Heaven...I'm in Heaven?

The etymological roots of the word "heaven" take us to the second century where we find the word "heofon" which meant "place where God dwells". Combined with the earlier meaning of "sky" and "firmament" as well as Germanic dialects we end up with the idea of heaven pretty much all of us have created.
But what happens to those of the school of thought that heaven is something different for everyone else? And what about those for whom there is no heaven?
1943's "Cabin in the Sky" is an adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name which grabs the Faust concept to tell the story of Little Joe (Eddie "Rochester" Anderson), a gambler who dies but gets a second chance for redemption when the powers above, and below, decide to give him a six month trial to redeem his soul.
Directed by the legendary Vincente Minnelli, in his Hollywood debut, and produced by the extraordinary Arthur Freed (who was perhaps the creator of the film musical as we know it) the film proved to be controversial because of its all-African-American cast, which at the time was considered a commercial bomb as well as scandalous in segregated America.
Nowadays, although the film has aged wonderfully, because of the songs which have become standards as well as the creative script and altogether entertainment, as well as cultural, value one can begin to examine it under a more critical eye, especially because of its depictions of spiritual beliefs and above all heaven.
Despite its groundbreaking qualities, "Cabin in the Sky" still comes off looking as a slightly racist film that suggests that even heaven might've been segregated during the time. Perhaps not intentionally, but sometimes it's a rather upsetting portrait of the historical context.
Everyone in the film is African American, which obviously implies that figures like God or the devil, which historically have been represented as Caucassian males, are black.
Rex Ingram plays Lucifer Jr. with a delightful mix of dark comedy and charm (Louis Armstrong plays one of his henchmen) while Kenneth Spencer plays the General, a sort of archangel, sent to help Little Joe get to paradise.
The screenplay gives them some brilliant moments to play off the duality that lies within human beings. Think of them as those little representations of good and evil which became popular in cartoons. But they also force the audience to wonder if our ideas of the afterlife and spirituality are determined by our racial background.
Hollywood was known for limiting the appearance of black artists (just take a look at the filmography of Butterfly McQueen who is also featured in this film), and one can argue some things haven't really changed (they just call it "urban cinema" nowadays), but what can be made about the mutual exclusion this has brought onto artistic manifestations?
Because "Cabin in the Sky", although produced with what one assumes was a pretty much white crew, comes off looking as if it was made in a world where everyone had the same skin color.
There are several factors that come to mind as causes and consequences of this representation, including the fact that perhaps the film was aimed at a specific demographic and social group, that the idea of a majorly black cast instantly made actors of other races ineligible to be hired, or that maybe it was purposely done as some sort of "payback" for the mistreatment which had been given to black performers up to that point. Joe's wife, Petunia (played wonderfully by the exceptional Ethel Waters) at one point utters "sometimes when you fight the devil, you gotta jab him with his own pitchfork" which could very well express the injustice of intolerant behavior and the use of "eye for an eye" philosophy to take on it.
Maybe a white audience member watching this would wonder "why aren't there any white people here?" which would have the same repercussions of a black person watching a predominantly white film.
...or not, which is why "Cabin in the Sky" comes off as a film that has a lot of flavor but still can't help but feel bittersweet.
It has (un-?) surprisingly remained mostly unknown throughout the years (it was out of print until 2006) despite the fact that it's perhaps one of the most enjoyable early modern musicals (and worthy if only to see the delicious Lena Horne grab a flower to wear as a femme fatale hat) and can even be seen as a sort of "The Wizard of Oz" remake.
Despite the fact that the film is plagued with stereotypes which come as a shadow over film history (as well as having some cinematic flaws mostly related to its somewhat stagey transition from Broadway to Hollywood) the one thing that the movie never loses is a sort of unbridled joy.
It takes twists and turns that are completely implausible, but it does so with such style and, might one say it, sass, that make the happiness its trademark song talks about believable, despite the hell that was raging on outside.

- This post is part of "Musical of the Month" hosted by Nathaniel Rogers of "The Film Experience".

My Secret Love.

Gender roles in the revisionist Western.

- "I made a mistake about his gender, not his talent!"
Paul Harvey (Henry Miller) in "Calamity Jane".

Released exactly one year apart from each other, "Calamity Jane" and "Johnny Guitar" challenged the standards of the American film genre by excellence: the Western.
Both bend genre conventions and extract completely new ways of watching cowboy flicks particularly the fact that both share strong willed women as heroines, who can shoot like the devil and stand up to any man, along with more psychoanalytical, sapphic interpretations than there are fleas in a rodeo bull.
"Calamity Jane", a Western musical (talk about box office bomb potential for our times...) was done in response to the great success a few years prior of the Western musical "Annie Get Your Gun".
Doris Day plays the legendary Wild West heroine seen by most as the local tomboy. She spends her time in saloons and fighting indians who terrorize the area.
After a performer turns out to be a fiasco at the local saloon, Calamity gets one of her toughest missions as she decides to go to Chicago and look for a female entertainer to satisfy the male population requests.
Without thinking for a second that she might be able to fill the part herself, she goes to the big city where she is often confused as a man. She finds Katie Brown (Allyn Ann McLerie) a beginner singer who she takes back to Deadwood, only to have her become part of a love rectangle as they both fight for the affections of Lt. Danny Gilmartin (Philip Carey) and Wild Bill Hicock (Howard Keel).
In Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar", Joan Crawford plays saloonkeeper Vienna; a revolutionary urbanist who wants to build a new town around her business, but becomes the target for villagers who want her to leave once and for all.
When she is accused of a crime she didn't commit, she is aided by the title hero (played by Sterling Hayden) an outlaw/troubadour with whom she shares a past.
"I've never seen a woman who was more like a man," says one character about Vienna, but in truth he could have also been talking about Calamity.
Both women exert more power over the other characters (and the audience) than anything else in their films and while this may have to do with pure star wattage, the truth is that in a deeper sense both films are poignant sexual critiques about what was arguably seen as a man's thing.
With the Hayes Code slowly becoming obsolete, the 50's paved the way for the sexual revolution that would follow in the next decade and while Hollywood was pretending to play along with the rules, filmmakers were beginning to challenge conceptions and infused their films with unintendedly controversial elements.
A sequence in "Calamity Jane" features a female impersonator who is eventually discovered, but only after he's stirred the hormones of some of the audience members.
Once they discover their mistake they begin to boo at him. The film of course plays this like a "ha ha" moment, but never lets go of its not so subtle commentary on how social standards were sustained as long as they appeared to be the real thing.
You can't stop wondering if they were booing at the fact that the performer was a man, or that he stopped singing after the discovery.

The leading men in both films, play supporting roles to women they know they never will be able to handle.
Wild Bill affirms to Calamity "I Can Do Without You" and mostly stands in the back as she does all the hard work (including their eventual romance), while Lt. Gilmartin exclaims "just untie me!" after Calamity saves him from a group of indians all by herself.
Johnny Guitar on the other side tries to regain back his masculinity by asking Vienna to lie to him about how much she needs him.
"Lie to me. Tell me all these years you've waited. Tell me." he asks.
"All those years I've waited. " she exclaims without an ounce of truthfulness.
He know she's lying, she knows as long as she says it out loud, he'll be alright.
And of course where there's a strong woman, there's a rumor of lesbianism.
When "Johnny Guitar" became an icon for the French auteur movement, psychoanalysis was going through an explosive difusion.
The film's bizarre mood and the use of color became alleged allegories for everything, from McCarthy-ism to supressed sexual feelings. "Johnny"'s villainness comes in the shape of Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge) a woman as asexual as Vienna, who is seeking to regain her throne as the butchiest of them all and encounters a personality as defying as her own, which might, or might not, stir feelings of identification in her that she confuses as attraction leading to hatred...
And if all that sounds over the top, there's the theory that "Secret Love", the Academy Award winning song from "Calamity Jane", is not precisely about Jane's newfound affection towards Bill, but of her more introspective feelings towards Katie.
When the film has Katie movie in with Calamity for "protection" you wonder if it's protection from the town boys, bandits, indians or from social prejudice.
Regardless of the sexual orientation of the characters, both films are proof of how the artform thrives with possibilities that go beyond mere entertainment and how genre can constantly be reinvented.

This post is part of "Musical of the Month", hosted by Nathaniel Rogers of "The Film Experience".

They're Not That Innocent.

"Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch one's eyes"
Hilaire Belloc

They say that drunkards and children always tell the truth.
And while it’s true that alcohol makes people lose their inhibitions and children are allegedly pure and good, the adage becomes questionable when you examine the nature of what they understand by the concept of truth.
In William Wyler’s “The Children’s Hour” (1961) and Joe Wright’s “Atonement” (2007) two young girls “misinterpret” facts and create truths of their own, changing forever the lives of those around them.
In “Children’s”, Mary Tilford (Karen Balkin) is a young, spoiled girl living in a boarding school. Faced with the possibility of being accused of bad behavior to her grandmother (Fay Bainter), she creates a diversion by revealing to her that her two teachers (played by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine) are secret lovers.
Word immediately gets out in the little New England town and before long, the women have become outcasts at the mercy of a little girl’s presumptions.
“Atonement” has Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a precocious twelve year old devoted to the written word. After writing her first play, which she is to direct with her cousins as cast, she begins to realize that there’s a bigger stage than the one she crafts for her dolls and stuffed animals.
After tying knots in her head she accuses the housekeeper’s son (James McAvoy) of committing a crime she is sure she was witness of. When in fact what Briony is doing is pulling off a deus ex machine (with her as deus) playing with people as literary figures in her most ambitious project.
The definition of lie deems that there must be “a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood” but in both Mary and Briony’s case you can debate the end they wished to achieve by using lies as the means.
When Mary repeats the rumors she’s heard in her school, she uses the word unnatural to the dismay of her grandmother who finds it a forbidden word (Remember that in the 1960’s they couldn’t throw the word lesbian around just like that). But the viewer wonders, what could be more unnatural than a child becoming a messenger of cruelty?
Balkin’s performance is remarkable, if you watch the movie and don’t wish to spank her and ground her for decades then you are the nicest person in the world, but what remains disturbing is the idea that in a way Mary isn’t lying to save her skin, as much as she is trying to satisfy her curiosity.
Deep down she knows that she can’t come and face grownups with issues like the ones dealt with in the plot, her only way of entering the adult world then is using them as scandal.
Only by playing innocent about things, she probably knows nothing about, is she able to justify her existence.
In the very same way a passage in “Atonement”, witten by Ian McEwan, describes Briony as someone who picked up the dictionary and randomly chose complicated words to feel part of the adult world.
While the movie doesn’t show this, Ronan’s performance lets you know that this girl is always picking up things in her surroundings.
This makes you question not only essential parenting skills, but also how important it is for children to understand the world around them.
How long do you have to wait before teaching them about things like sexuality and cause/consequence relations?
Later in the film, and in the novel, Briony grows up to her 70’s but the youngest version of her is the one that lingers in your mind.
Both Mary and Briony have to carry with the weight of deaths and sorrow in their minds, but we only get to see how the burden affects Briony.
She remains looking for the title atonement for the rest of her life, one that could’ve been prevented, but we never know for sure what steps to take to have made a difference.
And in a manner of speaking both characters are so powerful because at one time we were them as well.
Whether we were lying about breaking our grandma’s favorite flower pot, about stealing the last cookie in the jar or about what that cigarette smell is doing in our clothes, we never know for sure what the effect of our words will have on others.
Sure makes you want to be a baby again huh?

- This post is part of the"Rugrats Blog-a-thon" hosted by Michael Parsons of "My Stuff and Cr*p"