This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Click on the headline to link to an Associated Press (AP) report on the situation in France (as of October 21, 2010) as the strikers, including student supporters, take to the streets again, and close down public faculties.
Markin comment:
Below is a repost of an October 20, 2010 entry. The main points still stand. Now more than ever the struggle for a workers government is posed. More, later.
Earlier in the day (October 20) I wrote a short commentary concerning a three-point program for home foreclosure relief for the working class in America in order to survive as a class to fight another day. There I noted that one, as least this one, me, expected that the social tinder that has been just below the surface of American society for the past several years would have exploded by now, and that we would have the capitalists on the run, or at least give them a first scare. I also note in that commentary that if the capitalists couldn’t see their way clear to doing the right thing, then they should move on over and keep out of our way. I further noted that that last point would take hard-bitten communists to implement though. The French working class, now joined by students who can foretaste their futures under the new pension plan, in their current defensive struggles to save their pension system and uphold their right to retire before they die, show the way forward for the American working class. Although there too hard-bitten communists are needed to finish the deal. Forward. Victory to the worker and student strikers! Sarkozy Hands Off The Strikers!Fight for a revolutionary workers party that fights for a workers government
Once Again On The
Legend-Busting Trail-This Time One Don Juan-With Errol Flynn’s The Adventures
Of Don Juan (1948) In Mind-A Film Review-Of Sorts
DVD Review
BY Will Bradley
The Adventures of Don Juan,
starring Errol Flynn, Vivica Lindsfor, 1948
[Seth Garth reminded me
recently that in this journalism business, this writing for publication, you
have to find some niche, some “hook” as he said not only for the piece itself
but for you to gain recognition for some particular aspect of the realm of
ideas. It seems that as of late I am becoming the “go-to” guy to debunk or
clarify various legends that have come down to us and which get accepted fairly
easily by those who thrill to legends, myths and religious expressions. Greg
Green has given me the “green light” to pursue this work as he believes that
this looks like my niche- and my “ticket” to a by-line. So be it. W.B.]
*********
Apparently I am the
debunker-in chief of various legends and other signs of humankind’s inability
to get past legends, myths and other religious expressions for explanation of
the ton of stuff even now we don’t know, whether consciously or not, the
unknown. At least I hold that position at this publication it seems after
having to take fellow writer Lance Lawrence to task for telling the tale about
Johnny Cielo, the so-called legendary aviator whom he touted based on the
memories of some rum-dum he met in a bar in Miami who led him by the nose maybe
for just a few drinks when he was hard-up for a story. You can see my retort in
the archives here for September 30, 2018. (Lance was on the bum after busting
up on a big drug cartel story when the informants never showed up probably
re-thinking their options in the light of their probably fates if they were
exposed. In any case Lance was hungry for copy having been on the sidelines for
a while with a threat of losing his by-line if he didn’t come up with something.
I have been there myself although I don’t have a by-line yet but may get one in
this goddam cutthroat business at Lance’s expense.)
I have a certain history on
this subject of fake legends having exposed a modern- day so-called Robin Hood
from around where I grew up by the name of Pretty James Preston (real name
except the “Pretty” since he was very good-looking even in his police mug and
had more than one gal swooning over him, and protecting him with hide-outs and
alibis) whose claim to fame was that he robbed banks and other places where
hard cash was located like department stores in those days in the time-honored
tradition except alone and in broad
daylight. Of course it is easy to break the legend of modern day figures since
there is a fair amount of paper trail involved. In James’ case he had been
touted by his voluntary press agent Scott Allan who worked as a reporter for
the North Adamsville Ledger who had
known Pretty as a young man, as a schoolboy, and who was also tired of the dead-beat
police beat for the newspaper and so got carried away with his reportage. Let
Pretty James off the hook and let him become some later day Robin Hood based on
what had been his leaving a fifty-cent tip for some sullen waitress who he had
an eye on, maybe didn’t jackroll some old guy when cash was tight and who
didn’t pistol whip some poor bank clerk. His exploits like paying rent for
those who lived in “the projects” where he grew up, sending milk and food to
elementary school kids and sending dough along to Sacred Heart parish was all
hooey, all made-up bullshit. By the way this has nothing to do with his
so-called legend but the real Pretty Boy blew away four bank customers for no
good reason except they were in the way on his last caper before going down in
a hail of bullets. Even Scott Allan couldn’t pretty up Pretty Boy on that
one.
Like I said modern-day
legends are easier to bust than the old hoary ones like Robin Hood and the
subject of this piece one Don Juan, or maybe not “one” since my investigations
to be detailed below point to multiple sightings-and sighings. Take Lance’s
fatal pitch on behalf of Johnny Cielo. He egged on the legend created by a
drunken sot met one hard-scrabble night in a gin mill in Miami after falling
down on another more important piece when his people didn’t show. His source
Billy just unwound on him, probably gaining steam as the evening wore on and
they both got drunker. Lance made the cardinal error, strangely not uncommon in
this damn cutthroat business and which I had to my own regret did one time as
well, of not checking sources, of not seeing what was myth and what was true if
anything.
In a capsule Johnny Cielo’s
legend centered on two key points-his “affair” with 1930s and 1940s Hollywood
glamour queen and World War II G.I. wet dream pin-up girl Rita Haywood who
allegedly in a period when she was not seen around Hollywood for a while before
marrying the Aga Khan had followed Johnny down to Central America, to Barranca
after he had run out of options in the States (had had a no-no reputation for
drug smuggling). Never happened, and Lance should have seen that from minute
one, and bells should have rung, rung loudly. What really happened beside
Johnny probably like every other red-blooded guy at the time having Rita’s
photo in his locker, that is about how close he came to her, was he brought
some tramp, some bar girl or whorehouse denizen met who knows where who was
beautiful and looked like Rita and Johnny promoted her as the real deal. The
other later long after he ditched “Rita” legend was that he had run guns to
Fidel and his guys in the Sierra Madres in the late 1950s and had fallen into
the deep blue sea in the Caribbean on some mission. Reality: Johnny had ditched
his plane and passengers while he was doing his real job of ferrying tourists
between Key West and Naples down in Florida. See where things get out of
hand.
As I said previously
breaking down old-time legends, here the Robin Hood legend from the12th century
is a much tougher matter. Really a
thankless task since even with all kinds of at least circumstantial evidence
the vast majority of humankind will still take the legend as good coin. Still
if one can one has to set the record as straight as possible. The big storyline
on this Robin Hood, or whatever his name was since he worked under many aliases
in his business, he “robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.” Pure fantasy
both before and after King Richard’s return and grant of land and other goodies
which according to church and manor records made him one of the richest and
greediest men in England. The records tell it all on the after side and Robin
would not be the first to go from decent guy to bum of the month as he aged and
grew fatter in many ways but he early side is more problematic. The only
official record is Friar Tuck’s monastery record which shows one Robert
Woodson, Hood’s real name, giving the equivalent of two buck to the place. Not
exactly a big hand out considering he is estimated to have robbed every wealthy
traveler who dared to come within twenty miles of his Sherwood Forest base of
operations.
Okay on to today’s balloon
bursting. The busting of the Don Juan legend. First off try as I might I could
find no listing for one Don Juan de la Marca, the name of the person the legend
goes under. The Spanish in that period kept excellent records, remember these
were the guys who ran the Inquisition and recorded every goddam sound cried out
in terror and pain so that made me think that maybe he was working under
another name or that there were several Don Juans, not improbable. The story
goes, at least the cinematic story, that he was a caddish love them and leave
them guy galivanting around Europe, leaving his seed, until his home country queen
knocked him for a loop (for a while) and he became something of a Spanish
patriot against the likes of the mysterious and sinister Duke of Lorca who had
the King’s ear and kept the Queen at bay. Enter Don Juan into the lists in
defense of Queen and realm. Don Juan allegedly was a great swordsman (of the
steel kind not of the kind the prurient reader might think) and was said to
have been permitted to run the academy at court producing young swordsmen
defenders of the realm. Through that connection he was able to rouse the better
elements and make short work of the Duke and his paid mercenaries. Putting
country above self, Don Juan who was supposedly a lover of the Queen, platonic
of course, left the court shortly thereafter rather than tempting the Queen in
some senseless love affair. Off to other romantic conquests.
Reality hits one in the
face hard on this one since it involved some coerced confessions from young
women who were not very world wary or wise. As mentioned earlier there is no
record of a Don Juan de la Marca which after exhaustive research now makes
sense because the whole legend was a hoax, a figment of the imagination of a
bunch of young women who would probably swear to this day they had been
ravished by-somebody. Seemingly it all started at the Convent of Saint Mary’s
(English translation) in rural Cordoba. The young women there, boarders, were
not headed for the nunnery but were being farmed off by their parents for
reasons ranging from keeping them out of temptation’s way to getting rid of
unwanted witnesses to their debaucheries.
A very curious lot of mainly
teenage girls with time on their hands and many dreamy moments. According to
the accounts from the investigation team, the Inquisition boys, one girl, Dona
Maria, spied a lightly-bearded slender young man crossing a field and called
out to him. He answered and went away, only to show up again a day later
walking that same field. Same call out, same walk away. Truth: the young man on
closer inspection was a lout, a youth with warts and all so as he approached the
convent Dona Maria screamed out she had been ravished by the lad. She needed
some back-up for her bogus accusations and enlisted some of her convent mates
into claiming the young bearded lad had ravished them as well. That was how the
rumor got started and the hysterics began as young girls and women in similar
isolated desperately hormonal situations, not always in cloistered convents,
started clamoring the same set of lies about this long gone and who knows what
happened to him youth. The long and short of it was that every Tom, Dick and
Harry (English translations) used that bit as his calling card among his
friends that they were the Don Juan figures even if they were not from Cordoba,
or Spain for that matter. Whoever claimed to be saving the Queen at court from
the intrigues of Don Lorca is just another holy goof impostor, a con man. You
heard it hear for all the good it will for those many young women today who have
their imaginations tweaked by a good-looking guy.
[Postscript: one of my
fellow reporters at another publication whose name I will not mention but who
is known to take particular pleasure in skewering her fellow reviewers has
taken me to task for not checking the Spanish Court Record Almanac where I
would find one Don Juan de la Marco’s name prominently described as master of
the sword (again of the steel variety) and as having been given various awards
for bravery. A look at this ancient dusty book does show such a name but if
that hard-pressed fellow reporter had read further to the man’s age of
sixty-two she might have saved herself some embarrassment trying to skewer me
in this cutthroat business. Moreover, Madame Reviewer might have put her
eyeglasses on to find that the person listed was not only sixty-two years of
age but the name listed was Don Juan de la Marlo, a very different person, and
no threat to that youthful lightly-bearded youth crossing some forlorn field of
some young maiden’s sex-starved imagination legend. W.B.]
The High White Note Blowing
Out To The China Seas-The Film Adaptation Of Pearl S. Buck’s “China Sky” (1945)-
A Review
DVD Review
By Josie Davis
China Sky, starring
Randolph Scott, Ruth Warrick, Ellen Drew, Anthony Quinn, 1945
Although I am fairly new to the film reviewing
business, to journalism in general having just finished up my graduate program
at Boston University’s School of Communications I find it hard to believe what
the older writers keep telling me as words of advice.To watch my back, to watch out for fellow
reviewers who will skewer my work just to get ahead, just to beat someone in
what they have all called a cutthroat, drag down business. The idea behind
their cautions seems to center on the notion that nobody really needs to read a
film review, everybody has a subjective point of view on the subject matter of
a film and the only way to get out from under the rock is to take dead aim at
somebody else’s work in order to do what they call “move up the food chain.”
Here is what is ironic about all of what they say. I
was assigned this old- time film, China
Sky, by the site manager mostly because nobody else wanted to do the review
and because if I messed up, the site manager’s words, nobody would notice some
raw rookie errors anyway. After viewing the film I was puzzled, could not
figure out how to write the review up since the film seemed very dated and
weird. Weird since the film, as the title indicated, was about and set in China
during World War II, during the time Japan was trying to make all of Asia its
feeding grounds. Yet several of the main actors like Anthony Quinn known to me
from a cinema class where we watched and critiqued Zorba the Greek who were obviously not Chinese were made up to look
that way rather than have real Chinese actors in the roles.
One day at the water cooler I introduced myself to
some older writers who were talking about the modern film Black Panther and when I had an opportunity I asked what I should
do about the odd film I had been given to review. Most of them, actually all of
them except Si Lannon, walked away after basically telling that it was my
problem and that if I wanted to get ahead in the profession I had better figure
out a way to deal with the film or they would be more than willing to rip it
apart to show me how tough this “racket” really was. Si told me not to listen
to them because that was all an act. They just didn’t want to be bothered
“mentoring” a rookie on a turkey like China
Sky. Si gave me some advice which I think is reflected in this review-if
all else fails then use the old “slice of life” fall back. By that he meant if
I couldn’t figure a “hook” is what he, they call it to just go on and on about
the plotline of the film and move on. Thanks, Si who is proof that whatever
else some people in this business are not out to cut everybody else’s
throat.
I remember, because I asked
my mother, that my grandmother used to have many of Pearl S. Buck’s books on
her shelf. I might have glanced through a couple, I remember one The Good Earth I started to read but
gave it up because it was hard to follow when I was a teenager, didn’t speak to
me about the China I had heard about. I believe that most of Buck’s books were
based on China experiences and represented a Western missionary come to help
the heathens to the good life way of looking at that then benighted country. China Sky falls into that same category.
I have already mentioned the use of Western actors in some roles as Chinese but
also that the Chinese people are portrayed as mere props for the in this case
Americans to bring into the modern world.
Si told me to get the “boy
meets girl” part out of the way first. I already knew from the tons of films
that I had seen in classes and on my own that an extraordinary number of films,
especially from Hollywood back in the 1930s and 1940s depended on that theme.
Here that theme got a serious work- out in the relationship between the two
doctors, one male, Thompson, played by ruggedly handsome Randolph Scott and one
female, Durant, played by quietly beautiful Ruth Warrick. From scene one, where
he is absent off in America to raise money for medical equipment everybody and
their sister and brother knows she loves him. But that love is thwarted first
by their professional relationship and secondly when the good doctor does
appear he has a brand- new wife, Laura, played by fetching Ellen Drew. Done
for. No, through the course of the film as Laura cannot adjust to the wartime deprivations
and misery Doc Thompson starts to see the light, starts to see that he had made
a mistake and should have taken his fellow doctor will all hands. But brave Doc
Durant will just pine away and be the good soldier.
Of course in the end Laura
will fall down and the two fated doctors will come together. There is also a
secondary love interest between the Chinese guerilla leader, played by Anthony
Quinn in Chinese make-up and one of the nurses, also in Chinese make-up, which
will also get happily resolved when the treacherous native doctor she is
betrothed to is killed after betraying the hospital and town to a “wily”
Japanese POW.
As already foreshadowed
this film is a wartime romance set in World War II China when the Japanese were
fighting for control of the whole vast country and the town where all the
action takes place is near where the Chinese partisans have their supply dumps.
Since the Japanese are trying to push through holding that position is a must
for them. That however means that the town took a terrible beating from the
Japanese air forces bombing the hell out of everything that moved-including the
American-sponsored hospital. The wartime action spins around that senior
Japanese POW who the guerrillas want to put on trial for war crimes. He, as an
officer, tried every way to get information back to his side about the location
of the supply dumps. Including playing on the racial and romantic animosities
of the chief native doctor (who was actually Korean and whose unknown father
was Japanese). Naturally the good guys led by Doc Thompson and the guerrilla
chief beat back the bastardly Japanese. You already know the love story part
where Doc Thompson’s desperate to leave wife acted as a foil for treachery with
the Korean doctor in order to get her and Doc out of the country so that part
is done.
Final note, footnote, for
the “slice of life” idea from Si. We live in an age more concerned about what
we call political correctness than back in the 1940s so some of the stereotypes
are pretty raw. The superiority of Americans over mainly prop Asians. The
contempt for the average people expressed by Laura. The wily treacherous
Japanese and the sullen Korean. But above all that use of Western actors in
Chinese make-up reminiscent of whites in blackface tells me that this film is
certainly a period piece. That is that for a first review. Hope I survive.
The Answer My Friend Id
Blowing (No Clipped “G”) In The Wind-The Influence Of Bob Dylan’s “The Times
They Are A-Changin’” On The “Generation of’68”-The Best Part Of That Cohort
[An encore of two pieces on this subject and like the Summer of Love, 1967 frenzy at this publication, time to move on and let others give their choices without further prompting. S.G. ]
By Seth Garth
No question this
publication both in its former hard copy editions and now more so in the
on-line editions as the, ouch, 50th anniversary of many signature
events for the “Generation of ‘68” have come and gone that the whole period of
the 1950s and 1960s had gotten a full airing. Has been dissected, deflected,
inspected, reflected and even rejected beyond compare. That is not to say that this
trend won’t continue if for no other reason that the demographics and actual
readership response indicate that people still have a desire to not forget
their pasts, their youth.
(Under the new site manager
Greg Green, despite what I consider all good sense having worked under
taskmaster Allan Jackson, we are encouraged to give this blessed readership
some inside dope, no, no that kind, about how things are run these days in an
on-line publication. With that okay in mind there was a huge controversy that
put the last sentence in the above paragraph in some perspective recently when Greg
for whatever ill-begotten reason thought that he would try to draw in younger
audiences by catering to their predilections-for comic book character movies,
video games, graphic novels and trendy music and got nothing but serious
blow-back from those who have supported this publication financially and
otherwise both in hard copy times and now on-line. What that means as the target
demographic fades is another question and maybe one for a future generation who
might take over the operation. Or perhaps like many operations this one will
not outlast its creators- and their purposes.)
Today’s 1960s question, a
question that I have asked over the years and so I drew the assignment to
address the issue-who was the voice of the 1960s. Who or what. Was it the
lunchroom sit-inners and Freedom Riders, what about the hippies (which I
counted myself as one for a time), was it SDS, the various Weather
configurations, acid, rock, folk rock, folk, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman,
Grace Slick, hell the Three Js-Joplin, Jimi, Jim as in Morrison and the like.
Or maybe it was a mood, a mood of disenchantment about a world that seemed out
of our control, which seemed to be running without any input from us, without
us even being asked. My candidate, and not my only candidate but a recent NPR Morning Edition segment brought the
question to mind (see above link), is a song, a song created by Bob Dylan in
the early 1960s which was really a clarion call to action on our part, or the
best part of our generation-The Times
They Are A-Changin’.
I am not sure if Bob Dylan
started out with some oversized desire to be the “voice” of his generation. He
certainly blew the whole thing off later after his motorcycle accident and
still later when he became a recluse even if he did 200 shows a year, maybe
sullen introvert is better, actually maybe his own press agent giving out
dribbles is even better but that song, that “anthem” sticks in memory as a
decisive summing up of what I was feeling at the time. (And apparently has
found resonance with a new generation of activists via the March for Our Lives
movement and other youth-driven movements.) As a kid I was antsy to do
something, especially once I saw graphic footage on commercial television of
young black kids being water-hosed, beaten with police clubs and bitten by dogs down in the South simply
for looking for some rough justice in this wicked old world. Those images, and
those of the brave lunch-room sitters and Freedom bus riders were stark and
compelling. They and my disquiet over nuclear bombs which were a lot scarier
then when there were serious confrontations which put them in play and concern
that what bothered me about having no say, about things not being addressed
galvanized me.
The song “spoke to me” as
it might not have earlier or later. It had the hopeful ring of a promise of a
newer world. That didn’t happen or happen in ways that would have helped the
mass of humanity but for that moment I flipped out every time I heard it played
on the radio or on my old vinyl records record-player. Other songs, events,
moods, later would overtake this song’s sentiment but I was there at the
creation. Remember that, please.
***********
Once Again Haunted By The
Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When
The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon
By Seth Garth
I have been haunted
recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by
either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when
I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to
the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the drearies at
the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7th
Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor
exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of
Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom
church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and
injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who
presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not
had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards
who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact
on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at
the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing
water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on
peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow
system which deprived them of their civil rights.
Those events galvanized me
into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in
an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of
Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since
a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a
class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from
Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my
surprise given where she came from, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked
although I only knew her slightly since she was “in” with the social butterfly
crowd which we Acre boys avoided like the plague, or they avoided us take your
pick). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a
dozen articlesI have done over the past
few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a
sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung
around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black
people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of
time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word
which needs no explanation here and which was the “term of art” in reference to
black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)
In many ways I think I only
survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social
matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to
intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going”
steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What
was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those
Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on
Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights
struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting
drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went
until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S.
Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had
done that.
The other recent occurrence
that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the
American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of
folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The
Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival
of late in newer social movements like the kids getting scared out of their wits
with guns running amok and getting serious about gun control). No question for
those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose
this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what
Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson
call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about
obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the
social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to
wherever we thought we were going.
I mentioned in that
previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may
have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life
he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the
Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy
is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the
best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily
defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those
lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night
worrying about the world and our place in the sun.
For a long time, probably
far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison,
shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and
headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what
was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after
some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that
Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not
my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again
probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that
meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that
the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many
manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would
carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin,
hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at
me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide
of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as
likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man”
(new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down
like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my
ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.
So I’ll be damned right now
if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem,
or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer.
Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this
matter.
In The Age Of Tweeter
Rant-Defend The Enlightenment Like Your Life Depended On-It Does-“A Royal
Affair” (2012) Better-“En Kongelig Affaere”-A Film Review
DVD Review
BY Fritz Taylor
“A Royal Affair” Better-“En
Kongelig Affaere”
I have on more than one
occasion mentioned that I am a child of rock and roll, a child of the classic
age of rock in the 1950s which was the first jailbreak movement that led my
Generation of ’68 “astray” (in the very best sense of the word). I am, as
becomes more necessary to declare each day in this crazy world of alternate
facts, lies, and low-grade bullshit as my grandfather was fond of saying when
he was pissed off at what passed for civil discourse in his time, a child of
the Enlightenment. Yes the 18th century movement of men and women
who under great pressure (and maybe the pains of torture and exile) tried to
bring some rational discourse to the way people were governed, the way people
in civil society dealt with other and some kind of funny idea that equality of
person was something humankind could and should aspire to achieve.
Now being a good old boy
growing up from down in Fulton County, Georgia there was no way that I started
out life as a child of the Enlightenment unlike the ease which I slipped into
being a child of rock and roll. That my friends came courtesy of Uncle Sam,
specifically his “request” that I lay down my life for him in the jungles of
Vietnam back in1966-1967. (That “request” business really a gag since I
volunteered under duress, the duress being directed from a military proud
grandfather, the same one fond of saying low-grade bullshit when he was pissed,
although subsequently I would come to understand that almost every young man of
my Generation of ’68 made decisions under duress under the thunder clouds of a
seemingly endless war.)
I was as gung-ho as any
previous generation of Taylor male-until-until I got over there, got in
-country and came to realize before my eighteen months tour was over (I
extended for another six months against the normal year to get an early out
they were offering both to get re-ups and to get grunts to stay in country against
all good sense) that I had no quarrel with these people and nobody else really
did either. That would lead to my post-military service “conversion” to getting
on the right side of the angels, getting to understand a whole bunch of stuff
like the Enlightenment, a word when I was a kid I had probably never heard
of-certainly didn’t act upon any of its ideas. Those lessons though just didn’t
come out of the blue but through my involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against
the War (VVAW), you know, the organization ex-Secretary of State John Kerry
helped organize in his sunnier days and through coming north to Boston and then
west to Frisco. My first “tutor” has a name, the late Peter Paul Markin who I
met down in Washington on a G.I. anti-war march and when he fell down of his
hubris and what he called “wanting habits” writers here like Sam Lowell, Seth
Garth and Josh Breslin picked up the slack.
Now what does all of this
talk of Enlightenment have to do with reviewing a Danish film, in English A Royal Affair assigned to me by site
manager Greg Green for whatever reason he thought I would be suitable for doing
such heavy lifting. Folks that have seen my name here know that I am something
of a military and social justice writer and not a damn film reviewer like Sam
Lowell who has spent his whole freaking career blasting out pieces about every
kind of god-awful film. The “hook” Greg used was that part of the plot-line of
the film was an attempt by people at the Danish court, royal or otherwise to
bring Enlightenment values to that benighted country out in the boondocks of
Europe and others with vested property and proprietary interest to stop them. I
accepted the assignment on that basis maybe in the back of my head figuring I
could control my ranting about the damn tweeter storms that have racked civil
society in America to its core.
Oh yes, I better confess if
that is the right word that beside being a child of rock and roll and of the
Enlightenment I am a child of republican (small “r” please note) meaning I
defend various forms of republican governmental rule against monarchies,
constitutional or otherwise, royalty, the nobility and every damn hanger-on who
floats to the surface. So why accept the assignment. Simple that republican
ideal was not so-widespread in the middle of the 18th century the
time of story-line of this film. At that time Enlightenment ideas were just
raising their head in the world and got germinated in the bowels of the old
society by certain free-thinking people. So this hatred of the monarchy, remember
please King George III all you Jacks and Jills who devour everything coming out
of English court-life these days has been an acquired taste for generations
coming down to me. The characters here, some of them commoners some royal,
don’t question that aspect of governance-that is for later times and larger
uprisings than court intrigues.
I have taken a particular
slant on this production based on some historical truths around bringing
Enlightenment ideas to backwater Denmark. The film itself based on a Danish historical
novel about the times-about the sullen reign of mentally disturbed King
Christian VII, his English princess wife and a commoner, a doctor goes into
another direction and I could if I was Sam Lowell, better, Laura Perkins, have
dwelled on the menange between the three chief characters and left it at that.
The frame for this one cries out for that treatment since the whole affair,
royal or otherwise, is presented from Queen Caroline Matilde’s point of view as
she writes to her children on her deathbed about why she has not seen them for
a long time.
I have had my say so as Sam
always says a little summary is in order. Christian and Caroline, who are
cousins, but what else is new with European royal in-breeding. Those
interconnections never stopped them from cutting each other to bits. World War
I could have just as easily been called the “Cousins’ war” which for its time
was the bloodiest conflagration ever seen. A betrothal was arranged and
Caroline became the Danish queen having a son by the king. The king who was
probably every psychiatrist’s poster child for an assortment of strange mental
disturbances was more of a whoremonger and frill than a husband to the
well-educated and talented Caroline. That is the predicate for the personal
tragedies that follow. Doctor Struensee, a commoner, a German which meant a
foreigner then, a low-key man of the Enlightenment was brought in to attend to
the king. They became fast friends once the good doctor saw he could have
influence over the erratic king in order to push his agenda. Problem, big
problem, is that over time Struensee and Caroline become fast friends, very
fast indeed, having a child together, a girl who is passed off as the king’s
progeny.
That cuckolded king notion
lets the anti-foreign, anti-reformnobility and another arm of the royal family take the high ground
spreading rumors among the common folk that the doctor is running the show and
the Queen is egging him on. In the end the threads favoring the Enlightenment
were too weak to hold against the old regime and so the doctor and Queen meet
bad ends, bad fates. Her losing her children and exile and the Doc having his
head taken from him by the executioner’s axe. The only hope is for the
future-that the younger generation in the person of the royal prince will do
better. And he does. Such are the vagaries of history. Well-done with English
subtitles, a tight script and beautiful film work.
