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?