as long as stories have been around, yet Watchmen uses it in a unique way: by incorporating superheroes into a contemporary setting, and covering human history. By highlighting how historic events were different with the existence of godlike entities, the world feels much more believable and realistic. Many alternate history stories with godlike entities (such as Captain America or Wonder Woman) simply make the godlike character disappear for a long period of time. Watchmen instead makes the characters live throughout time, changing every event that comes after their existence. Due to all these seemingly small details, Watchmen is a much more realistic depiction of alternate history than most stories like it.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other takes on the show you’d share?

July 17, 2020: AmericanStudying Watchmen: White Supremacy and America

[Along with Bosch, another acclaimed show I’ve finally had a chance to check out during lockdown is HBO’s Watchmen, and it lived up to the hype. Among its many strengths, I’d emphasize in particular its remarkable depth when it comes to American history, and this week will focus on five sides to those themes and threads. Leading up to a special weekend post sharing student perspectives on both the show and its graphic novel source material!][NB. SPOILERS will abound all week—go check the show out and then come back to read these posts and share your thoughts!]On one overarching choice this AmericanStudier loves, and one I’m still thinking about.I’ve written a good deal in this space about some excellent TV shows that have addressed the topic of race in America, both because they are some of my favorites and because that remains a frustratingly short list (I haven’t yet had a chance to see the adaptation of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, but that seems likely to join the list when I do). Obviously the job of a TV drama is not first and foremost to portray themes (not at the expense of engaging its audience through story, character, etc., anyway), and neither am I suggesting that any one show should have to bear the weight of all our collective histories. Let’s just say that I really appreciate when a great cultural work in any medium can also engage with those histories, and so I really, really appreciated all the ways that HBO’s Watchmen did so (without losing an ounce of engaging artistic and storytelling greatness). I’ve traced many of those ways across this week’s posts and subjects, and wanted in this final post of mine to go a bit further, thinking about two overarching twists of the show’s plotlines [one last time, SPOILERS!] and how they depict the even broader and more fundamental idea of white supremacy’s tendrils throughout American culture and society. The first such twist begins to unfold relatively early in the show’s nine episodes, but nonetheless represents a bold and game-changing choice. At the end of episode one, one of the show’s apparent central characters (and lead actors), Don Johnson’s police chief Judd Crawford, is murdered; as his friend and fellow officer Angela Abar (Regina King) investigates, she quickly realizes that Judd was not all that he seemed, and indeed was not on the side of justice. Ultimately she and we learn that Judd was a former KKK member turned leader of the white supremacist 7thCavalry, working alongside another undercover domestic terrorist (Senator and presidential candidate Joe Keene [James Wolk]) to keep both the political and legal systems beholden to white supremacy. Which means that two of the show’s three most powerful characters are white supremacist domestic terrorists, a bracing and vital reminder that throughout American history (as was the case in the lynching epidemic) it was not just angry mobs, but also and especially society’s most powerful and elite, who maintained white supremacy’s violent, hierarchical hold on the nation. But Judd and Joe turn out to be only secondary villains to Watchmen’s most villainous character, and the show’s most powerful individual: Hong Chau’sVietnamese American genius, entrepreneur, and megalomaniac Lady Trieu. That Lady Trieu is opposed to the 7th Cavalry and the source of their ultimate destructionmeans that she is in no way part of that white supremacist power structure, but that’s the part about which I have mixed feelings: I understand the need for multiple twists, particularly when it comes to villains who are revealed relatively early in a show’s arc, and certainly Trieu’s villainous plan is (as with most of the best villains) both understandable and even sympathetic yet deeply disturbing and horrific. But this particular twist and villain not only make the white supremacists seem significantly less dangerous (indeed, their entire plan has been just a distraction from the true evil), but even positions them as primary (or at least the initial) targets of the real danger (one from precisely the kind of figure against whom they have directed their xenophobic prejudice). Again, shows aren’t political manifestos, and Watchmen is about a lot more than just race or America—but this particular choice seems to me to frustratingly undercut some of the choices and themes that make this show so unique and important.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other takes on the show you’d share?

July 16, 2020: AmericanStudying Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan

[Along with Bosch, another acclaimed show I’ve finally had a chance to check out during lockdown is HBO’s Watchmen, and it lived up to the hype. Among its many strengths, I’d emphasize in particular its remarkable depth when it comes to American history, and this week will focus on five sides to those themes and threads. Leading up to a special weekend post sharing student perspectives on both the show and its graphic novel source material!][NB. SPOILERS will abound all week—go check the show out and then come back to read these posts and share your thoughts!]On two ways the HBO show humanizes the graphic novel’s most (literally) fantastic character.I taught Watchmen (the graphic novel) in my Intro to Science Fiction & Fantasy class this past semester (such as it was), and as has been the case each time I’ve taught the book, we spent a fair amount of time talking (well, in this case writing in shared Google Docs) about how we would define its genre. Partly that’s because we read Watchmen last, so by that time we’ve spent a dozen weeks talking about science fiction, fantasy, weird tales, and other related genres. But partly it’s because Watchmen defies easy genre characterizations: it’s clearly a superhero comic in some key ways (even published by DC Comics); but it also has numerous elements of alternate history, or perhaps a dystopian science fiction story that has emerged out of an alternate history. And speaking of science fiction, then there all the elements that the character of Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan adds into the mix—not just the supernatural powers caused by his nuclear accident (a somewhat typical superhero trope, of course), but also the related elements like time travel and telepathy that his situation brings with it. In truth, Manhattan has always seemed to me to exist outside of the rest of Watchmen in not only genre but in those other ways as well, and I’ve found it somewhat difficult to frame him within the novel. If you’re going to have Dr. Manhattan in your story (and the HBO show, like the Snyder film before it, does so), then you’re going to have to deal with those elements and effects (and, yes, with the infamous giant blue phallus, which is not a phrase I ever expected to write on this blog but here we are). But HBO’s Watchmenfinds a couple smart and compelling ways to add humanity to Manhattan’s role and identity, transforming this fantastic character into part of its world and story much more fully in the process. One of them, considering the continued aftermath of Manhattan’s supernatural victory for the US forces during the Vietnam War, is perhaps an inevitable effect of making the show a temporal sequel to the graphic novel, but is nonetheless handled with nuance and depth (more so, I’d say, than in the novel, which is also set some years after the conclusion of the war). On a broad level, that means for example the decision to make Vietnam a U.S. state, and to make one of the show’s central new characters a Vietnamese American woman (about whom I will say no more, even in a spoilerific series). But it also means creating plot threads that depict continued conflicts within Vietnam, ones caused specifically by both the US victory and its ongoing presence. Dr. Manhattan might have decided that knowing everything that will happen means nothing matters, that is, but the show’s depiction of Vietnam reminds us that for everyone else that’s far from the truth.And in fact, the show’s other central choice related to Manhattan works very effectively to change that omniscient, all-powerful side to the character as well. The show’s 8th episode, “A God Walks into Abar” (serious SPOILERS in both that great Sepinwall piece and the rest of this paragraph), dives into the story of how Dr. Manhattan met and fell in love with Angela Abar, and how through that relationship he was convinced to give up his omniscience and powers in exchange for the possibility of a genuinely shared human love. That plotline works as an interesting counter to Manhattan’s story in the graphic novel, where we only see his human relationship with fellow scientist Janey Slater in flashback and where his romance with Laurie Juspeczyk/Silt Spectre is consistently overshadowed by his supernatural powers. HBO’s Watchmen imagines instead how a profoundly human love might be powerful enough to overshadow the supernatural, and what might result, for this fantastic character, his lover, and the entire world, from that shift. Last WatchmenStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other takes on the show you’d share?

July 15, 2020: AmericanStudying Watchmen: Rorschach and Looking Glass

[Along with Bosch, another acclaimed show I’ve finally had a chance to check out during lockdown is HBO’s Watchmen, and it lived up to the hype. Among its many strengths, I’d emphasize in particular its remarkable depth when it comes to American history, and this week will focus on five sides to those themes and threads. Leading up to a special weekend post sharing student perspectives on both the show and its graphic novel source material!][NB. SPOILERS will abound all week—go check the show out and then come back to read these posts and share your thoughts!]On how both the new show and a new central character challenge a fan favorite.I don’t tend to quote myself in this space, but since this post builds directly on a somewhat tangential line from the final paragraph of yesterday’s post, I thought I’d start there: “many Watchmen readers are apparently big fans of the character Rorschach, who is at best a reactionary sociopathif not also a blatant white supremacist.” As is often the case, there are layers beyond what I could capture in that one line, so I should add: the first time I read Watchmen, as an early 20-something, I was certainly also drawn to Rorschach, a unique and compelling character with a striking voice, a tragic backstory, and a dogged determination never to give up on the quest for justice (as he sees it) even when he is literally alone in that pursuit (“Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon”). The problem lies in that parenthetical phrase “as he sees it”—Rorschach’s perspective on his society and his fellow Americans (and humans) is not just profoundly judgmental and pessimistic (although yes on both counts), but also full of reactionary prejudice and hatred that, the more I’ve read and thought about it (having taught the graphic novel five times across the last 13 years), seem to me to mark him as a white supremacist (or at least a sympathetic fellow traveler to that cause). In HBO’s Watchmen’s first sequence set in the 2019 present (following the 1921 Tulsa-set opening), the show takes an immediate and striking stance on the central image associated with that established and often beloved character. An African American cop (still in Tulsa) stops a suspicious white motorist, sees what he calls a “Rorschach mask” in the driver’s glove compartment, and while he’s waiting for authorization to release his firearm for use (the show’s alternate America has a very different relationship to guns than ours) the motorist puts on that mask (which indeed closely resembles Rorschach’s from the graphic novel) and guns the police officer down in cold blood. We quickly learn that the show’s chief villains, a white supremacist domestic terrorist group known as the 7thCavalry, consistently wear those Rorschach masks, a statement that at least from their perspective they have taken up the legacy of that famous member of the 1980s Watchmen. Since (SPOILER, if a less time-sensitive one than most of this week’s) Rorschach himself was killed at the end of the graphic novel, the show is not able to offer us a clear vision of how he might have seen these white supremacist terrorists, but their embrace of him is a striking commentary nonetheless.While Rorschach doesn’t appear in the new series, however, it does feature a new character who bears a significant resemblance to him: Tim Blake Nelson’s Wade Tillman/Looking Glass, a suspicious and paranoid loner who is revealed to have a tragic backstory that has led him to his role as a superhero wearing a mask that reflects those around him. Moreover (SPOILERS again, this time for the show) Wade is eventually recruited by the 7th Cavalry, who tell him the truth about the infamous Alien Squid attack that Oxymandias unleashed on New York at the end of the graphic novel; that truth confirms the worst of Wade’s paranoia (“Is anything true?,” he asks Regina King’s Angela) and seems primed to turn him into another cynical, pessimistic vigilante like the original Rorschach. Yet that transformation does not occur—over the show’s final two episodes Wade continues to fight alongside characters like Angela and against the 7thCavalry, in the process ironically donning a Rorschach mask (taken from a terrorist he has killed) in order to infiltrate their ranks. While those choices and actions are of course about the character of Wade Tillman, they also read to this WatchmenStudier as another direct and crucial challenge to the ultimately less heroic character and perspective of Rorschach. Next WatchmenStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other takes on the show you’d share?

July 14, 2020: AmericanStudying Watchmen: Hooded Justice

[Along with Bosch, another acclaimed show I’ve finally had a chance to check out during lockdown is HBO’s Watchmen, and it lived up to the hype. Among its many strengths, I’d emphasize in particular its remarkable depth when it comes to American history, and this week will focus on five sides to those themes and threads. Leading up to a special weekend post sharing student perspectives on both the show and its graphic novel source material!][NB. SPOILERS will abound all week—go check the show out and then come back to read these posts and share your thoughts!]On the adaptation choice that changes everything, and why it makes perfect sense.The decision to adapt a beloved cultural work—I’m talking about Dave Gibbons’ and Alan Moore’s magisterial 1987 graphic novel, obviously; the less said about Zach Snyder’s 2009 filmversion, the better—must always be a complex and fraught one. If you try to recreate the original text in this new medium, you’re likely going to just remind audiences of how your version won’t ever be precisely the same as that established classic; but if you make any significant changes, you’re definitely going to make some subset of those fans (Tom Bombadil stans, we might call them) very angry. When Damon Lindelof decided to make a TV show based on Watchmen, he went all in for the latter type—and while his show is more of a sequelthan a straight adaptation, it does engage in central ways with a number of characters and stories from the graphic novel. And moreover, Lindelof has stated in interviews [one more time, MAJOR SPOILERS here and throughout this post] that it was the chance to radically rethink one of those characters—Hooded Justice, the graphic novel’s foundational early 20th century superhero—that made him want to work on the show in the first place.Lindelof and company hold the reveal of that rethinking until the show’s 6th episode (of 8 total; and again, SPOILERS in that wonderful Alan Sepinwall piece, not just for this reveal overall but for all the details of that episode in particular), but when we get it it forces us to rethink all five prior episodes, among many other things. Hooded Justice, it turns out, was black, and indeed the same young boy (Will Reeves) whom we followed during the first episode’s 1921 Tulsa-set opening sequence. That boy grew up to become a police office in late 1930s New York City (played as a young man by the wonderful Jovan Adepo, and as an elderly man in the show’s present by the eternally wonderful Louis Gossett Jr.), and then when he realized the law was not the source of justice he (like his childhood hero and namesake Bass Reeves) thought it was, he decided to take justice into his own hands. The episode’s historical revelations thus change our entire perspective on both the multi-generational legacy of superheroes (HJ was the inspiration for the Minutemen, the first group of superheroes who then inspired the Watchmen who then inspired the show’s current superheroes) and the show’s multi-generational family story (Regina King’s character Angela Abar/Sister Night, our most consistent protagonist, is revealed to be HJ’s granddaughter). Given that many Watchmen readers are apparently big fans of the character Rorschach, who is at best a reactionary sociopathif not also a blatant white supremacist (and the TV show goes with the latter, on which more in tomorrow’s post), I have to imagine that a black Hooded Justice didn’t go over well with them. But for me, it’s one of the best and smartest choices I’ve seen in any TV show or cultural work. It works very well within the show’s and graphic novel’s stories and worlds, both extending and challenging core elements of them. But I think it works even better within the broader frames of American history and culture. It’s pretty telling that when comic books were finally able to feature black superheroes, the first prominent such character was from a fictional African country, rather than here in the United States. I understand that choice, but at the same time, no American community would have more reason to seek the kinds of extralegal, vigilante justice that superheroes offer than African Americans, which is literally how Will becomes HJ—he is nearly lynched by fellow police officers, and when he subsequently happens upon another crime in progress, the lynching rope still around his neck, he decides to put on a hood and deal out his own justice. That just might be my favorite American pop culture moment of the 21stcentury, and is the central, unequivocal triumph of HBO’s Watchmen.Next WatchmenStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other takes on the show you’d share?

July 13, 2020: AmericanStudying Watchmen: Tulsa

[Along with Bosch, another acclaimed show I’ve finally had a chance to check out during lockdown is HBO’s Watchmen, and it lived up to the hype. Among its many strengths, I’d emphasize in particular its remarkable depth when it comes to American history, and this week will focus on five sides to those themes and threads. Leading up to a special weekend post sharing student perspectives on both the show and its graphic novel source material!][NB. SPOILERS will abound all week—go check the show out and then come back to read these posts and share your thoughts!]On two small details that make a stunning scene even better, and why the scene needs further contextualization nonetheless.Because I watched Watchmen nearly a year after it initially aired (I don’t get HBO, so I always catch up on HBO shows well after the fact), I knew from scholarly Twitter and other commentaries that the series opens with an extended sequence set during the 1921 Tulsa massacre (even if you haven’t seen the show yet, I recommend watching the multi-part clip hyperlinked under “an extended sequence”; it’s the series’ opening so it’s not really spoiling anything). I can only imagine how stunned I would have been to watch that scene with no foreknowledge; I’ve long lamented that histories like Tulsa’s (and the many, many other such massacres across American history, on which more below) are largely absent from our collective memories, and one central reason is that there have been very few pop culture portrayals (John Singleton’s 1997 film Rosewood is an exception, but even that film has been mostly ignored since its release). But even knowing it was coming, I was blown away by the raw realism of this sequence, from the senseless individual murders to the aerial bombardment to the sheer terror of the African American protagonists facing this horrific communal terrorism. Great TV and film sequences are made from small details as much as the big picture, and two in particular stand out to me in Watchmen’s bravura Tulsa sequence. The more obvious but still crucial one is to begin with the youthful protagonist watching a silent film, a fictional one depicting a real historical figure, the legendary African American US Marshal (and likely inspiration for the character of the Lone Ranger) Bass Reeves. That choice not only immediately contrasts mythic pop culture ideals to the unfolding brutal reality outside of the theater, but also implicitly points audiences toward a very different cultural text: the white supremacist silent film Birth of a Nation. More understated and unspoken still, but even more crucial, is the choice to have that young African American protagonist’s father dressed in his WWI uniform; without saying a word, that choice links this massacre to the Red Summer of 1919, and the tragic and awful gaps between the service of WWI African American soldiers and the realities of the discrimination and violence they faced on the homefront. But should those words have somehow been said, those histories more overtly spoken? On the one hand, it’s obviously not a dramatic TV show’s job to depict many different histories, or even contextualize one history as fully as scholarship might; again, just featuring this Tulsa sequence sets Watchmen apart from most other American pop cultural works. But at the same time, one potential downside to depicting Tulsa’s extremes (like that aerial bombardment, which did stand out from other massacres) is that it can make it seem like the event was a one-off or an aberration. To put it bluntly, racial massacres were between the Civil War and (at least) the 1940s much more the norm than the exception; indeed, if we see such massacres as lynchings writ large and thus link them to the lynching epidemic as a whole, it becomes even more difficult to see events like Tulsa as anything other than a constant presence and threat for African Americans. I don’t know that there’s any way a single TV show could (or should) depict those overarching histories—but at the very least it’s crucial that we follow up this stunning sequence with further work to make clear just how tragically typical such events were.Next WatchmenStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other takes on the show you’d share?

July 11-12, 2020: Presidential Medals of Freedom: Rush Limbaugh

[On July 6th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order establishing the Presidential Medal of Freedomwent into effect. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of the Medals recipients, leading up to this weekend post on the most recent, most controversial honoree yet.]On the more obvious and more subtle ways that the most recent recognition broke tradition.Presidential Medals of Freedom have certainly been awarded to overtly political figures before, including former President Lyndon Johnson and presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey (both honored by Jimmy Carter in 1980), presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (by Ronald Reagan in 1986), future Vice President Dick Cheney (by George H.W. Bush in 1991), former President Ronald Reagan (by Bush in 1993), former President George H.W. Bush (by Barack Obama in 2011), former President Bill Clinton (by Obama in 2013), and Vice President Joe Biden (by Obama in 2017). Indeed, there have been enough of those kinds of political recipients (often understandably tied to the presidency and presidential administrations) that they really constitute their own category alongside the others about which I’ve written this week (although it’s worth noting that such political honorees were not present in the first couple decades of medals and have emerged as a category in the last forty years). So it would be inaccurate to argue that President Trump’s awarding of a Presidential Medal of Freedom during his February 2020 State of the Union Address to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh in and of itself comprised something new or different.But Limbaugh’s medal did still break from tradition in a couple troubling ways. For one thing, prior Presidential Medals for media figures had gone to journalists whose work and voices were intended for and benefited all Americans: from Edward R. Murrow in 1964 to Norman Rockwell in 1977 to Walter Cronkite in 1981 to Clare Boothe Luce in 1983. The one partial exception to that trend was George H.W. Bush’s medal for National Review founder William F. Buckley in 1991; but whether we agree with this designation or not (and I mostly don’t), Buckley was seen at the time, as he still largely is, as a more serious and mainstream figure than Limbaugh. And when it comes to symbolic statements like presidential medals, such perceptions and narratives matter a great deal; that is, while Buckley’s role and status might be debatable, there is no doubt whatsoever that Rush Limbaugh is a far-right pundit, one who defines his journalistic purpose as advancing that position and (most of all) defeating his perceived adversaries at all costs (including, if not especially, with smears and lies). To recognize someone like that with a Presidential Medal of Freedom is to politicize and polemicize this national honor as fully as Trump has every other aspect of the presidency.Limbaugh’s was also the first Presidential Medal of Freedom, out of the hundreds that have been awarded, to be presented at a State of the Union Address. That might seem like a very insignificant change, and it is important not to be swayed by the idea of tradition for its own sake; where and how a medal is presented shouldn’t necessarily be beholden to the past. In this case it is impossible to separate my prior point from this one; that is, Trump honoring this especially partisan and problematic figure is entirely tied to his concurrent treatment of the State of the Union as an occasion for demagoguery of which Limbaugh would undoubtedly be proud. But even if this State of the Union medal had been presented to a more universally beloved figure (like Elvis Presley, one of Trump’s first recipients as I mentioned yesterday), awarding it in that context would still mean turning this highest civilian honor into a reality show moment, and thus making it wholly about the moment (and the president awarding it), rather than the honored figure. That’s a symbolic issue—but when it comes to one of our most prominent national symbolic customs, such issues become very meaningful indeed. Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other honorees you’d highlight?

July 10, 2020: Presidential Medals of Freedom: Springsteen and Elvis

[On July 6th, 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order establishing the Presidential Medal of Freedomwent into effect. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the Medals recipients, leading up to a weekend post on the most recent, most controversial honoree yet.]On the Medal of Freedom as a unifying occasion or a partisan instrument.First things first: I’m on record, in this space and most everywhere else, as Bruce Springsteen’s biggest fan; and I’m also on record in this space as significantly less of a fan of Elvis Presley. On that latter point, Bruce and I disagree very fully—he famously jumped the wall at Graceland while on tour in 1976 in an attempt to meet his idol; and Bruce has recorded no less than (and probably many more than) a dozen covers of songs by the artist he has called one of his greatest inspirations since he first saw Elvis’s controversial performance on the Ed Sullivan show. I promise (Bruce, myself, you all) to keep an open mind and keep giving Elvis the old college try, but in any case this post isn’t about the two artists themselves; it’s about how Barack Obama’s 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom tribute to Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump’s 2018 Medal tribute to Elvis Presley (posthumously, of course) reveal (as does most everything else about the two presidents) two distinct and fundamentally opposed visions of what something like the Medal of Freedom means, for the president and for the nation.At the November 2016 ceremony honoring Springsteen and 20 others, President Obama said of the Medal that “it’s a tribute to the idea that all of us, no matter where we come from, have the opportunity to change this country for the better….These 21 individuals have helped push America forward, inspiring millions of people around the world along the way.” About Springsteen more specifically, he added, “The stories he has told, in lyrics and epic live concert performances, have helped shape American music and have challenged us to realize the American dream.” As has so often been the case with Obama’s speeches and public statements, his use of first-person plural pronouns here is crucial, establishing the medal and occasion as a collective expression and reflection (and amplification) of that communal experience and identity. That choice purposefully downplays both Obama’s own individual action (despite of course being the president giving the Presidential Medal) and the larger 21st century narrative of a divided America whose citizens might or might not all celebrate such figures (while it boggles my mind that anyone wouldn’t celebrate Bruce, there’s no doubt he has become increasingly linked to progressive politicians and causes).While Elvis Presley has at times been associated with the (overstated, I’ve argued) narrative of white artists capitalizing on black music, it would nonetheless be easy and appropriate to present him with a posthumous Medal of Freedom in much the same unifying terms. But it will come as no surprise to anyone who has been alive and awake for the last five years that President Trump did not talk about Elvis in that way shortly after awarding him that November 2018 medal. In contrast with Obama’s “we,” Trump linked Elvis to himself, claiming that he didn’t want to sound “very conceited” but noting that, “other than the blond hair, when I was growing up they said I looked like Elvis. Can you believe it? I always considered that a great compliment.” And he went on to connect Elvis to one of the moment’s most divisive issues, that of the so-called “migrant caravan” making its way to the Mexican American border; “They're not going to put in Elvis in there,” he stated, going out of his way to differentiate the iconic American artist from a community he sought time and again to define as a foreign threat to the U.S. There are literally countless ways we could trace the changes and gaps between 2016/Obama and 2018/Trump, but their frames for these two rock ‘n roll medals do the trick nicely.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other honorees you’d highlight?