Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 276

October 31, 2016: ElectionStudying: 1800

[For this last week before the most painful, frustrating, and potentially disastrous election season in my lifetime—and perhaps American history—concludes, I’ll AmericanStudy the histories, stories, and stakes of five prior exemplary elections. Would love to hear your ElectionStudying thoughts—or your recipes for staying sane for one more week—in comments!]On the moment that definitely changed things in post-Revolutionary America—but also, inspiringly, didn’t.
It’d be an overstatement to say that the first decade of post-Constitution America was devoid of national or partisan divisions—this was the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts and their responses, after all; also of that little rebellion up in Pennsylvania—but I don’t think it’s inaccurate to see the first three presidential terms (Washington’s two and John Adams’s one) as among the most unified and non-controversial in our history. That’s true even though Adams’s Vice President was his chief rival in the 1796 election, Thomas Jefferson; Jefferson had gained the second-most electoral votes, which in the first constitutional model meant that he would serve as vice president (an idea that in and of itself reflects a striking lack of expected controversy!). There were certainly two distinct parties as of that second administration (Adams’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans), and they had distinct perspectives on evolving national issues to be sure; but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of significant partisan divisions between them in that period.
To say that things changed with the presidential election of 1800 would be to drastically understate the case. Once again Adams and Jefferson were the chief contenders, now linked by the past four years of joint service but at the same time more overtly rivals because of that prior election and its results; moreover, this time Jefferson’s running mate, Aaron Burr, was a far more prominent and popular candidate in his own right. And this combination of complex factors led to an outcome that was divisive and controversial on multiple levels: Jefferson’s ticket handily defeated that of his boss, greatly amplifying the partisan rancor between the men and parties; but at the same time Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Jefferson, an unprecedented (then or since) tie between two Republicans that sent the election into the hands of the Federalist-controlled Congress. Although most Federalists opposed Jefferson (for obvious reasons), through a murky and secretive process (one likely influenced by Alexander Hamilton) Jefferson was ultimately chosen on the 36th ballot as the nation’s third president.Four years later Burr shot Hamilton dead in the nation’s most famous duel (now more famous than ever, thanks to a certain groundbreaking musical), and it’s entirely fair to say that, in the aftermath of this heated and controversial election, the nation could have similarly descended into conflict. But instead, Burr and Hamilton’s eventual fates notwithstanding, the better angels of our collective nature rose to the occasion—Adams peacefully handed over the executive to Jefferson, all those who had supported Burr recognized the new administration, and the parties continued to move forward as political but not social or destructive rivals. If and when the partisan divisions seem too deep and too wide, and frankly too much for me to contemplate (as, I will admit, they often feel at the moment), I try to remember the election of 1800; not because it went smoothly or was perfect (far from it), nor because the leaders in that generation were any nobler or purer (ditto), but rather precisely because it went horribly and was deeply messed-up and the leaders were as selfish and human as they always are, and yet somehow—as untested and raw as we were—we came out on the other side. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll do the same this time.Next exemplary election tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on this or any prior election?

October 29-30, 2016: October 2016 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]October 3: AmericanStudying The Americans: “Illegals”: A series on the great FX TV show starts with what’s compelling and what’s troubling about the show’s central premise.October 4: AmericanStudying The Americans: Spies like Us: The series continues with what we don’t know about two high-profile spying controversies, and why it doesn’t matter.October 5: AmericanStudying The Americans: Stealth: The historical limitations and imaginative possibilities of a secretive technology, as the series rolls on.October 6: AmericanStudying The Americans: Afghanistan: How four kinds of cultural texts can help us understand one of our most complicated and evolving relationships and histories.October 7: AmericanStudying The Americans: Immigrant Generations: The series concludes with how a recent plot twist helps us analyze a vital American issue.October 8-9: Emily Lauer’s Guest Post on Super Immigrants: In my latest Guest Post, Emily Lauer analyzes immigration through superhero characters and stories.October 10: Birth Control in America: Margaret Sanger: A series inspired by the 100thanniversary of Sanger’s first clinic starts with three lesser-known sides to the activist herself.October 11: Birth Control in America: Esther at the Doctor: The series continues with two historical and cultural lessons from an intimate fictional sequence.October 12: Birth Control in America: The Pill: How the history of the combinated oral contraceptive pill echoes the first two posts and how it differs, as the series rolls on.October 13: Birth Control in America: Condom Commercials: Three telling stages in the history of advertising birth control.October 14: Birth Control in America: Sandra Fluke: The series concludes with two ways a 2012 story extended my week’s themes and reflected their continued presence in our society.October 15-16: Layne Craig’s When Sex Changed: I couldn’t write a series about birth control and not highlight this great scholarly book by a former colleague of mine!October 17: Black Panther Posts: The Alabama Panthers: A 50thanniversary series on the Panthers starts with their largely forgotten inspiration, and why it matters.October 18: Black Panther Posts: Guns and Breakfasts: The series continues with two central sides to the Panthers, and why they’re not as opposed as they might seem.October 19: Black Panther Posts: Female Panthers: The complicated stories and inspiring legacies of three female Panthers, as the series rolls on.October 20: Black Panther Posts: Forrest Gump: What’s bad, and what’s even worse, about the party’s appearance in a popular historical film.October 21: Black Panther Posts: AAIHS Links: The series concludes with links to a handful of great Panther posts at the African American Intellectual History Society’s blog.October 22-23: Colin Kaepernick and 1960s Legacies: A special weekend follow up, on two ways the controversial quarterback is extending historical influences.October 24: American Killers: Wieland: This year’s annual Halloween series starts with two origin points in a unique and strange Gothic novel.October 25: American Killers: The Devil in the White City: The series continues with two reasons to celebrate Erik Larson’s historical bestseller, and one critique.October 26: American Killers: Executioner Songs: Norman Mailer, Bruce Springsteen, and cultural narratives of serial killers, as the series rolls on.October 27: American Killers: Bundy and Dahmer: How two pop culture genres portray stories of serial killers.October 28: American Killers: Dexter: The series concludes with antiheroes, vigilantes, and everyone’s favorite TV serial killer.Special election series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

October 28, 2016: American Killers: Dexter

[For this year’s installment in my annual Halloween series, I’ll be AmericanStudying serial killers in American culture and history. Add your boos and other thoughts in comments, please!]On antiheroes, vigilante justice, and serial killers.Although the character began in 2004 in the first of a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, when Dexter Morgan was brought to TV life by Michael C. Hall across eight seasons on Showtime he fit very nicely into the dominant 21st century trend of television antiheroes. While Dexter might seem to be the worst of the bunch, given that his defining characteristic was killing people week in and week out, I would argue that he’s more representative of the type than unique; after all, Frank Underwood and Tony Soprano both kill their fair share of innocent people, while Walter White kills numerous fellow criminals in order to further his own criminal enterprise. Indeed, since Dexter only kills the guilty (something that the show makes sure its audience knows with certainty in a way that would be impossible in real life), he’s not unlike another heroic antihero: Jack Bauer, who only tortures and/or kills those whom viewers know are necessary to thwart terrorist plots. Dexter is unquestionably haunted by his actions (given tangible form through his “dark passenger,” the ghost of his adopted father Harry Morgan), but so in one way or another are these other TV antiheroes as well.Yet at the same time, Dexter’s explicit and primary motivation is to find ways to kill his deserving (as he sees it, and again as the show portrays it) victims without being caught or stopped; if and when those other antiheroes kill, they do so as a means toward other ends (some more noble than others, to be sure), rather than the end in and of itself. That doesn’t necessarily make Dexter worse than them, but it does link him to a different cultural and American type: the vigilante, one pursuing a self-defined vision of justice outside of and opposed to the law (a narrative driven home with particular clarity and irony due to Dexter’s day job as a policeman). As is so often the case with such vigilante characters in popular culture, while the audience is given various forms of distance through which they can critique Dexter’s actions (such as the stories of his fellow police officers investigating his killings), the ultimate success of the show depends on the audience sympathizing enough with him to remain invested in his story—or, to put it another way, if the audience became more sympathetic to his victims than to him the show would quickly cease to work.So Dexter Morgan is an antihero and a vigilante, two types we’ve seen quite a bit on television and in popular culture more broadly over the last couple decades. But he’s also a serial killer, and to my mind the only serial killer protagonist of a TV show. Contemporary TV is full of serial killers—they’re pursued just about every night of the week by the detectives on numerous procedural and cop shows—which certainly reflects our collective fascination with such characters and narratives. Yet even when those killers are charismatic or compelling (as were Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter on Hannibaland James Purefoy’s Joe Carrollon The Following, for example), the logic of the shows requires them to be the hunted, locating the audience as one of those hunting them. Whereas, as I’ve argued in each paragraph here, the logic of Dexter locates us in an uneasy but clear parallel to Dexter himself, concerned about what might happen to him (legally but also psychologically) but taking part in his ongoing killing spree. Perhaps the show was simply an anomaly—but perhaps it represents a next step from some of the cultural texts and narratives I’ve highlighted throughout this week’s posts.October recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other American killers or scares you’d highlight?

October 27, 2016: American Killers: Bundy and Dahmer

[For this year’s installment in my annual Halloween series, I’ll be AmericanStudying serial killers in American culture and history. Add your boos and other thoughts in comments, please!]On how two pop culture genres portray monstrous serial killers.I’m sure the discipline of abnormal psychology would have something to say about this, but to my mind it’s virtually impossible to truly understand the motivation behind decades-long, horrifically brutal serial killing sprees like those undertaken by Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. I’m not going to get into the most graphic and disturbing details, but suffice to say that these men didn’t just kill dozens of strangers; they committed acts before, during, and after those murders that defy any rational (or irrational) explanation I can imagine. Moreover, both admitted those acts with (it seemed) pride during their eventual trials and (in Bundy’s case) the media interviews that accompanied them. While it’s tempting to say that we shouldn’t even try to understand such monstrous acts and figures, you don’t have to be an abnormal psychologist to recognize the importance of engaging with every kind of human identity and experience, even (perhaps especially) the most unnerving or repellent. And as is so often the case, cultural texts—and specifically here two genres of popular culture—have offered their own interesting and illuminating portrayals of the Bundy and Dahmer stories.The first genre also happens to be one of the most ridiculed in American pop culture: the made-for-TV movie. As that hyperlinked listicle makes clear, there have certainly been plenty of terrible TV movies, although of course no cultural genre is without its bombs. And I think that the genre does allow for a certain kind of film to be made, one that might not work as a big-screen blockbuster but that offers a fictionalized spin on a real-life story (the model in particular for the sub-genre often known disparagingly as a “Lifetime movie”). Between them the Bundy and Dahmer cases have (by my admittedly unscientific count) produced at least five made-for-TV movies over the last thirty years, some starring well-known actors like Mark Harmon and Billy Campbell (both of whom played Bundy, in 1986’s The Deliberate Stranger and 2003’s The Stranger Beside Me respectively) and others with lesser lights. There are plenty of differences across those films, but to my mind they all resist the horror/slasher tendency that might come with cinema treatments of the stories, choosing instead an almost domestic drama dynamic more appropriate to the small-screen. In so doing, they at least ask us to imagine serial killers as part of our everyday world, rather than extreme or superhuman exceptions to it as is sometimes the case with film killers like Hannibal Lecter.The second pop culture genre I’m thinking of offers a very different kind of portrayal of serial killers like Bundy and Dahmer. The Law & Order TV franchise has long promised stories “ripped from the headlines,” and has indeed, across all three of its shows, often delivered fictionalized accounts of real cases that explore both their legal and psychological facets. Neither of the episodes I’m focused on here portayed Bundy or Dahmer precisely; but both created similar serial killer criminals who, thanks in part to phenomenal guest actors, opened up such stories in new ways. On Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Fred Savage played a charismatic serial rapist and killer who was smart enough to defend himself in court and convincing enough that another defense attorney fell for his lies until she saw irrefutable evidence of his crimes; the episode linked rape culture to serial killers like Bundy in a way that forces viewers to see Bundy as something more than simply a monstrous aberration. And on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Neil Patrick Harris played a lonely and troubled serial killer who kept and ate parts of his victims, yet with whom Vincent D’Onofrio’s Detective Bobby Goren came to sympathize (to his colleagues’ frustration and anger); the episode sought to portray and understand the psychology of a monstrous killer like Dahmer better than any other cultural text I’ve encountered. We may never truly get killers like these, but cultural texts can help us get a bit closer.Last killer tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other American killers or scares you’d highlight?

October 26, 2016: American Killers: Executioner Songs

[For this year’s installment in my annual Halloween series, I’ll be AmericanStudying serial killers in American culture and history. Add your boos and other thoughts in comments, please!]On two striking similarities and one important difference in a pair of pop culture serial killer texts.Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song(1979) and Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” (1982) both consistently link the story of their real-life serial killer protagonists—Gary Gilmore in Mailer’s novel and Charles Starkweather in Springsteen’s song—to key women in the men’s lives. Although Mailer’s opening section is titled “Gary,” it begins instead with the perspective of Brenda Nicol, a cousin and childhood friend of Gilmore’s who remained linked to him through his final killing spree; parts two and three are titled “Nicole” and “Gary and Nicole,” after the girlfriend (Nicole Barrett) who stayed with Gary through his execution and on whom much of Mailer’s portrait of Gilmore focuses. Similarly, Springsteen’s song uses the 19 year old Starkweather’s relationship with 14 year old Caril Ann Fugate, who accompanied Starkweather while he took part in his own killing spree, as its linchpin, from the song’s opening lines, “I saw her standin’ on her front lawn/just twirlin’ her baton,” through to Starkweather’s culminating desire to have Fugate “sitting right there on my lap” when he is executed. These family and romantic relationships certainly humanize Mailer and Springsteen’s protagonists, but they also seem tied to the men’s crimes in complex ways that echo the links between sex and horror I discussed in yesterday’s post.Mailer’s and Springsteen’s works also similarly feature a near-complete disappearance of their creators in the course of the texts. That’s perhaps more expected in a song like Springsteen’s, but I don’t just mean that Springsteen doesn’t refer to himself in any overt way; even the voice in which he sings “Nebraska” is strikingly affected and distinct from Bruce’s own (and an entire departure from the voice in which he had sung any of his five prior albums), and since this was the first song on the album, would have taken contemporary listeners entirely by surprise. The absence of Norman Mailer from his book is more striking still, as the book is as the subtitle puts it “A True Life Novel,” and one based (as he writes in a brief “Afterword”) on extensive interviews and conversations between Mailer, Gilmore, and many other individuals. Yet to the best of my recollection Mailer does not appear anywhere in the book’s more than 1000 pages, engaging with his role in producing the text (and even participating in the text’s events in the closing period of Gilmore’s life) only in that brief concluding coda. As a result, Mailer’s mammoth book feels as closely focused on Gilmore and everything within and connected to his life and identity as Springsteen’s intimate song does on Starkweather, even though in both cases the texts are the careful, artistic constructions of two deeply talented creators in their respective genres.There’s one key formal difference between the two texts, though, and it significantly impacts their portrayals of the two serial killers. As he does with all but one of the songs on Nebraska, Springsteen sings the title track in the first-person, speaking directly as Starkweather (the only historical figure among the album’s first-person speakers); Mailer’s book features a fully omniscient third-person narrator, one who can provide the perspectives of any and all of his historical figures (including Brenda and Nicole among many others) alongside Gary’s. Due in large part to that narrative distinction, Springsteen’s song forces its audience into a direct and unfiltered relationship with Starkweather’s raw voice and cynical worldview, as in its nihilistic concluding lines: “They wanted to know why I did what I did/Well sir I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” Mailer’s more sweeping narration, on the other hand, situates Gilmore as part of broader communities (family, romantic relationships, neighborhood, prison, region, nation) and offers more of a sociological than a psychological engagement with his identity and perspective. I wouldn’t say Executioner’s Song is optimistic, exactly, but it certainly offers its audience more ways to understand its serial killer subject than does “Nebraska”—while the latter lets us see through that subject’s eyes, whether we want to or not.Next killers tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other American killers or scares you’d highlight?

October 25, 2016: American Killers: The Devil in the White City

[For this year’s installment in my annual Halloween series, I’ll be AmericanStudying serial killers in American culture and history. Add your boos and other thoughts in comments, please!]On two reasons to celebrate Erik Larson’s bestseller, and one important critique. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (2003), Erik Larson’s gripping account of both the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and a serial killing doctor who operated (grisly pun very much intended) in the shadow of the fair, is one of the 21stcentury’s most successful works of historical nonfiction to date (so much so that it is being adapted as a feature film, directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the killer). Even if I weren’t a public scholar looking to connect with mainstream audiences outside of academia, the striking success of Larson’s book would be an inspiring example of how such broad audiences are interested in historical stories, as long as they’re well-chosen and –told. Indeed, the nonfiction bestseller list is as usual full of historical nonfiction—and while some of it falls into the category of the distinctly propagandistic voices (O’Reilly and Limbaugh et al) who helped prompt my first moves toward public scholarship, much of it is being written by impressive public scholars and intellectuals like Larson, David McCullough, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and many others.Moreover, such bestselling historical nonfiction doesn’t just engage readers on its own terms—it also offers starting points for further historical awareness and engagement. I’ve written multiple times, in this space as well as in my first book, about the complexities and meanings of the Columbian Exposition; I agree with Larson’s subtitle phrase that the fair changed (as well as reflected) late 19th century America on many levels. And in one key narrative choice, Larson makes the fair a central part of his book’s focus: by featuring not only serial killer H.H. Holmes but also the Exposition’s chief architect Daniel H. Burnham as his two protagonists, Larson fully and impressively intertwines the fair and its histories and contexts (such as the development of Chicago, in which Burnham played a key role as well) with the story of Holmes and his crimes. No one event or moment can explain an entire period in American history and culture, of course—but we have to start somewhere, and beginning with the Columbian Exposition offers American audiences a number of key themes and questions that could prompt further research into and analysis of Gilded Age America. Larson’s book offers a great way into that process.Yet Larson’s focus on serial killer Holmes, while entirely understandable and of course integral to the book’s popular appeal, also reflects a limit of much bestselling historical nonfiction as well as of our true crime and horror narratives. That is, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both Holmes and Burnham are white men, as the majority of both our most celebrated historical figures and our most infamous historical killers have occupied that over-emphasized demographic category. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t still stories featuring such figures that need better remembering in our collective narratives—there most definitely are, and both Burnham’s and Holmes’s were such stories before Larson told them. Yet to my mind the most interesting figures and stories linked to the Columbian Exposition are those of others: Ida B. Wells and the group of African Americans who wrote this amazing pamphlet; Sophia Hayden and the women who produced and operated the Woman’s Building; Chief Simon Pokagon and that amazingly revisionist pamphlet (which he distributed to visitors at the fair). Perhaps Larson’s book can help lead audiences to those figures and stories—but not necessarily, and at the very least we need more bestselling historical nonfiction that starts with them. They might not be as sexy as a serial killing doctor, but they’re just as closely tied to both the devils and the ideals that the white city featured.Next killer tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other American killers or scares you’d highlight?

October 24, 2016: American Killers: Wieland

[For this year’s installment in my annual Halloween series, I’ll be AmericanStudying serial killers in American culture and history. Add your boos and other thoughts in comments, please!]On two ways a singular American novel prefigures dominant horror narratives.Theodore Wieland, the killer in Charles Brockden Brown’s Gothic novel Wieland; or the Transformation: An American Tale (1798), isn’t exactly a serial killer, but he’s certainly a mass murderer: Theodore kills his wife Catharine, their four young children, and a family friend in a murdering spree that the novel (or at least its somewhat unreliable first-person narrator, Theodore’s sister Clara Wieland) ultimately blames on a combination of the ventriloquist villain Carwin and a streak of instability in the Wieland family. Brockden Brown’s book, long considered one of the first American novels, is as that brief description indicates also unique and deeply strange, combining Revolutionary-era debates over Enlightenment philosophy and science with Gothic suspense and horror, Clara’s sometimes contradictory and always complex narrative voice and perspective with extended pseudo-medical treatises on spontaneous combustion (the official cause of death for Theodore and Clara’s father, a German immigrant and religious cult leader whose unexpected end foreshadows Theodore’s tragedy) and Carwin’s “biloquism.”Yet despite those unique details and qualities, Brockden Brown’s novel still helped establish (nearly as much as the works of his much more famous Gothic countryman Edgar Allan Poe) some key tropes that have remained central to our American horror stories for the subsequent two centuries. For one thing, Theodore’s descent into madness and murder is clearly linked to both a tellingly haunted place (the family’s isolated country estate) and a nonscientifically hereditary horror (his father’s ailment and death). While those elements have long been associated with European Gothic fiction, they’re sometimes seen as absent from an American tradition (as in Hawthorne’s famous quote about why it’s so difficult to write a romance in this too-new nation). Yet I would argue the opposite—that works like Wieland (and Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher,” and others) helped wed those Gothic elements to an American context, originating a horror tradition that was both universal and national (if to differing degrees—Poe’s “Usher” has far fewer specific American elements than do Brown’s and Irving’s texts). Theodore Wieland’s is a foundational American horror story to be sure.As is Clara Wieland’s, I would argue. Brockden Brown’s choice to write his novel in the voice of a female first-person narrator is a striking one, particularly in his late 18th century moment, and scholars have often linked or paralleled it to Carwin’s ventriloquism and that central theme of voice and authority in the novel overall. Yet I believe Clara also represents an interesting early iteration of a hugely prominent 20th and 21st century horror trope: the “final girl,” the female protagonist who is threatened by the slasher/killer yet ultimately outlasts and defeats him (often with the help of a somewhat relucatant significant other, as Clara is eventually aided by her suitor Henry Pleyel but only after he accuses her of a relationship with the charismatic Carwin). Clara is threatened and menaced by both Theodore and Carwin, and yet—or rather also—the latter pursues her romantically, linking her gender and sexuality to the dangers and horrors she faces in a way that also prefigures many elements of the final girl trope. “He had not escaped the amorous contagion,” Clara writes at one point of a complex romantic relationship—and while the phrase reflects her (and Brown’s) often tortured prose, it also indicates the novel’s close associations of love and madness, romance and horror. Associations that have certainly endured into our own horror narratives.Next killer tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other American killers or scares you’d highlight?

October 22-23, 2016: Colin Kaepernick and 1960s Legacies

[On October 15th, 1966, the Black Panthers were founded in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of histories and stories connected to the Panthers, leading up to this special weekend post on an unfolding contemporary history that echoes the group’s activism and legacy. For another historical parallel to Kaepernick, see this great US Sport History post by Kevin Rossi.] On two ways the controversial quarterback is extending a historical influence.Although the presidential election has of course sucked much of the oxygen out of any other news stories of late, one of the other most talked-about stories of the fall has been San Francisco 49ers backup (and now starting) quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s #BlackLivesMatter-connected national anthem protests. In the course of his two months (to date) of protesting, Kaepernick has inspired similar protests across the league (and other sports leagues), sparred with a Supreme Court Justice (and even changed her perspective in the process, per that hyperlinked story), and produced numerous thinkpieces on whether he’s contributing to apparently declining ratings and attendance for the NFL, among many other effects. But too much of the time, journalistic stories on Kaepernick have focused on these 2016 questions and issues, rather than linking him and his protest to what seems to me (and other historians) its perfectly clear historical origin: the 1968 national anthem Black Power protest in Mexico City by U.S. Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos.As is so often the case with history (see for example the collective embrace of Martin Luther King Jr., compared to the vitriol and hate he facedin his lifetime), the Mexico City protest has perhaps come to seem less controversial or divisive than was the case in its moment. As Smith and Carlos have amply testified, they were (and have continued to be for nearly four decades) on the receiving end of just as much racist, faux-patriotic nastiness in the aftermath of their protest as Kaepernick has been. Which, to be clear, they very much expected, and indeed was precisely the point of choosing both the Olympic stage overall and the potent symbolic moment of the national anthem specifically as the occasion for their protest. Similarly, Kaepernick has made clear that he was and remains prepared for the consequences of his own anthem protest, and has—by donating a million dollars to activist organizations in the Bay Area—demonstrated his deep and ongoing commitment to the cultural and political causes for which he’s protesting. In those ways, Kaepernick’s protests can be seen as also paralleling the Black Panther Party—a source of controversy and division, but also an example of thoughtful and committed activism for and contributions to social justice efforts. While the Mexico City protest and the Black Panther Party had a good deal in common, I would also differentiate them when it comes to audience. That is, the Black Panthers very overtly focused on addressing and engaging with fellow African Americans, while Smith and Carlos were seeking to reach a broader national (and even worldwide) audience with their message. Both kinds of activism are equally important and complement each other, so the difference isn’t a hierarchy in any sense; just another layer to analyzing these respective efforts. I would put Kaepernick’s protests in the “broader audience” category, and I have one particularly clear illustration of his effects on that level: my older son (pictured above, although almost 11 years old now). While I talk about lots of AmericanStudies kinds of topics with the boys, I don’t believe we had yet talked about Kaepernick when, out of the blue, he told me that his 5th-grade chorus is practicing “America the Beautiful,” but that he had chosen not to sing, “just like Colin Kaepernick.” A few days later, he mentioned that he had decided not to say the Pledge of Allegiance during morning announcements; his teacher asked him to do so, but he resisted. With at least this one thoughtful young American, the influence and inspiration of Kaepernick’s historically grounded protests have been tangible and impressive.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other contemporary issues or stories you’d link to the Panthers?

October 21, 2016: Black Panther Posts: AAIHS Links

[On October 15th, 1966, the Black Panthers were founded in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of histories and stories connected to the Panthers, leading up to a special weekend post on an unfolding contemporary history that echoes the group’s activism and legacy.] I had already written most of this week’s series when I saw a number of wonderful Black Panther posts on the African American Intellectual History Society’s blog. Decided it was important to dedicate a post of mine to linking to a handful of those great posts:Herstories: Writing Black Panther Women’s History The Black Panthers: A New 50th Anniversary Book of Revolutionaries An Interview with Former Black Panther Lynn FrenchThe Black Panther Party and the Free Breakfast for Children ProgramIntroduction to the #BlackpanthersyllabusSpecial post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Panther histories or connections you’d highlight?

October 20, 2016: Black Panther Posts: Forrest Gump

[On October 15th, 1966, the Black Panthers were founded in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of histories and stories connected to the Panthers, leading up to a special weekend post on an unfolding contemporary history that echoes the group’s activism and legacy.]On what’s bad, and what’s even worse, about the party’s appearance in a popular historical film.Somehow I’ve managed to get almost six years into this blog’s existence without writing at length (other than a brief reference in this post on Nathan Bedford Forrest) about Forrest Gump (1994), a film that I find one of the most propagandistic and problematic American historical dramas since Gone with the Wind . Tom Hanks’s Oscar-winning performance is unquestionably unique and brilliant, and the film’s central love story is moving; but that love story, like every other aspect of the movie, is built directly on a profoundly troubling depiction of the 1960s social and counter-culture movements as the source of a great deal that is wrong with late 20thcentury America, including but not at all limited to the AIDS epidemic that (without ever being overtly named) kills Forrest’s lifelong love interest Jenny (Robin Wright). Among the many such 60s movements to which Jenny’s self-destructive arc connects is, in one particularly frustrating scene (available in full at that hyperlink), the Black Panther Party.What stands out most clearly in the scene is of course the violence: the domestic violence directed at Jenny by her (white) asshole activist boyfriend in the background; but also and even more centrally the violent rhetoric and tone employed by the Black Panther activist in his diatribe to Forrest in the foreground. While those two respective violent elements aren’t explicitly interconnected, it’s impossible to watch the scene and not feel that they are linked: partly because what we’re hearing is the Black Panther’s angry rant while we’re watching Jenny being abused; and partly because the abusive boyfriend is dressed in the same garb as the Panthers and clearly is a close associate of theirs (Forrest has introduced them all collectively as “her friends”). Indeed, through these choices director Robert Zemeckis is able to portray symbolically both a blond white woman and the audience themselves as being violently beaten by an angry and threatening black male just as much as by his white associate, an image that comes quite literally out of the racist tradition of Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. That such an image could appear without much controversy in an Oscar-winning film released more than fifty years after Gone is, to say the least, troubling.That’s not the only nor even the most troubling aspect of this scene, however. It also represents the film’s only explicit engagement, despite its overall emphasis on the 1960s and their aftermaths, with the Civil Rights Movement and African American activists. Despite Forrest finding his way to connect to numerous historical assassinations, neither he nor the film mention the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X, two of the period’s three most prominent assassinations (alongside that of John F. Kennedy). (There was a King scene filmedthat ended up being cut, although I don’t know if it mentioned his assassination as Forrest does with so many historical figures.) In the absence of such 60s figures and histories, the film features two main African American characters—Bubba, the simple-minded Vietnam comrade who is only interested in shrimp and who dies in the war (leaving Forrest to carry on his legacy by starting the Bubba Gump shrimp company); and the angry, ranting Black Panther character. Every historical drama has to make choices about what histories to include and then how to portray them—but reducing African American activism to this one glimpse of the Panthers, and then tying that glimpse to Jenny’s abuse so fully, is perhaps the most problematic historical move in a film full of them.Last post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Panther histories or connections you’d highlight?