![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
no subject
no subject
You're very welcome! The contemporary complexity is in all ways interesting and a a part of the story I really hadn't known.
no subject
http://freestateofjones.info/
I don't think I'll be able to get myself to the forthcoming "Birth of a Nation," either.
Do you mean schreibergasse? I keep meaning to tell him that I follow you on LJ, but never have. I think he'd be entirely plausible in a pin-striped suit.
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.
no subject
It may well be positive; I just can't read it online due to the paywall. The Boston Globe's review is critical but ultimately positive, whch is one of the reasons I'm thinking about it.
I definitely plan to dive into the background information site, though.
Well, that looks like a glorious timesink of American history.
I don't think I'll be able to get myself to the forthcoming "Birth of a Nation," either.
I am hoping to see Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation (2016) because I read about it when it was at Sundance and never expected it would get a general release; I feel now that it's upcoming at my local theater I should really follow through. I understand the opposite view, though. I seem to find film noir really comforting and I'm watching a lot of it.
Do you mean schreibergasse? I keep meaning to tell him that I follow you on LJ, but never have. I think he'd be entirely plausible in a pin-striped suit.
No, actually! We didn't go to college together; we met in grad school. I see why you asked, though.
Re:
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.
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
I haven't seen Tap Roots, but several months ago TCM showed a block of Karloff films I'd never seen before, some of which featured Karloff in Chinese roles. I was torn between the sheer wrongness of it all and Karloff's engaging performances.
no subject
That's very cool! I don't think I'd heard of her before running across the poem linked in the post; do you have any suggestions or favorites?
I haven't seen Tap Roots, but several months ago TCM showed a block of Karloff films I'd never seen before, some of which featured Karloff in Chinese roles. I was torn between the sheer wrongness of it all and Karloff's engaging performances.
I have a friend who claims seriously that Olivier's best performance on film is his 1965 Othello. I think there must be a sliding scale of performance-of-race that I'm all right with; I feel very weird about testing his assertion for myself.
no subject
Despite its massively problematic aspects, I can recommend the Karloff film The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), which is an over-the-top pre-Code extravaganza. As I commented when I saw it, "I expected the racism, but not the crocodiles."
no subject
Thank you! I like the titles.
As I commented when I saw it, "I expected the racism, but not the crocodiles."
Under what circumstances does a person expect crocodiles?
no subject
no subject
Legit.
no subject
no subject
I don't mind at all! It is an important poem and a beautiful one also; please tell Chris that I am sorry to hear about the pushback, because what it deserves is to be read everywhere.