Baby, That's Cold (analysis of subtext)

Apparently, a Cleaveland radio station made international news for deciding not to play "Baby, It's Cold Outside," citing the #MeToo movement. If it triggers bad memories, then change the station, but is it a rape song?

Historical questions to ask:  Would the 1940s era radio knowingly play a rape song? Would the FCC have allowed it?

Read the ending before debating. They both agree about the outcome. Both sing together, "Baby, it's cold." If they agree, the implied statement is that the wooed will stay. He has accepted her argument.

The song is a standard that switches things up. In the above video, the genders are flipped, changing who is wooing whom. However, this wouldn't alter whether the song is about rape.

Think of the song as a negotiation, as a sales pitch. It isn't necessarily a sexual pitch although that seems likely, especially given that the temperature won't get warmer until the morning. But a night of all kissing or touching might be all that is on the agenda.

Let's analyze the lyrics:

"I really can't stay... 

I simply must go

"Really" and "simply" suggests that the speaker is contemplating staying but is telling himself and the wooer he should go. "Simply" is doubly intriguing as it suggests it should be easy for him to choose to go, but it isn't.

Both admit they've had a good time up to this point:

This evening has been

(Been hoping that you'd drop in) 

So very nice
(I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice)

You've really been grand...

Note the touch. They apparently are in a touching relationship. He accepts her invitation, which is how she is able to pronounce the hands cold.

He refers to this touch later, where "warm" is both literal and figurative ("nice" indicates he likes her physical and personal warmth):

Your welcome has been... 

So nice and warm

In fact, their touch progresses to the lips. Note the change in her dialogue, she must have confirmed her suspicions with a kiss (it could be a non-consensual kiss; however, there are no complaints about the kiss, and he does end up staying):

(Gosh your lips look delicious)... 

(ooh your lips are delicious)

He doesn't say that he has to do something, or be somewhere, or doesn't want to be with the wooer, only that his family and others might have a problem with his sticking around, not to mention the gossip of neighbors. In other words, it isn't he who has a problem being there but others (or at least he says so):

My mother will start worry... 

My father will be pacing the floor... 

The neighbors might think...

My sister will be suspicious... 

My brother will be there at the door... 

My maiden aunt's mind is vicious... 

There's bound to be talk tomorrow... 

At least there will be plenty implied

Now there are a few problematic lines:

The answer is no

This seems to be definitive, but he's been showing doubt all along. There's also the next set of lines:

But maybe just a half a drink more
(Put some records on while I pour) 

Say what's in this drink

Now that last line sounds like the date-rape drug; however, what would be implied in the 1940s would be alcohol, something to lower his inhibitions. He did ask for the drink. His asking for more says they have already been drinking. Had they not been drinking alcohol before? Was he wanting alcohol? Was he wanting his inhibitions lowered, wanting to be convinced? Was there more alcohol than he expected? The song doesn't say or imply.

However, he does admit that he wants to stick around a little longer, making excuses to stay. Here he is again, making excuses to stick around:

But maybe just a cigarette more

He is hopelessly attracted to her:

I wish I knew how... 

To break this spell

She asks for permission:

(Mind if I move in closer)

He admits that he's going to stay and come up with some excuse to tell the family and gossipers:

At least I'm gonna say that I tried

To make this song about rape ignores a lot of subtext. There is one line that's problematic, but the others put it into a different context. The ending says it all.

ETA: Here is another, earlier article that I just read that says similar things with less analysis but more historical context.

Henry James on the Novel

This link shows Henry James' compressed view of the novel, in a letter to Deerfield Summer School.

James spends some time discouraging what he thinks the director's predilection of the novel might be and presents an overview of James's own perspective:

1. do something from your point of view
2. an ounce of example is worth a ton of generalities
3. do something with the great art and the great form 
4. do something with life
5. see the actual or imaginative... and... paint it.

He expands on point of view:

1. any point of view is interesting that is a direct impression of life
2. You each have an impression coloured by your individual conditions
3. Make that into a picture... framed by your own person wisdom, your glimpse of the American world
4. The field is vast for freedom, for study, for observation, for truth.

On life, he writes:

1. Consider life directly and closely
2. [don't] be put off with mean and puerile falsities
3. be conscientious about it. 
4. It is infinitely large, various and comprehensive.
5. Every sort of mind will find what it [the mind?] look for in it [presumably life].
6. Whereby, the novel becomes truly multifarious and illustrative.

On liberty, he writes:

1. give [liberty?] its head and let it range.
2. nothing but freedom can refresh [the English novel] and restore its self respect.

Writer/Reviewer Appreciation Week

A well respected writer/friend complained about a reviewer who never liked anything the writer had written. He received a number of comments to brush it off, while others had stronger words for the reviewer. An editor told a story about how writers at a convention panel complained about reviewers who disliked their work (even admitting to trying to get revenge) but in the end they admitted that the field needed reviewers. Sort of.

Enter W.S. Merwin, a favorite poet of mine. The famous poet he kept dragging out to pummel is Walt Whitman with his support of Manifest Destiny. Some bad things were done in the name of Manifest Destiny. Merwin names ecological damage as well as destruction of native populations. Merwin thought that Whitman should have questioned these things.

But Merwin's view is ensconced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It ignores Whitman's love of everything and everyone. While it is hard to nail down what someone from the past might have thought from twenty-first century perspective, it seems more probable that a lover of all things would not favor destruction. This seems a fatal flaw in Merwin's critique. Maybe Whitman wanted to share the advantages he had with his style of government.

The other critical factors left out of Merwin's judgement are 1) Emerson called for an American poetry, which Whitman delivered by looking around him, and 2) Europe looked down at American literature at the time. Whitman did what he had to do when others trammeled down his country: He lifted it up. Otherwise, (this may be overstating the case), Merwin might not have walked down the road to writing had Whitman not already paved the road.

This is just to say that even intelligent, insightful people fail to understand the world from another's perspective/literary work. People can be too mired in their own swamp to give an objective perspective. As Salman Rushdie said, "To see the picture, you have to step out of the frame." This isn't to say that Merwin did not have good critiques of Whitman, but his primary distaste is problematic.

SF by Gaddafi?

I don't know if this is real or not, but here are purported stories by Muammar Al Gaddafi. The SF one is "Suicide by Astronaut"--more interesting for who wrote it than for the work itself.

Interesting quotes from Wikipedia:

"I have created a Utopia here in Libya. Not an imaginary one that people write about in books, but a concrete Utopia." — Muammar Gaddafi.

President Nasser privately described Gaddafi as "a nice boy, but terribly naïve" 

Craft Techniques in "Wants" by Grace Paley

As a discussion of the story, there may be spoilers here, but I'm not sure the story can be spoiled. The story is a simple one. A formerly married couple encounter, talk, bicker, and part.

No quotes creates a dreamy atmosphere. The narrator's inner thoughts meld with dialogue.

Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.

#

I love her admissions of guilt:

The librarian said $32 even and you’ve owed it for eighteen years. I didn’t deny anything. Because I don’t understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.

Not only is this funny, but also many creatives are just as guilty. It also allows us to accept the difference in couples, and we probably identify a little more with the narrator because of her interests. It also helps that we see her critique herself when she turns to critique on her ex.

#

One thing I didn't buy:

Don’t be bitter, I said. It’s never too late. 

No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger.

Is he bitter? Maybe. Maybe she knows him so well she can hear it where we may not. However, 1) How can someone hear "a great deal of bitterness" in a single syllable? and 2) He goes on to say he has been doing something about it.

Maybe she admits to not knowing here:

Either [current or former husband] has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn’t exhaust either man’s qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.

#

The title, "Wants," plays on the dynamic between the old definition of "want" and the newer one, where "want" used to be closer to "need."

His wants are physical: a sailboat. Hers, to better herself and the world.

# 

The ending is curious when she says

I decided to bring those two books back to the library. Which proves that... I can take some appropriate action.

This actually opens new questions: 1) Is she returning the books before reading them just to make a point? (which is absurdly funny) 2) Or are we to trust that her decision is as good as action? 3) If her decision is as good as action, why hadn't she turned the books in before?

She undercuts this with the statement, "although I am better known for my hospitable remarks." This doesn't necessarily answer the above questions, but maybe it suggests she may not turn in the books after all, despite her good intentions.

My First F&SF

The two stories I remember--mostly for the impression of trains so vivid that I was certain the cover had a train on it: "North of the Abyss" by Brian Aldiss and "Bound for Glory" by Lucius Shepard. I was quite taken by Card's "Lost Boys" despite it being fictional biography. I rather liked the rug being pulled out from under me (in a story).

Also garnering attention were Gene Wolfe's "The Friendship Light," J. G. Ballard's "War Fever, and Robert Silverberg's "Tales from the Venia Woods" although I don't remember them. I did like the issue. I subscribed whenever funds supplied the means to do so.


Fantasy & Science Fiction website

My First Asimov's magazine

Writers were discussing the first issues of SF magazines. This was my first issue of Asimov's. I was most taken by Nancy Kress's story, "Beggars in Spain," which went on to win a Nebula. She later expanded it into a novel, which felt like its more natural milieu. My first read left me wanting more, when I reread it as a novel, the expansion felt a good fit. Some prefer the story, however.

Mike Resnick's alternate history, "Bully!," got attention as did "The July Ward" by Sharon N. Farber/S. N. Dyer, which may be her best known work. I'll have to reread it.

Asimov's website

Cultural Ephemera: Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Carpeted Staircase

I can't remember being smitten by an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem before. Here is "April," a recent Poem of the Day featured at Poetry Foundation.

It doesn't get interesting until she gets to the maggots squirming in brains--"Not only under ground are the brains of men / Eaten by maggots"--an unexpected image from what came before, but it's interesting also in that it is life in death ("there is no death").

The ending is good, but this phrase was the most fascinating bit: "a flight of uncarpeted stairs"--as a metaphor for life being nothing. Does that mean that carpeted stairs is something? The poem reveals itself as a product of its time, a flag of history where carpet on stairs was a technological thing of wonder, perhaps something to be envied (they're so rich they have carpet on their stairs!).

This thing we now take for granted--a simple option homeowners briefly think about--was once a wonder, perhaps even a thing of joy.

A brief search shows carpet was beginning to be affordable in the mid 19th century, with some innovations in the early 20th century. No way to know when it fir
st became a thing to fit carpet on the stairs.

Belatedly, it strikes me that the carpeted stairs could be a joke (oh, remember when people used to think carpets on stairs was novel? ha, ha--my parents were such rubes). Even so, the innovation would have to been within or very near Edna's lifetime, for that to have been a joke.

Cultural Ephemera: The 1960s Generational Divide in Art Linkletter's "We Love You, Call Collect"

I'm repurposing the use of a term ("ephemera" meaning printed matter not intended to exist for long--which seems to be the most popular use according Google searches) by going back to the word's primary use in order to get at a phenomenon that intrigues me--and possibly others, which is "something of no lasting significance" (according to Merriam-Webster).

When I combine the term with "cultural," I refer to those things that momentarily struck a culture's zeitgeist, for whatever reason. The reason is usually the fascinating part. Why did it strike the culture's fancy?

Here's an example. Art Linkletter (Wikipedia) was a talk show host on a variety of radio and TV programs. You sometimes hear people still using Linkletter as the butt of a joke--as if the meaning of the joke should be clear--although its use is rather dated if not obscure to most of society now.

Art's daughter, Diane, [video clip of Diane in a commercial with her father] jumped to her death in 1969, out of a six-story window [further info on her death]. Art said it was due to an LSD flashback although people like Bobby Darin blamed Art's parenting (his song "Baby May") as Art became staunchly opposed to drug culture and figures like Timothy Leary who said LSD was safe. John Waters did a short film about Diane featuring his famed drag queen, Divine [It's early John Waters--the dialogue jumbled]. David Foster Wallace refers to it in his novel, The Pale Kings.

Art released the following spoken word audio, "We Love You, Call Collect," which peaked at #42 on Billboard Top 100 and won that year's Grammy Award:

Supposedly, there's a rebuttal from the daughter ("Dear Mom and Dad") though I couldn't locate that.

The power of this ephemera is not how it delivers its art, which is nigh nil except for its moving last line, but how it captures the generational divide of its time. One can extrapolate both perspectives.

Note that even in Linkletter's excoriation of Leary, he also praises Leary, which makes Leary smile (see video linked above). Whatever else one may have against Linkletter, he was talented at engaging people, even in anger.

Free and Reduced Ebook Lunches

Dave Creek is giving away his novel free if sign up for his newsletter.

The Best of Cordwainer Smith 
Free

Sea Change 
by Jorie Graham
$0.99

Are You Loathsome Tonight?: Stories 
by Poppy Z. Brite
$0.99

Crosstalk 
by Connie Willis
$1.99

Dark Corners 

by Barry B. Longyear

$1.99

Little Big Man 
by Thomas Berger 

$1.99

The Ship Who Sang 

by Anne McCaffrey

$1.99

Dragon's Egg (Del Rey Impact) 

by Robert L. Forward

$1.99

The High Window 

by Raymond Chandler

$2.12

The Complete Poems 

by Anne Sexton
$2.99

New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012 
by Charles Simic
$2.99

Native Guard
by Natasha Trethewey
$2.99

Kant and the Platypus: 
Essays on Language and Cognition 
by Umberto Eco
$2.99

The Management Style of the Supreme Beings 
by Tom Holt
$2.99

Moving Mars 

by Greg Bear

$2.99

The Dragon Griaule 

by Lucius Shepard

$2.99

Beautiful Blood 

by Lucius Shepard

$2.99

Amazing Stories Magazine Is Staging a Comeback

Amazing Stories, the oldest SF magazine, is prepping jetpacks to make a comeback, but they need your help.

Here's a Kickstarter with the details. They may need a few more goals and possible stretch goals. So far they've received 25% of their goal within 25% of its month of being up.

Paterson

Here's a movie about writing that I'd heard much to get excited about. It uses real poetry from Ron Padgett, a poet whose poetry can be fun, and it was supposed to be realistic about the writing life and poetry. 

Most of the drama gets buried or is held out of view. Sometimes a glimmer of what may be the conflict arises, but it's a red herring. The poet's partner gets involved in projects: first, decorating (house, apparel); then cupcakes; then guitars. Is the conflict going to be her revolving, sometimes costly interests? In a word: No. The bus breaks down, and everyone mills around waiting for the next bus. Are we going to see how miserable life can be as a laborer of the lower class and everyone feels obligated to complain to/at you? No. A group of gangsta guys warns Paterson his dog might get stolen. Was that a foreshadowing or a warning of what those guys planned to do? No. His girlfriend warns him his poetry might get lost; he should make copies. Seventy percent into the movie, a gun is drawn (the guy's girlfriend doesn't act scared--she seems more dubious). Is that it? Is that the central conflict? No.

The most interesting aspect of the film is the composition of poetry. Even then, the poetry is written, not rewritten or tumbling down blind alleys, so we don't get a full sense of the poet's mind at work. However, we do get glimmers of the poet's inspirations.

Someone somewhere will say that conflict is overrated. If so, why not stare at a waterfall or a still photograph? We humans deal with conflict daily--not that we crave it (well, at least not most of us), but that we have to find ways out of it. We have dreams. Things don't go as planned. We have loves, but other humans don't see the world/situation as we do.

In the film, we could have started closer to the conflict and examined the repercussions in his life. Surely, his loss will make him at least a little irritable, causing other problems.

The quotes below summarize the movie, and you might wonder if you're following the right character although there are some nice parallels and minor details of interest like the mailbox and twins. The trailer makes it look like it's a little more thrilling.

The movie is well rated on both IMDB (7.4) and Rotten Tomatoes (96%), so don't take my word for it (there might have been one time when my feeling about a movie matched Rotten Tomatoes over IMDB). Those numbers match my expectations--not a thrill but poetically inspiring (which it was) and intellectually stimulating and perhaps moving. I suspect that many love the low-keyness, the cinematography (Laura's designs are kind of cool), the idea of poetry as subject matter (includes Real PoetryTM!), and the lack of conflict. If you ask what's going on inside him, your answer might differ.

Quotes:

Donny: Ready to roll, Paterson?
Paterson: Yeah. Everything okay?
Donny: Well, now that you ask, No, not really. My kid needs braces on her teeth, my car needs a transmission job, my wife wants me to take her to Florida but I’m behind on the mortgage payments, my uncle called from India and he needs money for my niece’s wedding and I got this strange rash on my back. You name it, brother. How about you?
Paterson: I’m okay.

Man in Low Rider: That’s an English bulldog, right? A dog like that get dog-jacked, majee.
Paterson: Well, it gives me something to look forward to, I guess.

Doc [looking at the chessboard]: I got my ass kicked a bit.
Paterson: Who are you playing?
Doc: Myself.

Ross Gay on Poetry Workshops and his Own Writing Goals

I’m interested in workshop the way you go to a place and make stuff. I’m trying to figure out how to make my classes — everything I teach — more like a lab or an experiment zone. 

I’m trying to encourage weird accidents of the imagination. I’m trying to set up a classroom as a place where people can make really beautiful mistakes, and where collaboration is among the highest achievements. Radical collaboration, deep collaboration. I feel like something is happening to my work — I don’t know what it is, but something that I trust is good.... 

I’m so uninterested in proficiency, and I’m so uninterested in mastery.... I’m way more interested in people who are doing things they don’t know how to do. 

Everything that I’m writing now I have no fucking idea how to write. I’m writing these little mini-essays. I’m writing a nonfiction book. And then I’m writing this very long poem, that is completely out of my league. 

--interview with Callie Siskel at LA Review of Books 

Ross Gay on his Revision Process for Poetry

[I]n the revision process[,] I’ll get a sort of feeling for what a poem’s going to be, and then I’ll go back into it and try to find cracks or openings where something might happen. It’s almost always the case that what feels really interesting to me about a poem arrives through the long and slow revision process — really sitting at points where I’m stuck in the poem or not telling the truth, and then finally, hopefully, arriving at the thing that opens the poem up to me. That actually is the moment... that transforms the poem into a thing that transforms me. Sometimes it’s a pronoun, literally — and it takes me months to figure it out. 

I have a poem called “Glass” in my second book, and I was working on that poem almost daily for a couple months... I was doing things along the way — but what I needed to do was change a “they” to a “we,” and once that happened the poem materialized. I was banging my head into this poem so hard, and then that happened, and it felt like, oh my god, this is what I did not know until now. 

The first [draft] feels like I’m being more verbose[.] I’m including is what’s available in my mind at the time, and that could feel sort of big and wild. The way that a revision might open up to include things is very different. 

[T]hat “Spoon” poem... went through many drafts, and it took a couple years to write it. At first, that poem was... about a spoon. It ended in a sort of sweet, boring way. And then I broke it back open, and I realized there was more, and then I broke it open again, when I realized that I could not get to where I thought I was going to get. [T]hat was a turn in the poem where I got to understand something about my poetic process or my imaginative process, but also about this more complicated relationship with people who are no longer with me.

--interview with Callie Siskel at LA Review of Books

Mary Ruefle Lectures (essays on poetry)

28 Short Lectures:

Lectures I Will Never Give (includes Q & A):

Opening lectures from Madness, Rack, and Honey

Kangaroo Beach

On Fear: 
Our positive capability.

I Remember, I Remember:
On the handsome roofers, attentive cows, and sudden tears of youth.

On Erasure: Visual and Textual

On Imagination  (includes Q & A):

Science News

Who discovered fire? Men? Bears? Birds light fires in Australia.

The hope of viewing black holes with a planet-wide telescope.

Spinning black hole tidally disturbs local star, circling star material around back to the star again to create a flare.

An interesting perspective on depression.

Books about time (I won't bother with the superlatives)

$1 Billion object destroyed to protect the possibility of alien life

Outerscope I (Episode 12 - 16)

Episode 12:

The kids discover oranges with sparkly hair who speak like they're tough 1940s Hollywood gangsters. They have the secret to happiness. The youngest Outerscope kids don't trust the oranges so they plan to stand guard by the ship while the others go to find out about the secret to happiness. The promise to take the kids to the Yun-yun theater.

The set-up could shortened and less repetitious.

# 13

The Yun-yun theater stars none other than stinky... onions. They seem to be the butt of their own jokes. Clearly, the secret to happiness is laughing at someone else's expense. If you didn't get this, they reinforce it with a direct explanation. The oranges (or tree treats) subjugate the Yun-yuns and force them to tell jokes about themselves, so that oranges feel beautiful and powerful. No subtelty here.

# 14

The older kids thought the show was funny until they see Yun-yuns coerced to put on a show.

#15

The Outerscope kids want to turn the tables and make fun of the Tree Treats instead. The Outerscope kids play on the vanity of Tree Treats to make them pretend to be Yun-yuns and plan to put on a better show.

#16

The Yunyuns boo and laugh although some Yunyuns don't care for the turned tables. Meanwhile, the Tree Treats have learned their lesson about making fun of Yunyuns. They discover that either way is wrong. Celebration!

#17

If you didn't get the moral of the story the first time, they expound it again as they travel to another planet.

They hit a bouncy object but it is too dark to tell what they hit. Eleanor decides to go on a space walk without a space suit and has lots of fun. They have to talk her into investigating. What looked like a keyhole from the spaceship turns out to be...

a keyhole! Eleanor swims through space to look for a doorknob.

Am I exaggerating by calling this a science fantasy? They've dropped the ball on wondering to what extent if any they are living in reality.

To be continued...

It strikes me that these episodes are way to short to convey much. Due to their brevity, they had to make certain aspects redundant. If you could recut them to eliminate the pedantic aspects and redundancy they might retain some of the fondness and mystery of the brief glimpses I had as a child. I do like the "To be continued..." but maybe right before an episode where one ends on this kind of mysterious wonder. But until these get trimmed, they are rather tedious. I wonder how many episodes a kid would sit through. Certainly most adults might accidentally lose the disc before getting to the end.