They Shall Beat Their Swords into…..Mickey Mouse

In the same 100 year old brick barracks where US soldiers anxiously waited to be shipped out to the Somme, Omaha Beach and the Mekong Delta, kids now watch Mickey Mouse dancing with Minnie and can sing along with Mary Poppins and the chimney sweeps. 

Walt Disney Family MuseumSan Francisco’s Walt Disney Family Museum overlooks the military parade grounds of the Presido, a 1500-acre military base founded in 1776.  It became a national park in 1989, when it and hundreds of US bases were closed at the end of the Cold War. 

Disney’s daughter lived in San Francisco and had stored much of her family memorabilia in the base’s many unused buildings.  Her $110 million gift funded a challenging historical retrofit, earthquake work and a creative multimedia 40,000 square foot museum and theater, which opened in 2009.

I finally made it there this past weekend, for the 50^th birthday party of a friend who is also a museum docent.  We toured the museum, toasted our friend, and he led us in a sing along screening of Mary Poppins; my friend’s invitation said, “I and the movie were both ‘released’ in 1964.”

I grew up on Walt Disney, watching the Mickey Mouse Club on my black and white TV, Snow White and Bambi.  I took my kids to Disneyland in the 90’s.  Our early VCR purchases included Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, which we watched many, many times.  My kids are both artists and imaginative and I appreciate that Disney employed many artists and celebrated creativity, play and simple happiness.  Although Disneyland was not, for me, its self-declared “Happiest Place on Earth,” I do generally approve of children being encouraged to play, be happy, and imagine. 

But there is something about Walt Disney and his legacy that bothers me.

The recent movie Saving Mr. Banks pairs the obvious stereotypes: stiff reserved British P. L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books, meets casual pushy Walt Disney who wants the movie rights.  I was on Travers’ side from the start.  I liked her pride and her convictions.  Walt seemed so very American – pushy, over informal, self-centered.

It also bothers her, and me, that he wanted to change Travers’ story, make it sillier and musical and animated.  He changed and messed up Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan the same way.  We Americans do tend to take other culture’s treasures and, well, Disnify them- it’s become a verb.

Meryl Streep this week, while giving Emma Thompson an award for her portrayal of P. L. Travers, and praising her performance, slammed Disney, calling him a racist and sexist. She said he supported an anti-Semitic industry lobby, refused to hire women artists, and perpetuated horrendous racial and gender stereotypes. 

It’s hard to argue with that.  “Someday my prince will come” was a pretty normative message to little girls when I was growing up.  While Snow White sang it beautifully, it took a lot of work for my generation to stop the waiting and dreaming and just go out looking ourselves.  And 40 years later, in the 90’s, my daughter deserved more than a mermaid who sold her soul and her voice to get a man.  Even in the 50’s I cringed at the racist Indians in Peter Pan, but I know I internalized Disney’s stereotypes of southerners and blacks.

And the money!  Disneyland costs over $125 for a one day ticket, adults or kids, without parking, food.  And all that merchandising.  The company, with its films and its parks around the world, ownership of ABC, etc. is now the largest media conglomerate in the world.  Last year its revenue went up 32% to $1.5 billion.  Sure, the Disney family was forced out years ago, and we live in a big corporate world, but until his death in 1966, Walt was as much a business man, big studio boss, and developer as he was an artist and lover of children.  It’s a big business.

So very American – pushy, self centered, imperialist, racist, sexist, corporate.

But I can’t stay mad at Disney for long.  Even knowing all this annoying stuff about him, I also know what I feel when I hear a lot of the songs. “I love to laugh!” sings Ed Wynn as he floats to the ceiling.  My birthday friend, whose partner had just died a couple weeks before his party after a long painful illness, he yelled out in the theater as this scene began, “I love this song.  And Scott did too!” 

FantasiaAt the museum I was reminded of Disney’s work with Stravinsky on Fantasia and that amazing celebration of fantasy and magic.  Fantasy and magic are good things.

I heard interviews with some of the many artists who were happy to work at Disney (and he did hire women artists after a while; the Disney Museum has an upcoming show on Mary Blair who did much of the work on Peter Pan and It’s a Small World.) I watched those incredible rooftop chimney sweep dancers. It’s hard to stay mad at someone who supported so many artists and dancers and musicians.

Sad and stiff P. L. Travers, who turns out to have had a pretty miserable childhood and many disappointments, slowly starts tapping her feet to the music.  She is able to convince Disney’s team to see that it is the stiff sad father whom Mary Poppins comes to save, not the children, as they thought.  She sees that, like Mr. Banks, she too was living in a cage of expectation and fear.  And Walt gently tells her about his own sad childhood, and says that their job, as storytellers, is to bring hope.  And hope comes, like Mary Poppins’ new wind from the east.

Thanks, Walt.

Copyright 2014 Deborah Streeter

First Night

200 cities in the US host a New Year’s Eve event called First Night, an afternoon and evening, indoor and outdoor, alcohol-free celebration of local arts and artists.  Afternoon kid and family events include art projects and sing-a-longs, and there might be a parade. After dark, in the city’s downtown, you can go to performances in churches and concert halls and conference centers and storefronts and coffee houses and galleries.  You will hear country bands and folk singers and rap artists and Greek dancers and Taiko drummers and flamenco dancers and poets and hand bell choirs.  Some events are free outdoors, others require a $20 button that gets you into everything.  Come midnight there’s a happy loud massed crowd countdown and, if the city can afford it, fireworks. 

First Night began in Boston in the 1970’s. A small group of the city’s young artist community came up with the idea of celebrating the New Year not in the typical American way, ie lots of drinking and partying, but with performances and creativity. By the 90’s Boston’s First Night had become a huge success; a million people wandered through Boston with over a thousand artist to choose from: music, dance, talks, even ice sculptures on the Boston Commons and fireworks over Boston Harbor at midnight.

I first heard of First Night 15 years ago when I moved to Monterey.   Boston native Paulette Lynch had just a few years previously moved west and wanted something like Boston’s extravaganza in her new town, but on a smaller scale.  An artist and teacher, she also imitated Boston First Night’s gradual evolution into a year round arts advocacy organization, especially for lower income youth.  At summer and after school arts camps in Dorchester and Jamaica Plains, youth create visual art and performances they then share in Boston on New Year’s Eve. 

Within a few years Monterey County kids in the south county migrant farm worker camps and inner city Salinas kids were doing art year round thanks to First Night grants. On Dec. 31 they’d bring their rap groups and mariachi bands and Mexican-style murals to First Night Monterey. 

It has been a great place for our whole family to celebrate New Year’s safely and creatively.  One year our friend a beloved local poet was Grand Marshall of the parade and we got to ride on the funky truck bed float with him down the main street.  We weren’t on a float in the Rose Bowl parade, (another very American New Year’s tradition: Pasadena, a million spectators live, 20 million on TV) but it was fun.

So I’ll just tell one story from this year’s First Night Monterey.  Each year has a theme, and this year’s was “Sea Change,” focusing on protecting ocean health, promoting marine stewardship, reducing plastics.  Check out this cool fish sculpture fifth graders from rural Greenfield made from plastic bottles, while they learned about not throwing trash into the Salinas River and thence into the Monterey Bay.

At the Conference Center my First Night button with a little seahorse on it got me into a performance by the local Spector Dance Company.  After a cute dance with young kids in Santa hats, a woman came out on stage and said,

“Welcome.  I’m a ballet mom and a marine scientist.”

Turns out she works at MBARI, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.  She said, "

"We do research on the effects of climate change and acidification on the ocean, pollution and plastics on marine organisms.  We wanted to share our research with the public in other ways than just research papers and colloquia.  We are thrilled when the folks at Spector Dance proposed collaborating on an artistic and educational project called ‘Ocean.’  Here are some of our adult and youth dancers doing an excerpt of it.  They’ve performed it at the Smithsonian in Washington DC and at the Aquarium of the Pacific, and in classrooms.”

Behind the dancers was a video screen with underwater photography and interviews with ocean scientists. It’s hard to describe dance, but believe me that I got a new appreciation of interdependence, decalcification and wave action from those delightful dancers.

Here’s a YouTube exerpt.

When I left the auditorium I saw a table with an art project where you could make jelly fish mobiles out of recycled plastic bottle bottoms and curly ribbon. Standing alongside many little kids, with the dancers still in my head, I fashioned my little jelly fish. 

It was a better souvenir of my New Year’s celebration than a party hat or a hangover. 

Here’s a toast to the arts, and science; may we have a sea change in 2014.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

American Hustle: Rotten and Delicious

Rosalyn:  “I chipped my nails moving furniture, it’s my new obsession, moving,  redecorating, it makes me feel better, like exercise.  But there’s this top coat [of nail polish] that you can only get from Switzerland, and I don’t know what I’m going to do because I’m running out of it, and I love it, I can’t get enough of it.  There’s something about it, it’s perfumy, but also – rotten?  And I know this sounds crazy but I can’t get enough of it.  Smell it, it’s true.  Historically all the best perfumes in the world were laden with something nasty, foul, it’s true.  Irving loves it, he can’t get enough of it.”

Dolly: “Carmine, smell her nails.”

Rosalyn:  “Sweet and sour.  Rotten and delicious.”

Carmine:  “It smells like flowers.”

Rosalyn:  “Flowers, but with garbage.  Irving can’t get enough of it.  It hooks you.  He always comes back for it.”

{Click here to see the video}

I went to see the new David O. Russell film American Hustle the past week.  Loosely based on the late 1970’s ABSCAM scandal, it tells the story of two small time con artists loan sharks (Christian Bale and Amy Adams), caught by a sleazy undercover FBI agent (Bradley Cooper).  He agrees to let them off if they help him entrap some New Jersey politicians in a string operation.  The (now) three hustlers, in a suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York, get the politicians to accept bribes to use their influence to help the new Atlantic City casinos, gambling having just been legalized in the state.  Jennifer Lawrence plays Rosalyn, Bale’s bimbo yet wise Long Island wife.  Carmine and Dolly, in the dialogue above, are the Mayor of Camden and his wife, the con artists’ first victims.

It’s a fun movie and it says a lot about America, and the late 70’s.  Hustle has always been an admired national virtue, in films and in real life.  Bend the law a bit to get ahead.  And be a flashy dresser while doing it. The loveable hustler is often the sympathetic hero. Throw in some Bee Gees songs and Cosmo magazine type female fashion, with a cameo from Robert de Niro as a mafia boss – an enjoyable Christmas movie. 

(For years my daughter and I have gone to the movies on Christmas Eve.  When she was younger it helped fill the impatient afternoon until the Christmas Eve church service.  But even then we tried to be irreverent in our selection, something decidedly unspiritual.  James Bond.  The X Men.  Last year it was Life of Pi, actually quite a spiritual movie.)

Jennifer Lawrence steals the film playing another great American film type – the dumb blonde who is really pretty smart and from whose mouth come many of the film’s wiser points and themes. 

Like the scene about nail polish.  It’s the first meeting between the two couples, Irving and Rosalyn, hustler and wife, and Carmine and Dolly, well meaning Italian American public servants about to be screwed.  Rosalyn (Lawrence) is both out of her league and totally on it.  She knows what her husband is doing is both rotten and delicious, and it turns her on too.

The film is all about not being able to get enough.  The hustlers just can’t stop.  The FBI agent turns out to be a coke snorting hustler himself who bends the rules and gets caught in his own scam.  Of course the New Jersey politicians and the mafia dons are doing the hustle.  But at least towards the characters in this scene, you feel some understanding, sympathy, even forgiveness.  And Rosalyn/Lawrence is simply hilarious.

My daughter pointed out to me that this film would, just barely, pass the Bechdel Test.  The test asks three simple questions:  Does the film:

a) have two or more named female characters

b) who talk with each other

c) about something besides men.

(The test is named for American comic strip creator Alison Bechdel, who in 1985 had characters in her strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” say they would only go see a film that met these three criteria.  Sweden recently started publishing a film rating system based on the Bechdel Test for all films.)

Few films pass the test.  None of the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings films do.  Nor does Pulp Fiction, and only one Harry Potter film makes it.  And of those films that do pass the test, in half of them the two named female characters talk only of marriage or babies.

With Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence you can expect some great acting.  And you get it.  But they only share one scene, a surprising and luscious one, late in the film.  It’s in a women’s restroom, where Rosalyn, Irving’s wife and the Amy Adams character, ex-stripper Sydney, Irvings’ con partner and lover, meet for the first time.  But sadly, no passing grade from Bechdel; they only speak of Irving and which one of them he loves best. 

But in the nailpolish scene the two named characters, Rosalyn and Dolly, lacquered and bimbo-ed as they are, talking not about men, but nail polish. 

And they remind us how much of life really is that dangerous and attractive mixture of rotten and delicious.  And how it’s not so bad to want more of it.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

Notable 2013 Deaths: Jeanne Manford

I like end-of-the-year lists.  “10 best books of 2013.”  “Looking back at a tumultuous year.”

My favorites are the death lists.  “75 notable people who died this year.”   Probably because of my morbid fascination with both death and celebrity.

Lists of the famous dead help me to recall and reflect on the past year.  I give thanks for lives well lived.  And I take stock of my own life and my eventual obituary – what will be my notable achievements?

From the list of 2013 deaths, I am reminded of the famous folks, like Nelson Mandela, Peter O’Toole, Margaret Thatcher.  But what sticks with me are the lesser celebrities that I learn about.

Jeanne ManfordLike Jeanne Manford.  A New York mom, teacher, and dentist’s wife, Manford made history in 1972 when she founded PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.  She died this past January at age 92.

“I have a homosexual son and I love him,” she wrote to the New York Post in 1972. 

She was 52, living in Queens, teaching fifth grade math at a public school, 3 grown children.  One, her son Morty, was beaten up one night in 1972 outside a big political meeting.  He was a student at Columbia and a gay rights advocate, and he was handing out leaflets protesting how the press was (not) covering gay rights issues.  Police covering the meeting and the protestors stood by and watched him being beaten up by union organizers. 

Jeanne and her husband Jules got a phone call from the hospital.  Jeanne wrote the letter to the paper.  Her son told her, “Everyone’s talking about your letter.”

Two months later she marched with her son in the first Gay Pride Parade in Greenwich Village, holding a homemade sign that read “Parents of Gays Unite in Support of Our Children.”  Homosexuality was still considered a mental illness and sodomy was a crime.  California State Senator Mark Leno later said of Manford, “For her to step into the street to declare support for her mentally ill, outlaw son, that was no small act….But it was what a mother’s love does.”

Manford later recalled that marchers in that parade hugged and kissed her, asked her to talk with their parents.  She and Jules started welcoming Morty’s gay friends and colleagues to their home in Flushing, Queens, and Jules even gave them some free dental work.  A couple months later they got the idea of forming a group to, as they said, bridge the heterosexual and gay community, a place for parents of gays and lesbians to get information and support.  Their first meeting was in a Methodist church in Greenwich Village. For decades Manford talked with radio, TV, press about parents of gays.   40 years later there are now 350 PFLAG chapters around the country.  (I first heard about PFLAG when I was called to serve a church which sponsored a PFLAG group.) 

Morty Manford went on to become an assistant attorney general for the State of New York.  He died of AIDS related complications in 1992. 

Jeanne Manford with a picture of her son MortyPresident Obama awarded Jeanne Manford the Presidential Citizen’s Medal posthumously this year, and it was accepted by her daughter.  Obama said of Mumford, “These folks participate, they get involved, they have a point of view.  They don’t just wait for somebody else to do something, they go out there and do it, and they join and they become part of groups and they mobilize and they organize….Jeanne Muford had a simple message; No matter who her son was, no matter who he loved, she loved him, and wouldn’t put up with this kind of nonsense.”

I will probably never make it onto a list of notable celebrities, alive or dead, but I can aspire to live a life something like Jeanne Manford’s. 

Happy New Year.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

American Santa

Americans have always loved dressing up as Santa Claus (“I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus”) but this week I read three stories about American Santa’s that made me laugh, and cry, because they were so typical of my fellow citizens.  I call them Racist Santa, Nosy Santa and Drunk Santa.

Racist Santa is actually racist Fox News.  In a much-mocked segment star host Megyn Kelly insisted that Santa Claus is a white man, always has been and any other Santa’s are out of the question.  She also assured any kid viewers (it was the 10 pm news) that Santa is also real.  (She also went on to assert that Jesus was white – “You just can’t deny it!”)  She was criticizing a Slate magazine piece about what it’s like to grow up African American and see an occasional black Santa, but noticing that all the white Santa’s in stores and on TV are obviously the cultural norm.  The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, among many other mockers, pointed out that the historical figure St. Nicholas, a Turkish bishop, was certainly dark skinned: today, Stewart said, he wouldn’t be found flying on to your rooftop, he’d be stuck on a “no-fly” list at the security gate.

Speaking of Santa and security against terrorism, the American Civil Liberties Union put out a funny video to raise money for their legal challenges to the National Security Agency’s widespread snooping on American and international citizens.  It features NSA agents in Santa costumes and sunglasses spying on happy innocent shoppers.  The soundtrack sings “You’d better watch out, you’d better not Skype, you’d better log out, you’d better not type, NSA is coming to town.  They’re making a list, checking it twice, they’re watching almost every electronic device.”

And cities around the country (and the world) braced this week for Santa Con, the yearly flash mob cum pub crawl where mostly young men dressed up as Santa take to the streets to party hearty. Last year a crowd of over 30,000 Santa wannabes took over New York’s East Village for an afternoon and into the night, and reportedly were rude and drunk and decidedly unjolly by the end of the night.  What began 20 years ago as an urban adventure and a way to critique commercialism has become an urban nuisance, what an op-ed writer in the New York Times calls a Santa Siege.   “When I see packs of drunken Santa’s, I usually ditch my plans and run home. My neighborhood last year was under Santa Siege. Drunken Santa’s make being a parent who is trying to keep a small childhood innocence alive so much harder.”

San Francisco Santa ConSan Francisco Santa Com, where the tradition began 20 years ago, warns participants to behave themselves.  In a post called “The Lowdown on the Ho Down” organizers ask that folks bring a toy for the Firefighters Toys for Tots drive, and then list 75 bars that are welcoming participants this weekend and donating a portion of profits to the toy collection. 

But they caution:

While SOME naughty is nice, don't be an asshole! No vandalism, violence, theft or other criminal behavior...Santacon is about spreading joy, not needing bail. Santa's Little Douchebag Contingent is NOT welcome at our reindeer games. Santa's look out for ach other...naughty of the NOT nice variety is not tolerated! If you find yourself in conflict with a drunken belligerent Santa, walk away. Just let it go.

Be AWESOME to bar staff! Pay with cash...it gets chaotic when Santa comes to town. Tip well...Santa wants to be welcome in years to come. Bring ID...Santa is of legal drinking age.

Be SAFE & PREPARED! Don't be that Santa that gets so jolly that you need babysitting! Buddy up...we're still a city! Dress for the occasion & weather...costume + comfy shoes + layers = Happy Santa. Expect to walk...a lot. Take public transportation...Muni/BART/cabs are your friend! Don't drink and drive! Remember to eat something! Take a break and grab some food while you're out. Take care of yourself. Don't block the street in busy areas of the city! Stay on the freakin sidewalk! Leave no trace...put trash/recycle into cans and clean up after your reindeer! There are Santacon blacklashes in many cities. Let's show everyone Bay Area Santa knows how to do it right.

From all of us here at Blowin in the Wind (that would be me) may you all make it through Christmas with a spirit of peace on earth and good well to all. I hope Santa's of all colors visit your home with Christmas cheer and no snooping. You might want to leave Santa some coffee as well as cookies beside the hearth.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter.