Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 195

July 13-14, 2019: An Aliens and America Addendum

The Guest Post on The X-Files will be up next weekend, but in the meantime I just had to note one addendum to the series, and particularly to Monday’s post about the escapist role that alien conspiracy theories can play in our cultural consciousness:
As of this writing, more than 400,000 folks have signed up for a Facebook Event to “Storm Area 51” in order to “see them aliens.” Area 51 is, of course, in a border state, and thus not all that far away from the restricted concentration camps in which real, fellow humans are being held in some of the most inhuman conditions imaginable. Not sure I need to say any more about the contrast between this planned event and those unfolding realities.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?

July 12, 2019: Alien America: Close Encounters and Contact

[On July 8th, 1947, somethinghappened in Roswell, New Mexico. It was probably just a weather balloon (or like a really big condor), but ever since a not-insignificant community of Americans have believed that an alien landed there and was covered up by the US government. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Roswell and other cultural representations of aliens in America, leading up to a special weekend post on one of the most famous and influential such representations ever, The X-Files!]On two superficially similar films that feature very distinct portrayals of both America and aliens.Two of the most prominent cinematic representations of alien encounters feature similar title images of those encounters: Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Robert Zemeckis’ Contact (1997). Spielberg was a kind of mentor to Zemeckis, executive producing the younger director’s first two films (both released in the three years after Close Encounters), and so it’s quite possible that Contact (released almost exactly 20 years after Close Encounters) was partially intended as a tribute to the earlier film (although its title is drawn from Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel on which it’s based). And the two films do follow a fundamentally similar structure when it comes to those alien encounters [SPOILERS for the two films here and in the rest of this post]: opening with a partial and uncertain such encounter and then following a group of characters attempting to connect more definitively with these aliens and, in the film’s culminating scenes, able to do so more definitively.Yet when it comes to both those main characters and the aliens they encounter, Close Encounters and Contact differ in striking and significant ways. Spielberg’s film focuses on ordinary Americans, working-class protagonists (Richard Dreyfuss’s Roy Neary is an electrical lineman and Melinda Dillon’s JillianGuiler a working single mother) who are unexpectedly drawn into and fundamentally changed by the alien encounters and the broader universe they open up. Zemeckis’ film, on the other hand, focuses on scientists and parallel figures (Jodie Foster’s Dr. Ellie Arroway works for the SETI observatory and Matthew McConaughey’s Palmer Joss is a spiritual leader with a lifelong obsession with theories of alien life) who have long been concerned with the question of aliens and alien encounters by the time the film opens. That difference doesn’t simply mean that the two films portray quite distinct strata of American society (although they certainly do). It also means that they depict the question of alien encounters through very different perspectives and tones—for Spielberg’s characters, these are shockingly strange questions that reveal a universe they had never known and entirely shift their identities as a result; while for Zemeckis’, these are questions toward which their whole lives have been trending and the answers to which will determine whether their identities have been meaningful or ultimately misguided.Perhaps relatedly, the two films also portray the aliens themselves in very distinct ways. Close Encounter’s aliens l ook very much like our most common images of extraterrestrials—oddly shaped heads atop thin necks, very long fingers, and so on—and communicate in a language of their own, one featuring hand gestures as well as the film’s famous musical notes (courtesy of Spielberg’s favorite composer John Williams, natch). In Contact, on the other hand, we never really see the aliens, which is precisely the point: when Foster finally makes contact, the alien she meets chooses to take the form of her late father in order to connect with her more individually and intimately. Although we are meant to understand that he is indeed an alien (rather than simply a hallucination of Foster’s, as many of her peers believe), this choice nonetheless makes Contact’s alien encounter far more thematically focused on Foster’s character and identity than on the aliens themselves; while Dreyfuss in particular does become similarly obsessed with aliens in Close Encounters(eventually leaving with them at the film’s conclusion), their depiction nonetheless draws our attention to their striking form rather than simply his character. One more significant difference between these two cinematic representations of alien America.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other representations of aliens (in America or otherwise) you’d highlight?

July 11, 2019: Alien America: ID4

[On July 8th, 1947, something happened in Roswell, New Mexico. It was probably just a weather balloon (or like a really big condor), but ever since a not-insignificant community of Americans have believed that an alien landed there and was covered up by the US government. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Roswell and other cultural representations of aliens in America, leading up to a special weekend post on one of the most famous and influential such representations ever, The X-Files!]On the blockbuster that’s American in the worst, but perhaps also the best, senses.The weekend of July 4th, 1996, saw the release of a summer blockbuster that in its own ways changed the game just as fully as did Jaws. Independence Day (otherwise known as ID4) might not have been the first summer movie to emphasize over-the-top spectacle and special effects and catastrophic destruction and a barely-used ginormous cast and Will Smith makin’ jokes at inappropriate moments and etc., but maybe it was, and it certainly was one of the first to recoup its bloated budget thanks to all those elements (I assume; it sure wasn’t thanks to subtle, character-driven filmmaking). Although it did feature the always wonderful and criminally underused Judd Hirsch, so I suppose I can’t be too angry with Roland Emmerich’s behemoth of a blockbuster.On the other hand, the problems with ID4 go deeper than just special effects or budget, and connect very fully to some of the most frustrating and limiting American narratives. There would be plenty of thematic nits to pick, but I’m thinking specifically about the striking thread of American Exceptionalism that runs throughout the film. Ostensibly the alien invasion affects the whole world, and the film includes various establishing shots of worldwide destruction and subsequent communities of survivors in various national settings and garb. But the story is an American one, and not just in terms of the characters whom we follow—it’s the American scientist and American soldier who come up with the plan to save the day, the American pilots who take down the alien mothership, and, most crucially, the very American president who gives the speech to rally those troops and the whole world to the cause. When that president proclaims that “Today [the Fourth of July] we celebrate our independence day,” I suppose it could feel like he’s uniting the whole world—but it feels more like he’s just Americanizing the world, much like Hollywood itself has so often done.So on the whole, ID4 embodies some of the worst features of both the big-budget blockbuster and American excess. But there’s one particular thread that links a few characters and connects to a very different kind of national narrative. In their own ways, Jeff Goldblum’s scientist, Randy Quaid’s cropduster pilot, and Bill Pullman’s president are all, at the film’s opening, failures, men who have let down those for whom they are responsible (wife, children, and citizens, respectively). Since this is a crowd-pleasing action film, of course by the end all three have redeemed themselves—but the way they do it is still worth noting: not by heroic acts of rugged individualism (that’s left to the Fresh Prince and his alien-punches) but by collective effort, working with each other to become something better than what any of them had been and perhaps could have been on their own. That’s a blockbuster lesson well worth the price of admission.Last AlienStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other representations of aliens (in America or otherwise) you’d highlight?

July 10, 2019: Alien America: Brother from Another Planet

[On July 8th, 1947, something happened in Roswell, New Mexico. It was probably just a weather balloon (or like a really big condor), but ever since a not-insignificant community of Americans have believed that an alien landed there and was covered up by the US government. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Roswell and other cultural representations of aliens in America, leading up to a special weekend post on one of the most famous and influential such representations ever, The X-Files!]On a quote we would do well to collectively think about, and a film that would help us do so.As I’ve written about elsewhere, one of the difficulties of teaching courses in Ethnic American Literature is the tendency to reduce authors to representatives of overly broad ethnic categories: African American, Native American, Asian American, and so on. That tendency is of course in no way specific to classrooms or academia—most of our collective conversations about race and ethnicity depend quite precisely on our use of such categories, on the idea that everyone within them shares certain fundamental similarities. But even leaving aside the many distinct nations/heritages included in those categories, such use ignores the fact that, as scholars David Goldstein and Aubrey Thacker note in the introduction to their wonderful edited collection Complicating Constructions: Race, Ethnicity, and Hybridity in American Texts (2007), sociologists have long argued that “diversity within categories far exceeds diversity between categories.”Unfortunately, I can think of few works of mainstream popular culture that work to present such intra-category diversity—if anything, those works that are centrally interested in complicating our narratives of race and ethnicity tend to do so by challenging our sense of the relationships between, not those within, the different categories (I’m thinking of films like Crash and Do the Right Thing , for example). Ironically, it seems to me that Tyler Perry’s films, made by an African American filmmaker and featuring largely African American casts, are more interested in presenting the diversity of identities and experiences within that one community—but the irony is that Perry’s films attract a predominantly African American audience, which means that such messages might not get to other audiences that could benefit from them as well. All of which is to say that I believe there’s a significant opening for broadly accessible films, or other pop culture texts, that focus on diversity and identity within different American communities—and I’d like to nominate one here: John Sayles’ The Brother from Another Planet (1984).In Sayles’ film, an alien (Joe Morton) who happens to look African American crashes his spaceship in New York City; as he wanders through Harlem trying to get his bearings and survive (all while chased by a couple of special agents out to capture and investigate him), he interacts with many different members of the African American community (as well as other ethnicities and communities). Because the alien cannot speak, those encounters are largely driven by the assumptions and attitudes of the other people, which certainly allows the film to depict the role that such attitudes (and the stereotypes and definitions that come with them) play in society. But Sayles’ cross-section of Harlem and African American life is just as noteworthy for its complex and multi-faceted humanity; it shouldn’t be worth pointing out when a non-African American filmmaker or artist creates such a representation of the diversity within that community, but, well, I believe it is. There would be lots of ways to think more collectively and successfully about all the diversity within each American category, but Sayles’ film is certainly one unique, funny, and effective means through which to start doing so.Next AlienStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other representations of aliens (in America or otherwise) you’d highlight?

July 9, 2019: Alien America: E.T. and Aliens

[On July 8th, 1947, something happened in Roswell, New Mexico. It was probably just a weather balloon (or like a really big condor), but ever since a not-insignificant community of Americans have believed that an alien landed there and was covered up by the US government. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Roswell and other cultural representations of aliens in America, leading up to a special weekend post on one of the most famous and influential such representations ever, The X-Files!]On friendly and hostile extraterrestrials, and the real bad guys in any case.In the shape of his head, E.T.(star of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film of the same name) looks a tiny bit like a distant cousin of the mother alien (the “bitch,” that is) from James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). But that slight comparison is about the only possible way in which these two summer blockbusters aren’t wholly distinct from one another. E.T. is perhaps Spielberg’s most kid-centered film, from its youthful protagonists to its product placements for Reese’s Pieces and the good ol’ Speak and Spell, its drunken slapstick to its underlying theme of growing up in a single-parent household. While Alienshas to be one of the most adult, hard-R-rated summer blockbusters ever, featuring one nightmare-inducing, graphically violent and horrifying sequence and image after the next (to say nothing of the Space Marines’ extremely salty repartee).E.T. and Aliens aren’t just at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to their ratings and intended audiences, however. They also embody two entirely different perspectives on the question not of whether there is life other than our own in the universe (both films agree that there is), but of what attitude toward Earth and humanity those extraterrestials might hold. The summer blockbuster Independence Day (1994), about which I blogged here, explicitly engages with these contrasting perspectives, featuring a number of characters who believe the aliens might come in peace before their true, hostile intentions are revealed. Because of its status as a sequel to a film in which the alien creature could not be more hostile and destructive to humans, Aliens can dispense with the debate and move immediately into the story of how its human characters will combat the extraterrestrial threats. And by tying his extraterrestrial’s first entrance into the film to the creature’s love of Reese’s Pieces, Spielberg similarly signals from the start that his alien will be friendly to—indeed, overtly parallel to—his young protagonist Elliot.E.T. isn’t without antagonists, though—but they’re of the human variety, the community of threatening scientists and government officials who seek to capture and (if necessary) kill E.T. to learn his secrets (and who in the original film carry guns, not walkie talkies, in that pursuit). And in that sense, E.T. and Aliens aren’t quite as far apart as they might seem—because in the latter film’s major reveal (SPOILER alert), it turns out that Paul Reiser’s corporate scientist Carter Burke is far more overt of a villain than the aliens, who are after all only fighting for their own survival (rather than driven by greed and manipulation, and a willingness to sacrifice anyone who gets in their way, as Burke and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation for which he works are revealed to be). If there’s one thing on which such disparate summer blockbusters can apparently agree, it’s that the powers that be—whether corporate or governmental—represent a far greater threat, to humans and extraterrestrials alike, than any alien invaders. Next AlienStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other representations of aliens (in America or otherwise) you’d highlight?

July 8, 2019: Alien America: Roswell

[On July 8th, 1947, something happened in Roswell, New Mexico. It was probably just a weather balloon (or like a really big condor), but ever since a not-insignificant community of Americans have believed that an alien landed there and was covered up by the US government. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Roswell and other cultural representations of aliens in America, leading up to a special weekend post on one of the most famous and influential such representations ever, The X-Files!]On the longstanding, contemporary, and problematic sides to an otherworldly theory.Despite spending his whole life in Europe (nearly all of it in his native France), pioneering author Jules Verne seems to have understood quite well a longstanding American tendency: our obsession with space, and our ability to use that alien world as an escape when things are especially difficult or fearful here at home. Verne set his groundbreaking science fiction novel From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel Around the Moon (1870)in a post-Civil War America, one in which the adventurers of the Baltimore Gun Club hope to create a vehicle that can take them away from this troubled place and toward that extraterrestrial body. 150 years later, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s groundbreaking science fiction film Interstellar (2014) represents the latest version of this trend, using space travel and the possibilities of escape to other worlds as an alternative to climate change and inevitable destruction here on Earth.No historical moment better encapsulated this trend than the first decades of the Cold War. There’s a reason why President John F. Kennedy emphasized in a 1962 speech a successful American journey to the moon as a central goal for the decade—while that ambition was partly based on the practical fears of Soviet space domination inspired by Sputnik and the Space Race, I would argue that it also gave the nation yet another way to focus on the heavens as an escape from such terrestrial fears and concerns. Fifteen years prior to Kennedy’s speech, in the first years of the Cold War, a routine incident—the crash of an Air Force surveillance balloon near Roswell, New Mexico—had produced an even more elaborate escapist space fantasy, the suspicions and stories of a covered-up alien landing that would become one of the nation’s most extended and enduring conspiracy theories. From TV shows like the X-Files and Roswell (1999-2002) to a central sequence in the film Independence Day (1996), the Roswell theory has become a staple of American popular culture, a shorthand for both the belief in extraterrestrials and this broader fascination with the mysteries of space.That fascination seems silly and harmless at its worst, and (as with the very successful culmination of Kennedy’s and NASA’s 60s goals) productive and meaningful at its best. But NASA’s successes notwithstanding, I would argue that there is a more problematic side to the escapist space fantasies exemplified by the Roswell theory (besides the suspicious anti-government rhetoric it can engender and amplify, which is a recurring theme across many conspiracy theories). As he has done so often, Don Henley nicely summed up my thoughts on the matter, in the song “They’re Not Here, They’re Not Coming” from his album Workin’’ It (2000). Henley notes that such theories of alien encounters “carry our highest hopes and our darkest fears,” but recognizes them for the escapist fantasies that they are: “Now you long to be delivered from this world of pain and strife/That’s a sorry substitution for a spiritual life.” That last line is a bit more preachy than I would like, but I would agree with Henley’s concluding recommendation for what we must do instead, now more than ever: “Turn your hopes back homeward/Hold your children, dry their tears.”Next AlienStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other representations of aliens (in America or otherwise) you’d highlight?

July 6-7, 2019: The 4th of July in 2019

[In honor of the 4th of July—a holiday that, contrary to certain presidential proclamations, we’ve been celebrating for a good while now—this week’s series has highlighted various historical and cultural contexts for July 4. Leading up to this special weekend post on the 4th in 2019!]On what’s consistently true of the holiday, what feels new, and what to do about it.I’ve written a lot about critical patriotism over the last few years—hell, I even published a book largely dedicated to the concept—but even I have to admit that the other kind of patriotism, the easier and simpler and more jingoistic kind, will always be with us as well. And honestly that’s okay—while I believe critical patriotism is vitally important, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with more straightforward celebrations of the best of our national community and identity (at least not if they are complemented by expressions of that more critical type as well). I understand Samuel Johnson’s point about “the last refuge of a scoundrel” and all, but I also think there’s a natural and human thing about wanting to be part of a community, wanting to feel good about that community (not blindly or unthinkingly good, but still good), and wanting to come together to express that attitude every now and then. In that sense, I suppose 4th of July celebrations are really a bit like one very big block party—and as long as all the neighbors are invited and get to partake fully and equally in the good eats and the fireworks and whatnot, I’m all for a very big block party every so often.But what happens when that block party, despite having taken place every year for, y’know, centuries, is suddenly organized by that one new neighbor who fancies himself the community dictator and pretends that the whole party is in his honor? Well, even though we all know better, it’s hard not to feel that the block party has distinctly shifted in tone, turned into something uglier and darker through his presence and influence. Or, if we’re feeling a bit more cynical, like he has revealed sides to the party—and to the block—that we had managed not to focus on or feature at the parties (at least not for a good while). So while Trump was of course as nonsensical and a-historical as ever when he proclaimed this year’s July 4th celebrations as something new or different or Trump-tastic (I’m not gonna link to stories about this bs a second time, but the link is up in the intro above if you want to read more), I can’t say that he hasn’t revealed something uncomfortable about the holiday, just as he has revealed such things about the nation. Nor can I say that I’ll be able to cheer along to anthems and fireworks this year (I’m writing this post in March, although I know it’ll air post-holiday) with nearly the same enthusiasm as I have in years past. In many ways we’re living in Trump’s America, which does indeed make this Trump’s 4th (if not in the ways he’d like it to be, not in either case).So what do we do, those of us who don’t want to move out of the neighborhood and don’t want to cede the block party over to the neighborhood bully and his allies? That’s not a rhetorical question—I’m not gonna come up with some definitive answer in this paragraph, and I’d love to hear your thoughts as well, my fellow AmericanStudiers. Earlier in the week I mentioned the idea of sharing texts like Douglass’s speech as part of July 4th festivities, and I do think there’s real value in highlighting both patriotic and critically patriotic voices and words on the holiday—not abandoning the anthem or the Declaration or the like, but complementing them with voices and perspectives like Douglass’s. But of course that also can feel like preaching to the choir—and while I don’t think I can in any context preach to Trump or his hardest-core supporters, I would like to imagine 4th of July celebrations that can both celebrate America without being Trump-tastic and critique America without entirely losing large swaths of my fellow Americans. So how do we, to coin a phrase, make the 4th of July great again? How do we reclaim this holiday for the best versions of our nation and of patriotism? Again, I’d love to hear your thoughts, all!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other 4th of July histories or contexts you’d highlight?

July 5, 2019: 4th of July Contexts: “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”

[In honor of the 4th of July—a holiday that, contrary to certain presidential proclamations, we’ve been celebrating for a good while now—a series highlighting various historical and cultural contexts for July 4. Leading up to a special weekend post on the 4th in 2019!]On the stunning speech that challenges us as much today as it did 150 years ago.I’ve written many times, in this space and elsewhere, about the inspiring history of Elizabeth Freeman, Quock Walker, and their Revolutionary-era peers and allies. Freeman, Walker, their fellow Massachusetts slaves, and the abolitionist activists with whom they worked used the language and ideas of the Declaration of Independence and 1780 Massachusetts Constitution in support of their anti-slavery petitions and court cases, and in so doing contributed significantly to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. I’m hard-pressed to think of a more inspiring application of our national ideals, or of a more compelling example of my argument (made in the second hyperlinked piece above) that black history is American history. Yet at the same time, it would be disingenuous in the extreme for me to claim that Freeman’s and Walker’s cases were representative ones, either in their era or at any time in the two and a half centuries of American slavery; nor I would I want to use Freeman’s and Walker’s successful legal actions as evidence that the Declaration’s “All men are created equal” sentiment did not in a slaveholding nation include a central strain of hypocrisy.If I ever need reminding of that foundational American hypocrisy, I can turn to one of our most fiery texts: Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass’s speech is long and multi-layered, and I don’t want to reduce its historical and social visions to any one moment; but I would argue that it builds with particular power to this passage, one of the most trenchant in American oration and writing: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?” The subsequent second half of the speech sustains that perspective and passion, impugning every element of a nation still entirely defined by slavery and its effects. Despite having begun his speech by noting his “quailing sensation,” his feeling of appearing before the august gathering “shrinkingly,” Douglass thus builds instead to one of the most full-throated, confident critiques of American hypocrisy and failure ever articulated.As an avowed and thoroughgoing optimist, it’s far easier for me to grapple with Freeman’s and Walker’s use of the Declaration and the 4th of July than with Douglass’s—which, of course, makes it that much more important for me to include Douglass in my purview, and which is why I wanted to end this week’s series with Douglass’s speech. There’s a reason, after all, why the most famous American slave is undoubtedly Harriet Tubman—we like our histories overtly inspiring, and if we’re going to remember slavery at all, why not do so through the lens of someone who resisted it so successfully? Yet while Tubman, like Walker, is certainly worth remembering, the overarching truth of slavery in America is captured far better by Douglass’s speech and its forceful attention to our national hypocrises and flaws. And despite the ridiculous attacks over the last few years on “too negative” histories or “apologizing for America,” there’s no way we can understand our nation or move forward collectively without a fuller engagement with precisely the lens provided by Douglass and his stunning speech.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other 4th of July histories or contexts you’d highlight?

July 4, 2019: 4th of July Contexts: Born on the 4th of July

[In honor of the 4th of July—a holiday that, contrary to certain presidential proclamations, we’ve been celebrating for a good while now—a series highlighting various historical and cultural contexts for July 4. Leading up to a special weekend post on the 4th in 2019!]On three evolutions of a classic, complex American phrase.To my knowledge, the phrase “born on the 4th of July” first appeared in “The Yankee Doodle Boy”(usually known as “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy”), a song that first appeared in George M. Cohan’s musical Little Johnny Jones (1904) and became most famous through James Cagney’s performance of it (as Cohan himself) in the film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). In this context, the phrase is a straightforward as it seems, capturing the speaker’s stereotypical all-American identity, an unironic embrace of the mythology that is amplified by every line in Cohan’s song: “I’m glad I am/So’s Uncle Sam”; “Yanks through and through/Red, white, and blue”; “A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam”; and so on. I suppose it’s possible to read the song’s question about this identity—“Oh say can you see/Anything about my pedigree that’s phony?”—as a recognition of its over-the-top embrace of stereotypical patriotism, but I don’t know that anything in the song, musical, or Cohan’s career and work warrants that kind of ironic reading.At the other end of the irony spectrum is the use of Cohan’s phrase in a searing autobiographical work published in the nation’s bicentennial year: Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July (1976). Kovic, a Vietnam veteran turned antiwar protester, was indeed born on July 4th, 1946; but in his memoir that coincidence becomes a multi-layered metaphor for both the myths and ideals that contributed to his volunteering for service during the Vietnam War and the realities and gaps of his experiences in that conflict and upon his return home as a wounded veteran. As he puts it in a new introduction for a 2005 re-issue of the book, “I wanted people to understand. I wanted to share with them as nakedly and openly and intimately as possible what I had gone through, what I had endured. I wanted them to know what it really meant to be in a war, … not the myth we had grown up believing.” While the myths of war about which Kovic writes were no doubt due in part to the very specific, post-World War II context of his birth and childhood, they’ve also been a part of our national mythos since the war with which our nation originated, a connection captured potently by Kovic’s evocation of July 4th.Oliver Stone’s award-winning 1989 film version of Born on the Fourth of July, adapted for the screen by Kovic himself (along with Stone), certainly represents another evolution of the phrase, one in which it ironically returned to a Cohanesque mainstream popular culture prominence (thanks in no small measure to the film’s breakout performance by its movie star leading man). Yet I want to highlight as well a more recent use of the phrase, one that exemplifies a more detached, less socially critical form of irony. In a middle verse of The Killer’s song “Sam’s Town” (2006), which opens their concept album of the same name, the speaker portrays his family’s iconic American identity thusly: “I still remember Grandma Dixie’s wake/I’d never really known anybody to die before/Red, white, and blue upon a birthday cake/My brother he was born on the fourth of July and that’s all.” Coupled with a preceding line, “Running through my veins an American masquerade,” this verse seems to offer the first steps toward a layered critique of American mythology to complement Kovic’s. Yet while the remainder of Sam’s Town is engaging rock and roll, socially or historically aware it is not—and indeed, the band’s frontman Brandon Flowers critiqued Green Day’s American Idiotalbum and tour for attacking America. [Although, as I highlighted earlier this year, The Killers’ new song and video are overtly and stunningly political, so they seem to have evolved on this score.] By the 21st century, perhaps, the phrase “born on the fourth of July” has come to capture most fully the cypher that is American popular culture.Last July 4thcontext tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 4th of July histories or contexts you’d highlight?

July 3, 2019: 4th of July Contexts: Fireworks

[In honor of the 4th of July—a holiday that, contrary to certain presidential proclamations, we’ve been celebrating for a good while now—a series highlighting various historical and cultural contexts for July 4. Leading up to a special weekend post on the 4th in 2019!]On the history, symbolism, and limitations of an American tradition.As detailed in this Slate article, the intersection of fireworks and the 4th of July literally goes back to the first, 1777 celebrations of the holiday (the first because in 1776 July 4thwas the date of the Declaration’s actual dissemination and readings, rather than a holiday commemorating that occasion). I’ll have more to say about the John Adams letter referenced in that piece in my weekend post, so here I’ll keep this paragraph short and say that you should certainly check out that Slate piece by senior editor Forrest Wickmanfor a clear, concise depiction of the longstanding histories (both American and international) of fireworks.While fireworks might have been present from those earliest Independence Day celebrations on, however, I would argue that their July 4th symbolism really took hold after the War of 1812, and more exactly after Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the aftermath of the side of Fort McHenry during that conflict. After all, the central image of our national anthem is a contrasting visual one, of seeing the flag through the darkness—eventually “by the dawn’s early light,” but even more importantly by the glow of “the bombs bursting in air” that “gave proof through the night.” It’s a compelling and powerful image, the idea of a light in the darkness that allows us to keep an eye on our national ideals. And whether fireworks actually create a flag of fiery lights (as they often do for the 4th) or simply burst in the night sky for our collective vision and inspiration, they capture this defining national image in a visceral and affecting way.Visceral and affecting as fireworks might be, however, what they are not is thought-provoking; indeed, as with many spectacular entertainments, they require us not to think at all in order to get the most pleasure from their spectacle. To be clear, as a fan of Star Wars and the James Bond films, among many other spectacles, I don’t have any problem with such entertainments being part of our culture and society. But as a commemoration of our nation’s independence day, such a spectacle does seem to represent another example of what I’ve elsewhere described as the easy form of patriotism, the kind that asks nothing more of us than our awed appreciation. So while such awe can and perhaps should be a part of our July 4th celebrations, I’d love if there were space as well for more reflective engagement with our history and community. Am I arguing for Frederick Douglass-shaped fireworks? Maybe not—but I could definitely get behind a brief reading from “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” before every July 4th fireworks ceremony. Give it a couple years and it’d be just as much a part of the tradition as those fiery bombs bursting in air.Next July 4thcontext tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 4th of July histories or contexts you’d highlight?