Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 396
December 7, 2012
December 7, 2012: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Five
[In this week that culminates in National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, I’ve been blogging about different aspects of how we remember World War II’s Pacific Theater (and related issues). That has led up to this Pearl Harbor-centered post. Please share your thoughts on these topics, World War II, memories of war, or any related themes for the weekend post!]
On the complex, challenging, and crucial question of how we remember our infamous days.Few presidential statements have been proven as accurate by the subsequent decades as Franklin Roosevelt’s description of December 7th, 1941 as “a date which will live in infamy.” We have a fair number of national memory days of one kind or another, of course, but I can’t think of another that remembers anything that’s anywhere near as explicitly negative and destructive as does National Pear Harbor Remembrance Day (although of course Columbus Day would qualify from the counter-argument side). The only potential equivalent would be September 11th, which doesn’t currently have an official remembrance day but likely will get there—and for that reason, along with many others, it’s worth considering how we remember an event like Pearl Harbor, and what the stakes are.In the Atlantic essay that I hyperlinked under “likely will get there,” historian and educator Kevin Levin argues that, as the essay’s synopsis puts it, “Over time, our memory of national catastrophes becomes less personal and more nuanced.” But Levin’s comparison for September 11th is to our national memories of the Civil War, and I would argue that there’s an overt and key difference between that horrific event and either 9/11 or Pearl Harbor: everyone involved in the Civil War was an American (whether they wanted to admit it at the time or not), and so after the event it became and has continued for the next 150 years to be important (for better and for worse reasons) for us to find ways to produce more nuanced and less divisive memories of it. Obviously there are American communities of which we could say the same when it comes to Pearl Harbor (ie, the Japanese Internment) and 9/11 (the anti-Muslim backlash), but the fact remains that those infamous events were caused by nations and entities outside of America, and so it’s entirely possible for us to continue to define them through a more explicitly divided, us vs. them frame.Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, or at least not absolutely—Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both, in their definitely distinct ways, attacks on the United States by such external forces, and there’s no way we can or should try to remember them outside of such a frame. While I would certainly emphasize remembering those who were lost in the attacks, rather than focusing our attention on the attackers, that shift wouldn’t change the fundamental frame so much as (potentially) produce different emotional responses to it (mourning rather than anger, for example). The White House statement hyperlinked at “National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day” in the intro section above illustrates this kind of emphasis and emotion nicely, I’d say. But to come back to Levin’s argument, I would agree with him that more nuance—more understanding of the multiple perspectives and histories contained in an event, and the various and often competing causes and elements that lead up to it, and the equally varied and in many cases still unfolding results—should always be part of our goal for such remembrance as well. That it’s far more difficult to reach for such nuance when it comes to these external attacks (compared to the Civil War) only makes the effort that much more valuable.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So last chance—what do you think? Thoughts on these issues and questions, on any of the week’s posts, or on any related themes for that crowd-sourced post?12/7 Memory Day nominee: Willa Cather, for her Nebraska trilogy to be sure, but for a career’s worth of equally unique, impressive, and enduring American stories.
On the complex, challenging, and crucial question of how we remember our infamous days.Few presidential statements have been proven as accurate by the subsequent decades as Franklin Roosevelt’s description of December 7th, 1941 as “a date which will live in infamy.” We have a fair number of national memory days of one kind or another, of course, but I can’t think of another that remembers anything that’s anywhere near as explicitly negative and destructive as does National Pear Harbor Remembrance Day (although of course Columbus Day would qualify from the counter-argument side). The only potential equivalent would be September 11th, which doesn’t currently have an official remembrance day but likely will get there—and for that reason, along with many others, it’s worth considering how we remember an event like Pearl Harbor, and what the stakes are.In the Atlantic essay that I hyperlinked under “likely will get there,” historian and educator Kevin Levin argues that, as the essay’s synopsis puts it, “Over time, our memory of national catastrophes becomes less personal and more nuanced.” But Levin’s comparison for September 11th is to our national memories of the Civil War, and I would argue that there’s an overt and key difference between that horrific event and either 9/11 or Pearl Harbor: everyone involved in the Civil War was an American (whether they wanted to admit it at the time or not), and so after the event it became and has continued for the next 150 years to be important (for better and for worse reasons) for us to find ways to produce more nuanced and less divisive memories of it. Obviously there are American communities of which we could say the same when it comes to Pearl Harbor (ie, the Japanese Internment) and 9/11 (the anti-Muslim backlash), but the fact remains that those infamous events were caused by nations and entities outside of America, and so it’s entirely possible for us to continue to define them through a more explicitly divided, us vs. them frame.Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, or at least not absolutely—Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both, in their definitely distinct ways, attacks on the United States by such external forces, and there’s no way we can or should try to remember them outside of such a frame. While I would certainly emphasize remembering those who were lost in the attacks, rather than focusing our attention on the attackers, that shift wouldn’t change the fundamental frame so much as (potentially) produce different emotional responses to it (mourning rather than anger, for example). The White House statement hyperlinked at “National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day” in the intro section above illustrates this kind of emphasis and emotion nicely, I’d say. But to come back to Levin’s argument, I would agree with him that more nuance—more understanding of the multiple perspectives and histories contained in an event, and the various and often competing causes and elements that lead up to it, and the equally varied and in many cases still unfolding results—should always be part of our goal for such remembrance as well. That it’s far more difficult to reach for such nuance when it comes to these external attacks (compared to the Civil War) only makes the effort that much more valuable.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So last chance—what do you think? Thoughts on these issues and questions, on any of the week’s posts, or on any related themes for that crowd-sourced post?12/7 Memory Day nominee: Willa Cather, for her Nebraska trilogy to be sure, but for a career’s worth of equally unique, impressive, and enduring American stories.
December 6, 2012
December 6, 2012: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Four
[In this week that culminates in National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, I’ll be blogging about different aspects of how we remember World War II’s Pacific Theater (and related issues). That’ll lead up to a Pearl Harbor-centered Friday post. Please share your thoughts on these topics, World War II, memories of war, or any related themes for the weekend post!]
On a childhood building models, and what they can help us understand.I’m not sure exactly when it started, but by the time I was in middle school I was seriously into model-building. I know that I constructed some trucks, a few planes, maybe the occasional car, but the vast majority of the models I built were of naval ships. I distinctly remember a box in our upstairs bathroom full of those completed steel-gray models—battleships, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, PT boats, troop carriers and amphibious landers, you name it and I had at least a few in my assembled fleet. The hobby hasn’t continued into my adult years (although I look forward to making some models with my boys, and especially my very careful and mechanically minded older son), but I’m sure that the skills it helped me hone—reading and following directions, precision, patience—have come with me into lots of other aspects of my life and identity.Yet as I think back on those model ships, I have to admit that I don’t know that they communicated much at all about the complex realities of their uses, their histories, the battles and conflicts in which they participated. Obviously they weren’t necessarily designed to do so—or at least I’ve never encountered a plastic model that comes with any way to represent the effects of explosions, of aeriel bombardment or ship-to-ship combat, or the like—and there’s no reason why they would have to; there are plenty of other ways for interested young people to learn about war, after all. But you could make the case, and I think I might be inclined to agree, that in the absence of any such contexts and complications, military models can help convey ideals of war as a purely exciting and noble pursuit, something that every young person can imagine participating in heroically. For one of the most clear and compelling accounts of such youthful ideals and what they can produce, I can’t recommend strongly enough Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July(1976).I remember one model that was very different, though. That was a model of the beachhead at Tarawa (that’s not the one I had, but it’s not dissimilar), the Pacific Island which became the site of one of World War II’s most horrific and destructive battles. The model of course couldn’t convey every detail of the battle, but it did a couple of things that were distinct from the ships: it forced me to consider the experiences and lives (and deaths) of the individual soldiers I was putting down on the beachhead; and it inspired me to investigate the battle I was assembling, and so to learn about the U.S. casualties, the Japanese defenders who literally fought to the last man to hold the island, and so on. Doing so didn’t stop me from working on those other kinds of models, but it did make it much harder for me to entirely ignore or elide the contexts—or, more exactly, the defining realities—of the Pacific Theater, of World War II, and of war in general. That’s a perspective worth modeling, I’d say.Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on modeling or other connectinos to war, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/6 Memory Day nominee: Ira Gershwin, who with his brother and partner George contributed some of America’s most memorable and enduring songs and musicals.[image error]
On a childhood building models, and what they can help us understand.I’m not sure exactly when it started, but by the time I was in middle school I was seriously into model-building. I know that I constructed some trucks, a few planes, maybe the occasional car, but the vast majority of the models I built were of naval ships. I distinctly remember a box in our upstairs bathroom full of those completed steel-gray models—battleships, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, PT boats, troop carriers and amphibious landers, you name it and I had at least a few in my assembled fleet. The hobby hasn’t continued into my adult years (although I look forward to making some models with my boys, and especially my very careful and mechanically minded older son), but I’m sure that the skills it helped me hone—reading and following directions, precision, patience—have come with me into lots of other aspects of my life and identity.Yet as I think back on those model ships, I have to admit that I don’t know that they communicated much at all about the complex realities of their uses, their histories, the battles and conflicts in which they participated. Obviously they weren’t necessarily designed to do so—or at least I’ve never encountered a plastic model that comes with any way to represent the effects of explosions, of aeriel bombardment or ship-to-ship combat, or the like—and there’s no reason why they would have to; there are plenty of other ways for interested young people to learn about war, after all. But you could make the case, and I think I might be inclined to agree, that in the absence of any such contexts and complications, military models can help convey ideals of war as a purely exciting and noble pursuit, something that every young person can imagine participating in heroically. For one of the most clear and compelling accounts of such youthful ideals and what they can produce, I can’t recommend strongly enough Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July(1976).I remember one model that was very different, though. That was a model of the beachhead at Tarawa (that’s not the one I had, but it’s not dissimilar), the Pacific Island which became the site of one of World War II’s most horrific and destructive battles. The model of course couldn’t convey every detail of the battle, but it did a couple of things that were distinct from the ships: it forced me to consider the experiences and lives (and deaths) of the individual soldiers I was putting down on the beachhead; and it inspired me to investigate the battle I was assembling, and so to learn about the U.S. casualties, the Japanese defenders who literally fought to the last man to hold the island, and so on. Doing so didn’t stop me from working on those other kinds of models, but it did make it much harder for me to entirely ignore or elide the contexts—or, more exactly, the defining realities—of the Pacific Theater, of World War II, and of war in general. That’s a perspective worth modeling, I’d say.Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on modeling or other connectinos to war, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/6 Memory Day nominee: Ira Gershwin, who with his brother and partner George contributed some of America’s most memorable and enduring songs and musicals.[image error]
December 5, 2012
December 5, 2012: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Three
[In this week that culminates in National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, I’ll be blogging about different aspects of how we remember World War II’s Pacific Theater (and related issues). That’ll lead up to a Pearl Harbor-centered Friday post. Please share your thoughts on these topics, World War II, memories of war, or any related themes for the weekend post!]
On the clear and telling differences between two similarly star-studded World War II films.Jack Smight’s Midway (1976) and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) have more in common than just their Pacific Theater settings. Or at least they have one pretty obvious and striking thing in common: each uses a huge and star-studded cast to capture a wide range of soldier and officer experiences within its focal battle. Midway features Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Charlton Heston, Hal Holbrook, James Coburn, Dabney Coleman, Robert Mitchum, Toshiro Mifune, Pat Morita, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, and Erik Estrada (among others!); Lineincludes Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, and John Travolta (to say nothing of the equally big-name actors, such as Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton, and Gary Oldman, whose parts were cut by Malick during editing). When it comes to cast size and scope, the two films are similarly old-school epics to be sure.The similarities pretty much end there, though, and while some of the differences can be attributed to Malick’s particular and very unique style—see: long, long shots of waving grass and the like—others can reveal a great deal about both the eras in which the films were made and the distinct genres in which they could be classified. For example, Midway makes significant use of stock footage, both from wartime camera shots of aerial battles and from numerous other films (American and Japanese); Malick’s film features no such footage. That’s partly a difference in period, as the use of stock footagewas still somewhat common in the 1970s and has almost entirely disappeared from filmmaking in the decades since (other than in rare and significant cases such as Forrest Gump). But to my mind it also reveals a key difference in the films’ emphases and goals: Midway is largely uninterested in engaging critically or analytically with the history it portrays, focusing instead on the character identities, interactions, and communities as they experience those events; whereas in Line individual characters come and go almost at random (and again, some were dropped entirely in post-production), making the history itself far more consistently central than any particular identities or interactions—and making the battle scenes the film’s acknowledged centerpieces, rather than simply stock footage to be quickly shown before we get back to the characters.To connect those distinct emphases to genre, I would argue that the films break down along the “period fiction” vs. “historical fiction” line that I delineated in this post. As I noted there, such a distinction is never absolute when it comes to individual works—it would be silly to claim that Midwaycould be set against the backdrop of any battle without changing in one important way or another; and some of Line’s key themes of individual choice and war’s destructiveness could be located in any military conflict. Moreover, it’s important to note that Midway includes an interesting subplot dealing with a very specific and important history, that of the Japanese Internment. Yet those qualifications notwithstanding, Midway is to my mind about its star-studded cast, and the individual characters they create and interactions they portray; while Line’s famously haphazard usage of its equally starry cast makes clear how much Malick sees those individuals as instead part of a larger and more central tapestry. While that distinction does to my mind make Malick’s the more historically complex and interesting film, the truth, as so often in this space, is this: watching both provides a particularly balanced picture of how epic films can portray war.Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on either or both of these films, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/5 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two titanic 20th century cultural icons and influences, Walt Disney and Little Richard.
On the clear and telling differences between two similarly star-studded World War II films.Jack Smight’s Midway (1976) and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) have more in common than just their Pacific Theater settings. Or at least they have one pretty obvious and striking thing in common: each uses a huge and star-studded cast to capture a wide range of soldier and officer experiences within its focal battle. Midway features Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Charlton Heston, Hal Holbrook, James Coburn, Dabney Coleman, Robert Mitchum, Toshiro Mifune, Pat Morita, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, and Erik Estrada (among others!); Lineincludes Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, and John Travolta (to say nothing of the equally big-name actors, such as Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton, and Gary Oldman, whose parts were cut by Malick during editing). When it comes to cast size and scope, the two films are similarly old-school epics to be sure.The similarities pretty much end there, though, and while some of the differences can be attributed to Malick’s particular and very unique style—see: long, long shots of waving grass and the like—others can reveal a great deal about both the eras in which the films were made and the distinct genres in which they could be classified. For example, Midway makes significant use of stock footage, both from wartime camera shots of aerial battles and from numerous other films (American and Japanese); Malick’s film features no such footage. That’s partly a difference in period, as the use of stock footagewas still somewhat common in the 1970s and has almost entirely disappeared from filmmaking in the decades since (other than in rare and significant cases such as Forrest Gump). But to my mind it also reveals a key difference in the films’ emphases and goals: Midway is largely uninterested in engaging critically or analytically with the history it portrays, focusing instead on the character identities, interactions, and communities as they experience those events; whereas in Line individual characters come and go almost at random (and again, some were dropped entirely in post-production), making the history itself far more consistently central than any particular identities or interactions—and making the battle scenes the film’s acknowledged centerpieces, rather than simply stock footage to be quickly shown before we get back to the characters.To connect those distinct emphases to genre, I would argue that the films break down along the “period fiction” vs. “historical fiction” line that I delineated in this post. As I noted there, such a distinction is never absolute when it comes to individual works—it would be silly to claim that Midwaycould be set against the backdrop of any battle without changing in one important way or another; and some of Line’s key themes of individual choice and war’s destructiveness could be located in any military conflict. Moreover, it’s important to note that Midway includes an interesting subplot dealing with a very specific and important history, that of the Japanese Internment. Yet those qualifications notwithstanding, Midway is to my mind about its star-studded cast, and the individual characters they create and interactions they portray; while Line’s famously haphazard usage of its equally starry cast makes clear how much Malick sees those individuals as instead part of a larger and more central tapestry. While that distinction does to my mind make Malick’s the more historically complex and interesting film, the truth, as so often in this space, is this: watching both provides a particularly balanced picture of how epic films can portray war.Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on either or both of these films, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/5 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two titanic 20th century cultural icons and influences, Walt Disney and Little Richard.
December 4, 2012
December 4, 2012: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part Two
[In this week that culminates in National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, I’ll be blogging about different aspects of how we remember World War II’s Pacific Theater (and related issues). That’ll lead up to a Pearl Harbor-centered Friday post. Please share your thoughts on these topics, World War II, memories of war, or any related themes for the weekend post!]
Trying to make sense of the two very different, and even opposed, public roles served by San Diego’s most unique historic site.Floating in San Diego’s harbor, just a few hundred yards away from the city’s downtown, is a hugely singular and compelling public space: the U.S.S. Midway, a formerly operational aircraft carrier that has (since 2004) served as a naval and aviation museum. The museum offers visitors at least three distinct visions into the lives of naval sailors and aviators: on the flight deck, a number of actual planes and helicopters, many of which the visitors can sit in; in the hangar beneath (alongside a few more planes), flight simulators and other re-creations of piloting and wartime experiences; and below-decks, an elaborately preserved and re-created vision of everyday life aboard the carrier for its officers, aviators, and sailors. My boys were particularly struck by the laundry room, with loads of fake clothes tumbling in the giant washers and dryers, and detailed depictions of the sailors whose job it was to carry the hundred-pound bags of laundry around the ship.That laundry room illustrates what is to my mind the most significant and inspiring public role of the Midway museum: to help 21st century visitors understand the experiences and identities of those men and women who served aboard the carrier and its many sister ships, at all times but most especially during times of war. As I wrote in my first Veteran’s Day post (in analysis of the post-World War II film The Best Years of Our Lives), when it comes to American Studiers and our connections to the American past, there are few acts of empathy more important than such understandings of what the experiences of war and military service have entailed; obviously such experiences are hugely varied, both in different periods/wars and for different individuals, but nonetheless a museum like the Midway offers a very striking and effective means to create those connections with past servicemen and women. I’ve visited a number of battlefields and other wartime historic sites, and would rank the Midway (and particularly its below-decks exhibits) among the most effective such connection-creators I’ve encountered.There’s another side to that connection, though, and it’s one that is to my mind much less historical and more propagandistic. On the Midway I found it illustrated most succinctly by the placard in front of one of the flight deck planes; the placard was describing the plane’s role during the Vietnam War, and noted that it was frequently used for “close-in bombing” in the war’s later stages. Which is to say, although the placard was careful not to say this: these bombers almost certainly participated in President Nixon’s often secret, likely illegal, and thoroughly despicable carpet-bombing campaigns of Cambodia and Laos; even if they didn’t, they most likely dropped napalm and other weapons of mass deconstruction indiscriminately on North Vietnamese villages. Such bombings are quite possibly, as I wrote in my post on Dresden, an inevitable part of war; but that inevitability does not in any way elide their horrific brutality, and it most definitely did not make me view the plane being connected to such bombings with anything other than horror. But in the context of the Midway, with its stated motto of “Live the Adventure, Honor the Legend,” Vietnam and its bombing raids are folded into that adventurous, honorable, legendary history—which is perhaps just as disturbing as the bombings themselves.A multifaceted, complex, and vital American Studies, public historic site for sure! Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on the Midway, on historic sites, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/4 Memory Day nominee: Cornell Woolrich, the crime and suspense novelist known as the father of noir, not only for his books but for the many influential films that came from them.
Trying to make sense of the two very different, and even opposed, public roles served by San Diego’s most unique historic site.Floating in San Diego’s harbor, just a few hundred yards away from the city’s downtown, is a hugely singular and compelling public space: the U.S.S. Midway, a formerly operational aircraft carrier that has (since 2004) served as a naval and aviation museum. The museum offers visitors at least three distinct visions into the lives of naval sailors and aviators: on the flight deck, a number of actual planes and helicopters, many of which the visitors can sit in; in the hangar beneath (alongside a few more planes), flight simulators and other re-creations of piloting and wartime experiences; and below-decks, an elaborately preserved and re-created vision of everyday life aboard the carrier for its officers, aviators, and sailors. My boys were particularly struck by the laundry room, with loads of fake clothes tumbling in the giant washers and dryers, and detailed depictions of the sailors whose job it was to carry the hundred-pound bags of laundry around the ship.That laundry room illustrates what is to my mind the most significant and inspiring public role of the Midway museum: to help 21st century visitors understand the experiences and identities of those men and women who served aboard the carrier and its many sister ships, at all times but most especially during times of war. As I wrote in my first Veteran’s Day post (in analysis of the post-World War II film The Best Years of Our Lives), when it comes to American Studiers and our connections to the American past, there are few acts of empathy more important than such understandings of what the experiences of war and military service have entailed; obviously such experiences are hugely varied, both in different periods/wars and for different individuals, but nonetheless a museum like the Midway offers a very striking and effective means to create those connections with past servicemen and women. I’ve visited a number of battlefields and other wartime historic sites, and would rank the Midway (and particularly its below-decks exhibits) among the most effective such connection-creators I’ve encountered.There’s another side to that connection, though, and it’s one that is to my mind much less historical and more propagandistic. On the Midway I found it illustrated most succinctly by the placard in front of one of the flight deck planes; the placard was describing the plane’s role during the Vietnam War, and noted that it was frequently used for “close-in bombing” in the war’s later stages. Which is to say, although the placard was careful not to say this: these bombers almost certainly participated in President Nixon’s often secret, likely illegal, and thoroughly despicable carpet-bombing campaigns of Cambodia and Laos; even if they didn’t, they most likely dropped napalm and other weapons of mass deconstruction indiscriminately on North Vietnamese villages. Such bombings are quite possibly, as I wrote in my post on Dresden, an inevitable part of war; but that inevitability does not in any way elide their horrific brutality, and it most definitely did not make me view the plane being connected to such bombings with anything other than horror. But in the context of the Midway, with its stated motto of “Live the Adventure, Honor the Legend,” Vietnam and its bombing raids are folded into that adventurous, honorable, legendary history—which is perhaps just as disturbing as the bombings themselves.A multifaceted, complex, and vital American Studies, public historic site for sure! Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on the Midway, on historic sites, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/4 Memory Day nominee: Cornell Woolrich, the crime and suspense novelist known as the father of noir, not only for his books but for the many influential films that came from them.
December 3, 2012
December 3, 2012: AmericanStudying the Pacific, Part One
[In this week that culminates in National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, I’ll be blogging about different aspects of how we remember World War II’s Pacific Theater (and related issues). That’ll lead up to a Pearl Harbor-centered Friday post. Please share your thoughts on these topics, World War II, memories of war, or any related themes for the weekend post!]
On the more and less meaningful, complex, and valuable ways in which we remember wars.Michael Kammen, whose Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991) changed my life when I read it in college and remains one of the best American Studies books I’ve ever read (and is just one of many great books he’s written), has persuasively argued that we need at least two distinct concepts for public memory: remembrance, which would describe genuine attempts to remember the past in all its complexity; and commemoration, which would categorize those efforts that are more simplifying and mythologizing, and usually more tied to present concerns than to the past itself. Kammen goes into much more detail and nuance than that, as would I, but ultimately I do think there’s significant value to separating out such thoroughly distinct kinds of public (and at least potentially, for that matter, private) memory and history.There are many applications for that two-part concept, but in following up on an earlier post on the Tuskegee Airmen, it seems to me that our memories of war are particularly ripe for this kind of analysis. I’m thinking especially about cultural memories, stories and representations of war in popular culture—like Lucas’s Red Tails, and like so, so many other war films, TV shows, novels, and more. I would argue that many, if not the vast majority, of those cultural representations are commemorative (which doesn’t have to mean celebratory); that whether the cultural sources seek to celebrate wartime heroism (as does Lucas’ film) to attack the brutalities and horrors of war (as does for example Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket), or to stake out any position in between, they almost always create simplified and even mythologized depictions of war in service of their agendas and goals. They might incidentally introduce complexities and even contradictions (an ironic critique of American racism within the celebratory Red Tails; a positive depiction of soldierly comraderie in the cynical world of Jacket), but to my mind their overall construction of war is far closer to commemoration than to remembrance.We do have models in our popular culture for remembering rather than commemorating war, though. One such model is when a talented artist builds on but deepens and amplifies his or her personal experiences of war and creates a complex and powerful text as a result—Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is one such text, as are the best novels by Tim O’Brien. Just as important, however, are those models that don’t depend on personal experience (at least not of the artist him or herself), and for that I would highlight two complementary films from one of my Memory Day nominees: Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. If we try to consider what a battle like Iwo Jima, or a war like World War II, would look like and mean for those fighting it on both sides, it seems to me that we’re a long way toward remembering war in all its complexities. And it doesn’t hurt that Flags itself focuses directly on the most destructive effects of an emphasis on commemoration, in that case in the post-war lives of the Iwo Jima flag raisers. Commemoration has its value, as Kammen certainly acknowledges. But you know me well enough to know that I greatly prefer remembrance—even more so when it comes to a complex, dark, and crucial historical theme like war. Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on Iwo Jima, on Eastwood’s films, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/3 Memory Day nominee: Gilbert Stuart, who painted some of America’s first and most memorable portraits, and whose imagescontinue to influence how we remember the Revolutionary era.
On the more and less meaningful, complex, and valuable ways in which we remember wars.Michael Kammen, whose Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991) changed my life when I read it in college and remains one of the best American Studies books I’ve ever read (and is just one of many great books he’s written), has persuasively argued that we need at least two distinct concepts for public memory: remembrance, which would describe genuine attempts to remember the past in all its complexity; and commemoration, which would categorize those efforts that are more simplifying and mythologizing, and usually more tied to present concerns than to the past itself. Kammen goes into much more detail and nuance than that, as would I, but ultimately I do think there’s significant value to separating out such thoroughly distinct kinds of public (and at least potentially, for that matter, private) memory and history.There are many applications for that two-part concept, but in following up on an earlier post on the Tuskegee Airmen, it seems to me that our memories of war are particularly ripe for this kind of analysis. I’m thinking especially about cultural memories, stories and representations of war in popular culture—like Lucas’s Red Tails, and like so, so many other war films, TV shows, novels, and more. I would argue that many, if not the vast majority, of those cultural representations are commemorative (which doesn’t have to mean celebratory); that whether the cultural sources seek to celebrate wartime heroism (as does Lucas’ film) to attack the brutalities and horrors of war (as does for example Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket), or to stake out any position in between, they almost always create simplified and even mythologized depictions of war in service of their agendas and goals. They might incidentally introduce complexities and even contradictions (an ironic critique of American racism within the celebratory Red Tails; a positive depiction of soldierly comraderie in the cynical world of Jacket), but to my mind their overall construction of war is far closer to commemoration than to remembrance.We do have models in our popular culture for remembering rather than commemorating war, though. One such model is when a talented artist builds on but deepens and amplifies his or her personal experiences of war and creates a complex and powerful text as a result—Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is one such text, as are the best novels by Tim O’Brien. Just as important, however, are those models that don’t depend on personal experience (at least not of the artist him or herself), and for that I would highlight two complementary films from one of my Memory Day nominees: Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. If we try to consider what a battle like Iwo Jima, or a war like World War II, would look like and mean for those fighting it on both sides, it seems to me that we’re a long way toward remembering war in all its complexities. And it doesn’t hurt that Flags itself focuses directly on the most destructive effects of an emphasis on commemoration, in that case in the post-war lives of the Iwo Jima flag raisers. Commemoration has its value, as Kammen certainly acknowledges. But you know me well enough to know that I greatly prefer remembrance—even more so when it comes to a complex, dark, and crucial historical theme like war. Next Pacific-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these issues, on Iwo Jima, on Eastwood’s films, or on any related themes for the weekend post?12/3 Memory Day nominee: Gilbert Stuart, who painted some of America’s first and most memorable portraits, and whose imagescontinue to influence how we remember the Revolutionary era.
December 1, 2012
December 1-2, 2012: Chilly Crowd-sourcing
[This week’s series has focused on interesting and telling images of winter in American culture. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the ideas and responss of my fellow AmericanStudiers to that topic and the week’s posts—please add your stone cold suggestions!]
In response to Monday’s post on snow, Monica Jackson writes, “This post made me think of Where the Wild Things Are (movie version). I was excited to take my older son to see it when it came out, but in the film the story is so depressing and I think it's because of the snow. Max is sad, alone, and angry because the teenagers are too rough when playing with the snow. They break his fort and hurt him unintentionally, but then it leads into a string of depressing issues that always seem to arise during the winter months. There are layers to winter and snow. It's nice to look at, brings up memories or associations, but it leaves your fingers numb and if you get hit with a snowball, it will sting.”Following up the same post, Ronny Belmontes considers the film Cinderella Man , and specifically the way in which winter can be the toughest time for those experiencing economic and familial hardships; and so Ronny reflects on how Jim Braddock’s young children (as represented in that film) were forced to grow up particularly fast in their coldest moments.Rob Velella follows up the Fireside Poets post, writing, “I love your reading of "Snow-Bound" by putting it in the context of post-bellum America. It's also interesting to note how radical Whittier must have looked in his earlier period when he was using his poetry almost exclusively for the abolitionist cause (and he wrote some violently angry poetry for a Quaker). Longfellow, by far the superior poet, also wrote out against slavery before, as I say, using his poetry as a unifying force to create the American identity - to that end, he used history, calming imagery, etc. The reality was, of course, that it worked, which is reflected by his popularity. Further, I agree with your conclusion: I wouldn't take any of these folks out of our literary history.”Steve Edwards follows up the post on holiday classics by highlighting this interesting and informative story on a revised scene from Rudolph.On Twitter, Luke Dietrich highlights a couple complex American literary representations of snow: “Wallace Stevens' ‘The Snow Man’ is a favorite. The end of Ann Petry's novel The Streetsees NYC blanketed in snow.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? What images or ideas of winter would you highlight?12/1 Memory Day nominees: A tie between William Mahone, the Confederate officer whose complex and inspiring trajectory led to one of the post-war south’s most succesful biracial political parties; and Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who helped his parents escape the Japanese Internment and went on to design the World Trade Towers. 12/2 Memory Day nominee: Harry Burleigh, the composer, musician, and singer who contributed significantly not only to American music, but to Dvorak’s “From the New World.”
In response to Monday’s post on snow, Monica Jackson writes, “This post made me think of Where the Wild Things Are (movie version). I was excited to take my older son to see it when it came out, but in the film the story is so depressing and I think it's because of the snow. Max is sad, alone, and angry because the teenagers are too rough when playing with the snow. They break his fort and hurt him unintentionally, but then it leads into a string of depressing issues that always seem to arise during the winter months. There are layers to winter and snow. It's nice to look at, brings up memories or associations, but it leaves your fingers numb and if you get hit with a snowball, it will sting.”Following up the same post, Ronny Belmontes considers the film Cinderella Man , and specifically the way in which winter can be the toughest time for those experiencing economic and familial hardships; and so Ronny reflects on how Jim Braddock’s young children (as represented in that film) were forced to grow up particularly fast in their coldest moments.Rob Velella follows up the Fireside Poets post, writing, “I love your reading of "Snow-Bound" by putting it in the context of post-bellum America. It's also interesting to note how radical Whittier must have looked in his earlier period when he was using his poetry almost exclusively for the abolitionist cause (and he wrote some violently angry poetry for a Quaker). Longfellow, by far the superior poet, also wrote out against slavery before, as I say, using his poetry as a unifying force to create the American identity - to that end, he used history, calming imagery, etc. The reality was, of course, that it worked, which is reflected by his popularity. Further, I agree with your conclusion: I wouldn't take any of these folks out of our literary history.”Steve Edwards follows up the post on holiday classics by highlighting this interesting and informative story on a revised scene from Rudolph.On Twitter, Luke Dietrich highlights a couple complex American literary representations of snow: “Wallace Stevens' ‘The Snow Man’ is a favorite. The end of Ann Petry's novel The Streetsees NYC blanketed in snow.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? What images or ideas of winter would you highlight?12/1 Memory Day nominees: A tie between William Mahone, the Confederate officer whose complex and inspiring trajectory led to one of the post-war south’s most succesful biracial political parties; and Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who helped his parents escape the Japanese Internment and went on to design the World Trade Towers. 12/2 Memory Day nominee: Harry Burleigh, the composer, musician, and singer who contributed significantly not only to American music, but to Dvorak’s “From the New World.”
November 30, 2012
November 30, 2012: November 2012 Recap
[The wintry series takes a break for this recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying. But please add your thoughts on winter in American culture for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
November 1: American Spooking, Part Three: On Grant Wood, American Horror Story, and the question of whether there’s a homegrown American horror—and where to find it.November 2: American Spooking, Part Four: On the novel and film versions of The Shining, and what their very different endings can help us see about American stories.November 3-4: Crowd-sourcing American Scares: Crowd-sourced post on American scary stories, fictional and real.November 5: Obama and America, Part One: An election-week series begins with a post on the stakes of the election for definitions of America.November 6: Obama and America, Part Two: The series continues with an Election Day post on why every American should read Dreams from My Father.November 7: Obama and America, Part Three: Next in the series, on the Birther movement and its American cultural meanings.November 8: Obama and America, Part Four: On Obama, race, and us.November 9: Obama and America, Part Five: The series concludes with a post on how history remembers presidents, and how it might remember Obama. November 10-11: A Very American Election: A few of my responses to the 2012 election results and those of some fellow AmericanStudiers November 12: Public Scholarship, Part One: Glenn Beck University, David Barton, and the need for public AmericanStudies scholarship.November 13: Public Scholarship, Part Two: Church and state, Newt Gingrich, and contested national narratives and definitions.November 14: Public Scholarship, Part Three: William Cronon, anti-intellectualism and universities, and the worst and best sides of the profession.November 15: Public Scholarship, Part Four: King Theoden, William Hazlitt, Albion Tourgée, and what public scholars can and should do.November 16: Public Scholarship, Part Five: Facebook arguments, Pamela Geller, and the limits and benefits of complexity and nuance as public scholarly goals.November 17-18: Crowd-sourcing Public Scholarship: Fellow AmericanStudiers weigh in on the week’s themes, topics, and related questions.November 19: AmericanThanking, Part One: A series on American people and moments I’m thankful for starts with Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg.November 20: AmericanThanking, Part Two: Next in the series, on Robert Penn Warren and his striking and inspiring shift.November 21: AmericanThanking, Part Three: My thanks for the voice and passion of William Apess.November 22: AmericanThanking, Part Four: A Thanksgiving special, on a rebuttal to Rush for which I’d be thankful if you’d spread the word.November 23: AmericanThanking, Part Five: The series concludes with five American artists for whom I’ve very thankful.November 24: Crowd-sourced Thanks: The thanks of a fellow AmericanStudier—and my request for your contributions!November 25: Extra Thanks: Three reasons why I’m very thankful for John Sayles, as well as a mini-review of his new film Amigo.November 26: American Winter, Part One: A chilly series starts with an analysis of winter and the American Dream, as represented by two dark and wintry recent films.November 27: American Winter, Part Two: The many layers of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, next in the wintry series.November 28: American Winter, Part Three: The chilly series continues with thoughts on John Greenleaf Whittier’s Snow-Bound and the Fireside Poets.November 29: American Winter, Part Four: And the wintry series concludes with my take on two perennial holiday classics and the two American perspectives they include.Crowd-sourced post on winter this weekend,BenPS. So last chance—cultural images of winter you’d highlight? Other responses to the week’s posts?11/30 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Samuel Clemens (for all things Mark Twain, see that website!); and Shirley Chisholm, the politician, educator, and lifelong advocate for oppressed American communities.
November 1: American Spooking, Part Three: On Grant Wood, American Horror Story, and the question of whether there’s a homegrown American horror—and where to find it.November 2: American Spooking, Part Four: On the novel and film versions of The Shining, and what their very different endings can help us see about American stories.November 3-4: Crowd-sourcing American Scares: Crowd-sourced post on American scary stories, fictional and real.November 5: Obama and America, Part One: An election-week series begins with a post on the stakes of the election for definitions of America.November 6: Obama and America, Part Two: The series continues with an Election Day post on why every American should read Dreams from My Father.November 7: Obama and America, Part Three: Next in the series, on the Birther movement and its American cultural meanings.November 8: Obama and America, Part Four: On Obama, race, and us.November 9: Obama and America, Part Five: The series concludes with a post on how history remembers presidents, and how it might remember Obama. November 10-11: A Very American Election: A few of my responses to the 2012 election results and those of some fellow AmericanStudiers November 12: Public Scholarship, Part One: Glenn Beck University, David Barton, and the need for public AmericanStudies scholarship.November 13: Public Scholarship, Part Two: Church and state, Newt Gingrich, and contested national narratives and definitions.November 14: Public Scholarship, Part Three: William Cronon, anti-intellectualism and universities, and the worst and best sides of the profession.November 15: Public Scholarship, Part Four: King Theoden, William Hazlitt, Albion Tourgée, and what public scholars can and should do.November 16: Public Scholarship, Part Five: Facebook arguments, Pamela Geller, and the limits and benefits of complexity and nuance as public scholarly goals.November 17-18: Crowd-sourcing Public Scholarship: Fellow AmericanStudiers weigh in on the week’s themes, topics, and related questions.November 19: AmericanThanking, Part One: A series on American people and moments I’m thankful for starts with Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg.November 20: AmericanThanking, Part Two: Next in the series, on Robert Penn Warren and his striking and inspiring shift.November 21: AmericanThanking, Part Three: My thanks for the voice and passion of William Apess.November 22: AmericanThanking, Part Four: A Thanksgiving special, on a rebuttal to Rush for which I’d be thankful if you’d spread the word.November 23: AmericanThanking, Part Five: The series concludes with five American artists for whom I’ve very thankful.November 24: Crowd-sourced Thanks: The thanks of a fellow AmericanStudier—and my request for your contributions!November 25: Extra Thanks: Three reasons why I’m very thankful for John Sayles, as well as a mini-review of his new film Amigo.November 26: American Winter, Part One: A chilly series starts with an analysis of winter and the American Dream, as represented by two dark and wintry recent films.November 27: American Winter, Part Two: The many layers of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, next in the wintry series.November 28: American Winter, Part Three: The chilly series continues with thoughts on John Greenleaf Whittier’s Snow-Bound and the Fireside Poets.November 29: American Winter, Part Four: And the wintry series concludes with my take on two perennial holiday classics and the two American perspectives they include.Crowd-sourced post on winter this weekend,BenPS. So last chance—cultural images of winter you’d highlight? Other responses to the week’s posts?11/30 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Samuel Clemens (for all things Mark Twain, see that website!); and Shirley Chisholm, the politician, educator, and lifelong advocate for oppressed American communities.
November 29, 2012
November 29, 2012: American Winter, Part Four
[This week’s series will focus on interesting and telling images of winter in American culture. Please share your wintry ideas and nominations for the chilly weekend post!]
On the two different perspectives at the heart of two of our most famous wintry tunes.In one of my silliest posts, a Christmas Day special from my first year on the blog, I dissected the hidden and troubling meanings behind a few of our favorite holiday songs. The post was largely tongue-in-cheek, although I do wish that Rudolph could gain fame and friends without having to prove his usefulness to his boss first (a theme that connects the red-nosed little fella to one Thomas the Tank Engine). But the idea that even the most innocuous holiday tunes (like all popular art and media, however seemingly simple or uncontroversial) can carry and convey much more complex and significant themes and perspectives—well, about that I was and am dead serious.Take the example of two of the most enduring and popular wintry tunes, “Winter Wonderland” and “White Christmas.” Originally composed in 1934 and 1942, respectively, these two classics have stood the test of time and remain among the season’s most popular melodies (search YouTube for both and notice how many contemporary artists have recorded versions), and one key reason would seem to be just how universal and uncontroversial they are. Who doesn’t enjoy a nice walk in a winter wonderland, followed by some canoodling by the fire? Who doesn’t dream of a picturesque holiday season, one that can carry them back to fond childhood memories? (Or, if they live in the deep south or southwest or somewhere else where it doesn’t snow, to fond memories of songs and TV specials about snow at the holidays.) These are just some of our most deep-seated pleasures, and I’m not gonna argue the point because I most definitely share them.Yet just because these songs offer such shared pleasures doesn’t mean that we can’t also consider and analyze some of their more subtle, and in this case competing, themes and perspectives. For example, “Winter Wonderland” provides a consistent thread of optimistic emphasis on the future, seen most explicitly in the lines “Later on, we’ll conspire / As we dream, by the fire / To face unafraid / The plans that we’ve made / Walking in a winter wonderland.” “White Christmas” isn’t necessarily pessimistic, but its dreams focus in the opposite direction, on the past: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / Just like the ones I used to know.” I would argue that these two moments represent two distinct kinds of American hope—the latter focused on a desire to recapture nostalgic ideals about where we’ve been, the former more on a hope that we can move into a better and stronger future. While I tend to side more with the future focus—nostalgia, while entirely human and inevitable, has its downsides—I would say that the most enduring hope probably entails a combination of both of these perspectives. So let’s keep singing both!November recap tomorrow, then wintry crowd-sourcing this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Takes on these songs? Cultural images of winter you’d highlight?11/29 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two members of one of America’s most impressive families and father-daughter combos, Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott.
On the two different perspectives at the heart of two of our most famous wintry tunes.In one of my silliest posts, a Christmas Day special from my first year on the blog, I dissected the hidden and troubling meanings behind a few of our favorite holiday songs. The post was largely tongue-in-cheek, although I do wish that Rudolph could gain fame and friends without having to prove his usefulness to his boss first (a theme that connects the red-nosed little fella to one Thomas the Tank Engine). But the idea that even the most innocuous holiday tunes (like all popular art and media, however seemingly simple or uncontroversial) can carry and convey much more complex and significant themes and perspectives—well, about that I was and am dead serious.Take the example of two of the most enduring and popular wintry tunes, “Winter Wonderland” and “White Christmas.” Originally composed in 1934 and 1942, respectively, these two classics have stood the test of time and remain among the season’s most popular melodies (search YouTube for both and notice how many contemporary artists have recorded versions), and one key reason would seem to be just how universal and uncontroversial they are. Who doesn’t enjoy a nice walk in a winter wonderland, followed by some canoodling by the fire? Who doesn’t dream of a picturesque holiday season, one that can carry them back to fond childhood memories? (Or, if they live in the deep south or southwest or somewhere else where it doesn’t snow, to fond memories of songs and TV specials about snow at the holidays.) These are just some of our most deep-seated pleasures, and I’m not gonna argue the point because I most definitely share them.Yet just because these songs offer such shared pleasures doesn’t mean that we can’t also consider and analyze some of their more subtle, and in this case competing, themes and perspectives. For example, “Winter Wonderland” provides a consistent thread of optimistic emphasis on the future, seen most explicitly in the lines “Later on, we’ll conspire / As we dream, by the fire / To face unafraid / The plans that we’ve made / Walking in a winter wonderland.” “White Christmas” isn’t necessarily pessimistic, but its dreams focus in the opposite direction, on the past: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / Just like the ones I used to know.” I would argue that these two moments represent two distinct kinds of American hope—the latter focused on a desire to recapture nostalgic ideals about where we’ve been, the former more on a hope that we can move into a better and stronger future. While I tend to side more with the future focus—nostalgia, while entirely human and inevitable, has its downsides—I would say that the most enduring hope probably entails a combination of both of these perspectives. So let’s keep singing both!November recap tomorrow, then wintry crowd-sourcing this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Takes on these songs? Cultural images of winter you’d highlight?11/29 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two members of one of America’s most impressive families and father-daughter combos, Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott.
November 28, 2012
November 28, 2012: American Winter, Part Three
[This week’s series will focus on interesting and telling images of winter in American culture. Please share your wintry ideas and nominations for the chilly weekend post!]
On the simple but undeniable comforts of America’s most popular poets.It’s easy, and not entirely wrong, to be snooty about the Fireside Poets. Across the same eras in which James Russell Lowell was satirizing slavery and Walt Whitman creating a uniquely American poetic style, in which Emily Dickinson and Sarah Piatt were crafting dense and dialogic lyrics, in which Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was using poetry to give voice to slaves and other too-often-silenced African Americans, Fireside Poets like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier wrote singsong rhymes that would be easily memorized by (and were even at times explicitly addressed to) children. Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” and “Evangeline” and Whittier’s collection Voices of Freedom, among other works, demonstrate that these poets were more than capable of engaging with more complex American histories and topics; but still, compared to their contemporaries, it’s fair to say that the Fireside Poets tended toward the traditional.Whittier’s most famous poem, in his own era and into our own, the epic Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll (1865), would seem to be a case in point. For more than a thousand rhyming lines, Whittier narrates the tale of a New England snowstorm and of the farm family who are pleasantly enclosed by its wintry power. The poem literally seems written precisely to be read at fireside, perhaps for a family to take turns reading aloud as the winter rages outside. It is accessible and readable, with plenty of personification and metaphor and other poetic devices but with nary a single moment that would force a mid-19thcentury reader to stop and try to figure out the syntax or meaning. And its popularity reflects those elements, as it sold more than 20,000 copies in its first year and remained second only to “Hiawatha” in sales into the 20thcentury. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with readability or popularity, of course—but if we compare this 1865 poem to (for example) those that Herman Melville would write about the Civil War a year later, it seems again that Whittier eschewed the era’s most vital themes in favor of this more universal and uncontroversial topic.Yet we could just as easily, and with perhaps just as much justice, turn that idea on its head. With the nation reaching the end of its most divisive and destructive four years, it’s fair to say that Americans weren’t necessarily itching to read creative works detailing those divisions and destructions. Or, at the very least, it’s fair to say that there was even more of a place and role for fireside poetry in such a period, for poems that families could read and share and in which they could find solace from the moment’s worst sides. Moreover, we could even read Snow-Bound, in which a potentially destructive storm ends up creating even more communal closeness and unity, as a very subtle metaphor for precisely the possibility of a more positive present and future despite that horrific war. But even if you’re not willing to go that far, the fact remains that the kind of traditional comfort poetry offered by the Fireside Poets provides very definite emotional and communal effects and power; I wouldn’t want an American literary tradition without the Whitmans and Dickinsons, but I wouldn’t want it to miss the Longfellows and Whittiers either.Next wintry post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Cultural images of winter you’d highlight?11/28 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Helen Magill White, the first American woman to receive a PhD and an important educator and advocate; and Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown Records and one of the 20th century’s most significant cultural figures.
On the simple but undeniable comforts of America’s most popular poets.It’s easy, and not entirely wrong, to be snooty about the Fireside Poets. Across the same eras in which James Russell Lowell was satirizing slavery and Walt Whitman creating a uniquely American poetic style, in which Emily Dickinson and Sarah Piatt were crafting dense and dialogic lyrics, in which Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was using poetry to give voice to slaves and other too-often-silenced African Americans, Fireside Poets like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier wrote singsong rhymes that would be easily memorized by (and were even at times explicitly addressed to) children. Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” and “Evangeline” and Whittier’s collection Voices of Freedom, among other works, demonstrate that these poets were more than capable of engaging with more complex American histories and topics; but still, compared to their contemporaries, it’s fair to say that the Fireside Poets tended toward the traditional.Whittier’s most famous poem, in his own era and into our own, the epic Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll (1865), would seem to be a case in point. For more than a thousand rhyming lines, Whittier narrates the tale of a New England snowstorm and of the farm family who are pleasantly enclosed by its wintry power. The poem literally seems written precisely to be read at fireside, perhaps for a family to take turns reading aloud as the winter rages outside. It is accessible and readable, with plenty of personification and metaphor and other poetic devices but with nary a single moment that would force a mid-19thcentury reader to stop and try to figure out the syntax or meaning. And its popularity reflects those elements, as it sold more than 20,000 copies in its first year and remained second only to “Hiawatha” in sales into the 20thcentury. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with readability or popularity, of course—but if we compare this 1865 poem to (for example) those that Herman Melville would write about the Civil War a year later, it seems again that Whittier eschewed the era’s most vital themes in favor of this more universal and uncontroversial topic.Yet we could just as easily, and with perhaps just as much justice, turn that idea on its head. With the nation reaching the end of its most divisive and destructive four years, it’s fair to say that Americans weren’t necessarily itching to read creative works detailing those divisions and destructions. Or, at the very least, it’s fair to say that there was even more of a place and role for fireside poetry in such a period, for poems that families could read and share and in which they could find solace from the moment’s worst sides. Moreover, we could even read Snow-Bound, in which a potentially destructive storm ends up creating even more communal closeness and unity, as a very subtle metaphor for precisely the possibility of a more positive present and future despite that horrific war. But even if you’re not willing to go that far, the fact remains that the kind of traditional comfort poetry offered by the Fireside Poets provides very definite emotional and communal effects and power; I wouldn’t want an American literary tradition without the Whitmans and Dickinsons, but I wouldn’t want it to miss the Longfellows and Whittiers either.Next wintry post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Cultural images of winter you’d highlight?11/28 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Helen Magill White, the first American woman to receive a PhD and an important educator and advocate; and Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown Records and one of the 20th century’s most significant cultural figures.
November 27, 2012
November 27, 2012: American Winter, Part Two
[This week’s series will focus on interesting and telling images of winter in American culture. Please share your wintry ideas and nominations for the chilly weekend post!]
On the interesting layers to Edith Wharton’s winter tale.I’m not exactly sure why so many high school students (including this AmericanStudier) read Ethan Frome (1911), but I have a few guesses: it’s technically a novel but is pretty short and reads very quickly; it’s by a canonical author who looks good on a reading list but is significantly less complex than many of her works; it features a doomed love triangle and a climactic sledding (!) scene; it was made into a filmstarring Liam Neeson, Joan Allen, and Patricia Arquette. Lots there for high school students to grab onto, no doubt about it. But I’ll admit that on both my original reading of the novel and in initially considering it for this post, I had thought of it as pretty slight, as significantly less worth attention and analysis than most of Wharton’s novels.I haven’t re-read it, and maybe if I did I’d still feel that way. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the novel’s frame story—in which the narrator, an unnamed traveler, is trapped by a New England snowstorm and forced to stay in Ethan’s house and thus learn about his tragic past—adds some very interesting layers to that more slight plot. For one thing, the narrator’s situation eerily parallels that of Ethan as well as the novel’s other two main characters, Zeena and Mattie: all three are likewise trapped in this house, for different reasons but all related to the snowstorm in which Ethan and Mattie met their tragic sled-induced fate. And for another, given that we assume (or at least I do) that the first-person narrator is the one who writes the novel’s third-person middle section, in which Ethan’s story is told as an extended flashback, the question of memory and accuracy, of truth and fiction, becomes more complex than it otherwise would. Are we reading the version of the story that the narrator learned? If so, is he only imagining the characters’ perspectives? If not, who is narrating this section, and to what end?All of those layers made Ethan Frome more interesting within its pages. But they also, I would argue, allow us to consider more explicitly the novel itself, and its place in Wharton’s career. Apparently Wharton based the novel, or at least the climactic sledding scene, on real events from Lenox, Massachusetts; events that she, like her narrator, learned about after the fact from one of the participants (in this case a girl named Kate Spencer who worked with Wharton for a time at the Lenox Library). That helps explain why Wharton wrote the novel at all, given how different it is in setting and world from virtually every other of her works. But it might also indicate that the novel served for Wharton as a kind of reflection on story-telling, on the role of a writer in relationship to the places where she travels—since Wharton was a lifelong New Yorker before she moved to Lenox and built her estate there—and the people she both meets and constructs there. Wharton stayed in Lenox far longer than her narrator seems like too in the fictional town of Starkfield, but as a writer, she was perhaps never entirely at home. Neither was Ethan, for that matter.Next wintry post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Cultural images of winter you’d highlight?11/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering, talented, and influential20th century American writers, Charles Beard and James Agee.
On the interesting layers to Edith Wharton’s winter tale.I’m not exactly sure why so many high school students (including this AmericanStudier) read Ethan Frome (1911), but I have a few guesses: it’s technically a novel but is pretty short and reads very quickly; it’s by a canonical author who looks good on a reading list but is significantly less complex than many of her works; it features a doomed love triangle and a climactic sledding (!) scene; it was made into a filmstarring Liam Neeson, Joan Allen, and Patricia Arquette. Lots there for high school students to grab onto, no doubt about it. But I’ll admit that on both my original reading of the novel and in initially considering it for this post, I had thought of it as pretty slight, as significantly less worth attention and analysis than most of Wharton’s novels.I haven’t re-read it, and maybe if I did I’d still feel that way. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the novel’s frame story—in which the narrator, an unnamed traveler, is trapped by a New England snowstorm and forced to stay in Ethan’s house and thus learn about his tragic past—adds some very interesting layers to that more slight plot. For one thing, the narrator’s situation eerily parallels that of Ethan as well as the novel’s other two main characters, Zeena and Mattie: all three are likewise trapped in this house, for different reasons but all related to the snowstorm in which Ethan and Mattie met their tragic sled-induced fate. And for another, given that we assume (or at least I do) that the first-person narrator is the one who writes the novel’s third-person middle section, in which Ethan’s story is told as an extended flashback, the question of memory and accuracy, of truth and fiction, becomes more complex than it otherwise would. Are we reading the version of the story that the narrator learned? If so, is he only imagining the characters’ perspectives? If not, who is narrating this section, and to what end?All of those layers made Ethan Frome more interesting within its pages. But they also, I would argue, allow us to consider more explicitly the novel itself, and its place in Wharton’s career. Apparently Wharton based the novel, or at least the climactic sledding scene, on real events from Lenox, Massachusetts; events that she, like her narrator, learned about after the fact from one of the participants (in this case a girl named Kate Spencer who worked with Wharton for a time at the Lenox Library). That helps explain why Wharton wrote the novel at all, given how different it is in setting and world from virtually every other of her works. But it might also indicate that the novel served for Wharton as a kind of reflection on story-telling, on the role of a writer in relationship to the places where she travels—since Wharton was a lifelong New Yorker before she moved to Lenox and built her estate there—and the people she both meets and constructs there. Wharton stayed in Lenox far longer than her narrator seems like too in the fictional town of Starkfield, but as a writer, she was perhaps never entirely at home. Neither was Ethan, for that matter.Next wintry post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Cultural images of winter you’d highlight?11/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering, talented, and influential20th century American writers, Charles Beard and James Agee.
Benjamin A. Railton's Blog
- Benjamin A. Railton's profile
- 2 followers
Benjamin A. Railton isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
