Native Son (1940)

My first exposure to Richard Wright, years ago, was an excerpt in a college class from his autobiography Black Boy, and I later followed up to read Black Boy in its entirety, which I thought was incredible. I’ve only just gotten around to Native Son, though, the work he’s probably best-known for. While I’m still digesting it, the novel is undeniably fascinating (premise spoilers.)

Bigger Thomas, a young Black man living in Chicago during the Great Depression, is a combustion waiting to happen. Inside, he roils with the injustices he faces at the hands of white folks, both personal and systemic. When he gets a job working as a driver for a wealthy white family in the city, his sudden proximity to that world ignites a firestorm, and a moment of panic in the dark soon has the entire city swept up in a shocking crime, one the perpetrator can barely articulate why he committed.

Reading the book, you can tell that Wright is in it more for the ideas than the story. Plenty of time is spent, not just telling you what Bigger is thinking, but explaining why he thinks that, all the societal forces that shape him and spur him on toward his fate. It can border on treatise at times, and while it’s a gripping commentary, it’s the sort of writing that comes across much better in nonfiction, and as such, while I loved its use in Black Boy, it feels a little clunkier here. To use a modern-day comparison, you see a number of progressive-leaning TV shows trying to thread this needle – you can tell a great story along the themes of social justice, but depending on how you tell it, the effect can come across as just preachy instead of compelling, even among people who agree with the ideas being espoused.

However, I don’t want to get too down on the book for this aspect. It reminds me of an old post I did comparing The Normal Heart to Rent. I noted how The Normal Heart is much more overt and in-your-face about the ravages of the HIV epidemic, with characters regularly delivering soapbox speeches to the audience, but I also noted that Larry Kramer wrote that play during the height of the crisis at a time when the majority of people weren’t listening or caring. As he watched friends and loved ones die around him, he didn’t feel the luxury of packaging his message nicely. I get some of the same vibe with Wright here. When he wrote the book (and sadly, it’s still true for a lot of people now,) a huge chunk of the American public probably figured they knew exactly what “a Bigger Thomas” was like: good-for-nothing, criminal, dangerous, overpowered by lust for white women. When they saw Bigger Thomases in the newspaper who were arrested, who were convicted, who were jailed or executed, they thought, “Good!”, and they slept more easily at night.

But Wright sets out, not so much to show you who Bigger Thomas is, but why he is the way he is. That’s why he spells it out, why he drives home his points multiple times and explains them thoroughly, because he knows he’s addressing people who have never looked at the bigger picture. They’ve never given a Bigger Thomas the benefit of wondering why he makes the choices he does, what drives him. They see black and white, guilty and innocent, but they don’t see the layers of systemic inequality that mold the world around Bigger until he feels trapped in it. Wright never justifies Bigger’s actions or absolves him of them, but he contextualizes Bigger in that hopes that, just maybe, he’ll get someone to think twice the next time they read about a Bigger Thomas in the paper.

Warnings

Violence, sexual content, language (including racial slurs,) disturbing images, drinking/smoking, and strong thematic elements.

Li’l Abner (1940)

Here’s the last of Buster’s late-career features that I have access to, and it’s not a particularly good one.  Granted, I’ve never read the comic strip that it’s based on (and really, any feature film based on a comic strip is probably stretching it – there’s a reason Peanuts mostly stuck to half-hour TV specials,) but there’s still not much here.  Also, it’s a film where it’s difficult to enjoy Buster’s part.

In the hillbilly town of Dogpatch, strapping young simpleton Li’l Abner spends his days getting easily confused and trying to avoid matrimonial entanglements.  One day, he has the misfortune to have two women both declaring him their betrothed, and with Sadie Hawkins Day coming up – in which all the unmarried women chase all the bachelors through town, and any woman who catches a man is entitled to marry him – he doesn’t like his odds.

Again, I don’t know much of anything about the comic strip, although I’m guessing the movie’s visuals are pretty accurate:  the giant fake noses on Li’l Abner’s parents and the overall look of comic sidekick Hairless Joe are very cartoony, so I’m assuming the film basically brings the comic strip to life.  For a seventy-five-minute string of hillbilly jokes, stupid jokes, and marriage jokes, it’s cute enough but incredibly lightweight.  It did occur to me that Li’l Abner’s characterization of running away from women is similar to Jughead’s longtime M.O. in Archie comics, and I amused myself by imagining Li’l Abner as ace (although he seems to like Daisy Mae fairly well – it’s more just that he doesn’t want to be a husband.)

Like Pajama Party, this is another unpleasant case of Buster playing a Native American, in this case the supporting character Lonesome Polecat.  I wouldn’t say the film leans into the stereotypes quite as hard as the Pajama Party does, but it’s still uncomfortable to see.  That said, he isn’t in it much.  Mainly, he’s in a short comic bit at the beginning of the film and is featured more in the Sadie Hawkins Day sequence, where both he and Hairless Joe are thwarted in their attempts to get snagged by a woman (as opposed to all the other guys, who are trying to run away from them.)

If there’s an upside, it’s that it has me thinking more about race in Buster’s silent work.  I’ve discussed before that there’s certainly some unpleasant humor to be found there – I don’t want to excuse any of the insensitive jokes in his films – and he took his own turn at “Indian humor” in The Paleface.  That said, I’d say both Li’l Abner in 1940 and Pajama Party in 1964 are more racist than anything Buster made in the 1920s.  And since I can’t imagine Hollywood in the ‘20s was less racist than it was in the ‘40s or ‘60s, then it’s likely that Buster’s classic works aren’t nearly as racist as they could have been, and I’d guess we have Buster to thank for that.  That’s a very weird sort of faint praise, but given the times, I do think it’s something worth crediting.

On another note, this is going to be my last Buster Monday post.  Not that I’m done writing about him!  I’m going to keep up the 100 Years of Buster Keaton write-ups, and I’ll post anything else that strikes me, but after about three years and over 150 posts, I’m just running out of stuff to write about him every single week.  It’s been super fun, and again, Buster Keaton posts will keep coming, just not quite as frequently.

Warnings

Drinking/smoking, a little slapstick violence, and unfortunate racial stereotypes.

In the Good Old Summertime (1949)

Another musical Buster was in, although it’s less of a standard musical and more a case of the film contriving in-story reasons for the characters to sing (hey, when Judy Garland’s in your movie, you do what you have to do.)  It’s also, notably, a fairly early take on the particular romantic comedy storyline that was later popularized in You’ve Got Mail.  It’s not the original version of the story – apparently, that was a French play from the 1930s – but it’s still reaching back quite a ways.

Andy and Veronica work in the same music shop, where they spend most of their work day at each other’s throats.  Everything either does annoys the other, and both tend to unfavorably compare the other to the anonymous someone with whom they correspond through the post office.  Little do they know, of course, those lovely, thoughtful, poetic letters they send are actually to one another.

It’s a cute film – the contentious relationship between Van Johnson’s Andy and Judy Garland’s Veronica is the focal point of the film, and both play their parts well.  Johnson brings a slightly-rapscallion charm to Andy, while, as Veronica, Garland is fussy and opinionated but misunderstood.  Be advised, though – there’s more than a hint of sexism tinging the romance.  Still, it’s a pretty light, bouncy story, and the music-shop locale offers a decent excuse for Garland to sing frequently, as she demos sheet music for prospective customers while Andy accompanies her.

Buster plays one of several other people working at the music shop, all of which are pleasant and entertaining in their own right.  In Buster’s case, he plays Hickey, the clumsy but eager-to-please nephew of the shop’s temperamental owner.  It still strikes me sometimes how Buster can give such great reaction shots while maintaining his classic stone face, but it’s true.  Here, there’s a great scene where he dutifully sits down to indulge his uncle in the irascible man’s favorite pastime:  (badly) playing the violin when he’s annoyed.  Buster’s reactions to each sour note are fantastic.

Fortunately, this is also a film that recognizes that, if you’ve got Buster Keaton, you let him do physical comedy – hence Hickey’s clumsiness.  At first, it just feels like a trait that’s a bit shoehorned into the character simply because Buster is playing him (and to be honest, the slapsticky elements do feel a little out of place with the tone of the rest of the movie,) but it’s actually laying the groundwork for a clutzy disaster at a critical moment in the film, which I like.  As it turns out, Buster was initially just consulted on the film as a gag writer, but when he devised that aforementioned clutzy disaster for them, they realized that no one but Buster could play it with the precision that was needed.  It also helps that Hickey isn’t the only source of slapstick in the film.  There are other intricate bits of physical comedy performed by some of the other actors, and Buster’s hand in crafting their gags is apparent.

Warnings

A little suggestiveness and some old-timey sexism.