On Seeing Gone with the Wind in a theater for the fifth time

 

On Watching Gone with the Wind in a Theater for the Fifth Time

 

Gone with the Wind is universal art misunderstood by elite book burners

 

On April 7, I attended an eighty-fifth anniversary theatrical showing of Gone with the Wind. In recent weeks, I've been through an earthquake, seen a solar eclipse, and spent hours in church for Easter. Even so, watching GWTW for the fifth time in a theater was a religious experience.

 

Manohla Dargis, the New York Times chief film critic, interrupts her April 12 review of a new movie to restate her righteous indignation against an unrelated film. Gone with the Wind, she insists, is a "monument to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause."

 

Yes, both the book and the film are racist. No, GWTW's racism is not the works' alpha and omega. And, no, GWTW is not the only flawed work of art. Have you heard any rap lyrics lately? Rather, GWTW addresses universal themes. Audiences from diverse ethnicities and social classes recognize these themes and even just the film's soundtrack reduces listeners to tears. GWTW brings the power of myth to a universal experience: growing up, leaving childhood innocence, and entering a world that isn't invested in your survival, and that can engineer relentless freight trains full of misery and steer them right at you. It's about who survives the collision, how, and why, and at what cost. "Hardships make or break people," as Rhett Butler says.

"One Way Back" by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Book Review

 

"One Way Back" is a good book. It's not just a "celebrity memoir." Even if author Dr. Christine Blasey Ford were not famous, this book would be worth reading. It's well-written and like any good book it causes the reader to feel, to think, and to understand the human race a bit better. "One Way Back" is also brief and an easy read. The sentences are short and the vocabulary is basic.
 
"One Way Back" is no less beautiful for its ease of reading. Ford uses surfing as her overarching metaphor. Surfing is dangerous but it is also, for the surfer, like life itself. Yes, it entails risk, but in undertaking that risk the surfer enhances the experience of being alive. The book's title, "One Way Back," is a reference to surfing. The surfer paddles out into the ocean, and must ride the wave the ocean presents. There's only one way back to shore – riding the wave that life hands you.

 

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was not famous before summer, 2018. US President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the SCOTUS. Ford contacted her elected officials to report that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at an informal high school gathering when she was 15 and he was 17. Ford passed a lie detector test administered by a former FBI agent. Ford was asked to testify before the Senate, and she did. In initial reactions, even FOX news, and, indeed, even Donald Trump himself assessed Ford as credible.

 

Later, the White House devised a strategy whereby Brett Kavanaugh would perform an opera similar to the one presented by the similarly accused Clarence Thomas. Thomas claimed he was a victim of a "high tech lynching." Kavanaugh said, "This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election … revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups." What Kavanaugh said here was not true. Kavanaugh spoke other untruths, see, for example, his untrue comments about "boof," about "Devil's Triangle," and about how much he drank and what parties he attended. He spoke these untruths while under oath.

 

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her family have been subjected to murderous harassment ever since. She has had to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in security fees. For the past six years, people have been actively threatening to kill her and her children. Even animals are subjected to this rage. Dead animals have been thrown onto her property. Brett Kavanaugh has a lifetime ride on the SCOTUS, a position as close to royalty as America awards.

 

"One Way Back" is a quiet book. Dr. Ford records these events, but quietly. She never adopts the histrionic, fever pitch screech of Kavanaugh in his testimony, revealing temperament so totally unworthy of a judge that Saturday Night Live parodied it in one of their most popular routines.

 

Rather we get an account of a woman who apparently never wanted the spotlight, but who marched – or surfed – into it when she thought doing so was her civic duty.

 

I liked this book, but I didn't feel that I could ever get close to Dr. Ford. She is very unlike me. Her father was a self-made man. He was successful enough that he managed to send his three children to exclusive prep schools and to see them go on to advanced degrees and successful careers.

 

Young Christine didn't have to work. She went to an exclusive prep school and spent her extracurricular hours swimming and diving. It seems that her dad bankrolled her advanced education that included time spent in Hawaii. With that foundation, Dr. Ford became a successful professor and employee at two California universities. She is happily married and her sons followed her into the water and she spent her summers standing by as they received training at the beach.

 

Dr. Ford is frank about how she differs from others. She is a very sensitive person and she sometimes feels shy and out of place with others' values. Reading about her decision to come forward, I felt as if I were reading about Dr. Ford being put through a food processor. So many different people gave her so much different advice. Testify, don't testify, protect yourself above all, do your civic duty above all, align yourself with this or that person … it must have been hell for her. Through it all, she was true to her own sense of civic duty. And for that unhinged, hateful misogynists defame her and encourage really bad people to continue to threaten her life and the life of her children.

 

Ford's misogynist enemies lie about her. Many of those lies have found their way into influential publications. "One Way Back" corrects those lies. Read the book.

 

Finally – Thank you Dr. Ford.

 

 

One Life and Nicky's Family: Two Films Dramatize WW II Rescue of Refugees from Prague

 

One Life and Nicky's Family
Two films depict the rescue of over six hundred children from Nazis

 

The 2023 biopic One Life concludes with a very moving scene. An elderly man is surprised by a televised celebration of heroic deeds he performed when he was young. I could not resist the scene's power. I cried. I made sniffling sounds. I didn't even try to apply the emotional brakes.

 

If only the rest of the movie were as good as that final scene.

 

One Life dramatizes the life of Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE. When he was 29 years old, Winton participated in an effort to save Jewish children from oncoming Nazis. His heroism warrants an uplifting, inspirational, unforgettable film. I was worried when I saw that One Life would be released in the US on March 15. Early March is part of the "dump months" when movies that haven't tested well are released.

 

One Life is not a bad movie. It's just not good enough. I'd give it a six out of ten, but, given that the subject matter is so important and so appealing, I will nudge that up to a seven. Nicky Winton deserves an eleven out of ten.

 

As I left the theater, I asked, "Who was Nicholas Winton? Why did he perform these heroic acts? How did he perform them?" One Life didn't answer those questions for me. I spent hours reading about Winton. I stumbled across a movie I'd never heard of before. Nicky's Family is a 2011, English language, Czech and Slovak documentary. It is currently streaming for free. Nicky's Family moved me deeply, answered my questions, and worked for me.

The War on Children by Robby and Landon Starbuck: Movie Review

 

The War on Children by Robby and Landon Starbuck
A new documentary takes on too much and offers simplistic solutions

 

The War on Children is a documentary addressing various social trends that damage children. The War on Children premiered on Twitter in February, 2024. War is two hours, twenty minutes long. The War on Children cites the following trends that damage children: child trafficking, trans extremism, online pornography, Marxist domination of public education, greedy corporations, and water pollution. The documentary recommends the following solutions: parents spending more time with their children in outdoor activities, limiting children's internet access, attendance at Christian churches, men reclaiming their masculinity, and voting Republican.

 

War was produced and directed by 36-year-old Robby Starbuck, aka Robert Starbuck Newsome. In 2022, Starbuck ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a Tennessee congressional seat. Before that, he was, according to his Vimeo bio, a video and film director. Interestingly, that bio states his preferred pronouns as "he/him." The bio says he has worked with the celebrities "Akon, Smashing Pumpkins, Sarah Bareilles, Metric, Megadeth, Snoop Dogg, Machine Gun Kelly & Yellowcard." Starbuck identifies as Cuban-American.

 

War also features Starbuck's wife, Landon Starbuck, and their three children. On her website, Landon Starbuck says, "I'm passionate about faith, family, freedom, truth and justice … I speak, write, make music and advocate to protect all children. I left the music industry as a Billboard charting artist to focus on fighting child trafficking … I started my own non-profit combatting child abuse, exploitation and trafficking in 2021 … All glory goes to God. I love Jesus [and] my family." 

 

I follow movie news but I had heard nothing about The War on Children. I also follow Andrew Gutmann. In 2021, Gutmann received national attention when he published a protest against Woke education at Brearley, a private K-12 school for girls in Manhattan that charges $61,500 in annual tuition. Gutmann's letter is here; a 2024 update is here. Gutmann recommended The War on Children, and Gutmann's recommendation made War a must-see film for me.

 

I watched The War on Children on Twitter, straight through, twice. Though I share many of the filmmaker's concerns, the film did not work for me. Both times, after watching it, I felt agitated, depressed, and powerless. War shares much in common with Matt Walsh's 2022 documentary, What Is a Woman? I review What Is a Woman? here. What Is a Woman? worked for me in ways that The War on Children did not.

Cabrini 2024 Movie Review. Cabrini the film is as beautiful, and as provocative, as Cabrini the woman

 

Cabrini 2024
Cabrini the film is as beautiful, and as provocative, as Cabrini the woman

On Friday, March 8 – "International Women's Day" – I stepped out into sunshine and felt as if I'd just taken a spiritual shower. My soul tingled as cleansing droplets pelted through. I was refreshed and renewed. I was walking on air. I was ready to cope with the challenges that my life in Paterson presents to me, from the garbage in the streets to the noisy car stereos blasting rap. I resolved to be a better person. And, yes, I felt all of those things because I had just seen Cabrini.

Cabrini is a 2024 biopic of the Italian American nun, Sister Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917). In 1946, Cabrini became the first US citizen to be canonized. Cabrini accomplished this in spite of having been dealt an inauspicious hand in life. Her parents were Italian farmers. She was one of the youngest of many brothers and sisters – sources list between ten and thirteen siblings. Only four of her siblings survived beyond adolescence. Worldwide, youngest daughters of large, agricultural families have low status and relatively low survival rates. On top of that, Cabrini was born two months premature. She was afflicted with smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis, which compromised her lungs for life.

When she was a child, Cabrini made paper boats, outfitted them with violet flowers, and launched them on the water. These were her early, imaginary "missions." She yearned to preach Christ in China. Because of her physical frailty, three orders of nuns refused to accept her. She founded her own order.

A cardinal dismissed her ambitions, reminding her that there had never been an independent order of missionary women.

Cabrini replied, "If the mission of announcing the lord’s Resurrection to his apostles had been entrusted to Mary Magdalene, it would seem a very good thing to confide to other women an evangelizing mission."

The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest: Three Excellent New Films

 

The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest:
Three great films best seen in a theater

 

Friend, I beg of you. Go to a theater and see three great movies sometime soon: The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest.  

 

Leopold Staff, a Polish poet who survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, said that "Even more than bread we now need poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all." Movies are democratic. They are accessible and they are communal. It's fashionable to declare one's superiority by sneering at popular culture. It's harder to sneer when you remember that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fearless counter-jihadi, was inspired by Nancy Drew novels, and that Top Gun and Saving Private Ryan drove military recruitment. Politics is downstream from culture. The culture we support with our ticket-buying dollars is as important as the candidates we support with our votes.

 

We get something from publicly watching a movie together with our fellow citizens. The Major and the Minor is a 1942 screwball comedy. I'd watched it a couple of times at home, alone, on a small TV screen before seeing it for the first time in a jam-packed, Greenwich Village art house theater. In that crowd of rollicking laughter, I suddenly realized what a very naughty movie The Major and the Minor is. Its double entendres had flown right over my head. While watching Gone with the Wind, a loud and spontaneous sigh erupted when the camera zoomed in on Rhett Butler's handsome face (see here). Gathering in the ladies room after a movie like that is a genre of psychotherapy. While washing your hands you ask complete strangers, "Do you think Scarlett and Rhett ever got back together?" You comfort and enlighten each other and the world is warmer, more connected, less lonely and tense. Mel Gibson's The Passion depicts Christ's torture, crucifixion, and death in grisly detail. Three Muslim guys took seats directly behind me. They were joking sarcastically. Clearly, they were in the theater to mock. After the film ended, I turned around to check on them. One was doubled over, distraught. His companions were rubbing his back and speaking softly to him.

 

The loss of public movie-going erodes not just community, but also art. Ali's well is a famous, eight-minute scene in Lawrence of Arabia. Most of what we see is a completely flat, lifeless, tan desert landscape against a blue sky unbroken by any cloud. Two men draw water from a desert well. A tiny dot appears on the horizon. Slowly we realize that that dot is a man approaching on a camel. He shoots one of the men to death. As we wait, and wait, and wait for the approaching man  to arrive, we experience a fraction of the desert: the emptiness, the boredom, the terror, the sudden and irrational violence, the value system so very different from our own. That scene could never move us in the same way on a small screen. And, when we are watching alone on a small screen, we can fast forward through the parts we don't like, like, say, the grim depictions of the Holocaust in Schindler's List.

 

My students, trained on media that rushes and delivers jolts of violence and sex aimed at the lizard brain's reward-squirting mechanisms, lack the ability to sit through a scene like Ali's well. They also have trouble sitting through a complex lecture on current events, or a long story of personal struggle told by a friend. Movies, like all art, have the potential to train us to be our best selves.

 

The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest are three very different films, but they are all innovative, in different ways. Peasants is so innovative another movie like it may never be made again. Zone rewrote how the Holocaust will be treated in film, and how it will be understood. Boys is rebellious, counter-cultural filmmaking in ways I'll detail below. All three films have much to say about our current politico-cultural landscape. Each addresses community. Each, given their visual and auditory artistry and impact, should be seen in a theater.

Alan Dundes on the Qur'an

Fables of the Ancients? Folklore in the Qur'an by Alan Dundes
"The most renowned folklorist of his time" tackles the Qur'an

I'll bet that everyone who knew him has a favorite Alan Dundes story. Here's a couple of mine. To understand both, you have to know that Dundes was larger than life in many ways, including physically. I somehow don't want to apply the adjective "fat" to him, although, yes, he was. Some called him "a tank," others, "a rhino." He was so formal and so formidable that I resort to an old-fashioned word, "portly."

I only ever saw him in a charcoal gray suit, white shirt, and dark tie. And he knew everything about his field. Students would line up in chairs along the back of his office wall. They would approach, timidly, one by one. They would burble about their family's traditional Persian Nawruz celebration, or a Yiddish joke, or a Peruvian children's game, that is, material that they had stored in their mind's attic among their most intimate and cherished memories, and that they thought belonged to them alone, and Dundes would immediately provide the student with numerous citations to scholarly articles addressing the very obscure factoid they thought they'd never fully understand. After their encounter with Dundes, they walked out of his office into an expanded world, a world of meaning and wonder in which they were playing a vital part every time they told that half-remembered joke, every time they played that childhood game. You aren't alone, the scholarship Dundes introduced students to said. There are others who told the same joke, played the same games. There is a meaning to all this; there is a story; it is dense and rich and everlasting.

So, yes, Dundes was big. And he was funny as hell. Hundreds of students registered for his classes, which were held in an auditorium. He was up there on stage making us laugh, and then inviting us to eye-opening, even outrageous interpretations of every day events. He'd weave in something as ordinary as a traffic sign, cite some Freud, tell a joke, and before you knew it your mind was pinging around like an explorer's finger on a globe and you had the sense that life is a wonderful mystery and this guy possessed many of the clues.

One day he introduced a particularly complex lecture. You had to hang on every word to grok the unfolding revelation. When he finished, many of us thought we were in the presence of the smartest guy on a campus with many Nobel Laureates.

At that moment, a young blonde asked a stupid question. Her question suggested to us that she hadn't really been listening to the lecture, and that she didn't care that she was revealing that she hadn't been listening to the lecture. Her question insulted, and deflated, Dundes. Impatient, aware of his own worth Dundes sniffed, "That was a stupid question."

We all gasped. A minute before we had been surfing with him a wave of joyful discovery. Her cluelessness, and his dismissal, crashed us onto a jetty's boulders.

Dundes, dark and massive, paced a few steps; the auditorium was so hushed we could hear the stage floorboards creak beneath him. Dundes wasn't just arrogant. He was also charming. His bonhomie returned. He stopped and turned to the young lady. "I'm sorry," he said to her, in his most tender, grandfatherly aural caress. "I shouldn't have said that. There's no such thing as a stupid question."

We exhaled.

Dundes paced to the edge of the stage. He swung his bulk around dramatically and shouted, "But that came pretty damn close!"

We exploded in laughter.

One of the regrets of my life is that I found it hard to interact with Dundes, and he found it hard to interact with me. I'm blue collar. I swept floors and swabbed toilets before and after his lectures to work my way through Berkeley grad school. His father was a lawyer; mine, a coal miner. He went to Yale, I, as he reminded me with typical bluntness, got my BA at an "undistinguished state school." Dundes told a dumb Polak joke in class. I went to his office and we yelled at each other. I operated on the assumption that he hated me; it was only after I finished that I learned from someone else that he had "pulled strings he didn't know existed" to get me funding. Ironically, we shared a common ancestral homeland: Poland.

My second story took place more than a decade later, in 2005. I had my PhD, had published work that I assessed was as good as the standard Dundes' superb oeuvre had set for me, and, given that we were now thousands of miles apart and communicating via email, I found it easier to talk to him. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I might someday ask permission to address him by his first name. I sent him an email asking for prayer for my academic career. He responded in an email that enveloped me in a completely new atmosphere. I no longer felt that I was one of a handful of students lining the back of his office wall, awaiting my brief encounter with the great man. He spoke to me as if I were his equal, even his intimate. He spoke about faith. I was overwhelmed. Suddenly I had to relearn how to interact with him. I devoted quiet time to contemplating how to respond to this new Prof. Dundes. And then a friend phoned me and said that he thought that the New York Times obituary for Alan Dundes had been too short. Dundes had collapsed and died of a heart attack while teaching a class he had once taught me, and so many others. To the last, I never got to say all of what I wanted to say to him, in the way that I yearned to say it.