Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 46
April 27, 2024
April 27-28, 2024: April 2024 Recap
[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
April1: Satire Studying: African American Satire: An April Fool’s series onsatire starts with a link to my recent SaturdayEvening Post Black History Month column.
April2: Satire Studying: Innocents Abroad: The series continues with thedouble-edged satire at the heart of Mark Twain’s first big hit.
April3: Satire Studying: The Interview: What’s problematic, and what’simportant, about a hugely controversial cinematic comedy, as the series pokeson.
April4: Satire Studying: TV Satires: Four news and sketch comedy shows fromwhich we can learn a lot (but which I originally posted in 2017, so add morerecent nominations please!).
April5: Satire Studying: The Big Short and Vice: The series concludes with valueand limits of satire when it comes to contemporary, contested events.
April6-7: Emily Lauer on Comics Analysis & Editing as Public-Facing Scholarship:My newest Guest Post from a familiar friend of the blog—Emily Lauer with her record-setting4th Guest Post!
April8: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: Vaughn Joy on No Way Out: A serieson the 60th anniversary of Poitier’s groundbreaking Oscar win kicksoff with a FilmStudier I really love on Poitier’s cinematic debut.
April9: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: The Blackboard Jungle: The series continueswith a Poitier character who’s very similar to a 1980s favorite, and oneimportant distinction.
April10: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: The Defiant Ones: Two differentgenres through which to contextualize Poitier’s 1958 prison break film, as theseries roles on.
April11: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: Two 1967 Classics: Standoutspeeches and sweet sendoffs in Poitier’s pair of pitch-perfect 1967 films.
April12: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: Lillies of the Field: The seriesconcludes with what was historic about Poitier’s Oscar-winning role, what wasn’tquite, and what’s importantly outside that framing.
April13-14: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: 21C Heirs: A special weekend follow-upon noteworthy performances from five of our best contemporary Black actors (notincluding Denzel and Morgan who could each get whole posts for their workalone).
April15: Mythic Patriotisms: The 1776 Project: For Patriots’ Day this year I wantedto trace some histories and layers to one of the main categories in my book Of Thee I Sing, starting with a post onhow a project dedicated to “patriotic education” embodies the worst of mythic patriotism.
April16: Mythic Patriotisms: The National Anthem: The series continues with twolayers of mythic patriotism found in the lesser-known later verses of “TheStar-Spangled Banner.”
April17: Mythic Patriotisms: “Self-Made”: How an iconic American narrative ismythic patriotic in both meanings and effects, as the series pledges on.
April18: Mythic Patriotisms: Defining America’s Origins: The multiple mythic patrioticlayers to an origin story that centers on the Pilgrims/Puritans.
April19: Mythic Patriotisms: Love It or Leave It: The series concludes with the1960s constructions of a phrase that sums up mythic patriotism’s exclusions.
April20-21: Mythic Patriotisms in 2024: There’s never been a moment with moreovert mythic patriotism than our own, and for this weekend follow-up I bothanalyzed that presence and asked for connections to chances to talk more aboutthese topics!
April22: Climate Culture: Cli Fi: An Earth Day series on cultural works aboutthe climate crisis kicks off with a stunning recent novel that extends the longlegacy of cli fi.
April23: Climate Culture: The Day After Tomorrow and Don’t Look Up: The seriescontinues with the necessity but limitations of disaster movies, and animportant recent variation on the genre.
April24: Climate Culture: “The Tradition”: Two complementary ways to read aclimate change moment in Jericho Brown’s powerful 21st century sonnet,as the series rolls on.
April25: Climate Culture: “The Ghost Birds”: What’s specific and what’s universalin Karen Russell’s amazing 2021 short story.
April26: Climate Culture: Climate Songs: The series and month conclude with fiveexamples of pop music perspectives on the climate crisis, including MidnightOil’s great album Resist (2022).
Nextseries starts Monday,
Ben
PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!
April 26, 2024
April 26, 2024: Climate Culture: Climate Songs
[It’s hardnot to think about the climatecrisis every day in 2024, but it’s impossible not to do so on Earth Day. So thisweek in honor of that solemn occasion, I’ll AmericanStudy cultural works thatrepresent and help us engage with climate change.]
On fiveexamples of pop music perspectives on the climate crisis.
1) Don Henley, “Goodbye to a River”(2000): As I highlighted in thispost featuring Henley’s successful efforts to preserve Walden Woods, theformer Eagle has become one of our most prominent and dedicated environmentalactivists. So it makes sense that he penned an early and excellent climatecrisis song, from his wonderfullypolitical yet deeply personal album InsideJob. That album was hugely prescient about the nascent 21stcentury, and never more so than its fears for a changing planet.
2) Common, “Trouble in the Water”(2014): If Henley’s song is a lament, Common’s track (featuring a ton of guestcontributors) is a righteously enraged banger. Many of its targets are humanforces, like the corporate fuckery called out in bars such as “Everything waspeople/Until you showed up on the land to fuck the people/Contaminate theocean/Now the water is lethal/Four bucks for two liters/That should beillegal.” But as Common’s anthem depicts all too potently, it’s on ourenvironment that such man-made trouble will have the most damaging effects.
3) Childish Gambino, “Feels like Summer”(2018): This song (from actor Donald Glover’s rap persona Childish Gambino)occupies a third genre, a sweet summer ballad—yet one that asks us to lookcloser and think deeper while we bop along. Never more so than in the secondverse: “Every day gets hotter than the one before/Running out of water, it’sabout to go down/Air that kills the bees that we depend upon/Birds were madefor singing, waking up to no sound.” I don’t know if Karen Russell listened to“Feels like Summer” before imagining a future with no birds in the short storyI wrote about in yesterday’s post, but I know her story and Gambino’s song makefor a particularly powerful pairing.
4) Billie Eilish, “All the Good Girls Go toHell” (2019): As I’ve bloggedabout many times (and even included as an example of critical patriotism inthe 1980s chapter of mymost recent book), rap has a long tradition of social commentary. I don’tknow that pop music has the same legacy necessarily, and of course socialcommentary isn’t the only thing music can or should do in any case; but therecertainly is plenty of socially conscious pop music, and singer-songwriterBillie Eilish’s amazing 2019 track is a great recent example. I’m not surethere’s a more hard-hitting nor better three-line verse from the last decade ofpop music than “Hills burn in California/My turn to ignore ya/Don’t say Ididn’t warn ya.” Whew.
5) Midnight Oil, Resist(2022): I bloggedfor my Valentine’s series last year about one of the many great songs onMidnight’s Oil latest album. The whole album is deeply connected to the climatecrisis, but it’s the first song, “RisingSeas,” which is a particularly bracing and vital example of where climatechange music is here in the 2020s. Listen, get mad, and recognize that, as Oilputs it in the final lines of the impassioned “At the Time of Writing,”“At the time of writing we were on the brink/At the time of writing we stillhad time to think.”
AprilRecap this weekend,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think? Climate texts of any type you’d share?
April 25, 2024
April 25, 2024: Climate Culture: “The Ghost Birds”
[It’s hardnot to think about theclimate crisis every day in 2024, but it’s impossible not to do so on Earth Day. So thisweek in honor of that solemn occasion, I’ll AmericanStudy cultural works thatrepresent and help us engage with climate change.]
On what’s specificand what’s universal in Karen Russell’s amazing story.
I first encountered“The Ghost Birds” in the BestAmerican Short Stories 2022 anthology (well worth getting your hands onas those collections always are), but it originally appeared in The NewYorker in October 2021. Whetheryou’re a subscriber or not you should be able to read it as one of your freearticles for the month, so in lieu of a full first paragraph here I’llrecommend that you read this phenomenal short story and then come on back for acouple of my thoughts.
Welcomeback! At the heart of Russell’s story is a depiction of a very real naturalphenomenon: the annualflight of Vaux’s Swifts, migratory birds who settle in spaces like (most famously) thechimney of a Portland (Oregon) elementary school. Most of the cultural worksabout climate change that I’ve encountered focus on its effects for humancharacters and communities, which is of course understandable (these are textscreated by human artists, after all) but also both limited and ironic given therole that humans have played in creating this crisis. Russell’s text certainly stillfeatures central human characters as I’ll discuss in a moment, but from itstitle on it is alsodeeply concerned with what a climate crisis future might look like for thenatural world, including the dystopian yet frustratingly realistic concept of aworld from which birds have almost entirely disappeared. I really don’t like tothink about that possibility, which is precisely what makes Russell’s story soimportant, both as a unique work of climate culture and as an intervention inour own moment.
But that’snot what made Russell’s story hit me so hard the first time I read it. Her narratorand protagonist Jasper is a single father, one who is trying desperately toreconnect with his teenage daughter Starling (he’s a birder through andthrough) through a shared trip to try to find those titular ghost birds. It’snot just that I’m a divorced single father too, but also and especially that I thinkall the time about the climate crisis as it connects to my sons and theirfutures (not least because they have become very dedicatedactivists for that cause on a varietyof fronts). Concerns about what the future will hold for our kids are ofcourse one of the most universal human perspectives and experiences, and yetone that needs to be depicted through specific moments and emotions if a culturalwork centered on that perspective is going to ring true. And for this reader,Russell’s story, despite its setting in a dystopian future, rings as story asany I’ve read in a while.
Lastclimate culture tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think? Climate texts of any type you’d share?
April 24, 2024
April 24, 2024: Climate Culture: “The Tradition”
[It’s hardnot to think about theclimate crisis every day in 2024, but it’s impossible not to do so on EarthDay. So this week in honor of that solemn occasion, I’ll AmericanStudy culturalworks that represent and help us engage with climate change.]
On two complementaryways to read a climate change moment in a 21st century sonnet.
I’vewritten about the great contemporary poet Jericho Brown in multiple posts here,including this one on hiswonderful TED talk and thisone on a few different ways and settings in which he engages his audiences.As part of the latter post, I mentioned his poem “The Tradition” (2015), which wasthe first work of Brown’s I encountered (as the epigraph for Jesmyn Ward’sphenomenal 2016 collection TheFire This Time) and which I’ve had the chance to teach many timessince. “The Tradition” is a particularly interesting poem from a contemporarypoet in that it’s technically a sonnet, both in 14-line length and in terms ofelements like the final rhyming couplet (an aspect of the Shakespearean sonnetin particular); but Brown also purposefully plays with that poetic traditionvery fully, creating line and section structures that utilize yet also deconstructthe classical form, just as he brings into his diction both Latin words anddeeply 21st century details and names.
One ofthose 21st century details is the poem’s allusion to climate changein its middle third (lines 5-8), where Brown writes (in between the names of flowersthat are the poem’s most consistent throughline), “Summer seemed to bloomagainst the will/Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter/On thisplanet than when our dead fathers/Wiped sweat from their necks.” In a poem that’sso much defined by the relationships between tradition and change in all the waysI just highlighted, this moment certainly reflects how climate change functionsas an overt disruption to even the most seemingly consistent cycles: howfamiliar, even indeed unchanging, elements like the sun and the seasons havebecome different as a result of this new reality. “News reports claimed” mightmake it seem that the poem’s speaker isn’t himself sure of the veracity of thatreality, but the poem’s final couplet includes the phrase “Where the worldends,” so I’d argue that he is well aware of at least the possibility of those genuinechanges leading to catastrophe.
On theother hand, the catastrophic losses with which “The Tradition” ends are due notto climate change or natural disaster but racist and institutional violence, asillustrated by the final line’s names of three young Black men killed by thepolice (“John Crawford. Eric Garner. MikeBrown.”). And seen through that lens, the poem’s climate change lines reada bit differently: as not a radical shift so much as yet another unfolding history(not unlike the systems like slavery and sharecropping alluded to with “deadfathers/Wiped sweat from their necks”) that targets people of color and thedisadvantaged far more consistently and destructively than it does the planet’smore privileged communities. That kind of discriminatory targeting is its ownAmerican (and really global, but this is AmericanStudier) tradition, after all,and one that doesn’t disappear with the emergence of new 21st centuryissues. All of which makes Brown’s poem an even more multilayered andmeaningful work of climate culture to add into this week’s series.
Nextclimate culture tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think? Climate texts of any type you’d share?
April 23, 2024
April 23, 2024: Climate Culture: The Day After Tomorrow and Don’t Look Up
[It’s hardnot to think about theclimate crisis every day in 2024, but it’s impossible not to do so on EarthDay. So this week in honor of that solemn occasion, I’ll AmericanStudy culturalworks that represent and help us engage with climate change.]
On thenecessity but limitations of disaster movies, and an important variation.
It makesperfect sense that the first climate change film would have been a disastermovie. By far the most consistent type of disaster on which that longstandinggenre focuses (although not the only one of course, and thank goodness or there’dbe no Airplane!)is the natural disaster: whether relatively everyday ones like fires and floods, more extreme oneslike mega-earthquakesand –tsunamis, orthoroughly extreme ones like volcanoes and asteroids, it’s veryoften nature that is creating the catastrophic conditions which jumpstart thesemovies. Which makes The Day After Tomorrow(2004), a film in which rapidly worsening climate change causes a huge numberand variety of naturaldisasters (including pretty much all of those referenced above, among others) to strikeEarth all at once, just about the most iconic disaster film of all time. In2004 that premise seemed like dystopian science fiction; twenty years later, ithits a whole lot closer to home. But either way, I don’t know that there could beclimate change cinema without the genre of the disaster film.
But here’s thething about disaster films: they have to find their way to some sort of a happyending. Of course there’s been plenty of destruction and death along the way,so things won’t simply return to the way they were; but for at least some ofour characters, usually the protagonists natch, there’s got to be a sense atthe film’s conclusion that they will be okay moving forward. (There are ofcourse, as with every rule, exceptions.) The Day After Tomorrow certainly doesn’ttry to pretend that the world hasn’t changed—indeed, one of its final momentsinvolves astronauts on the International Space Station looking down upon aprofoundly changed planet—but nonetheless, much of the film’s conclusionfocuses on our main characters, who have survived the catastrophic events andare reunited with loved ones to uplifting notes on the musical score and so on.As realistic as disaster movies can (at least at times) be, that is, there’sstill a layer of melodramatic storytelling that makes the genre somewhat lesswell-equipped to really confront the worst possibilities of the climate crisis.
And then there’sDon’t Look Up(2021). In many ways Don’t Look Upseems to be another classic disaster film, with the impending disaster thistime a comet with the potential to destroy all life on Earth, the usualscientist characters who figure out the disaster before everyone else, and soon. But Don’t Look Up turnsout to be a satire instead, and so all the folks in that “everyone else”don’t pay any attention to the scientists and the disaster continues unabated—rightup to (SPOILERS) anending in which apparently no one, not our protagonists or anyone else,escapes the disaster with their lives. That might seem pretty bleak, and insome ways it certainly is—but as you can see from that hyperlinked clip, there’salso a remarkable degree of tenderness and shared humanity in that ending, andI find those emotions more realistic and moving than a more typical happyending could possibly be. As a subgenre, the climate disaster movie might justhave to evolve from the familiar tropes, and if so Don’t Look Up offers at least one model for how to do so.
Nextclimate culture tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think? Climate texts of any type you’d share?
April 22, 2024
April 22, 2024: Climate Culture: Cli Fi
[It’s hardnot to think about theclimate crisis every day in 2024, but it’s impossible not to do so on EarthDay. So this week in honor of that solemn occasion, I’ll AmericanStudy culturalworks that represent and help us engage with climate change.]
On thelong legacy of cli fi, and a stunning recent novel that reveals the genre’strue potential.
The term “cli fi” (for“climate fiction”) has only been around for the last 10 yearsor so; it was apparently first coined in 2011 by activist and author Dan Bloom todescribe JimLaughter’s novel Polar City Red, and thengradually picked up by various mediavoices and stories around 2013-2014. But as with so manyliterary genres, there are numerous earlier authors and works that canproductively be classified within this frame, including Jules Verne’s The Purchase of the North Pole (1889),Laurence Manning’s The Man Who Awoke (1933),multiple novels byJ.G. Ballard, and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993)and Parable of the Talents (1998),among others. While all of those works are distinct and specific, I’d say thatall of them fall under the broad umbrella of science fiction, wedding as theydo their realistic depictions of science and the natural world to imaginedfutures in which (generally) worst-case climate and environmental scenarioshave come to pass and humans (individually and/or collectively) are dealingwith the aftermaths.
Sci fi clifi (say that five times fast) has continued to be a prominent sub-genre here inthe 21st century, as exemplified particularly clearly by sciencefiction legend KimStanley Robinson’s Science in the Capitol trilogy (comprisingthe novels Forty Signs of Rain[2004], Fifty Degrees Below [2005],and Sixty Days and Counting [2007]). Butas we’ve moved further and further into a world where climate change is not animagined future scenario but a very, very realpresent reality, we’ve concurrently seen authors begin to produce as well cli finovels and stories that depict, respond to, and engage in more sociallyrealistic ways that present world. That list includes, among others, BarbaraKingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012),Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure (2018), anumber of the stories in John Joseph Adams’ edited anthology Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology ofClimate Fiction (2015), and one of the most acclaimed andpowerful American novels in recent memory, Richard Powers’ PulitzerPrize-winning The Overstory (2018).
Yet intruth, to classify The Overstory asan example of more contemporary and/or socially realistic fiction is no moreaccurate than to describe it as science fiction. Powers’ book does trace theindividual yet ultimately interconnected stories of nine realistic fictionalcharacters, all Americans living in our early 21st century moment,all descended from family and communal histories involving trees in centralways. But through that shared theme, and through his structural and narrativechoices as well, Powers ultimately produces a work that I would call ahistorical novel in which the history (as well as the present and future) ofthe world is viewed through the lens of trees and forests, rather than throughthe perspectives or experiences of humans (individual or collective, fictionalor real). Which is to say, Powers’ first cli fi novel (his latest, 2021’s Bewilderment, has beendescribed that way as well, but I haven’t had the chance to read it) isn’t justabout climate change or environmentalism—it makes the environment, andspecifically trees, its main character, main narrative perspective, andultimately main emphasis, above (in every sense) and beyond us transienthumans.
Nextclimate culture tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think? Climate texts of any type you’d share?
April 20, 2024
April 20-21, 2024: Mythic Patriotisms in 2024
[Up herein New England, the third Monday in April is a holiday, Patriots’Day. But as I argue in mymost recent book, patriotism is a very complex concept, and so this week I’vehighlighted a handful of examples of the worst of what it has meant for how weremember our histories. Leading up to this special weekend post on the state ofmythic patriotism in 2024!]
On twoways that mythic patriotism can help us understand this year, and one related request.
I’ll startwith the request: OfThee I Sing came out in March 2021, just two months after theJanuary 6th insurrection (I gave my first book talk on the project onJanuary 7th, which was, well, a whole lot); but I believe that thecontested history of American patriotism is if anything even more relevant to2024 than it was in that moment. I’ve had the chance to talkabout the book and those subjects a lot over the last three years, but I nonethelessbelieve we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to those conversations,and would hugely appreciate any and all connections to opportunities andcommunities to keep the conversation going. That includes classes/students(high school as well as higher ed), book clubs and discussion groups,organizations and institutions of all kinds, podcasts, whatever you got! (I’malso very willing to travel within reason, so I’m not talking just virtual byany means.) Feel free to emailwith any ideas, and thanks very much in advance!
There’s nodoubt that theMAGA movement has leaned as heavily into therhetoric and symbolism of patriotism as any political community in mylifetime. I don’t disagree with Jon Stewart’s recent Daily Show rant that a movementdefined so completely by allegiance to an individual, and a dictatorial one atthat, really doesn’t embody any recognizable form of American patriotism. But Ido think the concept of mythic patriotism in particular can help us understandsome of the essence of this movement’s ideologies, some of what they mean byphrases like “Make America Great Again” (or its telling predecessor “I want my country back!”).Or, relatedly, why this movement, like DonaldTrump’s own political ascendance, began so clearly with Barack Obama’selection to the presidency, one of the most blatant symbolic challenges towhite supremacist visions of American politics, society, community, and identityas in any way homogeneously or essentially white. Birtherismwas perhaps the first defining conspiracy theory for a movement that ismore or less entirely defined by conspiracy theories, and it was a mythicpatriotic conspiracy theory if ever there’s been one.
If MAGAhas been the defining political force of the last decade or so, the last fewyears have been especially defined by anti-educationefforts (and related trends like book bans and attackson libraries), and it seems clear that such culture wars debates will playa significant role throughout this election year as well. As I discussed inMonday’s post on the 1776 Project, it’s difficult for me to overstate how centralmythic patriotism is to these attacks on educators, curricula, books, and anyand all other forces that challenge this specific vision of American historyand identity. Momsfor Liberty and all the others behind these efforts can talk all they wantabout threats to children or “grooming” or whatever other justifications they’readvancing, but the essential truth is that these educational elements aredangerous to these groups and this perspective precisely inasmuch as they offerchallenges and alternatives to white-centered (and often overtly whitesupremacist) visions of America. And that’s the thing with mythic patriotism,as I’ve highlighted throughout this series—it not only excludes many Americansfrom its vision of our history, it also excludes all those who would challenge andcounter that vision. Identifying and responding to such mythic patriotism isthus a crucial 2024 goal.
Next seriesstarts Monday,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think?
April 19, 2024
April 19, 2024: Mythic Patriotisms: Love It or Leave It
[Up herein New England, the third Monday in April is a holiday, Patriots’Day. But as I argue in mymost recent book, patriotism is a very complex concept, and so this week I’llhighlight a handful of examples of the worst of what it has meant for how weremember our histories. Leading up to a weekend post on the state of mythicpatriotism in 2024!]
First,here are two paragraphs from Chapter 7 of OfThee I Sing:
“In a telling sentence inhis statement, John Warner did admit another part of the Bicentennial’scontexts: that it ‘comes after a particularly difficult decade.’ One of themost divisive elements of that decade, the Vietnam War, had come to adefinitive close just a year before the Bicentennial, with the July 1975reunification of the nations of North and South Vietnam as a new country, theSocialist Republic of Vietnam. As has been the case with wars throughout Americanhistory, this one featured celebratory patriotic views through which Americanssought unity in response to this military conflict. But one of the mostprominent such Vietnam era celebratory patriotisms, the ubiquitousphrase ‘Love it or leave it,’ represented a far more aggressive anddivisive tone than did the Bicentennial preparations and celebrations. Thatphrase appeared on bumper stickers and billboards throughout this period, aswell as in such cultural works as country artist Ernest Tubb’s ‘It’s America (Love it orLeave it)’ (1970) and his country colleague Merle Haggard’s ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me’(1970), which begins, ‘I hear people talkin’ bad,/About the way they have tolive here in this country,’ and then argues, ‘They’re running down a way oflife/Our fightin’ men have fought and died to keep/ If you don’t love it, leaveit.’ This phrase’s version of celebratory patriotism was one overtly defined inopposition to criticisms of the nation, and indeed one that portrayed anidealized celebratory patriotism as a necessary element to being part of theUnited States at all.
TheMay8th, 1970 ‘Hard Hat Riot’ in New York City illustrated withstark clarity the effects of that aggressive celebratory stance. Hundreds ofcollege and high school students had gathered at an early morning anti-warprotest and memorial for the four Kent State University students who had beenkilled by National Guardsman on May 4th. Around noon, a group ofaround 200 construction workers, many carrying American flags and signs withslogans like ‘America, love it or leave it’ and ‘All the way, USA’ attackedthe protesters with clubs, steel-toed boots, and other weapons. Hours ofviolent clashes left nearly 100 protesters injured and made clear the mythiclogic behind and endpoint of the ‘love it or leave it’ celebratory patrioticsentiment.”
Isaid much of what I’d want to say about this phrase and concept in those paragraphs,but would add one more thing: it’s not just that I find this to be perhaps themost overt expression of mythic patriotism’s exclusion of any voices/perspectivesthat would criticize those myths (although it is that to be sure). It’s that “loveit or leave it” so explicitly contrasts with my favorite expression of criticalpatriotism (and the epigraph to my book), from JamesBaldwin in Notes of a Native Son:“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for thisreason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” The question I wouldask anyone who subscribes to the “love it or leave it” mantra is whether theywould say the same about other forms of love: does loving a person mean we cannever criticize them? Or does it require that we do so when we see them fallingshort, in an effort to help them be their best? I know which one I’d argue for,and it’s not the mythic patriotic concept.
Specialpost this weekend,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think?
April 18, 2024
April 18, 2024: Mythic Patriotisms: Defining America’s Origins
[Up herein New England, the third Monday in April is a holiday, Patriots’Day. But as I argue in mymost recent book, patriotism is a very complex concept, and so this week I’llhighlight a handful of examples of the worst of what it has meant for how weremember our histories. Leading up to a weekend post on the state of mythicpatriotism in 2024!]
On the multiplemythic patriotic layers to a Puritan-centered American origin story.
In the introductionto OfThee I Sing, I define my book’s four types of American patriotism usingthefour verses of Katharine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful” (1893). While Ihadn’t overtly created my terms for them yet when I wrote that hyperlinked 2019blog post, everything I said there about the song’s second verse and itsemphasis on the Pilgrims/Puritans as an American origin point exemplifiesmythic patriotism as I would now define it. It’s not just that Bates’ versecelebrates the Pilgrims as part of the nation’s past, after all—it’s that shedescribes them as “beating” a “thoroughfare for freedom” into a “wilderness,”and thus as originating American ideals in a place that was apparently devoidof other communities until their arrival. Connecting the Pilgrims/Puritans to “freedom”is afraught endeavor to be sure, but doing so by eliminating the indigenous peopleswho were already present in New England (and everywhere else on the continent)is an explicitly exclusionary and white supremacist one.
Over thecourse of the century following Bates’ composition, moreover, multiple exclusionaryand white supremacist narratives were created that depended upon that mythicpatriotic vision of America’s origins. None was more blatant than SouthCarolina Senator Ellison DuRant Smith’s use of that vision to argue for thediscriminatory ImmigrationAct of 1924 in a xenophobicspeech on the Senate floor. Smith argues, “Thank God we have in Americaperhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure,unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock…It is for the preservation of that splendidstock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for theoppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect thatsplendid type of manhood.” “That splendid stock that has characterized us” is aparticularly clear vision of an Anglo origin point for the United States, andthe entirety of Smith’s speech—as well as the developmentof national immigration laws overall—makes clear the potential whitesupremacist use of that vision.
Far moresubtle, but ultimately quite problematic in its own right, is the longstandingvision, one really created as a 20thcentury tourist narrative, of Plymouth, Massachusetts as “America’s hometown” (NB. Thatsite and project seem even more overtly problematic still, so my link is forevidence only, not in any way endorsement). Would it be possible to includeindigenous communities like the Wampanoag tribe in that vision of Plymouth?Maybe, but in practice that tribe has been portrayed as at best a historicalpredecessor to the Pilgrims, and at worst oneof the challenges that they overcame to establish this American originpoint. It was to counter those white-centered and exclusionary practices andnarratives that Native American activist WamsuttaJames delivered his 1970 speech in Plymouth making the case to reframe Thanksgivingas a “National Day of Mourning.” As readers of this blog know well, I’m allabout an additive vision of our history, and I’m not trying to suggest that thePilgrims/Puritans weren’t part of America’s 17th century origins—butany narrative that treats them as isolated or elides indigenous communities inany way is simply perpetuating these mythic patriotic visions.
Lastpatriotism post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Whatdo you think?
April 17, 2024
April 17, 2024: Mythic Patriotisms: “Self-Made”
[Up herein New England, the third Monday in April is a holiday, Patriots’Day. But as I argue in mymost recent book, patriotism is a very complex concept, and so this week I’llhighlight a handful of examples of the worst of what it has meant for how weremember our histories. Leading up to a weekend post on the state of mythicpatriotism in 2024!]
On how aniconic American image is mythic patriotic in both meanings and effects.
I’vewritten at length in this space about the mythic but ubiquitous American narrativeof the “self-made man”: first for one of my earliest postsin October 2011 (man I’ve been writing this blog for a long time!); andthen in aFebruary 2021 follow-up as part of my annual non-favorites series. Before Idive into a couple ways to connect that mythic narrative to the concept ofmythic patriotism, I’d ask you to check out those two posts if you would.
Welcomeback! Obviously it would be possible for any person to be described as “self-made,”but I believe it’s quite telling that almost all of the figures most commonly associatedwith this narrative have been white men: Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, AndrewJohnson, Andrew Carnegie (something about those Andrews, I dunno), pretty muchall of Horatio Alger’s protagonists, Jay Gatsby, contemporary folks like BillGates and Mark Zuckerberg, etc. While the self-made man narrative is ostensiblya celebration of such individuals andtheir achievements, it is at least as much a rejection of the presence andinfluence of communities—or even a direct attack on them as an obstacle to betranscended in pursuit of the American Dream. I’d certainly call that vision ofAmerican identities mythic in general, but I would also add that it is a mythwhich specifically and overtly privileges white men, who for most if not all ofAmerican history have had a greater degree of autonomy and mobility than anyother group. To be clear, even those iconic individual white men have dependedon communal support, so the image is mythic in their cases too—but itsrejection of the need for community does exclude most other Americans, past andpresent.
Theproblems with mythic patriotic narratives aren’t just due to their inaccuraciesand exclusions, though—it’s also in the ways they can contribute to or even helpcreate other, sometimes even more overtly exclusionary, narratives. Forexample, I would say it’s far from coincidental that the late 19thcentury in America was both an era in which the self-made man narrativeproliferated and a period of intensifyingattacks on the nascent labor movement as un- and anti-American. After all,at the heart of that evolving labor movement was an emphasis on workers’communities in at least two key ways: that supposedly “self-made” individualslike the Gilded Age Robber Barons were instead achieving their successes on thebacks of those communities; and that it would thus take communal solidarity toresist and challenge and change those realities. In my early 20thcentury chapter of OfThee I Sing I argue that 1910s and 1920s attacks on the labor movementconstituted a potent form of mythic patriotism, but I would add that thosetrends really began in the late 19th century, right alongside theresurgence of the self-made man narrative.
Nextpatriotism post tomorrow,
Ben
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