Lately I’ve been spending way too much time flipping through Meta’s primary offerings to kill time. A friend and I send each other links to reels and posts on a wide variety of topics from political to plain funny. This morning he sent me a clip from the 70s sitcom “All In the Family”. You know the show whose claim to fame was the first toilet flush broadcast nationally (or anywhere) on the old tube (quite literally).
For the younger ones, TVs was not a series of OLED points of light but instead a cathode ray tube. Electrons were fired from ray guns – red, green, and blue for colour TVs that were distributed across a phosphor coated screen. The cathode ray tube was the primary reason old TVs were so deep and weighed a ton. For more info visit How Television Works | HowStuffWorks.
Anyway, back to Archie, Edith, and the family. Here is the clip my friend this morning with Archie and Meathead debating why cave women had short legs and fat butts…
As I watched, it donned on me that this show, a cultural juggernaut in its time would never have aired in 2023. Ironic because the entire point was to expose the social issues of the day. The same issues that still plague society today. You could argue that many of the movement exist or thrived because of “All In the Family”, its spin-off show “The Jeffersons” and other shows that followed a similar path.
All In the Family was one of the watershed moments in Western pop culture. It brought many of the issue of race, sex and inequality into the public consciousness. The show was a bold statement in its time that represented two steps forward in our social evolution. It is as relevant today as it was in the 1970s. Unfortunately, the pendulum it helped push in the right direction, has swung so far beyond its maxima, never mind equilibrium that it would have been cancelled long before it made it to Netflix.
I have spent a lot of time in the United States from the mid-aughts through the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency. With my children playing rep sports it seems every weekend was spent in some apple pie town for ball tournaments or some other sports-related function. I have met some great people and made lifelong friends but it is safe to say that the nation to the south of my home has always been different. A singular obsession with guns, violence, race and money is woven far more deeply into the fabric of American society than it is north of the 49th parallel.
The infiltration of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its companion illness COVID-19 brought both our great countries and in fact the entire global community to a standstill. The onset of the “China Flu” halted our frequent forays across the longest unprotected border in the world. While the majority of us adhered to mandatory quarantine and masking mandates public sentiment was turning. It has become clear that in my absence something was shifting in the machinations of Canada’s southern neighbour. The division of the Trump Administration policies continues to poison America, seeping into its very fabric.
Fast forward to 2023, with the world once again open for business. Most everyone has returned to an altered yet familiar normalcy of pre-pandemic times and our weekend jaunts to a very different America have once again resumed. My son now a young man has graduated from youth to beer league sports. Travel for him has ended, however, his sister has taken up the mantle, playing fastpitch with all the aspirations and promises of her youthful exuberance. One eye fixed on a future that could open doorways to grants and scholarships for both academic and athletic performance.
Who knows, maybe someday she will play in the Women’s College World Series, something that she and her teammates have followed closely during this trip. Gathering together in the hotel between their own games to watch women role models, not much older than they themselves playing their butts off for personal pride and the glory of their school.
My return to America was much different than my previous visits. On the surface everything seemed familiar, however, this time there was a tension I don’t recall being there before. This rendition of America is suspicious and deeply divided between rich and poor, black and white (and red and yellow and brown), donkeys and elephants, scientific discovery and fairy tales, Venus and Mars (and everything that falls on the spectrum in between).
I felt this tension in everything I observed and everyone I interacted with. The African American clerk at the Dick’s Sporting Goods store, tentative as I approached the counter until the tension was broken with friendly banter. The Latin American waitress at the restaurant seemed so timid serving tables of white customers, barely able to make eye contact with me or those at other tables, but had no problem interacting freely with people identifying from minority backgrounds. The gay Latin barkeep who wouldn’t dare talk back to an obnoxious white customer, waiting to unleash loud, harsh words about them the moment they walked out the door. At the same time starting arguments with Black customers he felt had “disrespected” him. These interactions drive home the hierarchical nature of race in American society.
Then there was the retail experience. A highlight for most Canadians heading to the States however I found it very different – almost every major outlet and even smaller stores had uniformed Security Guards at the doors. Some places, like Walmart forgo private security in favour of paid-duty police officers armed to the teeth. In small ways, it felt more like a police state than a constitutional republic ingrained with the ideals of democracy and freedom. I was flabbergasted to find that the prices which used to be so much cheaper were no longer a bargain. Most items after factoring in exchange rates were comparable to prices back home and in many cases more expensive. Many items are priced the same in USD as they would be in CAD. For a Canadian, that means incurring additional costs of about 25% to purchase the same products in the States as at home.
The only exception is gas, which by comparison is still cheap as f@ck, especially in Ohio. That is probably why the cars seemed bigger than ever. Navigators, Suburbans, Expeditions, Silverados and F-150’s everywhere. The only electric-powered vehicles I saw the entire trip were the ones with Canadian licence plates on them. Apparently, global warming isn’t a thing anymore.
I know America is the land of gun worship. Constitution, militia, amendment, yada, yada, yada, but this is the first trip where it seemed real. From the McDonalds somewhere between Detroit and Columbus where a teammate’s family stopped for lunch. Multiple TV menu boards were black and riddled with bullet holes that had rendered them lifeless. Another example was the car in the hotel parking lot, damaged and dented along the entire passenger side, The lines from scraped paint and dented metal lead the eye to a void where the rear bumper, ripped clean off the car, would normally be. From the front view, it sported bullet holes through the hood that were now operating as additional air vents for the engine block inside. The owner spent most of his time hotboxed in the back seat before returning to the hotel room and leaving the entire building stinking like skunk.
It takes time for government policies to work their way through the system and down to the grassroots levels. It seems to me the divisive nature of the Trump Republican years continues to bear pest-infested rotten fruit while the oblivious Democrat left concerns itself with social engineering pet projects. All the while, Nero fiddles away as the real fires rage on.
My observations point to an Empire at a crossroads, an aging Superpower quickly fading beyond the Western horizon while the morning Sun rises in the Far East. A politically savvy China tightly controls its media and manipulates the narrative to build goodwill and paint itself as a positive and cooperative international partner. It is an image that does not jive with the brutal nature of China’s totalitarian regime but Trump himself proved that if you keep telling the same lies over and over the truth becomes irrelevant. The pro-Beijing rhetoric has become a seemingly better option for our youth when juxtaposed against the outward dysfunction of a divided America. A disillusioned generation of Americans, of Westerners, willing to forgo freedom in favour of the red mirage. Not even a slim chance that they know they are being duped by a wolf in sheep’s clothes.
Without some sort of monumental upheaval that allows America’s factions to reconcile, find common ground and work towards a common vision all China and its allies need do is waits like vultures for The Divided States of America to destroy itself from the inside before swooping in to pick whatever scraps remain on the carcass.
Every week Fandango over at This, That and the Other posts a provocative question. This week’s question is…
“Do you think that the metrics the Academy Awards will start applying in 2024 regarding the composition of at least 30% of the cast and crew by under-represented groups in order for a film to even qualify for the Best Picture Oscar nomination is appropriate? Or, do you share Richard Dreyfuss’ opinion that because filmmaking is an art form, imposing such criteria in order for a film to even be considered for an Oscar is inappropriate?“
It is as ridiculous as the publishing world rewriting books to conform to today’s politically correct woke-driven standards. It is a form of censorship that we cannot allow to happen. I believe the best people applying for the position should be employed. I’m not naive, I fully understand that there are bigoted factions in society and sometimes affirmative action initiatives are appropriate. There are other ways to ensure a representative workforce. Stifling art is not the place it should be applied.
Art must be judged on its merit, not on a headcount of arbitrarily delineated categories of people. Salman Rushdie said it best of the literary world at the 2023 British Book Awards when he was talking about publishers re-writing works by authors such as Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl. “Books have to come to us from their time and be of their time, and if that’s difficult to take, don’t read them. Read another book, but don’t try and remake yesterday’s work in the light of today’s attitudes.”
While Hollywood may not be re-editing or updating older works there is a push to rewrite the screenplays of the stories Rushdie talks about to conform to today’s rules. I point to the example of The Aeronauts, a fictional film based on the true history of scientists James Glaisher and Henry Tracy Coxwell. When the screenplay was being written and the cast chosen there was a conscious effort to replace Henry Tracy Coxwell with the fictional Amelia Wren (the name of the character, no doubt chosen to mimic that of female heroine Amelia Earheart, only serving to further muddle the true history) to make the film more inclusive. Essentially rewriting the past for public consumption and to an audience that will take it as a fact and never consider looking up the real history.
While I believe that all people who are qualified should be able to apply and work in the film industry (or any industry) I suspect the new rules the Academy will impose only encourage more bowdlerizing of art and history and that is a form of censorship that cannot be tolerated.
Mary Two Rivers stood quietly in the place along the edge of the reservation she’d come to so often, the band Chief agreeing to one last visit even as the heavy machinery roared around her.
The pain had not softened in the years since her Emily, the dark-haired girl with a spirit set alight by a spark from the Creator’s fire, had been taken.
The worn and weathered doll she’d been gifted by the widow from the secondhand shop in town, herself long since dead, marked the last known location of the girl who’d vanished some 21 years earlier.
In a few short hours, the landmarks that provided Mary with the last links to her baby’s existence would be erased in the name of progress; another girl added to the list of the forgotten.
There is an epidemic across North America that has seen tens of thousands of Aboriginal women and girls murdered or go missing. In Canada that number is about 1200 since 1980 however it is believed to be much higher as many cases are never reported or reported incorrectly. Information on Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls can be found at MMIWG.
Is there anything more culturally inappropriate than the tomahawk chop? I can’t think of much that makes me cringe more than watching a stadium full of Braves fans do its rendition of a Native war chant while some yahoo with a drum and Aboriginal feathered headdress beats on.
This month Chel’s Terrible Poetry contest asks us to write a terrible poem about cultural appropriation using the triolet form. I have chosen the English iambic tetrameter model. To heck with my French heritage, I say let them eat cake! Now let the terribleness begin…
Aah wah aah wah wah a warriors hum, Back and forth the tomahawk chop. Warpaint, feather headdress, and drum, Aah wah aah wah wah a warriors hum, From what century did you come? Ratta tat tat tat, make it stop! Aah wah aah wah wah a warriors hum, Back and forth the tomahawk chop.
It is the start of another baseball season and I say “go, anyone but Atlanta, go!
The following is in response to Fandango’s Provocative Question #165. The prompt is: How do you feel about what is going on in the United States in regard to racism? Do you see any way of reconciling the concepts of White Replacement Theory and Critical Race Theory?
The Human Race
I identify as human, yes I have skin that categorizes me as Caucasian, my recent ancestors are of European descent and can be traced back to England, Ireland and France. That is how others identify me but I am human, we are all human.
As an outsider, I see the American race dilemma as an observer. I have a sister who moved and married in Texas and although I would not call her racist she and her family certainly represent conservative white America. From what I see that Trump supporting rabid white right is a scary place right now. Not from external threats but from within. Seemingly bright, educated people who have lost all perspective on reality.
Canada is not without our own racial discourse. Our treatment of Japanese Canadians during World War II and two centuries of oppression against aboriginal populations have been appalling.
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