Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 263

April 7, 2017: NeMLA Recaps: The Reginald F. Lewis Museum

[A couple weeks back, we held the 48th annual Northeast MLA Conventionin Baltimore. Thanks to the work of President Hilda Chacón, Executive Director Carine Mardorossian, and many many more, the convention went off beautifully. This week I’ll follow up on five particular events and conversations—add your thoughts, whether you were there or not, in comments, please!]On three exemplary and inspiring sides to the wonderful Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History & Culture. 1)      The Lynching Tree: Like the city and state in which it’s located, the Lewis Museum features a wide and deep range of African American and American histories, from slavery and shipbuilding to sharecropping and jazz, Civil War soldiers to boxers, and many many more besides. But I was particularly struck by how the museum presented the histories of lynching—after reading materials and placards on those histories, visitors enter into a secluded, dark room under the low-hanging eaves and branches of wizened tree, and watch a powerful looping video of lynching images and stories. I haven’t had a chance yet to visit the National Museum of African American History & Culture, and can’t wait to see how the National Lynching Museum & Memorial develops; but in my experience, the Lewis Museum’s lynching exhibit was more evocative and potent than any I’ve encountered. Remembering lynching is about a highly complex and fraught balance of pain, discomfort, knowledge, and mourning, and I felt all those sides to the story under the branches of the Lewis Museum’s tree.2)      Past and Present: While that lynching exhibit is rightly focused on a particular set of histories, however, the Lewis Museum’s overall exhibition m.o. is quite different. Materials and artifacts from https://www.google.com/intl/en/options/the 19thcentury or earlier are usually exhibited right next to, indeed in conversation with, photographs or artifacts from the more recent past or even our own moment. These materials are always related to one another (such as artifacts of slave shipbuilding in Frederick Douglass’ era next to photographs of mid-20thcentury African American shipwrights), and so offer narratives of continuity as well as change. The exhibits don’t usually make those narratives explicit in any way, though, instead asking viewers and visitors to think actively about the relationship between the materials, and thus between past and present, then and now. I’m tempted to call such exhibits Living History, but I think the effect is actually more multi-directional than that—not only bringing histories to life in our own moment, that is, but also putting our own moment back into conversation with the legacies and heritages out of which it has arisen. And whatever we call it, this exhibition motif is consistently both thought-provoking and moving.3)      Sons: When my NeMLA colleague and friend John Caseyhad the chance to visit the Lewis Museum, the special exhibition (ongoing through the end of July) was Sons: Seeing the Modern African American Male. Featured the photographs of James Taliaferro, Sons highlights multi-generational African American families from the Baltimore area, with the explicit goal of representing the many different sides to manhood and masculinity in that community in our 21st century moment. Given on the one hand the prominence of the museum’s namesake and Baltimore native Reginald F. Lewis in such conversations, and on the other hand the ongoing and very distinct presence of African American men like Baltimore’s Freddie Gray in the news, the exhibition felt particularly salient in many ways. Yet what struck me most about Sons was the same thing I highlighted about the Boston MFA’s 2015 Gordon Parks exhibit: the fundamental, inescapable humanity of these photographic subjects. Even for those of us who resist all racist or discriminatory definitions, the truth is that a category like race all too easily reduces individuals and families to types, representations of larger communities. We’re certainly all that, but we’re also all individuals, and all sons and daughters as well. That’s a simple point but not an easy one always to remember, and this wonderful exhibit helped me do just that.Special reflection post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other NeMLA memories to share?

April 6, 2017: NeMLA Recaps: Creative Reading and Keynote Address

[A couple weeks back, we held the 48th annual Northeast MLA Conventionin Baltimore. Thanks to the work of President Hilda Chacón, Executive Director Carine Mardorossian, and many many more, the convention went off beautifully. This week I’ll follow up on five particular events and conversations—add your thoughts, whether you were there or not, in comments, please!]On the complementary, crucial messages of the conference’s two featured speakers.A conference with as many attendees (more than 1800 at Baltimore) and panels (nearly 500 at Baltimore), featuring as many distinct disciplines and fields and even languages, as NeMLA is never going to have a single unifying thread (nor should it). Yet one of my goals for my 2016 presidential conference in Hartford was nevertheless to find ways to feature our central themes more overtly. While I sought to do so through a few different initiatives, a principal method was through the two featured speakers: Monique Truong’s opening night creative reading and Jelani Cobb’s keynote address both represented, to my mind, ways to foreground American cultural, historical, and contemporary diversity and pluralism, while also offering critical, public scholarly perspectives on some of our more enduring and pernicious national myths and attitudes. And this year, President Hilda Chacón did an even better job finding a creative reader (Chilean American poet and scholar Marjorie Agosin) and keynote speaker (Mexican American writer, graphic novelist, translator, and scholar Ilan Stavans) who could perfectly encapsulate and express two distinct but interconnected sides to her conference theme of “Translingual and Transcultural Competence: Toward a Multilingual Future in the Global Era.”As a poet, Agosin’s presentation on language and culture focused on profoundly intimate sides to those themes, linking them to her personal, professional, and familial stories of home and exile, displacement and translation, silence and voice. Yet while the details of those stories are specific to Agosin and her individual experiences—such as her family’s flight from Chile after Augusto Pinochet took dictatorial power in a US-backed, 1973 coup—their broader contours are, as Agosin argued throughout her talk, resonant with most (if not indeed all) American families, communities, and identities. Even leaving aside the immigrant and cross-cultural histories that define all Americans, the experiences of searching for our own voices and ways to express them, of translating our voices into the languages of the world around us, of remembering our homes and heritages through languages and stories, are at the heart of all of our identities. Those are of course human experiences that transcend any particular place and time—but as Agosin (and Stevens on the next night) reminded us, they are also especially salient here in the United States, a community that has been from its origin points as multi-lingual and –cultural as any in the world. As with all great poets, Agosin’s works speak to any and all audiences; but as with the greatest American poets, those works also exemplify the unique languages and stories that constitute this place.In his keynote address the following night, Stevens certainly highlighted similar personal stories and connections, using his own experiences of migration, immigration, and cross-cultural identity as one through-line of his wonderful talk (presented with no notes of any kind!). But Stevens also tapped into his experiences as a literary translator and an academic to highlight two other resonant sides to language and translation. Using Don Quixoteand One Hundred Years of Solitude, two towering works of Hispanic literature that (Stevens argued) have been read in translation far more often than in Spanish, Stevens acknowledged but also challenged the notion of what is “lost in translation,” suggesting that at least as much is offered or possible through that process. And using his experiences as a graduate student and faculty member, Stevens presented an impassioned case that academic specializations, silos, and separations from our outside communities serve to impoverish both our own careers and institutions and the world; instead, he argued, we must work to translate our voices and efforts into the languages of our colleagues and peers, of other disciplines and conversations, and of the world all around us. Interdisciplinary and public scholarship, like translingual and transcultural transformations, can render our familiar identities uncomfortable—but Stevens, like Agosin and this wonderful conference overall, offered a powerful case for the vital benefits of those modes.Last recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other NeMLA memories to share?

April 5, 2017: NeMLA Recaps: Re-reading Roundtable

[A couple weeks back, we held the 48th annual Northeast MLA Conventionin Baltimore. Thanks to the work of President Hilda Chacón, Executive Director Carine Mardorossian, and many many more, the convention went off beautifully. This week I’ll follow up on five particular events and conversations—add your thoughts, whether you were there or not, in comments, please!]On pedagogical and public scholarly sides to what might seem to be a personal pleasure.I originally hadn’t planned to present on any scholarly panels at NeMLA, but as the conference program developed I had the chance to join a roundtable on the practice and value of re-reading literary texts. Organized by Richard Johnston, an English professor at the Air Force Academy, the roundtable was particularly compelling to me because I’ve always thought of re-reading as a distinctly personal activity, a way to return to favorite authors and works across the course of our lives and careers (whether through re-reading entire works or through what I call “pleasure grazing,” re-reading small sections of favorite works). Yet like reading itself, an often highly personal activity that can and should still be analyzed and theorized for all sorts of reasons, re-reading is worth our scholarly attention and conversation, and I was glad to have the chance to join Richard, my co-presenter Matt Duffus of Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina, and a group of interested audience members to discuss different sides to the process and meanings of re-reading.Matt’s presentation, and much of the subsequent conversation, focused on re-reading as a purposeful part of our pedagogies. When Matt discovered that a number of students in his American Lit II survey had read two of his main texts ( The Awakening and The Great Gatsby ) previously, he decided to keep those texts on the syllabus and to take advantage of the opportunity to explore what the experience of re-reading them might look like and mean for that subset of his classroom. In our broader discussion, an audience member raised a different, more fully shared pedagogical use of re-reading: a seminar on The Grapes of Wrath in which the entire class reads the novel at the start, then moves through a number of other texts and contexts, and then returns to re-read the novel at the end. I found a great deal of value in both of these approaches to utilizing re-reading, but will admit that within the frame of my student-centered pedagogy, Matt’s approach is particularly interesting, as it entails not only meeting students where they are but also working to build where different groups of students are into the syllabus and work of a class. Such re-reading students could become, as Matt noted and sought to amplify, another layer of teacher or expert in the course, offering perspectives on a text that can help guide class discussions beyond simply plot or information and toward multi-layered analyses.Longtime readers of this blog, and perhaps even people who have overheard me talking to myself on the street, will be entirely unsurprised at either of my focal points for my contribution to the roundtable: Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition, my favorite American novel and one of the books I’ve re-read most frequently; and public scholarship, and more exactly the role that works of literature can play in our collective conversations. I shared how my own readings of Chesnutt’s novel have evolved across the many moments and situations in which I have re-read it (from graduate school to early teaching experiences, the development of my teaching over time to experiences writing about the novel in both this blog and my most recent book), and linked that evolution to an argument about why all Americans should read (and ideally, yes, re-read, although one step at a time!) works like Chesnutt’s. As I mentioned in my presentation, living in a moment when (it seems quite clear to me) our president himself never reads makes it significantly harder to envision an America where we all read and engage literary works as part of our cultural and civic life. Yet much like the NEA’s Big Read program, the goal of such emphases wouldn’t be to force every American to read, but rather to make conversations about books and authors and culture—and the social and historical issues they can help us acknowledge and discuss—part of our communities and society. And if we can get there, Chesnutt’s novel would be at the top of my list of nominees.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other NeMLA memories to share?

April 4, 2017: NeMLA Recaps: The Book Award

[A couple weeks back, we held the 48th annual Northeast MLA Conventionin Baltimore. Thanks to the work of President Hilda Chacón, Executive Director Carine Mardorossian, and many many more, the convention went off beautifully. This week I’ll follow up on five particular events and conversations—add your thoughts, whether you were there or not, in comments, please!]On AmericanStudies takeaways from our two Book Award co-winners.As NeMLA Past President for the last year, my only official duty—alongside my unofficial duties of shaking hands and kissing babies, natch—was to oversee the selection process for our annual Book Award, presented each year at the Membership Brunch that concludes the Convention. I’ve had the chance to be part of the Book Award review process in a couple prior years, and while we’ve always had a number of impressive submissions, this year was particularly noteworthy, both for the overall quantity (the largest number of submissions in the award’s history, I believe) and for the quality of those submissions. NeMLA members are producing vital scholarship, engaged in equal measure with very specific subjects (authors, texts, literary movements, historical moments) that deserve more attention and some of the most overarching questions and issues confronting our society and world. Exemplifying the balance of those levels of scholarly inquiry were our two 2017 co-winners: Katie Daily-Bruckner’s Who Am I With?: Rejection and Disaffiliation in Twenty-First Century Immigration Narratives and Regina Galasso’s Translating New York: The City's Languages in Iberian Literatures.I can’t do justice here to either of these multi-layered and nuanced books (if you want to know more, read the books when they’re published, to paraphrase Reading Rainbow), but I did want to note a couple of salient takeaways from each for AmericanStudying our current moment. As someone who has read and thought a great deal about stories of immigration, I was particularly struck with how Daily-Bruckner’s project manages to find new ways to frame and analyze such immigration narratives, coupling extended close readings of individual works and voices to an important overarching argument on the complex and crucial identity questions that such stories include and help us engage. Many of Daily-Bruckner’s focal authors have so much to tell us about both America and the world in the 21stcentury; I would highlight in particular her readings of Edwidge Danticat(about whom I’ve also written but still learned a great deal from her book) and Mohsin Hamid (about whom I knew far too little). But in a moment when immigrants are being so consistently and thoroughly defined and debated and acted upon from the outside, by governmental and activist forces across the political spectrum, perhaps Daily-Bruckner’s most important work is simply to remind us of the vital need to read and listen to and understand and learn from these authors and voices themselves. In the process we’ll engage not only with their identities and communities and experiences, but with all of ours.Galasso’s project considers two distinct but complementary forms of cross-cultural and global movement: the transatlantic travels of a group of 20th and 21stcentury Iberian writers; and the literary and philosophical movement involved in translating both such experiences overall and the languages of New York City in particular across at least three focal tongues (Spanish, England, and Catalan). I’m far from an expert on Iberian literature and culture, of course, and deferred to our excellent reviewers for their assessments of the strengths and significance of Galasso’s manuscript. But I have thought and written a great deal about cross-cultural movement and transformation, about multi-lingual identities and communities and the acts of translation that they necessitate, and about what we all can learn from such experiences and questions. On that last note, I might be wrong—and as always feel free to correct me in comments!—but it seems to me that Iberian nations, like most countries in the world, have a more overt and shared sense of multi-lingualism and translation as fundamental components of identity and community than does the United States (or at least far too many of our citizens). For all too many Americans, multi-lingualism is boiled down to complaints about “pressing 1 for English” or, far more troublingly, attacks on those fellow Americans overheard speaking languages other than English. Despite its Iberian focus, then, Galasso’s book has a great deal to teach us all about language, translation, and the cross-cultural construction of all 21stcentury identities.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other NeMLA memories to share?

April 3, 2017: NeMLA Recaps: Forum on Immigration Executive Orders and Actions

[A couple weeks back, we held the 48th annual Northeast MLA Conventionin Baltimore. Thanks to the work of President Hilda Chacón, Executive Director Carine Mardorossian, and many many more, the convention went off beautifully. This week I’ll follow up on five particular events and conversations—add your thoughts, whether you were there or not, in comments, please!]On one specific and one overarching takeaway from a vital new NeMLA initiative.As I highlighted in this NeMLA preview post, the newest addition to our 2017 conference—one only added to the otherwise completed program in the last couple of months, in fact—was an Open Forum on President Trump’s Executive Orders and other actions on immigration, refugees, and related issues. Along with my Executive Boardcolleagues—then President Hilda Chacón, Vice President Maria DiFrancesco, and Second Vice President Simona Wright—I helped chair a conversation on what organizations like NeMLA, as well as institutions of higher education and individual faculty members, can do in response to these current events, on behalf of our students and communities, and as citizens of the United States and the world. Although by scheduling necessity the Forum was up against the regular couple dozen other sessions in its time slot, we nonetheless drew a crowd of more than 20 engaged and impassioned faculty and graduate students from institutions around the country (including one of our special event speakers, Dr. Brian Norman), along with one particularly inspiring retired faculty member who had marched in the 1967 March on the Pentagon, to talk through these and many other questions.I learned a lot from all those perspectives and voices, far more than I can share in one blog post (we’ll be writing up some of the main points for the website and newsletter, and I’ll pass them along as PS’s to this post when they’re available). But if I were to highlight one specific takeaway, it’s the need for us to share resources across institutions and communities. One of the attendees had helped draft a proposal to the Board of Trustees at her institution, requesting them to vote on whether to designate the institution a sanctuary campus and on whether to endorse a number of specific positions in any case. Another had worked with the faculty union at his institution to develop a clear union position on many of these communal issues and bring it to both institutional administration and state government. A third is in administration himself and had a clear sense of particular legal issues at play and on resources for acquiring and using such legal information in any particular situation. My guess is that many departments and institutions are moving through similar processes, but too often having to reinvent the wheel each time, rather than benefiting from these other experiences and perspectives. We asked all our attendees to send materials and resources to support@nemla.org, and I’d ask the same if you’re reading this post—help us develop a collective database of materials and resources that can be part of every communal response to these ongoing situations and crises.It seems to me that such specific and practical responses comprise the most important steps that an organization like NeMLA can take to help in this multi-front battle, and to show the students, staff, and faculty affected most directly by these policies that we are allies in that fight. But the Open Forum discussion, and especially the final minutes when the retired faculty member shared his 1960s experiences and advice, also led us to broader questions of what any individual is willing to do and risk in moments such as this one. Which is to say, if my own institution made a point of not professing support for the students and community members affected by this policies (and to be clear, Fitchburg State has done so clearly and eloquently to this point, but the overarching question remains), would I be willing to risk losing my job in order to challenge that position or take action outside of those bounds? Will I be willing to march and face censure and even jail time (as our retired attendee had done in 1967) on behalf of my fellow Americans? I’d like to believe that the answer to both of those questions is yes, but in truth I can’t know for sure until I’m faced with such situations—and if and when I am, of course I’ll have my sons to think of, among other factors. But regadless of my own personal decisions, the Open Forum reminded us all of the stakes and seriousness of the moment that faces us, and the vital value of facing it together as much as possible.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other NeMLA memories to share?

April 1-2, 2017: March 2017 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]March 6: AmericanStudies Events: The American Dream at Leominster Library: A series reflecting on recent talks starts with what I tried to bring and what I took away from a community conversation.March 7: AmericanStudies Events: Exclusion and Inclusion at the Monadnock Inn: The series continues with an inspiring conversation that has helped kick-start my next book.March 8: AmericanStudies Events: Twain as Public Scholar at the Mark Twain House: Three inspiring layers to one of my favorite talks to date, as the series rolls on. March 9: AmericanStudies Events: Why We Teach at BOLLI: What’s unique about Brandeis’ adult learning program, and what I’ve already learned from it.March 10: AmericanStudies Events: Looking for More!: The series concludes with a request for more opportunities for talks, panels, and events!March 11-12: NeMLA 2017 Preview: A preview of the newest initiative at the 2017 NeMLA conference—for reflections on which see this coming Monday’s post!March 13: Andrew Jackson’s America: Jacksonian Democracy: A series inspired by Jackson’s 250th birthday starts with what’s accurate and what’s left out of a central part of his legacy.March 14: Andrew Jackson’s America: Indian Removal: The series continues with what’s unquestionably horrific about Jackson’s signature policy, and what might have been different.March 15: Andrew Jackson’s America: The Bank Battle: Three lesser-remembered moments in Jackson’s crusade against the Second Bank of the US, as the series rolls on.March 16: Andrew Jackson’s America: Dueling Histories: What two of Jackson’s many duels help us see about the activity and the man.March 17: Andrew Jackson’s America: The $20 Bill: The series concludes with three historical ironies surrounding Jackson’s presence (for now!) on the twenty.March 18-19: Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump: A special post on what links and what separates the two polarizing presidents.March 20: Spring in America: Williams and Eliot: A spring series starts with two Modernist poets that offer contrasting yet complementary images of hope.March 21: Spring in America: “Appalachian Spring”: The series continues with the composer and work that helped bring classical music to America, and vice versa.March 22: Spring in America: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”: A simple and vital song that captures the essence of protest music, as the series rocks on.March 23: Spring in America: Children’s Stories: Frog and Toad, Abdul Gasazi, and two sides to images of spring in children’s literature.March 24: Spring in America: The Mayflower and the Maypole: The series concludes with two contrasting narratives of spring for New England’s earliest English arrivals.March 25-26: Crowd-sourced Spring: Fellow AmericanStudiers share their images and associations of spring—add yours in comments, please!March 27: Televised Fools: Catastrophe: An April Fool’s series on recent comedy on TV starts with three contexts for the raunchy Amazon original series.March 28: Televised Fools: Master of None: The series continues with what’s groundbreaking and what’s not about Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series.March 29: Televised Fools: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Two characters who walk the fine line between humor and offensiveness, as the series rolls on.March 30: Televised Fools: Archer: The pleasures and limits of parody, and a show that transcends both.March 31: Televised Fools: Social Satire: The series concludes with four shows from which we can learn a great deal about our society and culture.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

March 31, 2017: Televised Fools: Social Satire

[For this year’s April Fool’s series, I wanted to AmericanStudy a handful of recent comic TV shows. Share your thoughts on these or other televised foolishness, present or past, in comments!]On four comic shows from which we can learn a great deal about our society and culture.1)      Key & Peele (2012-2015): During its five seasons and fifty-three episodes, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s Comedy Central sketch comedy series was more than just consistently hilarious; it offered some of the most biting and insightfulreflections on race in America that I’ve ever seen (in any genre or medium). (By all reports, Peele’s new horror film Get Out manages the same impressive balance of entertainment and social commentary within that genre.) If I were to suggest any one cultural work to represent race in America in the age of Trayvon and Obama, it would have to be Key & Peele; a viewer could dive into almost any episode and come away with a better understanding of the lightest and darkest of both this crucial issue and our national community.2)      Inside Amy Schumer (2013- ). I would say many of the same things about Amy Schumer’s Comedy Central sketch comedy show, which has aired four seasons and has a fifth coming at some point in the future; only her show focuses its social satirical lens most consistently on issues of gender and sex. Schumer is particularly adept at utilizing parody in the best ways about which I wrote in yesterday’s post: see this Friday Night Lights sketch on football and rape culture; or this clip from her transcendent, episode-long parody of Twelve Angry Men. But her entirely original sketches are just as biting, as illustrated by this one on female celebrities experiencing their “last fuckable day.” Between the two of them, Key & Peele and Inside Amy Schumer could comprise the entire syllabus for a course on 21st century America and you wouldn’t run out of things to talk about.3)      Last Week Tonight (2014- ): The Daily Show veteran John Oliver’s weekly news satire show on HBO is an entirely different animal, not only from sketch comedy shows like those but even from The Daily Show and its ilk. What Oliver does best—and, perhaps, what only Oliver does—is produce in-depth segments, usually running in the ballpark of twenty minutes, that examine a complex issue at great length, featuring a mixture of humor, investigative reporting, and impassioned arguments and activism. If you haven’t seen any, I don’t think you can go wrong, but I would recommend in particular this one on the death penalty, this one on prisons, this one on refugees, and this one on online harassment of women. Like many folks, I used to say that The Daily Show offered more accurate news than most of the news media; that might well still be true, but I don’t think any current show offers better reporting on vital American issues than Last Week Tonight.4)      Full Frontal (2016- ): Another Daily Show vet, Samantha Bee’s weekly news satire show is the newest of this batch (it debuted just over a year ago), but has already impressed me (and everybody else I’ve ever talked to about it) with its blend of reporting and humor (a la Oliver’s show) mixed with Bee’s unique, fiery, and never less than compelling voice and perspective. Once again, I don’t think you can go wrong with any clip, but this one—Bee’s response to Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood tape scandal from last October—is a particular favorite and exemplifies all those qualities that have made this show much-watch television so quickly. As I wrote in this post on the media and the 2016 election (written in the halcyon days before that election actually transpired), to my mind the majority of the best coverage of that campaign came from the Olivers and Bees of the media world. That’s partly a disturbing reflection of the state of other parts of the news media, to be sure; but it’s also partly an illustration of just how vital these kinds of social satirical voices have become in our society and culture. March Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other TV comedies you’d highlight?

March 30, 2017: Televised Fools: Archer

[For this year’s April Fool’s series, I wanted to AmericanStudy a handful of recent comic TV shows. Share your thoughts on these or other televised foolishness, present or past, in comments!]On the pleasures and limits of parody, and a show that transcends both.As someone whose list of childhood pop culture favorites includes both Weird Al Yankovic and the Zucker Brothers/Jim Abrahams films (especially Top Secret! [1984] and Hot Shots! [1991]) in very prominent spots, I’ve always had a soft spot for the difficult comedic art of parody. When they work, parodies certainly utilize the pleasure of familiarity, of riffing off of stories and images that we already know and enjoy seeing twisted into a comic new one; but they also and just as importantly have to offer their own distinct humor and pleasures, laughs and stories that don’t simply rely on the parodic elements to succeed but engage audiences in other ways as well. To my mind, on the other hand, failed parodies like many Leslie Nielsen films from late in his career—such as Dracula: Dead and Loving It [1995] and Mafia! (1998)—offer only note-for-note parodies of their respective genres, with little if anything that’s original or compelling about their own jokes and stories. Such limited parodies might work for a Saturday Night Live sketch or some other short-form humor, but stretched into a full-length movie the thrill of parody loses its appeal relatively quickly and in these failed parodies the audience is left with little else to keep them engaged.One of the most successful parodies I’ve encountered in recent years is the FX animated TV show Archer (2010- ), the 8thseason of which premieres on the FXX network in less than a week (in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll note that I’ve been gradually catching up on the show on Netflix and have only watched into the 3rd season at this point, so as usual I welcome comments from folks with more Archer-watching under their belts [and anyone else]). The show’s original premise seems to have been as a more or less direct parody of the James Bond films, only with our superspy protagonist being a much less classy, much more proudly oafish American. Similarly, the main setting for the show’s espionage world (at least in its original few seasons; I know the premise has been “rebooted” a couple of times in recent years) was the same kind of Cold War environment in which Bond originally and long operated, with the Soviet Union and the KGB the most consistent adversaries for Archer and his (now unfortunately named) ISIS colleagues; yet Archerfrom the outset purposefully bent that setting and timing in a variety of ways, from a character with World War I service to 21st century pop culture references aplenty (among many other anachronisms). Given the difficulty of sustaining a parody over seasons of at least ten (and usually thirteen) episodes, this balance of on-point parodic elements and twists on the genre and world makes sense and helps keep the show feeling fresh.Yet like all the best parodies, as I argued above, Archerworks as well as it does because it features a number of features that are entirely its own, and distinguish it from both the genre its parodying and the parodic elements it includes. An excellent case in point are two of its central female characters: Malory Archer (voiced by Jessica Walter), superspy Sterling Archer’s Mom as well as his boss at ISIS; and Lana Kane (voiced by Aisha Tyler), a superspy in her own right and also Archer’s on-again/off-again love interest and rival. Both have aspects of familiar James Bond characters—his tough boss M, famously played by Judi Dench in recent years; and his many fellow agent love interests—but within the first few episodes (thanks to both great writing and wonderful performances) each had already taken shape as a distinct and interesting character in her own right, and by the end of Season 1 they were two of my favorite characters on television. Similarly, the show has gradually developed a deep well of recurring catch-phrasesand in-jokes, pleasures that depend not on a genre or parody but precisely on rewarding those viewers who have been coming back to the show for its own sake. Despite that childhood of Weird Al songs and Zucker Brothers films, I don’t believe I’ve ever watched multiple seasons of a parodic TV show—but Archer represents the best of that genre, and a wonderful comic pleasure all its own.Last TV fooling tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other TV comedies you’d highlight?

March 29, 2017: Televised Fools: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

[For this year’s April Fool’s series, I wanted to AmericanStudy a handful of recent comic TV shows. Share your thoughts on these or other televised foolishness, present or past, in comments!]On two characters who walk that fine line between humor and offensiveness.When I wrote this post a couple years back, critiquing the very popular (and very funny) sitcom Friends for a few of its less admirable elements, I didn’t quite acknowledge the inescapable fact of situation comedy that would certainly provide an important context for any such critiques: that sitcoms, with few if any notable exceptions, rely on exaggeration and (to at least a degree) stereotypes for many of their laughs. I don’t know exactly what proportion of audience laughs to televised minutes is necessary to make a sitcom successful and keep it on the air, but I think the number is decently high; there’s a reason why so many sitcoms have used the laugh track to try to emphasize those many moments for desired audience response, after all. And to get those laughs quickly and consistently, more subtle or sophisticated humor (which many sitcoms have certainly featured) has to be balanced with exaggeration, slapstick, punchlines, and other kinds of humor that aren’t necessarily realistic (could anyone really stand to be friends with someone making as many sarcastic jokes a minute as Chandler Bing?) but that can get and keep an audience laughing.One problem with humor based on exaggeration and stereotypes, though, is that it’s always perilously close to offensive (as, I argued there, were the anti-intellectualism and homophobia in Friends). Perhaps no current sitcom has demonstrated that challenge more fully than Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which chronicles the life of a 29 year old woman who escapes from 15 years in a doomsday cult and tries to navigate 21stcentury life and New York City with the mindset and experiences of a 14 year old. Kimmy herself, played pitch-perfectly by Ellie Kemper, is too innocent and naïve to be offensive; but the show’s two most prominent supporting characters are a different story. There’s Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), a struggling actor who is so flamboyantly gay that he makes Jack from Will & Grace look like a wallflower by comparison. And there’s Jacqueline Voorhees (Jane Krakowski), an elite Manhattan socialite who, we gradually learn, is actually of Native American heritage but passing for white. The identities of both characters are frequently played for laughs (at least in the first season; I haven’t had a chance to watch the second yet and welcome any responses in comments as always!), with Krakowski’s identity and struggles being the most potentially troubling as the actress herself is not Native American.I can’t say for sure whether these characters and performances are or would be offensive to you, fellow AmericanStudier, and that’s of course part of what makes this question so tricky: humor is very much in the funny bone of the beholder, and what’s on the funny side of the line to me might well be on the offensive side to you (and vice versa). Similarly, I can’t speak for either a gay or a Native American audience member, and certainly believe that the perspectives of different communities need to be heard and engaged with when it comes to cultural representations of them. But at the same time, sitcoms can and should represent characters with different sexualities, racial and ethnic heritages, and all other aspects of identity; and as long as they also need to utilize exaggeration and stereotypes for at least some of their laughs, then their work with those and all characters is going to continue to occupy an uneasy space on that fine line. I suppose all we can really ask is that those most exaggerated qualities are balanced by some humanity, by a sense that these are extreme versions of real people (rather than pure stereotypes, as the worst kinds of sitcom characters have often been). And thanks to the talents of their respective actors, both Titus and Jacqueline do achieve those vital moments of humanity in the course of Kimmy’s first season.Next TV fooling tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other TV comedies you’d highlight?

March 28, 2017: Televised Fools: Master of None

[For this year’s April Fool’s series, I wanted to AmericanStudy a handful of recent comic TV shows. Share your thoughts on these or other televised foolishness, present or past, in comments!]On what’s groundbreaking about Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series, what’s not, and what to do with that gap.Master of None isn’t the first, nor the only current, sitcom to focus on an Asian American protagonist: there are historical examples such as Pat Morita’s very short-lived Mr. T and Tina (1976) and Margaret Cho’s one-season All-American Girl (1994); and ongoing contemporary shows like Mindy Kaling’s The Mindy Project and Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat . But at its best, as in the two early Season 1 episodes “Parents” (episode 2) and “Indians on TV” (episode 4), Ansari’s show explores elements of the multi-generational, immigrant, multi-cultural, professional, familial, and everyday Asian American experience with a combination of humor and nuance that I’d never before encountered on American TV (much less in a sitcom). Foregrounded as they are toward the start of the show’s first season, those two groundbreaking episodes make clear that Master of None isn’t just a show featuring an Asian American lead (and his Asian American best friend Brian [Kelvin Yu])—they announce a sitcom unafraid to examine issues of race, ethnicity, culture, and identity with realism and intelligence. Unfortunately, with the exception of an episode (“Ladies and Gentlemen”) focused on the issue of misogyny in American society and popular culture, the first season’s remaining six episodes didn’t live up to the promise of those edgy early eps. Instead, the bulk of the season’s second half was dedicated to the romantic trials and tribulations of Ansari’s Dev and his girlfriend Rachel (Noël Wells), which while both entertaining and realistic didn’t feel particularly distinct from (to name one particularly famous example) those experienced by a different Rachel with her very on-again/off-again boyfriend Ross. Or indeed any number of other sitcom romances—the fact that I could have used literally countless analogies to conclude that last sentence make clear just how central romantic trials and tribulations have been to the genre. Even a rule-breaking sitcom like Seinfeld consistently featured relationship struggles for all of its main characters (other than perhaps Kramer, whose most confusing relationship was of course with himself). In its reliance on the Dev-Rachel dynamic to propel its season-long plot, then, Master of None was as typical of TV sitcoms as those early episodes were unique.So what do we do with that frustrating duality? (Or, if not frustrating, at least striking, especially if you binge-watch the show’s episodes in the manner I highlighted in yesterday’s post, and see this shift in plot and theme happen so quickly.) One way to interpret Ansari’s decision to take the season in this direction would be audience: that while those groundbreaking early episodes would certainly have spoken to many American viewers, they would also have felt unfamiliar to many others; while relationship drama is of course a kind of story with which virtually all adult audience members can connect. Another interpretation could focus on storytelling itself—the themes of the early episodes made for interesting individual stories, but didn’t necessarily lend themselves to serialized storytelling of the sorts now possible (as I argued yesterday) in streaming sitcoms; while the question of whether a promising romance will survive or not is tailor-made to be serialized across a handful of episodes (leading to an end-of-season cliffhanger of sorts that I won’t spoil here). Or perhaps Ansari just wanted to make clear that while Dev is partly defined by his Asian American heritage and identity, he’s also just that much clichéd but realistic sitcom type: a single person looking for love.Next TV fooling tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other TV comedies you’d highlight?