Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 440

August 10, 2011: Not Yet E-raced

It's difficult to overstate my frustration with how frequently and consistently our last few years of national political and cultural conversations have been driven by images or narratives of reverse racism, and specifically of African American racism against whites. Vying for the most famous (and probably most stupid) examples would have to be Glenn Beck's description of President Obama as a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred of white people" (don't tell his Mom and grandparents!) and Rush Limbaugh's responding to a video of black teens beating up a white peer on a school bus by arguing that this is what happens in "Barack Obama's America." But while those particular instances could be dismissed as outliers or extremes, the fact is that many of the most ongoing contemporary narratives (especially from the right, although they have all permeated broader conversations as well) likewise depend on images of reverse racism that are just as ridiculous and fabricated as they are divisive and damaging: these would include Eric Holder's Justice department giving preferential treatment to African Americans, the NAACP and Shirley Sherrod and others discriminating against whites, ACORN and similar organizations conspiring to steal elections, Sonia Sotomayor and other governmental appointees (and even Obama himself) as "affirmative action picks," and many other narratives along these same lines.A basic knowledge of and engagement with many of the histories with which I've engaged in this space—from 19th century histories of slavery, the rise of the KKK and Jim Crow, and lynching to 20th century ones of ongoing segregation and violence, the resistance to the Civil Rights movement, institutionalized racism in the housing and educational systems, and much else besides—would go a long way toward revealing the silliness in any description of American racism as targeting whites. But that historical knowledge would not necessarily counter a somewhat more complicated but ultimately just as nonsensical and damaging narratives that I have encountered frequently among those advancing these claimants of reverse racism: this narrative begins by admitting and lamenting the long history of racism in America but notes that now things have changed, partly for the better (for the prior victims of racism) but also unfortunately for the worse (for those who have now become the victims). This narrative would thus seem to diffuse any appeal to history (although I have found that it tends to locate the racist histories much further back in time than would be appropriate, and to tend similarly to minimize any blame for the racism through general ideas about "the way things were"), and thus require a response that at least does not rely solely on history in order to offer a different perspective on racism and racial hierarchies here in 21st century America.There are, I believe, plenty of contemporary realities and details that would help with such a response, including some of the broadest facts about our society; this would include a recent Pew study(at the first link) that details the ever-widening wealth gap between white and non-white communities in the United States (a gap that is at its largest in over 25 years). Yet while such economic realities and their usually concomitant institutional policies are often the most telling markers of a society's communal identity, they don't necessarily work (to go back to yesterday's Mailer post) as effective stories. Luckily, or rather helpfully for this argument, there have been numerous overt and horrifying recent stories that make clear the lingering and destructive presence of anti-black racism in America. At the second link, for example, is the story of a late June hate crime in Mississippi, the brutal murder of a black man by a group of local teens who were simply looking to "mess with" any and all African Americans they encountered; at the third is the much less violent but just as fucked-up story of an Arkansas (Little Rock, in a particularly tragic irony) high school that refused to allow an African American girl to serve as its valedictorian, despite her clear status as the graduating senior with the highest GPA. These are, I hope it goes without saying, only two of many such stories I have seen in recent months; like them, each has had its specific contexts and complexities, but all have illustrated that 21st century American victims of racism (whether individual or institutional) still don't look much like Beck or Limbaugh.How we—as individuals, as communities, as a nation—should respond to that reality remains an ongoing and difficult question, although I would certainly connect it to need for the kinds of social programs I wrote about in this post. But as with so many of our most pressing national questions, before we can even begin to address it seriously we need to dispense with the over-simplified and often simply false narratives that obscure our perspective on it. Which is to say, in this case and as bluntly as possible (and echoing a bit what Mike Parker wrote in his guest post here): fellow white people, get over yourselves. More tomorrow,BenPS. Four links to start with:1)      A story on the wealth gap: http://newsone.com/nation/associatedpress2/wealth-gap-between-blacks-whites-widens/2)      New York Times story on the hate crime: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/us/09hate.html?_r=13)      A local story on the valedictorian controversy: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/07/25/38410.htm4)      OPEN: What do you think?

August 9, 2011: Narrating Our Battles

The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (1968) isn't just (as I wrote yesterday) the best book from Normal Mailer's crazy prolific and diverse decade, nor even Mailer's best book period; I think it's one of the great works of 20th century American literature, full stop. There are lots of elements that make it so great, from those that I'll admit might be somewhat particular to this AmericanStudier's obsessions (such as the book's structural division, as stated in the title, into two parts that mirror two different emphases of the phrase "historical novel") to those that are more universally effective (it's extremely funny, for example). It's at once an incredibly detailed and grounded depiction of a particular historical event and moment (a 1967 anti-Vietnam march in which Mailer participated) and a broad engagement with many of the most significant themes and questions at the hearts of America and the 1960s. There's no question that it's a Norman Mailer book—the writer's trademark ego is prominently on display throughout—but to my mind likewise no question of its greatness.There are also, however, very specific, contemporary reasons to read Armies in August 2011. The book's occasion is a protest, or more exactly two distinct protests: the first a reading and lecture by Mailer, based on his 1967 pamphlet Why Are We In Vietnam?; the second the following day's anti-war march. In part the inclusion of the former protest reflects that famous Mailer ego, as it allows Mailer to feature himself and his exploits far more than would be possible in an account solely of the march (during which he was arrested, but which nonetheless featured some 200,000 protesters rather than just one drunken and belligerent writer). But in part the two protests mirror the book's two structural sections and their interconnected yet distinct categories of history and novel: the march being, from its origins and purposes on, very much a self-consciously historical event, a grappling with the era's biggest issues on America's most mythologizing stage; while the lecture, on the other hand, represents a likewise purposeful and complex act of story-telling, a fictionalization of self and of history in equal measure. That doesn't mean that Mailer necessarily privileges the lecture over the march, but it does, in my reading, allow the former to influence the latter, set the stage for the march through the lecture's emphasis on story-telling and narratives.It would be crazy to suggest that Mailer's semi-coherent lecture had as much historical or national meaning as, or even influenced its own moment or audience as much as, the following day's march. But it would not be nearly as crazy to note that protests, like any other events, are often and mostly meaningful in direct correlation to how they're narrated, to the representations they receive in the media (it's no coincidence that Mailer begins the book with a quote from Time), to the stories that are told of them. In fact, such questions of narration are particularly salient for protests and other similar social and political events—since these events will always be judged through the lens of their effects, of the impacts and changes they produced, it becomes that much more crucial how they're represented, by whom, and from what perspective. Moreover, as Mailer's book makes clear, such narrations have at their best an ability to humanize everyone involved in and impacted by events far more than might otherwise be the case—in Mailer's hands, not only the many different communities of protesters but also the policeman and national guardsmen become fully-realized American characters, participants in this event who not only retain their humanity, but through it become the heart of an event that illustrates the nation's divisions but also reflects the larger community to which all Americans still belong (whether they like it or not). I'm not a postmodernist about the past—I know that historical events happened, independent of (and more significantly than) any subsequent narration of them—and I don't think Mailer is either; he took part in the march, was arrested in the course of it and spent a weekend in jail as a result, and in those and other ways recognizes its tangible and meaningful realities. Yet as this blog has hopefully illustrated, I believe that no political or cultural or ideological battles are more important than those over narratives, over which stories we tell and how we tell them. Mailer's book not only exemplifies that idea, but likewise models the kinds of complex and human stories that can comprise a richer and more genuinely communal American history and identity, making it an essential American text for sure. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      Great review of Armies by literary critic Alfred Kazin: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html2)      Other accounts from and photos of the 1967 march: http://www.jofreeman.com/photos/Pentagon67.html3)      OPEN: What do you think?

August 8, 2011: Multi-talented

When it comes to our culture's (and maybe every culture's) evaluation of artistic genius, I think we tend to prefer those artists who do, within their chosen medium, one thing exceptionally well over those who do many things successfully but perhaps less exceptionally. So in film, for example, few critics would dispute the claim that Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest filmmakers of the last few decades, even though (or perhaps, again, because) the majority of his best-known films are very similar in many ways: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, and The Departed all (despite distinctions of course) mine a core, shared vein of crime and violence, honor and loyalty, and the darker sides of the American Dream. On the other hand, I doubt you could find a critic (outside of those who give 5-star reviews to the latest direct to DVD features in order to get their names on the box) willing to call Ron Howard a genius filmmaker, even though (or perhaps, again, because) his resume includes a stunningly long list of movies that feel quite distinct from each other: Cocoon, Willow, Parenthood, Backdraft, Far and Away, The Paper, Apollo 13, Random, EdTV, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Beautiful Mind, The Missing, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code, and Frost/Nixon all appeared within one twenty-year period of Howard's career, and I don't know that any two can be connected in any particularly significant ways.I'm not trying to make the case that Howard is a more talented (much less more important) filmmaker than Scorsese; that's the kind of thing that gets your AmericanStudier license taken away. While tastes can of course vary, you'd be hard-pressed to argue that any of Howard's films have changed the landscape of American cinema or culture, while certainly Scorsese's early works fit that description. Along those same lines, neither would I claim that Norman Mailer is as talented a novelist or writer as William Faulkner, whose prose style and use of stream of consciousness helped revolutionary the novel and writing and justifiably earned him a Nobel Prize. But just as the range and diversity of Howard's career bespeaks an artist willing and able to delve into virtually every genre, so too would I make a case that the diversity of Mailer's literary output, particularly within a fifteen-year period in the middle of his career (between An American Dream [1965] and The Executioner's Song [1979]), at least demands acknowledgment and at best represents an artist who can vary his talents and results much more fully than a largely static (if again hugely talented) writer like Faulkner. The Mailer novels that I used to bookend that fifteen-year period, An American Dream and The Executioner's Song, might seem in a description of their plots to have a great deal in common: the fictional protagonist of Dream, Stephen Rojack, murders his wife and becomes, along with a femme fatale of a nightclub singer, an adversary to virtually every prominent force in 1960s American society; while the real-life protagonist of Song, Gary Gilmore, falls in love with a young woman whose influence contributes to his eventual breakdown into a mass murderer who is caught and sentenced to death. Yet the two could not be more formally or stylistically different: with Dream published serially in a highly metaphorical and (appropriately) dream-like style, with characters who feel like archetypes of national life existing in an invented Manhattan underworld; and Song written as an intimate, extremely realistic representation of the perspectives and lives of its real characters, set against precisely captured middle American settings. The two were also very different in the responses they produced—Dream was considered anti-war and even treasonous, and was banned from publication in America for years; while Song was a huge best-seller and won Mailer the Pulitzer Prize. Both are also, like all of Mailer's works, flawed and difficult, possibly misogynistic, frustratingly hard to pin down, and, like all of his publications within (and beyond) this wide-ranging fifteen-year period, well worth your time.I haven't even mentioned the best book from within these years: The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (1968). That's because tomorrow's post will be a follow-up to this one that will focus on that novel and the questions of protest and activism to which it connects. It's just as distinct from the two aforementioned novels as they are from each other, illustrating even more fully the diversity of Mailer's talents and output. There's not much value in trying to prioritize kinds of artistic success, but I think it's high time we added such multi-talented artistry to our list of truly impressive, even genius, achievements. More tomorrow on Armies,Ben PS. Three links to start with:1)      An interesting piece on Gilmore and Mailer: http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-March-1997/petch.html2)      A review of Dream by the great literary critic Richard Poirier: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/an-american-dream-by-norman-mailer/3)      OPEN: Any multi-talented folks you'd highlight?

August 6-7, 2011 [Link-Tastic Post 2]: Blogroll

For this second set of Links, here (as ever in no particular order) are some of the blogs I read regularly, when I'm not, y'know, blogging, working on book three, hanging with the boys, or trying to juggle those other couple dozen balls floating up there:1)      American Literary Blog: It's true that Rob Velella graciously both guest-posted here and allowed me to do the same on his blog. But it's also true that I would need no quid pro quo to recommend this diverse, engaging, always informative (almost-) daily blog on 19th century American literature and culture. 2)      No Category: Yes, fine, Mike Parker is another of my guest posters and my most frequent commenter here. But if you're once again insinuating that these links have somehow been bought and paid for, well, you're once again mistaken. Mike's blog has only been around for a few months, but with its uniformly thoughtful and provocative takes on the complexities of 21st century adult life, it's already one of my go-to reads.3)      Ta-Nehisi Coates:  TNC (as the blogosphere calls him) is one of the most talented writers and most nuanced thinkers I've read in a good while. That he's also a pitch-perfect AmericanStudier, equally adept at analyzing the Civil War and hip hop, Jane Austen and contemporary politics, makes him an even more ideal link for this blog.4)      Joe Posnanski:  To say that Joe is just a sportswriter would be the equivalent of calling Hendrix just a guitarist; not only not accurate to the range and depth of talent, but also failing to see how much power and passion and perfection each man can achieve within his chosen vocation. The posts on Joe's two daughters are the most moving, but most everything the man writes is guaranteed to hit you on some level.5)      Paul Krugman and Robert Reich: Say what you will about the perils of the internet (and I'm likely to agree with much of what you say), but in what other moment would we Americans and citizens of the world have near-daily access to two of the most accomplished and impressive economic thinkers and writers of our era, one a Nobel Prize winner, the other a long-time Cabinet official, both vital voices in assessing the state of our nation and world? I'm not saying I necessarily would have enjoyed reading Alexander Hamilton's blog, but it would have been cool to have the chance—and with these guys, we do!6)      (Pre-)Conference Conversations: This blog has only been around for a week, but already I can tell that … ah, who am I kidding? This is the one link here that has indeed been bought and paid for, but only by my effort and the efforts of my fellow NEASA Council-mate Jonathan Silverman. Our first four pre-conference posts are up, as is my first week's recap and open thread—all offer chances to share your own AmericanStudies voice and ideas, perspective and interests. Check it out, and if you don't like it, you'll get every cent of your money back!If and when you feel as if you need more to read than just AmericanStudies—and I'll understand, I suppose—all six of these are well worth your time. Enjoy, and, y'know, feel free to pimp this blog while you're there! More next week,BenPS. Any favorite blogs or other websites you'd share?

August 5, 2011 [Scholarly Review 4]: Lawrence Rosenwald

When I've written about scholarship and political activism in this space, I have tended to treat the two things, as I did in Monday's post, as distinct and even (to my mind) opposed options for any AmericanStudier (or other academic). I certainly believe that to be the case when it comes to classroom teaching; espousing a particular political party or candidate in the classroom (which, as I wrote way back on May 11th, I believe that very few of us teachers do, despite the cultural stereotypes of indoctrinating liberal professors and the like) is for me anathema to complex, contextual, historical and cultural and literary and analytical and above all student-centered course work. Yet in a scholar's work and career outside of the classroom, it's entirely possible to be both a committed political activist and (what I have defined as) the best kind of scholar, a fact that's exemplified by my friend and English and AmericanStudies colleague, Wellesley College Professor Lawrence (Larry) Rosenwald. Larry's particular kind of political activism has brought him a (relatively) good deal of attention, both because it's unusual and because it's at least potentially illegal: he is a tax resister, and specifically a war tax resister, an American citizen who refuses each year (at least those years when the US is fighting a war) to pay the portion of his taxes that he has calculated go to support our defense and military spending. Yet while these actions and choices are certainly individual, political, and in response to contemporary issues and realities, they are also, as Larry argues with great nuance and impressiveness in the essay at the first link, deeply scholarly and analytical, connected to a line of American philosophy and writing that extends back at least to Henry David Thoreau and his practice and ideas of civil disobedience. That essay of Larry's is in fact a model for me of public AmericanStudies scholarship, a piece that does full justice to an American literary figure and historical moment and philosophical and political narrative, while at the same time foregrounding and engaging directly with Larry's own and our national contemporary connections to all of those focal points. That activism and essay would be more than enough to merit Larry a place in my Scholarly Review series, but they're far from the only, nor even necessarily the central, impressive scholarly works of his. Larry has also made at least as valuable and critical a contribution to our national identity and conversations with his book Multilingual America: Language and the Making of American Literature (2008): that text acts as a very thorough and comprehensive survey and analysis of the multilingual canons and traditions that have been part of our national literature and identity from their origins; and at the same time makes a compelling case for redefining both that literature and our identity precisely through multilingualism. In other words, the book has a great deal to offer to students, literary critics, cultural historians, interested AmericanStudiers outside of the academy, and educators who work with multilingual student populations, among many other potential audiences; public scholarship, as I have tried to articulate in this space on multiple occasions (including this June 12th post), entails not only certain kinds of focal points and methodologies but also and at least as importantly broad and deep connections to a variety of audience members and communities, and Larry's book, like his work in general, fits that definition perfectly.I suppose my main takeaway here, and (I have realized) one of my main purposes for this blog, is that public scholarship is on a core level inherently political activism. That's true when it aligns directly with overt activism, as with Larry's performance and analysis of civil disobedience; and is true when it comprises instead a sustained illustration of and argument for a distinct and crucial vision of our national and cultural identity, as with Larry's book. But even if you disagree entirely with those points of mine, Larry's multifaceted AmericanStudies work is exemplary and well worth our communal awareness and response. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      An essay of Larry's on Thoreau, civil disobedience, and tax resistance: http://thoreau.eserver.org/theory.html2)      Info on Multilingual America: http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook.jsf?bid=CBO97805114856573)      OPEN: Any scholarly nominees for this series?

August 4, 2011: First to Go

Every day for the past two weeks, my Mom has been driving a fourth-grader who graduated from her Bright Stars preschool program—the same Mom and program on which I focused in this Tribute post—about 35 miles (each way) to a Central Virginia horse farm. There, the farm's owner, a friend of my Mom's, has been offering this girl a free slot at the horse riding camp she operates during the summers. This is the second summer where such a slot has been offered to one of the Bright Star graduates, in each case a girl who is recovering from sexual abuse. My Mom has been extremely impressed with how much these couple of weeks, and especially the connection to a particular horse that each girl has fostered during that time, have helped the kids to move forward in the very difficult but essential healing process, as well as other parallel growth and maturation processes in their young lives. Because of the generosity and efforts of both my Mom and the farm owner, the experience costs virtually nothing to the school system or the state or the taxpayers, and yet, like all that my Mom and her colleagues do for their kids and families (the program continues to work with the kids and families through 5th grade), it would not exist without the overarching state- and local-funded Bright Stars program.The vast majority of the spending cuts required by the just-passed debt ceiling deal are to be made in the euphemistically titled "non-defense discretionary spending"; as the article at the first link details, that category comprises a variety of areas, but certainly includes educational and social programs—and Bright Stars, like many programs, is a combination of those two types—front and center. A cynic might argue that my entire first paragraph is too unique or anecdotal to be relevant to the question of such cuts, might contend that such programs in general work far less consistently or include far too much bureaucracy and waste or otherwise can stand to be cut; in point of fact, I have read and encountered a wide variety of arguments along the latter lines, as well as parallel arguments that since we simply must cut spending, the cuts should at least come not from nationally necessary programs such as Social Security or Medicare, nor by negatively impacting industries that create jobs and grow the economy, but from programs like these, which unfortunately are just (in this argument) more cut-able than the other areas. An even more cynical perspective would add that the beneficiaries of a program such as Bright Stars not only are unlikely to vote but have virtually no voice in our national and communal conversations, and as such are perhaps the only group affected by potential spending cuts who will not protest those cuts nor otherwise complicate the process moving forward.The only problem with those various points is that they're all completely nonsensical. For one thing, social and educational programs already receive less governmental, federal funding than any other item on the budget; if we simply must cut spending, we presumably must do so in such a way as to genuinely impact the budget moving forward, and cutting these programs will not achieve that objective. For another, while every industry and field includes wasteful or unnecessary spending and bureaucracy, that already-low level of funding for these educational and social programs, coupled with the tremendous amount that their workers contribute and give on their own—I firmly believe that my Mom's and her friend's generosity in the above anecdote, impressive as it is, is quite the opposite of an anomaly—means that far less is wasted in these programs than in (for example) the defense industry or the budgets of the giant corporations whose tax breaks remain untouched in the debt deal. And for yet another and by far the most important—if also the least quantifiable—thing, the human cost of cutting these programs is without question the most explicit and destructive. It's there that the power of the above anecdote is really revealed: without Bright Stars and the opportunities that it, combined with the efforts of my Mom and her friend, can offer, this young girl and hundreds more in this one program—and millions more in programs and schools around the country—would have no support, no recourse from the horrors that far too often constitute their lives, virtually (if not certainly) no possibility of changing those lives for the better. And what could be of more communal and national importance than the question of whether millions of young Americans will or will not have the opportunity to become strong and successful adults and citizens?I don't personally believe that we should be focused on cutting spending at all, but that's an argument for a different post. For now, the bottom line is that, even for those who believe again that we simply must cut spending, our consistent and continuing priorities in what, and who, we cut first are so profoundly ass backwards as to defy both reason and compassion. What can those of us outside of the corridors of power do about that? Well, for one thing, we can tell stories like the one in my first paragraph, of the people at the heart of these most vital and endangered American programs. If those people don't have enough of a voice in our conversations right now, then all the more reason for us to make sure we voice our support for them. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      A Mother Jones story on where the "non-defense discretionary spending" cuts are likely to come from: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/united-states-of-austerity2)      The website for the Bright Stars program: http://www.albemarle.org/department.asp?department=dss&relpage=38973)      OPEN: What do you think?

August 3, 2011: Two Talented, Troubling Americans

Writing about Matt Damon in yesterday's post got me thinking about what I consider his two best film performances, both as reflections of his truly remarkable range and just as two impressively complex and rich character creations: Tom Ripley, the con artist protagonist of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999); and Jason Bourne, the fugitive former-assassin protagonist of The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). There's plenty that could be said about each of these films, including the very impressive supporting casts (Jude Law has never been as good as he is in Ripley and the Bourne films almost made me like Julia Stiles, to cite two particularly impressive examples); similarly, each character was created by an interesting and underrated late 20th-century American novelist whose works still have a great deal to offer in their own right (Ripley appeared in four novels by Patricia Highsmith, whose ground-breaking psychological thrillers also included Strangers on a Train [1951]; Bourne in three novels by Robert Ludlum, whose dense espionage thrillers without question inspired future bestsellers such as Tom Clancy). But for this blog, what's most interesting about both Ripley and Bourne is how much they connect to and yet complicate and critique dominant American narratives.Tom Ripley, at least in the film's representation of him (while I've read both Highsmith and Ludlum, it was a while ago and for this post I'm going with my much clearer memories of the films; I'll also be spoiling those films a good bit, so feel free to stop here if you haven't seen 'em!), has a great deal in common with one of the most iconic American fictional (in every sense) characters: Jay Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Ripley is born into poverty but will do whatever it takes to become wealthy, successful, and (perhaps most importantly) accepted by the most elite and upper-crust of his countrymen; also like Gatsby, Ripley is most talented precisely at performance, at inhabiting every aspect of the character and world he is continually creating. While both men's stories end with a great deal of death and destruction, it's certainly true that Ripley is a far more overt cause of that chaos than Gatsby; Ripley, in short, is willing to murder in order to keep up his performances, while Gatsby's undeniable culpability lies more in his various forms of cheating (financial, adulterous) and his sins of omission. Yet you could make a convincing case that Gatsby is nearly as reprehensible as Ripley, and that the main difference lies in the fact that we see Gatsby through the eyes of Fitzgerald's novelist-narrator Nick Carraway, a man who both falls under Gatsby's charm and who (to an extent) shares Gatsby's culpability in the novel's final events; our vision of Ripley, unmediated by such a narrating voice, makes it easier to judge his most heinous actions for the atrocities that they really are. And as destructive as both men's ambitions and desires ultimately are, it would also be important to keep in mind how fully they line up with some of America's defining narratives, most especially the self-made man and the prominent place he occupies in the American Dream.Jason Bourne's American connections (again, in the film version of the character) are in many ways much more explicitly contemporary, more directly in conversation with national narratives and realities post-9/11. The series' engagement with those contemporary and political issues has been present since the first film but was ramped up in each subsequent sequel; the villain played by the great David Strathairn in Ultimatum represents a particularly clear stand-in for American "war on terror" policies and practices and their logical yet terrifying endpoints. Moreover, both Bourne's complicity in those extremes and horrors and his gradual but absolutely determined extrication of himself and his prior identity from them can be read across the three films as a powerful argument for how the nation as well can and must leave behind what we've become in the decade since 9/11. Yet on another level Bourne connects to a centuries-old and archetypal American hero, the kind of character described by literary critic R.W.B. Lewis as "the American Adam": these Adamic heroes, who originated as many American literary images did with James Fenimore Cooper (and specifically with his recurring hero Natty Bumppo), seem to exist as innocent and largely self-made"new men," outside of (or at least not ultimately bound by) the limits of history and society. Bourne is not the first character who can be said to reveal the fundamental flaws in and even impossibility of such an Adamic identity—Lewis rightly notes that Gatsby can be read in precisely that way—but he is a particularly compelling case: an Adamic hero who comes to realize that he has been instead an anti-hero, and must fight to escape and destroy that anti-heroic identity and the myths that come with it. Both Ripley and the Bourne films are great entertainments on their own terms, but as with all of the best art, they also echo and engage with and amplify ongoing narratives and images, with our ideas about who we are and with what those stories often leave out or gloss over. And that's a very impressive talent for sure. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      A great, telling brief scene from Ripley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiKBP8L-twA2)      The concluding sequence from Identity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4efr_NASQE&feature=related3)      OPEN: Any deeply American characters you'd highlight?

August 2, 2011 [Tribute Post 20]: Inspiring Public School Teachers

Unfortunately overshadowed by the debt ceiling nonsense was the July 30th Save Our Schools march in Washington, and especially the speech delivered by actor and all-around impressive guy Matt Damon at that march. See the first link below for the full text of the speech, which weaves together Damon's individual experiences, his Mom's life and efforts, and his educational perspective and arguments about as well as could possibly be imagined in such a brief text. Damon makes a compelling case against standardized (and especially high-stakes) testing, a position I certainly share; but even if we leave that issue aside, he also argues—not only with his words but also in his very identity—for a greater appreciation of the work done by and the hugely powerful influence of teachers, and most especially (at least in his case, as in mine) public school teachers.Most of my first half-dozen Tribute Posts here focused on inspiring teachers, many of them from my 15 years in the Charlottesville Virginia public schools: that would include my high school English and writing teacher Mr. Heartwell; my elementary school History teacher and Camp Virginia guru Mr. Kirby; my middle school English teacher Mr. Hickerson; and my high school Calculus teacher Mrs. Perkins. I could (and perhaps down the road will) write at least as many additional Tributes to other, equally inspiring teachers from those years, among them: Mrs. Sturgill, who taught middle and then high school sciences into her 70s when she could have long before retired (not least because her husband was a prominent physician at and director of the University of Virginia hospital); Mrs. Banks, who included Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (!) on the syllabus of her amazing 8th grade English class; Mrs. Frankel, who made the nuances and power of American history come alive without sacrificing the slightest bit of rigor in our AP US course; Mrs. Wilroy, the very young and very passionate 9th and 10th grade English teacher whose talents and commitment I should have vocally appreciated much more fully than I did; and Dr. King, the legendary principal at my elementary school who passed away far too young but has continued to influence his students positively through a college scholarship fund. Our national narratives about public education have been dominated for at least two decades now by two pretty destructive threads. The more recent is also the more overtly partisan and divisive, the perspective that public school teachers (like all public employees) are overpaid and over-coddled, leeches who benefit from the system far more than they give to it, thanks in large part to their even more leech-y teachers' unions; I believe that at least as many Americans oppose this narrative as support it, which doesn't lessen its potential destructiveness but does make it slightly less horrific to think about. But the longer-term narrative, the one about holding schools and teachers accountable—the narrative that is the direct source for high-stakes testing and No Child Left Behind and every other imposed method of assessing whether schools and teachers are doing their jobs (and then penalizing them if they're not)—is both far more broadly accepted (how can it be bad to hold someone accountable?) and far more dangerous and destructive. After all, at that narrative's core is the idea that if our public schools are failing, that's due, whether in part or in large part or in sum, to the failures of those who work in them, and thus ultimately of public school teachers. Like Damon, I reject that narrative wholeheartedly, partly from my own experiences with such schools and teachers, but partly because I know that for far too long we as a society have given them far too little support (financial and otherwise). If anything, it's astounding, and very inspiring, that we still have so many great public school teachers—and it is something we had for damn sure better not take for granted.More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      Damon's amazing speech: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/matt-damons-clear-headed-speech-to-teachers-rally/2011/07/30/gIQAG9Q6jI_blog.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews&fb_source=profile_oneline2)      What looks to be a pretty positive website in support of inspiring teachers everywhere: http://www.inspiringteachers.com/index.html3)      OPEN: Any great teachers you'd nominate?

August 1, 2011: What's the Point?

I had a pretty unpleasant Facebook-thread argument recently—in the immediate context of the debt ceiling nonsense and President Obama, two topics about which I have nothing more to say at the moment—with a leftist political activist (not someone I know personally, but such are the promise and peril of Facebook and the internet) who feels that "academic liberals" are "the lamest, most clueless, most useless motherfuckers in the world." Since he said this to me directly, after I had offered him what he admitted was "unreciprocated civility," the line certainly reflects most centrally the guy's particular and unattractive online voice and personality. But leaving the insults aside, his broader points, which focused on how academic liberals (and perhaps liberals more generally) don't have the will or tenacity to do whatever it takes to "win" political arguments and thus are ultimately powerless in the face of win-at-all-costs conservatives like those currently running the show in DC, are ones I have myself considered often, including in and in regard to this space.For example, much of my April 19th post focused explicitly on the question (in response to a few prompts, including William Hazlitt's still relevant 1820 essay "On the Spirit of Partisanship" and the work of Reconstruction-era activist and writer Albion Tourgée) of whether liberals should fight conservative fire with fire or with complexity, should (at least at times and when necessary) abandon the high roads of historical awareness and knowledge and context (among many others) and play dirty in order to take on conservative movements that seem often to rely heavily, even depend, upon propaganda and misrepresentations and bald-faced lies. Since that time I have, I will admit, included more contemporary and political topics among my focal points here, but I have not, I devoutly hope, abandoned even a fraction of my desire for nuance and context, for awareness and knowledge, for connecting such issues thoroughly to the long and multi-part threads that can be traced from them to so much of our national history and identity and narratives. As I wrote in that April 19th post, and as I still believe, trying to provide all of those layers is the right thing to do, but what my Facebook interlocutor might ask (if with more vulgarity), and what I certainly ask myself frequently as well, is whether it's the best thing to do, at least for those of us seeking to enter into and even ideally influence broader national conversations.I'd be lying if I said I had the answer to that question. But I think a news story from today (available at the first link below) illustrates, if I do say so myself, the real and urgent need in our national conversations not only for the voices of public AmericanStudies scholars in general, but in this particular case for the argument at the heart of my recent book specifically. In this story, the despicable anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller, about whom I wrote in my July 25th and July 26th posts, comes out in support of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik; Geller makes that disgusting case in a variety of ways, but in one particularly telling comment (later scrubbed from her site but caught in a screen capture also available at that first link) she captions a photo of the kids at the Norwegian youth camp (taken the day before the shooting) by asking her readers to "note the faces which are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian." Geller may think that she's making a point there about Norway specifically or European societies more generally—and certainly she, like Breivik and the rest of their anti-Muslim ilk, are indeed intertwined with social changes and concurrent hate movements throughout the continent—but to my AmericanStudier's mind the loudest echoes are of deeply American narratives about who is and is not a "pure" or "real" American, narratives which have been and continue to be constructed in direct response both to immigration and to racial and cultural mixture. And narratives, yes, that represent precisely a crucial inspiration for much of my own attempt to define American identity precisely through the concept of such mixtures, to make them the most "pure" version of who and what we have been and are.If I had to guess, I'd say that my Facebook conversant would argue that the best, and perhaps the only, way to respond to somebody like Geller is to publicly attack and shame her, to put her bigotry and vitriol on display for all to see—and to make clear at the same time how deeply interconnected she and they are to the current Republican party (note the photo of her with House Majority Whip Eric Cantor in that linked article). Again, he might well have a point. But to me, responding by first noting the deep-seated national narratives to which her bigotry and vitriol connect, and then positing some alternative and more genuinely communal narratives in their place, can and, I still believe, will ultimately allow us to move into a future where we all stand a better shot of winning, maybe not immediate prizes of power or influence but fundamental and more meaningful ones of equality and hope. At the end of the day, I'm going to keep making that point, here and everywhere else. More tomorrow,BenPS. Four links to start with:1)      A story on Geller: http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/01/284011/pam-geller-race-mixing-breivik-right/2)      A collection of great, and very broadly accessible and meaningful, resources and documents on race and identity in America: http://www.pbs.org/race/007_Resources/007_01-search.php?orderby=title&getonly=all&searchheader=All%20resources&queryfrom=url&page=83)      Speaking of public conversations, the first posts are up on the NEASA pre-conference blog, at http://neasaconference.blogspot.com. Check 'em out, and please feel free to add your voice and ideas into the mix through the Comments there (or to send me such responses if you'd rather they be posted by someone else)!4)      OPEN: What do you think?

July 30-31, 2011: July Recap

[New post for today coming, well, later today, but for now I wanted to post the first version of a new feature for the blog, an end-of-month recap of the month's posts [with hyperlinks]. I know that my titles aren't always that overt, so hopefully this will help give you all a sense of what I've written about over the last month of posts.]July 1: A Tale of Two Sixties: David Halberstam, Roger Ailes, and post-1960s journalismJuly 2-4: The Fourth Dimension: My second book and definitions of American identityJuly 5: The Genres of Abraham: Early 20th century Jewish American writer Abraham CahanJuly 6: Trial and Error: The jury trial system, the Constitution, and Casey AnthonyJuly 7 [Scholarly Review 1]: A Good Deal: Elizabeth's Cohen's Making a New Deal, a book about industrial workers in early 20th century ChicagoJuly 8: Deadly Personal (Repeat): In response to a controversial Texas execution, a re-post on the death penalty, Steve Earle, and Dead Man WalkingJuly 9-10 [Tribute Post 18]: Web Feat: The internet, teaching and scholarship, and my Dad Steve Railton's great scholarly websitesJuly 11: The Okay American Novel: Proposed revised versions of Huck Finn and The Great GatsbyJuly 12: What's the Fantastic For?: George R.R. Martin, fantasy fiction, and AmericaJuly 13 [Scholarly Review 2]: Encyclopedic: Scholarly encyclopedias, especially the Gale Enc. of Multicultural America and the Encyclopedia of American Studies July 14: Not a Fan: The US Women's Soccer Team, sports fanaticism, and us vs. them mentalitiesJuly 15: On the Other Hand: Michael Irvin on marriage equality, and the more inspiring side of sportsJuly 18: If You Like This Blog…: The New England American Studies Association's upcoming (starts this week!) pre-conference blogJuly 19: Be Like Ike: Complicated political histories, and what 21st century liberals and Americans can learn from President EisenhowerJuly 20: That's Rich: Growing wealth, and concurrent wealth inequalities, in AmericaJuly 21: Impoverished Arguments: My response to a controversial Heritage Foundation study on poverty in AmericaJuly 22 [Scholarly Review 3]: Caroline Rody: The great scholarly work of this University of Virginia professorJuly 23-24 [Tribute Post 19]: Amy Winehouse: My tribute to the talented and troubled British singer, and a couple American connectionsJuly 25: Crazy Talk: Norwegian terrorist Anders Brievik, terrorism, and talk radioJuly 26: Fighting for America: Anti-muslim extremists, Muslim Americans, and Colin PowellJuly 27: WWJD?: On the perils of quoting the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, and Muslim AmericansJuly 28: Advancing Through History: The South Central (LA) Tea Party and Me on the historical and contemporary roles of the NAACPJuly 29 [Link-Tastic Post 1]: The Debt Ceiling: A collection of links about this issue and its contextsHope this helps! More soon,BenPS. Any topics, issues, events, figures, texts, or etc. you'd like me to add to my August plans?