The Red Wave That Wasn't

OK, it's Monday and normally the Monday post is for me to rant about some damn thing or another going on in the world or politics or some damn shit.

I suppose some commentary on last week's mid terms may be in order.  

Here's something we do know. Whatever gains the Republicans made last week, it fell short of their expected "red wave". 

For weeks leading up to election nights, Republican pundits were on Fox News and other right wing outlets touting how the Republican Party was not only going to win in November, they were going to win SO BIG like a big honking red wave sweeping over America. 

To be fair, there were some things working in their favor.

1. Historically, the party in power in the White House and Congress tends to get its butt kicked in the mid terms. 
2. Voters tends to not be kind to the party in power when things are rough on the home front.  Run away inflation was a major head wind for the Democrats.
3. CRIME! Crimes rates have ticked up a bit. Except in Republican political ads where crime rates have SOARED into the stratosphere! You're probably being murdered RIGHT NOW and it's a Democrat's fault! 
4. The fix is in! Look, Republicans have been redistricting and gerrymandering like crazy for years and thought they had things pretty well locked up.  They would win big because they simply couldn't lose. 

Despite all those advantages, the red wave was more of a red trickle. 

Yeah, the Republicans may take the House but it's gonna be close. So why didn't the Republican Party win big? 

1. FEAR!  Republicans have usually had a lock on motivating people with fear (CRIME is OUT of CONTROL! If you do not want to be MURDERED by DEMOCRATS, you better vote for us!)  But the Democrats had their own message of fear.  With the overturn of Roe V. Wade and Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights, Democrats could point to the very real possibility of a dystopian theocracy that would change The Handmaid's Tale from fiction to documentary. Nothing less than the fate of democracy and freedom were at stake.
2. STUPIDITY! A lot of Republican candidates were in races that easily could've been slam dunks for the Republican Party. Those races turned into slim margin wins or losses simply because the Republican candidates were... stupid.  Of course these candidates were there not for their skills or talents in leadership but for their devotion to Donald Trump and his big lie of 2020 election fraud.    

The stupidest of Trump's handpicked candidates was Hershel Walker who in a typically red state like Georgia was came up short to Sen. Raphael Warnock. 

Unfortunately, the mid term election nightmare is not over because neither Warnock nor Walker crossed the 50% mark needed to avoid a run off.  

So there is that to look forward to. 

It should be an embarrassment that the Warnock vs. Walker race was as close as it was given just how distressingly poor a candidate Walker was. Oh God he is so stupid! 

Speaking of stupid... Donald Trump. 

The guy whose biggest insult is calling someone a loser and whose biggest fear is being a loser is a loser again. 

Under Trump, Republicans lost control off the House in 2018 and lost the Senate and the White House in 2020. Whatever gains Republicans make in 2022, they will fall short of expectations under Trump.

There are some Republicans now openly voicing the idea of hitching the fate of the party to a petulant, unintelligent, unstable man child may have been a mistake.

Oh, you think?  

As I write this, the political landscape in Washington is still in flux. Maybe by the time time this posts on Monday, that will change.  

Whatever happens, Republicans did not get what they were expecting. And it's on their dumbass to not have seen this coming. 

Cinema Sunday: Mutiny on the Bounty

Today's Cinema Sunday takes a turn back to 1962 for an epic version of Mutiny on the Bounty.  The story is based on the real-life mutiny led by Fletcher Christian against William Bligh, captain of HMAV Bounty, in 1789. 

In 1787, the Bounty sets sail from Britain for Tahiti under the command of Captain William Bligh (Trevor Howard) to collect a shipload of breadfruit saplings and transport them to Jamaica.

The plan is to see if the breadfruit plants will thrive in Jamaica and provide a cheap source of food for slaves.

Bligh is a flinty old bastard whose motto is "Cruelty with a purpose is not cruelty, it is efficiency."

Bligh wants to reach Tahiti ahead of schedule by attempting the shorter westbound route around Cape Horn. 

Everyone tells him this won't work.

Bligh order this route to be taken anyway.

It doesn't work, the Bounty cast about by storms and rough seas.  The shortcut puts the ship behind schedule. 

Bligh makes up the lost time by pushing the crew harder and cutting their rations.

In other words, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

First Lieutenant Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando) serves as second-in-command and is privately disgusted by Bligh's dismissive and cruel treatment of the men under his command. But Christian is first and foremost a good officer and will not act or speak out against his commanding officer.

Until Bligh does one damn cruel thing too damn many.

On the voyage to Jamaica, to atone for the lost time due to Bligh's error of attempting to go around Cape Horn, Blight attempts to bring back twice the number of breadfruit plants and reduces the water rations of the crew to water the extra plants.

Bligh's cruel and heartless edict to restrict the crew's access to water results in the deaths of crew members and Christian has finally had enough.   

Christian takes command of the ship. 

Showing more mercy to Bligh than Bligh ever showed for his men, Christian sets Bligh and the certain crew members still loyal to Bligh adrift in a longboat with navigational equipment. 

Long story made short: Bligh makes it back to England where there's a trial where a bunch of old white men in wigs declare that Bligh is not guilty in the matter of losing his ship in a mutiny but maybe it was a mistake for him to be a captain of a ship in the first damn place. 

Meanwhile, Fletcher Christian tries to come to terms that he is a renegade captain of a stolen ship with an outlaw crew. 

And he can't. 

Christian decides to return to Britain and testify to Bligh's wrongdoing. His men have other ideas and their decision does not end well for Christian or the Bounty. 

The 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty certain looks good.  Filmed using the Ultra Panavision 70 widescreen process and partly shot on location in the South Pacific, the movie makes use of bold colors and a vast canvas. The scenes in Tahiti are a gorgeous spectacle. 

In terms of acting, Trevor Howard's turn as Captain Bligh is particularly chilling with the casual nature of Bligh's arrogance and his cruelty to his men. Bligh's detached and blithe attitude towards his men is worse than any histrionic mustache twirling villainy.

The most challenging performance to process is Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian as a seagoing Hamlet, pensively pondering Bligh's misguided leadership and his cruel treatment of the crew but doing nothing about it, more of an effete sophisticate than a seasoned sailing professional.  

Things are not helped by Brando questionable English accent.

In the narrative of Mutiny On the Bounty, Fletcher Christian should provide a solid moral center. Brando's Christian is more of an oddity than a captivating leader of men.  

Quite frankly, Marlon Brando was miscast in the role of Fletcher Christian. Which is not the first time that particular issue has come up in a Cinema Sunday review. In our post on Guys and Dolls from September 13, 2020, the role of Sky Masterson destined for someone like Gene Kelly or Frank Sinatra went to Marlon Brando based solely on him as a big box office draw. 

Brando's rep as an actor's actor who could also fill theater seats carried a lot of weight, a one-two punch to bring both prestige and dollars. Even if the role wasn't quite right for him. 

Fletcher Christian in Mutiny On the Bounty was another such role. 

It didn't help matters than apparently Marlon Brando was in a pissy mood during much of the shoot.  Apparently Brando had certain ideas how the movie should be made and director Lewis Milestone had a different view.  

Originally, Carol Reed was the director but after 3 months of shoots in Tahiti, Reed stepped down for reasons ranging from poor health to just being fricking tired of fighting everyone to get the movie made his way.  

Lewis Milestone took over thinking this would be an easy gig except to find after three months of shooting, all anyone had to show for all that work was one 7 minute scene.  

And Marlon Brando was behaving very badly.

And I haven't mentioned to 372 times the script was re-written. OK, 372 is an exaggeration but the script went through many changes by many hands. 

Ultimately, the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty could not deliver on its promises, panned by critics and bombing at the box office. Marlon Brando's one-two punch did not bring either the prestige or the dollars the studio was fervently hoping for.  

What did I think? Well, it looks good, both the beautiful tropical paradise of Tahiti and the gritty details of the harsh life aboard the Bounty.  

Ultimately though, Mutiny on the Bounty is a victim of style over substance, a potentially strong story undone by a ponderous pace and questionable acting choices.  

Mutiny on the Bounty is something more suited to look at and less so to experience.   

Songs For Saturday: Neil Young

November is birthday month on Songs For Saturday.

On this date of November 12th in 1945, Neil Young was born.  

In addition to being a member of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Neil Young has had a long and extensive career as a solo artist.  

Up first for today's post is Neil's big, hard rocking single from 1989, "Rockin' in the Free World".  

Next up is Neil Young's iconic, introspective ballad "Hey Hey My My" from the album "Rust Never Sleeps".    

And that is that for today's Songs For Saturday. 

Next week, I'll post a couple of Motown R&B classics from a songwriter born on November 19th.   

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and to always keep the music alive.   

Your Friday Video Link: Dave's Not Here

 

In a follow up to yesterday's "Where's Dave" post,  Your Friday Video Link post for this week offers an animated clip of Cheech & Chong's classic "Dave's Not Here" routine.

Where's Dave?

Where's Dave?

Dave's not here man! 

OK, anyone looking for any pithy insights to Tuesday's mid term elections will have to wait a damn minute.

As I write this, there are still some races too close to call or some such and the balance of power in the House and the Senate is too close to call.

My prediction for all of those who value intelligence, wisdom and compassion: you're fucked. 

I could be wrong.

Probably not.

With that weighing on my mind, it's a good thing I'm not here.

If you doubt my word that I am not here, here's a statement from the I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You editorial staff. 

See? 

Toldja I'm not here. 

The U.S. and the Holocaust

Like a lot of Americans, I think I had a handle on the tragedy known as the Holocaust.  

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime led a campaign of terror and murder against Jewish people in Europe which came to an end when the Allies (and by "Allies", I mean of course the Americans and some other people) defeated Hitler's Nazi war machine and liberated the surviving Jews from Hitler's terrible grasp.

Hoo-ray for America! We won the war and saved the Jews.

Except...

Except...

Well, history is never quite that simple.

And in the case of the United States and it's role in the Jewish Holocaust, it was far from simple. 

As much as we might want to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves on a job well done, we cannot escape our culpability in the extermination of 6 million lives.  

I watched the PBS documentary series The U.S. and the Holocaust which lays bare how much of a partner the United States was in Hitler's efforts to marginalize, demonize and ultimately murder the Jewish community.  

The anti-semitism that Hitler stoked in his rise to power was not unique to Germany.  

In the United States, along side the signs in windows that forbade entry by black people to shops, schools and hospitals were also signs for Jews to not shop there, not apply for work there, to not seek medical help there.   

To further whitewash the face of America, a 1924 law imposed new, stringent immigration quotas that favored white Protestants.  With no exceptions for refugees. 

And there were a lot refugees looking to get the hell out of Germany.

When cheering throngs greeted Hitler's rants against how Jews were to blame for all the world's ills, he was emboldened to enact policies that stripped German Jews of their rights to hold property, to have jobs, access to education and health care.  

And when Hitler made manifest his ambitions to conquer Europe beyond Germany's borders, expanding into Poland and the Netherlands and more, he had more Jews to ostracize. 

And when de-humanizing the Jews was not enough, Hitler had more Jews to murder.  

Jewish men were rousted from their homes and sent to concentration camps.

Not satisfied with that, Jewish women and children were packed onto trains and shipped off to the camps.

Whoever wasn't worked to death as slave labor died of starvation, exposure and disease. And when that process was too slow, the Nazis built apparatuses like gas chambers and ovens to speed up the extermination of the Jews.

Surely the United States would do something about all that.

Desperate appeals by the Jewish community to seek safe haven in the United States fell on deaf ears. Anti-semitism was pervasive in the US State Department who refused to budge even an inch to relieve the immigration quota restrictions. 

Regarding the reports of the atrocities in the concentration camps, Americans felt the stories were too horrific to be true and were all part of some pro-Jewish propaganda.  

There were sadly Americans who did not doubt the veracity of these reports and figured those deceitful Jews had it coming just like the nice Hitler feller says.  

In response to such efforts to save German and other European Jews from torment, torture and extermination, North Carolina Sen. Robert Rice Reynolds had this to say in June 1941:  “If I had my way, I would today build a wall about the U.S. so high and so secure that not a single alien or foreign refugee from any country upon the face of this earth could possibly scale or ascend it.”

In short, what we have is ours and you can't have any part of it, no matter how bad things are for you where you are.

And if any of that sounds distressingly familiar, just look back over the rants and policies going back 6 years from Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and more.   

The documentary concludes with a montage, a sequence with  images of the torch-carrying Charlottesville mob shouting, “Jews will not replace us” in 2017 and of the murderous 2018 attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. And from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, there's a man in a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt.

The U.S. and the Holocaust provides a solemn record of people, men, women and children who sought nothing more than the simple dignity of living their lives, heinously marked as "different", "other", "not to be trusted." For this inflammatory and false narrative of their threat to "good people", they were put to death in a horrifying efficient manner, in the death camps in gas chambers and ovens.  

The U.S. and the Holocaust also provides a damning testimony not just of the sins of Hitler and his Nazi machine of death but of the sins of the United States. 

Yeah, yay for America who won the war and saved the surviving Jews from the concentration camps. 

But what of our sin of omission, that we could've done so much more if we had lived up to our ideals instead of reaching down to our basest fear and ignorance?

And what of our direction today? Do we have the will to be better than our worst selves and live up to our ideals?

Or are we still on a path to not helping those in a time of need?  

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Interview with the Vampire

 

Today's Tuesday TV Touchbase turns it's attention to a new series on AMC called Interview with the Vampire. 

The "interview" takes place in the present day between vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac and reporter Daniel Molloy. The story Louis sets out to tell goes back to the start of the 20th century of how he was brought across into the undead life of a vampire by vampire Lestat de Lioncourt.

Lestat is all slick and polished with European refinement. Louis is a young black man in New Orleans, hustling hard to be a successful business man in a country that has no interest in seeing a young black man becoming a successful anything. 

In addition to the obvious issues with race, Louis also wrestles with being gay and even in the rough and tumble world of New Orleans in 1910, that's something that needs to be managed very carefully.  

Lestat and Louis become lovers and Lestat turns Louis into a vampire.  

From there, Louis learns of the gifts and burdens of being a nigh immortal being who thrives on the blood of the living. And being a vampire doesn't make the racist and homophobic shit go away. 

For example, Lestat and Louis can only go to the opera together if Louis pretends to be his butler. 

Louis struggles with the need to kill to maintain the supply of blood he needs to survive as a vampire. He tries to take a moral high road by only consuming blood from wild animals but it's a poor substitute for human blood. And there are some humans who deserve killing.

Like the alderman whose enacts blatantly racist laws to drive Louis' whorehouse out of business.  

Louis doesn't want to lose contact with his human family. But as time passes and they age and he doesn't, Louis' separation from his humanity becomes more certain.

Louis seeks to restore some sense of family with Claudia, a 14 year old girl who becomes a daughter to Louis and Lestat.  

Making a 14 year old girl a vampire comes with its own unique problems, leaving her caught in puberty for eternity.  For example, while Louis or Lestat can drain an adult person dry and be satisfied for awhile before they need to feed again, Claudia is perpetually hungry.  

And that is not the worst of it. Even as she "ages" into her early 20's and feels longings for love and sex, her smooth body betrays her as forever a child. This is very frustrating for Claudia.  

In the present, Daniel prickly pokes holes in Louis' narrative, taking issue with Louis' flowery poetic language to describe even that darkest, most disturbing parts of his life as a vampire. At one point, Daniel snipes at Louis, “You talk about him like he was your soulmate, like you were locked in some fucked-up gothic romance."   

Daniel does have a point. Whatever romance novel gloss Louis wants to give to his story, he and Lestat are most definitely in a dysfunctional relationship. 

I have not read the Anne Rice novel or seen the 1994 film on which Interview with the Vampire is based but I know enough of the source material to understand some fundamental changes from that material. 

In the book and the movie, Louis de Pointe du Lac was a plantation owner from the 1800's.  Changing him to a young black businessman of the early 1900's is an inspired touch that opens up lots the story in interesting ways. For all the power that Louis de Pointe du Lac gains by becoming a vampire (which includes enhances strength and telepathy) that make him more than human, Louis is still constrained by societal constructs designed to treat him as less than human.

Another change from the source material is the relationship between Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt. In the book, their homosexual relationship is subtext. In the movie, it is completely scrubbed out of the narrative.

In this new TV series, subtext moves to text. Louis and Lestat do share a coffin for booty calls.  Their gay relationship is another obstacle Louis must navigate around in an oppressive America. More the libertine, Lestat is frequently puzzled by what all the fuss is about.  

Louis has his own sexual limitations to contend with. While he is completely all in for sexing dudes and nobody but dudes, Lestat is more than willing to cross the street to sample the ladies on occasion.  

Interview with the Vampire is a fascinating study into the logistical issues that come with being a vampire, of avoiding daylight, navigating interactions with a very mortal humanity, of knowing when to feed and how.  And for all the power that comes with being an immortal vampire, the limits of that power because humanity has other ideas regarding race and sex. 

Interview with the Vampire hinges on some great performances at it's core.  

As Louis de Pointe du Lac,  Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones, Doctor Who) plays a wide range of emotional beats, from cocky confidence to agonized sadness to different levels of rage, from barely repressed to blazing white hot.  Louis has a lot on his plate over the course of a century, at war with a society working against him for being black and gay and at war with his own dark impulses as a vampire underneath the civilize veneer of a businessman.   

Sam Reid has to thread a tricky needle as Lestat de Lioncourt, at once a genuinely charming man but also a deeply disturbing and manipulative killer.  

Bailey Bass as Claudia is extraordinary in her portrayal of the 14 year old vampire, ecstatic over the power and freedom being a vampire gives her but depressed and lost with being frozen in form that does not keep pace with her intellectual and emotional development, a passionate woman trapped in a child's body for eternity. 

Eric Bogosian is wry and acerbic as Daniel Molloy, not allowing Louis' unique status as a century old vampire to rattle him in his quest for honest answers to hard questions.  

Interview with the Vampire is a powerful drama that demands the attention of the viewer in a compelling way, much as Lestat compels Louis down a dark and dangerous path.

 And that is that for the Tuesday TV Touchbase this week.

There is another television post coming up tomorrow as I post about the PBS documentary series The U.S. and the Holocaust.  

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.