Hot Springs, Arkansas: The Arlington Hotel

Hot Springs, Arkansas, is to me an ideal place for a sojourn: it's low-key and there's plenty to do (or not do) in a day, a few days or over a more leisurely period. For those into this kind of thing, it's situated in an area that features an extensive geological "crystal bed" and hot spring mineral waters. That is, the "Valley of the Vapors" is a concentrated "power point." The Arlington Hotel is part of Hot Springs National Park. It maintains much of its original 1920s and 1930s charm -- and "Spanish Colonial" eccentricity. I love it. Pictured above is the front lobby after hours, on the side away from the bar. Outside, there's a spacious wraparound veranda.

At the Arlington, also plenty of history and hauntings, as they say. The parade of big-hitter guests over the years has included: Al Capone, FDR, Harry Truman, certain Republican presidents best left anonymous, Babe Ruth, Will Rogers, Mae West and Bill Clinton.

Today's Rune: Joy.   

With Striped Zoot Jacket That Salts Can Plainly See

Consider the Zoot Suit, an "extreme style" that swirled around the world like this past year's Gangnam Style and still-ongoing Harlem Shake. Race. Class. Gender. Style. Status Quo. Pied Pipers. Fashion statement. Join the bandwagon. Crackdown.

What's it all about, Alfie? Can you dig?

Great Depression, World War Two, Race Riot. In the Navy, Wild in the Streets. "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift . . ." It's all Zoot!

New books include: Kathy Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and Elizabeth Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, March 21, 2013).

Today's Rune: Warrior.
  

Jean Cocteau: Le Sang d'un poète / The Blood of a Poet

                                                                                                                                              

A nifty little film, less than an hour long: Jean Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète / Le sang d'un poète* / The Blood of a Poet (1930; premiered in France in 1932). I checked out the Criterion Collection version because it restores six minutes as a sort of "director's cut." *(In some cases, Sang [blood] is in caps for emphasis, but in others, not.)

Le Sang d'un poète employs an eclectic mix of techniques, making it a hybrid sound-and-silent film, theatre, visual art, mythlike, dreamlike, and, by all but official name, surreal. What we see on the screen is poetry in motion from a poet's imagination, and a poetic response to external stimuli. As a backdrop, there's the myth of Orpheus and his lyre -- again.   

                                                                                                                                                       

The film gives us a rare glimpse of Lee Miller (1907-1977) in motion, albeit fairly slow motion. (Indeed, in a few of the more lagging silent parts of the film that didn't include Miller in the frame, I felt free to speed the tempo up to 2012 levels). You can see here why she was treated as a Muse by Man Ray, yet also understand why she would move on from that role, too. Within fifteen years, she'd become an accomplished photographer and war correspondent, and at the end of World War II would be in Munich sitting in one of Hitler's abandoned bathtubs for a superbly iconic shot. In Le Sang d'un poète, she plays an armless statue and a mysterious card player, among other things. Costumes for the film were designed by Coco Chanel (1883-1971).

                                                                                                                                                          

Also of note is a Guardian Angel played by Féral Benga (1906–1957) of Dakar, Senegal, a stylized Mexican firing squad and a peephole into "the mystery of China" that involves opium. There is a reclining hermaphrodite in one room, a man in drag on a balcony in the center of a cluster of aristocratic types, and also a kid wrapped in what appears to be chains who flies up to a ceiling to escape harrassment and stays there, making faces.

 

There are statues that come to life, a passageway through a looking glass mirror (above), a demanding mouth in one of the poet's hands (much to his horror), hurled snowballs, what appears to be a silver cylinder flying through a room (think David Lynch), painted masks, glowing eyes, moving pictures and a cow apparently decorated with maps being led by Lee Miller. And that's not all, folks!

Today's Rune: Partnership.   

Jean Vigo: Zéro de conduite / Zero for Conduct

Finally got to see Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite / Zero for Conduct (1933) in its forty-one minute entirety. This little black and white film has a wild and anarchic feel with surrealistic touches, as akin to the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933) as to Luis Buñuel's (and Salvador Dalí's) L’Age d’or / The Golden Age (1930).

In Zéro de conduite, the basics are this: male students (boys) have to go back to school (a pretty seedy looking boarding school); what we see for most of the film is a ragged tug of war between students and "adults." This can be taken as a straight up power struggle, as delivered in many other stories set in boarding schools, orphanages, mental institutions, prisons and POW camps. Indeed, there is a whole cluster of films around that time -- at the onset of "talkies" and the Great Depression, in between world wars -- that take a strong look at the existing social fabric and underlying conflicts in different settings. Let's not forget, for example, Leontine Sagan's Mädchen in Uniform (1931), Fritz Lang's M (1931) and G.W. Pabst's Westfront 1918/ Vier von der Infanterie (1930). But in Vigo's short film there are many weird additional touches -- striking surrealist imagery, for starters.   

What do we have here? These figures look almost like pieces off a Monopoly board, characters from a German Expressionist work or dolls lifted right out of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi. Look, there's even an empty chair for Clint Eastwood to scold. Surrealism lives!

Good God, what are these "little devils" up to now?

Today's Rune: Signals.

Ernst Lubitsch: Design for Living / Sérénade à trois

In Design for Living (aka Sérénade à trois, 1933), Ernst Lubitsch, through the scrim of Ben Hecht's screenplay, rearranges Noel Coward's 1932 stage play of the same title. I haven't seen the stage version, but the film is highly entertaining and even in 2012 remains subversive in the realm of sexual politics. Such creative, unconventional ways of living are rarely depicted, though François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962), Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and the HBO series Big Love (2005-2011) dare to explore similar themes.

Design for Living stars Miriam Hopkins (Gilda), Gary Cooper (George), Fredric March (Tom) and Edward Everett Horton (Max) -- all excellent. Gilda is the strongest character and has the best lines, such as: "It's true we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman." Ha! A true "Bohemian rhapsody."

 

Today's Rune: Strength.        

Jean Vigo: L'Atalante

Joie de vivre and «Cherchez la femme!» Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934) finds the woman and the joy despite dodgy moments, jealous fits and oddball characters. Newlyweds Juliette and Jean literally embark on an adventure via L'Atalante, the river barge Jean skippers. The accompanying crew consists of Père Jules, a battered and somehwat barmy veteran of the high seas (like Zorba the Greek with a few extra bats in his belfry), Kid (a boy also not playing with a full deck -- akin to Billy in The Last Picture Show), and a slew of Jules' cats. In addition, Jules has in his cabin a storehouse of bizarre artifacts from his patchwork life. 

Vigo's depiction of life on a river barge adeptly captures the mix of adventure, excitement, boredom and claustrophobia that often emerges in a marriage or similar intimate relationship. Boris Kaufman's cinematography will look familiar to anyone who's seen On the Waterfront (1954) or many a black and white French New Wave film.  L'Atlalante is an early gem. As of 2012, the 89 minute Criterion (2011) restored version is the way to go. It's available as part of The Complete Jean Vigo (The Criterion Collection), 2011.  

Today's Rune: Joy.

The Social Darwinists

                                                                                                                                       

Characterizing the bipolar political system in the US as dysfunctional is one thing, but saying that there's no difference between Democratic and Republican policies is empirically false. The main difference is in priorities -- today even more clearly defined. The Obama Administration seeks to implement and maintain a rational approach to the future with a moderate safety net in the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The role of government is important in this tradition, and seen in a positive light. The Republican challengers -- Mitt Romney and Tea Party Congressional Representative Paul Ryan -- view the government's role very differently. To them, building up the military-industrial complex is paramount, weakening the social safey net (i.e. "What I know is Texas, and here, you're on your own"), cutting texas for the wealthy, and privatizing without oversight is the way to go. These are significantly different approaches, indeed. 

 

To me, the Social Darwinist approach of the Romney-Ryan ticket is unnecessarily brutal. The Obama approach is much more civilized. Of course government can be made more efficient and responsive to the needs of people -- but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Besides, the rich are doing quite fine the way things stand. In fact, if elected, Romney would be the wealthiest man to become US President in more than two hundred years. Do the super rich really need further encouragement?

Thoughts?

Today's Rune: Signals.  

Luis Buñuel: L’Âge d’or / The Golden Age, Take I

Surrealism punctuates Luis Buñuel's L’Âge d’or / The Golden Age (1930), but there are enough slow, stable sequences that one can remain somewhat oriented to the bizarro plot. It's a little like the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933) without being so over-the-top, with a touch of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974) and a hint of Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers (1963). On the other hand, it's entirely different from almost anything else in cinema except for other films by Luis Buñuel himself.

The "initial" script for L’Âge d’or was concocted by Salvador Dalí, but the Buñuelean motifs and tropes flow backward and forward through earlier and later works. There are almost always people being thwarted -- or egged on -- by social forces; and various animals sporadically appear in odd places -- such as, in L’Âge d’or, a large cow standing drolly in a person's bed, and a small (toy) giraffe tumbling out of a window; there are usually insects; and hallucinations and dream sequences; there are distortions of time and space; and wry, satirical iconoclastic barbs; well executed movements of the camera; and orchestrated employment of music, food and drink; plus various other apparent repeat obsessions. Weird -- and memorable, whether one wishes it to be or not!

Among other things, Buñuel seems always to be showing how there never was a Golden Age -- human beings have always been strange and conflicted, partly by choice, seemingly at random and to an absurd extent.

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).  
    

Family Time Capsule: Second World War

On the left, drinking a beer, is my great uncle Curtis (Curt) St. Bonnet, brother of Richard in the previous post. Born before the Great War, he led an adventurous life. From Monroe County, Pennsylvania, he "yondered" for years, first heading west on a motorcycle. He joined the Merchant Marines and travelled around the world, and during World War Two he joined the US Army and became a sergeant. I visited him with my immediate family when he lived in Mexico in the 1970s, and, with one of my sisters on a long road trip, when he lived near Portland, Oregon (Vancouver, Washington) in the 1980s. Loved hearing his stories, of which there were many, including of him working on a railroad in the 1930s, and sailing a boat from Acapulco to Hawaii in the 1960s.

No idea who the soldier on the Jeep is, or even where they are. On the bumper: PAC-SEC. X-85. Asia-Pacific Theater, or that way bound? On the back is a note: wherever they were, beer cost fifty cents a pop. 

Today's Rune: Defense.   

A Family Time Capsule: 1929

Here are members of my family with French and Irish backgrounds in 1929, just before the Great Depression. Setting is probably in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, possibly at Vineyard Cottage. On the far left stands Margaret Theresa (family name Moriarity). She was born during the American Civil War (1861-1865) on or near the frontier, either in Kansas or close by. Her parents (Moriarity) came over from Ireland -- probably not long before. On the far right is her husband Nicholas, son of parents (Saint Bonnet/St. Bonnet) who came to the US from France. He was born in Connecticut in 1859 but moved to Kansas with his family after the Civil War. To Margaret's immediate left is her daughter Mae, and in the back is Margaret and Nicholas's grandson, Richard St. Bonnet, whose father Warren St. Bonnet died in the Great Influenza of 1918 in his thirties, working as a postman. Here in this picture, they look happy, and I'm glad for them.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.     

In the Valley of the Vapors: The Arlington Hotel

It's historic. It's a time capsule with all mod cons. It's affordable. It's part of Hot Springs National Park in the Valley of the Vapors. It's the kind of "power point" I love. 

Built in 1925, the (third) Arlington Hotel provides a good vista of the downtown historic district -- espeically from this floor, the sixth. Back during Prohibition days, and at the onset of the Great Depression, Al Capone looked out a similar window from the fourth floor. Later, FDR and Harry Truman came to stay. Let's not forget Babe Ruth, Mae West, and later, Bill Clinton. Singers and bands. Comedians. Actors. Writers. Why? It's a power point, a place to experience firsthand to believe. Really.  
 

The Shining, anyone? The Great Gatsby? Get into the ghostly groove in the Valley of the Vapors -- at the Arlington Hotel.

Today's Rune: Journey.  

Sullivan's Travels

Preston Sturgis' Sullivan's Travels (1941) has a lot to recommend, and more to consider. Veronica Lake ("The Girl"), in her late teens, has a sophisticated vibe that belies her youth. Joel McCrea, later known for his role in Westerns, plays John L. Sullivan, a financially secure but naive movie director who wants to make a film about the "forgotten man" during the Great Depression, O Brother Where Art Thou? In order to do this, he must step away from Hollywood and roam the American countryside like a "hobo." This character arc is akin to the arc in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha (1922), however without as much depth.

Sullivan picks up "The Girl" while ordering coffee on the road, or rather she picks him up through an act of kindness. Subsequently, there is train-hopping, food-sharing, and much contrast between the life of the rich and the poor. And, remarkably for the time, there's an acknowledgement of race without it being entirely transformed into a stereotypical farce.    

Sullivan's Travels is at its best in the final half hour or so, when Sullivan finds himself on a prison farm, isolated from his Hollywood support team and entourage. The scenes with Veronica Lake are also good, but somewhat restrained, thanks to the prudish Hollywood Code that had put a damper on sexual realism since the early 1930s. This particular movie has to dance around the realization that Sullivan, when he's roaming around with The Girl, is joylessly married to another woman who eventually "hooks up" with his business manager (who are seen together, but in separate beds); of course, "The Girl" wants to be with Sullivan, but first he must divorce the shrewish current wife (who's only in it for the money, apparently) and then marry her. Meanwhile, Sullivan comes to the conclusion that laughter is the Balm of Gilead enjoyed by rich and poor alike, to hell with gender issues. (So: as long as people are laughing, socio-economic and gender-based imbalances can be safely swept under the rug?).

Final note: I don't know if this was intentional or just a coincidence, but the name John L. Sullivan hearkens back to "Manifest Destiny," a phrase coined in the 19th century by John L. O'Sullivan. 

Today's Rune: The Warrior.   

Dusty Roads

Driving west on I-30 just before dusk and I what do I see? A pall, haze, smog, volcanic ash -- what is it? Dust storm! Out in Lubbock they're blanketed with such stuff and flights are cancelled. What's going on? Climate, climate change, a big dry spell, high winds, human industrial and habitation patterns -- all of it. Above: Dust storm in the Texas Panhandle in 1936. (Photo credit: Library of Congress.)

(Newspaper clippings about the 1930s Dustbowl: Library of Congress)

Which reminds me: there was a dude in Chapel Hill named Dusty Rhoades. Back in the 1980s, he used to hang around the edges of the WXYC alternative radio crowd and always seemed to be everywhere, at least for a couple of years.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.   

The Wild Ones Revisited

Belle Isle sojourn, Detroit, in the early 1930s.  Love is a many-splendored thing. I wonder what Frida Kahlo is thinking as she fiercely eyes an apparently napping Diego Rivera.

From the artists of the Great Depression to the artists of the Great Recession, a salute!

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

The Real Glory

The title and soundtrack may be incongruent, but Henry Hathaway's 1939 adaptation of The Real Glory, a 1937 novel by Charles L. Clifford, sheds a lot more light on American foreign policy than was probably intended at the time. Though set in the Philippines in 1906, parallels to American frontier fighting and US military adventures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan shout out to be heard. But is anyone listening?

The Real Glory stars Gary Cooper as a sort of action-doctor, along with David Niven as Lt. McCool. They are based in a small village enclave on Mindanao, part of a cadre training "native troops" (as they are called in the movie).  The biggest threat to happiness apparently comes from the Moro* people, Muslims who'd fought against the Spanish for nearly four hundred years, and now (in 1906) the Americans, and later the Japanese, and later still, the  Filipino central government (through the time of this post). 

One American officer complains that he could not possibly train the local "constabulary force" in ten years, let alone sooner.  Another quips: "From now on the little brothers will have to stand on their own feet -- if they can."

Other interesting stuff to watch for: Moro strategy and tactics. The Moros, even as portrayed in the movie, are relentless guerilla fighters and raiders. They gather intelligence about the American enclave, assassinate officers with suicide attacks. They set ambushes and traps and use punji stick pits. They cut freshwater supplies to the village in order to force small contingents out into the jungle and then attack them on rough chosen ground. And so forth. The American commander responds by fortifying the village with sandbags, putting up barbed wire, and rounding up village Moros, forcing them into the village stockade. What happens to the prisoners after that we are never told.      

Another line from The Real Glory: "If you believe in marriage, never say 'yes' to a soldier." The great San Francisco earthquake is referenced, and a cholera epidemic figures prominenently, as does a wise Spanish Catholic padre. The music soundtrack is very lame, but otherwise, interesting film.

*Moro sounds like Moor and Moors, and derives from the same Spanish Christian nomenclature for Muslim historical adversaries in Spain.

Today's Rune: Harvest.   

Lindsay Anderson: Britannia Hospital

This, my friends, is what a crazy anarchist movie looks like. Take the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933) -- shot during the Great Depression -- and mix in Jean-Luc Godard's Tout va bien / Everything's Fine (1972) with Luis Buñuel's Le Fantôme de la liberté / The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and class-conscious British sitcoms of the 1970s, with an added dash of horror, fantasy and science fiction, plus Robert Altman and voilà, presto -- there you have it.

Hotel Britannia (1982) is neither good for casual entertainment, nor is it the first Lindsay Anderson film to check out. As Anderson himself put it (quoted in the twelve-minute extra featuring Malcolm McDowell): "you need a strong sense of humor to understand the satire in Britannia Hospital." That said, it's very relevant for a sharper understanding of the dramatic global happenings of 2011.

The initial release of Britannia Hospital fared well in France, but it suffered from terrible timing on its release in the UK (thanks to the nationalistic, jingoistic and xenophobic enthusiasm of the Falklands/Malvinas War managed by Margaret Thatcher). In the USA, Ronald Reagan was in power, gearing up with his own foreign adventures. Today's underlying economic inequities were reinforced just then, as Anderson clearly observed. But Anderson's critique, along with others, largely fell on deaf ears thanks to the draw of unleashed greed and the pursuit of power. It's quite an interesting film, albeit with an ick factor and a slapstick feel, not too far off from the Pink Panther films. Its themes go deep, and its critique of class, power and the human condition cuts deep, as well.



Snippets of Britannia Hospital such as this brief one may be more evocative than the film as a whole. This one's very telling as to Lindsay's Anderson's worldview.   

Today's Rune: Movement.

Changing Currency: Motherland, Fatherland, Homeland

Motherland and Russia, Fatherland and Germany, Homeland and the United States of America? Where did these concepts come from? And why have they changed over time?

A cursory look at a Google Ngram (for English language books only) seems to reveal these trends:

Homeland emerges as the preferred concept during the Great Depression. It continued to gain currency well before the symbolic (and real) attacks of ten years ago.

Fatherland peaks during the cataclysm we conceptualize as WWII/The Second World War, particularly around the time of the ferocious German-Soviet war, then drains away over time.

Motherland remains fairly steady, but never rises above third place overall.

What is a homeland, anyway? You've probably seen this joker-subversive poster . . .

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Southern Gothic Revisited: Get Low vs. Chrystal

Two Southern Gothic Tales: Aaron Schneider's Get Low (2010), set in Tennessee by way of Georgia during the Great Depression, and Ray McKinnon's Chrystal (2005), set in more contemporary backwoods Arkansas. Get Low provides a comfortable vehicle for Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray and company to do their thing, though the backstory isn't strong enough to support the front story. Chrystal provides a much sharper, darker tale, peppered with mordant humor and with a superb ensemble cast including Lisa Blount (now deceased), Ray McKinnon (the writer-director), Billy Bob Thornton and Grace Zabriskie.

In brief, Get Low can be seen by a wider audience without squirming, but Chrystal is the better (and edgier) movie. With Chrystal, beware of foul language and chillingly dubious situations.

At one point in Chrystal, Billy Bob Thornton sports an enormous beard, as does Robert Duvall in Get Low.

Today's Rune: Initiation.

Mae West's Babe Gordon or: The Constant Sinner

Almost done with Mae West's novel first published in 1930 as Babe Gordon and then as The Constant Sinner, which she also adapted into a play in 1931. It's remarkable for a number of reasons: the main character, Babe Gordon, despite being only eighteen and nineteen years old during the action, is a strong antihero (or heroine, if you prefer) who is able to work her magic despite all sorts of edgy and highly charged racial, gender, sexual and socio-economic conflicts. 

The text. A reader having no clue about historical or literary context will be presented with a society that seems unhinged about race, gender, sex, money and power, and will probably wonder why social relations are so deranged. Babe Gordon is unquestionably out for herself, seeking good times but also security and self-preservation. She divides and conquers, but not without challenges, setbacks and enemies. Strange lingo peppers the text, slang, racial, gender and class slurs and epithets included, yet a 2011 reader will certainly recognize many social realities that seem familiar. One must come away from the text and ask: what is the same, and what has changed?

One place to look is at word usage, technology employed and attitudes made evident by what is contested and what is subverted in Babe Gordon's arc.

As a social document, Babe Gordon / The Constant Sinner remains compelling -- and incendiary -- in many ways. The text, the language and cultural attitudes revealed are fascinating. On the other hand, this novel also fits within the context of other writings published around the same time. A lot of dialogue shifts gear and employs clashing perspectives as in James Joyce's Ulysses (1920-1922) and Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu / In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927), and let's not forget Dashiell Hammett, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen and many other of Mae West's contemporaries. Nor should we be particularly shocked by Babe Gordon's bold attitudes: one need only consider some of the great blues singers of the 1920s to perceive the contesting of power in many social spheres at a time when Prohibition was the law, segregation was almost universally pervasive, and adult women could finally vote across the USA.  

Today's Rune: Harvest.    

Signifying Mary Johnson: Black Gal Blues

Here's my transcription of Mary Johnson's "Black Gal Blues." On this take, Johnson is accompanied by Henry Brown on piano; song recorded on August 24, 1934, in Chicago.

"Black Gal Blues" by Mary Johnson

Black gal, black gal
How come you talk about poor me so?
The more you talk about me
The more your man hangs around my door.
Now if you can’t hold your man
Don’t call me no so and so.

If your lovin’ won’t hold him
Why don’t you let him go?
If your lovin’ won’t hold him
Why don’t you let him go?
Well don’t blame me
If I got Mr. so and so.

If you don’t like my peaches
Please don’t you shake my tree.
If you don’t like my peaches
Please don’t shake my tree.
I don’t ask your man for his money
He brings it on home to me.

Black gal, black gal
What makes your nappy head so hard?
Black gal, black gal
What make your nappy head so hard?
The more you talk about me
Your man stays in my back yard.

Black gal, black gal
How come you talk about poor me so?
The more you talk about me
The more your man hangs around my door.
Now if you can’t hold your man
Don’t call me no so and so. 

http://www.we7.com/song/Mary-Johnson/Black-Gal-Blues?m=0 

Today's Rune: Harvest.