Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 297

February 29, 2016: Montreal Memories: The McCord Museum

[Late last year, I had a chance to spend a few days in Montreal, my first extended visit to the city. Among the many reasons I loved it was the plethora of compelling spaces and ways through which the city remembers its social, cultural, and artistic histories. So this week I’ll CanadianStudy a few such spaces, leading up to a special post on a few Canadian colleagues!]On the best exhibit at a unique social and cultural history museum, and its complicated relationship to the whole.Founded in 1921 by, and initially grounded in the extensive materials of, Canadian lawyer, politician, and collector David Ross McCord, Montreal’s McCord Museum has a unique mission: to reflect the city itself, to capture in a museum setting “our history, our people, our communities.” While that mission could be paralleled to other famous history museums, from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to the British Museum in London, the McCord is much more purposefully and specifically linked to its particular city than those, seeking as “a museum that mirrors a city” to “celebrate our past and present life in Montreal.” And yet because the McCord defines its city, in that same section of the museum’s mission statement, as “a city that mirrors the world,” it at the same time seeks to incorporate “an openness to the world and to issues important to Montrealers.” Achieving that balance, between the local and the global, is a complex but certainly worthwhile goal.To my mind, the McCord Museum best achieves such a balance in the permanent exhibition “Wearing Our Identity. The First Peoples Collection.” Introduced with a map of Canada that highlights the locations of the First Peoples cultures (past and present) across the nation, along with a looped video that continually welcomes visitors in all of their respective languages, and featuring a separate video inside that details the deeply troubling Indian Act of 1876, the exhibition certainly seeks to provide a comprehensive reflection of this vital part of Canadian identity and community. Yet in the powerfully specific and individual items it presents, pieces of clothing and costume and material culture collected and narrated with the help of Algonquin artist and guest curator Nadia Myreand an Aboriginal Advisory Committee, the exhibition makes clear that neither First Peoples nor identity can be reduced to any overarching image or idea. For this visitor, at least, the exhibition offered both specific knowledge and an invitation to enter a much broader conversation, details about dozens of communities and cultures and an understanding that the histories and stories of these First Peoples and their world go far beyond the exhibition’s walls.Just beyond those walls, of course, is the rest of the McCord Museum. Any individual museum exhibition has its own distinct identity from the space as a whole, but in this particular case I found Wearing Our Identity to be (or at least to feel) more separate from the museum than might be ideal. Part of that is simply location and the building’s floorplan: the museum’s upper floors included at least a couple exhibitions each, while putting Wearing Our Identity on the first floor (quite possibly to prioritize it) isolated it from the rest of the collection. Yet the separation was also reflected in other exhibitions, such as those on the second floor: “Montreal—Points of View,” which “explores 10 different facets of the history of Montreal” but features at best a minimal (and nearly invisible) First Peoples presence; and the fun “Mister Rabbit’s Circus,” which offers children a glimpse into “traditional toys” but once again includes (to my memory, and as always correct me if you have other info!) little to no engagement with First Peoples materials. Here in the United States, even when we remember Native American histories we tend to treat them as entirely separate from our narratives of “America” more broadly, and the Montreal and Canadian history reflected at the McCord seems to create the same split.Next memory tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?

February 27-28, 2016: February 2016 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]February 1: Football Debates: The Redskins: A Super Bowl week series starts with what’s not complicated, and what is, about name and mascot debates.February 2: Football Debates: Adrian Peterson: The series continues with what’s not surprising about the Peterson debate, and what we must remember nonetheless.February 3: Football Debates: Deflategate: How to AmericanStudy an over-covered story, and what we could talk about instead, as the series rolls on.February 4: Football Debates: Missouri Activism Update: The latest twist in one of 2015’s biggest stories, and why it’s vital to resist it.February 5: Football Debates: Banning the Sport: The series concludes with a Fitchburg State debate on whether football should be banned.February 6-7: AmericanStudying Super Bowl L: A pair of complementary links and articles on the 2016 Super Bowl quarterbacks and American narratives.February 8: Teacher Tributes: Alan Heimert: A Valentine’s week series on teachers I love starts with the college professor who exemplified staying in the room.February 9: Teacher Tributes: Proal Heartwell: The series continues with the high school teacher who had mastered the art of getting through.February 10: Teacher Tributes: It Takes a Village: Five crucial moments and teachers from whom I’ve learned along the way, as the series rolls on.February 11: Teacher Tributes: Jeff Renye: Some of the many things I learned from my first office and officemate.February 12: Teacher Tributes: Student Teachers: The series concludes with three things I’ve learned about from my Fitchburg State students.February 13-14: Teacher Tributes: My Fiancé: A special Valentine’s weekend post on my favorite teacher!February 15: AmericanStudying Non-favorites: To Kill a Mockingbird: My annual non-favorites series starts with what the beloved novel doesn’t do, and what it does.February 16: AmericanStudying Non-favorites: Citizen Kane: The series continues with two very American flaws in the classic film.February 17: AmericanStudying Non-favorites: Mad Men: The historical and American problems with the acclaimed TV series, as the series rolls on.February 18: AmericanStudying Non-favorites: “Africa” and Graceland: The varieties of cultural appropriation in 80s pop music.February 19: AmericanStudying Non-favorites: Low Five: The series concludes with five historical figures with whom I have a bone—or a whole skeleton—to pick.February 20-21: Crowd-sourced Non-favorites: Another great crowd-sourced post concludes the non-favorites series—add your grievances in comments!February 22: Rap Readings: Public Enemy and N.W.A.: A series AmericanStudying rap starts with rap and the legacy of American protest music.February 23: Rap Readings: Eminem’s “Closet”: The series continues with Sylvia Plath, Eminem, and persona and art.February 24: Rap Readings: Biggie and Tupac: What we can learn from one of rap’s most famous beefs, and what it leaves out, as the series rolls on.February 25: Rap Readings: Psy and M.I.A.: Two sides to the internationalization of rap, and what the trends helps us see in ourselves.February 26: Rap Readings: Macklemore, J. Cole, and #BlackLivesMatter: The series concludes with two contemporary rap engagements with race in America.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics or themes you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

February 26, 2016: Rap Readings: Macklemore, J. Cole, and #BlackLivesMatter

[When I wrote a Thanksgiving post on Macklemore, I realized I had never written a full series AmericanStudying rap, one of the most distinctly American, and most complex and contested, musical genres. Well, that changes this week. I’d love to hear your own Rap Readings in comments! And I have to highlight here the work of Dr. Regina Bradley, AKA Red Clay Scholar, the best current scholar of all things rap and hip hop.]On two complementary ways rap can engage and extend a social movement.Back in that Thanksgiving post on Macklemore, I wrote about “White Privilege”(2005), the rich and thoughtful song through which he (at a very early moment in his career) considered what it means to be a white rap artist and the roles that race, culture, and identity have played and continue to play in the genre and its evolution. Well, just over a month ago Macklemore released a sequel, “White Privilege 2” (2016), and the new song is richer, more thoughtful, and more complex than the first in every way, including its use of multiple voices and perspectives, its layered engagements with Macklemore’s own identity as both a person (speaking to himself as Ben, his actual rather than stage name) and an artist, and, especially, its focus on the #BlackLivesMatter movement to ask questions about white agency, responbility, and limits not just in rap music but in American culture and society overall. Those looking to critique Macklemore as a poser or cultural appropriator will I’m sure find plenty to dislike—but to my mind, the song not only engages with precisely those issues, but also serves as a vital model for how all white Americans can support the #BlackLivesMatter movement honestly and self-critically.It remains the case, however, that, as Macklemore put it in the first “White Privilege,” “hip hop started off on a block I’ve never been to/To counteract a struggle that I’ve never even been through.” Portraying that block and struggle quite powerfully, in both implicit and direct conversation with #BlackLivesMatter, is another recent rap album: J. Cole’s amazing 2014 Forest Hills Drive(2014). Named after his childhood home in Fayetteville, North Carolina (also home to my favorite American artist, Charles Chesnutt!), Cole’s album is rivaled only by Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012) as an artistic expression of what it means to grow up and live as a young African American male in late 20th and early 21st century America. And the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the years between the albums has allowed Cole, both in his album and in his public statements and conversations, to consider those social and historical issues of race and community even more directly and fully. Indeed, alongside Ryan Coogler’s stunning debut film Fruitvale Station (2013), I would call Cole’s album the best cultural complement to the #BlackLivesMatter movement to date.It’d be easy to see Cole’s and Macklemore’s engagements with that movement as alternatives or even competing options—and given that radio airplay and journalistic stories and the like are ultimately limited in time and scope, I would agree that often priorities have to be established (and, to be clear, that Cole’s perspective on this issue should take priority over Macklemore’s in that case). Yet as I have done in so many posts here, I would also and most importantly return to an additive rather than a competive model for our culture and collective attention and memory. Not only because our digital and multimedia moment makes it far more possible for us to listen to and share lots of songs and artists (whether they’re getting radio play or media coverage or not), although that’s an important rejoinder to my first point in this paragraph to be sure; but also because as powerful as any individual work and voice might be, there’s an even greater power in putting them in conversation and resisting what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called “the danger of a single story.” As I hope this week’s posts have reflected, rap has never been a single story, and indeed its many stories and voices are a key part of what makes it such an important American genre.February Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other rap artists, songs, or analyses you’d share?

February 25, 2016: Rap Readings: Psy and M.I.A.

[When I wrote a Thanksgiving post on Macklemore, I realized I had never written a full series AmericanStudying rap, one of the most distinctly American, and most complex and contested, musical genres. Well, that changes this week. I’d love to hear your own Rap Readings in comments! And I have to highlight here the work of Dr. Regina Bradley, AKA Red Clay Scholar, the best current scholar of all things rap and hip hop.]On two sides to the internationalization of rap, and what the trend helps us see in ourselves.One of the most unmistakable and important 21st century trends in rap has been the rise of international artists, not just as individual voices but as prominent rap communities within many cultures and nations. I’m sure that many of these international artists and rap communities have been present and evolving for decades, but with the rise of the internet and digital culture they’ve gained far more access to audiences around the world (and the world has gained far more knowledge of these artists and communities). Each international version of the genre, and even each individual artist, brings a distinct perspective and angle that deserve our attention and engagement on their own terms—but at the same time, I would say that the contrast I used Tupac and Biggie to highlight in yesterday’s post, between more critical and more celebratory rap traditions, has been clearly reflected and even amplified in the genre’s international development. Strikingly illustrating that contrast are two South Asian artists: South Korean hip hop artist Psy and Sri Lankan-English rapper M.I.A.Both artists have been making music for well more than a decade, but their most recent hits can nicely represent their respective voices and goals. Psy’s “Daddy” (2015) is even more over the top and nonsensical than “Gangnam Style” (2012), the smash dance hit that became one of the biggest songs and most bizarre videos of the decade. M.I.A.’s “Borders” (2015) literally embeds the rapper within a community of refugees (perhaps Syrian, although they reflect so many 21st century refugee groups), as she uses both imagery and her incisive lyrics and perspective to force us to think about both such communities and our own complicity in their stories. The irony, of course, is that Psy hails from one of the nations most overtly and complicatedly defined by a border and by international politics; yet he has consistently made music that not only does not engage with those political and historical issues, but that seems to embody the most escapist and silly forms of popular music and culture. There’s unquestionably a place for such forms—sometimes all we want to do is dance, and that’s an important human need to fulfill—but even more of a role, I would argue, for the kinds of politically and socially conscious music M.I.A. is making.Moreover, considering that more socially conscious side of international rap also helps us think about America’s role in and relationship to the rest of the world. For one thing, there are American rap artists who have overtly engaged in such extensions: such as Mos Def, the Brooklyn-born artist who renamed himself Yasiin Bey and has become, first in his music and now in his very identity, a spokeperson for civil and human rights issues worldwide; or Matisyahu, the Jewish American rapper and reggae artist who has become one of the cultural voices most consistently and compellingly engaging with issues such as Israeli identity and historyand the ongoing quest for global peace. And for another thing, there’s no way to watch a video like that for Psy’s “Gangnam Style” and not recognize the complex combination of Korean and American popular cultures that it features—and thus to think about where and how American music and culture have spread, and what new 21st century cultures are being created through these international trends.Last rap reading tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other rap artists, songs, or analyses you’d share?

February 24, 2016: Rap Readings: Biggie and Tupac

[When I wrote a Thanksgiving post on Macklemore, I realized I had never written a full series AmericanStudying rap, one of the most distinctly American, and most complex and contested, musical genres. Well, that changes this week. I’d love to hear your own Rap Readings in comments! And I have to highlight here the work of Dr. Regina Bradley, AKA Red Clay Scholar, the best current scholar of all things rap and hip hop.]On what we can learn from one of rap’s most famous beefs, and what it doesn’t include.There’s nothing I can write about the feud between Tupac Shakur and Chris Wallace (generally known by his stage names Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G.), and the broader East Coast-West Coast rivalry that the beef represented and indeed helped create, that hasn’t already been exhaustively covered in every form of media over the last couple decades. If anything, I would say that the beef has become too central to the story and collective memory of both men (no doubt due in large part to the fact that both were killed in shootings that might have been linked to the rivalry), making it difficult at times to remember them for the voice, artistry, and innovations that made them two of rap’s most significant talents. I don’t want to simply add one more text focused entirely on the feud; but I do believe that pairing the two artists can help us consider an interesting and important contrast in rap and in American culture more broadly.To put it simply (and of course far too reductively, but as always this post is a starting point for ideas that I hope we can keep talking about!), it seems to me that Tupac carried forward rap’s socially and politically conscious legacies, while Biggie embodied its celebratory narratives of party and pleasure. Take two of their most autobiographical songs: Tupac’s “Dear Mama” from Me Against the World(1995), a song which links the story of his childhood to the social and cultural factors of his mother’s life and the historical and political problems they reflect; and Biggie’s “Juicy” from Ready to Die (1994), a song which likewise narrates many of the challenging circumstances of Biggie’s childhood but contrasts them with the success and wealth he has achieved to make the case that “it’s all good.” These are only two of their many songs, but I believe they do illustrate how two artists with similar backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives could come to frame those topics and their artistic identities and roles very differently. Tupac’s posthumously published collection of poetry was entitled The Rose That Grew from Concrete (1999), and I would argue that while the phrase applies to both men, Tupac often rapped about the concrete, while Biggie focused on the rose.Notwithstanding that telling contrast, however, there’s no doubt that in many ways both Tupac and Biggiewere part of the 1990s rise of gangsta rap as the genre’s most prominent and popular (and controversial) form. There’s a reason why Biggie named his debut album Ready to Die, and why Tupac predicted his own shooting death in (among other places in his music) the final verse of “Changes” (1998). And thus, while it’s important to remember the artistry and talent of both men, it’s equally important to move beyond them and their sub-genre and consider other sides of rap in the decade. Take, for example, Arrested Development’s “Tennessee”(1992), a song that consider late 20th century African American identity and community in relationship to the legacies of slavery and racial violence. That amazing song doesn’t just offer a different vision of what rap and hip hop can include, and of the kinds of voices and sounds that can portray it—it also reminds us that there are American geographies beyond the East Coast and West Coast that have played a foundational role in creating those musical genres, and have remained a vital part of their evolving identities.  Next rap reading tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other rap artists, songs, or analyses you’d share?

February 23, 2016: Rap Readings: Eminem’s “Closet”

[When I wrote a Thanksgiving post on Macklemore, I realized I had never written a full series AmericanStudying rap, one of the most distinctly American, and most complex and contested, musical genres. Well, that changes this week. I’d love to hear your own Rap Readings in comments! And I have to highlight here the work of Dr. Regina Bradley, AKA Red Clay Scholar, the best current scholar of all things rap and hip hop.]On the private and public sides to persona, art, and the confessional.I’ve written multiple posts arguing that Sylvia Plath was more than just the author of “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus,” the controversial, soul-baring autobiographical poems for which she is best known, and I stand by those arguments. But the truth, as I wrote in this post on Plath’s and Mark Doty’s confessional poetry, is that even in those most overtly autobiographical poems of Plath’s it’s very difficult to parse out the relationship between text and identity, to say whether the speaker is Sylvia Plath or “Sylvia Plath,” poet or persona, historical figure or literary creation. “Dying/Is an art, like everything else,” Plath writes in “Lady Lazarus”—and if so, can we say that her literary suicide, foreshadowed and even enacted in poems like that one, is the equivalent of her actual one? Where does the line between persona and person fall, and do texts like these accentuate or blur it?Such questions have only become more prevalent in our multi- and social media saturated moment, where we hear about artists and their identities and biographies as much (if not indeed in many cases far more) as we hear from them in their published works, and no contemporary artist exemplifies that fact and the ambiguities it can produce more than Eminem. Any artist who releases three albums, in four years, named after three different persona— The Slim Shady LP (1999), The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), and The Eminem Show (2002)—is obviously well aware of, engaged with, and constantly pushing the boundaries of identity and performance. And as a result, it is incredibly difficult, both across the arc of Eminem’s career to date and in any one song or performance, to identify from which persona we’re hearing—much less when and whether we’re getting a more genuine or more constructed or fictional perspective and voice.Nowhere is that clearer than in Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet” (2002). The song’s verses seem to be among the most confessional of his career, addressing his absentee father, his (allegedly) abusive mother, his evolving relationships to them, his wife, and his young daughter, and many other aspects of his life and identity. But since the song is included on The Eminem Show album, and since Eminem explicitly concludes the second verse with the line “It’s my life, I’d like to welcome y’all to the Eminem Show,” it’s possible to read the verses’ extreme emotions as exaggerated or constructed, part of the particularly combative Eminem persona—a possibility reinforced by the song’s chorus, in which the speaker (Eminem? Marshall? Both? Neither?) apologizes to the same mother whom he has so viciously attacked in the second and third verses. In any case, Eminem, like Plath before him, proves in this complex song, as in many of his best ones, that confession is an art like everything else—and one he does exceptionally well.Next rap reading tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other rap artists, songs, or analyses you’d share?

February 22, 2016: Rap Readings: Public Enemy and N.W.A.

[When I wrote a Thanksgiving post on Macklemore, I realized I had never written a full series AmericanStudying rap, one of the most distinctly American, and most complex and contested, musical genres. Well, that changes this week. I’d love to hear your own Rap Readings in comments! And I have to highlight here the work of Dr. Regina Bradley, AKA Red Clay Scholar, the best current scholar of all things rap and hip hop.]On the protest album that helped change rap—and thoroughly changed America.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on rap—not that I would claim to be an expert on most of the topics about which I write here (John Sayles and Bruce Springsteen, maybe, but not most of them), but I am particularly less-well-informed when it comes to the multi-decade history and evolution of rap. When someone who grew up on the genre, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, writes about it, it quickly becomes clear to me how many of the artists who were influential to him are barely (if at all) familiar to me, and how uniquely unqualified I thus would be to judge which artists or records have been the most significant in rap history. But on the other hand, one of the genres with which I’m most familiar is American political and protest music—the more my Springsteen tastes started to include his most explicitly political albums and songs (like most of The Ghost of Tom Joad, an album that I hated on first listen and have come to love), the more I both delved back into artists like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Tom Waits and came to appreciate contemporary ones like Rage Against the Machine and Ani DiFranco. And so I feel entirely qualified to assert that Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) is one of the greatest political and protest albums in American history.
Although I was too young to recognize it at the time, 1988 seems to have been the single most important year in rap’s transition from an underground, fully counter-culture genre to a dominant force in popular music—the Beastie Boys had started the shift a year or two earlier, but ’88 saw the release of both Public Enemy’s album (their second, but the first had been Def Jam Records’ worst-selling album of all time, so it was this second that really broke them) and N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton. While there are certainly points of connection and overlap between the two albums, their central voices and styles are hugely distinct, and can perhaps be captured in their two best-selling singles (which I use side by side in my Intro to American Studies course on the 1980s): N.W.A.’s “Fuck Tha Police,” an intentionally extreme, vulgar, and violent response to police brutality and profiling; and Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype,” a sophisticated and media-savvy response to critics’ and mainstream musical outlets’ stereotyping of the group. I think there is most definitely a place and role for both songs in our understanding of (among other things) South Central Los Angeles, life for young African American men, and race in the 1980s, but it is unquestionably easier to fixate on the extremes in N.W.A. and thus miss the serious and social questions behind them; whereas Public Enemy’s song, like their entire album, forces us to engage seriously and meaningfully with its central themes and perspectives.
Which doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. The real genius of Nation of Millions, what puts it in the same conversation with works like “This Land is Your Land,” “The Hurricane,” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” is that it weds tremendous popular appeal with cutting political critiques and radical messages; it’s got a beat and you can dance to it, but while you’re doing so your perspective and understanding of American identities and communities, present and past, are being significantly impacted and (at least for someone not a product of inner-city Los Angeles; or, to put it more exactly, at least for me) significantly altered. Political protest music doesn’t have to feel pedantic (I’m looking at you, Neil Young’s “Southern Man”) or explicitly divisive (ditto, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”); it can instead unite its listeners across any and all categories and identities, bringing audiences together and to their feet and then hitting them in their collective consciousness. In the final verse of “Don’t Believe the Hype,” Chuck D raps that he and the group will “rock the hard jams, treat it like a seminar/Teach the bourgeoisie, and rock the boulevard,” and that’s exactly the balance that the whole album achieves. If working with college students day in and day out for the last decade and a half has taught me anything, it’s how centrally important music is to their lives and identities and perspectives; pop culture in general has a big influence, of course, but while I have some students for whom that means movies and some for whom it’s TV, some who are all about various websites and some who read a ton of science fiction (to cite only four of the many pursuits and obsessions I encounter), I would say that music is hugely significant for pretty much every one of them. And that makes it especially important than American Studies scholarship pay particular attention to an album like Nation of Millions, a best-selling work of popular music that managed to engage, with sophistication and humor and intelligence, with some of our nation’s most pressing and complex questions.Next rap reading tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other rap artists, songs, or analyses you’d share?

February 20-21, 2016: Crowd-sourced Non-favorites

[Each year for the last couple, I’ve followed up my Valentine’s series with a week AmericanStudying some things of which I’m not as big a fan. This crowd-sourced grudge match is drawn from the response of fellow AmericanStudies—add your thoughts and non-favorites in comments, please!]Responding to Monday’s To Kill a Mockingbird post, Tim McCaffrey writes, “Excellent take. I like the novel quite a bit but agree that it tends to be overblown with regard to race. I always felt that it speaks more to integrity than race. When I first read it, I was reminded of John Adams' legal defense of the British soldiers.”Responding to Wednesday’s Mad Men post, Nancy Caronia writes, “A-freaking-men, and why i could never watch more than a few episodes. It might do interesting things with that narrow view of America in the '60s and the acting might be okay, but I just felt such a patina of forced falseness, I could not engage. And I tried, numerous times with numerous seasons.”On the same post, Harrison Chute comments, “I agree -- and for the record, the issue of race is decidedly not rectified in S6 and S7. I have no memory of the black secretary, Dawn, though her not having a dramatically satisfying closure is consistent with all supporting characters. Mad Men always seemed trapped between its literary ambition and the traditions of the television medium, as showrunner Matthew Weiner is very old guard, having contributed significantly to The Sopranos. And so the prevailing question for the show, even for me who loves it, is... why seven seasons? The middle seasons offer very little in development for Draper, measured directly against Peggy's advancement, so instead we get this granularity of character in 'character-driven' moments, which too have little bearing on the long game. At that point it becomes television entertainment only, and that works for some (like easily impressed TV critics), and doesn't for others.”Whereas Emily responds, “While I agree with you about most of this, when you finish, I'd love to have a conversation about how the show offers and explores different models of successful (white) womanhood in this particular milieu. I also think that while offered too little screen time, the acting and writing for the black tertiary characters (all women) was really good. Dawn and Shirley do get more development, though they stay minor.”Responding to Thursday’s Africa and pop music post, Summer Lopez writes, “Okay, a push-back: while ‘We are the World’ may have helped raise awareness, it also added to the overriding image of Africa as a desperate place in need of saving by the West. (Don't even get me started on ‘Do They Know it's Christmas?’ - even if Bono did participate.) Graceland, however, also raised awareness, but of African music and artists. It was the first time I ever really heard African music, and probably for a long time Ladysmith Black Mambazo was the only African musician or musical group I could have named. Paul Simon gave South African artists who were silenced by the apartheid regime a global platform and helped expose westerners to a side of Africa rarely depicted elsewhere - its culture, talent, and beauty. I think in the long run that's a far more valuable contribution.” She follows up, “Also just to add I think ‘WATW’ also contributed to the view of 'Africa' as a place that could be subject to a single description or stereotype. With Graceland at least you knew they were *South African* musicians.”Responding to the same post, Andrea Grenadier also disagrees, writing, “I think your comments about Graceland were a bit too dismissive. Sure, one could cavil with Paul Simon's ‘appropriation,’ if you want to call it that. But there's a difference in working in idioms that honor a country's music, and shamelessly ripping it off. Paul Simon gave much-needed attention to the African music scene, to the point where he helped to make some careers flourish even more, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo. When Graceland came out in 1986, it also spurred other musicians to incorporate Affrican singers into their fold, including Youssou N'Dour on Peter Gabriel's So, also in 1986. Paul Simon is singular in other ways, and way ahead of the pack; way back in 1973, he headed down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record parts of There Goes Rhymin' Simon there, adding the Dixie Hummingbirds to the soundtrack. So I think of his work as more stretching idioms, and featuring the heart, soul, and idea of a place to make the music more present than it could have been otherwise.”Responding to Friday’s historical figure list, Andrew DaSilva nominates “Some more to add to your list: Dr. Taliaferro Clark & Dr. Raymond A. Vonderlehr (for their part in the Tuskegee experiment); Ronald (union busting of the air traffic controllers) and Nancy Reagan (in particular her Just Say No campaign); and UN ambassador John Bolton.”On the same post, Nancy Caronia writes, “You are not going to like this one [BEN: She’s right, but I appreciate it just the same!], and I don't either. Bruce Springsteen. You know I love him. You know I do. BUT when he wrote The River, it was a direct response to the encroaching neoliberal economic and political policies that were decimating (and, I might add, continue to decimate) public services for the poor, working, and middle classes. Now, one might think The River tour on which he and the E Street Band is embarked works in direct correlation to that timeframe with what is happening during this election cycle. BUT from where I'm sitting, he's playing music meant for a downtrodden people and the only ones who can afford a freaking ticket are those who have somehow gained economically through neoliberal economic policies (and now global service provider policies). He's playing to the audience that most needs to learn about this kind of poverty and destitution, but will be the ones least likely to listen too closely. I just want to smack him upside his head.”Some other non-favs responses:Amy Johnson writes, “I really did not enjoy A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I was assigned to read it.”Rob Velella highlights, “Henry James. I just don't get it. I remember being told that, even if I thought I didn't like Henry James, I'd still appreciate The Turn of the Screw . Finally read it, still didn't care for it/him. Also, Ralph Waldo Emerson. I find him pretentious, wordy, and opaque.” Andrea Grenadier agrees with Rob on both counts, but disagrees with Amy on James Joyce!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Other non-favorites you’d share?

February 19, 2016: AmericanStudying Non-favorites: Low Five

[Each year for the last couple, I’ve followed up my Valentine’s series with a week AmericanStudying some things of which I’m not as big a fan. Please share your own non-favorites for a crowd-sourced airing of grievances this weekend!]Five historical figures with whom I have a bone—or a whole skeleton—to pick. To see the full x-ray, check out those posts! [And yes, this is a repeat of the final post of last year’s non-favorites series—but it led to some great follow-up responses from fellow AmericanStudiers, and I’d love to prompt some more of the same!]1)      Nathan Bedford Forrest2)      George Wallace3)      Rutherford B. Hayes4)      George McClellan and Andrew Johnson (two for the price of one!)5)      Andrew Jackson“I got a lot of problems with you [historical] people; now, you’re gonna hear about it!”Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Pushback on this post, or other non-favorites you’d share?

February 18, 2016: AmericanStudying Non-favorites: “Africa” and Graceland

[Each year for the last couple, I’ve followed up my Valentine’s series with a week AmericanStudying some things of which I’m not as big a fan. Please share your own non-favorites for a crowd-sourced airing of grievances this weekend!]On more obvious and more subtle acts of cultural and continental appropriation in pop music.Back when I regularly taught the 1980s-focused Introduction to American Studies course I co-created at Fitchburg State, one of the more interesting days was when we collectively analyzed USA for Africa’s “We are the World” (1985). Even if we ignore that random and deeply awkard Dan Aykroyd cameo, there are a lot of obvious ways to critique the song, from its on-the-nose and blissfully naïve lyrics (“Send them your heart so they’ll know that someone cares/And their lives will be stronger and free”) to the forced community and camaraderie of its who’s who of 80s pop artists (Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, and Kim Carnes for the win!). But at the same time, the song and video existed for one clear and compelling reason—to raise awareness and money for the battle against African poverty and hunger, a battle that the organization has continued to wage for the 30 years since the song’s release—and we have to make sure not to lose sight of that crucial fact amidst the 80s excess and clichés.The same can’t be said for two other engagements with—or, more accurately, cultural appropriations of—Africa in 1980s American pop music. The much more obviously appropriative of the two is Toto’s “Africa”(1982), which creates a literal embodiment of the Magical Negro in its African “old man” who says to our speaker, about his search for “salvation” in Africa’s “old forgotten words or ancient melodies,” “Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you.” That speaker wouldn’t be the first white man to journey to Mt. Kiliminjaro or into the depths of Africa in an effort to find himself (and, yes, leave behind his lady friend), of course—but the song’s use of that cliché only amplifies just how much Toto has given in to those stereotypical images of the continent of Africa as a blank slate against which non-Africans can measure their own identities. It’s got a catchy tune, does “Africa,” but I’m not sure the best melody ever written could ameliorate lines like “I bless the rains down in Africa” and “The wild dogs cry out in the night/As they grow restless, longing for some solitary company.” I think both the rains and the dogs were doing just fine without you, buddy.Allow me to be very clear from the outset of this paragraph that I’m not trying to equate “Africa” with Paul Simon’s magisterial album Graceland(1986). Simon has been one of America’s most talented and interesting songwriters for decades, and Gracelandrepresents an artist at the peak of his powers, inspired by new influences and sounds to make some of the best music of his career. But how he found those new influences and sounds, well, that’s a bit more troubling. At a career and personal crossroads, perhaps “seek[ing] to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing [he’d] become” (those are quotes from “Africa,” natch), Simon journeyed to, you guessed it, Africa. South Africa in particular, where the nation’s rhythms and the music of artists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo combined to provide the inspiration that led to Graceland. Because South Africa was still under Apartheid, and thus still the subject of an artistic and cultural embargo, Simon’s visit caused a great deal of controversy; but even if we leave aside that particular issue (arguing, for example, that he was supporting black South Africans, not the regime), he was still in many ways the white Westerner traveling to Africa for personal salvation, and focusing on his own issues in the process (Gracelanddoesn’t have much at all to do with African politics or societies). Not my favorite move, regardless of the quality of the work it produced.Last non-favorite tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Pushback on this post, or other non-favorites you’d share?