Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 47

April 16, 2024: Mythic Patriotisms: The National Anthem

[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 twolayers of mythic patriotism found in the laterverses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

There are multiplereasons why I decided to put Francis Scott Key conceiving of “The Star-SpangledBanner” and Colin Kaepernick kneeling during a performance of it on thecover of Of Thee I Sing, and noneof them make Key look particularly good. I wrote about some of those layers in this2019 post on the anthem (and especially on its much less frequentlyperformed later verses), and so once again would ask you to check out thatprior post and then come on back for a couple further thoughts on this complexnational text.

Welcomeback! In the opening paragraph of that prior post, I highlighted a particularcouplet in the anthem’s generally overlooked third verse: “No refuge could savethe hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” AsI mentioned there, Keyhimself was both a slaveowner and a lawyer who opposed abolition and foughtfor the rights of other slaveowners, making his use of that particular wordespecially fraught if not overtly hypocritical. But I would argue that theentire phrase also plays into a specific mythicpatriotic narrative of both the War of 1812 and the American Revolution:that enslaved people were adversaries of the American cause in both cases,allied with the English and thus suffering defeat (flight, the grave, etc.) atthe hands of the U.S. The realities of those histories are multilayered, as I tracedin this column; but as I argued in yesterday’s post, many of the Revolution’smost inspiring patriots were enslaved people, a trend that continue into theEarly Republic and that Key’s phrase and verse entirely and frustratingly elide.

The anthem’sthird verse is thus particularly fraught with mythic patriotic ideas, but Iwould add that the fourth verse likewise includes its own form of mythicpatriotism. Key writes there, “O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand/Betweentheir lov’d home and the war’s desolation!” and adds, “Then conquer we must,when our cause it is just,/And this be our motto—‘In God is our trust.’” He’salluding there to a narrative of the War of 1812 as a defensive conflict, onein which the United States was invaded by England and fought back to protectand preserve its homes and homeland. That’s certainly one way to understand thewar’s origin points; but asI wrote in this column, that narrative entirely minimizes the concurrentways in which the war was both caused and defined by U.S. aggression, particularlytowards both Canada and indigenous communities. Indeed, the United States didseek to “conquer” as part of the war, to conquer and annex a great deal ofterritory from those other sovereign nations—and whether we see that “cause” as“just” or not, it’s unquestionably a distinct one from self-defense. One moreway in which Key’s anthem views our history through an overtly mythic patrioticlens.

Nextpatriotism post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

April 15, 2024: Mythic Patriotisms: The 1776 Project

[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 twoways that a project dedicated to “patriotic education” embodies the worst of mythicpatriotism.

In abrief post as part of last year’s July 4th series, I highlightedthe Trump administration’s now-defunct but still influential 1776 Project, andthe ways that its concept of “patriotic education” have informed ongoing attackson public education, educators and librarians, the discipline of history,and more. I’d ask you to check out that quick post if you would, and then comeon back here for a couple additional connections of the 1776 Project to myown concept of mythic patriotism.

Welcomeback! As I define it, mythic patriotism has two main layers, both of which wecan see quite clearly in the 1776 Project. The more overt is a vision ofAmerican history and identity which relies on mythic narratives, ones that areat the very least centered on white communities and are all too oftenexplicitly white supremacist. The 1776Commission Report develops particularly mythic such visions of history andidentity when it comes to the American Revolution and founding, and mostespecially the Framers—making the case, for example, that while many of themowned enslaved people they opposed and sought to end the system of slavery. Besidesbeing inaccurate to theflawed realities of this group of men, this historical narrative likewiseand even more frustratingly makes it nearly impossible to focus on a far more genuinelyrevolutionary community of American founders: the enslaved men and women whosought to use the era’s ideals to arguefor their own freedom and equality. Idolizing a simplistic vision of theFramers in a way that overtly makes it more difficult to remember the presenceand contributions of their inspiring African American peers exemplifies awhite-centered, if not blatantly white supremacist, mythic patriotism.

Mythic patriotismdoesn’t just rely on such visions of the past and nation, however—it alsodefines any Americans who critique and challenge those visions as unpatrioticand even un-American. The 1776 Commission Report does that most explicitly inits portrayal of “Universities in the United States” as “hotbeds ofanti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in studentsand in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outrighthatred for this country.” The authors add that “Colleges peddle resentment andcontempt for American principles and history alike, in the process weakeningattachment to our shared heritage.” To tie together this post’s two points, I wouldhighlight the word “our” in that final phrase, which to my mind subtly butunquestionably refers to a white-centered vision of American history, heritage,and identity. Besides being, once again, inaccurate to the realities of our foundationaland diverse community, that vision is also entirely wrong when it comes to thepotential effects, for students and for all Americans, of better remembering Revolutionarystories and histories far beyond those of the Framers. Eliding those historiesin favor of simplistic myths about the Founding, and describing any scholars oreducators who challenge those myths as “anti-American,” is the real peddling ofresentment and contempt.

Nextpatriotism post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

April 13-14, 2024: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: 21C Heirs

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 60thanniversary of Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar.So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Poitier performances, leading upto this special weekend post on a handful of 21C actors carrying his legacyforward!]

On fivenoteworthy performances from five of our best contemporary Black actors (notincluding Denzel or Morgan, who to my mind are Poitier’s genuine equals asscreen legends and could each get their own full post very easily).

1)     Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda(2004): Cheadle has been a favorite of mine since he grabbed every filmgoer’s attentionwith his supporting rolein Denzel’s Walter Mosely adaptation Devilin a Blue Dress (1995), but I worry a little that he’s one of those Marvel actors whohas become for some audiences synonymous with his superhero character. And thatwould be a shame, because as his truly multilayered, heartbreaking, and vitalperformance as Paul Rusesabagina reflects, Cheadle is quite simply one of themost talented actors we’ve got.

2)     Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12Years a Slave (2012): First of all, I know Ejiofor is British—but a) SidneyPoitier grew up in the Bahamas; and b) more importantly, some of the bestperformances in 21st century American films (and TV shows) have comefrom Black British actors. None better than Ejiofor’s as Solomon Northup inSteve McQueen’s film, to my mind the single best cultural work ever producedabout slavery in America. If you haven’t seen it, you really really should—but inthe meantime, here are twoof the best minutes of acting you’ll ever see.

3)     Mahershala Ali, Moonlight (2015):My favorite Mahershala Ali performance is also my single favorite TVperformance I’ve ever seen—as Detective Wayne Hays (acrossthree very distinct time periods and stages of life, as he discusses in that hyperlinkedvideo) in True Detective Season 3. Butsince Poitier was a film actor, I’m highlighting here one of Ali’s manystandout film performances, and one where in just a few minutes of total screentimehe creates one of the most uniqueand compelling characters in 21st century cinema.

4)     Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s BlackBottom (2019): Before his tragically early passing in 2020 at the ageof 43, Chadwick Boseman gave a trio of truly great performances as iconic 20thcentury historical figures: as Jackie Robinson in 42 (2013), James Brown in GetOn Up (2014), and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall(2017). All three helped cement Boseman as a worthy heir to Sidney Poitier’sCivil Rights-era films, but to my mind his performance as Levee Green in the2019 adaptation of AugustWilson’s 1982 play is even better, and perhaps even more significant as arepresentation of America’shardest histories.

5)     Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction(2023): Like Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Wright has been giving stunning filmperformances since the 1990s; I have a soft spot for his recurring roleas Felix Leiter opposite Daniel Craig’s James Bond. But like Cheadle andPoitier and all the greats, Wright has continued to hone his craft, and I’m notsure he’s given a more deeply human and nuanced performance than he does as Thelonious “Monk” Ellisonin American Fiction. Every one ofthese actors is part of the legacy of Sidney Poitier (and so many other greats),but I’m not sure there’s a more talented heir than Jeffrey Wright.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other actors you’d add?

April 12, 2024: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: Lillies of the Field

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 60thanniversary of Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar.So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Poitier performances, leading upto a special post on a handful of 21C actors carrying his legacy forward!]

On whatwas unquestionably historic about Poitier’s Oscar, what wasn’t quite, andwhat’s importantly outside of that framing.

I startedthis week’s series by highlighting the work of my favorite FilmStudier, VaughnJoy, so it’s only appropriate that I end the series by doing the same: for adelightful and engaging but also thoroughly thoughtful and analytical take onthe history of the Academy Awards, including questions of diversity andrepresentation therein, I highly recommend thisepisode of Liam Heffernan’s America: A History Podcast featuring Vaughn. Asthey get into at length, the Oscars have been frustratingly bad when it comesto racial/ethnic representation—which also means that we have to recognize thegenuine (if frustratingly slow and haphazard) significance of historical stepsin that direction. Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black man to win anAcademy Award, and the first Black performer to win in the Best Actor orActress categories, in 1964 for his performance in Lillies of the Field (1963) was such a historic step; the fact thatit was long overdue, and the not-unrelated fact that it would be nearly 40years before another such Best Actor or Actress win (2001, when both HalleBerry and Denzel Washington took home Oscars in those categories), areimportant contexts but do not diminish Poitier’s achievement in the slightest.

I can’tlie, though—it’s also a bit frustrating, and at least somewhat telling, that itwas Lillies for which Poitier won hisone Oscar. Don’t get me wrong, Poitier is great asalways in Lillies, playing itinerant laborerHomer Smith who finds himself trapped in a convent doing the Lord’s work (orrather the nuns’ work, but in a pointed running joke the head nun Mother Maria[Shirley Booth] keeps thanking the Lord instead of him). And I’m not going tosuggest that his character is anywhere near as limited nor stereotyped as the one for which theonly prior African American Oscar winner, Hattie McDaniel, tookhome her trophy. But nonetheless, of the couple dozen films that Poitier starredin across the 1950s and 60s (as I discussed in yesterday’s post), Homer is tomy mind one of the least nuanced or interesting characters, a relatively straightforwardcomic role, one that uses the character more to make symbolic religious pointsthan to offer the kinds of emotional and human truths that were at the heart ofPoitier’s consistently, complicatedly compelling performances. And I’m not sureit’s a coincidence that this one, rather than all those others, was the rolewhich won him the Oscar.

On theother hand, the Academy Awards are of course far from the only way to measureeither a performance or a film’s significance. On the first note, SidneyPoitier gave many of the best film performances of the 1950s and 60s (and overthe next few decades after), whatever happened in awards season. And on thesecond, I do think there’s at least one really important element of Lillies of the Field—that it features aBlack man living in a convent with a group of largely white nuns for months,and the situation is presented as both humorous and symbolically resonant butnever, not even for a second, as fraught. Considering that oneof the first historic American films featured the racist myth of Blackrapists as a central plot element, and that none other than the film which wonHattie McDaniel her Oscar used that same myth as a drivingforce in the plot of its second half as well, it’s not at all insignificantto note the absence of even the slightest intimation of those racist narrativesin Lillies of the Field. That doesn’tmake this one of Poitier’s most important or interesting performances, but itdoes make it yet another way he and his films profoundly affected Americanaculture and society.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Poitier films you’d highlight?

April 11, 2024: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: Two 1967 Classics

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 60thanniversary of Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar.So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Poitier performances, leading upto a special post on a handful of 21C actors carrying his legacy forward!]

On standoutspeeches and sweet sendoffs in Poitier’s pair of 1967 releases.

By 1967Sidney Poitier had starred in 24 films, including the 1963 release that won himthe Academy Award 60 years ago this week (and on which I’ll focus in tomorrow’spost); in early 1967 he would star in another, the English educational drama To Sir, with Love. Whichis to say, he was by this time already very well-established, if not indeedAmerica’s most beloved screen actor. But having said all of that, I would stillmake the case that it was his second and third 1967 releases which hold up thebest among all of Poitier’s films, and which not coincidentally happen tocomprise (at the time and ever since) two of the most powerful depictions ofrace in America ever put on the silver screen: the police procedural In the Heat of the Night,which co-starred Rod Steiger and debuted in August 1967; and the domestic melodrama(with plenty of comic moments) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, whichco-starred Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (in his final performance, as hepassed away in June) and debuted in December 1967.

WhilePoitier’s character is far more central to Heatthan to Guess (where for much of thefilm he takes an understandable backseat to the powerhouse couple of Hepburn andTracy), both films offer him the chance to deliver standout, stirring speechesabout race in America (among other topics). In Heat those speeches tend to be brief, to the point, and righteouslyenraged, as in the film’s two most famous moments: “They call me Mr.Tibbs!” and the slapheard ‘round the world. In GuessPoitier’s most extended speech and scene is far more slow-building, emotionallynuanced, and multilayered: a frustrated yet lovingconversation with his father (the great character actor Roy E. Glenn, Sr.) abouttheir respective generations and perspectives. But what all these speeches andscenes share is a profound degree of emotional truth, the authentic humanitythat Poitier brought to every performance and that makes both of these charactersfar more than just statements about race or civil rights (although they areboth that as well).

Althoughfull of more fraught and painful moments, both of these films end on sweetnotes, and interestingly ones that are given to Poitier’s white male co-stars(while they are addressed to his characters). Spencer Tracy’s long finalmonologue in Guess is justifiablyfamous, not least because it is clearly addressed to his actual wife Hepburn (henceher very real tears throughout) as well as to the characters by Poitier and hisfiancé (Tracy’s character’s daughter). Rob Steiger’s final linein Heat is as brief and to the point asPoitier’s explosions earlier in the film, but it is no less moving than Tracy’smonologue (and just as important to the film’s arc and themes), and it elicits oneof Poitier’s most beautiful smiles in all his film performances. And while bothof these endings are performed by other actors, I would argue that both momentshave been created largely (if not, in Heatat least, entirely) by the presence and influence of Poitier’s characters, andspecifically by that combination of emotional humanity and civic inspirationabout which I wrote above.

LastPoitier post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Poitier films you’d highlight?

April 10, 2024: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: The Defiant Ones

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 60thanniversary of Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar.So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Poitier performances, leading upto a special post on a handful of 21C actors carrying his legacy forward!]

On twodifferent genres through which to contextualize The Defiant Ones (1958).

Firstthings first: I have to take this post’s opening paragraph to complement SidneyPoitier’s range as an actor. Just think about the characters he played in the three1950s movies I’ve highlighted so far in this series: a brilliant doctor in No Way Out (1950); a rebellious highschool student in The Blackboard Jungle(1955); and an angry convict in The Defiant Ones(1958). Over those same years he also played a South African preacher in Cry, the Beloved Country (1951),a World War II officer in Red BallExpress (1952), a Harlem Globetrotter in Go, Man, Go! (1954), and a roughneck stevedore in Edge of the City (1957), among manyother performances. Poitier became so known for his Civil Rights-related filmsthat he’s often defined as an activist as much as an actor, and my focal pointsin this blog series might tend to reinforce that perspective; so I wanted tomake sure to start this post by recognizing the true breadth and variety ofroles that he played (and played equally pitch-perfectly), even at a young age(he was only 30 when he made Defiant Ones).Truly one of our all-time great actors.

The most straightforwardway to contextualize’s Poitier’s 1958 film TheDefiant Ones, and not at all an inaccurate lens, is to put it in conversationwith other films about prisons and convicts, a genre with a long andmultilayered history to be sure. One of the most famous such films, TheShawshank Redemption (1994), likewise features an evolving friendshipbetween a pair of initially antagonistic Black and white prisoners, which couldmake for an interesting comparative lens. Others, like OBrother, Where Art Thou? (2000), focus as Defiant Ones does on escaped convicts, its own subgenre within thisgenre. And others, like Cool Hand Luke(1967), dwell on the dictatorial and destructive power structures within this brutalminiature society, structures that are never far from recapturing Poitier’s Noah Cullen andTony Curtis’ John “Joker” Jackson throughout their story. Amidst thislongstanding and crowded genre, this particular prison film was influentialenough that it’s been adapted and remade multiple times, including with female prisonersin 1973’s Black Mama White Mama(starring Pam Grier and Margaret Markov).

There are lotsof reasons why that might be the case, but I would argue that one is Defiant’s relationship to another genrewith an even more longstanding history and perhaps even more overt audienceappeal to boot: the buddy comedy roadtrip film. For the two decades prior to Defiant Ones’ release, one of the mostsuccessful film series was squarely located within that genre: BingCrosby and Bob Hope’s Road to… movies (the 7th and finalof which, The Road to Hong Kong[1962], came out after Defiant Ones).Like most of the films I can think of in this genre—including such famous 1980sclassics as Midnight Run (1988)and Planes, Trains, andAutomobiles (1987)—the Crosby/Hope films were played for laughs, while The Defiant Ones is far more serious intone (featuring a near-lynching among many other striking such sequences). Yetwhether more humorous or more harrowing, what the best of these films (acategory in which I would not put the Crosby/Hope films, personally) have incommon is an emphasis on their characters as the driving force, individuallybut even more so in relationship to one another. And on that level, I don’tknow a better buddy roadtrip film than TheDefiant Ones.

NextPoitier post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Poitier films you’d highlight?

April 9, 2024: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: The Blackboard Jungle

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 60thanniversary of Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar.So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Poitier performances, leading upto a special post on a handful of 21C actors carrying his legacy forward!]

On twovery similar characters, and one important distinction.

Five yearsafter his debut performance as the lead of the film I highlighted yesterday, 1950’s No Way Out, Sidney Poitier took on a more supporting but stillvery significant role in The Blackboard Jungle (1955).Based on EvanHunter’s semi-autobiographical 1954 novel, The Blackboard Jungle isthe story of a young WWII veteran turned high school English teacher, Glenn Ford’s Richard Dadier,who seeks to get through to the troubled students at an urban, integrated tradeschool. While the story seems initially focused on Dadier and his adultrelationships, including with his pregnant wife (played by Anne Francis) andtwo fellow teachers (Richard Kiley and Margaret Hayes), it is graduallydominated by Poitier’s star-making performance as Gregory Miller, a rebellious leaderof the students and apparent adversary to Dadier’s authority. But when herecognizes Miller’s intelligence and talents (including as a musician) andtreats him with respect, Dadier is able to make Miller an ally instead, and(having pledged not to quit as long as the other doesn’t either) together theyhelp turn the classroom around.

If thatteacher-student dynamic seems familiar to modern audiences unfamiliar with Blackboard Jungle, I’d argue a mainreason might be that it closely parallels the evolving central relationship inanother, more recent film set in an urban high school: between Los Angeles highschool math teacher Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos) and troubled buttalented student AngelGuzman (Lou Diamond Phillips) in Stand and Deliver(1988). Like Guzman in Stand and Deliver,Poitier’s Miller is at least loosely connected to a gang, which in Blackboard is led by class bully Artie West (Vic Morrow).But as that hyperlinked scene reflects for the relationship between Miller andWest, in both of these stories the potential student leader is far less violentand far more open to the teacher’s positive influences than is the gang leadercharacter. Indeed, just as Poitier’s Miller is revealed to have musical talentsthat could take him very far if he gets the chance to pursue them, Phillips’Guzman turns out to be one of the best and smartest students in Escalanate’s class,scoring a perfect 5 on the AP Calculus exam.

So thereare clear and compelling similarities between these two youthful characters andtheir roles in their respective films. But there’s also a significantdifference, and it’s one that I’d argue reflects the films’ respective timeperiods and historical contexts: Blackboard’stwo central characters are distinct in race/ethnicity (Ford’s Dadier is white,while of course Poitier’s Miller is African American), while Stand’s are both Mexican American. In a pivotal scene in Stand, Escalante is accused ofhelping his students cheat on the AP exam, and rightly sees the accusation asracist stereotyping of himself as well as his students, attitudes which alsoseem connected to 1970s-80sattacks on affirmative action. Blackboard,on the other hand, is quite specifically a story about integration in public education,one not coincidentally released just a year after the Supreme Court’s landmark decisionin Brownv. Board of Education (1954). As we’ll see throughout this week’sseries, Poitier was consistently part of such Civil Rights-era films andthemes, and despite its familiar overall genre Blackboard Jungle can’t be separated from those contexts.

NextPoitier post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Poitier films you’d highlight?

April 8, 2024: I Am AmericanStudying Sidney Poitier: Vaughn Joy on No Way Out

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 60thanniversary of Sidney Poitier becoming the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar.So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Poitier performances, leading upto a special post on a handful of 21C actors carrying his legacy forward!]

Back inJanuary, at the end of myseries on Columbia Pictures’ 100th anniversary, I paidtribute to a current FilmStudier I really love: Vaughn Joy. I ended thatlist of (some of) Vaughn’s many impressive pieces and projects by highlightingone of her newest, her ReviewRoulette newsletter. Not too long after that, Vaughn focused on a BlackHistory Month edition of her newsletter on Sidney Poitier’s film debut, No Way Out (1950). It’s one of my favoriteentries in a newsletter that I’m always excited to see in my inbox, so in lieuof today’s post I’ll ask you to check out that hyperlinked piece of Vaughn’s,subscribe to Review Roulette, and come on back here tomorrow for the nextPoitierStudying!

NextPoitier post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Poitier films you’d highlight?

April 6-7, 2024: Emily Lauer on Comics Analysis & Editing as Public-Facing Scholarship

[This is EmilyLauer’s fourthGuest Post,making her the current leader in sharing her great ideas and writing here.Everybody else, time to step up your Guest Posting game!]

It’s always lovely to guest post for Ben’s AmericanStudies community, and this time around, instead of reviewing some interesting American Culture Thing, I’m writing about one of my own activities in public-facing scholarship. 

 

I’ve been involved with the website WWAC for almost eight years now, and I currently hold the position of Comics Academe Editor - that is, I edit the posts that go up in the section of the site dedicated to academic writing about comics. This includes scholarly reviews of comics, reviews of comics scholarship, and academic analysis of comics for a general audience. All the editors are volunteers; this role is a labor of love, not a paying gig. 

 

The website WomenWriteAboutComics.com was started by Megan Purdy in 2012 in response to a specific claim by some ill-informed pundit who said, when asked why his site didn’t publish criticism written by women, that, “women don’t write about comics.” In the many years since then, the site has grown to encompass coverage of television and film and non-comics books in our Bookmarked section as well.

 

We won the Eisner Award for Best Comics Journalism three times in a row, in 2020, 2021, and 2022. 

 

We are archived by the US Library of Congress, wherewe are featured as an online source for research about women and comic books. 

 

After Megan stepped back from her roles as Editor-in-Chiefand Publisher, those roles have been filled by a number of dedicated people,currently Nola Pfau as Editor-in-Chief and Kate Tanski as Publisher. Under their leadership WWAC has “become an educational partner of the Oregon State University Creative Writing Internship program,” and they are pursuing “potential future partnerships with comics-related non-profit organizations” according to Kate. I am especially looking forward to their plan to change the site name to WeWriteAboutComics.com, to better reflect the range of marginalized genders among our varied contributors. In the meantime, we are going by our initials, WWAC, as much as possible. 

 

Personally, I got involved with WWAC in the summer of2016 when I saw a call for people to join their copyediting team. I had asabbatical coming up with a project writing about comics adaptations, and someexperience in journalism and proofreading. It seemed like a good fit. After atime as a copyeditor, I also became a contributor; after a time as acontributor I was asked to take on editing duties for a section of the sitecalled Pubwatches which offers roundups of comics publishers’ new releases and news on a monthly basis. 

 

After years as the Pubwatches Editor, we startedwinning Eisners. Was it largely due to my own personal efforts that the sitebecame so celebrated? Reader, it was not. But it was definitely an excitingtime to be involved. Due to some personal stuff with the pandemic and movinginto a new apartment, I took a break from editing, but I missed it, and startedmy current role in the Comics Academe section of the site about a year ago. 

 

The Comics Academe section is a venue for scholarlywriting with journalistic publishing practices. If you are a scholar who hassomething to say about a comic (or about Comics) but you don’t feel it needs tobe in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, it is probably right for Comics Academe. Kate Tanski points out that, “essays published in Comics Academe are frequently used on syllabi, and have won the Gilbert Seldes Prize from the Comics Studies Society’s annual awards in 2021 and 2023 . Several current or past members of the Comics Studies Society have also served on the CSS board.” 

 

In my short time working on this section of the site,we’ve published a three-part series about archeology in comics, written byacademic archeologists who happen to be interested in comics; we’ve publishedreviews of comics that take a scholarly approach to their analysis, and we’vepublished a pedagogical discussion of using comics in the classroom—among otherthings. In the queue now we have a review of a scholarly collection of essaysabout comics, and a biographical look at an influential comics creator inIndia. 

 

It’s a vibrant and varied section, is what I’m saying.And we welcome pitches!

 

It’s really fun for me to receive these pitches andthen get to read all these cool things scholars are doing with comics, often ina more casual tone than would be required for a scholarly journal, and a morecasual timeline than would be required for most journalism. The best of both. 

 

Being a part of an organization like WWAC is rewardingfor other reasons, too. Not only because the submissions are so interesting,but also partly because my involvement with WWAC is so different from myday-to-day experience of being a college professor. WWAC includes people allover the world, not all academics, with different career goals and strengths inwriting. It enriches my scholarly practice, as all public-facing scholarshipdoes, by broadening my perspective on what scholarship can be, and where it cango. 

[Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Ideasfor Guest Posts of your own? Share‘em, please!]

April 5, 2024: Satire Studying: The Big Short and Vice

[If ever ayear both needed and yet resisted a heavy dose of satire, it would be 2024. Sofor this year’s April Fool’s series I’ll share a humorous handful ofSatireStudying posts—please add your thoughts on these and any other satiricaltexts you’d highlight for a knee-slapping yet pointed crowd-sourced weekendpost!]

On thevalue and the limits of satire when it comes to contemporary, contested events.

One of themore interesting artistic transformations of the 21st century hasbeen that of writer and director . McKayrose to prominence through his collaborations with comedian Will Ferrell (andothers) on a series of extremely silly comedies: Anchorman (2004) and its sequel, Talladega Nights (2006), StepBrothers (2008), and The Other Guys (2010).If you haven’t had a chance to see any of those films, the most important thingto emphasize (and one you can gather from just about any clip from any of them) is thatthey are almost entirely, and very purposefully, non-thematic, overtly notinterested in social or cultural issues and just trying to make audiences laughas consistently and hard as possible. But in 2015, McKay wrote and directed TheBig Short, a satirical dramedy based on MichaelLewis’s book of the same name about the 2008 housing crisis and financialmeltdown. And 2018 saw the release of a second, very similar McKay film, Vice, a satirical dramedy based on the life andpolitical career (to date) of Dick Cheney (starring Christian Bale as Cheney,Amy Adams as his wife Liz, Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, Steve Carrell asDonald Rumsfeld, and many more actors).

Thesesatirical yet serious takes on hot-button contemporary issues parallel in manyways one of the 21st century’s most popular cultural genres: thesatirical news commentary and comedy program. Originated by Comedy Central’s The Daily Show (especially once JonStewart took over the hosting gig), this genre hasbecome one of the most prolific in recent years, from Stephen Colbertand John Oliver to Samantha Bee and Hasan Minhaj (among others!). Even late-nighttalk show hosts have gotten in on the act in diverse but equally compelling ways.What unites all these satirical news programs is their desire to walk a fineline between making audiences laugh (not constantly, but at least consistently)and providing thought-provoking commentary on current events, and I would sayMcKay’s recent films are aiming for that same sweet spot. I haven’t had achance to see Vice yet, but I did seeThe Big Short and it was mostdefinitely seeking to provide both laughs and knowledge, often in the exactsame sequences (as with the famous and controversial use of random beautiful actresses to talkabout the fine points of housing policy and economics). As that hyperlinkedsequence featuring Margot Robbie notes, knowing these seemingly boring detailsis pretty vital to understanding the last decade in American life, and the goalof using comedy and satire to convey such details links McKay’s recent films tothese news programs.

Yet I havesignificantly more ambivalence about McKay’s films than I do about thoseprograms, and I think it boils down to one factor: the use of talented, likableactors to create sympathy for figures who have contributed negatively anddestructively to these recent histories. That was somewhat the case with The Big Short’s protagonists, mortgagebrokers (played by highly likable actors such as Ryan Gosling and ChristianBale) who seemingly fought the system yet at the same time profited greatly bypredicting and betting on the upcoming crash and crisis. And it’s verydefinitely the case with Vice—again,I haven’t had a chance to see it as of this writing, but part of the reason whyis that I love watching Christian Bale in anything, and really don’t relish thethought of him playing Dick Cheney, to my mind one of the truly evil figures inthe last century of American political and social life. Every historical figureis a flesh-and-blood human being, with various layers and sides, and so Isuppose every one is also worth extended attention and even sympathy. But Idon’t know that we need an entire film creating such a multi-layered portraitof Dick Motherfucking Cheney (that’s his full name, y’know), and I likewise amnot at all sure that the lighter touch of comedy and satire are appropriatewhen it comes to depicting such a figure. I suppose there’s a place for suchfilms, but they’re likely to remain non-favorites for this AmericanStudier (andfor reviewers such as Slate’s Bilge Ebiri, itseems).

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: What do you think? Other satirical works you’d share?