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Some young god tore the canvas into shreds
I don't think I'm actually running a fever, but I feel like it: skin-ache, bone-ache, overall sensation of recent collision with a cement truck. It is very distracting. I couldn't fall back asleep, so I made notes on the internet.
1. I wish Free State of Jones (2016) were getting better reviews; the real history of Newt Knight and Jones County is fascinating. To my knowledge, the only other movie to draw on the story of the Free State of Jones is the very loosely inspired Tap Roots (1948), which is where I first heard of it. I can't speak to the 1942 source novel by James H. Street, but I bailed on the film despite its glancing brush with history and the novelty of Van Heflin and Boris Karloff in the same movie (and Arthur Shields in a bit part, speaking of character actors). Heflin has a mustache, proving that Universal learned no lessons from MGM's Green Dolphin Street (1947), and Karloff is playing a Choctaw character, albeit one who gets to show off his beautifully modulated British accent, and there was too much antebellum melodrama and then when we got to the bellum the melodrama didn't let up and I had better things to do with my time, like brushing the cat. Possibly I am just setting myself up for more of the same if I try out Free State of Jones for the sake of Matthew McConaughey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, but I'm still considering it.
2. Three poems I'd been meaning to link for some time: Eloise Klein Healy's "The Lyric in a Time of War," Chris Emslie's "Prayer for Anything but Prayer," and Harry Giles' "Piercings." I found this one yesterday, but I was right that I'd want the collection it came from: Owen Sheers' "Mametz Wood." It's very strange to read someone whose way of thinking about the war dead of the Western Front is so close in language to mine, even if we did different things with the imagery; I want to look for the common ancestor. I wonder if I can blame David Jones. He's not mentioned in the notes for "Last Letters," but he is the nameless poet with the terrible arcana: "praise for the action proper to chemicals . . . candle-light, fire-light, Cups, Wands and Swords, to choose at random."
3. Internet, I wasn't looking for a photo of Elisha Cook, Jr. at the time of his military service, but I'll take it. The weird thing is, from that angle he looks like someone I knew in college. The obituary photo of Harry Rabinowitz really looks like someone I knew in college, give or take fifteen years and a pinstriped suit. It is extremely jarring to see that sort of thing in a sidebar.
Back to bed.
1. I wish Free State of Jones (2016) were getting better reviews; the real history of Newt Knight and Jones County is fascinating. To my knowledge, the only other movie to draw on the story of the Free State of Jones is the very loosely inspired Tap Roots (1948), which is where I first heard of it. I can't speak to the 1942 source novel by James H. Street, but I bailed on the film despite its glancing brush with history and the novelty of Van Heflin and Boris Karloff in the same movie (and Arthur Shields in a bit part, speaking of character actors). Heflin has a mustache, proving that Universal learned no lessons from MGM's Green Dolphin Street (1947), and Karloff is playing a Choctaw character, albeit one who gets to show off his beautifully modulated British accent, and there was too much antebellum melodrama and then when we got to the bellum the melodrama didn't let up and I had better things to do with my time, like brushing the cat. Possibly I am just setting myself up for more of the same if I try out Free State of Jones for the sake of Matthew McConaughey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, but I'm still considering it.
2. Three poems I'd been meaning to link for some time: Eloise Klein Healy's "The Lyric in a Time of War," Chris Emslie's "Prayer for Anything but Prayer," and Harry Giles' "Piercings." I found this one yesterday, but I was right that I'd want the collection it came from: Owen Sheers' "Mametz Wood." It's very strange to read someone whose way of thinking about the war dead of the Western Front is so close in language to mine, even if we did different things with the imagery; I want to look for the common ancestor. I wonder if I can blame David Jones. He's not mentioned in the notes for "Last Letters," but he is the nameless poet with the terrible arcana: "praise for the action proper to chemicals . . . candle-light, fire-light, Cups, Wands and Swords, to choose at random."
3. Internet, I wasn't looking for a photo of Elisha Cook, Jr. at the time of his military service, but I'll take it. The weird thing is, from that angle he looks like someone I knew in college. The obituary photo of Harry Rabinowitz really looks like someone I knew in college, give or take fifteen years and a pinstriped suit. It is extremely jarring to see that sort of thing in a sidebar.
Back to bed.
Almost everything about the Confederate-held South interests me, and so does everything about resistance against slavery. On the other hand, most of the movies/media I've seen about it just annoy me, either because they depict black people being helpless until white people sort things out for them ("Twelve Years A Slave" seemed like that to me) or because they're "Gone With The Wind." I suspect "Free State of Jones" of being in the first camp. If I do go see it, I'll report back.
I think Boris Karloff got stereotyped as a generically "ethnic guy" because he was half- or one-quarter Indian (as in, from India). He's always playing sinister Native characters in early silent films. He downplayed this once he started getting big roles (and would attribute his dark complexion to "a tight collar and too much gin"). I also seem to recall young Leonard Nimoy played Native American heavies in Westerns. Maybe the directors wanted imposing men with craggy faces, or maybe they wanted someone they thought of as vaguely "ethnic" and didn't want to bother finding actual Native actors.
Re:
no subject
I believe it was at my great-grandfather's funeral in 1964 that my mother overheard a New York relative wanting to know the identity of my mother's family (who were, by the way, the immediately bereaved) and on hearing that they were the Glixmans from Oklahoma nodded sagely: "Yes, of course, they look like Indians."
no subject
It's playing at the Somerville, which is one of the reasons I might just go anyway.
Thank you for linking to that Smithsonian article; I devoured it with eager eyes. The interviewer met a lot of Confederate "historians," as distinguished from Confederate historians.
You're very welcome! I love how the writer's reactions are also part of the story, along with the head-spinning complexity of the local attitudes.
On the other hand, most of the movies/media I've seen about it just annoy me, either because they depict black people being helpless until white people sort things out for them ("Twelve Years A Slave" seemed like that to me) or because they're "Gone With The Wind."
Well, going by the Sundance reviews, the Nat Turner biopic mentioned above is definitely neither of those things.
I think Boris Karloff got stereotyped as a generically "ethnic guy" because he was half- or one-quarter Indian (as in, from India).
I figured that was a factor, but the heavy bronzer he's covered in was really distracting.
I also seem to recall young Leonard Nimoy played Native American heavies in Westerns. Maybe the directors wanted imposing men with craggy faces, or maybe they wanted someone they thought of as vaguely "ethnic" and didn't want to bother finding actual Native actors.
My guess would be a combination of the two, honestly. I've always taken the scene in Blazing Saddles (1974) where all the Native Americans speak Yiddish as a reference to this tendency.