raphael's blog

A slightly unrelated cartoon, with a damn good point.

As I read about the America Eats Project, I wondered if this was an early form of the food critic. Up until then there was no accepted position of a writer who wrote about food as non fiction. Food was food. If your friend said it was good you might eat it, but there was no market for celebrity judging. Now, the writers engaged in the WPA were not serving as critics, but as documenters, trying to preserve American traditions. Like the State tourism guides they helped to enforce the folklore of America. While they various regional food groups still do exist, there is much more overlap, especially in New York. And fast food chains, or chains in general have made it possible to go to the opposite side of the country and get exactly the same food you could have gotten a block from your house. Andrew Gross, in “The American Guide Series: Patriotism as name brand Identification” makes some great points about the WPA state guides which I think could easily be translated to the food guides. By making these traditional food stuffs, often based on the various levels of colonialism and immigration which occurred combined with the climate and local foods, into things to go try out, America eats made them something to be discovered, a meal to be conquered. It was no longer just what some populations in the area ate, it was what every one in that region ate all the time. People in Maine only ate lobster. People in New Orleans only at Gumbo. This is obviously just untrue, but it works like commercial advertising for clothing. All the cool kids wear this style or that designer. Anyways, Gross makes a number of good arguments, but also gives some of this history behind the WPA guides and connects them to other guides and books including Nathan Asch’s The Road: In Search of America. “The unregulated highway is a symbol of laissez-faire economics and a society that cares for profits over people; it is also the geographical complement to Texas' sprawling suburbs.” (gross)

I had been thinking a lot about how especially tourists, but really everyone often missed so much of a place when they traveled there.

Then I saw this.
Slightly problematic of his sister, agent and Pratt in putting him on display but I still thought I should share :

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/nyregion/28about.html?hp

1963

The Argonauts, a book by a collection of college aged students from 1940, or at least the first few chapters anyways, should be examples of what not to do to experience real life. We follow Lillian Ross, George Whitman, Joe Wershba, Helen Ross, and Mel Fiske on their journey out of their cautious academic lives in New York City, into the rest of America. It gives way to much detail about how they saved money by working hard and scamming family members, and getting grants, and scamming friends and so on. Then once they finally make it onto the road, though before the even go through the Holland tunnel, they bore the reader with information about how they paid the toll to cross. Maybe a statistician would be interested in all of their daily and weekly budget plans, but I for one am not. Then the men drive and deal with money, while the women serve as secretaries/ and cooks even though she can’t cook. It is strange that they don’t compile a list of possible people to meet up with until after starting the journey. In fact it seems like a major oversight on their part, which, due to luck, doesn’t blow up in their face immediately. I think in today’s world fewer people create contact sheets of people they could stay with throughout the country, and they definitely don’t do it by memory. It is also strange that she just writes the name, city, and what they would be good for, as if they could walk into Cincinnati and ask the first person the see about where the contact lives. Also in the first few chapters, they travelers find them selves involved in a strike, and heroically go out to join the picket line. This does seem like something many people would do, but it is just written in a way that focuses solely on them and a select few people. The text would have been more engaging if they had talked much less about themselves, much more about the people they met, and had any discussion of their surroundings. At least in the first part of their trip, these students were more like slightly academically dedicated spring breakers than the Argonauts of lore.

slightly off the beaten track :

In the excerpt from “The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth Century North America”, James Jakle discusses all of the ways that tourists were able o get around during the 1930s. First comes the car. Now just accepted as a road trip staple, affordable cars revolutionized travel. People were able to go anywhere they wanted. This very quickly led to a fascination with the car which left the places being driven though, quite literally, by the roadside. Smoother cars, and better highways meant that people didn’t have to think about where they were driving through at all, and could instead play games, sing songs or whatnot. I know that while I was growing up, playing car games was often done, even on shorter day trips in the car. But we also had the radio, and eventually tapes and CDs. Imagine what the tourists from the thirties would do if they saw minivan with a TV screen in the back for the kids!? Jakle also talks about how by making car travel easier, the road systems became more developed. Gas stations, diners, motels and so on, which very clearly led to the chain rest stops we have nowadays. But with so much comfort and new exciting things to see on the road itself, people became obsessed with the idea of driving travel without understanding what they were going to see. They rushed through the sites at the destination in order to DRIVE to the next one and on and on until they went back home. People still do this. I grew up in Albany, so in school we went to New York for a lot of field trips. Since coming to school here I have realized how crazy our trips were. For instance combining the Met, Ellis Island and the wax museum into one day is insane. Or doing the Bronx zoo combined with seeing a matinee show is a lot. As tourists we rushed through these landmarks which one should spend much more time at. Also, like many tourists, we did these things in strange orders. Going from one side of the island to the other and back again, as opposed to a more geographically logical procession. Tourists need people from the area to tell us what to do, but will continue to reject advice that does not fit into our preconceived notion of the place.

The readings this week really seemed to focus on ‘boxcar living’. Hobos had there own whole society under the framework of the mainstream with councils, congresses, lingo, and symbols. It also builds on the tradition of ‘simple living’ which American’s have historically dreamt of. When you live on the rails, everything you own must be able to be carried on your back, and thus possessions are very few. Henry David Thoreau made the idea of a simple life famous with his 1854 work, Walden, based on his experience living in self imposed extreme simplicity for two years in a cabin on Walden Pond. Thoreau wrote “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” Pete Seeger. who wrote the introduction for this edition of Bound for Glory also advocates this simple life. A part of the folk movement in the 30s and ten later the folk revival movemebt of the 60s, Seeger lives in a small rural town in upstate NY in a house he built himself., over the course of a number of years. Seeger, with Guthrie before him, and Dylan after him, had numerous songs about travel, and simplicity, and trains. Living with the bare minimums also plays into the concept of self sufficient, productive American. It is about rugged individualism, the stronghold of the American Dream and a byproduct of a ‘free-market’ society. I also just learned about a show called “The Simple Life” which starred Pairs Hilton and Nicole Richie had a season called “Road Trip” where the heiresses traveled around America pretending to give up their extravagant lifestyles, and trying to fit in/learn about real America. As amusing as it might be, instead of showing a clip from this show however, here’s a Seeger cover of a Guthrie song called Hobo’s Lullaby. The woman in the center of the photo is Eleanor Roosevelt. :

The thing that is forgotten in the romance of the hobo is that even if they were ‘free’ of the commodity culture of America, they were still stuck in the classist system of America where leading a simple life can mean no food, no job, and escaping (or not) the cops on a regular basis. It's still a pretty song....

While watching Michael Moore’s new film “Capitalism: A Love Story” I couldn’t help but think about some of the readings we had been doing in class. “Capitalism” is probably Moore’s best work so far. In it he tries to show how our current recession was created, and how it is an inevitable part of the capitalist system. He also shows that, contrary to popular belief, Capitalism is not the same as democracy, and the free market system as it exists now is almost the opposite of the democratic ideals we hold dear. The movies argument is strong and it includes almost no “gotcha” interviews (thanks Sara Palin). Instead he utilizes interviews with representatives, economists, lawyers, priests, and every day Americans, and political theater events like trying to tape off Wall Street with crime scene tape, or make citizens’ arrests of company CEOs.
Some people in class have seemed to have a problem with the literary perversions in some of the first or second hand accounts we have read which, y’all claim, distort the truth and lead the audience to certain conclusions. While I disagree with you, the same arguments could be made against this film as it makes full use of the Eisensteinian montage. Sergei Eisenstein was a Soviet film director who created and theorized on the idea of montage. In this “arbitrarily selected independent …(outside the given composition and the plot links of the characters) attractions [are put together] with a view to establishing a certain final thematic effect“ (Eisenstein, Montage of Attractions) In other words, by combining lots of somewhat unrelated footage and images into a rhythmic presentation, the filmmaker can create an emotional reaction from the audience. Eisenstein was actually brought to America in 1930 to direct some movies but they failed and were never finished. While here though he befriended Charlie Chaplin and Upton Sinclair, both of who would go on to make major works based on the Great Depression, and traveling. Chaplin’ 1936 “Modern Times” opens with a satiric plate which reads, “Modern Times: a story of industry, of individual enterprise – humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness”

But back to Moore: In “Capitalism” the parts of the movie are intercept with footage from old American and soviet propaganda, as well as information videos on ancient Rome and many other stock clips ranging from riots, to the metropolitan opera. This helps to create a sense of overwhelming cultishness, and shows the hypocrisy of how American functions now.
Moore also shows some of the home reclaiming groups in action, in which a community group takes back a family’s foreclosed home. Like the conversation in beginning of the Grapes of Wrath, it poses the problem of, with such enormous inhuman companies, who do you rebel against. The movie also by default makes the audience think about the Great Depression because it focuses on our current “Great Recession”.

Nathanael West’s “A Cool Million” is a stunning piece of satire while twists and torments the American Dream, in a way we have not yet seen in this class. When beginning to read, the names and the way that the story was told brought up more traditional fairy tales. Miss Prail’s family situation is reminiscent of Cinderella’s. Mr. Whipple of Rat River National Bank seems like a version of Mr. Frog from Wind in the Willows. It incorporates the mysterious two faced unnamed “the fat fellow in the Chesterfield overcoat” (177) who takes on the role of infiltrator, detective, assassin, agitator or even John Wilkes Booth. The people Lem meets on the train, though actually probably realistic, seem like the Artful Dodger, or any multitude of other Dickens characters. Lem himself when he is trading the cow is Jack in the Bean stalk, and for much of the rest of it is Oliver, from Dickens as well. The police and legal system are excessively incompetent, and almost comically violent a la the Keystone Kops. Or this. They, along with the other characters in the story ‘help’ Lem loose his teeth, eye, thumb, leg, and be scalped making him almost into a social realist version of this. The one real problem I had was with the racist nature of some of the characters, like the pimp Wong Fu and his cronies. Or the Chief Satinpenny and Jake Raven, who talks as though he just walked of the stage of a minstral show. I think that some of this may have been part of the satire, as in since its told about “real Americans” the others in the story are even more so just stock characters. It is also likely that much of it is due to the time difference between its authorship and now. The book also reminded me of another satirical piece of American fiction from only three years later. The Cradle will Rock, a play by Marc Blitzein through the Federal Theater Project also bitterly twists the notion of the American Dream, while being much more explicitly pro union and anti war. Here is a clip from a movie made more recently by Tim Robbins about the show, which shows both on stage and off, what was going on. The clip features Mr Mr a wealthy industrialist, his wife Mrs Mr., and their son Jr. Mr.

For me, one of the most interesting parts of the “American Road Trip” article was the soviet perspective on the American Dream. “…the biographies of ilf and petrovfamous millionaires, who all, as if by previous agreement, started their careers as errand paper, or shoeshine boys…[promoting]…a simple ideology :anyone can become a millionaire” (27) The two reply to this American infatuation by stating the simple fact that it is untrue and that people inherit millions, and that only they can govern. The interesting thing here is that, on some level they seem to agree with part of the American dream- the good natured-ness and friendliness of the people. While this may have just been their experience, it also fits with the soviet/ radical idolization of the worker / everyman Anyways, they eventual go back to discussing the faults of the dream: “He worked…he saved up…then his wife fell down the stairs, broke her back, and was crippled for life. From that moment on, everything began to fall apart. The doctors attacked the poor man like bandits.”(28) The above was written in 1935 two soviet tourists in America, and yet it seems like it could be out of yesterday’s newspaper. As much medical, scientific and industrial progress as we have made in the seventy four years since then, why is our medical system seem to have the same faults. People who work hard all there lives can loose everything due to one sudden injury, or medical issue, although now the difficulty is more likely to be with the insurance or medications, not the doctor themselves. To compare the above quote more to the current effort for health care reform, check out Obama’s speech from September 9th.

Full text here Be sure to think good and hard about the American dream as you watch it though. I think the rest of this article was actually amusing. Seeing the thoughts of these two turn into a semi-bizarre saccharine account of America. For example “American’s don’t waste time on stupid things, for example, te torturous process of coming up with names for their towns…why strain yourself when so many wonderful names already exist in the world.” (23) How would they know what it is like to name a town? Another example of their humor is showing one picture of a downtown and one picture of an uptown, and seeming to act as though those two photos could serve as documentation for most of America. I would be interested to see more of what they wrote, and the pictures at the beginning of the Americans chapter which were taken out.

So this week I learned that I barely know anything about square dancing, particularly how to do it. The people in the government camp seem to have so much fun doing it (other than the whole like, getting attacked by the police fear thingy) so I figured I would investigate. According to Ed Gilmore and the Western Square Dancing homepage, the idea of multiple couples dancing in a square came out of the Quadrille, an English and French dance. Some of the steps and movement patterns came out of traditional Scottish dancing. When people from these areas immigrated to the US, the started blending together. Then When the western migration began in full force the two groups really came into contact and what emerged was the first version of ‘American Square Dancing. Henry Ford, and his wife, helped bring square dancing to prominence in the early 1920s and by 1928, the Boards of Education all around America began sponsoring square dancing programs in schools. These were seen as great ways to promote exercise, respect for tradition, and good manners. In 1982, Ronald Regan made square dancing the National Folk Dance of America in a temporary resolution that lasted only two years. However many states have it as their official state dance including, California, Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Florida. So how does it work? Well apparently there are some key elements. Namely, four couples, some music, a wooden floor, and a caller. According to Dr Lloyd Shaw, whose 1939 book on square dancing helped lead to a revival in the 1950s, there are several important qualities in a good caller: “He must have the voice. Deep and pleasant. He must have had a sufficient training and experience in public speaking that he knows how to enunciate correctly and can be clearly understood. He must have an ear for music in order to be able to do singing calls or to chant. He must be thoroughly familiar with the dances. He must have an infallible sense of rhythm. This should be instinctive. He must have an unerring geometric sense. He should be a natural teacher. He must have the ability to overcome his own embarrassment. He must be clear headed.” For a better example, check out this commercial from 1948.

“Jehovites is good people. They’re howlers an’ jumpers. I dunno. Somepin jus’ come over me. I didn’ think I could stan’ it. I’d jus’ fly all apart” says Ma after a woman trys to hold a prayer meeting for Granma in the Joad tent. When I read this scene I began thinking about what religion was like during the Great Depression.

"The Oakie as a Farm Laborer", an article by Walter Stein discusses how important religion had been to those affected most by the dustbowl. It had been an integral part of their lives and they took this with them when they took to the road. “‘The itinerant pastor, the Moses of the migration, sets up a large brown tent which serves as a temple’”. Stein says that these churches were usually Pentecostal. According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know) Pentecostalism is an evangelical faith, focusing on the absolute authority of the bible. They do not practice baptisms at birth, instead waiting for a person to choose Jesus. In addition they believe in a personal experience of god and the Holy Spirit.

Stein later discusses the churches relationship with organized labor. His main concept is that the two worked together to try and get better lives for the people. His concession however is very important. He mentions the emphasis that many Pentecostal services placed on how things would be different in heaven. This seems to make more sense. The Salvation Army and other groups had been citied for not doing anything real for people to help them with life, and only subduing the peoples desire for action and change by saying that those who were ‘good’ on earth would get “pie in the sky when you die”

Ma Joad probably had been religious. The family had at least gone to the church were Jim Casey had preached enough for Tom and he to know each other. But I think the point of the exchange between her and the over zealous woman was to show that she was disillusioned with life after being evicted and traveling for so long. She does not want her rest to be intruded upon by the “Jehovites” because she sees that whether or not there is a heaven where only those who pray are accepted, rest on this earth was more important at that point. On some level it is also showing her denial about how close Granma is to death.

o brother where art thou- set in 1937