Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 197

June 20, 2019: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Tammar Stein’s YA Novels

[I’ve got some very talented friends and colleagues. So for this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight works by friends old and new and colleagues at FSU (I’m a poet and I don’t know it!). Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year, so make sure to share your Beach Read nominations, please!]I met Tammar Laufer at a multi-family dinner right before the start of 8th grade, and we were pretty close for the next few years. College took us in separate directions as it tends to, but I distinctly remember getting together to exchange short stories the summer after our first years, and being blown away by Tammar’s story about a college student studying astronomy. I’m pretty sure that story eventually became a starting point for Light Years (2005), the first of Tammar (who publishes as Tammar Stein)’s now six acclaimed and award-winning young adult novels. All of them seem well worth your time, on or off the beach, and they occupy different genre niches so you’re likely to find one that hits your sweet spot; I’m particularly drawn by its description to High Dive (2008), which looks to be a unique exploration of multi-generational family histories, cultures, and identities through the genre of a road trip novel. In any case, I’m proud to say I knew this award-winning YA novelist back in the day, and would be proud to see her books on the beach this summer!Last Beach Read tomorrow,BenPS. What are you bringing to the beach this year or would you recommend we bring?

June 19, 2019: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God

[I’ve got some very talented friends and colleagues. So for this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight works by friends old and new and colleagues at FSU (I’m a poet and I don’t know it!). Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year, so make sure to share your Beach Read nominations, please!]Like yesterday’s subject Emily Page, Lauren Winner and I were in the Charlottesville public schools together—but she was a year ahead of me and I didn’t know her nearly as well. But I could tell she was headed for big things, and I wasn’t wrong—Lauren is now an Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke University Divinity School, and has become one of our most prominent and thoughtful voices on all things religion in 21st century American society. Her personal and public scholarly writing for sites such as Beliefnetand Christianity Today was an early model for my own forays into public scholarship, and her books likewise blend memoir, public scholarship, and theological philosophy. From what I can tell you can’t go wrong with any of those books, but a particularly good fit for a Beach Read would be her first, Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life (2002). A memoir of her conversion from Judaism to Christianity, Girlis also a nuanced examination of spirituality and identity in our fraught and fractured 21st century world. And it’s pretty darn funny at the same time, which is key for any good Beach Read and certainly one that deals with such weighty topics.Next Beach Read tomorrow,BenPS. What are you bringing to the beach this year or would you recommend we bring?

June 18, 2019: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Emily Page’s Fractured Memories

[I’ve got some very talented friends and colleagues. So for this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight works by friends old and new and colleagues at FSU (I’m a poet and I don’t know it!). Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year, so make sure to share your Beach Read nominations, please!]If you think I’ve known yesterday’s subject Ian Williams for a good while (and I have—we met at FSU’s new faculty orientation in September 2005), well how about this: I’ve known Emily Page since at least 7th grade, when we shared a homeroom in Charlottesville’s Buford Middle School. Which is why it was extra special to see Emily (who works as an artist and tattoo artist in North Carolina) complete and publish her first book, Fractured Memories . Combining her artistic talents and works with her experiences as the daughter of a father with dementia, Fractured Memories is at one and the same time raw, moving, and personal and abstract, experimental, and evocative. It’s a pretty big book (coffee table book size, really), so you’ll need a big bag to bring it to the beach with you—but who doesn’t already bring a big bag to the beach?? And whether you’re interested in the visual arts or memoirs, in avant garde imagery or explorations of aging and family, you’ll find something to keep your Beach Reading attention fully held in Emily Page’s Fractured Memories.Next Beach Read tomorrow,BenPS. What are you bringing to the beach this year or would you recommend we bring?

June 17, 2019: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Ian Williams’s Reproduction

[I’ve got some very talented friends and colleagues. So for this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight works by friends old and new and colleagues at FSU (I’m a poet and I don’t know it!). Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year, so make sure to share your Beach Read nominations, please!]I’ve written about my friend and former FSU colleague Ian Williams in at least three distinct posts here, including one in a prior Beach Reads series no less. But if you thought that I’d let the occasion of the publication of Ian’s first novel pass without highlighting it here—well, I don’t imagine you thought that, and you were right. I haven’t had a chance to read Reproduction (2019) yet, but even without the laundry list of praise from amazing fellow writers on that Random House (!) website, I know that this novel will be both deep and fun, and thus a perfect Beach Read that’ll stick with you long after the sunscreen has washed away. If Ian isn’t already a very big deal (and he really is), he’s soon gonna be, and it’s been a honor to watch every step of this amazing career (to date) unfold. Let’s bring the latest step to our summer getaways!Next Beach Read tomorrow,BenPS. What are you bringing to the beach this year or would you recommend we bring?

June 15-16, 2019: Boxing and America: Boxing Movies

[On June 13th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to this weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]On how three boxing movies present multi-layered, complex American themes.1)      Raging Bull (1980): Longtime readers of this blog will remember that I’m not a big fan of Martin Scorcese’s films; while that post focused mostly on his Mafia/crime films, many of the same critiques would apply to his boxing film Raging Bull (which even starred two of his favorite crime-film actors, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci). But interestingly enough, I would say that this earlier Scorcese film (which to be clear I only watched once, many many years ago) is better able to turn a critical lens on the toxic masculinity of its protagonist than are his later movies (which too often, I would argue, celebrate that masculinity even as they portray its downfall). Indeed, in many ways it is Jake Lamotta’s toxic temper and violence that undo his athletic and American success—and while the same could be argued for many Scorcese characters, to my mind Raging Bull, not coincidentally a film about one of our most violent sports, explores those themes more overtly and compellingly than do his other works.2)      Million Dollar Baby (2004): Clint Eastwood’s directorial efforts have explored masculinity, toxic and otherwise, since at least the greatness that is Unforgiven (1992); if in recent years his protagonists (usually played by Eastwood himself) have gotten a bit more racist than I’d prefer, I suppose we could call that another layer of 21st century American toxic masculinity. But interestingly enough, Eastwood’s film about boxing focuses instead on one of his few female leading characters, Hilary’s Swank’s Maggie Fitzgerald. Moreover, while Eastwood does also appear as Maggie’s grizzled, reluctant trainer Frankie Dunn, the film’s surprising plot twists end up leading to a focus on Frankie as a father-figure to Maggie, and one who is forced to deal with some of the most difficult and emotional questions a parent could ever face. And not just a parent—given the brutal nature of boxing, it seems likely that many if not most trainers eventually have to decide between the health and safety and the athletic successes of their fighters, maxing Million a compelling twist on the boxing film as well. 3)      The Fighter (2010): I’ve written elsewhere in this space about David O. Russell’s pair of quirky sports films, with The Fighter the slightly more conventional of the two (I know it’s a bit of a stretch to call Silver Linings Playbook a sports film, but I do think it qualifies). As a slightly more conventional sports film, Fighter features a lot of familiar themes: a hero who overcomes seemingly impossible odds, narratives of lost potential and failure and second chances and redemption, a romantic relationship that offers vital support. But thanks to Christian Bale’s virtuoso turn as Dicky Eklund, Russell’s film is also able to grapple with a couple of distinct social issues: life and poverty in a post-industrial American city like Lowell (MA); and drug addiction and its multi-layered effects. The stunning sequence where an imprisoned Dicky watches a documentary about himself, believing it will focus on his own past boxing glories but gradually realizing it depicts instead the depths to which his life has sunk, reflects the cultural and social layers to this unique boxing and sports film.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other boxing films (or stories or histories) you’d highlight?

June 14, 2019: Boxing and America: Tyson and Celebrity

[On June 13th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]On three stages in the bizarre public arc of a 1980s boxing champion.American athletes had also been (or at least had the potential to be) celebrities since at least Babe Ruth’s era, if not indeed that of the first professional football player, Pudge Heffelfinger. But the mid-20th century rise of the television age brought enhanced such possibilities for athletic celebrity (with my Wednesday subject Muhammad Alia prime example; seriously, just watch the first couple minutes of that hyperlinked 1963 interview and you’ll see just how much the camera loved Ali [then still known as Cassius Clay] and vice versa), and the late 20th century emergence of the multimedia and cable news era brought even more opportunities for telegenic athletes to become global celebrities. Magic and Michael in basketball, Doc and Darryl in baseball, and Montana and Marino in football were all great examples of that trend in the 1980s, but I’m not sure any 80s athlete became more famous than heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. At the height of his boxing success Tyson was making as much as $25 million for a single fight, and raking in far more than that in endorsements and television rights and the like.Some of the other 80s athletes I mentioned dealt publicly (and have continued to deal) with serious issues (especially drugs for Doc Gooden and, later, AIDS for Magic Johnson), but of that cohort only Mike Tyson went to prison for a violent crime. By 1992 Tyson had undergone a serious of public failures, including his 1988 divorce from actress Robin Givens (after she accused him of spousal abuse, in a televised interview, natch) and his 1990 upset loss of his heavyweight title to Buster Douglas. But it was a 1991 accusation of rape by Miss Black America contestant Desiree Washington that led to Tyson’s February 1992 jury conviction of that crime and his three-year prison sentence with the Indiana Department of Corrections. That jail time was in no way the end of Tyson’s boxing career, however: at least some of those aforementioned ginormous paychecks came for fights after Tyson’s release from prison, which reveals (among other things) the extent of his celebrity, the degree to which such uber-celebrity is always driven by a desire to watch potential trainwrecks unfold, and the lack of seriousness with which American culture takes the crime of rape. Not surprisingly, this second act in Tyson’s boxing career ended with another shockingly violent moment (ie, not the usual boxing violence about which I wrote on Monday, but unsanctioned such violence), this one in the ring.That 1997 scandal more or less ended Tyson’s pro boxing career; but his career as a public celebrity has continued and even deepened in the two decades since. There have been various signal moments along the way of this unfolding third act, but I think a particularly salient one would be Tyson’s surprise guest starring role in the blockbuster comedy film The Hangover (2009). Tyson was, of course, playing himself in that film, or perhaps purposefully playing an even-crazier (and apparently heavily drugged) doppelganger of himself. Our inability to be sure about which of those possibilities was the case, and indeed the blurring of the line between Tyson’s actual self and the performance of that self in public (see also: his appearance at the roast of Charlie Sheen, which began with Tyson accurately quoting William Shakespeare, again natch), seems to be precisely the point. At least from this outsider’s perspective, the world of boxing overall (at least at its most publicly famous level) feels as if it has become quite close to reality television in the last couple decades, and so this third iteration of Mike Tyson, while far from the boxing ring, might well be one more stage of athletic celebrity.Boxing films this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 13, 2019: Boxing and America: Cinderella Man and the Depression

[On June 13th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]On two different and complementary narratives of hope in one of America’s darkest times.For us AmericanStudiers who are interested in the question of how hope can be found and kept in our darkest moments (a question that, shall we say, has never felt as salient to me as it does in 2019), it’s a good idea to examine closely the histories of particular such moments, and to consider specifically how and where narratives of hope were created or can be found in them. I did that in part—if somewhat implicitly—in this 2012 series on bad American memories and how we engage with them, since most such engagements (at least for a criticial optimist like me) try to find the possibility of meaning and hope in the face of those dark histories. Those memories were generally tied to particular communities, though (if, as I argued, still broadly and nationally relevant), and so it’s worth examining as well our most collectively shared dark moments. And certainly at the top of that list, to my mind competing only with the Civil War in its breadth of impact, would have to be the economic, social, and communal nadir that was the Great Depression.From literally the first moment of his presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to the Depression by creating a narrative of a hope in an original and striking way. In the opening paragraph of his 1932 inaugural address, Roosevelt “first of all … assert[ed his] firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The line, like the tone of the whole speech, was as somber and serious as the moment demanded; but it’s an argument for hope nonetheless, one that suggests quite explicitly that the absence of hope (the opposite of it, even) represents a far worse threat than any economic or social realities could. Nearly a decade later, Roosevelt extended and amplified that idea, making “freedom from fear” one of his core “Four Freedoms” to which all Americans and all citizens of the world are entitled. Roosevelt’s emphasis on fear, on the dark and negative side of the emotional spectrum, connects directly to the central point of my fourth book: that we can’t find genuine hope until we admit and engage with the darkest realities and histories, and the emotions that they engender.Obviously I believe in the value of that engagement—but I also recognize the need, at our darkest moments in particular, for feel-good stories, for histories that can inspire hope because they represent the best of what we can be and do. The depths of the Depression produced many such stories in America, and none was more famous nor more inspiring than that of Irish American boxer James J. Braddock, whose epic comeback tale was portrayed in the film Cinderella Man (2005). Braddock’s story offered Americans hope for at least two key reasons: he and his family had experienced the same desperate situation and poverty of so many of their peers, making him a truly representative everyman; and yet he had literally fought his way out of those conditions, becoming heavyweight champion from 1935 to 1937 and embodying the sense that the future was not determined nor circumscribed by the worst of the past and present. What Braddock seemed to exemplify, that is, was what Americans and America could achieve once they had faced down their worst fears and found their way through them to the hard-earned freedom for which Roosevelt argued.Last boxing day tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 12, 2019: Boxing and America: Ali and the Draft

[On June 13th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]On what led up to a pivotal 1967 moment, what it changed, and why it still matters.From the first moments of his professional boxing career in 1960 (when he was only 18 years old), Cassius Clay was known as much for his brash and bold attitude and statements as for his dominating performances in the ring. Apparently inspired in part by a fortuitous conversation with professional wrestler “Gorgeous George” Wagner, Clay consistently used press conferences and interviews to belittle his opponents and boast of his own prowess. While his 1964 name change to Muhammad Ali was driven by his personal spiritual conversion to Islam and evolving relationship with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, Ali nonetheless used that occasion to make similarly striking statements about American history and society, calling Cassius Clay “my slave name” and arguing that “I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.” Given these statements, Ali’s announcement two years later, when notified that he was now eligible for the draft (after having previously failed the army’s qualifying test), that he would pursue conscientious objector status and refuse to be drafted, and his remark that “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong,” represented one more step in this outspoken life and career.Yet while that 1966 announcement, and Ali’s subsequent April 1967 draft resistance and arrest in Houston, were thus not at all unprecedented, they nonetheless produced significant, lasting shifts in his career and image. On the one hand, Ali’s courageous stance cost him four years in the prime of his career and athletic prowess—his boxing licenses were stripped by every state after the arrest, and Ali was unable to obtain a license or box professionally again until the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Clay v. United States upheld his conscientitous objector status and overturned his conviction. Given the relatively short window in which a professional boxer can generally stay viable in the sport, it’s difficult to overstate the value (financial and otherwise) of this lost time in Ali’s career. At the same time, Ali shifted much more overtly and fully into the status of an activist and public intellectual over those years, giving speeches across the country along the lines of his 1967 “Black is Best” speech at Howard University (a speech given in support of the university’s Black Power movement, an alliance that Ali not coincidentally formed during this same period of his career). I don’t mean to suggest that such speeches or events in any direct way compensated Ali for his lost time or success as a boxer; instead, it’s more accurate to say that Ali’s public image and role shifted over these years, and that shift would endure long after both his 1971 reinstatement and 1981 retirement from the sport.Ali’s enduring role as a late 20th and early 21st century public activist thus provides one important reason to remember the moment when he began to make that shift in earnest. But I would also argue that Ali’s 1967 civil disobedience offered a profoundly distinct model of athlete activism than any that had come before. There had of course been athletes whose very identity and public image represented a challenge to national and white supremacist narratives, such as Ali’s boxing predecessor Jack Johnson. And there had been those like Jackie Robinson whose groundbreaking sports careers themselves became a form of activism against the racist status quo. But to my knowledge, Ali’s draft resistance and his statements in support of that position took athlete activism in America to a new, much more publicly engaged level, one far beyond any sports-specific context. A more public form of athlete activism that quite possibly influenced the following year’s Olympic Black Power salute in Mexico City, and that certainly is worth linking to a contemporary example such as Colin Kaepernick’s ongoing protests and public activisms (and the shocking level of vitriol Kaepernick has received in response, from within the NFL just as much as outside of it). In all those ways, Muhammad Ali’s 1967 act of civil disobedience was a watershed moment in American society as well as its sports culture.Next boxing day tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 11, 2019: Boxing and America: Jack London and Jack Johnson

[On June 13th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]On an ugly moment when white supremacy took precedence over athletic supremacy.I was super excited when I was invited to review Cecelia Tichi’s book Jack London: A Writer’s Fight for a Better America (2015) for the American Historical Review. There were lots of reasons for my excitement, including how important Tichi’s book Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America (1987) was for my development as an AmericanStudier, and how much I appreciated her goal in this new project of recuperating London as a public intellectual (and thus a model for that role in 21st century America as well). But I was also just super excited to learn more about London, whom I knew largely as the author of hugely popular boys’ adventures stories about wolves and sailors and that one incredibly realistic and depressing story about a man who needs to build a fire in order to keep from freezing to death and the dog who becomes a witness to the unfolding horrors (all of which of course was a central rationale behind Tichi’s attempt to recreate the more socially and politically engaged sides of London as both a writer and a public figure).I’m not trying to dwell on my one criticism of Tichi’s book here, but it turned out that one of the things I learned about London was a frustratingly bigoted moment that Tichi understandably but problematically minimized in her project. She did note (if still to my mind a bit too briefly) London’s lifelong fascination with Social Darwinism and that philosophy’s consistently hierarchical and racist worldviews; but it was in response to the controversial (at least for white supremacists) rise of early 20th century African American boxing champion Jack Johnson that London would articulate much more overtly his own racism. In December 1908 Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight champ, defeating the reigning champ Tommy Burns, and that historic moment led London to implore a retired white champion to return to the ring and defend his race. Covering the 1908 fight as a syndicated sportswriter, London concluded his column, “But now one thing remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his [Burbank, CA] Alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you. The White Man must be rescued.”Initially reticent, Jeffries did eventually emerge from retirement, facing Johnson in a July 4th, 1910 championship bout in Reno. Jeffries was by this time so out of shape that “bout” probably isn’t the word, though, as he was quickly knocked down for the first time in his career and threw in the towel at that point. Given that white Americans often find reasons to riot in both sporting events and racism (although not usually at the same time), it’s unfortunately no surprise that Johnson’s victory led to riots around the country that left a handful of African Americans dead and many more injured (riots, I’ll note, that to this day, when they’re remembered at all, are usually and all too typically described with that deeply loaded phrase “race riot”). Perhaps it should be no more surprising that when an African American athlete reached the pinnacle of his sport, theories of physical prowess and the survival of the fittest gave way to white supremacist bigotry and ignorance, even from an otherwise intelligent and (as Tichi convincingly argues) socially progressive figure like Jack London. But it’s still frustrating to see how powerful such white supremacist nonsense can be—although it’s also deeply satisfying to see it literally and figuratively knocked on its ass. Next boxing day tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 10, 2019: Boxing and America: A Clear but Troubling Association

[On June 13th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]On why AmericanStudiers can’t forget the sweet science, and why I wish we could.If I were going to make the case for boxing’s crucial significance in American history and identity, I would start here: the story of African American life in the 20thcentury can be pretty succinctly told through the sequence of Jack Johnson to Joe Louis to Sugar Ray Robinson to Muhammad Ali to Mike Tyson (three of whom will be focal points for later posts in this series, not coincidentally). Or maybe I would note how many great films use boxing as a metaphor for American history and identity, from The Champ (1931) to On the Waterfront (1954), Raging Bull (1980) to Cinderella Man (2005), Rocky (1976) to Rocky Balboa (2006), and dozens more besides (a handful of which will also non-coincidentally be the focus of the special weekend post). Or maybe I’d talk about all the resonances of the Hurricane—the boxer, the song, the movie (and perhaps Denzel’s best performanceto date), the history. In any case, as this week’s series will hopefully illustrate, boxing and America seem profoundly and permanently intertwined.Before I get into the rest of that series, however, I have to admit that I’ve got a couple problems with that association. For one thing, and it’s an obvious thing I guess but a hard one to get around, boxing is so thoroughly and unavoidably violent and destructive. I wrote a post my 2014 Super Bowl series on the necessary hypocrisy that comes with watching football these days, given what we have learned and continue to learn about the sport’s impacts on the bodies and (especially) brains of those playing it; I went even further in this post on MMA fighting. As with MMA, in the case of boxing such violent impact is not only part of the sport, it’s the most central and consistent part—and indeed, the point of the sport is for each participant to try to be more violent than his or her opponent, to damage that opponent sufficiently that he or she cannot continue. To be honest, the nickname “the sweet science” seems to me to exist in part to mask the fundamental reality that boxing is neither sweet nor scientific, but instead (or at least especially) a savage test of who can sustain the most violence and pain.It’s hard for me to argue that such a sport should occupy a prominent role in 21stcentury American society and culture. Of course, it’s also undeniable that boxing has already lost much of its prior prominence, a change that has been due not to its violence (since again the even more violent Ultimate Fighting is extremely popular at the moment) as much as to the impression that the sport is profoundly corrupt. And that’s my other problem with the role of boxing in narratives of American history and identity—we may have recently become more aware of the role that corrupt promoters and organizations, judges and paydays, and the like play in the world of boxing, but as far as I can tell those realities have been part of the sport for as long as it has existed. Of course America has always had its fair share of corruption and greed as well, but do we want a nationally symbolic sport that emphasizes those qualities? It’d be the equivalent of the Black Sox scandal being the norm in baseball, rather than a glaring exception. I can’t deny boxing’s role in our past and identity, but I can’t pretend I don’t find that more than a little disturbing.Next boxing day tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?