Boardwalk Empire, Season 4, Episode 1, "New York Sour"

“Boardwalk Empire” returned this week as the Roaring Twenties and the concomitant battle over Prohibition continued.  The first episode of season four explores a few of the important issues of that decade as the program moves into 1924.

Eli Thompson’s wife is worried that her college-attending son is smoking while at school.  In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, smoking was concentrated among working-class people and the poor and was seen as uncouth among middle and upper middle class people.  As the Victorian values of that era lost their power during the 1920s, the stigma on smoking faded and it slowly became a respectable behavior.

Meanwhile, a new character played by Ron Livingstone, has arrived to bring the Piggly Wiggly chain to Atlantic City.  At the time, chain stores were expanding across the country and putting economic pressure on local mom and pop stores.  Such problems existed long before the arrival of Wal-Mart.

At the conclusion of the episode, Nucky Thompson is examining real estate papers about property in Manatee County on the Florida Gulf Coast.  The 1920s witnessed a dramatic rise in interest in real estate in the Sunshine State as a bubble in land prices eventually burst at the end of the decade.  Could Nucky be headed for some poor financial investments?

Lee Daniels' "The Butler"

I modestly recommend “Lee Daniel’s The Butler,” which offers the most thorough feature film depiction of the civil rights movement to date.  Though it often oversimplifies the period, it exposes the audience to an important set of events that many Americans are unaware of as we continue to honor the 50^th anniversary of the era, with the celebration of the March on Washington coming at the end of the month.

The film revolves around the life of Cecil Gaines, played by Forrest Whitaker, who eventually works as a butler in the White House for three decades.  His story begins in Georgia in 1926, where he and his family live on a cotton plantation.  At the opening of the film, a planter rapes his mother and his father is killed after offering minor protest.  Of course, blacks had no recourse to such violence at that time in the Jim Crow South. After several years working inside the house at the plantation, Cecil joins millions of other black Americans in the Great Migration to the North and gets a job a working at a luxury hotel in Washington D.C.

Hired by the White House in 1957, Cecil watches President Eisenhower agonize over the crisis in Little Rock, AK, where Governor Orval Faubus is preventing the court-ordered integration of Central High School.  The film accurately shows Ike’s desire for the South to have more time to implement the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, but also how he is forced to send federal troops to enforce the order when Faubus allows a climate of anarchy of prevail in the city.  The film is sympathetic to Eisenhower and does not show his refusal to urge citizens to obey the Brown decision, which many historians believe offered sustenance to the South’s campaign of “massive resistance.”

The movie’s central theme is the generational tension between Cecil and his son Lewis.  Like many of his era, Cecil is reluctant to openly challenge the system because of the memory of the racial violence he saw in the South (in addition to his father’s death, he witnessed a lynching as a teenager).  Having escaped the worst of the Jim Crow South, he is content with his life as the movement picks up speed after the Brown decision. Representing the more militant post-World War II generation, Lewis wants to challenge the status quo.

Lewis attends Fisk University in Tennessee, one of the leading historically black colleges that educated blacks during the era of segregation.  While in school, he goes to James Lawson’s workshops on nonviolence and becomes part of the student sit-in campaign in Nashville in 1960, which eventually resulted in the desegregation of public facilities in the city.  He becomes part of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the fictional character becomes the Forrest Gump of the movement, appearing at all of the key events of the time, including the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Birmingham campaign of 1963, and the Selma campaign of 1965.

At the same time, Cecil watches JFK and LBJ deal with the movement from Washington. “The Butler” shows—albeit in Hollywood fashion—how the activists moved Kennedy to propose the most far-reaching civil rights bill in history after the Birmingham police unleashed fire hoses and dogs on protesters in the city.  Following the assassination, LBJ pushes the final bill through Congress and then proposes the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after Alabama state troopers violently beat activists at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.  Through his lens, the movie portrays the movement as a grass-roots phenomenon that involved more than the incredibly important efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Throughout all of this, Cecil disapproves of Lewis’ behavior because he breaks the law though his civil disobedience and because he fears for his son’s life.  Indeed, many black Americans, even leaders of the NAACP, did not support the street protest tactics of the students because they felt were too dangerous and that change should come through the courts and legislation.

Like some SNCC activists such as Stokley Carmichael, Lewis and his girlfriend become disenchanted with the non-violent strategy of Dr. King during the mid-to-late 1960s, moving closer to Malcolm X’s advocacy of self-defense.  They join the Black Panthers, although Lewis becomes disenchanted with the group and leaves.  At the same time, Cecil hears President Nixon and his advisers plot the group’s destruction, with references to J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO campaign that undermined the Panthers.

Lewis and Cecil continue to be estranged throughout the 1970s and 1980s, even as Lewis enters politics and is elected to Congress.  Cecil continues to work into the Reagan years where he sees the president veto sanctions on apartheid-era South Africa (Congress overrode the veto).  Shortly thereafter, father and son reconcile and are arrested together at a protest outside the South African embassy.  Such efforts were common in the 1980s as many movement veterans saw the anti-apartheid struggle as an extension of their fight during the 1950s and 1960s.

Of course, the film concludes with Gaines living to see the election of Barack Obama, though his wife, played by Oprah Winfrey, passes away beforehand.  The move concludes with Cecil going to a meeting with Obama in the White House (though we do not see him)

The film oversimplifies aspects of the movement, though in fairness it is a feature film and not a documentary.  Moreover, it bizarrely casts very famous actors as presidents: Robin Williams as Ike, John Cusack as Nixon, and Alan Rickman as Reagan.  It’s almost as if the filmmakers thought of the actor least likely to play the role and cast them!  Still, they were following the path laid by the television miniseries “Roots” 35 years ago; if you have a black-themed project, use prominent white actors in supporting roles.

Indeed, the most important thing about “The Butler” is that it is a film about African-American issues with black characters in the lead.  Most films about such issues, whether unbelievably inaccurate (“Mississippi Burning”) or relatively accurate (“Lincoln”) usually feature whites as protagonists.  In “The Butler,” the white characters are clearly in background. For this reason and for its depiction of the seminal events of the civil rights era, it is a worthwhile movie.

"Breaking Bad"

I watched every episode of “Breaking Bad” this summer (I know I’m behind the curve) and have a few reflections about the show as the second half of the final season begins on Sunday night.  First, I see a strong undercurrent of class tensions, perhaps reflecting the growing income inequality in the US in recent years as well as the impact of the Great Recession.  Moreover, even though the show focuses on the “war on drugs,” the impact of the post-9/11 conflicts is clearly visible on the characters.

As a highly educated man with a Ph.D. in chemistry, Walter White represents an idiosyncratic symbol for the economic struggles of many working and middle class Americans in recent years.  His education should make him a highly paid professional, but his personal disputes with his grad school colleagues left him out of an enormously successful business, Gray and White.  As a high school teacher, Walt struggles to support his family and once he is diagnosed with lung cancer, his HMO won’t pay for the best health care.  Wearing his sense of resentment on his sleeve, Walt refuses the financial assistance of his rich friends and even blows up the car of an arrogant wealthy man in season one.

The Iraq war’s influence could be seen when White’s DEA brother-in-law Hank is nearly killed by an IED while working near the Mexican border.  Such devices were the weapons of choice for the insurgents in their fight against American troops.  The combination of that trauma as well as Hank’s shooting of a drug dealer in self-defense leaves him with a serious case of post-traumatic stress syndrome, like many who have served abroad in America’s wars over the last decade.

As we head into the final episodes, it will be interesting to see how executive producer Vince Gilligan concludes the show.  I predict a very unambiguous ending—i.e., the antithesis of “The Sopranos” or “Lost.”

"Man of Steel"

I recommend “Man of Steel,” which offers a darker take on the Superman story than audiences have seen in the past.  Combining traditional elements of the mythology with the more serious tone of post-9/11 comic book films, director Zack Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan have banished the memory of Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” (2006), reinvigorating the franchise.

Like the original “Superman” (1978), the film begins with the depiction of Kal-El’s leaving Krypton as an infant.  With the planet crumbling, Jor-El, played well by Russell Crowe, puts his only son on a ship to Earth.  After Kal’s departure, the evil General Zod (“Boardwalk Empire’s” Michael Shannon) kills Jor-El and declares that he will find his son.

Jor-El’s act of sending his son away to save him echoes the story of Moses from the Old Testament and Kal-El means “vessel of G-D” in Hebrew (Tye, 65-66). As I noted in my previous post on Superman, two Jewish American teenagers from Cleveland created the character during the 1930s and the influence of their religion and immigrant experience pervades the tale.  The destruction of Krypton can be seen as a metaphor for the Russian pogroms that forced Jews to leave Eastern Europe in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries or for Europe on the eve of the Second World War. Once on Earth, the Middle American Kent family adopts and raises Kal-El as Clark Kent and he tries to assimilate into humanity, but is not truly one of them, an experience shared by many immigrants who came to the United States.  Indeed, Kal El’s biological mother fears humans will see him as an “outcast” and a “freak.”  For more about Superman’s history, see http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2013/06/supermans-history.html

Like “Batman Begins” (2005) and “Amazing Spider Man” (2012), “Man of Steel" is a much more cynical examination of its protagonist than previous incarnations.  Gone is the whimsy and humor of the Christopher Reeve films of the 1970s and 1980s, replaced by humanity’s fear of the alien other.  In the beginning of the movie, Clark Kent is working a series of odd jobs, quietly helping people on the way and then quickly moving on, much like David Banner in the “Incredible Hulk” TV show.  In a series of flashbacks, we see his adolescent struggles with his powers, which are far more traumatic than those experienced by Tom Welling’s Clark on TV’s “Smallville” (2001-2011).

As I’ve noted before, most film franchises have become more serious since 9/11 and one of the problems with “Superman Returns” was that is so consciously echoed the sensibility of the original films.  Not so with “Man of Steel.”  Indeed, the climactic action scenes eerily echo 9/11 as we see people fleeing dust and falling buildings. The contrast between Henry Cavill’s Superman and Christopher Reeve’s from the late 70s/early 80s is almost as stark as the difference between Daniel Craig’s James Bond and Roger Moore’s from the late 70s/early 80s.  For more, see http://popculturemeetshistory.blogspot.com/2011/09/post-911-popular-culture.html>

Overall, I very much enjoyed the film, though Snyder could have cut one major action sequence to make the story tighter.  At the end, Clark begins his traditional job at the Daily Planet, providing a nice conclusion to the movie and giving us hope that newspapers will still exist when the sequel debuts.

Larry Tye, Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero, (New York, 2012)

Superman's History

With the premiere of “Man of Steel,” the latest iteration of the Superman legend, it is an appropriate time to analyze the history of the character on his 75^th anniversary.  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 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 director Richard Donner portrayed Superman 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.

The TV show “Smallville,” which premiered in 2001, can be seen as a 10-year prequel to the Christopher Reeve films and became the primary representation of the Superman myth for Generation Y.  Exploring Clark Kent’s coming-of-age in Kansas, which is only partially examined in the Donner film, “Smallville” shows the young Superman discovering his origins and learning to use his powers.  

After the failure of “Superman Returns” to revive the movie franchise in 2006, it appeared that the character might disappear from the big screen. With the strong opening box office for “Man of Steel,” however it seems likely that the character will continue to endure in films and other aspects of popular culture for the foreseeable future.

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

"Mad Men," Season Six, Episode 10, 'Favors"

The Vietnam-era draft moved to center stage on “Mad Men” in  “Favors” as Mitchell Rosen, the son of Don’s ex-mistress, is in danger of being inducted into the military and sent to Southeast Asia in 1968.  Don tries to help, assisting Mitchell in a way that ends with mixed results.

Universal conscription prevailed during the World War II-era as the draft provided no exemptions for men attending college or graduate school.  In order to avoid a national debate over Vietnam, the Johnson Administration allowed for deferments for those in higher education during the 1960s.  As a result, most members of the American upper middle class did not serve and a smaller share of the population bore the burden of the conflict than in the Second World War.  According to the historian Christian Appy, 20 percent of the American soldiers who served in Vietnam were poor, 55 percent were working class, and 20 percent were middle class (though a larger share of the country participated in Vietnam than has served in the all-volunteer military of the post-9/11 wars).

Once out of school, young people with means often found ways to avoid the war.  Some used creative tactics to fail their physical, such as losing a tremendous amount of weight in advance.  Others found a friendly doctor to give them a medical exemption.  Finally, 30,000 people left the country altogether and journeyed to safe haven in Canada.

Mitchell Rosen is contemplating that path and Megan, herself a Canadian, considers helping him. “He can’t be on the run the rest of his life,” responds Don, no doubt thinking of his perpetual post-Korean War fear of being exposed as a fraud and deserter.  Instead, Don tries to find a way for Mitchell to gain another exemption.  Though a student, Mitchell sent back his draft card in protest and has been classified as 1A, or available for service.

Don tries to see if his new clients at General Motors will help, but like many Americans, they express disgust toward those who try to avoid the draft.  Even Arnold Rosen, a Korean War vet himself, seems conflicted, saying that he and Don were lucky to live in this country and that “Service is part of that bargain…sacrifice…We knew that.”  In an interesting twist, Ted Chaough comes to the rescue and contacts a pilot friend of his in the Air National Guard, which will likely become Mitchell’s salvation, just as it did for the young George W. Bush in 1968.  While members of the guard and reserves have served multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11, Lyndon Johnson refused to call them up throughout the Vietnam War, fearing it would provoke a wider debate over the conflict.  As a result, many young people with connections, like Bush and Dan Quayle, found their way into the National Guard.

History aside, this season of “Mad Men” has picked up momentum in the last few episodes and seems to be a late bloomer.  It will be interesting to see how Don survives his current escapades.

"Mad Men," Season Six, Episode 9, "A Tale of Two Cities"

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“It’s a revolt,” declares Pete Campbell regarding the internecine machinations at Sterling Cooper as antiwar protestors battle with police in Chicago during the infamous 1968 Democratic convention.  In a strong episode, the divisions between the old and new members of the firm mirror the schism in the country over the Vietnam War.

Early in “A Tale of Two Cities,” the Democrats are delaying the debate over Vietnam at their convention.  Megan tells Don there is no way Humphrey can win if the Democrats don’t come out against the war.  “Against Nixon,” responds Don quizzically.  Indeed, Nixon had been left for dead by many after his close loss to JFK in the 1960 presidential election, which was followed by a defeat at the hands of Pat Brown (father of Jerry) in the 1962 California gubernatorial race.  “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” snarled the former vice president to the press afterward.  Most pundits presumed his political career was over, but Nixon campaigned hard for the GOP in the 1966 midterms, receiving a great deal of credit for the Republicans’ success that year, which was much needed after the Goldwater debacle in 1964.  Still, Megan was partially correct, as the failure to adopt a stronger position against the war alienated the antiwar left from the Democrats, with many of them staying at home rather than voting for LBJ’s vice president.

The convention plays on television throughout the episode, reminding us of a time when there were only three networks and the quadrennial rituals revealed major national debates as opposed to the stage-managed infomercials the country watches today.  The antiwar movement descended on the proceedings and marched toward the convention hall, only to be met with harsh resistance from the Chicago police of Mayor Richard J. Daley.  Of course, public opinion was divided over the police beatings of antiwar protesters and that is reflected in the episode.  Megan and Joan are horrified while Don seems sympathetic to the police.  In the end, a majority of Americans seemed to side with the cops, despite their brutality, a sign of how the only thing more unpopular than the Vietnam War was the antiwar movement.  In the end, the disorder surrounding the convention doomed Humphrey, paving the way for Nixon’s victory in the fall.

The next day, Roger and Don meet with some executives from Carnation.  One official believes that the Democrats are not only done for 1968 because of Chicago, but could be finished for good.  While that was a slight exaggeration, the legacy of the divisions surrounding the battles of 1968 and 1972 weakened the party for years, leaving them with a reputation that liberals were outside the national mainstream.  Between 1968 and 1988, the Democrats only won one presidential election, Jimmy Carter’s narrow post-Watergate win in 1976.

The CEO of Carnation arrives at the meeting and express his anger at the “long haired fools,” but is also unhappy that the Republicans will likely nominate Nixon the next month, calling him an “opportunist.”  He prefers “Dutch Reagan,” a reference to then California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had been elected in 1966.  The “Gipper” would make his first attempt to win the presidential nomination at the GOP convention in Miami Beach, falling short in part because the party bosses believed he was too conservative for the country.  Nixon adroitly bridged the divide between the Rockefeller and Goldwater wings of the party in ‘68, but Reagan’s emergence reflected the rise of the New Right that grew out of the reaction to the 1960s.

By the conclusion of “A Tale of Two Cities,” Pete is frustrated that the business is changing and seems to give into the cultural changes of the time, borrowing a marijuana cigarette from Stan.  Meanwhile, the divide between those from Ted Chaough’s firm and the old guard from Sterling Cooper seems as profound as the divide in the country as a whole in 1968.