Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Depression

Walter Huston in American Madness

August 4, 1932, with the Great Depression at its worst, Frank Capra’s American Madness is released.

‘American Madness’ was a shocker to the public. It created controversy among critics and bitter contention in financial circles. Some called it “New Dealish”… “impractical star-gazing:… “fuzzy thinking.” Other said the thinking was no fuzzier than the “thinking” of financiers which created the boom and the crash.

– Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title, 1971

That quote is an example of why Capra’s autobiography is best read with an occasional grain of salt. The New Deal didn’t exist yet, and FDR hadn’t even been elected. Regardless, American Madness has Walter Huston as a bank president stating the case for new thinking to deal with the Depression. Herbert “Business as Usual” Hoover did not represent new thinking.

American Madness is a must-see movie, if only for its value as a time capsule, dramatizing the very real fears of a desperate, panicking public. But it has much more going for it. With the exception of the clichéd gangsters, the interactions between the characters are delightful, and Constance Cummings is an absolute dream.

Bang, Bang, He Shot Him Down

Jon Stewart ties Oklahoma State Senator Nathan Dahm in knots, as he tries to explain and defend his illogic regarding guns. I’m going to assume that Dahm is aspiring to national political office.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution:

  • As originally written — A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
  • As currently interpreted by the Supreme Court — The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Pointy Haired Boss Fires Dilbert

Dilbert for February 26, 2023, the day Andrews McMeel Universal announced it was dropping the strip

Scott Adams could have quit, but instead he chose to be fired. At least there’s more publicity in that.

Adams said that white people should “get the hell away from black people.” Isn’t that the way it’s been in almost every syndicated humorous comic strip since Peanuts? Lynn Johnston and Cathy Guisewite were eagerly signed for syndication, but their points of reference were no less white and suburban than Gary Larson or Bill Watterson.

Perhaps Adams doesn’t want to be a cartoonist anymore. My take from watching some of Real Coffee With Scott Adams on YouTube is that he sees himself as another Rush Limbaugh. Adams retains Rush’s attention-getting histrionics in his polemics, while avoiding the hysterics of ex-DJ Limbaugh.

New Kid on the Block

This would have been better for Valentine’s Day than on President’s Day, but I hadn’t heard it until now, thanks to Pandora. 20-year-old Stephen Sanchez, going with a retro sound that has me wondering if his mother is a Chris Isaak fan.

97 million views! Sanchez was on Colbert last year. I usually only watch music acts on his show that I already know. Just shows to go ya.

P.S. Something about that song reminded me of something else, but it took a while to realize it was this.

The Art Pyramind

Before the Digital Age, in the Print Age of the 20th century, there was the general view that art belonged to one of three categories. I think of it as the Art Pyramid, with the bottom level having the largest audience, and the top having the smallest.

I’ll add socio-economic labels, based on the amount of money that was required to enjoy each of the levels.

  • Art = upper class
  • Illustration = middle class
  • Cartooning = working class

Where the distinctions get muddied a bit is with an artist like Andrew Wyeth, who could be viewed as having followed in the footsteps of his illustrator father, N.C. Wyeth. Frank Frazetta was a comic book artist whose paintings were in the tradition of pulp magazine covers, and yet they had a quality that rose above the subject matter.

In Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, fictional billionaire Miles Bron decorates his Greek island estate with fine art that he has purchased. He even has the Mona Lisa on loan from the Louvre, explaining that the museum needed money during the pandemic. One of the pieces in Bron’s collection, shown in the background here, is Girl with Hair Ribbon, by Roy Lichtenstein.

This is the complete image, as appropriated by Lichtenstein.

I say appropriated because he copied it from a DC romance comic book drawing by John Romita, Sr., as revealed by fellow Westfield State alum, David Barsalou.

This video has a British upper class analysis of Girl with Hair Ribbon. The picture’s “intellectual provocation” and lack of “organic unity” are considered apart from its original context, except for a generic reference to “the comic book cartoon.”

How did Roy Lichtenstein elevate a lowly comic book drawing by John Romita from the bottom of the Art Pyramid to the top? This is the subject of a new documentary, Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation. Personally, I have come around to the view that Lichtenstein went beyond taking inspiration from comic book panels to the outright and sustained swiping of work done by others.

https://gizmodo.com/lichtenstein-comic-art-appropriation-documentary-review-1850042171