We're All Just a Bunch of Perverts with Short Attention Spans

I don’t mean to tread too much on familiar ground, but I felt a real need to discuss this issue following yesterday’s parade of clips from 1923 all the way 2006. What I found interesting wasn’t necessarily the way the various decades reflect upon its unique vision of the 1920s but rather how the unique visions of the 1920s reflected upon the various decades. Both of the issues I’ll be discussing were brought up in class, but I frankly don’t feel they were discussed enough (probably an inevitability considering that we had around 3-5 minutes to debrief after the clips were over).

Specifically, I’d like to talk about the increasingly short camera shots and increasingly provocative dancing featured by the women within the films. The progression is almost too perfect, starting first with Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, the least offensive of the bunch. I’ll begin there, and instead of being overly wordy (as I’m so used to in these blogs), I’ll just focus on the aspects of the clips most important to this blog’s subject.

Experimental Sound Short (1923):

Two men standing by a piano and singing. The shot is steady throughout the entire scene.

The Jazz Singer (1927):

More movement and action within this scene, though the only one singing and dancing is a man. There are a few cuts throughout the scene, but no real camera movements at all.

Some Like It Hot (1959):

Marilyn Monroe, enough said. She’s sex personified, though her dancing is rather minimal. Her outfit in the second clip shown, however, is a bit more than simply revealing. Camera movement is still slight, though there are several different shots, used for both emphasizing various aspects of the scene and merely to switch things up for the viewer.

The Great Gatsby (1974):

The party scene includes no real singing, and the dancing isn’t exactly sexual in nature, though the jumping into a pool is rather promiscuous. The editing is much more contemporary, including various cuts and changes in scene to keep the audience’s interest piqued. The glittering hair covers brought up in class are first introduced here, in a small number. While not necessarily sexual in nature, they do emphasize the role of women a great deal more than any of the other women in the earlier clips.

The Cotton Club (1984):

The dancing here is much more sexual, though the quick cuts away from the dancing make it hard to condemn that. The second clip shows more traditional dancing from the men and sexual dancing from the woman. Quite an interesting choice. The cuts here are even faster than anything before.
Chicago (2002):

Very sexual, very quick cuts. Flashy and bright.

Idlewild (2006);

Basically a hip-hop video set in the 1920s. Super fast cuts, super sexual dancing.

As you can see, the progression appeals increasingly to the perverted, low attention-spanned masses that we find ourselves surrounded by day-in and day-out. And I don’t mean to exclude myself from that group merely because I’m criticizing it. I was much more interested in the clips from Chicago and Idlewild than the Experimental Sound Short. This fact is merely a byproduct of the fast-paced, sex-driven world we live in.

And this is why classes like the one I’m writing this blog for are important. Modern interpretations of the 1920s, while valiant, do very little to maintain the era itself. Without real academic study, it’s very possible our view of the 1920s will be the hypersexed and hyperfast world presented by Chicago and Idlewild.

And that’s a sad world to live in.

The Sun Also Rises

I've spent a lot of time with this blog, possibly too much, discussing whether or not I like a particular story we've read. It's a tad egotistical to think that anyone would care whether or not I like a piece, but I'm willing to live with that. So willing, in fact, that I'm going to do it again this week. Thanksgiving is all about tradition, is it not? Why rock the boat now?

Also, I should warn anyone reading now that I recently discovered the HTML tag for italicizing text. Be prepared for a lot of emphasis in this blog. Probably too much. Way too much.

So, The Sun Also Rises. In a word, awesome. In a few more, one of the most intriguing novels we've read all semester. What makes this fact worth mentioning is that it seems to embody exactly what I said I didn't like about The Beautiful and Damned and Babbit. It's long, retreads the same ground over and over, and plods along slower than my eighty-year-old grandmother after three plates of turkey and stuffing. Being a stubborn as I am, it's pretty hard for me to admit this, but I found myself really enjoying The Sun Also Rises despite its obvious "first half of 20th century" characteristics.

Another staple of these long-winded reviews is that I always latch onto one aspect of the book and talk about it to death. Again, this blog will be no different. What makes The Sun Also Rises so powerful are its fascinating assortment of characters, from Jake to Lady Brett to Cohn. They are so unlike any characters I have ever read, and for this reason (above all others), this story has stuck with me for a little over a week now.

First we have Jake Barnes, who quite honestly hooked me before I even opened the novel. His injury alone is intriguing and quite original (as far as I'm aware, at least), managing to speak on both the physical and emotional levels all at once. It's a perfect symbol also, especially considering Jake's relationship to Lady Brett. Honestly, it's brilliant. A man who becomes impotent after an injury in the war also has an impossible crush on a woman who is addicted to sex? It's perfect! His final line, though perhaps slightly undeserved, is also amazingly effective. It's one of those "YES!" moments that you get when watching a movie where the good guy finally stands up for himself that leaves he standing pumping your fist in the air. I think a little bit too much happened during the story itself for me to became "endeared" to Jake, but his concept and growth will probably stick with me for some time.

Lady Brett is another story entirely. I hated her in the beginning. Flashes of Gloria Patch and Hazel Morse characterized Lady Brett for me at the outset. She seemed so, well, boring. Again, I'm pretty stubborn, so it wasn't until the first rodeo that I began to realize she was actually so much more. Jake tells her not to watch (assuming, like I might have, that she's just a typical woman who won't enjoy the violence). Lady Brett, on the other hand, not only watches but is fascinated by the events taking place around her. It was a great characterizing moment, and I must take my hat off for the skill of Hemingway here. He completely changed my mind about her. Someone in class characterized Lady Brett as "one of the guys," which I think is very true. Gloria may have been in groups with all the guys (or more specifically, the guys all form groups around her), but she was never really "one of them" the same way that Lady Brett is.

On the other side of the coin, we have Cohn, who is one of the boys but is never really part of the boys. Admittedly, Cohn flirted with annoyance from time to time, but there was always some semblance of pity there to keep me interested. I think it was Jake's introduction of Cohn in the first pages that hooked me, but it was Cohn's Muhammad Ali impression that really sold me. He'll never match up with Jake Barnes or Lady Brett Ashley, but he definitely added to my enjoyment of The Sun Also Rises.

Well, the tryptophan is kicking in and I'm Hemingwayed out. Discussing these characters was a lot more difficult than I'd thought it would be and frankly I'm a bit disappointed with the results, but it works. All that needs to be said is that it was Hemingway's characters that kept me interested in The Sun Also Rises from the first page to the last line.

Sandra Hollin Flowers on Toomer's "Box Seat"

In her essay “Solving the Critical Conundrum of Jean Toomer’s ‘Box Seat,’” Sandra Hollin Flowers argues that Toomer’s “Box Seat” should not be read merely as “the urban correlative to a rural journey,” but rather as “an expressionist drama denouncing black middle-class values” (Flowers 301). She continues on to assert that Toomer achieves this through his use of “enclosure, locking, a positioning imagery” throughout the short story to “criticize class division among Afro-Americans during the early 1920s” (Flowers 301). Flowers first cites Nellie McKay as an inspiration for this new reading, who revealed that Toomer’s trip to Washington D.C., and thus the inspiration for the urban portion of Cane, was not a planned trip but an impromptu one meant to temporarily relieve him from the stresses of the south. If the trip was not directly intended as research for the journey Cane provides, Flowers argues that the true meaning of the text must lie elsewhere, namely the issues of “class division among Afro-Americans” introduced in her thesis (Flowers 301). One following citation, this time from E. Franklin Frazier, sets up the class divisions and exactly why Washington D.C.’s setting is suitable for Toomer’s thematic concerns. According to Frazier, Washington D.C. held a “relatively large Negro professional class,” with African-Americans “in the nation’s capital [having] incomes far above those in other parts of the country” (Flowers 302). Once the foundational backdrop of “Box Seat” is firmly established, Flowers moves on to the summary of the narrative itself, focusing specifically on those events most pertinent to her argument. Much attention is given to the two-part structure of the story, a device used by Toomer to “exact parallel meanings from recurring imagery” (Flowers 302). Flowers asserts that Part I “establishes socio-economic distinctions by using houses, seating arrangements, and movement to demarcate social classes,” while Part II “modifies this imagery to parody the nascent middle class’s pretensions” (Flowers 302). Next, Flowers explicates the text thoroughly, identifying and explaining each piece of positional, enclosing and locking imagery to fully explore the depth of Toomer’s message within “Box Seat.” Finally, she asserts that “‘Box Seat’ occupies a more significant place within the canon of Toomer’s work than has generally been recognized” (Flowers 305). According to Flowers, “Box Seat” is much more than the urban parallel to Cane’s rural backdrop, rather serving as Toomer’s most powerful depiction of his “preoccupation with the social and psychological pettiness of the black middle class of his era” (Flowers 305).

Beyond a rather awkward summary of “Box Seat” before the actual explication begins, Flowers’ “Solving the Critical Conundrum of Jean Toomer’s ‘Box Seat’” is a highly valuable analysis for anyone hoping to dive more deeply into Toomer’s text. Of particular note is Flowers’ opening page, where she lays down her inspiration for her unique reading of “Box Seat,” as well as introduce the issue she feels Toomer is addressing through his story. One could perhaps argue that it starts off too slow for the average reader, but it really lays a nice foundation of knowledge for the information that is to come. Without this first page, Flowers risks losing a good portion of her readership, so its slow nature is ultimately forgiven when taking the big picture into account. As I introduced earlier, the only real flaw I found within Flowers’ analysis is with the first summary of “Box Seat,” before the actual explication of the text begins. The structure seems to be interrupted by this summary’s placement, especially considering Flowers touches on each of the points she brings up here later, and more in-depth, in the explication. In such a short analysis, one must be very economical with words, and this summary fails to do so. That said, the explication that follows is extremely solid, taking into account nearly every single case of positional, enclosure, and locking imagery. The main meat of the analysis lies in this explication (as it should), and really does a great job supporting Flowers’ thesis. While there are a few instances where I feel Flowers takes some of Toomer’s imagery a bit too literally, such as the fighting dwarves, she does effectively identify and explain each image significant and relevant to her main argument. Flowers’ last paragraph also addresses one of my favorite aspects of her analysis, namely her assertion that “Box Seat” clearly “occupies a more significant place within the canon of Toomer’s work than has generally been recognized” (Flowers 305). In this way, her analysis is positioned as something of foundation for “Box Seat” to stand up, to gain notice among the other stories within Cane. With this statement, Flowers becomes a “Box Seat” evangelist, and her analysis becomes far more significant than it would have otherwise. Her unique vision of Toomer’s work breathes new life into both Dan and Muriel, elevating both “Box Seat” and her very analysis heads above any other, less daring explication of Toomer’s text.

Masterful Restraint (and a Lack Thereof) in "The Closing Door"

It occurred to me just now, as I was pulling my Harlem Renaissance Reader out to discuss Angelina Weld Grimké’s The Closing Door, that it is situated right after Nella Larsen’s Passing. Those who read last week’s blog know how much praise I have for that novel, and I was actually planning on looking at The Closing Door in the same light. Apparently, David Levering Lewis (the editor of the HRL) agrees with me.

Actually, I think a more specific way to define what makes The Closing Door so compelling is its masterful employment of literary restraint or, in one particular case, a severe lack thereof. Before I dive into it, I suppose it would probably be worthwhile to explain exactly what I mean by “literary restraint.” In any given moment, an author has limitless possibilities regarding where he or she could go next with his or her story. Some authors choose to go big, the easiest example would be using lots of guns, blood, explosions, nudity, etc. There’s no subtlety there, no restraint. Sure, it’s exciting for that one moment, but as humans we become desensitized to these things very quickly. Take horror movies for an example. The best ones keep the monster or villain in the shadows, away from view, for as long as possible because this heightens the tension and makes the audience truly involved in what’s going on. That’s restraint. Monster movies that lack restraint will show the monster within the first five minutes and by the end of the movie the audience is already used to the snarling fangs and glowing red eyes. What I’m saying is that, used properly, restraint adds to the tension and involves readers, forcing them to put the pieces of an event together in their own minds with only a minimal amount of actual description from the author. Now, actual definition aside, I’ll dive into The Closing Door.

The story opens in media res, with Agnes Milton already in some sort of care facility, clearly depressed, a “blank, empty... grey automaton” (Grimké 486). We are not given any real clue as to the reason for her decline, though we are given a bit of ironic foreshadowing in the form of the first line regarding Agnes’ “mother heart” (Grimké 486). This in particular in an interesting hook, something that you’d never see in something like Babbit or The Beautiful and Damned, as they seemed locked into their chronological structure. This bit of restraint, holding back all but the most tantalizing of details, is not exactly the restraint I’m referring to, but it helps to set the stage for what is to come.

The piece of restraint I’m primarily referring to when I brought this whole thing up would be on the final page, just before the last paragraph at the end. Yes, I’m referring to Agnes’ murdering of her own child. It’s such an absolutely gut-wrenching scene because of its restraint. Grimké does not show Agnes smothering her baby. She does not employ the use of gratuitous blood or violence. If all she wanted to do was disturb and shock us, Grimké could have just had Agnes take a butcher knife from the kitchen to her child, but you’ll notice the act of murder isn’t even seen. What she does describe, however, is far more disturbing and heart-shattering. Grimké’s narrator sees Agnes standing in her room in the darkness. Okay, strange. Then, there’s the questioning in her own head, “What had Agnes Milton wanted in my room?” (Grimké 500). This is when the reader starts to remember the event that had happened just prior, with Agnes standing over the baby and crying. There’s a sudden moment of horrible realization with a faint hope that maybe, just maybe, we’ve jumped to a conclusion that won’t come to pass. Grimké, almost assuredly anticipating this reaction (or even better, orchestrating it), follows with the supremely disturbing “It was quiet, very quiet, too quiet” (Grimké 500). Only then does she spell it out, and only in one very factual, almost objective statement. I would argue that this scene could have been much, much more graphic, but would that have made it any more powerful? No. In fact, I will assert her that Grimké obvious talent with restraint is the main factor that drives the power of this scene.

I’m running a bit longer than I’d hoped to, but I should mention that The Closing Door does have its share of restraint failures. In particular, Joe’s description of Bob’s lynching. Grimké spares no detail, from the hanging to the shooting to the burning to the solicitation of the body parts. Obviously, there’s a serious lack of restraint being shown here. Why, you ask? Surely Grimké didn’t just accidentally forget to employ restraint? Actually, the lack of restraint here makes perfect sense, especially considering it seems to be one of the only (and certainly the most prominent) time it happens within the whole story. I would argue there are two reasons for this lack of restraint:

1) The act itself is a horrible one. Grimké uses the shocking nature of the description, especially compared to the rest of the relatively somber prose, to emphasize how horrible and atrocious the murder was.

2) More importantly, this is the thing that sends Agnes over the edge, so to speak, so it makes absolute sense that it would be the most horrific and obscene description in the story. The shocking, inconsistent nature of it is what sends Agnes spirally into her depression.

There, another week, another blog. The Closing Door is a great piece of work, and really serves (along with Passing) to exemplify some of the more modern pieces within our required reading this semester. I, for one, am definitely glad we read it.

Nella Larsen's Passing

I’ll just say it: Nella Larsen’s Passing is the best book we’ve read all semester. I was not prepared to admit this when starting the book, in fact, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the novel at all. What makes Passing so great is the mere fact that it is so ahead of its time. According to the back of the book, Passing was published in 1929, and yet it shares its pacing and tight narrative with much later contemporary novels. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, the concept is great. It’s so much deeper and more complex than anything within the Harlem Renaissance Reader. The very concept of “passing” is absolutely fascinating from every perspective imaginable. Clare, for instance, is a black woman who has married a racist and betrayed her entire ancestry. Conversely, there’s John, who has been raised to hate black people and yet has married one without his knowledge (oh, sweet irony!). Irene is equally compelling, bound to some unexplained duty to Clare without truly understanding herself. I could go on and on, but I’ve made my point. The characters are great. George Babbit is nothing but a caricature next to these people. Anthony Patch’s struggle with Gloria and money seems trivial and, frankly, just plain boring.

What’s even better than the characters is the pacing of the novel itself. There is no fluff here. Babbit and The Beautiful and Damned were plagued with so much unnecessary narrative that reading them felt like running track in an ankle-deep marsh. There was so much back and forth in terms of characterization that it was impossible to believe by the end that any of the changes within the characters would actually stick. Don’t get me wrong, the length of both novels did contribute to their “epic” feel, but was everything within them absolutely necessary? Not at all. With Passing, everything is necessary and there is no redundancy in the narrative. I know this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it makes the prose so much tighter and provocative.

Not only does the pacing cut out the fat, Passing also manages to provide the reader with all of the information and imagery necessary to easily follow the plot. One of my biggest complaints of Cane stemmed from one of the characteristic of the whole “modernist” style, namely the omission of certain parts of the text. Jean Toomer seemed to think that this would force the reader to pay closer attention and engage more with the text. While reading through these omitted sections, I did not engage any more than I normally would have, but I was more frustrated than I’d been in a long time. I won’t use this blog to rail against such strange and illogical methods (that could be a whole blog of its own), but needless to say there is none of that in Passing. While Larsen avoids using superfluous information, she provides the reader with all the details necessary to know what’s happening within the story without bashing them over the head with it. Case in point, the whole concept of “passing.” I’m sure many in the time the book was published knew what “passing” was, but I sure didn’t. Larsen makes sure to let the reader know (even uninformed ones like myself) exactly what they need to know to understand through character dialogue rather than a simple paragraph saying “This is what ‘passing’ is…” It's this sort of hand-holding that pulls a reader out of a novel and can insult their intelligence. Larsen, thankfully, avoids this.

Another aspect of the novel's pacing that was brought up in class on Tuesday is the structure of the narrative itself. Both Fitzgerald and Lewis tell their stories in a strictly chronological sense, exacerbating the plodding pace issue discussed above. Larsen does not restrict herself in the same way, rather using a flashback in the beginning to hook the reader before diving into the present narrative. Granted, the "hook" is very short and the story probably could have been told chronologically without hurting too much, but the mere fact that the flashback is there opens the story up in ways that confining it to a chronological retelling never could. Breaking up the flow of time in this way is just something you don't see enough from early 20th century texts, and it again forces Larsen's Passing into the limelight.

I fear I’m getting off track here, but my point remains the same: what make Passing so great are the complex characters and especially the near perfect pacing. It’s a testament to the book that I finished in two days what I’d originally planned to split into four. I just could not put the book down, and that’s saying something considering that this is required reading.

I think what impresses me the most about Passing is how those two points I’ve just discussed in length are so modern feeling, like a book I’d pick up in the new releases at Barnes and Noble. F. Scott Fitzgerald is a literary legend, but that does not at all mean his work reads as well as it did when it was first released. Literature has inevitably evolved since the 1920s, and yet Larsen’s Passing seems to pass off as one of the new generation. That in itself is worth commendation, and I for one am more than excited to finish the final part of the book for Thursday’s class.

Jean Toomer's Eye Fetish

Seeing as I’ve been almost completely unmoved by Toomer’s writing in general, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a closer look at his apparent fascination with human eyes. I have noticed, in “Fern,” “Blood-Burning Moon” and especially “Box Seat,” that Toomer often characterizing the characters within his stories by their eyes. I don’t want to speculate too much on why this is, as I don’t feel I have the proper qualifications to do so, but rather hoped (if anyone aside from Dr. Campbell reads these blogs) I could start some sort of dialogue regarding this topic. So, without further ado, I’ll jump into it.

The first case I noticed of this particular inclination toward eye description was the very opening of “Fern.” Right from the first line, Fern is basically boiled down to one key feature: her eyes. In fact, her entire head seemed nothing more than a vehicle to display them to the world, evidenced in the first couple of sentences, “Face flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and plaintive ripples, in such a way that wherever your glance may momentarily have rested, it immediately thereafter wavered in the direction of her eyes” (Toomer 16). Toomer goes on, for a whole half a page, focused solely on Fern’s eyes and the power they held over the men around her. It’s an interesting way to characterize her, sure, but not necessarily enough for a new reader to realize how preoccupied with eyes Toomer really is. Continuing on, however, the pattern becomes more clear.

In “Blood-Burning Moon,” Toomer uses eyes as his chosen image to portray the power and barbaric nature of Tom Burwell’s death. On page 36, Toomer writes, “Tom’s eyes popped” (Toomer 36). It’s a simple sentence, but the power of the line is derived primarily from that simplicity, and along with the scent of burning flesh from the sentence before, the reader is left without any doubt as to Toomer’s intended emotion within this closing scene. It’s interesting that Toomer would choose the eyes to portray the aural and visual aspects of this scene. This is not the first time a human has been burned at the stake in a piece of literature, but it’s likely one of the only ones to use the eye as that one pivotal image.

Finally, and most noticeably, Toomer’s “Box Seat” is absolutely full of examples for his eye fascination. Mrs. Pribby is characterized by her eyes when she is first introduced, “Her eyes are weak. They are bluish and watery from reading the newspapers” (Toomer 60). Of the “portly Negress” described on page 65, Toomer writes that the “eyes of the woman don’t belong to her” (Toomer 65). The man with whom Dan nearly brawls with at the end of the story is characterized likewise merely by his eyes, as if nothing else even matters, “The man’s face is a blur about two swollen liquid things that are his eyes. The eyes dissolve in the surrounding vagueness” (Toomer 66). The eyes, it seems, are the only vivid characteristics the man has, though even they are threatened by the “surrounding vagueness” that nearly dissolves them (Toomer 66). During Dan’s seeming bout of hallucinations, he even admits to this obvious preoccupation with people’s eyes when he says, “I did see his eyes. Never miss eyes” (Toomer 68). Obviously, Toomer is aware of the descriptive pattern of his, and even seems to comment on it here.

Again, I don’t mean to suggest any meaning behind this eye fascination of Toomer’s, partly because this blog has already gone on far longer than I’d originally conceived but mostly because I’d like to hear other thoughts on this subject. Let’s get some intellectual discourse under way, here. This is certainly a subject that requires a little bit of knowledge about Jean Toomer himself, so hopefully someone has a bit more knowledge about him than I do.

Also, in case anyone is wondering, I do, in fact, see the irony in calling out Toomer for his obsession with eyes while the very ability to notice it requires a similar, if not even more neurotic, obsession. So thank you for noticing.

Fred Waring's Collegiate Review

The song I chose to discuss is “Collegiate” by Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, partly because it was one I’d latched onto since we listened to it in class and also because it provides some interesting points of discussion. First of all, it seems to be a song celebrating the college life, or at least one aspect of the college life (that is, the party side of the collegiate career). One look at the lyrics and one can tell that the issues dealt with are very surface level and care-free, especially farther on in the song when the singers proclaim “Sigma Kappa / Tap-a half-a keg / That’s the Greek for all the lodges we belong to.” In fact, there is no mention of any real education at all, merely an ode to rowdy behavior like poker, “neckin’, muggin’… [and] huggin’.” Even better is that good ol’ Fred Waring never seems to apologize for this behavior, as if this really is what college is about, rather than the typical notion that the focus should be on academics.
Obviously, though, it is apparent both in the lyrics and music (light and boisterous) that the humor presented is very tongue-in-cheek. From lines like “Lend me, give me / Want-a half-a dollar” to “Very, very seldom in a hurry / Never ever worry / Real collegiates are we,” it is clear that, while Waring may not be admonishing college students, he clearly doesn’t respect or admire them. If college students really were as Waring characterizes them, they probably wouldn’t even care even if he was being critical, as they “Never ever worry” anyway. If anything, it’s a friendly form of mockery, poking fun at these students who go to college during this era of “Arrow collar” men to get an education, only to end up partying and chasing girls throughout the semester instead. It is not too out of line to consider this song Fred Waring’s review on the culture of college in general, and he manages to embody it well, while still getting in a few punches along the way.