Stand by, no way, stop

[sovay]

So my family made the decision not to hold a seder tomorrow night because my mother is still coughing (I will break matzah, pour wine, and open the door to the stranger, because that is the most important thing) and I think it was just as well because I appear to have come down sick. I was invited out to a movie tonight, but instead I fell over sideways and have alternated the last few hours between staring vaguely into the middle distance while feeling nauseated and sort of sleeping, minus rest and plus whiting out when I tried to stand up. I am not thrilled.

1. Erin Horáková seriously analyzes the popular reception of Captain James T. Kirk in context of the simplifying and not apolitical rewriting of the past: "Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift." (I feel some of this same process may explain my feelings toward neo-noir vs. noir, especially where the supposed ubiquity of the femme fatale is concerned. Somebody please remind me to write about the Wachowskis' Bound (1996); I loved that movie and it's been more than half a year.) The statement below flashed out at me:

Heterosexuality has been through the fucking ringer in cultural productions in the last decades due to backlashes against feminism and queer visibility that have transformed portrayals and interpretations alike into dumbshows—crude pantomimes, as before the play. These frantic defenses have done more to render the proposition of men and women loving one another a piece of one-note unsustainable ridiculousness than women's lib and LGBTQ rights ever could.

Boyd McDonald was making much the same frustrated point in the 1980's. I am not pleased that the problem has worsened again since. Also I had not actually realized that not everyone thinks of William Shatner as Jewish.

2. These poems were not published back-to-back, but I read them that way and they resonate interestingly: Robert Peake's "Homesickness" and Dante Di Stefano's "National Poetry Month."

3. I was just trying to run down a reference using Google Books. I ran into a biography of Wilfred Owen. Oh, hey, I thought to myself, I should read one of those sometime. Pat Barker's Regeneration (1991) doesn't count. I began flicking through the randomly available pages and then—

Robert Graves: "Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were homosexuals; though Sassoon tried to think he wasn't. To them, seeing men killed was as horrible as if you or I had to see fields of corpses of women."

JESUS H. MAGDALENE GRAVES.

Seriously, every time I try to parse that, it just gets worse. I feel sufficiently lousy that I would be going to bed right now no matter what, but really, Robert Graves, you're not helping! [edit] The former Archbishop of Canterbury agrees with me! Goodnight.

Comments

[yatima]

Please write about _Bound_! I have loved it for years and think it gains immeasurably now we know that it was made by two woman :)

[sovay]

Please write about _Bound_! I have loved it for years and think it gains immeasurably now we know that it was made by two woman

Absolutely! At present I am in the middle of a film post which is trying to spill over into an essay, but afterward I will see what I can do.

[thawrecka]

JFC Robert Graves, what a total tool.

I'm totally going to have to read that link about the popular reception of James Kirk later but I had to comment now about how awful Graves is in that quote. Just, what a dirtbag.

[sovay]

I'm totally going to have to read that link about the popular reception of James Kirk later but I had to comment now about how awful Graves is in that quote. Just, what a dirtbag.

I think it's worse than that time Kipling was racist about Einstein because relativity scared him.

[cyphomandra]

I love Goodbye to All That, but Graves does have some weird ideas about people. Especially women, but the whole kerfuffle with Sasson is just painful to read.

I would also love to see your thoughts on Bound! My first same sex relationship didn't have a lot going for it, in hindsight, but there were some good movies and this was one of them. I need to disentangle it a bit more from my past.

[sovay]

I love Goodbye to All That, but Graves does have some weird ideas about people.

I love I, Claudius, but I'm not even sure what he's trying to say here, except every interpretation I can think of is awful.

Especially women, but the whole kerfuffle with Sasson is just painful to read.

So I can think of several things about Graves and Sassoon that might apply; which one do you mean?

I would also love to see your thoughts on Bound!

So noted!

My first same sex relationship didn't have a lot going for it, in hindsight, but there were some good movies and this was one of them. I need to disentangle it a bit more from my past.

I'm glad there were good movies, at least.

[desperance]

I am tolerably sure that William Shatner thinks of William Shatner as Jewish, which is probably the only measure that matters [we saw his one-man show last year; I went expecting to be disappointed, and was delightfully impressed]. Also, Robert Graves may have ended up the only person who didn't see Robert Graves as a jerk.

[sovay]

I am tolerably sure that William Shatner thinks of William Shatner as Jewish, which is probably the only measure that matters

I don't argue. I may have worded things confusingly. Horáková just mentions that more people remember Nimoy's Jewishness than Shatner's and that surprised me.

[we saw his one-man show last year; I went expecting to be disappointed, and was delightfully impressed].

Nice! What kind of show was it?

Also, Robert Graves may have ended up the only person who didn't see Robert Graves as a jerk.

I imprinted very hard on the novel of I, Claudius in high school and that is never going away, but, yeah.

That was a very well-balanced comment, by the way.

[larryhammer]

Robert Graves may have ended up the only person who didn't see Robert Graves as a jerk.

Yup, yup.

[asakiyume]

Also, Robert Graves may have ended up the only person who didn't see Robert Graves as a jerk.

LOL--great line.

[lilysea]

I was invited out to a movie tonight, but instead I fell over sideways and have alternated the last few hours between staring vaguely into the middle distance while feeling nauseated and sort of sleeping, minus rest and plus whiting out when I tried to stand up. I am not thrilled.

Oh no! :(

I hope you feel better soon! ^_^ <3

[sovay]

I hope you feel better soon!

Thank you! Virtual tea much appreciated.

[rosefox]

Count me among those who had no idea that Shatner was Jewish.

That piece of Horáková's is marvelous.

[sovay]

Count me among those who had no idea that Shatner was Jewish.

I am getting the picture that I am an outlier and may edit my post so that I sound like less of a jerk about it. I just found it strange that something that I thought of as a basic fact had so totally slipped popular memory. (I don't know why I know, either—I can't remember ever reading interviews with Shatner or memoirs of his in the same way that I did with Nimoy.) In which case Horáková is absolutely correct that it affects the reading of Kirk's character.

That piece of Horáková's is marvelous.

It's going around my friendlist and it deserves all the attention it gets.

[poliphilo]

Fancy an Archbishop of Canterbury producing something as good as that!

Graves was an enthusiastic homophobe and a very silly man- the very epitome of a wise fool- but he wrote some cracking poems.

I like the picture at the head of the TLS article. It's a reminder of just how young most of the soldiers of the Great War were. Incidentally, I live just outside Tonbridge where the picture was taken.

If Cuthbertson is right about Owen's (lack of) sexual experience it follows that all the best known poets of the War- with the exception of Brooke- went into it- and exited it- as virgins.

[tree_and_leaf]

Rowan Williams is a very perceptive writer (and a decent poet).

[sovay]

Fancy an Archbishop of Canterbury producing something as good as that!

He wrote some good poems, too! I discovered him with this one (I suggest reading it before the introductory analysis).

Graves was an enthusiastic homophobe and a very silly man- the very epitome of a wise fool- but he wrote some cracking poems.

My mind was slightly blown when I realized sometime in college that he was responsible for the lines from "Song of Amergin" I had memorized as a child reading Susan Cooper's Silver on the Tree (1977).

I, Claudius was one of the formative books of my adolescence. I started Latin as soon as I could, which was in ninth grade in the Lexington school system; a year and a half later I picked my mother's red-spined Modern Library edition of I, Claudius off a shelf in the living room because I read everything that wasn't nailed down and I hadn't heard of the BBC miniseries, I didn't know from Derek Jacobi, I fell in love. (I did recognize, in the acknowledgements, the "Aircraftman T. E. Shaw" who argued with Graves over the use of "assegai" rather than "javelin" for framea. I'm with Lawrence.) I carried that copy around like a talisman for a year. I am lukewarm to indifferent toward Claudius the God, but you take I, Claudius from me over the bodies of the Praetorian Guard.

Fortunately, I don't need to agree unanimously with Graves in order to cherish it. His Greek Myths alone would have posed a problem there.

I like the picture at the head of the TLS article. It's a reminder of just how young most of the soldiers of the Great War were.

Yes.

Incidentally, I live just outside Tonbridge where the picture was taken.

What is the record (imprint? memory?) of the war where you live?

If Cuthbertson is right about Owen's (lack of) sexual experience it follows that all the best known poets of the War- with the exception of Brooke- went into it- and exited it- as virgins.

I didn't know that about the rest of them. That is terribly appropriate somehow.

[kore]

I am so sorry you are sick! I was getting better but had a relapse, but nothing like you and your mom, sounds like. Bleah.

Graves, not unlike Lawrence, is a fine poet and a bit of a shit human being, and he was always very weird about possibly being bi- or homosexual himself, like Lawrence was. It's like this bizarre pre-WWI British male cultural Thing. OH NOES I AM ARTISTIC AND FIND MEN HOT I MIGHT CATCH TEH GAY.* So they became hypermasculine in consequence in ways that make you go "...." like the way Graves writes about Sassoon and the wrestling scene in Women in Love. I don't know.

That essay was quite interesting -- it's very true the progressiveness of the original Trek (including the casting of Uhura and how the original deck crew is supposed to look like the UN) gets erased and turned into a weird notion of planetsfull of willing alien women and miniskirted = available crew women and so on. I was pretty surprised they didn't mention Janeway even once, though, and the discussion in the comments is disappointingly dismissive -- Janeway isn't written as a coherent character and so she's not really worth bringing up? Hunh. (Early Janeway is at leas as consistent as TOS Kirk, I think.)

*You can also see this a bit in US male literary culture a bit later? like in the 20s.

[moon_custafer]

Wilde's trial and imprisonment were not only rotten for Wilde, but for everyone else -- I think we're still seeing the fallout from that particular bit of society-wide gay panic. See every article about modern* straight men being unable to show affection for each other.

*In North America and the UK, anyhow. Also, I'm fascinated/depressed by the apparent greater freedom for men to hug each other in countries where homosexuality is outlawed. It's probably the only way for the ban to be tenable -- after all, if public displays of affection with your best buddy is just Normal Manly Stuff, a lot can hide in plain sight, the authorities only have to arrest people they want to, and the real size of the LGBT population is unknown, thus never recognized as normal. Of course some places seem to have the worst of both worlds.

[moon_custafer]

I feel like the Graves quote comes out of the same place as using "misogynist" to refer to gay men -- as though it's impossible to have any sort of respect or care for women in the absence of sexual attraction.

[sovay]

I feel like the Graves quote comes out of the same place as using "misogynist" to refer to gay men -- as though it's impossible to have any sort of respect or care for women in the absence of sexual attraction.

I just keep sticking on the part where it sounds like he's saying that it's impossible to feel pity or horror for anyone's death unless you personally find them sexually attractive.

[asakiyume]

That Robert Graves statement would be funny if it wasn't so awful.

Like you say, the more you try to parse it, the more covered in goo you become.

Hope you feel better soon, and I hope your mother does, too.

[sovay]

Like you say, the more you try to parse it, the more covered in goo you become.

And eventually you just go take a shower.

Hope you feel better soon, and I hope your mother does, too.

Thank you. I have not done very much today besides work at my desk and take a walk in search of a bottle of red wine and I have fantasies of going to bed early tonight.

[asakiyume]

... back again, having looked at the Kirk essay. It's too long for me to read in its entirety in one sitting (obligations press round), but this (alas, somewhat un-Kirk-related) remark jumped out at me:

It’s always thus: we did away with rookeries in London and established council housing. We then sold off the council housing and brought back rookeries. And each individual thing is small potatoes, except it isn’t, because everything’s small potatoes.

Especially the last part: each individual thing is small potatoes, except it isn't, because everything's small potatoes. I feel lik that's an important observation, and like Kay holding a shard of ice, I want to find the right thing to do with it.

[sovay]

I feel like that's an important observation, and like Kay holding a shard of ice, I want to find the right thing to do with it.

You should post this somewhere more widely read than comments in my journal, because it's very well said and important.

[rushthatspeaks]

I had no idea whatsoever that Shatner is Jewish. I agree that Kirk isn't, and that the character has subsumed the actor in popular culture in a way that is really peculiar and which also flattens the character in directions he is actually three-dimensional and progressive.

Good for the article-writer; it may be hopeless work pushing against the popular, flat conception, but it needs done.

[sovay]

Good for the article-writer; it may be hopeless work pushing against the popular, flat conception, but it needs done.

At the very least, it got me to reconsider Kirk as a character when he had always been less interesting to me than Spock and later McCoy. I know why I was interested in them first, but that doesn't mean Kirk isn't worth taking seriously.

And now we have a really useful name for this particular form of overwriting the past, which I agree with moon_custafer everyone should just use from now on.

[edit] It saddens me to realize that though I love it, and many Star Trek fans love it, and even many Star Trek actors love it, Galaxy Quest (1999) has been a major contributor to/vector of this process. Tim Allen in that movie is basically playing Kirk Drift. (Tim Allen is also not Jewish. Tim Allen is a lot more conservative than William Shatner.) It flattens aspects of other characters/actors, too. Sigourney Weaver complaining about her character's job as a glorified answering service washes out the radicalism of Nichelle Nichols as a bridge officer. Leonard Nimoy did not actually mean the same thing by the title of I Am Not Spock (1975) as Alan Rickman lamenting that his cheap TV role has taken over his life. Tony Shalhoub playing a non-Asian actor playing an Asian character would be a great commentary on TV yellowface except for the fact that George Takei. I am sure other people have gotten here ahead of me, but it just clicked and now I am a bit annoyed.

Shatner

[lauradi7dw]

Shatner's Jewishness made it into popular culture at a minimum in Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song
Here is a live version, in which the Jews mentioned are also shown in photographs. See 2:15 ish
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qUCNAnp2QAI

Re: Shatner

[sovay]

Shatner's Jewishness made it into popular culture at a minimum in Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song

spatch quoted that to me! It didn't help me understand why so few people remember that Shatner is Jewish.

[brigdh]

Thank you for these links! The Star Trek article is just absolutely fabulous (and I also very much enjoyed the Frozen article linked in the footnotes of it), and Homesickness is just beautiful.

[sovay]

Thank you for these links!

You're very welcome!

I hope "Kirk Drift" becomes the recognized term for this kind of collective cultural distortion; it's so useful to have a name for it at last.