September 18, 2024: Summer Reads: The Cold Millions

[I didn’t get to share my usual Beach Reads series earlier this summer, so I wanted to make up for it by highlighting a handful of the many amazing novels I read as I worked to return to pleasure reading over the last few months. I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading, from any genre, for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

With the first two books about which I’ve written in this series, I had a strong sense of them before I began, even if both did (as I hope I’ve made clear) exceed my expectations. Whereas with Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions (2020), a book recommended to me by my Mom (the main way I learn about new fiction, if I’m being honest), I knew literally nothing about it before I finally dove in this summer. So when I say that this was probably my favorite read of the summer, and definitely one of the most successfully executed historical novels I’ve ever read, you’ll understand just how much I’m saying. One of the best measures of a great historical novel is that I’m both thoroughly informed and utterly moved by the end, and I was crying when I read Walter’s epilogue so, y’know, mission very much accomplished. Now I gotta read everything else he’s written!

Next summer read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What have you been reading?

September 17, 2024: Summer Reads: Interior Chinatown

[I didn’t get to share my usual Beach Reads series earlier this summer, so I wanted to make up for it by highlighting a handful of the many amazing novels I read as I worked to return to pleasure reading over the last few months. I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading, from any genre, for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

I didn’t mention the 2020 TV adaptation of The Good Lord Bird in yesterday’s post, but of course I look forward to checking out Ethan Hawke as John Brown and Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass at some point soon (and have heard good things about the limited series overall). Not yet available but on the horizon is a TV adaptation of another novel I read this summer: Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown (2020). I suppose I’ll check that one out as well but I can’t lie, the amazingly experimental structure and style of Yu’s novel seems very unlikely to be successfully adapted to a visual medium (which is ironic, as the novel is centrally and thoughtfully interested in visual media like TV and film, but it’s nonetheless the case). At the very least, I would implore everyone to read Yu’s novel, as it is quite simply one of the most innovative and captivating literary works I’ve read in a long, long time.

Next summer read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What have you been reading?

September 16, 2024: Summer Reads: The Good Lord Bird

[I didn’t get to share my usual Beach Reads series earlier this summer, so I wanted to make up for it by highlighting a handful of the many amazing novels I read as I worked to return to pleasure reading over the last few months. I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading, from any genre, for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

I know James McBride’s masterpiece of a revisionist historical novel The Good Lord Bird (2013) is far from a new release (and indeed that his newest release has been even more acclaimed still, and I promise to check that out one sooner than a decade down the road). What I can say, I had really slacked on my pleasure reading for far too long (and hadn’t had a chance to teach McBride’s book, so didn’t have that reason to check it out). But McBride’s hilarious, pointed, and ultimately profoundly moving depiction of John Brown through the eyes of fictional escape enslaved person Henry “Onion” Shackleford was more than worth the wait, and might well have even edged out Russell Banks’ Cloudsplitter (1998), itself one of my very favorite novels, as the best book about Brown I’ve ever read. No matter what, this is quite simply a unique and amazing book, and of all the great ones I read this summer was the one that most fully reminded me of the unabashed and to my mind unequaled pleasures of pleasure reading (and, not unrelatedly, convinced me to get off of Twitter, but that’s a story for another time).

Next summer read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What have you been reading?

September 14-15, 2024: TV Studying: Bridgerton and The Bear

[This week marked the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50^th anniversary of Little House on the Prairie and the 70^th of Lassie. So I’ve AmericanStudied those and other classic TV shows and contexts, leading up to this special post on what we can learn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out this summer!]

On three contexts for a pair of the year’s (and decade’s) biggest shows.

1)      Bingeing: I’ve analyzed the relatively new form of cultural consumption that is binge-watching a few times in this space, most especially in this post on streaming sitcoms. I still have mixed feelings on the trend, and would in fact go further: when it comes to shows that were originally created to air once a week (ie, pretty much every TV show prior to the rise of Netflix original content in the early 2010s), bingeing them is as best a less ideal way to experience what the creators intended, and at worst actively ruins the experience. But for shows being created in this new era of streaming, the opposite is, if not a given, at least always possible: that the creators intend them to be binged, and have worked to create shows which reward viewers for such extended immersion. I’d say that’s the case for both Bridgerton and The Bear, particularly because both are so good at…

2)      …(World)Building: When I’ve used this storytelling term previously in this space, it’s largely been in the context of my Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy course, as worldbuilding has been without a doubt the most-discussed concept in every section of that class I’ve taught. But of course any genre and any cultural medium can build a world, and I don’t think any recent TV shows have done it more intentionally nor more successfully than do these two. But in two very distinct ways: Bridgerton in the vein of the best historical fiction in both senses of that genre as I’ve defined it in the past (such as in that hyperlinked post), immersing the audience in a prior historical period and yet creating compelling fictional stories that are not bound by historical facts; while The Bear builds its restaurant industry world through incredibly potent use of narrative tension and emotion, making the audience feel every detail of that setting and community. Or at least it hopes to do so, but the recent season three did meet with a great deal of…

3)      …Backlash: After a pair of relatively universally acclaimed seasons, The Bear’s season three has been quite a bit more divisive. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet (like I said, I’m late to these games), but my wife, who has, has offered a very thoughtful take: that the show is working to become more cinematic in its storytelling and imagery, while still using those devices to capture emotion and character as it always has. If that is the case, it would mean that The Bear has evolved but not fundamentally changed, and I’d say that’s very much the case for Bridgerton (on which I am fully caught up), which makes the rising backlash to that show’s various forms of diverse casting and storytelling particularly frustrating. That is, I get that Bridgerton differs from the original novels in a variety of ways, including its diversity; but that’s been a central element of the show from day one, and by this point fans should either go along for the very enjoyable ride or find something else to binge.  

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other classic or current TV you’d analyze?

September 13, 2024: Classic TV Studying: I Love Lucy

[This week marks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50^th anniversary of Little House on the Prairie and the 70^th of Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and other classic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we can learn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out this summer!]

On why the groundbreaking sitcom’s comfortable familiarity actually reflects its most radical elements.

While I Love Lucy (1951-57) was one of the first prominent sitcoms, there are a few reasons why its domestic and marital dynamics seem to fit comfortably within existing, familiar tropes, and most of them center directly about star Lucille Ball and her prior professional work. For the years leading up to the sitcom’s debut she had been starring in a CBS Radio program entitled My Favorite Husband, where she played a wacky housewife. When CBS initially balked at her request that a TV adaptation co-star her husband, Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, Lucille and Desi toured as a vaudeville act, performing the same kinds of marital hijinks that they would feature on the sitcom. So by the time Lucille and Desi were given the chance to perform those exaggerated versions of their real-life roles on TV, they—and Lucille especially—had extensive personal and professional experience with such characters and dynamics, helping give the show that impressively lived-in feel from its pilot episode on.

At the same time, I think it’s just as accurate to say that I Love Lucy itself established many of those sitcom domestic and marital tropes that have since come to feel so familiar, and that’s an important reframing because it allows us to see the show for just how radical it really was, in two distinct ways. For one thing, there’s the apparent reason why CBS initially balked at casting Desi are Lucille’s husband in the TV adaptation: their concerns that TV viewers wouldn’t accept a redheaded white woman and a Cuban man as a married couple (even though, again, the two had been married in real life for a decade by that time). What Ball understood, far better it seems than these network executives, was that mass media genres like sitcoms don’t have to simply reflect existing images or narratives (although they far too often settle for doing so); they can also, and perhaps especially, shape such cultural and social conversations. Am I suggesting that I Love Lucy helped create the shifts in attitudes toward cross-cultural marriages that would contribute to the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967) a decade later? Well yeah, I guess I am.

Through and because of the show, and more exactly because of how much it brought her star power to wider audiences, Ball was also able to achieve significant professional milestones of her own. Most strikingly, she and Desi founded a TV production company, Desilu, of which she became the first female studio head; when the two divorced in 1960, she bought out his share and cemented her role as the full business and creative director of that successful and influential studio. Lest you think those are hyperbolic adjectives to make my point, here are just four of the TV shows that Desilu produced, all of them during Lucille’s reign as solo studio head post-divorce: the original Star Trek (launched in 1966); the original Mission: Impossible (also 1966); The Andy Griffith Show (launched in 1960); and The Dick Van Dyke Show (launched in 1961). All of those in their own ways became and remain familiar presences within, and contributed enduring tropes to, their respective genres—one more way that I Love Lucy has left its radical imprint on our cultural landscape.

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 12, 2024: Classic TV Studying: Lassie

[This week marks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50^th anniversary of Little House on the Prairie and the 70^th of Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and other classic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we can learn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out this summer!]

On AmericanStudies takeaways from three iterations of the iconic canine hero.

1)      Family: After its September 12^th, 1954 debut, Lassie ran for 19 total seasons, making it the 7^th longest-running American primetime TV show to date. The first ten of those seasons are the ones most audiences likely associate with the show, as they were set on a family farm (or rather two families’ farms, as the original Miller family transitioned to the Martins during the fourth season, if ostensibly at the same farm). That farm setting was somewhat distinct from most of the era’s family sitcoms, if in keeping with later rural-themed 1960s shows like The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Green Acres among others. But nonetheless, I would argue that the first ten seasons of Lassie exist squarely in the TV metaverse inhabited by the sitcom dads I wrote about in Tuesday’s post, along with their wives, children, neighbors, etc. Family was the name of the game in early TV, and Lassie did it so well that it outlasted almost all of those other programs.

2)      Forestry: No show exists for nearly twenty years without evolving, though, and after those ten family-focused seasons, Lassie shifted dramatically beginning in season 11 (1964-65), when Lassie became the canine companion of U.S. Forestry Service Ranger Corey Stuart (Robert Bray). Not coincidentally, the show transitioned to more full color filming in this era, and that technology was used to showcase a variety of spectacular Western locations, including Sequoia National Forest and Monument Valley. Those locales would seem to parallel this new iteration of Lassie with another of the era’s most prominent TV trends, the ubiquitous Westerns. But I would argue that they also represented a potential counterpoint to that genre’s mythologized and frequently nostalgic American West, offering viewers glimpses of a contemporary West to which they, like the heroic pooch, could travel.

3)      Fucking What?: As is the case with so many successful and long-running shows, when Lassie came to a close its creators sought to continue the success with a spin-off, in this case the animated show Lassie’s Rescue Rangers (1973). Yet that spin-off lasted only one season, with the main factor in its demise undoubtedly being a couple prominent responses: Lassie’s original trainer Rudd Weatherwax claiming “That’s not Lassie. That’s trash”; and the National Association of Broadcasters adding “The manufacturers of this rubbish have incorporated violence, crime, and stupidity into what is probably the worst show for children of the season.” I can’t lie, if you read some of the episode descriptions, they do sound, well, batshit insane (seriously, read them and thank me later). But I also have to believe that another factor in these extreme responses was that the new Lassie was even more overtly tied to early 1970s environmental themes and advocacy, and not everybody was ready or willing to accept that emphasis for the beloved pooch.

Last TV Studying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?

September 11, 2024: Classic TV Studying: Little House on the Prairie

[This week marks the anniversaries of the premieres of two classic TV shows: the 50^th anniversary of Little House on the Prairie and the 70^th of Lassie. So I’ll AmericanStudy those and other classic TV shows and contexts, leading up to a special post on what we can learn from a couple current hits I finally got around to checking out this summer!]

On a key difference between the TV show and the books, and why it matters.

I watched a good bit of the TV adaptation of Little House on the Prairie (1974-1982, but I mostly watched it in subsequent reruns on TBS) growing up, but only one episode stands out in my memory: “Gambini the Great,” an episode early in the show’s 8^th season (the penultimate season, and the final one featuring Michael Landon before the show changed its title to Little House: A New Beginning for the 9^th and final season) in which the Wilder family’s adopted son Albert (Matthew Laborteaux) becomes enamored of the titular aging circus escape artist/daredevil. Albert’s father Charles Wilder (Landon) tries in vain to convince Albert that the openly and proudly non-religious Gambini (Jack Kruschen) is not someone to idolize or emulate, and is proven tragically yet righteously accurate when Gambini dies in a stunt gone wrong. As I remember it, the show and Charles (pretty much always the show’s voice of unquestioned authority) present this tragedy as, if not explicitly deserved due to Gambini’s lack of religious faith, at the very least a clear moral and spiritual lesson for Albert, and one that he takes to heart as he returns fully to the fold of the family’s religious beliefs.

Albert was a character not present in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of books (in which Little House on the Prairie was the third of eight published novels, with a ninth published posthumously), and thus represents one of many elements that were added, tweaked, or significantly changed in adapting the books into the show. But I would go further, and argue that the overt and pedantic religious themes and lessons exemplified by an episode like “Gambini the Great” were also far more central to the TV adaptation than the novels. That’s not to suggest that religion and spirituality weren’t elements of the novels and their portrayal of the Wilder family and its world, but I believe they were just that: elements, details of the family’s identity and community and experiences that could be paralleled by many other such elements and themes. Perhaps it’s the nature of episodic television (particular in its pre-serialized era) to need more of a moral, a sense of what an audience can and should take away from the hour-long, at least somewhat self-contained story they have just watched. Likely the show’s producers also learned quickly just how compelling and charismatic a voice they had in Michael Landon’s, and wanted to use him to convey such overt morals and messages. But in any case, I believe (and as always, correct me if you disagree!) that the show tended toward such overtly pedantic (and often, although certainly not exclusively, religious) moral lessons far more than did the novels.

Although the word “pedantic” does tend to have negative connotations, I mean it more literally, in terms of trying to teach the audience a particular lesson; that is, I’m not trying to argue through using that word that the novels were necessarily better or more successful as works of art than the show because of this difference. At the same time, however, I do believe that the difference produces a significant effect, one not so much aesthetic as thematic, related in particular to how each text portrays history. To me, the novels seek to chronicle the pioneer/frontier experience for their focal family and community, describing a wide range of issues and concerns that were specific to that communal experience (if, of course, very different from the concurrent experiences of other Western communities, such as Native Americans, with whom Wilder engages to a degree but certainly far less, and at times more problematically, than would be ideal for a more accurate portrait of the American West). Whereas the TV show consistently seeks to make use of its historical setting to convey broader and more universal messages (about religion and morality, but also about family, relationships, communal obligations, and more). Which is to say, I would argue that, to use the terms I deployed in this post, while Wilder’s novels certainly qualify as historical fiction (as well as autobiographical fiction), the show seems more to be period fiction, with somewhat less to teach its young audiences about the history itself.

Next TV Studying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other classic TV you’d analyze?