Shout Out.

"I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States."-Antonin Dvorak

I liked this quote. I like the idea of finding a "Native" form of music and making oneself focus upon it. I like that jazz was seen as popular, and thus vulgar. I liked the rest of the quote which goes "... These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them."
Even though it's a focus on "American Originality" with songs that didn't have their origins in the US, I think that works. I'm not a melting pot advocate, but I do like the idea of merging cultures and creating a shared heritage. I think that's where we gain our sense of American pride, or maybe it's me (admittedly, not too great at this whole patriot thing), through the emergence of a new and shared culture that blends the old world and the new.

Not much to say on this this, other than, sometimes, distant, distant, distant relatives can be pretty cool, right? And that you should all check out the "New World Symphony" at some point, because it's pretty rad. (Also, it kind of explores this issue of merging a new idea with the old, all with a visitor/outside observer to the US. Seems to be a common theme).

Oh Sigrid (Mostly getting my thoughts on Blog)

My final paper has proven to be far more vexing than I previously anticipated.  Writing about the early 1900s, whilst fulfilling my love of that era, has presented its own set of difficulties.  Perhaps the most irritating would be my annoying tendency to interpret the past through my decidedly fish-eyed lens, attempting to make my "interesting historical figure" into nothing more than a Beth surrogate, with ideas and ideals that are far too atypical for her time period.

To counteract this, I've been focusing a lot on Sigrid's Christian faith, which comes to her far more easily than it has ever/will ever come to me.  But is there a point where it becomes too cloying?  Her father was a pastor for a small farming community (decidedly Norwegian, to balance my decidedly Czech heritage) which would account for her strong faith.  She's far too nice, far too blonde, and just a tad boring.

But I wonder if I'm focusing far too much on who she is and then deciding what she symbolizes? It's probably my creative side dominating my academic one (not that they're unable to coexist in this setting, mind you), but has anyone run into this problem?  Do you find it better to plan out your person's purpose first and then tailor their day around it, or is the inverse true?

 

A Day in the Life of an Ole

I decided to do my paper on Sigrid Halvorson, a fictional female student (very, very, very Norwegian), on December 10th, 1906. She double majors in home economics and Vocal Music. Having recently heard about Congress having passed the Safe Food and Drug Act, and having read a shortened version of The Jungle she's bothered by what's apparently been happening in the meat industry.  She plans to sneak out later and smoke with a boy named Jurgis, but she'll have to steal the key to the lady's house first.

Oh Yes, oh Yes, oh Yes, oh Yes, They both reached for the Gun, the Gun, for the Gun!

Can we just get this out of the way?  I'm a huge showtunes nerd.  Also, my great grandmother baby sat for Judy Garland  (back when she was Frances Ethel Gumm) and her mother was trying to make it in vaudeville.    I just want you all to know that I've got some major ties with fame.  Major.

Talking about vaudeville, as Enich has said, makes me think of Chicago.  Although I'll use any flimsy excuse to talk about showtunes, I think this one has some validity.  I linked to "The Press Conference Rag" from the 2002 film.  Although not my favorite song in the movie, you have to admire Richard Gere's rather charming performance.

Thinking about  how Gary mentioned that vaudeville kind of created fame as we know it (the press!  the celebrity!  the crushed dreams!), it made me think about the role of the press in Vaudeville, and the role of the press in the idea of fame.  Most of the reason that these things were so famous is because we're paying attention to them (it's fairly obvious).  With that, it made me think about how that kind of fame can become warped.

Tying it back to Am Con, look at the press Evelyn Nesbit got from a murder trial as compared to Coalhouse Walker's press.  Both thrive because the press, and the American public, made them into something bigger than what they were. Evelyn was a harlot and Coalhouse was an angry guy who set fires to things.  Yes, they stand for something greater, but at what point do we say enough is enough, and stop crediting someone as beyond what they are?  Is Coalhouse a victim?  Absolutely.  Is he a martyr?  I find that hard to swallow.

Part of the reason I think vaudeville was so popular was the publicity, and the warping of what's importance.  We thrive on this idea of a collective sensationalism, that we make things important because we get people to believe in them.  Does something become more or less valid as more people believe in it?  On the one hand, you have validation beyond yourself, and although we deny it, everyone kind of seeks validation from other people.  On the other, with more people, its more easily warped into something you never meant for your cause to be about.

I guess I'm just debating whether Vaudeville was important because we wanted it to be, or we needed it to be?  I'm not saying it's a binary system, but does anyone know where to stand on this?

Also, I've got a lot of blogs to catch up on...eek.

Manly men?

"The Glorification of the prizefighter and the workingman bespoke the ambivalence of middle-class men about their own gender status, for it suggested that they too, regarded such men as more manly than themselves-more physical, less civilized, less effeminate.  It also suggest that when middle-class gay men celebrated such working as paragons of masculinity, they only followed the lead of other men in their class."-pg 114

This passage struck me for two reasons because the idea of gender status and not being sure in one's own being a two way relationship.  It's very similar to the idea of "inversion" in my mind, but the main difference being that one is sure of their gender, but they're perceived as the wrong one or they were assigned the wrong one (transgendered?) as opposed to being unsure of their status within the gender. The other reason is for the idea of class status in relation to gender-middle class men seeing themselves as less manly than their working class counterparts, despite the fact that many working class men were the most likely to engage in more traditionally homosexual behavior.
It's such a huge contrast to how we now think, with the idea of adopting mannerisms that are true to one gender more than the other.  Women are told to "man up" and sometimes, we tell men that it's okay to cry. However, there are still many people that like to keep "manly" and "womanly" traits upon a binary scale.  Of course, people fall on different places between these two extremes.
Is there something to be said for this continued perception of what's masculine and what's feminine and our slow mixture of the two?  Is this a positive change for a better relationship between people of different races, genders and classes?  Personally, I feel like it's adding division where there is already a copious amount.  Maybe we should stop looking at the class binary and the sexuality binary and realize we're all on a sliding scale?

Ragtiiiiiime (Ragtime!) and the Patron Saint of Mediocrity

Okay, let's be honest.  I'm awful at watching movies. I talk.  I think about how I want to eat more popcorn.  I wonder how mad people will be if I filter out the movie with reading (answer: very).  When watching movies, I tend to be hyper critical. It is so difficult.
With that out of the way, Ragtime.  The movie.  Oh good lord, as soon as I saw the first scene, I went "This reminds me of Amadeus!"  Sure enough, it was the same director, Milos Forman.  I am good.
But, I'm not surprised.  The two stories are pretty similar.  They both look at the unreliability of memory, the glossing over of certain points of history.
Ragtime exemplifies the theory that I've had all along:

We look at history through a fisheye lens.  As we focus in on a new point, we distort the periphery.  What was clear a second go now blurs, until we don't know what it used to look like.

 The movie feels a bit like a memory.  The book even more so.  We're being told what happened-but do we ever know the truth?  Is history important because of what happened, or how we perceive what happened?  Which is more important?  Which is less?  Why do I always have more questions, and very really find a satisfactory answer?  Can you find one?
Either way, I absolve you.  :)

Post-Colonialism/Gender/Sex (I use books as metaphors a lot, have you noticed?)

Whilst we were having our discussion this week about sex, sexuality, gender and the roles that those things designate within a culture, I kept thinking of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. More specifically, I kept thinking about the discussions we had about them in my 11th grade English class.  (Isn't it irritating that almost everything I do now can be related to a different phase in my life?)
When my English teacher introduced the ideas of a post colonial lens to the class, he brought up the idea that reading books from previously "colonialized" places helped  you to understand their point of view.

 But then he brought up the converse of that point-how can you be "free" when you're using the tools of your oppressors to express yourself?

This same idea was one that I had broached upon when discussing gender roles in The House on Mango Street.  The protagonist starts acting more like a boy in order to gain control in her extremely patriarchal household.  This idea frustrated me-if she had to act less like her gender, was she escaping the patriarchal system or enforcing it?

Which then creates a nice segway into Ragtime.  If Evelyn Nesbit has to use her sexual appeal to gain power, is she really doing that, or is she just helping her own victimization?  (I firmly believe that Evelyn is a victim-a silly, beautiful fool in the style of Daisy Buchannan).  How do you beat the system by working from within it?  Is it not better to work outside the system, a la Emma Goldman or Coalhouse?  Are revolutions not fought in order to foster the creation of a new system?  I.e. The American Revolution overthrowing a monarchy and creating a democracy? In the latter cases, their subversion of the system ultimately spells out their own undoing, but I feel like they're the more transcendent of the characters.

This is part of the reason that I think the end of chapter eight with "THAT SCENE" is so important. Yeah, it's probably one of the most awkward things I've ever read in the history of my life as a reader (about sixteen years)-and hopefully one of the last...Every person I've brought the book up to says "Isn't that the book with the guy in the closet who..." and then they trail off, embarrassed. Despite the unpleasantness, the scene demonstrates perhaps the one time that Evelyn is in control of something, her sexuality, without a male gaze (that she knows of).  Even then though, she only gains that control through Emma, so is it really her control again?  

The whole scene just reeks of tragedy (and awkward euphemisms). The one time Evelyn comes into an iota of control, Mother's Younger Brother suddenly...um...appears... um...and covers her in capitalism.

There's no real escape from the oppression when you're using it to your advantage.  You're still enforcing that system.  Even if Evelyn has taken controtl for that moment, she's lost it for all the others.  That may not necessarily be Doctorow's point, but I'm reminded of how Authorial intent is so often overshadowed by the reader's interpretation.  I feel like Evelyn is a victim of circumstance, like Daisy, like Okonkwo, like Esperanza.  They may recognize the system, but their attempted subversion just turns into a reinforcement.