Category: Television

Harbors, Cathedrals, Markets and Lavendar UPDATED

AIZ Marseille boats and cathedral
Harborside view of Marseilles and her cathedral

Marseille was a funky town once. Now it’s got a shiny harbor, some beautiful museums and broad vistas, a hugely diverse population and close to a million tourists per year – up from the 20,000 it claimed when we were there in the 1980’s.

On arrival we went almost at once to nearby Aix-en-Provence, and  its markets, lavender shops, cathedrals and history. (Even aerosol olive oil – see second pic.)   AIX Market

 

2015-06-14 10.56.02The wars are here too, as they always are in Europe – today in memory plaques for the “martyr’s of the Resistance.”  The story of those real participants is scary and moving and true.  There’s also a memorial to those who helped to liberate Aix.

AIX Resistance martyrs AIX WWII martyrs 1

It was really hot in Marseilles so we took this tiny train on a one-hour circle up to the Basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde and back.
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And on the way, one more reminder of the continued ghost of WWII here – this tank was part of the liberation of Marseille and sits on a triangle of land among apartments and houses and a plain residential neighborhood. History doesn’t have to repeat itself – it’s still here.
AIX tank cropped

Don Draper, Dick Whitman, Peggy, Sally, Joan, Coke, Mad Men and Us

Don on pay phone2The farewell to Mad Men, at least on Monday’s morning news programs, was all about “the Coke commercial” (indeed a brilliant, brilliant presence in the episode) the 60’s, advertising, capitalism and a Don Draper not at all like the man he described to Peggy in this phone call:

“I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am…. I broke all my vows. I scandalized my child. I took another man’s name. and made nothing of it.”

or his physical transformation – messy hair, plaid shirt and jeans – that returned him, at least briefly, to the “Dick Whitman” he once was.  Even his expressions were those of a country boy with a squint.

Joan faye peggy2
Joan, Peggy and Faye in the elevator in especially poignant episode about the women of Mad Men

Preoccupation  with “the commercial” overrode discussion of how important Mad Men has been to women: not only those who were teenagers as Don ascended and for whom so many scenes brought back memories of the scandalous neighborhood “divorcee,” of the Women’s Clubs and Garden Clubs and all the other “activities” suburban mothers created —  but also for those who came after, for whom some of what they saw of women’s lives was just a relic but way too much was way too familiar.

Don Draper’s journey, from brothel to executive suite to Esalen, is very much that of America through the 60’s and beyond.   It was a traumatic, scary, strange and exhilarating time, and whether you were there or you arrived later, it’s clear that Don’s misery and confusion mirrored what many of us, and, even more so, our parents felt every day.

Oh, and that Coke commercial? It was so perfect I laughed out loud as it appeared: all that we had hoped for and dreamed of, laid out in an air-brushed, multicultural, Benetton panorama.  I don’t think we knew then how far we would be today – maybe forever – from that dream, but watching it now, it seems quaint how sentimental we were, even in our days of rage.  Just like Don.

My BB King Story – Farewell to Such a Lovely Man


BB King carried music in his hands and in his heart, joy at the sound of it and commitment to the making of it.  All you had to do was hear him for three minutes and you knew that.  And he faced down plenty to keep doing it. As the BBC tells it:

He played more than 300 gigs on the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit, the collection of performance venues in what were then racially segregated southern states where it was safe for black musicians to perform.

King said: “I have put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.

“Touring a segregated America, forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most ‘cos you didn’t realise the damage. You hold it in.”

I met him once, and the memory of that morning haunts me still.

It was, of course, when I worked at the TODAY SHOW (are you sick of those stories yet?)  I used to go in early to hang out in the green room when someone I admired was going to be there.  Of course, that included the morning BB was coming.  He arrived with his musicians – no entourage, no fuss.

That morning, the Canadian singer Anne Murray was also on the show, appearing earlier than Mr. King.   As we sat there quietly, watching the show, she told Bryant Gumbel that she was taking “a few months” off from her touring schedule to “recharge.”

King glanced up at the screen, looking sort of sad.  “A few months” he said. “I could never do that.  I can’t do that.” The disparity of income between blues musicians and the rockers they inspired was well-known, so much so that a foundation was established to help those who never made a dime from their royalties.

Even so, although he told the BBC in 2009, at the age of 83 “I can’t retire, I need the money,” I was never sure if his reason that day was money, or love of the road, but he said it with such longing, and with such an expression of regret, that I can see it right now.  Clear as day.

I will always love his music and love his spirit and humor and warmth, and be grateful for his legacy.    In my mind though, as he leaves us, it’s that peek into the life of a blues man – even a great one – as he made his way that I remember most.

 

Remember When Claire Underwood Was a Princess?

OK I know this is PrincessBride_buttercup350facile and a little silly maybe, but House of Cards starts Friday and when The Princess Bride theme slid onto my Spotify feed last week, I remembered that Robin Wright, (Princess Buttercup!) is now the notorious Claire Underwood: monstrous friend, cold manipulator and, of course, ruthless First Lady.

Claire underwoodArt imitates life, right?  This is a great reflection – hugely distorted and grotesque though it is, of what has happened to so many of us —  women and men –particularly but not only in public life.

We walk such thin lines most of the time.  We flee innocence and dependence in pursuit of ourselves.  We watch what appears to be the slow crumbling of every trusted institution.  We struggle to learn how to be — and remain, moral, whole adults, able to stand alone, able to love and share, able to support, able to seek and accept help when we need it.  And still, we feel – women and men and our country itself – that we’re losing what’s best in us.

Claire has jettisoned most of these qualities, if she ever had them.   The conspiracy she shares with her husband has tethered her to his malignant pursuit of power at any cost.  Their “arrangement” is beyond toxic; even a desired pregnancy must be sacrificed.  What would Princess Buttercup – or even the Dread Pirate Roberts – think of these two?

The Princess Bride was released nearly thirty years ago, in September of 1987.  It’s possible that was a nicer time.   The 5 top grossing films that year were 1) 3 Men and a Baby (corny/cute), 2) Fatal Attraction (boiled bunnies – not so cute), 3) Beverly Hills Cop 2 (bloodshed and mayhem amid the jokes – also not so cute), 4) Good Morning Vietnam (Robin Williams, war, music, grief and rebelliousness celebrated in the film but not so popular today), and 5) Moonstruck (love, family, fairytale new beginnings.)  Also among the top ten were the venal comedy The Secret of My Success (7), Lethal Weapon (see Beverly Hills Cop above) (9) and, perhaps a distant cousin to The Princess Bride, Dirty Dancing (class, romance, first love, politics, music) (10.)  Cumulatively not as dark a worldview as in House of Cards, but not all sweet little stories, either.  Even so, add Dirty Dancing to The Princess Bride and Moonstruck and 1987 offered us at least three fairy tales.  No fairy tales dare show their faces at the Underwood caucus, do they?

Even more interesting are the films IMDB denizens took the time to vote for that year.  1) Full Metal Jacket (more war), 2) Predator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and, 3)The Princess Bride herself!  Behind her, The Untouchables (Costner as Ness), Lethal Weapon (see high grossing: cop comedies), RoboCop (robot – um – cop), and – again – Dirty Dancing.  Wrapping up the top ten, Spaceballs (funny space stuff), Wall Street (“Greed — is good.”) and The Running Man. (more Arnold.)  Probably Oliver Stone’s Wall Street comes closest to our current Netflix White House.

Last year, when the Underwoods took over the presidency, the highest grossing films, not a fairy tale among them, included six sci-fi/fantasy films including three from Marvel, a witch, a Hobbit and some Transformers.  The list concludes with two animations, an American sniper and one Dystopian teen rebellion.

Those garnering the most IMDB votes included eight sci-fi/fantasy films including five from Marvel, an end-of-the-world time/space and time travel adventure and two outer space monster invasions.  That list concludes with a fancy old hotel, icky, nasty Gone Girl and …  a different Dystopian teen rebellion.

Not altogether sure what all this means except that we’ve lost much of our 1987 capacity to cherish whimsy and gentle humor, Grand Budapest Hotel or not.  OH and that we need all that escape these days — really badly.  If I were to guess, I’d say what we’re escaping from is a world where, although certainly not in the White House, the Underwoods have taken over, for real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s How I Got to Memphis – Music and the News

Will, Charlie's grandson and Jim sing That's How I Got to Memphis
Will, Charlie’s grandson and Jim sing That’s How I Got to Memphis

Stuck in my head ever since the end of The Newsroom, this song really seems to want to spend today with me, which would be fine if it didn’t make me so sad.

It won’t matter much if you didn’t like the show, or if music doesn’t carry you forward and back or if you don’t mourn the decline of integrity as a core value of journalism, but the use of it at a funeral for Charlie Skinner, (Sam Waterston,) the keeper of the flame, the leader who defended the honor of every journalist and story, is a spectacular metaphor.  YouTube won’t let me embed it, but here it is if you have the patience to link, it’s worth it.

Aaron Sorkin says Charlie represented the loss of decency offered by each of us to the rest of us, but for me, as Newsroom closed down, he stood for the rules that made journalism credible and critical to our country*; rules eroded in surrender to commerce and coarseness and fear.  Even so, The Newsroom closed with the first moment of yet another day’s show.  As Sorkin said, “They’re going to keep doing the news.”  It will, though, be with the loss of just a little more of the combination of honor and power, the Charlie Skinner, that had protected them, and us, for so long.

 

*The Atlantic called it a funeral for “old media” but I’ve lived in “new media” for decades now and the show wasn’t about that change – at least not to me.

 

Patti Smith, Big Eyes, Mr. Turner and Into the Woods: Women and Art

How do the artists we admire find their way?  What do they sacrifice to share their vision with the rest of us?  How does it feel?  Were they ever satisfied with what they made?

The great Patti Smith answered many of these questions, and more, in her 2010 memoir Just Kids.  It was, to me a real gift – a peek behind the curtain that stands between the journey and the outcome.  It was a long time before another such revelation turned up.  But first, consider this:

“Of course women aren’t as creative as men,” he said.  “After all, they create children.  They don’t have the same drive to do anything else.  How many female composers do you know of?”  

That wasn’t some 21st century sexist.  That was a professor at Smith, the excellent, committed, women’s college where I spent four years in the late 60s.  He was sitting in the “housemother’s parlor” after dinner, speaking with whomever of us had turned up for coffee.  I remember thinking “Huh.  That’s interesting.” and feeling, at his declaration, not outrage but sadness — and humiliation.

I remembered this moment for the first time in decades as a rash of holiday films raised questions about creativity and art, agency and power, commitment and sacrifice.  Into the Woods offered a grim view of women’s lives, where mothers imprison their daughters, daughters abuse their sisters, bakers long to become mothers and deliver their most important lessons after they’re dead, and it’s all the witch’s fault.  Steven Sondheim’s beloved musical includes some lovely songs and I went mostly to see Anna Kendrick but still…

No witches but a desperate mother who sells her soul for her art (and, kind of, for love) emerges in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes.  It’s the story of American painter Margaret Keane, whose husband Walter stole her art, her talent and her reputation and took them for his own.  The cost of continuing to paint and still support herself and her daughter was to surrender the right to take credit for her own work.  A woman in the 50’s making art for a living was unthinkable, or so he told her.  Her story is a bridge – she owned her creativity but not the product.

Then came Mr. Turner, an exquisite profile of the brilliant JMW Turner, a maker of art, no matter what the cost.  The film is a journey through his life as a painter of sea and landscapes and the invincible drive to create images of the beauty he saw.  His singular vision, the decisions he made to preserve that vision, his almost Asberger’s detachment from most people and his startling depth of commitment to the two people he truly loved combined in a thrilling consideration of art and love and living with both: a portrait of what is required of any artist, woman or man, to share what they see and feel and understand.

And so we return to Patti.  She and Turner are bookends on this shelf.  As with Mr. Turner, we learn what she lived and learned and made and what she left behind to do it — a woman slamming through barriers with commitment and with love.  An woman’s tale of what must be done – and of a woman expecting, demanding and embracing — as did Turner — all it took to share what she sees with the rest of us.

 

 

Ferguson, Age, and Loss

kneeling sizedVery seldom do I notice my age.  But as I have read the outpouring of grief and rage (which I share) over the Michael Brown grand jury verdict, I am deeply aware of the decades I lived before most of these friends, and other writers who are otherwise strangers, were born.  Things they learned about, but I lived through.

With deep sadness and disgust,  I watched Robert McCullough in his starched white shirt and dark suit with his half-glasses perched on his nose like a college professor and knew what he would say.  His endless prologue foretold what was coming with an ego and naked self-interest that was dreadful to see.  But it wasn’t a surprise.  I expected nothing else.

I remember the murders of  James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner,, (see Awesomely Luvvie) of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Dr. King, Viola Liuzzo.  Brutality, incarceration, death.  I remember George Wallace in the school-house door,

and Willie Horton

and the ads that NC Sen. Jesse Helms, in a re-election bid, ran against African-American candidate Harvey Gantt .  
I remember scores more for every one of these.

It’s really terrible to witness, and share, the heartbreak described by so many I love.  Read this post by Kelly Wickham that expands on that, or this by Rita Arens.  Or go back and hit the #ferguson and #blacklivesmatter hashtags one more time if you can bear it.  A Greek chorus of agony.

I am by no means connecting this weariness of mine with reasons to stop taking action and writing and reaching out and making noise.  No.  I’m just thinking about how different it feels when you’ve sat in front of black and white TVs and listened on transistor radios the first times you learned of each desperately painful incident of even the past half century. We know we will keep working, trying.  Even so, how hard it is to feel shock or surprise or anything other than a bone-chilling validation of the presence of those ugly creatures of hate and injustice that still hide between the stars and stripes that represent our country.

John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers REDUX

JFK Inaugural tickets

I wrote this piece right before the Obama Inauguration.  This, the 51st anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, seems like a good day to share it again.

I seem to be living in the WayBack Machine this year.  Lots of memoriesof 1968 and even 1963.  Now as January 20, 2009 approaches, yet anotherlooms.  January 20, certainly, but in 1961.

See that crowd?  Somewhere, way in the back, probably at least a block beyond, stand an almost-fifteen-year-old girl and her mother.  Fresh off an overnight train from Pittsburgh, having arrived at Union Station in time to watch the Army flame-throwers melt a blizzard’s worth of snowon the streets of the inaugural route, they make their way to their parade seats: in the bleachers, way down near the Treasure Building.

I spent most of 1960 besotted with John Kennedy.  And Jackie.  And Caroline.  And all the other Kennedys who came with them.  Most of my lunch money went to bus fare as, after school, I shuttled  back and forth “to town” to volunteer in the local JFK headquarters.  I even had a scrapbook of clippings about Kennedy and his family.

So.  My parents surprised me with these two parade tickets.  My mom and I took the overnight train and arrived around dawn Inauguration morning.  We couldn’t get into the swearing-in itself, of course, so we went to a bar that served breakfast (at least that’s how I remember it) and watched the speech on their TV, then made our way along the snowy sidewalks to our seats, arriving in time to watch the new president and his wife roll by, to see his Honor Guard, the last time it would be comprised solely of white men (since Kennedy ordered their integrationsoon after,) in time to see the floats and the Cabinet members and the bands and the batons.

It was very cold.  We had no thermos, no blankets, nothing extra, and my mom, God bless her, never insisted that we go in for a break, never complained or made me feel anything but thrilled.  Which I was.   As the parade drew to a close, and the light faded, we stumbled down the bleachers, half-frozen, and walked the few blocks to the White House fence. I stood there, as close to the fence as I am now to my keyboard, and watched our new president enter the White House for the first time as Commander in Chief.

That was half a century ago.  I can’t say it feels like yesterday, but it remains a formidable and cherished memory.  It was also a defining lesson on how to be a parent; it took enormous love and respect to decide to do this for me.  I was such a kid – they could have treated my devotion like a rock star crush; so young, they could have decided I would “appreciate it more” next time.  (Of course there was no next time.)   Instead, they gave me what really was the lifetime gift of being a part of history.  And showed me that my political commitment had value – enough value to merit such an adventure.

Who’s to say if I would have ended up an activist (I did)- and then a journalist (I did) – without those memories.  If I would have continued to act within the system rather than try to destroy it. (I did)  If I would have been the mom who took kids to Europe, brought them along on news assignments to Inaugurations and royal weddings and green room visits with the Mets (Yup, I did.)  I had learned to honor the interests and dreams of my children the way my parents had honored my own.  So it’s hard for me to tell parents now to stay home.

My good friend, the wise and gifted PunditMom, advises “those with little children” to skip it, and since strollers and backpacks are banned for security reasons, I’m sure she’s right.*  But if you’ve got a dreamer in your house, a young adult who has become a true citizen because of this election, I’d try to come.  After all, he’s their guy.  What he does will touch their lives far more than it will ours.  Being part of this beginning may determine their willingness to accept the tough sacrifices he asks of them – at least that – and probably, also help to build their roles as citizens – as Americans – for the rest of their lives.  Oh — and will tell them that, despite curfews and learner’s permits, parental limit-setting and screaming battles, their parents see them as thinking, wise and effective people who will, as our new President promised them, help to change the world.

*I know, I thought of Christina-Taylor Greene as I re-read this too.

This post also appears in PunditMom’s Mothers of Intention: How Women & Social Media Are Revolutionizing Politics in America

 

Art, Truth, Feminism, JD Salinger, Lena Dunham and Sex

LENA about authorwhen 
From Lena Dunham’s Website

 Lena Dunham was just a little older, when she wrote this, than she was in the currently infamous story from her new book; it’s been raging through right-wing and/or feminist (?!) blogs for days.  If you’ve been offline for the past few days, her new book Not That Kind of Girl, includes material about sexual curiosity, sisters, vaginas and sexual limits, all in the form of what were, to many, uncomfortable anecdotes.

Dunham and her book have been brutalized in the press and on blogs – mostly for telling the truth – a truth which some claim is the sexual abuse of a younger sibling.  It seemed more like a less-than-attractive set of events and not, to child development experts, worthy of the outrage it generated.

Beyond that, it’s honest, real and revealing, so: is this cacophony of condemnation how we modern readers reward a writer’s honesty?  It shouldn’t be – and JD Salinger told us why:

Since [writing] is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? … I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions.’ Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.”   (Seymour, an Introduction)

Justice on Television: Way Before Good Wives and Even West Wings!

The Defenders East Side West side posterMovies stay with us; they’re great historic documents, but television is intimate, and when it’s good, television is us.

My own early understanding of injustice and race and poverty and social change came from television.  For example:

There are plenty of others but this is #microblogmonday so I’m about done: consider though the WWI episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs, and Route 66.

* The Museum of Broadcast Communications called it “perhaps the most socially conscious series the medium has ever seen”, a show”singularly resonant with New Frontier liberalism.”