Film critics get paid a lot of money to see a lot of movies. One recent year, Peter Travers, movie critic for Rolling Stone, wrote that he watched more than 400 theatrical releases in 365 days. (He gave four stars to all of them, undoubtedly.) Here at Bareknuckle Vengeance, we’re too busy fighting the man to watch every movie that comes out. I haven’t seen Biutiful, or 127 Hours, or the King’s Speech, so I hesitate to make a “Best of” or “Top Ten” list. And I’m not going to waste the space here talking about how great the Social Network or Black Swan is, although I liked them both a lot, because you’re more likely to have seen them. But here are a few movies you might have missed:
El Secreto de Sus Ojos - This Argentinian film won the best Foreign Language Academy Award last year, but it was only distributed in the U.S. in 2010. It tells the story of an investigator who failed to crack a murder case and revisits it decades later, along with a relationship with his superior that fizzled out along with the case. You don’t need to know anything about Argentinian politics to enjoy the snaking storyline or the questions that the film raises about memory and trauma, and you won’t come away learning much about Argentina either. But El Secreto de Sus Ojos satisfyingly works on two levels; the decisions and attitudes of the film’s various characters are stand-ins for the varying stances on “truth and reconciliation” that wrenchingly played out on a national level after Argentina emerged from a dirty war prosecuted against its own people by the ruling military junta.
Machete - This movie should never have worked. But it does, incredibly. Modeled after the same Grindhouse pulp movies as was Robert Rodriguez’s prior film Planet Terror, Machete succeeds where that one failed chiefly because of its more straight-forward plot and likeable characters. It wears its politics on its sleeve, but perhaps its didactism is tempered by the sheer awesome ridiculousness of its violence. Who would have thought that a movie with so many has-been actors crammed in to the supporting cast -- including Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Jeff Fahey and <cough cough> Robert DeNiro <cough cough> -- would have turned out so well?
Mother - The latest from Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho, I think the less that I say about Mother’s plot the better. The film is at its heart about the unswerving loyalty of a mother towards her son, but twists in the story beg questions of the audience about how we understand the borders between right and wrong, hero and criminal, victim and victimizer. All of the characters have complex motivations, and none find solutions to the problems in their lives that don’t affect those around them. Like El Secreto de Sus Ojos, I believe this is actually a 2009 film that was released in the states in 2010. If you have Netflix, you can stream the movie now.
El Secreto de Sus Ojos - This Argentinian film won the best Foreign Language Academy Award last year, but it was only distributed in the U.S. in 2010. It tells the story of an investigator who failed to crack a murder case and revisits it decades later, along with a relationship with his superior that fizzled out along with the case. You don’t need to know anything about Argentinian politics to enjoy the snaking storyline or the questions that the film raises about memory and trauma, and you won’t come away learning much about Argentina either. But El Secreto de Sus Ojos satisfyingly works on two levels; the decisions and attitudes of the film’s various characters are stand-ins for the varying stances on “truth and reconciliation” that wrenchingly played out on a national level after Argentina emerged from a dirty war prosecuted against its own people by the ruling military junta.
Machete - This movie should never have worked. But it does, incredibly. Modeled after the same Grindhouse pulp movies as was Robert Rodriguez’s prior film Planet Terror, Machete succeeds where that one failed chiefly because of its more straight-forward plot and likeable characters. It wears its politics on its sleeve, but perhaps its didactism is tempered by the sheer awesome ridiculousness of its violence. Who would have thought that a movie with so many has-been actors crammed in to the supporting cast -- including Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Jeff Fahey and <cough cough> Robert DeNiro <cough cough> -- would have turned out so well?
Mother - The latest from Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho, I think the less that I say about Mother’s plot the better. The film is at its heart about the unswerving loyalty of a mother towards her son, but twists in the story beg questions of the audience about how we understand the borders between right and wrong, hero and criminal, victim and victimizer. All of the characters have complex motivations, and none find solutions to the problems in their lives that don’t affect those around them. Like El Secreto de Sus Ojos, I believe this is actually a 2009 film that was released in the states in 2010. If you have Netflix, you can stream the movie now.
Machete vs. Mother: It would be a close fight.
Exit Through the Gift Shop - I’m still not sure if this is a fake documentary about a real artist, or a real documentary about a fake artist. But either way, I think the point of the film, which follows an amateur L.A. videographer turned street artist turned local art celebrity, is that there is no way to characterize art as “real” or “fake” anyways, that authenticity in modern art is constructed, and in turn, commodified. In that way, the film is similar to another documentary about art, My Kid Could Paint That. But whereas in that movie, the filmmakers studiously try to redraw the lines between fake and authentic even as they begin to crumble around their protagonist, Exit Through the Gift Shop is more carefree, letting the artists, whoever the hell they really are, have the last laugh.
The Kids Are Alright - Conservative L.A. Times columnist Jonah Goldberg recently celebrated the rise of the homosexual bourgeoisie as a sign of the decline of more radical leftist movements, and I think he would find much to like about The Kids Are Alright as emblematic of the phenomenon as he understands it. I guess that I too wrote about this, albeit from a more critical and speculative perspective, but I still like The Kids Are Alright, a movie about a lesbian couple with teenage children. Even if they all live in a magical crunchy granola bohemia-land, the characters are fleshed out and fallible in a refreshing way. The film is at turns hilarious and quite affecting.
If you added the budgets of these movies together, you might be halfway towards that of Inception. But I give you the Gyp the Blood guarantee: while these movies might be searching, messy, challenging, dark or violent, they are all well crafted, and certainly not boring. Instead of catching the next Transformers or Hangover sequel, you might think about watching these instead.
Bonus: Best Movies of 2009 That You Still Haven’t Seen: Moon and In the Loop - One is a comment on the commodification of human bodies written and directed by David Bowie’s son and consists of Sam Rockwell talking to himself for two hours. The other is the only movie about the 2003 invasion of Iraq to feature the dialog: “It'll be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.” “No, it won't. It'll be difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult.” Both are great. |
So, Bareknuckle readers, have you seen any of these? Any films that I missed?
As I spin my lonely dreydl on this Christmas eve, I wish my goyish friends a happy holiday. I’m a little jealous. But not because I don’t get any presents, but because Christmas music is way cooler than Hannukkah music. The closest we get to popular holiday tunes are an Adam Sandler song and the Klezmatics’ album of Woody Guthrie penned Hannukkah music.
OK, so most contemporary Christmas music sucks. I know -- I worked at a record store for five years, during which we were forced to play Christmas tracks around the clock every December. I knew all the words to Rosie O’Donnell’s A Rosie Christmas the year that one was released. I’ll spare you a hyperlink.
But if Bob Dylan can get into Christmas music, I guess I can too. After all, Darlene Love boasts that it took three Jews to write what she terms the greatest Christmas song of all time:
Darlene returned the favor some years later with “Christmas for the Jews”, an instant rhythm and blues classic if there ever was one.
Here’s Miles Davis on Christmas:
“Blue Xmas” is on a compilation CD called Hipsters’ Holiday, which I recommend, although I have found that evangelical East Texans don’t like it. But they spin Bob Wills tunes in Aggie country, and that’s OK too (Aaah-Aaah!). My next pick probably doesn’t go down very well down there either, but I understand that its quite popular in the UK around Christmastime, where they presumably have a better collective sense of humor:
No knocking Darlene Love, but “Fairytale of New York” might just be the greatest song of all time, Christmas or not. Those three Jews were seriously bested by a couple of Irishmen. I tend to listen to “Fairytale of New York” on repeat whenever I dig it out.
Here’s Miles Davis on Christmas:
“Blue Xmas” is on a compilation CD called Hipsters’ Holiday, which I recommend, although I have found that evangelical East Texans don’t like it. But they spin Bob Wills tunes in Aggie country, and that’s OK too (Aaah-Aaah!). My next pick probably doesn’t go down very well down there either, but I understand that its quite popular in the UK around Christmastime, where they presumably have a better collective sense of humor:
No knocking Darlene Love, but “Fairytale of New York” might just be the greatest song of all time, Christmas or not. Those three Jews were seriously bested by a couple of Irishmen. I tend to listen to “Fairytale of New York” on repeat whenever I dig it out.
Happy Chrismukkahzaa everyone. Sorry about that war on Christmas that we started. Maybe the above illustrates that to a large degree, as a culture we've already moved past narrow definitions of the holiday season, both in terms of those that would privilege a false sort of authenticity that legitimizes hierarchies of moral authority, and those that would place the crass commercialization of the holidays above discourses that poke holes into Christmas mythology, or those that celebrate charity and community. Yes, the radio still plays Mariah Carey way too much. But these are not really obscure or "indie" genres or artists that I've selected either. (Sorry that there are no heavy metal Christmas tunes here, E.)
Now then, about that whole peace thing:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
--Robert Frost
The Giant Menorah: A New Superweapon in the War on Christmas
Earlier this week, a county snow plow caught fire in the suburban town of Prior Lake. Fortunately, its driver escaped without injury, and nobody else was hurt. No one knows what lit the plow aflame, but a full tank of gas aided in its immolation. According to the local fire chief, “That’s the reason there was a lot of fire.”
Further east, a suburban home in Apple Valley burned down after a troubled woman doused it with gasoline, struck a match, and tried to kill herself with a screwdriver. This news reminded me of Drowning Mona, a movie about people who drive Yugos. The film starred Neve Campbell, whose good looks and snowy forename embodied the aesthetics of a frosty and fiery winter apocalypse.
In my opinion, one of the best recurring moments of fire and ice is the Winter Olympic torch—the flames I mean, not the related ceremonies. I think it’s great to watch televised Nordic ski racing, even if you have to listen to Al Trautwig’s stupid commentary. But since we can’t look forward to that again until 2014, it’s good to have other icy hot distractions.
Torche's Volcanic Album Cover
Snowy volcanos usually do it for me. Right around our first snowfall this winter, I started listening to the band Torche. Because I’m not super hip on the music scene, I sometimes fall a few years and/or decades behind the state of the art. In this case, I was blasting “Snowblind,” the classic Black Sabbath tune, in honor of our forthcoming snow-mageddon. Then I realized Ozzy’s howling was not literally about snow, but about cocaine. Pleased at having unraveled this metaphor, I decided my chops were in shape for something more current. I came across Torche while browsing “top-rated” heavy metal playlists on the iTunes music store; although, technically, I think their genre is something more like sludge rock or stoner metal. Their melodies whirl atop heavy, drop-tuned guitar riffs, but in major keys. And I think this what really elevates them over any other “metal” band I’ve heard; it transforms the doom and gloom into something more ambiguous and interesting.
Yesterday evening, we endured the winter solstice and crossed into Rumple Minze season. If there’s ever a beverage that represents fire and ice, it’s the oddly-fascist 100-proof peppermint schnapps. Rumple Minze is to your esophagus as Gold Bond is to your dermis. The frozen menthol burn pairs well with hot chocolate, offering a sultry taste redolent of a tryst between the Swiss Miss and Princess Teegra. Another good winter cocktail is the “Grolar Bear” (Ursus horribilus maritimus), a beige blend of peppermint schnapps and bourbon.
In the spirit of the season, let's raise our glasses to the heroes and champions, artists and adventures, lovers, brothers, sisters, and Others that make the world hot and cold. Cheers, and happy holidays!
On Saturday, a bill to repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of the United States’ armed forces was passed by the Senate, and now has no visible hurdles before becoming law. While the repeal of DADT is a good thing, I think it might be a good time to take a step back here, and raise a couple of issues.
First, although this means that servicemen and women who identify as gay or bisexual can serve without being afraid getting fired, it doesn’t mean that life in the military will be any easier. The barbeques on base are not immediately going to start resembling Lady Gaga concerts because, I imagine, most of those who are affected by this bill are likely to keep their sexuality under wraps. Homophobia is not going to disappear from the military overnight.
Second, we should think about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the context of broader changes in understandings of civil rights in the United States, changes that are often precipitated by the military, or because of American militaristic aims. Ever since the black seaman Dorie Miller, a mess hall cook, manned anti-aircraft guns at Pearl Harbor, leaders have capitalized upon the eagerness of Americans to sacrifice for a country that has systematically discriminated against them.
During World War II, the military paraded Miller and other African Americans around so as to promote a unified citizenry and dissuade racial conflict. Documentary films like The Negro Soldier, the result of collaborations between the Signal Corps, the Office of War Information, and Hollywood, projected an image of a multicultural fighting force, even as troops were still segregated and minorities were given the worst, menial jobs. And features such as Hollywood Canteen dramatized the co-mingling of black, Asian, and Native American soldiers, even as the real Hollywood Canteen, a club in Los Angeles that Bette Davis created for servicemen on shore leave, was under investigation by the FBI because Davis refused to segregate its visitors.
In American government policy, political discourse, and mass culture, civil rights became entangled with ideas about service to the nation. Prisoners at Manzanar and other Japanese-American concentration camps (the U.S. government’s preferred terminology at the time) were only allowed to leave the camp if they swore allegiance to the country that had locked them up, and if they voluntarily enlisted to join the front lines in Europe. Thus thousands of Japanese and other minority soldiers died, with the understanding that their sacrifice was a means to prove their Americaness.
The cold war provoked leaders like Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy to think about civil rights almost solely in terms of the strategies of a global war. Communists, not only in the Soviet Union, but also those who were dedicated to the struggles of third world liberation movements around the world, pointed to racism and segregation as proof of the hypocrisy of Western democracy. When Truman desegregated the military, he did it to ensure the survival of American hegemony.
For much of the following decade, Hollywood movies spoke in terms of race almost exclusively within the context of military service. And none of them questioned the inanity of making minorities prove their devotion, at the cost of their own blood, to a country that still withheld equal rights. The policy of “Double Victory” that animated African American troops to volunteer in the war against fascism had backfired; The assumption that the subjugated would find equality after proving their loyalty in World War II became a perpetual call for minorities to voice their grievances within the bounds of the conservative nationalism of the early cold war.
As Melani McAlister has argued, the notion of a multi-cultural, egalitarian America has a greater currency in global politics now more than ever. When Barack Obama was elected president, he projected an internationalist image to his Muslim audience in a speech in Egypt for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, even as he continued to wage two wars in the region. I would argue that his ability to act as a black leader is terribly circumscribed by the necessity that he operate as an American one, but its only the latter that allows for the former.
It is unlikely that terrorists are passing out pamphlets in Pakistan that attack Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. But we might ask why this reform, that which allows gay men and women to die for their country, is being passed while there are still no laws that prevent employers from firing people for being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgendered. Why is it that gay Americans can elect to protect their country, but the same country has elected not to protect them? Some, not all, gay men and women have voiced their opposition to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in terms of patriotic sacrifice -- I just want to serve my country in a time of war. I don’t mean to entirely dismiss such language as a means to argue for equal rights. And certainly, jobs currently held by homosexuals in the military are diverse enough that it is unlikely that we will see masses of recently outed servicemen sent to the front lines to die in as overwhelming numbers as was suffered by the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry and other minority regiments in wars past. But I wonder if there is a disconnect between this movement and the broader struggle towards social justice, in the United States and abroad.
The 442nd
Does this mean, in repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, that we are elevating an argument for equality that carries with it stipulations that reify militaristic nationalist sentiment and thus validate American global hegemony? Will the movement against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell backfire? I hope not, and I don’t want to overstress the historical parallels here.
In the essay “American Things,” Tony Kushner wrote that gay rights is the same as civil rights, the same as socialism. He championed the concept of America while dismissing the “fixed fetishes of democracy and freedom” and chastising those who saw the American experiment as a finished project, and American democracy as an excuse to tyrannize minorities.
“The only politics that can survive an encounter with this world,” he says, “is a politics that can encompass both the harmonics and the dissonance. The frazzle, the rubbed raw, the unresolved, the fragile and the fiery and the dangerous: These are American things.”
To be honest, I don’t really know what all of that means. But it strikes me as Bulosan-esque, and maybe it is along the lines of what’s missing in the discussion of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
First, although this means that servicemen and women who identify as gay or bisexual can serve without being afraid getting fired, it doesn’t mean that life in the military will be any easier. The barbeques on base are not immediately going to start resembling Lady Gaga concerts because, I imagine, most of those who are affected by this bill are likely to keep their sexuality under wraps. Homophobia is not going to disappear from the military overnight.
Second, we should think about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the context of broader changes in understandings of civil rights in the United States, changes that are often precipitated by the military, or because of American militaristic aims. Ever since the black seaman Dorie Miller, a mess hall cook, manned anti-aircraft guns at Pearl Harbor, leaders have capitalized upon the eagerness of Americans to sacrifice for a country that has systematically discriminated against them.
During World War II, the military paraded Miller and other African Americans around so as to promote a unified citizenry and dissuade racial conflict. Documentary films like The Negro Soldier, the result of collaborations between the Signal Corps, the Office of War Information, and Hollywood, projected an image of a multicultural fighting force, even as troops were still segregated and minorities were given the worst, menial jobs. And features such as Hollywood Canteen dramatized the co-mingling of black, Asian, and Native American soldiers, even as the real Hollywood Canteen, a club in Los Angeles that Bette Davis created for servicemen on shore leave, was under investigation by the FBI because Davis refused to segregate its visitors.
In American government policy, political discourse, and mass culture, civil rights became entangled with ideas about service to the nation. Prisoners at Manzanar and other Japanese-American concentration camps (the U.S. government’s preferred terminology at the time) were only allowed to leave the camp if they swore allegiance to the country that had locked them up, and if they voluntarily enlisted to join the front lines in Europe. Thus thousands of Japanese and other minority soldiers died, with the understanding that their sacrifice was a means to prove their Americaness.
The cold war provoked leaders like Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy to think about civil rights almost solely in terms of the strategies of a global war. Communists, not only in the Soviet Union, but also those who were dedicated to the struggles of third world liberation movements around the world, pointed to racism and segregation as proof of the hypocrisy of Western democracy. When Truman desegregated the military, he did it to ensure the survival of American hegemony.
For much of the following decade, Hollywood movies spoke in terms of race almost exclusively within the context of military service. And none of them questioned the inanity of making minorities prove their devotion, at the cost of their own blood, to a country that still withheld equal rights. The policy of “Double Victory” that animated African American troops to volunteer in the war against fascism had backfired; The assumption that the subjugated would find equality after proving their loyalty in World War II became a perpetual call for minorities to voice their grievances within the bounds of the conservative nationalism of the early cold war.
As Melani McAlister has argued, the notion of a multi-cultural, egalitarian America has a greater currency in global politics now more than ever. When Barack Obama was elected president, he projected an internationalist image to his Muslim audience in a speech in Egypt for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, even as he continued to wage two wars in the region. I would argue that his ability to act as a black leader is terribly circumscribed by the necessity that he operate as an American one, but its only the latter that allows for the former.
It is unlikely that terrorists are passing out pamphlets in Pakistan that attack Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. But we might ask why this reform, that which allows gay men and women to die for their country, is being passed while there are still no laws that prevent employers from firing people for being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgendered. Why is it that gay Americans can elect to protect their country, but the same country has elected not to protect them? Some, not all, gay men and women have voiced their opposition to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in terms of patriotic sacrifice -- I just want to serve my country in a time of war. I don’t mean to entirely dismiss such language as a means to argue for equal rights. And certainly, jobs currently held by homosexuals in the military are diverse enough that it is unlikely that we will see masses of recently outed servicemen sent to the front lines to die in as overwhelming numbers as was suffered by the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry and other minority regiments in wars past. But I wonder if there is a disconnect between this movement and the broader struggle towards social justice, in the United States and abroad.
The 442nd
Does this mean, in repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, that we are elevating an argument for equality that carries with it stipulations that reify militaristic nationalist sentiment and thus validate American global hegemony? Will the movement against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell backfire? I hope not, and I don’t want to overstress the historical parallels here.
In the essay “American Things,” Tony Kushner wrote that gay rights is the same as civil rights, the same as socialism. He championed the concept of America while dismissing the “fixed fetishes of democracy and freedom” and chastising those who saw the American experiment as a finished project, and American democracy as an excuse to tyrannize minorities.
“The only politics that can survive an encounter with this world,” he says, “is a politics that can encompass both the harmonics and the dissonance. The frazzle, the rubbed raw, the unresolved, the fragile and the fiery and the dangerous: These are American things.”
To be honest, I don’t really know what all of that means. But it strikes me as Bulosan-esque, and maybe it is along the lines of what’s missing in the discussion of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding.”
Frankly, I think Scrooge was onto something—I say we start with that little wanker, Tiny Tim.
Mercifully, though somewhat surprisingly, this year has seen relatively little outrage (with the notable exception of Sen. Jon Kyl) over the alleged “War on Christmas,” a controversy so obviously contrived and stupid that it seems more like an ironic statement on the poverty of American political discourse than anything. That controversy has become such a predictable, borderline traditional, part of December in the United States that it's actually remarkable to think it really became a national political issue only five years ago when conservative commentator (and noted Max Headroom-impersonator) John Gibson published The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse than You Thought.
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The War on the Pompadour: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the World’s Greatest Haircut is Worse than You Thought by John Gibson
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Here is where I would normally explain Gibson's argument before pointing out its inaccuracies, inconsistencies, or fallacies, all the while making fun of him like a jerk. But I've never read The War on Christmas. And you know what? I'm never going to read The War on Christmas. Because, really, you already know what it says and I already know what it says, and what it says is stupid. So let's not bother and just move on.
What is particularly interesting and too often ignored in this moronic debate is that, if ever there was a “War on Christmas,” it was fought for ardently by the celebrated “forefathers” of the American nation itself, the Puritans, who prevented any private or public celebration of Christmas in New England well into the eighteenth-century. In short, the Puritans hated Christmas—hated, hated, hated it. For them, it was a Catholic celebration without Scriptural or historical merit (they believed Jesus to be an autumn birth) that had obviously co-opted a Roman pagan holiday. Cotton Mather derisively referred to it as a “wanton Bacchanalian feast” and Puritan authorities happily punished anyone found to be celebrating Christmas for “disturbing the peace.” Indeed, Governor William Bradford issued his first such punishment in 1620—just weeks after the first Thanksgiving.
What is particularly interesting and too often ignored in this moronic debate is that, if ever there was a “War on Christmas,” it was fought for ardently by the celebrated “forefathers” of the American nation itself, the Puritans, who prevented any private or public celebration of Christmas in New England well into the eighteenth-century. In short, the Puritans hated Christmas—hated, hated, hated it. For them, it was a Catholic celebration without Scriptural or historical merit (they believed Jesus to be an autumn birth) that had obviously co-opted a Roman pagan holiday. Cotton Mather derisively referred to it as a “wanton Bacchanalian feast” and Puritan authorities happily punished anyone found to be celebrating Christmas for “disturbing the peace.” Indeed, Governor William Bradford issued his first such punishment in 1620—just weeks after the first Thanksgiving.
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| Screw thy pagan holiday. |
(Bill O'Reilly wants to remind you that these secular-progressive Puritans are trying to deny the religious legacy of this country).Other colonies were not as authoritarian as the Puritans, of course, and various other more liberal denominations held some sort of Christmas celebration in southern and mid-Atlantic colonies. But these were neither obligatory nor necessarily festive affairs. Thomas Jefferson rarely, if ever, even referenced Christmas while George Washington often spent the holiday shooting animals and/or locking his servants into oppressive indentures. And because Christmas celebrations were so strongly associated with the English and Germans, by the time of the American Revolution, the entire practice fell out of favor in the United States. Well into the 1800s, then, many Protestants rarely even took notice of Christmas.
In reality, our sentimentalized “Christmas” is less a traditionally sacred Christian holiday than it is an invention of nineteenth-century authors like Charles Dickens or Washington Irving who managed to blend disparate elements of German (the tree), Dutch (the cookie), British (the card), and American (predictably, the fat guy in a stupid outfit) culture together to create the illusion of a coherent “tradition.” This particular narrative of Christmas would become popularized particularly in the second-half of the century because it fit so neatly into dominant cultural trends of the Victorian era: a newfound recognition and celebration of the notion of “childhood” and an increasing emphasis on mass consumption. The merging of these two ideals could be no better embodied than in the figure of Santa Claus:
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| Santa was apparently more of a creepy opium-freak when Thomas Nast created him. |
As Protestants began increasingly to observe and celebrate the new holiday, some ministers began to actively promote gift-giving on Christmas (instead of the more traditional New Year's Day) in order to make the religious holiday more esteemed than its secular counterpart. But other religious leaders have continued, even into the present, to express ambivalence, if not outright hostility, toward a holiday that would be far more accurately described by Daniel Boorstin as "the national festival of consumption" than an actual religious observance. And, by and large, that is really what Christmas is: it is a seemingly unending period between Thanksgiving and New Year's in which Americans are turned into raving lunatics, foaming at the mouth while frantically seeking out cheap consumer goods in ostentatious worship of capitalism and Bing Crosby music:
We can mock these people all we want and, to an extent, rightly so. But it may be worth reflecting on our own complicity in perpetuating an atmosphere in which this behavior makes any sort of sense. Christmas, as it is generally practiced in postwar America, works to solidify our increasingly pathological obsession with filling some hollow void with "stuff." Regardless of the financial burden that may ensue, the measure of a parent becomes their ability to procure some stupid new fad in order to fulfill a desire that was largely imposed upon their children through effective advertising. And the myth of Santa helps neatly obfuscate the production of the goods we buy: have you ever stopped to think that “Santa's elves” are often actually just children working in slave labor conditions out of our sight?
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| Merry Christmas. |
Debbie Downer, maybe, but it might be something worth actually stopping to think about before we supposedly celebrate "Christian charity."
But let’s return momentarily to the “War on Christmas” for a moment. The phrase “Happy Holidays” is, most likely, just as old as the greeting “Merry Christmas,” and was certainly in widespread use by the 1950s—long before the age of multiculturalism, tolerance, and “political correctness.” Even still, as American society has diversified over the past sixty years, it has become increasingly difficult and problematic to assume a Christian audience. And other December celebrations (Hannukah and Kwanzaa) have gained increased recognition as holidays no more constructed, and no less American, than Christmas.
In short, “Happy Holidays” became both a phrase of inclusion and a method of marketing to a wider audience. It is most certainly not the denial of a “sacred” Christian holiday nor of some uniform American religious tradition. After all, the “War on Christmas” is much more of a longstanding American tradition than Christmas itself. If you want to say "Merry Christmas," go for it, but the persistent attempts to make it compulsory (or to criticize those who prefer something else) are not only ahistorical, they are part of a larger agenda to recreate an imagined version of an homogeneous “Christian America” that never really existed in the first place.
In this vein, Christopher Hitchens has famously, and I think convincingly, argued that Christmas turns the country into a quasi-totalitarian state:
"As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor's office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined "themes" have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader's birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring."
I don’t want entirely to be a Grinch here (only mostly). Christmas can also be a good time of family, of celebration, of charity, and so on. But what does it say about modern society that we need to set out a particular time of the year (besieged with compulsory conspicuous consumption) in order to do all those things?
Linus can go to hell--Charlie Brown got it right, man:
Roughly speaking, the irony of snow removal is that snow removes itself. It sublimates into ice, melts into water, evaporates into vapor. In most places where it’s removed, snow has a maximum lifespan of a few days to a few months. But during those scattered winter weeks, we spend millions of dollars shoveling, plowing, blowing, and hauling it away in order to pretend it’s a different season. Like football season, for instance. Now that the Metrodome's roof has collapsed (following attempts to melt snow off the roof with hot water), the University of Minnesota is shoveling out "the Bank" so that the Vikings can host the Chicago Bears on Monday night. To accomplish this pharaonic undertaking, the U has employed gangs of 100 laborers rotating in 4-hour shifts, shoveling snow 16 hours a day until the field's playing area, seats, and corridors are cleared (UPDATE: They are now asking for additional volunteers!). When they're done, they should flood the stadium and stage a naval battle.
A Livable Winter Bedroom
It's hard to do certain things well in the snow, and in the past people have adapted. Today, however, we expect winter to conform to our standards of "livability," a vague idea that what's good for somebody is good for everybody. By removing snow, I guess we think that we are making our cities and highways more "livable." In addition to making us late for work, snow slows down the distribution of goods and services; snow accumulation impedes our accumulations as consumers. Whether we're after live football or leafy greens, there are certain things that Minnesotans aren't meant to have in the middle of December. But because we think we need them, or maybe that we've earned them, or that we should have access to them in a "livable" city, we remove snow as soon as possible, even though it’s an expensive process measured by the core values of American social life: time, money, and inconvenience.
The history of snow removal is instructive because it demonstrates how these values have grown so bizarrely unhinged from the seasonal rhythms in which Americans and others have lived for centuries. But that’s not really my point. It would be too easy to argue that the needs of the marketplace have trumped our “natural” relationship with winter. Instead, let’s think about it like this: there’s no such thing as an authentic approach to winter, you just kind of stammer along with its pains and pleasures. Living with winter is part triage, part bricolàge. Not surprisingly, then, some of the most important factors in the history of snow removal have been peoples’ objections to the removal of snow.
Up until about a hundred years ago, snow made it easier, not harder, to get around. When the first snow of the season cemented the city’s rough, rutted roads into smooth corridors, drivers replaced the wheels of their wagons with skis and runners. Outside of town, snow also eased cross-country travel. In the early 1850s, travel to St. Paul was best accomplished by sleigh during the dead of winter, a fact understood by most travelers. John Owens, the editor of the Weekly Minnesotian, emphasized this point in his stilted remarks on winter travel: “the man who desires to go to Minnesota in the winter season, and deters for fear of difficulties and sufferings on the road is a great dunce.” Yes, indeed, sliding over snow is generally easier than rolling over rocks, mud, logs, and the other sorts of obstacles that adorned the nineteenth-century highway.
Beyond offering an effective mode of transportation, sleighs also provided winter revelers with a splendid opportunity to get corned. Rather than sitting indoors, huddled beneath snuggies, our stolid Victorian ancestors used winter as an excuse to party. For as long as the snow lubricated access between friends’ farms and villages, people sleighed across field and forest to greet and gift one another, drinking brandy, rum and other spirits. Sometimes their inebriation contributed to horrific sleigh accidents. Other times, their sleigh-abrations endured grisly wolf attacks.
A Sleigh-abration
For the sleigh industry, snow removal was a bitch. But historians of the sleigh have mostly ignored the impact of snow removal on the sleigh’s obsolescence, instead, blaming the internal combustion engine. Erika Janik, for instance, writes that the sleigh, “like the horse-drawn-wheeled carriage… began to disappear with the spread of automobile travel.” But she also notes that in Wisconsin sleighs lasted longer on public roadways than did wheeled carriages, sharing the road with automobiles at least until the 1940s. It seems the reason sleighs didn’t outlive the mid-twentieth century wasn’t because they didn’t have engines, but because by the 1940s we had started plowing snow off public thoroughfares.
And, of course, today there are engines on sleighs; they’re called “snow machines,” “snowmobiles,” or simply “sleds.” The correct pronunciation depends on your provincial dialect, your body mass index, and your opinion of Todd Palin. The reason most of us don’t drive these around town or down the highway in the winter isn’t because they’re obnoxiously loud or they make you smell like lawn mower exhaust, but because snow removal eliminates the option. Granted, snowmobiles remain an important form of transportation in seriously isolated Arctic and mountain locations. But for most people, they’re solely a mode of recreation—you have to actually load them into your truck and drive somewhere to use them.
The tragedy of snow removal really sinks in when you realize how it’s transformed skiing. People used to ski to get around, but now, because of snow removal, people can only ski for fun. Like snowmobiling, skiing is mostly recreation, not transportation. Although the Norwegians are typically, and perhaps rightfully associated as the vanguard of skiing peoples, I think it was the Finns that best utilized skiing as transportation when they fought off a Soviet mechanized invasion in 1940, skiing around and blowing up Red Army tanks. Just think how the Battle of the Bulge might have turned out differently had Patton’s army double-poled its way to Bastogne, rather than sat in snowbound columns of deuce-and-a-half trucks. Today, not only do people mostly have to drive to go skiing, but if they’re “alpine skiing” they need to take motorized lifts to the top of the mountain. When I was in high school, Mount Baker set the world record for one-year snowfall, reporting 1,140 inches. I remember they had to shovel out the ski lifts in order to keep them running. All this snow made for awesome skiing, but it also demonstrated the sweet perversion of ski resort alpinism. I mean, since when did you need to remove snow so that you could ski on it? I thought about that a little longer and realized, lifts aside, that the only reason I could ever ski Baker was because the Washington DOT plowed Highway 542.
Last weekend’s “snOMG” event dropped it deep enough and fast enough that I could actually ski around on Minneapolis city streets before they got plowed. But only after merrily skiing circles along West River Parkway did I realize this was a golden opportunity to use skis for their original intended purpose—going somewhere. Determined to reenact the folkways of a bygone era (the Victorian winter spree), I pointed my ski tips toward the liquor store, kicking and poling my way toward its stockpile of libatious elixirs. To my fascination, I encountered at least half-a- dozen other skiers headed the same direction; even an older couple freighting home a case of beer on a dog-drawn toboggan. I glided along the tire-groomed streets as dusk settled across the plastered landscape, proffering my half-hearted words of encouragement to the frantic motorists digging their cars out of the buried curb lanes. “Need a hand?” I would ask, skiing out of earshot before they had a chance to express anything other than dumbfounded shock.
This was an unfamiliar winter moment—skiing somewhere rather than going somewhere to ski. The incongruity revealed the possibility of a different world, a world without snow removal, but otherwise a world not far from our own.
Your New City Bus
The difference, I think, lies primarily in our imaginative capabilities. Over the last century, the history of snow removal has corresponded with broader social desires to stabilize global exchange. As the twentieth-century wore on, snow removal offered a technological fix to the problems winter posed to the industrial city’s conformation to modern standards of transportation and distribution, a model defined more by L.A. than by London. Opening the city to these international standards required the constant management of local environments. In our own neo-liberal era, formerly corporate concerns over the conformation of urban infrastructure to these global norms have infiltrated the lives of individual citizens, who, now expressing their liberty through markets and property, imagine themselves as products rather than persons. Snowy roads slow their distribution to consumers, who expect that these human products come packaged and delivered via acceptable standards of global ground freight: cars, buses, bikes. That it’s ridiculous to imagine a modified public snow coach transporting people down Hennepin Avenue indicates how a global sense of place has limited our creativity. And yet, after tonight’s cessation of Minneapolis’s back-to-back Snow Emergencies, few will question the sanity of removing 17 inches of snow from over 3,000 miles of streets and alleys, enough to “plow a path from Minneapolis to Anchorage, Alaska,” according to city spokespeople.
If the city didn't plow, our automobility would be compromised. Undoubtedly, winter storms would transform from minor inconveniences to natural disasters, but that would only emphasize the degree to which we've grown comfortable with the idea of a global consumer society as the natural order. As the history of winter transport demonstrates, there are other options besides snow removal; we just pretend they don't exist. Something to think about next time you're in the mall parking lot under that giant pile of plowed snow.
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