Notes regarding Heroes and movies.

There are several things I should be doing, so of course I'm going to ignore them and work on a blog post instead. The venomous expression of politics, with its accompanying slithering about, have made Facebook and Twitter a fly over zone for now. You know, I've never been fond of that 'fly over' expression, as it seems to me to be a bit of rhetoric that seeks to be divisive; it has a pejorative built in. I will note that the non 'fly over' portions of the country are those portions of the East and West coasts that are home to those awful liberal 'elites' (i.e. "blue" on a political map). They are almost magical areas where sanity still seems to prevail these days. Those areas fare better in everything from quality of life studies to education, health care, happiness, financial stability, and generate a sizeable portion of the country's income. Which explains why the Trump administration's budget and tax plans seem to target those very areas. I don't want to leave that statement unsupported, but I shall for now.

From 'Black Sheep' (2006)

There are plenty of other statements I'd like to make without posting voluminous notes to support my comments. I could, for instance, point out that two of our governments' agencies which heavily influence the daily life and future of our country are the Office of Management and Budget, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The two men in charge of those agencies were both politically active in their respective states. If one were to take an honest look at the financial health of those states, the status of education in those states, the tax burden, etc. ad infinitum, one of the first things one might notice, if one can look behind the curtain of tourist and relocation PR, is that both states are financially distressed to the point of being referred to economically as "sinkholes". Their people are largely poor. Their educational systems are in disaster mode. These states are the bottom of our country's barrel. These men are regarded by the current administration, and their enablers, as heroes.

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. More than a gal with a sword.

A recent discussion with a friend raised the issue of the Hero, and the Hero's place, in our entertainment culture. I had finally caught up with the 'Wonder Woman' movie, which was widely praised and a huge financial success. While it was delightful to have the super hero figure be a woman, there was little else to differentiate it from any other superhero movie, and I pointed out in discussion that the movie simply substituted a female lead for a male. Kind of like the change of sex for the role of Hildy between the stage play and movie of 'The Front Page' to the remake version known as 'His Girl Friday'. The hero role being female was simply a change, it didn't inform or impact the story. 'Wonder Woman' had the same tired tropes as any other superhero movie. I should point out that I'm just making observations; no judgement on the product is intended. It is product, and that statement isn't intended as a judgement either. I found it to be an enjoyable and entertaining movie. I'm not trying to impose my thoughts or vision on it. You know, I hate this. I hate having to qualify every statement; in this case to make it clear that I have no problem with female superheroes, lead roles, or action figures. I'd like to see more of them, and I'm delighted that young girls (or older girls, or women of any age) can have female fantasy figures which might inspire their dreams and persons.

Gal Gadot as Wonder woman,  her sword placed as if it were...
umm, nevermind.

The discussion veered to the first 'Star Wars' movie, which I rushed to see on opening day after reading a review which linked that movie's themes to Joseph Campbell's books, 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces', and 'Myths to Live By'. Such themes reflected some of my interests, and both books had been influences on my thinking. Thoughts of a hero's quest have been rambling around my brain due to the movies I've watched these last three nights.

Sunday afternoon was spent at a younger friend's home attending his monthly 'movie night'. The idea is that there is a stated theme; each person attending should (if so moved) bring a DVD of a movie reflecting that theme, and give a very quick pitch on its behalf. Those in attendance write on slips of paper the name of the movie which most appeals to them. The slips are put into a hat, from which one slip is selected, providing the selection to be viewed. The theme this time was 'really bad movies'. The winner was 'Black Sheep', a New Zealand indy effort in which a flock of sheep become ravenous flesh eating killers of humans. It's got blood, guts, a middling implied criticism of money making science, a zombie or two, and makes particularly good use of sheep flatulence. Science, in this case, was a substitute for magical forces. The male hero is a younger brother with a phobia about sheep, who has returned to the family ranch to sell his interest to his evil and deluded older brother. The boy, in his journey, must confront and overcome his phobia, confront and overcome his brother, and become action oriented enough to overcome his nelly attributes to fight off the marauding sheep for the survival of the main characters and all of mankind. The girl hero arrives to expose animal abuses at the ranch. Her journey moves her from babbling about new age mysticism to becoming an action figure fighting the sheep, helping the younger brother to survive, saving mankind, and, of course falling in love with the younger brother.

Experience (Danielle Mason) and Henry (Nathan Meister) in the midst of a long day fighting sheep. 

The sheep(le) are out to get you , you know. Be warned.

John Wayne as Ringo.

Monday night, a friend unexpectedly had free time and came over to watch one of the movies I wanted to see and delete from my digital video recorder. We settled on the 1939 'Stagecoach'. In it, the male hero escapes from jail in order to extract revenge on three bad guy brothers who killed his family and whose false testimony put him in prison in the first place. His journey includes fighting to save the stagecoach from Indian attack even though a sheriff has him in shackles. The girl hero is less action oriented, instead proving herself as a caring, nurturing goddess despite being thrown out of town by the uplifter ladies league for being of questionable moral character in her choice of employment. The movie took great pains not to use the word prostitute, and greater pains to not state that another female character was pregnant. The hero, named Ringo, was played by a youngish John Wayne. The good-bad girl was Clare Trevor, who had top billing. The rest of the cast was character actor heaven. It's the kind of movie which keeps things moving in an attempt to distract the viewer from questioning some sizeable holes in the story. I could, and should, go on at length about the movie, but that will have to be its own post in that great someday in the sky. I'll just note this about one iconic shot - Ringo is first seen, standing by the side of the road, his shotgun male appendage held akimbo. As he walked towards the stagecoach, I noticed was that he didn't fill out his jeans all that well. Simply put, John Wayne had a saggy female pear shaped ass. Otherwise, he was the slightly nelly butch straight shooter who treated the good-bad girl with the respect that no one else could muster, save perhaps for the drunken doctor who was really Scarlett O'Hara's father.

 

Last night, another friend came over on the spur of the moment. We watched the 1940 'Thief of Bagdad'. (Note to the Turner Classic Movies channel: the print quality was shameful.) Sabu, then 16, played the titular hero. He spends a portion of the movie as a dog, due to a spell by an evil wizard. He also helps a wronged Prince regain his throne, helps the Prince save the woman the Prince loves, copes with an ill tempered genie, fights off a giant spider without falling into an aqueous pit inhabited by octopi, visits magical places, and triumphs over other similar adversities while fulfilling prophecy. For his part, the Prince is cut from the same sort of slightly nelly English male cloth as an Ashley Wilkes or Sebastian Flyte. He must overcome magical blindness, find his Princess, and defeat the usurper of his throne, the very magician whose anti-education, pro-punishment, rule by fear, power mad greedy attitudes starves the population, and provides the evil which engulfs several kingdoms. In this, the oldest of the movies being noted, the hero journey for the Princess involves staying out of the clutches of the evil wizard, and falling instantly in love with the Prince who speaks in poetic phrases.

Two of the movies involved Princesses (Thief of Bagdad, and Wonder Woman whose journey includes learning that she is the daughter of Zeus and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. She is out to kill Ares, the God of War. In classical Greek mythology, Hippolyta was Ares daughter. The movie's comic book mythology avoids the potential complications of that one. In Stagecoach, One might make a case for the woman traveling to meet her husband being a Princess stand-in. She was a Southern Lady, which figures slightly in the Grand Hotel on wagon wheels plot. The girl in Black Sheep starts as a satirical take on new age hippie throwbacks and could thus be said to be a Princess stand in, but was otherwise just a modern gal who proves to have some gumption.



Black Sheep (2006) Experience got a gun.  



In a sense, three of the movies had magical realms;  Black Sheep's was the New Zealand farm in the countryside which left me wondering when the hobbits were going to appear; Wonder Woman's realm was an island protected by Zeus' magic cloud cover, and Thief was set in ancient Iraq's mythical period. If there was a magical place in Stagecoach, it was Ringo's ranch in Mexico where he and the good-bad girl could live in blessed happy ever afterness if only they could reach it. It was only mentioned, never seen, and not integral to the story.

In all four stories, the heroes overcome obstacles, and fight for their happiness, as well as the common good. All of them must deal with the sacrifice of friends or relatives along their journeys' paths. In all but Stagecoach, the heroes save the world.

Of these four movies, the only one which didn't involve magical forces was Stagecoach. Well, unless you count too many bullets, or killing all of your enemies in an impossible situation (the main event occurs off screen). This American myth has a wronged hero, willing to suffer the penalty of 'doing what a man's gotta do'.



The Stagecoach about to depart a rest stop, even though they know Geronimo is out and about.
John Carradine (far left), Andy Devine (holding the reins), George Bancroft (riding shotgun), Chris Pin-Martin as the innkeeper, Louise Platt as the woman traveling to meet her husband, Donald Meek as the milquetoast liquor salesman, Clare Trevor as the good-bad girl, John Wayne as the Ringo Kid, Berton Churchill as the thieving bank manager. 
Thomas Mitchell, who won an Academy Award for his drunken doctor, is not in the picture.

Now, let's go back for a moment to those two erstwhile heroes of the right, the men in charge of the nation's budget, and the nation's environment. They present themselves as John Wayne he-men out to conquer a world gone mad due to the ideals of those annoying liberals who want to feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate the masses, and provide health care in a reasonable manner. Needless to say, these men do not fit the hero myth. Their 'common good' is what is good for the power brokers who pay them, those who steal people's money, food, kingdoms, and who unleash unholy forces in the name of profit.

Conrad Veidt, the evil wizard of Thief of Bagdad, plots how to cover up his orange hair.
No wait, that's not right... Mr. Veidt played Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca, and
the murderous somnambulist in the silent German expressionist classic 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.'

What we need these days are honest nelly heroes, their butch helpers, angry women, and pissed off teenagers to work together to rid ourselves of the usurpers of power, who prefer their people uneducated, sent off to endless wars, fighting each other at home for scraps of food, so they can't unite to fight the evil taking over the kingdoms. But that would be the old school hero journey, and involve magical help. Even the American West loner hero living by a moral code seems decidedly old fashioned now. Folks are counting on the investigation being held by Mr. Mueller as magical help. In so many ways, it's the same old tropes.

Dreams remembered

For the last few days those moments just before waking have provided a continuation of the same dream. I don't remember most of it; Dreams often fade quickly. I can recall that just before waking, in an era in which people with education were suspect, a roundup of intellectuals and dissidents had begun.
I was trying to save people, including myself.

Every morning has seen an intention to write in this space. I have started many posts, and left them abandoned. I am certain of the cause; it starts, much as it always does, with reading the news. It just happened again as I began sipping my coffee on a beautiful late Spring morning during the last official month of winter. The news makes me wonder about the use of winter as a metaphor.

For many years, I have kept a file in the "pictures" section of my computer labelled "Dreams Remembered". It consists entirely of old, often fading, photographs of men together, or women together. They are part of a history intentionally buried. When such images were found, often I would guess after the owner of the photo passed, they were destroyed by concerned family members. A good number of them escaped attention even though the pictures seemed to show affection between the subjects. After all, people note, men and women were freer to show affection to each other in days gone by. Such photos depict good friends, or family members. Yet now, in a more liberal time, many such photos seem to imply other relationships were depicted. They may be mementoes of a more innocent time, but they are also stories lost, or destroyed. For those who can see what is there, they are dreams remembered.

Two civil war soldiers in a hand tinted photo from the Library of Congress, posted to the Shorpy site.

Lest anyone assume that over interpretation is involved, here's a relatively sedate photo in which closeness

is portrayed, but there is no physical contact. Poet Walt Whitman is on the left, Pete Doyle on the right.
Pete Doyle, it should be noted, was Whitman's lover.

Having one's picture taken in those days was expensive. There was only one copy per photograph.

Were these two friends sharing an expense, a memento of a friendship, or something more?

As the process of photography changed and the cost was reduced,

some photographs began to suggest a little more about the nature of a relationship. 

These dreams come to mind due to a four night drama program which has been unfolding on the Disney owned ABC broadcast television network. "When We Rise" is a slightly fictionalized story of three people whose lives intersected in San Francisco, and the parts they played in the gay liberation movement.  The first part was shown on Monday, just a few days after the newly installed U.S. Attorney General rescinded and abandoned the previous administration's policy that allowed transgender teens to use the bathroom of the sex with which they identify. The new Attorney General had promised, just a few days before, that despite his past record in the segregated South, he would uphold civil rights of all Americans. He was passed on a party line vote, "conservative" and reactionary Republicans outnumbering the Democrats. The mini-series episode that night portrayed a time, in the first years after the Stonewall riots, when gay men and women were considered mentally ill, were routinely denied the rights of Americans, were routinely dismissed from their jobs, thrown out of their homes, denied housing, and just as routinely beat up and/or killed by thugs and police alike. I remember all of it, and was not ready for the pain it brought back.

Anita Bryant, pictured above, was a singer and orange juice pitchwoman who campaigned to rescind a Florida law

which banned discrimination of the basis of sexual orientation. She famously said that she would prefer

"my child be dead than homo".

The second night of the mini-series was postponed due to the new President of the United States giving an address to the entire assembled Congress. The speech was remarkable for dropping Mr. Trump's confrontational style, acting like an adult instead of a raving lunatic. The immediate response from the press, which Mr. Trump had constantly belittled, castigated, accused of making up stories (i.e. the unfavorable ones), and declared the enemy of the American People, was overly kind, remarking that he suddenly seemed presidential. They didn't really discuss his misrepresentations, distortions, outright lies, and attempts to cover up what may or may not be the truth.

Last night's episode of 'When We Rise' focused on relationships being built by the story's participants, the elation of the election of a gay man (Harvey Milk) to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, his assassination 11 months later, and the rise of what was being called a 'gay disease'.

The episode ended with one of the principals holding a protest in which people in San Francisco began posting the names of friends and lovers lost to this new disease onto the side of city hall. I've been crying a lot. The memories of the death of dear friends, the men with whom I was forming my family, have been overpowering.

This morning, intent on resuming my post of thoughts arising from the old movies I've been watching, I logged onto my computer to discover news that the new Attorney General had been caught lying about his contacts with Russia. These contacts, as well as a number of others surrounding the new administration, seem to expand into an ever deepening well. There are lies upon lies. As the stories of investigations into these incidents become public, they aren't just denied, the press is accused of making them up to discredit the President. Also in the news were further stories about the new administrator of the Federal Communications Commission and his repeal of polices protecting access to the internet, programs which helped the poor afford the internet in their homes, and rules of privacy which had hemmed in internet providers ability to keep records of what sites and information anyone had accessed. All of this is, of course, in the name of fostering business growth and competition. Such information would never be used to assist in rounding up people.

Other news stories concern the President's travel bans, people being deported due to such criminal backgrounds as having traffic violations, people being detained for hours or days without warrants, people having their identification papers checked as they left a flight which started and ended within the United States, and so forth. When the travel ban was imposed to protests and legal actions across the country, Homeland Security backed the President. They will be getting 15,000 new agents. The Department of Defense will get billions, partially to fund new atomic weapons. Other areas of the budget will have to be cut; these include monies for health care, social security, education, and the arts.

The man in the center of the above photograph is Bix Biderbecke. He is one of the men who was instrumental in the development of jazz. He was an alcoholic who died young, at the age of 28. He was gay.

Paul's Grandfather and the sky blue sky.

It's a beautiful Saturday morning here in Vermont. It's gone from 29 degrees Fahrenheit when I started writing this blog entry, to 36 degrees; wispy cirrus clouds spread themselves over portions of a sky that can't seem to make up its mind if it wants to be light blue or Columbia blue.  The piles of snow reflect white, unless they are near the roadside, in which case they are topped with shades of sooty black, and disturbed dirt gray, an effect of automotive exhaust and road/sidewalk plowing. They remind me of the days when snow was generally mixed with soot, when hanging icicles at my father's house were multi-colored thanks to the Dupont plant about an hour's drive away. Memory drifts to my days at the beach, summer in Ocean City, and one particular trip to New York City. I was too poor at the time to afford more than an occasional visit to the laundromat, and having few "good" clothes, hand washed much of what I wore on a day to day basis. I washed my best non-suit shirt for a day trip to New York. The next morning, I washed it again. The water turned black, darker than the color of a well used cast iron frying pan. The black was from the soot in the air. That was the era when smog hung over our major cities and industrial areas, when breathing problems began to be noticed amongst the populace. The daily news programs on the tv reported a smog index. In 1970, under the administration of President Nixon, a Republican, the Environmental Protection Agency was created to deal with such problems. The concept for the EPA had been pushed by Democrats, and modeled on the suggestions which Representative George Miller (a Democrat) had put forth in 1959. More conservative Republicans, as well as major industries, have been attempting to discredit the agency, and gut its regulations, ever since - often using incredible distortions of the truth, and outright lies about the agency and its actions. In the meantime, due to the work of the EPA, the severity of smog was reduced in the United States to such point that it is barely mentioned anymore. This is not true of other countries, like China.

To help consumers make purchasing decisions based on cleaning up the environment, the Safer Choice label was created. Years later, the Energy Star ratings were added to consumer products such as air conditioners and heaters.

Our drinking water has been cleaned up and protected by the EPA. Legislation covered over 80% of our nation's drinking water supply. Reports often seem better than the actual situation, as a number of pollutants never came under regulation. And smaller streams are still used as chemical dumping grounds by corporations which refuse to foot the bill for proper disposal of their effluent. Stories of various areas of the country being told not to drink their water can be found a few times a year. That problem would be much worse if it weren't for the EPA.

The EPA's Clean Air Act was amended in 2011 to include greenhouse gases. Last year, the hole in our planet's ozone layer began closing.

These are just a few of the many things the EPA has accomplished. It is now an agency under siege. Within a day of two of President Trump's inauguration, all of the EPA's research on climate change was deleted from their website. A gag order was imposed by the President preventing any release of information from that agency. It gets worse; I'm only glazing the surface of what has been happening.

Yesterday, Scott Pruitt was approved by a vote of the majority Republicans in Congress to run the EPA, and sworn in as the head of the agency. As close as I can gather, this was done during the President's contentious news conference, in which he castigated news reporting as being unfair to him, mentioned his imagined margin of victory, insulted minorities, and comported himself in such a manner that his denial of creating chaos in the government was obviously a falsehood. Mr. Pruitt was yet another of President Trump's picks to run agencies which they have actively opposed or called for dismantling. Mr. Pruitt has described himself as a ""leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda". Over the last 6 years as Attorney General of Oklahoma, he sued the EPA 14 times over water standards, clean air standards, coal emission laws, and etc. (all of his suits have failed). He also fought for "religious freedom" laws (which would allow someone to refuse business or other service to anyone whose existence violates their religious beliefs - i.e. legalized discrimination), and against the Affordable Care Act, abortion rights, and gay marriage (he even tried to claim that the ruling of the Supreme Court allowing gay marriage did not affect Oklahoma).

I could, and probably should, go on, but I won't.

Today's post was going to be about last night's screening of 'A Hard Day's Night', the 1964 movie which starred the Beatles. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned the blue sky, for that sent me off in another direction. I should probably note that part of the thread of the plot of 'A Hard Day's Night' centers on Paul's Grandfather, a cranky old man who spreads dissention, chaos, and creates arguments wherever he goes.

"I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours."

It has been difficult to return to writing here, even to just jot random notes about the movies I've watched. It's not that I don't want to do so, and it's not the laziness of older age; I think my reluctance has more to do with wanting to protect what has become my own little bubble of sanity and security. Movies, after all, have much value as escapism. As the ad campaign for 'That's Entertainment' put it, "Boy, do we need it now".

Ticket Booth, Times Square, 1954. Photo by Frank Oscar Larson.

Last night, the anchor of the CBS News program introduced a segment by saying, "It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality". My cable box has the capability to 'rewind' whatever has just been shown, kind of like a videotape could be rewound to replay something, or instant replay on a sports program. I had to go back and listen to that introduction again. At first, it was because I couldn't believe the anchor, Scott Pelley, had actually said it. Then I watched it again to savor the moment. And a third time to accurately note the wording of the quote. Frankly, I'm still amazed. It's not something I ever expected to hear on a news report. Certainly not on one of the major networks, and certainly not on CBS, once the center of great reporting by journalists like Edward R. Murrow, and Walter Cronkite, now fallen on the same hard times that beset most news departments under the purview of their networks' entertainment divisions. It would seem that even CBS News has had enough. The sad thing is that most people probably don't realize how important and unprecedented it was to make that statement.

 It is snowing at the moment. It is, as a voice somewhere in the back of my head would put it, "coming down at a pretty good clip". I don't have a particularly wonderful view; Putney Road gets a lot of traffic as it's the main artery going north to the land of shopping malls, empty stores, pizza joints, supermarkets, discount palaces, auto parts, and fast food. A couple of old mid 19th century mansions, once the homes of the local gentry, are in evidence peeking out from under trees, and from behind hedges of evergreen. Even with the traffic, it is still mesmerizing, calling forth the little boy still trapped somewhere within. It's probably the boy who is so entertained by the movies. Certainly the movies lead me to reading a number of books which became favorites. I often bemoan my books being in storage, but I suppose it's better that way. Just before they all got packed into boxes for the trip to a friend's early 18th century barn, I had to sell off quite a few of my best, my favorites, my - yes, friends. It was during a period of unemployment uncertainty and had to be done to raise the necessary emollient for modern life. I don't quite know what I still have left. I would be crushed to discover I sold my Compleat Sherlock Holmes, my annotated copies of Dickens, my reference edition (including manuscript) of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass'. The Alice books have been on my mind a lot recently.

The quote which serves as the title for this post is from one of the Alice's. With the beauty of the falling snow visible before me, the image of falling down a rabbit hole into a world of nonsense seems a fit metaphor for the current political situation in these United States. I've occasionally railed against the present unpolitic politic on Facebook, which does not lend itself to writing of more than a few sentences. People seem to read a paragraph or so and move on. People post links to articles with wildly exaggerated headlines they think bolsters their reality, without having read the accompanying story. Only liberals and reporters seem to be bothered by statements which stress "alternative facts", as noted by one of President The Donald's hench spokespeople. I could go on and on, but I don't want to at the moment. I'm feeling peaceful while looking at falling snow, and such moments of peace are few and far between just now.

I'll try to force myself to come back later, or tomorrow, to make a few notes about some of the movies I'm already beginning to forget. After all, tomorrow is another day. (cue swelling music)