#would have been closer to audiences in 1954

[greatmuldini]

Any household equipped to receive the television service of the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1954 would almost certainly have done so on a “table-top” set not unlike the moderately priced and now iconic “TV-22,” which featured a circular 9-inch Mullard “television picture tube” capable of displaying the 405 lines its electron beam had to travel to draw the “high definition” images coming from London’s Alexandra Palace or the Birmingham transmitter in Sutton Coldfield. First manufactured in 1950 by Bush Radio, then under the umbrella of the Rank Corporation, the Bakelite-clad receiver came with connections for a dipole aerial and AC mains power, and no option at all to change the channel. What today would be considered a serious limitation was in fact a pragmatic decision as long as the country's airwaves remained limited to a single channel. (The set would have been ready for three additional channels which were proposed but never implemented.)

Growing audiences and an expanding schedule forced the new medium to create new content if it intended to fulfil its mission as a public broadcaster to “inform, educate, and entertain.” While the BBC's radio service had famously been on the air since 1922 and earned its merits during the war, television remained for a long time an experimental technology of questionable utility. Early programming therefore relied heavily on the spoken word and the conventions of live theatre, including the singular, and ephemeral, nature of each performance: very little was pre-recorded (on film), and once a programme was broadcast it ceased to exist. Much of the BBC's live programming and even material recorded on tape is now lost; what we do have from the era before and just after the introduction of magnetic tape in 1956 was routinely filmed off the television screen in a process known as kinescoping. Preservation of its output did not rank among the BBC's priorities; recording everything on film would have required vast resources dwarfing the convenience of "canned" content: repeat showings on the BBC often meant repeat performances – bringing the original cast and crew back to the studio was, after all, a well-rehearsed operation and more efficient than any existing technology. Similar traditional arrangements continued well beyond the arrival of effective technical solutions.

The lack of definition, in every sense, at first prevented the new medium from being recognized as such not only by those who worked in it but also the sceptical consumers into whose living rooms the images would be beamed. The privacy of the viewing experience would prove decisive: like its theatrical rival, television was visual, and it was live. With radio it shared the spontaneity of the live broadcast and a large audience that would not need to come together in a single room. Film could offer none of the above, certainly not in combination, but where television (and radio) opted for intimacy on the small screen, film went big and promoted the communal experience – a very basic, fundamental division which remained in place for more than half a century and is only now being challenged by the most recent innovations in streaming and subscription services.

In 1954 the BBC, as the sole operator of the new technology in the United Kingdom, looked to other pioneers abroad for suitable formats with which to fill their expanding schedules. In the United States, commercial television was in full swing by the early 1950s, with major broadcasters such as NBC and CBS competing for viewers and, more importantly, advertising partners – sponsors in the terminology of the scheme developed for radio that had businesses pay for the right to name an entire programme (today's wealth of "archival" recordings from the era is a direct result of the legal requirement to provide proof to the customers that their money was well-spent). Here, too, tried and tested radio content was being adapted for television and, in the process, began to take on hybrid features. One promising concept on the CBS network that appealed to the BBC decision makers was a former radio show turned televisual experiment: You Are There fused (fictitious) contemporary radio reportage with historical re-enactments – easily done on radio but more challenging – and more rewarding – as a live spectacle for audiences to see. Not quite ready, in technical terms, to rival the offerings of the film industry but arguably an alternative to a night out at the theatre, the "night in" promised to become an event in its own right.

You Are There set out to transport the viewer back in time and to bring them face to face with historical figures, who are moreover prepared to pause and be interviewed by modern-day (all-male, often real-life) TV news correspondents. The deliberate anachronism of the programme, examining a fictionalized version of history with the most modern tools available and presenting it to the viewer in the privacy of his own living room was the message and the medium rolled into one: the historical subject under scrutiny was by no means chosen at random or pre-determined by the American creators; licensees around the world dramatized historical events from their own national perspectives. Only seven episodes were produced for the BBC in 1954, none of which exist today. Press reviews and summaries confirm the use of exterior location sequences pre-recorded on film to supplement the live performances in the Alexandra Palace studio, but we can only speculate on the precise treatment of each subject.

The series opened, appropriately, with the Charge of the Light Brigade in the year of its centenary, followed by the trials (and tribulations) of Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I, Captain Dreyfus, and Julius Caesar. Joining this eminent circle were, somewhat less obviously, the instigators of a minor mutiny, as well as a major figure, arguably, of the Anglo-Irish political struggle whose historical – and literary - significance has only grown since 1954. The Fall of Charles Stuart Parnell has inspired generations of writers engaged in the fabrication of alternate histories. The enigma of his personality, and the complex set of circumstances surrounding the events of 1890 continue to be explored in imaginary what if variations. You Are There, by contrast, portrays a moment in time that must contain a myriad of possibilities. [Part 1 of 2]

[ladyeliot]

All of me. Chapter One [B.B.]

When she met him masterlist

Prologue

Pairing: Winter soldier x Female Reader [Michelle]

Summary: In May 1954 two parallel worlds were to meet in Berlin. On the one hand yours, completely chaotic, on the other that of the Winter Soldier.

Warnings: Angst. Toxic relationship. Mind control. Winter Soldier.

Word count: 3075

A/N:  Sorry for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

West Berlin. May 1954

The mirror showed a reflection you hadn’t stopped to contemplate in a long time. Rosy cheeks offered life and warmth to a pale face that seemed to have been forgotten. Your skin was smooth and the colour of porcelain, showing the youth that had just begun. Your eyes were highlighted by a greyish iris, which seemed to be complemented by blue drops, but as pale as your complexion. Your golden hair was tied back behind your face, but even so, a few strands stood up in rebellion, sliding down your forehead.

You moved closer to that imposing mirror, which was perched on the chest of drawers in that hotel room. It was then that you could see on your lips that the reddish lipstick had been fixed to perfection, offering a speck of colour to that ensemble that you formed in your totality. Your attention was diverted to the melody coming from the phonograph’s horn, however you could notice the presence of a person behind you reflected in the mirror itself. Those vermilion lips showed a smile, as the warmth of the male body pressed against your back. 

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” the whisper overpowered the music. “Tonight every man in the universe will know how lucky I am.”

A blush came over you, causing you to look away from his face through the mirror and lower your gaze, still smiling. It had been a few months since you had left behind everything you had known in your nineteen years, venturing out to suffer the indifference and rejection that the unknown future could bring. Your life in New York was a past that counterbalanced the pain and happiness of your younger years, but it did not offer you all that your inner self demanded, until he came along. Richard was a young British man of beauty, wit and chance, who had made a fortune in the tobacco world after the end of the Second World War. So you could say that it didn’t take long for you to notice him and for him to want you among his various properties. It was an accumulation of promises that entered your mind and led you to follow him to Europe without questioning their veracity, accepting the consequences that this meant for a young woman of your position in a world run by and for men. 

It had been many years since you 

had had a male figure to support or guide your decisions, as well as your purpose in life. The loss of your father during the Second World War made you acquire a mind of your own and make decisions of your own, which mostly used to be accepted by your sweet mother, but which in this case did not find a place in the audacity of your friends and family. Those who knew you thought that your judgement had been clouded or that you had only lost your mind because of your love for that gentleman.

Richard had made his appearance in New York City just a few months earlier. Your fates crossed in the New York night, during the presentation of a new Walker Motors Corporation internal combustion engine at the Edison Hotel, a milestone in the market. Richard was an external guest, invited by one of the company’s own partners, but you were invited by the leading eminence. It is worth noting that Charles Walker, director of WMC, has been friends with you since your childhood, which is why you attended the private party. However, it was not until midnight that Charles himself took it upon himself to introduce you, alluding that Richard had shown an exclusive interest in meeting you.

“Where is your mind?” Richard’s lips brushed your right earlobe.

His fingers rested on your neck and brushed aside a slight lock that fell across your collarbone to rest his lips on it. All the while you watched each of his movements in the mirror.

“I don’t want your mind to go elsewhere if I’m not in your thoughts,” that whisper sent a shudder around your body, as Richard’s lips continued to trail firmly down your neck.

You had been extremely decisive in agreeing to give yourself to a man you barely knew, or had any testimony about his past. But your mind was so dazzled by the hopes you had placed on him and his oaths that you had barely been able to consider the fact that something could go wrong.

The kissing stopped, which caused you to open your eyes again to find your own reflection. Richard turned away from your body for a moment to look inside his jacket. After a few seconds he pulled out a greenish rectangular box, which he opened without letting you see what was inside.

“Close your eyes,” the young man asked softly in your ear.

With little opposition you acted as he had instructed. A tingle tingled around your neck, which brought a subtle smile to your lips as you waited for Richard’s command to open your eyes again. However, it wasn’t until after he placed a brief kiss on your bare shoulder that you decided on your own to contemplate the object resting on your collarbones. Your lips parted in surprise, as an array of pearls lay upon you, illuminating practically the entire room. Your fingers slowly brushed each one of them, you hardly knew what to say, the only thing that came to your mind was the questioning of why about that detail.

“Tonight you will shine over the whole world,” Richard’s hands rested on your hips. “There won’t be anyone in Berlin, east or west, who doesn’t know who Michelle Wells is.”

You offered him a blushing smile as you stared at your figures in front of the mirror, those words giving you the encouragement you needed to face the performance that was to take place in a few hours.

Your ability on stage had been recognised in various clubs in New York, but you knew that the audience that night could not compare to the one you had had before. New York had been the pinnacle of jazz, and Harlem had been a favourite neighbourhood of its own creation, yet it was a far cry from anything you were used to.

A slight sigh came out of your mouth, showing the presence of your nervousness in such a situation. It was an unavoidable fact of life that you were thousands of miles away from your hometown, and even if you had made yourself think that you and Richard would find your own home, you couldn’t help but feel incomplete.

“Take everything out of your mind, leave it blank and just focus on you from this moment on,” the breath collided with your ear, creating a brief shiver down your spine. “Forget everything you have lived through, and all the people. You are the creator of your own destiny, and no one can stand in the way of that. Tonight may be the most important moment for your future. For our future.”

In that instant you turned around so that you could look directly into his eyes, those that depending on the light could appear blue or green. Under the dimness of the lamp the greenish hue could be found in them, but you barely noticed it because their proximity was cut short when he said those words, melting into a slow, passionate kiss before he left for the club.

Meanwhile, in East Berlin

A whitish light flickered faintly above him with each step down the long corridor. The silence was broken by the flickering tinkle and the sordid screams in the distance. The place felt like hell itself. However, if it really was hell, it was not as he had imagined it to be. The mist was pouring out of his nostrils with every exhalation, the cold was bordering on extreme. Yet he was unable to feel it in every part of his body. His gaze was impassive, as his ice-cold eyes seemed to be held in a sea of darkness. The road came to an end as the stiff iron gate cut him off. His footsteps slowed but did not stop, as a dull echo reported the opening of the gate, offering entrance to a new area.

The walls, as sturdy as the material of construction, stone, offered not a hint of light, for there were hardly any openings in them. The place had the characteristics of an underground bunker, with only a musty smell coming from the ceiling. His figure continued his march along the corridor, with a firm and decisive step, knowing where he was going. At that instant, a silhouette loomed on the right side, guarding a new entrance. That silhouette, noticing the presence that was heading towards him, moved away from in front of the door, opening the way for the man, who stopped in front of it until it opened.

“Oh, we’ve been expecting you, soldier,” said a German-accented voice from inside the room.

Unlike the corridor, there was a pleasant warmth in that room for anyone. However, he was no longer a person. The door closed behind him, preventing him from leaving, for he would have to face the four figures sitting at an oval table. One of them rose from his seat and slowly approached him with his hands behind his back, until they were facing each other.

“I believe the orders you have been given are clear soldier,” he observed curiously squinting at the young man. “Do you have any doubts?”

“No, sir,” a coldness crept into his voice from inside his throat, it seemed as if he had spent the last few months barely expressing a sound through it.

“That’s the way I like it,” that statement came along with an encouraging look from every part of the young soldier. “Kerkove will be in charge of taking you to the west side of Berlin. There you know what you have to do.”

The soldier merely nodded, processing all the data that had been offered to him hours before. The door opened again to let him out, just as he had entered, and the person in charge of his mission stood there. Over the past months he had carried out a number of other missions on the eastern front, but this was the first time he would be infiltrating the western zone, covered by American and British soldiers, which is why he was wearing an American infantry uniform, similar to that of his companion.

As he arrived outside, he realised that the night was clear, as the moon was in full bloom, a fact that could hinder the key points of the mission. Even so, he had to concentrate, since his first test would be the moment he wanted to cross the border, for although he was in the uniform of the American army, he had to pass himself off as one of them.

Fifteen and a half kilometres was the distance to be covered by car, before walking three kilometres to the point in question. The quietness fell upon him, sharing a constant blank stare, and with nothing else in his thoughts but each and every step to be taken that night. There were hardly any words between the two of them, until the moment they parted, as his companion informed him that they would meet again after four hours at the rendezvous point to carry out their extraction.

The ease with which he found himself in West Berlin in five minutes seemed absurd in the face of so much apparent control over the population itself. The tranquillity received on the other side of the wall caused a rupture in the new area, a commotion was generated as he walked towards the more central streets, entering the Berlin night. The movement of pedestrians and cars caused him to slow his steps, remembering his sense of mission ‘To blend in without being discovered’.

The streetlights illuminated the roads and the power of those lights fell on his face, generating a sense of uneasiness in the face of his own passivity. Groups of uniformed men walked along, mingling with the local population. He was curious as to where they were going, for the premises of the busy main street invited him to enter them. Those five soldiers in British uniforms, which he could distinguish by colours and badges, made their way to the pavement in front of him and then entered a place called 'Central Club’.

After looking around, he could not think of a better situation than to take the same path and thus discover their frequent activities. With the proximity to the place, he noticed the melody that could be heard behind the door, which became more and more noticeable after opening it. An unfamiliar smell hit his face as he stepped inside. Warm brown tones met his gaze as did long descending staircases. Hesitantly he descended each step, incorporating the smell of aniseed liqueur into his senses as the notes coming from those instruments became more constant. A greenish curtain gave way to the hall, which was unexpectedly packed with people. Its tables were completely crowded and the noise mixed with the melody hardly let him think in those moments. He looked around as a boy bumped into him trying to get in. His gaze fell on the bar on the right-hand side, intending to sit down and take in the area at his leisure. Nearby he could find an empty stool catching the attention of the bartender himself.

"What will you have?” he asked as he wiped a glass of champagne between his hands “Is this your first time at the Central Club?”

The soldier nodded, half-opening his lips, for he had scarcely noticed his presence.

“Then you must try our special aniseed and ginger cocktail,” the waiter began to serve him after watching the boy nod. “I suppose you’ve come for her, haven’t you? We haven’t had the club this full since before the war, she’s a real gem, I envy the man who gets her.”

The soldier paid little attention to his words, but nodded at every comment he offered, for he had not yet been able to adjust to the atmosphere generated by the crowd. Music was still playing on the circular wooden stage in the background. A band was providing entertainment, showing off their merits with a piano, drums, bass and saxophone. However, due to the noise it was impossible to hear them.

He took the glass that the man had prepared for him a few minutes ago and brought it to his lips, making his throat burn with every drop that fell through it. His senses were amplified and the warmth was rising from within him. She turned to the man behind the bar to inform him to refill the glass, for if he was to blend in he hoped to do so as everyone else in the place did.

The music stopped and male words came from the stage. The soldier barely noticed. However, the deafening noise of applause and cheers made him look towards the back of the room. A female figure appeared as if out of nowhere before his very eyes. After she came on stage, silence fell, reminding him of peace. The spotlights created an aura of divinity around the young woman that abstracted any of his own thoughts as soon as he beheld her. Her crimson lips could be glimpsed from every corner of the club, making the blood burn under those uniforms.

Time had stood still for a few moments, for the slowness with which such an event unfolded before his eyes was apparent. The girl slowly brought her fingers around the microphone to bring it closer to her mouth, as she set the rhythm by snapping her fingers to the melody of the bass. That was the moment when the soldier became a man, his reasoning engaged in a constant struggle against his experience. That voice had taken over his thoughts and was the only thing he could hear inside him. The melody had awakened a sliver of his memories, but he had not yet realised that fact. The hole of darkness that made him up had found a flame to illuminate it. 

“All of me

Why not take all of me?

Can’t you see?

I’m no good without you”

His muscles had relaxed as the minutes passed. His lips were parted and his eyes were completely lost in hers. For an instant he thought he could feel their paths meet, holding her gaze, a fact that generated a throbbing in his heart that he did not seem to possess. In a subtle blink of an eye, barely noticing it, the girl finished her song and lost his vision as everyone in the room rose to their feet to applaud her, but he did not. He preferred to keep his gaze lost trying to glimpse what had just happened in those moments, as his mission became present in him again.

“It’s a wonder,” the bartender interjected. ��"A woman with a voice like that can’t possibly go unnoticed. I think I could listen to her for the rest of my life, and watch her too. You know what I mean.“

The soldier just sipped the last of the liquor in his glass and turned his attention back to the group of men in British uniforms who had led him there. They seemed to be in a hurry to leave again, so he took a note from his pocket and without looking back left it on the bar to follow them. From that moment on, his evening was based on analysing each of the places they frequented and the activities they carried out, making the odd brief conversation, and letting himself be seen in the area. He did not have a chance to think about the heady moment he had experienced until he returned to the bunker and was asked for all the information he had collected. However, although a new memory had settled in his mind, he was unable to express his encounter with you.

Taglist Open (DM)

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[msclaritea]

Oct. 16, 2020, 4:30 PM CDT By April Glaser

“At Joe Biden’s town hall meeting on Thursday, Cedrick Humphrey, a young Black man from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, asked a question central to some of the most recent misinformation tactics at play in the election.

“Many people believe that the true swing demographic in this election will be Black voters under the age of 30, not because they’ll be voting for Trump, but because they won’t vote at all,” he said, adding that he shared this sentiment. “What do you have to say to young Black voters who see voting for you as further participation in a system that continuously fails to protect them?”

Biden answered by pointing to the importance of voting, and to the need to give Black Americans the means to amass wealth and improve access to education.

The question Humphrey posed to the former vice president and the Democratic presidential nominee is part of a broader trend unfolding in the final days before the election. Among all of the social media disinformation campaigns that have preyed on voters in the run-up to Nov. 3, one domestic-originated tactic has become particularly troubling. Some Black social media influencers as well as Black community groups on Facebook who are more progressive than Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, are targeting Black voters less by deceiving them and more by what experts describe as voter depression.

Voter depression isn’t about giving voters the wrong information that would keep them from making it to the polls, like discrediting mail-in ballots by disparaging the postal service.

Rather, with voter depression, the goal is to make people who would otherwise vote feel that there’s no reason to do so, stoking inaction and apathy.

This approach has been a particular challenge for the Biden campaign, while the same voter depression tactics aren’t being used as much on Republican voters, said Jacquelyn Mason, a senior investigative researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that provides research and training for journalists.

“The absence of enthusiasm around a candidate can really contribute to interference in the form of voter depression,” Mason said. She added that since many progressive Black voters might not be excited about voting for Biden, it raises questions about what the point is of voting at all.

Memes and Micro-influencers

Earlier this month, an Instagram account with over 19,000 followers posted a video of a young Black man asking a series of questions: “Can we vote out systemic racism? Can we vote out police violence?,” before answering, “The obvious answer is no.”

“Don’t vote,” he concludes.

That video is one of thousands of posts in an increasingly popular genre of social media content aimed at discouraging Black people from casting their ballots this election cycle. One of the most prominent examples of voter depression has been the attacks on Harris and her prosecutorial record during her tenure as the district attorney of San Francisco and later the attorney general of California.

In one meme that went viral this month, a mosaic of people’s faces together formed a portrait of her. The meme received some of its most popular shares from accounts of Black conservative social media influencers. The mosaic claims to be a composite image made up of “all the black men she locked up and kept in prison past their release date for jail labor.” It's been shared over 23,000 times on Facebook with no warning next to it that indicates that the image isn’t actually what it claims to be: A closer look reveals the mosaic actually repeats the same faces over and over again.

These tactics started cropping up before the 2016 election with a clip that went viral of Hiliary Clinton where in a speech she referred to Black youth as “superpredators.” During that election, Russian operatives also ran thousands of fake social media accounts in the run-up targeting Black social media users on Facebook with ads based on their interest in “Martin Luther King Jr.,” “Black is beautiful” and the “African American Civil Rights Movement (1954-68).”

Many of those tactics have extended to the current election season. Just this month, Twitter banned a network of more than two dozen accounts of users pretending to be Black Trump supporters, but were in reality profiles created using stock images of Black people or images of Black people lifted from news stories and recycled to give a veneer of authenticity behind the fake accounts proclaiming allegiance to Trump. These accounts amassed hundreds of thousands of retweets and followers before Twitter removed them. While these examples aren’t explicitly voter depression tactics, they are part of a larger disinformation ecosystem that has focused on using Black identity as a way of manipulating the election.

But this election, many of the voter depression memes and posts circulating on social media aimed at dissuading Black people from voting in 2020 are not based on entirely false information.

What makes voter depression narratives so appealing and difficult to dislodge is that there can be “a grain of truth to them,” Mason said.

Voter depression targeting Black communities online are picking up momentum because, according to researchers, they’re coming from accounts people already have relationships with and appear to be authentic.

“Some of the tactics we worry a lot about and are seeing more of are from micro-influencers, like on Instagram Live,” said Jiore Craig, a vice president at GQR, a Democratic research firm, who advises campaigns on disinformation.

Micro-influencers engaged in voter depression may have as low as 10 to 30,000 followers and often speak to them directly to the camera, denigrating the value of voting.

“They are speaking to issues that present pathways to take what either candidate is saying about the voting process and saying instead, ‘Isn’t this just kind of BS?’ Planting the question is a part of the strategy,” Craig said.

“It’s a communication strategy, chipping away at what appears to be a preconceived belief. The name of the game in so many ways is about erosion of trust,” Craig said.

The end goal is to get their audience to then pose questions about the value of voting to their family or friend group––turning their audience into messengers and making the concept more legitimate.

Rebuilding Trust

Some Black advocacy groups are working to undo voter depression efforts with similar tactics, focusing on sharing relatable information from individuals voters trust.

One group leading this work is the political action committee run by the online racial justice organization Color of Change, which has for years conducted advocacy campaigns aimed at large social media platforms, like Facebook, where disinformation and hate speech flourish. This year the group is also working to engage Black voters who are most likely to be targeted by voter depression efforts, in part through a grassroots volunteer program where members are reaching out to friends and family to encourage them to plan their vote.

One of the ways the group is creating a narrative about the importance of voting is by talking about more local races in person and on social media, like district attorney seats, which are also on the ballot in many communities across the country.

“While many, especially irregular Black voters or voters who might be prone to not turn out to vote, might not see the importance of electing a president and the impact on their lives, we are having a conversation with them about the daily decisions that prosecutors make that are causing harm in black communities,” said Arisha Hatch, the vice president and chief of campaigns at Color of Change. “And when we engage in that conversation their mentality begins to shift.”

Greater accountability

In the past six months, Color of Change has been in multiple closed-door meetings with social media companies, like Facebook, Google and Twitter, to talk about what the companies need to do to ensure that their platforms aren’t being used to disenfranchise Black voters ahead of the 2020 election.

While those conversations have been useful––Facebook has promised to expand the definition of content it prohibits because it engages in voter suppression––Color of Change is calling for the company to enforce its policy changes consistently and transparently. NBC News reported in August that Facebook has given special exception to its rules against misinformation on conservative pages.

“The tech companies have a real responsibility in correcting some of the shifts we’re seeing about how information moves,” Hatch said. “That is not only influencing public policy but influencing a more polarized culture that just leads to more gridlock and more working-class people being left out of the American dream.”

[chrisgoesrock]

Howlin' Wolf - Howlin' Wolf (2nd Album US 1962)

In the history of the blues, there has never been anyone quite like the Howlin' Wolf. Six foot three and close to 300 pounds in his salad days, the Wolf was the primal force of the music spun out to its ultimate conclusion. A Robert Johnson may have possessed more lyrical insight, a Muddy Waters more dignity, and a B.B. King certainly more technical expertise, but no one could match him for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits.

He was born in West Point, MS, and named after the 21st President of the United States (Chester Arthur). His father was a farmer and Wolf took to it as well until his 18th birthday, when a chance meeting with Delta blues legend Charley Patton changed his life forever. Though he never came close to learning the subtleties of Patton's complex guitar technique, two of the major components of Wolf's style (Patton's inimitable growl of a voice and his propensity for entertaining) were learned first hand from the Delta blues master. The main source of Wolf's hard-driving, rhythmic style on harmonica came when Aleck "Rice" Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson) married his half-sister Mary and taught him the rudiments of the instrument. He first started playing in the early '30s as a strict Patton imitator, while others recall him at decade's end rocking the juke joints with a neck-rack harmonica and one of the first electric guitars anyone had ever seen. After a four-year stretch in the Army, he settled down as a farmer and weekend player in West Memphis, AR, and it was here that Wolf's career in music began in earnest.

By 1948, he had established himself within the community as a radio personality. As a means of advertising his own local appearances, Wolf had a 15-minute radio show on KWEM in West Memphis, interspersing his down-home blues with farm reports and like-minded advertising that he sold himself. But a change in Wolf's sound that would alter everything that came after was soon in coming because when listeners tuned in for Wolf's show, the sound was up-to-the-minute electric. Wolf had put his first band together, featuring the explosive guitar work of Willie Johnson, whose aggressive style not only perfectly suited Wolf's sound but aurally extended and amplified the violence and nastiness of it as well. In any discussion of Wolf's early success both live, over the airwaves, and on record, the importance of Willie Johnson cannot be overestimated.

Wolf finally started recording in 1951, when he caught the ear of Sam Phillips, who first heard him on his morning radio show. The music Wolf made in the Memphis Recording Service studio was full of passion and zest and Phillips simultaneously leased the results to the Bihari Brothers in Los Angeles and Leonard Chess in Chicago. Suddenly, Howlin' Wolf had two hits at the same time on the R&B charts with two record companies claiming to have him exclusively under contract. Chess finally won him over and as Wolf would proudly relate years later, "I had a 4,000 dollar car and 3,900 dollars in my pocket. I'm the onliest one drove out of the South like a gentleman." It was the winter of 1953 and Chicago would be his new home.

When Wolf entered the Chess studios the next year, the violent aggression of the Memphis sides was being replaced with a Chicago backbeat and, with very little fanfare, a new member in the band. Hubert Sumlin proved himself to be the Wolf's longest-running musical associate. He first appears as a rhythm guitarist on a 1954 session, and within a few years' time his style had fully matured to take over the role of lead guitarist in the band by early 1958. In what can only be described as an "angular attack," Sumlin played almost no chords behind Wolf, sometimes soloing right through his vocals, featuring wild skitterings up and down the fingerboard and biting single notes. If Willie Johnson was Wolf's second voice in his early recording career, then Hubert Sumlin would pick up the gauntlet and run with it right to the end of the howler's life.

By 1956, Wolf was in the R&B charts again, racking up hits with "Evil" and "Smokestack Lightnin'." He remained a top attraction both on the Chicago circuit and on the road. His records, while seldom showing up on the national charts, were still selling in decent numbers down South. But by 1960, Wolf was teamed up with Chess staff writer Willie Dixon, and for the next five years he would record almost nothing but songs written by Dixon. The magic combination of Wolf's voice, Sumlin's guitar, and Dixon's tunes sold a lot of records and brought the 50-year-old bluesman roaring into the next decade with a considerable flourish. The mid-'60s saw him touring Europe regularly with "Smokestack Lightnin'" becoming a hit in England some eight years after its American release. Certainly any list of Wolf's greatest sides would have to include "I Ain't Superstitious," "The Red Rooster," "Shake for Me," "Back Door Man," "Spoonful," and "Wang Dang Doodle," Dixon compositions all. While almost all of them would eventually become Chicago blues standards, their greatest cache occurred when rock bands the world over started mining the Chess catalog for all it was worth. One of these bands was the Rolling Stones, whose cover of "The Red Rooster" became a number-one record in England. At the height of the British Invasion, the Stones came to America in 1965 for an appearance on ABC-TV's rock music show, Shindig. Their main stipulation for appearing on the program was that Howlin' Wolf would be their special guest. With the Stones sitting worshipfully at his feet, the Wolf performed a storming version of "How Many More Years," being seen on his network-TV debut by an audience of a few million. Wolf never forgot the respect the Stones paid him, and he spoke of them highly right up to his final days.

Dixon and Wolf parted company by 1964 and Wolf was back in the studio doing his own songs. One of the classics to emerge from this period was "Killing Floor," featuring a modern backbeat and a incredibly catchy guitar riff from Sumlin. Catchy enough for Led Zeppelin to appropriate it for one of their early albums, cheerfully crediting it to themselves in much the same manner as they had done with numerous other blues standards. By the end of the decade, Wolf's material was being recorded by artists including the Doors, the Electric Flag, the Blues Project, Cream, and Jeff Beck. The result of all these covers brought Wolf the belated acclaim of a young, white audience. Chess' response to this was to bring him into the studio for a "psychedelic" album, truly the most dreadful of his career. His last big payday came when Chess sent him over to England in 1970 to capitalize on the then-current trend of London Session albums, recording with Eric Clapton on lead guitar and other British superstars. Wolf's health was not the best, but the session was miles above the earlier, ill-advised attempt to update Wolf's sound for a younger audience.

As the '70s moved on, the end of the trail started coming closer. By now Wolf was a very sick man; he had survived numerous heart attacks and was suffering kidney damage from an automobile accident that sent him flying through the car's windshield. His bandleader Eddie Shaw firmly rationed Wolf to a meager half-dozen songs per set. Occasionally some of the old fire would come blazing forth from some untapped wellspring, and his final live and studio recordings show that he could still tear the house apart when the spirit moved him. He entered the Veterans Administration Hospital in 1976 to be operated on, but never survived it, finally passing away on January 10th of that year.

But his passing did not go unrecognized. A life-size statue of him was erected shortly after in a Chicago park. Eddie Shaw kept his memory and music alive by keeping his band, the Wolf Gang, together for several years afterward. A child-education center in Chicago was named in his honor and in 1980 he was elected to the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. In 1991, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A couple of years later, his face was on a United States postage stamp. Live performance footage of him exists in the CD-ROM computer format. Howlin' Wolf is now a permanent part of American history.

01. Shake for Me   02. Red Rooster Howlin' Wolf   03. You'll Be Mine   04. Who's Been Talkin'   05. Wang-Dang-Doodle   06. Little Baby   07. Spoonful   08. Going Down Slow Oden   09. Down in the Bottom   10. Back Door Man   11. Howlin' for My Baby Howlin' Wolf   12. Tell Me

[latetotherant]

Negotiating Remix Culture through Steve Oedekerk’s “Kung Pow” ••• By Lissa Heineman

In “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse”, Stuart Hall explains the three ways we consume media texts: dominant, oppositional, and negotiated modes. The dominant model upholds society’s norms. These works don’t break barriers, and often entertain and reassert hegemonic ideas . The oppositional model, as its name suggests, identifies and critiques the dominant notions. Oliver Moore notes that these readings are often met with hostility from those supportive of the dominant framework. Finally, negotiated works lie between these extremes, allowing consumers to choose to accept or reject elements of a text. This mode employs dominant performances without subscribing to them. Negotiation twists popular notions into something new and subversive, while allowing them to be consumable by those in the dominant sphere.

Steve Oedekerk’s Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002) is one of many pastiches of the kung fu genre. The film follows in the footsteps of What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), and the Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973), films famous for their own remixes (here meaning media that draws inspiration and shape from pre-existing works). Kung Pow opens with a production note: 

This motion picture contains some footage from Hu He Shuang Xing aka “Tiger & Crane Fists,” a motion picture made in Hong Kong in 1976, but the voices and soundtrack were eliminated, and new voices and soundtrack were inserted by the producers of this motion picture.

While a bit clunky, this opening does what it needed to do: the Jimmy Neutron and Barnyard creator acknowledges the work of Jimmy Wang Yu (Tiger & Crane’s director), and prefaces the remix and remediation that Tiger & Crane Fists underwent in this movie.

As described within the production note, Kung Pow is a very literal remix. Oedekerk remastered Tiger & Crane Fists: he successfully took poorly preserved footage and had it saved digitally. He then scrambled this footage, filmed himself in front of a green screen, and reshaped the film around him. The process of remastering an old film is incredibly time-consuming and expensive, and yet he did it. Why? This is emblematic of his own fanboyishness. Oedekerk replaces the hero of a film he evidently loves in a very expensive form of fanfiction. Further, as noted in the movie’s preface, the film employs gag dubbing, a controversial redubbing technique used mainly for comedy. In the film’s commentary, Oedekerk notes that when any new characters or stand-ins were inserted into the remastered Tiger and Crane Fist footage, they wouldn’t record the script’s dialogue. Instead, they’d often be filmed speaking nonsense, and then the film’s audio was post-synced once filming and editing was completed. This ultimately made the film cohesively re-dubbed, with the entire film lacking sly lip-synching. Most films look to hide any issues with editing, and it’s clear Oedekerk’s choice was an intentional part of the film’s final result. This is poignant when one recognizes that the entire process of making Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is reminiscent of the production history of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (1954).

Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a heavily re-edited American adaptation, commonly referred to as an Americanization of the 1954 Japanese film Gojira. In the West, the original Gojira had initially only been shown in America in Japanese community theatres, and the re-edited version became the known Godzilla to the Western world. Gojira was a film that was made to cope with the nuclear fallout in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and when it was remixed for American and other Western audiences, this plotline was entirely removed. This process is reminiscent of Kung Pow’s removal of Tiger and Crane Fists’ anti-Japanese colonization narrative. Further, this exemplifies a dominant mode of remix. The hegemonic order of American politics at the time would want a film that could create positive relations to Japan through a fun spectacle, the inclusion of an anti-American dialogue was oppositional to that structure and therefore something that was censored as it was brought Westward. One can see then, in turn, how Kung Pow! Enter the Fist intentionally mimicked the style of dubbing, which could then mock Godzilla: King of the Monsters and other re-dubbed works that remove narrative elements from their stories. This American film is often recognized as the original Godzilla, but it was actually a remix of the 1954 Gojira. In this remix, like Kung Pow, a white savior is literally superimposed into the narrative, suggesting to an unknowing Western viewer that he was in Gojira all along. Oedekerk, in Kung Pow, seems to acknowledge this historical remixing of Asian cinema. The film’s apparent self-awareness and its transparency to the audience gives the film the opportunity to be negotiatory pastiche, and, with that, instead of invoking literal meaning through its more stereotypical comedy, we instead might see the more problematic nature of such performances in mainstream media. This being said, there are then two questions: does Oedekerk take advantage of his window to perform pastiche rather than parody? And, further, why would this film’s stereotyping be more excusable than other works?

On the topic of pastiche versus parody, it is most appropriate to look at scenes from Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. The film opens on an original six-minute scene by Oedekerk that sets the tone of the film: a man, known as the Chosen One, and his sentient tongue, Tonguey, seek revenge on Master Pain, the person who murdered his family and attempted to kill him. The scene uses a CGI baby that has a powerful knack for kung-fu and seeming immortality (displayed by not dying while being flung down a steep hill). This scene explicitly presents what is to be anticipated for the rest of the 81 minute movie: this film is absurd, parodic, hyper-masculine, and hyper-violent. The cartoonish exploits paint the comedy of the work, from the CGI Tonguey to the over-the-top redubbing for the main antagonist. The film is obviously ridiculous, and everything about the over-dramatic, cliched narration and equally contrived action demands the audience to recognize that the film is absurd. There’s no denying that it absolutely is an inherently dumb film—the humor is juvenile, and often much closer to straight-up mockery than thoughtful pastiche—yet the film reveals itself as more deliberate than its surface-level silliness. Across the following scene in Kung Pow, country-rock music mixes with moments of flute-playing reminiscent of traditional kung-fu scenes. This transcultural moment highlights how Eastern and Western action cinema influences the other. Looking at Jimmy Wang Yu’s work, as well as other kung fu films and anime, one can see how American rock-n-roll has become embedded as marker of “the Chosen One” archetype; he’s a badass loner. Similarly, the Western genre plays into the same markers of the solitary hero, often with a tragic backstory.

The scene ultimately continues to an abandoned dojo where the Chosen One encounters other adversaries. The actors, all Asian, are dubbed-over in ridiculous American accents, and perform dramatic Kung-fu style moves. The fighting choreography revels in the extreme. At one point, rather than attacking the main pursuer, the Chosen One speedily tears apart a man’s black robe, resulting in the garb resembling a tasseled bikini, which causes the man, mortified, to run away whimpering. Soon after, the Chosen One literally punches a circular hole through one of his attackers’ chest, the camera peering through the maimed body to see Oedekerk’s fist retract from the man-made cavity, and we see the missing-cylindrical bulge of flesh in the background. It’s impossible not to recognize the scene’s cinematic violence and hyper-masculinity. There is contrast between Oedekerk’s clothed body and how the shirtless or stripped villains are put on display. This is one example of how the film notes that many films promote Caucasian masculinity dominating Asian masculinity. 

Narratively, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist does significantly more to perpetuate problematic Asian stereotypes than many other kung fu remixes. However, the films’ genres are considerably different. Oedekerk’s work is well defined by the term “transgressive”, meaning that the film is oppositional and deliberate in its offensiveness. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Guthmann wrote that “Kung Pow! is the kind of movie that's critic-proof, simply because it aims so low.” Guthmann suggests that the Oedekerk purposefully looked to disgust critics with the film’s exaggerated racism, homophobia, and misogyny. By making it “critic-proof,” Oedekerk reveals the film’s agenda, which is very different from, say, Quentin Tarantino’s art house style of taking lowbrow cinema (self-proclaimed “B-Movies”) and making it tasteful, in his duty as tastemaker. Oedekerk, instead, uses the same kinds of movies but degrades them further, making Kung Pow offensive to the taste of critics.

Despite being reviled by many critics, however, Kung Pow is a quite popular film. Despite coming out close to two decades ago, the film is still engaged by active reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes and Amazon, and is still commented on in Reddit channels and on Youtube videos. Metacritic reviews from the film’s cult following reveal the movie to be, to some, “silly and creative” and “one of the funniest movies [ever]”. One fan even described the film as “unbelievabl[y] hilarious”, stating that Kung Pow’s absurdity:

“...is something to cherish. It takes masterful skill to create such comedic bliss with this spoofing style...it can be a bit childish, but most of the time, I'm laughing harder than I ever have at film... I can confidently say this was the funniest movie of the decade.” 

It becomes clear, from the film’s status as a new-age cult classic, that while Oedekerk doesn’t undermine racist representations of Asians in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, he does ultimately mock genre and notions of the importance of critical acclaim. Even racist movies many win Oscars, but that was never Oedekerk’s plan. Steve Oedekerk, unlike Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill, didn’t strive to make an art film. Rather, as he notes in film’s commentary, he sought to have fun, and, seemingly, had fulfilled making a “realization of his childhood dream to be in a martial-arts flick.” By taking over director and actor’s Jimmy Wang Yu’s role from Tiger and Crane Fist, Steve Oedekerk fulfills his own dream of being a kung-fu action hero and simultaneously embodying an Asian director. Oedekerk successfully takes over and embodies Jimmy Wang Yu, but then with that power he doesn’t replicate Asian cinema, but rather destroys it in a transgressive act of defiance against the politics of film criticism and connoisseurship. Ultimately, while Oedekerk doesn’t negotiate racist rhetoric, he does do substantial work in creating friction about what it means to be an auteur, and how his cult cinema and others’ art cinema operate deliberately and differently.

Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is a screwball cult film. Oedekerk’s film commentary offers insight into the film production, describing the joy and challenges of its creation. The movie ultimately presents itself as a fan-project, rather than an auteurist work. Yet, it is this structure, as described above, that allows for Kung Pow to mimic practices of problematic remix to then develop a subtextual commentary. This commentary doesn’t undermine racist representations of Asians, but rather reveals the immature-comedy-packed film to be intelligent and aware of the history it partakes in, and use this to critique the nature and importance of “critical acclaim”.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

Mads!! I was wondering if you had some thoughts on Bi!Wyatt because you write him so well and he is, uh, at least 50000% more interesting than I Am Wyatt Logan And I Am Definitely Straight!Wyatt. I JUST HAVE A LOT OF BI!WYATT FEELS

Oh. Oh you wanna know about Bi!Wyatt. Oh ho ho. This. This is gonna be fun.

AKA the Why Wyatt is Bi Meta That I Probably Should’ve Written a Year Ago But Didn’t Because I’m Lazy. BUCKLE UP BUTTERCUPS. THIS IS A FUCKING MANIFESTO.

This will be in two parts. The first will be my arguing why I think Wyatt is bi (pointing out examples that support my argument) and the second will be musing on why taking a character like Wyatt and making him bi is a more creative and interesting writing choice and gives him depth and complexity as a character.

PROLOGUE

Okay before we get started, people are probably wondering why I’m putting so much goddamn effort into writing about the possible sexuality of a character that managed to royally piss us all off for two thirds of an entire season.

Two reasons:

The first is that as I’ve mentioned countless times previously, Wyatt Logan isn’t a malicious person. He’s not a villain. He’s had genuinely good and loving moments. His toxic behavior actually makes him a wonderful example to people watching because it shows how otherwise good men can exhibit this behavior, and in my fiction I love to give him a chance to overcome that behavior and be the good and loving person that he can be and was meant to be. @brassmama once said I should start tagging all my fic “The Emotional Redemption of Wyatt Logan” and frankly, she’s right. That’s what I set out to do. Because to me, just hating on Wyatt and wanting to set him on fire is fucking boring.

also the amount of hate some of you show is concerning me are you guys okay?

Why hate when you can stretch your writing skills and give a character a thorough and well-earned redemption arc? Because shocking news, a lot of the toxic people we meet in our lives are not one-dimensional villains that we can dismiss. It’s not our job to fix them but by golly don’t you hope that they grow past that and become better people? I know I do.

Second, my anger at Wyatt isn’t actually mostly at Wyatt. It’s at the writers. It’s at the shitty boring writers who decided to just hand him his happy ending instead of taking the golden opportunity before them to give him a nice deep and complex redemption arc. It’s at the writers who decided to make him a toxic asshole in the first place instead of taking all his potential in season one and putting it to damn good use and making him a character who was interesting for all the right reasons instead of making him one who was interesting because he pissed us off. Two strikes means you’re out in this particular game, writers.

So. I didn’t come onto this goddamn blue hellsite in order to adopt Wyatt motherfucking Logan of all characters but since I am his mother now I am going to make him interesting and I am going to give him his emotional redemption and one of the best ways to do that is to make him bi so without further ado, here is a) why I think he’s bi and b) why that matters.

PART THE FIRST: LA PREUVE!!!

Before we get into this, I suggest that you quickly read my meta on why I see Wyatt Logan as submissive rather than dominant. It touches on some moments I’ll be mentioning here and helps to further round out how I see his character.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? With our favorite British spy, Ian Fleming, in 1x04. This is Wyatt’s reaction when he learns that it’s Fleming they’re dealing with:

“NOT NOW BONER!”

“Oookay that’s hot, he’s hot.”

“Oh oh oh he’s funny and cute aaaahhh”

“LUCY LUCY LUCY DID YOU SEE OHMYGOD DID YOU SEE WHO THAT IS AAAAHHH!!!!” *puppy eyes*

What’s important to note here isn’t just Wyatt’s reaction, but Lucy’s. Lucy is looking at Wyatt with a bit of fond exasperation–she’s saying “seriously?” Rufus has a similar reaction a moment later (although it was too quick for a screengrab, dammit). It’s like they’re annoyed, in a gentle friend way, by Wyatt’s behavior.

Note that Lucy’s geeking out and hero worship is never greeted with suspicion or fond annoyance by Rufus, Wyatt, and later on Flynn. Lucy’s hero worship and knowledge of historical characters is considered one of her strengths, because it allows her to get close to them. So why are Lucy and Rufus reacting this way when Wyatt hero worships someone?

Maybe because it’s not hero worship but, rather, a crush. Lucy and Rufus’s reactions much better fit friends dealing with their friend and the object of his affection.

We see this again in 2x2 with Wendell Scott. Scott makes what can only be described as a ‘sexy entrance’, throwing a man out of his tent and striding out while rock music plays, the camera panning up his body. *fans self* Oh hello sailor.

And the camera goes immediately to Wyatt who has THIS expression on his face right before saying breathlessly, “that’s…”

Wyatt then rushes in to defend Scott (who is just… hhnngghhh… sorry I need a moment that man is a Lot…) and shakes Scott’s hand with this look on his face:

If this isn’t the definition of heart eyes I don’t know what is.

When Scott compliments Wyatt, Wyatt blushes and looks away, pleased and embarrassed. Wyatt then spends the entire episode gooey eyed over Scott, and in a telling moment, tells Scott about his abusive father–private and intimate information that not even Lucy, Wyatt’s official love interest, knows about. It would make far more sense for Wyatt to tell Lucy about all this since she and Rufus are clearly wondering why Wyatt’s so knowledgeable about cars, and Lucy is Wyatt’s chief confessor at this point. Out of everyone, you’d think he’d be most comfortable telling Lucy about something like this.

But instead, he tells Scott about his father, clearly wanting to connect with Scott and be closer to him. This is something you see people do all the time when they have a crush on someone or are attracted to them: we tell them intimate details about our life in order to grow closer to them, intended to speed up the relationship process and stimulate them to be intimate with us in return (since we want to know everything we can about the people with whom we are infatuated).

Moreover, Wyatt’s reactions to Scott contrast Rufus’s reactions. Rufus also greatly admires Scott, and their growing connection as two black men despite their differences based on the times they live in is central to the emotional plot of the episode. But once again, Lucy and Rufus are basically telling Wyatt to “cool it.” Why Wyatt and not Rufus? Because with Wyatt, they’re not telling him just to calm down, they’re telling him to keep it in his pants.

Another thing to note about Fleming in 1x04 is that Wyatt is envious of his interactions with Lucy. Here’s his reaction when Fleming kisses Lucy’s hand:

🎶HEY JEALOUSYYYYYYY 🎶

Not the best screengrab but he’s trying his damndest not to roll his eyes.

Now, we the audience are probably supposed to make the jump in logic that Wyatt is envious of Fleming i.e. Wyatt is attracted to Lucy. But in the previous episode, 1x03, Wyatt tried to use the telegram system at the Vegas hotel to warn Jess of her death and save her life. He’s still hung up on his dead wife and wants to save her (we see this again in 1x06 when Flynn states outright from the journal that Wyatt is ‘obsessed’ with Jess and bringing her back). At this point in the series, Wyatt is still in love with his wife and wants her back. There’s no reason for him, therefore, to feel possessive of Lucy in any way.

But Fleming is Wyatt’s hero, not Lucy’s. So if Wyatt is attracted to Fleming, his envy makes sense. He’s envious of Lucy for getting all of Fleming’s flirtation and attention.

However, conversely we see that Wyatt is uncomfortable around other men who might show him interest. In 1x16 at the gay club, we see that Wyatt is extremely discomforted and stated that he “feels like a piece of meat.” Wyatt has so far been perfectly comfortable with LGBT+ people such as Denise, and then he’s comfortable with Ethan Cahill later on, so this doesn’t stem from homophobia but specifically from gay men thinking Wyatt is gay. I admit I’m drawing from personal experience here but in said personal experience, men who react with such discomfort tend to be suppressing a few things themselves–most straight men I know would laugh it off or roll their eyes.

Wyatt, however, is outright skittish. He’s acting like he’s got something to hide. Our first indication is when Lucy says, “This is 1954. You could get arrested for being gay.”

I couldn’t get a good enough shot of Wyatt’s reaction but here’s the tail end of it. Wyatt reacts to this assertion with discomfort and self-consciousness. Why would he do that? It’s not like they’re talking about him… unless Lucy’s reminder that people think being gay isn’t okay has painfully reminded Wyatt of himself. Wyatt grew up in a small town in Texas. I doubt they were all that kind to LGBT+ people there.

This is Wyatt right after a guy checks him out:

Check out his face. Wyatt’s avoiding the guy’s eyes, shifting uncomfortably, looking at the ground. Look at those puppy eyes. He’s scared–but why would he be scared? He’s not going to get jumped or anything. What could he possibly be fearing? The only thing that makes sense is he fears being outed, somehow, by another gay man who might be perceptive enough to metaphorically back him into a corner and force Wyatt to reveal something that he’s not ready to reveal.

Wyatt then tries to blow it off, “he’s looking at me like I’m a piece of meat,” but if we actually look at the onceover the gay guy gives him… it’s not actually that objectifying. The man looks down, then looks Wyatt right in the eyes and smiles at him flirtatiously. There’s no sloooooow drag up Wyatt’s frame, no wink, no outright leering. It’s quite tame compared to how most men look at women. But Wyatt’s response is that he feels like a piece of meat. His discomfort is actually disproportionate to the action that sparks his reaction.

But of course, all of these examples pale in comparison to the main one. The piece de resistance, the most compelling set of reasons yet, I give you… (drumroll, please)…

GARCIA FLYNN

Wyatt’s reactions to Flynn are… extreme. Rufus and Lucy have more reason to dislike Flynn than Wyatt does, and yet Wyatt’s the one storming all over the place and acting like just being around Flynn gives him an allergic reaction. He’s constantly going out of his way to push Flynn away and show Flynn just how much Wyatt hates him. It’s like Wyatt needs to prove to Flynn–and to everyone else–just how much Wyatt dislikes him.

Like this moment in 2x06 when Wyatt demands that Flynn “keep them safe”:

Note that Flynn winks at him:

was this wink scripted Goran Goran hey hey was this wink scripted or did you do it in the moment because Certified Mess™ Flynn can’t resist flirting with Wyatt to knock him off his game Goran inquiring minds need to know GORAN I HAVE QUESTIONS

And Wyatt is caught off-guard by the wink and then has to turn around and collect himself, taking a deep steadying breath:

Or take this moment when Flynn walks into the bunker in 2x03…

…where Wyatt literally stands up and storms out of the room upon Flynn’s entrance, saying to keep Flynn on a leash. Wyatt can’t even handle being in the same room with Flynn, while Lucy and Rufus (y’know, the guy Flynn got shot in 1x15) manage to stay in the room and have much smaller reactions to Flynn.

Note: Flynn definitely checks out Wyatt’s ass as he leaves I’m just saying–

Wyatt might as well be waving a giant red flag going HEY! HEY! I HATE THIS GUY! IN CASE ANY OF YOU THOUGHT I MIGHT LIKE THIS GUY OR EVEN RESPECT HIM THE TINIEST BIT!

We get even more of this in 2x07 when Wyatt gets extremely aggressive and tells Flynn to stay away from Lucy:

…and they were roommates.

(Oh my God they were roommates.)

…I mean do I even need to talk about the homoerotic subtext in these screenshots?

Wyatt, however, has more reason than anyone besides Lucy to connect with Flynn. Not only because they mirror each other, but because Wyatt gets to see a vulnerable and personal side of Flynn that nobody else does. Flynn doesn’t tell Lucy about his family’s murder–he tells Wyatt. Lucy doesn’t see Flynn risk his own existence to save his brother’s life, Wyatt does. Why does Wyatt get to see these moments if not to set the two men up as a parallel, a mirror for one another, and frankly why does he keep insisting Flynn’s an asshole when Wyatt is privy to moments like these:

Quote: “He just saved your son’s life.”

Quote: “Every memory I have of you, you were always sad. I know what it is to lose a child. I didn’t want you to lose your son, not if I could stop it.”

Moments where we clearly see Wyatt realizing Flynn’s not such a bad guy and understanding that Flynn is complex and has layers and weaknesses and powerful, understandable motivation. Why would we a) get to see Wyatt with Flynn in these moments of vulnerability and intimacy but then b) see Wyatt go out of his way to continually push Flynn away more than anyone else?

This has no bearing on the whole bi thing but frankly, this is one of Wyatt’s best looks. 10/10 suit. Pretty pretty puppy.

There’s only one reason: he’s scared of Flynn getting too close to him. And why would he be scared of that? Same reason he’s scared of the gay men in the bar hitting on him: Flynn might see a secret that Wyatt isn’t ready to look at.

1x08 is Flynn at his third lowest point (second lowest being his suicide mission in 1x16 and lowest of all being the end of 1x10/beginning of 1x11 when he kidnaps Lucy). He is ready to erase his own existence to save his brother and make his mother happy. It would make the most sense for Flynn to be seen like this by Lucy, who is the only character who’s made any attempt to understand him or connect with him and is the one he’s making the most effort to reach out to, the one he says he’ll “make a great team” with someday. Not to mention that given the disappearance of Amy from existence, Lucy’s the one most poised to understand what Flynn’s doing: saving a sibling. And Lucy’s the one (prior to 1x16) with a good relationship with her mom, just like Flynn, and would feasibly understand wanting to do anything to make one’s mother smile. Wyatt’s mother is never even mentioned in canon.

But it’s not Lucy who sees him like this and gets this intimate glimpse into Flynn’s past and home life. It’s Wyatt. Wyatt gets to see that–and usually in fiction writing, the character who gets to see that is the romantic interest or the character who at least has some sort of romantic feeling for the person.

Hmmmmmmm.

But before the Space Race, there was an even more prolonged and intimate moment between the two men–the first real interaction they have and one that, for me, cemented Wyatt as a closeted bisexual.

I’ve left this one for last, since it’s our biggest piece of evidence: The Watergate Tape.

AKA Wyatt Logan Has a Brain Glitch, AKA Wyatt Logan Has a Bi Crisis and Discovers a New Kink, AKA In Which Wyatt Logan Realizes He is Kinkier and Gayer Than He Originally Planned

thank you to @extasiswings for the second title

Aaanyway.

So. In this episode, Flynn captures the Time Team and sends Rufus and Lucy to get information for him while he holds Wyatt hostage.

I think I’ve seen this porno.

Flynn then spends his time with Wyatt telling him about Lucy’s journal and how Lucy writes about Jessica Logan’s death–in fact this is how the audience finally finds out how Jess died–and that Wyatt is ‘obsessed’ with Jess’s death and needs to learn to move on. In return to earn Wyatt’s trust, Flynn tells Wyatt how Flynn’s wife and child were murdered by Rittenhouse (again, this is how the audience also learns the story).

It’s a startlingly intimate moment between the two men. Like with Scott, we’d expect to hear the story of Jess’s death through Wyatt talking to Lucy, the person to whom he is closest and the person who at this point he is starting to show sexual attraction towards (I personally think Wyatt started to really be attracted to Lucy in 1x05 after she steadies him at the Alamo during his PTSD attack but anyhow). But instead, we hear it in a painful and intimate exchange between these two.

Pay attention to how Wyatt gets super uncomfortable when Flynn gets close to him, how he looks up at Flynn through his lashes, how very submissive Wyatt is being with his body language.

“Raise my chin even more to look Flynn directly in the eye? Nah. Gonna do a half-head tilt so I’m giving him a sultry side-eye.”

Wyatt also throughout their exchange (before Flynn pushes Wyatt’s buttons and makes him angry) routinely gives Flynn these looks:

Hmm, where have we seen Wyatt have that facial expression? At Fleming, for one, and at Lucy, for another. It’s a flirtatious expression.

There’s no reason for this screencap I just think it’s preeeetty. Mmm. Bask in the pretty.

Actually this screencap does a good job of illustrating the use of this scene to parallel the two men’s lives and storylines and show how they mirror each other.

Also? Look at how Wyatt’s positioned.

He’s not just in a hugely submissive position, he’s in a sexually suggestive position. He’s tied to a chair, and Flynn is looming over him, both of which are submissive. And look at how his legs are spread. His feet aren’t tied, by the way–Wyatt is doing that subconsciously, which puts, ah, certain aspects on display and in another situation it might be manspreading but given the positioning of the rest of his body and the situation he’s in, I sure as hell wouldn’t be manspreading. Manspreading suggests confidence and relaxation. His life is in danger and when we’re in danger whether we like it or not we instinctively go to protect our ‘vulnerable bits’ including, especially for men, our junk. By spreading his legs like this, Wyatt isn’t asserting his relaxation or confidence, he’s displaying himself.

His legs are spread, he’s tied up, he’s looking up at Flynn through his lashes, and he’s wearing a shirt that’s stretching across his chest, drawing attention to it. Now, in day to day reality, we sometimes wear shirts that do this and it doesn’t mean anything. But this is fiction and that means a costumer put that actor in a shirt that they knew would stretch across his chest in that way and therefore make him look even more sexually suggestive and exposed, and they chose to undo his top buttons and expose more of his throat, making him look more vulnerable and suggestive through that as well.

If Wyatt was, say, hanging from his wrists, that would be submissive, but not sexually suggestive. This, however, is both. The way the two sit together, the way Flynn tries to get on his level, the soft lighting, the way the two are wearing a pastel version of each other’s colors (Flynn’s signature color is burgundy and Wyatt is wearing pink, Wyatt’s signature color is blue and Flynn is wearing pastel blue)… if Wyatt was a woman there’d be no doubt that we’re seeing a prelude to a romantic connection here.

Throughout the whole confrontation with Flynn, up until the point where Wyatt’s angry over Flynn bringing up Jess’s death, Wyatt is in a suggestive, submissive position, he’s giving Flynn flirtatious looks, he’s uncomfortable in a not now boner way when Flynn gets too close the same way he was with Fleming. The whole time Wyatt is acting like he’s uncomfortably aroused.

Wyatt then takes great pains to shove away any connection with Flynn. There’s no real attempt to reason with Flynn, or acknowledge their similarities. Instead he denies any connection between them and calls Flynn a sociopath. Why? Because you can’t let any man to whom you’re attracted too close or he might figure out those dark feelings you’re trying to deny and/or hide. Wyatt is practically allergic to Flynn’s overtures or even to Flynn’s presence, as we already covered in 2x03, 2x06, and so on. But he keeps being given reason to think Flynn isn’t such a bad guy (1x06, 1x08). His shoving Flynn away like this only makes sense if Wyatt is scared of what will happen if Flynn gets too close to him, physically or emotionally. And it all starts here with 1x06.

It was this conversation that led me to go hmmmm and then re-examine 1x04 and take a closer look at Wyatt’s behavior in subsequent episodes.

So, to recap:

Wyatt shows in 1x04 that he is capable of being attracted to a man given his behavior around Fleming and Lucy and Rufus’s reaction to Wyatt’s behavior (”ugh get a room buddy,” etc). This is seen yet again in 2x02. In 1x06, Wyatt has a long conversation with Flynn where it is in a vulnerable position emotionally and physically and is furthermore in a sexually suggestive and submissive position in relation to Flynn. In 1x08 he gets an intimate look into Flynn’s psyche and childhood and family. In 1x16, we see Wyatt is uncomfortable in a LGBT+ setting suggesting he is not comfortable with his own sexuality and is scared of being found out. For all of season two, he then goes out of his way to show Flynn and everyone else how much he absolutely hates Flynn, despite having the least reason to do so, since his only reason is vying for Lucy’s affection and Flynn doesn’t become a true threat to that until 2x06. But in 2x03, 2x06, and 2x07, we see Wyatt making sure Flynn knows he’s not wanted.

Conclusion: Wyatt is bi. Wyatt is uncomfortable with being bi and has not accepted that about himself or perhaps even admitted it to himself. Wyatt is attracted to Flynn, as seen in 1x06, and has tentative romantic feelings for him developed in 1x06 and 1x08 based on seeing Flynn in vulnerable moments and learning intimate details about Flynn’s life. Wyatt then pushes Flynn away in order to push his own bisexuality away and avoid confronting it.

Wyatt being attracted to Flynn is the only logical conclusion for Wyatt’s behavior towards Flynn pre-2x06, given that Lucy and Rufus have more reason to dislike Flynn than Wyatt does, and that Flynn is not a true contender for Lucy’s romantic affection until 2x06 (he is, but Wyatt has ZERO reason to know this until 2x06 when Wyatt sees Flynn and Lucy smiling and joking together and walking down the hallway together, presumably towards one of their bedrooms for a private conversation, and Lucy tells Wyatt how great Flynn was on the mission). Wyatt has no reason other than being attracted to Flynn.

Wyatt being bi is the only logical conclusion for his behavior towards Fleming and Scott, given that Lucy and Rufus also have characters they hero worship and are not treated by the other two the way that Wyatt is when he ‘hero worships’ Scott and Fleming. Compare and contrast Wyatt’s behavior towards Scott with Rufus’s behavior towards Scott.

Wyatt being bi is the only logical conclusion for his behavior at the gay club, given that he is otherwise shown to be comfortable with LGBT+ people and seems not only uncomfortable but genuinely afraid, which as a Delta force-trained man who can more than protect himself physically, he has no reason to be–unless he’s hiding his sexuality and is scared of exposure.

The proof is in the pudding. Wyatt is bi. At least, according to my headcanon he is.

We can’t say for sure what the writers intended for Wyatt’s sexuality, and I’m not saying with any of this that they were secretly writing him as bi the whole time. I’m certain that some of them definitely didn’t write him that way *cough* Arika *cough* but either way I would never presume to know about the secret or hidden agendas of the creative team. This isn’t me saying “the writers were going to reveal Wyatt as bi in season three!” or “they secretly wrote Wyatt to be a closeted bisexual!”

Rather, this is me showing you through screenshots and a breakdown of Wyatt’s behavior in the episodes that it is perfectly possible and even logical to conclude that he is bi, and that I can use the actual source text (in this case the episodes) to back up my assertion.

This got annoyingly long so you can read the rest here!

[diloph]

I have seen the film Diloph, so if you want, could you please tell me more spoilery bits?

Oh! Well, good, hopeyou enjoyed it.

Spoilers under the cut!Big ones!

So, starting off,Madison is given a TRUCKLOAD more to do, more lines, more relevanceetc. She’s great, easily my favourite part of the novelisation. Sheacts like a smart, compassionate kid who’s been conned by her motherinto joining the ecoterrorists and is appropriately horrified andresistant when she needs to be. She takes action like she does in thefilm, but there’s a bigger obstacle (and possibly in-joke for thefans of Mr Danse’s host show) which she deals with, again, in a wayI’d have liked to see in the film. Madison has lots of great parts toread about, not just the ORCA distraction. This kid has guts.

God, I hope she comesback.

I think that this sortof expanded role (POV seems to be split between her and herfather/mother, leaning more towards her father) was either cut fromthe film for time, assuming people would want to see more of Sad MadDad or hastily added into the book when they realised that she wasn’tjust a familiar face from a popular TV show when Stranger Things hitits second season and tried to do damage control, hoping not torepeat the Bryan Cranston backlash. Maybe a combination of the two. Iknow that some people were hyped when they first saw her, thendisappointed when she wasn’t the character of focus, but what she gotin both the book and the novel made me very happy with the characterherself, though I too longed for more of the girl who saved the worldand screamed defiance in King Ghidorah’s faces.

The same goes for therest of the characters. Jonah and Emma’s villainy is a lot morefleshed out; their motives are explained in greater detail, not tomention their attitudes towards those goals when Ghidorah rears hisugly heads. The friction between them goes a lot further than justJonah mocking Emma’s reluctance to commit a horrible atrocity infront of her child like he was a schoolyard bully. He’s still a dick,but we know why he’s a dick and why he’s doing this. Like a certainpurple bugger also still on our screens at the time of writing, hethinks he knows better and doesn’t care if he’s wrong. He’s going tobe fine. Emma’s doubts are focused on, she regrets releasingGhidorah’s Motley Menagerie and her part in “killing” Godzillaas, despite Mark blaming him for their son’s death, she believes thesame as Serizawa in that Godzilla serves a greater purpose and isfairly noble about it.

Speaking of, Serizawais given a greater focus and actually mourns for Vivienne (which isin my opinion, horribly glossed over in favour of Rick “Wubba LubbaDub Dub” Stanton andVerizon-Guy-Who-I-Don’t-Know-Because-I-Live-In-The-Desolate-Wastes-Of-Glasgow-Scotland),with even Mark expressing regret. Even she gets some perspective,some lines, some warm thoughts before her untimely death. VivienneGraham might not survive the film, but she’s well-remembered here atleast. Again, this makes me think of what I thought for Madison,because the Shape Of Water turned out to be a hit and given that shedidn’t survive, lead me to believe the whole finalised script thingwas rolled out and filmed before the two pieces of media hit andsuddenly their popularity skyrocketed.

Or maybe all that wascut for the monsters, I dunno.

So, yeah, Serizawa isgiven just as much gravitas in the book as in the film, but thistime, we actually get to hear thoughts and feelings and so on. Itmakes his character a lot more fleshed out and realistic, realisingthat while Emma had followed this dangerous path, he had not been ascareful as he had wished to be. His sacrifice and devotion to the bigguy is pretty touching, even if the “an innocent and well meaningman sacrifices himself to use a nuke to revive Godzilla and save theworld” thing is a little more… pro-nuke than the “an innocentand well-meaning man damaged by war must sacrifice himself to end thelife of a sentient creature equally damaged by war and mankind’snuclear abuse in order to save the world, while still causing a massdeath/pollution of the environment” that we got in 1954, but hey,he didn’t write the script and I think most audiences focus only onthe Bomb as a big booming explosive, not a corrupter and polluter.It’s a “problem solver” rather than a last resort/weapon ofterrible consequence. Sort of how the Oxygen Destroyer is alsoglossed over and not given nearly enough impact, considering what itis and what the consequences might be.

War is bad.

Dr Chen also gets more,which is good, because she’s certainly my favourite of the “new”Monarch crew (excluding Huston Brooks because of hisblink-and-you’ll-miss-it role and his presence in Skull Island). Howshe and her family ties into Mothra and how she and Vivenne were notonly good friends, but practically aunts to Madison and her deceasedbrother; this kid was brought up in Monarch long before the MUTOsmade their presence known. Chen’s the perfect bridging point betweenSerizawa’s knowhow and reverence, Vivienne’s enthusiasm and awe andthe other morons’ humour (again, better jokes and lines by far. Icould swap the three characters that died on screen with three othersor just write them out and assimilate their lines and knowledge intothe good ones and the film would lose nothing. NOTHING.)

Even Mark has hischaracter expanded upon. He’s still the man we get in the film, butat least we know him a little better. Same with Rick and Sam. Eventhe soldiers get lines that better reflect them as people, ratherthan props.

Of other things, theTitans get an introductory paragraph each (well, a lot of them).Mokele-Mbembe is given sort of its own contained mini story (andcontrary to popular belief, it’s not a Sauropod, if I’m correct it’smore akin to a Deinotherium), and how much damage Jonah’s group hasdone via infiltration.

Did we ever get a namefor Jonah’s group? It’d be easy to remember them as the ANTI-MONARCHor something. I could call them S.C.A.L.E but that’s been taken.

Additionally, the newTitans get some words put to them, but of the familiar faces, onlyGodzilla loses out. King Ghidorah and Rodan go up against themilitary in Washington DC for a bit longer, Mothra’s benevolence isechoed by everybody who speaks about her, another familiar face getsa few words in during the big monster breakout and the final sceneduring moments closer to the end of the film, which I described inthe earlier ask, I won’t spoil. It’s a big character moment andactually made me punch the air for said character’s involvement.Because of course they’d do that. That’s who they are.

All in all, a prettywell-made adaptation of a big film. Improvement on the first two wegot (older scripts), certainly better than the graphic novels (somany problems and all of them were easily preventable) and fairlybrisk to read through.

[the-future-of-education]

Unit 12: All Posts

Which personality quiz is the most reliable according to psychologists?

According to psychologists, the Big Five personality test is the most reliable indication of personality. This test is identified as the most reliable because it does not sort people into categories; rather, it places everyone on the same scale, just at different points. Additionally, the Big Five personality tests ask the individual if they agree or disagree with a statement, whereas other personality tests ask the individual about hypotheticals which is less reliable as the individual must try to imagine a situation they may have never encountered before (Koerth-Baker, 2018).

What are the Big Five traits?

The Big Five traits are often abbreviated as OCEAN. It includes openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Can you predict someone’s personality?

Predicting someone’s personality based on their results of the Big Five personality test would be mostly accurate, provided that they answered each question honestly. If you were, however, attempting to predict someone’s personality based on their political alignment, (as some political campaigners have claimed) you likely wouldn't get an accurate result. 

Is the Selfie a new phenomenon?

When front facing cameras emerged, the news began publishing stories about how self-absorbed the newest generation had become, simply because they dared to take pictures of themselves.

What the media neglected to mention is that selfies have been around for much longer than the relatively recent invention of the front-facing camera.

One of the earliest photographs from 1839 was a selfie (Gernsbacher) and since then people have continued to take pictures of themselves.  In 1954, Jackie Kennedy took a selfie in the mirror; in 1966, Buzz Aldrin took a selfie on the moon. In the same year,  George Harrison from the Beatles took a selfie in front of the Taj Mahal. The list goes on. 

In short, the selfie is neither a new phenomenon nor is it something to be scored. Maybe one day, your selfies will be an important landmark in our history.

 How do selfies change our perception of ourselves?

Selfies can change our perception of ourselves. When you use different applications on your phone, they will capture your face differently; some of them even flip the image of your face so it will be entirely opposite to what you are used to seeing in the mirror

Additionally, the lens of any camera can change the way your face looks. The closer you are to the lens, the larger it will make the more prominent features of your face (like your nose), which actively changes our perception of ourselves. Another contributing factor to the distortion of how we see ourselves is the idea that we see everything in 3D, but a picture can only capture 2D images.

All of this is important information to consider the next time you take a selfie. Instead of assuming you look bad in the image, try thinking about everything that the camera does to change your appearance.

What is humblebragging, why do people do it, and is it preferable to traditional bragging?

Humblebragging is a means of bragging but is done so in a manner to make the individual seem more modest either by being self-critical or by simply stating it casually. Either option is meant to draw attention to an accomplishment or something impressive that an individual did. Most people think that humblebragging is a good way to avoid seemingly being stuck-up by their peers. They assume that since they are not actively pointing to their accomplishments that it will be more socially acceptable.

Humblebragging tries to guide the audience into praising the individual, which is typically seen as insincere and duplicitous. Humblebragging can be incredibly frustrating to deal with, often resulting in annoyance and general exasperation. Psychologists have even determined that the majority of the population actually views people who traditionally brag to be more sincere and trustworthy than those who humblebrag. 

[dweemeister]

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

Almost a hundred years after the United States started settling its West, most of the land west of the Mississippi River remained “untamed” by humans. Today, much of the American West still has humans at the mercy of nature. Jeremy Kagan’s The Journey of Natty Gann sees a young, tomboyish girl that endures some of nature’s harshness in her long westward adventure – eventually finding peace with it and surviving. This one of the strongest films from one of the worst decades for Walt Disney Studios; yet the film is all but forgotten. In the years after Walt Disney’s death, the studio that bears his name attempted to make live-action films within the family-friendly confines that Disney himself established, yet making these newer films appeal to contemporary audiences. That tricky balancing act has continued into the present day, yet few have ever succeeded to the extent Natty Gann does.

It is 1935 in Chicago. Sol Gann (Ray Wise) lives in an aging apartment complex with his fifteen-year-old daughter Natalie Sue/“Natty” (Meredith Salenger). It seems as if he has been unemployed for some time, but soon finds a job in Washington state as a lumberjack thanks to the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The catch: he must leave on a bus for the Pacific Northwest immediately. Once he arrives home, Sol is unable to find his child anywhere. Considering his financial desperation, he leaves a note for Natty and arranges for the landlord, Connie (Lainie Kazan), to be a temporary guardian. Connie disapproves of Natty, and circumstances will force Natty to leave Chicago on her own. While traveling west on foot, by train, and automobiles, she will save and befriend a wolfdog from a dogfighting organization and meet a young man named Harry (John Cusack).

The Journey of Natty Gann marks the final on-screen appearance of dancer/singer/actor Scatman Crothers (the voice of Hong Kong Phooey, 1970′s The Aristocats, 1980′s The Shining), who appears in a brief role.

There is no denying that Natty Gann is as sentimental a movie as it sounds. It presents itself as a family film but does not see the need to sugarcoat everything: the dogfighting scene is more violent than expected, we are shown a few instances of a worried Sol calling a prevaricating Connie about his missing daughter, and Natty must fend off someone heavily implied to be a pedophile. Screenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg (1979′s The Black Stallion, 1991′s White Fang… yes, she specializes in animal movies) turns the film into part animal movie, part coming-of-age - when the film concentrates on the latter, it is at its best. This is because Natty is a street-smart Chicagoan who knows how to navigate life in a big city. But when tossed into wilderness without anyone to fall back upon, she retools her sense of resourcefulness and inner courage to suit her passing surroundings. Never despairing, a quiet go-getter by nature, always retaining some shred of optimism within but – unlike many Disney female characters – in touch with her anger, Natty is wonderfully portrayed by Salenger as one of the least Disney-esque female protagonists. It helps to have the Disney label, but The Journey of Natty Gann is an excellent film for youngsters who can take some of the film’s violence.

A sorta-first romance occurs with John Cusack’s character of Harry, but so little is made of this and so underdeveloped is their emotional connection that it seems like just another throwaway subplot in the film’s final third. Cusack, whose career was just beginning and had starred in Sixteen Candles (1984) and Better Off Dead (1985), is like a teenage Humphrey Bogart mixed with a teenage James Cagney (in his non-gangster roles) in this film – even though he does not appear in Natty Gann long, it should be of great interest to his fans.

One cannot ignore the other half of the film, as it is also a decent animal movie. Walt Disney Pictures has a long history of making live-action animal films from Old Yeller (1957) to various incarnations of The Incredible Journey (1963) and others, the studio has produced plenty in that subgenre – even if they might not be the most artistic movies ever made, there is no denying their enjoyability or emotional hold on audiences. To its credit, Natty Gann leaves its wolfdog protagonist as more of an open question, an unpredictable and fickle (like nature itself) aspect of the story that takes his time to warm up to Natty. Trust and understanding is not developed instantaneously, and the relationship between Natty and the wolfdog progresses as she comes closer to reuniting with her father. The film concentrates on Natty, not the wolfdog who never receives a proper name other than “Wolf”.

The canine actor here is a wolf-malamute named Jed. Born in 1977, Jed appeared in four films: a cameo in 1982′s The Thing, The Journey of Natty Gann, and White Fang and its 1994 sequel. His owner-trainer was Clint Rowe, who has trained animals for movies and television for more than thirty years. Ferocious though he might be at first, he wins over Natty’s and the audience’s affections as the film concludes.

From the film’s beginning in Chicago until its closing minutes, this is one of the prettiest films ever photographed with Disney. Cinematographer Dick Bush outdoes himself (1979′s Yanks, 1982′s Victor Victoria) in a setting – because of his British background – he has little experience with. The North American outdoors, as I have already waxed upon earlier, are unlike anything else in the world and often becomes a character of its own when Hollywood movies warrant it. Shot in various places along the route of the BC Rail (westward from Prince George to Vancouver) in Canada, Bush – when the action slows down – captures enormous panoramas of the forests, mountains, and waterways to trumpet the immense scope of Natty’s journey. During more intimate moments (like to emphasize the lack of space in the Chicago apartment complex Natty and Sol live out of), Bush’s camera lingers on conversations without gimmicks – and assisted by a lack of unnecessary editing by David Holden (1979′s The Warriors, 1980′s The Long Riders). And in moments of peril, the camera keeps the action within the entirety of the frame, rather than fragmenting it as it happens too often in contemporary films.

There is nothing more traumatic for a film score composer than when one has composed an entire score for an upcoming project, only to have it entirely tossed out and be replaced with another composer’s work. This trend increased in major Hollywood studios once the old Studio System disintegrated. For Natty Gann, Elmer Bernstein (1956′s The Ten Commandments, 1960′s The Magnificent Seven) submitted a score, rewrote it once, edited some of the cues after the second rejection, but ultimately was dismissed from the film. The already-established, but young, James Horner (1982′s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1989′s Glory) came in. Horner’s score recalls the works of Aaron Copland in its musical expanse – Americana music replete with optimistic woodwinds and free-flowing strings. Later in his career, Horner’s compositions for Americana would incorporate tragic motifs like in Legends of the Fall (1994), so Natty Gann represents Horner at his most adventurous and clear-eyed for a film sent in the West. Influences from Copland’s Rodeo appear in cues like “Into Town” (and would be replicated for Horner’s work in 1991′s An American Tail: Fievel Goes West). The final minutes of the film are blessed with two cues – “Farewell” and “Reunion/End Title” – which encapsulate all the emotion building to the only ending that this movie could entertain. It is excellent work from a young James Horner.

To appreciate The Journey of Natty Gann in all its scenic beauty, do not purchase the 2004 DVD/VHS release. That home media edition employs pan-and-scan – a bastardized method of video presentation meant for square televisions, but chops off chunks of the film’s imagery. For a proper letterboxed experience, all editions of Natty Gann legally streaming are presented in the correct format. This review, based on the March 29 airing on Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) Treasures from the Disney Vault bloc, has been written on the letterboxed version.

Today, Disney is approaching a time where a majority of its live-action/hybrid films are remakes or reimaginings of its animated classics. Longtime readers will notice, thanks to TCM’s periodic bloc, has featured many live-action Disney titles from yesteryear not based on any pre-existing Disney property. Where have lower-mid and mid-budget original films like The Journey of Natty Gann gone? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) this is not, nor is it trying to be. In that wonderful modesty, set amidst beautiful landscapes, verdant forests, and shimmering rivers, The Journey of Natty Gann – along with another film with wolves, Never Cry Wolf (1983) – is one of the best Disney films of the 1980s, and ranks comfortably in the studio’s top tier of live-action films.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[ladyeliot]

Chapter One

When she met him (Masterlist)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader [called Michelle]

Summary: 50s. Michelle Wells, a young New Yorker, has left everything behind for love, or so she thinks.

Warnings: Toxic relationship.

Word count: 1252

A/N: This is an introductory chapter for the female protagonist. / Sorry for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

West Berlin - May 1954 - POV MICHELLE

The mirror showed a reflection she had not stopped to contemplate in a long time. Rosy cheeks offered life and warmth to a pale face that seemed to have been forgotten. Her skin was smooth, the colour of porcelain, showing the youth that had only just begun. Her eyes were highlighted by a greyish iris, which seemed to be complemented by blue drops, but as pale as her complexion. Her golden hair was tied back behind her face, but even so, a few strands stood up in rebellion, sliding down her forehead. 

She moved closer to the imposing mirror, which was perched on the dresser in the room. It was then that she could see on her lips that the reddish lipstick had been fixed to perfection, offering a speck of colour to the ensemble that she herself formed. 

Her attention was diverted to the melody coming from the phonograph's horn, but she could see the presence of a person behind her reflected in the mirror itself. Those vermilion lips showed a smile as the warmth of the male body pressed against her back.

"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life," the whisper overpowered the music. "Tonight every man in the universe will know how lucky I am.”

The blush took hold of her, causing her to look away from his face through the mirror and lower her gaze without ceasing to smile.

It had been a few months since she had left behind everything she had known in her nineteen years, venturing to suffer the indifference and the very rejection that the unknown future could bring her. Her life in New York was a past that counterbalanced the pain and happiness of her younger years, but it did not offer her all that her inner self demanded, until he came along.

Richard was a young British man of beauty, wit and chance, who had made a fortune in the world of tobacco after the end of the Second World War. So one could say that it didn't take long for her to notice him, and for him to desire to possess her beauty among his various properties. It was an accumulation of promises that entered Michelle's mind and led her to follow him to Europe without questioning their veracity. Accepting the consequences that this meant for a young woman of her position in a world run by and for men.

It had been many years since she had had a male figure to support or guide her decisions, as well as her purpose in life. The loss of her father made her acquire a sense of purpose and make decisions of her own, which were usually accepted by her mother, but which in this case did not find a place in Michelle's audacity. Those who knew her thought that her judgement had been clouded or that she had only lost her head out of love for this gentleman.

Richard had made his appearance in New York City just a few months earlier. Their fates had crossed in the New York night, during the presentation of a new Walker Motors Corporation internal combustion engine at the Edison Hotel, which was a milestone in the market. Richard was an external guest, invited by one of the company's own partners, but Michelle was invited by the leading eminence. It is worth noting that Charles Walker, director of WMC, has been friends with them since their childhood, which is why she attended the private party. However, it was not until midnight that Charles himself introduced them, saying that Richard had shown an exclusive interest in meeting her.

“Where is your mind?" Richard's lips brushed her right earlobe.

His fingers rested on her neck, still staring at herself in the mirror, and brushed aside a light strand of hair that fell across her collarbone to place his lips on hers.

"I don't want you to go elsewhere if I'm not in your thoughts," that whisper sent a shudder around her body, as Richard's lips continued to trail firmly along her neck.

Michelle had been extremely decisive in agreeing to give herself to a man she barely knew or had any testimony about his past. But her mind had been so dazzled by the hopes she had placed on him and his oaths, that she had barely been able to consider the fact that something could go wrong.

The kissing stopped, causing the young woman to open her eyes again to meet her own reflection. Richard turned away from her body for a moment to search inside his jacket. Within seconds he pulled out a greenish rectangular box, which he opened without letting Michelle contemplate the contents, who watched his movements with curiosity.

“Close your eyes," he asked softly in her ear.

Michelle, showing little opposition, acted as he ordered. A tingle tingled around her throat, which brought a subtle smile to her lips as she waited for Richard's command to open her eyes again. It wasn't until after a brief kiss on her bare shoulder, however, that she decided to contemplate the object resting on her neck for herself. Her lips parted in surprise as an array of pearls lay upon her, illuminating practically the entire room. Her fingers slowly brushed each one of them, she hardly knew what to say, the only thing that came to her mind was the questioning of why about that detail.

"Tonight you will shine over the whole world,” Richard's hands rested on her hips “There won't be anyone in Berlin, east or west, who doesn't know who Michelle Wells is.”

The young woman smiled with a blush as she gazed at her figures in the mirror, those words giving her the encouragement she needed to face the performance that was to take place in a few hours' time. Her ability on stage had been recognised in various clubs in New York, but she knew that the audience that night could not compare with the one she had had before. New York had been the pinnacle of jazz, and Harlem the favoured neighbourhood of her own creation, yet this was a far cry from anything she was used to.

A slight sigh came out of her mouth, showing her nervousness at such a situation. It was an unavoidable fact of life that she was thousands of miles away from her hometown, and although she had made herself think that she and Richard would be looking for their own home, she couldn't help but feel incomplete.

“Take everything out of your mind, let it go blank and only focus on you from this moment on," the breath collided on her ear creating a brief shiver down Michelle's back, "Forget everything you've lived through, and all the people. You are the creator of your own destiny, and no one can stand in the way of that. Tonight may be the most important moment for your future. For our future.”

Michelle turned around so she could look directly into his eyes, eyes that depending on the light could appear blue or green. Under the dimness of the lamp the greenish hue could be found in them, but she barely noticed it because their proximity was cut short when he said those words, melting into a slow, passionate kiss before he left for the club.

Taglist: @indigo123789​ @mycosmicparadise @imerdwarf

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Pretend I’m the owner of a polling company that surveys political races. I prominently advertise my results: According to a Walt Hickey Polling Inc. survey of 600 likely voters, John Doe is beating Jane Doe 58 percent to 40 percent — John Doe will likely win the election. (Let’s say it’s a race for the U.S. Senate.)

But then you keep reading and you notice that the sample on which my poll is based consists of 400 men and 200 women. You can’t really tell whether I’m adjusting the numbers, and if so, how. Would you trust that number? Unless there’s some state I don’t know about where men outnumber women 2-to-1, you shouldn’t.

So why aren’t we more skeptical of movie ratings that do the same thing?

It’s a worthwhile question, and lately it’s made it pretty hard for us to take the ratings provided on IMDb, the largest and most popular movie site on the internet, at face value. The Academy Awards rightly get criticized for reflecting the preferences of a small, unrepresentative sample of the population, but online ratings have the same problem. Even the vaunted IMDb Top 250 — nominally the best-liked films ever — is worth taking with 250 grains of salt. Women accounted for 52 percent of moviegoers in the U.S. and Canada in 2016, according to the most recent annual study by the Motion Picture Association of America. But on the internet, and on ratings sites, they’re a much smaller percentage.

“If you see any number that is a rating number or a number with a percentage sign, it may be compelling or meaningful and it may not be,” said Gary Langer, the president of Langer Research Associates, the polling firm that has long conducted surveys for ABC News. “And what we need to do rather than be seduced by the number is to subject it to meaningful inquiry as to how it was obtained.”

OK, but how skeptical should we be? To figure that out, I wanted to see how strong the male skew of raters is on IMDb and how big an effect that skew has on movies’ scores.

We’ll start with every film that’s eligible for IMDb’s Top 250 list. A film needs 25,000 ratings from regular IMDb voters to qualify for the list. As of Feb. 14, that was 4,377 titles. Of those movies, only 97 had more ratings from women than men. The other 4,280 films were mostly rated by men, and it wasn’t even close for all but a few films. In 3,942 cases (90 percent of all eligible films), the men outnumbered the women by at least 2-to-1. In 2,212 cases (51 percent), men outnumbered women more than 5-to-1. And in 513 cases (12 percent), the men outnumbered the women by at least 10-to-1.

Looking strictly at IMDb’s weighted average — IMDb adjusts the raw ratings it gets “in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at vote stuffing,” but it does not disclose how — the male skew of raters has a pretty significant effect. In 17 percent of cases, the weighted average of the male and female voters was equal, and in another 26 percent of cases, the votes of the men and women were within 0.1 points of one another. But when there was bigger disagreement — i.e. men and women rated a movie differently by 0.2 points or more, on average — the overall score overwhelmingly broke closer to the men’s rating than the women’s rating. The score was closer to the men’s rating more than 48 percent of the time and closer to the women’s rating less than 9 percent of the time, meaning that when there was disagreement, the male preference won out about 85 percent of the time.

That male skew of raters is also apparent in the 250 movies that make IMDb’s top list, which we pulled on Feb. 16:

So, what’s the issue here? If IMDb is content with its ratings being intended almost solely for men, then there isn’t one. (We reached out to IMDb for comment and for more information on how the site adjusts its ratings, but we received no response. So we don’t know, for example, if IMDb is already doing something to the data that accounts for the gender disparity in raters.) But if IMDb seeks to reflect the opinions of the actual movie-going population, the situation is grave.

Can we fix that? Langer is skeptical. Mainly, besides how simple it is for a dedicated individual or group to “manufacture” results, online data from a self-selected group of people is so inherently dubious that any reweighting of that data is also inherently dubious. You can’t just adjust troublesome data to make it reflect the world, he said.

“The notion that you can take bad data and weight it to be OK is … hazardous to your health,” Langer cautioned.

That said, since the scores of the most popular movie site on the internet are already being calculated based on an entirely self-selected sample, would it destroy the IMDb Top 250 to try to mimic actual movie audiences more? I don’t really think so. As a thought experiment, I used everything we know about IMDb’s rating adjustments — which is far from the full picture — and ran them on the ratings of the 4,377 eligible films after I adjusted the raw ratings to weight men’s and women’s views equally.

We can’t do an adjustment that allows us to perfectly replicate the top 250 — again, we don’t know what’s in the black box, so we can’t re-create it — but to approximate it, I excluded any film that didn’t either a) make the IMDb top 1,000 movies list or b) have a rating from the site’s top 1,000 users within 0.87 points1 of the rating from its users overall. This allows us to sidestep films that would have made the top 250 through vote-stuffing.

My main point is that overall, the naive reweighting didn’t destroy the general look of the 250, and if anything, it elevated films that may have been overlooked because one gender is vastly outnumbered.2

What if IMDb adjusted ratings toward gender parity?

Estimated highest-ranking films on IMDb if the men’s and women’s ratings were weighted toward 50-50 vs. IMDb’s actual rank as of Feb. 16, 2018

Rankings Year▲▼ Film▲▼ Actual▲▼ Women only▲▼ Men only▲▼ Gender- weighted▲▼ 1994 The Shawshank Redemption 1 1 1 1 1972 The Godfather 2 10 2 2 2008 The Dark Knight 4 3 3 3 2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 8 2 4 4 1993 Schindler’s List 6 6 11 5 1999 Fight Club 10 5 8 6 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 11 7 10 7 1957 12 Angry Men 5 27 7 8 1974 The Godfather: Part II 3 22 5 9 2010 Inception 14 8 6 10 1994 Forrest Gump 12 9 13 11 2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 15 11 14 12 1994 The Lion King 47 4 29 13 1994 Pulp Fiction 7 15 9 14 2014 Interstellar 30 25 15 15 1999 The Green Mile 32 12 28 16 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 16 24 19 17 1966 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 9 115 12 18 2006 The Prestige 48 26 16 19 1998 American History X 31 17 27 20 2012 The Dark Knight Rises 65 23 22 21 1997 Life Is Beautiful 25 16 41 22 1980 Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back 13 41 17 23 1994 Leon: The Professional 27 21 37 24 2002 City of God 21 64 20 25 1995 Se7en 22 28 23 26 2001 Spirited Away 28 13 56 27 1991 The Silence of the Lambs 23 20 33 28 2006 The Departed 40 35 26 29 1990 Goodfellas 17 71 18 30 2011 The Intouchables 37 19 52 31 2014 Whiplash 45 54 30 32 2000 Gladiator 46 44 24 33 2012 Django Unchained 60 29 31 34 2002 The Pianist 39 31 53 35 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life 24 56 51 36 1960 Psycho 34 55 40 37 1977 Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope 20 48 32 38 2009 Inglourious Basterds 97 32 43 39 1998 Saving Private Ryan 29 70 25 40 1995 The Usual Suspects 26 58 36 41 1999 The Matrix 18 62 21 42 2000 Memento 49 57 34 43 1942 Casablanca 36 73 42 44 1999 American Beauty 63 51 35 45 1985 Back to the Future 44 49 46 46 2001 A Beautiful Mind 144 34 68 47 1954 Rear Window 43 80 60 48 2000 Requiem for a Dream 80 50 49 49 2011 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 218 14 126 50 2006 The Lives of Others 58 86 78 51 2010 Shutter Island 177 39 59 52 2008 WALL-E 62 42 62 53 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 87 38 66 54 1980 The Shining 61 61 47 55 1997 Good Will Hunting 102 60 48 56 1971 A Clockwork Orange 84 79 50 57 2001 Amelie 82 30 90 58 1954 Seven Samurai 19 336 39 59 1983 Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi 76 87 63 60 1992 Reservoir Dogs 77 94 64 61 2017 Coco 51 209 166 62 1988 Cinema Paradiso 54 165 97 63 1979 Apocalypse Now 50 219 38 64 1940 The Great Dictator 53 262 101 65 1950 Sunset Boulevard 55 190 108 66 1931 City Lights 35 294 92 67 1997 Princess Mononoke 64 118 100 68 2015 Room 143 82 139 69 2003 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl > 250 36 113 70 2004 Howl’s Moving Castle 137 43 216 71 1962 To Kill a Mockingbird 89 102 135 72 2009 Up 115 37 117 73 2014 Gone Girl 179 81 70 74 2010 Toy Story 3 98 66 82 75 1936 Modern Times 38 248 96 76 1988 Grave of the Fireflies 57 159 133 77 2006 Pan’s Labyrinth 130 74 91 78 2016 Hacksaw Ridge 175 161 124 79 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey 91 195 54 80 2007 Into the Wild 181 84 95 81 1958 Vertigo 72 154 87 82 2015 Inside Out 140 78 107 83 2005 Batman Begins 116 106 58 84 1975 Monty Python and the Holy Grail 103 123 104 85 2009 3 Idiots 93 203 93 86 2003 Oldeuboi 67 171 73 87 1964 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 56 236 57 88 1991 Terminator 2 42 178 44 89 1959 North by Northwest 74 205 99 90 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West 33 447 55 91 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark 41 131 65 92 1995 Toy Story 94 85 80 93 1952 Singin’ in the Rain 90 110 170 94 2016 La La Land 207 122 86 95 1979 Alien 52 151 67 96 1941 Citizen Kane 71 188 74 97 2002 Catch Me if You Can 219 97 81 98 1983 Scarface 105 181 69 99 1976 Taxi Driver 88 164 71 100 2014 The Grand Budapest Hotel 194 65 128 101 1987 Full Metal Jacket 92 177 83 102 2010 How to Train Your Dragon 176 47 165 103 1984 Amadeus 83 128 121 104 2007 There Will Be Blood 165 212 72 105 2012 The Avengers > 250 52 144 106 1984 Once Upon a Time in America 69 337 88 107 2013 The Wolf of Wall Street 150 158 45 108 2005 V for Vendetta 151 76 112 109 1939 Gone With the Wind 157 46 279 110 2003 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 174 89 114 111 1995 Braveheart 75 141 61 112 2003 Finding Nemo 166 53 151 113 1999 The Sixth Sense 160 75 116 114 2011 The Help 241 33 245 115 2015 Star Wars: The Force Awakens > 250 92 154 116 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road 204 135 79 117 2000 Snatch 100 144 76 118 2016 Dangal 73 649 195 119 2016 Zootopia > 250 95 187 120 2001 Donnie Darko 226 91 122 121 2008 Gran Torino 158 121 120 122 1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 112 156 84 123 2012 Jagten 101 183 141 124 1988 My Neighbor Totoro 132 112 183 125 1996 Trainspotting 156 107 127 126 2013 12 Years a Slave 201 100 131 127 1959 Some Like It Hot 118 124 186 128 1973 The Sting 95 284 143 129 2013 Prisoners 215 148 98 130 2017 Logan 202 193 103 131 2016 Your Name 79 399 190 132 2007 Taare Zameen Par 81 448 138 133 2011 A Separation 109 242 125 134 1997 Titanic > 250 45 188 135 2011 Warrior 154 213 134 136 2017 Dunkirk 236 192 145 137 2015 Spotlight 205 155 152 138 1986 Stand by Me 192 125 184 139 2014 X-Men: Days of Future Past > 250 113 159 140 2004 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 > 250 116 157 141 2014 The Imitation Game > 250 69 209 142 2010 The King’s Speech > 250 59 206 143 1986 Aliens 68 217 85 144 2004 Downfall 121 288 115 145 1998 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels 142 199 130 146 1997 L.A. Confidential 106 225 94 147 2016 Arrival > 250 169 137 148 1957 Paths of Glory 59 704 109 149 2017 Blade Runner 2049 147 368 102 150 1991 Beauty and the Beast 247 40 379 151 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy > 250 111 147 152 1962 Lawrence of Arabia 85 396 105 153 1993 Jurassic Park 198 150 118 154 1927 Metropolis 108 331 182 155 2016 Deadpool > 250 126 155 156 2012 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey > 250 90 192 157 2001 Monsters, Inc. 224 77 196 158 1988 Die Hard 122 220 77 159 1989 Dead Poets Society 238 103 239 160 2010 Black Swan > 250 98 161 161 2015 The Martian > 250 134 160 162 1957 Witness for the Prosecution 66 476 229 163 2004 Hotel Rwanda 190 176 181 164 2009 Star Trek > 250 117 199 165 2013 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug > 250 109 205 166 2009 Hachi: A Dog’s Tale 212 127 288 167 2017 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 111 351 204 168 1981 Das Boot 70 603 111 169 1995 Heat 123 332 89 170 1978 The Deer Hunter 159 346 153 171 1980 The Elephant Man 148 261 177 172 1931 M 78 465 167 173 1950 All About Eve 114 227 302 174 1921 The Kid 99 459 249 175 1944 Double Indemnity 86 433 169 176 2013 Her > 250 194 106 177 2009 Mary and Max 178 175 274 178 2017 Thor: Ragnarok > 250 200 260 179 2013 Dallas Buyers Club > 250 146 175 180 1960 The Apartment 107 322 189 181 2008 In Bruges > 250 239 140 182 1998 The Truman Show 206 132 149 183 2010 Incendies 131 300 253 184 1939 The Wizard of Oz 232 119 241 185 2008 Slumdog Millionaire > 250 99 191 186 2007 No Country for Old Men 162 244 75 187 1999 The Boondock Saints > 250 254 250 188 2009 The Secret in Their Eyes 135 265 198 189 2016 Lion > 250 170 332 190 2017 Baahubali 2: The Conclusion > 250 1170 343 191 2015 The Revenant > 250 214 129 192 2004 Million Dollar Baby 203 163 162 193 2005 Babam ve Oglum 117 526 291 194 1963 The Great Escape 126 479 174 195 1948 Bicycle Thieves 96 458 202 196 2004 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban > 250 72 339 197 2006 Blood Diamond > 250 172 212 198 1993 The Nightmare Before Christmas > 250 105 318 199 1974 Chinatown 129 360 158 200 2012 The Perks of Being a Wallflower > 250 108 232 201 1990 Edward Scissorhands > 250 67 357 202 1949 The Third Man 127 484 224 203 2003 Big Fish > 250 133 226 204 2013 Rush 193 252 172 205 1954 Dial M for Murder 155 352 233 206 1995 Before Sunrise 211 179 228 207 1940 Rebecca 173 250 350 208 1992 Unforgiven 120 543 110 209 1979 Life of Brian 183 266 179 210 1998 The Big Lebowski 167 256 123 211 1992 Aladdin > 250 120 308 212 2000 Amores Perros 209 260 225 213 2007 The Bourne Ultimatum 234 235 156 214 2007 Ratatouille > 250 138 211 215 1996 Fargo 161 230 164 216 1995 Twelve Monkeys 245 238 163 217 1965 For a Few Dollars More 104 792 142 218 1980 Raging Bull 124 599 119 219 2005 Serenity > 250 208 295 220 1967 Cool Hand Luke 172 539 215 221 1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 210 421 231 222 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai 138 581 180 223 1988 Rain Man > 250 182 217 224 1965 The Sound of Music > 250 101 516 225 1957 The Seventh Seal 141 462 223 226 1993 In the Name of the Father 188 408 268 227 2014 Wild Tales 185 323 282 228 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 145 466 297 229 2006 The Pursuit of Happyness > 250 185 220 230 1995 Casino 146 419 136 231 1987 The Princess Bride 214 136 298 232 1950 Rashomon 110 626 185 233 2008 Iron Man > 250 140 244 234 1975 Dog Day Afternoon > 250 417 252 235 2014 PK > 250 646 246 236 2005 Sin City > 250 231 148 237 1954 On the Waterfront 139 546 237 238 1982 Gandhi 227 370 221 239 2017 Call Me by Your Name 186 347 528 240 2011 X: First Class > 250 157 248 241 1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 119 786 230 242 2014 Kingsman: The Secret Service > 250 174 259 243 2012 Life of Pi > 250 152 257 244 2016 Captain America: Civil War > 250 215 265 245 2005 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire > 250 96 431 246 2004 The Notebook > 250 63 452 247 1976 Rocky 220 442 132 248 2013 About Time > 250 189 269 249 1977 Annie Hall 233 289 218 250 2003 Mystic River > 250 245 219 251 2011 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo > 250 216 222 252 1992 Scent of a Woman > 250 276 255 253 2007 Atonement > 250 139 366 254 2011 The Artist > 250 197 325 255 2014 Big Hero 6 > 250 129 462 256 1986 Platoon 187 490 176 257 1984 Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind 213 378 301 258 1973 The Exorcist > 250 309 178 259 1925 The Gold Rush 136 684 306 260 1953 Roman Holiday > 250 206 426 261 1982 The Thing 163 528 146 262 1984 The Terminator 229 318 150 263 1985 The Breakfast Club > 250 137 391 264 2007 Persepolis > 250 291 477 265 2004 Before Sunset > 250 263 240 266 1959 Ben-Hur 195 481 227 267 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg 134 752 375 268 2013 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire > 250 83 525 269 2004 The Incredibles > 250 222 208 270 2000 Remember the Titans > 250 312 346 271 2001 Shrek > 250 143 323 272 1934 It Happened One Night 184 366 424 273 2001 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone > 250 88 530 274 2006 Casino Royale > 250 282 200 275 2014 Edge of Tomorrow > 250 293 203 276 2014 How to Train Your Dragon 2 > 250 186 395 277 1941 The Maltese Falcon 216 541 271 278 2014 Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) > 250 299 168 279 1974 Young Frankenstein > 250 443 334 280 1957 Wild Strawberries 152 609 329 281 2001 Ocean’s Eleven > 250 221 262 282 2004 Shaun of the Dead > 250 233 261 283 1967 The Graduate > 250 285 254 284 2006 The Fall > 250 223 594 285 1995 La Haine 231 561 276 286 2006 Little Miss Sunshine > 250 149 349 287 2003 Dogville > 250 328 365 288 2015 The Hateful Eight > 250 411 171 289 2005 Pride & Prejudice > 250 68 754 290 2014 Nightcrawler > 250 380 173 291 1990 Dances With Wolves > 250 375 264 292 1986 Castle in the Sky 250 379 310 293 2010 Tangled > 250 93 599 294 1999 The Iron Giant > 250 418 312 295 2000 In the Mood for Love 240 358 423 296 2016 Hidden Figures > 250 180 651 297 2008 Yip Man > 250 744 214 298 1951 Strangers on a Train > 250 478 371 299 1948 Rope > 250 503 369 300 2009 Moon > 250 350 284 301 2016 Manchester by the Sea > 250 427 243 302 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire > 250 348 448 303 1986 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off > 250 255 303 304 2001 Mulholland Drive > 250 349 242 305 2014 Captain America: The Winter Soldier > 250 204 316 306 2009 District 9 > 250 324 193 307 1982 Blade Runner 149 341 197 308 1999 Magnolia > 250 444 194 309 1985 Brazil > 250 554 287 310 2002 The Bourne Identity > 250 298 256 311 2002 Hero > 250 492 355 312 2005 Cinderella Man > 250 495 286 313 2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon > 250 354 313 314 1999 Toy Story 2 > 250 249 266 315 2013 Star Trek: Into Darkness > 250 191 417 316 1968 Rosemary’s Baby > 250 343 304 317 1946 Notorious > 250 500 450 318 1976 Network 191 720 273 319 2016 Rogue One > 250 283 337 320 1997 Children of Heaven 128 678 519 321 2007 Hot Fuzz > 250 259 331 322 1983 A Christmas Story > 250 415 377 323 2004 Crash > 250 226 336 324 2010 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 > 250 104 696 325 1995 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge > 250 902 437 326 2013 Captain Phillips > 250 270 340 327 2005 Walk the Line > 250 224 418 328 2017 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 > 250 241 446 329 2007 Elite Squad > 250 974 307 330 1982 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial > 250 246 370 331 2000 Dancer in the Dark > 250 400 447 332 1966 Persona 196 548 400 333 2009 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo > 250 269 412 334 2008 Let the Right One In > 250 384 270 335 2014 Boyhood > 250 335 238 336 2012 Barfi! > 250 877 440 337 2009 Mr. Nobody > 250 253 434 338 1993 True Romance > 250 557 280 339 2010 My Name Is Khan > 250 535 517 340 2009 The Hangover > 250 258 247 341 1926 The General 153 891 381 342 2012 Moonrise Kingdom > 250 232 386 343 2012 Les Miserables > 250 168 499 344 1979 Stalker 197 767 347 345 2017 Baby Driver > 250 389 305 346 2012 Silver Linings Playbook > 250 237 251 347 2016 Contratiempo > 250 589 561 348 2004 The Sea Inside > 250 428 507 349 2006 Apocalypto > 250 364 373 350 1959 The 400 Blows 200 637 374 351 2017 Get Out > 250 344 314 352 1988 Akira > 250 882 267 353 1964 Fistful of Dollars > 250 950 278 354 2009 The Blind Side > 250 198 488 355 2008 Taken > 250 257 315 356 2008 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button > 250 211 320 357 2007 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly > 250 432 397 358 2011 Drive > 250 361 207 359 2003 Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring > 250 572 416 360 1987 The Untouchables > 250 604 300 361 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace > 250 464 617 362 1996 Sling Blade > 250 715 464 363 2008 The Boy in the Striped Pajamas > 250 207 601 364 2002 Talk to Her > 250 394 430 365 1979 Manhattan > 250 508 359 366 2013 Short Term 12 > 250 474 529 367 2015 Straight Outta Compton > 250 513 459 368 2010 Despicable Me > 250 145 543 369 2000 Almost Famous > 250 320 322 370 1982 Pink Floyd: The Wall > 250 656 510 371 2006 Children of Men > 250 355 263 372 2014 Ex Machina > 250 362 272 373 1997 Boogie Nights > 250 660 213 374 2013 Queen > 250 1005 484 375 1973 Papillon > 250 831 354 376 2010 Elite Squad: The Enemy Within > 250 1116 352 377 2014 The Theory of Everything > 250 173 591 378 1940 The Philadelphia Story > 250 393 766 379 1940 The Grapes of Wrath 221 728 403 380 1971 Harold and Maude > 250 436 685 381 2016 Captain Fantastic > 250 363 505 382 1993 What’s Eating Gilbert Grape > 250 202 574 383 2003 Memories of Murder 199 916 330 384 2009 Avatar > 250 228 296 385 2002 Infernal Affairs 243 875 292 386 1994 Three Colors: Red > 250 644 415 387 1976 All the President’s Men > 250 755 420 388 2016 The Handmaiden 246 595 549 389 1955 The Night of the Hunter > 250 737 471 390 1995 Underground > 250 751 541 391 1990 The Godfather: Part III > 250 440 358 392 1984 Paris, Texas 244 736 455 393 2010 The Fighter > 250 452 283 394 1966 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? > 250 537 565 395 2014 The Fault in Our Stars > 250 187 513 396 2005 Brokeback Mountain > 250 162 611 397 2007 Chak de! India > 250 1278 317 398 2006 Lucky Number Slevin > 250 416 363 399 1991 JFK > 250 847 324 400 1998 The Legend of 1900 242 608 607 401 2017 The Greatest Showman > 250 272 972 402 2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? > 250 401 387 403 2010 The Social Network > 250 414 201 404 1997 Gattaca > 250 356 390 405 2012 Argo > 250 243 409 406 1993 Groundhog Day 230 457 210 407 1962 The Manchurian Candidate > 250 849 506 408 1984 This Is Spinal Tap > 250 762 348 409 2013 Frozen > 250 130 692 410 1990 Misery > 250 402 466 411 2007 The Man From Earth > 250 764 290 412 1968 Planet of the Apes > 250 789 294 413 2000 Cast Away > 250 314 328 414 1998 Black Cat, White Cat > 250 676 605 415 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory > 250 333 496 416 1985 Ran 133 1207 234 417 2008 Changeling > 250 296 405 418 2006 Rang De Basanti 180 1218 236 419 1989 Glory > 250 768 427 420 1989 Back to the Future Part II > 250 374 338 421 2004 The Bourne Supremacy > 250 413 333 422 2006 Letters From Iwo Jima > 250 791 364 423 1952 High Noon > 250 890 407 424 1997 The Fifth Element > 250 247 546 425 2017 Wonder Woman > 250 196 706 426 1995 Ghost in the Shell > 250 917 361 427 1961 Yojimbo 113 1281 235 428 2015 Bahubali: The Beginning > 250 1491 393 429 2007 Zodiac > 250 435 275 430 1990 Awakenings > 250 467 559 431 1993 Three Colors: Blue > 250 552 603 432 1950 Harvey > 250 645 680 433 2014 Fury > 250 449 341 434 1993 Philadelphia > 250 277 644 435 1998 The Celebration > 250 785 404 436 1946 The Big Sleep > 250 750 489 437 1987 Wings of Desire > 250 622 638 438 2016 Hunt for the Wilderpeople > 250 605 701 439 1994 Chungking Express > 250 712 600 440 2012 Kahaani > 250 1212 478 441 1958 Touch of Evil 228 1008 356 442 2004 Finding Neverland > 250 240 570 443 2004 The Machinist > 250 330 438 444 1987 Empire of the Sun > 250 530 668 445 2012 Wreck-It Ralph > 250 281 458 446 1968 Night of the Living Dead > 250 837 385 447 1993 Carlito’s Way > 250 876 326 448 1996 The Bandit 171 1181 362 449 1997 The Game > 250 441 367 450 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives 239 772 604 451 2004 Man on Fire > 250 406 444 452 2014 The Lego Movie > 250 397 380 453 1964 Mary Poppins > 250 234 806 454 1959 Anatomy of a Murder > 250 864 515 455 1999 Being John Malkovich > 250 392 383 456 2015 The Big Short > 250 515 299 457 2008 The Wrestler > 250 621 289 458 1954 La Strada > 250 748 623 459 1999 All About My Mother > 250 405 712 460 2007 3:10 to Yuma > 250 511 456 461 1975 Barry Lyndon 225 991 281 462 2009 Fantastic Mr. Fox > 250 423 445 463 1922 Nosferatu > 250 716 468 464 2017 Wonder > 250 577 862 465 2006 The Last King of Scotland > 250 455 535 466 1980 The Blues Brothers > 250 687 372 467 2012 Skyfall > 250 295 401 468 1997 As Good as It Gets > 250 367 396 469 1955 Diabolique 223 910 534 470 2016 Kubo and the Two Strings > 250 600 616 471 1972 Solaris > 250 996 429 472 2013 Before Midnight > 250 453 449 473 1989 Kiki’s Delivery Service > 250 357 674 474 1994 Ed Wood > 250 545 384 475 1960 La Dolce Vita > 250 793 512 476 1993 The Fugitive > 250 569 392 477 1967 Bonnie and Clyde > 250 648 501 478 1996 Primal Fear > 250 426 578 479 2002 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets > 250 142 831 480 1999 The Insider > 250 863 378 481 2004 3-Iron > 250 651 719 482 1965 Doctor Zhivago > 250 714 577 483 1927 Sunrise 164 995 633 484 2009 Zombieland > 250 329 414 485 2001 Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India 249 1190 293 486 1993 Tombstone > 250 794 526 487 2008 Departures > 250 731 613 488 2009 (500) Days of Summer > 250 310 345 489 1969 Midnight Cowboy > 250 818 502 490 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany’s > 250 210 802 491 2007 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix > 250 147 837 492 2004 The Butterfly Effect > 250 303 428 493 2003 21 Grams > 250 410 500 494 2016 Doctor Strange > 250 287 556 495 2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince > 250 160 846 496 1953 Stalag 17 > 250 1059 642 497 1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? > 250 585 793 498 2007 Once > 250 463 487 499 2013 Mandariinid > 250 666 865 500

IMDb makes adjustments to its raw ratings but does not disclose its methodology. Therefore, these rankings — which start with the raw ratings — may not match a gender-weighted version of a list made by IMDb itself because we can’t re-create the site’s adjustments.

Source: IMDb

The top 100 largely includes films from the original list of 250, and the additions to the list — there are a lot of best picture winners among the newbies — appear mainly in the back half of the 250.

Attempting to reflect a target population is a common practice in many fields that use surveys. It’s not clear to me why movie rating sites don’t do it — or, at the least, why they don’t indicate that their scores are almost all based mostly on the opinions of male users.

[peterguralnick]

Memphis Blues Again

L to R: Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt

I had never been South before.

My brother and I set out for Memphis in a Volkswagen that lost its clutch in Knoxville, and as we got closer, it seemed like I knew a blues lyric (“I’m going to Brownsville, take that right-hand road”) for nearly every town we passed. Our destination was the 1969 Memphis Country Blues Festival, which took place at the Overton Park Shell, where Elvis’ career had been launched fifteen years earlier. It was early June, hot, humid, sitting on the old wooden benches at the Overton Park amphitheater, there was no escape from the sun. But the music was magical: rediscovered (or recently discovered) blues legends like Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Reverend Robert Wilkins,

Fred McDowell, Joe Callicott, and Sleepy John Estes, all in their sixties and seventies, were the stars of the show, along with an assortment of young white disciples like John Fahey, Sid Selvidge, and Johnny Winter.

I had seen many of them before, certainly, in coffee houses and college concerts, but it was a different experience to see them for the first time in a steamier climate, and there was no question that the music benefited from the change. A new ten-album series on Fat Possum, developed in collaboration with Amazon Originals under the umbrella title of Worried Blues (most of the albums were originally issued in a limited edition by the Genes/Adelphi label in the ’90s), presents the first three on that 1969 Memphis bill, plus such other luminaries as Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Houston Stackhouse, R.L. Burnside, and Honeyboy Edwards, all recorded in what appear to be relaxed, easy-going settings at the outset of their new careers. And yet in few cases did those careers live up to the expectation of either artist or audience. The gulf between anticipation and achievement was simply too great.

Bukka White, one of the towering figures of pre-war country blues, whose 1940 recordings rivaled the taut poetry and tightly controlled performances of Robert Johnson (his indisputable masterpiece, “Fixin’ to Die,” was featured on Bob Dylan’s first album), is a case in point. To his young cousin, Riley B. King (soon to become B.B.), his visits home, to Kilmichael, Mississippi, in the early ’40s were like the visits of a Hollywood star. “Razor sharp. Big hat, clean shirt, pressed pants, shiny shoes. He smelled of the big city and glamorous times; he looked confident and talked about things outside our little life in the hills.” But it was Bukka’s music that impressed his younger cousin most, the ability “to connect [his] guitar to human emotions,” a standard that B.B. would strive to uphold all his life. Bukka (more properly “Booker” as in “Booker T. Washington White”) was rediscovered in 1963, when guitarist John Fahey, a brilliant blues abstractionist who preferred to describe his music as “American Primitive,” sent a letter to “Bukka White (Old Blues Singer), c/o General Delivery, Aberdeen, Mississippi,” on no other basis than that White had proclaimed in one of his early recordings, “Aberdeen is my home/But the men don’t want me around.” As it turned out, the letter was forwarded to the Memphis boarding house where Bukka lived while working part-time in a tank factory, and his musical career, on hold for the last fifteen years, almost immediately resumed.

Certainly the recordings on the Fat Possum album, originally titled 1963 Ain’t 1962, and made within weeks of his rediscovery, retain some of the power of his early work, and there are evocations, as there would be on subsequent recordings, too, of influences like Charlie Patton and contemporaries like Howlin’ Wolf. But it was clear at the same time that the knife-edge quality of his voice had coarsened, and the astonishing focus and fluidity of his songwriting and performance had ineradicably declined. And it was clear as well to anyone who had contact with the man that at fifty-four he was not looking for rediscovery, he was ready for the stardom that his cousin B.B. King had long since achieved. I think for me the most poignant manifestation of this dilemma came when I first saw Bukka, in the spring of 1964, as part of a folk series at the Boston YMCA, where the featured performer showed up for his Boston concert debut in a tuxedo, with little more than a dozen people in the audience (and not well-dressed ones at that) to applaud his performance.

With Skip James, the situation was somewhat different. Rediscovered in the Tunica County Hospital in June of 1964 by a trio of fans (once more including John Fahey), he was playing again, for the first time in years, at the Newport Folk Festival in July, his singular musical skills and imagination largely undiminished. He continued to develop his music, and even write new songs reflecting on his current situation, until his death five years later, but in a dark and characteristically introspective style that set him apart from almost every blues singer of his, or any other, generation. Playing in an open D-minor tuning that can best be described as “eerie” (it was a style that was confined almost entirely to his hometown of Bentonia, Mississippi, population then and now: less than 500), he sang fully thought-out and composed songs far removed from a blues mainstream that for the most part defines itself by fervor, not form. As a result, Skip never achieved anything like the popularity of many of his fellow rediscoveries, and it clearly ate at him to see the adulation that his good friend Mississippi John Hurt got from a young audience that was won over by the charm of both his personality and performance.

And just in case you should have any doubts on that score, listen to the music on almost any of Hurt’s recordings, early or late – I defy you to resist the nimble finger-picking and winsome charm of such performances as “Richland Woman,” “Louis Collins,” and “Avalon Blues,” or his self-deprecating star turn at the end of the PBS series American Epic. To Skip, though, this was little more than “play-party music,” perfectly good for dances and country suppers, as Skip’s manager Dick Waterman put it, but “not to be taken seriously as ‘great blues.’” And just for the record, Mississippi John Hurt agreed; he considered Skip a “genius,” beyond any doubt. But on the other hand, you wonder just how much of John’s irresistible charm was that very agreeableness.

There were few moments of rest for Skip, it seemed – he was ill, and he was troubled –  but I remember seeing him once with John at a Boston coffee house, where in addition to presenting their own songs in separate sets, they performed together as well. The two songs that I recall were utterly…all right, charming “Silent Night” (though you haven’t heard “Silent Night” until you hear Solomon Burke’s soaring, soulful version, recorded live in a Georgia church at the blazing height of summer) and Jimmie Rodgers’ epochal country (as in country music) blues “Waiting for a Train.” But let’s pause here for a moment, if only to recall all the different strands that go into all the different kinds of music. Jimmie Rodgers, as I’m sure everyone knows, was almost universally hailed as “The Father of Country Music,” and to all intents and purposes he was. And yet his music drew upon the most diverse sources, not the least of which was the ululating blues of Tommy Johnson, who (just to illustrate some of the complications endemic to every form of cultural transliteration) greatly influenced that purest of all blues singers, Howlin’ Wolf, who in turn cited as one of his greatest inspirations none other than…Jimmie Rodgers.

This was all, for me, in 1969, a vast unexplored land, and like every realm of the imagination it remains so to this day. There are always going to be new, or overlooked, or simply misconstrued, treasures to discover, there are always new and unexpected connections to be made. And I hope this is not beginning to sound like, ‘There were giants that walked the earth in those days,’ and that with the passing of those giants this kind of music is no more – that isn’t what I mean at all. If you need a mantra, just remember the lesson of the Internet, nothing ever really disappears, and listen to the music of new champions of the old and new, like the North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther and Cody Dickinson, who learned at the feet of such legendary champions of the hill country style as R.L Burnside and Junior Kimbrough and Otha Turner, listen to no less dedicated disciples like Dan Auerbach or Paul Burch or Colin Linden, or poetic practitioners like Kevin Gordon – and who knows how many more?

Because by now it should be clear there’s no end in sight – how could there be, unless we’re talking the twilight of the gods or the inescapable impermanence of the flesh? When I first came to Memphis in 1969, I did my best to imagine the world as it must once have been. A world in which Elvis’ performance of the Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup blues “That’s All Right” at the Overton Park Shell in 1954 stood out as a revolutionary act. And yet as I was later to learn, Elvis listened to the Metropolitan Opera, too, as a child, he went to Overton Park on many Sunday afternoons (“The same place that I did my first concert”) to hear the Memphis Symphony Orchestra play. While at the same time he was tuning in religiously to WDIA, the first all-black station in the country. And listening every night to DJ Dewey Phillips’ aptly named Red, Hot, and Blue show, which mixed r&b and pop, the sacred and the profane, the trivial and the profound for a black-and-white audience that competed in its fervor for both the music and its egalitarian champion. It took a long time for me to disimagine categories, but as Howlin’ Wolf said the first time we met, in response to one of those foolish questions we all tend to ask, like, What did he think of all these white kids, like the Rolling Stones, who had so recently adopted his music? Well, he said, he liked Paul Butterfield, “he grown up in it just like that other boy out in California, [who did] that ‘Hound Dog’ number.” You mean Elvis Presley? I finally managed to blurt out – I mean, I was caught. “Yeah,” said Wolf impatiently, as if the reference should have been obvious to anyone. “Elvis Presley,” he said, “he made it his way.”

Which only goes to show that nothing ever really changes. Marketing strategies (which, after all, is all that categories are) may rise and fall, but to the democratic listener they are beside the point. The music calls attention to itself, and then takes you somewhere else. It isn’t really any different than going to Memphis was for me in the first place. One thing inevitably leads to another, and before you know it, you are caught up in the ecstatic dance, the ecstatic trance of the music. But just remember: If you’re going to Brownsville, take that right-hand road.

This piece appeared in a slightly different form on The Oxford American website.

[jasonsutekh]

Dial M For Murder (1954)

A man comes up with the perfect way to murder his wife but in practise there are numerous complications.

 The idea of this film has the potential to be a rather good comedy film but the suspense method used creates a rather gripping film with many sources of tension without ruining the basic concept. The focus shifts between small details (keys, a watch, money, etc) and each one is a danger to wither the husband or the wife so rather than the suspense diminishing, it instead just moves its focal point.

 The film is largely, although not entirely, confined to the main room of the couple’s home but the way that it is shot makes the space work well and change depending on the mood. The camera tends to get closer to the characters or objects in moments of import and then draw backwards when things get calmer.

 The characters appear rather realistic and the narrative is sufficiently complex to maintain interest for the duration of the film. The lighting is also very key, especially just before the murder scene which still looks as though it could be from the play that the film is based on because of the dim lighting on the curtains and the fact that a prop, usually a lamp or a chair deliberately obstructs or divides the audience’s view at most points.

 Although it is set up as the perfect murder, the husband mostly just considers the financial aspects of it and although a lot goes wrong for him, one of the things that is not considered is the other people of the neighbourhood. If one of those people had seen the would-be killer enter or leave or saw him on his first visit to the house then it could have been reported and ruined the entire thing. The police also then proceed to set a trap just as complicated in which nothing goes wrong.

 7/10 -Well above average, but no masterpiece-

 -The extreme close-ups of the dialing in the film involved an oversized finger and phone because the camera could not focus when that far zoomed in.

-Because the film is based on a play, it comes with a traditional intermission about half way though.

-The lead woman’s dresses start bright and get progressively darker.

[hlr-mv]

Last Train Music Video Evaluation

Pre-Production

Back in January, when I was initially given the brief, I instantly knew that I wanted to collaborate with my Dad’s band, Bargain Blooze. Previously, I had  filmed their rehearsals and performances on a number of occasions but I had never worked on a music video for them as they currently only perform cover songs. My Dad had mentioned a few times that he had some songs that he wanted to record which I thought would be perfect for this project. Unfortunately, due to everyone’s busy schedules, it would have been almost impossible to record a new song in the space of a few months and film a video in time for the deadline. A couple of weeks later my dad came up with a solution; we film a music video for a song he wrote with his previous band, Devils River Blues Band, specifically the song Last Train (Rainford, 2005). I listened to some of the other songs from the album Dead Man’s Canyon (Devils River, 2005), but I felt that I could produce more of a narrative music video (which was the style I wanted to use) with this song. I also wanted to include a performance of the band as there are three members, using only the lead singer for the narrative sections of the video, then all three during the performance.

The song is about social conditioning, feeling trapped in the 9-5 work day and wanting to find a way out. I wanted to portray this topic in my narrative by interpreting the lyrics slightly. The genre of the song is blues. I went on Youtube.com and watched a couple of blues music videos to give me some inspiration on the style of video I should create such as Purple Haze Jimi Hendrix (1970) and Tears in Heaven Eric Clapton (1992).

Purple Haze, Jimi Hendrix (1970).

Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton (1992).

When I was watching these videos, I was looking specifically at the camera techniques including composition, movement and transitions. I noticed that the use of fades was common. Another element which I picked up on was the fact that music videos for blues tend to use darker colours which I took into account whilst colour grading later on in post-production. I wanted to follow the same techniques. To further my knowledge of the codes and conventions of music videos for the Blues genre, I attempted to do some research online however, I struggled to find any information and therefore I had to rely on the videos I had watched. 

Another video which I looked at was Happiness (Steve Cutts, 2017). The video tells the story of trying to find happiness and fulfilment in today’s society. The reason why I watched this video was to fully understand the theme in order to portray it in my music video effectively. It was this video that inspired me to include time-lapse’s.

Both my Dad and I had very similar ideas for the video. The only differences being, he wanted to include the quote by Charles Bukowski which can been seen in the opening of my music video and also, the two books which are shown; Brave New World By Aldous Huxley (Huxley, 1932) - a story set in a futuristic society which is based on science and efficiency and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (Matheson, 1954) - a novel focusing on the character Robert Neville who is supposedly the only survivor of a worldwide apocalypse. Both of which are very popular novels which my target audience will hopefully understand, the correlation between these stories and the narrative of both the song and music video.

Being completely honest, I did not write any notes whilst I was planning my ideas as I am more of a visual thinker. I planned it in my head by analysing the lyrics, listening to the song repeatedly and conversing with my dad. Throughout this process, I tried to visualise each scene, and building it up until I had a general idea of how I wanted this music video to look. 

As soon as I had my idea, I began my production folder (each stage can be viewed in my previous posts). 

Production

Whilst I was filming the scenes on the train, going towards Liverpool, I was supposed to have an extra appearing. As it happens, he got on the train after the one I was on so unfortunately he did not appear on the shoot as planned. Despite this, as we were travelling during rush hour, there were plenty of commuters in the background, on their phones which is what I wanted to capture anyway so this wasn’t really an issue. Once we arrived in Liverpool and has captured the majority of the footage that I wanted for my video, I began filming the time-lapses. I decided to add a few more locations specifically ones which portray commercialism and the rush of people heading to and from work. I had already planned to film on Church street and decided to film more time-lapses in other locations. I moved onto Liverpool One by John Lewis and then The Capital building which contains many offices for various companies. This time-lapse took ten minutes to film and my dad turned 360 degrees a couple of times to represent his character being engulfed in social conditioning. Then I moved onto Rainford Square as a little homage to my surname. When I began to situate my sequence together in post-production, I realised that I needed to film another time-lapse as the total duration for this section was not full as I had planned during pre-production. I went back into Liverpool the following week and filmed it while my dad was on his break from work. Originally, I planned to film this outside the Old Hall Street entrance of Moorfields Train station however, it was absolutely pouring down with rain so we got onto the train and went to Liverpool Central and filmed inside the station instead. 

Another change I made during production was for my final shot of the train driving off with the sunset in shot. I decided that as there is currently construction going on next to the train station, the view of the sunset would not appear in frame much. I went to Fisherman’s Path which is by Freshfield train station in Formby. I have walked around that area many times and knew it was a great alternative. I also saved money on travel as this location is closer to home. 

Finding the time to film with Bargain Blooze in their studio came with more difficulty than I expected. I kept asking my dad to make the rest of the band aware of my plans in order for us to schedule a suitable date to film. However, the band came across an issue concerning their drummer not being able to attend all gigs meaning, they had to bring in a new stand-in drummer. With many upcoming gigs quickly approaching, it was vital for the new drummer to have as much time as possible to rehearse. This delayed filming and dates kept changing and subsequently, the shoot was left to the last minute. Due to this, I began feeling very anxious about filming, successfully, in time for the deadline. I ended up filming the band in their studio a week before the deadline which wasn’t ideal at all incase I needed to capture more footage. All in all, the band only gave me twenty minutes to film for my music video which I wasn’t happy with at all since I had been planning this for so long. I also got the impression that my dad hadn’t given the other members much detail about what we were doing; for example, they had to learn the song there and then which understandably, made them a little uncomfortable due to the lack of preparation. Fortunately, I had filmed some of their rehearsal and I’m glad I did because I wasn’t able to capture everything I wanted for my music video. Therefore, I had to use some of the rehearsal footage in my music video in a way which syncs up with it. 

In both past and recent music videos, I have seen a lot camera movement,  some of which was very interesting. I wanted to incorporate this into my music video by being more experimental in terms of using gimbal moves that I have not used before to keep my target audience engaged. The video below gave me a lot of inspiration and I tried to copy some of the techniques used.

As I was filming a music video using a song from my dad’s old band which his current band mimed, it caused a bit of tension within the band. The bassist was not happy about filming and asked for the music video not to be shared on their Facebook page. Understandably, he’s being protective however, the rest of us could not really understand his issue as the band perform covers anyway so it doesn’t make too much of a difference. Despite this, the video has been shared multiple times by family and friends on Facebook and has almost 200 views on YouTube after one week. 

Post-Production

The post-production process was very straight forward. The only technical elements that I used were; cropping a few of the time-lapse shots to align their composition, use of on-screen text and colour grading. I particularly focused on colour grading. I wanted my music video to follow the codes and conventions of a blues music video as the song fits into this genre. As I mentioned earlier, I was unable to find any information on this so I looked at the use of colour in similar videos. I decided to make this video slightly cold looking. I used a LUT which I downloaded called Industrial STD. by Bubvisuals. I then went onto adjust the contrast, highlights (making them warmer by using orange shades), and a vignette. 

(Before)

(After)

In conclusion, I am pleased with the way my music video turned out. I found the production process slightly challenging however this pushed me to work harder in order for this project to be successful. I would’ve liked to have experimented with skilful techniques that I haven’t used before however due to the genre of music and from watching similar videos, I found that music videos of this genre are very simple and straightforward in terms of both the style and editing. I will definitely take this into consideration for future projects. I especially enjoyed researching past music videos as I have always had an interest in history. Previously, I had no desire of working on music videos as a career but since completing this project, it has become an interest of mine. 

After completing my practice music video, You (Dan Morgans, 2018), I have been contacted by a friend of Dan Morgans to film a music video for him which I will be working on over the summer. 

[justanotherrandomperson]

Hey, here’s a random ramble/analysis? of “Mr Green” because WHY NOT? WHO KNOWS ABOUT THIS MOVIE? WHO EVEN CARES? (Spoilers below for Clue)

I’m about to do a short analysis on a character from the 1985 cult classic comedy “Clue”, a loving satire of the who-dun-it genre and self-aware comedy based on the board game Cluedo. Yep, it exist and it’s quite an odd funny film. The character I’m exploring is one of the more complicated of the archetype-based characters “Mr Green” and it’s basically me saying that he actually is super gay. Clearly, within the narrative and context of the time it was filmed Mr Green, a seemingly clumsy, nervous and slightly effeminate lonely homosexual man that is revealed to be a super confident, intellectual, powerful, antagonist-killing spy, a man embodying American ideals of masculinity had it be sure to include that he was totally straight the whole time because he had to be, he is the secret hero after all but within the actual narrative it makes more sense that he was in fact actually gay all along and I’m gonna say why because why not.

Now, this is set in New England, America in 1954 and I’m not American and my knowledge of American politics and history is therefore limited but, in regards to the rights of homosexual men, The persona “Mr Green” says that, regarding homosexuality, he “must keep it a secret or (he) will lose (his) job on security grounds,” referring to the order by President Eisenhower in 1953 to prohibit federal employees from being members of a group/organisation that was considered subversive with “sexual perversion” listed as a security risk constituting grounds for termination and denial of employment. SO, yeah, he’s right, both his persona “Mr Green” who works for the state department and the real Green who works for the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover (Who, you know, was part of the crusade of uncovering homosexual spies within the force whilst being gay himself, most likely) would both be in BIG trouble if his homosexuality came to light. Why is this relevant? You’ll see!

Now the actual climatic initial plot twist reveal in the true ending of the narrative is that we find out the murdered Mr Boddy, the mastermind who was blackmailing all the colourful figures for their criminal actions for profit and initial victim was actually the real butler of Wadsworth, the posing butler and instigator of information. We know the real Mr Boddy has been  blackmailing all of them “For some considerable time, all of (them) have been paying what (they) can afford and, in some cases, more than (they) can afford to someone who threatens to expose you.” (stated by Wadsworth, the blackmailer, Mr Boddy himself) Clearly, the real Mr Boddy and the crew have not met each other before but he knows about them through the information he has collected of them, blackmailing them with it. Considering that, how does spy “Mr Green” work into the picture.

Invited by the real Mr Boddy himself, Wadsworth/Boddy intended to invite him and clearly has been actually blackmailing him, which begs the question: How did “Mr Green” plant himself into this whole affair, an event where someone who has been blackmailing a group of people for over a year sends out personal letters to invite them. Green planting himself by somehow trying to get Mr Boddy to get acted out homo-erotic photographs of him presumably with a fake male lover and then paying him for a year in order to get invited and then discover his identity and get him arrested seems very… unlikely. Considering the amount of homophobia within both society and within the FBI at the time, the idea that of all the criminal activities he could have faked to get planted and blackmailed for, homosexuality seems an odd choice, something he’d have to physically act out and have photographed, something so nauseating and humiliating, an ultimate betrayal of everything the American male ideal represents, more so than other criminal activities. Of course, faking a murder- thus presenting Green as dangerous- would be off the table but there are plenty more criminal acts that within the stagnant uncomfortable environment would be much more likely to fake before homosexuality. Personally, I feel like it’s more likely that Mr Boddy was able to get his hands on actual real photographs that were used to blackmail Green and he decided he was going to figure out how to find this man and get him arrested, thus calling on an investigation of this guy he has already “planted” himself into the affair of with a more personal vendetta, as well as a secret persona that he can call upon to keep his secret sexuality part of his very fake fictional persona he is acting out as a professional, linking any further evidence or rumour to him acting the role of the “deviant” as a spy for his country.

Clearly, the persona of “Mr Green” is a made up on, his personality smart but ultimately weak, clumsy and cowardly for the sake of making him nonthreatening, to not be possibly perceived as a threat so that when he is able to act out in his more confident, quick-acting true self he will take Mr Boddy off guard which he clearly does when he shoots him. Green is clearly a fairly great actor but it’s hard to know how well, the women and any of their sexually gratifying aspects have fairly active positive responses from the rest of the male guests with Mr Green quickly and actively being apathetic and repulsed. Of course, good acting or instinctual behaviour that he can freely show, there is no way to really know and this is clearly not my main point that he is gay.

The most distinct moment during the Mr Green persona, between Green actively trying to showcase his carelessness, his cowardice and his nervousness and lack of control in continuous “I didn’t do it”, is when Mr Green stands up for himself and shows a great sense of confidence in his homosexuality, which in no way adds to make him be seen as someone easily manipulated and is far closer to his actual personality, little that we see.

He says, “I have something to say. I'm not going to wait for Wadsworth here to unmask me. I work for the state department. And I am a homosexual. I feel no personal shame or guilt about this. But I must keep it a secret or I will lose my job on security grounds. . . . Thank you.” Mr Green actively puts himself in control of the situation and unabashedly owns up to his sexuality with a sense of confidence. A more in-line Mr Green might stumble to cut Wadsworth off in shame and nervousness, or let himself be outed as he fell apart, let himself be perceived as a weak pawn in Mr Boddy’s game but he didn’t. If Green was legitimately gay and was in this situation he may have acted out in this way for two reasons. 1. He didn’t want to be outed by someone else, a very personally vulnerable and exhausting experience that would badly affected him and 2. He wanted to for a moment be able to actually be himself and openly admit his actual feelings within the safety of the persona’s character.

Of course the final lines is “I’m going home to sleep with my wife” which was, of course, the quick way to pull-out that OF COURSE, the gay was a charade, GOTTA MAKE SURE THE AUDIENCE KNOWS THERE AIN’T NO GOOD GAYS HERE. But…. what if….. Mr Green, now surrounded by his peers, after acting as the gay man he is but doesn’t want to be known as, having finally killed the guy he was after who blackmailed him, was taking a moment of celebratory happiness and was awkwardly trying to reaffirm his straight orientation that he most definitely has. I mean, it could be a “straight” lie or…. Even a misconstrued truth, his “wife” being his male lover who is a drag queen who uses “wife” as their drag name. Anyway, that’s just my headcannon, him crying out he’s going back to be with his “Wife”, perceived in all it’s faux heterosexualness.

Now clearly this whole thing wasn’t the way Mr Green was meant to be interpreted but the movie didn’t care about the small plot holes and if I can fill them by pointing out how secretly gay Mr Green actually is that’s what I’m gonna do. So, yep. I just wrote this casually on the train home from work. I’m not even editing this mess. Enjoy.

Tldr: Mr Green is super gay for real, trust me.

[blackkudos]

Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia Jackson (/məˈheɪljə/ mə-HAYL-yə; October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel". She became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer and civil rights activist. She was described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as "the single most powerful black woman in the United States". She recorded about 30 albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career, and her 45 rpm records included a dozen "golds"—million-sellers.

"I sing God's music because it makes me feel free", Jackson once said about her choice of gospel, adding, "It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues."

Early life

She was born on October 26, 1911 as Mahala Jackson and nicknamed "Halie". Jackson grew up in the Black Pearl section of the Carrollton neighborhood of uptown New Orleans. The three-room dwelling on Pitt Street housed thirteen people and a dog. This included Little Mahala (named after her aunt, Mahala Clark-Paul whom the family called Aunt Duke); her brother Roosevelt Hunter, whom they called Peter; and her mother Charity Clark, who worked as both a maid and a laundress. Several aunts and cousins lived in the house as well. Aunt Mahala was given the nickname "Duke" after proving herself the undisputed "boss" of the family. The extended family (the Clarks) consisted of her mother's siblings: Isabell, Mahala, Boston, Porterfield, Hannah, Alice, Rhoda, Bessie, their children, grandchildren, and patriarch Rev. Paul Clark, a former slave. Jackson's father, John A. Jackson, Sr. was a stevedore (dockworker) and a barber who later became a Baptist minister. He fathered five other children besides Mahalia: Wilmon (older) and then Yvonne, Edna, Pearl, and Johnny, Jr. (by his marriage shortly after Halie's birth). Her father's sister, Jeanette Jackson-Burnett, and her husband, Josie, were vaudeville entertainers. Their son, her cousin Edward, shared stories and records of Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith whose voices and blues singing impressed her so much that she would imitate their ways of bending and coloring notes. (Her voice and singing style would be compared to Bessie Smith's all her life).

At birth, Jackson suffered from genu varum, or "bowed legs". The doctors wanted to perform surgery by breaking her legs, but one of the resident aunts opposed it. Jackson's mother would rub her legs down with greasy dishwater. The condition never stopped young Jackson from performing her dance steps for the white woman for whom her mother and Aunt Bell cleaned house.

Jackson was four (or five) years old when her mother Charity died (at the age of 25), leaving her family to decide who would raise Halie and her brother. Aunt Duke assumed this responsibility, and the children were forced to work from sun-up to sun-down. Aunt Duke would always inspect the house using the "white glove" method. If the house was not cleaned properly, Jackson was beaten. If one of the other relatives could not do their chores or clean at their job, Jackson or one of her cousins was expected to perform that particular task. School was hardly an option. Jackson loved to sing and church is where she loved to sing the most. Her Aunt Bell told her that one day she would sing in front of royalty, a prediction that would eventually come true. Jackson began her singing career at the local Mount Moriah Baptist Church. At 12 years old, she was baptized in the Mississippi River by Mt. Moriah's pastor, the Rev. E.D. Lawrence, then went back to the church to "receive the right hand of fellowship".

Career

1920s–1940s

In 1927, at the age of 16, Jackson moved to Chicago, Illinois, in the midst of the Great Migration. After her first Sunday school service, where she had given an impromptu performance of her favorite song, "Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet, Gabriel", she was invited to join the Greater Salem Baptist Church Choir. She began touring the city's churches and surrounding areas with the Johnson Gospel Singers, one of the earliest professional gospel groups. In 1929, Jackson met the composer Thomas A. Dorsey, known as the Father of Gospel Music. He gave her musical advice, and in the mid-1930s they began a 14-year association of touring, with Jackson singing Dorsey's songs in church programs and at conventions. His "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" became her signature song.

In 1936, Jackson married Isaac Lanes Grey Hockenhull ("Ike"), a graduate of Fisk University and Tuskegee Institute who was 10 years her senior. She refused to sing secular music, a pledge she would keep throughout her professional life. She was frequently offered money to do so and she divorced Isaac in 1941 because of his unrelenting pressure on her to sing secular music and his addiction to gambling on racehorses.

In 1931, Jackson recorded "You Better Run, Run, Run". Not much is known about this recording and no publicly known copies exist. Biographer Laurraine Goreau cites that it was also around this time she added the "i" to her name, changing it from Mahala to Mahalia, pronounced /məˈheɪliə/. At the age of 25, her second set of records was recorded on May 21, 1937, under the Decca Coral label, accompanied by Estelle Allen (piano), in order: "God's Gonna Separate The Wheat From The Tares", "My Lord", "Keep Me Everyday" and "God Shall Wipe All Tears Away". Financially, these were not successful, and Decca let her go.

In 1947, Jackson signed up with the Apollo label, and in 1948, recorded the William Herbert Brewster song "Move On Up a Little Higher", a recording so popular stores could not stock enough copies to meet demand, selling an astonishing eight million copies. (The song was later honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.) The success of this record rocketed her to fame in the U.S., and soon after, in Europe. During this time she toured as a concert artist, appearing more frequently in concert halls and less often in churches. As a consequence of this change in her venues, her arrangements expanded from piano and organ to orchestral accompaniments.

Other recordings received wide praise, including "Let the Power of the Holy Ghost Fall on Me" (1949), which won the French Academy's Grand Prix du Disque; and "Silent Night", which became one of the best-selling singles in the history of Norway. When Jackson sang "Silent Night" on Denmark's national radio, more than 20,000 requests for copies poured in. Other recordings on the Apollo label included "He Knows My Heart" (1946), "Amazing Grace" (1947), "Tired" (1947), "I Can Put My Trust in Jesus" (1949), "Walk with Me" (1949), "Let the Power of the Holy Ghost Fall on Me" (1949), "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (1950), "The Lord's Prayer" (1950), "How I Got Over" (1951), "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" (1951), "I Believe" (1953), "Didn't It Rain" (1953), "Hands of God" (1953) and "Nobody Knows" (1954).

1950s–1970s

In 1950, Jackson became the first gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall when Joe Bostic produced the Negro Gospel and Religious Music Festival. She started touring Europe in 1952 and was hailed by critics as the "world's greatest gospel singer". In Paris she was called the Angel of Peace, and throughout the continent she sang to capacity audiences. The tour, however, had to be cut short due to exhaustion. She began a radio series on CBS and signed to Columbia Records in 1954. A writer for Down Beat music magazine stated on November 17, 1954: "It is generally agreed that the greatest spiritual singer now alive is Mahalia Jackson." Her debut album for Columbia was The World's Greatest Gospel Singer, recorded in 1954, followed by a Christmas album called Sweet Little Jesus Boy and Bless This House in 1956.

With her mainstream success, Jackson was criticized by some gospel purists who complained about her hand-clapping and foot-stomping and about her bringing "jazz into the church". She had many notable accomplishments during this period, including her performance of many songs in the 1958 film St. Louis Blues, singing "Trouble of the World" in 1959's Imitation of Life, and recording with Percy Faith. When she recorded The Power and the Glory with Faith, the orchestra arched their bows to honor her in solemn recognition of her great voice. She was the main attraction in the first gospel music showcase at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957, which was organized by Joe Bostic and recorded by the Voice of America and performed again in 1958 (Newport 1958). She was also present at the opening night of Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music in December 1957. In 1961, she sang at John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball. She recorded her second Christmas album Silent Night (Songs for Christmas) in 1962. By this time, she had also become a familiar face to British television viewers as a result of short films of her performing that were occasionally shown.

At the March on Washington in 1963, Jackson sang in front of 250,000 people "How I Got Over" and "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned". Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech there. She also sang "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at his funeral after he was assassinated in 1968. She sang to crowds at the 1964 New York World's Fair and was accompanied by "wonderboy preacher" Al Sharpton. She toured Europe again in 1961 (Recorded Live in Europe 1961), 1963–64, 1967, 1968 and 1969. In 1970, she performed for Liberian President William Tubman.

Jackson's last album was What The World Needs Now (1969). The next year, in 1970, she and Louis Armstrong performed "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" together. She ended her career in 1971 with a concert in Germany, and when she returned to the U.S., made one of her final television appearances on The Flip Wilson Show. She devoted much of her time and energy to helping others. She established the Mahalia Jackson Scholarship Foundation for young people who wanted to attend college. For her efforts in helping international understanding, she received the Silver Dove Award. Chicago remained her home until the end. She opened a beauty parlor and a florist shop with her earnings, while also investing in real estate ($100,000 a year at her peak).

In 1970, she guest-starred on episode 56 of Sesame Street, singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", followed by Gordon Robinson (played by Matt Robinson) finding hidden E's.

Civil rights movement

Jackson played an important role during the civil rights movement. In August 1956, she met Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr. at the National Baptist Convention. A few months later, both King and Abernathy contacted her about coming to Montgomery, Alabama, to sing at a rally to raise money for the bus boycott. They also hoped she would inspire the people who were getting discouraged with the boycott.

Despite death threats, Jackson agreed to sing in Montgomery. Her concert was on December 6, 1956. By then, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Browder v. Gayle that bus segregation was unconstitutional. In Montgomery, the ruling was not yet put into effect, so the bus boycott continued. At this concert she sang "I've Heard of a City Called Heaven", "Move On Up a Little Higher" and "Silent Night". There was a good turnout at the concert and they were happy with the amount of money raised. However, when she returned to the Abernathy's home, it had been bombed. The boycott finally ended on December 21, 1956, when federal injunctions were served, forcing Montgomery to comply with the court ruling.

Although Jackson was internationally known and had moved up to the northern states, she still encountered racial prejudice. One account of this was when she tried to buy a house in Chicago. Everywhere she went, the white owners and real estate agents would turn her away, claiming the house had already been sold or they changed their minds about selling. When she finally found a house, the neighbors were not happy. Shots were fired at her windows and she had to contact the police for protection. White families started moving out and black families started moving in. Everything remained the same in her neighborhood except for the skin color of the residents.

King and Abernathy continued to protest segregation. In 1957, they founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The first major event sponsored by the SCLC was the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1957, the third anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. From this point forward, Jackson appeared often with King, singing before his speeches and for SCLC fundraisers. In a 1962 SCLC press release, he wrote she had "appeared on numerous programs that helped the struggle in the South, but now she has indicated that she wants to be involved on a regular basis". Jesse Jackson said when King called on her, she never refused, traveling with him to the deepest parts of the segregated South.

At the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, Jackson performed "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned", before King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Toward the end of the speech, he departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme "I have a dream", prompted by Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!"

Jackson said that she hoped her music could "break down some of the hate and fear that divide the white and black people in this country". She also contributed financially to the movement.

Death

Jackson died in Chicago on January 27, 1972 at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, Illinois, of heart failure and diabetes complications. Two cities paid tribute: Chicago and New Orleans. Beginning in Chicago, outside the Greater Salem Baptist Church, 50,000 people filed silently past her mahogany, glass-topped coffin in final tribute to the queen of gospel song. The next day, as many people who could—6,000 or more—filled every seat and stood along the walls of the city's public concert hall, the Arie Crown Theater of McCormick Place, for a two-hour funeral service. Her pastor, Rev. Leon Jenkins, Mayor Richard J. Daley, and Mrs. Coretta Scott King eulogized her during the Chicago funeral as "a friend – proud, black and beautiful". Sammy Davis, Jr., and Ella Fitzgerald paid their respects. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., delivered the eulogy at the Chicago funeral. Aretha Franklin closed the Chicago rites with a moving rendition of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand".

Three days later, a thousand miles away, the scene repeated itself: again the long lines, again the silent tribute, again the thousands filling the great hall of the Rivergate Convention Center in downtown New Orleans this time. Mayor Moon Landrieu and Louisiana Governor John J. McKeithen joined gospel singer Bessie Griffin. Dick Gregory praised Jackson's "moral force" as the main reason for her success. Lou Rawls sang "Just a Closer Walk With Thee". The funeral cortège of 24 limousines drove slowly past her childhood place of worship, Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, where her recordings played through loudspeakers. The procession made its way to Providence Memorial Park in Metairie, Louisiana, where she was entombed. Despite the inscription of her birth year on her gravestone as 1912, she was actually born in 1911. Among her surviving relatives are her great-nephews, NBA basketball player Danny Granger and soul artist Scotty Granger.

Jackson's estate was reported at more than four million dollars. Some reporters estimated record royalties, television and movie residuals, and various investments made it worth more. The bulk of the estate was left to a number of relatives, many of whom cared for her during her early years. Among principal heirs were relatives including her half-brother, John Jackson, and aunt, Hannah Robinson. Neither of her ex-husbands, Isaac Hockenhull (1936–1941) and Sigmund Galloway (1964–1967), were mentioned in her will.

Legacy and honors

Jackson's music was played widely on gospel and Christian radio stations, such as Family Radio. Her good friend Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "A voice like this one comes not once in a century, but once in a millennium." She was a close friend of Doris Akers, one of the most prolific gospel composers of the 20th century. In 1958, they cowrote the hit "Lord, Don't Move the Mountain". Mahalia also sang many of Akers' own compositions such as "God Is So Good to Me", "God Spoke to Me One Day", "Trouble", "Lead On, Lord Jesus" and "He's a Light Unto My Pathway", helping Akers to secure her position as the leading female Gospel composer of that time. In addition to her singing career, she mentored the legendary soul singer Aretha Franklin. Jackson was also good friends with Dorothy Norwood and fellow Chicago-based gospel singer Albertina Walker, and she discovered a young Della Reese. On the 20th anniversary of her death, Smithsonian Folkways Recording commemorated her with the album I Sing Because I'm Happy, which includes interviews about her childhood conducted by Jules Scherwin.

American Idol winner and Grammy Award-winning R&B singer Fantasia Barrino has been cast to play Jackson in a biographical film about her life. It will be based on the 1993 book Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel. It is said to be directed by Euzhan Palcy, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences created the Gospel Music or Other Religious Recording category for Jackson, making her the first gospel music artist to win the prestigious Grammy Award.

In December 2008, she was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

A prominent namesake in her native New Orleans is the Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts, which was remodeled and reopened on January 17, 2009, with a gala ceremony featuring Plácido Domingo, Patricia Clarkson, and the New Orleans Opera directed by Robert Lyall.

Mahalia Jackson was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 1967 in the area of The Performing Arts.

Selective awards and honors

Grammy Award historyGrammy Hall of Fame

Jackson was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor artists whose recordings are at least twenty-five years old and have "qualitative or historical significance". Jackson is a three-time inductee as of 2015.

Honors

Well-known songs

In popular culture

Jackson appears in the 1960 film Jazz on a Summer's Day – an artistic documentary filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. She sings three gospel numbers at the end of the film, including "The Lord's Prayer".

In the 1958 movie St. Louis Blues, Jackson played the character Bessie May and sang in the church choir.

In the movie Jungle Fever, the character played by Ossie Davis tries to distract himself from his son Gator's (Samuel L. Jackson) crack cocaine addiction by listening to her albums by the hour.

In the 1959 film Imitation of Life, Jackson portrays the choir soloist, singing "Trouble of the World" at Annie's funeral. She has no speaking lines, but her singing performance highlights the climactic scene.

In the 1964 film The Best Man, Jackson plays herself, singing at a Democratic Convention in a two-minute clip.

In the television promotional special This Way to Sesame Street, Ernie mentions Jackson as one of the celebrities who occasionally visit Sesame Street.

Duke Ellington, with whom Jackson occasionally recorded, most notably on the studio version of Black, Brown and Beige, paid tribute to her on his New Orleans Suite album with the song "Portrait of Mahalia Jackson".

In the 1970 documentary movie Elvis: That's the Way It Is, Elvis Presley jokes with one of his back-up singing groups The Sweet Inspirations that, "I'm gonna bring in the Supremes tomorrow night, you know. And Mahalia Jackson singing lead with them."

Alan Parker's 1988 film Mississippi Burning starts with Jackson's famous recording of "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" over the opening credits, over a poignant scene of a pair of segregated water fountains.

In the 2014 film Selma, she is portrayed by singer Ledisi.

Columbia Records discography

World's Greatest Gospel Singer

Sweet Little Jesus Boy

Bless This House

You'll Never Walk Alone

Gospels, Spirituals, & Hymns (1956)

Live at Newport 1958

Great Gettin' Up Morning

Come On Children, Let's Sing

The Power and the Glory

I Believe

Everytime I Feel the Spirit

Recorded Live in Europe During Her Latest Concert Tour

Great Songs of Love and Faith

Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord

Silent Night

Mahalia Jackson's Greatest Hits

Let's Pray Together

Mahalia

Garden of Prayer

My Faith

Mahalia Jackson in Concert Easter Sunday, 1967

A Mighty Fortress

Christmas With Mahalia

Mahalia Sings the Gospel Right Out of the Church

What the World Needs Now

Compilations

Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (1975) Vogue

The Best of Mahalia Jackson Hymns, Spirituals & Songs of Inspiration (1976)

Mahalia Jackson's Greatest Hits (1988) Columbia Records

Mahalia Jackson: The Apollo Sessions 1946–1951 (re-issued 1994) Pair Records

The Forgotten Recordings (2005) Acrobat

Wikipedia