Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 266

March 3, 2017: CubanAmericanStudying: Rubio and Cruz

[On March 2nd, the great actor and entertainer Desi Arnaz would have celebrated his 100th birthday. So for Arnaz’s centennial, a series on a handful of Cuban-American figures and histories!]On what distinguishes, and what links, the two Cuban-American politicians.As my most recent pieces for the Huffington Post’s blog have illustrated with (I imagine) particular clarity, I have come to believe that it’s neither possible nor desirable for me to separate my public scholarly writing from contemporary (and, inevitably, partisan) politics. This blog has of course ranged across a far wider variety of topics, subjects, and disciplines than have most of my public scholarly pieces for other sites, so I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of my posts here have not in any overt way connected to contemporary politics. But even here, relatively recent posts such as this pre-election one in early November and this post-election one in late December have offered much more blatant engagements with our current political and historical moment than had been my norm over the previous six years of AmericanStudying. All of which is to say, if you had told me any time in the last half-year or so that I’d be writing a March 2017 post on Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, I would have bet the boys’ future college tuitions that it’d be focused on a topic like GOP Senators going along with (or, hoping against hope, resisting?!) President Trump’s outrageous agenda and proposals.Good thing I didn’t make that bet, though. Because the truth is that all of us, even political leaders with whom I would disagree on pretty much every conceivable topic, have complex and multi-layered identities. And in the case of Rubio and Cruz, that includes two very distinct Cuban-American family stories and heritages; each of which is hard to untangle from various attacks and defenses over the recent presidential campaign, but I’ll try to focus on the main and less disputed details here. Rubio’s parents were both born in Cuba and immigrated to Miami in 1956; they would continue to travel back and forth to Cuba in the next few years, and other relatives (including his maternal grandfather) would gradually make their way to the U.S. as well (although the family was well settled by Rubio’s birth in 1971). That’s not quite the typical story of post-Castro exiles (although Rubio has framed it as such at times), but it’s relatively straightforward nonetheless. Cruz’s family story is far more complex: his paternal grandfather immigrated to Cuba (from the Canary Islands) as an infant, and his father Rafael was born there; but Rafael came to the U.S. in 1957 to attend college at the University of Texas, obtained political asylum when his student visa expired four years later, and subsequently moved to Canada, obtaining Canadian citizenship in 1973. He met Cruz’s mother (a U.S. citizen of Irish and Italian heritage working in Calgary) there, and Cruz was born in Calgary in 1970; a few years later his father moved back to Texas, and the family eventually followed him there.Two widely distinct family stories and heritages; indeed even describing Ted Cruz as Cuban American is a more complex and interpretative (and often purposeful, as it is for me in this post to be sure) move (not at all unlike describing Barack Obama as Kenyan American or even African American) than doing the same with Marco Rubio. But amidst all those important details and differences, I would note one very clear and important link: both Rubio’s parents and Cruz’s father, the Cuban American immigrants in question in each family story, came to the United States before Castro’s revolution, when Batista’s regime was still in power. I wrote in yesterday’s Desi Arnaz post that most of our collective memories and narratives of Cuban Americans focus on the last half century, on the exiles and refugees and communities post-Castro. I would once argue that that’s true—but even within those narratives and memories of the last half-century, we too often forget that Cuban Americans could and did immigrate to the United States in circumstances significantly different from the post-Castro period. Which is to say, Cuban Americans immigrate, and have always immigrated, to the United States for the same complex combination of push and pull factors as any and every other immigrant community. Castro and his aftermath and regime certainly comprise a significant subset of those factors, but focusing solely on them limits and falsifies the recent, as well as the longstanding, Cuban American experience.February Recap this weeked,BenPS. What do you think? Any other Cuban American stories or histories you’d highlight?

March 2, 2017: CubanAmericanStudying: Desi Arnaz

[On March 2nd, the great actor and entertainer Desi Arnaz would have celebrated his 100th birthday. So for Arnaz’s centennial, a series on a handful of Cuban-American figures and histories!]How the pioneering entertainer helps us remember a different side to Cuban American history, and why that matters.For understandable reasons, including the sheer percentage of the current Cuban American population that have entered the United States since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution (as well as the numerous, prominent historical events over that time, from the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs through the Mariel boatlift and Castro’s death late last year), many of our contemporary narratives and collective memories of the Cuban American community focus largely if not entirely on the last half-century. Yet as Monday’s subject José Martí (among many other figures and histories, including the 1854 Ostend Manifesto) reflects, Cuban American history goes back much, much further than that. Moreover, better remembering those longstanding histories isn’t just a matter of gaining a more accurate sense of both this particular ethnic community and the United States as a whole; it also helps us think about what particular histories and stories each stage and era of Cuban American identity featured, and how each of those stages likewise contributed distinctly to our collective society and culture.Desi Arnaz, born (100 years ago today) Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III in Santiago de Cuba, experienced a very particular such stage and history. As Arnaz details in his autobiography A Book (1976), he was born into a multi-generational family that was very prominent in both the region and nation: his maternal grandfather Alberto de Acha was one of the three founders of Bacardi Rum and thus one of Cuba’s wealthiest citizens, and his father Desiderio Alberto Arnaz de Alberni II was a rising political leader and the youngest mayor in Santiago’s history. When military officer (and future strongman dictator) Fulgencio Batista led a 1933 revolution (backed by the United States) to overthrow President Gerardo Machado, however, Desi’s father was jailed for six months; upon his release, the family (including 16 year old Desi) fled to Miami, where Desi finished high school and then began his career in show business (with the 1939 musical Too Many Girls; the 1940 film adaptationof which also starred Lucille Ball, with whom Arnaz would elope). While that family exile of course foreshadows and parallels in many ways the Cuban families who would similarly flee the island after Castro’s revolution (which overthrew Batista), it also includes a number of distinct elements, many focused on a 1930s Miami and Florida that were both far less defined by a Cuban American community and in the midst of the Great Depression when Desi and his family arrived.While these will be of course speculative points, I certainly think it’s possible to see how such specific details influenced Arnaz’s life and career. To cite one example, when he and Ball proposed the initial idea for the sitcom I Love Lucy in 1950, studio executives balked at featuring this interracial couple on television; so Arnaz and Ball organized a summer vaudeville tour (with the help of the clown Pepito Pérez), proving that this cross-cultural comic combination could work and work well (much of the sitcom’s pilot episodewas drawn from the vaudeville show). Later, with the show already one of the first true TV mega-hits, Arnaz had the idea of re-airing episodes; he is credited as the inventor of the concept of the rerun, and this strategy for capitalizing and building on success seems to me quite possibly related to the experience of entering the U.S. and show business in the midst of the Depression. Another CubanAmericanStudier might, of course, interpret the influence of Arnaz’s particular personal and family and cultural experiences differently—but in any case, we’d be remembering not only one man’s life and career, but a far different moment in Cuban-American history and community. Sounds like a good way to honor Desi’s centennial to me!Last CubanAmericanStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Cuban American stories or histories you’d highlight?

March 1, 2017: CubanAmericanStudying: Three Artists, Three Generations

[On March 2nd, the great actor and entertainer Desi Arnaz would have celebrated his 100th birthday. So for Arnaz’s centennial, a series on a handful of Cuban-American figures and histories!]On a trio of talented and influential Cuban American musical artists who also reflect their respective generations and periods.1)      Arturo Sandoval (born 1949): Sandoval, one of the 20th century’s most talented and influential jazz trumpeters and composers(and he’s still going strong into the 21st!), first became a force within the worlds of jazz and music while still in Cuba: he helped establish the Orquestra Cubana de Música Moderna in 1967 (when he was only 18), and began touring with his own band shortly thereafter; in 1982 he toured with the legendary trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and they began a close working and personal relationship. It while on a 1990 world tour with Gillespie that Sandoval defected to the U.S. embassy in Rome, beginning the Cuban American stage of his life and career that included his 1998 citizenship and his 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom. Although, again, he has continued to work prolifically in recent years, and although any figure this pioneering unquestionably transcends historical circumstances, Sandoval’s connections to both jazz and to Cold War Cuban and American dynamics embody the baby boom generation in many ways.2)      Gloria Estefan (born 1957): Although she was born only eight years after Sandoval (and left Cuba long before him, in 1960 as her family fled Castro’s revolution), I would nonetheless locate salsa and pop singer, songwriter, and superstar (and now businesswoman and entrepreneur) Estefan in a subsequent generation and artistic period. “Conga,” the 1985 song that launched Estefan and her band Miami Sound Machine (she had been singing with them since 1977, when they were known as Miami Latin Boys) into international superstardom, mixes Latino rhythms and influences with the legacy of disco and the currents of 80s pop, yielding a new sound that would make Estefan and the band into perennial chart-toppers for the rest of the decade. After Estefan went solo in 1991 with the album Into the Light, she continued to build on those interconnected musical and cultural influences over subsequent decades, moving back and forth between English and Spanish songs and albums in the process (and receiving her own Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with her husband and lifelong collaborator Emilio, in 2015). In all those ways, Estefan reflects the evolution of popular music and culture in and after the 1980s, an evolution that continues to shape our 21st century world in every way.3)      Pitbull (born 1981): Armando Christian Pérez, the Cuban-American rapper and producer known by his stage name Pitbull, is the only one of these three artists to be born in the United States; his parents had fled Cuba many years earlier, and he was born in Miami (a fact he includes in many, many songs). It is thus perhaps no coincidence that Pitbull has risen to musical prominence in the genre of rap, one of the most uniquely American musical genres; while it’s true that he frequently raps in Spanish as well as English, I would (as any reader of this blog likely knows) call that a distinctly American combination as well. So it’s certainly possible to say that Pitbull represents an overtly post-Cuban identity and generation, one where Cuba is of course a heritage but where the United States—not only geographically, but in its art and pop culture—is the central presence and influence. Yet at the same time, we AmericanStudiers know that identity, community, and culture are never that simple—and in this particular case, as all of this week’s posts will reflect, Miami in particular is a setting that over the last half century has come to be defined as fully by Cuba as by any influence. So Pitbull really reflects a new Cuban-American generation and community, one helping them and all of us move into the 21stcentury.Next CubanAmericanStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Cuban American stories or histories you’d highlight?

February 28, 2017: CubanAmericanStudying: The Mariel Boatlift

[On March 2nd, the great actor and entertainer Desi Arnaz would have celebrated his 100th birthday. So for Arnaz’s centennial, a series on a handful of Cuban-American figures and histories!]Three ways to contextualize and analyze the 1980 exodus of some 125,000 Cubans (known as Marielitos) from Mariel Harbor to the United States.1)      Refugee policy: Donald Trump’s recent Executive Orders on refugees and immigration have of course brought debates over refugee policy back into the news, but in a particularly oversimplified—and fearful and paranoid and factually challenged—way. The situation and issues facing President Jimmy Carter in 1980, on the other hand, illustrate just how complex and multi-layered national decisions about refugee policy are (even for those of us, like me and I believe Carter, who feel strongly that the U.S. should always try to welcome refugees). There are the perspectives and realities of a sovereign nation like Cuba, and of our own evolving relationship with that nation (Carter and Castro had worked to alleviate some tensions between the two nations over the years leading up to Mariel). There are the humanitarian and practical questions of where and how the refugees will be resettled in the United States, and what that will mean for the communities to which they arrive (Miami was most definitely and profoundly changed by the Marielitos). And there are the thorny but inevitable comparative questions—what do our decisions in response to this particular refugee community mean for the millions of others seeking and waiting for the chance to asylum? All difficult issues, and all raised with clarity by the Mariel boatlift.2)      The boatlift in art: Refugee and immigration histories aren’t just about governments and policies, though—they’re also and most importantly about communities and stories, about identities and lives. Artistic and cultural texts are particularly good at portraying those latter sides to histories, and I would highlight three very distinct such texts about the Mariel boatlift. The Brian De Palma film Scarface (1983) uses the story of one fictional Marielito, Tony Montana (Al Pacino in one of his most famous performances), to consider some of our most overarching national narratives, from the ideals of the American Dream to the most sordid nightmares of violence and crime. Christine Bell’s novel The Pérez Family (1991; adapted into a 1995 film) focuses more fully on themes of community, both among the Marielitos (the protagonists are characters who share the same last name and decide to pass as a family) and in relationship to the Cuban-American community (Juan Pérez is looking for his wife, who has already been in the United States for decades by the time he arrives). And Reinaldo Arenas’ autobiography Before Night Falls(1992; adapted into a 2000 film) tells the harrowing story of one individual writer before, during, and after the boatlift. Each text is different in medium and genre as well as story and theme, but taken together they offer a powerful artistic portrayal of the boatlift.3)      Pedro Zamora: For better or for worse, the fictional gangster Tony Montana is probably the most famous individual Marielito. But I believe a close second would be Pedro Zamora, who came to the United States with his family in the boatlift when he was only 8 years old, and came to prominence 14 years later as the breakout star of The Real World: San Francisco , the 1994 third season of MTV’s ground-breaking reality TV show. Zamora broke multiple cultural barriers during his time on television: he was one of the first openly gay stars of a TV show, and his commitment ceremony with boyfriend Sean Sasser the first such same-sex ceremony in TV history; and he was also living with HIV/AIDS throughout the show, bringing a profoundly intimate and human face to a disease that was, at the time, still deeply controversial and feared. Zamora’s tragic death later that year, and his widely broadcast memorial service, offered one more level to that prominence and its effects. None of those events or effects are limited to Marielitos or Cuban Americans, of course; but we can’t understand and analyze Zamora’s identity, nor perhaps appreciate his commitment to public advocacy and activism, without remembering the foundational role of the Mariel boatlift in his life.Next CubanAmericanStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Cuban American stories or histories you’d highlight?

February 27, 2017: CubanAmericanStudying: José Martí

[On March 2nd, the great On the cross-cultural experiences, ideas, and meanings of the legendary activist.
As best I can tell, José Martí (1853-1895) could be accurately described as at one and the same time the George Washington, Tom Paine, and Phillis Wheatley of Cuba: equal parts revolutionary activist and leader, political journalist and philosopher, and poetic and artistic genius. Although he died far too young, fighting in the revolution against Spain that he had so fully helped bring about, he had already done and achieved and influenced more in his forty-two years, in all those different arenas and many others as well, than most of us can dream of in a lifetime twice that long. And just as another legendary Caribbean and world revolutionary leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, belongs centrally to his native Haiti for which he lived and died so inspiringly, so too do Martí’s inspiring life and work clearly belong to his beloved Cuba, and I would never try to argue for a defining national or communal identity other than that for him.
Yet one of the more striking facts about that life is that almost exactly a third of it—most of the years between 1880 and 1894—was spent living in the United States; principally New York City, but with extensive time and travel in Florida as well. That Martí was less a voluntary immigrant than a political exile from his homeland interestingly connects him both to many 20th and 21st century Cuban Americans and to the long history of immigrant Americans who fled for political reasons and found a new home in (often) communities like New York. But while those are the some of the main reasons behind Martí’s move to the United States, they can’t possibly capture all that he experienced in that decade and a half here, what (for example) the society and world of Gilded Age New York meant to this still young man from Havana. Not at all coincidentally, Martí did much of his writing and literary work during these years, including (to cite only one telling example) translating Helen Hunt Jackson’s activist novel Ramona (1884) into Spanish.
Toward the end of his time in the U.S., Martí published his seminal essay “Our America” (1892), a breathtakingly original and vital work (to my mind, it’s on the short list for the most unique and significant American texts, from any time and in any genre, that our hemisphere has yet produced) that manages both to capture his specifically Cuban patriotism and goals and to argue for a sweepingly trans-hemispheric vision of American identity and community. The essay is all Martí, reflective of all the different individual roles and talents, ideas and visions, experiences and passions that I tried to highlight in my opening paragraph and that define a truly singular person. But I can’t help but see it as well as profoundly influenced by his cross-cultural experiences, his time in New York and Florida (among many other places), his trans-Caribbean and –Atlantic travels, a life and perspective that had stretched beyond any borders or limiting categorizations. As such, I believe that there’s great value in thinking of Martí as Our Martí—not, again, removing him from his Cuban heritage and impacts, legacies and meanings, but instead in extending his meanings (just as he extended his life and work) into our U.S. histories and narratives as well.Next CubanAmericanStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Cuban American stories or histories you’d highlight?

February 25-26, 2017: Crowd-sourced Non-Favorites

[This week it was back—the very popular annual post-Valentine’s non-favorites series, in which I AmericanStudied some of those things that just don’t quite do it for me. Leading up to the annual crowd-sourced airing of grievances, which could always use more griping in comments!]Other non-favorites:Matthew Teutsch Tweets, “I would have to say Andrew Jackson &, even though I like the writing, The Great Gatsby .” He adds, “I do find Nick Carraway a fascinating narrator. Wrote this a while back.”Joe Fruscione goes with, “Henry James. Big ol’ meh.” He adds, “Also: Deadpool . I just don’t get it.” On James, Matthew responds, “Coming back to James, after a few years, I liked him. Granted, I was reading shorter works, such as “Daisy Miller.”Rachel Weeks Blight nominates, “HMH history/geography textbooks (iBooks and paper). I use them because they are cheap and basic methods for covering info that might appear on a standardized text someday and I get something for the kids' homeschool portfolios, but I hate their over-reliance on History Channel videos. Speaking of which, I also have a love/hate relationship with . It's like the Red Lobster of channels: I have high hopes for what could be and am always disappointed.”Paige Swarbrick writes, “I dislike the ‘memoirs’ that are touted as completely real but turn out to be mostly untrue. Two that come to mind are A Million Little Pieces by James Frey and Smashed: Story of a Drunked Girlhood by Koren Zailckas.”Matt Chambers votes for, “Current political and social commentary in the US that either draws shallow comparisons to the 1930s/40s or treats events as exceptional (for example, I've been living under a pretty similarly awful regime for over a year now).”Kisha Tracy adds Catcher in the Rye , noting, “I find it insufferable,” to which responds, “I completely agree!”Maggi Smith-Dalton writes, “I have had a strong opinion on this for some time, however I will not annouce it publicly to fellow AmStudies/history folks any more. I've had it with that, frankly. Suffice to say, I feel the mess we're in right now in our country has been seeded, however inadvertently, however unintentionally, by the things I have worried about in our community for some years. Don't forget I have been in the public sphere for most of my professional life.”Diego Ubiera nominates The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Tim McCaffrey notes that the phrase “in my heart of hearts” “makes me cringe every time.” He adds, “Also, the work of Joseph Heller never clicked with me.”Laura Mulligan Thomas goes with two “phrases in education circle these days”: “sharing out” and “have a conversation around it.”Nicole Sterbinsky writes, “This has never happened to me personally but I hate hearing it, ‘You look good for x-amount of kids.’ Or ‘You look good for a mom.’ It's a backhanded compliment on quite a few levels.”And we’ll end with Jeff Renye’s pitch-perfect nomination: The Art of the Deal . Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Responses to these non-favorites? Others you’d share? Join the communal gripe-fest!

February 24, 2017: AmericanStudying Non-Favorites: Tom Brady

[It’s back—the very popular annual post-Valentine’s non-favorites series, in which I AmericanStudy some of those things that just don’t quite do it for me. Leading up to what is always my most full and fun crowd-sourced weekend post, so share your own non-favorites in comments, please!]Two ways I’d (apologetically-not-apologetically) critique the all-time great quarterback.For a while now I’ve thought that my non-favorites post on Thomas Jefferson (just the namesake of the street I grew up on and the founder of the university where my Dad teaches and the patron saint of my hometown and and and) was the post most likely to lose me Facebook friends (lots of Cville connections there, natch). But I’ve taught at Fitchburg State University for 12 years, and lived in Massachusetts for nearly 14, so I think this non-favorites post might just take over the top spot. For what it’s worth, I’ll start by being very clear: I think New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has as that article details a very strong case for being the greatest quarterback of all time (and had one even before winning his fifth, and most impressive, Super Bowl a few weeks back). When it comes to what he has done on the football field, I come here to praise the Golden Boy, not to bury him. Furthermore, when it comes to issues immediately adjacent to the football field, I’m not going to focus at all in this post on Deflategate, the scandal and controversy about which I said all I need or want to say in that hyperlinked post from last year’s football series. Even if Brady could have handled that moment and its aftermath better, it’s fair to say that this year’s success put all of that behind him, and I’d have to be a much more impassioned anti-Patriots fan than I am to say otherwise.No, my critiques of Brady have to do with non-football related issues, which might seem to be irrelevant or unfair; but to my mind athletes, like all of us, are parts of society in every way, and moreover are (like artists or politicians or pundits) public figures who can be analyzed and critiqued for elements beyond their performance of their professional duties. Sometimes those elements are deeply personal, as is the first on which I’d knock Brady a bit: the way he handled and has continued to handle his initial experience of fatherhood, with actress Bridget Moynahan. Or more exactly, to be fair, the way that this side of Brady has been covered and portrayed in the sports and national media. For much of their son Jack’s young life, Moynahan raised him as a single mother, with (as far as I can tell, and of course all of this is somewhat speculative) relatively little involvement from Brady (they were living on opposite coasts, among other things). I’m not suggesting that they would have had to get married, or that any particular life path is necessary (or for anyone else to say)—but at the very least, I would note that Brady’s status as an out-of-wedlock and at least somewhat absentee father received far, far less critique than (to my mind) many of his fellow athletes, and perhaps especially African American athletes, receive for the same situations. Then, when Brady married Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, Jack suddenly became a central part of his and their lives, and in my experience has been covered as just another child of theirs (along with Brady and Gisele’s own children). None of this is simple or would have to be portrayed in any one way—but nonetheless, the thorough absence of critical coverage of any of it is a principal reason why I call Brady Golden Boy.To be fair, though, my critiques on that score do have much more to do with the coverage and portrayals of Brady than with his own actions or choices. My second critique, however, is almost entirely about Brady’s own actions and words. In September 2015, as Donald Trump’s incendiary presidential campaign was just heating up, Brady revealed that he had a “Make American Great Again” hat in his locker; but he refused to talk about any political contexts for that choice, attributing it simply to his longstanding friendship with Trump. Now that Trump has become president, Brady has reiterated that the two remain friends and speak on the phone frequently, but has one again downplayed the slightest political connection for such details; indeed, at a pre-Super Bowl press conference when asked about current world events, Brady responded, “What’s going on in the world? I haven’t paid much attention. I’m just a positive person.” I’m not suggesting that Brady would have to start protesting like Colin Kaepernick, but first of all, I don’t care who you are or how positive of a person you are—nobody in America, or in the world, can afford to not pay much attention to what’s going on at the moment, and certainly no public figure should advocate such ignorance. And second of all, and most saliently for my point here, Brady has made a very public point of his friendship and phone calls with Donald Trump, the extreme and divisive president who has directly caused much of what’s going on in the world—so he doesn’t then get to pretend to be neutral or separate from all that’s happening. Brady and Trump are now thoroughly intertwined, and while that won’t change his legacy on the field, to my mind it absolutely has to be part of his overall legacy and story.Crowd-sourced non-favorites this weekend,BenPS. So one more: what do you think? Takes on this non-favorite or others you’d share?

February 23, 2017: AmericanStudying Non-Favorites: The Goonies

[It’s back—the very popular annual post-Valentine’s non-favorites series, in which I AmericanStudy some of those things that just don’t quite do it for me. Leading up to what is always my most full and fun crowd-sourced weekend post, so share your own non-favorites in comments, please!]On what’s annoying about the 80s action-adventure film, and what’s more frustrating still.Like any other child of the 1980s, I loved the Richard Donner-directed/Steven Spielberg-produced (and perhaps co-directed, if you believe Sean Astin’s memories) blockbuster summer film The Goonies (1985). For this little 8 year old AmericanStudier, what was not to love? There was a map to pirate treasure and a lost pirate ship and booby traps and puzzles to solve, resourceful young heroes (especially Jonathan Ke Huy Quan’s inventive wizard Data), silly humor aplenty, villains who were scary enough but also sufficiently incompetent to lose to our heroes (and played by three of the great character actors of their generation, Anne Ramsey, Joe Pantoliano, and Robert Davi), just enough teenage romance, a truly unique monster-toward-hero in the character of Sloth (John Matuszak), and much more besides. It was Indiana Jones crossed with E.T., with a healthy dose of Saturday morning cartoons mixed in, and I can assure you that 8 year old me would have never for a second contemplated putting it on a non-favorites list (he also wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the concept of an internet blog, of course).Then I grew up. And maybe this reflects as much on my incipient grumpy-old-man status as it does on the film itself, but when I’ve stumbled on showings of The Goonies on TV in recent years, I’ve found it almost unbearably loud and obnoxious. I mean that partly literally: all of the sound in the film (even just the conversations, or should I say screaming matches, between the kids) seems to have been turned up to 11, and after just a few seconds of watching I tend to feel as if I’ve been beaten about the head by an insistent troop of naughty gremlins (the mischievious mechanical kind, not the ones from that other 80s film). But it’s not just the sound effects—compared for example to Elliot and his siblings and friends in E.T., the youthful protagonists of The Goonies are to this viewer consistently and thoroughly annoying, an off-putting, grating quality that makes it very hard to watch their adventures without starting to root for one of the booby traps to achieve its fatal purpose. I know how a group of young boys can act when thrown together (my sons and their friends are currently in a phase when almost every conversation turns into a game of “roasting” each other with insults), and I suppose The Gooniesis mining that vein—but who wants to watch a film about, much less root for the triumph of, a group of kids at their most annoying? Just makes me want to quote Jack Nicholson’s Melvin Udall from As Good As It Gets (1997): “Shut up, kids!”I know that the Goonies are on a quest for a more noble purpose than just finding pirate loot (or finding occasions to scream more at each other): their family homes (they are neighbors in the same Astoria, Oregon community) are facing foreclosure from a greedy developer looking to build a country club, and they hope that the lost treasure will help stave off the crisis. But even that, to be honest, is more silly and frustrating than ennobling. All these families are under water on their mortgages at the same time and to the same bank (I know that 80s prosperity didn’t reach all American families by any means, but this still feels like a very clumsy premise)? What about other houses and families in the neighborhood that would presumably likewise have to be foreclosed upon for the development to go forward? And what do we make of Rosalita (Lupe Ontiveros), the Latina housekeeper who ultimately finds the treasure that saves the day? How can the Walsh family afford to employ her, if they can’t pay their mortgage? Why is she pretty much literally only in the movie as a source of racist comic relief before providing this sudden, final plot twist? Does she get to benefit from any of that treasure, since clearly her situation is even more dire than that of the Walsh family (not least because she has to work around these kids all the time—the health insurance for migraines alone will be astronomical)? So, so many questions—and while a full viewing of the film might provide some answers, I’m not at all willing to find out.Last non-favorite tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Takes on this non-favorite or others you’d share?

February 22, 2017: AmericanStudying Non-Favorites: The Sound of Music

[It’s back—the very popular annual post-Valentine’s non-favorites series, in which I AmericanStudy some of those things that just don’t quite do it for me. Leading up to what is always my most full and fun crowd-sourced weekend post, so share your own non-favorites in comments, please!]On the problems with overly saccharine art, and how it can still help change the world.My main issue with the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music (1959) can be summed up in one very funny, semi-raunchy line from the great romantic comedy The Opposite of Sex (1998). Lisa Kudrow’s hardened, cynical character Lucia is talking to Martin Donovan’s Bill about how she feels around him and the many other particularly “nice” people in her life, and uses the following pitch-perfect analogy: “That’s how I always felt around you, like the Baroness in The Sound of Music. Everybody’s singing and climbing an Alp, and I just wanna stuff that guitar up that nun’s ass!” Baroness Elsa Schrader, the initial love interest for (indeed, the long-waiting fiancée of) the widowed Captain von Trapp in the musical, is of course the only non-Nazi main character unable to resist former nun and current governess Maria’s musical charms (charms which, among many other effects, succeed in winning over the Captain and stealing him from the Baroness). My main experience with Soundis the 1965 film versionstarring Julie Andrews (although I did get to see a performance of the musical as part of my job with the Ash Lawn-Highland Summer Music Festival), and at least based on that film adaptation I’d have to say I side with the Baroness (and apparently Lucia): let’s just say that Andrews’ unimaginably chipper performance as Maria is very much not one of my favorite things.That’s a matter of personal preference and response, to be sure; but I also believe that the problems with the musical’s sugar-sweet tone run deeper, and can be succinctly illustrated by the song “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” As that film clip reflects, the song presents a youthful moment of courtship and budding romance between the oldest von Trapp child, 16 year old Liesl, and her suitor, 17 year old Rolf—who, oh yeah, just happens to be a Nazi courier, and indeed the first Nazi character we meet in the musical (and really the only one we meet for the entirety of Act I). I’m not suggesting that Nazi youth weren’t human beings and couldn’t fall in love, but it’s telling that the principal Nazi character for much of this musical (set in Austria in 1938, just before the Nazi invasion and annexation known as the Anschluss) is a handsome and charming young man whose surprise first kiss with a youthful heroine is a source of delighted giggles. Moreover, in one of the musical’s final moments Rolf has the chance to turn the von Trapp family over to his Nazi superiors but, seeing Liesl, chooses instead to let them escape, meaning that our most prominent Nazi character remains first and foremost a young lover throughout the story. Night and Fog (1956) this very much isn’t.Yet while I thus very much wouldn’t recommend The Sound of Music for those looking to learn more about the Nazis or their era, that doesn’t mean that the musical can’t have an interesting perspective to offer on such complex and crucial historical subjects. And I would focus in particular on the moments right before Rolf’s culminating choice, when Maria, the Captain, and the rest of the von Trapp family have used their musical talents (and the support of others in their musical community) to engineer an escape from the Nazis (who have ordered the Captain into service as a military officer and intend him and his family harm if he resists). Moreover, it’d be entirely possible to argue that it’s precisely the lovable, family-friendly nature of their performance which allows it to entertain and thus distract the audience (including those Nazis) sufficiently for the von Trapps to make their getaway. There’s obviously an important role for overtly aggressive, activist art to play in resisting and challenging Nazis and their ilk. But The Sound of Music makes the case, in its own saccharine and charming way to be sure, that light-hearted and entertaining art can at the same time likewise punch Nazis in the face. Not sure I can imagine a more important idea for us to consider here in 2017 America.Next non-favorite tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Takes on this non-favorite or others you’d share?

February 21, 2017: AmericanStudying Non-Favorites: The Great Gatsby

[It’s back—the very popular annual post-Valentine’s non-favorites series, in which I AmericanStudy some of those things that just don’t quite do it for me. Leading up to what is always my most full and fun crowd-sourced weekend post, so share your own non-favorites in comments, please!]On the limits of an unquestionably great novel, and how we can complement them.First things first, both out of respect to the many wonderful teachers and scholars I know who love this book (including two of my favorite people, AmericanStudier pére and the author of my recent Guest Post!) and because I certainly do feel the same way: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby(1925) is, indeed, a great American novel. I don’t know if I can entirely agree with Random House’s Modern Library, who put it second on their list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century (it’s the only American novel in the top three); that kind of slight overrating is part of what I’m responding to in this post, I suppose. But there’s no doubt that Fitzgerald’s is that truly rare novel which is both formally and aesthetically perfect (that structure! that lyrical style! Nick’s novelist-narrator narration!) and thematically rich and resonant, both profoundly representative of its particular historical, social, and cultural moment and milieu and yet able to connect with deeply universal human questions and issues. If I were to make a list of 25 novels all Americans should read and then talk about—as part of my idea of a national Big Read, perhaps—The Great Gatsbywould definitely be in contention, and would probably make the final list.So how the heck, you might be wondering, can I start my annual non-favorites series with Fitzgerald’s novel? Well, I will answer, the problem lies in his titular protagonist, Jay Gatsby (neé James Gatz), and more precisely in Gatsby’s motivations as a character. Gatsby has long been linked to the American Dream (to the point where there was an indie rock band named Gatsby’s American Dream), but his version of it seems so superficial: a nouveau rich monstrosity of a mansion, must-attend parties where all the most famous current celebrities can be seen, the adoration of all and sundry, and shady business deals with known gangsters which help fund that lifestyle. And when the curtain is pulled back and we learn the true motivation behind all of that, I don’t know that it’s necessarily any deeper: yes, it’s the love of his life; but a) that love is Daisy Buchanan, a complex character but one who overtly and unquestionably symbolizes extreme wealth and privilege (“her voice is … made of money,” Gatsby realizes at one point in the novel); and b) Gatsby only met and loved and was loved by Daisy once he had already remade himself into an imaginary man of extreme wealth and privilege in his own right, and he consistently pursues her as that faux-person, rather than as James Gatz. You can certainly argue that Fitzgerald wants us to analyze and critique these elements of his title character, but they nonetheless to my mind represent profound limits of Gatsby’s characterization, and especially of our ability to sympathize with him (or, really, with any character in the novel, as all of them are implicated in one way or another in the same issues).None of that, to be clear and to echo my opening paragraph, would comprise reasons not to read Fitzgerald’s novel. But I would certainly argue that there are any number of early 20th century novels which offer distinct, and to my mind more meaningful and broadly resonant, images and narratives of American Dreams. There’s Janey in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), searching for relationships (including romantic ones to be sure) and communities where she can successfully be the strong black woman she is. Or Irene and Clare in Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), two African American women struggling with the question of whether and how to “pass” for white in a society far too defined by race and color. Or Sara in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers (1925), trying to balance her highly Orthodox Jewish father’s Old World demands with her evolving life and goals as an ambitious young woman in New York City. Or Ántonia in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), an immigrant woman battling the elements and social prejudices on the Nebraska plains. Obviously it wouldn’t be possible to read all these books in place of (for example) Gatsby’s frequent location on syllabi—although of course groups of students could be assigned different texts and then could come together to talk about similarities and differences. Or even brief excerpts of each could be presented alongside Gatsby, to highlight and discuss the era’s many distinct identities, communities, and dreams. In any case, all of these works and characters importantly complement Fitzgerald’s novel, and could help make our conversations about it more of a favorite for this AmericanStudier.Next non-favorite tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Takes on this non-favorite or others you’d share?