Truth, Justice and the American Way

Do you remember the Superman television show?  The opening had an announcer, telling Superman's story and ending with a resounding declaration that he fought for "truth, justice and the American Way" with a picture of George Reeves standing proudly, his cape billowing behind him superimposed over a large waving American Flag  DO you remember?

We could use someone like that right now, especially   the truth and justice part.  The current administration hides EVERYTHING,under the umbrella of "National Secrets"  We need the truth.   The Russian already know everything anyway, its the American people who are running around in the dark.

Speaking of Superman, did you ever consider that he was an illegal alien?  A DACA baby?  Well, think about it.  Before their world is destroyed, his natural parents put him in a spaceship and send him to Earth , where he winds up in a field of a farm in the Mid-west.  He is "adopted" by the farmers who found him and raised as their own.  No one can ever know his TRUE origins, although he himself does and it does come out eventually.  I wonder if, when he crashed landed here, if they would have put him in a cage?  No, probably not,  He was white.

I did get to wondering how the parents knew to send him here, how  it was he looked like he came from this planet, when all the other escapee aliens looked like... aliens.


In any case, on this Saturday morning  I am longing for justice to work the way Superman might have envisioned it.  I wonder if he would punch Bill Barr in the face?

Banned books and authors

So for some reason or another, I was thinking about Ezra Pound.  Heard of him?  Unless you are an English major, probably not.  HECK I was an English major and I'd be hard pressed to recall ANYTHING old Ezra wrote.   The only thing I DO remember is he was a racist asshole and they stopped teaching about him when the truth came out

Fair?  Probably not, but I think he just fell out of favor.  Maybe his works just lost their shine. I probably should see if I can wade through any of his writing before I say much more in his defense.

My mind went over to Laura Ingalls Wilder, who earlier this year had an award named after her  experience a name change  to the Children's Literature Legacy Award.  HER crime?  Repeating in her stories what her MOTHER had said about the Native Americans in her area.  Hear me out here.  SHE is being charged with racism, essentially being punished for relating in her books the moré of the time that is CERTAINLY wrong, but it was what people thought. So, she is being punished, in a sense, for relating history.  Should we stop reading Mark Twain for the same reason?  How about William Faulkner?  Laura was not saying this was right and I think it gives us a talking point with kids who may read it and question it, if they do at all.  Ma was kind of a minor character in the books, they were more about Pa.    Still I think that the presences of Ma's bias- that was really a product of her time and environment and while it is was and always will be WRONG- was something from that time period and we shouldn't erase it and prettify the time by pretending it wasn't there.

I think Laura herself got a bad shake after she died when her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, intimated that SHE, not her mother, was the author of those books which were based on her mother's recollections.  I think Laura and Rose had a bad relationship and Rose was jealous of her mother's success.  I tried to read Rose's book.  It was NOT good, and I  believe totally disproves the "I wrote the Little House Books" claim that Rose made.

But back to my original thought.  Do we separate the dancer from the dance?  Do we talk about works of art independent of the artist?  Or do we dismiss talent because of flawed character?

Obviously. May The 4th Be with you

Star Wars. The original film- smack in the middle of Lucas' opus of nine stories-  defined our generation in many ways.

I think I saw the movie eight or nine times at the drive-in the summer it came out.  I was newly married and the theater was not in our budget, but the drive in was.  We could bring our own snacks for one thing.

Who in that time did not love the story and oooh and ahhh at  what was then  State of the Art special effects.  People these days won't understand it, just as we might not have understood how it felt,when Dorothy opened the door from her sepia toned house onto the expanse of the Munchkin City.

It was magic.

The only "Known" name was Sir Alec Guinness and he came to loathe the film.  You have to feel for the guy;  a HUGE body of work and kids are coming up to him calling him Obi-wan.  That HAS to be demoralizing.


Still the film stays with us, even with how BAD the second trilogy was.  I still have not made it through all of them, I just throw my hands up in exasperation.  BAD casting.  I blame that.  WHO the HELL cast a seven year old as Anakin?   Cute kid but creepy as hell when you think about him and Amadala. 

Now that the trilogy time 3 is over- and I really liked the last film, it tied it up nicely, what next?  Now that Disney has the franchise, they are going to milk that cow for all it is worth.  I suppose the story of Yoda is in the works.  Baby Yoda is cute, scary, but cute.

I am waiting for an all BB8 movie ( Ok it's a running bit around my house, I have several BB8's) 

Still the thought of something that connects us all and guides us in some way if we are open to it is not so bad,  I'm going with that.