Labor Day Weekends

This Labor Day weekend, it's been raining a lot. Ever since I was a kid I've associated this weekend in the year with watching the muscular dystrophy telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis while it's raining. I've rarely watched television during this century. The main times were when visiting my grandmother since she often watched it. I liked watching with her some of the telethon because it was similar to the variety shows common on broadcast television before the spread of cable.

Another thing I associate with Labor Day is the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie after I saw it again while I was visiting home during my first semester in college. I especially think of when Gene Wilder sings "Pure Imagination" and the meaning of the lyrics. Writing this has given me the idea to play in my sociology classes a clip of Wilder singing the song and asking my students for their thoughts. The song is maybe too personal for me, so I have to think about whether to try.

Below is "Round Falls"--Dam on Jones Falls river in Baltimore, near the Jones Falls Trail where it follows Falls Road. Location is 2948 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21211. The small trail down to this spot should be improved to make it safer and more accessible. I took this picture in July and include it here because I like the effect of the light rays into this spot.

Some thoughts about illusions

"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." Tom near the beginning of "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams.

on bike path in Madison, Wisconsin, along Old Middleton Road (The first word is Life.)
I wonder what led someone to write this.

When re-watching online today a scene from "Come Back, Little Sheba," I found out that Shirley Booth played the mother, Amanda, in a CBS Playhouse version of "The Glass Menagerie" in 1966. The video was thought to have been lost; however, the unedited video was recently discovered and pieced together to replicate what was originally broadcast. Hal Holbrook played Tom (the son) and Laura (the daughter) was played by Barbara Loden. This was finally re-broadcast exactly fifty years later by TCM on December 8, 2016. 

 Baltimore, lawn in Roland Park neighborhood. I liked the colors of the leaves.

I didn't have time to watch the full version I found online, so I skipped to the part that especially affects me, when Laura learns about the "gentleman caller's" prior commitment. Loden's reaction of pain was visible to the audience but hidden from her mother and brother as she kept her back to them. In what might still be my favorite version, Karen Allen seemed to conceal her feelings more. As I jumped to some other scenes, I realized that maybe I want to wait to watch this with someone else to talk about it. I used to think about that kind of thing more often in the past, of waiting not to do something because I don't want to do it alone. For some reason I had once set aside a documentary by Errol Morris for that even though it wasn't especially meaningful to me. When I finally watched it because UW was screening many of his films, it was very painful for me to realize I was watching alone and I was glad that the theater was dark. 

Many things come to my mind about what the Tom character, who was probably based on Williams, says about illusions.  In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,  Dr. Bessel van der Kolk quotes this favorably: "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves" (Dr. Elvin Semrad [former supervisor at Massachusetts Mental Health Center] 2014: 11). But at other times he says that a way to deal with trauma is through imagination. I forget how he reconciles those two ideas. I think I've often used day dreaming of the future as a way to get by, but the dangers are not to take enough action and to fool myself. 

Another thing I'm reminded of is when I returned home from my freshman year in college during the Labor Day weekend and watched some of "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" again on some television station.  The Willy Wonka character doesn't seem to completely believe it when he sings "Pure Imagination"--"If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it."

Baltimore, outside stores along Hartford Road. They were closed, so I couldn't ask anyone about the chalk. 

Thinking about some films made in Baltimore

One of my thoughts on "sat up all night reading it to each other" in my previous post was about movie scenes that have stuck to me. To get more familiar with Baltimore, last year I borrowed from the library DVDs of films by such directors as Barry Levinson and Matthew Porterfield. What saddened me while watching the Levinson films were scenes of emotional abuse, especially toward women. In Tin Men, the character played by Barbara Hershey once asked her husband, played by Danny DeVito, if they could go on a picnic. It was obvious that the meaning of this was important to her, but he dismissed this simple, romantic request. Maybe what occurred was mainly emotional neglect, but it felt like the contempt of abuse from how he responded. There was worse abuse than this, but the lack of care affected me.

In Diner, there's the scene when the wife of one character had listened to "his" records but not put them back in the slots he preferred. It was painful watching how he belittled her and showed so much contempt. I think it would instead feel wonderful if someone would take that much interest in another's musical tastes. Rather than attacking her, they could have talked about the music, whether any songs stood out for her and the feelings they evoked. The film felt more like tragedy to me than a comedy from the abuse and predator behavior of some of the men.  One of my biggest laughs during the movie was when a guy required a woman to pass an impossible trivia quiz on football before they got married. At the same time I was disturbed by the underlying message about focusing on trivial aspects of life and male control in some relationships. [Roger Ebert review of Diner]

The two films by Porterfield I've seen, Putty Hill and Hamilton, seem not so much about abuse as emotional neglect, listlessness, and disconnect from others. These were low-budget productions that received little attention. Their atmospheres felt like what is often depicted in good graphic novels about everyday life, such as Building Stories, the box of booklets by Chris Ware.

Watching these kinds of films is a good reminder of what not to do and what to value in life.

[Added on August 2: I mistakenly attributed the football quiz to Liberty Heights when it was in Diner. I should have mentioned that Liberty Heights did depict a more positive romantic relationship, which faced hurdles because it was between an African American teenage girl and a White teenage boy.]

Stephen King, Renoirs, and the USS Constellation

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” Stephen King, first paragraph of "The Body," novella published in Different Seasons and basis for the movie Stand By Me.

art in the Baltimore Museum of Art by Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
father of Jean Renoir,  "Small Stooping Washerwoman" 

I worry that I've missed revelations like that from others. Or maybe at times I've heard, or at least have tried to, but have failed to convey that well enough. It's painful to be on the other end, trying to word feelings of that depth but not being heard or more often keeping them inside out of fear of little or no reaction.  And sometimes it's that the people who might be willing to listen are not the same as the one or those you wish would care. That problem reminds me of one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen--The Rules of the Game, the 1939 French film directed by Jean Renoir. I first saw it on Christmas night at an arthouse theater in Kansas City's Westport. Characters were shifting their romantic interests and they often failed to match. A would be interested in B, who was interested in C but not A. D would be interested in A, who was not interested in D. Something like that. I haven't seen this in a while. [Roger Ebert's review of The Rules of the Game.]

"Washerwomen" (left), "On the Shore of the Seine" (upper right), "The Reader" (lower right)

Below are some pictures I took last summer of the interior of the USS Constellation located in Baltimore. For most of the time, I was the only one on the deck. Feelings similar to what I've described above overcame me when I was where the ballast is stored in the hold. One of my thoughts was the realization that sometimes returns to me of experiencing things alone, similar to a painful moment that I don't want to describe online.  Part of that feeling was realizing that I might be a willing listener that the speaker wasn't so interested in opening up to. Another was of going through life like this, seeing sights but no one with whom to share experiences. The most common time for me to feel that, though, is in everyday settings.

Captain's quarters

Circus Wagons and Silent Movie: Overture Center 10th Anniversary events, Saturday, September 27, 2014

The event that especially interested me was the free showing of a Harold Lloyd movie, Hot Water, in the Capitol Theater. It has some funny moments but is definitely not as good as his more famous movies. Because it was free, I was surprised and disappointed that most seats in the balcony, where I sat, were empty. Opened in 1928, the theater is one of the few silent movie theaters left that has its original organ to accompany movies.

Capitol Theater, Overture Center; Madison, Wisconsin. September 27, 2014. Organ being played prior to show.

The theater was kept and renovated as part of the Overture Center, which has a much larger hall within the complex. I attended one of the first concerts in the Overture Hall--Dave Brubeck--but I disliked the "European seating" design in the balconies without aisles. The older Capitol Theater, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with its palace look.

Barnum and London Cage Wagon, 1883--along State Street, Madison, WI

For the anniversary of the entire center, a circus theme was chosen--I suppose because of the proximity of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo. About a dozen circus wagons from the museum were placed on streets surrounding the Overture Center. According to signs posted near each wagon, most of the wagons are over 100 years old. They included ones for caged animals, music calliopes (one of them was playing while I walked by), bands, and selling tickets. The band wagons reminded me of Dr. Seuss books.

One reason that I post this information is in case someone is considering moving to Madison, such as to teach at UW. In recent years, the sociology department has lost prominent professors through retirement, better salaries elsewhere, or family reasons. Some prospective professors and grad students maybe have the misconception of a boring Midwest, so they prefer one of the coasts. [I'd forgotten to post this after I created it this past fall.]

Circus calliope wagon

Circus steam calliope

Attending a talk on primates while worrying about the WI governor's attack on state employee unions
Friday evening I was torn between watching a Cinematheque showing of a documentary on the Nuremberg trials and attending a talk by a primate researcher. The film was a restoration of a US government documentary made in the 1940s that wasn't allowed to be shown in the US. I figured that I could see it in the future on DVD, so I chose the talk by Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist at Iowa State.[For more info see this article:http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-04/chimps-with-spears/roach-text.html]

The chimpanzees she studies in the savanna-woodlands of Senegal face an environment very different from the chimps in more heavily forested central Africa, such as in the Congo. She got in the news for discovering that the Senegal chimps sometimes sharpen with their teeth the ends of branches to use as spears to kill small monkeys. The chimps poke the spears into the holes of tree trunks where monkeys hide. Before this it was thought that only humans make such a tool.

For my intro soc classes, I sometimes show a Nova documentary on the first day called "The Last Great Ape," which is on bonobos but includes an interesting comparison to chimps. The main point is that bonobos are more empathetic and much less violent than chimps. Some of the proposed causes are genetics, the male dominance in chimp culture versus female dominance of bonobos, the use of sex among bonobos as a calming mechanism, and the competition over resources that chimps face with gorillas north of the Congo River. In the past comparisons of humans with primates would mainly be with chimps, but maybe we can better understand ourselves by also learning more about bonobos.

Silent Movie at the Capitol Theater
One of my favorite activities in Madison is watching a silent movie at the Capitol Theater in a series called Duck Soup Cinema. Built in the late 1920s, the theater still has the original Grand Barton organ system designed for silent movies. Before the movie, some local variety acts perform for about 45 minutes, and after intermission, the hosts pull a few raffle tickets to award local prizes. The acts this past Saturday were a folk music duo, the UW ballroom dance group, and a juggler who used the diabolo, derived from what is sometimes called a Chinese yo-yo. [In Beijing the rapidly moving Chinese yo-yo (響簧 xiǎng huáng or 抖空竹 dǒukōngzhú ) makes a whistling sound that can add to the atmosphere of old Beijing hutongs. See also http://hua.umf.maine.edu/China/ModernBeijing/pages/286_ChineseYoyo.html.] For a few years, three movies were scheduled during a season, but now they're back to two, and a ticket costs $7. At the start of this decade, the price was $1. The hosts mix in silly jokes--some so stupid that they're often funny--that are based on changing light bulbs and people going into bars.

The movie was Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality, which has a lot of funny scenes as well as some good stunts by Keaton. An usher told me during intermission, though, that only about 400 showed up for the matinee and about 700 were at the evening show. Because I now teach also on Saturday mornings and I bought some vegetables at the last farmers' market of the season at the Square, I couldn't make the matinee as I had hoped. After the show, I had the chance to talk to the person in charge to suggest an act for the next Duck Soup Cinema, another Keaton movie, Three Ages, to be shown on February 26.

I wish that more people would take advantage of Duck Soup Cinema because it's a great opportunity to enjoy good laughs in a large, original silent movie theater, see skillful stunts, and listen to the live organ. Over the years, I've taken advantage of the wide-ranging video/DVD collection at the local libraries, and one type I've sometimes tried are silent movies. Here's a list that gives me some good ideas: http://www.silentera.com/info/top100.html I'd rank Safety Last, by Harold Lloyd, much higher than #19 for the laughs.

Watching films and Errol Morris
This evening's talk by Errol Morris, the director, was among the best I've heard at the Union Theater, and I was glad that I could tell him that at the reception. After talking for about 20 minutes, mainly on his time at UW as a history major, he opened it up to questions, which lasted for about one hour. It was a good way for audience members to ask about various films and for him to then provide interesting and often humorous background info. Because The Thin Blue Line is one of the options for my documentary assignment, I mentioned the lecture to my criminology students, but during the talk I regretted not more strongly encouraging people to go. I'll be sure to be there early for the showing of his recent film Friday afternoon at the contemporary art museum, at which he'll also be present.

While at UW, Morris often watched on his own films in the historical library collection. This reminds me of my time at Kansas going to the union to watch movies, such as The Seventh Seal, The Bicycle Thief, and The 400 Blows. I once told someone that I was going to the movie so as to study, and I wonder if he thought I was joking. I wasn't.

This evening Morris said that a great interest of his is the inner mystery of people, of others as well as oneself. Films, like novels, can sometimes offer insights into life's meaning, even when the characters lead lives different from mine. The first movie that comes to my mind that hits home, though, I'm reluctant to say much about--the John Malkovich/Joanne Woodward/Karen Allen version of The Glass Menagerie. One scene in particular reminds me of my own experiences.

Since it's really a play, I wonder about classifying The Glass Menagerie as a movie. The version I mention is much better, I think, than the one with Katharine Hepburn. Anyway, it has one of the best movie lines--"Time is the longest distance between two places." One message of this is regret about past actions and inactions. I've been thinking about how I've sometimes let my fear of re-experiencing something like The Glass Menagerie scene and other painful moments to influence me at times, especially in recent months. This is one of the values of films--to help us reflect on our inner selves and those of others. But meeting people in person should remain the main way that we accomplish this. One reason that I enjoyed this evening's talk and the reception was seeing Morris' cheerful and inquisitive disposition.