"Bringing the High Heat": A Short Story

This week, I decided to take a quick break from essays and instead present another short story, in the vein of "Tessy Dubois" from last Halloween.  This story is based on an actual field in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, named for the man who hit one of the most famous home runs in the history of Major League Baseball.

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“Bringing the High Heat"

“Hey, kid.  What are you out so late for?”

There I was, out on a late summer’s stroll through Schenley Park.  I was always fond of seeing this particular section of the city with the full moon out.  Casting its light on the fountains and statues and wide green spaces, it gave one the impression of walking into a bygone era.  It was a reverie I lost myself in frequently, and one I was shaken from when I saw a girl, maybe eleven-years-old, standing alone on a softball field.

The girl—I never learned her name, but when I asked around someone suggested that it was Jessie—looked at me as if my asking her was a source of confusion.  “Playing baseball.”

That much was obvious.  When you see a young girl standing a pitcher’s rubber with a mitt and a faded yellow Pirates cap, there are only some many explanations.  Of course, when one factors in that it was nearly ten o’clock at night and that there was no one else on the field, even those few plausible explanations cease to make much sense.

“I can see you’re playing baseball,” I said, “but you do know that it’s dark out, right?”

“Yeah, I can see,” she said with an air of annoyance that this old geezer was asking her such dumb questions.  I got the same response when I asked if her parents knew where she was (“Yes, naturally”) and whether she was waiting for anyone else (“No, of course not”).

Clearly, I thought, having a conversation with this girl, besides the implications that may carry to passers-by, was not a fruitful proposition.  The old man buried deep within me wanted to moan, “The damn kids today,” and walk off shaking my cane, but as I lacked a cane and an old geezer’s voice that was impossible.  Still, just thinking about her curt response was enough to irritate me, though I’m not sure whether it was the attitude or the lack of substance that proved bothersome.

All that time I was thinking, she didn’t do much beyond staring at the backstop.  Jessie looked right into that chain-link fence, as if she were staring down a capable but middle-of-the-road batter on a 1-0 count.  Only, she took extra time between breaths, ratcheting up the tension; it must have been the bottom of the ninth in her head.  I couldn’t imagine getting much a reaction one way or another from a tangled web of metal, but I could see the expression in her face shift ever-so-slightly from moment to moment.

At first, she seemed cold, giving off the aura of smooth dealer about send a breaking ball right by her adversary.  Then, just for a flash, all that confidence drained from her face.  “He knows it,” it seemed to scream.  “He knows that the heat is coming up and in.”  But just as I thought that a deer-in-the-headlights look was going to occur, I saw a slight smirk cross her lips.  It was a false alarm; the backstop’s posture clearly gave away that he was betting on a change-up.

Suddenly, I heard the rattling of metal and caught a glimpse of the baseball feeling bouncing back to the pitching circle.  To be honest, it caught me off guard.  I had thought that a bullet had just been fired or something.  When I looked up, there was Jessie, still standing in that same spot, but now holding back a laugh.

“Yes, yes,” I said, trying to diffuse things as quickly as possible.  “Laugh, laugh—you got me.”  I brushed off my sleeves in some strange attempt at a gesture and added: “You’ve got quite an arm there, kid.”

“Heh.  Thanks.”  She still laughed, but at least I could tell myself that it was on my own terms.  “This is the perfect spot for baseball.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

How could anyone disagree?  Where we stood at that moment was where Forbes Field stood all those years ago, back when the plaza was a parking lot and the Pirates were pennant contenders.  It had been torn down back in 1971, but nobody could ever forget the baseball history that laced this tract of land.  A section of wall still stands in the park, and right beside it—right where Jessie was pitching—was a softball field dedicated to Bill Mazeroski.

As I contemplated the significance of this little softball field, Jessie shouted, “You know, someday, I’ll be pitching for the Pirates!”  She threw the ball up into the air and caught it with a jump.  “Yeah, just you wait—Game 7, World Series, strikeout to win the game!”

I couldn’t help but smile.  “Hope you grow up fast,” I said.  “They could use you right now.”  I had fastened my jacket and was about to go on my way, when something pulled me back.  Later I rationalized that I didn’t want to leave her alone at this hour, but that really could not have been it.  “Do you want a catcher?”

Jessie did give a response, and a potent one at that: a mitt thrown right at my chest.  “All right!” she said, savoring the moment.  She put on her announcer’s voice: “It’s all come down to this, folks: the Yankees and the Pirates are tied 9-9 in the final game of the World Series.  If the Pirates can get a run across, they’ll win it all.”  The set-up sounded rather familiar to me, but I had some trouble piecing it together.  Then: “And up to the plate comes number 9, Bill Mazeroski.”

“Hang on,” I said; I caught myself waving my arms as if I were asking the ump for timeout.  “Why are you Ralph Terry here?  I thought you were a Pirates fan.”

“Exactly!” she said with electricity.  “Hey, if I can strike out Maz, then I can get everybody.”

Squatting back down, I had to admire her passion and reasoning there.  Clearly, the Pirates ran through her blood.  The organization needed fans like that, and I wasn’t sure there were that many left.

After sending one into the dirt—“Ach,” she said, “I tried getting him to chase a slider”—Jessie stood perfectly still.  Just like before, as a matter of fact.  I saw her face, those many muscles controlling expression, going through the exact same process as before: stoicism, terror, smugness.  I saw her bring the baseball up to her chest and take a deep sigh.

She was bringing the high heat.  And Maz was about to send it over the left-field fence.

I threw down two fingers.  She threw the ball, leaving me to hope that she saw them in time.

D.O.A. (1950)

D.O.A. (1950)

Directed by Rudolph Maté

Screenplay by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene

Runtime: 1 hr, 23 min

Existence oftentimes seems predicated on simple twists of fate; mere coincidence can end up cutting us down in the end.  You may just be doing your own thing, minding your own business, but before you know you are implicated in some grand scheme of which you want absolutely no part.  It’s a most sinister form of “wrong place, wrong time” syndrome, the kind in which you aren’t even aware you are in until it’s too late.  This is the sort of scenario which forms the basis for Rudolph Maté’s 1950 film noir, D.O.A.

Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) walks into a police station to report a murder: his own.  In film noir tradition, he tells his story in flashback.  While on a spur-of-the-moment vacation in San Francisco, Bigelow, an account, discovers that he’s been poisoned and is beyond medical help.  Upon hearing that a man named Eugene Phillips, who wanted to get in contact with Bigelow, has committed suicide, Bigelow sets out to find out who murdered him and why.  What follows is a twisted tale of crime, adultery, and downright craziness.

Bigelow’s search hinges on a case involving stolen iridium, and his lines of inquiry bring him into contact with numerous colorful characters: Phillips’ grieving widow (Lynn Baggett) and Halliday, the comptroller of Phillips’ business (William Ching); Marla Rakubian (Laurette Luez), the requisite femme fatale, and the insane, sadistic enforcer Chester (Neville Brand).  Most of all, however, Bigelow is driven by his love for his secretary Paula (Pamela Britton), who aids him and pleads with him throughout the case.

Maté and the screenwriters use the cast of characters to craft an exciting world, largely consisting of San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Because the roles are so engaging—Brand in particular is a pure scene-stealer—the criminal dealings and gunplay have a serious heft to them.  Whether they instill sympathy, loathing, or terror, every actor on the screen elicits significant emotional response.  This prevents D.O.A. from getting bogged down in its plot, which ultimately proves inconsequential and a little bit contrived.

O’Brien’s Bigelow, interestingly, might be the least engaging character in the film.  He almost places a dramatic version of the straight-man, which makes sense; he’s the everyday guy who, because he happened to sign a bill of sale some time ago, finds himself a dead man.  Though he responds with anguish at first, as the reality of the situation sinks in, Bigelow becomes more and more stoic, accepting his fate with strength while not actively trying to change.  He’s also (understandably) fatalistic, which may explain some of his risky behavior in his detective work.

O’Brien’s co-star, Britton, is equally as good playing Paula.  At first glance, Paula is the first and most obvious suspect, by virtue of being the only character with any clear connection to Bigelow.  But Britton’s performance—confused, distraught and reassuring—makes it apparent that she had nothing to with it.  This also allows for D.O.A. to be a true mystery.  The only person with any apparent motivation to poison Bigelow is not the killer, so who wants Bigelow dead and gone is anyone’s guess.

Adding to the mystery atmosphere is the film’s style and cinematography.  Rudolph Maté was an acclaimed cinematographer in Europe, and he doesn’t let that style go to waste in his directorial debut.  Of particular note is the opening sequence: as the opening credits roll, Bigelow is making his way through the police station toward the homicide department.  The camera follows him down seemingly endless hallways, which ratchets up the tension immediately.  This type of sequence is repeated twice in the film, and each time makes it clear that time is of the essence.

D.O.A. is a bit restrained by its low budget and production values, though.  The film that was shown on the local PBS affiliate was grainy, and the beginning of scenes seemed amateurish, in that the actors reacting to the scene beginning was a common sight.  D.O.A. was not a big budget production, so some problems with the appearance of the film are to be expected.  That said, the low end production values do detract from the experience, and that I was cognizant of them demonstrates that they can distract from the film’s proceedings.

Despite not being as polished as it could have stood to be, D.O.A. is still an incredibly fun film noir.  From the near-literal dead man walking angle to the stolen iridium to the everyman dragged into hell, Maté’s film holds its own as a thriller.  If you are like me and are not particular genre savvy, then I expect that D.O.A. will keep you guessing until the very end, wondering why the hell anyone would want—nay, need—a lowly CPA out of the way, and how the hell Bigelow manages to find his killer in time.

Wings of Desire (1987)

Wings of Desire (1987)

Directed by Wim Wenders

Screenplay by Wim Wenders and Peter Handke

Runtime: 2 hr, 8 min

There are some films for which I have a hard time writing an introduction.  Usually this is because they are so nondescript that there doesn’t seem to be much worth mentioning.  Other times, however, it’s because there are so many directions to take it.  Where exactly does one start with this sort of movie?  Perhaps the importance of time in film would make a good starting point, but I know I’ve used that before and fairly recently.  Well, with no known direction, I’ll just start by saying this movie is easily a masterpiece in my book.

Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (German title: Der Himmel über Berlin, literally The Sky over Berlin) follows angels, present and former, who go about and observe the people of Berlin.  They listen in on the people’s thoughts, which need not correspond with what they are doing.  However, the angels, as they exist not in the “now” but in “forever”, are unable to experience much of anything; neither time nor sensation has more than an abstract meaning to them.  It is this longing for experience that leads the angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) to fall.

The filmmakers attempt to show the world both through the lens of the eternal angels and from the perspective of the temporal humans.  Of course, to show the first perspective on film is not easy; it’s a medium defined by stimuli and time.  To achieve this end, the world from the angels’ point of view is shot in a gorgeous black-and-white.  These sequences are a sight to behold, for certain, but they also give the film a surreal, almost fantastical quality, especially when combined with the aerial cinematography.  It’s a perfect demonstration of the utility of monochrome.

Unless an angel decides to fall, their closest contact with humanity is the thoughts of the Berliners.  Great swaths of the movie are dedicated to following the people of Berlin, both through their daily minutiae and through momentous events in their lives.  These glimpses, however, are fragmented.  We hear their minds in mid-thought, pondering their future, their finances, or their purpose—before moving on to the next human.  All their thoughts and actions are temporal and fleeting, standing in sharp contrast to the existence of the angels.

It is this quality, this attachment to time, that drives Damiel’s desire to live life as a human.  That, and there’s a girl.  He becomes attracted to a circus trapeze artist named Marion (Solveig Dommartin).  In many ways, Marion appears to be a human angel.  Whereas the angels, figuratively at least, reside above Berlin, Marion during her act gracefully soars above the circus audience.  They both long for contact, for some experience, and Marion is by far the most loquaciously philosophical of the human characters in the film.  No wonder Damiel is drawn to her.

What may be less clear is why an angel would want to fall in this particular locale.  Wings of Desire may be a commentary on the state of Berlin.  Since the angels mention the (Berlin) Olympic Games happened fifty years ago, this would place the action of the film in 1986.  The mood of the city appears to be somewhere between ennui and anxiety.  Most of the humans’ reflections are very heavy, and the simple question of “Why?” is pervasive.  Damiel’s fellow angel Cassiel (Otto Sander) even witnesses a man (Sigurd Rachman) commit suicide by jumping off a building.  This is not the happiest of places.

But then again, there is still much joy to be found as well.  Much of this comes from Peter Falk, who plays himself (or some variation on himself).  Falk is in Berlin to shoot a picture set in Nazi Germany, which sounds dire, yes, but he is most in love with life.  He takes great pleasure in sketching the extras for the film, reveling in the human form and all its imperfections.  Falk also adds levity to the film, particularly when he spends several minutes with a costumer trying to find the perfect hat for his character to wear.

In fact, looking back, the beauties of the human world are everywhere.  The children laugh and shout with glee during a circus performance.  Marion and the other acts sing half-drunkenly after the show.  We see hundreds of people taking in a performance by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who play the aptly titled “From Her to Eternity”.  When I stop to think, the world of Wings of Desire is filled with reasons to experience time and sensation.  I dare call it life-affirming that Damiel, an eternal being, longs for a slice of this action.

Wenders’ film, then, is surely something to treasure, celebrating and honoring the perks of being human even in the face of incredible heaviness.  It’s not the kind of film that needs to preach its message, and even when the characters do start to monologue, it feels more like poetry.  In fact, that’s the perfect descriptor of this movie: poetic.  It does not need a clearly defined plot or even full-on trains of thought to impart its meaning.  Like many a poem, Wings of Desire is all about creating a mood, and after watching it, I know that I am in the mood to live.

On "Badge of Pride" and the Acceptance of LGBT Cops

A couple of months ago, I saw a short documentary feature called Badge of Pride, which portrayed that stuggles and hopes of openly gay cops in the Toronto Police Service.  At just under forty-five minutes of runtime, Badge of Pride is a tad too slight and relies heavily on the anecdotes of the interviewed officers, but Min Sook Lee's film does bring some important issues to light, and raises the question of how accepting of the LGBT community society actually is.

Naturally, society has come a long way is the past several decades, certainly when compared to the 1980s.  What is now Pride Week in Toronto was originally conceived as a protest against the 1981 police raids on Toronto's gay bathhouses, during which over 300 men were arrested (Badge).  Meanwhile, according to Michael R. Stevenson, a 1987 study of U.S. college freshmen found that "62.5% of men and 44.6% of women agreed that homosexual relations should be forbidden" (500).

Over time, tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals have increased, although problems still remain.  Jeni Loftus reports that between 1973 and 1998, while hostility to the LGBT community declined, every year a majority of Americans said that homosexuality was "always wrong" (767).  Keep in mind that it was not until 2003 that the Supreme Court of the United States, in the decision Lawrence v. Texas, struck down anti-sodomy laws as unconstitutional.

The same year that anti-sodomy laws were struck down in the United States, the case Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada legalized same-sex marriage in the province of Ontario.  Two years later, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Toronto's Pride Week, the chief of Toronto's police took part in the proceedings.  Badge of Pride, which began filming in 2006, uses the apparent progressive swing as background for the film, and asks whether things have changed as much as we may think.

Badge of Pride follows four members of the Toronto Police Service: three constables (Jackie O'Keefe, Paul Regan, and Todd Hillhouse, the latter of whom was promoted to sergeant during filming) and a detective (Judy Nosworthy).  These four discuss their impressions of the workplace environment and what it means to be an out-of-closet member of the police force.  Sometimes the experience is positive, and other times their treatment is worrisome.

The question of whether the Toronto police is accepting of the LBGT community is best demonstrated in the contrast between Regan and O'Keefe's impressions.  Regan, who the filmmakers report as the most prominent openly gay cop in Toronto, reports having almost no problems from his coworkers or his superiors.  Though he does say that some of his partners are uncomfortable hearing about his sex life, Regan tends to be optimistic about his position and that state of gay cops in general.

O'Keefe, however, explicitly states that Regan's optimism is misplaced and believes that he will eventually come up against internal discrimination and harrassment.  O'Keefe speaks from her own experience; she mentions receiving threatening messages from a senior officer regarding her being a proudly open lesbian: "You have to remember who signs your checks," she recalls hearing, "and you have to remember who puts a roof over your head."

Sadly, the stories of the other two cops tends to support O'Keefe's side of the argument.  The harrassment from his comrades that Hillhouse faced was beyond absurd, up to and including his harrassers spying on his house from their squad car on the side of the road.  Nosworthy, meanwhile, compares the environment of the police department to that of a high school, with homophobic slurs thrown about on a regular basis.

It also appears that the strain of homophobia within the Toronto Police Service extends past individual officers and into the LGBT community as a whole.  After all, it wasn't until the year before Lee began filming that the police participated in Pride Week.  Gay-friendly heterosexual officers also appear reluctant to show their support, for fear of repercussions.  This is especially evident at Nosworthy's wedding--several of her coworkers attended, but none of them wished to appear on camera.

This makes O'Keefe's skepticism of Regan's outlook understandable, for certain, and Regan's camera presence--rarely looking directly at the camera or interviewer--suggests a reticence to talk.  However, it could also be that O'Keefe and Regan's viewpoints are influenced by their level of involvement in gay-related politics.  Lee describes O'Keefe as having been a "radical lesbian feminist" before joining the force, while Regan mentions thatthe whole Toronto pride scene just wasn't for him.

How much of the arguments presented in the film hold up today is unclear.  Badge of Pride was first screened in 2009, and must have wrapped up production well before then.  Several years have passed, and while, assuming past trends have not significantly altered, the Toronto of 2012 would be more accepting of gay cops than the Toronto of 2009.  But in the grand scheme of things, three years is not that long.  However one slices it, there is still a long way to go.

Works cited:
Badge of Pride. Dir. Min Sook Lee. PBS. WNET, New York, 27 June 2012.
     Television.

Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada. 60 O.R. 321. Court of Appeal for Ontario.
     2003. Ontario Courts. Judges' Library, n.d. Web. 28 June 2012.

Lawrence v. Texas. 539 U.S. 558. Supreme Court of the US. 2003. Supreme Court.
     Legal Information Inst., Cornell U Law School, n.d. Web. 28 June 2012.

Loftus, Jeni. "America's Liberalization in Attitudes toward Homosexuality, 1973 to
     1998." American Sociological Review 66.5 (2001): 762-82. JSTOR. Web. 28 June
     2012.

Stevenson, Michael R. "Promoting Tolerance for Homosexuality: An Evaluation of
     Intervention Strategies." The Journal of Sex Research 25.4 (1988): 500-11.
     JSTOR. Web. 28 June 2012.

Norma Rae (1979)

Norma Rae (1979)

Directed by Martin Ritt

Screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.

Runtime: 1 hr, 50 min

In the United States, organized labor has become progressively weaker, with the percentage of union workers in the labor pool well within single digits.  Such was not always the case, however, as conflicts between employers and unions were ever present.  I would hazard that most of us would associate these struggles with the Industrial Revolution: the Pullman strike, the lead up to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, etc.  But these conflicts continued well beyond that, and Norma Rae is based on one such effort.

Norma Rae Webster, played by Sally Field, is an analogue of Crystal Lee Sutton, a woman who fought to unionize the local textile factory.  The film naturally takes liberties with the real life events but several pivotal scenes are faithfully reproduced.  Norma Rae is something of an anomaly in her Southern town.  She has agitated with management before, has been with multiple men and is even willing to challenge the authority of the local church.  Whereas most everyone else is willing to maintain the status quo, Norma Rae is liable to shake things up.

It is this feistiness that draws the attention of Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman), a union organizer from New York.  He thinks that she’d be a perfect driving force to unionize the factory’s laborers.  Unfortunately, Reuben’s efforts tend to be met with hostility or apathy.  Norma’s father (John Calvin) calls Reuben a communist, and Reuben is dismayed that only seventeen people, out of a workforce of 800, showed up to one of the organization meetings.  Clearly, winning over textile workers is an uphill battle.

Many of the problems faced in Norma Rae can be attributed to a fear of the “other”.  Reuben jokes that he figured all Southern men would be like Ashleigh Wilkes, yet not one mill family will let him stay at their residence.  Not only is he a union agitator from the North, but also he’s Jewish; Norma Rae tells him that she’s never seen a Jew in her life.  And unsurprisingly, race gets involved.  Norma Rae’s husband Sonny (Beau Bridges) is shocked that black men are in their house for a union meeting, and management plays on the white workers fears to disrupt the organizational process.

Yet Norma Rae and Reuben soldier on, and their actors make their struggles both gripping and human.  Sally Field has the spunk that her character needs, but all the stress in her life—the family and the union both need her attention, not to mention the whole textile worker thing—gradually build and wear on her, to the point where her mental health may be shaky.  Leibman, who for some reason reminds me of Cosmo Kramer, is both jovial and demanding, a wisecracker who is, make no mistake about it, on a mission.  And appropriately, his whole demeanor differs drastically from the rest of the town’s.

What Norma Rae and Reuben are up against is also well done, in that it actually isn’t done all that much.  There is no single villain in Norma Rae.  Yes, there’s the textile mill’s owners and management, but they’re not in the film that much, and when they are they tend to be shown all at once, so that no one character shines through.  The antagonist, then, is a force, something which drives a great many people against the union’s cause.  How exactly does one fight a force?  It sure as hell would be easier for them if the big bad were one evil dude.

The lack of this antagonistic person(s) does result in a film which seems to eschew some narrative elements.  There isn’t any moment where the heroes’ hopes appear shattered for any length of time—if there’s no one to overcome, then any setbacks can more easily be shrugged off as the norm.  I attribute part of this to some pacing issues.  Norma Rae gets arrested at one point and she tells her children that her name may be dragged through the mud.  Nothing really comes of this however, as the film just skips to the vote to unionize the factory.  An actual antagonist may have resulted in more focused obstacles and resolutions.

However, Norma Rae compensates this problem with a thoroughly oppressive atmosphere which is established almost immediately.  The pounding of machinery in the factory makes it difficult for people to hear and can easily induce temporary deafness.  Add on the pressure for workers to speed up their labors and continue to work despite any pain or numbness, and the result is a living hell within the factory walls.  In fact, this chaotic atmosphere is done so well that one would buy the total silence of the floor during a demonstration as something well worth celebrating.

Norma Rae itself is something worth celebrating.  Set aside whether unionization is actually beneficial for a second, because this film ultimately isn’t about that.  It’s not even about going up against some faceless concrete authority.  It’s a simple film about taking a stand for one’s beliefs and refusing to stand down.  Granted, to be in that position may mean the surrender of one’s reason momentarily, but it is still a powerful portrait of a woman with a goal, and by God she will not give up until that goal is reached.

The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Directed by Maurice Tourneur and Clarence Brown

Adaptation by Robert Dillon, based on the novel by James Fennimore Cooper

Runtime: 1 hr, 13 min

What is now the oldest film that I have seen is not even the oldest film adaptation of James Fennimore Cooper’s famed novel The Last of the Mohicans, a book I unfortunately have not read.  The first version dates back to 1911, predating the mass film migration to southern California; the best known version was made in 1992 and starred Daniel Day-Lewis, and there are least ten others in multiple languages.  However, the version under consideration today is the only adaptation preserved in the National Film Registry (inducted in 1995).

In the film, set during the French and Indian War, the last remaining member of the Mohican tribe, Uncas (Alan Roscoe), is sent to Fort Edward to warn of an impending attack on Fort William Henry, where Colonel Munro (James Gordon).  The two Munro girls, Cora (Barbara Bedford) and Alice (Lillian Hall), are told to follow an Indian guide named Magua (Wallace Beery) to the fort, but Magua is pure evil and wants to take Cora as his woman, resulting in the party’s capture on the way.  It’s all downhill from there.

And when I say downhill, I mean it.  The Last of the Mohicans is the sort of film in which the problems for the main characters never cease.  The moment that one obstacle has been overcome, another pops up right in its place, giving the characters (and the audience) little time to catch a breath and reflect on events.  Not long after Uncas and company rescue the Munro party from Magua’s thugs on the way to Fort William Henry, the combined French and Huron forces begin burning the fort to the ground and, contrary to the terms of surrender, begin attacking the women and children.

Speaking of attacking the women and children, and more than a little unfortunately, the film and the story in general is quite the product of its time.  It goes beyond that the vast majority of the Native American characters are portrayed at best as savage and at worst as pure evil (take the one Huron who seems to be licking his lips at a defenseless mother with her baby).  As was the norm, the Native American characters are played by white men.  The whole “different time” thing softens the blow somewhat, but even so, it’s hard to stomach Wallace Beery’s get-up as Magua.  If I didn’t know any better I’d think he was in blackface.

Now that the obvious unpleasantness is out of the way, we can discuss the film’s own merits and demerits.  On the positive side, there are some fine performances alongside the uncomfortable camp.  Barbara Bedford imbues Cora with a great deal of strength and resolve, appearing appropriately stoic when events take a turn for the worse.  That, and she can sell insanely standing at a cliff’s edge.  Lillian Hall, meanwhile, exudes a girlish charm combined with intense fear at the impending events, and their relationship, based on that contrast, shines through.

How much directors Maurice Tourneur and Clarence Brown had to do with those performances is unclear, but they certainly had a hand in staging the film’s numerous action sequences.  These scenes, especially the attack on Fort William Henry, provide the other highlights of The Last of the Mohicans.  The staging captures the full chaos of the attack, with hundreds running about in no particular direction.  Yet the entire time, it is easy to tell what is literally happening on screen; Tourneur and Brown never let the chaos extend past the mental level.

Well, I take that back.  While at any given moment the action is easy to comprehend, taken as a whole, the movie’s plotline is a bit hard to follow.  Part of the problem is that not enough time is given to establish the characters at the beginning.  During the early scenes I spent most of my time trying to figure out which character was which.  This holds true most with the British generals; it took forever for me to distinguish Captain Randolph (George Hackathorne) from General Webb (Sydney Deane).  Must be those god-forsaken wigs.

This confusion makes The Last of the Mohicans a frustrating watch for the first half, but the second half, in which Magua’s scheming and Uncas heroics come to head, comes about with great clarity.  The shots get longer, the actors more meditative.  And even though the conflict gets reduced to the fate of Cora and Alice, somehow the stakes feel grander than when the British war prospects were at stake.  This is where Bedford and Hall’s performances pay off, as they lend their choices down the road significant gravitas.

Had it not been for strength of Alice and Cora, and the resulting strong ending sequence, I probably would have judged The Last of the Mohicans a movie worth passing over.  But when those performances and the action scenes are factored in, it becomes a film worth a quick look.  It’s available on Google Video, so it’s not that hard to track down.  I certainly can’t guarantee that one would enjoy the film—I’m not even sure if I’d want to see it again or not.  But, hey, it was deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.  That has to count for something, right?

In-School Advertising: Red Bull, Fast Food and the All-Seeing Eyes

September 24, 2012 was a Monday, and it started as a pretty routine one to boot.  I woke up at 8:00 a.m., took a walk through Schenley Park while listening to Morning Edition, went back to the room and relaxed for an hour.  It was all fairly rote up to this point.  Then it came time to head out for the 11:30 a.m. lecture for Shakespearean Comedies and Romances.  Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary so far.  All I expected when I arrived at Porter Hall was a discussion on the role of satire in As You Like It.

Upon entering the classroom, though, I noticed that something was different in the room.  Most of the desks had little notes on them.  At first I figured that they were announcements for voter registration; given the controversy regarding Pennsylvania's stringent voter ID laws, that sort of information was a constant presense.  But as I read it, it became clear that these pieces of laminated paper had nothing to do with voting.  Or even Shakespeare.  Instead it was...well, I'll show you:

Q) IF JOHNNY STAYS OUT UNTIL 7AM WITH JULIE AND GETS TO CLASS BY 8AM, HOW MANY RED BULLS DOES HE NEED?

Yep: an advertisement for Red Bull.  (I actually kept it for the longest time, but alas, it seems to have been lost to eternity).

Now, had it been any other product, I would have been scratching my head.  But Red Bull marketing efforts have been almost as much of a constant at Carnegie Mellon as voter registration volunteers.  I remember last spring when women--always women--with cannisters of Red Bull on their backs would walk campus and try to give away free samples of it.  Or how The Red Bulletin was handed out during the TEDxCMU event.  It's as if Red Bull and the university were in cahoots or something.

Still, this bit seemed a bit off, even by Red Bull standards.  It was around this point in the thought process that I discovered that the question in the ad did, in fact, have an answer.  Invert the card and what does it read?

A) JUST THE ONE UNDER HIS SEAT.

Okay, I thought, is this some meta-joke that I'm not getting?  Who keeps Red Bull under one's seat?  Had I not happened to look to the right for no particular reason, I probably would have gone on wondering for some time.  Lo and behold, under the desk by the door, lay a thin metallic can.

By this time, other people had entered the room, and the investigation was underway.  We found that beneath every students' desk was a can of Red Bull, attached by Velcro to the bottom of the seat.  (Of course, the Velcro patch on the can itself conveniently blocked out the nutrition information).  This just raised so many questions: How much money did this cost?  How and when did they get into the room?  Was this all just an elaborate commentary on the fast pace of the court-world scenes in As You Like It?

Some students were apparently pleased with this development; at least two people began to drink from the cans freshly removed from beneath their desks.  Most of us, though, were not particularly amused.  "What's next?" we thought.  "Will the professor's lecture be interrupted when the projector inexplicably starts playing Red Bull commercials?"  Clearly, no, but it did get me thinking--how far has advertising gone in society that allows some ploy like this to happen?

I'm no expert in advertising, but I'm fairly certain that no one would be surprised to hear that we're constantly deluged with advertisements.  On buses, on billboards, before online videos--commercials are everywhere.  But I'm most interested in advertisements in schools.  For one thing, that Red Bull stunt was the impetus for this blog post.  For another, students, especially in a public school setting, are a captive audience.  Tell me that there is nothing creepy about that as a development.

I first became aware of corporations advertising in public schools when I read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.  In the chapter entitled "Your Trusted Friends", Schlosser writes that, beginning in Colorado Springs in 1993, school districts began allowing fast food companies to advertise on school buses and in hallways, while signing exclusivity deals with soft drink manufacturers (51).  One of the few places where one is theoretically insulated from advertising is no more; now one is constantly inundated with ads at every turn.

There is of course a reason that school districts have allowed advertisers on the premises: they need money.  I am quite sympathetic to cash-strapped school districts; the question is what is the cost of obtaining the funds.  Schlosser sums up the debate like so:

The proponents of advertising in the schools argue that it is necessary to prevent further cutbacks; opponents contend that schoolchildren are becoming a captive audience for marketers, compelled by law to attend school and then forced to look at ads as a means of paying for their own education. (52)

If this were the only drawback--exposure to ads in an ad-drenched world--I'd have fewer concerns.  I still would take issue with it, but viewing things from a pragmatic perspective, what else could be done?  After all, one could argue that money derived from in-school advertisements can raise enough revenue to prevent teacher layoffs.  But the companies involved in in-school advertising haven't just subjected children to their commercials; they've tried to alter the material taughts in classes.

Really, why stop at just telling people about your product when you can mold their perceptions of the world and how it affects your company.  Schlosser argues that materials given to schools from Proctor and Gamble, ExxonMobil and the American Coal Federation present misinformation on the environmental effects of their practices.  "A 1998 study of [corporate-sponsored] teaching materials by the Consumers Union," he writes, "found that 80 percent were biased, providing students with incomplete or slanted information that favored the sponsor's products and views" (55).

All of this, again, is not surprising.  But here's where things get scary: companies linked to in-school advertising have been also accused of invading students' privacy.  In a New York Times piece from 1999, Michael Pollak notes that one company from California "offered schools free computers with limited Internet access, but then monitors the students' Web selections to get information on what advertising would appeal to them" (B9).  Keep in mind, this was happening on machines which were presumably purchased for educational, not personal, use.  This isn't trusting Facebook; it's trusting the school board.

I'm not here to offer remedies to the problem, largely because I am completely unqualified to do so.  I know little about the intricacies of marketing and have only taken a introductory course on economics, so it's not my place to offer policy prescriptions.  But I do have a question that I would like to pose.  Given the fact that we have allowed advertisers access to educational institutions, what does all of this say about our relationship with advertisers today?

My view: it would seem we are entirely too trusting of companies hawking their products.  Part of it is the image that many companies consciously try to project.  Would Burger King or Royal Dutch Shell actively try to cast themselves as complete monsters?  Of course not; there's a reason that Schlosser titled the chapter "Your Trusted Friends".  But part of the problem is complacency.  Whenever advertisers enter another arena of public life, there may be some outrage, but the impulse is to just shrug it off and get on with our lives.

Further, companies advertising their products and services just seems inevitable.  We take commercials for granted; they've always been there, right.  Hell, you're reading this on the Internet.  If there is one thing the Internet is made of, it's advertising (I know you were thinking something else there).  Except that wasn't always the case, according to Wendy M. Grossman, the author of Net.wars.  The opening sentence of the chapter "Make.Money.Fast" remains one of the most eye-opening statements I've come across: "Once upon a time the Internet had no advertising" (1).

Grossman's description of how advertisers forced their way onto Usenet elicits both hope and despair in me.  On the one hand, she notes that the Internet community's response to the first wave of mass advertising was one of passioned outrage, overwhelming the servers of the originators' ISP with complaints (3).  On the other hand, it suggests that the efforts were futile.  Net.wars came out in 1997, and even by that point Grossman wrote, "There are very areas of Usenet these days where you don't have to pick your way through piles of spam" (5).

In short: we must be proactive.  And even that might not be enough.

Works cited:
Grossman, Wendy M. "Make.Money.Fast." Net.wars. New York: NYU Press, 1997.
     1-9. NYU Press. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

Pollak, Michael. "Marketing in Schools." New York Times 29 Sep. 1999: B9. ProQuest
     Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2008). Web. 29 Sep. 2012.

Red Bull. Advertisement. N.d.

Schlosser, Eric. "Your Trusted Friends." Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the
     All-American Meal. 2002. New York: Perennial-Harper, 2005. Print.