Hipsters, Part Two: The American Beatnik and Other Cool Cats

Lenny Bruce, raising his own eyebrow,
no doubt in a call-and-response
routine with the many he raised...

On the heels of Thursday's discussion about the Soviet Stilyaga's blue suede shoes, we hop over the ocean this Tuesday to meet his American counterpart in hip--the beatnik, jazz man, and the other faces in the crowd of cool cats who congregate in the seedier sections of major cities, like New York's East Village and San Francisco's North Beach. As you read Norman Mailer's seminal essay about hipster psychology, race, and the atomic age--a piece at once perspicacious and highly problematic--think back to our previous readings, and the ways they dealt differently with many of the same themes. Likewise for Lenny Bruce, who needs no introduction other than a name before he starts 'talking dirty and influencing you,' to paraphrase the title of one of his books.

For those of you who have watched Mad Men before Thursday's class, you may recognize Bruce as a smaller point of inspiration (beside Rat Packer Joey Bishop) for the show's Jewish comedian Jimmy Barrett. I mention this, and footnote Mailer's own downplayed Jewish background, because Jewish identity and Anti-Semitism are major if mostly unarticulated questions of the Cold War in the US and USSR. I encourage you to start thinking more systematically in this direction, perhaps starting with your discussion questions. 

Hipsters, Part One: Soviet Stiliagi

Mikhail Svetlov, Andrei Voznesensky,
Bella Akhmadulina and Evgenii Evtushenko

Soviet Hipsters or Stiliagi

Now that we've encountered Yevtushenko's poetry in motion with the Cuban-Soviet film collaboration, Soy Cuba/Ia Kuba, we're well positioned for our Thursday rap session on the return of revolutionary Romanticism, postwar nostalgia for futurism, and youth culture during the Khrushchev Thaw. You'll be getting to know other cold war cool cats in the coming couple of classes, so please post questions below that deepen our introduction to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, his fellow stadium poet, Andrei Voznesensky, and, in a remediated or retroactive way, to Vladimir Mayakovsky--with whom American hipsters will also connect their ethic and aesthetic desires. Feel free to ask about the hipster figure more generally.  

"I am Cuba" Questions

In Tuesday's class we'll be watching the second half of the visually/musically/conceptually stunning film collaboration between Russo-Soviet and Cuban artists called "I am Cuba," and framing this conversation with selected works by the screenwriter/post-Stalinist youth poet extraordinaire, Yevgeny Yevtushenko.



(*Pay special attention to the poem and the person, Mayakovsky. You've encountered him before with the cartoon "Black and White," and will again with Yevtushenko's poet-peer Andrei Voznesensky, and once more with Frank O'Hara on our Mad Men/Cuban Missile Crisis day.)



Please post your curious questions and other interested observations below... 

Cold War Exoticism: William Burroughs's Queer

Leave your questions here for Queer. Feel free to draw connections between Lee and the other 'difficult personalities' featured in last week's reading. What do Lee, Anthony Burns, and Jesse have to say to one another? What does Queer have to say about the Cold War? And what in the world do Lee's routines have to say about any of this? 

 

The Sado-Masochism of American Racism: Baldwin + Williams, Part 2.

Please post a question below that explores the continuities and contrasts of these complementary short stories, possibly stirring Circus and the Soviet cartoons into the pot as well. If you desperately want to post about only one of them, feel free. Otherwise I welcome you to respond to one of the questions posted about these texts--whether in this or the previous thread, by you or your classmates. You should also feel free to begin interrogating Queer, though I have a hunch we'll be spending the bulk of our meeting puzzling through these other two, and setting up what comes next in Burroughs's book.

American Authors Confront Race: James Baldwin and Tennessee Williams

- What connections do James Baldwin and Tennessee Williams explore between race, gender and sexuality?

 - Pay attention to the narrative texture of Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man." How does the story introduce its characters? Who is narrating? - What is the “thrilling silence” Big Jim C. talks about?  And what is the function of black song in the story?

Black and White in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

If the Soviet film "Circus" spoke to you, somehow sparked your interest or left you scratching your head in a good way, I encourage you to make it the subject of your first 1-2 page reader response (due Tuesday, September 24 before the start of class). You'll find some questions to guide your thinking below. Keep in mind: these are possible directions to pursue in your paper, not top-down directives. Feel free to find your own theme and write a couple of coherent paragraphs of analysis about it.

--How are Americans and America depicted? How are Soviets and the Soviet Union depicted? How are Germans depicted?

--What kinds of oppositions—moral and ideological—separate the US and the USSR in the film? How does the film shore up these oppositions with black-and-white/light-and-dark imagery?

--How does the film demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism?

--According to the film, what are the US’s and USSR’s attitudes about race?

--What are the USSR’s attitudes about gender? For instance, who are the new Soviet man and woman? What are their psychological and physical attributes?

--How does the film handle the issues of marriage and romantic love? (Think not only of Marion and Martynov but also Raika and Skameikin.)

--Is this film propaganda, art, entertainment or some combination of the three?

--Why does this ideological struggle take place in the circus? What is the significance of Marion’s “Flight to the Moon” and Martynov’s “Flight to the Stratosphere” acts? What role does technology play in the film?  

--The dominant metaphor of Circus is that the USSR is one big, happy family. Do you agree or disagree? Support your answer.

--What can this film accomplish—artistically and politically—because it is a musical?

--The concept of genre is crucial to the analysis of an artistic text. Circus is not just a musical comedy but also a melodrama. What kinds of emotions does it attempt to invoke in its viewer, how, and to what end?

--What kind of viewer does this film assume? How does it embed these assumptions into its structure?

--How does the film use language—proper and improper Russian as well as non-Russian languages—to convey its ideological message?

For many of these topics, I encourage you to perform a close-reading of the film’s musical refrain, “Broad is my native land.” The lyrics are pasted below: 

Broad is my native land,
Many forests, fields and rivers!
I know of no other land
Where man can breathe so freely!
From Moscow to our furthest outposts,
The southern mountains to the northern seas,
Man walks as the master of
His own vast native land!

Welcome to The Cold War Gets Hot!