The Friday Article Roundup
Be swayed by the week's best pop culture writing.
This week, you will be persuaded that:
No persuasion needed to recognize the contributions of Bridgett Taylor! Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesfar [at] gmail, post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and have a Happy Friday!
On Hamilton’s tenth anniversary, Emily St. James makes the case for the play as art, not politics:
In Hamilton, [Lin-Manuel] Miranda was fairly ruthless at cutting out anything that got in the way of his core character study, to the degree that it was his choice to largely eschew the arguments over slavery that so divided Founding Fathers. Does that make the show worse as history? Yes. Does it make it better as a narrative? Also, yes. For the most part, in fact, the leftist critiques of Hamilton largely avoid the show’s second act, which is mostly about how Alexander Hamilton sucks, how his inability to simply chill out meant he destroyed so many things he held dear, and how he could not ever leave well enough alone… For better or worse, the show’s outwardly neoliberal trappings are necessary for the story to work at all, and too often, critiques of the trappings avoid the things about the story that are undercutting or even subverting the trappings.
At Literary Hub, Maris Kreizman pours cold water on the empathetic power of books:
Every time I answered a question about the importance of books, I wanted to make very clear that I don’t believe that books have the power to enlighten everyone all the time. I’ve read so much about studies that show, in some form or another, that reading fiction is meant to make you more empathetic, that considering someone else’s point of view might help you to gain greater understanding of people who are different from you. I don’t believe that reading is a secret shortcut to empathy. It never was. My pat answer is something like, “I know tons of morally reprehensible people who read good books all the time.”
Natalie Weiner shines a light on a neglected singer at her Don’t Rock The Inbox newsletter, and looks at why she’s been overlooked and by whom:
Legacy requires respect, and typically respect from (white) men — otherwise known as the ones most often in position to create canons and litigate legacies. It’s why there are thousands of books on the Beatles and the Stones and just two extremely recent ones on Big Mama Thornton; why Dolly had to get old enough to no longer be threatening before she was truly recognized as a legend (and still, it’s mostly the ferocity of her female fanbase that’s put her in this position more than any sea change from the men who too often write our histories).
Jesse Raub criticizes Civil War as part of a larger breakdown in what movies are offering viewers:
In the grander scheme of things, Civil War belongs to the “Shit Happens” Cinematic Universe. On paper, there’s a premise—what if a civil war broke out?—and on screen, the filmmaker rarely gets past the premise into an actual narrative. Things happen on screen, we’re not really sure why, we don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, and the filmmaker doens’t seem to really understand either. The movies are shot beautifully, capture images and scenes that play for big emotions, but ultimately don’t have a perspective that leaves you leaving the theater having felt anything true. These are the “pure vibes” movies that beg audiences to ascribe meaning to the images they saw on screen.
In a discussion at N+1, A.S. Hamrah digs into what Cracker Barrel and its logo change represent today:
It’s a question of a civilizational difference between Cracker Barrel and KFC, one that still tries to maintain a connection to its community, and the other, which is deracinated and generic. One represents a certain kind of gathering of citizens, in a residual form, even if it’s a damaged or historically racist one. The other, more dominant one just represents the maw of capitalism, destroying everything as it makes what are basically poisonous products for people to eat all over the world.
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The Friday Article Roundup
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Double Features
Family heirlooms loom large in Father Mother Sister Brother and Vulcanizadora.
Double Features
Moving in time with One Battle After Another and Caught By The Tides.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
The Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Final Insult
This pushes a lot of the absurdity too far; the start really leans hard on the sex jokes past the point of it being funny, the climax stretches out too long (and includes a transphobic joke), and Frank has been escalated into full-blown buffoon. Still, there’s a lot to like here; at points the sheer intensity of gags kills. The basic story works, as always, as a basis for the gags.
Babylon 5, Season Three, Episode Three, “A Day In The Strife”
Despite the cool title implying a structural trick, this actually isn’t that different from most B5 episodes. There is something in how this is a moment between beats; it reminds me of slower Breaking Bad episodes between more intense ones, especially in season three. Franklin is getting set up for a longer addiction arc (Garibaldi comes off like an asshole, but a realistic and sincere one – ACAB very much applies to Garibaldi); Londo is lingering between stories as he soaks up more consequences for his deal with the devil, mostly social; Delenn spends time with him and is clearly disturbed by everything about him, and he tries manoeuvring Vyr out of his life with a bunch of bullshit.
G’Kar carries the most weight here, and even then, not as much as it first appears; he gets the best scene of the episode, when his brother Narn come to him and insist that he not give himself up; when G’Kar asks if his family will be punished, to which he’s told that they’re willing to do it for the freedom he taught them to pursue – Andreas Katsulas is the most effective at finding moments between words, and here, he’s positively beaming. In a lot of ways, G’Kar’s story is that of the politician, serving as symbol and decision-maker.
The main thing I remember about 33 1/3 is the Untouchables opening sequence, which is top-tier. OJ spiking the baby is a hilarious gag that of course is only funnier now. And yeah, Katsulas just keeps following this path as the season goes on, the politician aspect remains but the symbol/avatar one becomes more prominent.
Babylon 5 — a fairly straightforward plot, you can see the ending from a mile away but it still works because the characters performing it have been interacting for a while now and if the beats are familiar, they know how to play them with personal style. And real points to the show for the design of the Shadows’ ships — it took a little bit to get into the main aesthetic of the show but these have been nightmare fuel from the start, a great design that in many ways is not supposed to make “sense” (the way Babylon 5 the station rotates on its long axis to create gravity, say) and just strike fear.
Michael Clayton — attempting a rewatch but only got the first hour, apparently my looks-fine DVD is a dud! Fuck! This is worse than anything that corporation in the movie is doing.
The Howling — apparently this deviates a lot from the novel it is based on but it still feels like John Sayles is beholden to stuff instead of being at full strength like Alligator or Piranha, bits drag and don’t quite gel. But it comes together well at the end, Dante’s horror chops are underrated because of how often he goofs around (which rules, of course) and a long tense exploration scene is really well done, and then comes the big transformation scene that presumably got Rob Bottin his job on The Thing, amazing gross shit here. The very ending is nicely cynical too, although that hamburger looks fairly crummy.
Yeah, really enjoy this one and Piranha of course, still haven’t seen Alligator. The endings of the first two really ring together in a cynical, approachable way.
Oh man, get on Alligator. That has a bit of a slow start but then gathers steam to a great, all-out ending.
Andor, S1E10, “One Way Out” – Mostly sublime, dunno another word for the catharsis and liberation here but also the drama, especially Kino Loy becoming the purest version of himself in the way Curtis Lemansky can or Peggy Olsen. Juxtaposes people finding real freedom, even if only for an instant, with other characters who are utterly trapped in these systems. No man is a tool, everyone can be a tool to be used and inserted and disposed of, or they make themselves into them. (Luthen’s monologue, a bit too writer-y to me, points to this.)
Ownage: The whole episode. Notes: “That’s the first untrue thing you’ve said.” I like having a sort of Irish-American gangster in the SW universe, sure, why not? The rage and disgust in Serkis’ voice when he says “They FRIED a hundred men-” is amazing.
“I can’t swim.” Gut punch.
Just the weekly Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, which I’ve briefly commented on elsewhere. I’m enjoying dipping into a weekly episode of this but also feel like I’m struggling to quite get on the right wavelength for it for some reason, maybe just because I haven’t watched much old-school TV before? Although I have no issue with cinem from the era, so fuck knows what’s going on.
I think TV of the era can sometimes have a statelier feel and pacing than the cinema, so I wonder if that’s part of it.
I’d call it stagey, which isn’t a bad thing but takes getting used to. Very theatrical compared to what came later.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “The Case of Mr. Pelham” – Watch Along with Lauren! Comment Along with Lauren. Really good, tense storytelling, directed by Hitch, with a strong performance by Tom Ewell.
The Practice, “”Checkmate” – John Laroquette is back as Joey Heric, on trial for another murder of another lover, and this time, he’s acting as his own counsel in part because Bobby would much prefer an insanity plea. (I wonder if this was in any way inspired by the case of the man convicted of the horrific 1993 LIRR mass shooting, who fired all his lawyers for wanting that plea and did things himself.) Laroquette is brilliant as usual, able to veer from disdainful to serious to full of rage, and frankly giving a better performance in the courtroom than half the cast usually does. Fair to say, I think, that Laroquette is one of our finest TV actors. (And of course, in the end, he manages to get cleared, again.)
But the important part here is the other case, a suit by an obese woman against a carnival whose dunk clown told fat jokes that humiliated her. This is possible the first time any TV show addressed issues of sizeism and body shaming, or took a stance for body positivity. Naturally Ellenor is the lawyer, and it’s absolutely clear than Camryn Mannheim is speaking from the heart. This is probably where she won her Emmy (“This is for the fat girls!”).
Frasier – “Shut Out in Seattle,” first half – The season finale was an hour long, and split in half for syndication. And if you quit after half an hour, everyone is having some sort of relationship. Daphne and Donnie of course. Frasier is still with Faye but keeps calling her Cassandra, Roz has strangely hooked up with Bulldog, Martin with a waitress from his favorite bar, and Niles with a waitress from Cafe Nervosa. Of course, even without having seen the other half, I know most of this goes to pieces. But that’s the Frasier experience, isn’t it?
Great bit of dual role acting from Ewell.
I think Tristan may have mentioned this before, but if you eventually move onto Boston Legal after you wrap up The Practice, Laroquette is also a delight in its later seasons there.
I’m crushing as much Robert Altman as I can in the next few months, as a lot of hard-to-get titles are currently in streaming circulation right now.
In an attempt to see what a chronological watch list reveals about the evolution *(and varients) of the Altman style, I started with COUNTDOWN, which offers very little of that due to the fact that the director was fired during the production. It’s a cold war astronaut drama that should have been structured as a thriller as opposed to a character study. It’s very slack, and has a very poorly executed moon walking sequence that demonstrates the effort that 2001, released the same, made in speculative authenticity. Even the stuff on land feels like studio pre-fab. Rising above the mediocrity an intense supporting role for a youngish Robert Duvall and a NASA themed spoof of “John Henry” performed by Robert Ridgely at the squarest Air Force party ever filmed.
My biggest surprise regarding THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK is how much the Altman touch was present before he’s graduate to studio projects the next year. The roving camera, heavily miked background dialogue (particularly in a sequence where Sandy Dennis’ spinster character goes to a family planning clinic in preparation for her seduction of a man she presumes is a mute drifter), and the use of glass in its reflective and transparent qualities get worked out here, in sets conveying acute claustrophobia. Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs even gets his patented lens flare in the first tracking shot. Like his protege Alan Rudolph’s REMEMBER MY NAME which came out a decade later, it’s a rumination on a post-WWII women’s gothic, with Dennis’ diminutive facial features and pale skin conveying a heavy neurosis compounded by sexual repression. This manifests itself in an attempt to imprison the object of her affection, who is gaslighting her as to his identity and intentions. While interesting, some of the twists in the last hour feel a bit gratuitously creepy (including hints of sibling incest) and a major subplot fails to detonate the whole argy-bargy. It promises better things to come, but there were a lot more Altmanesque flourishes than I was expecting.
MASH, historically speaking, signals Altman’s arrival, blending some of the elements above (having to substitute mosquito mesh for windows) to a broader social canvas. The transition from chamber drama to a field hospital leads to rougher style and a more informal pacing of dialogue and blocking, and based on my recollection the core of his aesthetic will become more refined over the next few projects. In some respects it’s also a tough watch due to the widespread sexism and casual, paternalistic racism that defines the medical unit’s culture of stress decompression, a theme that is somewhat muddled due to the film’s ambiguousness in character development. The three main doctor’s asshole-ishness seem apparent from the get-go, yet circumstances rationalize these behaviors as a byproduct of the job after their arrival. When I first saw this film I responded to it’s anti-authoritarian energy, but in hindsight that seems to stem from an air of professional superiority, and exudes a certain arrogance that finds expression in cruelty, particularly in the treatment of Hot Lips (I should note that there is a large degree of compassion, particularly in dealing with Painless’ depression). I think it’s an honest depiction of behavior in this space and environment, but laughing with the characters is more cognitively dissonant.
Similar problem I’ve run into with revisiting anti-authoritarian comedies from the 70s/80s – some of this formed my own political thinking, but goddamn the slobs are also assholes sometimes.
MASH was a perfect articulation of my teenage worldview when I saw it for the first time, probably around 1975, but it’s thumb-its-nose at everything attitude doesn’t hold up as well, particularly as some of its attitudes and episodes aren’t grounded in an explicitly stated context.
That’s where the film’s episodic structure becomes an overall weakness. It appears that Hawkeye and the group find war, at one level, a liberational experience, allowing for the falling away of corporate hierarchy and domestic fidelity and conformity. When they get to Korea, they actively rebel against any other font of ideology, from militarism to patriotism and religion, that might re-impose a social contract of bourgeois self control. The film doesn’t explain itself as a military version of HUSBANDS, however. Where it shares a DNA with Hawks, I’d say, is that their professionalism, of being a good doctor or nurse, is the only thing that bonds each individual to a sense of community, and their pranks are directed at those who prioritize any other value system above that. On the other hands, the stresses and traumas of the battlefield adjacent OR aren’t shied away from, and these hijinx might be a form of releasing traumatic tension. This would require an arc of changing behavioral attitudes to demonstrate this, but the film doesn’t develop that either.
In my teens I didn’t need that; I just got off on the “let’s pull the rug out from everything sacred” vibe. Today I think it has a lot of aggressively funny moments, some cringy ones, and a sense that Altman didn’t manage to clearly articulate what he wanted to say about the experience of war.
The Criterion curation of Altman has a shit ton of stuff — I think we will move into Tanner ’88 once we finish The Trip as our other TV show.
Cowboys at Eagles – The NFL is back! And I kinda watched it in the background while I was playing Silksong.
You’re lying, Silksong is never coming out.
What did we read?
8 Bit Theater, 001 – 0030
I’m feeling a reread. I’ve been frustrated by this for a long time, because I know there’s a principle about storytelling and comedy at the core of this that I haven’t been able to express. This is the kind of comedy I would like to make, and I think what it does is almost unique. Well, now I feel much more confident talking about comedy and risking making it unfunny just to find whatever it is I’ve been trying to find. In fact, I’m going to analyse it to a level even I find absurd and abstract. Doing that deep dive on Star Wars really opened me up, critically speaking.
Obviously, this very beginning section of the comic is crude, but right from the start it shows at least one basic comic concept the strip will artfully elaborate on: saying something stupid, being asked to explain it, and giving an even stupider explanation. 8BT isn’t quite as transcendently simple as Police Squad! in the regard of doing one thing over and over, but it is a very basic setup that the comic repeats to great results; in fact, less than a dozen strips in, it already hits some comedy gold in this vein (“You think you’re so smart! Well, for your information, he didn’t take our gold, I gave it to him, so there.”).
I often find when writing drama that the best scenes come when I’ve gotten all my ideas out of the way and there’s nothing left but consequences, and it seems comedy is the same way; no spectacular absurdity is as funny as trying to get away with doing said absurdity, and it seems 8 Bit Theater runs on this.
This early run also kicks into my other favourite thing about it: the use of language. That is to say, characters declaring either facts or their motivations in a dry, stilted way that reveals the very obvious fact they’re either missing or avoiding; my favourite example of this is Black Mage remarking “Of course, I bet Fighter would undoubtedly spend his share [of our money] on weapons and armor that will prove to be vastly inferior to what we will find on our travels,” because it initially sells us on BM rationalising ripping Fighter off and also immediately cuts to Fighter saying almost exactly the same thing, because he’s stupid.
It’s a very Simpsons-esque idea (the dialogue often reminds me of things like “My son is also named Bort” or “yellow, lemon-shaped rock”, to the point that you could imagine Homer saying a lot of Fighter’s dialogue and Lisa saying a lot of Black Mage’s), and indeed there are a few direct references to the show in these strips. But I feel 8BT takes it further; not only is almost every character talking in this stilted style (including signs and walls), it’s all in service of pushing this stupid plot forward.
The subtler structural trick the comic has already mastered is that all the characters have goals at all times. The first two plots are pretty naff; BM and Fighter are looking for the Cave of No Return and then fight a giant. But from there, plots start happening; Black Mage seeks revenge on the old man who took all their gold from Fighter, Fighter discovers the King is looking for Light Warriors and goes looking for new members to join them, Thief eyes Fighter and BM to rope them into a crew, and BM tries hitting on White Mage.
Already, this sets up another aspect of 8 Bit Theater that makes me love it: these weird, simple characters. In particular, the comic already has a (crude, again) understanding that Black Mage is, on the one hand, hypercritical of everyone around him and, on the other, is a horny, violent little asshole. It’s a Liz Lemon-esque setup for a character, with the distinctions that a) unlike Liz, BM is usually correct about his insights into the people around him and b) unlike Liz, he has no self-awareness slowing him down over his destructive impulses. Which means he also dodges the criticisms of unlikeability Liz has thrown at her by viewers. It’s fun to watch him rip into people and it’s fun to watch him fuck up.
Which leads to the final basic aspect of the strip, also showing up in (crude) form: the ultraviolence as comedy. It’s not as brutal as it will be yet; the main expressions are the simple killing of a giant with BM’s Hadoken and his lightning bolt on a bunch of innocent old men. The latter especially sells what kind of comedy we’ll be dealing with here – not just violence, but vicious and needless cruelty. The reason it works is because, more than anything else, the strip works so hard to get you not to see anything in it as real. Obviously, the style is about as unrealistic as you can get; the stilted dialogue and fact that nobody has a real name (at least until we get to King Steve) add to this effect. The world of 8 Bit Theater is elaborately cruel, but it’s not even close to pretending to be real so there’s no point getting upset about it. Actually, there’s also White Mage hammering the absolute shit out of BM; this specific gag involves BM discussing shattered bones and organs in hilarious counterpoint to the fake artstyle.
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
Jesus Christ. Even if I didn’t know how this ended, I could figure it out from the opening scene, and it made the whole thing so awful and bleak. There’s a strong tension here between the intense love people can feel for each other and personal practical needs, and ultimately the former overrides the latter in soulful terms and the latter wins in terms of what happens. This is a potent anti-capitalist work in how the drive to make money causes and then amplifies everything; George is driven by a desire to just be comfortable and able to look after himself, and even if he didn’t have Lenny, that would still be a pain in the ass.
(This also extends to the ‘villains’; Curly and his wife are shitty people, but you also get how exhausting their lives are and how this is energy that should be going somewhere else.)
Although the book was also a relief in how we have restructured society in a limited way to keep the Lennys of the world safe. In a way, this book is a call to action; wouldn’t you have rather lived in the world where Lenny could just be allowed to look after the rabbits?
My bunny, Eclipse, agrees with you.
Tearing up thinking about Of Mice and Men, so I’m going to hastily petition for a lot more of “Tristan makes comedy unfunny” essays and/or comments, because breaking down the structure of comedy like this is so tricky and fascinating. I was revisiting Nath’s famous Tom Myers essay yesterday, and of course it’s got a bit of this, though with the curveball of dissecting DOA jokes rather than vivisecting working ones.
I can vivisect working jokes as well, they’re just not as fascinating as something like the “comedy” of Tom Myers.
I was thinking recently, having seen a number of comments from actual comedians on the “essence” of comedy, what I think it is. Some say it’s physical. Some say it’s funny voices. There’s a clip from Good Talk that was going around recently where Anthony Jeselnik says it’s surprise, but Kristen Schaal argues that commitment in a character can be just as funny. Anyway, I think the essence of comedy is absurdity.
Had a strong emotional reaction as a kid to Lenny getting beaten by Curly (before grabbing that piece of shit’s arm) – I totally understood how it feels to be picked on when you have zero idea what you did wrong.
Friday, by Ed Brubaker, Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente — reread of the first 2/3 and then the final chapter of this graphic novel where the conceit is “Sally comes back from college and rejoins Encyclopedia Brown to solve a mystery in their Lovecraftian New England town.” This is a pretty good idea to begin with and what makes it really sing is Martin and Vicente’s art, which is explicitly drawing on the Edward Gorey material used for John Bellairs’ YA-before-YA-was-a-thing fiction, it absolutely rules and one sequence in particular is pure terror. Unfortunately, this falls down pretty hard in its final section — it throws a ton of backstory in to make the main story make sense and it feels like something happened along the way (Brubaker references the pandemic in an afterword) that hurt the structure here — the ending needed a lot more seeding along the way to really work (and it’s not like Brubaker doesn’t know how to do this, see pretty much any crime story he’s written and in particular the ongoing Reckless books). Oh well, it’s still very much worth a read and especially a look at that fantastic art.
The Devil Knows You’re Dead by Lawrence Block — taking a flier on a guy I should’ve checked out long ago. This is one of his Matthew Scudder novels and Scudder the recovering alcoholic is a great twist on the Marlovian private eye, he has his observations and his despairs and in this book a real fuck-up that is not resolved, but he also has a perspective of knowing rock bottom and personal failure that lets him navigate mean streets without whining about it. He’s trying to walk the righteous path, as the Drive-By Truckers put it, and the steps of that path are one at a time. Block’s prose is also unadorned and solid, he and Donald Westlake were longtime buddies going back to their time in the porno trenches and there’s a similar basic craft here that is a pleasure to read. Already picked up my second book.
Hell yeah, Lawrence Block! I’ve read a ton of his standalones, but I haven’t actually ventured into the Scudder books yet. (That Liam Neeson adaptation of one is pretty solid and has some appealingly nasty stuff in it, though.)
A Walk Among The Tombstones (the movie) is a great and nasty little sleeper — the villains are really horrifying (David Harbour, why are you so evil!) but instead of the expected Taken-esque performance from Neeson he’s in a really strong weary tarnished knight mode, it’s hard for me to read the books and not picture him now. I think it’s one of those movies that people will come back to over the years as an unheralded gem. I like Eight Million Ways To Die as a weird 80s noir but I’m guessing it takes a lot of liberties with the story (moving to LA for one).
She Wakes – Almost done here and while I wouldn’t say it’s a bad horror novel, Ketchum seems much stronger in lean novella form. The take on the succubus doesn’t work for me either, as with too many of them, the monster is (very) female, an incarnation of what guys fear and desire, and doesn’t have strong motivation beyond jealousy and spite.* Ketchum goes off on nature goddesses and Hecate and all that jazz in a long monologue for one character,
*Tomie is the best succubus character because Ito is also dissecting largely male attraction descending into violence, Tomie is not inherently asking to be desired and if you act on it, she will put that bullshit back on you. (Think there’s one man who isn’t harmed because he’s a widower and can also see Tomie is a young girl.)
Keats by Lucasta Miller – Excellent book, less of a biography than a reading of the poet via nine of his works that also critiques the romantic vision of Keats. Threads the needle of pointing at Keats’ faults and idiosyncrasies – his anti-Semitism, sexual neurosis, his depressive tendencies etc. – and also his endearing qualities and genius. One striking thing is how death as much a part of his work as beauty, and the man did nurse both his mother and brother until their deaths from tuberculosis. That would make anyone write “Isabella, or The Pot of Basil.”
This fourth book in the Milkweed Multiverse neurodivergent poetry series, appreciating the breakdown of language in these books while wishing there was less Whitman sublime schtick. I think the poets are sincere but this is making me want to be the autistic Philip Larkin. Disabled poets can be grouchy or negative too!
Picked this up after you mentioned it to fill in my last big Ketchum gap, but I did notice it was unusually long for a Ketchum novel. The Girl Next Door is a tad thicker than something like the one-crazy-night Off Season–and I’d argue GND is his masterpiece–but yeah, in general, he benefits from that kind of wild, propulsive narrative. Still going to get to this soon, though.
I wouldn’t say don’t read it but wow does it get rapey in a very “It’s 70s/80’s horror time!” way near the end.
Making my way through Stephen Sears’s Lincoln’s Lieutenants, which maybe goes into way more detail about every last commander and every last unit, but does give a really good overview. Sears joins the long list of writers who call out George McLellan’s many failings but he does find some good things to say. He is less fond of Edwin Stanton, who he actually calls “malevolent.”
Also reading The Great Air Race: Death, Glory, and the Dawn of American Aviation by John Lancaster, about a post-WWI race across the US and back orchestrated by Billy Mitchell to promote military and commercial air travel and industry. I am not there yet, but there will be a lot of bravery and a lot of tragedy. A nice snapshot so far of where air travel once was.
Stanton suspends some Constitutional privileges post-Lincoln assassination, right?
Sounds like him. He definitely led the manhunt – or, to some small degree, witchhunt – for the conspirators.
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, by Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton
Oh, boy, do I have a lot of thoughts.
NERD ALERT: Although Armstrong and Hamilton disguise the university of this study as MU, or Midwestern University, it is clearly–and the internet backs me up on this–Indiana University, where I went to both undergrad and grad school. I mention this because the authors began their sociological study by embedding themselves in a notorious party dorm, and they say that the reputation of IU dorms is so constant that every alum they spoke to knew which one they were talking about, and reader, I had no fucking idea.
My own tone-deafness to the party scene does, weirdly, get at one of the negatives about this book. Armstrong and Hamilton throw in a few caveats, especially later on, but in general, they tend to write like there are only two kinds of people in the world: “isolates” (who hide tragically in their rooms and are always presumed to be unhappy) and “partiers.” If anyone in their study had anything resembling my kind of cozy college friend group–where we’d meet up for meals, have movie and TV nights, and hang out and talk–you wouldn’t know it. Similarly, if any of the people involved are genuine introverts who are sometimes delighted to spend a Friday night reading in their room, you also wouldn’t know that. Until very late in the book, everyone not on what the authors call the “party pathway” is painted in a pathetic, lonely light–and this is the fault of the university, apparently, even though a lot of organized social events suck and are terrifying (one of the weirdest things here is that they spend a lot of time judging people’s social lives by how much they hang out with the people who were randomly assigned to their freshman dorm floor, which is a granfalloon if I’ve ever seen one).
Presumed desperate loneliness is the Scylla to the party pathway’s Charybdis, where you drink and socialize so much that you can’t have a challenging major. According to Armstrong and Hamilton, a few people slip in between these problems, but not many … but that’s also because they’re studying a party dorm and using that to condemn the entire university, when they acknowledge, in passing asides, that there are plenty of academic living learning communities, cultural-based communities, quieter dorms, etc. This is an interesting study about why universities should do their best to keep dorms from ever having party reputations at all, but using it to smear the whole institution makes me feel like they went to one Times Square restaurant and are now talking about how bad NYC food is. There were a lot of other options! You’re just not studying them! And when they happen, you’re brushing them off!
The other big negative of the book for me was that it made me realize that I’m not a sociology person–the field somewhat demands reducing people and their lives to categories and statistics, and I didn’t grasp just how dehumanizing that would feel to me in execution. The authors eventually touch on this in their epilogue, acknowledging that they’ve categorized one student as having her “[social/economic upward] mobility at risk”–one of the major ways they’re classifying people–but that she’s actually incredibly happy with her life and feels like college changed her for the better. It got her involved with a hiking club that awakened major interest in the outdoors, and it’s also how she met the love of her life; the two of them are cheerfully occupying roving lower-rung jobs, like being ski instructors, that give them tons of outdoor experience and time to pursue their passions. But it’s not lucrative, and the love of her life doesn’t make a lot of money, so their system technically classifies her as a failure and dings him for not being a “high-status partner.” It’s hard for me to process reducing someone’s life in this manner. (Also, if you’re going to talk in the opening about how much you cared about your subjects, maybe don’t call a whole category of them “wannabes.”)
Armstrong and Hamilton are passionately invested in what they call the “mobility pathway” through college–the route for low-income, working- or lower-middle-class students to achieve stable, lucrative careers–and I agree that that pathway tends to be well-developed and well-maintained. But at times, they take their investment in this so far that it all queasily reminds me of people who feel like working-class students should exclusively be pushed to trade schools. There’s some actual outrage here about professors recommending a highly gifted student pursue a PhD in Classical archeology: they shouldn’t have thought about her specific interests and skills, they should have sniffed out her exact income status and known that she’d need a more guaranteed paycheck. They should have encouraged her to aim lower, and go after something more practical. I agree that anyone recommending a professional path that’s extremely rocky should bracket it with a lot of caveats and provide a lot of explanations about how that would work, but there’s a whiff of “they were giving her ideas above her station” here that does not sit well with me at all. Working-class students are allowed to think about things besides money! After a while, it starts to feel like Armstrong and Hamilton are failing to acknowledge that people without money can also have intellectual curiosity.
Of course, there’s a reason for that: it can feel nuts to go deeply into student loan debt to reward intellectual curiosity, whereas going into debt to make more money later on makes more intrinsic sense. But the authors are using the book strictly to advocate for changes at the university level, not the national level, and that can sometimes lead to a suffocating narrowness of options. Things could, and should, be better than this, and not acknowledging that feels like scolding universities for not putting a better Band-Aid on a bullet wound.
All of that being said, there’s a ton of interesting, thought-provoking material here. A key idea here is that public universities, suffering from state funding cuts, try to recruit out-of-state students to pay steeper tuition fees; this means targeting affluent populations who still use college as a social training ground rather than an intellectual one. It’s a place to make connections and hone networking skills–and, since Armstrong and Hamilton are exclusively studying women–a certain kind of polished, traditional, upper-class and upper-middle-class white heterosexual femininity that can be (decoratively, decorously) monetized. These students are attracted by prominent Greek life socializing, but that’s so time-consuming that students can’t easily pursue traditional liberal arts or professional majors alongside it. (IU has a renowned business school, for example, but it’s usually considered too demanding for the “party pathway” students, even though that’s the kind of thing they’d like.) Schools respond by inventing what the authors call “easy majors” like tourism or sports communication, fields of study that are outside academia’s usual focus and lack its rigor but also don’t have immediate professional applications, though they may pretend to. They’re ostensibly tied to careers, but those careers don’t require degrees, and they reward connections rather than study.
Having these as options, Armstrong and Hamilton convincingly argue, is a bullshit trap for lower-income students who may mistake them for actually worthwhile degrees. Students from wealthy families can pursue these programs (often called “business-lite”) and do well afterwards, but they do well because their families can get them internships (and then partly support them throughout those internships, so they can maintain their lifestyles) and glitzy jobs. Less fortunate students find that they’ve spent four years and a ton of tuition money to get into an inaccessible profession, and the education that they’ve gained is so low in prestige that it doesn’t translate well to anything else. It’s easy to believe, after all this, that these particular fields of study only exist to effectively babysit wealthy students and give them an easy degree in something personable-sounding. And in the meantime, the same students who don’t have the connections to use these degrees also mostly don’t have the connections to know they shouldn’t pursue them. They sound cool, and the coolest people around are going after them, so they must be a good idea, right?
Prominent Greek life also comes in for a well-deserved, well-explained kicking. Again–shocker–it’s a system that benefits the rich and can actually hurt anyone aspiring to it, even if they manage to get in; lower-status girls are (probably accurately) presumed to be less connected, so they’re safer targets and more vulnerable to rampant sexual abuse. Hefty membership dues are also a problem, but more insidiously, the huge demands on a sorority girl’s time lower her GPA–which puts her ability to stay in the sorority at risk–which pushes her towards an easy major … which, again, is often not a viable option for anything other than getting her through these four years with a GPA above 2.7 or so. Even if these students keep their original majors, unless they’re really exceptionally academically talented, their grades still often get dragged down enough that they have a hard time finding professional placement or necessary grad school acceptance afterwards.
Obviously a book I have very mixed feelings about. Notably, the parts I like best often felt more like journalism than sociology–they were descriptive without already being rendered as datapoints. I always wanted more of that approach, and more specificity (I love Bloomington, but the “generic” take of the book means that there’s no Bloomington here, no sense of local culture); some of the ideas I found most interesting (like the value of a big liberal arts college in an appealing area for students who’d grown up in small rural towns, and the widening of perspective and possibilities that comes with exposure to that kind of cultural milieu) didn’t surface until the end, and then they only came up in passing. I think I have a more romantic view of college than the authors do. But this is all still an interesting, chewy read, and it’s definitely worth looking at if you’re interested in higher education and specifically how the current system sometimes ill-serves, or even outright fails, lower-income students.
If this indeed Indiana University, how much does it touch on the basketball subculture that sort of defines both the college and the whole state?
There’s shockingly little basketball! It’s mentioned as a Big Ten school, with that idea of having a kind of partying-related luster that attracts high-income students, and some of the girls are mentioned as dating athletes, but that’s about it.
It’s also weird that the Little 500 doesn’t make an appearance, though maybe it’s because that would ruin the apparent anonymity. But that’s a major drinking event as well as a major sporting event: in fact, it annoyed the hell out of me when I was there, because I didn’t want to have to dodge puddles of puke when I went out for breakfast. (I still hold enough of a grudge that I haven’t watched Breaking Away yet.)
But it was confirmed to be IU, apparently, so these are just odd omissions.
My closest faculty contact during my research there was Phyllis Klotman, whose criticism of Bobby Knight’s rape analogies forced the university to get him to apologize
What’s the Little 500? I feel like we had a similar drinking and vaguely sporting yearly event at my school, although we didn’t have the Indy 500 to build it around.
Bicycle race! Very popular.
Oh, if it’s a bike race, it’s even more similar than I thought! Let’s discuss.
A lot to chew on here, but I think I agree with the point you make that this is a social problem that the authors think is a university problem.
It’s also worth noting that four-year colleges remain a good value in strictly economic terms, even for people who have a goofy major. (And have actually gotten to be a better value in the last few years as they’ve had to compete with better salaries for non-grads. We’ll see how the Trump recession changes things.)
I should be fair and say that when the authors were talking about the bad rate of return on some of these majors, it was mostly in contrast to “pursuing a more practical major at a regional school without a party reputation” or “pursuing a stronger major at the current school.” The only discussion of two-year schools that I remember was in relation to nursing degrees, since you can become an RN with an associate’s, and not pursuing college at all was usually only talked about in terms of “that’s what some of the subjects’ boyfriends were doing, and that means a lower income, which means they’re less promising as potential life partners.”
Outstanding — and Hoosier-specific! — deployment of “granfalloon” here, just superbly done. And great write-up, this sounds like the sociology end (and are these writers sociologists?) is not well-thought-out. Also, is “embedded” a Back To School kind of thing? How obvious is their role here?
I knew someone would appreciate that!
Armstrong already had her PhD in sociology at the time of the study; Hamilton was a graduate student who acted as a research assistant (along with several others whose contributions were less significant, evidently). Looks like Armstrong is at the University of Michigan now.
“Embedded”: Armstrong was teaching at IU at the time (I took some psychology classes but never sociology, so I missed her, though I was there during the right window), and she and Hamilton (I believe) lived in a room in the party dorm for a year and continued to do interviews with students after that year. They were open about their role. They had to be, really: Armstrong was quite a bit older than the subjects, obviously, and had some trouble getting them to open up to her; the younger, more fashionable Hamilton had better luck getting in-depth interviews but was still known as part of the project.
Ahhhh, ok — that’s a good setup then! I was picturing a more undercover kind of deal, which would be pretty bad.
And to another comment — Breaking Away is a phenomenal movie, one of the best sports movies ever made and one of the best flicks of the 70s, watch it!
No, they were definitely ethical about it! They talk a little about the IRB approval process in the book.
I’m going to cave on Breaking Away now that this is the second time it’s come up in the last couple weeks.
While I wouldn’t objectively, or personally, qualify as low income, access to money definitely affects the speed and qualitative nature of school experience. Some of these issues address here haven’t been one’s I’ve experienced, but they add an interesting set of circumstances in terms of how inequality determines educational outcomes.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time at IU in the 90s doing research. I really love the place.
I really loved being there! So much so that I think part of my frustration with the book was how little the IU it painted resembled the one I experienced, which was less about partying and more about the Lilly Library, the Kinsey Institute, the great English faculty, the beautiful and leafy campus (the Sample Gates!), the great and varied cluster of restaurants right off campus, the bookstores, the superb public library (still my favorite of anywhere I’ve ever lived), the Buskirk-Chumley, the fact that a lot of the dorms had little entertainment libraries in the basements (the first time I did a Simpsons deep-dive was from one of those), IU Cinema ….
My wife got her doctorate at IU. I’ve always liked Bloomington, especially the amazing record store, Landlocked Music. The brother of the bass player in my band had been complaining that he had looked everywhere for a used copy of Daryl Hall, Sacred Songs (produced by Robert Fripp, so, yeah, it’s rather good), but could never find it. Went to Landlocked, and there it was, a nice clean copy.
Sweet win for Landlocked! Another local icon.
I got to see The Feelies at a club there on one of my research visits.
“After a while, it starts to feel like Armstrong and Hamilton are failing to acknowledge that people without money can also have intellectual curiosity.” Yep, looks like the tell, right here. Yet another regurgitation of the old, don’t major in humanities, ’cause you’ll starve argument.
Armageddon Crazy by Mick Farren (Yes, that Mick Farren) – The US is a theocratic police state ruled by the Preacher and fundamentalist Deacons in the wake of an economic crash. The Constitution is trashed. Religious police and death squads patrol the streets arresting the ungodly – or anyone they deem an enemy of the state – throwing them in concentration camps in American cities. Three characters – a special-effects wizard, a disaffected religious cop questioning his beliefs and an undercover agent of the Deacons (or is she?) – all play a role in the coming revolution. Farren tells the story from different POVs providing rich world building to the dystopia. Pulpy, funny political and social satire.
Hey, friends, what’s up?
I tried to teach myself how to draw better by practicing an hour every day, and this proved rewarding but, unfortunately, too exhausting for my current lifestyle. Strangely, it’s probably the most mentally taxing of all my hobbies so far. I’ll save it for my days off and see how that goes.
Even though it’s only just ticked over into September, it feels so much colder and wetter and I want the long hot days and some energy back, please. Got a gig tonight and with hilarious timing, I somehow managed to slice the end of one of my key guitar-fingers while shaving this morning (yes, shaving my face – no, I don’t know either). Think I should be OK to push through but I may end up with a guitar covered in blood. That’s rock ‘n’ roll I guess?
Right now I have a tech trying to clean out my dryer lint vents a second time. Seems his boss did a half ass job three days ago. But I think they got it now. I hope. Same guy also did a stellar job on the kitchen floor. Stanley Steemer, my friends!
Otherwise, also racing to set up a committee meeting for Monday morning because no one I work with is that organized. (At least for once it’s not related to the End of Funding.) Also, my department head offered to help anyone who wants to look for another job in any way he can. I am not looking to go, but it’s good to know that is a thing. (I don’t think, however, he would be allowed to give a reference under company rules.)
Playing a show tonight, outdoors in chilly, windy weather. Send warm, or even hot, wishes.
Progress with the book, also battling some depression. Think I need to start therapy again but my insurance coverage is shit. Otherwise, I dunno, I’m okay. The perpetual battle between autistic routine and ADHD stimulus.
“Progress with the book” aside (because I have no book and feel I have progressed nothing this week), are you me?
Uh… last week I started having some back spasms that laid me up for a few days, that wasn’t fun. Did go out a couple of times over the weekend.
Kind of taken it easy this week– especially since I didn’t really get a Labor Day holiday, since I don’t work and my wife had to work that day anyway– but this coming week I need to get it back together and get back to playing poker and working on my project.
Saw MJ Lenderman Wednesday which was great, and I spent most of yesterday playing Silksong.
Especially good FAR this week!
I agree with Jesse Raub that the “Shit Happens” Cinematic Universe is a thing, but I disagree (sometimes profoundly) about some of the films in question; in particular, even though I wasn’t much of a fan of Nosferatu, I absolutely loathe that Nosferatu reading, which privileges a possible symbolic interpretation over the concrete events and then gets mad at the film because if this thing they made up actually happened, that would be quite bad, wouldn’t it? That said, the difference between premise and narrative is a good and worthy one and something I’ll be thinking about.
Like the look at the Cracker Barrel logo change as a case study of rampant capitalism stripping everything down to the most generic, meaningless version of itself, along with IHOP and KFC turning into signifiers that no longer actually refer to anything; three cheers for Waffle House for hanging in there as its beautiful, weird, scruffy, more equitable self.
I still really like Hamilton–I get why a lot of people avoid listening (I still primarily think of it as a cast album experience rather than a visual one, since that’s how I’ve primarily gone through it) to it out of objection to the premise, but I’ve always thought it was strong on a storytelling and musical front, especially in the second act when the optimism gets darker and prices have to be paid, so I was pleased to see Emily highlighting that part in particular. Looking at it as a particular (fictionalized) biographical drama rather than “the story of America” makes it much better; it was always too sanitized about the past and too (commercially) optimistic about the present, but divorced from the idea that it has to comment on anything, as Emily says, it’s compelling in its own right.
The FAR was initially very hyped for Raub’s piece but was similarly disappointed by its lack of rigor! Good idea (and Civil War is a great example of an empty-headed movie) but poor execution. And thank Bridgett for the Hamilton piece! A much better consideration of flawed material, or perhaps flawed response to material.
I am actually baffled by Raub’s interpretation of The VVitch. Like, tilting my head like a confused dog baffled.
I feel like half of the Hamilton backlash was that people expected it to do things it couldn’t possibly do. I had someone (who was rapidly falling down a conservative rabbit hole, but still) say it was rhetoric supporting a Hillary Clinton presidency, and while that is batshit, I do think that there was a lot of ‘great art will change the world’ expectations on it that no piece of art can really live up to.
Yeah, The Witch take is so weird that I don’t even know how Raub got there! I guess at least with Nosferatu, I can see the line of thought, even if I disagree with it.
Great point about Hamilton.
Maybe if you get locked in a closet and never talk with a woman? Ever?
Query whether Cracker Barrel wasn’t already the anodyne general-store manqués, same as KFC, just better at hoodwinking Hamrah about it?
Cracker Barrel really does have the store and KFC does not, right? Whatever the company wants to do is its business and they are both about making money above all, not providing atmosphere (or decent food), but they do seem to be starting from different points.
Yeah, you exit Cracker Barrel through the literal gift shop. It’s also much smaller than KFC, which is the biggest fast food franchise in China and a Japanese Christmas tradition, among other international concerns.
Year of the Month update!
This September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby/Holiday
Sept. 15th: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
And here’s a primer on some of the movies, albums, books and TVwe’ll be covering for 1973 in October!
Oct. 7th: Lauren James: Working
Oct. 22nd: Lauren James: The Wicker Man
Oct. 29th: Lauren James: Don’t Look Now