Kim Thúy: 'Ru' (2009, 2012), Take I

Kim Thúy, Ru. New York: Translated from the French by Sheila Fischman. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012; originally published in French in 2009.

This is a lovely short novel, organized as a series of interconnected (but mostly capable of standing alone) short chapters that look on the page like prose poems or flash pieces. 

Ru has the gravitas of a personal nonfiction account. I found it completely absorbing on a first read and can imagine combing through it again soon to see what I missed.  

"I came into the world during the Tet Offensive, in the early days of the Year of the Monkey, when the long chains of firecrackers draped in front of houses exploded polyphonically along with the sound of machine guns." (page 1) 

An Tinh Nguyen, the main protagonist, is born in Saigon. French and Vietnamese culture are strong in her childhood years, even after the American War when the country is unified. Eventually, she escapes with members of her family to Malaysia, until they are taken in by Canadians and relocated to Quebec. 

I appreciate the fact that Ru is mostly neutral on the opposing sides of the war and its aftermath, allowing the reader to focus instead on what it's like to be a war child and refugee. 

Throughout Ru, we are taken as if by the hand to see conditions in Vietnam during and after the American War, in boats and refugee camps, and in a new, unfamiliar land -- Canada. We see the family of An Tinh Nguyen and come to understand something of its structure (Aunt Seven, Step-Uncle Six, Cousin Sao Mai, etcetera), and see what it's like to become accustomed to a new country, while still yearning for the old. 

Deft and memorable. 

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision.

The story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its creator is movingly charted by Freida Lee Mock in her Academy Award winning documentary film, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1995), available in digital format. 

The scenes of veterans and vet families at the wall can't help but elicit sympathy and sadness; interviews with various vets involved in the creation of the memorial are also indicative of how deep the wounds left by the Vietnam War remain. Though there is much talk about healing, it's clear from viewing this film that for many involved, the wounds will never heal in this lifetime. Maya Lin's achievement is to have created a place where people can weep and release some of their grief, at least for a time.

Maya Lin (born October 5, 1959) was a Yale undergrad when she entered a 1980 competition to design the memorial, and almost miraculously, her radically brilliant but controversial design won. She was 21 years old at the time. At Yale, she had studied funereal architecture and wondered, as she says on film, "What is a memorial's purpose?" How has the world shifted since the great World War One memorials were designed and erected? How did they relate to their natural setting? In support of her very simple but powerful vision, she spent two months composing an essay explaining how it "focused on the individual losses" of war and steered away from the overtly political. It was to be neither a glorification of war and nation, nor a barbed condemnation of flawed policies. Still, some took it the latter way and fought ferociously to change the design from sunken, low and black to raised, above ground and white, with a giant U.S. flag at its apex. Some called it a "boomerang" design and read that as a critique of U.S. foreign policy. She imagined the concept as "taking a knife and cutting into the Earth," whereas one vet fumes on film that it is "a black scar" on all who served.

Maya Lin was attacked for being a woman, for being Chinese American (her parents, born in China, were professors at the University of Ohio in Athens, Ohio), and for being too young. But, after a pragmatic compromise was reached, her vision prevailed. The main monument area was constructed as she intended, and a more traditional "combat figures" statue was set to one side, with a large flag at the side entrance.

The result, unveiled in 1982, is stunning. It is worth the journey to Washington, DC to see and experience in person. It is very much a living memorial. People leave notes, photographs, letters, posies, dog tags, uniforms, teddy bears, and anything else you might imagine there every day.

The film follows Maya Lin's success after the Vietnam memorial, too. We see her Memphis civil rights memorial and her peace chapel at Juniata College.

Maya Lin also designed the Wave Field swales pictured above at the University of Michigan. She is very attuned to natural setting and context, and was a selection jurist for the World Trade Center Site Memorial competition. She owns and runs a studio in New York City and has a retreat in Colorado. I read somewhere that she loves the energies of Manhattan but also needs a remote place for more relaxed contemplation. Seems like the best of both worlds.

Near the end of the film, she raises the interesting question of whether there is a significant gender difference between what she calls the male eye and the female eye, and concludes, "we can only wait and see." Architecture, like engineering, has long been a male-dominated field, but as in most fields, women are making significant inroads over time, however slowly it seems.

Freida Lee Mock is to be commended for this fine documentary. She subsequently produced the excellent 1999 documentary Bird by Bird: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott.

[Note: This post was originally published on May 15, 2006.]

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

Monique Truong's 'The Book of Salt:' Take Two

Monique Truong's The Book of Salt (2003, 2004): a few pinches more.

“’I left Vietnam when I was twenty-two,’” said the man whose eyes were again back on the Seine. ‘I haven’t been back since.’ His voice trailed off, his words taking a quiet leap into the water below" (pages 91-92).  

Exile. Hasn't been back since. Because he can't, because of the danger or expense, or because he chooses not to? Questions for all exiles, expatriates, refugees and immigrants. In this case, the scene is from a bridge over the River Seine in Paris. 

“'He will always cook from all the places where he has been. It is his way of remembering the world'” (page 99). Sounds like a good idea to me.

“Men, believe me, are fragile in unexpected ways. Weak is another way of putting it” (page 125). 

“She is French, after all. Madame is a snob but not a prude” (page 132). 

“They promised her the words to an opera and the history of everyone who has ever lived” (page 181). 

“. . . the first thing Miss Toklas asked me was whether I had a recipe for gazpacho.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you learn it in Spain?’

‘No.’

‘Then it is best to forget it.’

‘Oh'" (page 211). 

Today's Rune: Signals.

Monique Truong's 'The Book of Salt:' Take One

Monique Truong's The Book of Salt (2003, 2004) takes her readers into the 1920s and 1930s milieu of French Indochina (Indochine française) and France through the eyes of a gay Vietnamese cook working in three spheres: the Governor-General's house, on board ocean-crossing ships, and in the service of two Americans-in-France -- Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. A novel that is both absorbing and consciousness-raising, The Book of Salt delivers.

Truong writes in vivid detail of both food and social relationships. We see Binh's family system (particularly his place in relation to his father, mother, and brother Minh), Binh's friendships with fellow travelers, and his arc of time working for the intense and fussy Stein and Toklas.  

Several characters tell stories, usually short ones, throughout the novel, with Binh commenting upon their style and manner. "That, for Bão, was of course the whole point of telling the basket weaver’s story. No matter who else may be present, Bão was the hero in all of his stories" (page 56). Don't we all know storytellers who put themselves in the starring role as hero?

Binh enjoyed, as a kid, his mother's creativity in storytelling; her tales rarely remained the same over time:  “While my mother’s hands followed a set routine, her stories never did. They were free to roam, to consider alternative routes, to invent their own ways home, especially in the retelling" (page 81). And: "For my mother and me, the story of Father Augustine was like any other, a thing to be repeated and retold. A story, after all, is best when shared, a gift in the truest sense of the word" (page 165). The Book of Salt is such a gift. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Welcome to the Year of the Fire Monkey

Dig it while you can, for the next Year of the Fire Monkey begins on February 5, 2076. These are some of the photos I took yesterday inside a cool Vietnamese oasis in North Texas. Here, sustenance is offered to ancestor spirits and the gods, presumably. (HTC cellphone shot). 

God (or boddhisattva) in a rocky place overlooking a pool. Women dressed in beautiful silk dresses were praying here, but I didn't want to disturb them in process. (HTC cellphone shot).

Temple complex by front entrance. (Nikon Coolpix L830). This is February!

Shiny cake! Really these are giant candle holders. In the evening (and maybe at other times, too), folks light candles, one for each departed soul among their loved ones. (Nikon Coolpix L830). 

The main complex from fifty paces back. I came across these sacred grounds by chance, synchronicity, fate, kismet, divine guidance or luck of the draw, right on the Eve of the Lunar New Year (Tết), coming back from a Chinese New Year celebration by a new route. Certainly better than getting vaporized by a meteorite, like that poor guy in India. (Nikon Coolpix L830). 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Psychedelic Saigon

Sublime Frquencies (Seattle, Washington, USA): Saigon Rock & Soul: Vietnamese Classic Tracks 1968-1974 2-LP SF060.

This collection is a mind-blower, but as soon as you think about it, everything makes perfect sense. Of course there was a music scene "on the scene" in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) during the US-Vietnam War. Of course there was more going on than that reflected in Hollywood movies about the war. Yes, there were and are Vietnamese people, too! South, North and everything in between.

I've known several Vietnamese Americans and all of them have had rich, complicated family histories. One was a stewardess who emigrated to the States in the late 1960s, having married a GI. Another, an entrepreneur in Philadelphia, was raised Catholic and brought with her two sisters by her mother -- initially to Omaha, Nebraska, in the early 1970s. Her father remained in country, fighting for the North. Texas has a large Vietnamese population, too, fanning out from eateries to goods and services businesses and into local colleges. I've worked with many Vietnamese students in Philadelphia, Detroit and in Texas, working on basic English writing skills, and am always struck by how poetic Vietnamese turns of phrase are, even when morphed into English. For these reasons and more, it's with great delight that I choose this collection for today's post. 

To quote from Sublime Frequencies' product description: Every song is a mini-masterpiece be it heavy acid rock psychedelia, horn and guitar drenched funk grooves, or gripping soul ballads reflective of life during wartime. The tracks that form this collection cut a window into a rich musical Vietnamese music scene that has long been obscured, and for the most part, forgotten. As the scope of electrified Vietnamese music from the 1960s and 1970s begins to be revealed, it becomes evident that this was among the heaviest and most eclectic musical scenes of South East Asia at the time. These songs tell of war, love and what war does to love. All of them were recorded in makeshift studios and even US army facilities while the Vietnam War raged – and were issued by a handful of Saigon record companies on vinyl 45s and reel or cassette tapes.

One of my favorite tracks so far is this one by Thành Mái: "Tóc Mai Sợi Vắn Sợi Dài (Long, Uneven Hair)." It's got a trippy tempo with strong vocal. For more from Sublime Frequencies, here's a link. I'm a big fan.



Today's Rune: Joy.                                         

Not Fade Away

Not Fade Away (2012), David Chase's theatrical film debut, has strong elements -- the historical backdrop of the 1960s, both locally (New Jersey) and broadly; James Gandolfini as the father of a nuclear family; three sisters from two families, all interesting; extended family and friends; ditch-digging workers; and period music, with visual footage -- but all in all, it can't surpass any single episode of Chase's The Sopranos on HBO, nor Mad Men on AMC. The problem is point of view. We hear narration from one of the sisters, which is fine, but the main focus is on a dingbat brother who lacks charisma, charm, drive or courage as he becomes part of a fledgling garage band.* Much better results would come from a closer, sustained look at life from the perspective of the James Gandolfini character -- he is put upon, he becomes physically sick, he has epiphanies -- or either of the Dietz sisters (Joy and Grace, played respectively by Dominique McElligott and Bella Heathcote), both Bohemians, one mentally unstable and the other rock steady.

I enjoyed the period feel and details of Not Fade Away, brief scenes of and banter about the Rolling Stones, blues and the times, and quips about Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup / Blow-Up (1966). About Antonioni's film, Grace Dietz suggests that the rustling of trees serves as musical soundtrack during a key scene, rather than a more heavy-handed signaling of how specifically to respond as film audience. Small victories for Not Fade Away, but better than a total wash.

Today's Rune: Warrior. *Of the band members, only Gene (Jack Huston) shows any spark.   

"He's Dead. I'm Crippled. You're Lost."

And now for something completely different: epic war movies. There are many, but the best ones are able to let history speak on a grand scale, without simplistic renderings or overly partisan agendas. The ones I prefer try to get at all sides of war, not just the immediate victors' or -- as is the case with most Vietnam movies, losers' -- angle.

Irish-born Cornelius Ryan (1920-1974), a young war correspondent during WWII, knew how to show the many faces of war with both deftness and fairness; he provided the basis for two excellent film adaptions. His books The Longest Day (1959), The Last Battle (1966), and A Bridge Too Far (1974) look at D-Day, the fall of Berlin, and Operation Market-Garden with a clear, wise eye.

Something of Cornelius Ryan's generous spirit is reflected in the following movies:

The Longest Day (1962). Today's header is derived from the Richard Burton character's final assessment of D-Day at the end of this great film, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who utilized no fewer than four directors in the field. All sides are given their due, which is incredibly refreshing. "Sometimes I wonder which side God is on. . ." -- Major General Gunther Blumentritt, June 6, 1944.

Zulu! (1964). Rorke's Drift. Michael Caine is superb. Zulu Dawn (1979). Depicts the Battle of Isandlwana, in which the Zulus defeated the British; not bad, either, but not as exciting as the earlier film.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Pearl Harbor from multiple perspectives.

Waterloo / Ватерлоо (1970). Napoleon vs. Wellington. A little ragged in parts, but a great story and amazing to see. Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Orson Welles.

A Bridge Too Far (1977). Near the end of WW2, Netherlands. Sean Connery, et al.

There are, of course, zillions of war movies, and I'm not even including documentaries. The caveat for the above films: viewers can learn a bit of narrative history in an entertaining way. There are also spectacular scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Paths of Glory (1957), and particularly the air assault on the VC village in Apocalypse Now! (1979). Two unconventional but extraordinary war films also worth mentioning here: Gillo Pontecorvo's La Battaglia di Algeri / The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Queimada / Burn! (1969) with Marlon Brando. Most of the war movies of the past twenty-five years either suck or carry a transparent agenda (eg., Oliver Stone) -- or I simply don't like the director/film. An excellent exception is: Der Untergang / Downfall (2004/2005), about the collapse of Nazi Germany from the German perspective. Let's not forget Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima / Iōtō Kara no Tegami (2006).

Today's Rune: Opening.

Michelangelo Antonioni: Zabriskie Point (Take II)

In Zabriskie Point (1970), Antonioni gives a sort of take (or double-take) on 

1) what's going on in the USA at the time; and 
2) how things change with time as new technologies and modes of exchange are injected into our daily lives. 

Some of this overlaps with his Italian-location films such as Il Grido / The Cry (1957) and Il deserto rosso / Red Desert (1964-1965). Some details are peculiar to American culture.

Many things are going on in Zabriskie Point, albeit often at what seems like a slow pace. Development, for instance. Rod Taylor (The Time Machine, 1960; The Birds, 1963) plays a quintessentially aggressive real estate developer, pushing out into the desert with "Sunny Dunes," a place to "get away from it all" -- despite issues of water shortages and general ecological impact. This development thread may be the most important thrust of the movie and remains completely relevant in the 21st century.

More specific to the latter 1960s and early 1970s, there are in Zabriskie Point organized upheavals on college campuses. These include the twin thrusts of Black Power and development of counterculture alternatives to "dominant paradigms."  The students are, for the most part, knowledgeable about what's going on with the Establishment, about civil rights and the then ongoing US-Vietnam War. We see some of this from time to time now (compare the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, and the highly organized Act Up campaigns), but there's nothing quite like eliminating the Draft and opening up voting to 18-21 year old citizens to take the air out of resistance to War and the Establishment in general. 

In the last post, I mentioned Antonioni's taking notice of the timeless gun obsession element of American culture, and there's more to express about this, but for now, it's worth noting another more time-specific element: letting it all hang out in small communes and collectives, with hippies, be-ins and that kind of stuff. Antonioni sure seems to sympathize with Daria (Daria Halprin) as she questions the Establishment status quo and wonders around on the road from LA to Phoenix. There are scenes involving her that remind one of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical (1967-1968), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and similar types of countercultural outpourings that even now seem to make a lot of people nervous.

Today's Rune: Signals.    

Smoking Typewriters II

When I first heard the name "Joe Pool Lake," I chuckled. It sounds so goofy and quaint. I wondered: What is it? Found out it's a North Texas reservoir and recreational area named after none other than Joe Pool, a Congressional Representative from North Texas (in the 1960s).

In the last couple of years, about the only time Joe Pool Lake has seemed to make news headlines has been when someone dies there. Items like: "Another one drowns in Joe Pool Lake" or: "Boat capsizes, three drown in Joe Pool Lake."

In any case, I finally finished John McMillian's Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University Press, 2011). In it, Representative Joe Pool makes a couple of comical appearances as a rabid opponent of the Sixties underground press. Apparently he hated actual free speech and attacked anyone opposed to the US-Vietnam War. In Chapter 5 ("Either We Have Freedom of the Press . . . or We Don't Have Freedom of the Press"), Pool is quoted as going after the Underground Press Syndicate, an underground version of Associated Press and United Press International wire services, in 1967.

Here's Joe Pool: "The plan of this Underground Press Syndicate is to take advantage of that part of the First Amendment which protects newspapers and gives them freedom of press."  Doh! So what's the problem with free speech in Texas? According to Joe Pool, "These smut sheets are today's Molotov cocktails thrown at respectability in our nation . . . They encourage depravity and irresponsibility . . ." (Smoking Typewriters, page 129).

What a dope. 

So what happened to Joe Pool? About six months after the Tet Offensive began in early 1968, he keeled over dead in Houston, Texas, age 57, at the airport.

Of Joe Pool: ". . . outspoken critic of Vietnam war protesters and resisters to the draft . . . member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities . . . often said he would vote for a declaration of war against North Vietnam." ("REP. JOE POOL DIES SUDDENLY," Gettysburg Times, July 16, 1968). 

If only more Texas politicians were as adamant about protecting the First Amendment as they are about bandying about the Second . . . but alas, they'd rather go jump in Joe Pool Lake, and drown.

Today's Rune: Signals.     
   

Tết MMXIII

Chúc mừng năm mới: and so begins the Feast of the First Morning of the Year of the Water Snake, the new lunar calendar, and here we go . . . 

We blunder about within concepts of time that are mind-bending precisely because they run concurrently, simultaneously, one through another. Solar time, lunar time. Solar calendar, lunar calendar.

It's as tricky trying to unravel and cross-check calendars as it is to count backwards through "B.C." years, such as instantly comparing 33 B.C. (Before Christ) to 33 "C.E."  (Common Era).

Does anything really hold up if you look at it very closely?

But we can do it regardless. Damn the torpedoes! Somehow, it's possible to read handwritten scrawl and keyboarded fonts, decipher Roman numbers and Indo-Arabic numerals. Gestalt that and do it anyway.

Like leap of faith, fate, wraith, date, night, wight, deep, sleep. Dream on.

If you schedule yourself according to the twelve-month solar calendar, the thirteen-month lunar calendar is always shifting. End result?  Bewilderment. Twelve apostles, and Jesus makes thirteen. Twelve jurors. Baker's dozen. Never two without three.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.
   

Eve of the Lunar New Year

Early on this eve of the Lunar New Year (Year of the Water Snake) 2013, I journeyed out to Grand Prairie, Texas, at the suggestion of a Vietnamese entrepreneur from Haltom City. He described the basics of what would be going on, and he was completely accurate.

Before arriving at "Asian Time Square," I had to cross through a large chunk of Grand Prairie that is neither grand nor prairie, although in between urban sprawl, a myriad of nondescript warehouses and broken down, overladen roads, you can see from the lay of the land that yes, there once was a big open area of slightly rolling hills. 

Once inside Asian Time Square, a mall-sized socioeconomic space gussied up for the Lunar New Year, I walked around to the sight, sound and aroma of snapping firecrackers, sizzling meats and gao dumplings, neon lights and small games of chance and fortune. Whole foods were on display at the back of a large all-purpose interior supermarket, where catfish swam behind hand-drawn price-per-pound signs and there were frozen dead chickens that actually looked like frozen dead chickens, ready to be thawed, cooked and eaten. Kind of refreshing, keeping it real and not on the "chicken nugget" side of fast food presentation. Yes, Virginia, those nuggets were once alive!

My best find for takeaway was Le Jing G7 Vietnamese coffee "using only the choicest coffee beans from Buon Ma Thuot, Vietnam's legendary basaltic region." Also good: handmade bánh mì, a sort of Vietnamese Po' Boy that's delicious. Glad I checked it out.

Today's Rune: Signals.      

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes

I'm far enough into Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (Grove Press, 2010) to form an initial response. It's an absorbing read, riveting, filled with meticulous detail. Visceral. Leeches and jungle rot. Soldiers sizing each other up, trying to figure out what's going on around them.  Well worth checking out. A lot of telling details about the US-Vietnam War at the micro level, many of them new to me, for sure.

Today's Rune: Signals.

One Year Later: Lightnin' Hopkins Redux

I thoroughly enjoyed Alan Govenar's Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life and Blues (Chicago Review Press, 2010). Govenar scoured city and country to find every bit of information he could; he dug through company records, conducted numerous interviews and sifted through a mountain of liner notes and articles.

Combined with an extended engagement with Hopkins' recorded output -- even a reasonable sampling -- this biographical study will give anyone interested a good feel for the iconic bluesman. 

One also glimpses how the music show business worked from the 1940s into the 1980s, in the studio and on the road. Some keen observations by Ed Pearl, owner of Ash Grove, a West Coast oasis for live performances at 8162 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles that ran from 1958 to 1973: "He [Hopkins] knew his limitations . . . and he was happy to be part of his community, but he knew there was a bigger world out there. He thought people should be equal and he thought . . . poor people should have more. And everyone is a child of God. He was against the Vietnam war" (page 194, from 2008 Govenar interview). 

Another noteworthy aspect of Lightnin' Hopkins' life: his thirty-five year relationship, until his death, with Antoinette Charles. She was a love of his life, and strong, if not the only one; given that she was married to someone else for the same duration, with kids, it was the same for her.

 














As Govenar points out emphatically, not all of the bluesman's recorded output is of equal quality. Delving into his discography (and there's a comprehensive one included), it's a good idea to choose carefully. The most recent collection I've been listening to features him on electric guitar (Hopkins' preferred style): Lightnin' Hopkins, Rainy Day In Houston (2000), recordings from 1955, 1961 and 1968. This one has three of my favorite of his topical tracks: "War Is Starting Again," "The World's In A Tangle" and "Vietnam War."

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

The First and Last Casualties

Coverage of wars and poverty, of competing ideas and political conflict is all over the map.  Attention Deficit Disorder and entropy on one hand, pre-existing ideological prejudices and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder on the other.  Avoidance on the one hand, oversaturation on the other.

Some of the most memorable wartime investigative journalism can be epitomized by the work of Seymour Hersch, who has, during his career, written a number of penetrating stories for United Press International (UPI), the Associated Press (AP), The New York Times, The New Yorker, and more. Prime examples: exposing the My Lai Massacre (1968). Investigating the context of what led to the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (1983). Digging into the false pretenses and cynical manipulation of public perceptions by the Bush-Cheney Administation that led to the Iraq War (2003-2011). Delving into the ghoulish facts of the Abu Ghraib POW scandal. And so forth. This is not to say that Hersch is always completely accurate in his reporting, but rather that he's done more good investigative work relating to war and abuse of power than most. Under the banner of the First Amendment, we need more people doing this kind of work.

Today's Rune: Flow.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975: Take Two

Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) begins with footage from 1967 when the US population is 210 million (it's now 312 million at the time of this posting) at the height of the US-Vietnam War, with a military draft in place and 525,000 American soldiers deployed in Vietnam.

Swedish archival footage gives us fresh glimpses at people, places and events, including stellar footage of Stokely Carmichael (or Kwame Ture, 1941-1998, pictured above) and his mother -- she has a fascinating Trinidid-New York City hybrid accent, while he retains a subtler Trinidadian lilt. When asked in Paris if he fears being imprisoned upon his return to the USA, he responds, "I was born in jail." He relocates to West Africa in 1969. 

Martin Luther King is clearly against the US-Vietnam War, as Angela Davis notes in narration made for parts of the documentary. His "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church, NYC on April 4, 1967 -- exactly one year to the day before his assassination in Memphis -- epitomizes his overall stance: "We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

There's footage of MLK and Harry Belafonte meeting with King Gustaf VI Adolf (1882-1973) of Sweden in Stockholm, reminding us of ongoing Swedish support for human and civil rights as well as the international dimensions of American society.

Black Power kicks into high gear when MLK is killed in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive and sometimes called Revolutionary Year Zero. (To be continued).

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.       

Göran Olsson: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 brings to light exciting and empathetic archival footage of the movement from a Swedish perspective. I loved it. There's the backdrop of the US-Vietnam War, riots, upheaval and assassination, the Black Panthers and Attica Prison uprising, with contemporary commentators. More to say about it, with more details -- soon. Anyone interested in human/civil rights and/or the 1960s and 1970s would probably dig this for any number of reasons. I sure did.  

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

Go Tell the Spartans: Surrealistic Elements

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Let Ted Post's Go Tell the Spartans marinate a little and what new observations develop? Surrealistic bits rise to the top, for one thing. Take the opium-addled character, Corporal Abraham Lincoln (played by Dennis Howard). At one point in the film, he scrambles up the wooden watchtower at Muc Wa and regales the garrison with his own special version of presidential speechmaking, until a mortar round blows him off course.
  

Then there's the matter of the "river" and related white crosses. When the mixed Vietnamese and American detachment first arrives at the old French outpost at Muc Wa, we see them crossing a stream henceforth referred to as a "river." As they move equipment in and take charge of the place, one can see white crosses on the banks and even in the water, or so it seems. Are they real? No one in the film seems to notice; instead, two American soldiers discuss the formal French cemetery, its headboard inscribed with a French translation of a Greek memorial to the 300 Spartans killed at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. At Muc Wa when the 1964 troops arrive, there are 302 marked graves in the cemetery. Do these include the ones on the riverbank?  

 

On right: Sergeant Oleonowski (Jonathan Goldsmith) -- aka "The Most Interesting Man in the World!" Here, he's got on French-derived Tigerstripe camouflage and hand grenades ready to be thrown. See Dos Equis beer ads for more.             

Above: The Vietnamese Girl (aka Butterfly) and behind her, the Old Man with Ho Chi Minh beard. On the far right, "Cowboy." Each of these three Vietnamese characters has an important role to play, with twists along the way.  



One-eyed Jack -- actually referred to as "one-eyed Charlie." Is he real? Seems to be a veteran of the Viet Minh days, First Indochina War, survivor of the 1953 fighting at Muc Wa. Apparently he is a sort of wraith-like sentinel left to keep his one good eye on the post. In any case, he's there early and he's there late and he seems to be the one who leaves a message in the French cemetery that reads, more or less, "Yankee Go Home!"

Today's Rune: Journey.   

Go Tell the Spartans

Ted Post's Go Tell the Spartans (1978), adapted from Incident at Muc Wa, a 1967 novel by Daniel Ford, is from those I've seen the most thoughtful American feature film yet made about the US-Vietnam War. Its strong script overcomes a relatively low budget and production values that look more like something from a 1970s TV series such as M*A*S*H than a big-budget blockbuster like Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). In fact, the latter's budget was twenty times higher, yet Apocalypse Now is nowhere near as coherent and down-to-earth as Go Tell the Spartans.   

                                                                                                                                                             

Burt Lancaster stars in Go Tell the Spartans, and he's on top of his game as a crusty Korean War veteran charged with sending a motley Vietnamese and American detachment into the middle of nowhere to reoccupy an old French outpost last fought over in 1953, all on a whim of the high command. It's now 1964, well before the major US troop buildups, but the story arc serves as a microcosm of the larger war to come. And it includes Vietnamese soldiers and civilians as important characters, key to understanding the conflict -- doh!  Multiple perspectives -- something I love to see in a war movie. Go Tell the Spartans is the closest in US-Vietnam War movies to the best World War II movies, ones like Oliver Hirschbiegel's Der Untergang / Downfall (2004) and Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).   

                                                                                                                                                                   

Craig Wesson and Burt Lancaster as American soldiers, two of the strongest characters in Go Tell the Spartans. 

 

In Go Tell the Spartans, American GIs refer to the Vietnamese -- friend and foe alike -- as "dinks," "gooks," "Charlie" and "slopes." From the Viet Cong point of view, sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me. ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) soldiers are depicted as capable, though "Cowboy," their interpreter and de facto squad leader, "gets his jollies" torturing suspected VC and, in one instance, beheading a wounded enemy. Militiamen are poorly armed and remain in civilian clothes, but are seen as doing the best they can regardless. The only real foolishness, beyond a certain naïveté shared by several of the American GIs about the nature of the war unfolding, comes with the higher ups, both South Vietnamese and American. Unfortunately, Go Tell the Spartans could easily be updated to include the current Afghanistan War, with drones added. The more things change . . .

Today's Rune: Partnership.