Cymbal Monkey

25 January 2004

Within formal poetry, each form has its own unique pitfalls:  with sestinas and pantoums, it is the danger of repeated phrases becoming stale and therefore easy to overlook; with metered lines, it is that recurring rhythms may become too trite, sing-songey, distracting the reader and lending an air of frivolity (or sense of the archaic) to the poem.  The dramatic monolog, or persona poem, has its own set of problems, some of which are brought to mind by a reading of Ai’s new and selected poems in Vice.  These problems include the authenticity of voice and diction to the speaker and the familiarity of the reader with the historical figure being represented in the poem, if such specificity is appropriate.  How much does the writer trust the reader to “get” the poem even if he is unfamiliar with the historical facts reported or alluded to in the work?  How does a poet convey the actions and thoughts and history of the character to the reader without being too explicit, in the event that the persona is a historical figure she hopes to truly portray?  Through a reading of the poems in Vice, it is clear that even experienced and “successful” poets like Ai must still contend with these issues in the monolog form.  For the most part she handles them with the gusto of an artist and the skill of a craftsman.

In a monolog whose speaker is fictional, one of the ways in which the reader gets a sense of the character is through that character’s speech; word choice, word order, and level of formality all contribute to our understanding of the speaker’s education, position, and attitude in a poem.   When the subject of a monolog is an actual historical figure, we may already be familiar with some of these qualities through study or popular reference.  In this case, it becomes increasingly important for the poet to accurately simulate the speaker’s “voice,” so that the character is believable to us when we read the poem.  A college English professor, for example, might be likely to use literary allusions and standard English language, while a high-school educated construction worker might be more inclined toward slang and popular-culture references.  (These are stereotypes, of course; there are highly literate blue-collar workers as well as pop-culture obsessed PhDs.  I believe the point is still valid – the former associations are more common in our culture).

Ai is extremely accomplished at the task of fitting the speech to the speaker even when the subject is a very well known historical figure.  For example, in “Two Brothers” (47), John F. Kennedy speaks to his brother Robert – after his own death – about his life and death, addressing Robert Kennedy as “Bobby” and referring to himself by his nickname, “Jack.”  In the language of this poem, we can almost hear JFK’s pronounced Massachusetts accent, with its distinctive “a”s, as in the description of dying in lines 6-7:  “Death, Bobby, hit me / like the flat of a hand.”  It is simple and direct, as Northeasterners tend to be, and as we might imagine two brothers to be when speaking in absolute privacy.  And in “James Dean” (113), we get another taste of the facility with which Ai puts words in the mouths of celebrity figures: 

            until I drove the road

            like the back of a black panther,

            speckled with the gold

            of the cold and distant stars

            and the slam, bang, bam

            of metal jammed against metal.  (lines 4-9)

How appropriate this is, the subtle positioning of the speaker, the late James Dean, at a height from which the road seems like a panther’s back.  And then comes the reminder of his youth – the onomatopoeic words he uses to describe the fatal car crash:  slam, bang, bam.  Like a boy.  We understand that with death has come a new perspective, but we also see that not everything has changed with the transition.  And we get this all from his language, which is never too polished, but filled with attitude, almost brash, like the rebel we commonly associate with Dean’s teenaged persona.  “…if anybody’d let me, / I’d have proved” he brags in lines 23-4, and “I didn’t give a Quaker’s shit, man, / I gave performances. / I even peed on the set of Giant – “ in lines 61-3.  Vice is filled with examples equally as fitting, all of which lend both depth and believability to the characters of their poems. 

Another area of concern that is particularly important with monologs containing famous subjects is that of trust:  how much faith does the writer place in her audience to “get” the poem’s nuance?  The answer, as it usually applies to Ai, seems to be, “Very much.”  Although in general it seems that she trusts us more when the details of the subject’s life or situation are more well known, and less when the figure is somewhat obscure, there are a few notable exceptions, one of which stand out as noteworthy.  In “Hoover, Edgar J.,” from the 1993 book Greed, the first twenty or so lines are highly rhythmic, with lots of internal- as well as end-rhymes, as in lines 18-24:

            just to aggravate me,

            but my strength is truth.

            I have the proof

            of every kind of infidelity

            and that makes me the one free man

            in a country of prisoners

            of lust, greed, hatred, need[.]

After about the midway point of the first section, however, the language becomes less rhythmic, the rhymes less frequent.  And although the rhyming picks back up later in the poem, in section 2, the musicality remains stifled, the meter irregular enough to subdue the strong rhymes “rooms/perfume” and “proclaimed/name.”  It is as if Hoover starts out as a young black man, then morphs into a suburban white man (lines 25-34), then fades back and forth for the middle section of the poem until finally settling on the latter arrangement in the final twenty or so lines. 

The uncertainty of voice here is disconcerting, at least initially, but the next poem in the collection helps clear up some of the mystery; “Hoover Trismegistus” finds Hoover considering the possibility that he might be part black:  “Was I a throwback to some buck / who sat hunched over in the hull / of a ship, / while the whip lashed his back?” (lines 8-11).  But in this poem, Hoover speaks in a voice the reader is more likely to recognize, a tough, “G-Man” kind of verbiage that refers to the man’s historically-correct attitude, as in this passage:  “When they called Joe McCarthy’s bluff, / he grabbed his nuts and ran” (26-7).  If “Hoover, Edgar J.” were positioned after “Hoover Trismegistus,” we might feel that we had learned enough from the first poem to understand the resistance to, but fascination with, ethnic language in the second.  However, in Vice the reader is asked to accept the rap-music style of “Hoover, Edgar J.” as belonging to Hoover before the explanatory “Trismegistus.”  In effect, Ai is placing too much trust in our hands; we are expected to believe the alternative version of Hoover that is presented through speech, without any hints in the content as to why.  One of the problems inherent in the dramatic monolog is that the reader must know enough — or be able to glean enough — information about the central character to envision the style of speech as indicative of the speaker’s real self, whether or not the speech is that normally associated with the figure. 

If, as Bin Ramke says, “The first duty of the poem is to teach us how to read it” (Meek 40), this poem has failed in this duty.  And upon consideration, I do believe Ramke’s statement is true, at least, or should I say, in particular, regarding monolog poems, where the character must be recognizable at least as to type, from pretty near the beginning in most cases.  It is difficult to find much fault, however, when the problem lies in the author’s placing too much trust in us as readers.  As it turns out, in an interview with Tomas Q. Morin in a recent issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, Ai explains this new ethnic spin on the former FBI director:  “It came out of a biography I was reading; I always read the biographies of historical figures I want to write a poem about.  In the biography there was talk that Hoover might have had black blood.  So I thought, whoa, this is a whole new direction” (Morin 8).  Without this explanation, even the potential groundwork of “Hoover Trismegistus” seems like a pretty long stretch to a reader who has never read this rather arcane fact. 

Yet a third aspect of the monolog that bears study is the difficulty in conveyance of circumstance peculiar to the speaker.  How does the author suggest prior action or situations in with specificity, without making direct statement of blindingly obvious fact?  As it turns out, this problem is almost identical to the same issue in other types of poetry.  Whether the speaker is actually placed in the poem, in the first-person reference, or is non-apparent or omniscient, the task remains the same:  express the situation with enough detail to allow the reader to understand, while still letting him feel as though he is participating in the work of the poem.  As Ai’s poem “Conversation” clearly demonstrates, sometimes the reader need not understand exactly the references included in the lines in order to find familiarity in the words.  This poem, sub-headed “For Robert Lowell,” almost certainly contains several references to Lowell’s own poetry; I recognized one.  Still, I got a strong sense of the direction of the poem and detected a style that I found comparable to Lowell’s 1977 “Epilogue,” with its references to light and sound. 

Yet there are also poems in which the reader does easily understand what has gone on, despite the lack of direct reference to an incident.  In “Charisma” (199), for example, the speaker is never named, yet the implication is clear; David Koresh speaks here, post-1993.  Another instance of this indirect directness is “The Mother’s Tale” (67), in which the mother of a young bridegroom gives instruction to her son, relating how he must handle his new wife:

            You must beat Rosita often.

            She must know the weight of a man’s hand,

            the bruises that are like the wounds of Christ.

            Her blood that is black at the heart

            must flow until it is as red and pure as His. (lines 26-30)

Although we are told very little explicitly about the history of this woman, we know much about her.  She has been beaten, certainly, for she defends the beatings like a victim of Stockholm syndrome; to deal with her own plight, she must rationalize the treatment she has received.  Also, she knows the risk associated with unchecked passions in a woman, for she relates an incident from her own past in which she cut her husband’s face with a knife in a fit of jealousy.  And, she is deeply religious, indicating her faith in Jesus in the above lines probably both as part of her cultural heritage and upbringing, and as a way to deal with the oppression and abuse she has suffered.  Again, we need not know the exact details of her life to understand her situation and probable relationship circumstance.

In reading the poems in Vice, I was struck by how well Ai seems to understand the thoughts of people whose thoughts must be so alien to her, and how boldly she uses the voice of her characters to portray, right or wrong, their decisiveness in action.  And possibly because she herself is so adept at pretending herself into someone else’s position, she also trusts her readers to step into the arena of the poem.  While occasionally this trust extends a bit too far, this condition seems preferable to the alternative of blindingly obvious statement.  These poems are filled with subtlety and strength, allowing the reader to both experience the intended impact and participate in the works through the exercise of interpretation.  This book is not only engaging and enjoyable; it is also a valuable study tool for would-be monologists. 

 Works Cited

Ai.  Vice:  New and Selected Poems.  New York:  Norton, 1999.  Print.

Meek, Sandra.  “Making and Meaning:  An Interview with Bin Ramke.”  The Writer’s Chronicle.  36.4 (Feb. 2004).  32+.  Print.

Morin, Tomas.  “An Interview with Ai.”  The Writer’s Chronicle.  36.3  (Dec. 2003).  4+.  Print.

8 August 2003

In the introduction to The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib:  Selected Poems of Ghalib, the poet Robert Bly notes that, “Ghalib’s tart, spicy declaration of defeated expectations ranges over many subjects” (2).  This statement is true, for the ghazals of this collection do cover many varying subjects, including friendship, romantic love, divine worship or love of God, identity, reality of existence, religion, and desire, treating the unfulfilled or corrupted aspect of each.  Yet this focus on the unrequited does not lessen the beauty, impact, or satisfaction of the reader’s expectations for the book itself.  This set of thirty poems by the eighteenth-century Indian poet Ghalib (born Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan) demonstrates the writer’s charm, wit, and deep understanding of the nature of existence, with its disappointments and the accompanying inevitable need for perseverance.  As Sunil Dutta points out in the postscript “Ghalib and His Work,” “The word ‘ghazal’ means, literally, a conversation with the beloved.  Thus the ghazal is essentially a love poem” (59).  The poems in this book are all conversations with the speaker’s beloved, although the calm matter-of-factness and ordinary language make the reader feel as if she is the beloved in question and the speaker addresses her, telling stories and imparting wisdom in order to both share his own pain and illuminate her on the truths of life.  That the subject of each ghazal is another love – God, a friend, or a lover – makes the words more personal, as if the speaker is revealing deep confidentialities in an intimate environment.  The meaning of each couplet retains its import and gains some additional meaning for the reader because she feels the message is being offered with love, out of a genuine concern for her.

This work is interesting in the study of the ghazal as a form; because its translators were more focused on preserving the spirit and intent of the original Urdu couplets, the radif (ending repetition) and kafiya (rhymes preceding the ending repetition) have been abandoned, leaving the more important aspects intact.  Each couplet, or sher,  is “a highly condensed poem of two lines and can stand on its own as an individual poem; a good sher is detachable and independently quotable” (60).  Within any given poem, any particular couplet might seem to have no bearing on the perceived theme.  This is the “disunity” of which Agha Shahid Ali speaks when he says, “The ghazal has a stringently formal disunity, its thematically independent couplets held (as well as not held) together in a stunning fashion” (Ali 2).  Therefore, when we read the two couplets which begin “When the Day Comes” –

             One can sigh, but a lifetime is needed to finish it.

            We’ll die before we see the tangles in your hair loosened.

            There are dangers in waves, in all those crocodiles with their jaws open.

            The drop of water goes through many difficulties before it becomes a pearl (15)

 we are apt to wonder what the connection is, both between the couplets themselves and between the couplets together and the title;  what coming day is indicated by these enigmatic lines?  what relationship exists between a sigh and tangled hair, or between a sigh, tangled hair, a crocodile and a pearl?  and, in what ocean does a drop of water become a pearl?  As we read further, to the end, we can see the meaning of the disparity.  The final line, “There are so many colors I the candle flame, and then the day comes[,]” resolves the question with the idea, echoed in other poems in this compilation, that everything is one in existence, that all things exist in one moment.  Line 11 asks, “How long is our life?  How long does an eyelash flutter?”.  If a lifetime of experience can be so large, yet a lifetime so small, then it must be true that the Ganges is in a drop, and the planet in a grain of sand (“The Drop and the River”) (31).  Ghalib’s poetry travels from one subject to another smoothly, almost imperceptibly changing, offering a sense of the inter-connectedness of event and perception and meaning.

Another traditional characteristic of the ghazal which is clearly demonstrated in the poems of Ghalib is the turn, or mystery/resolution within each couplet.  The poet’s mastery of this technique may well be what lends the couplets their independence, a completeness that makes each one a poem in its own right.  For example, “Don’t Skimp with Me Today” begins, “For tomorrow’s sake, don’t skimp with me on wine today. / A stingy portion implies a suspicion of heaven’s abundance” (19).  The reader may, and probably usually does, draw certain conclusions about each line of a poem, leading to assumptions about the line(s) to follow.  In informal poetry, these assumptions may commonly prove correct; surprises seem to come more often in the form of word choice than in a shift of intent.  Here, however, the common associations we might make with the imperative “don’t skimp with me on wine today” fail to lead us to the connection the poet makes, with a more divine rationale.  We might understandably assume the speaker to be addressing someone who has been known to “skimp” on wine, possibly a wife or innkeeper who disapproves of the speaker’s intake.  Or, in light of the opening “for tomorrow’s sake,” we might be led to believe that the demand is a threat; “if you short me today, there will be trouble between us tomorrow.”   The resolution, then, is a bit of a turn, for it brings in the un-hinted-at ideas of mortality and divine approval of the drinking of wine.  If we read the former intent, the speaker is saying that to skimp is to risk being sorry if the drinker should die before tomorrow:  “Why should we save what we have?  If I should die, I will find plenty in heaven.”  If we accept the latter interpretation, we see the speaker contending that heaven has provided an abundance of wine for the pleasure of people on earth; the argument becomes, “heaven provides it, therefore we should partake of it.”  In either event, the speaker makes an argument that is unexpected and hard for the addressee to combat.  It makes an entertaining and thoughtful surprise.

The lack of ending repetitions and rhyme scheme make these translations of Ghalib’s ghazals a valuable study in the subtler aspects of the form.  Without the restrictions of such conventions, the student of the ghazal can practice on the couplets themselves, concentrating (as with Bly and Dutta) on the independent spirit and traditional “turn” within each pair.  Perhaps to study these aspects independently of the radif and kafiya constraints is to gain a better understanding of the culture of the poetry, rather than an attention to the wordplay.  Certainly with these areas fully explored, the addition of repetitions and rhymes will bring the form itself into each example of it, “the planet in[to] a grain of sand.”

 Works Cited

Ali, Agha Shahid.  Ravishing DisUnities:  Real Ghazals in English.  Hanover, NH:  Wesleyan UP, 2000. Print.

Ghalib.  The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib:  Selected Poems of Ghalib.  Trans. Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta.  Hopewell, NJ:  Ecco, 1999. Print.

11 December 2001

It starts with a classic camera pan:  the city pans out before us, not daylight, not exactly dark, but half-lit as if at sunset.  We are to be present for the very beginning of the story, as it must begin at night.  Industrial stacks pour gray smoke into the air, providing a hazy veil under which the metropolis is teeming with sound and motion.  Down at street level, a dirty-faced kid rummages in a back-alley trashcan for a bite of a discarded sandwich.  Ducking into a warehouse to avoid being spotted by the policemen walking their beat, the orphan boy witnesses a card game in progress between several zoot-suited gangsters, each of whom bears the distorted face of a cartoon character.  Although the style is unmistakably noir, no trace of the realism which hallmarks classic film noir has yet been revealed.  The opening cityscape is cartooned, the characters too heavily made-up to be human.  This is 1990’s Dick Tracy. 

It has been argued that the term “film noir” can only truly be applied to a series of films made during the postwar years 1941-1953, and that no film made outside of that time period can legitimately be labeled as such.  While I do not dispute that point entirely – I do see some usefulness in limiting the category in order to allow for certain cultural and contextual interpretation – it seems almost as if those who argue against the application of the term to more modern movies are playing a childish game in which they want membership in an exclusive club for their “pet,” or favorite, films.  This cliquish attitude denies membership in the category to some recent films which seem to more adequately fit the specifications of film noir than their predecessors of the historical noir period.

That said, I do not argue for the inclusion of the 1990 film Dick Tracy into the genre.  Although the film noir style is obviously alive and well in Hollywood today, it is apparent to me that a campy film based on a comic strip, in which the actors – largely big-name and respected celebrities – are unrecognizable underneath caricature makeup, cannot be equated with the realistic type of film which inspired the phrase film noir.  There does seem, however, to be a connection between recent movies based on comics and comic books and those based upon the works of mystery novel writers such as Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane.  Possibly this connection stems from a parallel between the original writings themselves.

The comic strip Dick Tracy debuted in October of 1931, the same year as the original publication of Dashiel Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, upon which the movie of the same name was based.  Both works, like others in their genres, featured a tough, ultra-masculine hero who is not confined to the strictly-ethical when in search of justice.  Female characters in these works also share traits: clearly there was a growing feeling of distrust toward women during the period. Eventually both the square-jawed “tough” and the femme fatale became stock characters in the films based on the writings.

Hammett himself actually wrote a comic strip during that same era, titled X-9.  Evidently the organized crime activity in the big cities during the period leading up to the repeal of prohibition was such pervasive and interesting news that it made popular subject matter for novels and comic strips alike (Whole Earth pars. 1-2).  Although it is debatable whether the earliest film noir influenced the trend in comics (Whole Earth par. 3), or whether both media were simply influenced simultaneously by 1930’s society, the similarities are striking.  And the crime-novel/ comic strip connection does not appear to have faded from existence.

Contemporary novelist Max Allen Collins, author of the best-selling Nathan Heller series of detective stories, has also worked in the field of cartooning and graphic novels.  A writer for the syndicated Dick Tracy comic strip for fifteen years, starting in 1977 at the retirement of series creator Chester Gould, Collins recognizes the connection between crime fiction and comics, saying of his biggest influences in comic writing, “Will Eisner’s Spirit and the EC stories of Johnny Craig remain big influences on not only my comics writing, but any of my suspense writing. They are the masters of noir in comics…” (qtd. in Pierce).  (Collins does acknowledge that Gould himself did not write particularly “noir,” only “quirky” (Pierce)).  Incidentally, while working on the Dick Tracy strip, Collins also worked for a time on a new version of the comic book and strip Batman, another comic which spawned a movie with noticeable film noir stylings.

So, just what is the connection between comics, crime novels, and film noir?  Collins gives one answer: 

           …one aspect is the manner in which comics fall between film and prose: film is an exterior medium — shows us the story from the outside — and prose is an interior medium — tells us the story from inside. Comics is the only form that can gracefully give us both the interior and exterior of a story.  As Eisner has pointed out, the manner in which images can be frozen, in effect…the emphasis and rhythm that is possible, a manipulation of image…makes comics a storytelling medium without peer… (qtd. in Coville)

So Collins would have us view comics as a sort of bridge between the interior perspective of prose and the exterior one of film.  Although I disagree with his interpretation of the media, Collins may have a point about the comic being a combination of prose and film aspects.  The movie Dick Tracy seems to act like a comic strip as well as a film, using a certain rhythm mixed with long scenic shots to “freeze” certain images, focusing on them for their distinctive tone, which is often starkly noir. 

The characteristic camera angles and lighting effects commonly noted from the film noir period are abundant in this film.  Shots of the (unnamed) city from a high angle, shots of the city from a low angle — with the buildings slightly skewed to lean toward each other at the skyline – and lots of tight, almost claustrophobic interior shots lend some of the dark aspect.  And although this work is in color, the use of color is so strictly limited (black, red, yellow, and blue, with occasional green or gray) that it actually appears as flat on screen as its noirforefathers, with their dark darks and stark lights. 

Dick Tracy is, of course, a period piece.  Although the strip is actually still in production and some writers have tried to update the story lines in order to modernize the comic (Pierce), the movie is set squarely “in the day.”  The men wear hats, the women wear skirts, and the cars are huge.  References to alcohol and gambling prohibition are plentiful as the police try time and again to raid Big Boy’s (Al Pacino) nightclub.  The hero’s hat is as much a prop as a wardrobe piece; what film noir would be complete without the quintessential image of the detective donning his hat just as he turns a chiseled profile toward the door? 

Other characters have their classic moments, as well.  Our heroine, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headley), makes a beautiful gesture of sacrifice to the man she loves, telling him to “Go…go on” to his primary love, detective work, as he receives a call on his wristwatch/radio.  Breathless Mahoney, the femme fatale, stands face to face with Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) on a waterfront platform in the classic shot which allows the view of just her face over his shoulder, then alternately his over hers.  They stand in the yellow circle cast by an overhead streetlamp, and the sounds of water hitting dock pilings, and boat bells and foghorns, underlie the throaty dialog.  88 Keys, the love-struck piano player, is perfect in his innocent “wannabe” role as messenger and pawn of the evil NoFace.  This is camp, no doubt about it, but it is done with such openness and finesse that it cannot be called parody or mocking.  It is instead a tribute to film noir, a good-natured nod to an enduring connection between comics and crime novels and their relationships to movies.

One of the most intriguing noir aspects of Dick Tracy is the femme fatale, Breathless Mahoney, played beautifully by Madonna.  Oozing sexuality, in contrast with the more refined Tess Trueheart, this character saunters in and out of scenes, with no apparent effect, for the vast majority of the movie.  Two-thirds of the way through the film, when Breathless stands kissing Tracy in his apartment as a stunned Tess Trueheart happens in, we are left wondering whether Breathless has any real importance at all, besides window dressing.  Tess’s separation from Dick Tracy never seems destined to last, so we are relatively unconcerned that Breathless has engineered the encounter in order to imperil the love-therefore-salvation angle.  It begins to look as if Breathless Mahoney is just another shiny distraction.

Yet, true to the noir vision of woman as dark temptress, “amoral destroyer of male strength” (Cowie 123), the anti-heroine finally emerges as a very important figure.  Although unable to tempt Tracy into infidelity, Breathless is at last revealed to be the evil NoFace, the criminal mastermind who framed Dick Tracy and kidnapped Tess Trueheart in order to gain control of the racketeering business in the city.  In a setting reminiscent of Hitchcock, Edgar Allen Poe, and the creators of “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” Big Boy has tied Tess to the huge cogwheel of a drawbridge works.  In bold blocks of gray, black, and red, the scene plays out with Big Boy shooting NoFace, and then falling to his death over the railing of the bridge.  Tracy, together with the requisite Kid, saves Tess, and then unmasks the dying NoFace to find that “he” is none other than the sexy songstress herself.  Breathless dies, of course, and the camera rises upward to linger over the image of Dick Tracy standing over her lifeless body, giant cogwheels casting giant black shadows on concrete walls and four squares of light framed by a black window shadow on the ground beneath his feet.  Surely the movie should end there; it is a stunning image.  Unfortunately, there must be redemption for the hero, in the form of a marriage proposal and hints of future family life with the Kid and Tess.  The effect is lost in the aftermath.

Dick Tracy is a visually cool movie with less plot than style, a fact that marks it as influenced by the film noirstyle (Schrader 225). Although it is campy, modern, shot in color, and even musical – all things film noir is reputed not to be — it also incorporates many specific elements which were inherent in the film noirofferings of the 1940’s and ‘50’s.  This list includes a macho male lead who becomes involved (through no fault of his own) with a dangerous woman who (it is eventually revealed) frames him for a murder he did not commit.  This woman has a more traditionally feminine counterpart, with whom the hero eventually resolves his crisis of identity and is “integrated into the cultural order through marriage” (Krutnik 87).  There are stark shadows, black silhouettes, spinning headlines (yes, my personal favorite) and machine-gunners riding down the street in long hulky cars.  But it is the overall feel of this movie that marks it as a respectful admirer of the film noir of the past.  Dick Tracy is darkly scenic and comically flat, a holdover from its comic strip days.  It is, overall, an entertaining strip of a movie with a gritty texture but no rough edges.

Works Cited

Coville, Jamie.  “An Interview With Max Allen Collins.”  Collector Times.com.  6.9 (Oct. 2001).  10 December 2001.  Web.  

Cowie, Elizabeth.  “Film Noir and Women.”  Shades of Noir.  Ed. Copjec, Joan.  London: Verso, 1993.  121-65. Print.

Dick Tracy.  Dir. Warren Beatty.  Perf.  Warren Beatty, Madonna, Al Pacino, and Glenne Headley.  Buena Vista, 1990.  DVD.

Krutnik, Frank.  In a Lonely Street:  Film Noir, Genre, and Masculinity.  London:  Rutledge, 1996.  Print.

Pierce, J. Kingston.  “Killers, Coverups, and Max Allen Collins.”  January Magazine.  (Sept. 1999).  10 Dec. 2001.  Web.

Schrader, Paul.  “Notes on Film Noir.”  Film Genre Reader II.  Ed. Barry Keith Grant.  Austin: U of Texas P, 1997.  213-26. Print.

 “Two Prehistories.”  Whole Earth.  (Spring 1998):  25+.  Ebscohost.  5 Dec. 2001.  Web.

16 November 2001

Although readers may have been and may continue to be inspired to new heights of faith “down through the ages to the present time” (Bergant 469) by the Book of Job and its story of one man’s piety, suffering, and redemption, many questions still remain about this tale, including what some might consider the odd behavior of God in the framing prose.  For example, the God of modern Christianity is widely held to be a far superior figure to Satan, both in power and in knowledge.  Job’s God, however, makes casual, almost friendly, conversation with the fallen angel, eventually entering into a contest of sorts in which the stakes, although never explicitly stated, seem to be only bragging rights.  Satan is as likely to win as God, it appears, and the outcome of the wager rests on the reaction to suffering of an innocent, pious creature named Job.

Why, it is asked, would God — creator of everything, omnipotent, omniscient – lower himself to engage in such sport with the despicable Satan?  Wouldn’t God know the outcome already?  Doesn’t God know the quality of Job’s love?  And, finally, what is the real point of this story; is Job’s reward, the new improved family, extended lifespan and restored wealth, enough to compensate him for all that he endured?  Is this justice of God’s really all that it is touted to be?  Is this justice at all?

Underlying the question of justice in the Book of Job is another, possibly more universal theme:  man’s need for order.  Although justice may be considered a form or part of order, order itself, as Alexander Pope wrote, “is Heaven’s first law.”  Or at the least, “a certain amount of understanding seems essential for human stability” (Bergant 470).  People are comfortable with that which they understand.  The ability to equate a new situation with one already experienced is a technique of comfort precisely because it transforms the unknown – potential chaos – into the can-be-known – return to order.  Anthropomorphism, the attributing of human qualities to non-human objects or events, is one way of making this equation.  By applying the qualities we see in ourselves, projecting our own reasoning and motivation onto objects or natural phenomena, we can give ourselves an understanding, albeit not always a correct one, of the world around us.  Such is the case with the Book of Job, in which the author endows God Himself with humanistic qualities, either simply as a device to create an impetus for Job’s trial, or, more probably, as part of a holdover from polytheistic beliefs which were prevalent at the origin of the oral tradition from which the tale is derived.

Human suffering at the hands of gods – bands of gods which were worshipped in ancient civilizations such as Sumeria and Babylonia, from which such a story as Job may have originated – is anything but rare.  The gods of polytheism, according to ancient literature and visual art, wreaked havoc in the lives of mere mortals not only for malicious reasons, but in the name of love as well, and even incidentally, as seems to be the case with Job’s God, as a consequence of personal entertainment.  These gods are often arrogant, competitive, nosy, and petty, like humans.  They like their games, and bore easily, requiring fresh entertainment.  The belief in a multitude of man-like gods provides an explanation for pain and affliction; “if there are many gods, then the troubles of life can be explained as the conflict between opposing deities…Humanity has simply the misfortune of standing between them” (“Wisdom Literature” sec. e.).  Certainly, God and Satan in the Book of Job are more like rival or feuding gods in a Homeric epic than the God and Satan of modern belief.  Their verbal exchange seems to be that of equals, rather than dominant/submissive, and the casual manner in which they interfere in Job’s life, without regard for Job’s impending pain, is reminiscent of classic Greek or Roman polytheism. 

Although the identity of the author of the Book of Job is unknown, “scholars agree that neither the character Job nor the story about his misfortunes originated in Israel.”  Newsome places the origin of the name “Job,” as well as the place identified in the story as “Uz” in the ancient Near East:  “Job appears to have been an ancient non-Israelite or pre-Israelite whose story, originally developed in other parts of the ancient Near East, had been incorporated into Israelite religious culture by the sixth century BCE” (445-6).  Newsome highlights the parallels between the Book of Job and another text, the Babylonian Theodicy, which does bear striking resemblance to it.  Written in about 1000 BCE, this other text also contains dialog between a man in great anguish and his friend, who, like the friends of Job, criticizes the man’s actions as erroneous or blasphemous (447).  Babylonian beliefs of the era would have included many gods and goddesses, and indeed the Babylonian Theodicy contains references to several different deities (448-9).  If, as Newsome suggests, there is at least the possibility that the author of the biblical version of the Job story was familiar with the older traditions of a “righteous sufferer” and even with the Babylonian Theodicy itself, it seems therefore likely that the Book of Job is infused with the remnants of abandoned polytheism, namely anthropomorphic representations of deities, a deity, the Deity.

If it seems difficult to reconcile the God of the Book of Job with the God of other parts of the Bible, and with the God of popular Christian belief without the consideration of elements of polytheism, it becomes even messier with the addition of other, more humanoid gods.  If the God represented here is actually a “singularization” of a plurality, what then becomes of the divine attributes of God, as we know Him?  What do we make of the question of omniscience; does God know in advance what the outcome of his wager will be?  Or is he, like Satan, watching with interest to see what Job will do with his agony?

Usually, in the Greek stories, when two deities have a contest using a human being as a pawn, both players participate in the game until it is won.  In Homer’s  Odyssey, the future of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, becomes a group sport, with Athena and Zeus working to help the hero on his journey home, while Poseidon and others take steps to undermine his progress.  Each move is a response to another move, and deals with the immediate situational outcome; that is, none of the deities is able to affect the final outcome by supreme decree.

In the Book of Job, however, only Satan actually intervenes directly in Job’s life, at first causing the loss of wealth and family, and later inflicting the bodily pain which threatens Job’s resolve.  God participates only passively in Job’s tribulation, allowing Satan to take whatever action he deems necessary to make his point, except for taking Job’s life.  This suggests that God does have foreknowledge that those lesser deities do not have.  If God did not know at the outset what the result would be, would he make the wager in the first place?  I think not.  Here, God makes the bet because he already knows the outcome, which fact both supports and contradicts the argument for anthropomorphism in Job’s God character.  Here is a character who is human enough to be enticed into a bet — the setup of which will cause a very good man extreme pain — but who is god enough to know he is already a winner.  How human is it to bet on a “sure thing?”  I’d say, very human.

So what is the point of this story?  Is the restoration of Job’s health, wealth, and family really a fair trade for the life he lost?  I believe there is a better payoff here. 

God does know how Job will bear up under the strains of his suffering.  And, God knows the quality of Job’s love for Him.  I have argued that it is precisely because of this knowledge that God makes the arrangement with Satan.  But one step further than that, I also believe that God is aware of a need in his faithful servant.  He will give Job what he really needs, as a result of and as payment for his pain.

In the exposition, we are told that Job is a dutiful servant to God, making sacrifice even for his children’s sins, which they may or may not have even committed.  Job believes in an all-powerful God, One whose rule brings order to his world.  Job thinks, until his afflictions begin, that the good are rewarded according to their goodness, and the bad are punished in scale.  Thus there is order in Job’s world, and Job needs the order he sees. 

When his belief in divine justice is challenged, he becomes confused, despondent.  He rues the day he was born.  He cries out for action from God, even action which will end his life:  “O that I might have my request, and that God would grant my desire; that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!  This would be my consolation; I would even exult in pain unsparing; for I have not denied the words of the Holy One” (The Book of Job 415).  Here, Job is asking for a sign from God; not necessarily relief from his suffering, just a kind of proof that God is there, and is the all-powerful One that Job has believed Him to be.  Job needs to know whether God is, and whether God is God.

This is not the first hint at Job’s true issue, though.  When Job breaks his silence in a curse on the day he was born, he ends his long rant with the lines, “For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. / I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes” (413).  Clearly, Job means that he sees a limit to his patience, but maybe he is also describing a shadow of doubt that is looming over him.  Has he been wrong to believe in Order, to believe in a God of Order?

God’s real restitution for Job’s suffering is His manifestation before Job.  It makes no difference at that point what God tells Job, or whether He answers any of Job’s questions at all.  The appearance of God fills Job’s need for order in his world, for even if God will give no justification for His actions, His paternalistic authority is a fine substitute for the understanding which would restore order to Job’s life.  In lieu of a reason or comprehension why something is the way it is, a child will rely upon his parent’s word that everything will be all right.  As long as somebody understands and is in control, we can all breathe a little easier even in our confusion. 

The Book of Job is at one time sad and hopeful, awe-inspiring and unfulfilling, true and false.  For followers of God who need only the assurance the God is in control, the story is a reminder that any trial can be endured, and with intact faith.  For more skeptical readers, the pettiness of God’s character in the framing narrative, along with God’s complete refusal to give any comfort to his long-suffering servant Job, leaves a hollow feeling.  Could this be the God of our contemporary Christian belief?  Is this our noble and omnipotent Lord?  Actually, the answer is, “No.” 

Job’s God is a manifestation of divinity, but not the One we envision now.  This God is a holdover from the many gods of ancient polytheism.  He acts with human motivation in taking the wager with Satan, who is represented not as a subordinate, but as a more equal player in the game.  Truly, God’s omniscience in the text is the only quality he holds in common with the God of most other biblical writings.  Today’s Christian ideal of God does not include such small-mindedness, such blatant disregard for the suffering of the children of His flock.  Job’s God is another character altogether.  Today’s Christian believes himself to be made in God’s image.  The God of the Book of Job is clearly made in the image of man, instead.

Bergant writes that “at the heart of Job’s dilemma is the collapse of his world of meaning brought on by the incomprehensible events of his life” (470), and further, that “there is one thing that Job never doubts and that is his own integrity” (471).  Through all his traumatic misfortunes, Job’s need for order, his desire to maintain the belief in his sanity, is greater even than his faith in God.  A weaker man would sooner doubt his own perception of what is happening to him than to allow the questioning of his spiritual beliefs.  Job is honest, but firm.  Emotional stability must be maintained, and prior to the appearance of God, Job’s only source of level footing is the knowledge of his own righteousness.  After God comes to Job, his faith is affirmed and he takes a comfort in the knowledge that a father figure is in control.  A new understanding supplants the old ideas of order that Job had relied upon for strength.  God is in His Heaven and Job is repaid.

 Works Cited

Behrens, Laurence and Leonard Rosen, ed.  Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum.  7^th ed. 

New York:  Longman, 2000. 

Bergant, Dianne.  “Job:  Implications for Today.”  Behrens and Rosen  469-73.

The Book of Job.  Revised Standard Version.  Reprinted in Behrens and Rosen 411-33.

Newsom, Carol A.  “The Book of Job and Ancient Near Eastern Tradition.”  Behrens and Rosen

444-51.

“Wisdom Literature:  The Book of Job.”  Bible Survey.  Quartz Hill School of Theology,  Quartz

Hill, CA.  16 Nov. 2001.  <http://www.theology.edu/biblesurvey/job.htm>.

20 April 2001

“We the Living is not a story about Soviet Russia in 1925.  It is a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time, whether it be Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or – which this novel might do its share in helping to prevent – a socialist America.”  These words, written by Ayn Rand herself for the foreword to the 1959 printing of her 1936 novel We the Living, convey not only Rand’s direction to the reader to keep in mind the universality of the book’s theme, but also her opinion of communism in 1925 Russia and her suspicion that the United States might be headed down the same erroneous path.  During her lifetime, Rand would write prolifically both fiction and non-fiction, and found a philosophical movement whose widespread appeal would spark both loyalty and controversy.  However, We the Living is Rand’s first, and possibly most-accessible, statement on the nature of communist oppression and the immorality associated with man’s tolerance of it.

Born in Russia in 1905, Ayn Rand (nee Alice Rosembaum) immigrated in 1926 to the United States where, after a short visit with a cousin in Chicago, she proceeded to find work almost immediately in Hollywood, first as an extra and then as a junior screenwriter.  It was while she was working at the studio for director Cecil B. DeMille that she met her future husband, Frank O’Connor.  He was a minor actor, described as handsome and kind, but “by all evidence unassertive, passive, not at all like the Rand version of the ideal man” (Gladstein 9).  Although some sources allege that she married O’Connor in an effort to gain permanent resident status in the country (Walker xiv), others maintain that Rand found in her husband “a spiritual soul mate” (Gladstein 9).  Whichever account is more accurate, the two married in 1929 and remained married until O’Connor’s death in 1979 at eighty-two years of age. 

During the seventeen years following her marriage, Rand worked at several jobs, sold her first screenplay (which was never produced), and witnessed the Broadway production of her play Night of January 16^th.  Rand’s first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936, three years after its completion.  Two years later, the British publishing house Cassell produced the first printing of Anthem.

In 1940 Rand worked on the presidential election campaign of Wendell Wilkie, a self-described defender of free enterprise.  Rand believed strongly in the individualism that she thought Wilkie represented and she felt that the trend toward collectivism under Roosevelt should be opposed.  However, during the election she grew to believe that Wilkie had betrayed his own values, and consequently hers, in his pursuit of victory.  She left that experience disillusioned and distrustful of “those who called themselves conservatives and supporters of capitalism” (Gladstein 11). 

Rand’s The Fountainhead was released in 1943 and received some critical acclaim.  Although it was not initially a best-seller, its popularity grew steadily and later in the year Rand sold the film rights to it for $50,000.  Rand was hired to write the screen adaptation.  The movie was released in 1949 with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in the leading roles.

It was in 1950 that Rand met Nathaniel Branden (then Nathan Blumenthal), arguably the first follower of what was to become Objectivism.  Rand and Branden would subsequently develop a relationship of mutual admiration and benefit that lasted eighteen years.  Branden had read The Fountainheadin college and was so moved by it that he wrote a letter to the author, expressing his gratitude and admiration.  Affected by his letter, Rand, along with O’Connor, agreed to meet with Branden and his girlfriend (later wife), Barbara Weidman.  The four became good friends and together shared many long evenings of philosophical discussion.  Both couples moved to New York in 1951, and later that year the four began to invite others to sit in on their conversations.  They discussed, among other things, ways in which to apply Rand’s philosophy to their own daily lives.  This was the very beginning of a movement which endures even today, years after Ayn Rand’s death.

Atlas Shruggedwas Ayn Rand’s last novel.  It was published in 1957, and shortly after its emergence on the literary scene Nathaniel Branden initiated a public teaching of Rand’s philosophical principles.  He began a course of lecture-based study which included the title “Basic Principles of Objectivism” in the spring of 1958. 

The Nathaniel Branden Institute, born of the Nathaniel Branden Lectures series, grew to include a publication branch, film theater, and social organization which sponsored dances, sporting events, and fashion shows (Gladstein 15).  It published The Objectivist Newsletter in conjunction with Ayn Rand.  Rand endorsed these activities and Branden, enjoying ever larger popularity and recognition partly as a result of them.  She received honorary degrees, was interviewed regularly, and spread her philosophy through books, radio and print media. 

Ultimately, however, fame did not agree with Ayn Rand.  Some sources claim that it was because of the fame and adulation that she became autocratic and intolerant.  Formerly close friends and followers were expelled from her presence.  Those who dared disagree or even failed to meet Rand’s demands were shut out of her life and her group.  Remaining followers were strongly discouraged from having contact with those who had been shunned.  It is aspects such as these that have brought many to consider Rand’s movement cult-like, and to condemn it as destructive (Walker 63).   Although Rand’s ideology is based on individualism and personal freedom, the group which organized to practice these ideals was ultimately transformed into a “collective,” resembling everything Rand proclaimed to be oppressive and therefore immoral.

Objectivism, in its essential form, espouses “objective reality, reason, self-interest, and capitalism” (Essentials of Objectivism par.1), all the things that the Communist Party of 1925 Russia decried.  Rand’s description in We the Livingof life in Petrograd during that time provides a clear understanding of the hardships that resulted from the Bolshevik Revolution and its ensuing changes.  Rand herself called We the Living her most autobiographical novel, although she denied that the events of her life were also those of the book’s heroine, Kira.

Like Ayn Rand’s, Kira Argounova’s family was affluent.  Before the revolution, Kira’s father had owned and operated a factory in St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd) and her family had inhabited the “vast mansion” in which she was born.  There was also a summer residence and a governess.  There were material luxuries and the intangible luxuries of wild freedom and security.  Like her creator, Kira left church as a small child and never returned.  Also like Rand, Kira learned early that she preferred not to spend her time or energy on philanthropic activities.  Of this character Rand wrote, “The specific events of Kira’s life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values were and are” (Rand ix).

Rand believed that the story was the most important part of writing.  We the Livingis a good story – readable, intriguing.  The story opens with the return of Kira Argounova and her family to Petrograd after a four-year flight from the violence of the revolution.  Kira’s father’s textile factory has been nationalized, and their expansive home has been turned into living accommodations for several families.  Proceeding to the home of her aunt’s family, Kira and her parents and sister encounter the severity of life in newly socialized Russia.  Since his business, too, has been appropriated “for the people,” Kira’s uncle has begun to sell off family possessions for money.  Although some private enterprise is beginning to be allowed, money is practically nonexistent.  Food is rationed; only students in state academies and workers in nationalized businesses may have ration cards.  This family has only two ration cards to obtain food for five people. 

After registering with the State and obtaining her Labor Book, Kira is allowed to enroll at the Technological Institute, where she will study engineering.  Living quarters are found, and the family manages to retrieve some small amount of the furniture they had to leave behind four years earlier.  Life resumes, but not as usual.  Kira’s father opens a textile shop, small and mostly barren of goods – a far cry from his former industry.  Still, he manages to trade for a few of the necessities it has become so hard to get.  Commodities are in short supply; lines are long.  Rand’s descriptions almost place the reader on the sulky street, in a line with exhausted, underfed and extremely frustrated citizens of the new Russian Socialist Federalist Soviet Republic.  The tone is bleak.

Kira meets Leo Kovalensky on a dark night in a seedy neighborhood.  He is mysterious; she lets him believe she is a prostitute rather than letting him get away.  They walk and talk, and make a plan to see one another again.  This is an odd situation.  There appears to be no reason for the immediate attraction of these two characters, yet it is almost palpable.  Perhaps because of the desperation of their surroundings, it is not that difficult for the reader to believe that they have an instantaneous connection.  By their third meeting they are making an escape together, on a secret ship to a secret future.  They are caught.  They don’t even know one another’s name. 

Very, very little in We the Living is cheerful.   Kira’s and Leo’s relationship, passionate and loving in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the hardships they face and because of their different reactions to these hardships.  Kira, a realist, continues to attend classes until she is forced out of school because of her family’s Bourgeois background.  She provides as much normalcy as possible for her lover in their home.  After her expulsion from school she works at various jobs in order to keep her ration card, attempting to balance idealistic life with her dissident lover and practical necessities such as food and rent.  Leo resists such compromises as state employment, refusing to join the masses who see no other choice than to labor under the laws “of the people.”  Eventually he opens a shop which is a front for black-market goods, in secret collaboration with a member of the Communist Party.  He flaunts the money he gets from the proceeds, silently daring those of whom he so passionately disapproves to investigate his fortune.  Not so secretly he hopes to be confronted by a member of the Party so that he can openly deride their oppressive ways.  Yet he lacks the nerve to aggressively fight this movement.  It is perhaps this weakness that drives him to self-destruction.

The third major character in We the Livingis Andrei Taganov, a student who becomes a school friend of Kira’s.  Although Andrei is a communist, Kira accepts him on the merits of his character.  The two debate the politics of the movement, and eventually become close friends.  Andrei is an interesting and frustrating character.  Although he is shown to be a good person, loyal and compassionate with his friends, he seems blind to the adversity that Communism is causing.  Progressing in the ranks of the Party, he earns more and more money without seeming to notice that people all around him are starving.  Except for Kira.  Her needs he does notice.  Inevitably, Andrei falls in love with Kira, and eventually she begins to take advantage of that love.  Although Andrei is not a man she could ever love in return, Kira does become his mistress in an effort to get money to save her lover, Leo.  Ultimately, of course, all secrets are exposed, and the tragedy of the whole situation is revealed.  Leo abandons all efforts at morality; Andrei commits suicide; and Kira is killed trying to cross the border.

We the Livingis a tangled intrigue, romantic and heroic.  The consequences of requiring individuals to live for a collective good are illustrated in the destitution and demoralization of the citizens of Petrograd.  Andrei, the character with the most honor and virtue, still finds ruin because of his affiliation with the immoral politic.  All morality is beaten out of the characters with the most potential for it by the dire circumstances of their lives.  An excellent, emotionally moving story, this novel leaves no doubt as to the author’s feelings about the path of destruction down which socialism leads.