26 January // Captivity Narratives = Soft-Core Puritan Porn

I could voice any number of very legitimate issues about captivity narratives in general, and Mary Rowlandson's narrative in particular; ESPECIALLY the ridiculous portrayal of Christian providence as justification for eventual cultural genocide and early European settlement of occupied territory...but instead what comes to mind is this:

The cell-rock band Rasputina recorded a skit mocking captivity narratives on their album "Frustration Plantation", which I think hits pretty close to home. I've always found it odd how sexualized and violent those narratives are, which I think Rasputina does a great job of parodying in "My Captivity By Savages".

You can listen to the song on their Myspace page music player by clicking the photo above...you have to skip forward to the eighth track to get the song, but I promise it is worth it.

This is "The Story of My Captivity by Savages," or "How I Learned to Fight"
by Eliza Elizabeth Cook, age 13
Written in my own hand on this, the 23rd day of August, 1829.

Chapter 1: Fine Day for a Flaying, or The Brutal Massacre of All I Held Dear

The valley that runs down the trail over the west bank of the glorious state of Natchez-Pierce was the site of my own hideous undoing. My entire family was lain waste, no careb being taken by the natives that even baby Coolidge was to be spared an ounce of pain.
How I came to be spared, by the grace of God, I shall never know.

I had been smashed in the head with a boulder over fourteen times by a young Indian brave. When I awoke, through eyes still stinging from the smouldering decimation, my large blue eyes looked up into the burning sun of the late summer sky. No sooner had I stirred when four horsemen approached my wilted carcasse. In their stilted English, they told me in great detail how they had massacred mine own Ma and Pa, how my elder brother Ham had given no resistance to his own flogging, and how easy it had been to make my sickly sister, Sarah Susanna, wail and sob like a sea creature. (Boo hoo!)

I clenched my long, graceful fingers into tight fists at my sides, and turning my head away, laughed quietly to myself. (Ha ha ha!) If these human animals believed that they had captured a nubile and willing young white slave girl, they were sorely mistaken.

I felt about my waist for a weapon. Oftentimes, I kept sewing tools hanging from ribbons pinned to my dress. "Looking for this?" the handsomest warrior asked, holding my sterling pinking shears up between two red fingers as he looked down from his steed at my writhing confusion.

Brushing a strand of pale yellow hair from my brow, I pretended to reach for a stray silken slipper that I had spied nearby, but swiftly darted up and in between the flanks of the wild mustangs that stood majestically before me!

The silent commander had only to reach down to capture me by the hair. Yanking hard, he pulled me upright, and twisted my fair face up to meet his cold, cold gaze. I shall never forget my realization upon that moment that my freedom had thus been robbed. And that although my pleasing mortal shell was intact, I, Eliza Elizabeth Jane Cook, was to become a handmaiden to a number of verile, half-naked nomads, and that this ordeal would continue fourteen years.

28 January // Joseph McCarthy + Glenn Beck

Reading Arthur Miller's "Are You Now Or Were You Ever?" reminded me a lot of the weird parallel between Glenn Beck and Joseph McCarthy. It's almost like they're fulfilling the same roles in our society, just 50 years apart. Check out this video from the Glenn Beck Show that, unbelievably, portrays McCarthy in a supportive and positive light while calling for another modern-day witch hunt.



The Beck/McCarthy love connection is terrifying, isn't it?

My question is -- is this kind of thing cyclical? Are we destined to have sporadic outbreaks of intolerance and radical conservatism throughout our entire national history? Will there always be scapegoating and xenophobia, or can we ever develop a cohesive society that cherishes differences? Why is there such a push for conformity in America? For a society based on the melting pot ideal (which the title of Miller's play itself hearkens back to), why do we always seem to push for conformity in every expression of personal ideology? Why do we, as a nation, have such difficulty with variances in politics, religion, ethnicity, gender and orientation?

When I was doing an online search for McCarthy + TV (based on a half-remembered political science article linking the fall of McCarthyism with his televised demeanor), I ended up running across this. Reporter Edward Murrow ran a special program on McCarthy as part of the TV show "See It Now" -- it is widely held that the visual representation of McCarthy's incoherency and nonsensical rambling turned popular opinion against him. It turns out that CBS News has actually posted that broadcast on their online archive. It's strange because McCarthy doesn't seem that different from Beck to me, yet a medium that spelled the doom for one man is the broadcast "commentator" empire of another.


(Click the photo above or go to http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1065699n)

14 January // Contemporary American Indian Mythology

I'm glad we started the course with American Indian literature, because that underscores the very legitimate place First Nations people hold in American culture and history (and continue to hold into the present day). They are the original inhabitants of the continent and the first storytellers of our common landscape. Many First Nations works memorialize not only that geography but also the complexities of human experience.

Discussing ancient trickster cycles makes me think of the modern day, and how we tend to relegate American Indians to the past. It seems hard for mainstream American society to understand that those cultures and traditions are living, evolving things in the present.

Specifically, I am thinking about a digital media piece put together by artist Luke Warmwater based on the Lakota Iktomi cycle. I used portions of the following clip in a video essay I did several years ago about Lakota Generation Y cultural expressions. I think it says more than I ever could on the subject, although some people find that to be uncomfortable. But it is real and speaks to contemporary reservation experience, which is a facet of modern life that can't be ignored.

(WARNING: This is definitely not work or child friendly, but it is relevant to contemporary issues. It gets pretty...mature...within the first few minutes.)

21 January // Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity"

I am somewhat ambivalent about Winthrop. There are surprising points of fellowship, kindness, insight and charity in this speech that don't seem to really mesh with the parts that reveal his self-centered and short-sighted conceptions of the world. Some of what he says is inspired and beautiful, while other parts are just incredibly limited and moralistic.

The roots of American interventionism are apparent in this document, which is troubling for me because I agree with some of those offshoots. (Such as the United Nations and their 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.) As a nation, we still feel like we are a "city upon a hill". We take this mindset as a economic and political imperative, intervening in the political systems and cultural structures of other places to instill our brand in place of their native systems. This document is where it all starts in our political history. It's the mindset that led to the enforced Christianization of the Native peoples of America, the federally-instigated downfall of numerous Latin American governments and the wars of the past century (including Korea and Vietnam). I wonder if Winthrop could ever have envisioned that application of his theology.

Literary Break #1: Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights"

In honor of my birthday, which is today...

Sometimes when I hear this song, I imagine young Poetry MFA students-to-be across the English speaking world lip-syncing this into their 70s-era glitter hairbrushes while staring solemnly through feathered bangs at their older sisters' David Cassidy posters...



As a child of the early 80s, I can get away with saying that. We had our own embarrassments.

(But I do enjoy this song.)