Focus on Minh Lê and Dan Santat

I didn't want to call this a spotlight, because separately they both have several books that I have not read.

This happened by accident.

If I recall correctly, Drawn Together came up when I was searching for something else and looked interesting. A grandparent and grandson have language barriers, but are able to connect through drawing. 

I liked it, but I didn't think about it much beyond that. However, I am not the only person in this household who goes through a lot of picture books. The other one brought home Built to Last (the structures two friends build in play always get knocked down, but their friendship doesn't) in April. 

Those names sounded familiar so I looked. It had been almost a year, but yes, this was the same pair. 

In looking to see if there were other collaborations, I found one, but I also saw that they have both done many superhero comics. 

That made it a good time to read The Blur. A bittersweet story about how fast children grow up, much of it is communicated in superhero metaphors.

At that point I did think that I should do a spotlight, but that can get tricky with one person; for two it would be much harder. 

I decided to look up at least one work by each of them. Without planning, they both ended up having a common theme.

2014 Caldecott Medal Winner The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend has one of the potential imaginary friends on the island where they are born get tired of waiting to be dreamed up. He travels across the ocean to a crowded playground and is eventually spotted and named.

Nine years later, Real to Me was published. Written by Minh Lê and illustrated by Raissa Figueroa, a furry green creature with big teeth and a long tail misses the friend who others insisted was imaginary and whose sudden disappearance makes him wonder whether she was ever real. He makes new friends eventually and is happy to have the memory.

Bittersweet, perhaps, but probably not as bad as Bing Bong in Inside Out.

I don't know what follows. Reading more from either of them seems likely; reading all from them would be a pretty big effort. 

That being said, I like their sensibilities. 

I don't know if they are friends who will be looking for more collaboration or it all came from publishing decisions, but I think they do good work together.

I am glad these books came my way. 

Minh Lê and Dan Santat Together:

Drawn Together (2016)
The Blur (2022)
Built to Last (2024)

Separately:

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat (2014)
Real to Me by Minh Lê and Raissa Figueroa (2023)

The editing we deserve

I had thought I would complain a little about the latest Star Wars trilogy -- primarily The Last Jedi -- and that would be the end of it. 

I find I actually have a lot more to say about the trilogy than I realized; I should get more into that next week. 

For now, that title was the note I had. I can write about that today because it was not just that movie.

I really enjoyed the Paul Feig Ghostbusters and a lot of Spy, also by him.

What I most disliked in Spy was a tendency to overindulge in anything that seemed clever or fun to explore. 

I would say what I hated most were the specific streams of profanity, but I think that was also an aspect of the self-indulgence.

Good examples would be when they are messing around with the loss of gravity in the plane or when Rayna can't remember Susan's last name (no, my name is not Susan Groupon) or when Susan is being really mean to Anton right before he gets killed.

It's not that there aren't any humorous elements to them. Actually, I think Björn Gustafsson injected a fair amount of pathos into Anton for the limited screen time he had. Still, at some point it becomes a distraction. 

It may be something that's funny in a comedy, or something that has a lot of emotion in a drama, but can still detract overall.

The fist time I remember seeing extras was on a laser disc for Austin Powers: Man of Mystery. There were scenes of friends and family getting notifications of the deaths of evil henchmen. Specifically, they were the one who loses his head to ill-tempered mutant sea bass and the one crushed by the slow-moving steamroller. In addition, there was a scene where Number Two tries to team up with Austin by offering him a briefcase full of money, but it is not the full amount, because he took some out to buy the briefcase, a Fendi.

They ranged from funny to interesting (maybe a little sad for the one henchman's wife and stepson), but they absolutely would have slowed down the film. The movie worked better without them.

This is also true of the extended version of The Lord of the Rings. Yes, we know there is a lot more that could go in there from the books, but putting all of it in there loses dramatic momentum.

Interestingly, it felt like Peter Jackson forgot everything he knew about wise editing choices based on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The two Austin Powers sequels were much more self-indulgent and proportionately less funny.

That may be a trend.

Ages and ages ago I read about the proposed final scene for The Sixth Sense. There was an extended conversation between Malcolm and his sleeping wife, where he got to say more of what he needed to her. Her breathing became less visible, indicating that the cold that he brought was receding, driving home more that both of them were able to be at peace now. 

M. Knight Shyamalan loved it, but it didn't work in the movie, so he cut it.

Again, you can lose knowledge that you have. I suppose that gets to the heart of what "deserve" meant.

What about Hedy?

I thought this would be the simplest post, but it's not.

I left one note about Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, a 2017 documentary about the actress and inventor.

"I wish she could have just done science."

She was really brilliant, but she was discouraged from pursuing that because she was a woman. Then, as a beautiful and famous one, we would rather you use your influence to sell war bonds than give us this frequency hopping technology for torpedoes.

Her worst problems in life seemed to come from her husbands, but after the sixth divorce she stayed single for thirty-five years and that didn't fix everything.

Plus, she was the one to initially pursue acting. I think she would have liked to do both.

It was the acting that drew the attention of her first husband, the controlling arms dealer who didn't let her act anymore. It was also through that marriage that she got some of the early knowledge for the frequency-hopping idea.

Maybe if she had been in a technology path she would have come across that anyway, but would she have met a composer who added the technology for synchronizing player pianos? 

(Or would her work have been done on behalf of the Germans?) 

Her film career also allowed her to cross paths with Howard Hughes, who was very supportive of her inventing.

People are complicated.

Those complications cause a lot of the problems that other people will encounter, but there will be problems even under better circumstances. 

Then, regardless of the circumstances, it can be hard to untangle things later.

I wish things had been better for her, but even more I wish for better times now. 

So many women get pushed out of science and technology. They may do things now to encourage girls in STEM, but if they don't do anything about the men who will disregard and downplay work, still credit, and harass women right out of the field, we are setting those girls up for failure.

We are also setting ourselves up for failure through the knowledge and skills that get lost.

Hedy Lamarr got to do more science than a lot of people; there's something to be said for being grateful for what you have.

That's not a reason to stop hoping for better. 

So NOT creative

That title sounds like I am going to go off on AI again, but not this time. 

I've decided to get to my other three movie notes this week. I think it will lead me back into talking about the current political situation and dominator culture.

This first one also comes from distinct works with similar source material. Instead of Walter Mitty, it's P. T. Barnum.

Back in the day (it was 1989), my high school put on a production of Barnum! for the spring musical. Many of my friends were in it, so I saw it and heard them talking about it.

One thing I do remember is that some of them got together to watch the movie and were disappointed. I was surprised, because I had enjoyed their performance. One of them said that they did a great job with maybe not great material. I don't know if they had noticed an issue with the material before they saw someone else's version.

I also do not know whether they saw the stage performance led by Michael Crawford and filmed in London or the made-for-TV movie led by Burt Lancaster. I did not know there were multiple versions. I now know that both of those came out in 1986. They may have been part of why the drama department chose it, but the stage musical only debuted in 1980, so it may have still felt kind of new and exciting.

Having enjoyed it but learned that there could be disappointing versions, I was interested in what was going to happen with The Greatest Showman when it came out in 2017.

I did keep thinking of it at "Barnum!" but it was its own thing. Again, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was one of the last movies I took my mother to see in the theater.

The thing I hated most about Barnum! was the subplot with his affair with Jenny Lind, that rat.

Except, he didn't. There are no indications that there was ever any romantic intrigue between Barnum and Lind. They ended their business agreement because she was somewhat uncomfortable with the relentless (perhaps crass) commercial promotion side; she wanted to be more about the art and philanthropy. 

I think the business relationship was beneficial for both, probably beyond the time it lasted. They parted amicably.

I mean, how can you write a splashy musical number about that? 

The credit I can give The Greatest Showman is that they did not make Barnum a cheater; they just made Lind a clingy, delusional mess.

They probably didn't think anyone would buy Hugh Jackman as someone who would leave his adored wife and the mother of his children for... never mind.

In The Greatest Showman it still caused marital discord because it reminded Charity of her husbands monumental self-absorption and selfishness. Of course he didn't love Jenny; he couldn't love anyone!

It's a good line, though I don't think accurate to either the real or the movie people.

I don't know that you can successfully make an accurate musical about anyone. We know Hamilton and Night and Day didn't... that list could go on and on.

It might be better to make fictional ones that remind you of real people but leave some room to maneuver. 

Mainly my frustration was the way the material goes to cheating over and over again. There can be so much conflict without that!

Then my other frustration, possibly connected, is that it's something that happens in real life so much too.  

Children's books for AAPI Heritage Month

Once you start one thing, it can always lead to other things.

As it happened, many of the ghostly children's picture books I read could fit in this category. 

Boy Dumplings: A Tasty Chinese Tale by Ying Chang Compestine and James Yamasaki 
Ghosts in the House by Kazuna Kahara
Gracie Meets a Ghost by Keiko Sena
So Not Ghoul by Karen Yin and Bonnie Liu

The most surprising for me was Boy Dumplings. 

A boy gets caught by a ghost who is going to eat him, but the boy convinces him that he should make a better meal. I thought that would go the route of the other ingredients being delicious enough that the boy was extraneous, but it was just that it took long enough for the sun to rise and the ghost to become trapped. 

There's more than one way to avoid becoming ghost food.

I used "could" fit into the category because there can always be questions about categorization.

For example, Keiko Sena was just Japanese, not Japanese-American. However, if I wanted to read more of her work and see her influence on children's books, she has about 100 other titles.

(This year I am worrying about tracking down origins a little less, though I will discuss that more when I get to the music.) 

Speaking of reading other books, Karen Yin has a book coming out that could apply, Nice to Eat You -- inspired by the story of Hansel and Gretel -- but it is not expected until July. I did read one of her other books:

Whole Whale, illustrated by Nelleke Verhoeff

That is mainly about all of the animal illustrations you can fit into a single book. So Not Ghoul is about the struggle to fit in at school and meet parental expectations, hard for a traditional ghost who looks vaguely like Samara from The Ring, except her long hair is in pigtails. Tradition versus assimilation, but with teenage ghosts.

Another book about tradition takes place at the Mid-Autumn Festival as a grandmother tells a story to two sisters.

The Shadow in the Moon: A Tale of the Mid-Autumn Festival by Christina Matula and Pearl Law

While the festival and moon cakes come up a lot, I had not read that particular story before. It was a little wordy, but I do like learning new lore.

Otherwise, there were two biographical and two that were a little less serious. The two biographical ones were both written by Songju Ma Daemicke and illustrated by Lin.

Grace Lee Boggs: Gardens of Hope
Tu Youyou's Discovery: Finding a Cure for Malaria

I had also read a book of Boggs' writings, which will come up later. It was one of two books in a short time period that dealt with dialectics as part of its philosophical underpinnings. Connections happen in all sorts of ways.

(Speaking of that, there is another pair that I am going to explore further next week.)

For the two less serious ones, both by A.N. Kang...

The Very Fluffy Kitty, Papillon
Papillon Goes to the Vet 

I thought they were very cute, but for me cats are an easy sell. 

Viewing nostalgia

One of the recent drivers of Twitter discourse was this post:

https://x.com/upstatefederlst/status/2047910544611430889 

People out here acting like 80s and 90s kids regularly watched movies from the 50s and 60s. 

He was responding to a post about the lack of film literacy -- and literacy of any kind is always going to bring lots of responses -- but in this case it became its own thing because, yes, we did.

Disney would periodically release classic films. I definitely saw Snow White and Alice in Wonderland in theaters, even though their original releases were long before my time. 

There were some films that were broadcast every year, like The Wizard of Oz and The Ten Commandments, where it was a big deal. This was before home video so you had to watch it then or you would miss it.

There were only three networks and usually one or two local channels; they played a lot of old movies on weekends.

(The three networks also meant that a lot of us watched the same current shows, even though there were choices.) 

My father did not always consider the appropriateness of the movies, so I remember being deeply disturbed by scenes from The Green Berets, Hang 'Em High, The Dirty Dozen, and A Fistful of Dollars. (Clint Eastwood is overly represented, it is true.)

To be fair, I often did not understand what was gong on in the films, but I saw them.

Even as the situations and availability started to change, it led to more watching of old movies, not less.

Once everyone had VCRs, in addition to finding random old tapes and checking them out, there was also a weekend ritual of going to the video store and seeing what looked interesting. Sure, sometimes it was a popular, recent title, but sometimes you discovered gems you could have easily missed.

Cable played a lot of old movies, but also a lot of old television series.

I was reluctant to go back to school after one summer when I had really started to enjoy watching The Addams Family. On a sick day I learned that it changed with the fall and they were showing The Munsters instead. Not that I haven't enjoyed episodes of both. 

Before cable we had somehow managed to watch a lot of I Love Lucy, but it was after cable that my family started watching a lot of The Jack Benny Show and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. (That was on a Christian channel, which was very obvious from the commercials.)

Even with the Disney Channel, which had plenty of Disney content, I remember being introduced to Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees and Ball of Fire and Dana Andrews in Ball of Fire and The Best Years of Our Lives.

(And of course, Danny Kaye: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/04/three-lives-of-walter-mitty.html) 

There are other topics that come up with this, like how that forms collective thought and whether that is necessary. That may connect to the posts from Tuesday and Wednesday as well.

Today, though, I just wanted to enjoy the memories of good times, and also marvel in what a ridiculous assertion it was in the first place. 

You could potentially argue that kids in the 80s and 90s watched more films from the 40s and 70s than the 50s and 60s, but the idea upstatefederalist was trying to convey with disdainful certainty was just laughable.

Maybe it's because of Stranger Things showing kids roaming outside until dark, periodically stopping to drink from the garden hose. That happened too. I remember once arguing that it wasn't actually dark yet; it only looked dark because there were some clouds (the logic wasn't flawless). 

My youth did involve a lot of tag and hide and seek and swimming and biking, but it also involved a lot of watching television. Much of it was media made before I was born. That apparent dichotomy is just fact. 

I admit I have not seen anything from the French New Wave. 

Whom do we blame?

The ideas here come from Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018).

I have written about that movie twice before, but there was something I hadn't gotten to yet: conservatives bashing on him.

It's been a while since I have seen the film, but there were various conservative commentators (was one Limbaugh? possibly) blaming him for all of the weaklings that had grown up watching him.

Mr. Rogers may just be the anti-dominator culture personification, so people who want to rule through creating a hierarchy where we are all looking down on each other and accepting poor treatment of ourselves as long as we get to pay it downward to someone else... yeah, they're totally going to hate him. Maybe I can't remember the details now because they are all too much alike to stand out.

I saw the movie during the first Trump presidency, so that was going to resonate. However, the other thing that I wanted to get to was that it's kind of an old complaint.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates

I remember seeing this quote in Dear Abby. I guess it would have been in the 80s. I believe it was a response to complaints about "kids these days", making the point that despairing of the rising generation is nothing new.

Actually, the quote is questionable. It got cited a lot in the '60s after being used in a book from 1953, but that caused scholars to try and track it down and they couldn't. 

https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/respectfully-quoted/socrates-469399-b-c/ 

As it was, even then it was attributed to Socrates by Plato, who was fairly comfortable putting words in Socrates' mouth. 

That particular quote may not matter so much on its own; it's popularity was a result of lots of complaints about the youth of the 60s by the generation before them. That is a longstanding tradition.

(This is not a great page, but you can find more quotes here: https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/) 

I suppose some of it is a generation gap and some of it is ordinary change, but we have to be honest with ourselves about what is happening. Sometimes the issue may be balance or lack of thought.

I have developed a great appreciation for Fred Rogers. To the extent I get annoyed with anything in relation to him now, it's when adults retreat to "Look for the helpers." 

That's for children. When you're grown, sure, look around and take encouragement from people doing good, but also, become a helper! Children need to know that there are people who will try and make things better, but actually making that be true is on the adults.  

In fact, there may be people whose understanding stopped at "I like you just the way you are," without understanding that it goes for everyone else too, and that -- even though we will make mistakes and people should still love us despite that -- we still have a responsibility to be kind.

I'm just saying that for people who only got the first part of the message and stayed trapped there, it's not Mr. Rogers' fault. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/what-mr-rogers-said.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/11/mr-rogers-again.html 

Whom do we credit?

I'm going to spend a bit more time on movies that I saw a while ago, though I am not going to spend as much time on any of them as I did on Walter Mitty. To be fair, that was two movies and a short story.

Let's start with Dunkirk, a 2017 film by Christopher Nolan celebrating the Dunkirk evacuation, where more than 338,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated from the beaches and harbor there.

(I did write a little about Dunkirk in reference to something else last year: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-commandeered-past.html) 

Because of the harbor size, large ships could not get close; a lot of the evacuation was done by smaller boats, including many civilian vessels.

The movie does a good job of covering a lot of the historical factors while still being cinematic.

I think it's mostly true.

The overall theme of it is common people rising to the occasion with limited means and saving the day. That is something that happened.

A petty argument you could make is that some of the boats were taken without the owners' knowledge or consent; it was not all a volunteer force. There were still many civilian volunteers, even under direct navy command. It's hard to imagine a successful evacuation without them, based on the time constraints and the number of troops needing rescue.

Something else that I don't remember the movie treating (except for Tom Holland's pilot character) is that for every seven men rescued, one became a German prisoner of war. Some of those did not make it back. That's a lot of people, but all of them captured or killed would be worse. 

Remember, war is Hell.

None of that is actually why I kept it in my notes. It was an article that I read back then, about how it was part of changing attitudes about the war.

Apparently a lot of Brits were against engagement in WWII. Maybe they thought if Germany left them alone, it didn't matter what else happened, but it's hard to find praise for Neville Chamberlain nowadays.

Of course, Germany did not leave England alone, which I am sure was a factor. Apparently a lot of the changing attitudes came from Churchill's speeches where he lauded the patience and heroism of ordinary Brits, telling them how good they were and how important their patient support was.

The Wikipedia article mentions an ideological division between liberal and conservative, but that was more a matter of focusing on the ordinary people rallying and "the people's war" versus focusing on the military might.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation 

Eventually the ordinary people version won, possibly because it's a better story, but there are lots of good stories without storytellers promoting them. So that, and "Keep calm and carry on," ... a lot of the credit for that seems to belong to Churchill. 

That may have been the best thing that could happen under the circumstances for people getting through the Blitz and rising to the occasion. Good.

My concern with it is then that if we remember ourselves better than we were, will that cause other problems? 

Because remembering ourselves as better than we were happens a lot on this side of the pond. 

Graphic novels & short works on internment: AAPI Heritage Month 2026

This section is kind of random, but sometimes those paths are important.

I have been working my way through two articles about underappreciated or different comics, most of which have been disappointing. 

These three are all from those lists, but were better than some of the others: 

Mech Cadets by Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa
Everyday Hero Machine Boy by Irma Kniivila and Tri Vuong 
Umma's Table by Yeon-Sik Hong 

When we get to the internment books, they are mainly shorter and designed for middle readers. These first two books could also very much be for middle readers, with robots and adventure.

Umma's Table is not. (It was from a different article than the other two.) It is about a young family dealing with aging parents and budgets. There were things that frustrated me with some of the protagonist's choices, but I could never not feel a sense of understanding that it is hard. 

Stone Fruit by Lee Lai is also very adult. 

There are still fractured families. That is largely due to issues of gender and sexuality, at least for Bron. For Ray, sometimes resentment and frustration builds between siblings and takes effort to unravel.

It is not so much about aging, but the times they share with Ray's niece Nessie act as a reminder of how much complication comes with maturity. 

It Rhymes With Takei by George Takei, Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, Justin Eisinger 

I continue keeping up with George Takei:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/09/spotlight-on-george-takei-apahm-2024.html 

This book fills in a lot of the blanks from his previous bio, To the Stars. 

From it, I have to assume Josie (whom I worried about) knew he was gay all along and was fine with it. There is no assurance that she got her own happy ending, but I see a strong tendency to protect others' privacy. I respect that.

Takei's family's internment is not treated as much here; that was covered in They Called Us Enemy, which will be the selection for this year's #OneBookOneCoast:

https://lacounty.gov/2026/02/25/coming-this-spring-one-book-one-coast-unites-140-libraries-for-the-west-coasts-largest-book-club-featuring-george-takei/ 

It was really well done, and important to remember. That brings us to some other not quite children's books on that topic: 

The Children of Topaz: The Story of a Japanese-American Internment Camp by Michael O. Tunnel and George W. Chilcoat

 I am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment by Jerry Stanley 

The Children of Topaz focuses more on a class, with I am an American focusing more on a person. 

It's important to remember things that were done so recently that people who experienced them are still alive. It's important to keep that perspective, because we keep doing things like this over and over again.

Which leads to one other thing...

Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conkling

In my long study of award-winning works related to Latin American heritage, I happened to read this one just last night. 

I had already read a children's book about the Mendez vs Winchester case about school segregation. What I had not picked up on is that the reason the Mendez family was near a school they were not allowed to attend was that they were renting the farm of an interned Japanese family. The Munemitsu children had been allowed to attend the school.

Our racism isn't always logical or consistent. It is always wrong.

We can do better, but it will take facing the past and the present with honesty.

Laying Walter to rest

I intend to finish with Walter Mitty today, but first, what have we learned?

I keep coming back to something that I saw on the Wikipedia entry for the character (so not the author nor the story nor either movie):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mitty 

"the reader meets well-meaning but insensitive strangers who inadvertently rob Mitty of some of his remaining dignity."

That's a conclusion, not a quote from anywhere, so I don't know who phrased it that way. I question how much dignity there actually was.

That same paragraph refers earlier to the more tragic interpretation, where his last fantasy is going to a firing squad.

I had pointed out earlier that the character himself doesn't seem overly invested in any specific daydream, switching easily to the next one. The details that he retains, like the "ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" sound changes from cylinders on a plane to medical machinery to flame throwers. The important thing is that others admire him, even if they are going to execute him.

It wouldn't take much to be different.

Someone who was really into WWII or planes might keep returning to the cockpit and imagining different dogfights, enriched by reading and research.

That Walter Mitty might still not be a hero, but he's at least more interesting, and probably more gratified.

Someone who was present in his life might be too much to hope for, but trying to be present allows the opportunity for improvement. Maybe he needs to switch jobs. That could be a frightening prospect, but perhaps there is a different department in the same company that would suit him better.

Presumably he proposed to his wife for some reason; perhaps he could try and remember that and enjoy her company. Okay, she reminds him that he needs overshoes and gloves because he is getting older; that can be taken as a sign of caring.

If getting older is the problem, that happens. It might be best to face that one head-on.

Naturally, over the course of writing about this I have seen many examples of misogyny and racism and other things, but there are correlations in the lack of self-examination. There are things that can be improved where the responsibility can only be yours.

It may be easier to disconnect and blame others, but it doesn't make things better, for the blamer or the blamed.

There is nothing unusual about wanting to be a hero, nor in feeling like there aren't really opportunities for heroism.  

It just works out that petulantly withdrawing from that dissatisfaction is a short path to mediocrity, and maybe even to villainy. 

Or would the villainy be good because it's exciting? 

Walter Mitty in 2013

While the 1947 movie has a gentler spirit, it is very much of the same world as the 1939 story. The jobs aren't that satisfying and the women are domineering.

It's interesting to me that the story is from before US involvement in WWII. A lot of that mindset fits well with the post-war America that saw the first movie. Women needed to be pushed back into being supportive homemakers rather than thinking that they can do anything. Also, Freud-inspired psychiatrists have fled Europe to the States, ready to blame everything on mothers who are either iceboxes or smotherers.

We should have grown beyond that by 2013. In some ways we did.

For 2013 Walter Mitty, the digital world is changing his job and leaving him behind. 

It's not quite the same issue as civilized modern life "emasculating" men (though that issue would still be perceived as a problem by some) and it is much more gender-neutral. If there is still gender bias in play, that's nothing new.

Walter's mother is moving into assisted living, and thus downsizing. This includes having to give up her piano.

He worries over it, and I have sympathy for that. There can be a lot of worry with aging parents. However, between his tendency to feel put upon and to escape it via daydreaming, he misses things like that his mother visited with the photographer that he is trying to track down.

Just to get to the end of it (and here's a spoiler): the reason Walter couldn't find the negative he needed was that the photographer had playfully put it in the photo part of the wallet he left as a gift. Frustrated, Walter had thrown out the wallet, but Mrs. Mitty retrieved the wallet. While Walter was worrying about the problems his mother posed to him, she had the solution to his problem all along.

That makes Walter sound kind of petulant and self-absorbed. He is, but it doesn't necessarily make him unlikable, either. He does care about people, but sometimes the fear or the desire to avoid the problems makes him retreat into his daydreams.

In this case, his loss of the photograph and attempts to recover it become the impetus to learning more about what he actually can do, including things he would not have guessed were options.

It's all right, but it didn't need to be that way. 

Working at Life and processing photos from a globe-trotting photographer, he could have been thinking about places he would like to see all along. He could have taken up an interest in photography or music or some other hobby that he would have enjoyed.

He could have asked the woman out, without trying to set it up through eHarmony.

He could have actively listened to his mother.

Life is hard, but there are things that make it better and things that make it worse. 

Honesty in assessing yourself, persistence in figuring out what you want, and then persistence but also flexibility in going after it... it's a good starting point. 

Misanthropy doesn't negate misogyny

Years ago we had a neighbor, Steve. I remember my father saying that Steve wasn't racist; he hated everyone.

The weird thing about that is I don't remember any conversation leading up to it that would have made whether or not Steve was racist a topic of discussion. That makes me wonder if either my father or Steve had heard it, thought it was clever, and found a way to work it into conversation.

Either way, it's bunk. Having a generally negative view of others does not rule out the possibility of specific bigotries still playing a role.

(I think I also remember my father saying that he himself was not racist; he thought he was better than everyone. While he did think he was better than everyone, he was also racist. He wasn't a worse racist than the average white man born in the '40s, but he wasn't better either.)

Without it undoing any of misogyny in Thurber's works, it seems pretty clear that he didn't have a great opinion of men either.

I was thinking about why he hated the 1947 Danny Kaye movie. Sure, it takes a lot of departures from the source material, but ultimately it gives the meek little daydreamer some real adventure, romance, and a chance to come into his own. Did he want Walter to stay insignificant and miserable?

That's what I suspect.

I haven't read that much Thurber, but the lasting impression was that I hated it. If he hated people, I was probably responding to that.

Something I had read about Walter Mitty and other Thurber characters was that they reflected the problem of modern man being domesticated and hence emasculated.

That's bunk too.

Plenty of modern men did manly things; they built things and fixed things and maybe sometimes they even stopped in at the bar for a few drinks and some fistfights.

Such men were just lower class. The ones wearing suits to work had a higher position socially, but then they carried briefcases into offices. Real social climbers played golf at country clubs, which is no rugby.

Yes, a specific version of masculinity is constrained under those circumstances, but there is a class issue as well, with the country clubs also pointing us at issues of race. That mindset merely gives the people on top a reason to feel sorry for themselves.

For Thurber himself, I suspect he felt superior as a writer. There were people doing office drudgery, but he was above them because he was more creative and clever. 

Therefore, the little office drones should stay below him. 

Of course, much of Thurber's success as a writer came from his first wife's prodding, and then wives are the enemy too.

The attitudes are irritating and still exist, but what really stands out is the lack of self-reflection.

Well, if you want to feel superior to others, the less reflection you do, the better. 

Start thinking, and it all falls apart. 

Happy 50th! Another playlist

Someone had a 50th birthday in March, and I wanted to do a playlist for it.

I knew it would be the March songs, but I wanted there to be fifty songs total. That meant either going beyond March or not sharing all of the songs.

I did go into April, but there were two songs that I did not include. There was also one day at the end that I missed, though I am not sure which one. The dates reflect this ending one day earlier than it did, and I don't know where the gap was.

That was a really busy week.

Having fifty songs was part of acknowledging the milestone, but I also decided to start with the number and then conclude with gold. 

That left only one valid choice for the start. 

3/1 “Hawaii Five-O Original Theme Song” by The Ventures

Obviously, this was a 1976 birth date. There is more significance for us in the '80s, but I wanted to give those first four years their due.

As I had reviewed all of those years fairly recently, it was easy to go back and pick favorite songs from 1976 through 1979. "My Life" and "Right Back Where We Started From" meshed well with a theme of reviewing a life. Then if I was going to use Maxine Nightingale, the 2004 Starsky & Hutch movie has inextricably linked it to "Can't Smile Without You".

Yes, my affinity for "The Rubberband Man" song goes back to the commercial with Eddie Steeples, but I stand by it!  

3/2 “Right Back Where We Started From” by Maxine Nightingale
3/3 “The Rubberband Man” by The Spinners
3/4 “Can’t Smile Without You” by Barry Manilow
3/5 “My Life: by Billy Joel

Killing Joke takes us into the "Eighties"; then it was time to revel in some of that glorious synth pop that was so important to so many of us.

I knew that Mags Furuholmen and Nick Rhodes must be represented, but I had just used "Take On Me" for the Farewell playlist that I used in January. That was the first song that I included in the playlists but that was not a song of the day.  

3/6 “Eighties” by Killing Joke
“Take On Me” by A-ha
3/7 “Just Can’t Get Enough” by Depeche Mode
3/8 “A View To A Kill” by Duran Duran

I felt that Depeche Mode should be included, but I wasn't as sure about "Just Can't Get Enough". Maria insisted on "Get the Balance Right", and she was right, but I didn't get it in until later. Also, later "A Little Respect" made sense, so Vince Clarke may be a little over-represented. I can live with it. 

It gets a lot messier from here on out. 

3/9 “Big Time” by Peter Gabriel
“Together In Electric Dreams” by Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder
3/10 “Pop Goes My Heart” by PoP!

"Big Time" is a song from 1986, but it is there to represent the start of a career, not the middle of the decade. 

"Together In Electric Dreams" is because I suddenly remembered the importance of Giorgio Moroder. Normally I associate his influence with "I Feel Love" from 1977, which was very influential but which I don't particularly like. A little searching reminded me that he had collaborated with Phil Oakey with a song I could use. I had already moved past it in the daily songs, so that is the other one that didn't get posted. 

It took a while to work everything out.

"Pop Goes My Heart" is for fake '80s, in the way that "That Thing You Do" would be for fake '60s. It fits here.

3/11 “Heavy Metal Poisoning” by Styx
3/12 “Get Up (Before The Night Is Over)” by Technotronic
3/13 “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys
3/14 “Hum Hallelujah” by Fall Out Boy
3/15 “Don’t Try To Stop It” by Roman Holliday
3/16 “In The End” by Linkin Park
3/17 “Master Of Puppets” by Metallica

Some of the messiness is that I was using the songs while I was still making choices, but it is not merely that.

From "Big Time" through "Stab My Back" (the longest stretch), there are songs that represent life events, bands, albums, and concerts. 

3/18 “A Little Respect” by Erasure
3/19 “Get The Balance Right” by Depeche Mode
3/20 “29” by Gin Blossoms

Except that this section here, where we get the most Vince Clarke, is sort of putting all of that together. Hard times happen, but you are trying. Maybe your priorities are adjusting -- ideally you are learning -- but the hard times aren't done. After all, so far you're still young. 

3/21 “Paint It, Black” by The Rolling Stones
3/22 “Kickstart My Heart” by Mötley Crüe
3/23 “My Solution Is In The Lake” by Pentimento
3/24 “Time Traveler” by Berwanger
3/25 “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds

For some examples of the general trends, though, Berwanger was at one of the concerts so was likely to be included. For a walk through the past, "Time Traveler" fits the theme, and is a good song. (Upcoming references to bad luck and walking through Hell might also fit this pattern.)

It was not a Simple Minds concert, but there was a concert that had an amazing feeling of connection; their song fit that mood. 

3/26 “Who Knew” by P!nk
3/27 “Blame It On Bad Luck” by Bayside
3/28 “A Walk Through Hell” by Say Anything
3/29 “I Miss You” by blink-182
3/30 “Someone Like You” by Ice Nine Kills

There was an album where it really made sense to reference Adele, but I don't particularly like her. The chance to find a cover where it is a guy unable to cope with the loss of his dog (and with a band whose songs are usually about murdering people) really worked for me. 

3/31 “Don’t Listen To Me” by Household
4/1 “NJ Falls Into the Atlantic” by Senses Fail
4/2 “Howl” by Have Mercy

These all have to do with concerts, but I moved the song order around because "NJ Falls Into the Atlantic" sounded like it could be an April Fool's Day headline, and something bad happening to New Jersey was contextually appropriate.

4/3 “Myth” by The Casket Lottery
4/4 “I Love You” by Sarah McLachlan
4/5 “Stab My Back” by The All-American Rejects

Now the life events are done, but some of them were pretty awful. 

That's where this becomes more universal. By the time you get around fifty, a lot has happened. It's happened with jobs and relationships. There are deaths, of friends and parents. Maybe you kind of understood losing parents, even if it didn't feel good, but the friends your age were surely too young. 

4/6 “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day
4/7 “Regret” by New Order
4/8 “This Is Me” by Keala Settle and The Greatest Showman ensemble
4/9 “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House

Somehow you are still around, and this time maybe you really are learning more, about your identity and your abilities and your place in the world. And you can keep going. 

4/10 “I Got A Name” by Jim Croce
4/11 “Still Alive” by Social Distortion
4/12 “Cry For Love” by Iggy Pop
4/13 “C’mon Kid” by Dave Hause
4/14 “Oh Lord” by Foxy Shazam

Hard times are not ended, but there is still gold.

There was one song I wanted and could not find -- maybe I am remembering it wrong -- but still, it's not a bad ending. 

4/15 “Sailing Down This Golden River” by Arlo Guthrie
4/16 “Golden” by Kylie Minogue
4/17 “Golden Years” by David Bowie

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7Me7dCNv6KivPOrJ9RGucl?si=2819fdde3e5a4fb5

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWpUCC7Ou33_oN0wLEpPma4L4Koj10AcZ 

Mitty vs Mitty vs Mitty

I was pretty sure that the Ben Stiller version would need to be different psychologically. 

I mean, from the commercials it looked like it would be much more epic anyway, but also, all those years later one would hope for a difference. There was.

Let's review:

In the 1939 story, a man running errands while his wife is getting her hair done keeps lapsing into fantasies of heroism. When people wonder if he is all right or indicate that he is in their way, he feels irritated. Then the next fantasy is different, but none of them have anything really happening. They are just disconnected images of him being heroic.

In the 1947 movie, Walter works as a proofreader of pulp magazines, giving him plenty of fuel for his daydreams. A woman who is rightly worried about being followed kisses him and gets him into a cab, as protection. That leads to danger and complication, but not only does he get the girl, he gets a promotion. His fantasies are more detailed, but that does help open the door for musical numbers, which would not have been a factor for the short story.

2013 Walter works at Life magazine, handling the old school negatives submitted as the world, and the magazine, move to digital. In the final submission from one famous photographer, the negative that he recommends for the final cover is missing. In his attempt to locate it, Walter chases the photographer to Greenland, Iceland, and Afghanistan, then Los Angeles before returning to New York. What he wanted and needed was at home all along. I barely remember his fantasies, except that there was kind of a musical number with Kristen Wiig singing "Major Tom" while strumming a guitar.

1939 Walter is married, and seems to find his wife only a nuisance.

1947 Walter is engaged, but it doesn't really seem to be a love match; just something he got pulled into. By the end he has married the mystery woman, and seems much happier.

2013 Walter has someone he likes. She returns his interest fairly easily once given a chance. Instead of taking the direct approach, he tries going through eHarmony. I assume that was a sponsored inclusion, but it allows him to see how little he has going on in his life, and also how much has changed over the course of his adventures.

1939 Walter seems to have no interest in the people around him. They interrupt the fantasies, which are all that interest him.

1947 Walter is more connected, with a boss, fiancee, future mother-in-law, and a romantic rival, all of whom annoy him and make him want to retreat into the fantasy more. Telling them off is an important part of his hero's arc.

2013 Walter has a terrible new boss, but he has coworkers with whom he relates well, one he really wants to spend more time with, and a mother and sister that he does not fully appreciate, apparently concentrating more on the responsibility than the rewards, though he is missing something really key there. (There are some important details that I think we will get to later.)

The dissatisfaction with life is a common thread, as was the daydreaming as an escape from it. Otherwise there is not a lot in common. 

In all cases, Thurber's original vision is the least appealing. The movie incarnations are at least interested in their jobs. That can be a source of some satisfaction.

For more satisfaction, would there be some more optimal path than daydreaming? 

And might any of this relate to podbros? 

Putting Walter Mitty on the couch

"Anatole of Paris" was written by Sylvia Fine, Danny Kaye's wife.

She was a lyricist and composer professionally, separately from her husband, but she also worked with him, writing some of his most famous numbers.

I suspect that the "I hate women" conclusion was mostly a joke, based on women's fashion often being ridiculously uncomfortable and expensive. If there is some misogyny in the fashion industry, it is not specific to the film.

One point worth noting is that the 1947 movie takes place in a much broader world.

In the 1939 story, there are brief encounters with a parking lot attendant's horn, for example, but they are as undeveloped as the non-Mitty characters in his fantasies. Even the repeated interruptions by his wife have no real detail, just that it is a nuisance, distracting him from his... well, I would say "rich" fantasy life, but it's not really.

There aren't a lot of details; just brief glimpses of something imagined where he is cool, competent, and admired, but without the details and individualization that would make it "rich."

In the 1947 movie, Mitty has a boss who steals his ideas, a fiancee he doesn't really want, a competitor who does want her, and and overbearing future mother-in-law, all before coincidences set him up for a real adventure. 

So the 1939 Walter has five fantasies while doing normal Saturday errands, though as quickly as he falls in and out of them, there will probably be more. The 1947 Walter has some similar fantasies, but also some different ones, and one major real adventure that gets started on his way to work. Then the 2013 Walter has some globe-trotting adventures, but that's not important now.

Watching the 1947 movie it was easy to wonder why Walter was engaged to someone whom he didn't love, but who was also being pursued by someone else whom she seemed to find more exciting. What was in it for either of them?

Yes, you see that under all of the meekness there is courage, but why did he expend the effort to propose to Gertrude? Did she and her mother push him into it before they knew Tubby existed?

That's mainly just set up, and one could assume that 1947 Walter being pressed for help by Rosalind is what saved him from the fate of the 1939 Walter, hating his wife and his humdrum life.

That made me wonder if Thurber hated women.

Based on reading his work, that seemed probable, but reading about his life doesn't indicate it.

Thurber married in his 20s, was encouraged in his career by his wife, cheated on her (but it was mutual), reconciled because she was pregnant, cheated more but apparently had a pretty amicable divorce, then he remarried to a rebound from yet another relationship (though that one was still in contact with him years later). You could argue that behavior is not characteristic of loving and respecting women, but it's certainly not avoiding them.

To be fair, some of his work is not merely misogynistic, but also fairly misanthropic, and yet he had lots of friends. Later health issues led to emotional instability and depression and he tended to drink too much. His work did get darker then, but it seems like it was dark all along.

I have noted that the women he portrays -- in cartoons and in prose -- tend to be large and domineering. There could be an aspect of resenting the influence that women had, even though it seemed to involve things that were helpful, like pursuing writing as a profession and caring for him through his health problems, as well as picking up after him emotionally.

However, there is also a part of me that wonders if it was just going along with the ease of complaining about wives. Apparently, Henny Youngman adored Sadie, even if you would never know it from his act:

https://www.cracked.com/article_41738_take-my-wife-jokes-began-with-a-genuine-request.html 

I also wonder if part of it is when the woman commits the crime of becoming a wife, with all of the interest focused on obtaining her, followed by disappointment in her being a real person instead of a fantasy. 

The fantasy seems to be based on a rather simplistic definition of masculinity and a lot of other nonsense, but then at least it becomes convenient to blame your perceived problems on your wife as opposed to other social forces that would require some level of cooperation motivated by more than self-interest.

Better still than blaming yourself. 

Of course, Thurber says that Mitty was based on Robert Benchley, but I'm not sure the attitude fits. Maybe Benchley actually had a rich fantasy life.

The IMDb trivia page for the film also says that Thurber offered Samuel Goldwyn $10,000 not to make the film. He did not like the film version, as it wasn't his vision, but I don't think anyone would have enjoyed a film of his vision. 

That's show biz. 

Three Lives of Walter Mitty

After writing about The Help and the limited understanding of race relations that went into producing both the book and the movie, I thought I would write a little bit about misogyny. 

There are always so many examples.

I wanted to make a point of how easy it can be for a white woman to be aware of the sexism she faces without being aware of the racism that she perpetuates.

One thing that I kept remembering was a gaffe from Bette Midler back in 2018:

https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/news/better-midler-n-word-tweet-apology-brett-kavanaugh-vote-supreme-court-a8571781.html  

I do not hate Bette Midler, I have not cancelled her, but this is exactly the kind of crap that makes it so hard to overcome dominator culture. Awareness of one's own suffering as the most important thing in your world can easily lead to mistaking it for the most important thing in the entire world.

In fact, while progress has been made in some ways for various forms of marginalization, including racism and misogyny, nothing has progressed so far that it can be replaced by others. All of the bigotries still exist. Even when they seem dormant, they are easily revived. Among other reasons, some bigotries being outside the sphere of your awareness does not mean that they are gone.

I wish this wasn't true, but it is.

I was thinking about how to approach that, and suddenly I started thinking about the various incarnations of Walter Mitty.

In the spreadsheet tab where I track my reading for various awareness months and projects, there are a bunch of movies and things that I thought I would write about. Time passed and I didn't get to them, but I didn't erase them either.

With Walter Mitty specifically, maybe what started it was an ad for the video release of the 2013 movie with Ben Stiller, or something related to that.

At that point I had only seen the 1947 version with Danny Kaye. 

I am sure that I saw it back in the '80s on the Disney Channel. They ran a lot of Danny Kaye movies; I also saw The Court Jester (1956) and Wonder Man (1945), though somehow never Hans Christian Anderson(1952), though I remember seeing it advertised. In some ways, it seems like the early Disney Channel did a better job of delivering classic movies to me than Disney content, but I enjoyed it.

Anyway, I had seen the movie, wondered about how different the remake would be, and how different either would be from the original material, then decided to find out.

One motivation was this line that kept coming back to me from the musical number (of course the Danny Kaye version was a musical) "Anatole of Paris." This is one of Walter's fantasies, where -- descended from a long line of disturbed and artistic people -- he designs hats for women.

I thought it was a bigger part of the number, but in fact it's the last line and then the number is over. For all the expensive and ridiculous hats he makes, his reason is...

"I hate women."

Was that going to be a theme? 

As told by white people

I don't really know why I am writing about these now.

This is about two books, neither of them read recently.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Go Set A Watchmen by Harper Lee 

The Help was loaned to us by a friend who was in a book club and often passed books along. I think it was pretty popular; there was a movie two years after the book. We went to see that too; we all read the book and hadn't hated it.

I kind of liked it. It was interesting and the reading flowed and there was humor.

I was also uncomfortable with it. Some of the dialect that was used for the Black characters did not seem right, at least not written by a white woman, and some of the descriptions... I had some concerns.

The movie had things that really irritated me. From the book, Celia was never going to learn how to cook. She had other things that she could do and they had the money to hire people to cook. So when movie Celia's cooking for Minny gave Minny the courage to leave her abusive husband it was glaring.

In addition, while you don't have to hate Skeeter's mother, there was no seeing the light or changing her mind or anything like that in the book. Her being helpful with Hilly toward the end was just her usual insensitivity paying off, and that's fine. It's nice there was a use for it.

That seemed like a matter of soothing egos, making some people look better. I could give lots of examples, but only white characters got any kind of glow-up here.

I believe the movie was helpful for the careers of Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, and Jessica Chastain, so, good. 

Then, seeing discussion by Black women on Twitter, one glaring error in the movie and book was that in addition to the racism and condescension and employer caprice that real domestic workers had to deal with, a noticeable absence was the heavy threat of sexual assault. Someone who really saw that side would have known that. It would appear that Stockett did not, therefore Skeeter could not.

As it is, Stockett has Aibileen describe herself as black like a cockroach, and her husband leaves her for another woman. Minny has an abusive husband. Johnny appreciates Minny's cooking, but that's all the white men are going to see.

On the other hand, Skeeter's big problem is that she doesn't know she's attractive and that being tall is in her favor. That's because Skeeter's mother is mean to her and sent the loving Black maid away when Constantine's daughter embarrassed her in front of the DAR.

But all of these Black women are very supportive of Skeeter. Well, there's one who isn't, but the others say to ignore that one. In fact, Constantine dies of a broken heart after no longer being able to care for her white family and being stuck retired and living with her daughter.

Aibileen prays for Skeeter and tells Mae Mobley -- who also has an unloving mother -- that she is kind and smart and important. 

The Help keeps the Black women firmly into the "Mammy" role. That's not surprising, but it hit differently years later when I read the other book.

I remember people being really excited when there was finally another book from Harper Lee; then having strong reactions against the book. 

The reactions appeared to be to finding out that Atticus Finch was not perfectly noble and not racist. Instead he was pragmatic and fair, but still pretty firmly entrenched in the patriarchy. (Again, not surprising.)

I think what might have bothered some people more is that when Jean Louise goes to visit Calpurnia, there are no warm embraces. No one is exactly mean to her, they don't dote on her the way they did when she was a child. The easy affection turned into a wary caution with the adult white woman.

They are absolutely right to be suspicious. Maybe her motives are good, but that doesn't mean that she understands all of the forces working around her and she is going to leave town again. For Jean Louise, illusions are being shattered left and right, but for everyone else the illusions have long been gone.

Part of that is finding out that the adoration that you once accepted as your due was part of a job, and part of safety. I don't think that has to mean that there isn't any real affection, but if those condescending and capricious employers were also once cared for with great affection by their Black nannies, and then grew into those honey-dripping tyrants, it is inevitable that the situation changes. 

I suspect that's something Lee figured out and Stockett did not.  

If there's a sense of disillusionment with that, change that situation. Do better.

Adoration is not your due. 

Especially not when it's built on racism enforced by law and economic inequality. 

Oh, and this is interesting:

https://abcnews.com/Health/lawsuit-black-maid-ablene-cooper-sues-author-kathryn/story?id=12968562