popculturemeetshistory

"21 Jump Street," Johnny Depp, and the Rise of FOX

2012-03-06T13:32:00.001-08:00

In anearlier post, I explored how studios revive old television and film franchisesin a quarter-century cycle (See http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2011/10/return-of-mid-1980s.html.)And like clockwork, Hollywood is now recycling shows from the late 1980s, asthe film version of “21 Jump Street” premieres this week. “Jump Street” has not been seen insyndication for many years and is a largely forgotten program, but it was oneof the early FOX shows and helped launch the network as well as Johnny Depp’s actingcareer.

When “21Jump Street” debuted in the spring of 1987 as part of FOX’s first primetimelineup, Rupert Murdoch’s dream of challenging the decades-old dominance of ABC,NBC, and CBS seemed like a fantasy. Theprogram, which revolved around a group of youthful-looking police officersworking undercover in American high schools, appeared on the air before earlyFOX hits like “The Simpsons” or “Beverly Hills 90210.” The then-unknown Depp became the center ofthe ensemble cast, which led to roles in films like “Edward Scissorhands”(1990), the first of seven collaborations with director Tim Burton.

While FOXstruggled in the ratings in its early years, the network’s fortunes got a hugeboost when Murdoch acquired the rights to the National Football Conference (NFC)football package in 1993. At the time,the NFC was dominating the NFL with its streak of 13 consecutive Super Bowlvictories, and featured bigger markets (Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia,Dallas) than the weaker AFC. After thiscoup, FOX acquired stronger affiliates and the network became a genuinecompetitor to the Big Three.

Once theentertainment network attained a secure foothold, the FOX News Channel starteda few years later in 1996. With the helpof longtime GOP operative Roger Ailes, Murdoch sought to dethrone CNN as leaderof the 24-hour cable news market. Thenetwork quickly became a success, carving out a niche with conservative viewersunhappy with the supposed liberal bias of the mainstream media. By 2002, it had surpassed CNN and has usually ledthe news ratings race ever since. In alandmark for cable news in 2004, more people watched the Republican Conventionon FOX News than any other network, including the old broadcast networks.

As FOXNews became a controversial success, its entertainment counterpart became the mostpopular broadcast network for the coveted 18-49 year-old demographic. With shows like “24” and “House” in itslineup, along with the unbelievable popularity of “American Idol,” FOX defeatedthe major networks among younger viewers from 2004 to 2009.

Today,FOX is thriving while NBC, which dominated the ratings race during the 1980sand 90s, barely has a pulse among viewers. Over the same period, Depp became a bankable leading man as well ashighly respected actor with three Oscar nominations. Without “21 Jump Street,” there might neverhave been a FOX News Channel or a Captain Jack Sparrow. Is this a good or a bad thing? I blog. You decide.

50th Anniversary of John Glenn's Flight and the Decline of NASA

2012-03-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

Withlittle fanfare, the county commemorated the 50^th anniversary of JohnGlenn becoming the first American to orbit the Earth on February 21. The inattention to Glenn’s accomplishment aswell as the constant mocking of Newt Gingrich’s moon base plan, culminating inSNL’s February 4^th opening skit, “Newt Gingrich: Moon President,”reveals a significant change in American ambitions. The space program, once animportant source of national pride and influence on television and film, hasfaded in relevance and NASA is rapidly headed toward obscurity.

The ColdWar provided the impetus for the space race. Glenn’s triumphant voyage came after the Soviet Union launched the firstsatellite into space in 1957 with Sputnik as well as the first man into spacewhen Yuri Gagarin made an orbital flight in 1961. The race continued as the United States beatthe Russians to the moon when Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong landed atTranquility Base on July 20,1969.

DuringNASA’s heyday in the 1960s, astronauts became national icons who received tickertapeparades down New York City’s Canyon of Heroes, as Glenn did in 1962. The space race gave credence in sciencefiction as “Star Trek” premiered on television in 1966, with “2001: A SpaceOdyssey” and “Planet of the Apes” opening in theatres in 1968. Even a silly sitcom like “I Dream of Jeannie”(1965-70) took place at Cape Canaveral where Larry Hagman’s bumbling character,Major Anthony Nelson, worked as an astronaut.

After themoon landing, many NASA scientists like Werner Von Braun espoused visionssimilar to Newt’s, imagining moon bases by 1980 with trips to Mars tofollow. Indeed, Disney World’s “Flightto the Moon” became obsolete in “Tomorrowland” and was replaced by “Mission toMars” in 1975. With the moon race won,however, budgetary pressures led to the scrapping of the final three moonmissions in favor of Skylab, a short-lived American space station. Further travel to the stars was then shelvedin favor of the more cost-effective space shuttle, which could be reused.

WhileAmericans gradually lost interest in space, the still-fresh memory of theprogram remained important into the 1970s and early 80s. Science fiction reached new heights with theincredible success of the “Star Wars” trilogy from 1977-83 and the consequentrevival of “Star Trek.” “The RightStuff,” (1983), with its heroic portrayal of the original Mercury astronauts,fueled talk of a presidential run for John Glenn, then a U.S. Senator from Ohio. Despite the Hollywoodtreatment, Glenn’s 1984 campaign barely got off the ground and formerVice-President Walter Mondale and a then-unknown Gary Hart trounced him in theDemocratic primaries.

Startingwith the maiden voyage of Columbia in 1981, the space shuttle program producedimportant scientific gains like the Hubble Telescope, but missions to low Earthorbit could not inspire the national imagination in the same way a voyage tothe moon did. Over time, Americans began to only pay serious attention to NASAwhen there were tragedies, like the 1986 Challenger explosion. That disaster brought about nationalmourning, in part because it was the first time astronauts had been lost inflight, but also because the space program was still a key part of Americanidentity. Witness the far less emotionalreaction a generation later to the 2003 Columbia disaster. Only the gimmick of sending the 77 year-oldGlenn back into space on Discovery in 1998 drew significant media attention fora success.

Thedecline of blockbuster science fiction reflected this to some degree. The biggest movie franchises of the last decadedid not occur in space but were earth-bound fantasies such as “Lord of theRings” and “Harry Potter.” While I enjoyed these films immensely, they werelargely backward looking, particularly LOTR, which seemed to glorify a rural,feudal past.

Thoughboth President Bushes proposed returning to the moon, President Obama islargely privatizing the program with the intent of eventually launching a tripto land astronauts on an asteroid. Furthermore,public support for space travel remains low in light of contemporary budgetdeficits. The nation also seems to havelost the passion for space to the point that Newt is mocked for the same ideas thatrespectable scientists suggested a generation ago. This dynamic seems unlikelyto change anytime soon. As some have speculated, it may take a challenge fromanother foreign power like China to inspire a revitalized space program.

Billy Crystal's Return to the Oscars

2012-02-26T15:56:00.000-08:00

BillyCrystal’s return to host the Oscars for a ninth time represents a departurefrom the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ recent attempts torecruit younger people. Like the SuperBowl, the Academy Awards remains one of the few programs that can attainwidespread viewership in today’s 500-channel universe. While the awards show is often thehighest-rated non-football program of the year, it has struggled to maintainthe attention of 18-34 year olds who didn’t necessarily grow up watching it.

TheOscars, like all TV programs, has experienced declining audiences in recentyears, never matching the record 57 million that watched the megahit “Titanic”sweep the awards in 1998. As a result,the academy has sought out hosts who appeal to a younger demographic, withChris Rock, Hugh Jackman, and John Stewart (twice) receiving the opportunity sinceCrystal last hosted in 2004. None ofthese performers were particularly good or bad, with the notable exception ofthe James Franco/Anne Hathaway disaster of last year. Nevertheless, viewership has continued tofall, due to expanding entertainment options as well as the fact that many ofthe victorious films in the last few years have not been box office hits. While critics have often lambasted the Oscarsfor rewarding commercial movies, recent winners like “The Hurt Locker” (2009)and “No Country for Old Men” (2007) were hardly blockbusters.

With nohit film likely to do well tonight, Crystal’s return is unlikely to reverse thetrend of diminishing audiences, especially among younger viewers, given thathis heyday came in the late 80s and early 90s with movies like “When Harry MetSally” (1989) and “City Slickers” (1991). Still, he will likely appeal to the traditional Oscar watchers. According to today’s New York Times, 61 percent of the 2011 Academy Awards’ viewershipwas female, with the highest ratings coming from women over 35. This explains why my mother was the one whogot me into watching the program as a kid. And why she told me not to bother her tonight.

"The Artist" and Hollywood's Golden Age

2012-02-25T22:17:00.001-08:00

I enjoyed“The Artist,” which is the favorite to win best picture tonight at theOscars. I’m not sure if it should winthe Academy Award, but it is an innovative film that harkens back to the“Golden Age of Hollywood” in the 1920s and 1930s. Motion pictures emerged as a dominant part ofthe pop culture in this time and eventually moved from silent movies to“talkies” with sound.

D.W. Griffith’s“Birth of a Nation,” which premiered in 1915, is generally considered the firstfeature film. Though there had beenmovies in the first decade of the 20^th century, “Birth” used newtechniques that give it an almost modern feel. Griffith took several weeks to make “Birth of a Nation,” at a time whenmost movies were filmed in a week. Unfortunately, the film’s historical significance is how it depictedReconstruction as a time when law and order broke down in the recently defeatedConfederacy because freed blacks held political sway. The climax of the film shows the Ku Klux Klanemerging to defend virtuous white womanhood while restoring calm to the South. Griffith’s work provided a popular audiencefor the conventional historical interpretation of Reconstruction at the time—thatits “failure” revealed blacks were not ready for citizenship and that racialchange must come gradually.

“TheArtist” begins in 1927, with the movie industry thriving during the economicexpansion of the “Roaring 20s.” 20,000new theaters were constructed, as movie houses became a central part ofdowntowns in major cities across the country. Furthermore, attendance grew as the number of tickets sold rose from40,000 in 1922 to 100,000 by 1930, when 65 percent of the country attended films on a weekly basis, an all-time record (Leuchtenburg, 195; Pautz, p. 1).

The centralcharacter of “The Artist” is George Valentin, whose name is likely an homage toRudolph Valentino, a major star of the silent film era. The movie shows Valentin and his loveinterest, Penny Miller, working directly for the Hollywood studios. Under the “studio system” of the period, productioncompanies signed real-life actors and actresses to contracts to appear in acertain number of films. This arrangement prevailed throughout the industry untillegal challenges eventually brought about its end in the early 1960s.

“TheArtist” shows Valentin as dismissive of the dialogue in movies when firstintroduced to “talkies” in 1929. In fact,Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer” premiered as the first “talkie” two yearsearlier, in 1927. “The Jazz Singer” ismostly a silent film, but features two major scenes with talking and song anddance numbers.

The filmalso shows how Valentin’s career, like many silent stars, was damaged by thechange to audio. To add insult toinjury, Valentin is financially devastated by the stock market crash of 1929and the onset of the Great Depression. Propelledby the “talkies,” however, the movie industry as a whole did fairly well duringthe 1930s, as Americans needed an inexpensive distraction from their troubles.The film then follows Valentin’s descent into obscurity as he refuses to adaptto the new reality, while the younger Miller thrives in “talkies.”

“TheArtist” mythologizes the late 1920s and 1930s, which many look back upon asthe peak years of the movie industry. Indeed, films dominated American popular culture before the arrival oftelevision in the late 1940s. Subsequently, though, movie attendance began a two-decade long declinethat would only be reversed with the arrival of the summer blockbusters in the1970s. For more, see http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2011/06/emergence-of-summer-movie.html

Sources:William Leuchtenburg, Perils ofProsperity, 1914-32 (1958)
Michelle Pautz, "The Decline in Average Weekly Cinema Attendance: 1930-2000," Issues in Political Economy, 2002, vol. 11

Jeremy Lin and American Immigration

2012-02-20T19:38:00.000-08:00

JeremyLin’s meteoric rise in sports and popular culture has been incredible as the Harvardalum-turned-New York Knicks point guard was satirized on “Saturday Night Live”while appearing on the cover of SportsIllustrated during the same week. Indeed,“Linsanity” has spawned tremendous discussion about race and ethnicity inprofessional sports, much of it poorly informed. As the son of Taiwanese immigrants, Lin’s historicalimportance is how he embodies a long American tradition of sports serving as anavenue of assimilation for recent immigrant groups.

Thoughthere was a significant Irish and German immigration in the mid-19^thcentury, the largest wave of newcomers came to the U.S. from eastern andsouthern Europe between 1882 and 1924. Unlike previous immigrants, who had mostly come from northwesternEurope, these new arrivals hailed from Italy, Russia and the Austro-HungarianEmpire. The background of theseimmigrants, many whom entered the U.S. through Ellis Island, spawned a fierce debateabout the nature of American identity in the late 19^th and early 20^thcenturies. Many Americans believedeastern and southern Europeans weakened the country because they were raciallyinferior; others were concerned that a large percentage of them were Catholicand Jewish. Labor unions feared theywould lower wages for American workers. Asa result, some native-stock Americans formed organizations to halt the wave andafter many years of lobbying, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924,which sharply curtailed immigration from eastern and southern Europe bycreating small quotas for newcomers from those nations

By the1930s, first-generation sports heroes became symbols of pride for theseimmigrant communities, smoothing their entrance into the Americanmainstream. The Jewish-American baseballplayer Hank Greenberg became a star first baseman for the Detroit Tigers duringthe Great Depression. With the backdropof Hitler’s rise in Europe and growing American anti-Semitism, Greenberg wontwo American League Most Valuable Player awards and challenged Babe Ruth’ssingle-season home run record in 1938. Inthe same era, the Italian-American Joe DiMaggio emerged as the successor toRuth and Lou Gehrig as the star of the New York Yankees, setting a major leaguerecord by hitting in 56 consecutive games in 1941. Given their outsider status, Jews andItalians took particular pride in the achievements of Greenberg andDiMaggio. Furthermore, the baseballstars’ accomplishments earned them respect among the older American population,contributing to the weakening of the anti-Semitic and anti-Italian sentimentthat remained virulent in the 1930s United States.

With the militaryservice of first and second-generation Ellis Island immigrants in World War II,nativist sentiment began to decline. Thesoldiers returned home and participated in the economic boom of the 1950s,moving out of the old urban neighborhoods and into the suburbs, where ethnicidentity was not as visible. Furthermore,the civil rights movement undermined the scientific racism that had served asthe basis for the restrictions of 1924. In 1965, Congress passed and President Johnson signed the Hart-Celler Act,which removed the quotas that had limited immigration from eastern and southernEurope. For a number of reasons,legislators believed that they were simply ending an antiquated system and didnot think the change would precipitate renewed migration to the United States.

They werewrong. Hart-Celler facilitated a newwave of immigrants came from Latin America and Asia in the last third of the20th century, again reshaping the nation’s demography. Today, the percentage ofAmericans born outside of the United States is the highest it has been since1920. As we have seen in recent years, this migration has renewed the early 20^thcentury debates about “Who is an American?”

Like theEllis Island wave, many first-generation immigrants attained prominence insports. In particular, HispanicAmericans have reached tremendous heights in baseball, growing from a littleover ten percent of major league players in the early 1990s to over a quarter bythe early 21^th century. Thenumber of all-star Latino players is simply too long to list, though Sammy Sosaearned the greatest fame because of his duel with Mark McGwire for Roger Maris’single-season home run record in 1998 (though the two of them have had somedifficulties since, as you may have heard).

Lin iscertainly not the first Asian-American sports star. The Chinese-American tennis player MichaelChang, who was overshadowed by contemporaries like Andre Agassi and Pete Samprasin the 1990s, comes to mind. Still, Lin’ssuccess is comparable to Greenberg’s in that it also breaks down the stereotypethan an ethnic group known for excellence in academic pursuits can’t do thesame in athletics. Though he has onlyplayed a few weeks in the NBA, “Linsanity” has gone a long way to accomplishingthis end.

Only timewill tell if Lin can sustain his current level of play. The history of sports is littered with phenomswho have started strong and then disappeared almost as quickly. Whatever the end result, his status as anambassador for a recent immigrant group is part of a long American pattern.

The Rise of NASCAR

2012-02-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

With theDaytona 500 days away, it is an appropriate time to analyze the meteoric growthof NASCAR over the last three decades. As late as the mid-1980s, open wheel racing (Indy cars) reigned supremeover stock cars (NASCAR) and the Indianapolis 500—not Daytona— was the mostpopular race in the country. Mario Andrettiand A.J. Foyt, not Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, Sr., were the most famousdrivers in the nation. In the last 30years, though, stock car racing has surpassed open wheel racing, evolving from aregional sport based in the rural South to a national phenomenon with fanaticalsupporters across America.

Accordingto legend, NASCAR’s rise began with the exciting conclusion to the 1979 Daytona500, which was the first to air live on network television. A major snowstorm on the East Coast left manytrapped inside and some viewers who would not normally have watched tuned in. Following the conclusion of the race, won by Petty, drivers Cale Yarborough and Bobby and Donnie Alison got into afistfight over a last lap crash, bringing new attention to this sport. Just as 1958’s “Greatest Game Ever Played” betweenthe Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants spurred football to new heights,the ’79 Daytona launched NASCAR. See http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-football-came-to-dominate-america.html

Over thenext two decades, led by charismatic drivers such as Earnhardt, DarrellWaltrip, and Jeff Gordon, NASCAR became one of the most popular sports in thecountry, with ratings only surpassed by the NFL. Like football, auto racing’s ratings were augmentedby its once-a-week format, but that does not detract from the sport’sincredible rise. Meanwhile, internecinedisputes in Indy car racing split the sport into rival camps and many top driversdid not race in the Indianapolis 500 for several years. This divorce left the auto racing market toNASCAR alone.

NASCAR’sgrowth also reflected the rise of the South during the time. As the region’s population expanded, so didits influence on American culture. Othertraditionally southern phenomenon, like country music, developed crossoverappeal. Since the Reagan era, thepolitical conservatism and religiosity of the region has often seemed more reflectiveof the country than the liberalism and relative secularism of New England. By the 1990s, some discussed the “Southernizationof America,” as Arkansas’ Bill Clinton, Georgia’s Newt Gingrich, and Mississippi’sTrent Lott, served as President, Speaker of the House, and Senate MajorityLeader, respectively (Applebome, DixieRising).

DaleEarnhardt, Sr.’s death in a crash during the 2001 Daytona 500 precipitated PrincessDi-style mourning below the Mason-Dixon line. At the same time, some in the North scratched their heads over theemotional reaction. I’ll never forgetwhere I was when I found out that “The Intimidator” had died: the Upper WestSide of Manhattan. The local newsdeclared “tragedy strikes as a legend dies at Daytona.” Though I can count on my hands the number ofNASCAR races I’ve watched, as a sports fan I immediately blurted out, “Oh myG-D, did Dale Earnhardt die?” MyManhattan friends seemed totally nonplussed and refused to even let me watchthe sports segment to find out what had happened. It was a reflection of the cultural chasm thatstill exists, as NASCAR is very popular across a broad swath of the nation,except for a few bastions of blue America. As a perceptive friend of mine said later, thecircumstances surrounding Earnhardt’s death were unbelievable, the equivalentof Michael Jordan dying during Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Paradoxically,the period following Earnhardt’s crash may have been the sport’s peak. In 2004, “NASCAR dads” replaced “soccer moms”as the swing voters fawned over by presidential candidates and the nationalmedia alike. President George W. Bushcampaigned for re-election at the 2004 Daytona 500, opening the race bydeclaring, “Gentlemen, start your engines!”

While“The Intimdator’s” death brought new attention to the sport, it also sparked agreater awareness of its dangers. NASCARinstituted new safety guidelines that have helped prevent any deaths since2001, though some have suggested these measures have reduced the excitement ofthe races. Over the last decade, thesport’s popularity has declined as attendance at the races has slipped andtelevision ratings have come back to earth a bit.

It is notjust the new safety measures, however, that have caused the sport to plateau. NASCAR began as a working-class sport in therural South, but the sports’ leadership pushed to attract a more upscaledemographic. Nothing reflected thischange more than when sponsorship of the NASCAR points series switched from the“Winston Cup” to the “Nextel Cup” in 2004. Races at some of the older tracks have been abandoned in favor of largervenues, alienating some of the sports’ traditional fans,often called “gearheads.” SinceEarnhardt, Sr.’s death, no driver has emerged to replace him as someone thatfans either love or hate. Jimmie Johnsonhas dominated the sport in (old) Tigeresque fashion in recent years, winningfive consecutive championships between 2006-2010. But he doesn’t seem to elicit strong emotionseither way from the “gearheads.”

As the2012 race commences on February 26, it could mark the beginning of a resurgencein NASCAR’s popularity. Despite only onevictory in seven years of Indy car racing, Danica Patrick is moving to stockcars and will be in the field for the first time. Her celebrity will certainly bring renewedinterest in the “Great American Race,” but whatever happens, NASCAR has come a long way since its early days ofmoonshine and dirt tracks.

"Mad Men," "Alcatraz," and the Fascination with the Kennedy Era

2012-02-13T20:08:00.000-08:00

Propelledby the unlikely success of AMC”s “MadMen,” television has been fascinated by the early 1960s in recent years. The current season has featured “Pan Am,”“Playboy Club,” and “Alcatraz,” which have all been set during this timeperiod. While “Alcatraz” is the only oneof these shows likely to be renewed, the continuing interest in this periodreflects a persistent nostalgia for the United States before the social and politicalchanges of the 1960s.

Followingthe Kennedy assasination, the nation went though a series of upheavals, fromVietnam to race riots to Watergate. Though the Kennedy era witnessed the beginning of the civil rightsmovement, with sit-ins as well as the March on Washington, many scholars do notbelieve the decade truly began until the mid-1960s. One historian refers to 1964 as “The LastInnocent Year,” as the major aspects of the turbulent decade did not startuntil after the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Though therewere 16,000 U.S. advisers in Vietnam by 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson didnot send American ground troops until 1965, when it became clear South Vietnamwould fall to communism without direct U.S. military involvement. While there had been minimal antiwar activityearly in the war, opposition to the conflict grew every year after 1965, as casualtiesmounted. By 1968, a majority ofAmericans believed the war had been a mistake and protesters and police squaredoff at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Furthermore,the non-violence and the interracialism of the early civil rights movement gaveway to assertions of self-defense and black nationalism. Only a week afterPresident Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, race riots broke out inWatts, followed by three more years of “long, hot, summers,” culminating in anational wave of violence after Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis in1968. One of the few cities that did notexperience disorder was Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy was campaigning forpresident in the Indiana primary. Afterinforming the crowd that King had been shot, RFK told them of the anger he hadfelt after his brother’s murder and urged the audience to reject violence. Theyounger Kennedy seemed to be a unifying figure in a divisive time, able toreach out to both blacks and disaffected working-class whites. Adding to the turmoil of that year, RFKhimself was assassinated two months later in Los Angeles, immediately afterwinning the California primary.

RichardNixon achieved a historic political comeback to win the 1968 presidentialelection over Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and sought to end the war inSoutheast Asia through “Vietnamization”; that is, turning over military responsibilitiesto the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). Nevertheless, the anti-war movement continued to grow, peaking in 1970when Nixon expanded the war by invading Cambodia. The largest wave of campus protests followedand five Kent State students were shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsman.

Eventually,American military involvement in Vietnam came to a close with the Paris PeaceAccords in 1973, but it took a toll on the country, both in terms of 58,000casualties as well as a loss of trust in government and other majorinstitutions. President Johnson andmilitary leaders had repeatedly insisted we were winning the war and these liesgave way to a “credibility gap” between the public and Washington. This gap expanded because of Nixon’s prevarications during the Watergate scandal. In the early 1960s, three quarters of Americans trusted the governmentto do the right thing all or most of the time. Since Nixon’s resignation overthe Watergate scandal in 1974, it has been rare to find a poll where even one-thirdof the country trusts the government in such a fashion.

Inaddition, social and cultural changes disturbed many traditionally mindedAmericans. The divorce rate rosedramatically in the 1960s and 1970s, as did the number of children born out-of-wedlock. Many blamed these trends on the emergingfeminist movement. After the Stonewallriots in 1969, gays also began to come out of the closet and organizepolitically.

As aresult, nostalgia grew for the seeming calm of the 1950s and early 1960s. George Lucas’ film “American Graffiti” (1973)and the television show “Happy Days,” (1974-1984) were early examples of thisphenomenon. Coming in the immediateaftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, they presented an optimistic vision of Eisenhower-eraAmerica, without showing the darker sides of the period, such as racialsegregation and McCarthyism.

In latteryears, social conservatives often promoted an image of the 1950s as a time ofstable families when America led the world militarily. On “Meet the Press” in 1995, Newt Gingrichpraised the 1950s, saying that liberal Democratic policies and the 60scounterculture had undermined the traditional families of the time, causingmodern social problems.

It is notonly conservatives who harken back to the Kennedy era. Numerous hagiographic accounts of the Kennedypresidency have promoted the idea of his administration as “Camelot.” OliverStone’s “JFK” (1991) suggested that if President Kennedy had lived, he wouldn’thave escalated the war in Vietnam. Indeed, the upheavals that followed the Kennedy assassination are amajor reason for the persistent JFK nostalgia. His presidency now looks like the calm before the storm.

Ofcourse, “Mad Men” is no “Happy Days.” The show clearly illuminates some of the downsides of the time,particularly the institutionalized sexism. Still, some observers have suggested that the early seasons romanticizethe period. I’ve stopped watching “PanAm,” but it did seem to indulge in nostalgia, suggesting that stewardesses arethe avatars of feminism and largely ignoring the difficulties they faced. It is too early to tell with “Alcatraz,”which moves back and forth in “Lost”-like fashion between present day and theearly 60s. Nevertheless, theproliferation of such shows, as well as the continued fascination with JFK,show the nation still has a soft spot for that era in American history.

The Changing Image of New York City, 1970-Present

2012-02-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

As regular readers know, I’m enjoying both “Person of Interest and“Blue Bloods” on CBS. While the showsare very different, both programs’ feature protagonists who fightcrime in New York City. In “Person ofInterest,” Jim Caviezel plays an ex-CIA operative who operates with occasionalhelp from allies in law enforcement, while “Blue Bloods” focuses on Tom Selleckas the leader of a family of Irish-American police officers andprosecutors. Their dual premise isinteresting because crime has fallen dramatically in the Big Apple over thelast two decades, making it one of the safest cities in America. While New York City-based shows and movies ofthe 1970s and 80s depicted an unsafe metropolis in economic decline, mostpopular portrayals in recent years have caught up to the contemporary realityof a thriving city.

As crime rose in the 1970s and middle-class New Yorkers fled tothe suburbs, negative images of the city became plentiful in popular culture. In the aftermath of the fiscal crisis of themid-1970s, Woody Allen, the most prolific chronicler of New York, offered aharsh assessment in his most commercially successful movie, “Annie Hall” (1977). In light of the Ford Administration’srejection of Mayor Abe Beame’s request for a bailout in 1975, Alvy Singer(Woody Allen) tells his friend Rob (Tony Roberts) that the failure of thecountry to rally around New York is because, “the rest of the country looks upon New York like we'releft-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers,” adding, “I think of usthat way sometimes and I live here.” Singer later tells Rob, who hasnow moved to Los Angeles, “You're an actor, Max. You should be doing Shakespeare in the Park.“ Reflecting the rise in crime, Robtells Alvy, “Oh, I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max. I got mugged. I was playing Richard theSecond and two guys with leather jackets stole my leotard.” Films like “TaxiDriver” (1976) and "Saturday Night Fever"(1977) also showed a metropolis indecline.

The city endured a another epidemicof bad publicity in the 1980s as racially charged crimes like the Bernard Goetzsubway shooting and the infamous Central Park jogger case dominated coverage ofNew York. The early “Law and Order” reflected these issuesin “ripped from the headlines” fashion while Spike Lee portrayed a New York Citybitterly divided along racial and ethnic lines in “Do the Right Thing”(1989). Oliver Stone even skewered thebright spot of the era, the stock market boom, in "Wall Street" (1987). See http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/oliver-stones-wall-street-25-years.html

As the crack cocaine epidemicpeaked, murders reached an all-time high in 1990. Consequently, films and television of themid-to-late 80s depicted a city where law enforcement was ineffective. “The Equalizer,” a now-forgotten show that isa forefather of “Person of Interest,” featured Edward Woodward as a former CIAagent who protected people the police couldn’t or wouldn’t protect. In TimBurton’s original “Batman” (1989), Gotham is a stand-in for a NYC where only avigilante can rescue the city from the Joker and his violent minions.

With crime falling in the 1990s,pop culture reflected this change. “Seinfeld” and "Sex and the City” portrayed a Giuliani-era New York thatalmost seemed like a return to the “Fun City” of the mid-1960s. In 1999, Spike Lee made “Summer of Sam” whichdirectly contrasted the booming city of the tech bubble with the dysfunction of1977, when Son of Sam terrorized the citizenry and a blackout precipitatedwidespread rioting.

Positive depictions grew throughoutthe late 1990s and into the 21^st century. The first “Spider Man” (2002) showed thecaped crusader fighting minor criminals in a city that looked in far bettershape than the Gotham of the late 1980s. Following the lead of “Seinfeld,” virtually every sitcom aimed at anaffluent demographic seemed to take place in the city as “Friends,” “Will andGrace, “ and “Just Shoot Me” showed a safe New York where upscale professionalsthrived (though the diversity of the region is virtually absent from theseprograms.)

Starting in the early to-mid 1990s, crime inthe Big Apple fell precipitously, with murders reaching their lowest levelssince the 1960s. The economy boomed,partly due to the stock and real estate bubbles of the time. While “Blue Bloods” and “Person and Interest”depict a still-dangerous city, films and television have largely reflected thereality that it is now one of the most prosperous and safest big cities in thecountry.

How Football Dominates America (Part 3)

2012-02-06T12:07:00.000-08:00

With an audience of 111.3 million people, the 2012 Super Bowl barely broke the overall American viewership record of 111 million set by last year’s matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers. While the ratings, which represent the percentage of television households watching, for traditional scripted programs have fallen dramatically since the mid-1980s, the ratings for Sunday night’s Super Bowl XLVI between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots only slightly lagged the numbers for games from that period. Only in the NFL could a contest between small-market Green Bay and Pittsburgh draw an audience virtually identical to a game between big-market New York City and Boston (Though this was helped by the fact that the Packers and Steelers have two of the three biggest national followings of any NFL franchise, along with the Dallas Cowboys.)

Furthermore, 13 million people watched this year’s Pro Bowl, the meaningless NFL All-Star game, more than watched either the baseball or basketball all-star games. This figure is remarkable given that the quality of play in the Pro Bowl was so poor that even Commissioner Roger Goodell is contemplating ending the annual ritual.

Perhaps no league has ever dominated the American sports landscape the way the National Football League does today.

"Blue Bloods" and the Legacy of 9/11

2012-02-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

The February 3^rd episode of “Blue Bloods” provides yet another example of how television and film are beginning to focus more on the legacy of 9/11, as opposed to the threat of future terrorist attacks. As the 10^th anniversary of the tragic event passed last September and in the (thankful) absence of another major attack, shows and movies are examining the long-term impact of 9/11 on those who survived.

Like most episodes of “Blue Bloods,” the emphasis is on the Reagans, as one or more of the police family is investigating a conventional crime in New York City. In this episode, however, Frank Reagan, the stoic police commissioner played by Tom Selleck, is also struggling with guilt because a close friend from the force is dying. The colleague was with him in the North Tower on 9/11 and it appears he became ill due to exposure at Ground Zero. Because he is having difficulty sleeping, Regan, who embodies traditional notions of masculinity, has even taken the step of surreptitiously seeing a psychiatrist. Eventually, Regan’s friend passes away and he speaks at the funeral.

Ironically, Selleck’s most famous television show, “Magnum P.I.,” focused heavily on the legacy of a traumatic event from another era, the Vietnam War, as Magnum (Selleck) and his two closest friends had served together in that conflict. At the end of the “Blue Bloods” episode, Reagan goes to the 9/11 Memorial to honor his friend, and concludes the show by touching it. The scene is reminiscent of the 1985 “Magnum, P.I.” episode, “Going Home,” which ends with Magnum going to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, finding the name of his half-brother, and touching the wall.

"Blue Bloods" and Irish Americans

2012-02-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

CBS’s “Blue Bloods, ” which airs on Friday nights, has been one of the few breakout hits on television in recent years. Starring Tom Selleck as the head of a multigenerational family of New York City cops, it is yet another of the network’s procedural programs aimed at older viewers. The show centers on the Reagans, an Irish-American clan that has produced three generations of police officers. Selleck’s character, Frank Reagan, is the city’s police commissioner. By featuring an Irish-American family working in law enforcement, it reproduces a pop culture archetype with real roots in American history.

The Irish migration in the 1840s and 50s was the first major post-independence immigration wave to the United States. As a result, Irish Americans became a central factor in urban politics in the mid-to late 19^th century. Martin Scorsese depicted this dynamic in his 2002 film “Gangs of New York,” where the Tweed machine gains power by garnering the loyalty of freshly arrived Irish voters in the Civil War era. Displaced by the disastrous potato famine, the Irish came to the major Northeastern and Midwestern cities a generation before the larger wave of eastern and southern European immigrants. Using this time advantage, Irish Americans like Boston mayor Honey Fitzgerald, who was also JFK’s grandfather, became political leaders in a number of big cities.

In an era before significant federal and state social welfare programs existed, political “machines” like Tammany Hall in New York City offered new arrivals desperately needed jobs on the public payroll, often in the police force or the fire department. In response, native-stock progressives called for civil service reform to take the patronage power away from the machines. Despite some success by their opponents, mayors and their ward allies were still able to reward their backers and the Irish newcomers became a staple of police departments in the major cities. Like the fictional Reagans, many children and grandchildren followed their parents and grandparents into the family business. Thus, the Irish-American cop has been a staple of TV and films, perhaps best exemplified by Jimmy Malone, the policeman played by Sean Connery who assists Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness in the “Untouchables” (1987).

The Super Bowl Halftime Show and the History of Rock n' Roll

2012-01-31T20:12:00.001-08:00

Since the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” debacle of 2004, the National Football League (NFL) has turned to “safe” musicians with traditional star power for its Super Bowl halftime shows. ‘60s icons such as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and the Who have performed as well as ’80s stars like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Prince. The NFL’s choices reflect the decline of the culture wars of the 1960s as well as the enduring power of artists from the mass culture era of the 1980s.

When rock n’ roll emerged out of a fusion of rhythm and blues, country, and gospel in the 1950s, it was immediately controversial. The backlash against artists like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard led to a domestication of the music by the early 60s. Groups like Frankie Avalon and the Four Seasons, whose story has been revived in recent years by the musical “Jersey Boys,” and others promoted a brand of music that lacked the aggressive sexuality of the early rock n’ roll. Some observers even suggested that rock was going to fade away.

The emergence of the Beatles and the British Invasion bands of the mid-1960s dispelled such thoughts. Rock music reached new heights and these groups were often controversial given the social battles of the period. The Beatles drew the ire of many Christians when John Lennon suggested that the Fab Four were “bigger than Jesus.” The Rolling Stones, who sought to be more confrontational than the Beatles, were particularly galling to traditionally-minded people in the era of the “generation gap” as young and old clashed over the counterculture, civil rights, and Vietnam. In 1966, a poll showed that rock was the most unpopular music in the nation, disliked by almost half of adults (“Forty Years After Woodstock, a Gentler Generation Gap,” p. 2).

As time passed and the baby boomers aged, the music of the 1960s became “classic rock” and Generations X and Y embraced it with enthusiasm. A recent survey revealed that the Beatles are virtually the favorite band of both people between ages 50 and 64 as well as those between ages 16 and 29. Rock n’ roll is now the most popular music of every age group except those 65 and older (“Forty Years After Woodstock,” 18, 3). As a result, the 60s counterculture is now prime material for the family-friendly halftime show.

Similarly, once-polarizing 80s performers like Madonna, who courted controversy with her songs and videos during the Reagan years, is now acceptable. The Material Girl, like Springsteen and Prince, was a star of the last era of mass culture in music. As I noted in my post on the evolution of the music industry, http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/20th-anniversary-albums-and-changing.html, the MTV/FM radio era of the 80s and early 90s that gave musicians a wide audience has faded, leaving fewer acts that can garner the attention of the nation. Last year’s disappointing performance by a more contemporary group, the Black Eyed Peas, demonstrated this phenomenon as the Peas had to cover other artists’ songs during their show. They simply did not have a broad enough catalog of their own recognizable hits.

But there is a problem the NFL will have to face soon as the league is fast running out of entertainment options. There are no remaining 60s artists able to perform and the supply of 80s and 90s stars is also rapidly diminishing. I predict we will be watching Green Day at a Super Bowl halftime in the near future.

Sources: “Forty Years After Woodstock, a Gentler Generation Gap,” Pew Research Center, August 12, 2009

Kiefer Sutherland's "Touch" and 9/11

2012-01-30T19:54:00.000-08:00

As I’ve noted previously, the intersections between 9/11 and popular culture provided the primary inspiration for starting this blog. In the years following the attacks, I gravitated to programs such as “24” and “Heroes,” which were directly influenced by the war on terror and the fears and debates it spawned. These shows have concluded and been replaced by programs that seem to be moving away from 9/11 allegories. Fox’s new show “Touch,” developed by “Heroes” creator Tim Kring and starring “24’s” Kiefer Sutherland, reveals a continued shift away from direct fears of terrorism to an emphasis on the legacy of the attacks and a return to concerns about traditional crimes.

In “Touch,” Sutherland’s character, Martin Bohm, is a single father who has been caring for his autistic son since his wife was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. His son can’t speak, but is able to see numerical patterns that help Bohm prevent future crimes and accidents. Through a series of hard-to-explain mechanisms in the pilot, Bohm and his son facilitate the conditions by which a New York City firefighter can rescue children from a burning school bus. It turns out this firefighter is consumed with feelings of guilt because of his inability to save Bohm’s wife on 9/11. Like the Tom Hanks/Sandra Bullock film “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” “Touch” depicts how the deaths in the World Trade Center impacted those left behind.

From the previews of future episodes, it also seems that unlike Jack Bauer, Sutherland’s “24” character, Bohm will be trying to stop conventional crimes rather than terrorist attacks. Similar to CBS’ s “Person of Interest,” “Touch” reveals a gradual move away from post-9/11 fears of spectacular nuclear, chemical, and biological events seen in “Heroes” and “24” to anxieties about common malfeasance like murders, robberies, and car accidents.

"Midnight in Paris" and the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s

2012-01-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

The Oscar-nominated “Midnight in Paris” is Woody Allen’s best film since “Match Point” (2005), if not “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989). Set in Paris, Owen Wilson plays a writer who wanders the City of Lights each evening looking for inspiration. When the clock strikes midnight one night, a car takes him back in time to the Paris of the 1920s, where he hobnobs with literary greats like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were among many American intellectuals, often referred to as the “Lost Generation,” who left the country during the Roaring Twenties. Disillusioned by World War I and frustrated by the dominance of conservative values in their home country, they made their way to France.

In the years before the First World War, many intellectuals held optimistic beliefs about the inevitability of human progress. Such views were shattered by the devastation of the trenches and the Western Front (see post on Spielberg’s “War Horse” http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2011/12/war-horse-and-world-war-i.html. Hemingway himself was wounded in the conflict.

For the first time, the census showed that a majority of Americans lived in cities in 1920. During the subsequent decade, rural and urban Americans clashed over cultural issues as many in the heartland feared that traditional Victorian values were fading in the face of the rise of the cities and secular ideas. The divisions of this period were akin to the contemporary divide between “red” and “blue” states.

The strength of rural conservatism disturbed some of the urban intellectuals and if abortion, gay rights, and gun control represent the cultural divides of the 1990s and early 21st century, then alcohol, immigration, and evolution were the analogous splits of the 1920s. Throughout the decade, Prohibition reigned as the law of the land, though it was routinely flouted. The Ku Klux Klan expanded beyond its traditional rural Southern base and garnered support across the country, controlling the politics of states such as Indiana and Colorado. In this period, the Klan’s agenda went beyond a desire to maintain racial supremacy and extended to concerns about rising immigration from eastern and southern Europe as well as the power of the Catholic Church. Their influence grew to the point that the Klan helped prevent the Democratic Party from nominating Al Smith, the governor of New York and a Catholic, for president in 1924. Finally, religious modernists and fundamentalists battled over evolution laws in a number of states, culminating in the famous clash between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.

The emerging consumer culture of the period also disturbed the American expatriates. The US economy boomed in the 1920s, and while not all shared in the prosperity, the middle class grew and new and exciting products such as radios became available. From the perspective of the “Lost Generation,” too many Americans of this time were simply concerned about making money and “keeping up with the Joneses.”

Not all fled. Some stayed and critiqued American culture from home. But others went to Paris where they ran into Woody Allen—or at least Owen Wilson playing Woody Allen.

The History of the Super Bowl

2012-01-25T12:06:00.000-08:00

As the media commences another two weeks of unrelenting hype in advance of Super Bowl XLVI, it is the perfect time to review the history of the biggest sporting event in the country. Far younger than the World Series, the Masters, or the Kentucky Derby, the NFL championship game has become a virtual national holiday in which the life of the country comes to a full and complete stop.

The Super Bowl’s origins lie in the creation of the American Football League (AFL) in 1960. Started by a group of businessmen who wanted pro football teams but were frustrated by the NFL’s unwillingness to expand, the AFL forged ahead as an alternative that would play a more wide-open brand of football. So began a rivalry that would help propel pro football ahead of baseball as the most popular spectator sport in the country by the end of the decade.

In 1966, after several years of competition, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Lamar Hunt, owner of the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, negotiated a merger agreement in which the two leagues would formally join together in 1970. In the meantime, the AFL and NFL champions would play each other at the end of the season and Hunt suggested calling the new game the “Super Bowl.” Though both he and Rozelle thought a better title could be found, sportswriters started using the moniker in advance of the inaugural game in January 1967 and it stuck (MacCambridge, 236-237).

Though there was anticipation before Super Bowl I between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs, the hype did not remotely approach what we will see over the next ten days. The game, which was held in the Los Angeles Coliseum, did not even sell out. As Michael MacCambridge, author of a history of pro football, observed, “fans simply weren’t used to traveling to neutral sites.” (MacCambridge, 240) Though the Vince Lombardi-era Packers routed the Chiefs, ratifying notions of NFL superiority, the game drew 65 million television viewers, the largest ever for an American sporting event at the time (MacCambridge, 240).

The game’s popularity took off from there as the New York Jets’ shocking upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III gave the AFL credibility. After the merger, the NFL split into the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC) and the victors of those conferences fought it out at the end of each season. The two-week gap between the conference championship games allowed suspense to build, as the media presence grew dramatically. By 1974, the event had grown to such proportions that Norman Vincent Peale declared that if Christ were alive “he’d be at the Super Bowl.” (MacCambridge, 312).

As the NFC’s domination of the AFC produced a series of Super Bowl routs in the 1980s, Madison Avenue swooped in to create a different kind of interest in the game. In 1984, Apple commissioned a Ridley Scott-directed commercial promoting their new Macintosh computer. The ad, based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, showed a woman tossing a sledgehammer into a gigantic TV screen of Big Brother’s propaganda, thereby destroying it. Shown during Super Bowl XVIII, the commercial started a sensation and from that point forward, corporate America debuted their best ads during the game. After all, no better place to unveil them than before the biggest national television audience of the year. And ranking the spots became another part of watching the game.

While viewership for the World Series and NBA Finals are highly dependent on whether large-market teams or major stars participate or not, the Super Bowl’s ratings are almost unaffected by these factors. The NFL’s revenue-sharing arrangement allows small-market teams to remain competitive and even become national brands. While a playoff matchup between Milwaukee and Pittsburgh would strike fear into the hearts of baseball officials, last year’s Super Bowl between Green Bay and Pittsburgh drew an American television record of 111 million viewers.

With the rise of cable TV, the Internet, and other entertainment options, the country rarely pauses to watch or follow the same event, except in cases of national tragedy. When the game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots kicks off at 6:30 p.m. EST on February 5, virtually the entire nation will be watching, producing a collective experience that is rare in today’s niche culture world.

Sources: Michael MacCambridge, America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation (New York, 2004)

"Red Tails"--George Lucas on the Tuskegee Airmen

2012-01-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

When I heard George Lucas was making a film about the Tuskegee Airmen, my first thought was “I hope it’s better than the Star Wars prequels, because the Tuskegee Airmen deserve better.” Unfortunately, “Red Tails” was not better than the prequels—in fact, it may have been worse. Lucas wanted to produce an old-fashioned war film, with one of his colleagues saying black soldiers had never received the “John Wayne treatment.” (NYT, January 22, 2012) “Red Tails” accomplishes that goal, but adds a heavy dose of corny dialogue and dull characters. “Glory” (1989), which gave long-overdue attention to African-American military service in the Civil War, showed you could make a heroic war movie that is also sophisticated. “Red Tails” falls well short in this regard.

The film depicts the true story of black pilots in the Army Air Force during World War II (the Air Force did not become an independent service until 1947). Overcoming opposition from within the military as well as segregationist politicians, the Tuskegee Airmen fought to serve their country. Though not portrayed in the film, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt pushed hard for them to have the opportunity, bringing media attention to their cause. Once they received a chance, the airmen played a central role in the air war in Europe during the last two years of the conflict. The 332^nd Fighter Group, one of two squadrons which composed the airmen, had a “record [that] was unmatched by any single escort group,” wrote Gail Buckley in her history of blacks in the military, adding that “in two hundred missions they never lost a single bomber” (American Patriots, 277). Though “Red Tail’s” approach is wooden, the movie gives well-earned credit to the pilots, showing them as traditional military heroes.

The two main black flyers, however, are portrayed in cookie-cutter fashion; one is cautious and careful while another, Joe Little, is hot headed and adventurous. Little (whose name may be a reference to Malcolm Little, who became Malcolm X) gets into a bar fight with white soldiers at an officer’s club in Italy after he is called the n-word. This scene reflects the fact that conflicts between black and white soldiers were common during the war, deeply worrying military leaders.

Black airmen noted that they faced little prejudice from Italians. Indeed, Little has a relationship with a local woman, as some black soldiers did. As in World War I, stories about these interracial relationships deeply concerned many in the South, where Jim Crow had always centered on a fear of sex between black men and white women.

Race often came to forefront during the Second World War as some historians see the conflict as the start of the modern civil rights movement. Even before the war started, many in the government were concerned about black morale. A. Philip Randolph, a key black union leader, threatened to lead a March on Washington in 1941 if the Roosevelt Administration did not take action to prevent discrimination in defense employment. When Randolph wouldn’t budge, FDR issued Executive Order 8802, which created the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Though the FEPC would be underfunded and largely ineffective, it represented the first federal measure to protect the political rights of African Americans since Reconstruction. While Randolph called off the march, it provided the inspiration for the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech

Once the war began, the fight for democracy against racist regimes in Germany and Japan exposed the contradiction between American rhetoric and American practice. Noting that African-American soldiers were fighting for freedom abroad when they didn’t have equal rights at home, black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier promoted the “Double V” campaign of defeating both Jim Crow and the Axis powers. White liberals began to focus on the need to address the problem of segregation, albeit gradually.

500,000 blacks served in the American military during the war (American Patriots, 261). The Tuskegee Airmen, like all African-American soldiers, faced Jim Crow conditions while off base during their training in the South. While the pilots and others saw combat in segregated units, traditional stereotypes about the weak capabilities of black soldiers (briefly referenced in “Red Tails”) relegated most to supporting roles. One notable exception to both rules came during the Battle of the Bulge in 1945, when manpower shortages forced the integration of a few infantry units.

In interviews publicizing the movie, Lucas has mentioned the possibility of making another film that dramatizes the reaction to the airmen when they return home. While most black soldiers came back to the United States in 1945 hoping to find jobs and resume their lives, some sought to challenge the racial caste system. A young Mississippian named Medgar Evers tried to vote in the Democratic primary in his home state in 1946, only to be met with violence. He later became head of the NAACP in Mississippi. Jackie Robinson, who served in the Army during World War II, integrated major league baseball when he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. At the same time, many in the South wanted to ensure that returning black soldiers did not take the democratic rhetoric of the war too seriously. Lynchings, which had declined significantly over the previous generation, increased dramatically in 1946-47 and several veterans were among the victims, spurring President Harry Truman to take a stronger stance on civil rights.

The heroic service of the Tuskegee Airmen as well as other black soldiers paved the way for President Truman’s order integrating the military in 1948. Many military leaders, including five-star generals such as Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, opposed integration, with Bradley declaring that the military was not a venue for social engineering. It is remarkable to see the similarities between this thinking and contemporary arguments against allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

Lucas said that he wanted to make a heroic film for black teenagers because African Americans have never received that kind of portrayal in a World War II film. Indeed, dating back to the movies made during the war, World War II films have rarely highlighted black participation. Even in recent movies like “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), “Thin Red Line”1998), and “Flags of our Fathers” (2006), African Americans barely appear. Despite disdain from critics, “Red Tails” is getting a strong response from audiences, doubling the studios’ expectation with its opening weekend gross. Perhaps it will simply be a crowd-pleaser that calls attention to an important and relatively unknown part of American history. Many movies don’t even accomplish that much, though I would recommend the HBO movie “Tuskegee Airmen” (1995) for a more sophisticated look at the subject.

Sources:
Gail Buckley, American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm (New York, 2001)

New York Times Magazine, January 22, 2012

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

2012-01-21T07:54:00.001-08:00

I very much enjoyed the extremely intricate “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which harkens back to the 1970s and the era of Cold War espionage. It focuses on the British MI-6 agency and is about as far in spirit from the James Bond movies as possible. George Smiley, the film’s protagonist, is no suave 007, but a sober analyst whose life has been broken by the spy business. Played expertly by Gary Oldman, he comes out of retirement and methodically seeks out a mole within the ranks of British intelligence.

Based on a 1974 novel by John Le Carre, the story seems to be based on the Cambridge 5, a famous British espionage ring that was exposed in the 1950s. They were a group of British agents who became communists while students during the Great Depression. During the 1930s, many in the West were attracted to Marxism because the chronically high unemployment of the period made it seem as if capitalism had failed. At the same time, the growth of the Soviet Union under Stalin’s 5-Year Plan of forced industrialization led many to believe it was the land of the future. Others were attracted to communism because they thought that the USSR was standing up to fascism while the Western democracies dithered as Hitler’s power grew. After the revelation of the Stalinist terror campaigns of the 30s, along with the signing of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact in 1939, many leftists soured on communism. Nevertheless, when the Cambridge 5 joined British intelligence, they passed along state secrets to the KGB during World War II and into the early years of the Cold War.

The film takes place during the Cold War and reveals some similarities between that struggle and the war on terror. Both saw concerns regarding government secrecy and about how far to go with regard to interrogation of suspects. Furthermore, both eras featured fears about the possibilities of fifth columns undermining national security.

Oscar thoughts

2012-01-20T11:52:00.000-08:00

There have been plenty of Oscar prognostications, so I’m not going to do a full Academy Awards preview, but here are a few random thoughts concerning Tuesday morning’s announcements.

Andy Serkis, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”- I very much hope that he receives a nomination for playing Caesar, the ape who is the central character of the film. Beginning with his performance as Gollum in the Lord of the Ring movies, Serkis has been the master of the new motion capture technique with CGI. While he was a key supporting character in LOTR, his acting carries “Rise”, which was my favorite summer film. I’m guessing, however, that his nomination will have to wait until he reprises his role as Gollum in this fall’s “The Hobbit.”

Alan Rickman, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II”- The Potter franchise has been the most consistently strong of any film franchise, yet has received little Oscar love. Rickman helped make Severus Snape the most interesting character in the whole series and his acting stood out in the movies, which was quite impressive given that he was performing opposite half of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Furthermore, Rickman may be the best active actor not to have received a nomination, despite a series of excellent performances starting with his memorable turn as Hans Gruber, the villain in the original “Die Hard” (1988).

Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," 25 Years Later

2012-01-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

In recent weeks, pundits ranging from Paul Krugman to Ross Douthat have made analogies to Oliver Stone's 1987 film "Wall Street," with some going so far as to compare Mitt Romney with Gordon Gekko. In light of this dynamic as well as the spirited contemporary debate over economic inequality, I decided to reexamine the movie. Though it was released during another era of economic turbulence in the Reagan years, it appears as relevant as ever today.

It is important to remember the events surrounding the film, as the 1980s witnessed an historic bull market with stocks taking off as the economy recovered from the 1981-82 recession. While Wall Street brokers made a great deal of money in the 1960s and 70s, the rewards grew dramatically during the 1980s. At the same time, income inequality began to grow as the rich got richer, while the middle class barely gained, and the poor stagnated or fell behind. Finally, a number of major insider trading scandals broke in the late 1980s, famously ensnaring Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken.

Leveraged buyouts (LBOs), a process by which corporate leaders bought companies, then broke them up and sold them off rather than rebuilding them, also emerged in the 1980s. The advocates of LBOs claimed they were bringing new competitive pressures to American business, forcing them to be more efficient or face takeovers. To their critics, firms like Romney’s Bain Capital were merely corporate raiders that earned money by destroying businesses rather than creating anything.

This tension plays out in “Wall Street,” as a young trader named Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is working his way up the career ladder. The son of an airline union leader (real-life dad Martin Sheen) who is not satisfied with conventional success in the financial industry, Fox wants to make the big time by working with a major player, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Once he ingratiates himself into Gekko’s inner circle, Fox engages in all sorts of illegal activity, notably insider trading. He makes a great deal of money in the process and the film is replete with examples of the conspicuous consumption of the 1980s.

Though the film revolves around Fox, the movie’s star is clearly Gekko and Douglas’ performance earned him an Oscar for best actor. Equally charismatic and villainous, Gekko tempts Fox into his orbit, eventually using the relationship to put himself in a position to purchase and liquidate Fox’s father’s airline, Blue Star Airways, laying off all the workers in the process.

While Gekko’s “greed is good” speech is the most famous clip from the film, I think Gekko’s response to Fox when he confronts him about Blue Star’s fate is far more instructive. “The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars,” Gekko declares, “One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own.” In that sense, Gekko was dramatically different from morally ambiguous businessmen from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, who created massive new industries and businesses. It also differentiated him from a real-life contemporary, Steve Jobs, who was leading the personal computing revolution at Apple.

Gekko’s speech proved prescient as the nation’s economy was in the early stages of an economic transition that has continued to the present day. According to Alan Krueger, Obama’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, “The proportion of people in the top 1% who were from the finance and real estate sector nearly doubled from 1979 to 2005. And in 2005, executives from the finance and real estate sector made one quarter of the income in the top .1 percent.” While the earnings of different income quintiles grew by roughly the same amount from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, Congressional Budget Office data shows that the real after-tax incomes of the top 1% of families grew by 278 percent between 1979 and 2007, while the middle 60 percent grew by less than 40 percent (Krueger speech to Center for American Progress, Jan. 12, 2012). Today, income inequality has reached its highest level since 1929, the start of the Great Depression.

At the end of the film, Fox maneuvers to save Blue Star Airlines, but is arrested for insider trading. He wears a wire to obtain evidence against Gekko before going to jail at the end of the movie. His father tells him it may be the best thing for him to go to prison and “Stop going for the easy buck and produce something with your life. Create instead of living on the buying and selling of others." With the insider trading scandals and the October 1987 stock market crash, change in Wall Street appeared to be on the horizon. “I thought the ’80s would have been an end to a cycle," reflected Stone in 2008, "I thought there would be a bust. But that’s not what happened.”(New York Times, October 5, 2008)

Quite the opposite occurred. Bizarrely, many people who went to work on Wall Street over the next two decades cited Gekko as their inspiration. The 1990s witnessed another stock market boom, as high-technology stocks soared even though many of them never made a profit. Though inequality did narrow some due to the low unemployment of the Clinton years, the bubble burst as the century closed. The 2000s saw relatively weak growth fueled by the housing bubble, which also exploded, leaving the Great Recession in its wake. In the aftermath, Stone revisited the subject in the much weaker “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (2010). The sequel revolves around Gekko, but Fox makes a brief cameo. Rather than learning a lesson from his comeuppance, Fox has become a morally questionable entrepreneur himself. Perhaps a sad metaphor for the country not learning anything either.

The SEC's Dominance and the New South

2012-01-09T21:08:00.000-08:00

With Alabama winning the SEC’s sixth consecutive national title, the conference’s dominance in college football has been established beyond a doubt. Many sportswriters have discussed the reasons for the conference’s supremacy, ranging from the popularity of the sport in the region to the massive television contract that gives its members the power to pay top dollar to hire the best coaches. Beyond sports, however, the strength of the Southeastern Conference illuminates key shifts in the country with implications beyond the football field.

It may come as a surprise to those living south of the Mason-Dixon Line that college football started in the Northeast during the late 19^th century, conceived in part as a way for the children of the Eastern Establishment to establish their manhood. Theodore Roosevelt and others saw it as a way to toughen a generation that had not experienced combat in the Civil War. By the 1920s, college football had established itself in the South, where it eventually became the most popular sport and the area’s passion.

The rise of the SEC reflects, among other things, the shift in population away from the Northeast and toward the Sunbelt since the Second World War. Weapons production and the expansion of military bases in the region during the war brought new people to the area and this trend continued as Cold War defense spending created a peacetime military establishment. Strong chairmen of the Senate Armed Services Committee, such as Richard Russell of Georgia and John Stennis of Mississippi, used their clout to place bases in the region and funnel defense contracts to local plants. The Eisenhower Administration started the interstate highway system during the 1950s, which strengthened transportation in the relatively poor region, paving the way for population growth.

With an improved infrastructure and lower labor costs as an attraction, manufacturing and other businesses began leaving the unionized Northeast and Midwest for the nonunion South. Foreign companies followed, with BMW, Mercedes, and Nissan building plants in South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, respectively. Over the last half-century, economic differences between the South and the rest of the country have narrowed considerably, with per capita incomes nearly reaching parity.

Improved race relations were key to the South’s renaissance, as it was impossible for the region to move forward economically under Jim Crow, which restrained the potential of its black citizens. It is no coincidence that the much of the economic growth in the area has come since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended legal segregation. Indeed, business leaders in the area were often instrumental in pushing for change, not because of a humanitarian concern, but because of an understanding that racial disputes discouraged national and international investment.

Before the civil rights era, Southern schools did not recruit black players and were often unwilling to even play against integrated teams. Top black players went to Northern conferences like the Big Ten or to historically black colleges (HBCUs). Throughout the Jim Crow era and in its immediate aftermath, Grambling, under head coach Eddie Robinson, was an HBCU powerhouse with players like NFL Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Joiner and Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. SEC teams squandered hometown talent, as the University of Mississippi eschewed recruiting Walter Payton, who later became the NFL’s all-time leading rusher. Payton stayed in state to play at Jackson State, another historically black college.

After the passage of the civil rights laws, the SEC gradually embraced recruiting black players. Vanderbilt and Kentucky became the first schools to do so in 1966 and eventually the legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant revived the Crimson Tide in the 1970s by aggressively pursuing African American athletes. In the early years of the post-Jim Crow era, some black players were likely reluctant to go South because of strong memories of the violence of the civil rights era. Indeed, I believe the dominance of the conference today is in part due to the fading memories of the upheavals of the 1950s and 60s, as African American athletes are now more enthusiastic about playing in the Old Confederacy. In particular, the success of many black quarterbacks in the SEC over the last decade would have seemed unlikely a generation ago.

Today, the SEC is the top football conference and the South is the fastest-growing region of the country, both economically and in terms of population growth. Of course, the gains have been uneven, as Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia are more prosperous than Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. While race relations have improved and black players dominate the field, some barriers still remain. As of 2011, there has been only one black coach in the history of the conference. And there are none on the sidelines today.

"War Horse" and World War I

2011-12-31T09:29:00.000-08:00

I strongly recommend “War Horse,” which is one of the best movies of the year. Let me warn readers in advance that it is very sentimental and if anyone but Steven Spielberg had directed the film, it would not have worked. The movie calls attention to World War I, a conflict that most Americans have relatively little knowledge of and that has long been overshadowed in popular culture by World War II.

In June 1914, a Bosnian Serb nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, triggering a series of military alliances that began World War I, the first major European war in a century. Crowds across the continent cheered the coming of the conflict and both sides expected a short war. Instead, the battle between the Allied Powers of Britain, France, and Russia and the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, dragged on for over four years, killing 9 million soldiers and devastating Europe. When it finally ended on November 11, 1918, it was called the Great War or “the war to end all wars.”

World War I played an instrumental role in shaping the rest of the 20^th century. By its end, the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires had collapsed. The harsh peace imposed by the victorious Allied Powers in the Treaty of Versailles weakened the European economy, paving the way for the Great Depression of the 1930s. In particular, the settlement imposed huge reparations on the defeated Germans and demanded they accept guilt for starting the war, virtually strangling the democratic Weimar Republic at its birth. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis Party flourished in this climate, builiding political support by claiming that Jews and others had “stabbed the country in the back.” The war weakened the czarist regime in Russia, resulting in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the creation of the Soviet Union. Finally, after promising the Arab world its independence in exchange for joining the fight against their colonial overlords, the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France carved up the region between each other. They created countries like Iraq and Jordan, which had previously not existed, drawing national borders to suit their own interests. These artificial boundaries are responsible for many of the problems in today’s Middle East.

Of course, “War Horse” does not focus on such weighty geopolitical issues. (SPOILERS) It is the story of a young British boy who trains a horse that his family must sell to the British military in order to keep their farm. In the course of the war, the horse is used by the British, German, and French militaries on the Western front in France. Joey, as the horse is called, is never used by the U.S. Army, which only arrived in 1918. Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, the United States tried to avoid entering the conflict, only declaring war in April 1917 following the resumption of German submarine warfare. Given our small peacetime army at the time, it took almost another year to train units to send across the Atlantic, but our fresh troops eventually helped bring about an earlier end to the war.

The film illustrates how combat during the First World War changed from previous wars. New industrial technologies facilitated a different kind of battle than seen in the biggest Western conflict of the 19^th century, the American Civil War. While armies still used the cavalry charges of the last century, weaponry like machine guns and tanks led to higher casualties, as the two sides got bogged down in trench warfare for four years in France. Weapons of mass destruction like poison gas were used for the first time. Spielberg’s depiction of the fighting in No Man’s Land, the region between the trenches, is every bit as impressive as the now-famous portrayal of D-Day in the opening 30 minutes of his “Saving Private Ryan.”

Many historians consider World War I the first “total war,” where civilians experienced the full impact of a conflict. (Minor spoilers) The section of the film where the French Army repeatedly confiscates goods from a local farmer and his granddaughter illustrates this phenomenon. There is little ideology and politics discussed in the movie, which is largely about soldiers and civilians trying to maintain their humanity during the tragic conflict.

When the war was finally over, the Allies, including the United States, emerged victorious, but at a huge cost that would echo for generations. Yet most Americans know little about the conflict, even though 53,000 soldiers died in combat. The U.S. was only involved in the war for 18 months and did not suffer the heavy losses the Europeans did, while our home front was not nearly as affected. Furthermore, World War II, commencing a mere 20 years later and causing even greater destruction, is much more dominant in the American memory. Few major films have depicted World War I and none has achieved commercial success comparable to that of movies about the Civil War, World War II, or Vietnam.

“War Horse” will likely be a nominee for best picture and provide yet another best director nomination for Spielberg. It almost makes me forget how much I disliked “Adventures of Tintin.” More importantly, when I discuss World War I with my students, I will now be able to cite a film to illustrate some of my points.

"Dark Knight Rises" trailer

2011-12-31T09:27:00.001-08:00

As memory of the 9/11 terror attacks recede, more and more films are influenced by the next major event of the last decade, the Great Recession. “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (2010) and “Margin Call” (2011) both were quasi-documentary examinations of the global financial crisis. And just as there were films and television shows dealing with 9/11 in metaphorical fashion, it appears this is beginning to occur with the economy.

“Batman Begins” (2005) and its sequel, “The Dark Knight” (2008) both featured heavy echoes of the war on terror. In particular, “The Dark Knight” could be claimed by both sides in the debate over the Bush-era surveillance policies. From the trailer, it appears the conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012) may comment heavily on income inequality and other issues that have emerged as part of the national debate since 2008. Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman, tells the billionaire Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman as well as a charter member of the 1 percent: “You think this will last. There's a storm coming Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. Because when it hits, you'll wonder how you ever lived so large and left so little for the rest of us.”

Occupy Wall Street, anyone?

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

2011-12-29T21:33:00.000-08:00

I highly recommend, “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,” which I believe is the best action film of the year. When I wrote about the more serious tone of post-9/11 action films in September, I discussed several movie franchises, but not the Mission Impossible series. I did so in large part because the films have not been particularly memorable. Indeed, it is safe to assume that although it is his only film franchise, none of the first three movies will be remembered as among the most important of Tom Cruise’s long film career.

Upon further review, however, Mission Impossible underwent the same transition to greater seriousness that Batman and James Bond did between the 1990s and the post-2001 era. The first two films, released in 1996 and 2000, respectively, were merely crowd pleasers, without much else involved. The third film, which was directed by J.J. Abrams (“Lost,” “Star Trek”) and released in 2006, featured a much darker story in which the villain’s scheme involves a pseudo-neoconservative plot to create a pretext for a pre-emptive strike against terrorists. At one point, it appears Ethan Hunt’s (Cruise) wife is murdered (turns out to be someone else wearing a mask). Premiering shortly after Cruise’s well-publicized engagement to Katie Holmes and his couch-jumping exploits on Oprah, the film underachieved at the box office.

“Ghost Protocol,” the fourth film in the series, may signal the emergence of a lighter touch in action films, as the memory of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon begins to fade. Like this past summer’s “X-Men First Class,” it bears a strong resemblance to a pre-Daniel Craig Bond film. (SPOILERS) Like many Bond baddies, the film’s megalomaniacal villain manipulates U.S./Russian tensions to his own nefarious ends. In this case, the antagonist steals Russian nuclear codes in the hopes of precipitating a global nuclear war. While “Ghost Protocol” features a spectacularly filmed 21st century terrorist attack on the Kremlin, the film is more reminiscent of the over-the-top, Roger Moore-era Bond movies like “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977) and “Moonraker” (1979). As I said in the September post, it was too early to tell if the serious strain would last and by the same logic, “Ghost Protocol” is not sufficient proof that campiness is returning. Indeed, the “Dark Knight Rises” trailer appeared before the film and it looks deadly serious (more on that in the next post).

The film may also herald a comeback for Cruise, who has been the biggest movie star of his generation, but has not had a hit in some time. Hollywood star power has clearly faded in recent years as Cruise, Harrison Ford, and to a lesser extent, Tom Hanks have appeared in a number of commercial bombs. Only Will Smith can guarantee a huge gross these days, a fact that will be severely tested by the release of the highly unnecessary “Men in Black III” next year. Time will tell if Cruise can regain the star status he maintained from the mid-1980s to mid-2000s and if “Ghost Protocol” represents significant cultural change.

Terra Nova

2011-12-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

In the years since 9/11, television has presented the dilemmas of the war on terror in a number of different ways. “24” did so directly, through a series of relatively realistic nuclear, biological, and chemical crises. “Battlestar Galactica" presented a sci-fi metaphor, as the human race tried to survive and maintain its values after it is nearly destroyed by the Cylons. “Lost” showed them indirectly and occasionally, as when the Losties decided how to obtain information from captured members of the mysterious “Others” who also lived on their island.

“Terra Nova” is yet another example of post-9/11 culture and it combines elements of all three shows. In its “Galactica”-like premise, man has made the planet unlivable in the 22^nd century through greed and environmental destruction. Fortunately, humanity discovers a time fracture that allows people to make a one-way pilgrimage back to the pristine era of the dinosaurs. The formula is basically “Jurassic Park” meets “Lost.” Indeed, the Terra Nova colony looks suspiciously like “Lost’s” Dharma Initiative while the colony is routinely threatened by a subversive group of colonists called the “Sixers,” who seem suspiciously similar to the “Others.” Humanity must survive amidst dangerous predators as well as a fifth column that wants to make the time fracture go both ways so they can plunder the past for their own financial gain in the future.

In this environment, the show depicts the challenges of the post-9/11 period. Like “Galactica,” the colonists struggle with how to govern while under constant threat. Like “Lost”, a potential subversive is tortured and held in inhuman conditions to get him to talk. As in virtually every season of “24,” the colony leader, Colonel Taylor (whose name is likely an homage to Charlton Heston’s character in “Planet of the Apes”) must ferret out a mole within the community’s ranks.

Despite the intriguing premise, the show is extremely formulaic. Crises are neatly resolved and there is little drama. While Taylor, played by Stephen Lang (the villain in “Avatar”) is interesting, the show focuses on the Shannon family, who are extremely boring. Much attention is paid to the adolescent angst of their teenage children, whose portrayal falls well short of “Buffy” or even “Smallville” standards. It reminds us that great science fiction is not merely about impressive special effects, but characters that people care about. Frankly, I’m so annoyed by these characters that I’m rooting for the dinosaurs to eat some of them.

As I’ve said previously, the failure of serialized shows like “V” and “The Event,” along with the success of procedurals like “Person of Interest,” seems to indicate that we are moving past the post-9/11 era in popular culture. On the other hand, the former programs were also weaker than their predecessors. Perhaps “Terra Nova” will improve if Fox renews it for a second season, but I’m not terribly optimistic.

The Tim Tebow Phenomenon

2011-12-19T19:42:00.000-08:00

As a Florida Gators fan, I certainly hoped Tim Tebow, who was one of the greatest college quarterbacks ever, would have a successful NFL career. But I never would have believed he would attain a rock star status even greater than he had in college football. In the last week, Tebow, now the starting QB for the Denver Broncos, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was satirized on “Saturday Night Live.” Furthermore, in the last Republican debate of 2011, Rick Perry declared that he would like to be the “Tim Tebow of the Iowa Caucus,” referring to Tebow’s patented fourth-quarter comebacks as well as the quarterback’s evangelical Christianity, which is very popular with social conservatives in the Hawkeye State. Though Sports Illustrated and “Saturday Night Live” are central institutions from an earlier era that have faded in relevance, few could have pulled off this pop culture trifecta. The Tebow phenomenon culminated with Sunday’s Denver Broncos-New England Patriots game, which earned the second-highest ratings for an afternoon game on CBS since the network bought the rights to the AFC package in 1998. In a manner of weeks, Tebow has gone from the backup quarterback on a losing team to perhaps the biggest sports phenomenon in the country, crossing boundaries into politics and entertainment.

Colonel Potter and the Evolution of M.A.S.H.

2011-12-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

When Harry Morgan joined the cast of M.A.S.H. for the start of its fourth season in 1975, the show still largely followed the slapstick formula of the 1970 film. Morgan himself had played a minor role in this regard, with a guest appearance as a crazy general in a third season episode. Such portrayals were typical of the show, which often portrayed the military leadership as inept and out-of-touch. These representations grew out of the cynical spirit of the anti- Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. As the program continued throughout the late 70s and early 80s, however, the show took on a more serious tone as the respectable Colonel Potter replaced the hapless Colonel Blake, who had run the 4077^th for the first three years of the program.

The film depicted the Korean War of the early 1950s, but M.A.S.H. was clearly intended to serve as an allegory for the Vietnam War, which was still underway in 1970. In fact, the studio asked the filmmakers to add references to Korea to the movie, because director Robert Altman and others had tried to make the backdrop look as much like Vietnam as possible. The television show continued to follow this formula. It is ironic that the most famous pop culture representation of the Korean War, often called the “Forgotten War,” is thought of as the portrayal of another conflict.

In its early years, M.A.S.H. was a traditional comedy, as the irreverent Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) and Captain “Trapper John” MacIntyre (Wayne Rogers) played practical jokes on Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) and Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit), who represented traditional military values as well as the conventional American patriotism that had come under attack in some circles during the 1960s. The unit’s commanding officer, Colonel Henry Blake, was a well-meaning but bumbling leader who was manipulated by Pierce and MacIntyre with some assistance from Blake’s right-hand man, Corporal Radar O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff).

With the departure of Blake and Macintyre and the arrival of Potter and B.J. Hunicutt (Mike Farrell), the show began to take on a more dramatic tone. This change accelerated when the arrogant, competent Major Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers) replaced the incompetent Burns. Furthermore, the Margaret Houlihan character evolved from being the butt of jokes to a Mary Richards-like character mirroring the prominence of the women’s movement during the time. Even Corporal Klinger (Jamie Farr) stopped trying to get thrown out of the military, put away his dresses and became an effective company clerk.

The evolution of the program came about not only from cast changes, but from the growing role of Alan Alda in the writing and producing of the show. Alda was increasingly involved in liberal causes, becoming a leading advocate for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). As some scholars have noted, male roles changed due to the emergence of 1970s feminism, moving away from the machismo of John Wayne to the sensitivity of Alda. Reflecting this sensibility, Pierce, Alda’s on-screen alter ego, grew from an inveterate womanizer to a character who was frequently seen crying in episodes during the later years of M.A.S.H. This culminated when Hawkeye has a nervous breakdown during the series finale, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.”

Fans of M.A.S.H., like fans of Woody Allen, frequently debate: which was better, the early, funny years or the later, dramatic period? M.A.S.H. was one of my favorite shows as a kid and I use to prefer the dramatic era, but I’m no longer sure. The antiwar message becomes a little tired and I don’t need a TV show to repeatedly tell me that “war is bad.” It also saddens me to say the funny period isn’t as funny as I remember it being. Still, whichever time frame you like most, the shift began when Colonel Potter arrived at the 4077^th. Cue the theme music.

Colonel Potter's Death and the Fracturing of American Culture

2011-12-08T20:42:00.000-08:00

The death of Harry Morgan, who played Colonel Sherman Potter on “M.A.S.H.” from 1975 to the show’s conclusion in 1983, reveals the decline of mass culture, which has been one of the major themes of this blog. At various times yesterday, Morgan’s obituary was the most viewed article on NewYorkTimes.com, which is incredible for the death of an actor who played a supporting role in a show that went off the air nearly thirty years ago. Of course, “M.A.S.H.” has lived on in reruns since, but it demonstrates the incredible followings that television programs could achieve before cable and how they provided a unifying culture for much of the nation.

With only three networks, hit shows such as “M.A.S.H.” drew ratings that are inconceivable in the 500+ channel universe of today. I saw an article a few years ago that showed that “American Idol,” the biggest hit of the last decade, has an audience comparable to that of “Scarecrow and Mrs. King,” a middling show which aired for four years in the 1980s. Most famously, the last episode of “M.A.S.H.,” “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen,” which aired in 1983, remains the most watched non-sports program of all-time in terms of total viewers, a record that is likely to last for some time, even with the considerable growth in the population. Water usage in some cities increased dramatically during commercials for the final episode, as the nation collectively went to the bathroom (few VCRS and no DVRS in 1983!) Indeed, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen’s” overall record for total viewership lasted until 2010, when it was broken by Super Bowl XLIV between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts.

The long reign and domination of ABC, NBC, and CBS meant that large swaths of the country watched the same or similar programs. There were fewer differences in viewership based on race, age, or ethnicity. Most Americans watched Lucy Ricardo have her baby, Richard Kimball finally catch the one-armed man, Walter Cronkite narrate the moon landing, as well as discover that J.R. Ewing was shot by his secretary. Gradually, though, cable networks emerged to cover specific subjects, like CNN for news and ESPN for sports. This specialization evolved to news networks for liberals (MSNBC) and conservatives (FOX News) and sports networks for football (NFL Network) and golf (Golf Channel). Today, even the broadcast networks tend to target niche markets, with Fox pursuing the 18-49 age group while CBS focuses on older viewers. This has led to some of the fracturing of the culture I discussed in my earlier entry on the music industry; people no longer listen to the same artists or watch the same television programs.

Of course, one would not want to get too nostalgic, as anyone who has tried to watch 10 minutes of “CHiPS” or “Knight Rider” in recent years can attest. Cable has brought about a flowering of quality programs as HBO, FX, and AMC, have produced innovative fare like “The Wire,” “Nip/Tuck,” and “Mad Men.” The broadcast networks responded with shows like “The West Wing,” “Lost,” and “30 Rock,” programs that likely would not have lasted long a generation ago. Colonel Potter’s death is a reminder of what was lost and what we have also gained.

J. Edgar

2011-12-04T21:09:00.001-08:00

I strongly recommend J. Edgar, which is a very interesting look at the life and career of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Directed by the ageless Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the film focuses heavily on Hoover’s close relationship with his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, and suggests that the relationship went beyond friendship to a largely unrequited romance. While many have speculated on Hoover’s sexuality and while the true nature of the Hoover/Tolson relationship can never truly be known, J. Edgar provides a fairly accurate look at the public aspects of his career.

The film starts with Hoover’s pre-FBI role as young government agent involved in the 1919-20 Palmer Raids, which was an effort to root out domestic communism after the end of World War I. As the movie shows, it was prompted by a bombing campaign against several public officials that was blamed on American Communists. The Justice Department, led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, engaged in extreme and legally questionable attempts to stop what they saw as a conspiracy against the country, deporting many radicals despite the fact they had no criminal record. The Palmer Raids are often referred to as the First Red Scare and have been largely overshadowed by the Second Red Scare, led by Joe McCarthy in the 1950s

The movie then focuses on Hoover’s attempts to build the FBI into a modern crime-solving agency, with echoes of CSI techniques, which then included finger-printing and early expert testimony. He used the gangster activity of the 1930s to leverage a greater federal role in crime policy, an issue which had traditionally been left to state and local governments. Some of these events, like the FBI’s response to the bank robbery campaign of John Dillinger, were previously depicted in the 2009 film Public Enemies. The hysteria over the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and the eventual trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the crime, also led to greater power and prestige for the FBI.

During the film, these events are juxtaposed with an older Hoover’s obsession with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the 1960s. J. Edgar shows Hoover obtaining Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s acquiescence to the wiretapping of Dr. King by implicitly threatening RFK with material documenting President Kennedy’s affair with a woman from behind the Iron Curtain. It also shows Hoover dictating a letter to accompany a tape recording of one of King’s affairs; the combination seemed intended to compel King to commit suicide. In reality, William Sullivan, an Assistant FBI Director, composed the letter. Still, the basic thrust of this section of the film is accurate, even if all the details are not.

At the end of the film, Hoover meets with a recently-elected Richard Nixon and tells Tolson that the new president wants greater control over the FBI and that Nixon will create his own apparatus if he does not cooperate. Though I don’t believe there is evidence of such awareness on the part of Hoover, it dovetails with the historical record. Nixon wanted the FBI to do his bidding with regard to monitoring his political enemies and when Hoover refused, he moved to create his own “Plumbers” who would work to investigate leaks and gather intelligence against his political opponents. The break-in at the Watergate which, of course, led to Nixon’s downfall, was the most famous act of the Plumbers.

Of course, time limitations forced Eastwood and the writers to neglect aspects of Hoover’s career. Largely omitted was Hoover’s central role in the Second Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s. By 1960, because of his infiltration campaigns, a majority of the members of the American Communist Party were actually FBI informants! As the film shows, Hoover remained obsessed with domestic communists long after they were a significant social and political force.

In addition to his persecution of King, Hoover actively opposed the civil rights movement for a half-century, harassing a series of black leaders and organizations, from Marcus Garvey in the 1920s and continuing with the FBI’s COINTELPRO program to disrupt the Black Panthers and other black nationalist groups during the late 1960s. Though Hoover was often eager to extend the FBI’s influence, he refused to provide any protection to civil rights workers operating in the Deep South in the 1960s. Indeed, the FBI did not even open an office in Mississippi until after the “Mississippi Burning” killings of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney in the summer of 1964. A greater FBI presence might have prevented their murders as well as some of the other acts of white terrorism in the Deep South. Hoover, though, did eventually use the same tactics he used against the Communist Party to weaken the Klan.

All in all, J. Edgar is an interesting look at a complex and important historical figure and is a relatively accurate film. For a change of pace, I am now going to see the Muppets!

"Margin Call" and the Financial Crisis

2011-11-12T21:48:00.000-08:00

I modestly recommend Margin Call, a new film that dramatizes the 2008 financial crisis. It features a number of fine actors who give excellent performances, including Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons (in the best roles for both in a while), as well as Zachary Quinto (Spock in the Star Trek reboot). The movie is a bit slow, but is still clearly superior to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) in its depiction of the meltdown

The film is about an investment bank that is clearly an allegory for Lehman Brothers. Early in the movie, Quinto’s character discovers that the mortgage-backed securities that the firm has based their business model around have brought the company to the verge of bankruptcy. Reflecting the round-the-clock machinations that surrounded the sale of Bear Stearns, the bankruptcy of Lehman, and more recently, the demise of John Corzine’s MF Global, the film then follows the characters over the next 24 hours as they try to save the firm.

Margin Call reflects a number of the issues which surrounded the financial crisis. A number of commentators have observed that the extraordinary compensation which emerged on Wall Street distorted the American economy by draining talent from other sectors. Indeed, Quinto’s character turns out to be an MIT-educated physicist who went to work on Wall Street because of the higher pay. Another character was once an engineer. Some have also observed that it was these types of people, with their mathematical and technical acumen, who conceived of the complex financial instruments which helped precipitate the crisis.

The film also discusses the extravagant lifestyles enjoyed by Wall Street traders. Various characters seem to have extended themselves financially despite their immense wealth (or perhaps because of it). Spacey plays a burned-out trader who wants to get out of the business, but decides to stay at the end of the film because he still needs the money after a lifetime working in the industry.

Irons, who plays the unnamed firm’s CEO, tries to rationalize the disaster at the end of the film, telling Spacey that the crisis was unavoidable because it is just another in a series of bubbles that have occurred throughout the history of capitalism. This seems to be an echo of the explanations, or one might argue, rationalizations, provided by the heads of major investment banks since 2008. In their minds, new regulations like Dodd-Frank are unnecessary because the debacle of the last few years was not due to their irresponsible and unethical behavior, but due to forces beyond their control.

Joe Frazier's Death and the Decline of Boxing

2011-11-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

Joe Frazier’s death and the ensuing recollections of his three battles with Muhammad Ali remind us how far boxing has fallen in American culture. One of the three most popular sports during the first half of the 20^th century, along with baseball and horse racing, it now barely gets a mention on SportsCenter. While baseball may no longer be the national pastime, boxing is simply irrelevant.

In the late 19^th and nearly 20^th century, boxing was primarily a working-class sport, fought largely by immigrants in major cities. By the 1920s, with the decline of Victorian values and changing social mores, boxing became more respectable and popular among middle-class Americans. Furthermore, the emergence of radio allowed Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion of the era, to become a national figure, like Babe Ruth and other sports heroes of the time.

Boxing differed from baseball in that it was somewhat integrated. Malcolm X once noted that the boxing ring was the one place a black man could beat up a white man without getting killed. Jack Johnson became the first African American heavyweight champion in 1908 but the racism of the time eventually resulted in his criminal prosecution over his relationships with white women. It would be another generation before a very different black fighter, Joe Louis, got a chance to fight for the crown. His defeat of the German champion Max Schmeling in a title defense in 1938, at a time of tremendous tension between the U.S. and the Nazi regime, was one of the biggest sport events of the 20^th century. This triumph, as well as his humble manner, endeared the “Brown Bomber” to blacks and whites alike, making him the first crossover sports star.

The sweet science, as some called it, remained popular into the postwar period. Champions like Rocky Marciano and Sugar Ray Robinson were among the most prominent athletes. And it was not just the championship battles that were important. Boxing remained a spectator sport at the local level as well; I once showed an episode of I Love Lucy in class where Fred and Ricky go on a boy’s night out to the fights, the way one might go to a basketball game today.

Though some date the beginning of the sport’s decline to the 1960s and 1970s, the heavyweight champion of the world was still one of the best-known people in the nation, if not the world. Ali, Frazier, and George Foreman fought each other in battles that have still-legendary names like the “Rumble in the Jungle” and the “Thrilla in Manila.” The “Rocky” film franchise began in 1976, helping to maintain the sport’s popularity.

Even with the charismatic and controversial Ali no longer on the scene, boxing still had some prominence in the 1980s. Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas Hearns, fought major fights in the welterweight and middleweight divisions that garnered national attention. Sportswriters cared enough to label heavyweight champion Larry Holmes an unworthy successor to Ali and to laud Mike Tyson when he unified the division in the late 1980s.

Over the last two decades, boxing fell of the cliff for a number of reasons. After Tyson went to prison, no fighter emerged who engaged casual fans. The Olympic Games had launched the careers of a number of boxers, including Ali, Frazier, and Leonard, but network coverage of boxing declined as NBC pursued the female demographic.

Finally, there is no doubt that public revulsion at the corruption and physical costs of boxing caught up with the sport. Reminisces of Frazier all recall that neither he nor Ali were the same after their third fight. Indeed, there is nothing sadder than the sight of the once-loquacious Ali, now silenced by Parkinson’s disease. Many other boxers have had long-term health problems; a few have even died in the ring.

Today, when I teach about Louis or Ali in class, I have to remind them that the heavyweight champ was once a very important person. I ask them who the current champion is and there is usually a deafening silence. And not just from the students. The professor doesn’t know either.

How Football Continues to Dominate America

2011-11-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I discussed how pro football has come to dominate American sports and supplant baseball as the national pastime. Ironically, the compelling seven-game World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers only made this clearer.

On the one hand, this year’s World Series garnered television ratings 19 percent higher than last year’s five-game set between the Rangers and San Francisco Giants. While a seven game series should get a higher rating than a five game series, any time the ratings increase for a sporting event these days it must considered a success, given the continuing growth of other entertainment options.

A closer examination of the data, though, shows the relative strength of football. Though World Series games 3 and 4 beat Sunday and Monday Night football one-on-one in viewership, this past week’s Sunday night game between the Cowboys and the Eagles got a higher rating than Game 6, a dramatic affair that will go down as one of the greatest World Series’ games ever. While Game 7 of the World Series got higher viewership overall than Cowboys-Eagles, it performed lower among the 18-49 demographic coveted by advertisers. Unbelievably, more young people watched a regular season football game than the first Game 7 of a World Series since 2002.

Indeed, the World Series lagged the NBA Finals for the second straight year, providing a cautionary note regarding the potential costs of the current basketball lockout. The tremendous interest generated by LeBron James’ move to the Miami Heat, culminating in their loss to the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, boosted the sport’s fan base. Those gains could be squandered if significant portions of the 2011-2012 season are lost.

It will be interesting how the ratings for this weekend’s college football “Game of the Century” between LSU and Alabama measure up against the World Series.

20th Anniversary Albums and the Changing Nature of the Music Industry

2011-11-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

The 20^th anniversary re-releases of Nirvana’s Nevermind and U2’s Achtung Baby, along with the breakup of R.E.M., made me think about the changing nature of the music industry. One of the major trends of the last 30 years has been the relative decline of mass culture and the concomitant rise of niche culture. For example, as recently as the mid-1980s, the three broadcast networks still dominated the ratings and there were only 2-3 blockbuster movies per summer. Nowhere has this change been more dramatic than in the music business.

After rock n’ roll emerged in the mid-1950s, singles were the dominant way people bought music. By the late 1960s, following the success of works like the Beatles’ landmark Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, albums became the dominant medium. Indeed, album sales outpaced singles for the first time in 1968.

The dominance of albums continued into the 70s and 80s. Indeed, in some ways, the 1980s were the peak of the mass culture era in pop music. Artists released albums, singles from these albums were released on FM radio, and videos of the singles went into mass rotation on MTV (yes, it’s true, they did once show videos on MTV). As a result, albums like Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982), Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA (1984), and U2’s Joshua Tree (1987) reached an extraordinary audience. Due to the combination of radio and MTV, some songs got massively overexposed. To this day, I change the station when one of the hits off of Joshua Tree comes on the radio; I got tired of those songs in the year they came out. Of course, regional, racial, and ethnic differences in tastes remained, but these 1980s stars reached a far wider audience than artists today. Nevermind and Achtung Baby and R.E.M’s most commercially successful albums, Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), were released at the peak of this period.

In the early 1990s, MTV pioneered reality TV with the Real World and these shows gradually became more lucrative for the network. As a result, they eventually supplanted videos as that market diminished by the early 21^st century. With the emergence of the Internet, downloading became the way most people experienced music, as ITunes put record stores out of business across the country. The ease of buying individual songs on ITunes reduced the centrality of albums and FM radio does not have the audience among young people it had a generation ago. Consequently, the music industry is much more decentralized and it is harder for an artist to gain traction outside a certain niche.

This is perhaps most exemplified by the two iterations of the charity anthem, “We Are the World,” written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. The first, recorded in 1985 to support famine relief in Africa, featured a who’s who of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, including Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Steve Wonder, among many others. By contrast, I barely recognized the younger artists in the 25^th anniversary edition, made to back relief efforts in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. I first thought this meant that I was getting old and out of touch, until Saturday Night Live satirized the lack of star power in the new version shortly thereafter.

Due to these trends, it is unlikely there will be 20^th anniversary issues of albums from 2011 in 2031. I will have more to say about the decline of mass culture in television and film in future posts.

"Person of Interest" and post 9/11 culture

2011-10-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

In a post before the summer, I suggested that the post 9/11 era in popular culture was coming to a close. At first glance, CBS’s new procedural Person of Interest seems to undermine this theory. In the show, Mr. Finch, played by one of my favorite actors, Lost’ s Michael Emerson (the creepy Ben Linus) developed a surveillance device after the attacks which monitors all-email, phone calls, and cameras to predict future terrorist acts as well as conventional crimes. Reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report, this seems to reflect post 9/11 concerns about the growth of the state and the potential loss of civil liberties. The government, however, was so focused on terrorism that it didn’t pay attention to predictions of traditional crimes. Finch has found a way to tap into the government’s intelligence, which gives him the Social Security numbers of individuals who are either potential victims or perpetrators of crimes.

To stop these crimes, Finch hires an ex-CIA operative, Reese (Jim Caviziel), who was going to leave the agency until he felt he had to serve his country because of 9/11. While he was fighting the war on terror, someone murdered the love of his life. At the beginning of the pilot, he is homeless and riding the New York City subway. He has clearly paid a high psychological price for his actions defending the nation, somewhat like Jason Bourne.

In the show, Finch and Reese work to stop murders and other non-terrorism related crimes. At the end of the pilot, Reese tells one villain that he went abroad to hunt bad guys, but now realizes “there were plenty of you right here all along.” In this sense, the show seems to reflect a shift away from the post 9/11 fear of terrorism back to concerns about traditional malfeasance. In fact, it reminds me a little of a now-forgotten 1980s show, The Equalizer, which featured another ex-CIA agent who stopped crimes the police couldn’t prevent.

I’ll keep watching the show because the premise is interesting and Michael Emerson is one of the best actors on television today.

The Ides of March

2011-10-20T21:28:00.001-07:00

I didn’t like Ides of March that much, although my parents really enjoyed it. It seems to be an attempt by George Clooney, who directs and co-stars, to do an updated (and darker) version of Robert Redford’s 1972 film The Candidate. There are number of contemporary allegories in the movie, which was based on the 2008 play Farragut North. In an echo of Barack Obama, Clooney plays an inspiring progressive presidential candidate. Ryan Gosling plays a political consultant who is in thrall to Clooney and believes he is a man who will change the country. The Obama connection seems complete when a New York Times reporter accuses Gosling of having drunk the Kool Aid on Clooney and tells him that he is a politician who will eventually let him down. Perhaps an echo of the liberal disaffection with Obama? Without giving away too much, let’s just say that Clooney’s character also has a little bit of Bill Clinton in him and gets in trouble with a sexual indiscretion.

In the film, the Democrats are in the middle of a heated primary that appears to be more important than the general election because the Republicans are in such bad shape. This seems similar to 2008 when the Hilary-Obama race seemed like the main event given how Bush’s unpopularity was going to hinder the GOP nominee. Another echo of ’08 is how Republicans are encouraging their flock to vote in the Democratic primary to help Clooney’s opponent, who is perceived to be weaker and to also extend the primary campaign. This seems earliy similiar to Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos, which asked conservatives to support Hilary in open primaries when it appeared Obama was going to wrap up the nomination. This actually helped Obama in the end, forcing him to build a campaign infrastructure across the country, paving the way for his wins in GOP-leaning states like North Carolina and Indiana.

In the end, I would recommend Clooney’s 2005 Good Night and Good Luck for a political film.

"Ich Bin Ein Berliner"

2011-10-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

Last night’s Pan Am episode revolved around a real historical event, JFK’s 1963 trip to West Berlin. On this trip, JFK made one of his most famous speeches, the “Ich Bin Ein Berliner,” speech, which doubled as the title of the episode. In this address, Kennedy identified with West Germany’s struggle against communism by declaring that he was a Berliner (although in German he actually said he was a jelly doughnut). In order to prevent the continued exodus of educated people to the West, the Soviet Union and East Germany had erected the Berlin Wall, which split the city in two, in 1961. The wall quickly became the main symbol of the Cold War and the division of Europe. The show accurately depicts the tremendous excitement inspired by JFK’s visit.

A review of the speech reveals how much it expressed Kennedy’s Cold War liberalism. While we remember JFK as a liberal icon, he was a hawk who campaigned in 1960 on a platform of being tougher on the Soviet Union. In the “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech, Kennedy declared:

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sic nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin

The Wall would remain the most visible symbol of the Cold War throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Its fall in 1989 provided the clearest sign of the end of the U.S./Soviet conflict. West and East Germany would reunify shortly thereafter.

There were a number of other interesting historical notes in the episode. Some of the reporters covering the speech made oblique references to JFK’s affairs, which were not known to the general public at the time. In this time before feminism fostered a greater stigma toward adultery and Vietnam and Watergate brought about a more aggressive media, the press did not examine the private lives of politicians. In fact, the episode probably exaggerates the press’ knowledge of these affairs.

The trip revives the wartime memories of Colette, a French-born stewardess who grew up during the Nazi occupation of France from 1940-44. She has an angry exchange with German officials over how Kennedy’s visit seemingly gives Germany a pass for its wartime behavior. This part of the episode accurately reveals how the Cold War limited discussion of Nazi crimes because the U.S./West German alliance gave the West an interest in constructing an image of West Germans as “good” guys in the struggle against communism. Greater discussion of the Holocaust would only emerge in West Germany after a wave of youth protests in 1968 and, if you can believe it, the showing of NBC’s Holocaust mini-series in the late 1970s.

With the exception of a silly subplot where Christina Ricci’s character goes out of her way to try to meet President Kennedy, I enjoyed the episode. Indeed, I’ve actually been surprised by the relative quality of the show and will continue to watch and blog.

The Return of the Mid-1980s

2011-10-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

The imminent release of the Footloose remake made me realize that the last three years have witnessed the revival of a number of television shows/films from the mid-1980s. Since 2009, studios have produced new versions of: The Karate Kid (original: 1984, remake: 2010), A-Team (1983, 2010), V (1983, 2009), Conan the Barbarian (1982, 2011), G.I. Joe (1982, 2009), and Footloose (1984, 2011). I found it remarkable that the remakes occurred in a roughly 26-29 year cycle after the original.

A cursory review reveals that this pattern is a familiar one. The early 2000s witnessed a similar dynamic with: Charlie’s Angels (1976, 2000) The Incredible Hulk (1977-78, 2003), Battlestar Galactica (1978, 2003), and The Dukes of Hazard (1979, 2005). One could also add Doctor Who, revived in 2005, to this list. Though it originally premiered in Great Britain in 1963, the show reached unparalleled popularity with Tom Baker starring as the Doctor in the late 70s.

I think this pattern reveals the (ugh) maturation of Generation X. Once a generation reaches a certain age and attains a certain level of power within the entertainment industry, it seeks to revive the treasured programs of its childhood. While this is understandable and welcome in some cases, it does pose some frightening possibilities. In all likelihood, we are about to see a revival of the late 80s. There have been persistent rumors of a Quantum Leap film, which I would like to see. More disturbing prospects include revivals of Full House and Family Matters.

40th Anniversary of Walt Disney World

2011-10-02T21:12:00.001-07:00

This past weekend marked the 40^th anniversary of Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, FL. The park, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world, has made a profound impact on Florida and the United States.

The roots of the Central Florida park lie in the evolution of Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, which opened in 1955. The park, which capitalized on the affluence of post-World War II America, quickly became a very popular attraction. In the 1950s, more and more Americans had disposable income and paid vacations and could make the trip to Southern California. Despite this success, though, Walt Disney quickly became disturbed by the seedy hotels and other businesses opening just outside the Magic Kingdom.

As he contemplated a second park, Disney wanted a larger area to develop his ambitions. He quietly purchased a large amount of land in Central Florida and arranged a favorable deal with the state of Florida regarding the region’s governance. This led to his owning nearly 28,000 acres of virgin property near Orlando, giving him the autonomy to build any idea of his dreams.

But Walt Disney, who died in 1966, would not live to see the success of the new park. Walt Disney World had a star-studded opening in 1971 and the differences with Disneyland were notable. The park could not be seen from the surrounding roads, making Walt Disney World a self-contained community unlike Anaheim. At the outset, though, Disney World was a shadow of what it is today, featuring the Magic Kingdom, which was nearly a replica of Disneyland, and a few hotels.

Before his death, Walt Disney contemplated building a model city of the future. This town would have, among other things, a dome to protect it from inclement weather and all types of modern transportation. As the company floundered in the 1970s, Walt’s successors remade this concept of the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) into a World’s Fair-type park with a Future World of technology pavilions and a World Showcase of country pavilions. Opening in 1982, EPCOT became the second theme park at Disney World.

The arrival of Disney World changed Orlando and its surrounding areas from a sleepy, rural community, to a modern city with massive suburban sprawl. The area from Tampa to Daytona Beach, known as the “I-4 Corridor” is filled with people who have moved from other parts of the country and the world. This area, with its large number of registered independents, is considered the swing vote in the state of Florida, and because of the state’s Electoral College clout, the country. The growth of Florida, now the fourth-most populous state, would not have been as dramatic without the arrival of Mickey Mouse.

With the company near bankruptcy in the mid-1980s, Walt’s nephew Roy brought in Michael Eisner as CEO, and he led a dramatic expansion of Disney World. Under his leadership, Disney/MGM Studios’ opened in 1989, followed by Animal Kingdom in 1998. Furthermore, the number of park hotels expanded from a mere three in the early 1980s to 24 by 2011. Walt’s dream of a planned community became a reality with the opening of Celebration, FL in the late 1990s (minus the dome, though).

Disney’s growth reflects the globalization of the economy. Today, Disney has parks in Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong and is planning one in Shanghai. None of them would be imaginable without the success of Walt Disney World.

Of course, Disney has its critics who believe it has too much power in its arrangement with the state of Florida. Others believe it is partially responsible for the homogenization of American culture. And some, including me, think t is way too expensive. Still, none of these critiques diminishes the tremendous influence the parks have had on Florida, the US, and the world.

Pan Am TV Show and the Changing Nature of Air Travel

2011-09-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

At the most basic level, Pan Am is a paean to the airline industry before deregulation. With government-controlled routes that excluded competition, Pan Am dominated international travel. As a result, it charged high fares and provided services that one would never see today, at least on domestic routes. Passengers were treated to a number of benefits, such as spacious seating and food service that you would only find in first class today. Several films have portrayed this in a limited way. Think of Indiana Jones flying Pan Am in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Leonardo DiCaprio posing as a pilot and recruiting stewardesses in Catch Me If You Can.

Taking place in 1963, the show portrays the stewardesses’ lives as emblematic of the coming feminist movement, which was only in the early stages at the time. One woman sees her job as a way to assert her independence; her sister joins Pan Am after fleeing her wedding in Graduate-style fashion to avoid a life of 1950s domesticity. Christina Ricci plays a stewardess who lives as a bohemian in Greenwich Village.

Though Pan Am largely romanticizes their lives, the show does depict some of the downsides of working as a stewardess in that time. The airline routinely checked your weight and you had to quit when you got married. Indeed, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, air stewardesses were one of the first groups to challenge gender discrimination under Title VII of the landmark law.

With the passage of airline deregulation during the Carter Administration in the late 1970s, new competitors emerged which undercut the domination of Pan Am, TWA, Eastern, and other older carriers. The growth of discount airliners made flying accessible to many more people, but at the cost of the services that made air travel luxurious. When was the last time someone offered you a meal on a domestic flight, let alone playing cards? In the aftermath of the Libyan-sponsored bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, the airline was forced to declare bankruptcy. Eastern and TWA suffered the same fate in the 80s and 90s. If one were to make a 21^st century version of Pan Am, it would be called Southwest. It doesn’t sound nearly as romantic, though it is certainly more affordable.

How Football Came to Dominate America

2011-09-12T09:38:00.001-07:00

The start of the football season provides an interesting window into American culture. The incredible hype surrounding the beginning of the NFL, following all of the fears there wouldn’t even be a season, only reinforces how football has become the most dominant sport in the country by a large margin.

It wasn’t always this way. For years, baseball was the “national pastime” and the most popular sport in the nation. Opening day used to attract the kind of attention that the first Sunday of football now receives. This past summer, however, talk about a possible NFL lockout subsumed discussion of the actual baseball season. What happened?

Throughout the first six decades of the 20^th century, the three most important sports in the country were baseball, boxing, and horse racing. The World Series was the most important annual sporting event and the Super Bowl did not even exist. College football was actually more popular than pro football until at least the 1950s.

Pro football’s coming out party was the “Greatest Game Ever Played,” the 1958 NFL Championship game between Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts and Frank Gifford’s New York Giants. One of the early games on TV, it ended in dramatic fashion as the Colts’ Alan Ameche scored on an one yard run in overtime. Many credit the exciting contest for raising the NFL’s profile.

The popularity of the sport grew during the 1960s as the rivalry between the newly-formed AFL and NFL eventually resulted in the merger that created the modern NFL at the end of the decade. The first Super Bowl, held in 1967 as a contest between the AFL and NFL champions, was not a major event, but quickly grew in the following years. The famous Super Bowl III victory of Joe Namath’s New York Jets, indicating the competitiveness of the AFL, was another marker in the sport’s rise. By the early 1970s, polls showed pro football ahead of baseball in popularity. The Super Bowl became the biggest sporting event in the nation, a virtual national holiday that even non-fans feel obliged to watch.

What else accounted for the rise? No doubt television was instrumental. While baseball has made a tremendous amount of money from TV, football is more suited to the medium. NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, who was probably the greatest pro sports commissioner, developed relationships with the networks in the 1960s that helped grow the sport. Moreover, the wealthy owners embraced a kind of socialism, equally distributing the television money so that Green Bay could be as competitive as New York. This helped to bring about parity between large-market and small-market teams, giving every fan hope at the start of each new season.

Still, as recently as the mid-1980s, football was still barely ahead of baseball in popularity. In 1985, a Harris Poll showed 24 percent of fans choosing pro football as their favorite sport while 23 percent chose baseball. By 2010, 35 percent picked the NFL while only 16 percent picked major league baseball.

I think a number of factors account for the growth in the gap. Clearly, baseball’s labor strife during this time, including multiple strikes and the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, hurt the game. At the same time, the NFL had labor peace from 1987 to 2011, with no games lost to labor stoppages in that period.

Furthermore, football is a game more suited to the shorter attention spans of Generation X, raised on MTV and USA Today, and Generation Y, used to downloading music or receiving information immediately. The languid pace of baseball, which may account for declining Little League participation, doesn’t seem to suit those 40 and under.

On a personal note, I grew up a bigger baseball fan than football fan, but in recent years my allegiances have changed. I still love baseball, but it is a more difficult sport to follow as an adult. I enjoyed following the batting races and memorizing statistics as a kid, but I don’t have the time anymore. Part of the genius of football is that we can follow it by watching one day a week during the fall and winter, when the weather in most of the country precludes other activities

Post 9/11 Popular Culture

2011-09-08T18:48:00.001-07:00

As we approach the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, we are about to see a great deal of commentary about how the attacks altered the country. Over the last few months, I have procrastinated by watching a number of films that deal with terrorism and related issues. They provide a window into how much the culture has changed because of the attacks.

When you look at films that deal with terrorism from the 1980s and 90s, the humorous tone of the movies is noteworthy. Both Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard 2 (1990), for instance, are full of Bruce Willis’ wisecracks and public officials who don’t take the situations seriously. The lack of airport security is notable in Die Hard 2, as John McLane engages in full-scale firefights within the airport itself while security seems to exist solely of glorified rent-a-cops. I realize that some of these elements exist for dramatic effect, but it would inconceivable today for a film to depict the head of airport security ignoring a shooting in his own airport, as occurs in Die Hard 2.

Similarly, 1994’s True Lies, one of the first films to deal with the possibility of terrorists getting nuclear weapons, features a similar comedic tone. The film is a complete farce with cartoonish terrorists and includes a scene with Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger kissing as a loose nuke explodes in the background.

Some film franchises provide clear demarcations between pre and post 9-11 culture. For example, the 90s Batman films, particularly Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997), feature over-the-top villains and cartoonish plots reminiscent of the Adam West TV show from the 1960s. On the other hand, the 21^st century Christopher Nolan directed Batman Begin (2005) and Dark Knight (2008) have depicted relatively realistic threats similar to terrorist plots, such as Raz-a-Ghul’s attempt to poison the water in Gotham and the Joker’s multiple attacks.

Another clear contrast can be seen in the difference between the James Bond films of the 1990s and the post 9-11 007 movies. While Pierce Brosnan revived the franchise, the films are notable for ludicrous plots that couldn’t possibly be taken seriously, culminating in 2002’s Die Another Day, where Bond uses an invisible car and drives through an ice palace. It makes Moonraker look positively believable!

On the other hand, the Daniel Craig films feature a Bond that is ultra-serious and doesn’t even bother to engage in the usual puns and wisecracks. The plots of Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2009) are relatively believable and it seems as if genuine issues are actually a stake. Bond doesn’t even use the usual gadgets that have been such a trademark of the franchise as Q doesn’t appear in either movie. One couldn’t imagine Roger Moore, the Bond of my childhood, starring in these films.

Indeed, the Craig films seem inspired by the Bourne movies. Though based on the Robert Ludlum novels of the 1970s, the movies update the plots for the post 9/11 era. Bourne is a somber CIA-trained assassin trying to figure out his own identity. The third film, the Bourne Ultimatum (2007) is replete with commentary on the Bush era. When Joan Allen’s ethical CIA officer questions the agency’s extreme tactics, asking “When does this end,” her counterpart played by David Straitharn says, “It ends when we win!” When Bourne later asks Allen’s character, Pam Landy, why she is helping him, she responds, “This isn’t what I signed on for. This isn’t us.”

Generally speaking, action adventure films have taken a more serious tone in the years after 9/11. We will see if this continues or if this development will fade as we gain more distance from the attacks

Return to the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

With the release of Rise of Planet of the Apes, it seems a perfect time to revisit the original Planet of the Apes, released at a pivotal moment in contemporary US History in 1968. By this time, the optimism of the early 1960s has given way to cynicism as race riots, divisions over the Vietnam War, and assassinations roiled the country. In the film, which is conceived as an allegory for the civil rights movement, three astronauts, led by Charlton Heston, arrive on a world where apes rule over humans. The astronauts left Earth thousands of years ago on a journey to find alien life.

The film reflects a number of the key issues of the 1960s. Opening a year before the Apollo 11 moon landing, the use of the astronauts as protagonists demonstrates the centrality of the space program during this period. I discussed this in my earlier post on the end of the shuttle program.

The movie also reflects the racial tumult of the period. In a scene that is repeated in Rise, the apes use a fire hose on Heston while they hold him in prison. This scene was inspired by a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, when the Birmingham, AL police do the same to children protesting in 1963. This incident, which was replayed on television, led JFK to propose legislation that would eventually become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Echoes of the youth revolution and the generation gap of the period can be seen as well. One of the apes helping Heston tells him not to act like another adult giving orders. “Never trust anyone over 30,” jokes Heston to the younger ape, a common refrain of the New Left at the time.

Though the civil rights movement had achieved many legal goals by 1968, the women’s movement was still only in its infancy. Betty Friedan and other second-wave feminists had only formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. Heston is accompanied by three other astronauts, including one African American man. However, the crew only includes one female astronaut, who was brought for little other purpose than procreation and died during the flight. Though the Soviet Union had already sent up a female cosmonaut, Sally Ride only became the first American women in space in 1983.

Of course, the most famous scene in the movie is still the ending (Spoilers), when Heston discovers that the planet he landed on is actually the Earth of the future. When he sees the remains of the Statue of Liberty, we are left to believe that there has been a full-scale nuclear war, which was one of the central fears of the Cold War. This had been a theme of a number of films of this period, including Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe, both released in 1964. Of course, we had come perilously close to that outcome in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had occurred a few years earlier in 1962. It’s possible that younger viewers don’t make that connection.

Finally, in a preview of his later role as head of the NRA, Heston carries a gun throughout much of the film.

Captain America and World War II

2011-07-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed “Captain America;” it was a fun movie that shows how summer movies can be a nice diversion. Unlike “X-Men: First Class,” it did not, however, hold up much when it came to historical scrutiny. While I know it is only a Hollywood film, I found it annoying that the movie shows black, white, and Japanese American soldiers serving together in World War II. We fought World War II with a segregated army with blacks and Japanese Americans fighting in separate units. The all-Japanese 442^nd combat division was one of the most decorated units in the conflict. President Truman did not issue an order integrating the army until 1948, three years after the end of World War II. In reality, the military did not fight a war as an integrated force until the Vietnam War in the 1960s. While some have commented that the inclusion of minorities highlights their contributions, I don’t think it is helpful for Hollywood to sanitize our past.

A couple of other interesting items. The German émigré scientist, Dr. Erskine, who develops the formula that transforms Steve Rogers into Captain America, seems to represent the German intellectuals who fled the Nazis in the 1930s. Most of them were Jewish, though the film never makes it explicit that Erskine is Jewish. In the comic book, the character’s name is Reinstein, which is likely a reference to Albert Einstein.

Another interesting nod is the appearance of Tony Stark’s (Iron Man) father, Howard Stark, in this film. The use of the name “Howard” seems to be a nod to Howard Hughes, whom some have theorized was the original inspiration for the Tony Stark character when the Iron Man comic premiered in the early 1960s.

Harry Potter and Diversity

2011-07-13T09:35:00.001-07:00

In recent years, the United States has experienced a huge wave of immigration which has transformed the nation’s demography. At the same time, many European countries have undergone a similar transformation, including Great Britain. Western Europe experienced a significant labor shortage after World War II and welcomed “guest workers” from North Africa and Asia. Many people from India, Pakistan, and other former British colonies emigrated to Great Britain. These “guests” and their families stayed and have become part of the fabric of these countries. I have been to London twice in the last ten years and it feels a lot like New York City with a tremendous diversity of cultures.

The “Potter” books and films reflect this phenomenon. Though none of the main characters come from minority groups, a number of supporting characters do. Perhaps the most important was Cho Chan, Harry’s first crush. Ron and Harry went to a school dance in Goblet of Fire with the Patel twins.

Other British sci-fi products have reflected this change. For instance, the new “Doctor Who”, which has featured a couple of black cast members, has had a much more diverse feel than the original program, which aired from the 1960s-1980s.

Harry Potter and the Suburbs

2011-07-12T11:18:00.001-07:00

Another interesting element of the Harry Potter series is its depiction of the suburbs. Through the Dursleys, Harry’s Aunt and Uncle, suburbanites are portrayed as completely narrow-minded, conformist, and career-obsessed. This echoes the criticism that many American observers have made of suburbs since the 1950s. After the emergence of the post-WW2 Levittowns, intellectuals like David Riesman, Betty Friedan, and others have attacked the suburbs as repressive centers of boredom and homogenous thinking.

For a half-century, films like “American Beauty” and numerous others have echoed and reinforced this criticism. For instance, it has been a subtle theme throughout the films of Steven Spielberg. Think of the shot of Eliot’s suburb in “E.T.” which shows a sea of look-alike houses. Spielberg’s critique of the suburbs reached its peak in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” when a nuclear test destroys a model suburban community in Nevada. The Potter series reveal that at least some British observers feel the same way about their suburbs.

Harry Potter and the Historical Interpretation

2011-07-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

With the Harry Potter films ending this week, it is an appropriate time to analyze the series, which is now the highest grossing in the history of Hollywood. First, I’d like to examine the historical roots of some of J.K. Rowling’s ideas. A re-watching of Deathly Hallows, part 1 and parts of some of the other films this weekend reinforces my view that Voldemort and his allies are partially modeled on the Nazis. For instance, Voldemort is obsessed with a desire for “pure-blood” wizardry and wants to purge the magical community of “mudbloods” (wizards with Muggle, non-magical parents). This is eerily reminiscent of the Nazis’ views toward the Jews. Furthermore, in Deathly Hallows, Part 1, Voldemort expresses his fear of mating between Muggles and pure-blood magicians, another typical concern of the Nazis and others who have promoted ideologies of racial superiority. Also, the Ministry of Magic’s architecture in the film version of Deathly Hallows, pt. 1 bears a strong resemblance to Albert Speer’s Nazi style. Finally, Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) paints “mudblood” on Hermione’s forearm and it looks almost like a concentration camp tattoo.

Rowling and the filmmakers did not simply draw upon the Nazis as an inspiration for the villains. Voldemort’s fear of “race-mixing” also laid at the root of white supremacy in the Jim Crow South. Similarly, the description of the Death Eaters in the attack on the Quidditch Cup in Goblet of Fire bears a strong similarity to the Ku Klux Klan.

The End of the Shuttle Program and Popular Culture

2011-07-09T07:35:00.001-07:00

The end of the space shuttle program symbolizes a sea change in American popular culture. For years, the space program helped to promote and legitimize science fiction as the space race of the 1960s and the moon landing advanced an idea of the future where man traveled through the stars. It is no coincidence that the original “Star Trek” aired during the peak years of the Apollo program (1966-69). Similarly, sci-fi franchises like “Star Wars” and “Battlestar Galactica” emerged in the 1970s when the moon landing was still more than just a distant memory.

As the space program’s popularity declined in the 1990s and early 21^st century, sci-fi movies made a move toward a dystopian earth-bound future (The “Matrix” and “Terminator” films). Furthermore, fantasy seemed to supersede science fiction as the dominant theme of blockbuster films. It’s no coincidence that fantasy franchises like “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” were the dominant film series of the first decade of the 21^st century.

A Brief History of War Films

2011-06-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

Throughout the NBA Finals, ABC ran ads for a new show, “Combat Hospital.” This got me to thinking. No, not about watching the show, which looks like it originated when a network executive said, “What if we made “Grey’s Anatomy,” in AFGHANISTAN? Rather, it made me think about the timing of war movies.

During World War II, there were a plethora of films regarding the war during the conflict. These “platoon” films often featured heroic depictions of multiethnic units fighting in battle (sans African Americans, for the most part). In Vietnam, there were very few movies directly about the war during the primary years of American involvement (1965-1973). Hollywood addressed the war indirectly in films about other wars, such as Patton and M.A.S.H., both of which were released in 1970. The Westerns of the time also touched on the conflict.

The film industry did not depict the Vietnam War directly until the late 1970s, with movies like Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now (1979). Still, the biggest wave of Vietnam films did to arrive until the mid-to-late 1980s following the success of Oliver Stone’s Platoon, which won the Oscar for best picture for 1986. Casualties of War, Bat 21, Air America, and In Country, among others, followed in the next few years. Television also got into the act with short-lived shows like “Tour of Duty” and “China Beach.”

Interestingly, the Vietnam War films largely disappeared during the 1990s as there was a reemergence of interest in World War II coinciding with the 50^th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the aging of the “Greatest Generation.” The most memorable movies of this period included, of course, Saving Private Ryan, A Thin Red Line, and HBO’s Band of Brothers.

Unlike Vietnam, Hollywood did make a number of films about the Iraq War during the peak years of the conflict, but few of them were commercially successful. In the Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss, Green Zone, and others performed poorly at the box office, perhaps indicating a lack of interest in films about wars when they are constantly in the news. Even the Hurt Locker, which won best picture for 2009, was the lowest grossing Oscar winner ever.

With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, there may be more of an audience for films and TV shows about these wars. I doubt, however, that “Combat Hospital” will provide a good test.

Sources: Andrew Huebner, The Warrior Image (UNC Press, 2007)

The Emergence of the Summer Movie

2011-06-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

I haven’t see “Super 8” yet, but it made me think about the history of the summer blockbuster. The reviews suggest that the film, directed by J.J. Abrams, is deeply influenced by the Steven Spielberg movies of the 1970s and 80s (Spielberg is also producing “Super 8.”) This follows the release of “Paul” in the spring, which was a satirical look back on those films, with Spielberg making a cameo. These films reveal that the Gen X filmmakers that grew up on these movies are now in position to make their own tributes to the classics of their childhoods.

Directors like Abrams and Bryan Singer (X1, X2, Superman Returns) are part of the first generation to grow up with the summer blockbuster. Before the 1970s, Hollywood did not really target young people as an audience and summer grosses were not the driving force behind the film industry’s bottom line. The studios, however, fell into serious financial trouble in the late 1960s as movie attendance gradually declined from its post-World War II peak, largely because of the rise of television. Seeing the emergence of the youth culture in the late 1960s, Hollywood handed over control to young filmmakers who were supposed to be in touch with the cultural revolution of the previous decade.

As a result, directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Spielberg got opportunities to make films with relatively little interference. Because of this freedom, many film scholars see the 1970s as the golden age of film. It is remarkable to think about the best picture nominees for 1976: “All the President’s Men,” “Taxi Driver,” “Network,” “Bound for Glory,” and “Rocky.” Unbelievably, “Rocky” won.

Reversing the nearly three-decade decline in attendance, the success of Spielberg’s “Jaws” in the summer of 1975 and Lucas’ “Star Wars” in the summer of 1977 heralded a shift in the industry. The studios saw that they could get not only get young people to go to the movies, but they could get young people to go to the same film multiple times. By the 1980s, summer became the prime time for big-budget movies and the 16-24 age group became the primary move audience. It has remained that way ever since.

X-Men, First Class

2011-06-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

“X-Men: First Class” was a fun movie and the best X-Men film since X2. With its historical setting, it also provides a lot of grist for the blog. The film, like the first X-Men movie, starts with a scene showing the young Magneto at a concentration camp in Poland. We then see (SPOILERS) Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) experimenting on Magneto, as Nazi doctors like Josef Mengele did on twins and others in the camps. The movie seems to draw inspiration from the 2009 Star Trek reboot, opening with scenes of the young Magneto as well as the young Charles Xavier.

Most of the film is set in 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement. As I mentioned in the previous posting, Professor X/Magneto clearly reflect the Martin Luther King/Malcolm X divide from that period. This is perhaps unconsciously accentuated by the fact that the film shows Xavier growing up wealthy and comfortable, a condition somewhat akin to King’s middle-class upbringing as the son of a minster in Atlanta, while Magneto ‘s life in the camps and loss of his mother is closer to the more difficult upbringing experienced by Malcolm X, whose family was broken up after the death of his father.

The film refernces a number of historical phenomenon. We see Magneto's post-Holocaust revenge campaign, pursuing Swiss bankers, whom were discovered to have kept money deposited by survivors. He follows German war criminals to Argentina, which was the real-life hiding place for a number of prominent Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann.

The backdrop for the movie is the Cold War of the Kennedy years and the film clearly reflects the sensibilities of the early Bond films (The first film, “Dr. No”, premiered in 1962,). Shaw, who is the films’ villain, is the prototypical Bond villain who uses the US/Soviet conflict to promote his own megalomaniacal plan. He comes complete with the kinds of gadgets and technologies that Bond baddies from "Goldinger" to the Daniel Craig films have had.

Shaw’s plan is to get the world to destroy itself by manipulating the world into the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occured in October 1962. Besides the fact that mutants were not actually involved, the film does get at the basic essence of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War (and one could argue, of all human history). The U.S. placement of Jupiter missiles in Turkey, which is depicted in the film, was one of the provocations for the standoff. JFK did order a blockade of Soviet ships going to Cuba, as a middle ground between accepting the missiles or ordering an invasion of Cuba(all depicted well in Kevin Costner’ s 2001 film “Thirteen Days”). The film shows the Russian and U.S. ships meeting “eyeball-eyeball” as they did before the Russians withdrew.

Some of the historical analogies became heavy-handed as Xavier pleads with Magneto not to destroy all the ships that are firing upon them because there are "thousands of good men on them following orders" (a common refrain from the Nuremberg trials). Of course, Magneto responds that he has been at the whim of men following orders his whole life, declaring "Never again."

Still, I'll definitely see the sequels.

The History of the "X-Men"

2011-05-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

The new X-Men movie, which opens on Friday, is a prequel that takes place around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and will recalls the origins of the comic book from the early 1960s. Indeed, the X-Men first appeared as a Marvel Comic in 1963, during the peak years of the civil rights movement. The book would have debuted within a year of key events, such as the integration of the University of Mississippi, Bull Connor’s unleashing of police dogs on protestors in Birmingham, as well as JFK’s speech calling for a major civil rights bill. As a result, the “mutants” seem very clearly designed to serve as a metaphor for black Americans in this time. Charles Xavier (Professor X) and the X-Men, who want to work with humanity, represents Martin Luther King, Jr. and the integrationist wing of the movement. On the other hand, Magneto’s Brotherhood, with its doctrine of mutant supremacy, seems to represent Malcolm X and other black nationalists. Malcolm X’s profile was particularly high at this time as he appeared on TV more than anyone but President Kennedy in 1963. The connection between Malcolm and Magneto is again made in the final scene of the first X-Men film in 2000, when an imprisoned Magneto tells Xavier that he still intends to fight a war against humanity, “by any means necessary,” a famous line of Malcolm X’s.

Changing times meant that others could adjust the intolerance metaphor for new realities. In the last decade, director Bryan Singer used X1 and X2 to make the mutants a metaphor for discrimination against gays. The first film stresses the difficulties that mutants who have come forward have faced, while showing politicians trying to exploit the fear of mutants. In the second film, we see Bobby Drake (Iceman) have to “come out” to his family as a mutant, only to have his mom ask “Have you ever tried not being a mutant?” While Singer did not direct the final film, X3 revolves around a “cure” for mutancy and debates about whether the mutants should take it or not.

Looking forward to the movie this week and will have more to say afterward.

"The Event" and the Death of Bin Laden

2011-05-24T20:33:00.001-07:00

The cancellation of the lowly-rated “The Event” and the killing of Osama Bin Laden may not seem related, but they may symbolize the end of the post-9/11 era in pop culture. In the decade since the September 11^th attacks, television and movies have been consumed with real and metaphorical terrorist attacks. “24”, which debuted two months after the attack on the Trade Center, provided the clearest illustration of this phenomenon, with seasons revolving around real nuclear and biological attacks(2002-2004). Jack Bauer, the show’s protagonist, routinely used torture, causing some to see it as propaganda for the Bush/Cheney administration.

Other programs used a less direct approach. “Heroes’” first season dealt with the possibility of a nuclear bomb going off in the form of a “nuclear man” who is predicted to explode in New York City. Following the “24” formula, its second season then featured a bioterror threat. The reboot of “Battlestar Galactica” moved the show from the original’s Cold War roots to a war on terror metaphor with debates over how to maintain one’s ideals in the face of lethal threats to human civilization. “Lost” frequently dealt with the issue of torture, seen through the character of Sayyid, a former Iraqi torturer..

As the decade since the attacks continued, however, these kind of shows seemed to have less and less success. Programs like “Flash Forward” and “V” that dealt with 9/11 style events garnered weak ratings. The same went for “Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles” and now, “The Event.” Clearly, these shows were weaker than some of the ones mentioned above and viewers seem to have less an d less patience for the serialized format.

Still, as memories fade, it may be that the resonance of 9/11 will dissipate and Bin Laden’s death will only accelerate this process

Superman's History

2011-05-14T10:31:00.001-07:00

With the series finale of Smallville this week, one reader asked me to give some historical context to Superman, a character now entering his ninth decade in American cultural life. Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel, two Jewish-American teenagers from Cleveland, created Superman during the Great Depression, with DC Comics publishing Action Comics 1, the first comic book to feature Superman, in 1938. Many have interpreted Kal-El’s (Superman’s given name) flight from war-torn Krypton as a metaphor for the American immigrant experience in general, or perhaps for Jews trying to escape Europe during the 1930s. Clark Kent’s sense of otherness as an “alien” in Middle-American Kansas can also be seen as an expression of the challenge of assimilation for the immigrants who arrived through Ellis Island between 1882-1924 and their children. During the depression, Superman reflected the politics of the time, acting as a proto-New Dealer, taking on corrupt landlords and businessman.

During the 1950s, Superman again reflected the ethos of his era, emerging as a champion of “truth, justice, and the American way,” during the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. This phrase, now closely linked to the character, first became central during this time (though it had been used briefly during World War II.) The first Superman television show, the Adventures of Superman, premiered during this decade, starring George Reeves, from 1952-1958.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Superman re-emerged with the Christopher Reeve films, which became the most famous and influential depiction of the superhero. The success of the films can partly be attributable to the fact that Superman is portrayed as an incorruptible hero in the aftermath of the cynicism wrought by Vietnam and Watergate. The film also served as a template for most of the comic book movies since then, clearly influencing Tim Burton’s and Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, as well as Sam Raimi’s Spider Man series.

Indeed, Smallville, which premiered in 2001, can be seen as a 10-year prequel to the Christopher Reeve films and has become the primary representation of the Superman myth for Generation Y. With the arrival of yet another Superman film in 2012, it seems likely that the character will continue to endure in popular culture.

Sources: Bradford Wright, Comic Book Nation, (Baltimore, 2001)
Erik Lunegrad, "Truth, Justice and (Fill in the Blank), New York Times, June 30, 2006

The end of Smallville

2011-04-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

After 10 seasons, Smallville is concluding next month. Though the show has been wildly up and down at times, I haven’t missed many episodes since season 2. If you haven’t watched, the show has essentially depicted Clark Kent’s journey from adolescent to Superman. With the Seinfeldian rule of “No tights, no flying,” the program's longevity has allowed it to gradually depict a character’s growth in a way few sci-fi/fantasy shows have done.

The show has lasted because it has essentially been two shows. Seasons 1-5 were a kind of Buffyesque (though not quite as sharp) journey through high school and early college, with Clark saving the day repeatedly in Smallville. Clearly inspired by the first half of the original Superman movie, Clark’s parents, well-played by John Schneider (finally overcoming the stigma of the Dukes of Hazard) and Annette O’Toole (Lana Lang in the forgettable Superman 3), help guide him through learning about his origins and controlling his powers. Clark’s relationships with friends Chloe Sullivan and, for a time, Lex Luthor, are interesting. The major drawback is the on-again, off-again romance with Lana Lang, annoyingly played by Kristen Kreuk.

Smallville had a second act in seasons 6-10 because it allowed the characters to grow with the audience. Gradually, Clark begins to use his power to help the world beyond Smallville. We see the culmination of Lex’s Anakin Skywalkeresque road to the dark side, Clark’s parents leave the stage (with Jonathon Kent dying in similar fashion to Superman 1) and Lois Lane (thank G-D) replace Lana as the love interest. Michael Rosenbaum’s performance as Lex Luthor is the best portrayal of Lex, exceeding Gene Hackman in the original films and Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns. Erica Durance has also grown into a good Lois.

The best thing about the show has been a new character in the Superman universe, Chloe Sullivan. Played by Alison Mack, she has been the most consistently interesting person throughout the show, evolving from Clark’s love-sick best friend in high schools to his key ally in his battles againts various villians.

With the final show next month, old characters have been returning and have helped produce one of the better seasons of the show. Look for a final scene with Clark donning the Superman outfit and flying off with the classic John Williams music in the background

Sports and Age

2011-04-08T15:53:00.001-07:00

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I wanted to do a post on the Masters. Indeed, this week marks the 25^th anniversary of Jack Nicklaus’ sixth Masters victory at age 46. All of the retrospectives reveal that our conceptions of age have changed considerably since 1986. Nicklaus was considered over the hill at 46 and his two major victories in 1980 at age 40 were considered remarkable. Fast forward to the present and 40 year-old Phil Mickelson is the favorite to win this week. Furthermore, we have seen 45 and over golfers in the mix in a number of majors over the last few years, most remarkably when a 59 year-old Tom Watson came a putt away from winning the 2009 British Open. Fred Couples (51) has a chance to win over this weekend in Augusta just as he did last year. Shaping up to be an interesting weekend.

Mad Men (or lack thereof)

2011-03-31T16:46:00.000-07:00

I’m very disappointed that there will be no “Mad Men” in 2011. I started this blog to analyze the connections between pop culture and history and “Mad Men” was prime material. The show was a fascinating take on the social changes of the 1960s as producer Matt Weiner arranged many of the seasons to culminate around a major historical event.

In season 1, the show ends with the Kennedy/Nixon election (1960). In season 2, it concludes with the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). And in the third season, Weiner did an interesting look at how everyday people dealt with the Kennedy assassination (1963). The “change” wrought by the assassination also meant change for the major characters, with Betty and Don Draper getting divorced and several of the principals leaving Sterling Cooper to create a new firm. In season four, the season doesn’t revolve around a particular event, but we started to see the Vietnam War come into play with Joan’s husband in the Army.

Over the first four seasons, the show has often been best in depicting the early years of the women’s movement, particularly though the characters of Peggy and Joan. We see Peggy encounter the tremendous difficulties that a career-minded woman faced before the initial successes of second-wave feminism. Despite mildly open-minded superiors such as Don, she still faces tremendous sexism in the workplace and pressure from family and friends not to work so much (who fear it will prevent her from finding a husband). Joan faces a different set of obstacles in a more traditional position as an office manager, though everyone realizes the firm can’t really run without her. She even gets a promotion with no increase in pay, a common phenomenon during the period.

I’m sad we won’t see (for a while) how things would evolve in 1966-67, when the fifth season would presumably get underway. Beyond the historical issues, I’m very curious to see how Don’s new marriage to his secretary will work out. Not well I would imagine. What will happen to Betty, who was far less a presence in season 4, after her divorce from Don?

I feel that Don’s desertion from Korea and his forging a new identity is going to become more of a problem as the Vietnam War expands during the mid-to-late 60s. With resistance to the draft becoming more of an issue, it would be hard for the U.S. Army not to take a hard line on him should he ever be exposed. It seems that at some point everyone will know Don is really Dick Whitman and Don may regret not biting the bullet and revealing himself earlier.

Let’s hope for answers in 2012.

The Wire

2011-03-28T12:45:00.001-07:00

I just finished watching season 1 of “The Wire.’ I heard a lot of good things about the show, but did not see it during its run on HBO. It was very entertaining and I highly recommend it.

The show seems very much influenced by the “Godfather” saga. The show’s producer, David Simon, reveals a world where there is an interlocking relationship between drug dealers, the police, and public officials, just as Francis Ford Coppola does with the mafia and established institutions in the ““Godfather.” The Barksdale family, the primary villains in the first season, seems very similar to the Corleone family. Though the first season premiered in 2002, Simon seems to have been an early critic of the war on terror, criticizing federal officials for moving resources away from traditional crimes and toward the prevention of terrorism.

Fab Five Documentary

2011-03-23T21:33:00.001-07:00

Finally watched the ESPN documentary on the Fab Five. For the non sports fan, the Fab Five was a group of college basketball players who played for Michigan in the early 1990s, making the national title game in ’92 and ’93 (as freshmen and sophomores) . Jalen Rose’s comments about Duke have gotten all the attention, but that is only a small part of the piece. It is an interesting look at how the team reflected the rise of hip-hop culture at the time.

The film also looks back at the mistaken time-out Chris Webber called at the end of the ’93 national title game. Apparently, some of the players on the bench were yelling for him to call a time-out (though the Wolverines were out of timeouts and the technical foul shots sealed North Carolina’s victory.) I didn't remember that. The film shows how crushed Webber was by what happened; the players are still friends and never discuss this with him.

Juwan Howard notes that fans still remember him for being part of the Fab Five, as opposed to any of the pro teams he has played on. Rose observes that people can’t remember any of the starters of the ’93 UNC team that defeated them. The Michigan teams are certainly among the most famous teams never to have one a national title

Paul

2011-03-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend “Paul.” It will be very funny for everyone, but particularly to sci-fi geeks. The film is sweet and full of references to the great Spielberg and Lucas films of the 1970s and 1980s.

Serialized TV (part 2)

2011-03-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

I have liked The Event since its return. Again, neither V or the Event is 24 or Lost, but those shows both had their weak moments as well. The Event does seem to be accelerating the action and hopefully it will continue to be compelling

Serialized TV

2011-03-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

The new V finished its abbreviated second season this week and I hope ABC renews it. While it certainly has its weaknesses, I think the show is beginning to pick up. There have been only 23 episodes, so it really has had only one season's worth of episodes. Elizabeth Mitchell, who plays the lead character, was excellent in Lost and is good in V as well.
I'm not sure why they brought back Jane Badler (Diana in the 1980s miniseries) to play a different version of the character (who seemed to be a "good" Diana as opposed to the original, who was one of the all-time great sci-fi villians). Along the same lines, they have now brought back Marc Singer (the hero in the 80s miniseries) for a role. Singer was never a very good actor and the new show needs to stand on its own. I say this as someone who loved the original miniseries and has seen it more times than he cares to admit.

Ali-Frazier 1

2011-03-09T12:05:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was the 40^th anniversary of Ali-Frazier 1 in 1971. The retrospectives reveal a number of important things. First, most Americans have forgotten how polarizing Ali was back in the late 60s/early 70s because of his conversion to the Nation of Islam and his opposition to the Vietnam War. The anti-war movement and the counterculture embraced Ali while many working-class white supporters of the war backed Frazier because they viewed Ali as an unpatriotic draft-dodger.

Furthermore, Ali-Frazier 1 was one of the biggest sporting events of the 20^th century and engaged people who were not sports fans or boxing fans. Today, boxing has almost disappeared from the sports landscape. The last fight that casual fans may have been interested was Tyson-Spinks in 1988 or maybe Tyson-Holyfield II in 1997.

Check out an old HBO documentary, Ali-Frazier: One Nation Divisible, for more.

ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

2011-03-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

Saw "Adjustment Bureau" over the weekend. It was fun and again had the feel of a 70s thriller, though, as one review pointed out, it was not as dark as most of those. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are being monitored by an organization which has its own "rules" as to when it can intervene, a bit of a reflection of post 9/11 debates over civil liberties. Some of the meetings between Damon and offficals in the "Adjustment Bureau," particularly Mad Men's John Slattery and Terrence Stamp (General Zod in Superman II), are slightly reminscent of Robert Redford and Hal Holbrook in "All the President's Men."

best director

2011-02-27T20:07:00.000-08:00

Tom Hooper's win keeps David Fincher's place as the best director not to have won an Oscar. Social Network was good, but Zodiac remains one of the least appreciated films of recent years.

inside job

2011-02-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

Inside Job was a great documentary and a deserving winner, but it also in the long history of the Oscars using an award to send a political message

Gone with the Wind

2011-02-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

Interesting that the Academy still gives Gone with the Wind a place as a classic Hollywood film, given its racial politics. Saw it again recently and it remains the most prominent purveyor of the old racist interpretation of Reconstruction as a period when Northern carpetbaggers and African Americans ran roughshod over the post-Civil War South.

Oscar opening

2011-02-27T17:44:00.000-08:00

The opening montage was good, but the monolgue was fairly dull. Bring back Billy Crystal!

Unknown

2011-02-26T21:59:00.000-08:00

Saw the new Liam Neeson thriller Unknown. As some of the reviews have already noted, it seems to be a combination of Neeson's 2009 movie Taken and the Bourne films (though it is better than Taken and not as good as the Bourne films). It's fun as long as you don't take it too seriously.

In terms of history, it is yet another one of the many post 9/11 films that plays on themes from 1970s conspiracy films. We again see elaborate conspiracies from a bizarre network of villians who have tremendous abilities to manufacture identities. It seems that some combination of intelligence agencies and multinational corporations are in some kind of alliance to stop some kind of progressive outcome. Aside from Liam Neeson's amnesia, the plot could have easily have come from a season of "24"

Will be posting during the Oscars

V

2011-02-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

The new V seems to have finally found its stride. Like Battlestar Galactica, the reboot moved away from the Cold War/WW2 parallels of its predecessor toward a war on terror format where "anyone" could be a Visitor (just as anyone could be a Cylon). The February 22 episode did harken back to the original with its talk of the Visitors acclerating evolution to create a master race.

The difficulties that V has had, along with the failure of the promising "Flash Forward" and the post-season 1 "Heroes" reveal how difficult it is to write a good serialized drama that holds together. It will be interesting to see the if "The Event" can get on track when it returns. It may be that "Lost" and "24" were exceptions as opposed to trendsetters.

Welcome

2011-02-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

Hi! I teach 20th century U.S. history at the university level and I'm starting this blog to give my observations about how tv, films, and popular music reflect curent trends in the country. I hope the public will respond to my musings.