The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Malvina Reynolds "Little Boxes"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip from the "Rainbow Quest" series of Pete Seeger performing Malvina Reynold's classic sent-up of suburban life in the 1950s (and now, although it would be "Mac-boxes"), "Little Boxes".

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

Little Boxes

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Malvina and her husband were on their way from where they lived in Berkeley, through San Francisco and down the peninsula to La Honda where she was to sing at a meeting of the Friends’ Committee on Legislation (not the PTA, as Pete Seeger says in the documentary about Malvina, “Love It Like a Fool”). As she drove through Daly City, she said “Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”


Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs
---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook
---- There's Music in the Air: Songs for the Middle-Young

*Woody Allen On Tour- "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For Woody Allen.

DVD REVIEW

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Barmen, Penelope Cruz, directed by Woody Allen, 2008

I have been reviewing Woody Allen productions in this space over the past year or so. I have highly rated such old Woody classics as “Annie Hall, “Manhattan” and “Radio Days”, those memorable films with New York City its trials, tribulations and traumas as an epicenter. I have also given mixed reviews to some of his later productions like “Manhattan Mystery” and others based in other geographic locales (“Purple Rose Of Cairo”, etc.). I was, however, fully prepared to fulsomely praise the film under review, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, after having heard the hype about Penelope Cruz’s performance as, Maria Elena, the talented estranged artsy wife of the central male character, Juan Antonia (Javier Bardem), a Spanish avant guarde artist. After viewing the film Ms. Cruz's performance was certainly Oscar-worthy. Nevertheless the overall production falls flat. And here is why.

Woody Allen has created an important cinematic niche for himself as a performer, director, writer and producer in that netherworld of the alienated modern urbanite, especially of distracted women unsure of their place in the world and their ability to navigate it with (or without) a man. The classic examples of such angst and confusion were various film vehicles created for Diane Keaton (“Annie Hall”) Mia Farrow (“Broadway Danny Rose”, “Stardust Memories”) and along the way Woody himself, his doubts and his inhibitions (in about six billion of his films starting with “Take The Money And Run”). Here Woody has gathered the old familiar concerns about sexual inhibitions, the vacuity of upper middle class suburban life, the eternal problems with the opposite sex and various social conventions like bisexuality, adultery, threesomes and the like. All very familiar Woody material, although not always set in Barcelona.

With the above-mentioned exception of Ms. Cruz the other characters are Woody’s stock and trade of late: young woman with various personal and social problems, with or without Woody as conduit. The truly beautiful and talented Scarlett Johansson is wooden here as Cristina. The lesser known actress, Rebecca Hall, playing Vicky's role is the same. In the end I did not care whether the two women (or three, if we include Ms. Cruz) got their issues resolved, or not. That is not a good sign in a Woody Allen film where in earlier, better film , if nothing else, we are at least left wondering about their fates. Woody, come back to your New York hearth and home with all its tangled energies, excitement, enigmas and hangups. There you are “king of the hill”. Leave Europe for the kids.