Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 18

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?

April 29, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: First Blood

[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 what aniconic film speech gets wrong about the end of the war, and what it gets veryright.

I’vewritten a few times previously inthis space about First Blood (1982), and specifically about John Rambo’s final speech tohis Vietnam War Colonel about his experiences during and after that conflict. I’dask you to check out both that prior post and that clip of Rambo’s speech (ifyou don’t already know it), and then come on back for a couple more thoughts.

Welcomeback! One frustrating part of Rambo’s speech is his reference to themyth of spitting protesters, which as I discuss at length in thathyperlinked post (quoting Jerry Lembcke’s excellent book TheSpitting Image) seems pretty clearly to have been invented longafter the fact (around the time of First Blood, in fact). But in termsof the end of the war, I think his angry assertion that “I did what I had to doto win, but somebody wouldn’t let us win!” is equally inaccurate and dangerous.I have to imagine that he’s referring to ideas like that of the controversial General CurtisLeMay, who wanted to “bomb [North Vietnam] back into the Stone Age.” I don’tthink many (if any) military strategists or historians believe such actionswould have “won” the war, but rather would have just caused infinitely moredeath and destruction while turning the Vietnamese people even more fullyagainst the United States. And in any case, to my mind the Vietnam War’s trajectoryand ending weren’t in the slightest about what “somebody” would or wouldn’t “let”the U.S. forces do—and defining the war as such both removes all agency fromthe Vietnamese and suggests that mass death and destruction would have beenpreferable.

So I don’tthink Rambo’s final speech gets the end of the war right, and I think it likewisegives into mythic us-vs.-them depictions of anti-war protesters. But one thingthis scene (and certainly Stallone’s excellent performance in it) capturesquite powerfully isthe PTSD that so many returning Vietnam vets suffered from, the impact oftheir experiences and memories on their (already challenging and fraught) livesback on the homefront. The speech’s tearful final lines, including such phrasesas “I can’t get it out of my head,” “sometimes I wake up and I dunno where Iam,” and “I dream of it every day for seven years,” puts a profoundly humanface and voice to those veterans’ issues—and the fact that that face and voicebelong to the badass physician specimen and warrior-type that was the youngSylvester Stallone only adds to our recognition that these challenges can anddid happen to everyone. While the end of the Vietnam War meant many things, herein the U.S. that’s what it truly meant, what all these vets brought home withthem—and First Blood gets that note very right.

Nextportrayal tomorrow,

Ben

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

April 28, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: The Mayaguez Incident

[On April30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in Saigon,a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. That conclusionhas been represented frequently & complicatedly in American media, so thisweek for its 50th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of suchrepresentations!]

On how amaritime crisis turned military conflict can be connected to the war’s end, andhow it should be separated from it.

Each ofthe other posts in this week’s series will focus on a cultural work—two films,a musical, and a song, although not in that order so you’ll have to keepreading I suppose!—that depicts the historical events around the end of theVietnam War, but today’s subject was a very real historical event in its ownright. On May12th, 1975, the American merchant ship the SS Mayaguezwas seized in disputed Southeast Asian waters by forces of the Khmer Rouge, theCambodian junta that had taken control of that nation’s government lessthan a month before (toppling the US-supported Khmer Republic in theprocess). The U.S. Marines mounted arescue operation, retook the ship, and besieged the nearby island of KohTang where the hostages were wrongly believed to be held, but were met with intenseresistance by Khmer Rouge forces. After extensiveand destructive battles with the Khmer Rouge that left dozens of Americansdead and many more wounded, the Marines were evacuated on May 15; the KhmerRouge would themselves releasethe unharmed hostages.

While theinitial seizure of the ship didn’t necessarily have to do with the end of theVietnam War a couple weeks before (the Mayaguez was apparently muchcloser to Cambodian/Khmer-controlled waters than it should have been), it’simpossible to say that the timing of the incident overall was coincidental. Inhis book TheLast Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War (2002),historian Ralph Wetterhahn traces just how focused PresidentGerald Ford and his National Security Council were on perceptions of theU.S. military and America as a whole in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawalof troops from notonly South Vietnam, but also Cambodia(which had been its own evacuation operation but one closely tied to theVietnam evacuation). In his book The Mayaguez Crisis, Mission Command, and Civil-Military Relations(2018), military historian Christopher Lamb quotes Vice President Nelson Rockefelleras arguing, “this will be seen as a test case,” and adding, “I think a violent responseis in order.” There can be no doubt that the administration saw the incident asa chance to rewrite the narrative of the Vietnam War’s conclusion—nor that therescue’s failures would instead amplify those images.

If that’show the Mayaguez incident was perceived in its own moment, it certainlyhas to be part of how we remember this history. But the main reason why Iwanted to include this real historical event in a weeklong series focused oncultural texts is that I think it’s important to add that this vision of the Mayaguezis likewise a narrative frame, rather than an intrinsic layer to the events themselves.While the U.S. had attackedCambodia in the course of the Vietnam War (illegallyattacked, I should add), the two nations were of course in actualityentirely distinct, and moreover the Khmer Rouge saw the North Vietnamese (as ofApril 1975 just the Vietnamese) regime as an enemy (and the two nations would infact go to war a fewyears later, contributing to the end of the Khmer Rouge’s rule). Moreover,while it’s questionable at best whether the North Vietnamese regime were “thebad guys” in the Vietnam War (I’d personally put HenryKissinger at the top of that list), the Khmer Rouge were quite simply oneof the mostbrutal regimes of the 20th century, making the U.S. conflictwith them quite distinct from the morass that was the Vietnam War. Allreminders that our narratives for historical events are often, if not always,just that.

Next portrayaltomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Representations of thewar you’d highlight? 

April 26-27, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Charles Richter

[125 yearsago this weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ve AmericanStudieda handful of seismic quakes, leading up to this special birthday post onRichter himself!]

On what’sexpected in Richter’s bio, what’s a good bit less so, and what to make of thecombo.

Many ofthe details in CharlesRichter’s (1900-1985) biography read like you would expect for a famousscientist overall and a prominent earthquake scientist in particular: grew upin Southern California and attended Stanford as an undergrad and Cal Tech as agrad student; after a brief stint at the Carnegie Institute for Science in DCreturned to California to work at the new Seismology Laboratory in Pasadenaunder the renowned German-American seismologist Beno Gutenberg; whiletogether there the pairof them collaborated in 1932 on a new standard scale to measure earthquakes(with Richter apparently the lead developer, given that the scale was andremains named after him specifically); and then a few years later, in 1937,Richter returnedto Cal Tech and taught and researched there for the rest of his career. Impressiveto be sure, but not a note different from what we might have drafted with onlythe knowledge that he was a seismologist who gave his name to a groundbreaking(last time this week, I promise) scientific measurement.

That mightstill be true of this more quirky detail from his LindaHall Library bio (authored by History Professor and Hall Library ConsultantWilliamB. Ashworth Jr.): “in 1966, when he was 66, he saw his first Star Trekepisode and was hooked; he became an ardent Trekkie and kept careful notes on everyone of the 79 original episodes of Star Trek that aired between 1966 and1969.” Not exactly rocket science (sorry, sorry) to imagine that a scientist wouldbe fascinated by this innovative and quitescientific (as such things go) sci fi show. But that same paragraph opensthis way: “Since the first full-scalebiography of Richter appeared a few years ago, Richter is now known for afew other things besides his scale. He and his wife Linda were ardent nudists inthe 1930s and 40s, when nudist camps were a brand-newAmerican phenomenon. Richter also seems to have had a secret passion forhis biological sister, Margaret.” “So Richter was clearly not your typical seismologist,”the paragraph concludes, in what I’d have to call an understatement.

I’m notsharing those latter details in an attempt to be salacious, I promise (andindeed, I’d say going to nudist camps with your wife isn’t particularlysalacious; the sister detail is of course different, and I won’t pretend toknow anything more than what I’ve shared). In part it’s that I learned themwhile researching this post, and I couldn’t imagine not including them once Ihad done so. But I’d say they and Richter’s bio overall prompts an interestingAmericanStudies kind of question: what are our rights and/or ourresponsibilities when it comes to personal details for public figures,particularly those who have passed away? Neither the nudism nor the potentialincest have the slightest bit to do with why we know Richter’s name; but ifknowing his name makes us want to learn about the man, then we’re likely tofind such details, or at least personal details that go far beyond whatever thepublic starting points might be. I’m not going to come up with an answer to allof this in my last couple lines here, but I’ll just add this: public figuresare also complicated private humans, like every last one of us, and that’s alesson well worth learning every chance we get.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 25, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Movies

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

Ontakeaways from three blockbuster films about catastrophic quakes.

1)     Earthquake (1974): Iwrote inthis post about the long history of disaster films (one of the mostenduring genres of blockbusters, in fact), and there’s never been a moment morefull of such movies than the 1970s. Indeed, production on Earthquake wasrushed in order to try to beat a competingdisaster film, The Towering Inferno, into theaters, and Earthquakedid come out about a month before Inferno so mission accomplished there.But what really makes Earthquake stand out is its use of agroundbreaking (bad pun once again intended) theatrical technology, “Sensurround,”in order to help audiences truly feel the titular disaster. Given that the filmfeatures a scene (available at the first hyperlink above) set in a movie theatreduring the earthquake, I can imagine that the blurring of art and reality wouldhave gotten real complicated for at least Southern California audiences.

2)     The Great Los AngelesEarthquake (1990): In his reviewof this film (which he calls The Big One, an alternate title), WashingtonPost critic Tom Shales explicitly connected it to the 1974 film, notingthat, “bad as it is, [it] does seem an improvement over the 1974 theatricalrelease Earthquake, which also fantasized the destruction of L.A.” Butwhat interests me most about the 1990 film is that it was made-for-TV, and yetclearly intended to be just as much of a blockbuster as that prior theatrical release—the1990 film cost more than $9 million, was made over a three-year period,included sequences filmed at the same Universal Studios lot where Earthquakehad been filmed, and so on. There’s been a lot written in recent years, quiterightly, about the shift from film to TV (including in how films themselves getdistributed and viewed), but this blockbuster TV movie from 1990 reminds usthat that process has been a multi-decade one to be sure.

3)     San Andreas (2015): Hollywoodwas far from done with big-screen blockbuster disaster movies, of course, asreflected by this 2015 film about a catastrophic quake that hits the SanFrancisco Bay Area, starring blockbuster big guy Dwayne Johnson himself (amongmany others in an over-stuffed cast as is typical for the genre). I don’t knowthat there’s too much more to say about this particular film, but I’d note that,to my knowledge, there hasn’t yet been a feature film made about the 1906 SanFrancisco earthquake and fire, a real-life disaster that was (as I wrote inMonday’s post) as full of compelling stories as any imaginary one could be. Iknow that period pieces can be trickier, and generally are a distinct genrefrom disaster films—but if we’re gonna keep telling these stories, we might aswell engage with the real ones.

Richterpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 24, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Haiti in 2010

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On twodistinct but interconnected ways to AmericanStudy a Caribbean catastrophe.

Firstthings first (and I know I offer this disclaimer often when I write aboutglobal events and issues, but I think it bears repeating each and every time):the horrific earthquake that hit Haiti in January2010 is a specific event and history, our understandings of and engagementswith which must be centered on that island nation and its people. The hundredsof thousands of Haitians killed and millions more uprooted, the hundreds ofthousands of destroyed or severely damaged homes and other buildings (includingthe NationalPalace), the urgent and still in many ways ongoing humanitariancrises that resulted from all those and many more effects; these tragedies haveto be framed and responded to as centrally and fundamentally Haitian, and nothingI say on an AmericanStudies blog is meant to redirect or minimize that attention.

Yet ofcourse the United States is linked to the rest of the world, and in some specificcases it’s even more clearly and significantly connected in ways that demand wealso engage such global stories in terms of what they help us see in ourselves.I’m not sure there’s any other nation of which that’s more true than Haiti: fromits early 19th century Revolution and the both inspiringand fraught effects of that event in the Early Republic U.S.; to the strikingnumber of 20th century moments in which the U.S. directly intervenedin Haitian politics, including an extended (nearlytwo-decade, in fact) occupation early in the century and an ambiguous but unquestionableinfluence on a coupat the turn of the next century; the United States and Haiti have played asprominent a role in each other’s histories over the last couple centuries asany two Western Hemisphere nations. When the U.S. helped spearhead relief and recoveryefforts after the quake, particularly the January 22nd “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon,that role has to be understood as in some way connected to these longstandingrelationships—whether a continuation of US interventions, guilt for thathistory, or some combination of the two and other factors as well.

But that’snot the only way to AmericanStudy the U.S.’s role in the earthquake’saftermath, and I would say it’s at least as meaningful to understand thismoment as part of a humanitarian foreign policy alternative to those histories ofglobalintervention and realpolitik influence. No American political leaderembodied that humanitarian perspective better than PresidentJimmy Carter (RIP), and Carter was of course still doing that humanitarian worklong after his presidency, including inHaiti with those affected by the earthquake. And while that humanitarianperspective and role can and should be extended anywhere in the world, it’sperhaps especially meaningful in a Western Hemisphere context—given the U.S.’shistory of interventions and interference, but also and maybe even moreimportantly given the conceptof creolization, of the ways in which we can even more fully parallel thehistories, communities, and identities of nations like the U.S. and Haiti. Inat least some ways, that is, the 2010 earthquake hit us as well.

Last quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?