I won't lie, I knew you'd belong here

[sovay]

Rabbit, rabbit!

To see out January, spatch and I attended a double feature of Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), both starring Ryan O'Neal but more importantly both edited by Verna Fields: they were screened as part of the Brattle's series on female editors. I had seen What's Up, Doc once in high school, after which I went around quoting pieces of it for twenty-odd years ("There's not much to see, actually; we're inside a Chinese dragon"); this time I could appreciate Barbra Streisand, since I was no longer immediately bitter about Hello, Dolly! (1969), and notice that Kenneth Mars was doing his best Hans Conried as a snooty semi-Croatian musicologist, flouncing hair-toss and all. Rob had never seen it. I'd never seen Paper Moon, like a black-and-white forerunner of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), not a pastiche of the pre-Code movies it resembles. It was a Madeline Kahn double feature, too. After a relatively rotten day, we had a good evening.

Have a bunch of links.

1. Courtesy of brigdh: maps of the Roman Empire divided by stereotype. I am particularly fond of the progression from "Drunks" to "Huge, terrifying, really angry drunks" and the one with the Senate.

2. Courtesy of newredshoes: the backfire of "vice signaling," or why the New York Times keeps looking so pro-Nazi.

3. I've seen this article's argument made before and perhaps more rigorously, but it is always worth noting the ways in which the conspiracy theory aspects of anti-Semitism slide it under many people's recognition of racism: "Anti-Semitism differs from most forms of racism in that it purports to 'punch up' against a secret society of oppressors, which has the side effect of making it easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation. If Jews have power, then punching up at Jews is a form of speaking truth to power." See also Eric Ward's invaluable and quite rigorous "Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism."

4. Maria Dahvana Headley revisits The Crucible in light of Arthur Miller's personal life and comes to some distressing, though fascinating conclusions: "Him Too? How Arthur Miller Smeared Marilyn Monroe and Invented the Myth of the Male Witch Hunt." The title is clickbaity, but the article itself is not.

5. I love this story by Yoon Ha Lee very much: "The Starship and the Temple Cat." It has the best ghost cat.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Thanks for the link to the article about The Crucible. I never liked the way that the play heaped all the blame on Abigail, not least because I'd read other books about the witch trials & I knew the real Abigail was much younger than in the play - which I guess didn't give Miller any pause when he came up with the little story that became the germ of The Crucible. But this article lays it all out much more clearly than I could have.

[moon_custafer]

There’s been a production of The Crucible running at the local university— I’m sure it was in rehearsal before #metoo, but I have been a bit ill at ease seeing acquaintances approvingly quoting the line about “little crazy children jangling the keys of the kingdom.”

[sovay]

but I have been a bit ill at ease seeing acquaintances approvingly quoting the line about “little crazy children jangling the keys of the kingdom.”

I can see that.

Women lose both ways, in The Crucible: their efforts to take power are both underhanded and unsuccessful. I don't feel that was necessary in order to tell the story of a community turning on itself, but then I never understood before that John Proctor was Arthur Miller's self-insert.

[sovay]

Thanks for the link to the article about The Crucible.

You're welcome!

I never liked the way that the play heaped all the blame on Abigail, not least because I'd read other books about the witch trials & I knew the real Abigail was much younger than in the play - which I guess didn't give Miller any pause when he came up with the little story that became the germ of The Crucible. But this article lays it all out much more clearly than I could have.

And the thing is, The Crucible is a central piece of the American theater canon and it works powerfully as an indictment of McCarthyism and I still wish I could have seen Arthur Kennedy as John Proctor in the original 1953 Broadway production and I am fascinated that Sartre scripted his own version of Miller's play which was then filmed in 1957 in French: and there's this whole axis along which Miller slanted the history, which I have not seen anyone before Headley point out so keenly. (It's possible someone has. I don't read as much about mid-century theater as I read about mid-century film.) And that's there and that's real. I hope it will be taught.