Blog Twenty Seven. 25th Hour. "You Tell Them The Whole Thing. And Then You Ask Them If They Know How Lucky They Are To Be There."

MONTY. I don't want you to visit.

His voice is rough and slurred, his split lips impeding his diction. [Naturelle] opens a bottle of rubbing alcohol, wets a cotton ball, presses the cotton lightly against the gash in his forehead. He shudders, his fingers gripping the edges of the sofa cushions.

MONTY. I don't want you to come see me up there.

Naturelle struggles mightily to keep herself together. She continues cleaning his wounds.

MONTY. Why'd you stay with me? You should have left a long time ago.

NATURELLE. You idiot.

MR. BROGAN. And maybe one day years from, long after I'm dead and gone, you gather your whole family together and you tell them the truth. Why you are and where you came from. You tell them the whole thing. And then you ask them if they know how lucky they are to be there. It all came so close to never happening. This life came close to never happening...

Here's a part of the, for me at least, amazing ending

I loved Nell's reaction to the ending.  "No...No...You're kidding"—or something along those lines.  Well, I felt the same way when I saw it with Clark Cloyd when it first opened.  I totally thought the fantasy was reality.   It's as audacious an ending as there has been in a mainstream studio movie. I know a number of you—Nell definitely—were sucked in by this fantasy, this wish-fulfillment, of Monty (and maybe his father). I've seen this movie several times; and for some reason, this time I found the ending—the fantasy—uncommonly powerful and emotional.  I want Monty so much to make his life "right"—that he will use a second chance to make the world a better place than he left (and had a hand in ruining).  And I love looking at the beautiful children and grandchildren he and Naturelle could have had. 

So, to keep this short and sweet:  And here's the screenplay. 

1. Your reaction to the "ending": from the moment Monty goads Frank into beating him (it didn't take much), through his goodbye (his last, I think) to Naturelle, through the scene above. Along with your reaction, answer the question: what's the meaning of this ending? How does it resolve the conflict(s) of the movie? Do you find it satisfying or not? And why?  

2. Is the movie misogynistic? I ask that because the last time we watched this movie, we spent a good portion of the discussion debating this.  And a couple of you—Agasha?  Nell?—responded to the comment on made about the possible sexist ways the film portrays its women.  So going with this train of thought:  misogynistic—how so or how not? Think about this question before answer it. And think too: is the movie portraying, commenting on, a misogynist mind set that is in the story, or is it reflecting Spike Lee's misogyny.   Remember: Lee did not write the film—David Benioff did (though clearly it stylistically and thematically is consistent with many of his other films).

3.  Finally: do the 9/11 references have a place in this movie?  Do they serve a purpose in it?  If so, how?  If not—how do they, for you, affect the experience of watching the movie?

Finally, fittingly, we end the semester with a rant that most definitely and consciously mirrors the rant in our first text of the year, Do The Right Thing.

This is the last blog of the semester.  Thanks for the effort, thought, and insights you put into it.  Have a good weekend.  Be sure to see me starting Monday if you have questions about the paper.   

Blog Twenty Six. Black Ice. Through the End. "St. Paul's Gave Me New Words Into Which I Must Translate The Old" (237).

Without the stories and the songs, I am mute.  A white American education will never give them to me but it can—if I am graced, if I do not go blind in the white light of self-consciousness, if I have guides before me and the sense to heed them—it can help me see the stories, growing like a vine out of the cane fields, up out of unmarked graves, around me soul.  It can help me search out the very history it did not teach me.  (237)

"I mean, there's so much here, it seems almost like a waste to come back and give more.  It's good for the minority kids, I'm sure...But there's so much to do outside this...bubble.  I wonder if we aren't practically obliged to give it back elsewhere, to people who never got it in the first place..."
    "I do give it back elsewhere," I said.  I was glad that I felt no anger.  I had heard the argument in my mind so many times.  Now there was no anger, and I could smile.  "But I don't feel that there's anything wrong in giving it here, too.  It is like admitting who I am.  I came here, and I went away changed.  I've been fighting that for a long time, to no purpose.  I am a crossover artist, you know, like those jazz musicians who do pop albums too." (232-233)

The faculty that had appeared to my teenaged eyes as a monolith of critical white adulthood now revealed itself as a community of idealists, all trying, each according to his or her ability, to help young people (225).

For the first time that year, I was not ready to leave St. Paul's.  I had had all my time, all my chances. I could never do it again, never made it right.  I had not loved enough (219).

This time Izzy will jump of her own will when her legs have grown strong enough to absorb the shock; she will not lie on the ground, splayed out alone, crippled by distrust.  She will learn how to jump up through life, big, giant steps.  She'll fall, and get up again.  Up, Izzy, up.  Paint, dance, read, sing, skate, write, climb, fly.  Remember it all, and come tell us about it. (237-238).

There you have it.  Lorene: from working class Yeadon to St. Paul's School, two marriages and a child named Laura, a teacher and trustee of St. Paul's, and finally a writer of a story about a fifteen year old "overserious" (232) girl who leaves the comfort of home for a mysterious place in New Hampshire.  She went; she changed.  Here she is in 2013 getting an honorary degree from Swarthmore. She's a literature teacher at her alma mater, Penn.  She's a professional writer.  She's done all right for herself. 

I hope you all had a restful break.  We'll finish our discussion of the book over the next couple days.  I will give you your short paper topic.  Maybe we can watch one more movie.  And you'll have time to work on your big paper in class before it is due on the last day of the semester.

1.  What moment in this last part of the reading stayed with you?  Why?

2.  So what is this book about?  What did you get from it at the end—what was Cary wanting to say in this book about a girl going to prep school (like you are doing)?  Quote 2-3 times in your response.  Think about this, okay?

3.  Your response to this book?  Like?  Dislike?  Why?

See you all tomorrow.  

Blog Twenty Five. Black Ice Through Eleven. "I Spoke Clearly and Precisely..."

"...conscious, as the smell of vomit wafted sweet and sour off Booker's breath through the open window, of the confident speech St. Paul's had given me" (169). 

    "Let me go."
   "You too good?"
   "Get your motherfuckin' hands off of me."
   "Don't talk like that." He gave my torso another squeeze and opened the door.  "You got a nasty mouth sometimes," he said, holding the jar ajar.  "You'd better just make sure to keep it closed." (160)

He asked me whether or not I had messed around with any of the other men.  I did not feel indignant when he asked me these questions, so I intent was I on telling my story and making him listen (161).

    "Next thing you'll be turning us in."
    According the Honor Code, that's what I was supposed to do.  I did not think it would my case to point out that at the present moment I was being lenient.
    "I really didn't think you'd take it this way," said Janie.
    "Neither did I." [...] I didn't want her to think I'd joined the establishment, but the truth was that, in a way, I had. (180)

I learned to think of misbehavior as a symptom rather than a disease (193).

India and I talked often and late into the night after that.  We raged together at St. Paul's School—at its cliques and competitiveness; its ambivalence toward its new female members; its smugness and certainty and power.  We talked about families and boyfriends, girls we liked and girls we didn't.  We laughed at how we had appeared to each other the year before.  Our talk was therapeutic, private, and as intense as romance.  It was for me the first triumph of love over race. (199)

The following is a blog written by a student back in the spring of 2015.  It raises good questions.  Pick one of the two questions the student posed.  And answer the third that I ask. 

In the past two chapters, we have seen Lorene begin to feel as if she finds her place and embraces her positions of authority as a senior at St. Paul’s. Throughout the book previously, Lorene has struggled with feeling separate and cut off from the school’s environment and traditions, but now she begins to embrace them, realizing, as she says, that she has “…brought a whole bunch of new ideas that haven’t been here until now” (195).  

As Lorene begins to fill her new rolls—as a senior, Vice President, tutor, even teacher at one point—she struggles between taking advantage of St. Paul’s and being an active member of the community while maintaining her own identity and her history. She is struggling to do exactly as Mr. Vernon Jordan says, to “…be the best that you can, so that when you come out, you’ll be ready. But you cannot forget where you’ve come from”(202). This point is brought up again with Jimmy and his disciplinary case. On one hand, his experience does him good, but it also subdues him in a way that some may see as not entirely positive. 

1. How do we see Lorene struggle with this difficult balance of assimilation vs. maintaining her identity? What are your opinions on Jimmy’s disciplinary case? Do you think this balance between embracing St. Paul’s and maintaining personal identity is important or even possible?

We also see Lorene continue to find common ground and forge new relationships she never thought she would have, like her new friendship with India. Although this shows her growth, Lorene must begin to grapple with her own changing identity and the privileges she now has that she never previously self-identified with. This is highlighted with Lorene’s conversation with Archibald Cox, his not so sly “Our kind of people” (201) comment.

2.  So, what did you make of Archibald Cox and Lorene’s quick interaction, more specifically, the “our kind of people” comment? Is there a difference between finding common ground, like Lorene and India do, and dividing yourself into groups (especially privileged groups) like the “educated Northeastern establishment” into which both Cox and now Lorene fall? Is there any difference between these groups based on mutual privilege and something like the Third World Coalition?

And for everyone:  

3.  It seems clear to me that St. Paul's has changed Lorene—and in a positive way.  Agree or disagree with that statement.  And offer some support for your opinion. 

Ok, folks.  See you all tomorrow.  And I thought the discussion on Thursday was a good one. Thanks for the honesty, openness, and trust. 

Blog Twenty Four. Black Ice Through Chapter 6. "Everywhere I Went I Felt Out Of Place." (100)

The fact was that I had left home in September gleeful and smug.  I took it as divine justice that now I felt as if I no loner belonged anywhere (100).

I felt betrayed, first by them, then  by my own naivety.  HP were probably what they'd meant by fine—for black scholarship kids,  Maybe that's what they'd been saying all along, only I hadn't heard it (87).

"...but I always kind of wondered if, like, black guys and white guys were, like, different..." (86).

It couldn't be just that I was to become like them or hang onto what I'd been.  It couldn't be that lonely and pointless (86).

"You don't know them, and believe me, they could just be waiting for you to make a mistake.  Do you hear me?  Don't you go running to those people" (40).

I looked at Ruthie hard and tried to judge whether or not I could trust her.  All I could see as I looked at her, however, were her snow boots.  She always had the appropriate footwear, I thought, conscious of my wet feet.  Ruthie tossed her cornsilk hair...
   "Listen, Ruthie.  My friend is here.  He'll be here, at school, in minutes." (105)

I thought I loved this muscular young man with the sparkling smile.  I could not understand why I was relieved to see him go, or why his ardent letters embarrassed me (112).

That, I thought, was real stealing, done, no doubt, by some rich kleptomaniac,  the same one who had probably eaten my cheese and crackers the week before (113).

Well, you probably didn't see much of this coming (besides Jaliwa who read Chapter 5 already).  Lorene is a mess.  "Everywhere I felt out of place."  Her ambitions are being reduced as she struggles through her classes. The girls ask her about black men's masculinity ("the old song of the South" [84]).  Can she trust the well-to-do white kids? Does she listen to her mother who urges her not to trust them?   She's raped by her beautiful boyfriend Ricky.  She begins to steal from her classmates.
She tells no one what is happening with her. And what is happening to her is something terrible.

So what's going on with Lorene?  Why not reveal herself?  Why not reach out?  Why not hit Ricky? Why not tell her girlfriends at school the way their questions make her feel?  And how much of what is going on with her can be laid at the feet of St. Paul's School, which she makes fun of to her hometown friends, but where she can hang with the pimply young white science kids on the Astronomy Club and laugh—away from her "cooler friends" (103)?

Write an answer of the usual length, okay?  And quote 2-3 times in your response.  And feel free to respond to your classmates: agree, disagree, question.  See you all tomorrow.

Blog Twenty Three. Black Ice Through Chapter 4. "Listen To Me, Darling," He Said. "We're Going To Turn This Motherfucker Out!" (57).

And why not?  I, too, had been raised for it.  My mother and her mother, who had worked in a factory, and her mother, who had cleaned apartments in Manhattan, had been studying these people all their lives in preparation for this moment.  And I had studied them. I studied my mother as she turned out elementary schools and department store...Turning out had to do with will.  I came to regard my mother's will as a force of nature, an example of and a metaphor for black power and black duty.  My duty was to compete in St. Paul's classrooms.  I had no option but to succeed and no doubt that I could will my success. 
      Jimmy understood.  He knew the desperate mandate, the uncompromising demands, and the wild, perfect, greedy hope of it.  If we could succeed here—earn high marks, respect, awards; learn these people, study them, be in their world but not of it—we would fulfill the prayers of our ancestors...How we got there, how we found their secret hideout, was not the point.  The point was that we had been bred for it just as surely as they.  The point was that we were there to turn it out. (57-59)

I had heard from one of the girls that three guys had once stolen into Sam's room and urinated into his bureau drawer.  I wondered if it was true.  I wondered if Cash had been one of them. (78)

What did these white people say in a hundred ways but that we were somehow different from the common run of black people out there in America?  What did they say but that we were special, picked out for a special destiny?  I was ashamed even to consider the possibility, but it was hard not to believe sometimes.  How could I know that my special aloneness united me with my peers more surely than the wary, competitive fraternity I tried to create in my own heart? (78-79)

Tomorrow I hope we can really leap into Lorene's story.  At the same time I have enjoyed and appreciated the candidness and honesty of what many of you have been saying in class the last couple days.  I have appreciated hearing your stories.  I'm thinking about what Agasha said today about the burden of responsibility—about having a mission, a responsibility to others, and having your own life (my summary in my words), and how hard it is to satisfy both.  I'm also thinking about what Alice wrote on the last blog:

This book, this woman’s story, I know will be good for me, will teach me, but even then, I feel guilty for making her teach me. She shouldn’t have to educate me in empathy and understanding by sharing the most intimate stories of her past, but she does. I feel like I’m exploiting her. I realize she wants to share this story, but as she says, “I am writing this book to become part of that unruly conversation, and to bring my experience back to the community of minds that made it possible,”, this story isn’t meant for me. I know that sounds like an excuse for not putting myself out there to receive the messages she’s so clearly sending, but that’s how I feel. 


1.  What moment or scene  in Chapter 4 particularly jumped out at you, stayed with you?  And why?

2.  Lorene, after her meeting with the Third World Coalition, speaks to feeling alone, even among her fellow students of color.  Why might that be?

3. For this third question, please pick one of the following choices to respond to:

a. Stuart said today—and Agasha and Alice chimed in, as was Moey about to (sorry about that, Moey)—that the responsibility Lorene feels, as does her pal Jimmy and no doubt many of the other black kids, to succeed and to "turn it out" is not fair; it should not be expected of them.  Do you agree with this or disagree—and why?

b.  Read what Alice wrote: respond to it.

c.  Lorene writes in the first passage that she would fulfill her ancestors prayers by succeeding at St. Pauls and being in the privileged world of SPS but not of it.  Can one be in a place like St. Paul's—or even Paideia—and be in it but not of it?  How is that as a plan to succeed for Lorene and for the other black students at St. Paul's?   A good one?  A bad one?  Is it even possible? 

Okay, folks: remember to turn your paper in tomorrow if you haven't done so already.  See you then. 

Blog Twenty Two. Black Ice, 3-34. "Who At St. Paul's Would Stand Up For Her Child In Her Stead?" (7).

Lorene Cary first heard about St. Paul's School 45 years ago when she was 14.  Interestingly enough, that was also the first year of The Paideia School.  The school Lorene attending all those years ago was about as far away from this school as one could be at the time.  Today...well, that's another story.

What Lorene did all those years ago was probably being mirrored all across America.  The Private School, the (College) Preparatory School, the Independent School (a term I'm not sure existed back then—it sounds so less loaded the private or prep school)—particularly the ones in New England that had existed for hundreds of years  (like Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, founded in 1778, Phillips Exeter in Exeter, NH, founded in 1781, Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, MA, founded 1797, and, yes, St. Paul's School, founded in 1857)—were (and are) feeders for the Ivy Leagues.  As Lorene knew even at 14: "I wanted to know the things [Mike Russell] must know: about science and literature and language, living away from home, New England, white people, money, power, himself."  Power: even in Darby, a working class section of Philadelphia, she knew what what a New England prep school could bring.  And about the time St. Paul's sent out students like Mike Russell and teachers like Jeremy Price, these schools, like St. Paul's, were finally admitting girls.  And almost immediately, Lorene decides, "I had to be part of that.  With the force of religious conversion, the great God of education moved within me, an African Methodist God with a voice that boomed like thunder.  It took all my strength to hold myself inside my skin.  This school—why, this was what I had been raised for, only I hadn't known it" (12).  Years later, though, she acknowledges:

But  I would not admit how profoundly St. Paul's had shaken me, or how damaged and fraudulent and traitorous I felt when I graduated.  In fact, I pretended for so long that by the time I was twenty-six years old, I was able to convince myself that going back to school to teach would be the career equivalent of summering with distant, rich relatives. (4)

This is all happening to a fifteen year old girl who has never really left her home city, doesn't really know that much about the world outside her "enclave of black professionals, paraprofessionals, wish-they-was—, look-like, and might-as-well-be professionals, as we called ourselves" (9).  Lorene is on a mission—"This school—why, this was what I had been raised for, only I hadn't known it." But can one argue that she even came out ahead of the game, feeling "black and ugly"?  "Had they done that to me? Had somebody else? Had I let them? Could I stop the feelings? Or hide them?" (5).  Lorene Cary indeed was a trailblazer: one of the first girls in what had been an exclusively male school since 1855. And one of the first African-American girls in what had been an almost exclusively white world. How could this have gone right or smoothly? Or could it have?

I'd propose one of the major questions that Cary asks in her memoir is this: Was the experience worth it? As Sylvia Snyderman pointed out two years ago when I last taught this book, Cary seems to contradict herself. This place, this experience, that so seemed to scar her—to bring her so quickly back to her own feelings of powerlessness that she felt as an adolescent at the school—was not "an aberration from the common run of black life in America. The isolation I'd felt was an illusion" (6). That's one powerful illusion she felt. St. Paul's is hers because she went there—but did it have to be such a daunting experience? And if so, was it the fault of the school—had "they" done it to her? Had she "let them" do it to her? Was this simply a part of growing up? The memoir poses so many questions—and the answers, no surprise, are not easy, not easily reduced to "illusion," no matter how Lorene Cary may feel about them. In my opinion.  So...

1. Reactions to the book so far? What moment in it particularly jumped out at you in either a positive or negative way—and why—how so? Please quote.

2. Your reactions to Lorene Cary? Do you like her? Dislike her? Relate to her?  What moment in the book so far jumps out at you that helps define this precocious young woman for you, positively or negatively?  Please quote. 

3.  I'm curious, and it does tie in with Lorene's journey.  Why did you come to Paideia School? 

The St. Paul's website is here. Take a look at it. It looks remarkably like Paideia's website, I think. Take away the more formal dress of some of the boys, stick the pictures on our webpage, and no one would know the difference.  The tuition is a little over $60,000.  The school was in the news recently for a sex scandal involving a senior boy and a 15 year old female student.

This is Lorene Cary's website. 

See you all Tuesday.   

Blog Twenty One. Apocalypse Now. "But It's Judgement That Defeats Us."

It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary for those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and mortal terror are your friends. If not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies...I remember when I was with Special Forces—it seems a thousand centuries ago—we went into a camp to inoculate the children. We’d left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio and this old man came running after us and he was crying, and he couldn’t see. We went back there and they had hacked off every inoculated arm and there they were in a pile, a pile of little arms and I remember I...I...I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I want to remember it, I never want to forget it. I never want to forget, and then I realized like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond—a diamond bullet went through my forehead—and I thought, my God, the genius of that. The genius, the will to do that. Perfect, genuine, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than us, because they could stand it. These were not monsters, these were men, trained cadres, who have children, who are filled with love. But they have the strength, the strength, to do that. If I had ten divisions of these me then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time able to use their primordial instincts to kill without, feeing, without passion, without judgement, without judgement.  Because it’s judgement that defeats us...I worry that my son might not understand what I've tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything...Everything I did. Everything you saw. Because there's nothing I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do that for me. 

We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene.  

Much of what Kurtz says in the last 30 minutes of the movie was improvised by Brando. That was partly because Coppola had no real end to the film (so the story goes): or at least an end that tied up what he was doing with the hours and hours of footage he had already shot. Partly this happened because Brando was screwing with the man who directed him to an Oscar for The Godfather—Brando was notorious for not taking acting seriously (he got paid the unheard of sum in 1978 of $2 million for what was essentially 30 minutes of screen time). The ending has always been criticized for many reasons—Mira, you're not alone in criticizing the ending. Yet it also remains strangely and stubbornly true to Conrad's vision. As the photojournalist says, "This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this...shit we're in, man! Not with a bang, a whimper," quoting "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot. In Heart of Darkness, perhaps, as we discussed, the true darkness is not back there in the jungles, but in London, where Marlow chooses to lie about the way he saw the world end. Arguably, Apocalypse Now ends on a much more optimistic note than its forebearer.

This is a difficult film, no doubt. It's relentless: like its source, it offers little light.  Its relentless intensity, its commitment to a singular vision, its unsparing take on a vision of the world that seems to offer little hope—no tending your garden here—is exhausting. More so than ever today, where a popular film would never attempt to challenge its audience the way this did (again: this was nominated for several Academy Awards; it was a relatively successful film—I certainly saw it in a packed theater). Crowds chose to see this—pundits and critics and academics debated this seriously. It pushed the envelope—but it remained mainstream. There is a good chance that had you been 17 or 18 in 1978, or 19 or 20, you would have gone to see this movie. Now is a different story.

So:

The long italicized passage quoted at the top—the polio speech. I think it's the most important passage in the film. It is Kurtz's epiphany: it's the moment he decides to go all the way. (In Chef's terminology, it's the moment he "gets off the boat") What's your response to the position Kurtz states here? Does it make any sense whatsoever? Does it follow any degree of logic, of rationality? Or is the ravings of a madman? Or can it be both rational and insane?   Here it is—go ahead and watch it.

Take some time to answer this question. This is the last blog you'll have until we start Black Ice next week.  Doing this at 7 in the morning is not a good idea. Or if you do, don't rush through it. Again, this is as intense a film as we will watch this year. Next up: Lorene Cary goes to prep school in New Hampshire.  It isn't as easy as it sounds. See you guys tomorrow.
 

Blog Twenty. Apocalypse Now. "Our Motto: Apocalypse Now."

LANCE.  Where'd the dog go?  Where's the dog?  We gotta go back and get the 
dog!
Chef crawls to Clean and turns him over.  Sees that he is dead.
CHEF. Clean!  Hey!  Bubber, you can't die!  You fucker!  Hey, bubber!
CLEAN'S MOTHER (INTO RECORDER). "I'll have a lot of grandchildren to love and spoil, 

and then when your wife gets them back, she's be mad with me.  Even Aunt Jessie and 
Mama will come to celebrate your coming home.  Granny and Dad are trying to get 

enough money to get you a car.  But don't tell them, because that's our secret.  
Anyhow..."
Clean lying dead, flat on his back.  Chief turns him over and holds his wrist to try 

and take his pulse.
CLEAN'S MOTHER (INTO RECORDER. "...do the right thing, stay out  of the way of the 

bullets, and bring your hiney home ask in one piece...'cause we love you very 
much.  Love, Mom."

PHOTOJOURNALIST.  The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior in a classic sense.

I mean, sometimes he'll-well, you say hello to him, right?  And he'll just walk 

right by you and he won't even notice you.  And then suddenly he'll grab you and 

he'll throw you  in a corner and he'll say "Do you  know that the 'if' is the middle 
word in 'life'?  If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and 

blaming it on you.  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you." I'm a 
little man, I'm a little man. He's a great man. "I should have been a pair of ragged 
claws scuttling across floors of silent seas."

WILLARD. They told me, that you had gone...totally insane.  And that your methods 

were unsound. 

KURTZ. Are my methods unsound?

WILLARD. I don't see any method at all, sir.
KURTZ. I expected someone like you.  What did you expect?  Are you an assassin?
WILLARD. I'm a soldier.
KURTZ. You're neither.  You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to 
collect a bill.

Operation Brute Force. That's what the soldiers, marines, and sailors are being rewarded for with the Playboy Bunnies. As I said in class today, this is a parody of the USO shows that traveled around Vietnam, entertaining the troops: always popular in those shows were the Hollywood starlets like Ann-Margret and Rachel Welch, singers and dancers, comedians, professional athletes, and even Playboy bunnies—though not like this. Critics often have commented on their costumes—cowboys, Indians, and cavalry. Just like another war not too dissimilar to Vietnam. And critics—and viewers watching closely—can't help but notice the swipe of the nose by the Playmate of the Year. A little toot of cocaine perhaps to get her up for the show?

 Arguably the film loses steam with the entrance today of Kurtz: Brando overweight and having improvised much of his own dialogue. But the attack on the village by Kilgore; the Playmates scene; and today, the deaths of Clean and Chief: they can't help but elicit a reaction from an audience.  As Emma said in class today, the Playmates make no sense here.  Then again, we're in a world of Generals who send assassins to kill their own officers; helicopter attacks set to the music of Wagner; and the horrific state of Kurtz's compound. More than ever, I feel unsettled as we make our way down the river in the movie. I can't see what you all look like during the movie: I hope you're all paying attention as difficult as this movie is.

Pick the first or the second question to answer. And everyone do number two and three.

1. The Playboy Bunny scene. Reaction to it? After you write that: why do you think it's here? The women egg the men on—act provocatively, entice them to come over (although I don't think they thought they actually would swim the moat)—but when the men come over, they begin happily signing the posters the men have: no one is groping them, just hoping for an autograph. At the same time we hear very clearly Lance (who loves puppies) shout, "You fucking bitch!" The guys on the boat are some of the loudest in the crowd of men—but they also are the most humanized men we see in the film. So: why? Are we supposed to feel disgust for the behavior of the men? At the behavior of the women? Both? Something else?

or 

1.  The death of Clean.  We've seen Clean rake the sampan with his machine gun, killing a group of civilians.  He calls the girl a "slope bitch" (I believe).  Yet after all the carnage is done, as he lifts his shades, the look on his face says he can't—or almost can't—believe what he's done.  At the Do Long bridge, he's like the scared kid he is as he watches the men get blown off the bridge.  And Chief, as he's done throughout the movie, takes care of him.  And when Clean is killed, Chief breaks down in tears as he holds Clean's hand.  Some of you may have hated these men when they killed the civilians.  What do you feel about them now, in and after this scene?  And what was your reaction to this scene? 

2. What stayed with you from today's viewing?  And why?

3. The film is about.... Finish that thought in a thoughtful sentence. You may love the film or hate it or not care about it: but don't just give a quick, throwaway respone.

For one or two: give a detailed, thoughtful response as well. Not three sentences, but several.

We'll finish the film Monday.  Look at the writing topics: tell me Monday what you're doing to write about. 

Blog Ninteen. Apocalypse Now. "Someday This War Will Be Over."

KILGORE. Napalm, son. Nothing in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours...and when it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of them, not one stinking dink body. Th smell, you know that gasoline smell? The whole hill smelled like—victory.

INT. COMMAND COPTER - DAY. Looking down on the burning helicopter.
PILOT. They blew the shit out of it.
KILGORE. Fucking savages.
CO-PILOT. Holy Christ...I'm gonna get that dink bitch. Get over there, Johnny. Get the right skid right up her ass.

LUCAS. Your mission is to proceed up the Nuyng River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command.
WILLARD. Terminate the Colonel?
CORMAN. He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he still in the field commanding troops.
JERRY [CIA]. Terminate. With extreme prejudice.
LUCAS. You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist...

CORMAN:  Walter Kurtz was one of the most outstanding officers this country's ever produced.  He was brilliant.  He was outstanding in every way.  And he was a good man, too.  A humanitarian man. A man of wit and humor.  He joined the Special Forces, and after that, his ideas, methods, became...unsound. Unsound...Well, you see, Willard, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

WILLARD.  I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine. 

               In an instant, THEY ALL OPEN FIRE.  One of the Vietnamese 
               men is blown apart into the water, and the others are gunned 
               down in their tracks.

               All of them continue to fire their rifles and guns wildly, 
               yelling obscenities.  Willard has his .45 out but does not 
               shoot.

                                     CLEAN
                         Motherfuckers!

                                     CHEF
                              (weeping)
                         Let's kill them all!

                                     LANCE
                         Fucking cocksucker motherfuckers!

               Finally the Chief calls out to them.

                                     CHIEF
                         Hold it!  Hold it!

               They all stop firing, but Chef, Lance, and Clean are 
               mumbling hysterically.

                                     CHEF
                         Let's kill all the assholes!

                                     CHIEF
                         Chef, hold it!  Hold it!

                                     CHEF
                              (hysterically)
                         ...why not?

                                     CHIEF
                         Clean?

                                     CLEAN
                         I'm good.

                                     CHIEF
                         You okay, Lance?

                                     LANCE
                         Shit!  Fuck!

                                     CHIEF
                         Chef?

               Chef has moved to the yellow can that the Vietnamese girl 
               was sitting on.  He opens the lid and checks what she had 
               hidden.

                                     CHEF
                         Look what she was hiding.  She 
                         what she was running for?

               He reaches inside of the can, and pulls out a PUPPY.  They 
               all react.

                                     CHEF
                         A fucking puppy!  A puppy.

WILLARD.  It was a way we had over here of living with ourselves. We'd cut them in half with a machine gun, and give them a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw of them, the more I hated liars. Those boys were never gonna look at me the same way again, but I felt like I knew one or two things about Kurtz, that weren't in the dossier.

I was laughing with Stuart when Kilgore's men talked about surfing—I mean, it is funny.  But clearly no one was laughing after the sampan scene; I could hear someone crying (Nell I soon discovered).  Some of you wouldn't look at me when I asked for your reaction to the movie so far.  It's okay: you didn't come to school today expecting what you saw.  I haven't seen Apocalypse Now since I last showed it in this class two years ago (and I've seen it and Apocalypse Now Redux both in the movie theater and probably a dozen times on television and in class); yet today, it was like watching it anew. And it was disquieting. Horrifying. Horrifyingly sad.  I never thought of it as a sad movie before today.  As Asiya and Alice both talked said, we like the PBR crew—I like the PBR crew: Chief, the tough professional commander of the boat who looks out for his men, particularly Clean, and rightly distrusts Willard;  Clean—"Mister Clean"—seventeen years old, all elbows and long legs, who really is just a kid; Lance the surfer who is all wide-eyed at the world around him; and Chef, who chose the Navy because he heard the food was better, and who vows "to never get off the boat."  

 They're our boys—not professional killers like Willard (and Kilgore), but just guys who'd rather be home surfing or cooking or hanging with their buddies.  And then they become killers, cold- blooded murderers.  Something was going to happen—Nell talked about the rising tension in the scene—but not this.  Not this madness.  And yet it's a beautifully filmed movie, a gorgeously filmed movie: particularly what we saw today: has anyone ever seen as unappetizing a meal as the roast beef and shrimp that Corman serves Willard? The choreography of the helicopter attack on the village? The surreal nature of the opening napalming of the jungle? The surreal nature of all of it, really: the surfing? Col. Kilgore?

The opening: Willard remembering what happened, much as Marlow does, relating his tale—but to whom?  "Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another."  Coppola refuses to give into our desire for order and transparency. The narrative flies by so quickly that we are left wondering what to think. Kurtz is the bad guy, right? Willard the good guy? The attack on the village courageous and just? Corman's assessment of Kurtz is correct? Stop a minute and think about what's being said and what's being shown.

1. Reflection on the film so far? What moment, image, scene, jumped at you in particular—and why?

2. So far, where does the film overlap thematically with Conrad? How so?

3. Who are/is the good guy(s) here? Is there, are there, any? Who is/are the bad guy(s)? And why for both answers.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Eighteen. Heart of Darkness. "The Horror! The Horror!" (69).

"This is the reason I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it...He had summed up—he had judged. The horror!" (70)

"'The last words he pronounced was—your name.'"

I raised my head. he offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. (77)

There it is. The most studied book in American college and university.  From this moment on, you'll begin to recognize all the references to the story that are around you—Donald Trump himself has been compared to Kurtz (William was ahead of that curve). It has never stopped resonating. I thought last night: fifteen years after its publication, World War One began. It made what King Leopold did to the Congo look like a tea party. And it was a war waged by men just like Kurtz and Marlow: the best and brightest of Europe. The same thing would happen in World War Two. Vietnam was the brainchild of the graduates of the greatest centers of American intellectualism, the Ivy Leagues. George W. Bush, who gave us The War on Terror and torture (sanctioned by Harvard educated lawyers), was a Yalie and Harvard Law School graduate. Barrack Obama, a graduate of Columbia and—surprise—Harvard Law School, refused to indict the architects of the Bush policy of "enhanced interrogation" (they violated international law), and has widened the scope of drone attacks, killing thousands. And the New York Times reported back when I last taught this book that the US enlisted a thousand former Nazis, including those involved in extermination, as spies, hiding this program until...well, now. Now where does that heart of darkness start? What Conrad saw so clearly was that the architects of one of the most horrible genocides in recent history were men like Kurtz—a poet and painter and musician, a good and moral man. Did the wilderness drive him mad? Was it his hollowness? What was it that turned him to the darkness? (Hmm...shades of Star Wars there perhaps)

1. So what is "The Horror" that Kurtz utters on his deathbed?

2. Why does Marlow lie to The Intended at the end? Marlow expects the heavens to fall on his head—but nothing happens. This is an act of mercy to the devastated woman—but it is also a terrible lie that allows her to think Kurtz was a good and moral man, the man she knew. Should Marlow have told her the truth?

3. What's the last paragraph of the story mean? What's its effect as the end of this tale?

In one of your answers above please quote. Write a couple hundred words, okay?  And finally, as a preview of our viewing of Francis Coppola's free adaptation of the book, here is a clip from Apocalypse Now, starring Marlon Brando as Colonel Walter Kurtz, soldier gone rogue in Vietnam, and Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin Willard, soldier turned assassin.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Seventeen. Heart of Darkness Through 54 (Part II). "He Had No Restraint, No Restraint—Just Like Kurtz—A Tree Swayed By The Wind" (51).

"His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz, and by and by I learned that most appropriately the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had entrusted him with the making of a report for its future guidance"(49).

"The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible to imagine—it was not good for one either—trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land—l mean literally. You can't understand? How could you—with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall om you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by way of solitude—utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion. These little things make all the great difference." (49-50)

"Seventeen pages of close writing.  He had found time for it.  But this must have been before his—let us say—nerves went wrong and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which–as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times—were offered up to him—do you understand—to Mr. Kurtz himself" (50). 

"'Exterminate all the brutes!'" (50).  

We're close.  We see Kurtz's house surrounded by "a dozen slim posts...ornamented with round carved balls" (52). We meet a wildly garbed "harlequin" who reveals that Kurtz "has enlarged [his] mind" (54). We've read some of what Kurtz has written.  We know his lineage.  All we have left is to see him in the flesh.

1. As we talked about the first day of discussing the book, we recognized that it is an adventure tale—a genre that includes Indiana Jones, as well as a zillion Kipling stories and bad, grade Z Hollywood and Brit movies of the 30s and 40s (by the 50s they were pretty much dead, unless it was George Lucas reliving his childhood movie watching habits in the Indiana Jones series: and who can complain when the bad guys are Nazis?). The story, as we said in class, is the intrepid adventurer goes into the wild and makes things right. While not a parody in the way Voltaire approached the picaresque, this is a warped adventure story. How so—and to what purpose?

2.  The significance of Kurtz's lineage, as quoted above? 

3. What is Marlow trying to impress on his listeners in the second quote above?  Quote a couple times from the passage.

 Tomorrow I want to hear about your discussion in class yesterday.  I hope you all are doing well: juniors, survived the PSAT and seniors...well, survived sleeping late I assume.  See you folks tomorrow. 

Blog Sixteen. Heart of Darkness Through 44. "I Listened." (27)

"There was not a word from anybody.  The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened.  I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word that give me the clue to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavu night-air of the river..." (27).

"As for me, I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time.  It was a distinct glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home perhaps, setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness...I do not know his motive" (32).

"Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know.  To some place where they expected to get something, I bet!  For me it crawled toward Kurtz..." (35).

We're close to Kurtz.  Only eight miles down the river.  And with Kurtz, the meaning of Marlow's story will come into focus.  Or so can only hope.

1. Marlow thinks his audience isn't listening—but they are, particularly the narrator.  What interest could they have in this story that does not always support their view of empire, colonization, imperialism, and themselves?

2.  Marlow is looking for Kurtz.  That's it.  Why?  We'll find out more soon, but from what we've read already—what is the lure of Kurtz to Marlow?

That's enough to start us up again.  Go ahead and quote in one of your responses.  I hope your break was relaxing.  A big chunk of uninterrupted school time coming up.  Yay!

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Fifteen. Heart of Darkness Through 27. "...I Hate, Detest, And Can't Hear A Lie..." (27)

"There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget.  It makes me miserable and sick like biting something rotten would do" (27).
   
"I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but by all the stars these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a capricious and pitiless folly" (16).

"At last I got under the trees.  My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment, but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno" (16). 

"They were dying slowly—it was very clear.  They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom" (17). 

"The man seemed young—almost a boy—but you know with them it's hard to tell" (17). 

"'The groans of this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate" (18).

"'[Kurtz] is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and the devil knows what else.  We want...for the guidance of the cause entrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose...You are the new gang—the gang of virtue" (25).

"...No, it is impossible, it is impossible to convey the life sensation of any given epoch of one's existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live as we dream—alone..." (27)

So Marlow is straining, straining, to tell the truth—an educated Westerner who chills with the power brokers of empire trying to say something truthful about his trip into the darkness of Africa, a trip that for some reason haunts him.  But can he tell the truth?  Does he even know what truth is, given his background, his culture, his color?  This is The Great Gatsby on steroids, where reality, truth, is always in question: this is the ultimate first-person narrative—only Marlow isn't the first person. So what is the real narrator thinking of this?

This effect is partly why the book is still studied as it is. It brings into question the possibility of an experience to truly be rendered the way it happened. This is the Modernism movement of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century at its most powerful. And that's just addressing the narrative style of the book. What about the narrative itself?  What is the blasted book about?

1. What is the book about at this point? Don't talk about style: talk about Marlow and what is the story revolving around him about?  Is there even a story revolving around him?  So tell me what you think—and give a quote or two to help support your point.

2.  I said on the first day of our discussion that this book has been accused of being a racist text.  You're welcome to read the Achebe essay on page 336.  And you're welcome to read the essay by Hunt Hawkins, "Heart of Darkness and Racism," on 349.  Truthfully, if you read Achebe you need to read Hawkins—and vice versa.  I would, though, suggest saving those until you're done with Conrad—you're smart enough to draw your own conclusions.  So at this point in the bool: is it racist? Be sure to make the distinction between Marlow's narration and the hands at the control of all this, Joseph Conrad.  They're not necessarily the same perspective.

3. This is an incredibly rich text: reading it is like eating some gooey chocolate-ice cream-whipped cream-fruit and nuts concoction. You have to eat it slowly, start from the edges and work your way in. At least that's my image. What particular image, sentence, phrase even, jumped at you in the reading? Why? And what's it like for you reading the book?

I'm looking forward to hearing from those of you who were quiet on Friday.  This is a hard book—it may be the hardest book you read in high school.  But maybe not.  Hang in there.  See most of you tomorrow.  Those of you in Model UN: have fun!

Blog Fourteen. Candide The End. "This Is Well Said, But We Must Cultivate Our Garden."

 ...When His Highness the Sultan sends a ship to Egypt, does he worry whether the mice on board are comfortable not not?" (92)

Pangloss conceded that he had suffered horribly, all his life, but having once maintained that everything was going splendidly he would continue to do so, while believing nothing of the kind. (91)

"I should like to know which is worse: to be raped a hundred times by negro pirates, and have a buttock cut-off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgars, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley—in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered—or simply to sit here and do nothing?"—"That is a hard question," said Candide. (90-91)

"I know absolutely nothing of the events you describe; I assume as a matter of course that those who get involved in political affairs often come to a bad end, and that they deserve to; but I never inquire about what goes on in Constantinople; I am happy enough sending the fruits of my garden to be sold there." (92)

The speech gave rise to new speculations, and Martin in particular came to the conclusion that man was born to endure either the convulsion of anxiety or the lethargy of boredom. Candide did not agree with this, but he did not press the point. (91)

So we reach the end of Candide's journey, with his "little society" (93) off in their corner of Turkey . Everyone's back! Cunegonde, the old woman, Pangloss, Cacombo, Martin, Paquette, Brother Girofleo, even the Baron—until he is sold back to the Levantine captain to be put back in the slave galleys (without telling Cunegonde, of course). So begins the brave new order that will change the world.

Or not.

1. So what is the solution that Voltaire presents here at the end, the solution to the damned and damnable world he has depicted? Is it a solution even? If not, what is it? What does it—solution or not—achieve?  Quote twice in your response.

2. Is the ending hopeful for you? If not exactly hopeful, then what?

3. Your reaction to the book?  Does it still have validity two hundred fifty seven years since its original publication? 

Finally.  Contemporary satire at, I think, it's most pointed and painful.  Key and Peele. 

That's it. One of the great books down. Next great book: "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. We'll be using the Norton Critical Edition.  See you all on Tuesday.

Blog Thirteen. Candide. 18-21. "And He Wept As He Looked Down At His Negro."

"...And was still weeping as he entered Surinam." (52)

Four different soups were being served, each garnished with a brace of parrots, followed by a boiled condor weighing two hundred pounds, two excellent roast monkey, a platter containing three hundred birds of paradise and another of six hundred humming-birds... (44)

"My dear Master," retorted Cacombo, "you are always astonished by everything; why do you find it so strange that in some countries it is apes who enjoy the favor of young ladies? After all, they are one-quarter human, just as I am one-quarter Spanish—" (40)

"You see," said Candide to Martin, "crime is sometimes punished; that blackguard of a Dutch owner got the fate he deserved"—"Yes," said Martin, "but did the passengers on board have to perish too? God punished the thief, but the devil drowned the rest." (57)

"We would be foolish indeed," said the old man.  "Everyone here is of the same mind..." (47)

I apologize for the lateness of this. Darn faculty meeting.

So as this short novel comes toward a close, we, with Candide and his friends, have covered much of the world: Europe, South America, and back to Europe (where Volatire's own France comes under his withering stare as much as anyplace in the novel, as Martin, his new traveling companion, says, "I am told there are some civilized people in [Paris]; I should like to think so" [58]). And, voila!, we finally find the best of all worlds—El Dorado! And Candide leaves it.

The novel, at this point, takes on a darker mood, I've always found. The satire becomes less outrageous, less cartoonish. There are no more apes chasing naked girls; no more naked natives tying Candide down with bark in an obvious homage to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, no more imaginary lands like El Dorado. There are, however, black men sold by their mothers to Dutch slavers. And Candide weeps and weeps.

1. In Chapter 8,  Cunegonde's horrifying story ends in her large appetite being sated with a nice supper. This is soon followed by the old woman's story, worse even than Cunegonde's, and soon the two women are enaged in a battle of who-had-it-worse. And clearly being infected by the plague is "far worse than any earthquake" (29).  War is awful; rape is awful; and yet both happen continually in this book.  I would argue that why this is is partly found in the conversations of the old woman and Cunegonde.  This is a huge ill, a huge problem, Voltaire highlights in the novel. What's the problem?

2. Candide and Cacombo leave El Dorado after a month, even as Candide admits it surpasses that best of all places, Westphalia. It is, in fact, paradise. How do you read Candide's deserting this place of equality, peace, and harmony? Agree? Disagree? And is Voltaire criticizing his hero—is this a dig at Candide? Or does Voltaire agree? Quote in your answer.

3. Finally: agree or disagree with my statement that the novel takes on a darker mood with the abandonment of El Dorado. And what moment particularly jumped out at you in the reading?

Finally: one of the great film satires of my time: Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers. Check this clip out. A renegade American Air Force general has sent bombers loaded with nuclear bombs to attack the Soviet Union (because fluoridation is a Communist plot that has left him impotent).  Here the President of the United States is informing a drunk Russian Premier of the imminent attack.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Twelve. Candide. 6-11. "O Che Sciagura D'Essere Senza Coglioni."*

*"Oh, what a misfortune to be without balls." (28)

Okay, no one said satire is pretty.

Some of you on Friday remarked about the bullet train pace of the book. So a valid question (often asked when we read this book in class) is "why?"  In the space of twenty-some pages, the action has moved from Germany to Holland to Portugal, to Spain, and now Candide, Cunegonde, and the old woman are on their way to the New World, Paraguay. In these few pages, we've seen 30,000 soldiers be heroically butchered; 30,000 "inhabitants without regard to age or sex...crushed" in the earthquake of Lisbon; a Biscayan who married a godparent and two Portuguese Jews who didn't eat bacon burned to death, Pangloss, recovered from his venereal disease, hanged, and Candide flogged again in an auto-da-fe (act of faith) to prevent a follow-up earthquake (it fails). Cunegonde has survived seeing her family slaughtered, disembowelment and raped ("these things are not always fatal," she informs us), becoming the property of a Bulgar captain who sells her to Don Issacar who shares her with the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal. Candide kills one, then the other, in the space of two minutes—after all, as he says, "I already embarked on killing." The old woman keeps reminding us that she only has "one buttock for a seat," was once more beautiful than, it would seem, anyone in the known world ("the women who dressed and undressed me fell back in ecstasies when they gazed upon me, from whichever angle, and all the men would have wished to be in their place"). She too sees her mother and servants slaughtered, experiences cavity search ("it is one article of international law that is never neglected"), survives the killing of all her captors and captives to awaken to a man bemoaning the absence of his testicles. Whew! Just typing that took me fifteen minutes.

We know from reading the notes and from our discussion on Friday that Voltaire is taking the philosophy of optimism to task, and more specifically, the philosophy as laid out by Leibniz. But this isn't why we read the book today (except in a philosophy class); or should I say, this isn't why I read and teach the novel. I think it's funny and provocative and disturbing and profound and relevant to our time. So that's one answer to "why?"

1. So, for you, what is the book addressing—besides Leibniz? (Remember: a satire holds up human vices and follies to ridicule and scorn) So for you, what is its essential, fundamental, question (or questions)? And what specfically in the book so far leads you to this assertion? Go ahead and quote in your response.

2. What moment in this reading jumped out at you? How so? Go ahead and quote in your response. 

Write a couple hundred words for the questions.  Mira and Stuart: remember to get the Theo Cuffe translation. And finally, for another satire, silly, stupid, and funny as it may be, here is a clip from 2004's Team America: World Police, the work of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park and The Book of Mormon—and even then they were exercising their musical chops, as we see here.
Parker and Stone use both satire and parody (making fun of a particular type of work). Not subtle, but funny and pointed.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Eleven. Candide. 1-5. "Candide Listened Attentively, And He Trusted Innocently" (4).

Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologico-cosmo-nigolgy. He could prove to wonderful effect that there was no effect without cause, and that this was the best of all possible worlds, His Lordship the Baron's castle was the finest of castles and Her Ladyship the best of all possible baronesses.
"It is demonstrable," he would say, "that things cannot be other than as they are; for, since everything is made to serve an end, everything is necessarily for the best of all ends. Observe how noses were formed to support spectacles, therefore we have spectacles. Legs are clearly devised for the wearing of breeches, therefore we wear breeches...consequently, those who have argued that all is well have been talking nonsense; they should have said that all is for the best." (4)

Candide: or Optimism, published in 1759, is Voltaire's satirical attack on the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (look at the notes for the title page on 121). It's also an old man's (Voltaire was 65 when he wrote this) rumination on the state of the world and, per our study so far, how to live in it. Mookie, Sal, Buggin' Out, Jade, Mother-Sister, Da Mayor, Radio Raheem, the cops; Vivian, Jason, Susie, E.M. Ashford; Ned, Bruce, Tommy, Mickey, Felix, Emma, Ben: this has been the underlying issue, question, for all of them. Or, as Larry Kramer asks, as does Auden in his poem that gave The Normal Heart its title:


Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

"We must love another or die." That's one answer to the question Voltaire, Spike Lee, Margaret Edson, and Larry Kramer pose.

So Voltaire and his classic satire. Quick couple questions:

1. Reactions to the book so far? What jumped out at you in these chapters? Quote in addressing this question.

2. So far: is anything funny? Yes: what? No: what is making this not humorous?

3. Is Candide's world the best possible world? Why or why not in 2-3 sentences.

 Just something...different. Leonard Bernstein, as I said in class, conceived of an opera based on this book in 1956.  The lyrics are by poet Richard Wilbur.  Here is the opening song.  See what you think.
See you all tomorrow.

Blog Ten. The Normal Heart. "We Are Gathered Here In The Sight Of God To Join Together These Two Men. They Love Each Other Very Much And Want To Be Maried In The Presence of Their Family Before Felix Dies. I Can See No Objection."

...This is my hospital, my church. Do you, Felix Turner, take Ned Weeks—
FELIX. Alexander.
EMMA. ...to be your...
FELIX. My lover. My lover. I do.
NED. I do.
(Felix is dead. Emma, who has been holding Felix's hand and monitoring his pulse, places his hand on his body. She leaves. The two orderlies enter and push the hospital bed, though all the accumulated mess, off stage.)
NED. He always wanted me to take him to your new house in the country. Just the four of us.
BEN. Ned, I'm sorry. For Felix...and for other things.
NED. Why didn't I fight harder! Why didn't I picket the White House all by myself if nobody would come. Or go on a hunger strike. I forgot to tell him something. Felix, when they invited me to Gay Week at Yale, they had a dance...In my old college dining hall, just across the campus from that tiny freshman room where I wanted to kill myself because I thought I was the only gay man in the world—they had a dance, Felix, there were six hundred young men and women there. Smart, exceptional young men and women. Thank you, Felix.
(After a moment, Ben crosses to Ned, and somehow they manage to kiss and embrace and hold on to each other.)

Tom, get on your plane right now
I know your part'll go fine.
Fly down to Mexico
Da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da and here I am.
The only living boy in New York.  (Paul Simon, "The Only Living Boy in New York)

The quote above is from the end of the play (obviously). The film, being a film, ends with showing the Gay Week dance at Yale. It's a powerful ending, I think. No words, but a slowly gliding camera moving through the couples to Ned alone and crying, all set to Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy In New York."Are his tears at this end his thank you to Felix? I tend to think so.

When the play was first performed, as the movie makes clear in the statistics printed at its end, money was not forthcoming from the Federal government. President Reagan would not say the word "AIDS" publicly until 1987 (though this is disputed by some). Whether or not the President said or didn't say the word, the point is that Larry Kramer was watching his friends and community die in front of his eyes. He, and the play, were in the middle of a catastrophic epidemic. The movie version makes clear that the casualties were far from over, hence the last card that Tommy puts in his drawer is that of Bruce. Watching this in 1985 must have been like watching CNN breaking news. Today it's history and much has changed and become significantly better. But even then Kramer wasn't merely reporting; he was also crafting a popular drama, he was making art that, if it succeeded, would last beyond the tragedy of its time, in much the same way that Do The Right Thing still resonates, even since the creation of Black Lives Matter, and long after the racial incidents that inspired Spike Lee to make it. Something similar can be said for Wit: in all its specificity of illness and time and behavior (I believe the play and/or the film has been used to train doctors), Vivian Bearing is always with us. We know that teacher; we know that woman; we know that human being. And we all will know in some way, shape, or form, what awaits her.

So:

1. Your reaction to the film now you've seen it all (and it would have been better to watch it all in one sitting, I agree).

2. Today as we started talking about the film, Stuart said something about the "happy" ending—that there is the solace of Ned and Ben reconciling (but as as Moey said, this would not have happened without the intervention of Felix) to temper all the tragedy the film presents.  So what kind of ending is it? Hopeful? Hopeless? Something else? Stick to what we see and know from the film—don't extrapolate from what we know will happen in the future. Imagine this is it—Ned at the dance is the end.

3. We know the film is about the AIDS epidemic. But is that all? If this play can exist as art, as something more than a "These events are inspired by real events, but the names have been changed (besides Mayor Koch's)," then what is this play/film about? What does it leave us to talk about, make us talk about, beyond or outside the outrage we feel about wasn't done to help the gay community? In the way that Wit was about cancer, but at the end we weren't talking about cancer, and DTRT was about race, but by the end we weren't talking only about race, what is this about? And what would you want to talk about in the next day or two about it?

Give these questions some time to bubble and then set inside you. Don't answer them in 10 minutes. A couple hundred words. See you guys tomorrow.

And remember: your paper is due next Wednesday (or Friday—but that's your choice). Don't wait until the last minute to write it.  We'll talk on Monday about quoting and other mechanics.  My baseline with seminar papers: it would be a paper you would feel comfortable turning in to a college professor (maybe Vivian Bearing).  So maybe talk with me about it tomorrow.

Here's a video of Larry Kramer reflecting on the film and his play.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Nine. The Normal Heart. "Do You Think We Could Start Over?"

FELIX. I just told you. We made love twice. I thought it was lovely. You told me your name was Ned, that when you were a child you read a Philip Barry play called Holiday where there was a Ned, and you immediately switched from...Alexander? I teased you for taking such a Wasp, up-in-Connecticut-for-the-weekend name, and when I asked what you did, and you answered something like you'd tried a number of things, and I asked if that included love, which is when you said you had to get up early in the morning. That's when I left. But I tossed you my favorite go-fuck-yourself when you told me, "I really am not in the market for a lover"—men do not just naturally not love—they learn not to. I am not a whore. I just sometimes make mistakes and look for love in the wrong places. And I think you're a bluffer. Your novel was all about a man desperate for love and a relationship, in a world filled with nothing but casual sex.
NED. Do you think we could start over?
FELIX. Maybe.

Do you know that when Hitler's Final Solution to eliminate the Polish Jews was first mentioned in the Times it was on page twenty-eight. And on page six of the Washington Post. And the Times and the Post were owned by Jews. What causes silence like that?

NED. You want me to tell every gay man across the country—
EMMA. Across the world! That's the only way this disease will stop spreading.
NED. Dr. Brookner, isn't that just a tiny bit unrealistic.
EMMA. Mr. Weeks, if having sex can kill you, doesn't anybody with half a brain stop fucking? But perhaps you've never lost anything. Good-bye.

Other big Hollywood names are attached to this film behind the scenes, and everyone involved hopes the movie will bring “The Normal Heart” to audiences that might not have access to the kinds of theaters that would stage the play. Not all of these audiences are going to be comfortable with seeing a story about gay men, even three decades after AIDS first came to public consciousness. But that, perhaps, is part of the point of making this film at all. Just as those early alarm sounders warned, AIDS has turned out not to be exclusively a gay men’s issue or something that the straight world could safely ignore. Complacency and indifference are always the default responses to things that seem on the surface like someone else’s problem. But they’re rarely the right responses. 
—The New York Times, 22 May, 2014

The Normal Heart opened in New York  on 21 April, 1985. It takes place in the years 1981 to 1984. Imagine a play opening now about Zyka: that's how contemporary the subject of AIDS was when Larry Kramer wrote the play. This was his impassioned, deeply angry and anguished cry for the world, for people who could help fight "the plague" as he calls it in the play, to do something before everyone he knew, and probably himself, died. At the same time, he wrote a highly autobiographical story about a young gay man falling in love and what that meant. It's a political screed mixed with a coming-of-age narrative mixed with a romance. How's that for a genre mash-up? (Read here what the Times wrote about him when the film was about to be released; read here the review of the original production; and read here the review of the 2011 revival that won The Tony Award and that starred Joe Mantello, who plays Mickey Marcus in the movie, and featured Jim Parsons in the same role he plays in the film.)

1. So what do you think so far? What part(s) of this so far have grabbed you—and what part(s) if any left you cold? What scene or moment in particular stayed with you—and why?

2. There are more naked male bodies in the first 45 minutes of this than you may see in a year of television, including even pay cable.  There's more kissing and loving and sex between men than you might ever see in any mainstream form—television and movies.  Both Director Ryan Murphy and screenwriter Larry Kramer (adapting his own play) present this as the normal way of being for these men.  And of course this movie would most likely never be shown in any high school in the state of Georgia besides Paideia (and maybe if the administration knew I was showing it, I might be having a conversation with them right now—or maybe not).  But nonetheless, one could argue that the movie goes overboard with the nudity and sex.  Do you think it goes too far in this respect?  Just fair enough?  Not far enough?  And why do you say what you do?

More to come tomorrow. We've pretty much are done with the bare butts—but there's still much to keep one interested.  Here are clips from the 2011 revival.  It's much lighter than the movie—maybe something we'll talk about.

Blog Eight. Wit. The End. "It's Time To Go." (80)

"And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." (80)

Here is the scene of Vivian and Ashford:

You're welcome to look at the very end of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_208943&feature=iv&src_vid=eucAdWW-4HM&v=64Q5SXWDx7w. Personally, I don't like the film version's end. The violence to Vivian's body by the code team seems toned down, compared to the play's description. And Vivian's ascension, for lack of a better word, is cut. But you might disagree. The play, I think, still leaves Vivian's ascension ambiguous. Is she going to rest with the angels? Does she gain God's forgiveness? Is there—and this was one of my questions when reading Vivian's lecture to her class—even a God? Much to consider as we finish this play.

We'll keep this simple tonight.

1. What is your reaction to the ending? Satisfying? Not satisfying? What are you left thinking about, pondering, after the conclusion of the play?

2.  We've been batting around the question of a worthwhile life vs. a...well, whatever the opposite is.  What do you think the play is saying about this?  Go ahead and quote once in your answer.

As always, please feel free to respond to what your classmates write.  You folks are really smart.  Let each other know when a comment enlightens you or makes you think more deeply than you had been.

We'll see you all tomorrow.

Blog Seven. Wit. 51-63. "I Have Always Liked That Poem. In The Abstract..." (53-53)

"...Now I find the image of 'my minute's last point' a little too, shall we say, pointed" (53).

"So the young doctor, like the senior scholar, prefers research to humanity.  At the same time the senior scholar, in her pathetic state as a simpering victim, wishes the young scholar would take more interest in personal contact" (58).

"I don't know.  I feel so much—what is the word?  I look back, I see these scenes, and I..." (63)

Vivian is dying.  She will not say the word, nor will Jason—but her "peritoneal cavity, which, despite their best intentions, is now crawling with cancer" (53).  But she knows the end is coming; as she asks Jason, "Are you going to be sorry when I—Do you ever miss people?" (57).  The two hours allotted to her by "them" are almost up.

I hope you all got some rest this weekend.  I'll keep this sweet and short.

At the end of the reading, Vivian reflects back on her teaching.  And as she says—quoted above—"I feel so much—what is the word?  I look back...and I..."

1. Feels so much what?  And looking back, she what?  Finish her sentence.  And why do you say what you do?  Go ahead and quote once in your reponse.

2.  Jason took Vivian because Vivian was a known difficult teacher—and having that on his transcript would make him look like a serious student.  It's clear that not every student took her for that reason.   So would you want her for a teacher?  Is she even a good teacher?  Why or why not?

See you all tomorrow.

Blog 6. Wit. 33-50. "You Can't Imagine How Time...Can Be...So Still" (35).

"Use your eyes." Kelekian to the students (40).

JASON. Oh. Jeeze. Clinical. Professor Bearing. How are you feeling today?
VIVIAN. (Very sick) Fine. Just shaking sometimes from the chills.
JASON. IV will kick in anytime now. No problem. Listen, gotta go. Keep pushing the fluids. (47)

"If arsenic and serpents are not damned, then why is he? In asking the question, the speaker turns eternal damnation into an intellectual game. Who would God choose to do what is hard, to condemn, rather than what is easy, and also glorious—to show mercy?" (49-50)

Neutropenia (noo-troe-PEE-nee-uh) is an abnormally low count of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that helps fight off infections, particularly those caused by bacteria and fungi. (Mayo Clinic definition)

I've been keeping a dictionary close while reading this. I hope you have too.

So now we know that the tumor "the size of a grapefruit" (47) is not responding to the treatment. Now we now that Vivian is imperiled not by the cancer but by the treatment itself. Now we know that she is in terrible pain. Now we know she suspects she is dying.

1. A Thrower-kind-of-check-in. Your reaction to the play right now? What is it about to you?

2. We haven't yet looked too closely at the "health care professionals," as Vivian somewhat sarcastically calls the doctors and staff (though not, arguably, Susie). When I did this play last, a student made the point to complaints about the way the doctors treat Vivian, "[The doctors'] job is solving the puzzle." Another student asked, "Can the doctors have compassion for Vivian without losing themselves?" Respond to one of those quotes: agree, disagree, or answer the explicit or explicit question it poses. Go ahead and quote from the play in your response.

Here's the scene that the last reading covers. It actually goes a little past the stopping point. Warning: Vivian is really sick here.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Five. Wit. 22-33. "I Am Learning To Suffer."

"You may remark that my vocabulary has taken a turn for the Anglo-Saxon.  God, I'm going to barf my brains out." (32)

Take a look at this scene from the 2001 HBO adaptation.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of Emma Thompson as Vivian Bearing—she's too British, not bigger-than-life enough in the way I see Vivian in my mind—and as with many plays, I'm not sure it benefits from being "opened up," so that it is indeed in a real hospital, rather than the hospital in Vivian's mind. But you might disagree. But this clip gives you the sense of one way of viewing the play and Vivian.

1.  We began talking about Vivian yesterday—some of you said on the last blog you liked her, some of you said she was a bit off-putting, and one of you (hmm, I wonder who...) said they abhored her (though that position has since changed).  One can say she is cerebral, intelligent, arrogant, conceited, immodest, tough, brave, insecure, controlling. She is not an ogre, a monster, not even unlikable (though some may disagree). She is, I think, very human: a complex organism. She certainly is not warm, cuddly, modest, and soft. The play could have won our sympathy for Vivian very quickly if she were warm, cuddly, modest, and soft (movies so often do that when they give us a dying character). So why make her so prickly? Why risk alienating the audience from her? And she can be alienating—that's not an unreasonable response.

2. We are now into the treatment for Vivian's cancer. What's your reaction to it, as it is presented specifically in Jason Posner?

3. What moment or line in the reading particularly jumped out at you—and why?

As always, 200 words—take a little time answering.  I do want to hear more tomorrow from Stuart and others about what he said at the end of class yesterday, how (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) ovarian cancer makes sense for Vivian since she doesn't need her uterus anymore.  I could be paraphrasing incorrectly.  But it was a provocative comment, and there was some buzz at the end of class.  I like provocation and buzz.  So if Stuart is willing to, I'd like him to say again what he said and for us to talk about it in the context of how it applies to any theme(s) in the play.

See you guys tomorrow.

Blog Four. Wit. Through 22. "Life, Death...I See. It's a Metaphysical Conceit. It's Wit!"

"...I'll go back to the library and rewrite the paper.
E.M. It is not wit...It is truth. The paper is not the point."
VIVIAN. It isn't?
E.M. Vivian. You're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library. Go out. Enjoy yourself with your friends. Hmm? (15)

Atlantan Margaret Edson's only play to date (and based on this profile in the NY Times, probably her last play) was much acclaimed when it was first produced in New York 1998. Since, it was revived to great reviews in 2012, starring Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The City fame. Clark Cloyd told me of taking one of his classes when he was at Lovett to an Atlanta production that stunned him in ways he hadn't expected. I haven't taught this in many years, mainly because I don't think I did it well back then. I had to grow up some. We'll see if that's happened. This is maybe not the way you might have thought we would begin the reading in the class—a play about the last days of a middle-aged English professor (I'm not giving anything away: Vivian lets us know right away:"It's not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die in the end" [6]). But I thought let's start at the end and work our way backwards. What did the wise one once say? There are two certainties in life—death and taxes? I haven't yet found a text about taxes, though no doubt one exists.

So:

1. Reaction to the first twenty pages? What jumped at you, struck you, in particular in these pages? In fact, what line or lines jumped out at you and why?

2. The narrative voice of this is novel, to say the least. Vivian Bearing is our host: there is no fourth wall as she addresses us, acknowledges her role in the action, and says right off the bat, "They've give me less than two hours" and "then: curtain" (6-7). Maybe this is a cute device—though soon you'll see there's little that's very cute in the play. So what do you think? Why this approach? And to what effect?

3. Vivian Bearing: how would you describe her, characterize her? Is she likeable? Something else?

Write a couple hundred words answer these three questions. And take a look at the scene from the Mike Nichols/Emma Thompson film from 2001 of Vivian and her mentor E.M. Ashford:

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Two. Do The Right Thing. "As Much As You Say N------- This And N------- That, All Your Favorite People Are 'N-------s.'"

Here is one of the most famous and controversial scenes in the film—the "racist rant," preceded by the fascinating conversation between Mookie and Pino. Pino's favorite basketball, movie, and—secretly—music stars are all black.  But..."They're Black, but not really Black.  They're more than Black.  It's different."  Which slides into Mookie, Pino, Stevie, Sonny, and Officer Long revealing their deep seated racial and ethnic prejudices to the audience.  It's not realism: but it's real.  Lee would do something similar in 25th Hour, which we will watch in the spring. It never fails to make me sit up and gape.

"Mookie, if I love you, I love you.  But if I hate you..." Radio Raheem.

PINO. I'm sick of niggers. It's like I come to work, it's "Planet of the Apes." I don't like being around them. They're animals.
SAL. Why do you have so much hate in you?
PINO. Why? You want to know why? My friends laugh at me all the time, laugh right in my face, tell me, "Go to Bed-Sty. Go feed the Moulies."
SAL. Do your friends put money in your pocket? Pay your rent? Food on your plate? They're not your friends. If they were, they wouldn't laugh at you.
PINO. Pop, what can I say? I don't wanna be here. they don't want us here. We should stay in our own neighborhood, stay in Bensonhurst. And the niggers should stay in theirs...
SAL. I've never had trouble with these people...Yeah, sure, some of them don't like us, but most of them do. I mean, for Chrissake, Pino, they grew up on my food. I'm very proud of that...What I'm trying to say, is Sal's Famous Pizzaeria is here to stay."

The middle part of the film lightens up a little, doesn't it? Buggin Out's quixotic attempt to spur a boycott of Sal's; the tender scene between Da Mayor and Mother Sister on her stoop; the look on both Mookie and Pino's face as Jade is chatted up by Sal. And there's Mookie and Pino and the rants.  Hate what Pino says; but at least we begin to understand what makes him so angry. Then there are the three scenes with Radio Raheem: the famous love-hate moment, an homage to the classic 1955 film Night of The Hunter; and the scenes with the Koreans and Sal. Radio looms large in the film: a young man of few words but with loud music. He evokes different reponses from different people: a little boy runs alongside him at one point, clearly emulating him; he is well-liked by the other young black people on the street, Mookie in particular; the Korean couple are intimidated by him; and Sal...well, Sal doesn't like his music in his pizzeria, to say the least. (Did you notice how Sal angrily tosses the pizza slices Radio ordered in the oven? Very different than the way he lovingly put together Jade's sandwich.)

So:

1. What moment or scene particularly jumped out at you, or stayed with you, from today's viewing? And why?

2. Radio Raheem and Sal: the two physically largest figures in the movie. What is your reaction to both of them? How would you characterize each of them—what makes them who they are as individuals?

3. The scene I quote above between Sal and Pino. I think it is one of the saddest and tenderest in the film. You can disagree with me. But I do ask: what is your reaction to it? Sal asks an important question of his son—"Why do you have so much hate in you?" Pino answers: but there's more to the reason than what he says. So assuming that's a legitimate statement, why might he be so full of hate, along with what he tells his father?

Your response is due Sunday night by 10, but doing it while the fiom is still fresh in your mind might not be a bad idea.   I'm not expecting you to spend an hour on this (though some students did last year): but 25-30 minutes is not asking too much, particularly since this is your only homework in the class at this moment. It takes me an hour usually to write a post question. Feel free to comment on what others in the class write; agree, disagree, use it as a starting or ending point to what you're writing.

Finally: here's Mookie and Radio Raheem and the story of love and hate.  See you all on Monday.