Well, hello there. This is a busy month for me, but I think I have a system in place, and if 
I stick to that system, the project at hand shouldn’t overwhelm my days and nights. We’ll see.
Writing: Working on said project, daily until mid-August, and then perhaps for revisions and such in September. The Thing is targeted for publication next spring, so it’s all hands on deck. I’ve made an excellent running start – at least from my perspective.
Finished the Lenten devotional, turned it in on time. Hopefully, it’s good.
Still hoping to get some more thoughtful stuff up here and perhaps on Medium. Would you like the short version? It’s:
If virtual schooling through an institution or system is the main option being offered to you for your kids this fall, and if you are not happy with that option…do something else. Opt out. De-register your kids from the system (the system is not going to like this because it will lose the money they get for your student’s presence on their roll) and, if you can, do it yourself. Get in contact with your local homeschooling crew, find space and time to connect your kids with peers and tutors, get space to let them run and create.
If the schools are going to opt out of in-person instruction….let’s opt-out of them.
If you are going to have to school at home….do it yourself, on your own terms, and in line with your children’s interests and needs. The resources are out there.
And if you are a former teacher…consider getting into the tutoring/caregiver biz. The need and demand is huge.
Reading: I read Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing over the past couple of days. It was free via Prime Reading, and I wanted something light. It was okay. Not a total waste of time, although it was repetitively preachy on certain issues and much of the characterization was more caricature and there was the expected share of of course throughout – as in, “of course she’d say that…”
The core theme is worth grappling with, and ties into something I think about a lot – to look at one’s past and see actions one “regrets” – but to also deal with the fact that if those regrettable choices had not been made, you wouldn’t be experiencing the good of the present. I felt a little bit more focused reflection on that would have given the book more substance.
Anyway, now we’re on to Malamud. The Assistant.
(I managed to find a “copy” on the Internet Archive that I could borrow for longer than one hour, so that was good.)
Also, from today’s mail: The Love that is God: An Invitation to the Christian Faith by Frederick Bauerschmidt, prof at Loyola in Maryland and a permanent deacon in the Baltimore Archdiocese.
I’ve read most of the first chapter, and will probably read the rest today. I predict this is going to both a keeper and a give-it-away. Brief – that is, not intimidating – but rich and substantive, presented in a way perfectly suited to the moment. Excellent, so far.
Listening: Lots of Gershwin – the three main preludes as well as “Novelette in Fourths.” Starting to listen to quite a bit of the 3rd movement of the Moonlight Sonata. That is being tackled.
Much, much church music being listened to, as Musician Son played three Masses in two different churches last weekend, and has a funeral on Friday.
Same kid finally was able to purchase an electric guitar yesterday, and spent part of last night learning the Better Call Saul theme. So I don’t mind that purchase.
Also, Son-in-Law, who is doing regular “New Music Mondays”– someday these performers will be able to perform live again, with an actual audience. Soon, soon, soon, we pray.
Planning:
God willing and the Covid don’t rise, planning on getting a kid off to college in a few weeks and then a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. But who knows, these days…
Watching:
Television time has become dominated by a video game – the Ghost of Tsushima – which someone had been looking forward to for…years, is not an exaggeration. That, combined with the fact that same kid is reading Shogun, has seen many Kurosawa films and is also watching some weird Japanese animated series called Naruto makes me glad that we made it to Japan a couple of years ago, so at least there’s some real-life context to all of this.
We did watch a couple of movies last week, though.
Our Man in Havana which I liked a lot. Well, that’s a given – Alec Guiness in a Carol Reed-directed film? Script by Graham Greene based on his own novel? Set in Cuba sort of in the midst of pre- and post-revolutionary times? (Castro visited the set)
It’s not quite top-tier, at the level, say of Reed’s The Third Man or the Ealing comedies. But it is very enjoyable, with an amazing cast – besides Guinness, you have Noel Coward, Burl Ives and best of all, Ernie Kovacs as Segura, the rather villainous police chief. Kovac’s early death (at 42 in a car accident…returning from Milton Berle’s son’s baby shower being held and Billy Wilder’s house and Jack Lemmon identified his body….) was such a tragedy. He had an insane, off-kilter comedic mind and a winning presence on film.
Anyway, the plot of both novel and film is that the Guinness character is a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana in the late 50’s and somehow gets recruited by the British spy agency…and just starts making stuff up. Fabricates agents, weapons plans – and sends it all in. Of course, there are Consequences, but it’s all delightfully blackly satirical, as the whole notion of “loyalty” to a entity called a “country” is called into question and then – not to spoil anything, hopefully – my favorite element, which is the price one pays – or doesn’t – for one’s misdeeds.
They haven’t left us much to believe in, have they?–even disbelief. I can’t believe in anything bigger than a home or vaguer than a human being.
And then there was Gone with the Wind, which, come to think about it, plays in some ways with similar themes.
I, of course, have seen it several times, including in the theater – no, no, not in 1939, but during one of its regular theatrical re-releases back in the 70’s, I imagine. It’s the kind of film that really should be seen in the theater, and indeed, our local Alabama vintage showcase theater has traditionally shown GWTW as the closing event of the summer film series – which of course, didn’t happen this year. And honestly, I’ve always been a little surprised, since moving here, that they did show it at all, and made it unapologetically a Big Finale. Yes, this is Alabama, but Birmingham is very blue and the arts community here blue to the bone.
And…so I really wouldn’t be surprised if, after this year, that was the end of showing GWTW and the Alabama Theatre anyway.
So, eh, let’s watch it. It took a couple of nights, but I’m glad we did watch it. It was mostly enjoyable, but yes, definitely worth a critique, as it has from the beginning.
I actually have never seen it as a total romanticization of the Old South mostly because Scarlett O’Hara is a terrible person and Ashley Wilkes is a milquetoast wimp. These are the two most attached to the pre-War South, and both are delusional in their own ways. I think it’s very clear and completely fair to see the character of Scarlett as a deep critique of the antebellum South – she’s crazily, frenetically attached to myth, she refuses to accept reality, she has to be practically forced to live in the present, she uses people right and left, and when she does manage to shake off the past and live in the present so successfully, it’s all about personal benefit and exploitation.
And Vivian Leigh is perfectly cast.
(As is everyone else. And so strange to watch the film and say, “Yup, that’s Olivia de Havilland and she’s still alive.”)
Of course, in terms of race and enslavement, the film falls far short, One might even say it collapses. (I read the book, probably when I was about 13 or so, and remember none of it – I don’t know if it can be critiqued on the same grounds). Just imagine what a stronger film it would be if the Black characters were presented as whole human beings who perhaps were not as accepting of their situations as the film presents, if slavery were presented as a problem – as the problem – not just as background noise.
So, while I think Scarlett and Ashley are fairly effective critiques of the antebellum South as characters, their lack of engagement with the issue of slavery at all drastically weakens the critique.
But the film put the nostalgic Lost Cause mythology — by that point, the dominant national view of the Civil War — front and center, starting with the opening title cards paying tribute to “a land of Cavaliers and Cotton fields,” a “pretty world where Gallantry took its last bow.”
Even during production, there were calls for an African-American boycott. Afterward, there were protests outside theaters in Chicago, Washington and other cities.
While responses to the finished film in the black press were mixed, the criticism was harsh. The Chicago Defender initially published a column calling it inoffensive and the performances of Hattie McDaniel (Mammy) and Butterfly McQueen (Prissy) examples of “Negro artistry.” But a week later, it ran a scathing review calling it “a weapon of terror against black America,” a sentiment echoed in other black papers like the Pittsburgh Courier, which denounced the depiction of all blacks as “happy house servants and unthinking, helpless clods.”
Among those who saw it around this time was a teenage Malcolm X. “I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Oh, Butterfly McQueen. She can’t help her voice – watch this interesting short interview with her – but the script and direction make the Prissy character painful to watch.
We enjoyed watching GWTW, although it’s certainly not a definitive presentation of anything except 1939 Hollywood. What I find most interesting about it – aside from considering a counterfactual that actually engages with enslavement and oppression as supports for what Scarlett is yearning for – is the power of ambiguity.
Once again, I am thinking about how we in the present misrepresent the past, and I’m not talking about the Civil War era. I’m talking about the mid-20th century, which was supposedly an era in which men and women played clearly defined roles, in which “good women” were compliant homemakers and “good men” were noble breadwinners – and we’re led to think that this is what mid-century Americans thought and idealized and against which the 1960’s counterculture and feminism so righteously rebelled.
Well, of course, just watch some films from the period and read some books and you see a far more complex landscape. One in which powerful, engaging films – and the films that last – are steeped in ambiguity (Our Man in Havana) and certainly miss the boat on race, but do manage to present female characters who are anything but Happy Homemakers and films in which endings are often open-ended, with, Hayes Code notwithstanding, no clear punishment or rewards for boundary-breakers.
You look at the ending of GWTW and what do you see – Scarlett, finally played her last hand with Rhett, left, weeping, seemingly bereft, but, at the very last moment, hearing the call of Tara and realizing…tomorrow is another day!
I think the way this has been transmitted in popular culture is as a moment that affirms Scarlett’s strength, and confirms our experience of her strong will. And it does – but it also affirms, once more, her delusions, doesn’t it? That was my primary takeaway on this viewing – geez louise, Scarlett. Will you ever learn? Let. Go.
Charlotte was Both 