Steven Rubio's Online Life

latinos at the golden gate

I had the pleasure of attending a talk yesterday given by my friend Tomás Summers Sandoval about his book, Latinos at the Golden Gate. As is often the case, the subtitle focuses the topic: “Creating Community and Identity in San Francisco”. There is some irony in the fact that it took a SoCal Dodger fan to write a vital history of Latinos in San Francisco, but good historians do this. (It’s one of the many reasons I went to grad school in English rather than History … I was far too lazy to devote myself to the hard work of researching historical themes. Whatever I might say about my status as a literary scholar, I would have made a terrible historian.)

The book goes back to the Gold Rush, examining the influx of Latinos from Mexico, Chile, and other countries. It’s a useful starting point, in that it helps our understanding of Latinos in The City today when we know something about how we got to where we are now. As someone who has lived 59 of my 60 years in the greater Bay Area, I was interested in seeing how little I knew about this history. In particular, while I think there is a tendency to see “Latinos” in California as people with roots in Mexico, Tomás details how people from many countries came here. The need to bond together against racism meant that all Latinos worked together in a spirit of latinidad, which helps explain why the title of the book is not Chicanos at the Golden Gate.

Still, it was an important sign that the Catholic church that served as the social and cultural center of the community was named Nuestra Señora De Guadalupe. While the church (located in North Beach, which is one of those tidbits that fascinate those of us who think we know San Francisco) was a crucial place for Spanish-speaking San Franciscans, and while that common language was a crucial aspect of latinidad, the church was named after the person who is a symbol for Mexican Catholics.

Sandoval insists on the notion of “creating community and identity”, reminding us that while Spanish tied the peoples of various countries together, the community didn’t just appear. It had to be created, within the context of the times (both past and present). The community he describes isn’t static … it is always being re-created.

As Tomás knows (I’ve talked with him about it before, and brought it up again before the talk began), my personal interest is fueled in part by the arrival in San Francisco of my paternal grandparents in the late-1910s. They came from Spain (via Hawaii), but for myriad reasons, they (and subsequent generations like myself, half-Spanish) occupy a tangential position relative to latinidad. There’s the association with Europe … Spain were conquerors, not indigenous to the area … and there is what I believe the most important item, that many Spaniards only came to the U.S. after living in other countries. (I think my grandmother had a sister in Brazil and another in Cuba.) If you came from Spain to the United States via a long stay in Mexico, for instance, you would likely identify yourself more as Mexican-American than as Spanish-American. Whatever the reason, there aren’t many Spanish-Americans, and as I’ve written here more than once, I’m never certain if I’m “hispanic” or “latino” or just some suburban baby-boomer white boy (which is how I was raised).

I recommend Latinos at the Golden Gate. The approach is necessarily academic, but the prose works beyond those confines. And I definitely enjoyed yesterday’s talk … I even got to finally meet Tomás’ wife, Melinda. Unsurprisingly, she was delightful, but then, I expected no less. Tomás is one of the best people I know, and he has great love for his family. They seem like a good team. (My wife wanted to know if I met any of the little Summers Sandovals, but that wasn’t to be … Tomás and Melinda took advantage of this weekend in the Bay Area to spend their first time alone without the kids for eight years. I think they enjoyed themselves … at the least, Tomás posted a picture on Facebook that he took of the Chinese New Year’s parade.)

music friday, 1966 edition

Love, “Seven and Seven Is”. The next time someone tells you how great Forever Changes is, play this for them.

The Troggs, “Wild Thing”. This was written by Jon Voight’s brother.

Ike & Tina Turner, “River Deep - Mountain High”. Forget about Ike … he’s nowhere to be found on this one. It is both Tina Turner’s finest moment, and Phil Spector’s finest moment, and thus one of the great records of all time. Tina never matched it, but who can blame her? “I must have sung that 500,000 times. I was drenched with sweat. I had to take my shirt off and stand there in my bra to sing.”

Dusty Springfield, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”. If you only click on one video link, make it this one.

Jimmy Ruffin, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted”.

Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, “Devil With a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly”. Ladies and gentlemen, Johnny "Bee" Badanjek!

Nancy Sinatra, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”. Ladies and gentlemen, The Sixties!

Lorraine Ellison, “Stay With Me”. I was gonna say something snarky about Bette Midler’s version, but that would be mean.

The Beatles, “And Your Bird Can Sing”. Who cares what it’s about? Listen to those guitars!

Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, “Ballad of the Green Berets”. This was the #1 song on the Billboard charts of 1966.

by request: the heiress (william wyler, 1949)

(This was requested by Jeff Pike.)

I once had a complicated relationship with Henry James, and it is perhaps a mark of the turns my life has taken over the years that I haven’t thought seriously about James in 20+ years. In the early 90s, while preparing for my oral examinations for my doctorate in English, I knew I would get asked about James. I knew this because he was important, and because he wasn’t a favorite of mine … I assumed someone in the exam would seize upon this and grill me mercilessly. So I spent a lot of time in the year I did orals prep reading Henry James. I wanted to make sure I could handle anything that came up. I also prepared a canned response … one piece of advice you are given is to have a few such things saved up for when you found yourself at a loss.

And so, of course, no one asked me about Henry James. There was a short break at one point, when the people on the orals committee stepped outside, and I found myself alone in the room with the professor from PoliSci who was there as the “outside observer”. I told him that I thought I’d ducked a tough one when no one asked about James. When the rest of the committee returned, they asked the outside observer, who hadn’t spoken during the exam, if he had anything he wanted to ask me. Yes, he said … he knew I had an interest in media studies, particularly film, and so he wondered if maybe I could say something about Henry James, how I might use him in the classroom given my interests.

He was a great man, one of the best, and I imagine he had a glint in his eye, knowing that he’d tricked me. But the joke was on him, for my canned response to a James question was to talk about the movie of The Bostonians. And so I confidently jabbered for a couple of minutes about Vanessa Redgrave and Olive Chancellor.

Whew. I’m not sure, but that might have been the last time I read Henry James. I came to appreciate his work … I also learned that he wasn’t my cup of tea, which is on me, not James.

Oh, I was supposed to be talking about The Heiress, based on James’ Washington Square. (The movie review starts now.) David Thomson compared the movie to film noir, writing, “try to find a picture with worse things to say about human nature and the traps people make for themselves”. And indeed, The Heiress is bleak. I think the excellence of the movie comes largely from the acting performances from Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, and Ralph Richardson. They are all fine actors, but when you see so many strong performances in a movie, you have to tip your cap to the director for making those performances possible. William Wyler always struck me as a serviceable director, and this is one of his better efforts.

Each of the three actors comes at the audience differently. Richardson seems a bit stodgy at first, but he seems to be truly interested in his daughter’s welfare. As he moves against her intended nuptials, he seems hard-headed, but he is still less than villainous. By the end, though, we have lost all sympathy for him, even though he is proven right in some of his assumptions, because we know he hates his daughter. Clift, as Townsend,  is so pretty and so charming and so, I don’t know, innocent, that he is very convincing as the man who sees de Havilland’s Catherine for her inner and outer beauty. This makes Richardson’s father seem unfair. When we find that Townsend is a cad, it comes as a surprise because Clift played the fortune hunter so well that he fooled us the way he fooled Catherine. But it’s de Havilland that really takes over the movie. This beautiful actress seems a bit dumpy during the first part of the movie, and it’s not just her clothes or her makeup … de Havilland’s expressions are those of a woman who has been told once too many times that she is plain. She blossoms in her love affair, and de Havilland shows this in her expressions as well … she seems reborn. But when things go wrong, when she realizes that her lover is false and her father is hateful, de Havilland’s countenance changes for good. She finally gets the fire than her father thought did not exist. She takes control of her life at last. And even though things don’t work out well, even though Catherine is a harder person, de Havilland somehow manages to become truly beautiful at last.

I watched The Heiress back in 2007, and wrote about it in a rather dismissive way: “it's a very good movie and there is plenty to say about it, but who really cares? It's almost 60 years old.” Well, Jeff Pike apparently cared! Back then, I gave it 8/10, but that’s too low. 9/10. For my favorite Wyler movie, check out Roman Holiday. De Havilland won an Oscar for this movie, her second in four years … To Each His Own is the other. As for Montgomery Clift, I’m on record as loving From Here to Eternity very much.

what i watched last week

The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013). Not nearly as bad as I’d expected from the trailers. The anachronistic use of hip-hop is used sparingly (and for the most part works), and Luhrmann’s success is best stated in the film by Nick Carraway, who, when asked by Gatsby if his preparations for Daisy are right, replies “I think it’s what you want”. I believe that what we have here is The Great Gatsby that Baz Luhrmann wanted. Perhaps this is indeed an “unfilmable” novel. Luhrmann splashes through the big party scenes as if he was born for such work (which may well be true), and he can say that he’s been “true” to the novel … Fitzgerald did give us parties, after all. But, despite what film adaptations give us, The Great Gatsby isn’t about the parties, and what makes the book timeless is the prose, which is more elegant than the parties it describes. Luhrmann does what he can to foreground the prose, at times putting the actual words on the screen, and concocting a framing device that turns Nick Carraway into F. Scott Fitzgerald in far too literal a sense. Yes, Nick is Fitzgerald’s voice, and he carries the same ambiguous love/hate relationship to the rich that the author brings. But The Great Gatsby is more than an extended therapy session for an alcoholic. The cast is variable. Leonardo DiCaprio is fine … his charisma makes the public Gatsby believable, while he nicely plays the moments of uncertainty confronting Gatsby. Tobey Maguire’s job is impossible; he does what he can. Carey Mulligan is OK, but again, Daisy needs to be more than OK. She is a fantasy, not a real person, and Mulligan is too good at playing the real person to make the fantasy believable. The one actor I think was at a disadvantage compared to the 1974 version was Joel Edgerton as Tom. Bruce Dern nailed that role as if he personally had the right bloodlines. I thought I’d hate this movie, and I was wrong. But it doesn’t come close to the experience of reading the novel. For comparison, you could check out one of the earlier film versions of the book. Mia Farrow in 1974 offers a very different Daisy.

Thunder Road (Arthur Ripley, 1958). Disappointing cult film that has Robert Mitchum going for it, but not much else. The seemingly accurate portrayal of moonshiners in the South gives it some depth, and Mitchum is his usual laconic best. But the film drags, and the acting is something less than wonderful. I was looking forward to Keely Smith in a dramatic role, but unfortunately, she was pretty wooden. The film meant a lot to Mitchum, who provided the story, produced the movie, wrote the two featured songs, and may have even directed parts of it. But it’s better when you are imagining it than when you actually see it. For a follow up, try The Night of the Hunter, also with Mitchum, which made #31 on my Facebook Fave Fifty list.

The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012). Vinterberg gives us a blend of Kafka and Hitchcock in this story of a man falsely accused of child abuse. There is no mystery about the abuse … it didn’t happen … but the ways in which the accusations close in on the accused are frightening and quite real. Mads Mikkelsen, known here for his villain in Casino Royale and for playing Hannibal Lecter on TV, has the kind of good looks that are striking because they aren’t perfect. Combined with his villainous roles, this makes his kindergarten teacher rather ominous, but once we see how he is unfairly mistreated, Mikkelsen garners great sympathy from the audience. I don’t know if there is much more to The Hunt than Mikkelsen’s performance and the creepy atmosphere, but that is more than enough. For another Mikkelsen film, Casino Royale will do. I haven’t seen it, but Vinterberg’s The Celebration is highly regarded.

Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013). Tom Hanks does his Oscar thing … for some reason, he wasn’t nominated, perhaps the attempt was too obvious, but he’s fine throughout, and excellent in the final scenes. I’d like to give a special shout out to Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Danielle Albert, who played a doctor in that final scene. She is so good, you want her to be your doctor the next time you end up in the emergency room. Barkhad Abdi deserves his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, playing a Somali pirate. Greengrass gives us an exciting recreation of events, although there are serious questions about how accurate the film is. But the film takes too long to get going, Catherine Keener is wasted (if you’re hoping for some Keener magic, here’s a spoiler: she’s in one scene at the beginning, and it’s not even an interesting scene). Greengrass and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Billy Ray make nods towards sensitivity regarding the pirates, but ultimately, we get 2+ hours of crazy black men and stoic white men, with the enormous might of the U.S. military saving the day. It’s like a well-made Top Gun, and that’s not a compliment. For a better film by Greengrass, try Bloody Sunday.

the beatles, ed sullivan, and me

As a white American Baby Boomer, I am required today to offer my memories about the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

It’s a perfect Boomer moment, because 1) everyone remembers it, and 2) it offers plenty of opportunity for boomers to assume their personal experiences are in fact everyone’s personal experiences. Thus, one after another, we trot out our memories as if they explained an entire era.

My memories don’t explain anything. I was 10 years old. I wanted to act grown up, so I feigned a lack of interest in the Beatles. I stood in the background watching as they performed. It was just about the most thrilling thing I’d ever seen. And when it was over, I went back to pretending I was unimpressed.

The Beatles really were as big a cultural phenomenon as people say. They really were a crucial part of rock and roll history. And yes, their appearances on Ed Sullivan were big deals.

But most of what I’ve read over the past week has been bullshit nostalgia that tries to make personal experience seem more universal than it actually is.

You know what was a really big Beatles moment, one that doesn’t get mentioned nearly as often as Ed Sullivan? When they premiered “All You Need Is Love” on a world-wide satellite telecast titled “Our World”. It was the biggest TV audience of all time when it aired. What made it special wasn’t that we experienced it as individuals … no, it was that we were watching along with 400 million other people. That was special.

music friday: 35 years ago today

You know, all the talk about the 50th anniversary of The Beatles on Ed Sullivan should make me feel old, since I remember quite well what it was like that night. Yet somehow, I feel even older when I realize that 35 years ago today, The Clash made their first appearance in the USA.

I’ve written about this before, so this may seem familiar. The opening act was the local New Wave group, Pearl Harbor and the Explosions. Lead singer Harbor had previously sang in the band Leila and the Snakes, under the name Pearl E. Gates. “Leila” was Jane Dornacker, who later worked standup, appeared in the film The Right Stuff, and worked as a traffic reporter. She died in a helicopter crash while reporting traffic. Gates/Harbor and her band had a locally-released single, “Drivin’”, that was popular enough to get some wider attention … by the end of 1979 they had released their first major-label album. Their success was short-lived. Harbor was an energetic performer … we saw them a few times, and she was a favorite of my wife. Harbor later married Clash bassist Paul Simonon.

Here they are performing “Drivin’”:

And here is Harbor, touring in Japan with The Clash in 1982. You get the startling moment when a woman named Pearl Harbor sings “Fujiyama Mama” to a Japanese audience. And then, for a bonus, you get “Police on My Back” and “White Riot”:

Next up was the legendary Bo Diddley. As I have mentioned before, as part of his act, Bo played up how old he was compared to all the young punks. He’d bend down, and his guitar would make screaky noises as if his bones were too old. This story seems less funny to me with each passing year, since Bo was only 50 at the time. Here, he talks about what it was like opening for The Clash:

And The Clash? This was the first of the four times I saw them. We had front-row seats, which didn’t mean much one the band started playing, since everyone crushed forward, making the idea of “seats” rather unimportant. They opened with “I’m So Bored of the USA”, and to be honest, I’m not sure what else they played. I know that I loved it, I know that it was loud, that at one point I smacked Paul Simonon’s boot, and did I mention I loved it and it was loud? Joe Strummer is one of the best live performers I’ve ever seen, and that was my introduction to him.

Here they are, about a month before we saw them, with “English Civil War” and “I Fought the Law”:

beats music, part two

My free trial period has finished, and I decided not to sign up for the monthly pay version. There is much to like about Beats Music, and I can imagine it appealing to Pandora users willing to spend just a little more time with the software. But I only use Pandora for my wife … I’ve carefully created a station for her that is almost 100% accurate in playing only music she likes or would like. My own listening via Spotify, though, is much more compulsively constructed, and Beats can’t do what I want.

The primary problem with Beats (for me) is that it does not allow the integration of my own music. It is intended for mobile use. It works well, given that limitation, and most people probably don’t consider it a limitation anyway. But I use Spotify largely from my computer, where my obsessively built playlists combine Spotify’s music with my own (i.e., the Beatles). Most listeners are uninterested in creating playlists, or they want to have their playlists concocted by the software based on some general information. Again, this is how most people listen, and I wouldn’t count Beats out … they could indeed become the next Pandora. But Spotify still gets my listening.

what i watched last week

Dirty Wars (Rick Rowley, 2013). Informative documentary about the American presence in covert wars across the globe. It’s a story that needs to be told, and the persistence of journalist Jeremy Scahill in following that story is inspirational, even though what he finds is bad news piled on bad news. When the film was first put together, it was fairly straightforward, but a decision was made to place Scahill in the center of the story. The result is a film that is as much about the intrepid journalist as it is about American foreign policy. This might be the right move in terms of grabbing the attention of the audience, but in truth, Scahill isn’t the story here, and it’s a mistake to give him such a strong presence in the film. Nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar. 7/10. Two other nominees up against Dirty Wars are better: The Art of Killing, and The Square.

The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944). Early noir is a good one. The pacing is deliberate, which only increases the tension as we wait to see what will go wrong next. There is a bit of implausibility in the plot that somehow also works to ratchet up the tension … you never know precisely what will be thrown in the path of Edward G. Robinson as a professor and Joan Bennett’s femme fatale. The twist at the end seemed like a cheat at first, but it has stuck in my mind, and I find myself recreating the scenes in the context of that twist. It would be worth a second viewing for that alone. #981 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of all time. 8/10. Best companion film would be Scarlet Street, another Lang film from a year later that also starred Robinson, Bennett, and Dan Duryea (a blackmailer in Woman in the Window).

The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012). The sad news about Philip Seymour Hoffman inspired me to check this out, which had been sitting on my DVR for a couple of months. I run hot and cold when it comes to Anderson, and The Master is no different. Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, and Amy Adams all do terrific jobs and deserved their Oscar nominations. But this is one time where I think Oscar got it right: The Master got no other nominations beyond those three. The film is indeed a master class in acting, with each of the stars offering a different style. But after that, Anderson and I part ways, because I found the movie to be mostly a muddle. I’m willing to grant that Anderson intended his obscurities, but they aren’t for me. I’m glad I saw this movie, and it made an honorable tribute to Hoffman’s work. But when I posted a YouTube video of Hoffman, it was from Almost Famous, not The Master. #96 on the TSPDT list of the top 250 films of the 21st century. 7/10, which is probably too generous. My favorite Hoffman performances are in Almost Famous and Capote, and Magnolia, also directed by Anderson, is also good. And let’s not forget Boogie Nights, a film for which I have great affection.

The Road Warrior (George Miller, 1981). 10/10.

I’d like to include a quote here from Mick LaSalle’s most recent column, since it comes very close to my New Year’s resolution to not watch crappy movies:

Why watch anything that's not at least very good? Even film critics aren't obligated to see absolutely everything. There are 100 years of feature films out there from all over the world. There are enough great or almost-great movies available that you need never see a bad or even mediocre movie for the rest of your life. So don't. Your home video experience should be a nonstop parade of the great and near-great, a succession of enriching and transformative experiences.