Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 69

August 7, 2023: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011

[On August15th, this AmericanStudier celebrates his 46th birthday.So as I do each year, here’s a series sharing some of my favorite posts fromeach year on the blog, leading up to a new post with 46 favorites from the lastyear. And as ever, you couldn’t give me a better present than to say hi andtell me a bit about what brings you to the blog, what you’ve found or enjoyedhere, your own AmericanStudies thoughts, or anything else!]

In honor of this AmericanStudier’s 34thbirthday in 2011, here (from oldest to most recent) were 34 of my favoriteposts from the blog’s first year:

1)      TheWilmington Massacre and The Marrow of Tradition: My firstfull post, but also my first stab at two of this blog’s central purposes:narrating largely forgotten histories; and recommending texts we should allread.

2)      PineRidge, the American Indian Movement, and Apted’s Films: Ditto tothose purposes, but also a post in which I interwove history, politics,identity, and different media in, I hope, a pretty exemplary American Studies way.

3)      The ShawMemorial: I’ll freely admit that my first handful of posts were also justdedicated to texts and figures and moments and histories that I love—but theMemorial, like Chesnutt’s novel and Thunderheartin those first two links, is also a deeply inspiring work of American art.

4)      TheChinese Exclusion Act and the Most Amazing Baseball Game Ever: Probablymy favorite post to date, maybe because it tells my favorite American story.

5)      Ely Parker: The postin which I came up with my idea for Ben’s American Hall of Inspiration; I knowmany of my posts can be pretty depressing, but hopefully the Hall can be a wayfor me to keep coming back to Americans whose stories and legacies are anythingbut.

6)      MyColleague Ian Williams’ Work with Incarcerated Americans: Thefirst post where I made clear that we don’t need to look into our nationalhistory to find truly inspiring Americans and efforts.

7)      RushLimbaugh’s Thanksgiving Nonsense: My first request, and the first postto engage directly with the kinds of false American histories being advanced bythe contemporary right.

8)      The Pledgeof Allegiance: Another central purpose for this blog is to complicate, and attimes directly challenge and seek to change, some of our most accepted nationaland historical narratives. This is one of the most important such challenges.

9)      PublicEnemy, N.W.A., and Rap: If you’re going to be an AmericanStudier,you have to be willing to analyze even those media and genres on which you’refar from an expert, and hopefully find interesting and valuable things to sayin the process.

10)   Chinatownand the History of LA: At the same time, the best AmericanStudierslikewise have to be able to analyze their very favorite things (like this 1974film, for me), and find ways to link them to broader American narratives andhistories.

11)   The Statueof Liberty: Our national narratives about Lady Liberty are at least asingrained as those about the Pledge of Allegiance—and just about as inaccurate.

12)   TillieOlsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Parenting: Maybe the first post in which Ireally admitted my personal and intimate stakes in the topics I’m discussinghere, and another of those texts everybody should read to boot.

13)   DorotheaDix and Mental Health Reform: When it comes to a number of the people onwhom I’ve focused here, I didn’t know nearly enough myself at the start of myresearch—making the posts as valuable for me as I could hope them to be for anyother reader. This is one of those.

14)   BenFranklin and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: As with many dominant narratives,those Americans who argue most loudy in favor of limiting immigration usuallydo so in large part through false, or at best greatly oversimplified andpartial, versions of our past. 

15)   Divorce inAmerican History: Some of our narratives about the past andpresent seem so obvious as to be beyond dispute: such as the idea that divorcehas become more common and more accepted in our contemporary society. Maybe,but as with every topic I’ve discussed here, the reality is a good bit morecomplicated.

16)   My Mom’sGuest Post on Margaret Wise Brown: The first of the many great guestposts I’ve been fortunate enough to feature here; I won’t link to the others,as you can and should find them by clicking the “Guest Posts” category on theright. And please—whether I’ve asked you specifically or not—feel free tocontribute your own guest post down the road!

17)   JFK,Tucson, and the Rhetoric and Reality of Political Violence: Thefirst post in which I deviated from my planned schedule to respond directly toa current event—something I’ve incorporated very fully into this blog in themonths since.

18)   TributePost to Professor Alan Heimert: I’d say the same about the tributeposts that I did for the guest posts—both that they exemplify how fortunateI’ve been (in this case in the many amazing people and influences I’ve known)and that you should read them all (at the “Tribute Posts” category on theright).

19)   MartinLuther King: How do we remember the real, hugely complicated, and to my mindeven more inspiring man, rather than the mythic ideal we’ve created of him? Apretty key AmericanStudies question, one worth asking of every truly inspiringAmerican.

20)   AngelIsland and Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free”:Immigration has been, I believe, my first frequent theme here, perhaps because,as this post illustrates, it can connect us so fully to so many of the darkest,richest, most powerful and significant national places and events, texts andhistories.

21)   Dresdenand Slaughterhouse Five: One of the events we Americans have workedmost hard to forget, and one of the novels that most beautifully and compellingargues for the need to remember and retell every story.

22)   Valentine’sDay Lessons: Maybe my least analytical post, and also one of my favorites. Itain’t all academic, y’know.

23)   Tori Amos,Lara Logan, and Stories of Rape: One of the greatest songs I’ve everheard helps me respond to one of the year’s most horrific stories.

24)   PeterGomes and Faith: A tribute to one of the most inspiring Americans I’ve ever met,and some thoughts on the particularly complicated and important American themehe embodies for me.

25)   The Treatyof Tripoli and the Founders on Church and State:Sometimes our historical narratives are a lot more complicated than we think.And sometimes they’re just a lot simpler. Sorry, David Barton and Glenn Beck,but there’s literally no doubt of what the Founders felt about the separationof church and state the idea of America as a “Christian nation.”

26)   NewtGingrich, Definitions of America, and Why We’re Here: Thefirst of many posts (such as all those included in the “Book Posts” category onthe right) in which I bring the ideas at the heart of my second book into myresponses to AmericanStudies narratives and myths.

27)   Du Bois,Affirmative Action, and Obama: Donald Trump quickly and thoroughly revealedhimself to be a racist jackass, but the core reasons for much of the oppositionto affirmative action are both more widespread and more worth responding tothan Trump’s buffoonery.

28)   IllegalImmigrants, Our Current Deportation Policies, and Empathy: Whatdoes deportation really mean and entail, who is affected, and at what humancost?

29)   Tribute toMy Grandfather Art Railton: The saddest Railton event of the year leadsme to reflect on the many inspiring qualities of my grandfather’s life,identity, and especially perspective.

30)   MyClearest Immigration Post: Cutting through some of the complexities andstating things as plainly as possible, in response to Sarah Palin’s historicalfalsehoods. Repeated and renamed with even more force here.

31)   PaulRevere, Longfellow, and Wikipedia: Another Sarah Palin-inspired post,this time on her revisions to the Paul Revere story and the question of what is“common knowledge” and what purposes it serves in our communal conversations.

32)   “Us vs.them” narratives, Muslim Americans, and Illegal Immigrants: Thefirst of a couple posts to consider these particularly frustrating and divisivenational narratives. The second, which also followed up my Norwegian terrorismresponse (linked below), is here.

33)   AbrahamCahan: The many impressive genres and writings of this turn of thecentury Jewish American, and why AmericanStudiers should work to push downboundaries between disciplines as much as possible.

34)  Terrorism,Norway, and Rhetoric: One of the latest and most important iterationsof my using a current event to drive some American analyses—and likewise anillustration of just how fully interconnected international and American eventsand histories are.

Nextbirthday best post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Youknow what to do!

August 5-6, 2023: SiblingStudying: The Railton Boys

[On August2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing youngersister celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’veAmericanStudied interesting American siblings, leading up to this link to atribute to my very favorite siblings!]

For Father’sDay this past June, I wrote my most personal SaturdayEvening Post column yet (and oneof the most personal things I’ve written anywhere), a tribute to my sons andwhat I’ve learned about both the past and the future from their amazingscholarly projects this past year. There’s no better way to conclude a serieson American siblings than by sharing that column and tribute with you, and Ihope you’ll be as inspired by my favorite pair of siblings as I am every singleday!

Annualbirthday posts start Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight or siblings to whom you’d paytribute?

August 4, 2023: SiblingStudying: The Eaton Sisters

[On August2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing youngersister celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’llAmericanStudy interesting American siblings!]

On two columnswhere I’ve highlighted the amazing Eaton sisters, and one thing I’d add here.

I’ve longcalled Sui Sin Far (the literary pen name of Edith Maude Eaton) one of myfavorite American authors (and Americans period), and I made that case in thiscolumn for the American Writers Museum.

I hadn’thad as much of a chance to think about her equally talented and perhaps evenmore influential sister Onoto Watanna (the literary pen name of WinnifredEaton) until I researched and wrote this SaturdayEvening Post Considering History column(which also features their sister Sara Eaton Bosse, with whom Watanna wrote the1914 Chinese-Japanese Cookbook).

I hopethose columns are more than enough to convince you all of the uniqueness andimpressiveness of this set of multiracial American siblings. But the one thingI’d add is this: I really, really shouldn’t have to, because they shouldalready be as famous as any American literary or cultural family. The fact thatthey are not is a) one of so many layers to the frustrating, continuingexclusions of Asian Americans from our collective memories; and b) one of somany reasons why I’m determined to do everything I can to challenge and changethat trend. Which can start with all of us celebrating the Eaton sisters, todayand every day!

Specialtribute post this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?

August 3, 2023: SiblingStudying: William and Henry James

[On August2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing youngersister celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’llAmericanStudy interesting American siblings!]

On theinfluential and inspiring relationship between America’s most talented pair ofbrothers.

Of all thetopics I’ve researched, pondered, and analyzed over this blog’s nearly thirteenyears, I don’t think I’ve spent anywhere near as much time thinking about anyone of them (or maybe even all of them combined) compared to the relationshipbetween two close (in age and every other sense) brothers. My sons are 15.5months apart (I know I should just say 16, but no, those two additional weekscount!), and as far as I can tell, few if any aspects of their young lives (atleast until my older son leaves for college, which is so far in the futurestill that who can even imagine it?!) are going to be untouched by that fact,and by the complex interconnections it has already produced and continues toproduce. Obviously I have my fondest hopes for what that will mean (exemplifiedright now by the way they cheer on each other’s divergent yet equallyimpressive running careers) and my scariest worries about it (such as my fearthat if they drift apart it will have a profoundly negative influence on bothof their futures), but no matter what, this is clearly going to be a definingrelationship and influence in each of their lives.

I’m nottrying to put too much pressure on the boys, but you know who else were bornalmost exactly 15.5 months apart? Williamand Henry James, the brothers whose influences and talents extended intovirtually every aspect of late 19th and early 20thcentury American and British society and culture. Perhaps the older William’s far-reaching investigations intomedicine, psychology, philosophy, and religion impacted more conversations andcommunities than did theyounger Henry’s work as an author of fiction, drama, travelwriting, literary criticism, and autobiographies; but just as those branches ofthe sciences and social sciences would not have been the same without William’simpacts, so too were American and English literature and cultureprofoundly impactedby Henry’s works and ideas, style and themes. While I have no doubt that thebrothers would gladly have quarreled over whose legacy was more significant,probably while at the same time making the case for each other’s importance,the truth is that the combination is more impressive, and more accurate totheir collective legacies, than the competition.

Perhapsthe most overt and poignant tribute to that brotherly combination was writtenby Henry himself, in the opening chapters of his memoir A SmallBoy and Others (1913). William had died a few years earlier,in 1910, and while any memoir is likely produced by a number of psychologicalfactors, there’s no question that his brother was heavily on Henry’s mind as hewrote this one. The opening chapter, in fact, begins this way: “In the attemptto place together some particulars of the early life of William James andpresent him in his setting, his immediate native and domestic air, so that anyfuture gathered memorials of him might become the more intelligible andinteresting, I found one of the consequences of my interrogation of the pastassert itself a good deal at the expense of some of the others.” It’s not atall clear at this point, nor for many chapters, whether the titular small boyis Henry or William; and since the text continues to focus on the pair of themfor many more chapters (indeed more than half of the chapters), it could withjust as much accuracy be titled Two SmallBoys. Boys whose lives and legacies would likewise always and compellinglybe interconnected.

Lastsiblings tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?

August 2, 2023: SiblingStudying: The Wright Brothers

[On August2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing youngersister celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’llAmericanStudy interesting American siblings!]

Threelesser-known stories of thebrothers who helped changetransportation and the world.

1)     A Printing Press: In 1888, fifteen yearsbefore their pioneering flight and when Orville was still just a junior in highschool, the brothers developed their first technological innovation, a printingpress that they built themselves. They used it not only to publishtheir own newspapers in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio (first a weekly [West SideNews] and then briefly a daily [TheEvening Item]), but also produced publications for otherfriends and locals. One of them was a high school classmate of Orville’s and ablossoming young writer and poet, PaulLaurence Dunbar; the brothers’ printed his newspaper the Dayton Tattler for atime. Such personal and historical details not only remind us that the WrightBrothers moved through many stages of invention and profession before theiraviation pinnacles, but also help situate them in their settings, both of placeand time.

2)     A Bicycle Shop: Like many talented inventors,the Wright Brothers were never satisfied to stay in one stage or field forlong; just four years after they opened their press, they had moved on, openingtheir bicycle repair and sales shop the WrightCycle Exchange in 1892. As detailed at wonderful length in KateMilford’s historical YA novel TheBoneshaker (which features a Wright Brothers bicycle in a prominent role),bicycles had become something of a craze in this period, and the brothersquickly realized that they could turn their technological prowess to designingnew and improved bikes. By 1896, the WrightCycle Company was producing its own brand of bikes, machines which would ofcourse also feature prominently in their later aeronautical efforts. But whilethis business and pursuit offer a direct throughline toward the machine thatwould propel the brothers into the air at Kitty Hawk, it also links them to atransportation trend and history that were far more widespread and influentialthroughout the 1890s and well into the early 1900s.

3)     A Museum Feud: The interesting and complexhistories didn’t stop with that 1903 flight in Kitty Hawk, of course. One ofthe most compelling was the brothers’ multi-decadefeud with the Smithsonian Institution, thanks to a rivalry with theinstitution’s secretary SamuelLangley over whose manned flying machine should be considered the firstsuccessful model. The museum chose to display Langley’sAerodrome (which he had never gotten off the ground) much more prominentlythan the Wright Brothers’ model, and the brothers (especially Orville, asWilbur died far too young in 1912) retaliated by lending their invention to theLondonScience Museum in 1928. There it remained until Orville’s death in 1948, when a long-negotiatedtruce allowed the Smithsonian to purchase the flyer and return it tothe United States for the first time in decades. Among the many salient lessonsfrom this controversial history is a reminder that museums are living andevolving spaces, reflecting the conflicts and struggles of their societies asmuch as their ideals and innovations. It’s hard to imagine an American Air& Space Museum without the Wright Brothers—but for a long time, thanks tothe tangled history of aviation, that was precisely the case.

Nextsiblings tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?

August 1, 2023: SiblingStudying: The Grimké Sisters

[On August2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing youngersister celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’llAmericanStudy interesting American siblings!]

On the twosisters who exemplified the courage and power of American abolitionism.

As I’veargued before in this space, it might seem from our 21stcentury perspective as if it were relatively easy or at least didn’t take agreat deal of courage to be an abolitionist in mid-19th centuryAmerica, but that perception would be entirely wrong. WilliamLloyd Garrison being dragged through the streets of Boston is onlythe most overt of many similar examples of just how unpopular and even hatedabolitionists and abolitionism were by many Americans (from every region). Yeteven within a community defined by its courage and impressiveness, certainindividuals and voices can still stand out, can truly exemplify the kinds ofimpassioned and heroic activism that represent the best of what Americans canbe and do. And within the abolitionist community, two such individuals were the Grimkésisters, Angelina and Sarah.

Virtuallyevery detail and stage of the sisters’ lives defines their courage. Born to aprominent Charleston, South Carolina judge and his wife, part of an establishedand comfortable Southern family—and thus by definition in the period aslaveholding family—both sisters by their mid-20s had come to see theinstitution of slavery as a moral and national disgrace, and both choseself-exile (first to Philadelphia and then to many other Northern cities) fromtheir family and home. Told repeatedly that women could and should not speak inpublic, particularly not to “promiscuous” (mixed-gender) audiences, the sistersgave shared speaking engagements throughout the north nonetheless; Sarah alsowrote a series of “Letterson the Equality of the Sexes” to protest such gender biases. Notified thatshe could never return to Charleston or risk imprisonment and arrest, Angelinawrote an Appeal tothe Christian Women of the Southtomake her case in that way. When she learned that educator and abolitionistCatherine Beecher supported colonization for freed slaves and other Americanblacks, Angelina wrote Letters toCatherine Beecher, calling out the colonization idea as justanother kind of racism. And this all before they had lived in the North for tenyears!

Perhaps asingle 1838 event best sums up the sisters’ courageous activism; I’ll quote theabove-linked Gilder Lehrman Institute article on it: “Two days after their wedding,Angelina and Theodore [Weld] attended the anti-slavery convention inPhiladelphia. Feelings ran high in the city as rumors spread of whites andblacks parading arm in arm down city streets, and by the first evening of theevent, a hostile crowd had gathered outside the convention hall. Sounds ofobjects being thrown against the walls reverberated inside. But Angelina Grimkerose to speak out against slavery. ‘I have seen it! I have seen it!’ she toldher audience. ‘I know it has horrors that can never be described.’ Stones hitthe windows, but Angelina continued. For an hour more, she held the audience’srapt attention for the last public speech she would give. The next morning, anangry mob again surrounded the hall, and that evening, set fire to thebuilding, ransacked the anti-slavery offices inside, and destroyed all recordsand books that were found.” The sisters and Weld, like Garrison and many otherabolitionists, continued their efforts for many decades—but an individualmoment like this can make clear both the forces against which they strove andtheir determination to share their voices and arguments nonetheless.

Nextsiblings tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?

PPS. I’dbe remiss in not highlighting here a great recent book that offers a verydifferent take on the Grimké family, Kerri Greenridge’s TheGrimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family (2022).

July 31, 2023: SiblingStudying: The Marx Brothers and the Stooges

[On August2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing younger sistercelebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’ll AmericanStudyinteresting American siblings!]

On the twogroups of siblings at the heart of mid-20th century American comedyand popular culture.

From the Booths to the Barrymores, the Douglas’s to the Bridges, on downto Will andJada Pinkett Smith and their increasingly visible young‘uns, multi-generational families have long been a staple in Americanpopular culture (I’m setting aside the most famous such multi-generational popculture family in 21st America, the Kardashians, as a subject foranother time if I feel up to it). Whether you read the trend as one of manysigns that American society is not nearly as class-less as we like to believe, as asymbol of our hankering for an equivalent to the British royal family, or assimply a reflection that it’s easier to get ahead if you know the right people,there’s no doubt that our cultural icons have often come as part of familyunits. Yet I’m not sure that any other cultural medium or any other historicalmoment have been dominated by competing families of entertainers as were the1930s and 40s by the MarxBrothers and the ThreeStooges.

The twofamilies (which is a slightly inaccurate word for the Stooges, since Moe, Shemp, and Curly were brothersbut Larry was unrelated to them) have interestingly parallelbiographies: each group of brothers was born to Jewish American immigrantfamilies in late 19th century New York; members of each began toperform in Vaudeville-type acts for the first time in 1912, and achieved theirfirst real breakthrough successes about a decade later; and thesimilarly-titled films that truly launched each group both appeared within ayear of each other, the Marx’s The Cocoanuts (1929) and the Stooges’ Soup to Nuts (1930). The families even feature individualbrothers who helped originate the act but left the group at a relatively earlypoint, Zeppo Marx and Shemp Howard. Yet despite these parallels, in myexperience it’s very rare to find passionate fans of both the Marx Brothers andthe Stooges—they seem today, as perhaps they did in their own era, to havefound pretty distinct fan bases.

It’d beeasy to attribute that divide to thehighbrow/lowbrow dichotomy, and certainly there’s no doubt that the twogroups tended to employ very different kinds of comedy: the Marx’s using theirscripts and wordplay first and foremost, the Stooges their physical comedy andviolence (although certainly Harpo Marxwas entirely a physical comic, and in other ways too this division wouldbreak down upon close examination). Yet I would say that the two groups alsoexemplify two very distinct directions for American comedy and popular cultureafter Vaudeville, both employing developing technologies but in quite differentways: Cocoanuts was one of the first sound films, andthroughout their career the Marx Brothers used this new medium of sound film togreat effect; whereas most of the Stooges’ classic works were shorts, andwhile such pieces were often featured before or with other films they were alsotailor-made for the new medium of television as it developed in the decades tocome. Both films and television remain central media for American comedy, ofcourse, but they work and connect to audiences in fundamentally different ways,and the Marx’s and Stooges can help us analyze those trends at their earliermoments.

Nextsiblings tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?

July 29-30, 2023: July 2023 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

July3: Patriotism in 2023: What the Gerrymander? Podcast: For July 4th,I shared some of the many ways I’ve been able to talk about my patriotism book,starting with this excellent podcast on contemporary politics.

July4: Patriotism in 2023: Black Legislators, Past and Present: The seriescontinued with the most recent of the many SaturdayEvening Post columns where I’ve talked American patriotism.

July5: Patriotism in 2023: Adult Learning Conversations: What I shared andlearned in an adult learning class on patriotism, as the series talks on.

July6: Patriotism in 2023: Critical Patriotism and the Court: One particulararticle and context that an adult learning student shared with me after thataforementioned class.

July7: Patriotism in 2023: “Patriotic Education”: The series concludes with afrustratingly ubiquitous current context for the contested history of Americanpatriotism.

July8-9: Patriotism in 2023: Talking Of Thee I Sing: Which is one of manyreasons why I’d love any and every chance to keep talking about this book, soplease share such opportunities at any time!

July10: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summer Wind: It ain’t summer without summerjams, so this week I AmericanStudied a handful of summer songs, starting with aSinatra classic that reveals a lot about performance, authorship, andcollective memory.

July11: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime Blues: The series continueswith what a summer classic reveals about the voices of youth.

July12: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summer in the City: Whether all art is political,and why the question matters more than the answer, as the series rocks on.

July13: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime: Two distinct but equallysignificant ways to AmericanStudy the Fresh Prince and his most famous summerjam.

July14: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: All Summer Long: The series concludeswith classic rock, pseudo-nostalgia, and the undeniable role of pop culture inour lives.

July17: Seneca Falls Studying: Quaker Communities: For the 175thanniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, a series on its histories andcontexts starts with a delightfully specific and importantly broad layer to theConvention’s origins.

July18: Seneca Falls Studying: The Declaration: The series continues with oneobviously important choice in the Convention’s key document, and one subtlerone.

July19: Seneca Falls Studying: Douglass and Suffrage: Three ways in which FrederickDouglass contributed to the fight for women’s suffrage, as the series conveneson.

July20: Seneca Falls Studying: Rochester: Why an immediate follow-up conventionwas so important, and two of its more groundbreaking details.

July21: Seneca Falls Studying: The Historic Site’s Site: The series concludeswith three of the many interesting things you can find on the Women’s RightsNational Historical Park’s website.

July22-23: The 21st Century Women’s Movement: A special weekendfollow-up on five figures who embody the contemporary fight for women’s rights.

July24: Korean War Studying: The Armistice: For the 70th anniversaryof the Korean War’s Armistice, a series on that forgotten conflict starts withwhy that concluding treaty took so long, and what has lingered for the sevendecades since.

July25: Korean War Studying: MacArthur and Truman: The series continues withwhat differentiates the war’s most prominent American leaders, and what linksthem nonetheless.

July26: Korean War Studying: Films: Three films from just a three-year periodthat reflect three stages of cultural representation, as the series fights on.

July27: Korean War Studying: M*A*S*H: I couldn’t write a KoreanWarStudyingseries without analyzing the three iterations of the famous portrayal ofwartime doctors.

July28: Korean War Studying: So What?: The series concludes with three reasonsto better engage with one of our more under-remembered conflicts.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

July 28, 2023: Korean War Studying: So What?

[On July 27th,1953 an armistice signed by President Eisenhower ended the KoreanWar. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that endpoint and other Koreanconflict contexts!]

On threereasons to better engage with one of the 20th century’s more under-rememberedconflicts.

1)     The Soldiers: I would hope this would gowithout saying in any AmericanStudies (and any American) conversation, but I’llsay it anyway as clearly as I can: every military conflict is worth rememberingas fully as possible for all those who served and sacrificed in it. In the caseof the U.S. involvementin the Korean War (and obviously every individual from every nation isworth commemorating, but this blog is AmericanStudies after all), that meansthe more than 1.75 million Americans who served, the more than 35,000 who werekilled, the more than 100,000 wounded, and the more than 7000 POWs. I wrote afew days back in this series about the frustrating gaps in our collective memorybetween the Vietnam War and the Korean War, and certainly that extends to ourneed to better remember both the casualties and theveterans of the latter conflict.

2)     The Stakes: In that same earlier post onMacArthur and Truman, I criticized the idea—shared by those two men, despitetheir vast and vital differences—that the Korean conflict was necessarily aproxy war in the broader Cold War battle between the U.S. and the SovietUnion/China/communism. I stand by that critique, but the fact of the matter isthat all those governments did share that perspective (as it seems did theUnited Nations, at least in part), which made the stakes of this conflictjust as high as (for example) those in theCuban Missile Crisis a decade later. That is, if things had gonedifferently, and more exactly worse, in the war’s final events and resolutions,it very easily could have triggered a more genuinely global and destructiveconflict, and that makes this moment as worthy of collective memory as theMissile Crisis and any other Cold War pressure points.

3)     Today: I don’t imagine I need to dwell atlength here on the outsized role that North Korea has played in both worldaffairs and U.S.foreign policy over the last decade. That’s certainly due, as most everything(and certainly every bad thing) from this period has been, to the frustratingand destructive influence of one DonaldJ. Trump. But it’s also a result of a number of legacies of the Korean War:the DMZ and the fraught and fragile relationship between North and South Korea;North Korea’s continued insistence that it won the war and thus that the Southis already part of its unification of the peninsula; enduring tensions withboth Chinaand the United States over those histories and legacies alike. One of mymain goals in both this blog and all my public scholarship is to link the pastto the present, to help us understand the latter as we better remember theformer, and no history is more relevant to the present than that of the KoreanWar.

July Recapthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Any other Korean War contexts you’d highlight?

July 27, 2023: Korean War Studying: M*A*S*H

[On July 27th,1953 an armistice signed by President Eisenhower ended the KoreanWar. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that endpoint and other Koreanconflict contexts!]

On AmericanStudiestakeaways from each of the three iterations of M*A*S*H.

1)     The Novel: I can’tbe alone (at least among us born post-1970) in not having been aware that theentire MASH franchise originated witha book, RichardHooker’s (a pseudonym for military surgeon H. Richard Hornberger) MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors(1968). That was just the beginning of the literary franchise, as Hookerfollowed it up with two sequels over the next decade, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine (1972) and M*A*S*H Mania (1977). When we remember that Monday’s subject,Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, was publishedjust seven years before Hooker’s book, the two novels become part of a longerconversation (along with Wednesday’s subject Dr. Strangelove) about 1960s wartime comedies and satires. Interestinglynone of those works focuses on the decade’s ongoing war in Vietnam, but ofcourse all of them were at least implicitly in conversation with thatcontemporary event.

2)     The Film: Just two years after the publicationof Hooker’s novel, journalist and screenwriter adaptedit into a screenplay that was then directed by the young filmmaker RobertAltman as M*A*S*H (1970). Both Lardner Jr. (in tandemwith his dad Ring Lardner Sr.) and Altman have plenty to tell us about Americanculture and pop culture across the 20th century, as does the factthat the film is apparently the first studiomovie to feature audibly the word “fuck.” But what’s particularlyinteresting to me is the way in which the film’s main changes from Hooker’snovel involve the two characters of color: in the book the main Black characteris known as “Spearchucker” Jones and is the target of significant stereotyping,whereas he gets a more three-dimensional portrayal in thefilm; and in the book the young Korean soldier Ho-Jon is killed off, whereas inthe film (and later the TV show) he survives. Close in time, but quite distinctin tone, are these two texts.

3)     The TV Show: Just twoyears after that film (and thus only four years after the novel—this franchiseexploded very fast), on September 17, 1972, that hyperlinked opening scene ofthe pilot episode aired on CBS, launching what would become one of the mostsuccessful TV shows in history by the time its hugely prominent finaleaired in February 1983. Of course a show that ran for 256 episodesacross 11 seasons diverged in all sorts of big and small ways from the book andfilm alike; but the core characters remained the same, a striking testimony totheir appeal across all these genres and media. But one thing that’s specificto the show’s more than a decade-long timeline is how much the world changedacross those years—from the Vietnam War ending to the changes in the Cold Warbetween 1972 to 1983, and with many concurrent changes to the medium oftelevision itself, a show like M*A*S*Hcan help us track and analyze contexts well beyond its characters and plots.

Last posttomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Any other Korean War contexts you’d highlight?