Donald J. Raleigh: 'Soviet Baby Boomers' (2012), Part III

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Strange phenomenon: making "primitive 78-rpm recordings on used X-ray films." (page 140)

Aleksandr Galich, Bulat Okudzhava, Vladmimir Vysotsky, the latter's songs included "And All Is Quiet in the Cemetery." (pages 142-143)

Voice of America, Deutsche Welle (German Wave) broadcasts (pages 146-147).

Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jazz Hour, etcetera (page 148)

BBC better than Voice of America, to Yelena Kolosova (pages 149-150)

Cuba as romantic inspiration: many of the interviewed Soviet Baby Boomers thought that Castro and the Cubans were cool (just like hepcats and beatniks in "the West" did). "'Cuba, my love, island of crimson dawns.'" (page 151)

Split with China over Cultural Revolution and Damansky / Chenpao Island crisis (page 153), late 1960s. Ready for war, if needed. "'[P]eople think the Chinese are strange.'" (page 155)

As in "the West," Soviet Baby Boomers mostly ignored "the Developing World."  "In 1966 Soviet citizens harbored 'unequivocal disinterest in the 'Third World,' whereas 91 percent of those surveyed were interested in America and admired its technological progress and living standards. Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were enormously popular, and many believed Americans were much like Russians." (page 158) 

The assassination of JFK was felt as a tragedy and "calamity." Yelena Kolosova: "'Since the assassination, I've had a fierce hatred of Texas. The first time I flew to Dallas, I couldn't overcome that ominous feeling that the tragedy had taken place there.'"  (page 162)

"The Baby Boomers came of age at the zenith of Soviet socialism, only to see the system crumble some three decades later. Ironically, much of this had to do with the Soviet system's very success at effecting social change, whose byproducts included rapid urbanization and a rise in the number of educated professionals." (page 169)

1968 was a turning point of sorts, after the Prague Spring was crushed; things were worsened by the Afghanistan War (1979-1989).

Interesting gender statistics. "In 1970, 86 percent of working-age women were employed (the figure was 42 percent in the United States): 71 percent of the country's teachers were women, 70 percent of its physicians . . ." (page 190). 

Also as of 1970, the divorce rate in the Soviet Union was second only to that in the USA. "Soviet women initiated divorce more than men . . ." (page 201).

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Ryan H. Walsh's 'Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968' (2018)

Ryan H. Walsh, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968. New York: Penguin Press, 2018.

A kaleidoscopic time portal into trippy Boston centering around 1968, but opening out into the 1960s and 1970s. The possibilities for further study of its phenomena are wide and deep. 

The biggest revelation for me was musical, with Boston bands like Ultimate Spinach (a sort of psychedelic Doorsy head band); and interesting historical context for powerful music with which I was already quite familiar (James Brown, Velvet Underground, Van Morrison).  

And you get all sorts of crazy details about the local music scene, clubs, musicians, cultish and political activism (particularly "the Lyman family"), underground newspapers, Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970), the freaky What's Happening, Mr. Silver? show, Howard Zinn, Timothy Leary, Steve McQueen, the Boston Strangler, Tony Curtis, Aerosmith, Maria Muldaur, astral projection, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Barney Frank -- and more! 

Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 probably syncs well with an altered state, too, or so one can imagine. Can you dig? 

Today's Rune: The Self. 
   

Amy J. Berg's 'Janis: Little Girl Blue' (2015)

Amy J. Berg's Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015), a state of the art documentary biography of Janis Joplin (1943-1970), presents her life in a most compelling, sensitive and soulful manner. My first serious foray into this field was Howard Alk's Janis (1974), which I saw at the Melkweg in Amsterdam when I was twenty-two -- and I loved it, not to mention the audience's raucous response. Now I'd consider Alk's documentary as a complement or supplement to Berg's. There have been other films, and there have been excellent books on Janis, too. As anyone who knows her music can testify, Janis Joplin was intense. Amy J. Berg has done her justice here. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Mallarmé

Wallace Fowlie, Mallarmé. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1970; originally published in 1953.

Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) romps through Stéphane Mallarmé’s life (1842-1898) and writings, providing English translations and comparisons with interconnected poet-writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire along the way. Not neglected are Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marcel Proust, or Paul Valéry, nor Symbolist painters such as Odilon Redon, or composers Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and others. 

Symbolism is oft the name given to Mallarmé’s “style,” which is related to all of the above.

I’ve chosen a handful of Fowlie’s quips that may or may not shed light on the creation of poems specifically and artistic impulses in general. It’s your call.  

“The poem is the surviving mystery.” (p. 188)

“The legend of Mallarmé’s life was the great work dreamed by him, the unique work destined to subsume all other works. But it was never composed.” (p. 194)

“A doubling of the consciousness is indispensable for the artist.” (p. 197)

“The struggle of the artist to create out of the chaos of experience is not unlike a tempest of nature. The mystery of all art is the seeming chance, a throw of dice . . . out of which an order of logic and construction is achieved.” (p. 218)

"Poetry is a game of risk, of magic and incantation. Its meaning is always hidden under the brilliance of its images and the unusualness of its analogies.” (p. 223)

“At some point or other in the fabrication of [a] poem the poet is helpless and useless before the gift of chance.” (p. 226)

“The experience of religion for Mallarmé seems to have been completely merged with that of art, and particularly joined with the experience of theatre and music .” (pp. 235-236)

“The dead move and have their being in the words they leave. To live is to endure dangers, to move from one disaster to another.” (p. 247)

“First as a man  [Mallarmé ] made himself different from other men. And then as a poet he celebrated language, the sanctity of language, as a new Orpheus.”  (p. 287)

And so adieu: a salute to Wallace Fowlie and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Today's Rune: Strength.

Loose (Take 28)

Lisboa: Down on the Street Where the Faces Shine

Darkness and light in Lisbon. People. 

Lisbon: "Down on the street where the faces shine" ~ Stooges (1970). Same spot, different light. 


Today's Rune: Movement. 

Paul Thomas Anderson: 'Inherent Vice' (2014)

Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice (2014), an adaptation of the 2009 Thomas Pynchon novel of the same title, is a milieu film set in 1970 Los Angeles, California, and thereabouts. Ronald Reagan is the governor, Richard M. Nixon is the president and the US-Vietnam War is still dragging on and on.  Hippies and squares vie for shrinking karmic space on the West Coast.  

As Doc Sportello, stoner private eye, Joaquin Phoenix fits right in, as does Doc's frenemy, the other key character in this tale, flattoped LA Detective Bigfoot Bjornsen (Josh Brolin). 

Inherent Vice: it's the ouija board, man! Obvious comparison points: the Coen Brothers, The Big Lebowski (1998) and A Serious Man (2009); Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974); and so on. 

Inherent Vice: It's the fog, man!  Anderson proceeds at his usual grinding, discomfiting pace. Not as evil here as in There Will Be Blood (2007) or The Master (2012), still there are in Inherent Vice scenes both long and slow -- even unnerving. Overall, it's not as "heavy" a trip as the aforesaid flicks, not by a long shot -- which is a merciful thing. 

Inherent Vice: Can you grok this, 1-Adam-12? 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

A Donkey and Two Mules for Sister Sara

Two mules on a hot day in Texas -- early May 2014. Like magic, you may have to click on the image to see the second mule. 

Next, the arrival of Don Quijote -- within minutes of the approach of the mules.

Sentinel trees beyond the far side of the field, Pecan Valley. 

Today's Rune: Journey. 

David Lean: Ryan's Daughter (1970)

I first saw David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970) as a kid, and I recall it as being scandalous in part, with a man and woman, both married but not to each other, riding off into the woods by horseback, then disrobing and so forth. Still there seeing it as an adult, but now within a more coherent framework. A nifty Irish-set film from Lean, following his truly epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). A fine, meticulous film -- over the top at times, but it all works anyway.  

Ryan's Daughter is set smack dab in the middle of the Great War of 1914-1918, with Ireland still occupied by English soldiers (some of them shell shocked from trench warfare). There's a rising tide or Irish nationalism, and the Easter Uprising has just been "put down." Ryan (Leo McKern) is the village pub owner (aka publican) and a sort of double-dealer between Irish and English.

The main characters in Ryan's Daughter are archetypes of sorts. The rising Free Spirit (Sarah Miles); the Village Priest (Trevor Howard); the cultured but damaged school teacher (Robert Mitchum); the Occupying (English) Officer (Christopher Jones), damaged by war; the (Irish) Patriot-Zealot (Barry Foster); and the Village Idiot (John Mills), damaged but keenly aware. The interplay among these characters, and Ryan, when folded into the historical and ecological context, make the story. Three of the characters show growth and change. 

Comparisons. Besides Lean's other works, this one corresponds with Zorba the Greek (1964) in that the impoverished Villagers in both movies are wildly exuberant at times, but often mobbish, petty, cruel and sometimes violent. There are in both films Outsiders and Outsider-Insiders that stand apart from the madding crowd. There's a remnant of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856) and also I could see some resemblance, transplanted to western Ireland from the Midwestern USA, to Sinclair Lewis' Main Street (1920). Original screenplay by Robert Bolt.

Today's Rune: Gateway.

Marcel Proust: Du côté de chez Swann (1913)

All right! Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way  (1913) hits one hundred today. This calls for remembrance of things past, the search for lost time, and time regained. I raise high my glass in salute. 

One of my most memorable reading pleasures remains finishing Proust's complete cycle, À la recherche du temps perdu. And I'm certainly not alone in this the world over. 

For the record, traces of Proust are revealed in films ranging from Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1945)* to Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' Little Miss Sunshine (2006) -- and the beat goes on. 

Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way is a good place to start Proust, come to think of it. Swann and Odette de Crécy and l'amour fou ~ a most memorable start, indeed.

Proust's intricate, finely wrought sentences are a wonder even in English translation. For example, from Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way:

"When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection" (Wikiquote translation).

An easy way to sample Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way is to check out Volker Schlöndorff's Un amour de Swann / Swann in Love (1984). But beware: sensuality is depicted! 

Today's Rune: Joy.   *William Faulkner, a Proust admirer, was one of the screenwriter-adapters of the 1939 Raymond Chandler novel.

Games

I saw Curtis Harrington's Games (1967) on TV when I was a kid and it scared the hell out of me. It gave a glimpse into adult life, something that could apparently be even more bizarre than childhood! Never forgot it. 

Games. All the more interesting now after seeing the correspondence in basic story idea with Les Diaboliques (1954), a flick discussed in yesterday's post. What cements the deal is the reoccurrence of actor Simone Signoret. 

Striking in Games is the atmospheric use of Pop Art (like Roy Lichtenstein), which serves as a sort of Greek Chorus. 

Hard to believe, but even James Caan was once in his twenties. That's Katharine Ross on the left and Simone Signoret on the right. 

Two other films on TV that terrorized me as a kid: The Boston Strangler (1968; confusing because Tony Curtis was usually a nice guy in movies) and Crowhaven Farm (1970), a tale of reincarnation, modern witches and flashbacks to events in colonial Salem, Massachusetts. 

Happy Hallowe'en, folks!

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Interview with the Buddha

I go back to artwork and gardens -- antidotes to prolix patter. 

What is the sound of 

cellphone clapping?

Pablo Neruda, Muchos Somos / We Are Many (1970)

Of the many . . . whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing,
they have departed for another city. . .

De tantos hombres que soy, que somos,
no puedo encontrar a ninguno:
se me pierden bajo la ropa,
se fueron a otra ciudad.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this . . . has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to describe my choices,

I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

Mientras escribo estoy ausente
y cuando vuelvo ya he partido:
voy a ver si a las otras gentes
les pasa lo que a mí me pasa,
si son tantos como soy yo,
si se parecen a sí mismos
y cuando lo haya averiguado
voy a aprender tan bien las cosas
que para explicar mis problemas

les hablaré de geografía.

Does wireless have 

the Buddha nature?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Elmore Leonard, RIP

A fond farewell to Elmore Leonard (1925-2013), the writer and the person. It hasn't been but a few days since I unpacked his Cuba Libre (1998) from a box shipped from North Carolina. Oh, yeah. 

And how could I ever forget The Moonshine War (1969)? My sister Vickie took me to see a matinee showing of the 1970 movie version when we were but kids -- Richard Widmark, Alan Alda (yes) and Patrick ("Secret Agent Man" / The Prisoner) McGoohan as the major players -- a sort of foreshadowing of The Omega Man (1971) and Deliverance (1972), which we also saw when they came out. The joys of babysitting. I paid it all forward by taking our younger brother Jamie to see Wise Blood (1979), Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Kids Are Alright (1979). Haha. And the beat goes on. 

Elmore Leonard, RIP.

Today's Rune: Flow.       

Jean-Pierre Melville: Le cercle rouge (Take I)

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le cercle rouge (1970) comes from a point in time two decades after Les enfants terribles, and it's in color. With it, Melville delivers a meticulous mix of crime drama, film noir and neo-noir (depending on your lingo preferences).

It's a real cool film that moves in no particular hurry. 

Early on I started thinking "Sergio Leone," and then it hit me -- the character Vogel is played by Gian Maria Volonté, the same dude that plays Ramón Rojo in Per un pugno di dollari / A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and El Indio in Per qualche dollaro in più / For a Few Dollars More (1965).  

Synchronicities. In the final season of Dexter on Showtime, the new main character, played by Charlotte Rampling, is also named Vogel.

In tonight's season opener of Dexter, a dude is trying to figure out how to "fence" jewely he robbed from a mob-owned jewelry store, while sleeping with Deb, who is on hiatus from the police force.

In Le cercle rouge, a guy is hiding from mobsters while plotting to rob a jewelry store and fence the loot, along with Vogel, who is on the lam from the police.

In tonight's series opener for Ray Donovan also on Showtime, an opening scene has Mickey (Jon Voight) emerging from prison, ready for mischief. In Le cercle rouge, an opening scene has Corey (Alain Delon) emerging from prison, ready for mischief.

Worth noting, even if it means nothing other than that crime tropes repeat themselves across the decades.

Also in Le cercle rouge are two actors who played key roles in Costa-Gavras' Z (1968/1969) the greatest political thriller flick of the 20th century (so far as I have seen): Yves Montand (as Jansen, an alcoholic ex-police sharpshooter in Le cercle rouge) and François Périer (as Santi, a mob-connected club owner in Le cercle rouge). 

Finally, André Bourvil plays Le Commissaire Mattei with gravitas and extra decency, probably because in real life he was dying, and this was his last film. 

Today's Rune: Warrior.  

A Man Called Horse

Last time I saw Elliot Silverstein's A Man Called Horse (1970), I was a little kid -- and I loved it. This time, turns out I still love it!  This movie does well in bringing its audience into the reconstructed world of the Sioux before the "Plains Wars."  By observing the representatives of three worlds (Anglo-American, Sioux and French or First Nation/French Canadian) in action together, we can see cross-culturally, like anthropologists. A Man Called Horse is a sort of hybrid cultural achievement in its own right, in that the Sioux are the main players, but two characters, John Morgan (Richard Harris) and Batise (Jean Gascon) open up a "dialogue" for non-Sioux viewers. I love in particular that the oft-spoken Sioux is not translated, so Morgan must try to figure out what is meant (with the help of Batise, usually). Some of the later plot points in the film are skewed and unfortunate, but overall, this is a cool flick, released within days of the very first Earth Day.

Rosebud Sioux were employed in the film. Shoshone parties are introduced as "natural enemies" of the Sioux, and there is no US military presence in the area during the events depicted.

Clyde D. Dollar served as history liaison. His papers are in the Archives of the University of Central Arkansas, 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway, AR  72035.  I'd love to peruse them. One file is called '“Hollywood and Its Indians: The Story of the Making of the Film A Man Called Horse,” by Clyde D. Dollar, 1971.'  Looks like he did a lot of historical and archaeological surveys and oral histories in Arkansas and elsewhere. For more about what's in his papers, here's a link: http://uca.edu/archives/m91-17-clyde-d-dollar-collection/ 

Today's Rune: Gateway.

Michelangelo Antonioni: Zabriskie Point (Take II)

In Zabriskie Point (1970), Antonioni gives a sort of take (or double-take) on 

1) what's going on in the USA at the time; and 
2) how things change with time as new technologies and modes of exchange are injected into our daily lives. 

Some of this overlaps with his Italian-location films such as Il Grido / The Cry (1957) and Il deserto rosso / Red Desert (1964-1965). Some details are peculiar to American culture.

Many things are going on in Zabriskie Point, albeit often at what seems like a slow pace. Development, for instance. Rod Taylor (The Time Machine, 1960; The Birds, 1963) plays a quintessentially aggressive real estate developer, pushing out into the desert with "Sunny Dunes," a place to "get away from it all" -- despite issues of water shortages and general ecological impact. This development thread may be the most important thrust of the movie and remains completely relevant in the 21st century.

More specific to the latter 1960s and early 1970s, there are in Zabriskie Point organized upheavals on college campuses. These include the twin thrusts of Black Power and development of counterculture alternatives to "dominant paradigms."  The students are, for the most part, knowledgeable about what's going on with the Establishment, about civil rights and the then ongoing US-Vietnam War. We see some of this from time to time now (compare the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, and the highly organized Act Up campaigns), but there's nothing quite like eliminating the Draft and opening up voting to 18-21 year old citizens to take the air out of resistance to War and the Establishment in general. 

In the last post, I mentioned Antonioni's taking notice of the timeless gun obsession element of American culture, and there's more to express about this, but for now, it's worth noting another more time-specific element: letting it all hang out in small communes and collectives, with hippies, be-ins and that kind of stuff. Antonioni sure seems to sympathize with Daria (Daria Halprin) as she questions the Establishment status quo and wonders around on the road from LA to Phoenix. There are scenes involving her that remind one of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical (1967-1968), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and similar types of countercultural outpourings that even now seem to make a lot of people nervous.

Today's Rune: Signals.    

Michelangelo Antonioni: Zabriskie Point (Take I)

With a little Pink Floyd mixed in, far out is what it is: Michelangelo Antonioni's full color English language film Zabriskie Point (1970). It's fueled by ghosts in the machine, the late 1960s Zeitgeist, Time-Ghost, spirit of the time. Pictured here: Kathleen Cleaver, now a professor at Yale. How cool is that?

The main actors, Daria Halprin (as Daria -- Dennis Hopper was a spouse in "real life") and Mark Frechette (as Mark) are a joke as far as delivering lines (hello, Earth? Is anybody out there?), but Zabriskie Point works anyway.  Antonioni knows exactly how much Americans obssess about guns -- there's a sequence in a gunshop that could have been filmed in 2013, in fact -- and about planes (Mark steals one, for little apparent reason other than that he's a certifiable nut).

Let's not forget explosions -- and Wonder Bread debris flying through the air to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up" (a reworking of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene"). Far out, indeed.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  
  

Claude Chabrol: Le Boucher

Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher / The Butcher (1970/1971) exposes the strange underbelly of a seemingly idyllic town in Dordogne in the Southwest of France. Similar to, say, David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and Sofia Coppola's 1999 adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides. However, the main focus is on two characters who meet at a wedding: Hélène (Stéphane Audran), Headmistress at the town school, and Popaul (Jean Yanne), a traumatized fifteen year veteran of the First Indochina War (Vietnam) and the Guerre d'Algérie (Algerian War) who has resumed in civilian life his occupation as a butcher. The interaction between these two is intense, but masked in part by the routine business of town life contrasted with the introduction of murder. Chabrol subverts convention by making the investigating police inspector a minor distraction rather than either plot-driver or mystery solver. 

 

In addition, Chabrol gives words and images their due. The scenery is gorgeous. Cro-Magnon paintings at Les Grottes de Cougnac (the Cougnac Grottoes) are shown in one key segment. Finally, more harrowing than any overt action in the film are certain descriptive passages, such as Popaul's recollections of war:

I've seen a corpse or two, their heads in the wind, cut in half, mouths open. I've seen three or four piled together. Kids with their eyes punctured. Indo-Chinese as old as Madame Touraint completely torn to bits. I've seen pals of mine rotting in the sun, being eaten by maggots.

From one vantage point, certainly, Le Boucher may be seen as a serious contemplation of the hidden costs of war even in remote places. In this case, a combat veteran is clearly damaged and demonstrably capable of murder on the world stage, but is he, in fact, the local murderer, too?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.       

Little Big Man

Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970), based on Thomas Berger's 1964 novel of the same title, delivers a memorably consciousness raising story of the American West as recounted by a 121-year old man played by Dustin Hoffman. It plays to the charisma of Chief Dan George, who is also a hoot in Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).

In making Little Big Man, Arthur Penn was creating fully within the spirit of the times -- compare this film with his equally impressive Bonnie and Clyde (1967). When Little Big Man came out, Marvin Gaye was nearly ready to release "What's Going On?," environmentally-minded people had celebrated the first Earth Day and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM, formed in 1968) had occupied the Mayflower II -- on Thanksgiving Day 1970, after painting Plymouth Rock red. The US-Vietnam War was another ongoing concern, and the grisly facts of the My Lai Massacre of 1968 were coming under closer global scrutiny. Little Big Man reflects these times well.  

Also floating around in the Zeitgeist of the 1960s were songs dealing with the Little Big Horn. Here are snippets from two of them:

Please Mr. Custer, I don't wanna go . . .

-- "Mr. Custer" -- Larry Vern,  #1 American hit single in 1960.

Now I will tell you buster that I ain't a fan of Custer
And the General he don't ride well anymore
To some he was a hero but to me his score was zero
And the General he don't ride well anymore . . .

-- "Custer" -- Johnny Cash (and Peter La Farge), Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian (1964)

Today's Rune: Fertility.