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The American in Me
Philip Roth also wrote "The Great American Novel," which literally is an ur-text what with the character Gil Gamesh and all...... Best J. Charles Swift <jcswift@Frictionless.com> J. Charles, The seriously underrated- and-I-don't-care-what-anyone-says- to-the-contrary Roth is guilty of playing the American Card too often, but that doesn't detract from The Ghost Writer, Mr. Swift. No, it does not! Plus, I admire the way he lives: doing push-ups in his shack in the woods and producing PAGES. If only I could get it together like that, I could get some serious, oh so very serious, work-like work done, too. I've gotta get organizized. And I wouldn't make the mistakes he has. I'd call my book American Novel right off the American Bat. The title you remind us of doesn't qualify under the conditions set out in my piece. Maybe if he had called it American Gilgamesh. "The" and "Great," as ironic-pretentious as they are, point to another problem that certain Rothish authors fall prey to. It's a coy psychological quirk that leads to the inclusion of certian words in their titles that indicate how goshdarn great they are, but at the same time how lovable, how huggable, and how downright humble and squeezable, too. Examples are on the very cusp of being unnecessary, so I won't bother. Thanks for writing! Slotcar Hatebath Just across the River from You 
Subject: Profound! That's what I said when I read your essay. I remember looking up the number of movies that had "American" in the title a few years back, and it seems like the mess started with Reagan, as did so many messes. Pre 1980 you had relatively few movies that had American in the title, and then, after the election of the motherless swine, we started seeing movies like American Me, American Ninja, American Flyers and American Anthem--a real stinker, that, with ex-Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord in the lead. Possibly the new wave of "Americana" is an indice that Bush will be elected, though it's said his electability is due to the fact that he's confident. Of course he's confident--have you ever seen an idiot that wasn't? I'm so glad you mentioned that wonderful Butthole Surfers track--I've always loved it, especially the part in the middle where they start quoting from the Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing at Baxters" -the Buttholes, masters of one kind of psychedelic gibberish, saluting previous pioneers of it. (Remember Paul Kantner yelling "No man is an island! No man is an island! He's a peninsula.") Keep up the good work, Richard von Busack <regisgoat@earthlink.net> Von B., Don't you mean American Profound! Adding exclamation points to these things can only help. Yes, The Reagan (as Zontar magazine used to call him) certainly ushered in a climate (can you usher in a climate?) that promoted such pointless jingoism. I mean, American Ninja? But stupidity will out, and now we're stuck with titles like those in every medium. Eventually, every other TV show will be called American Something, and then the trend will reverse itself and hibernate until it's American Spring again. It's easy to blame Ronnie, and point to him as the historical reason for all this American Shit. But why so much of it in the last two years? It just goes to show: Clinton, Reagan -- as Alicia Silverstone said in American Clueless, "Whatever." SH
Damn it! And I had just finished my new novel: American American. Oh the horror. I hope the Today show doesn't get wind of your editorial before Oprah picks up my book! And I though I was so coy. Russell Warner <russell@privatecube.privatelabs.com> Russ, Fear not! Let me suggest American Novel. I'm never gonna finish that anyway. You can have it! Use it in your act with American Pride and American Joy. Slotcar
Mr. Hatebath, As with your excellent essay on scare quotes, one hopes that you have stopped another trend in its tracks. You know, these are both Boomer phenomena -- why didn't you point that out? Supposedly ironizing air quotes and empty sarcastic gestures like adding "American" to your title are the bailiwick of the same pony-tailed fuck-heads who are always castigating their juniors for not, like getting involved, man! (Speaking of sarcasm, it was hard to tell: do you REALLY like Lisa Bonet, or were you being flip?) How old are you, anyway, Hatebath? Unlike most of the Sucksters, you're so un-worldweary! Are you a brilliant 15-year-old who's been feigning autism for 10 years so your family would leave you alone, or are you a 900-year-old man who's just been dug up out of a peat bog in Hackensack? I mean, "American Decoy" - that is genius! PS: Terry Colon misspelled "Prejudice" on one of the illos. M. Wilson Del., OH <mattdamon69@hotmail.com> Mr. Wilson, Of course I like Lisa freaking Bonet! Am I not living and breathing? Do I not have a deep appreciation for American acting, on and off American Sitcoms, not to mention American Singing? (Or was it American Lip-synching in High Fidelity? Either way it was CONVINCING.) Why Bonet isn't a movie star on the level of a Suvari is beyond me. I guess maybe she's difficult or something. Probably permanently scarred by the Mickey Rourke-Robert De Niro double whammy she had to put up with on the set of Angel Heart. Maybe it's better that as an American Actress of her generation she never really made it into superstardom. Look at it this way: she never had to kiss Dennis Quaid, Judge Reinhold, or Adam Sandler. And to answer your question about my age, as the exciting Penelope has found out much to her dismay, I'm a horrible combination of a brilliant 15 year old boy and a 900 year old frozen caveman. How'd you guess? And what's with this crap about how the Sucksters are jaded? Don't you read Filler? It's all about hope, Matty, all about hope for a better world. Terry DID NOT spell prejudice incorrectly. That was an arch reference to the dialect humor in such American Novels as Huckleberry Finn. Boy, that one went right over your head. He did, however, spell "camp" wrong. As you can see, it starts with a C and there's no F at the end. American Hatebath (Stay Away from Me)
Hi Slotcar, interesting essay. Over the last year I've been pretty surprised by the "US transgenerational embrace of the song [American Woman]". I could understand why Kravitz could sing it with conviction, but as for the rest of the public, I assumed Americans were finding some kind of subtle meaning in the song that I couldn't perceive. It never occurred to me that "people don't listen to lyrics", which seems to explain the phenomenon much more succinctly. You asked the question, 'If the "American Woman" is a simple substitute for America, and the song's "me" represents Canada, how can one "stay away" from the other?'. Of course, no western country, least of all Canada, can "stay away" from America in a cultural sense, which I suppose lends an element of pathos to the song. I always took it as a simple anti-Vietnam War diatribe, futilely railing against the apparently seductive (and destructive) potential of rabid US jingoism. I suspect Burton Cummings knew full well that yelling "stay away" wouldn't halt American influence. Then again, perhaps without that song NAFTA would have come into being a decade earlier... Jeremy Smith <jbrentonsmith@hotmail.com> Hey, Smith, I don't need your war machines and I don't need your ghetto scenes, OK? Lay off with the heavy duty politics. You're making my head hurt, man. I just want to groove. A quick perusal of Burton Cummings's CD booklet notes in the Buddah rerelease of the American Woman LP proves one thing conclusively, however: Burton doesn't know a goddamn thing, and he now lives in LA, not Canada. If all Americans could listen to The Guess Who's acoustic intro to "American Woman" in the full-length LP version of the song, they'd be too depressed about their fellow Man to do anything. All that rabid jingoism would be a thing of the past. Kravitz's version may be enervating, but nothing can beat that intro (repeated at the end of the album just to rub your face in it) for outright lameness. Wow, is it bad. Listen to THAT and stop worrying about NAFTA. If that LP was a hit with the people who grew up to give us NAFTA, then Canadians and Americans need to get together right now. As those people get older, NAFTA is going to be the least of our worries. Yours, Slotcar Hatebath
Slotcar - Interesting essay, and definitely a trend that's becoming all encompassing in modern cultural (ultimately watering down something that's "Already been watered down all she can be watered" to paraphrase groundskeeper Willie on the Simpsons). A couple of examples you don't mention but that buttress your points. James Ellroy's 1995 "American Tabloid," a portrait of all that was filthy and corrupt in our country during the "Leave It to Beaver" era. Also, John Steinbeck's little known, but remarkable collection of essays: "America and the Americans." Probably speaks most closely to what your piece is talking about, as Steinbeck laments the destruction of the experiment that was America due to an apathetic populace. Worth checking out, if you can find it. Take it easy, Bob Dunn Green Magazine <RobertD@GreenMagazine.com> American Bob-- Ellroy's excellent novel was, as you point out, released in 1995, and I was trying to restrict myself to stuff from the last two years - and stuff that's on its way. But you're right: as with Roth, Ellroy is another admirable author who succumbed to the quick jolt the patriotic adjective can deliver. In the '70s, a decade pretentious in a different way, these things would've had the one-word portentous title: simply Tabloid, or Pastoral. Paul Schrader was in the forefront of this shift - not American Taxi Driver, but, yes, American Gigolo. Thanks for writing in from Green magazine. Can you lend me $10,000? Or would it be easier to get $100,000 out of you? Slotcar Hatebath
This may well be the mother of all American titles. American Toenail is a noir mystery with horror undertones, its director and cast inexplicably fallen into complete obscurity. It is a black and white B movie from the early fifties depicting the tribulations of the son of an eastern european immigrant family in the midwest. The young man goes to the big city (Chicago?) to find fame and fortune, leaving his family back in a squalid little farm lost on the prairie. The opening scene has our hero trimming his toenails in his cheap hotel room, when some fancy suited individuals come knocking on his door, mistaking him for the room's previous occupant. The rest of the film has him fleeing from his relentless and rather kinky-sadistic pursuers, who use bloodhounds and a single, large toenail fragment found in the hotel room to hunt him down, hence the title. Such grotesque titles probably didn't go over well back then, so it is no great surprise that this otherwise interesting little gem has been utterly forgotten. It is similar in tone and texture to The Respectful Prostitute and Los Olvidados. Heinz Hemken <heinz@dna.com> Sorry, Heinz. Arthur Penn made that movie in 1965. It's called Mickey One. If only it had been more like Los Olvidados. Good luck with the American Genome or whatever you're working on over there. When you do graph the whole thing, I bet you'll find that it's more ominous, somehow, that other genomes. More charged. More rugged, sure, but more threatening, too. You'll see. Thanks for readin' and writin' in- Slotcar Hatebath
Metaphoria Quote from this article: "By reducing the Holocaust to dramatic backstory for a superhero movie, Bryan Singer has confirmed his role as the first great director of the 20th Century." So, am I real dense, or is there a typo there? Should that be "21st Century?" Or are you saying that Singer is somehow behind the times, directing 20th-century movies in a 21st-century world? Like, if you said "the first great director of the 14th Century," haw haw haw? Or is it a reference to the fact that the Holocaust happened in the 20th century? Or maybe some really nerdy mathematical calendar point about how the year 2000 is REALLY still part of the 20th century? I dunno, it just doesn't ring true to me. SRB, Mr. Bad <mr.bad@pigdog.org> Hi, Mr. Bad. Although I'd like to claim it as an across the board snub that would make John Simon proud, it's just a typo. Best, 40th Street Black
Ok, I've been reading your stuff for a while now, and I've enjoyed about every article that you've written. That being said, the smarminess and sarcastic tone of your X-Men article was a big disappointment. I was a fan of the comic book when I was a kid, and the marked difference between the X-Men and any of the other possible movie titles that you suggest is this: X-Men the comic book was completely based around the more serious concept of discrimination and prejudice. The book was an allegory from the start - one that became even more serious in tone as the years went on. Don't get me wrong, the stories feature people in tights and a bunch of ass-kicking, but I (and many others) always gave credit to the series because it dealt with a wide variety of thoughtful issues instead of just serving up the same old crime fighting bullshit. Brian Singer's use of the holocaust to establish Magneto's motivation for combating the human race isn't directorial (poetic) license, it just follows the history of the comic book accurately. Your contempt or amusement (I can't decide which) at such weighty matters being showcased in such a juvenile or mindless format (summer blockbuster and comic book combined? Good heavens!) is somewhat understandable, but c'mon, let it slide. It adds to the story, and the franchise's popularity might gently nudge another generation of dorky young 'uns to draw positive conclusions about tolerance. You're still batting about .800 in my book, Bill Ardolino <Bill.Ardolino@MeriStar.com> Thanks for your note, and thanks for your kind comment about batting .800. The problem I have with the X-Men-as-discrimination-parable argument and similar broad metaphors in popular media the last 20 years or so is that they're used less as an opportunity for literary exploration than as a quasi-marketing tool to argue cultural weight for escapist entertainment. Watching a film like X-Men doesn't yield a wealth of insight. Since I don't think that victims of racism and superheroes have very much in common, I'm left without a compelling description of how racism works. And unless the film's creators are meditating on degrees of violent response as a proper solution, I don't think the metaphor extends very far past "This is bad." While it's certainly better to say "Discrimination is bad" than "Discrimination is good," the cultural value of such messages in popular entertainment resides on a slippery slope that almost always ends up with a favorite cliche from the early '90s - the "very special episode of Blossom." Those kinds of entertainment make for fine rudimentary civics lessons; but they also display all the signs of being bad art, and there's a real danger of exploiting the issues engaged for ratings/box office if you're not careful. Generally, I think films that try to engage sophisticated issues should be examined on their ability to do so, and I think these broad modern fantasies really fail. Best, 40th Street Black
Just read your recent article "Metaphoria" on Suck. Amusing in many respects. With regards to the Battlestar Galactica part, the humans did not create the brutish tin can Ceylons. The Ceylons were created by another race who suffered the fate you described and then went on the warpath to kill the humans. Have to find another series for the dumb-humans-did-it-to-themselves jokes. Byron Barker <barkerb@northcoast.com> I stand admonished. Although the humans were stupid enough to enter into treaties with them, which I guess makes that first episode of BG clumsy Cold War commentary. You know, if you think about it, "dumb-humans-did-it-to-themselves" describes EVERY TV show. Best, 40th Street Black
Dear Mr. Spurgeon, I really enjoyed your column in today's Suck. You might be interested in taking a look at the review of X-Men I posted on my Web site that touches on some of the questions you raise about the film.Best wishes, Dave C Dave Clayton <daveclayton@worldnet.att.net> I think we start with similar insights and go in different directions, but that's by far the most interesting reading of the movie I've seen. Anyone who uses "apotropaic" or "desuetude" without blinking is my kind of film reviewer to begin with. Best, 40th Street Black
"...Martin Luther King and Malcolm X funded elite militias that constantly beat the crap out of each other." Where can I find out more about this? TWF I know what you mean. I would have actually paid attention those last few weeks of high school history class if there had been less talkin', more blowin' stuff up. 40th Street Black By reducing the Holocaust to dramatic backstory for a superhero movie, Bryan Singer has confirmed his role as the first great director of the 20th Century. first...of the 20th Century? Stephen Ericson <sjericson@mindspring.com> I know, I know. It's all part of my overall plan to erode whatever small amount of trust exists between the Suck copyeditors and myself. Best, 40th Street Black
And yet, you forget the Tick... Mason <mason@gol.com> We've all forgotten the Tick. Every last one of us. But I think there's a TV show, right? So we'll all soon be reminded. Thanks for writing, 40th Street Black
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