Miscellany #2: The Political Sphere

1. Allard Lowenstein on Democracy

I think that there are a lot of macro-level parallels - many already noted elsewhere - between our current American political and social moment and the political and social moment that began around fifty years ago, in 1968, and continued into the Watergate era. What is interesting to me is that there are also so many what might be called "micro-level" parallels are well - small phrases and details that come up in speeches and interviews from that time that have strong echoes (or, I suppose, are the original, which we are the echo of today) of what's happening in the country now. Here is a short passage of politician and activist Allard Lowenstein speaking to William F. Buckley on Firing Line in the run-up to Watergate.

I think that the way you remove President Nixon from office is you defeat him, and I’m I’m engaged in an effort to make clear that’s possible. But I’ve never supported impeachment of President Nixon, not because - and what I want to do is to get into the questions that you raised, the basic questions that you raised, and just clear away some of the underbrush. It is, in fact, untrue to say that I became a devotee of democracy, as you suggest, only when the country, by polls, went my way. I think that the job of people who are in public office, or seeking public office, I think I agree with you on this, is to say what they believe, to stand on what they believe, and if they lose, to lose. And I don’t think you go with polls, I never have, I hope I never do. But I think what we said in 1968 when we opposed the renomination of President Johnson was, in fact, the majority sentiment of the country. We’ll never know, because in Los Angeles there was an assassination which punctured the normal procedures which would have given a test in that election. 

The election that fall, then, ended up not as a test of differences, but rather a test of which of two men could persuade people that they were less undesirable, at least that was the case for millions of people in the country. And what I think we have to see is that as a result of the frustrations that developed in 1968, through the murders and the other horrors of that spring, is that for millions of people there is a kind of erosion of belief in the whole election process. That’s led to some people doing extreme things in frustration which are unconstitutional and unjustifiable and I think we share opposition to that kind of tactic.

2. "A Base Craving For Peace"

A NASA research pilot watches a B-52 fly overhead, 1969.

 From Ward Moore's 1956 short story, "Flying Dutchman":

"The grave men who decided strategy had been well aware of the nature of the war they were fighting. Every possible preparation had been made for all forseeable eventualities; plans and alternative plans, and alternatives to the alternatives, had been carefully and thoroughly mapped. That the capital and the proud cities would be destroyed almost immediately was taken for granted, but the planners had gone much further than mere decentralization. In former wars operations had ultimately depended on men; the strategists knew how frail and fallible humans were. They thought with grim distaste of soldiers and mechanics made useless by uninterrupted bombardment or the effects of chemical and biological weapons, of civilians cowering in the innermost recesses of mines and caverns, their will to fight gone and only a base craving for peace left. Against this unstable factor the strategists had guarded zealously; they planned not only push-button war, but push-buttons for the push-buttons, and more push-buttons behind them. The civilians might cower and chatter, but the war would go on until victory was won.

And so The Flying Dutchman sped unerringly for its familiar goal, serviced and powered by an intricate network of tools, implements, factories, generators, underground cables and basic resources, all of them nearly impregnable to discovery and destruction, able to function until they wore out, which might not be - thanks to their perfection - for centuries hence. The Flying Dutchman flew north, a creation of man no longer dependent on its creator.

It flew toward the city which had long since become finely pulverized rubble. It flew toward the outlying rings of antiaircraft batteries and the few serviceable guns left which would spot it on their radarscreens and automatically aim and fire, attempting to bring it to the fate of all its counterparts. The Flying Dutchman flew toward the country of the enemy, a defeated country whose armies had been annihilated and whose people had perished. It flew so high that far below its outstretched wings and steady motors the bulge of the earth made a great curving line, the earth, that dead planet, upon which no living thing had been for a long, long time."

Full text of "Flying Dutchman" available here.

3. "What is Honor, Anyway?"

Allan Sherman with President Kennedy.

Here's an excerpt of a speech given by comedian Allan Sherman at UCLA in 1970.

See, I believe people are one by one. One by one. I’m a revolutionary - I think we need 3 billion separate revolutions. In forty-five years of living and feeling and trying to be as smart as I could, that’s all I ever learned: people are one by one. One at a time. Each one different. Each one special. Each one full of his own wild feelings, each one dancing to his own music. Each one living out the poem of his own life, in his own special language. 

That’s why I could never join anything like the Communist Party. That’s why I also don’t go along with the military mentality - because they both seem to regard human beings as units, digits, statistics to be manipulated. They lump people together in one pigeonhole, under one label. 

And this much I know: as soon as you think of people more than one at a time, you are beginning to tell yourself lies. Lies that begin with “All black people,” “All conservatives,” “All policemen,” “All Communists,” “All young people” - it doesn’t matter, they’re all lies.

But when you think of people one by one you begin to care. Just look at that last moonshot, with those three astronauts trying to get back to Earth in that broken tin can. They broke into the television all the time and kept showing them to us as human beings, one by one - Lubbell, and Hayes, and Sweigert. And one by one, when we saw them, we began to care. How long do you think the war would last if we did the same for the soldiers in Vietnam? How long would the majority remain silent? If all day long, they kept interrupting the television programs and Walter Cronkite came on and said, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin. Five minutes ago, Corporal Donald L. Carter, 21 years old, of Mattoon, Illinois, was killed in a mud-hole outside Da Nang. We bring you now an interview with his wife, Gwen, 20, and their son, Eddie, two years old. How long do you think this war would last if they interrupted the television like that fifteen times a day, once for every kid that got killed?

I don’t really know much about Communism, or the military, or the politics, or the CIA. We aren’t taught those things in our schools. It’s like sex education - you’re not supposed to know about it, just go out and do it. But you can’t get killed from that! 

And I’m getting very tired of secrets. The government keeps doing things in secret, and then when it’s all done, they tell me they did it for my own good. That’s how the whole war began, as far as I can tell. I’m tired of secrets, and trench coats, and cloak-and-dagger games. The other night I had a nightmare. I dreamed that the whole Communist Party was really the CIA in disguise - and there’s no way to prove I’m wrong! 

It’s not that this is a bad country. It’s a good country. But the quality of life has changed, like a virus that gets into your system and changes a healthy person into a sick one. I’m mad at the sickness, and I want to cure it before it kills us. When was it that form became more important than substance? Since World War II, we’ve been getting bigger and bigger and richer and richer and fatter and fatter, until we now seem to care more about our image than about what is real. All day long we lie to each other in business. Commercials and ads lie to us from the TV screen and the newspaper. Politicians lie - well, you’ve seen it in this last week or two. 

People say to me, “Well, you’re free to say anything in this country, it’s marvelous!” And I realize that’s true - largely - and the reason is, nobody’s listening! My friend, the late Robert Ruark, took a look at the quality of life in America. The last thing he ever wrote was an article called, “Nothing Works, and Nobody Cares.” 

And your generation grew up in that world. You never knew anything else. What else could you say but, “Oh my God, nobody cares”? “I’m alone, and nobody cares. My mother and my father care more about the rules and regulations than about me. My university says, ‘Don’t make waves, sit down in the corner please and be a nice hole in a punch card.’ My clergyman keeps shifting his position - God isn’t dead, no, he’s hiding; no, he’s sick; no, he’s on vacation somewhere trying to figure out what he really thinks about birth control.” The President goes on television and says, “I don’t care, I won’t change my mind, you could cry, or plead, or march in the streets.”

But you people have one advantage: you’re young, so you can’t lose. The world is gonna belong to you. Like children, you have to have the guts to ask the question that my generation did not have the guts to ask: “Why, Daddy? Why?” When you ask “Why,” the great political figures will answer you as if you were a six-year-old who asked where do babies come from. They’ll answer, “Not now, you’re too young to know. It’s too complicated. Go away and play. Have a lollipop. Have a Mustang. Go play with your color TV, play with your drugs, play with your dirty movies. Only don’t ask questions, and don’t make waves.”

Well, I’m forty-five years old, so I’m not too young to know. And I have a why to ask them. Gentlemen, why do you want my son? Is anybody listening? Does anybody care? Well, why do you want my son? He’s not a statistic, he’s not a military unit; he’s Robert Sherman. He’s twenty years old. He’s short for his age, and thin, and his face is still marked from where he had chicken pox. When he gets excited he stammers a little. But he’s not expendable, and he’s not replaceable. He’s Robert Sherman, and he’s full of joy and wonder and discovery and love and and life. He wants to become a musician or a mathematician or a comedian. Or maybe a bum! But he does not want to be a soldier. Killing doesn’t interest him and dying terrifies him. He loves his country, and his job, and his girl, and his car; he has a plain, conservative haircut, and he obeys the laws, and someday he might do something to make the whole world as proud of him as I am. But he wants a chance to live until that day, and be whole, and not have his body or his mind scarred forever with your kaleidoscope of death and dirt and napalm. So why do you want Robert Sherman? 

Mark Twain said, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” I say, “What if they gave a war and everyone left?” What if we just said, “Sorry, fellas, we hate to shoot and run”? And we put up a sign that said, “War cancelled because of human sanity,” and we went home and began to live our lives again like human beings? A lot of people would say, “Ah, but would it be an honorable peace?” And we would answer them, “Yes. Because there is more honor in peace than there is in war. And love is more honorable than hate. And life is more honorable than death. And truth is more honorable than lying. And joy is more honorable than misery.” 

What we need is a new definition of honor. What is honor, anyway? Is it military victory? Then Adolf Hitler, who won every battle except the last one, was one of the most honorable men of all. Is it honor to subdue by force everyone you disagree with? Then we owe Lee Harvey Oswald a Congressional Medal of Honor. There is such a thing as real honor. We’ve all seen it and felt it. Real honor is caring about other people, one by one, whether they’re famous or unknown, whether they’re rich or poor, whether they agree with your politics or not, whether they’re black or white or young or old. Real honor is being what you really are, not what you think other people would like you to be. Real honor is saying what you really feel. Real honor is not remaining in silence, safe and comfortable, while the country you love is burning down. Real honor is standing up for what you believe in and saying so, and accepting the responsibility for what you say and do.

It’s elusive. It’s hard to find. It’s hidden behind a labyrinth of bravado, and status-seeking, and image-making, and publicity releases, and plastic, and frozen TV dinners, and political gobbledegook. You think to yourself, “You can’t get there from here.” But you can’t get to the Moon, either - unless you want to. That would be real shining armor, wouldn’t it? That would give us back our pride in our manhood. That would bring us together, as Americans, in spite of all our differences. 

4.  "The Great Terror Would Be That I Might Win"

George Plimpton (far left) watching the America's Cup race with John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy in 1962.

George Plimpton answers a question about politics at Auburn University in 1972:

Well, I think I might win in politics, which would be terrible, because then my constituency would be stuck with me. Obviously, I wouldn't run for what Pat Paulson is running for, but I think if I ran for Representative in one of the New York districts, maybe I'd have a chance. But I'm not - I don't, that's not what I've set my life to do, you know? I think it would be cheating, you see, if I went into some political campaign, as Pat Paulson did. He does it as such a marvelous joke that it's really a commentary on politics. When I try to play quarterback for the Baltimore Colts, I really try as hard as I possibly can. I know I can't make it, but I'm not letting anybody down except myself. But if I tried to run for political office, and really wanted to do it - and after all, it's the only profession where any amateur can try, isn't it - then once I got started, it seems to me that I'd have to carry it all the way, and the great terror would be that I might win. Then I'd have to give up everything and become probably a rather mediocre political figure. If you see what I'm saying. 

I don't think you can fool around in politics, is really what I'm saying, unless you're a great comedian, as Paulson is. For example, Bill Buckley ran for the mayor of New York, and I think originally he started off to see - really, to write a book about it, to write a book about what it was like as an extremely bright amateur fussing around with the New York political system. And he got involved in it, and discovered that he was much brighter than anybody else that was going; also he discovered that he had a formidable political platform. And he began to do better and better and better, he was supported by the entire conservative wing in New York. And then he began to have dreams of glory, I think, ran really very solidly and well, and then wrote a book about it which is absolutely humorless. He forgot what he started off to do, and as an observer he became less interesting than - or he was less interesting as an actual participant than he might have been as an observer. 

Anyway, it's a very clumsy answer to what you asked me, but I think in essence, everybody has to find out what they're best at. I'm probably best as being an observer. 

 5. "Any Idiot Can Wreck What Only a Genius Can Make"

From Garry Wills' The Kennedy Imprisonment:

A parent can have every resource of coercion, along with the will to coerce, in dealing with a child; he or she can "ground" the child, spank, take away toys, allowance, privileges. But this combination of resources with will does not equal power, in the sense of getting another to do one's will, if the child keeps saying no.... 

The parent who exerts his or her power over children most drastically loses all power over them, except the power to twist and hurt and destroy. This power to destroy - to wound, to sever bridges, to end lives - is easily wielded; and we tend to call this real power since it has such an instant, spectacular effect, dependent only on our will. We can all smash a TV set, a computer, a friendship, a marriage. Few of us can build a workable computer or rewarding marriage. Any idiot can wreck what only a genius can make.

...[T]he ideal of foreign power has been to approximate our assertiveness to our powers of destruction, to equate ability to destroy with right to control. There, our will is being tested, not other wills recruited. 

Text Smash #1: Kick Butt, Big Guy!

The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (Dark Horse, 1995) / The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot Fox Kids, 1999)

This post is about two kinds of ideology in two versions of a text. The first of these texts is The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, a comic book first published in 1995 that was written by Frank Miller (of Sin City and The Dark Knight fame) and drawn by Geoff Darrow. In the comic, which spanned two issues, a gigantic monster begins destroying Tokyo and turning its inhabitants into smaller monsters. The Japanese government has a robot, which looks a bit like Jimmy Neutron and which talks like a character on Leave it to Beaver, which it hopes can defeat the monster. However, when Rusty the Boy Robot fails, Japan has to ask the United States – and more specifically, its giant weaponized mech suit, the Big Guy – for help. Despite the fact that The Big Guy and Rusty is usually positioned as a satire, or even as a tribute to the Japanese monster movie genre, I felt strongly immediately after reading this comic that it isn't a satire at all, or any kind of loving tribute tribute – rather, I see its subversion of key tropes of the Japanese monster movie genre as only serving to enforce an ideology of American exceptionalism and Japanese subservience.

The second text I will examine is the animated TV adaptation of The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, which aired on Fox Kids for two seasons starting in 1999 and starred Pamela Adlon, R. Lee Ermey, M. Emmet Walsh, and Milton from Office Space. I will only be discussing the first two episodes of the show today, but in those episodes alone, we can see how changes made in the story and the extension of the narrative beyond the ending point of the comic serve to alter the ideology as well as the plot.

I’ve already kind of given it away, but does a giant dinosaur-like monster destroying the streets of Tokyo sound familiar to anyone?

Godzilla is probably the most iconic Japanese monster movie, and Rusty the Boy Robot is generally seen as playing around with that tradition in an ironic or satirical way. For example, reviews of the comic call it “tongue in cheek,” “campy,” and “an homage that slyly crosses over into satire.” However, while the comic is clearly engaging with tropes of the Japanese monster movie genre, there are some very important ideological differences between a movie like Godzilla and The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.

In 1987, Chon Noriega published an excellent article in Cinema Journal defining the kind of Japanese monster movie exemplified by Godzilla, which was released in 1954, and laying out the ways that that kind of monster movie differs from those being made in the United States around the same time. Noriega writes that “[a]s the cold war developed, American monster films reflected... [an] inability to identify with the Other,” and that the “American monster films of the fifties are notable for their support of the bomb and cold war attitudes” (66).

For example, in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, from 1953, a dinosaur freed from ice by a nuclear explosion menaces New York City before being defeated by a nuclear missile to the face. For Noriega, the “message is clear: nuclear weapons can solve the problems and anxieties they create” (66). However, “in order to provide such a resolution, the real site of United States nuclear testing is displaced” from Nevada or, say, the ocean near Japan, and “onto the more politically distant and isolated Arctic” (Noriega 66). Noriega also notes that “[t]he complete Otherness of these monsters is emphasized by their impersonal names,” like Them and It. In American monster movies, “[t]he monsters are hated, feared, and eventually destroyed through force, often a variation of the technology that created them” (Noriega 67), but there is no irony in their destruction. In fact, as Noriega argues, these radioactive monsters have been constructed precisely to allow for their radioactive destruction, all free from any kind of cognitive dissonance:

[T]he monster’s autonomy and threat shifts responsibility from American science onto the monster itself. The films effectively destroy any causal relationship, thereby constructing the monster as complete Other. The Americans in the film, freed from implication in the monster’s threat, can now use nuclear or other force to destroy it. (67)

In Japan, by contrast, “the Japanese sympathize with the... monsters” (Noriega 67). As with Godzilla, the film which started the Japanese monster movie tradition, “[u]nlike American monsters, Japanese monsters have personalities, legends, and names” (Noriega 67). Susan J. Napier writes that “[i]n Godzilla’s version of secure horror, the forces of destruction come from outside and are vanquished” (333). However, this is not simply a case of moving the nuclear threat to a distant location, as in American monster movies, because in Japan’s case, the nuclear threat really does come from outside. As Noriega writes, “In Godzilla films, it is the United States that exists as Other” (64); the Godzilla series “transfers onto... [the monster] the role of the United States in order to symbolically re-enact a problematic United States-Japan relationship that includes atomic war, occupation, and thermonuclear tests” (68). While in American monster movies, the nuclear threat is removed to distant locations so it can be reassuringly destroyed by American military might, in Japanese monster movies “it is American science that brings forth the monster... [and] it is Japanese science... that ultimately saves the world” (Napier 331). Films like Godzilla are shaped by the power dynamic between the United States and Japan. “After the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, an essentially American military occupation force dismantled and rebuilt the Japanese family and society in such a way as to ensure that Japan could never again become a military threat to the Allies” (Noriega 65). Godzilla “demonizes American nuclear science in an obvious reference to the atomic tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.... [but] it allows for the traditional happy ending... by allowing ‘good’ Japanese science to triumph against the evil monster” (Napier 331-332).

So, how does The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot engage not only with the tropes of the monster movie, but the political ideology it contains? By setting the story in Tokyo, Miller specifically invokes Godzilla. As we have already seen, the ideology of the Japanese monster movie is very different from the American. However, what we see in The Big Guy is much more akin to the American ideology than the Japanese one. For one thing, the nameless monster of The Big Guy is created by the Japanese.

If, as Napier writes, the “secure horror” of Godzilla depends on the monster coming from outside and being vanquished from within, what we get in The Big Guy is insecure horror, where the monster is created on the inside. To continue with Napier’s argument, in the Japanese monster movie the “forces of destruction” must then be defeated from within. In The Big Guy, the Japanese military is completely ineffectual.

At one point, a Japanese helicopter acts as a kamikaze as the pilot says things like “Our lives mean nothing!” and “If we can stop this demon – for our families – for our nation!” Here, Miller gives us a picture of Japanese military power as impotent, the pilots’ sacrifice for the good of the group portrayed as a futile gesture. The Japanese have a secret weapon – the worryingly named “Rusty,” a robot who looks like a little boy (or Little Boy - I’m not even going to get into that) and speaks in gung-ho Americanisms...

...that ring hollow when it is easily swatted aside by the monster. Not only is the monster not defeated from within, but Japan’s failure is portrayed in an almost comically overwrought way.

For a robot, Rusty takes his defeat pretty hard, saying that “They never should have built me! And I’m sorry they ever did! I’m just a waste of parts and money! A failure! A crummy little hunk of junk! That’s all I am!” As the monster’s giant foot steps on him, Rusty says, “I’m just not big enough.” Luckily for Japan, they can beg for help from the United States. The Big Guy, a huge weaponized mech suit worn by an unnamed and unseen pilot, does battle with the monster while saying things like “For God and country – for every baby who’s ever gonna cut a tooth and every kid who’s ever gonna study hard and get a good job... I’m going in!!”

The monster’s biggest threat to the Big Guy is erasing his individuality – pulling him under its spell and turning him into one of the many small monsters now populating Tokyo. The Big Guy tricks the monster by echoing the same sentiments expressed by the Japanese pilot and Rusty: “I threw everything I had at you – but it was nothing! Nothing! My cause is hopeless!” Miller invokes another stereotype of the Japanese when he has the Big Guy say, “Nothing I can do – but beg you to forgive me! ...Allow me the honor of presenting you with one final, humble offering.” Ultimately, by pretending to weakly surrender, the Big Guy gains the upper hand, and the narration tells us that the Japanese “will teach their young to be strong and brave by telling of the hero who stared the Devil in the eye” – in other words, the Big Guy converts Japan from a collectivist to an individualist society.

It really is, as noted by Comics Alliance, “so obvious, so embarrassingly shaky and superficial a thing, that there are those who'd argue the comic was satire.” But all of this over-the-top action and retro propagandizing serves no subversive message. At no point does the story indicate that the Big Guy isn’t serious about his message, and in the end, Rusty watches from the sidelines as the Big Guy destroys the monster, and is ultimately given to the Big Guy as an unwanted gift by a grateful Japanese government. The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot does subvert the tropes of Godzilla, but it does so in the name of American power. It’s an American monster movie – a nameless monster emerges far from the United States...

...because of bad Japanese science and is vanquished by American military might, exploding in an atomic mushroom cloud:

By setting the story in Japan, by making Japanese science the cause of the destruction, and by invoking specific images and tropes of the Japanese monster movie genre, Miller and Darrow are not creating a satire, which is usually seen as lampooning the hegemonic structure. They are imposing that hegemony onto a tradition developed to give Japan a voice to process atomic fear in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and silencing that voice in the process.

As we’ve seen, the comic book of The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot is not exactly politically or ideologically neutral. But what happens to the ideology of the comic when it is adapted into a new medium, for a new audience? That’s exactly what happened in 1999, when the animated series The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot premiered on Fox Kids. A promo for the show introduced the character of Rusty, stating that “having a little kid in charge of saving the world can lead to a few problems. So now, Rusty has a new teacher to show him the ropes, and Big Guy just got a new partner.” The animated series shifts the setting of the story from Tokyo to “New Tronic City” (get it?Neutronic? Get it?), a generic American city. The show’s first episode is directly adapted from the comic book, but the setting change alone completely alters the ideological thrust of the story. If Rusty and the Big Guy are both weapons of the same government, The Big Guy can no longer call upon the Japanese monster movie tradition, or the atomic history of the Japanese and American political relationship, to lend it any kind of ideological momentum.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the show has no ideology! If that quote from the promo didn’t already clue you in, the story becomes not a narrative of American military dominance over Japan, but one of the creation of a productive citizen in American society – also known as neoliberalism. Now, neoliberalism can be a slippery term, so I’ll take a couple minutes here to define that term as I’m applying it to this text. Susan Koshy writes that neoliberalism is “the reconceptualization of labor from a fixed and abstract entity to a set of attributes and skills that enable an individual to earn an income over a lifetime” (345). In other words, labor isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. Neoliberalism sees “the worker... [as] an improvable ‘ability-machine’” (345) which serves the state, and this “understanding of human abilities as sources of potential income redefines child-rearing by treating a broader range of activities of care and cultivation... as potential ‘investments’ in the human capital of children” (345), an idea Koshy summarizes as a “revaluation of all aspects of family life through their capacity to form human capital” (345). The importance of child-rearing to the success of neoliberalism is key to our discussion of The Big Guy animated series for two reasons: first, Rusty is a robot, but he is also a little boy, with a little boy voice and a little boy’s understanding of the world; and second, because the show aired on Fox Kids – unlike with the violent, gory source material, children were the show’s target audience. As Koshy writes, “[w]ithin a neoliberal order, in which the wealth of nations has come to be measured by their human capital rather than just their physical capital, education... is widely seen as they key to success and economic dominance” (347). The Big Guy is a story of Rusty’s education at the hands of the Big Guy, and it also educates its young viewers on “correct” social values.

The comic already makes some gestures towards this mission – the Big Guy’s invocation of “every kid who’s ever gonna study hard and get a good job,” or Rusty’s final plea to the Big Guy, “I’ll prove myself to you, Big Guy! You’ll see!” – but the show is much more explicit about it. The theme song describes Rusty as “pretty darn good, but he needs help... The boy robot lives his dream, to be a legend in history, the Big Guy and Rusty.” From its opening moments, the show situates the Big Guy as a national hero, serving and protecting the state from monsters, and as a worthy role model for Rusty, who is effective and productive only when emulating his hero.

Rusty’s creator, Quark Industries, also developed the Big Guy. In fact, Rusty will make the Big Guy “obsolete.” When the episode’s monster appears, Rusty is not able to stop it on his own. Rusty also idolizes the Big Guy, who has already been secretly retired by Quark Industries. Similar to the comic, the military is not able to defeat the monster, so Rusty is called in to help. Similar to the comic, Rusty tackles his mission with a generous helping of gee-whiz gusto, but is ultimately unsuccessful. However, in the show, Rusty is much more ambiguously robotic. The pilot of the Big Guy, who is a major character in the show, says that he doesn’t “understand sending a child to do a man’s work,” and Rusty responds by saying that “I’m gonna grow up to be just like” the Big Guy. Koshy’s “improvable ability-machine” has here been made literal – Rusty is a robot, but unlike real technology, he is not simply programmed with his abilities. He must be raised in a family – the Big Guy and a female scientist at Quark Industries – to learn how to effectively perform his work for the state, the figurative “investments” made by adults in their children becoming literal, as Rusty’s success or failure affects the fortunes of Quark Industries. While the comic ends with Rusty pleading pathetically with the Big Guy, who is flying off alone into the sunset, the show makes sure that Rusty is accepted by his idol, actually becoming a physical part of his body.

“Thank Henry Ford for standardized parts,” the Big Guy says. (I’ll leave the subtext of that line up to you.) The episode ends with an award ceremony for the Big Guy. When Rusty is disappointed that the Big Guy works alone, his mother-slash-inventor says, “Someday you’ll be the greatest too, Rusty. Remember, you’re still a boy.” Luckily for Rusty, the military orders the Big Guy’s pilot to take on “the kid” as a partner. As a general says, “There is no doubt in my military mind that he will become a better soldier under your expert guidance.” While the comic ends with the rejection of Japan’s technology by the individualist American robot, the show ends with Rusty sitting on the Big Guy’s shoulder as his “partner,” ready to learn to be a productive citizen.

The fact that the show continues for another twenty-five episodes is another important change. If the show had ended here, we would still have a strong neoliberal message. But the show continues, cementing the emphasis on the teacher-student relationship between the Big Guy and Rusty as they battle a series of monsters. Rusty says early in episode two that “the only way I’m going to be a good sidekick is if I spend more time with him and learn all his moves.” When he gets a call to help the Big Guy, his mom warns him to be careful. He responds, “Don’t need to! Megaton of punishment!” Unsurprisingly, Rusty chafes at the constraints of being a student, and ultimately learns the valuable lesson that he doesn’t know more than the adults around him, and he should trust them instead of trying to strike out on his own. When he assumes there is a plan to throw him in the grinder, a machine that destroys robots and finally confronts the Big Guy, the Big Guy tells him, “No one wants to grind you. We’re trying to save you!” When the episode’s villain reappears, Rusty sacrifices himself to save the Big Guy, who says, “Hold on, son. We’re going to get you to a doctor.” At the end of the show, his life force returned, Rusty again sits on the Big Guy’s shoulder. “I can’t believe I doubted you... for one minute!” he says.

Koshy writes that the “revaluation of all aspects of family life through their capacity to form human capital” in the neoliberal order “fundamentally transforms ideas of inheritance and filiality: ...[educated families’] problem is not so much to transmit to their children an inheritance in the classical sense of the term, as the transmission of this other element, human capital, which also links the generations to each other but in a completely different way” (345). The Big Guy, as a suit piloted by a man, one who is retired and then un-retired in the show’s first episode, highlights the fact that protecting the United States is human labor. The Big Guy is then called upon to transmit his “set of attributes and skills” to a student, protégé, and son in the form of Rusty. The investment of attributes and skills in Rusty will allow him to become a productive citizen who can then take over the Big Guy’s role in the future, a goal which fits neatly with “neoliberal notions of ‘productive citizenship’ defined as ‘those who can contribute to their nation’s advancement in the global political economy’” (Koshy 346-347). In other words, the neoliberal ideology of the animated series tells the story of a young robot who is being given the skills to someday impose the political ideology of the comic book.

One could argue that neither of these texts are very culturally important. The comic is more renowned, even among its fans, for Darrow’s art than for Miller’s story, while the TV show is barely remembered by anyone (and I do not recommend it). So why bother writing about them at all?

First of all, because it’s worthwhile to remember that ideologies are everywhere – even in media that seems like fluff – and that the more deeply buried an ideology is, the more dangerous it can be. Secondly, I think that Miller’s comic, and to a lesser extant the animated adaptation of it, is a good cautionary tale about the slipperiness of satire. It’s easy to label something as satire or parody, but just as easy to slip a deadly serious message into that “satire.” Satire and parody are two of our most effective tools against repression, prejudice, and hate, and thus is one of the most coveted channels for that same hate. (Exhibit A: memes.)

A "meme" (I guess) from r/The_Donald.

Finally, I wanted to examine these two versions of the Big Guy text because I think it’s fascinating to see how the shift from comics to animation, and the shift between the assumed demographics for those different mediums, completely alters the ideology of a story that remains, on the macro level, pretty much the same. In a media landscape increasingly populated by adaptation and the development of intellectual property – including a highly successful series of movies, based on comics, which features, among others, an ultra-patriotic throwback American hero and a guy in a giant mech suit – I think it’s worth thinking about how hard to pin down ideology really is.

Works Cited:

“Big Guy & Rusty The Boy Robot | Promo | 1999 | Fox Kids.” YouTube, uploaded by Analog Memories, 10 April 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWgwPg4XB1U.

Koshy, Susan. “Neoliberal Family Matters.” American Literary History, 25, pp. 344-380 (2013).

Noriega, Chon. “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When ‘Them!’ is U.S.” Cinema Journal, 27, pp. 63-77 (1987).

Napier, Susan J. “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira.” The Journal of Japanese Studies, 19, pp. 327-351 (1993).

Miscellany #1: Hey, Lady

1. The Romanticization of Pain

I heard this song in the car the other day. 

I must have heard it before, but when I was a lot younger, before I got that the song is about Billie Holiday (and it's not very subtle about it). I did get that this last time, though, and I was really struck with how kind of icky the song is.

Sing me something terrible that even dawn may come.
You and me, we don't believe in happy endings.
Hey, Lady Day, can you save my life this time?
Can you cry so beautifully you make my troubles rhyme?

The thing about Billie Holiday is that she's been endlessly projected upon by so many people. She's like Oscar Wilde, or, I don't know, Judy Garland? Someone who is seen as not fitting into the dominant mold, and being broken by that struggle, and ultimately destroyed by it; someone who created lasting art in the process; and someone who never got to tell their own story (or whose tellings of their own story, like De Profundis, have been conveniently pushed aside by general audiences, or are suspect, like Lady Sings the Blues), allowing fans to read all of that life story into their work.

Holiday's late recordings are, in my opinion, terrible. I don't blame her for this - a hard life took its toll on her voice, and her substance abuse further hampered her abilities. Listening to Holiday after 1955 or so has always struck me as a kind of failure porn, or pain voyeurism - her ravaged voice and missed notes celebrated by the listener for their authenticity. The Magnetic Fields song really highlights this power dynamic between the listener and Holiday: here, Billie is being asked to put herself through pain ("Sing me something terrible"... "cry so beautifully"...) so that she can heal the narrator. (It's conceivable that the narrator is talking about early/peak Billie Holiday, but I doubt it, because the music she recorded in those years is generally cheerful and bouncy. And, honestly, no one is ever talking about that stuff when they say things like this song is saying.)

That painful music can be helpful, even therapeutic, in a painful experience is not crazy, or morally wrong, in my opinion. But the song goes further: "You and me, we don't believe in happy endings." Did Holiday enjoy her late recordings? Did she feel that she was producing quality music? I personally don't know. I'm not sure if Stephin Merritt knows either. But the song begs that question - Holiday's purpose is to be in pain, so that the narrator's pain can be healed.

Billie you're a genius enough to be a fool.
A fool to gamble everything and never know the rules.
Some of us can only live in songs of love and trouble.

This is obviously getting into some noble savage stuff here with that first line. I'm always reminded of On the Road - Sal in the "Denver colored section," wishing he was

anything but what I was so drearily, a "white man" disillusioned.... wishing I could exchange worlds with the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic Negroes of America.... There was excitement and the air was filled with the vibration of really joyous life that knows nothing of disappointment and "white sorrows" and all that.

For Sal, the African Americans and Mexicans are "joyous" because they aren't burdened by what he calls "white ambitions"; in the Magnetic Fields song, Billie, freed from society's norms by the ability to be ignorant, isn't joyous, but she does have an inner peace or resolution that the white narrator wants to find. The narrator lumps himself with Holiday while also putting her on a noble savage pedestal. The balls it takes for the narrator to ask Holiday to save his life (because of a breakup) by leveraging the pain and suffering which caused Holiday herself to die under arrest on a hospital bed at age 44 is astounding.

2. The Transcendence of Pain

The fact is, I was already thinking about Holiday's late work even before hearing that Magnetic Fields song, because on another car trip this song came up on my iPod:

This is Sinatra in 1986 - 1986! Frank was seventy years old, had been sounding rough since at least the early 1970s, and was definitely sounding not that great by the 1980s. Every so often when I was younger, a later Frank recording would come on the radio, and he always sounded terrible, especially compared to the 1950s records I loved to listen to, like A Swingin' Affair. So I always avoided late Sinatra recordings for much the same reason I avoided late Billie Holiday recordings - they seemed like pain voyeurism, and to be honest I didn't get much enjoyment from hearing one of my favorite singers repeatedly fail to hit notes he could hit with ease in his prime.

Then, for whatever reason, a few years ago I decided to listen to some of his later recordings. I think Will Friedwald, who doesn't cut Frank more slack than is necessary, recommended The Main Event Live, from 1974, in his excellent book on Sinatra. Whatever the impetus was, I ended up venturing into some 1970s and eventually 1980s recordings, including Live at the Meadowlands, the "Past" disc of Trilogy, from 1980, and L.A. Is My Lady, from 1984. And I was shocked to discover that while, yes, many tracks made me cringe as I heard Frank's voice fail spectacularly (often on bad song choices), there were just as many where he sounds energetic, excited, and agile, as with the "Come Rain Or Come Shine" at the Meadowlands. Some of these later recordings are now some of my favorite Sinatra recordings.

Why? I still can't listen to late Billie Holiday, so why can I listen to late Sinatra? I think it has to do with why we listen. As I explored in my previous post, many listen to late Billie Holiday because they feel the pain and suffering her ragged voice seems to embody is beautiful, or poignant, or sad in a way that rewards immersion. In essence, they are listening to Billie Holiday's late recordings because she will fail. And, though I don't enjoy those recordings, I understand that perspective. Holiday's failure is poignant - I personally just don't think that poignancy is enjoyable to hear. But Sinatra's failures are never beautiful, or poignant, or sad in any way but pathetic.

My guess is that this has to do with power. Holiday was a black woman, often exploited, definitely discriminated against, who struggled with domineering men and debilitating addictions. Her late recordings show a woman persisting, despite her broken voice. They can be interpreted as an expression of power - the power Holiday retained to imbue a song with deep meaning. Sinatra was, at his peak, one of the most powerful men in the world, a friend of multiple Presidents, musicians, and movie stars, connected to the mafia, a best-selling singer and a movie box-office draw. Sinatra at the end of his career is a man desperately trying to grasp a vocal power which is now out of reach. His voice is weak, is cracks and catches, it defies his commands. Late Billie Holiday sounds old before her time; late Sinatra just sounds old.

For me, then, the draw - the power - of a track like the one above is Sinatra's triumph. Listen to him during the instrumental break, a little after the two minute mark. He's still singing, his voice reaching high, blending with the horns in a way that can't help making you smile - the notes aren't perfect, but he's having a blast. And when he comes back in to close out the song, his voice sounds tired, but he is in command. Late Billie Holiday is poignant because it is a documentation (a validation, in the case of the Magnetic Fields song?) of powerlessness; late Frank Sinatra is triumphant because it is a documentation of power fleetingly recaptured, before the next regrettable cover or faltering ballad begins.