Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 381

June 13, 2013: AmericanStudier Blogroll: American Identity Blogs

[For this week’s series, I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many fellow bloggers/blogs on my reading list, divided up by categories (although all these blogs go beyond any one category). Please share some of your favorite blogs for a crowd-sourced blogroll-tastic weekend post!]
Three blogs that plumb the depths of that huge, complex, and vital topic: American identity.1)      Mixed Race America: Scholar Jennifer Ho maintains this blog, which consistently provides some of the most incisive and interesting engagements with racial and ethnic mixtures, combinations, encounters, representations, and definitions in American life and society.2)      Race Files: Where Mixed Race America comes out of a scholarly perspective, Soya Jung and Scot Nakagawa’s Race Files has political and social activism at its core. But more and more, I see public scholarship as a combination of both those conversations, and Race Files is one of my go-to sites for such contemporary dialogues about race, racism, and identity.3)      Native Appropriations: ’s website on representations and images of Native American identities has recently moved and is still settling into its new home—but for more than three years now it has offered some of the most incisive and important analyses of these American issues and identities.For those of us wading into the murky and roiling waters of American identity, blogs like these help make sure we don’t get swept away. Thoughts on my own blog tomorrow,BenPS. What blogs on race, ethnicity, culture, or identity do you read? Other blogs you’d highlight for the weekend post?

June 12, 2013: AmericanStudier Blogroll: History Blogs

[For this week’s series, I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many fellow bloggers/blogs on my reading list, divided up by categories (although all these blogs go beyond any one category). Please share some of your favorite blogs for a crowd-sourced blogroll-tastic weekend post!]
Three blogs that help me connect to that elusive but ever-present American past.1)      The Junto: This group blog, maintained by an impressive cohort of young Americanists, focuses on any and all aspects of early American history and culture. Newly created at the outset of 2013, The Junto has already become a must-read for all AmericanStudiers.2)      Civil War Memory: Kevin Levin’s website and blog, about which I’ve written previously in this space, is one of the longest-running and most prominent historical and scholarly blogs. So it certainly doesn’t need my endorsement—but be that as it may, I still visit Civil War Memory daily, and always come away inspired to keep thinking about American history and culture.3)      Hankering for History: An anonymous Fitchburg State University undergraduate (at least I think he wants to remain anonymous, and so won’t out him here!) maintains this multi-faceted historical blog, one that is as likely to focus on ancient Egypt as on contemporary military history. Works for me!The past isn’t even past, and blogs like this help make it a more meaningful part of our present. Next blogroll highlights tomorrow,BenPS. What historical blogs do you read? Other blogs you’d highlight for the weekend post?

June 11, 2013: AmericanStudier Blogroll: Lit and Culture Blogs

[For this week’s series, I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many fellow bloggers/blogs on my reading list, divided up by categories (although all these blogs go beyond any one category). Please share some of your favorite blogs for a crowd-sourced blogroll-tastic weekend post!]
Three blogs that keep me reading and thinking about American literature and culture.1)      The American Literary Blog: Rob Vellela has guest-posted on my blog, and I’ve had the chance to do the same on his—but even without such a connection, I’d make sure to visit Rob’s blog every day, for the (often under-remembered, and always interesting) American literary moments and figures he highlights.2)      : Managing Editor and his many contributors (including, once, ) have created a truly interdisciplinary AmericanStudies blog, one that in a given week might move between sitcoms, Southwestern humorists, and survey courses.3)      The Ardent Audience: Daniel Cavicchi maintains this equally interdisciplinary and always fascinating blog, one that connects the complex topic of audience to every kind of text and media within American (and world) culture.So much culture to consider, so little time—but blogs like these help me navigate that topic for sure. Next blogroll highlights tomorrow,BenPS. What literary or cultural studies blogs do you read? Other blogs you’d highlight for the weekend post?

June 10, 2013: AmericanStudier Blogroll: Teaching Blogs

[For this week’s series, I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many fellow bloggers/blogs on my reading list, divided up by categories (although all these blogs go beyond any one category). Please share some of your favorite blogs for a crowd-sourced blogroll-tastic weekend post!]
Three blogs from which I learn a lot about the classroom and its many contexts.1)      Deep Down in the Classroom: My grad school friend and her colleagues in the Montclair State University First Year Writing Program started this blog a few months ago, and I look forward to its evolving conversations about writing instruction, pedagogy, and a lot more.2)      Katherine Rye Jewell: Kate, a Fitchburg State University colleague with whom I’ve had the chance to team-teach our introductory AmericanStudies course, writes about many different topics on her scholarly blog—but she frequently features her innovative and inspiring thoughts on 21st century teaching.3)      Mass Medieval: This blog is run by two medievalists, including another FSU colleague of mine, Kisha Tracy. It too touches on many different topics, but one of the main threads has been questions of how to bring this kind of distant and complex content into the classroom and to our students.We teachers are always learning, and blogs like these have been instrumental in my continued development. Next blogroll highlights tomorrow,BenPS. What teaching blogs do you read? Other blogs you’d highlight for the weekend post?

June 8-9, 2013: A Crowd-sourced Blockbuster

[With the summer movie season fully underway, this week’s series has focused on AmericanStudying some classic blockbusters. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and ideas of fellow AmericanStudiers—add your own crowd-pleasers, please!]
Jeff Renye follows up the Star Warspost with a link to clips from “the Turkish Star Wars.”Anne Marie Donahue writes, “Don't be too hard on Lucas. Kurosawa often admitted to being very influenced by the American Westerns, particularly High Noon (legend has it, that was his favorite film). Best summer movie memory: seeing a revival of Jaws at the Strand Theatre in Clinton MA. Packed full of middle agers (self included) people who could be my parents and teens that could be my kids. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was there to have a blast. Never thought I'd see the day when a bunch of teens screamed at a foam rubber shark, sans HD effects! There is a god, and he is Spielberg.”And Anne follows up the Jaws post, adding, “I loved this film! What intrigued me the most (after the soundtrack of course) was the constant battle (but not battle) for alpha male that Quint, Brody and Hooper shared. Quint, being the owner of the boat and at one point madman of the sea, is supplanted by Hooper after Hooper proves his masculinity (battled a little shark as a child). Hooper's boating skills and nautical knowledge, paired with his unending good nature makes it clear to Quint that he's not playing alpha male, which oddly makes him a winner of that game. But the truly interesting upheaval is Brody, the former uber-macho police officer from NYC (I think) and now glorified security guard in a vacation spot. This film is one of the best.”In response to a Tweet of mine about historical films, I got a bunch of great replies:Heather Cox Richardson Tweeted, “On Reconstruction: Sweet Home Alabama =brilliant; Sommersby =hilariously awful.”Joseph Adelman Tweeted, “I’ve had good success in Revolutionary America class with Mary Silliman’s War,” adding that “there’s a decent essay on it from the AHA’s Perspectives.”Kenneth Owen Tweeted that he tends to use documentaries more than feature films in the classroom, but that “Movie-wise, I love the film version of 1776. #verypredictable.”Next series start Monday,BenPS. What blockbuster memories or analyses would you add?

June 7, 2013: Summer Blockbusters: The Patriot

[With the summer movie season fully underway, a series on AmericanStudying some classic blockbusters. Add your responses, memories, and ideas for a crowd-sourced post that’s sure to own the weekend box office!]
On the monstrous issue at the heart of another historical blockbuster.There are lots of reasons why this AmericanStudier should be a big fan of Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot (2000; serious spoilers in that video). It features a protagonist who seems to be at least loosely based on one of my favorite American historical figures: Frances Marion, the Swamp Fox on the Revolution. It includes multiple, compelling scenes set in the South Carolina State Legislature (seriously). And it’s a got a heaping helping of Chris Cooper, which is more than just about any other summer blockbuster outside of the unquestionably great The Bourne Identity . What’s not to like?The very, very very, unlikeable villain, that’s what. As embodied by Jason Isaacs, The Patriot’s villainous British colonel is a thoroughgoing monster, the kind of man who will shoot a young child just for the heck of it, with a smile on his face. There are of course generic reasons for this choice—the film is what we might call a historical revenge saga, one inspired quite directly by Mel Gibson’s previous Braveheart as well as similar films like Gladiator; those films featured equally monstrous villains played by Patrick McGoohanand Joaquin Phoenix (respectively), characters designed in each case to insure that audiences would root for nothing more than to see the protagonist achieve his vengeful goal. Maybe if I were a British or Roman historian, those villains would bother me more—but as an AmericanStudier, it’s Isaac’s over-the-top bad guy who gripes my cookies.The problem isn’t just that making Isaacs such a monster reduces the film’s narrative of the American Revolution to a story of primal revenge (although that sure doesn’t work on any historical level, unless you want to argue that everybody really took that Crispus Attucks thing personally). Nor is it just that it makes the British look really bad, although they had some justifiable issues with that effect. To my mind, the biggest problem with The Patriot’s monstrous villain is that he makes the film’s Revolutionary protagonist into an equally one-dimensional saint, turning our hugely complex, politically and socially layered originating moment into a simplistic saga of good vs. evil. I’m sure there were monstrous men in the British army, and in the Continental one as well—war tends to bring out such types. But they didn’t define the Revolution’s causes or stories; and so whatever its charms, this Revolutionary epic gets a failing grade in history.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s posts? Blockbusters you’d highlight, remember, or analyze?

June 6, 2013: Summer Blockbusters: Pearl Harbor

[With the summer movie season fully underway, a series on AmericanStudying some classic blockbusters. Add your responses, memories, and ideas for a crowd-sourced post that’s sure to own the weekend box office!]
On the uses and abuses of history in Michael Bay’s most serious blockbuster.First, let’s stop for a moment and acknowledge the basic impressiveness of the fact that the director of Bad Boys (and sequels), Transformers (and sequels), The Rock, Armageddon, and the like made a historical epic about the Pearl Harbor bombing and its World War II aftermaths. Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) came out in July (three years prior to Bay’s film) and so would qualify as a summer blockbuster, but it was Spielberg, and the post-Schindler and AmistadSpielberg at that—nothing surprising about a historical epic from that guy. But from the man who’s currently in production with both Transformers 4 and Bad Boys 3? Again, worth noting and, at a baseline level, admiring.Moreover, it’d be pretty silly to critique Bay’s film for making a friendship and a love triangle central to its plotlines. After all, that’s the nature of the genre I’ve elsewhere dubbed period fiction—works of art that set universal human stories against a backdrop of (often) impressively realized historical moments. While those of us who care deeply about the histories themselves might be frustrated that such works relegate them to the background, it would be just as possible to argue the opposite: that works of period fiction help modern audiences connect to their historical subjects through engaging and accessible human characters, stories, and themes. After all, none other than the godfather of historical fiction, Sir Walter Scott, could be said to have done precisely that in the creation of characters like Waverlyand Ivanhoe. Yes, I just compared Michael Bay to Sir Walter Scott, and I stand by it.On the other hand, I would argue that if a piece of period fiction is set in wartime, it owes its audience at the very least an equally compelling and affecting portrayal of war: Saving Private Ryan, whatever its flaws, certainly offers that, especially in the opening sequence linked above; Gone with the Wind , more flawed still, is nonetheless at its best in depicting the Civil War and particularly the destruction of Atlanta. Thanks to its sizeable budget and state-of-the-art special effects, Pearl Harbor is able to include an extended depiction of that bombing, among other battle sequences—yet to my mind (and you can judge for yourself at that link and the follow-up part 2) it fails utterly at capturing any of the brutalities or terrors, or any other aspects, of war. The problem isn’t that the director of Transformersis making a wartime historical epic—it’s that the wartime historical epic doesn’t feel noticeably different from any other action film in his oeuvre. Last summer movie tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Summer movie memories and analyses you’d share?

June 5, 2013: Summer Blockbusters: ID4

[With the summer movie season fully underway, a series on AmericanStudying some classic blockbusters. Add your responses, memories, and ideas for a crowd-sourced post that’s sure to own the weekend box office!]
On the blockbuster that’s American in the worst, but perhaps also the best, senses.The weekend of July 4th, 1996, saw the release of a summer blockbuster that in its own ways changed the game just as fully as did Jaws. Independence Day (otherwise known as ID4) might not have been the first summer movie to emphasize over-the-top spectacle and special effects and catastrophic destruction and a barely-used ginormous cast and Will Smith makin’ jokes at inappropriate moments and etc., but maybe it was, and it certainly was one of the first to recoup its bloated budget thanks to all those elements (I assume; it sure wasn’t thanks to subtle, character-driven filmmaking). Although it did feature the always wonderful and criminally underused Judd Hirsch, so I suppose I can’t be too angry with Roland Emmerich’s behemoth of a blockbuster.On the other hand, the problems with ID4 go deeper than just special effects or budget, and connect very fully to some of the most frustrating and limiting American narratives. There would be plenty of thematic nits to pick, but I’m thinking specifically about the striking thread of American Exceptionalism that runs throughout the film. Ostensibly the alien invasion affects the whole world, and the film includes various establishing shots of worldwide destruction and subsequent communities of survivors in various national settings and garb. But the story is an American one, and not just in terms of the characters whom we follow—it’s the American scientist and American soldier who come up with the plan to save the day, the American pilots who take down the alien mothership, and, most crucially, the very American president who gives the speech to rally those troops and the whole world to the cause. When that president proclaims that “Today [the Fourth of July] we celebrate our independence day,” I suppose it could feel like he’s uniting the whole world—but it feels more like he’s just Americanizing the world, much like Hollywood itself has so often done.So on the whole, ID4 embodies some of the worst features of both the big-budget blockbuster and American excess. But there’s one particular thread that links a few characters and connects to a very different kind of national narrative. In their own ways, Jeff Goldblum’s scientist, Randy Quaid’s cropduster pilot, and Bill Pullman’s president are all, at the film’s opening, failures, men who have let down those for whom they are responsible (wife, children, and citizens, respectively). Since this is a crowd-pleasing action film, of course by the end all three have redeemed themselves—but the way they do it is still worth noting: not by heroic acts of rugged individualism (that’s left to the Fresh Prince and his alien-punches) but by collective effort, working with each other to become something better than what any of them had been and perhaps could have been on their own. That’s a blockbuster lesson well worth the price of admission.Another summer movie tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Summer movie memories and analyses you’d share?

June 4, 2013: Summer Blockbusters: Jaws

[With the summer movie season fully underway, a series on AmericanStudying some classic blockbusters. Add your responses, memories, and ideas for a crowd-sourced post that’s sure to own the weekend box office!]
On the American communities, large and small, at the heart of the first summer blockbuster.I’m not sure if they’re still there, but for many decades a Martha’s Vineyard beach just outside of the fishing village of Menemshawas home to the broken-down remnants of two hugely important American cultural icons: the fishing boat on which Quint, Brody, and Hooper hunted for the great white that had been terrorizing Amity Island; and the camera boat from which Steven Spielberg had filmed their departure on that small craft (I believe the subsequent scenes at sea were filmed hundreds of miles away, in the warmer waters of the Caribbean). Besides making for a very cool tourist attraction, those boats nicely illustrated just how much Spielberg’s movie has lingered with our culture: considered the prototypical summer film, Jaws(1975) became in its era the highest-grossing movie of all time, and profoundly influenced future films in multiple genres.So there would be lots of ways to AmericanStudy Jaws, but what interests me most about the film (and of course the novel on which it was based, although I’m far less familiar with Benchley’s text so am focused on the film here) is its creation of complex and very American communities, on two distinct but interconnected levels. The film’s first half is as much about the fictional but Vineyard-like community of Amity as it is the terrifying underwater killer stalking the island’s beachgoers, and because the protagonist is that community’s chief law enforcement officer, we get to see many different elements of Amity’s world: the mayor and other aspects of the island’s power structure, locals like the fishermen who take part in the shark-fest or the mother whose son is eaten, the summer tourists on whom Amity depends for its survival but to whom it has the love-hate relationship you would expect, and so on. Brody and his wife also each have complex individual relationships to the place and those communities, adding another layer to what we learn about the island.When Brody, Hooper, and Quint depart on Quint’s Orca for the film’s second half, we leave the world of Amity behind; but the three men form a small and complex American community of their own. Horror films generally depend on characters who fit into stereotypical categories and roles, and the Orca’s trio would seem to qualify: the nerdy rich-kid scientist getting his first exposure to the real world; the laconic working class fisherman for whom it’s his way or the highway; the practical-minded lawman trying to balance those two while navigating his fear of the water. But what makes this section of the film work as well as it does is how much each man, and through them the small community’s dynamic overall, evolves and deepens; the drinking scene is often rightly highlighted, but the three actors really imbue every moment and interaction with this kind of depth, revealing the complexities within every American identity and the communities out of which they are composed. That’s a pretty impressive blockbuster!Another summer movie tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Summer movie memories and analyses you’d share?

June 3, 2013: Summer Blockbusters: Star Wars

[With the summer movie season fully underway, a series on AmericanStudying some classic blockbusters. Add your responses, memories, and ideas for a crowd-sourced post that’s sure to own the weekend box office!]

One of the most popular and influential summer movies (and movies period) was very directly influenced by a Japanese film—and, critiques of the American director notwithstanding, that influence is a very positive thing.Few cultural texts have had a more significant and ongoing presence over the last three decades than George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977) and its many sequels, prequels, novelizations, television spinoffs, parodies, merchandising and marketing and material culture connections, animated versions, Wookie-centric Christmas specials, and the like. Because of that lasting presence, and perhaps especially because a whole generation of students and scholars has grown up alongside Luke Skywalker and friends, Lucas’s prominent debt to Joseph Campbell’s analyses of heroism and mythologies has likewise been very well established and documented; which is to say, this is a pop culture text and artist whose multigenerational and cross-cultural (at least in the sense of Campbell’s ideas linking myths from multiple cultures) connections and influences seem already well known.Far be it for me to disagree with that longstanding and very thoroughly developed assessment—did you note the ridiculously comprehensive Lucas-Campbell chart at that link?—but there’s another, also very influential and much less broadly known, source for Lucas’s first film. As this website conversation highlights, Lucas’s initial story outline for Star Wars (particularly in the story’s initial events and exposition) closely parallels Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 film The Hidden Fortress; Lucas would change certain events and details between that outline and the film’s screenplay, but many of the Kurosawa echoes remained very much present in the finished film, as mashups of the two movies such as this one cleverly highlight. Such mashups could be used as exhibits in a plagiarism case against Lucas, and indeed many who have noted the similarities to Fortress have done so in a critical way, arguing that at least Lucas owed Kurosawa a more overt acknowledgment of the influence as Star Wars gained in popularity and Lucas became one of the most famous and wealthiest filmmakers of all time.Certainly I believe that Kurosawa’s film should be better known, not only because of its clear influence on Lucas’s early ideas for his own series, but also because it seems (from, admittedly, the handful of clips I have seen and the descriptions I have read) to be an interesting if minor work from one of cinema’s most prolific and talented artists. Yet far from serving as an indictment of Lucas or his film, this additional influence highlights, to my mind, just how genuinely and impressively American Star Warsreally is: inspired in equal measure by centuries of cross-cultural mythology and a Japanese film, with the seminal fantasy series by a British author thrown in for good measure; starring young American actors and some of England’s most established screen veterans; shamelessly cribbing from the styles and stunts of early serials and pop culture classics like Buck Rogers; with all those elements thrown into a space opera blender and turned into a hugely unique and engaging entertainments. Lucas had called his first, much more grounded and local and historically nostalgic, film American Graffiti (1973)—but it’s Star Warsthat really exemplifies the cross-cultural, multi-genre, intertextual, inspiring mélange that is American culture and art.Now’s that a Force to be reckoned with! Another summer movie tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Summer movie memories and analyses you’d share?