*Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle - John Water's "Cry Baby"- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip from the movie,"Cry Baby", of the sultry, sexy, saucy song "Please, Mr. Jailer". Whee!



Cry Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby

DVD Review

Cry Baby, starring Johnny Depp, directed by John Waters, 1990



I would argue that the work of director John Waters and his Baltimore teen mania, circa 1955, type works are an acquired taste. And I have acquired the taste, having first gotten interested in his work through “Hairspray” that was revived on screen a couple of years ago. Of course, part of the draw is that the demographic territory that Waters surveys, circa 1955 teens, is very familiar turf to me. So when dear John spoofs a certain fashion, or a certain crowd, or a certain way of looking at things that were alienating to the average teen back then he is giving off signals that I am attuned to. And that is the key; to know what is being spoofed, because the music is easy, very easy to figure out, the fight to get rock and roll to "youth nation".

Of course, as is inevitable in a teen-based film, spoof or not, there is the central theme of sex. Here that theme centers on the orphan bad boy, Cry Baby played by Johnny Depp, who deep down inside really has a heart of gold matched up with an upscale orphan good girl, Amy Locane, who deep down inside want to be bad. No, that last phrase won’t work here, deep down wants to redeem Johnny-bad boy. Along the way to this inevitable happy-ending everything not nailed down gets spooked from 1950s suburban cookie cutter lifestyles to seemingly odd-ball teen fetishes like- French kissing and, oh no, the love of rock and roll. For my money the best spoof though, and it must have been hard to do with a straight face, are the musical performances of the quartet of pre-roll and rock teen singers(one of them, good/bad girl’s beau, for a while) doing the cutesy songs made famous by male groups like The Letterman that were squeaky clean but upon hearing sounded like scratching on a chalk board. And, incidentally, drove me to blues, rock, and folk music in nothing flat.

Note: I haven’t mentioned much about the performances here but for a long time now anything Johnny Depp appears in will get a look see, although it does not always turn out to be worthwhile. He has had a string of great roles, like in "Ed Wood", and some that it is better left unspoken like, "Sweeney Todd", but in this early film role (1990)as Cry Baby he gives a glimpse of why I will take a chance on any of his efforts. He does a beautiful parody of the James Dean/Elvis/Marlon Brando "rebel without a cause" style that the Cry Baby role calls for. Well done, Johnny.

***After The Fall-John Steinbecks' "Eden Of Eden"- "There Are No Sins Outside The Gates Of Eden"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for John Steinbeck' novel, East Of Eden.

BOOK REVIEW

EAST OF EDEN, JOHN STEINBECK

I usually do not read the comments of book reviewers on Amazon.com (or, in a few cases, at least not until after I have written my own). I was, however, interested in finding out whether Steinbeck and his tale still held interest for today’s readers. The answer seems to be yes. Moreover, I was interested in what other people had to say about the symbolic nature of the clash between and among generations of brothers and its relationship to the old biblical struggles going back to the ‘first family’.

Damn, life has definitely been tougher since the ‘fall’. The morale to be derived from Steinbeck’s novel is, apparently, that while the ‘fall of man’ under the spell of earthly temptations had its down side humankind is better for the struggle. A strong argument can moreover be made that without that struggle by fallen humankind no serious progress would have been made. That struggle is epitomized by the characters, tensions and actions of the two brothers (in both generations ,Adam’s the father’s and Aaron’s and the son’s) which makes me think that Steinbeck may see this an eternal struggle and that we are endlessly doomed to roll that rock up the hill just to have it come crashing back down on us.

Those who have only seen the 1950’s movie version of this novel starring, among others, the ill-fated James Dean and a young Julie Harris, have missed some great writing about the effects of the destruction, struggle to rebuilt and attempts at redemption in the wake of the fall of Adam Trask and his struggle to change his ways. And through him, his sons. The movie (that I saw long before reading the book) skips over the compelling first section which deals with the seemingly pre-ordained destruction of Adam, by his ‘wife’ among others. Moreover, in the movie the demonic role of the ‘wife’ Kathy is glossed over (probably due to the less tolerate and more squeamish mores about ‘fallen women’ in the 1950’s). She is not a ‘nice’ person. Read the book and see why we, even the best of us, are now all living just East of Eden.

*Rumblings From The 1960's Heartland- S.E. Hinton's "The Outsider"- A Film Review

Click on the title to link to YouTube's film clip of Francis Ford Coppola's screen adaption of S.E. Hinton's classic tale of teenage alienation, "The Outsiders".

DVD Review

The Outsiders, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise and every other rising young male star of the 1980s worth his salt, Dian Lane, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Paramount Pictures, 1983

Recently I reviewed another film adaptation by the director Francis Ford of one of S.E. Hinton’s classic tales of American teenage working class alienation during the 1950s-1960s, “Rumblefish”. There the plot centered on the seemingly inescapable nihilism following the footsteps of a leader, and his ex-leader brother, of a by then passé white teenage gang. That film presented the anguish of youthful working class alienation in a very different and much less glamorous light than the teenage angst films of my youth, like Marlon Brando’s “The Wild Ones” and James Dean’s “Rebel Without A Cause”. I also mentioned in that review that I had been momentarily attracted, very attracted, to that ‘lifestyle’, coming as I did from that stratum of the working class that lived with few hopes and fewer dreams. It was a very near thing that shifted me away from that life, mainly the allure of books and less dangerous exploits.

I did not feel that same kind of identification here in this otherwise outstanding tale of youthful working class alienation out in the heartland in the hill of Oklahoma, “The Outsiders”. That, notwithstanding the fact that the main character and narrator, “Pony Boy”, is also very attracted to books (although “Gone With The Wind” and the poetry of Robert Frost seem odd choices to go ga-ga over). The difference. In “Rumblefish”, seemingly a much more experimental film on Coppola’s part and a more searing look at working class youth on Hinton’s part, the plot is is filled with examples of that unspoken danger, that unspoken destructive pathology and dead end nihilism that meant doom for at least some of the characters, and not just the easy to foresee one of early and untimely death that stalks those down at the edges of society.

Superficially, the plot of “The Outsiders” would have assumed that same fate for its characters. A small town out in the hill of Oklahoma where the class divisions are obvious has the working class “Greasers” lined up in combat against the middle class “Socs” with every cliché of the class struggle, except the political, thrown in for good measure. (Obviously portrayed, as well, note the sideburns long hair on the Greaser side and the chino pants on the frat guys side. You don’t need a scorecard on this one.) In summary: the two sides clash over nothing in particular except “turf”: hold grudges; seek revenge taking causalities, one fatally; and ending with a rumble where the Greasers have their momentary Pyrrhic victory.

Along the way there is plenty of time for youthful reflection by the narrator and his fellows about the ways of the class-ridden world, a few bouts heroism and a little off-hand (very off-hand) romance. As much as we know about the nature of modern class society this thing rings false. The moral here-even the most alienated Greaser, played to a tee by Matt Dillon, is really only searching for meaning to his life and a little society, only to get waylaid by that life in the end. Thus, this thing turns into something more like a cautionary tale than a slice of live down at the bottom edges of society. The more circumspect and existential “Rumblefish” gets my vote any day.

Note: Part of the problem with this film cinematically is that the leading male actors here, the likes of Rob Lowe, the late Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise and Matt Dillon are all too ‘pretty’ to be Greasers. Although one can appreciate the talent pool that came out of this film I know from real life that, while the "greasers" of this world may have some raw sexually attractions they would hardly grace the pages of “Gentleman’s Quarterly”, or some such magazine. These guys could. That is what rings false here, as well as the assurances, hammered home to us throughout the story, that in democratic America even the down-trodden can lift themselves up and succeed. If they wash up a little.

*In The Time Of The Great Fear- David Halberstam's "The Fifties"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the American writer, David Halberatam, most famous for his revealing look at the underside of American foreign policy in Vietnam, "The Best and the Brightest.

BOOK REVIEW

THE FIFTIES, DAVID HALBERSTAM

Although I am a member of the Generation of ’68, a political characterization, I am also by accident of birth a child of the Fifties. In some recollections of that period, including the present book, those times appear almost as a ‘golden age’. For those who were either too young to remember fully some of the early events of the Fifties or those who were not born at that time this book is a nice overview of the various political, social, economic, technological and cultural events of the period.

In a sense Mr. Halberstam has tried to accomplish too much under one cover, despite the book's several hundred page length. He has taken a panoramic view of the whole event- filled decade and with few exceptions given only a surface skimming of events, personalities and the impact that they had on the times. Notwithstanding that limitation, which can be addressed by reading other material on particular topics suggested by each chapter this is a solid journalistic piece of work. For an analysis of the meaning of the times or their place in the overall scheme of American history one can look elsewhere.

One thing is clear from Mr. Halberstam’s sweep of the decade and that is that many of the trends just coming to the surface then are still recognizable today. He tackles the vast changes in mass consumption brought on by the end of World War II that include the rise of the automobile, the suburbanization of America and the revolution in communications headlined by the use of television. This in turn triggered new mass service industries like airlines, hotels and fast food joints. These were also times of changes in cultural appreciations from an earlier more Victorian (at least on the surface) time and so on. Remarkably what has not changed despite massive changes in the forms of political packaging is the shallowness of political discourse. The banalities of the Eisenhower-Nixon years can easily compete with the banalities of today’s Bush era. The maturation of the age of the information super-highway since then has not brought a concurrent rise in political maturity.

Those of us who were alive during the period have our own take on the Fifties. I would make two points here that underscore what the Fifties mean to me. First, a lot of hoopla has been made over that generation that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II, my parents’ generation. In some cases they have been called the ‘greatest generation’. That is pure bunk. They sold their birthright to a more just society for a mess of pottage. However the Fifties was their time, the time that they came to maturity, and one cannot understand why they did or did not do better without and understanding of the period. Secondly, for my family, the saga that Mr. Halberstam presents was not our 1950’s. The promised abundance never reached down to my family, a family of the marginally working poor. In some ways the picture he presents is of a different society from the one I grew up in. There is no reason now to cry over it but those are the facts and that helps explain why my political trajectory took the course that it ultimately did.