Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 44

May 20, 2024: Criminal Duos: Pecos Bill & Joaquin Murrieta

[100years ago this week, the criminal duo who came to be known as Leopold &Loeb set their murderous plan in motion. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy L&Land four other criminal duos, leading up to a repeat Guest Post on the genre oftrue crime!]

On two folk heroes, and the competing frontier historiesthey reveal.

Even as a kid, encountering his stories in a compilation oftall tales, I could tell that Pecos Bill was abit of a PaulBunyan knockoff—an outlandish origin story (Bill fell out of his family’swagon as a baby and was raised by a pack of wolves as one of their own),similarly larger-than-life animal companions (his otherwise un-rideable horseWidow-Maker, the rattlesnake Shake that he used as a lasso), an equally mythiclove interest (Slue-Foot Sue, who rode a giant catfish down the Rio Grande). SoI wasn’t surprised to learn that Bill was a late addition to the “big man”school of tall tales, likely createdin 1916 by Edward O’Reilly and shoehorned back into the mythos of Westwardexpansion, the frontier, and the Wild West, one more addition to the roster oflawless heroes who had by the early 20th century come to define thatAmerican mythos so fully.

That Bill didn’t come into existence until a few decadesafter theclosing of the frontier doesn’t lessen his symbolic status, however—ifanything, it highlights just how much themythos of the American West was and remains just that, a consciouslycreated setof myths that have served to delineate after the fact a messy, dynamic,often dark, always complex region and history. Moreover, that mythos was asmulti-cultural as the West itself, as illustrated by Mexican American folk heroJoaquinMurrieta, “the Robin Hood of El Dorado”: Murrieta, a California 49er fromnorthern Mexico, first came to national prominence in a popular dime novel, John Rollin Ridge’sTheLife and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (1854); the tales of his charmingbanditry have been a part of the region’s folk history ever since, including acameo as Zorro’s older brother in the Antonio Banderas film The Mask of Zorro (1998).

Yet however muchMurrieta’s story has been fictionalized and mythologized, it did originate with anactual historical figure—and that distinction can help us see past the mythsto some of the frontier’s messier, darker, and more defining realities. For onething, Murrieta apparently began his outlaw career after he and his family wereviolently dispossessed of a land claim, events which connect to the social andlegal aftermath of theTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. For another, his gang’s victims included notonly Anglo settlers but also Chinese laborers, revealing California’s genuinelyand often painfully multiculturalcommunity as of the mid-19th century. A fuller engagement withthese histories would in part force Americans to confront the centuries of conflictand violence that have so frequently comprisedthe world of the frontier—but it would also allow us to push beyond talltales of larger-than-life individuals and to recognize just how collective andcommunal are both the myths and realities of the Southwest, and of America.

Next duotomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other duos you’d highlight?

May 18-19, 2024: American(Studier) Wedding!

No postthis weekend for a very good reason—I’m marrying my best friend and soulmate!See you on Monday, and much love in the meantime,

Ben

May 17, 2024: Spring 2024 Stand-Outs: Special Guests!

[Anothersemester comes to a close this week, and this time for my usual end-of-semesterreflections series I wanted to highlight stand-out days from my classes.Leading up to a weekend off for a very stand-out reason!]

YesterdayI wrote about my favorite discussion in one of my First-Year Writing IIsections—but when it comes to my favorite day in Writing II this semester, andindeed in any course this semester, and quite possibly in any course ever, it’sa tie between two other moments that complemented each other quite beautifullyand movingly:

--InFebruary, my sons were able to come to campus with me for the first time sinceSpring 2019, and probably the last time together as my older son will be headedoff to his own first year of college in a few short (so, so short) months. Takingno names at the all-you-can-eat dining hall was definitely the highlight forthem, but for me seeing them seated at a desk in the back of my afternoon WritingII section, and flashing back to all the times they’ve come to campus andclasses with me since I rocked my older son in his car carrier at the firstmeeting of my Summer 2006 Grad class, was just about the most beautiful thing Icould imagine.

--Butpretty darn close was my other special guest in that same section, just a few weekslater: my fiancé. We’re not online/on social media with our relationship, so Ihaven’t talked much about us in this space. But she’s my favorite (non-offspring)person and my partner in everything I do and am, including my teaching, and itwas so good to have her there, most especially in the same room where my sonshad been with me as well. The past and the future, right there in my Spring2024 present—that’s some stand-out stuff!

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Semester reflections or other work you’d share?

May 16, 2024: Spring 2024 Stand-Outs: Cereal in Composition

[Anothersemester comes to a close this week, and this time for my usual end-of-semesterreflections series I wanted to highlight stand-out days from my classes.Leading up to a weekend off for a very stand-out reason!]

When you’vebeen doing this as long as I have—finishing year 19 at FSU and 24 of teachingoverall this week—you can often see stand-out moments coming; that wasdefinitely the case with the Larsen and Zhang conversations I wrote about inthe last two posts, for example. But if I ever find myself entirely unable tobe taken by surprise, I’ll know it’s time to retire. Fortunately thatdefinitely isn’t the case yet, and of the many moments and days that surprised methis semester, none stands out more than a phenomenal discussion in one of my First-YearWriting II sections about this 1960s PostHoneycomb Cereal ad. I found that ad at the last minute, looking through anarchive I had shared with the students and hoping to find a text that seemedtargeted toward kids (the subject of one of our scholarly article readings inthat unit), and—get ready for some pedagogical inside baseball—had not watchedit in full prior to sharing it with the students. And then it became the sourceof the best discussion we had all semester in that section, with more than halfof the 18 students sharing thoughtful takes on choices and details in the ad.Surprise stand-outs ftw!

Laststand-out tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Semester reflections or other work you’d share?

May 15, 2024: Spring 2024 Stand-Outs: Gold in Grad Historical Fiction

[Another semestercomes to a close this week, and this time for my usual end-of-semesterreflections series I wanted to highlight stand-out days from my classes.Leading up to a weekend off for a very stand-out reason!]

My AmericanHistorical Fiction Grad class was the first course I got to teach for ourMA program (back in Summer 2006, at the end of my first year at FSU), and isthe one I’ve returned to the most often by far. Certain aspects have stayed thesame across those nearly twenty years and half-dozen sections, but one thingthat keeps it fresh is that I always end with a 21st century text,and have chosen a different one each time. They’ve consistently been great andled to excellent class conversations, but I was especially happy with my choicethis time, C. Pam Zhang’s HowMuch of These Hills is Gold (2020). Zhang’s novel is one of myfavorites in recent years, but (as I discussed in that hyperlinked post) it’salso an incredibly complex vision not just of American history, but ofhistorical fiction as a genre. All those layers made it a particularlyphenomenal text with which to close out this class, and one to which thestudents (most of them fellow educators, and all of them awesome as our MAstudents always are) responded with thoughtful and impassioned takes that madethis conversation a truly stand-out one.

Nextstand-out tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Semester reflections or other work you’d share?

May 14, 2024: Spring 2024 Stand-Outs: Ambiguity in Am Lit

[Another semestercomes to a close this week, and this time for my usual end-of-semesterreflections series I wanted to highlight stand-out days from my classes.Leading up to a weekend off for a very stand-out reason!]

As Ihighlighted and contextualized in this December2020 semester reflections post, and as has continued to be the case a goodbit of the time, in the semesters and years since Covid I’ve frequently movedaway from longer readings in favor of multiple shorter ones. A lot of the timeI think that can achieve my and the course’s goals equally well, but I’m alsocommitted to not abandoning longer works altogether, and more exactly to makingthe choice in each specific instance rather than having a blanket policy orperspective. And this semester offered a perfect illustration of something thatcan only happen with a longer work we’ve read and discussed across multipleclass meetings: our final day with NellaLarsen’s stunning novella Passing(1929), where we had one of our liveliest discussions of the semester aboutwhat we make of that book’s shocking and ambiguous ending (no SPOILERS here).We couldn’t have had that stand-out conversation if we hadn’t built to it acrossmultiple days of work with Larsen, and that was a great reminder of theimportance of continuing to find ways to make longer texts part of my classes.

Nextstand-out tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Semester reflections or other work you’d share?

May 13, 2024: Spring 2024 Stand-Outs: Salvatore in Sci Fi/Fantasy

[Another semestercomes to a close this week, and this time for my usual end-of-semesterreflections series I wanted to highlight stand-out days from my classes.Leading up to a weekend off for a very stand-out reason!]

I’ve hadthe chance to connect my students with folks on our syllabus a few times: whenKevin Gannon Zoomed into myEnglish Studies Capstone after we read Radical Hope; and when MoniqueTruong and EricNguyen generously answered questions about their books TheSweetest Fruits and ThingsWe Lost to the Water for other sections of that same course. Each andevery one of those experiences was exceptional, but this semester featured anext level moment: when hugely prolific and popular author (and FitchburgState alum!) R.A. Salvatore visited my Intro to Science Fiction &Fantasy course. Whether he was thoughtfully considering the similarities anddifferences between sci fi and fantasy worldbuilding, sharing advice from hisown four decades in the field, or just casually discussing the day he visitedSkywalker Ranch to talk with George Lucas about writing Star Wars novels, Salvatore not onlyengrossed us all from start to finish, but really brought the course’s texts, ideas,and conversations to vivid life. That’s a stand-out day for sure!

Nextstand-out tomorrow

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Semester reflections or other work you’d share?

May 11-12, 2024: Beach Blogging: Guest Posts from Elsa Devienne and Jamie Hirami

[Releasedon May 11, 1964, “I Get Around” would goon to become the first #1hit for The Beach Boys. To celebrate that sunny anniversary, thisweek I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of beachtastic texts, leading up to this multi-part Guest Post featuring two of our up-and-coming BeachStudiers!]

First, I can't BeachStudy in 2024 without highlighting Elsa Devienne's awesome new book, Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in 20th-Century Los Angeles. You shouldn't need anything more than that title to make you seek it out, but just in case, Elsa shares:

"Think of this book as the Beach Boys meets Chinatown meets Blade Runner meets Baywatch. There's real estate battles, presidents strolling on the sand, beatniks playing the bongo drum, black bathing beauties, evil Malibu beach homeowners and, of course, climate change coming to ruin the fun of everyone!"

Second, I wanted to re-share a great prior BeachStudying Guest Post from Jamie Hirami:

[Jamie Hirami is a PhDcandidate in American Studies at the amazing Penn StateHarrisburg program, where she’s writing a dissertation on VeniceBeach which promises to break significantly new ground in American materialculture and cultural studies. This Guest Post is just a glimpse of what’s tocome!]

[NB. Iwrote that bio when this post originally aired in 2014; I’m not sure what Jamieis up to these days, but I’m willing to bet it’s impressive!]

Freak Beach.  Muscle Beach. Silicon Beach.  Coney Island ofthe Pacific.  Slum by the Sea.  Venice Beach, aneighborhood of Los Angeles, goes by many monikers.  None of those nicknames reference theoriginal plan that founder Abbot Kinney, heir to a tobacco fortune, envisionedin 1898 when he bought out his real estate partners for the southern portionland that also originally encompassed Santa Monica: a resplendent, middle-classseaside resort and town, which would cater to its clientele with Chautauqua’sand other elements of high culture. Ultimately, mass and popular cultures shaped its direction as anamusement destination while the counter cultures of the mid-twentieth centuryinfluenced its modern reputation as bohemian community. 

Modeled after Venice, Italy, Kinneytransformed the marshy land into a series of navigable canals along which,early visitors could buy real estate for single-family home development.Venice-of-America officially opened on July 4, 1905 to a crowd of about 40,000people.  Kinney’s grand culturalintentions culminated in a 3,400 seat auditorium built for educational lecturesand cultural performances, which closed after one season.  Instead, visitors flocked to the pier, bathhouse,beach and other amusements.  In fact,rides and games proved to be so much more popular than the Chautauquaexperience, that in January 1906, he opened the hugely popular midwayplaisance, which included exhibits and freak shows from the world’s fairs inPortland and St. Louis.

By the time Kinney died in October1920, Venice’s original luster had greatly diminished.  The canals did not drain properly, creatingmurky and dirty waterways, and the national trend for boardwalk amusements, ingeneral, faded.  Years of opposition bythe growing permanent residents and clergy to boxing matches, alcohol, dancing,and more sordid amusements was capped by a hugely destructive fire that causedover a $1 million in damages.  In 1925,the City of Los Angeles annexed Venice, filling its famous canals in 1929 tomake room for roads. 

Over the next forty years, Veniceremained an outwardly run-down version of its former self, but in its place, avibrant counter-culture fomented cultural growth.  It became a Southern California hotbed forthe Beats; a hippie commune during the Sixties; and it embraced transients,hustlers, artists, and performers. 

Today,Venice’s increasingly gentrified neighborhoods have put homeless andhomeowners, hustlers and shop-owners, and low-income versus high-incomeresidents at odds, but it still maintains a fierce stance against themainstream.  In 2007, Abbot Kinney Blvd.(the main commercial thoroughfare) opened its first chain store—Pinkberry—causingan uproar among residents and local shop owners who petitioned people to boycott the chain.  Three years later, it closed because it wasunderperforming.  More importantly,Venice still maintains ties to its popular culture beginnings with numerous sidewalkperformers, a freak show along theboardwalk, and a voyeuristic outdoor gym amongother diversions.  Venice Beach, throughits varied history, remains, at heart, a destination that caters to popularamusements.

[Nextseries starts Mondy,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other beach histories or stories, or BeachStudiers, you’d highlight?]

May 10, 2024: Beach Blogging: The Beach Boys

[Releasedon May 11, 1964, “I Get Around” would goon to become the first #1hit for The Beach Boys. To celebrate that sunny anniversary, thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of beachtastic texts, leading up to a repeatGuest Post from one of our up-and-coming BeachStudiers!]

On threeways to contextualize the iconic beach band (beyond the early 60s surfingculture contexts I wrote about in Monday’s post).

1)     Kids and Cars: I’ve long noted that the onelayer of Bruce Springsteen’s work that has never quite resonated with me is hisobsessionwith cars; that perspective of mine hasn’t changed, but it’s certainlyworth noting that the intersection of carculture and American rock music long predates the Boss. The Beach Boys certainlydid their part to contribute to that tradition, including one of their biggest earlyhits “Little Deuce Coupe”(1963) among many,many others. And they, along with the role of car culture in films like RebelWithout a Cause (1955), can help me appreciate just how much cars contributedto the period’s youth counter-culture; not everyone had an ocean to surf, andmost folks couldn’t make a guitar talk, but just about every American kid coulddream of getting away from it all in a coupe.

2)     The Beatles and Competition: The Beach Boysand their surfing and car songs might have dominated the first couple years ofthe 1960s (alongside all the surfing culture I discussed on Monday), but soonenough a different oceanic influence would take over the American musical and culturallandscape—the invasionof The Beatles and so many contemporary and subsequent bands from acrossthe Atlantic. The Beach Boys were on the same record label, Capitol Records,as The Beatles U.S. releases, and apparently BrianWilson in particular was very frustrated by all the attention the Fab Fourreceived, later noting that The Beatles “eclipsed a lot we’d worked for,eclipsed the whole music world.” While of course Wilson’spsychological state was famously fragile and such stressors didn’t help, it’snonetheless also the case that the competition with The Beatles led The BeachBoys to create one of the most experimental, unique, and greatest albums inAmerican rock history, Pet Sounds (1966),which would go on to directlyinfluence The Beatles as well.

3)     “Kokomo” and Classic Rock: The question ofwhen rockmusic turns into “classic rock” is an interpretative one, and of course onethat can make fans feel real old. I would argue that as early as 1971, withtheir album Surf’s Up, The Beach Boys weremaking music that was overtly designed to tap into nostalgia for their earliermusic and that early 60s surfing craze, which could be a case for calling thatalbum “classic rock.” But while that’s a debatable point, I don’t think anyonewould argue that 1988’s “Kokomo,”which was recorded for the Cocktailsoundtrack and became the group’s first #1 hit since Pet Sounds, was anything other than an overt (and entirely successful)attempt to recapture those 1960s vibes, one that extended into an entire album,StillCruisin’ (1989). Which went platinum, proving that, fresh or classic,there remains a place for beachtastic pop music.

Guest Postthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other beachtastic texts you’d highlight?

May 9, 2024: Beach Blogging: Baywatch

[Releasedon May 11, 1964, “I Get Around” would goon to become the first #1hit for The Beach Boys. To celebrate that sunny anniversary, thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of beachtastic texts, leading up to a repeatGuest Post from one of our up-and-coming BeachStudiers!]

On whythose beautiful beach bodies are also a body of evidence.

Back inthe blog’s early days, Ihumorously but also earnestly noted that to a dedicated AmericanStudier,any text, even Baywatch, is apossible site of complex analysis. I stand by that possibility, and willmomentarily offer proof of same. But before I do, it’s important to foregroundthe basic but crucial reason for Baywatch’sexistence and popularity, one succinctly highlighted by Friends’ Joey and Chandler: pretty people running in slow-motion inbathing suits. While I plan to make a bit more of the show and its contexts andmeanings than that, it’d be just plain cray-cray to pretend that either theshow’s intent or its audience didn’t focus very fully on those beautifulbodies. Moreover, such an appeal was nothing new or unique—while the beachsetting differentiated Baywatch abit, I would argue that mostprime-time soap operas have similarly depended on the attractiveness of their casts to keeptheir audiences tuning in.

If Baywatch was partly a prime-time soapopera, however, it would also be possible to define the show’s genredifferently: in relationship to both the police and medical dramas that werebeginning to dominate the TV landscape in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Baywatch debuted in 1989). After all,the show’s plotlines typically included both rescues and crimes; while thelifeguards often dealt with romantic and interpersonal drama as well, so toodid the docs of ER or thecops of Miami Vice (to nametwo of the era’s many entries in these genres). Seen in this light, andparticularly when compared to the period’s police dramas, Baywatch was relatively progressive in the gender balance of itsprotagonists—compared to another California show, CHiPs, forexample, which similarly featured pretty people solving promised land problemsbut which focused almost entirely on male protagonists. Yes, the women of Baywatch were beautiful and dressedskimpily—but the same could be said of the men, and both genders were equallyheroic as well.

Thecreators of Baywatch tried to makethe cop show parallel overt with the ill-fated detective spinoff BaywatchNights, about which the less said the better (even AmericanStudiers havetheir limits). But the problem with BaywatchNights wasn’t just its awfulness (Baywatchitself wasn’t exactly The Wire, after all), it was that it missed acrucial element to the original show’s success: the beach. And no, I’m nottalking about the bathing suits. I would argue that the most prominent 1970sand 1980s cultural images of the beach were Jaws and its many sequels and imitators, a set ofimages that made it seem increasingly less safe to go back in the water. Andthen along came David Hasselhoff, Pam Anderson, and company, all determined totake back the beaches and shift our cultural images to something far morepleasant and attractive than . Whatever you think of the show, is there anydoubt that they succeeded, forever inserting themselves and their slow-morunning into our cultural narratives of the beach?

Last Beachtext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other beachtastic texts you’d highlight?