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Everybody's going to jail this morning
1. Courtesy of Dean: Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham, "Here Comes the Judge." It's an incredible recording. I had never heard of either Markham or his most famous routine, although ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel started quoting the song the minute I mentioned the title; if someone had played it for me cold and asked me when I thought it was recorded, barring the Vietnam references I'd have guessed the early '80's at least. It has the vocal rhythms of old-school hip-hop, the percussive swagger, and it is play-on-loop catchy. It was recorded in 1968, after Sammy Davis, Jr. revived the routine for a white audience on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (Markham was later invited onto the show himself). The B-side sketch it leads into has a punch line that dates back to vaudeville, but it's so well-delivered I don't care. He performed in blackface—a black man wearing burnt cork—until 1943. America gonif?
2.heliopausa asked if I knew of any Allied novels or movies from World War II that acknowledged the humanity of the Japanese in the same way that The Moon Is Down (1943) acknowledged the humanity of the Germans: I couldn't think of any. Postwar films with wartime settings, yes: Sessue Hayakawa playing the honorable enemy in Three Came Home (1950) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), James Shigeta as a sympathetic American-married diplomat in Bridge to the Sun (1961), I assume-to-hope there were more and more nuanced portrayals as the years went by and Hollywood became incrementally less racist. (As of last year there is finally a movie about Chiune Sugihara, although it is ineligible for purposes of this discussion because it is a Japanese production and has yet to play somewhere I can see it.) Between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day, however, pretty much everything that I know came out of Hollywood was either a racist cartoon of the kind it still upsets me that Dr. Seuss ever drew or a faceless wall of the enemy in their numbers, not exactly surprising from a country that couldn't see the disjoint of liberating concentration camps while fencing its own citizens behind barbed wire.* I know there was some sympathetic reportage, but I don't know if it made it into art. Behind the Rising Sun (1943) was definitely not it. I should like to believe there was at least one humanizing novel written by an Allied author at the time, but I don't know what it is or where to look for it. Outside of the U.S.? Anyone got pointers? Or was it all just as bad as Our Enemy—The Japanese (1943)?
* I am still sad that I couldn't get to the theatrical broadcast of Allegiance when it came around in December. Tangenting off on Hollywood depictions of Japanese-Americans did turn up something interesting: Robert Pirosh's Go for Broke! (1951), which appears to celebrate the heroism of Nisei soldiers—and admit the irony of their circumstances—considerably earlier than I thought this country had gotten around to and cast real-life veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in major roles. It's in the public domain thanks to failure to renew copyright, so I may try to check it out. Hell to Eternity (1960) sounds fascinating but also as though it may have whitewashed its protagonist, so I'm still thinking it over.
3. I was just obliged to fill out a demographic form and was reminded that the definition of "White" according to the U.S. Census Bureau parenthetically specifies "Not Hispanic or Latino" and then goes on to apply to "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa." Huh? I thought. Outside of the contingent whiteness of Ashkenazi Jews, when has anyone with roots in the Middle East ever been viewed as white in this country? So I poked at the internet and discovered the answer was 1909, when Syrian immigrant George Shishim sued for the right to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, which at that time depended on ethnographically proving his whiteness because the United States couldn't be bothered to extend its rights and privileges to its non-white residents. So that was an even more fucked-up answer than I had expected.
These are the kinds of historical facts it makes me feel stupid to learn only now, but at least I am learning them. On the brighter side,teenybuffalo tagged a portrait for me and now I will happily learn more about both Romaine Brooks and Gluck, neither of whom I had previously heard of. Also there is now an Estonian ferry with Tom of Finland's art all over it and that can only be a good thing for the world. Apparently that was April Fool's Day last year. I maintain it would have been great business. The painters are still real, though.
derspatchel started quoting the song the minute I mentioned the title; if someone had played it for me cold and asked me when I thought it was recorded, barring the Vietnam references I'd have guessed the early '80's at least. It has the vocal rhythms of old-school hip-hop, the percussive swagger, and it is play-on-loop catchy. It was recorded in 1968, after Sammy Davis, Jr. revived the routine for a white audience on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (Markham was later invited onto the show himself). The B-side sketch it leads into has a punch line that dates back to vaudeville, but it's so well-delivered I don't care. He performed in blackface—a black man wearing burnt cork—until 1943. America gonif?2.
heliopausa asked if I knew of any Allied novels or movies from World War II that acknowledged the humanity of the Japanese in the same way that The Moon Is Down (1943) acknowledged the humanity of the Germans: I couldn't think of any. Postwar films with wartime settings, yes: Sessue Hayakawa playing the honorable enemy in Three Came Home (1950) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), James Shigeta as a sympathetic American-married diplomat in Bridge to the Sun (1961), I assume-to-hope there were more and more nuanced portrayals as the years went by and Hollywood became incrementally less racist. (As of last year there is finally a movie about Chiune Sugihara, although it is ineligible for purposes of this discussion because it is a Japanese production and has yet to play somewhere I can see it.) Between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day, however, pretty much everything that I know came out of Hollywood was either a racist cartoon of the kind it still upsets me that Dr. Seuss ever drew or a faceless wall of the enemy in their numbers, not exactly surprising from a country that couldn't see the disjoint of liberating concentration camps while fencing its own citizens behind barbed wire.* I know there was some sympathetic reportage, but I don't know if it made it into art. Behind the Rising Sun (1943) was definitely not it. I should like to believe there was at least one humanizing novel written by an Allied author at the time, but I don't know what it is or where to look for it. Outside of the U.S.? Anyone got pointers? Or was it all just as bad as Our Enemy—The Japanese (1943)?* I am still sad that I couldn't get to the theatrical broadcast of Allegiance when it came around in December. Tangenting off on Hollywood depictions of Japanese-Americans did turn up something interesting: Robert Pirosh's Go for Broke! (1951), which appears to celebrate the heroism of Nisei soldiers—and admit the irony of their circumstances—considerably earlier than I thought this country had gotten around to and cast real-life veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in major roles. It's in the public domain thanks to failure to renew copyright, so I may try to check it out. Hell to Eternity (1960) sounds fascinating but also as though it may have whitewashed its protagonist, so I'm still thinking it over.
3. I was just obliged to fill out a demographic form and was reminded that the definition of "White" according to the U.S. Census Bureau parenthetically specifies "Not Hispanic or Latino" and then goes on to apply to "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa." Huh? I thought. Outside of the contingent whiteness of Ashkenazi Jews, when has anyone with roots in the Middle East ever been viewed as white in this country? So I poked at the internet and discovered the answer was 1909, when Syrian immigrant George Shishim sued for the right to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, which at that time depended on ethnographically proving his whiteness because the United States couldn't be bothered to extend its rights and privileges to its non-white residents. So that was an even more fucked-up answer than I had expected.
These are the kinds of historical facts it makes me feel stupid to learn only now, but at least I am learning them. On the brighter side,
teenybuffalo tagged a portrait for me and now I will happily learn more about both Romaine Brooks and Gluck, neither of whom I had previously heard of.
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That's still an interesting data point! I have heard of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence because any movie that contains David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Takeshi Kitano was bound to get on my radar at some point (sorry, Tom Conti), but I have not yet seen it.
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Cool.
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The reference to a "paint war" in Gluck's Wikipedia entry reminds me of Tumblr's current fascination with the feud between Anish Kapoor and Stuart Semple over the licensing of Vantablack.
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Yep! Because in 1854 that argument had worked. America, America.
I was about to wonder if Chang Apana ever had to deal with suspects claiming a similar loophole, but then remembered that Hawaii wasn't yet a U.S. State in his day.
I have no idea how racial issues of that kind were handled in the Territory of Hawaii. The language governing citizenship in the Territory looks entirely geographic, with no racial requirement: all citizens of the previous Republic of Hawaii were grandfathered into the Territory as U.S. citizens. Citizenship in the Republic, however, had applied strictly to natural-born or naturalized citizens of the previous Kingdom of Hawaii, which kept most of the immigrants out, and the Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii had permitted resident aliens to vote but confined citizenship to white and Hawaiian men above certain economic thresholds; Asians were right out. So I'm not actually sure that Chang Apana in 1933, in the Territory of Hawaii, would have been a U.S. citizen. He was born in Hawaii, but unless his parents were citizens, he wouldn't have qualified as "natural-born." His eligibility looks like it depended on whether he had native Hawaiian background in addition to Chinese or whether any of his Chinese ancestors had managed to naturalize. The U.S. finally abolished purely racial restrictions on immigration and naturalization in 1952, which was stupidly late; at that point it became impossible to deny citizenship to Asian immigrants, but since the same act upheld a quota system based on nationality and ethnicity and permitted the U.S. government to deport or bar anyone it considered subversive or undesirable—including naturalized citizens—it has required multiple revisions since and I think we're currently in the middle of another one because of the attitude toward immigrants and naturalized citizens suspected of terrorism, whee.
This was the cheapass "I read Wikipedia" version of research, so if you find a better answer, please let me know!
The reference to a "paint war" in Gluck's Wikipedia entry reminds me of Tumblr's current fascination with the feud between Anish Kapoor and Stuart Semple over the licensing of Vantablack.
Has that progressed? The last I saw, Kapoor had just given everyone the pinkest finger and Semple had forbidden him use of the glitteriest glitter.
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Re:
I have a list of Tumblrs I check at irregular intervals and yours is one of them. It has provided many fine examples of fish people over the years.
The first thing I thought when I saw the portrait was, "Oh, there's Sovay with a short haircut."
My immediate response is that I'm not sure I look like that now if I ever did, but I am squashing Tiny Richardson and saying thank you. I'm really honored.
I had never heard of either the artist or the sitter before now, but I need more of both of them.
Seriously. How did I manage to miss a twentieth-century painter that butch? Or in Brooks' case, that poly? Can I get a retrospective, MFA?
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Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I is (a) not a novel, (b) about events before the war (1937-1938), and (c) published in 1948, but it does have a very sympathetic portrayal of a young Japanese woman, Monica Sone (née Kazuko Itoi), who later wrote her own memoir, Nisei Daughter, in which she remembers Betty MacDonald equally fondly. (In other words this is a complete tangent from your inquiry, but you might possibly be interested anyway.)
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Definitely! Also, that is wonderful about the complementary memoirs.
. . . also, Betty MacDonald who wrote Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle?!
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That's really neat. I grew up on Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.
Here comes the Judge
Re: Here comes the Judge
I was not expecting the topical politics, either, and thought that was great. Especially when he closed the song by encouraging his audience to write him in for President, I was reminded of Jidenna's "Long Live the Chief," whose narrator talks the importance of strategy, informing his rivals that "at best you could run a little company . . . at worst I could run the whole country."
Cutting edge (more or less) satire and nostalgia, appealing to the same audience.
I always like looking back on things I took for granted in childhood, because usually they turn out to be incredibly weird.
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I was very glad I got to see the theatrical broadcast of Allegiance back in December. You'll have another chance: "George Takei’s Allegiance" will return to select theaters for a one-day encore Feb. 19" (the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066). If you go, bring tissues and stay for the post-credits material.
Also, thanks for the Laugh-In memories; I remember "Here Comes the Judge" from watching the show as a child. I had no real grasp of the larger social context but even so felt there was something more going on there.
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I'm not sure I'm making the link: being woefully undereducated in the ways of anything other than the white mainstream?
You'll have another chance: "George Takei’s Allegiance" will return to select theaters for a one-day encore Feb. 19" (the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066). If you go, bring tissues and stay for the post-credits material.
Thank you. I'm so glad to hear it. I should probably make sure to buy tickets now (or, realistically, as soon as Arisia's over).
Also, thanks for the Laugh-In memories; I remember "Here Comes the Judge" from watching the show as a child. I had no real grasp of the larger social context but even so felt there was something more going on there.
You're welcome! I find this kind of thing fascinating.
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Let me see what I can do about finding this kind of novel. (I am a sucker for challenging reference questions.) This may take a while, so feel free to nudge me if I don't report back.
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Happily! Thank you.
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That Tom of Finland Estonian ferry is very cheerful-making.
ETA: I remember the "Here Comes the Judge" skit from Laugh-In, but I'd never heard that recording. Wow!
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I feel very deprived that I'd known nothing! How did you run across them?
That Tom of Finland Estonian ferry is very cheerful-making.
I think the chances of my getting to Estonia are very small, but if I ever do, I know which ferry I want to take from Tallinn to Stockholm.
ETA: I remember the "Here Comes the Judge" skit from Laugh-In, but I'd never heard that recording. Wow!
I was glad to see that all sites I can find about Pigmeat Markham refer to "Here Comes to the Judge" as a forerunner of rap. Everything is earlier than I think it is.
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I'm very disappointed. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to me.
[edit] I had even checked the original post, because I like to know where and when things come from—had it said 2009 rather than 2015, I would have assumed the paint job might well have been painted back and not bothered to link it. It didn't even register to me as April Fool's because I don't follow the custom; I never think first about other people doing it.
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Probably from some book on the history of women artists. Though it's also possible I learned about Romaine Brooks from reading about her partner Natalie Barney.
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I can see I need to read about her, too.
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I'll have to listen to those!