Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 34

September 14-15, 2024: TV Studying: Bridgerton and The Bear

[This weekmarked the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50th anniversary of LittleHouse on the Prairie and the 70thof Lassie. So I’ve AmericanStudied those and otherclassic TV shows and contexts, leading up to this special post on what we canlearn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out thissummer!]

On threecontexts for a pair of the year’s (and decade’s) biggest shows.

1)     Bingeing: I’ve analyzed the relatively new formof cultural consumption that is binge-watching a few times in this space, most especiallyin thispost on streaming sitcoms. I still have mixed feelings on the trend, andwould in fact go further: when it comes to shows that were originally createdto air once a week (ie, pretty much every TV show prior to the rise of Netflixoriginal content in the early 2010s), bingeing them is as best a less idealway to experience what the creators intended, and at worst actively ruins theexperience. But for shows being created in this new era of streaming, theopposite is, if not a given, at least always possible: that the creators intendthem to be binged, and have worked to create shows which reward viewers forsuch extended immersion. I’d say that’s the case for both Bridgerton andThe Bear, particularly because both are so good at…

2)     …(World)Building: When I’ve used thisstorytelling term previously in this space, it’s largely been in the contextof my Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy course, as worldbuilding has been without adoubt the most-discussed concept in every section of that class I’ve taught. Butof course any genre and any cultural medium can build a world, and I don’tthink any recent TV shows have done it more intentionally nor more successfullythan do these two. But in two very distinct ways: Bridgerton in the veinof the best historical fiction in bothsenses of that genre as I’ve defined it in the past (such as in thathyperlinked post), immersing the audience in aprior historical period and yet creating compelling fictional stories thatare not bound by historical facts; while The Bear builds its restaurantindustry world through incredibly potent useof narrative tension and emotion, making the audience feel every detail ofthat setting and community. Or at least it hopes to do so, but the recentseason three did meet with a great deal of…

3)     …Backlash: After a pair of relativelyuniversally acclaimed seasons, The Bear’s season three has been quitea bit more divisive. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet (like I said, I’mlate to these games), but my wife, who has, has offered a very thoughtful take:that the show is working to become more cinematic in its storytelling and imagery,while still using those devices to capture emotion and character as it alwayshas. If that is the case, it would mean that The Bear has evolved butnot fundamentally changed, and I’d say that’s very much the case for Bridgerton(on which I am fully caught up), which makes therising backlash to that show’s various forms of diverse casting andstorytelling particularly frustrating. That is, I get that Bridgertondiffers from the original novels in a variety of ways, including its diversity;but that’s been a central element of the show from day one, and by this pointfans should either go along for the very enjoyable ride or find something elseto binge.  

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other classic or current TV you’d analyze?

September 13, 2024: Classic TV Studying: I Love Lucy

[This weekmarks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50th anniversary of LittleHouse on the Prairie and the 70thof Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and otherclassic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we canlearn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out thissummer!]

On why thegroundbreaking sitcom’s comfortable familiarity actually reflects its mostradical elements.

While I Love Lucy (1951-57)was one of the first prominent sitcoms, there are a few reasons why itsdomestic and marital dynamics seem to fit comfortably within existing, familiartropes, and most of them center directly about star Lucille Ball and her priorprofessional work. For the years leading up to the sitcom’s debut she had beenstarring in a CBS Radio program entitled My Favorite Husband, whereshe played a wacky housewife. When CBS initially balked at her request that aTV adaptation co-star her husband, , Lucille and Desi toured as a vaudeville act,performing the same kinds of marital hijinks that they would feature on thesitcom. So by the time Lucille and Desi were given the chance to perform thoseexaggerated versions of their real-life roles on TV, they—and Lucilleespecially—had extensive personal and professional experience with suchcharacters and dynamics, helping give the show that impressively lived-in feelfrom its pilotepisode on.

At thesame time, I think it’s just as accurate to say that I Love Lucy itself established many of those sitcom domestic andmarital tropes that have since come to feel so familiar, and that’s animportant reframing because it allows us to see the show for just how radicalit really was, in two distinct ways. For one thing, there’s the apparent reason whyCBS initially balked at casting Desi are Lucille’s husband in theTV adaptation: their concerns that TV viewers wouldn’t accept a redheaded whitewoman and a Cuban man as a married couple (even though, again, the two had beenmarried inreal life for a decade by that time). What Ball understood, far better itseems than these network executives, was that mass media genres like sitcomsdon’t have to simply reflect existing images or narratives (although they fartoo often settle fordoing so); they can also, and perhaps especially, shape such cultural andsocial conversations. Am I suggesting that ILove Lucy helped create the shifts in attitudes toward cross-culturalmarriages that would contribute to the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decisionin Loving v. Virginia (1967) adecade later? Well yeah, I guess I am.

Throughand because of the show, and more exactly because of how much it brought herstar power to wider audiences, Ball was also able to achieve significantprofessional milestones of her own. Most strikingly, she and Desi founded a TV production company, Desilu, of whichshe became the first female studio head; when the two divorcedin 1960, she bought out his share and cemented her role as the fullbusiness and creative director of that successful and influential studio. Lestyou think those are hyperbolic adjectives to make my point, here are just fourof the TV shows that Desilu produced, all of them during Lucille’s reign assolo studio head post-divorce: the original StarTrek (launched in 1966); the original Mission:Impossible (also 1966); The AndyGriffith Show (launched in 1960); and TheDick Van Dyke Show (launched in 1961). All of those in their own waysbecame and remain familiar presences within, and contributed enduring tropesto, their respective genres—one more way that I Love Lucy has left its radical imprint on our cultural landscape.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 12, 2024: Classic TV Studying: Lassie

[This weekmarks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50th anniversary of LittleHouse on the Prairie and the 70thof Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and otherclassic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we canlearn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out thissummer!]

On AmericanStudiestakeaways from three iterations of the iconic canine hero.

1)     Family: After its September 12th,1954 debut, Lassie ran for 19 total seasons, making it the 7thlongest-running American primetime TV show to date. The first ten of thoseseasons are the ones most audiences likely associate with the show, as theywere set on a family farm (or rather two families’ farms, as the originalMiller family transitioned to the Martins during the fourth season, ifostensibly at the same farm). That farm setting was somewhat distinct from mostof the era’s family sitcoms, if in keeping with later rural-themed1960s shows like The Andy Griffith Show, The BeverlyHillbillies, and Green Acres among others. But nonetheless, I would arguethat the first ten seasons of Lassie exist squarely in the TV metaverseinhabited by the sitcom dads I wrote about in Tuesday’s post, along with theirwives, children, neighbors, etc. Family was the name of the game in early TV,and Lassie did it so well that it outlasted almost all of those otherprograms.

2)     Forestry: No show exists for nearly twentyyears without evolving, though, and after those ten family-focused seasons, Lassieshifted dramatically beginningin season 11 (1964-65), when Lassie became the canine companion of U.S. ForestryService Ranger Corey Stuart (Robert Bray). Not coincidentally,the show transitioned to more full color filming in this era, and thattechnology was used to showcase a variety of spectacular Western locations,including Sequoia National Forest and Monument Valley. Thoselocales would seem to parallel this new iteration of Lassie with anotherof the era’s most prominent TV trends, the ubiquitousWesterns. But I would argue that they also represented a potential counterpointto that genre’s mythologized and frequently nostalgic American West, offeringviewers glimpses of a contemporary West to which they, like the heroic pooch,could travel.

3)     Fucking What?: As is the case with so manysuccessful and long-running shows, when Lassie came to a close itscreators sought to continue the success with a spin-off, in this case theanimated show Lassie’sRescue Rangers (1973). Yet that spin-off lasted only one season, withthe main factor in its demise undoubtedly being a couple prominent responses:Lassie’s original trainer RuddWeatherwax claiming “That’s not Lassie. That’s trash”; and theNational Association of Broadcasters adding “The manufacturers of thisrubbish have incorporated violence, crime, and stupidity into what is probablythe worst show for children of the season.” I can’t lie, if you read some of the episodedescriptions, they do sound, well, batshit insane (seriously, read them andthank me later). But I also have to believe that another factor in these extremeresponses was that the new Lassie was even more overtly tied toearly 1970s environmental themes and advocacy, and not everybody was readyor willing to accept that emphasis for the beloved pooch.

Last TVStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 11, 2024: Classic TV Studying: Little House on the Prairie

[This weekmarks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50th anniversary of LittleHouse on the Prairie and the 70thof Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and otherclassic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we canlearn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out thissummer!]

On a keydifference between the TV show and the books, and why it matters.

I watched a goodbit of the TV adaptation of Little House on the Prairie (1974-1982, but I mostly watched it insubsequent reruns on TBS) growing up, but only one episode stands out in mymemory: “Gambinithe Great,” an episode early in the show’s 8th season (thepenultimate season, and the final one featuring Michael Landon before the showchanged its title to Little House: A NewBeginning for the 9th and final season) in which the Wilderfamily’s adopted son Albert (Matthew Laborteaux) becomes enamored of thetitular aging circus escape artist/daredevil. Albert’s father Charles Wilder(Landon) tries in vain to convince Albert that the openly and proudlynon-religious Gambini (Jack Kruschen) is not someone to idolize or emulate, andis proven tragically yet righteously accurate when Gambini dies in a stunt gonewrong. As I remember it, the show and Charles (pretty much always the show’svoice of unquestioned authority) present this tragedy as, if not explicitly deserveddue to Gambini’s lack of religious faith, at the very least a clear moral andspiritual lesson for Albert, and one that he takes to heart as he returns fullyto the fold of the family’s religious beliefs.

Albert was acharacter not present in LauraIngalls Wilder’s series of books (in which LittleHouse on the Prairie was the third of eight published novels, with aninth published posthumously), and thus represents one of many elements thatwere added, tweaked, or significantlychanged in adapting the books into the show. But I would go further, andargue that the overt and pedantic religious themes and lessons exemplified byan episode like “Gambini the Great” were also far more central to the TVadaptation than the novels. That’s not to suggest that religion andspirituality weren’t elements of the novels and their portrayal of the Wilderfamily and its world, but I believe they were just that: elements, details ofthe family’s identity and community and experiences that could be paralleled bymany other such elements and themes. Perhaps it’s the nature of episodictelevision (particular in its pre-serialized era) to need more of a moral, asense of what an audience can and should take away from the hour-long, at leastsomewhat self-contained story they have just watched. Likely the show’sproducers also learned quickly just how compelling and charismatic a voice theyhad in Michael Landon’s, and wanted to use him to convey such overt morals andmessages. But in any case, I believe (and as always, correct me if youdisagree!) that the show tended toward such overtly pedantic (and often,although certainly not exclusively, religious) moral lessons far more than didthe novels.

Although theword “pedantic” does tend to have negative connotations, I mean it moreliterally, in terms of trying to teach the audience a particular lesson; thatis, I’m not trying to argue through using that word that the novels werenecessarily better or more successful as works of art than the show because ofthis difference. At the same time, however, I do believe that the differenceproduces a significant effect, one not so much aesthetic as thematic, relatedin particular to how each text portrays history. To me, the novels seek tochronicle the pioneer/frontier experience for their focal family and community,describing a wide range of issues and concerns that were specific to thatcommunal experience (if, of course, very different from the concurrentexperiences of other Western communities, such as Native Americans, with whomWilder engagesto a degree but certainly far less, and attimes more problematically, than would be ideal for a more accurateportrait of the American West). Whereas the TV show consistently seeks to makeuse of its historical setting to convey broader and more universal messages(about religion and morality, but also about family, relationships, communalobligations, and more). Which is to say, I would argue that, to use theterms I deployed in this post, while Wilder’s novels certainly qualify ashistorical fiction (as well as autobiographical fiction), the show seems moreto be period fiction, with somewhat less to teach its young audiences about thehistory itself.

Next TVStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 10, 2024: Classic TV Studying: Sitcom Dads

[This weekmarks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50th anniversary of LittleHouse on the Prairie and the 70thof Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and otherclassic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we canlearn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out thissummer!]

AmericanStudyingthe clichéd extremes of sitcom dads, and the men in the middle.

1)     The Wise Men: It’s no coincidence that one ofthe first popular TV sitcoms was entitled FatherKnows Best (1954-60, based on the 1949-54radio show). A central thread throughout the genre’s history has been thetrope of the wise father responding to his family’s problems and issues, from Father’s JimWarren (Robert Young) and LeaveIt to Beaver’s Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont, proving in that clip thatfather most definitely did not always know best) to TheCosby Show’s Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby, now ironically butnevertheless) and Growing Pains’ JasonSeaver (Alan Thicke), among countless others. It’s difficult to separatethis trope from 50s stereotypes of gender and family roles (especially afterseeing that hyperlinked Leave It toBeaver moment), but at the same time the trope’s endurance long after thatdecade reflects its continued cultural resonance. If sitcoms often reflectexaggerated versions of our idealized social structures, then there’s somethingabout that paternalistic wise man that has remained a powerful American idea.

2)     The Fools: Yet at the same time that the TVversion of Father Knows Best wastaking off, JackieGleason’s The Honeymooners (1955-56,based on a recurring comedy sketch) was experiencing its own brief butstriking success. I’m not sure whether Gleason’s foolish,angry husband (not yet a father in Gleason’s case) character was a directresponse to wise characters or just the natural yang to that yin; but in anycase such foolish fathers have likewise continued to be a sitcom staple in thedecades since, with Married with Children’s AlBundy (Ed O’Neill) and TheSimpsons’ Homer Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) representing twoparticularly exaggerated end of the century versions of the type. Yet also twosignificantly distinct versions—Al Bundy consistently desires to escape fromhis wife and family (putting him in the American tradition of characters likeRip Van Winkle), while Homer is a macho stereotype who loves his beer anddonuts but also mostly loves his family. To paraphrase Tolstoy’sfamous quote, each foolish sitcom father is foolish in his own way.

3)     The Middle Men: Because these two extremeshave been so prevalent in sitcom history, it’s easy to put each and everysitcom father into one or the other of these categories. But I think doing sowould be a disservice to (among others) those sitcom dads who mightsuperficially seem like caricatured fools, but whose characters includedcomplexities and depths beyond that stereotype. I’d say that’s especially thecase for a few 1970s dads: Allin the Family’s Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), TheJeffersons’ George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley, who first appearedas the character on All), and Sanfordand Son’s Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx). Each of those fathers could beas foolish and angry as any, but to stop there would be to miss much of whatmade them and their sitcoms memorable: partly the willingness to engage withsocial and political issues such as race and class; but also and just asimportantly the messy, dynamic humanity each character and actor captured, allwithout losing an ounce of their comic timing and success. Few fathers arepurely wise or foolish, after all, and these dads in the middle help remind usof the full spectrum of paternal possibilities.

Next TVStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 9, 2024: Classic TV Studying: Amos ‘n’ Andy

[This weekmarks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50th anniversary of LittleHouse on the Prairie and the 70thof Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and otherclassic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we canlearn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out thissummer!]

On astrikingly different way the early sitcom could have gone, and why thedifference matters.

By thetime the television adaptation of Amos ‘n’ Andy premieredon CBS in June 1951, it had been a popular radio program for nearly a quarter-century.Freeman Gosden andCharles Correll, the two white Vaudeville actors and radio hosts who hadmet in North Carolina in 1920, transitioned to work at Chicago’s WQJ radio stationin 1925, and then createdAmos ‘n’ Andy and its main characters in the late 1920s andbeen central to the program ever since, had been working since the mid-1940s onwhether and how to transition the show to the emerging medium of TV. Apparentlytheir working goal throughout those early years, and indeed per aDecember 1950 Pittsburgh Press article their plan when the show wasin its initial production phase, was for the two of them to continue providingthe voices of the characters (as they had throughout its radio run, and notjust Amos and Andy; they provided as many as 170 different character voices),and for Black actors to be seen on screen but only to lip sync the parts.

Supposedly(per Melvin Patrick Ely’s excellent book The Adventures of Amos ‘n’Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon [2001]) Gosdenand Correll recognized that they would not work as well as television actors(not least because their one attempt to bring the show to the big screen, the 1930 film Check andDouble Check, had been an unmitigated flop that Gosden would later call“just about the worst movie ever”) but wanted to be paid more than the TV show’sBlack performers, and since speaking lines make a part more substantive andthus higher-paying they devised this plan. But even without that overtly racistmotivation, the lip syncing plan was a truly awful idea. At the very least, itwould have made the show’s Black performers into quite literally minstrelshow characters, stand-ins for the racist stereotypes created by whiteartists. It’s even possible to see Black actors in this plan as an inverted butjust as gross form of the longstanding cultural tradition, in but also wellbeyond such minstrel shows, of Blackfaceperformance.

Fortunately,Gosden and Correll’s plan did not come to pass, and when the show premiered inJune 1951 it not only featured exclusively Black actors—including as Amos, as Andy, andthe well-known Vaudeville comedian as their shady friendKingfish—but they also spoke all the lines. The show only ran for two seasons(totaling 52 episodes), and was unquestionably controversial throughout thattime, as illustrated by the NAACP’s1951 publication “Why the Amos ‘n Andy TV Show Should Be Taken Offthe Air.” But it also seems to have represented a positive influence for manyAfrican American viewers and communities, at least according to historian HenryLouis Gates Jr. who wrote in his 2012 AmericanHeritage essay “Growing Up Colored”that “everybody loved Amos ‘n’ Andy—I don’t care what people say today.What was special to us was that their world was all colored, just like ours.” Thatwould have technically still been true if the Black actors had only lip syncedtheir lines, I suppose, but hearing their voices was of course part and parcelof their presence, and so I’m very glad that this early TV show went that way.

Next TVStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 6, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: Aidan at Vanderbilt!

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses.Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited aboutas well!]

By thetime this post airs, I will be down in Nashville for Family Weekend, visitingmy olderson Aidan as his first year at Vanderbilt University kicks off in earnest. Idon’t want to pretend that I know what his Fall semester will hold, no morethan I do any other part of these next four years and beyond (although I’msuper excited to find out!). But I know that one of the courses he’ll be takingthis Fall, alongside a bunch of Engineering and Engineering-adjacent ones as hestarts his major in Civil Engineering, will be Literature and the Environment, taughtby EnglishProfessor Rachel Teukolsky. I don’t expect Aidan will take many Englishcourses in his time at Vandy, and I hope y’all know me well enough to know I’mmore than good with that. But I can’t lie, I’m excited to think about his firstyear featuring one such course, and to talk about it with him, at Family Weekendand beyond.

Specialweekend update tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

September 5, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: American Lit II Online

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses.Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited aboutas well!]

One of themore unexpected ways my teaching career has evolved over the last few years hasbeen the chance to teach the same course in multiple modalities, and thus toreally experiment with variations of the syllabus, readings, assignments, andmore in those distinct spaces and time periods. This past year has been aparticularly striking case in point: in Fall 2023 I taught an online acceleratedsection (which met for only the last 8 weeks of the semester); in the Spring semesterI taught an in-person section of my American Lit II survey; in the Summersemester I taught a 5-week online version; and this Fall I’ll be teaching itonline again, but this time for the whole 15-week semester. For those keepingcount, that’s four distinct versions of the same course in about a calendaryear—a blend of in-person and online, full-semester and accelerated indifferent ways. I can’t lie, I still don’t always feel that I’ve masteredonline teaching (despite having done it for more than a decade now). But I doknow that each way I teach a course challenges me and helps keep it fresh as aresult, and for one of the classes I’ve been teaching throughout my 20-year FSUcareer, that effect is a welcome one indeed.

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

September 4, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: English Studies Capstone

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses.Leading up to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited aboutas well!]

As I’ve tracedhere in multiple end of semester reflection posts (hyperlinked below), one ofmy favorite things over the last few years of teaching has been the opportunityfor my English Studies Senior Capstone students to connect with authors we’veread in that course. That’s included my fellow public scholar KevinGannon for his book Radical Hope, but also the authors of our lasttwo 21st century literary texts: MoniqueTruong and EricNguyen. I try to keep that spot on the syllabus particularly fresh, so forthis semester’s Capstone section I’ve slotted in a new, very recent novel: JesmynWard’s bracing and beautiful LetUs Descend (2023). I know the students will get a lot out of Ward’sbook no matter what, and I’m excited to have a couple weeks of intenseconversations about this intense and important novel. But I’m certainly hopingwe can connect with Ward, at the very least to share some questions as I didwith Nguyen last year. I’ll keep y’all posted on the results!

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?

September 3, 2024: Fall Semester Previews: First-Year Writing

[As my 20th(!) year at Fitchburg State University kicks off, I’ll focus my Fall Semesterpreviews on one thing I’m especially excited about for each of my courses. Leadingup to a special post on a new scholarly project I’m very excited about aswell!]

I’vetaught at least one section of First-Year Writing I in every one of those 20Fall semesters, so it’s fair to say that most of what happens in this coursewill not be new to me (even if it’s genuinely the case that each community ofstudents forms its own identity in a way that keeps these courses freshnonetheless). But I do try to find ways to update the syllabi when possible,and for my two sections this Fall I’ve done so with the culminating assignment,a paper where the students combine personal and academic modes of writingaround a complex central topic of their choice. I’m a big believer in this finalpaper, as it helps me remind students that their personal identities, voices, perspectives,and experiences should always be part of their more formal academic work. Buthere in 2024, it seems to me that for many students, this assignment might makemore sense with digital components (or as an entirely digital product), ratherthan in writing on paper—so I’m going to include that as a parallel but distinctoption for this final paper, and hopefully we’ll work together to figure outhow each and every student can make this assignment fully and successfully theirs.

Next previewpost tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatare you excited to teach or work on this Fall?