Foster Dickson's Blog, page 25

Reading: “Still Life with Oysters and Lemon”

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This is where being open to suggestions works out well. It was 2008, and I was told by my friend Nancy Grisham Anderson that Mark Doty had been offered the Weil Fellowship at Auburn University at Montgomery, my alma mater. I was familiar with Doty as an extraordinary poet from his inclusion in anthologies and other projects, and was excited that he was coming to give a public lecture in Montgomery. Nancy told me that he would be talking about his book Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. Though it had been published in 2002, I’d never heard of it.

Though I had to fly through Still Life with Oysters and Lemon right before Doty was coming to speak, I’ve read and re-read it multiple times in the twelve years since. At less than 80 pages, it doesn’t take long, though I don’t want to be misunderstood to mean that the book is easy or simple. It is short. It’s also complex, packed with meaning, and really beautiful. The book functions like a long essay that weaves among subjects, prime among them still life painting.

More so, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon is about intimacy, an idea that Doty comes back to several times. Using the idea that a still life captures a moment through temporal objects, he carries the reader through a somewhat stream-of-consciousness narrative that includes his grandmother’s peppermints, his deceased partner Wally, his purchase of fixer-upper home with a new lover, his birthday, and of course, his ideas on poetry. What I like about Still Life with Oysters and Lemon is that it seems like Mark Doty is just talking to me about what’s on his mind.

This time, I was re-reading it because I’ve decided to teach it in the spring. In this time of virtual learning, which is off the beaten path, I’ve been looking for works that are off the beaten path and that emphasize out common humanity. I had considered this one and Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being, but opted for this book since it’s shorter and I want the students to (actually) read it. For my part, there are only a few works that I have read over and over because they’re keenly and adeptly insightful, distinct in their awareness of our predicament, our nuances, our trifles, our struggles, and because they speak to me. Still Life with Oysters and Lemon is one of those books. I hope that that is recommendation enough. The only other things I can say: I’m glad that Mark Doty wrote it and equally glad that Nancy turned me on to it.

 

The Great Watchlist Purge of 2021

Watching movies, particularly independent films and old classics, is one of my longtime hobbies. Among my favorites have been 1982’s Beastmaster and 1970’s Rio Lobo when I was kid, then 1986’s At Close Range and 1983’s Suburbia when I was a teenager. I’ve always had eclectic taste. Easy Rider is my all-time favorite movie, but I also can’t deny that I like more traditional films. Christmas can’t go by without It’s a Wonderful Life, and my heart breaks every time I see Joe Bradley walk away at the end of Roman Holiday. My favorite Charlie Brown special is Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!). I first started watching blaxploitation films in the late 1980s when a buddy got a hold of VHS tapes of Dolemite and The Human Tornado. I like weird and trips stuff like Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book and Prospero’s Books, and I like stark realism like Twelve Angry Men, and I like quirky comedies like One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead. I. Just. Love. Movies. 

In that spirit, I used some of my abundant free time during the COVID-19 quarantine to make an attempt at watching more movies in my IMDb Watchlist— the Great Watchlist Purge of 2020, I called it. I began in March with 67 films in the list, I watched all of the movies I could find, searching Prime and Netflix and YouTube and other video sites on the web . . . and then I ended the year with 74 films in the list! I would watch a movie, go and rate it, and voila!— if you liked that, here are some other movies you might like. It’s neverending!

Below is the current watchlist, in no particular order. I’m going to try again in 2021 to whittle this self-imposed cinematic to-do list down to something manageable, posting my progress on Twitter with the hashtag #GreatWatchlistPurge.

Persona (1966)
Ingmar Bergman in the mid-’60s. I’ve read that this film is very complex and has to be watched multiple times to understand it. Sounds like my kind of movie.

Ravagers (1979)
Though I don’t know much about this movie, it sounds odd, but what caught my attention was that it was filmed in Alabama.

Francesco (2002) and Francesco (1989) 
The newer of these two movies caught my attention, because I am interested in Saint Francis. The older one came in the suggestions list and stars Mickey Rourke right after he starred in 9 1/2 Weeks and Angel Heart. I am having trouble imagining how some casting agent saw Rourke in those two films and thought, “That’s our saint . . .”

Don’t Look Now (1973)
This movie came up as a suggestion after I rated the movie Deep Red. I like suspenseful movies and I like ’70s movies and I like Donald Sutherland, so I put it in the list.

Born to Win (1971), The Panic in Needle Park (1971), and Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971)
These three are all from the early ’70s and are all about hardcore drug users. I’m not sure that I’ll ever watch any of them, but I have them in the list in case I decide to.

In Bruges (2008) and Bruges-Le-Morte (1978)
These two films have nothing to do with each other, except that they both have the Belgian city Bruges in the title. I found the former, a Colin Farrell action story about a hitman, when I was reading something that said it was a great film, and the latter came up in a search when I typed ‘Bruges’ in the search bar to find the first movie. The second one is older and is about a guy who becomes obsessed with a woman who looks like his dead wife. 

The Blonde and the Black Pussycat (1969)
I came across this movie when searching for the actress Edwige Fenech, who starred in All the Colors of the Dark, which is down this list a ways. It’s about two aristocrats who inherit the same castle and fight over it. I’m not sure how Fenech fits in, but we’ll see.

Haiku Tunnel (2001) and Mountain Cry (2015)
These movies have no relation to each other either, except that they both came up when I searched the term ‘haiku.’ The first movie is an early 2000s indie comedy about doing temp work in an office, and the second one is a beautifully filmed Chinese drama about a family in a small village.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1929)
I had never heard of this animated movie before seeing a reference to it on Twitter from an account that was disputing Fantasia‘s designation as the first full-length animated feature film. The clip attached to the tweet was beautiful, and I want to see the whole film.

The Black Cat (1989)
An Italian horror film from the late ’80s . . . eh, why not?

The River Rat (1984)
I found this film when I was trying to figure out what Martha Plimpton had been in. I tend to think of Plimpton as the nerdy friend she played in Goonies, but this one, which is set in Louisiana and has Tommy Lee Jones playing her dad, puts her in a different role.

So, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? (2013)
I’d just like to see this documentary on Noam Chomsky because he always has interesting ideas, even if I don’t agree with them.

The Mephisto Waltz (1971)
I’ve read about this movie but never seen it. I must say, the title is great.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
This horror film came up alongside Deep Red, which I watched not long ago, after I rated two recent horror films: the disturbing Hagazussa and the less-heavy but still creepy Make-Out with Violence. Deep Red was good, so I want to watch this one, too.

Born in Flames (1983)
This movie looks cool but obscure. It’s an early ’80s dystopian film about life after a massive revolution. 

Personal Problems (1980)
This one is also pretty obscure – complicated African-American lives in the early ’80s – and came up as a suggestion since I liked Ganja and Hess. The description says “partly improvised,” which means that the characters probably ramble a good bit. 

The Vampires of Poverty (1978) and La mansion du Araucaima (1986)
Two by director Carlos Mayolo. Films out of Colombia in the late ’70s are a bit out of my wheelhouse, but both look intriguing. Vampires of Poverty is fictional but made to look a documentary about the poor. The latter is about an actress who wanders off a film set and into a weird castle. In both cases, I’ll need subtitles.

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
A young Daniel Day Lewis as the boyfriend of a Pakistani guy in England who opens a laundromat. This sounds like one of those quirky ’80s gems that you had to stumble on to know about.  

Greetings (1968) and Hi, Mom! (1970)
These two Brian de Palma movies both star a young Robert DeNiro and look like a hippie mess. But I’d like to see them. 

The Borrower (1991)
Early ’90s sci-fi/horror, starring Rae Dawn Chong, who you don’t hear much about anymore. She was everywhere for a while then kind of disappeared. The plot description sounds like a body snatchers kind of thing.  

Quiet Days in Clichy (1970)
Having been a big Henry Miller fan in college, I had already seen Henry & June and the adaptation of Tropic of Cancer that stars Rip Torn. The book Quiet Days in Clichy is about Miller’s (supposed) wild adventures with his friends, so I’ll be curious to see what the filmmaker did with that. 

American Splendor (2003)
Paul Giamatti back when he was still an indie film guy, before Sideways. I never did take the time to watch this movie, but I want to.

What the Peeper Saw (1972)
This Italian suspense-horror film is one from the creepy child sub-genre, like The Bad Seed. 

Alabama (1985)
The title of this one lured me in. But it’s not about Alabama, the state where I live. The film is Polish and has no description on IMDb. One of the posters says “love story” on it, so I’m guessing that it’s a love story. I’m mainly curious why it’s titled Alabama.

A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (2017)
I love Carson McCullers. That is all. 

The Night They Robbed Big Bertha’s (1975) and Smokey and the Outlaw Women (1978)
Both of these movies look awful, but they also look like great examples of that mid- to late 1970s Southern kitsch, that goofy comedy sub-genre that spawned Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Mondo Candido (1975)
I read the novel Candide in graduate school and liked it, and I teach it every once in a while in my twelfth grade English class. It’s a pretty wild story, and this adaptation is Italian. However, it’s hard to find and I’ll need subtitles.

Fantastic Planet (1973)
An animated sci-fi film, which isn’t really my thing, but the stills on IMDb make it look like something to see. 

Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Jean-Luc Godard in the ’60s. I wanted to see this after watching Contempt, with Brigitte Bardot, which was a beautiful and heartbreaking movie.The titled means Pierre (or Peter) the madman.

The Devil Rides Out (1968)
Though I like old horror movies, I’m normally not a Christopher Lee fan. This movie is supposed to be better than most of his churned-out vampire movies. We’ll see . . .

The Wicker Man (1973)
I’ve read that this is one of the best horror films ever made. 

Little Fauss and Big Halsey (1970)
Paul Newman movies from the late ’60s and early ’70s are among my all-time favorites. This one came out about the same time as Sometimes A Great Notion. Despite having seen Cool Hand Luke, Hud, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Long, Hot Summer numerous times each, I’d never heard of this movie until a few years ago.

The Baby (1973)
I noticed this horror movie several years ago after watching an older black-and-white movie called Spider Baby, which was really bizarre. This one is about a man-sized “baby” and looks equally weird. 

Under Milkwood (1971)
Richard Burton and Liz Taylor after Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which I loved, and a story written by the poet Dylan Thomas. 

Heavy Traffic (1973)
Again, I’m not really a cartoon guy, but this is Ralph Bakshi, who did Heavy Metal in the early ’80s. When we were growing up Heavy Metal was a major no-no, and we never could understand why— we’re kids and it’s a cartoon, what’s the problem? I watch it as an adult and saw why kids shouldn’t watch it. This is another one of his, but hard to find.

Six Pack (1982)
This was one of my favorites as a kid. Kenny Rogers, in his heyday, played a struggling race car driver, then he was helped by a pit crew of orphans who he finds when they try to rob him. It also has Diane Lane around the time she was in The Outsiders. But this movie is difficult to find these days.

The Sky is Gray (1980)
This movie is an adaptation of an Ernest Gaines short story. I haven’t been in a big hurry to watch it though, since the 1983 adaption of A Gathering of Old Men was poorly done, even though it had a good cast.

Widespread Panic: Live from the Georgia Theatre (1991) and The Earth Will Swallow You (2002)
How has a guy who loves Widespread Panic never seen either of these early concert films? Ridiculous.

Mondo Cane (1962)
I started this documentary once, left off, and never went back to it. The general thing is that it shows strange and sometimes violent rituals, traditions, and practices around the world. There’s a distinctly colonialist feel to it, like saying “Look what savages these people are,” but it also has the same feel as the Faces of Death series that were available when I was young. I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to watching this, but I leave it in the list. 

All the Right Noises (1970)
A story about a married theater manager who has an affair with a younger woman, and it looks a little like Fatal Attraction, like the relationships goes well until it doesn’t. I keep some movies in the watchlist because they look weird or unique. This one might actually be good.

The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds (1970)
I like this play a lot and teach it in my Creative Writing classes. Beyond that, Paul Newman, one of my favorite actors, produced this adaptation. I’m curious to see what a filmmaker would do with this very emotional story.

Boxcar Bertha (1972)
Boxcar Bertha looks a bit like Bonnie and Clyde. An early ’70s crime movie set during the Depression, it was directed by Martin Scorsese. It should be good.

The Sex Life of Belgians (1994) and Camping Cosmos (1996)
The Sex Life of Belgians was heavily advertised in the mid-’90s when I subscribed to the Village Voice. But living in Alabama in a time before streaming services, I had no access to the film. This is a director I know nothing about. The second film is the sequel.

Meridian (1990)
This horror/thriller was not a great movie, but it has Sherilynn Fenn in it, and she was another one of my 1990s celebrity crushes from being in Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks. For some reason, this movie has become hard to find.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)
I can’t remember who told me I ought to watch this, but somebody I know did. The genre is listed as comedy/horror and you never can tell with movies like that. The title inclines me to think it could be like the Evil Dead movies

The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence (2013)
I found this movie in a search for Udo Kier, who I’ve liked since seeing Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Dracula when I was in high school. The cinematic style of this one looks pretty cool, as does the story.

Endless Poetry (2016)
Alejandro Jodorowsky is hit-or-miss for me. I liked The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre but I didn’t finish El Topo. This movie about him is supposed to be done in his very strange style. 

Pink Motel (1982)
By all accounts, reviews, etc. this movie is terrible. But it has a few things going for it: it was made in the early ’80s, and it stars Phyllis Diller and Slim Pickens. 

Macunaima (1969)
I started watching this once, and it was really freakin’ weird. It’s surreal, Brazilian, and anti-colonialist, and I may give it another try.

The Rebel Rousers (1970), Ride in the Whirlwind (1968), and Psych Out (1968)
In the late ’60s, Jack Nicholson was prolific, though not all the films were great ones. Since Easy Rider is my favorite movie of all-time ever, I’ve got a special place in my heart for Nicholson and for hippie biker films, even bad ones.

Mood Indigo (2013)
This just looked like a good movie. And I’ve like Audrey Tautou ever since I saw Amelie.

Paris, Texas (1984) and Lucky (2017)
Part of me is embarrassed, as a movie buff, that I’ve never seen Paris, Texas, but another part of me says, “Hey, I was ten when it came out.” I like Harry Dean Stanton. He was the dad in Pretty in Pink, he was in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart, and he was hilarious in Two-Lane Blacktop as a hitchhiker who tries to pay Warren Oates for the ride with a blowjob. Both of these films star Stanton. The former is said to be one of the best films ever made.

Big Sur (2013)
Jack Kerouac was the writer who made me want to be a writer. This film is an adaptation of his book, but I’ve put off watching it for the same reason that I won’t watch Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of On the Road— I want my experience with the book to be the interpretation/imagining of it that stays in my head. I may not ever watch this movie.

Factotum (2005) 
In addition to liking Henry Miller in college, I also like Charles Bukowski. I’ve seen Barfly many times but have never seen this bio-pic that has Matt Dillon as Bukowski.

House (1977)
I noticed this film since it’s classified as horror, but what interests me more is the visual style of it. I’ve gotten to see clips from House and want to see the whole thing. 

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)
Another Edwige Fenech movie that looks similar to All the Colors of the Dark below.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Minnesota (2017)
I missed this movie in the theaters. I want to see it.

Beginner’s Luck (2001) and Tykho Moon (1996)
Both of these movies star Julia Delpy, who was another 1990s celebrity crush after I saw Killing Zoe and Before Sunrise.

All the Colors of the Dark (1972)
I saw this movie in the mid-1980s when the USA Network used to have a program called Saturday Nightmares, which featured an obscure horror movie followed by two half-hour shows like Ray Bradbury Theater or The Twilight Zone. That weird old program turned me on 1960s and ’70s European horror movies, like this is one, Vampire Circus, and The Devil’s Nightmare. I haven’t seen this movie in a long time, but it’s time to rewatch it.

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
Like House above, this Japanese film is visually really interesting. I’ve read that it was the progenitor for the anime genre. I don’t care about anime personally, but I’ve seen parts of this film and what I’ve seen is pretty trippy.

How Tasty Was my Little Frenchman (1971)
Like Macunaima, I also started watching this Brazilian anti-colonialist film once and never went back to it. Maybe this year, I’ll finish it. Then again, maybe I’ll just accept that I don’t like surreal, Brazilian, anti-colonialist films.

 

What’s in Store for 2021?

In Winter

Sketches of Newtown will go to press in mid-January. This 92-page monograph comes from an Alabama Bicentennial Commission-funded student project. The book contains ten short student-written, student-edited sketches (essays) about aspects of Newtown and its history, a selected bibliography, a color photo insert, and summaries of the oral histories collected in February 2019. A delivery date in mid- to late February is expected. Copies will be given away at no charge; however, requests will be limited to one book per person.

Also in January, the first works will be published in the new online anthology Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore. The first reading period for submissions lasted from October 1 through December 15. Submitting writers received their responses during the last week of December.

level:deepsouth will continue to accept submissions about growing up Generation X in the Deep South in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. 

Right before the spring equinox, on March 15, the winners of the Fitzgerald Museum’s third annual Literary Contest will be announced. This year’s theme has been “The Education of a Personage,” which comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1921 debut novel This Side of Paradise. This year’s judges are Ashley M. Jones and Alina Stefanescu.

Then, in Spring

In March, the second batch of works will be published in Nobody’s Home, and the third reading period will begin. May 15 will mark the end of that third reading period. 

March will also mark the one-year anniversary for level:deepsouth, which will continue to accept submissions about growing up Generation X in the Deep South in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. 

Later, in Summer

In June, the third batch of works will be published in Nobody’s Home. At that point, the final reading period will have begun, and it will last until August 15.

In July, Foster will deliver the first draft of his book-length manuscript about Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, formerly St. Mary’s of Loretto School. The project, which got underway in 2019, will commemorate the school’s 150th anniversary in 2023 with a summative account of its history. No release date has been set, as that anniversary is still two years away.

In August, the theme for the Fitzgerald Museum’s fourth annual Literary Contest will be announced. This student contest accepts submission from September 1 until December 31 each year. 

Finally, in early August, Foster will begin his 19th year in the classroom when the 2021 – 2022 school year opens— hopefully in-person!

Finally, in Fall

In September, the fourth and final batch of works will be published in the Nobody’s Home. At that point, the Literary Arts Fellowship will end, as the next round of fellows begin their projects in October. Once the anthology is complete, the project will enter a new phase that will consist of sharing and promoting the works. 

A Deep Southern, Diversified & Re-Imagined Recap of 2020

I had big plans for 2020. Plans for my school garden, plans for my students, plans for new projects of my own. But COVID-19 had other plans. After going to the Camp McDowell Farm School last November then the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network’s Food & Farm Forum last December, I was ready to use that new knowledge to improve the school garden. After receiving another education grant from the Alabama Bicentennial Commission, I was ready to continue with my students in Newtown. After deciding to get off my keister and finally develop the Southern Generation-X project I had thought about for a long time, I was ready to get started. Then a couple-zillion microbes came along and changed everything. But COVID didn’t stop the work entirely – except in the school garden, which did have to stop – though the ideas had to undergo some amendments. Below is a selection of posts from the blog that tell a reasonably solid version of this year’s story. Click on any of the red links to read further.

Posts

Recycling, Money, Sustainability, and Me (February)

A new project . . . level:deepsouth— for Generation X (March)

Congratulations to the Winners of “Love + Marriage” (March)

A Look Back at “Patchwork: A Chronicle of Alabama in the New South” (April)

Literary Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts! (June)

Biographical Sketches of Women Suffragists (June)

Alabamiana: Revisiting Mr. Rice (July)

The Education of a Personage: The Fitzgerald Museum Literary Contest (August)

Call for Submissions for Nobody’s Home (October)

Sketches of Newtown (December)

16,425 Days: The Whitehurst Case (December)

Let’s learn the lesson and move on. (December)

 

Reading

A Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke (January)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (January)

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton (February)

Let the Dead Bury their Dead by Randall Kenan (April)

How to Write a Sentence by Stanley Fish (April)

Whose Votes Count? by Abigail Thernstrom (May)

The Death of Innocents by Sister Helen Prejean (May)

A Love Letter to the Earth by Thich Nhat Hanh (May)

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (August)

St. Mark’s is Dead by Ada Calhoun (September)

Black Elks Speaks as told to Jim Neihardt (September)

Woodrow’s Trumpet by Tim McLaurin (September)

and published in “Groundwork,” the editor’s blog for Nobody’s Home :

Judgment & Grace in Dixie by Charles Reagan Wilson

The Countercultural South by Jack Temple Kirby

 

Southern Movies 

Macon County Line (1974)

The Klansman (1974)

The Beguiled (1971)

Good Intentions (2010)

The Rainmaker (1997)

The Liberation of LB Jones (1970)

Murder in Mississippi (1965)

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Bonus: A Women’s History Month Sampler

Bonus: A “Welcome to Eclectic” Southern Documentary Sampler

Bonus: Another Spooky, Scary Sampler, Old School Edition

Bonus: Yet Another Spooky, Scary Sampler, 21st Century Edition

 

Let’s learn the lesson and move on.

Everything won’t be magically better on Friday, but I think that we all agree that 2020 has been a whopper. Some of it we knew was coming, like Donald Trump’s antics when he lost the election, and some of it was less certain, like the enormity of the pandemic. Many people won’t be sad to see 2020 in the rearview mirror – except for maybe online retailers and billionaires – but among the wreckage, this teacher sees one lesson that we can learn.

For me, the bad part started when students were sent home last March. COVID-19 came to the US, and schoolhouses were closed soon after the first cases were acknowledged. What we call “school” went virtual. But schools weren’t prepared for that, and teachers weren’t trained for it. I was luckier than most in that I had taught online courses before, but the experience didn’t make me want to do it again. What we’ve experienced in 2020 with the lack of student engagement and the psychological distance between the teacher and students— I felt that when I taught online creative writing courses in 2007 and 2008. I knew about the problems that were coming. 

In my main teaching gig, I can truly say that I like the energy in an American high school. I’ve taught mostly twelfth graders for the last decade, and I especially enjoy their energy in the spring as graduation approaches. Last spring, though, prom was cancelled, and commencement was postponed then downsized. That hurt. For my Creative Writing students, our annual Sketch Show couldn’t happen, our literary magazines went unsold, and the Alabama Book Festival and the Flimp Festival were cancelled. That hurt, too. From home, I tried to teach online while also navigating my own children through it at the same time. It didn’t go well. I know these circumstances don’t compare to losing a loved one to COVID, being laid off, or having a business close down, but they do matter. (In my opinion, one of the worst things we can do with suffering is make it comparative.) 

But it’s like I tell my students: a failure is only a failure if you don’t learn something from it. If we’re willing to learn from this year’s failures, we’ll see that 2020 has provided a powerful lesson for the education community. In recent years, corporate interests, reformers, and anti-union types had been pushing online education as the wave of the future. This concept touted efficiency and “choice” with a “course in a can” and software that grades assignments instantly, while the teacher would become a “content delivery specialist.” However, teachers and our unions have known that these reforms would cut teacher jobs, leave remaining teachers with huge “classes,” and ultimately, be unsatisfactory to students and their families. 2020 has shown the nation what teachers knew all along: online learning is not suited to large-scale, mainstream schooling. The flaws have been glaring and obvious. The elimination of social interaction, the problem of childcare, the presence of technology glitches, and the need for on-site assistance have led to frustration, loneliness, depression, and fatigue. Student engagement has plummeted, and course failures have skyrocketed. Online learning should be a component of education in the future, but it can’t replace being in-person on a school campus. And I’ve noticed, during the last nine months, that those previously vocal education reformers haven’t been on the TV news saying, “See, look how well it’s working! We told you it would!” Nope, they’ve been mighty quiet.

When the pandemic is behind us and schools are fully operational again, there will be people who’ll pop up and declare that what we should learn other lessons instead. One alternative lesson will be that the failures of virtual learning were caused by a lack of training for teachers— and those folks will have training products to sell. Another will be that the failures were caused by inadequate technology— and those folks will have technology products to sell. Yet another will proclaim that we’ve worked out the kinks now, so it’s time to invest in streamlining the system we’ve run roughshod over unexpected terrain— and those folks will also have products to sell. The people who’ve invested money and time in promoting and selling online education aren’t going to recognize defeat, pack up, and go home. They’re businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists – not educators – and they’ll see opportunity in our post-pandemic disarray.

Unlike those businesspeople, I am a teacher (and a parent), who has seen the ground-level realities firsthand. The truths I’m sharing are simple, and I don’t have anything to sell. First, in-person learning is superior to online learning for the vast majority of children. Second, having children on-site at a school is better for most families. Third, children learn more than just their courses’ subject matter at school. Since March, teachers’ work has been less about teaching and more about content delivery. Our ability to enforce guidelines and policies has been severely hampered. Our choices for connecting with and motivating students are severely limited. Put bluntly, teachers do a better job in-person with students in our classrooms. And that can happen again when we’ve got this terrible disease under control.

In the meantime, I hope that we’ll move into 2021 wiser from this experience. There will be voices in our nation and in our communities that urge us to believe the rhetoric that says: so much has gone online, so education should, too. Now, however, we’ve seen it for ourselves, and we know about the flaws and drawbacks, especially for students who lack broadband access, a home computer, or parental support. And most especially for students who need social services and special education services. We’ll have more virtual schooling to do in the first half of 2021, but I hope that administrators nationwide are considering what will happen afterward. More than anything, I hope they don’t forget what they’ve witnessed as their anxious deliberations about how to get us back on track in 2021 get underway.

 

Watching: “Out of Print” (2013)

I’m a little late to the game on this documentary, which came out in 2013, but I’m glad that I didn’t miss it entirely. Out of Print focuses on the future of knowledge and ideas, mainly with respect to books and the internet as methods for transferring and preserving those things.   

I have a two-fold interest in these subjects. First, as a writer, I want a better understanding of how my work will be shared and, hopefully, purchased. I started in book publishing twenty years ago, when e-books were new and Amazon only sold books, and I’ve seen tremendous changes in this business. Second, as a teacher, it was compelling to watch the snippets with teenagers, who were explaining how they go straight to the internet for anything. The question we all ask is: how do we reach this generation, which expects reading be a quickie thing and which prefers instant results to searching? 

This documentary address both, albeit in fifty-five minutes all total, so it’s more of an overview than a deep dive. However, I immediately considered showing it in my Creative Writing classes, because of that.

 

Second Reading Period for “Nobody’s Home” Begins Today

Today begins the second reading period for my new project Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore. This reading period will end on February 15, with works accepted during that time being published in spring 2021. Hopefully, you’ll see the project’s ads on New Pages and Facebook.

The first reading period went from October 1 until December 15. I’ll be reading those submissions between now and New Year’s. The first batch of works in the anthology will be published in January. 

Things are moving right along with the project. I’ve been posting on my editor’s blog, which is called Groundwork, and posting on social media while submissions have been coming in. The original plan had involved some travel to talk with people around the South, but COVID has put a damper on those notions for now.

16,425 days: The Whitehurst Case

[image error]It has been 16,425 days since December 2, 1975, the day that a 33-year-old black man named Bernard Whitehurst, Jr. was shot and killed by a white Montgomery, Alabama police officer. Whitehurst was married, had four children under age 5, and worked as a janitor at a McDonald’s. At the time he was killed, police were chasing him as an armed robbery suspect, but he was the wrong man. Whitehurst was only walking the area, and his clothing did not fit the description of the robber. Yet, the officer who shot him claimed that Whitehurst had fired first. That account was backed up by a pistol laying in the grass nearby.

After Whitehurst was killed, police did not notify his family. Instead, his body was taken to a funeral home and embalmed, and the Whitehursts found out about his death when his mother read it on the front page of the Montgomery Advertiser the next morning. 

Soon, what became known as the Whitehurst Case was sparked by an allegation that the pistol was placed beside Whitehurst’s hand after he was dead. Internal police investigations began in early 1976, and the family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April. However, as the year wore on, no officers faced criminal charges in the death of Bernard Whitehurst, Jr., and the family’s lawsuit was defeated in federal court. Though the internal strife within the Montgomery Police Department did lead to resignations and firings, the Whitehurst family did not reach any resolution that they regard as justice. 

Today is the 45th anniversary of Bernard Whitehurst, Jr.’s death. The family has now been waiting 16,425 days for justice. His widow has been living with this tragedy for two-thirds of her life, and his children have lived nearly their entire lives without him. As many in our nation make calls for justice for recent victims of police shootings, those calls shouldn’t neglect or exclude victims from further back in the past. 

[image error]While the intensity of the Whitehurst Case had died down by 1977, its effects have lingered. The family has continued to live in Montgomery, and new calls for justice have been made by his now-grown children. Recently, a mural in downtown Montgomery that included Bernard Whitehurst, Jr. was dedicated to victims of police violence. To learn more about the Whitehurst Case, then and now, Closed Ranks offers a more detailed account of the story, including what has happened in the years since.    

 

Southern Movie 52: “Suddenly, Last Summer” (1959)

Perhaps most well-known for its iconic scene of Katherine Hepburn descending in a wrought-iron elevator, 1959’s Suddenly, Last Summer is one among a series of Tennessee Williams plays made into successful films, though this one was directed not by Elia Kazan but Joseph Mankiwiecz. The black-and-white film is set in New Orleans and deals with the aftermath of Sebastian Venable’s death, as his obsessively overprotective mother tries to erase any and all factual understanding of her son’s closeted life and unseemly demise. Starring Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, and Elizabeth Taylor, this one is a classic that conceals a bizarre twist until the end.

Suddenly, Last Summer begins ominously with the credits playing in blocky white text in front of a very tall brick wall. Once the credits are complete, the camera pans slowly over to a small sign on this large wall, which reads, “Lions View State Asylum.” Inside the asylum, we see an assortment of haggard-looking women in a day room, some sewing, some catatonic, as one large woman shuffles across the room taking what she pleases, first an item from a table then a rocking chair from a woman already sitting in it. Once our focus leaves the silent bully, it moves to a young woman with a placid expression who is marveling at a baby doll as though it were her child. Two female nurses come in and kindly escort her out, but she is wary of them and clutches the doll to her chest. Quickly, we see her anesthetized for surgery and wheeled out on a gurney, the doll left on a bench.

She is going to a large room with a balcony encircling the upper part of it, a surgery table is at center, with people in white gowns prepping the patient. Above the operating room is a loud man in a suit, boisterous and bureaucratic, who is bellowing in his Southern accent that the room used to be a library, when the facility was a school, and before that, a sugar warehouse. But now it’s an “operating theater,” where spectators can watch the procedures. What the assembled men, all in suits, are about the see is a frontal lobotomy, the first ever performed in the state. The bureaucrat, who is Dr. Hockstader, introduces Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift) from Chicago. He enters and gets ready to perform the surgery.

Dr. Cukrowicz works intently on the patient, but almost right away, one of the spectators in the gallery kicks loose a railing and mortar and dust sprinkle down onto the surgical area. Hockstader winces but doesn’t move to do anything about it. The surgery continues then, and as it is near completion, a light goes out. Hockstader winces again. As Cukrowicz finishes, he looks up to the watching men and tells them that they have just seen a delicate operation performed under very primitive conditions. 

Exasperated, Cukrowicz goes to confront Hockstader, who runs the asylum. He storms into his boss’s office and asks the secretary there to leave. The two men argue, the surgeon berating the conditions and lamenting unkept promises, and the administrator reminding him of the financial facts of their status as a state hospital. But when Cukrowicz mumbles that maybe he should just go work somewhere else, Hockstader stops him and says, “Before you go, read this,” holding out an already-opened envelope.

Cukrowicz takes out the letter and asks, “Who is . . . Violet Venable?”

Hockstader replies, “You reveal your ignorance of our fair city.”

Violet Venable is the widow of the richest man in town, making her the richest woman in town. And she wants something from them. Hockstader sees dollar signs, so Cukrowicz must go at 4:30 that afternoon to honor the invitation that Violet Venable has extended, to discuss a “matter of some urgency.”

Across town, Dr. Cukrowicz is let into a large, elegant and ornate foyer by a black butler. Cukrowicz waits alone for a moment when an older, matronly woman in cat’s-eye glasses comes down the spiral stairs, and he says, “Mrs. Venable?” No, this is Mrs. Foxhill, her personal secretary, who directs him where to sit. Within seconds, we hear an elegant voice begin to speak about a son named Sebastian, and we see Violet Venable come into the foyer via an elevator made for one. She is middle-aged, exquisitely dressed, and reclined on the seat. Cukrowicz is visibly charmed, and she explains that her son loved “the Byzantine,” then shifts seamlessly into an anecdote about how, unlike the Emperor of Byzantium ascends over his subjects, she, living in a democracy, descends to meet hers. This woman is at once aristocratic and enigmatic, talking nonstop.

Violet takes Cukrowicz arm-in-arm and invites him to the garden, though Mrs. Foxhill objects. Violet overrules her and explains to Cukrowicz that since her “tiny convulsion,” everyone is worried about her well-being. Cukrowicz inquires about the episode and is told that, since she had buried both her husband and her son recently, it should be understandable.

Cukrowicz is walked into the gardens, where a still-talking Violet leads him to a mass of jungle-like plants. She has picked up a small box and hints at feeding something, then moves them toward a Victorian glass cage, where she begins feeding insects to a Venus fly trap, before her segue into Dr. Cukrowicz’s specialty: the lobotomy. However, as Cukrowicz attempts to pick up what she has put down, she is off again, changing subjects and walking away. Violet is clearly in control here, and Cukrowicz is back on his heels, trying to follow where she leads, trying to discern why he is there.

After handing off the feeding duties to Mrs. Foxhill, Violet allows for a coherent conversation, for a moment, when Cukrowicz asks what Sebastian’s occupation was. She tries to explains that he was a poet, that “his life was his work,” but loses herself in despair and moves to the subject of the operation. Cukrowicz reminds her of the hospital’s financial needs, and she mumbles, “Yes, I know,” then reveals the “urgency.” Violet has a niece by marriage who has been struck with “dementia precox,” is institutionalized at St. Mary’s, and might be a candidate for a lobotomy.

Cukrowicz tries to reply, “But dementia precox is a meaningless . . .” but Violet’s loquacious rambling overtakes him. She begins to describe Sebastian again, ignoring Cukrowicz’s attempt to discuss the foundation she claimed in the letter to be founding, telling him that Sebastian was an artist who was above notions of commercial success or name recognition. So, in his wake, she will work to “memorialize” him.

After attempting to compare her son and Dr. Cukrowicz as people who use others, then procliaming that most people’s lives are nothing but “trails of debris,” Violet’s mood changes, lightens up. She then shares that her relationship with her son was not like mother and son, but more like they were a couple, as they gallivanted across Europe in style, always popular and always adored everywhere they went. This glimpse into the past is disconcerting because a mother and son are a pair we don’t think of as being a couple . . . But Violent seems not only insistent but happy about it. “Then, suddenly last summer . . .” she begins, her mood changing. “Your son died,” Cukrowicz says to complete her sentence.

Violet then becomes agitated, imploring the doctor to help her niece, who is mad, and finally getting to the detail that explains it all: she is saying terrible things about Sebastian. When pressed about what kinds of things she is saying, Violet is unable to produce an example, but instead refers to a he-said/she-said incident with the elderly gardener at St. Mary’s. Cukrowicz then admonishes Violet that the surgery is risky and that the pacifying effects could be permanent, and Violet seems to gets excited, almost licking her chops in anticipation. Take care of my niece, she intimates, and the money will come.

[image error]If Violet were not already frighteningly strange, she shifts her rambling banter to another anecdote about Sebastian seeing the face of God. Cukrowicz is captivated by now, his eyes wide, and she tells him that she has never told anyone the story before. The mother-son couple had gone to the Encantadas to watch baby sea turtles hatch and try to make it to the sea before being eaten by birds. She relays the narrative in the spookiest terms, turning an observation of natural phenomena into a life-changing religious experience that taught Sebastian about life and death. Sebastian saw the cruelty of the world there and translated into a theory of life. As she finishes, Violet and Cukrowicz are flanking a statue of Death, and she says again, “Suddenly, last summer,” she learned that her son’s ideas about the brutal experience were correct.

The pair leaves the garden to return to the house, and upon entering a study, find Mrs. Holley and her son George. The two are obviously simpletons compared to Violet. While George is loading suits out of a wardrobe, his mother is reading a letter that was left on a desk. They feign coy ignorance and greet Violet and Cukrowicz amiably, reminding Violet that she said that George could have Sebastian’s clothes. Violet is put off by the pair, asking them to get what they came to get and leave as soon as possible.

But Mrs. Holley just chatters and chatters, drawing tidbits and intimations out of Violet at Cukrowicz looks on. While George is gawking over his newfound treasures, Violet and Mrs. Holley banter about Katherine, the “girl” who Violet has called Cukrowicz about, and who is Mrs. Holley’s daughter and George’s sister. Mrs. Holley hears that Cukrowicz is a doctor and is concerned that Violet has had another of her “hysterical seizures,” but on finding out that he might help “Kathy,” she is glad (not knowing about his specialty, of course). Then, Mrs. Holley and Violet begin to discuss a picture that Cukrowicz has found, describing how it was the Mardi Gras ball and how lovely Katherine looked in clothes the Violet had lent her, but also acknowledging without details that it was not a happy evening. Violet soon grows weary of the mother and son, and tells them to leave. She calls them “neanderthals,” wonders out loud how such a family could have produced a jewel like Katherine, then begins again to praise Sebastian’s charm, wit, and sophistication.

It is in the moments after the Holleys leave that we get a better look into what happened to Sebastian. Cukrowicz remarks that Violet had not traveled with Sebastian that previous summer, and Violet retorts that Katherine did. And Sebastian died “of a heart attack,” she claims. Katherine was with him. She was not. And Violet returns the conversation to her primary mission: how soon can Cukrowicz see Katherine?

After the long conversation in the garden and the episode with the Holleys, we mustn’t forget that original issue of the money for Lion’s View. Before they part, Violet and Cukrowicz have one last conversation about the money. Cukrowicz wants to know that donation is not commensurate with his operating on Katherine, and Violet reminds him that people are always more interested in things that affect them personally. Cukrowicz understands. One last time, on his way out, Violet remarks on the garden and its prehistoric plants, using the fact to segue into this vaguely threatening comment: “The killers inherit the Earth. They always do.”

Next, we meet Katherine (Elizabeth Taylor). A weighty nun enters her little room, asks her to come along, then leads her through a medieval-looking building and into a library, where Cukrowicz is waiting but unseen. The two women sit but Katherine quickly jumps up, and the sister warns her for no apparent reason. Then Katherine sees something and darts toward it— it is a pack of cigarettes. She lights one and starts to smoke, but the sister tells her that smoking isn’t allowed. Katherine pleads to finish the cigarette but the sister demands that she hand it over, so Katherine sticks the lit end into the nun’s hand. Just then, Katherine see Cukrowicz who is watching calmly. The sister makes her case for being “deliberately burned” but Cukrowicz asks to be left alone with Katherine.

The two then engage in a conversation that is both bluntly honest and a cat-and-mouse game at the same time. Katherine finds out that he is from Lion’s View, a place she would rather not be, and he learns in bits and pieces about the conflict with Violet. Katherine calls her aunt “merciless” in the elder woman’s quest to keep her quiet and out of sight. New to the situation, Cukrowicz doesn’t know what’s going on, why this graceful and pretty young woman is being held as a raving lunatic, so he is all ears. Katherine weaves her way through the subject of Sebastian, who she describes as so charming that no one could resist him, and on to the subject of her Aunt Violet. She tells Cukrowicz that only recently Sebastian had decided to leave the world and become a monk; distraught, Violet had followed him into that life as a way to urge him back home, and while she was there, Mr. Venable had died, alone, asking only to see his wife as his last request. Violet had chosen Sebastian over her husband, a telltale sign of her devotion to him, Katherine says.

But since Katherine’s main problem is that her memory is gone, Cukrowicz asks to tell him about a memory, any memory, to get her mind going. she begins to talk about the Mardi Gras ball, an event that Violet had referenced with disgust, so Cukrowicz perks up. Katherine then sits and lazily begins to tell the story. She had gone to the ball with “a boy who got too drunk to stand up,” and when she wanted to go home, a man she’d never seen before appeared and offered to take her. But instead of taking her home, he took her to secluded place called the Dueling Oaks and had sex with her. Katherine claims that she hadn’t understood what was going to happen, but it did happen, then he took her home, remarking that they’d “better forget it” since he had a pregnant wife. Katherine didn’t accept that and returned to the ball, where she caused a huge scene— until Sebastian pulled her away.

Once that story is done, Cukrowicz tries to move her even further forward. Katherine explains in fits and starts that she and Sebastian were close, but she stops short of revealing what happened when he died in Cabeza de Lobo (Spain) last summer. She says that she doesn’t remember but also doesn’t believe that he had a heart attack. However, that fairly peaceful moment turns quickly into something more sinister as Katherine half-recalls the clanging music played on the streets, which she wishes away until she finally screams and falls crying in Cukrowicz’s arms. The sister comes in to intervene, but Cukrowicz tells her to leave, then Katherine kisses him tenderly. And the mood shifts. She becomes peacefully again and speaks to him in a sultry way, before leaving the room. Over at Lion’s View, she remarks, she can wear nice clothes and look pretty for her new friend, the doctor.

Across town at the asylum, Hockstader takes Cukrowicz out on the balcony to look over a vacant lot full of debris and trash. It will become the site of the new neurosurgery wing, paid for by Violet Venable. Hockstader is ready to move forward and is glad that Cukrowicz will operate on Katherine so he can get the $1,000,000 for the building. But Cukrowicz is not certain that he will operate, and Hockstader wrinkles his brow. The stodgy old administrator wants that money. They are interrupted when a nurse comes in to say that Katherine is in her room, not in the main ward but the nurse’s wing, and that she has had her hair done and everything. Hockstader reminds the young surgeon that Violet believes that he has committed to do a lobotomy on Katherine, and Cukrowicz assures him that he knows she thinks that.

In the hallway, Cukrowicz then runs into Mrs. Holley and George who are on their way in to see Katherine, who is all fixed up and wearing a black dress. Everything is pleasant enough, but George changes the tone when he tells his mother that they have business to attend to. Katherine can’t imagine what they mean, but it does come out: to accept a $100,000 “inheritance” from Sebastian, Violet demands that Mrs. Holley sign paperwork that will allow Katherine to be permanently committed and lobotomized. The mother and son want the money for George’s future. Katherine is horrified. 

She runs out of her room and into the hallway, but take a wrong turn onto an observation walkway above the men’s dayroom. Of course, the men go wild, some jumping up top grab her ankles. Katherine escapes quickly though, going back the way she came, and she is soon discovered by Cukrowicz and taken back to her room. There, they have a heart-to-heart about the plans as Katherine understands them, but Cukrowicz says that he isn’t sure whether he’ll actually operate. He asks her to hold on before making a  judgment about him, and has a male orderly to come in and sedate her. As Katherine is getting her shot, she is rambling about how blondes were next, how Sebastian described people like menu items, explaining that he was tired of the dark ones and was moving to blondes next . . . 

After Katherine has faded away, we see a long black limousine outside of Lion’s View, and we know that Violet has come. Cukrowicz escorts her into a sun room, and she gives him a give, a small bound volume of one of Sebastian’s poems. She explains that, every summer, he wrote poem. The rest of the year was simply preparation for that one poem.  He always wrote one, every summer . . . until last summer, when he didn’t. Violet claims that, without her he couldn’t write.

“Without me, he died,” she says.

Cukrowicz then pushes Violet about the facts of Sebastian’s death, including a letter that Mrs. Holley had seen, but Violet insists that there was no letter, only a death certificate. As she tries to lighten the mood and leave, Cukrowicz pushes her again, this time about Sebastian’s person life. Violet is offended and insists that he was “chaste,” and that she was the only one who could meet his needs. We sense the grotesque nature of the relationship, and Violet’s obsessive need to be the only person in her son’s life. 

Cukrowicz then suggests that she see Katherine, that it might help the young woman to remember. Violet is hesitant but agrees, feigning ease about it. In the little room, Katherine is waking up. She recognizes Violet and berates her for “forcing” her mother and George to sign the commitment papers to get the $100,000. Violet leaves, attempting at a graceful exit, but she is soon met again by Cukrowicz and Katherine in the sun room. The young woman again challenges Violet’s narrative of a maternal love that made their lives perfect. Katherine disagrees, at once talking at Violet and to Cukrowicz, saying that she and Sebastian simply used people. According to Katherine, Sebastian had asked her to accompany him in his summer travels because his mother was no longer attractive. Violet attempts to shut down this alternate narrative but Katherine continues, saying that Sebastian used them both as “decoys” to “procure for him,” to “make contacts.” Cukrowicz seems not to understand. It is never said, but still understood: Sebastian was gay and needed attractive women to help him meet men. Violet is appalled that her secret is coming out, but Katherine is relentless. After Violet faints, Katherine leaves the room, and Hockstader arrives to escort Violet out.

In the hallway, Katherine wanders for a moment, then lets herself into a door leading to the balcony above the women’s day room. The women slowly go into hysterics as she climbs over the rail, ostensibly to kill herself, but quickly a male orderly sneaks up on her and wrestles her back onto sure footing.

The bureaucrat Hockstader is now livid. He catalogs Katherine’s sins as evidence of her mania and implores Cukrowicz to agree to the surgery, We know: he wants the building, and he wants the money, and he wants Cukrowicz to operate on Katherine so he can have them. Cukrowicz, however, asks for more time, so Hockstader gets on the phone, trying to reach another doctor. But Cukrowicz stalls him. He wants to try something, tomorrow, at Violet Venable’s house.

That something is hypnosis. The final half-hour of the nearly two-hour film consists of Katherine telling the story of Sebastian’s death, which she witnessed. She is hypnotized by Dr. Cukrowicz and breaks into a dreamy story about her previous summer with Sebastian at Cabeza de Lobo, a term that means ‘head of the wolf.’ The whole cast sits on pins and needles as Katherine tells what happened in a breathy voice, heavy with anxiety. Going off Katherine’s earlier proclamation that she was there to attract men for her closeted cousin, she tells the onlookers – much to Violet’s chagrin – how they were at the beach and Sebastian had made her wear a white, see-through bathing suit. Additionally, Sebastian had drawn the attention of a group of boys who were street urchins and who played a raucous kind of “music” by clanging on homemade metal instruments. There, the combination of the heat, the tension over Katherine’s bathing suit, and the pressures of the begging boys had gotten too much for Sebastian, who fled the little restaurant where they had tried to take refuge. However, as Sebastian ran through the steep streets, chased by the boys, he eventually collapsed on a hill, where the hungry children pounced on him and chewed at his flesh— just like the birds had attacked the turtles in the Encantadas. Katherine, of course, is mortified by seeing her cousin cannibalized. We now know the reason for her madness, and the reason that Violet wants the memory of what happened to her supposedly celibate son erased. Sebastian did not have a heart attack, he was eaten alive in broad daylight. 

The film closes with Cukrowicz escorting Katherine out, and with Violet ascending in her elevator, back to that world-above where she does not have to face the truths of real life.

While the sensationalism of a story that ends in cannibalism may draw many viewers’ attention to that awful matter, as a Southern story, Suddenly, Last Summer is also a heady commentary on being a homosexual man in the South in the first half of the twentieth century. It is clear from each side’s version of events that Sebastian’s jaunts to Europe every summer were so that he could be himself, whether that meant being a poet (to Violet) or being gay (to Katherine). Certainly, in the episode at the Mardi Gras ball, where Katherine gives herself willingly to married man who she doesn’t even know, Sebastian saw a companion who could “procure” for him better than his aging mother could. And though it is never overtly stated, most critics agree that the street urchins knew him from his paying them for sex. Ultimately, it was this lifestyle that led to his death, though I wonder whether Tennessee Williams – a Southern gay man himself – wanted us to see that demise as his comeuppance. 

Suddenly, Last Summer had to be set in New Orleans and required the unseemly attitude of self-righteousness displayed by some among the upper classes. Unlike Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, this one couldn’t have played out in the rural idylls of a Mississippi plantation. It needed the seedy, lurid reputation of the Crescent City to prop up its back story. Here, too, we’re dealing with the privilege of very wealthy people to exercise their will on those without means. Violet didn’t earn the massive wealth that gave her such privilege, but her husband’s money allows her to have whatever truth she wants in her presence. She has protected her gay son from the harshness of a homophobic Southern culture by instilling in him a sense that people are simply there to be used, that their lives and their feelings don’t matter. However, when he is faced with desperate poverty (in the form of the starving street urchins) and with having to consider other people’s feelings (as he had to when Katherine did want to wear a see-through bathing suit), Sebastian Venable could not cope. With the façades created by his mother broken down, Sebastian Venable could not continue living. A harsh commentary on the attitudes of Southern aristocracy.

 

A Southern Movie Bonus: Yet Another Spooky, Scary Southern Sampler, the 21st Century Edition

In October, everybody loves horror movies. Even people who don’t like horror movies. All of the movies listed below are set in the South, are available on streaming services, and can satisfy a Halloween-time craving for a spooky, scary movie. Earlier this month, the sampler focused on older movies from the late ’60s to the early ’80s. This time, all four were released in the new millenium.

The St. Francisville Experiment (2000)

After The Blair Witch Project did so well in 1999, it was probably tempting to grab those coattails and hope that audiences would latch on to another film like it. That didn’t happen with this one. Roundly panned a bad movie, St. Francisville is set in southern Louisiana and attempts to capitalize on many of the stereotypes associated with that fabled place. (The real St. Francisville is north of Baton Rouge.)

With the subtitled, “This Ain’t No Walk in the Woods,” you’ll get what you’d expect from this film: flashlights in the dark, screaming college students, flying furniture, all the things.

2001 Maniacs (2005)

This sequel to 1964’s Two Thousand Maniacs! is very different film than its predecessor. The production value is better, but this improvement causes it to lose what the original had: the total DIY feel derived from stale acting and red paint as blood. The mayor is played this time by Robert Englund of Freddy Krueger fame, which also takes away the over-acting and loud guffawing of the earlier portrayal, which was like a sinister combination of Colonel Sanders and Foghorn Leghorn. But it stays true to the premise that a group of outsiders who are passing through must be sacrificed to Civil War-based quest for revenge.

This film is not going to be for everyone. Where the mid-1960s film was wild and raw, this one is polished and gruesome. Modern grindhouse films are known for blood and gore. 2001 Maniacs is not exactly a good selection for “Netflix and chill.” 

Hatchet (2007)

And Hatchet is more grindhouse. Based once again in Louisiana, this gory mess of a film starts with a group of twenty-something guys reveling in the French Quarter, until one of them decides to break with the beer-and-boobs motif and take a boat tour into the bayou. The others are against it, but one friend feels bad and decides to go along. Of course, they get stranded along with the varied group of pretty girls, tourists, etc. The problem is: out in the swamp is a deformed maniac who mercilessly murders everyone he lays eyes on. 

Most of the plot of Hatchet is people running, screaming, and getting killed in really nasty ways, but at the risk of making sound one-dimensional, it does start out with New Orleans, partying, heavy metal, and half-naked girls.  

The School in the Woods (2010)

For this year’s two samplers, we spend a lot of time in Louisiana, so we’ll end there, too. The School in the Woods takes on two familiar scenarios: paranormal researchers who go to find out if the stories are true, and young people isolated in the middle of nowhere. Once again, we’ve got flashlights and an abandoned building, but this time, we add tarot cards, little ghost children, and other elements that would easily scare a girlfriend into her boyfriend’s lap so he can make a move. 

The School in the Woods may be predictable but it does deliver what the Halloween scary-movie craving calls for. It plays on fears of the South as a haunted place, where the angry remnants of terrible events are more likely spring up and make you sorry you came looking for them.

See the Spooky, Scary Southern Sampler from last year or the more recent sampler from earlier this month.