Secondhand Seventies

Sometimes my reading and viewing choices form unpremeditated themes. This week three in a row evoked “life in the 70s.”

The 1970s were my favorite decade: I don’t mean in the history of the world, but just in the portion of it (starting in the 1950s) through which I personally lived. Partly that has to do with my own age (17 to 27) at the time. If that isn’t a vital time of life you are either very unfortunate or doing something wrong. But there was more: the 70s really were unlike any other decade. The sexual and cultural revolutions of the 60s went mainstream in the 1970s without the PC constraints of the 2010s. (As minor examples, it’s hard to imagine Blazing Saddles or even Animal House being greenlighted today; for a thorough account of the decade's mores, see Thy Neighbor's Wife by Gay Talese.) The Baby Boomers, all of whom spent at least some of their teens or 20s in the decade, by weight of numbers dominated the popular culture like no generation before or since. (The Millennials slightly outnumber Boomers in 2018, but they are a much smaller percentage of the total population than Boomers were 40 years ago.) Such youthful abundance ramped up the already hedonistic zeitgeist to a degree hard to believe to anyone who didn’t experience it.

First up was a short story collection by Ian McEwan, which actually dates to the 1970s. Not so the two movies that followed; they were released in 2016, but both are set in the 1970s. I think the common decade in all three was a coincidence, though it’s possible some unconscious selectivity on my part was at work. As that may be, together they synced nicely. Quick reviews are below. By the way, two short stories of my own set in the 1970s, one fiction and one nonfiction, can be found at my Richard’s Mirror site: Brown Acid and The Roxy Caution.

First Love, Last Rites by Ian McKewan

Ian McKewan is a superb British writer who creates detailed characters and images in finely crafted sentences. Those characters and images can be pretty dark, however, and never more so than in this early collection from 1975. There are tales of adolescent incest, murder, betrayal, an aunt’s theatrical perversity with her young nephew, and an infantilized man who sleeps in a cupboard. McKewan humanizes his characters – even the most criminal – in a way reminiscent of Nabokov. This differs from the modern tendency to demonize those guilty of wrong-think along with those who fail to join in the demonization for being “part of the problem.” In truth, though, such darknesses are, quite naturally, in all of us (even if we don’t act on them), which is precisely why McKewan’s stories are so disturbing.

All but one of the short stories were new to me. I recognized the exception as one I had read in the 1970s, but I don’t remember in what publication. It is a clever and darkly humorous tale that (alone of the bunch) verges on science fiction: “Solid Geometry” in which a mathematician discovers how to fold an object (including potentially a person) out of 3D space.

Recommended.

**** ****

The Nice Guys (2016)

Despite the presence of Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, this neo-noir comedy didn’t make much of a ripple when it was projected on screens in 2016. It should have. In decadent and tawdry 1977 Los Angeles private detective Holland March (Gosling) and enforcer-for-hire Jackson Healy (Crowe) are allied on the same case. Amelia, who objects to being called a porn actress for her work in politically significant porn, is missing. People connected to her and her last movie are dying. The reason involves corruption involving auto companies and government officials including Judith Kuttner (Kim Bassinger), chief of the California Department of Justice, who happens to be Amelia's mother.

The movie, directed by Shane Black (screenwriter of much straight-up noir including Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight), hits the right notes of action, humor, and camaraderie. It also catches the feel of the ‘70s (at once shiny and seedy) accurately enough to ignite the nostalgia evident in my intro to these reviews.

Thumbs Up.

**** ****

Free Fire (2016)

Once again we are in the disco decade: 1978 this time. One reason, quite aside from atmosphere, is that cell phones would disrupt the whole plot: a significant portion of the action involves attempts to get to a land line in order to call for backup. The primary reason, though, is the atmosphere, coming through in speech, style, and attitude. Free Fire does indeed have the look of a 70s action film minus all the usual plot and character development between the episodes of violence. Director Ben Wheatley doesn’t make the audience wait long for the gunfire to begin, and that is the rest of the movie.

The set-up: Twelve men and one woman (Brie Larson) meet at night in an empty warehouse near Boston for the sale of assault rifles to the IRA. Unfortunately, a few of the people involved on opposite sides of the trade know each other, are hot-headed, and have unresolved issues. For reasons completely unrelated to the actual trade, tempers flare and shots are fired. From that point there is no going back, and for the next hour and a half the shootout continues. Everyone is a lousy shot. So, despite the intensity of the action, wounds accumulate slowly and fatalities are long in coming. There actually are some character revelations in the midst of all this and, against all odds, a degree of offbeat humor. Who, if anyone, will survive to walk out with the money and/or guns is the question to be resolved at the end.

Thumbs warily Up: Definitely not for everyone, but it keeps the viewer’s attention more than one might imagine. At least this one didn’t make me nostalgic.

**** ****

What unplanned themes will emerge from future reads and views? I don’t think it will be the 80s – not quite yet anyway.

Trailer: The Nice Guys (2016)

Getting Schooled

The month of May is traditional for college graduation, but June overwhelming is the month of choice for handing out high school diplomas at annoyingly named “commencements.” Even when I was 17 this was as groan-inducing for me as movies that end with the words “The Beginning.”

Yours Truly, a few Junes ago

High school is such a near-universal experience in the developed world that we tend to forget how recently in historical terms this wasn’t so. A few generations ago, high school was primarily for the elite – most often at private academies. Public or private, high school attendance was rare in the U.S. before 1870 at which time only 2% of 17-year-olds had any secondary education. The numbers slowly climbed over the next 30 years, but in 1900 still hadn’t topped 6%. None of my grandparents (all born between 1896 and 1900) attended high school. I doubt they ever considered it. Attitudes and school budgets were changing, though, and by the 1920s at least some high school became the experience of most teens in the U.S. Still, not until the 1930s did a majority actually graduate, thanks partly to stricter enforcement of truancy laws for those under 14: enforcement inspired less by ideals about education than by a Depression-era desire to keep teens from competing with adults in the labor force. By 1940 75% of young people earned a high school diploma. Because older generations mostly had not, however, it was not until well into the 1950s that the median education level for the adult population as a whole was higher than 8^th grade.

Today nearly 90% of students finish high school, but high school has changed since the 1940s. Today, high schools almost universally provide a college-preparation course of study to all students. A college-prep study course was an option in public schools in the ‘40s, but most students took the far more practical business course of study. At right is an image of my father’s high school credit certificate that accompanied his diploma. (My father was not actually at his graduation on June 16, 1944, by the way; at that time he was on a Liberty Ship resupplying the Normandy beachhead, but Morristown High nonetheless graduated students who left school in the final year to join the military if they had accumulated enough credits.) How different is this list of credits from what students typically encounter in high school today? 

I use the word “encounter” rather than “learn” because what is forgotten the moment an exam is passed cannot be considered learned. A study from the University of East Anglia in the UK found that students remembered only 40 percent of their high school studies by the first week at a university – and the study tested with multiple choice exams in which the correct answer was present. Said lead researcher Harriet Jones: “What our research shows is that students are arriving at university with fantastic A-Level grades, but having forgotten much of what they actually learned for their exams.” U.S. studies have similar or worse findings. Despite a tripling of school budgets in inflation-adjusted terms in the past 40 years there has been no improvement at all in student proficiency at the time of high school graduation, and much of that proficiency is lost over the following summer anyway. Half of all students entering community colleges require remedial education. Across all colleges and universities the average college student reads at an 8^th grade level: only slightly better than the U.S. population as a whole.

Truth be told, the majority of adults retain and get by – often quite well – on 8^th grade level math and literacy skills just as their great grandparents did. This is as true of college graduates as of high school graduates. Obviously there are fields of study in which this is not true: students of engineering, medicine, and various hard sciences really do acquire knowledge useful and necessary to their future careers. Graduates in these fields make up a smallish minority (14%) of the total however. Viewed purely in career terms, the more typical college grad learns nothing new at college that is applicable to later jobs; nearly all the important aspects of their jobs are learned on the job. Even well-paid professionals commonly let high school (never mind college) level skills atrophy if they aren’t used in daily practice, as most aren’t.

So, is sending people to school past 8^th grade a waste of money? In a purely economic sense, yes and no. For an individual average student in the world as it is, a diploma is an extremely wise investment. Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, makes this point in The Case against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money. For an average graduate – comparing him or her with someone who tests the same in every way but lacks the sheepskin – a diploma is never a waste of time and money. A Bachelor’s degree will boost lifetime earnings by 70% over someone with just a high school diploma, who in turn earns 50% more than high school dropouts. The reason is “signaling.” Employers use the diploma as a quick way of ascertaining if prospective employees have the skills and temperament to do the job: they successfully completed four or more years of at least modestly intellectual drudgery at school, the thinking goes, so they probably can do as much at work. This is especially true today when completing school is a social expectation. Many occupational licenses and many employers currently require college degrees even though most of those jobs do not actually require skills beyond a competent 8^th-grader. For this reason, while pursuing a diploma makes sense for an individual, Caplan argues that, for society, pushing everyone to get one (at enormous cost) does not. The increase in college graduates in particular has devalued their degrees so that many now seek jobs that in the 1950s were held by people who didn’t finish high school: “If everyone got a college degree, the result would not be great jobs for all, but runaway credential inflation.” He is keener on vocational schools, which demonstrably pay earnings dividends to the individual and to society at large as well.

I’m more sanguine about education than Caplan – certainly through high school anyway. A lot of students are not average, for one thing, and it’s not always clear which ones unless we expose them all to school. For another, not every consideration is economic. Having some understanding of science and culture is essential to becoming a well-rounded human being. Ideally, high school provides a framework for future self-education in these matters – self-education being the only real kind of education there is. College can reinforce that framework. Neither is absolutely necessary to this task, but the schools and colleges can make it a whole lot easier. As for the majority of philistine graduates who don’t give a whit about academics and who will forget it all in a year…well, at least they had the chance.

I’ll be in the audience of no high school graduations this year, but at least there is one Commencement I will be celebrating tomorrow without any groans at the word: the onset of summer. Happy Solstice!

Nat King Cole - You Don't Learn That in School (1946)

Trackside Recap: Jerzey Derby Brigade vs. Hartford Wailers

On June 16 The Jerzey Derby Brigade (JDB) at its home track in Morristown hosted the Harford Wailers for what proved to be a bruising bout.

#1200 Liberty Violence the Wailers put the first points on the board for the Wailers. They were far from her last. With a depth of jammers (notably #24 Sabatage Saval, #1200 Liberty Violence, #1965 Pretty Bizaarbie, and #528 Ginger-vitus) and well-practiced blocking, the Wailers took an early lead. For JDB, #8 Lil Mo Peep and #3684 Californikate showed their usual jamming skills, but encountered stiff blocking. Both teams’ blockers were tactically competent and showed individual aggression when separated from teammates, such as a solid block of #64 Madeleine Alfight by Wailer #608 Rebel Scum and a knockdown #528 Ginger-vitus by JDB skater #221 Det. Sure-Block Holmes. The Hartford defense had the better of it overall, however, which allowed the Wailers to build its lead throughout the first half. JDB remained competitive with hit-it-quit-it point gains and occasional multipass jams, such as a 19 point jam by #128 Val Royale and another 19-pointer by #3684 Californikate. #1965 Pretty Bizaarbie put the Wailers over the 100 mark and #8 Lil Mo Peep did the same for JDB several minutes later. The first half ended with a score of 111-162 in favor of the Wailers.

The Wailers lead at the start of the second half was formidable but not insurmountable. Blocking on both sides became more aggressive – as it frequently does in second halves – with more than usual number of takedowns and pileups. Despite JDB’s best efforts, which included repeated hit-it-quit-it jams by Lil Mo Peep and a 21 point jam by Californikate, the Wailers expanded their lead. #24 Sabatage Saval showed a special talent for slipping through defensive walls. #45 Black Mamba took the Wailers over 300 and Californikate put JDB over 200. The final jam started with 25 seconds on the clock. #24 Sabatage Saval picked up lead jammer status and could have ended the match after the 25 seconds, but she chose to let the jam play out as both she and #8 Lil Mo Peep battled the pack. The whistle blew with a Final Score of 205 – 365 in favor of the Hartford Wailers.

MVPs:

JDB

Blocker – #221 Det. Sure-Block Holmes

Jammer – #8 Lil Mo Peep

Wailers

Blocker  – #1965 Pretty Bizaarbie

Jammer – #24 Sabatage Saval

Make Yourself at Home

In NYC the other day on a personal errand, my route on foot took me across Union Square. For those unfamiliar with the city, Union Square is one of Manhattan’s less attractive parks (largely paved) in a very busy part of town between 17^th Street and 14th; more broadly, it is an area name for several blocks surrounding the park. Go south on Broadway or Park Avenue from midtown and you’ll run into it. I don’t have much occasion to walk there these days. I’m usually either south of it in the Village or north of it in the theater district. Back in the 70s, though, I walked there a lot. I’d frequently get off the Path subway at 14^th and walk eastward through Union Square to 18th. I dated a young lady who lived there. (I used to joke with her about dating an older woman: she was one month older.) It didn’t work out (not because of the age joke), but it took three years not to work out. 40 years later on my most recent stroll through the area I had a strange and unexpected sense of nostalgia: a sense of coming home even though the area never was that – for me, that is. It is home to plenty of other people.

The association of particular places with memories and emotions is called geotagging. We all do it. We do it even when the places aren’t real, as in the virtual worlds of video games: see “Neural Activity in Human Hippocampal Formation Reveals the Spatial Context of Retrieved Memories” by Jonathan Miller et al. in Science magazine. Humans form mental maps of particular locations in the same place they form long term memories: the hippocampus, which is also the seat of our emotions. It’s no wonder some spaces bring up an associated mix of memories and emotions. Naturally, the response is greatest when the emotional content of the memories is strongest. As Christopher Bergland notes in Psychology Today, “The nostalgia of being home for the holidays is a perfect example of this type of memory encoding...For most of us, the locations we spend Thanksgiving and Christmas are coupled with strong memories and emotions linked to that environment.” Some location-triggered memories and responses are anything but pleasant. An intersection where someone had an auto accident could trigger fear or discomfort, for example; some people might deliberately avoid the spot thereafter.

Washington Monument 1971: I'm in that
crowd somewhere

We tend to be most conscious of the nostalgia-laden geotags though. In WW2 Frank Sinatra crooned I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places. (Oddly, Civil War doctors often listed “nostalgia” as a cause of death for hospitalized soldiers. I think they meant depression from homesickness. The risk of dying from nostalgia per se is not really a worrisome one.) All sorts of places – some of them quite mundane – can evoke a flood of memories: a train station, an old high school football field, a local drug store, Main Street in Disneyland, the Top of the Mark in San Francisco, etc. It all depends on what we experienced there. Sometimes one memory dominates. I’ve stood on the Washington Monument grounds in DC many times, for example, yet every time I do I have a shadow-vision of the grounds in 1971 packed shoulder to shoulder with young people; I still can smell the burning hemp. (See my account of this in The Quiet Riot.)

For the ultimate sense of being “home again,” though, it’s hard to beat one’s actual home. I have the good fortune to live in what had been my parents’ house and hopefully I’ll be able to hold onto it for a while – no sure outcome in this ridiculously high-tax state. One good reason for traveling, aside from the fun of new places or the nostalgia of old ones, is the enjoyment of returning home. I also can see the attraction, however, of leaving all one’s geotags behind and building (literally or figuratively) a new home elsewhere. Maybe one day I’ll try that, too. For now, however, maybe I’ll just let my familiar environs evoke what memories they will – and I’ll try not to die from nostalgia.

Devil Doll - Union Square

June 9 Double Derby

As is their frequent custom, the New Jersey Roller Derby (NJRD) hosted a Saturday night double header on its home track in Morristown. The NJRD teams, the All Stars and the Brawl Stars, skated against the Reading Derby Girls and the Central Jersey Roller Vixens respectively.

NJRD All Stars vs. Reading Derby Girls

The two teams proved to be a very good match. Neither was able to build up a significant lead in the first 30 minutes of play. Solid jamming on the part of Reading – notably by #021 Amandasaurus Wrex, #14 J-Bird, and #22 Skater Di – was equaled by NJRD – Notably #14 Ragnarok, #1793 Queen Guillotine, and #11 Tuff Crust Pizza. At the beginning of the second half the score was 81-88 in favor of Reading. In a power jam against stiff opposition Tuff Crust Pizza put NJRD into the lead 107-101. Well organized defensive walls led to fancy footwork on both sides to get past them; in one peculiar jam both sides resorted to star passes. As the second half wore on, NJRD built on its lead but remained vulnerable. In the final jam, #021 Amandasaurus Wrex made an impressive push after a star pass to accumulate points, but the clock ran out with NJRD still 16 points ahead. Final Score 175 – 159 in favor of NJRD.

MVPs:

NJRD

Blocker – #10 Miss USAHole

Jammer – #14 Ragnarok

Reading

Blocker  – #04 Tomb Schrader

Jammer – #021 Amandasaurus Wrex

NJRD Brawl Stars vs. Central Jersey Roller Vixens

It was clear from the first few jams that the Vixens would be a tough adversary. In the very first jam, #412 Brindiesel broke through the pack to put four points on the board for NJRD. It was the last time NJRD would hold the lead. #19 Ivanna Exposya in the next jam put the Vixens ahead 4-11. Yet, the match remain competitive with the first half ending with the score at 88-101. The Vixens have a depth of good jammers including #13 Lil Miss Moody, #549 Rooney, and especially #706 Breaka who repeatedly was able to break through the walls of NJRD blockers. #412 Brindiesel, #100 Tkatch Money, and #8 Smiley Cyrus did strong jamming for NJRD. The blocking was very aggressive on both sides in the second half with numerous pileups. As the clock wound down, however, the Vixens solidified their lead with multi-pass jams by both #706 Breaka, #549 Rooney, and (in the final jam) #19 Ivanna Exposya. The Vixens took the victory with a Final Score of 148 – 215.

MVPs:

NJRD

Blocker – #314 Fearless Bueller

Jammer – #8 Smiley Cyrus

Vixens

Blocker  – #6 Lucille Squall

Jammer – #706 Breaka

Accidental Teen

My most recent picks of novel and movie were not chosen for having targeted the demographic born since 2000 (Generation Z or, as some prefer, iGen). Yet by happenstance both were so aimed. Carl Hiaasen is known for his rollicking but entirely adult crime fiction. Movie audiences may know him best from the 90s film adaptation with Demi Moore of his novel Strip Tease. Young Adult (YA) fiction is not what one expects from his pen; it is not what I expected anyway. Similarly, I opted for the movie Thoroughbreds on account of a pocket-description of it as a stylish indie neo-noir thriller. So it is, but contrary to my expectation the protagonists are 17-ish. That’s OK for both page and screen. Excepting anyone under 12, we’ve all been teenage. In some ways we never get past it. While there is much teen-oriented entertainment that makes adults wince, a book or script that is not hopelessly… well… adolescent remains relatable at any age. These are relatable.

**** **** 

Skink: No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen

Richard is a shy 14-y.o. Floridian who is close friends with his same-age cousin Malley. Malley is smart and capable but impetuous and rebellious with a history of running away; she is a teenage handful whom her parents intend to send to boarding school in New Hampshire. Her IQ doesn’t save her from having a 14-year-old’s foolish romantic streak, which leads her (in the wake of the news about boarding school) to run away with a fellow calling himself Talbo Chock whom she met in an online chat room. This proves to be a bad idea. “Talbo” is not who he pretends to be. He is a predator with handcuffs. He lets Malley have some monitored cell phone contact with her parents and Richard in order to reassure them that she is just on another of her ill-advised romps and is in no real danger. Richard thinks otherwise.

Richard encounters a burly, eccentric, septuagenarian, hands-on (more precisely, fists-on) environmental activist, Viet-vet, former governor of Florida who almost everyone assumes died years earlier. What follows are chases, fights, and adventures on the road and down the Choctawatchee River as Skink and Richard and Malley herself strive to break her free.

Normally I prefer fiction – even YA fiction – to be more complex and, like life, morally ambiguous, but there is something refreshing about an old-fashioned YA in which (as in the 50s when YAs were without intended insult called Juveniles) the good guys are clearly distinguishable from the bad guys. The book does not equate good and lawful, I should add, though, more frequently than one might imagine, neither did ones from the 30s-60s. Thanks to Hiaasen’s skilled writing and trademark humor, it’s a fun read for tweens, teens, and adults.

**** ****

Thoroughbreds (2017)

This debut film by Cory Finley, on the other hand, is very short on good guys, and that itself is good. It fits the style of movie he has chosen.

“Privileged” barely hints at the family economic status of the two teens at the heart of this neo-noir: Lily, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, and Amanda, played by Olivia Cooke. Amanda’s parents consider her to be troubled. She is really not – and that is the trouble. Amanda is lacking emotions. (There is a distinction between drives, e.g. hunger and lust, and emotions, e.g. joy and sadness.) Amanda isn’t unhappy. She’s not happy either, but she isn’t unhappy. Everything is all the same to her. Because she doesn’t experience thrills from crime, she is not particularly impelled toward it, but because she has no guilt or fear she has no compunctions about it either. Finley makes a point of not diagnosing Amanda, but she fits the description for alexithymia. Lily doesn’t lack emotions, but that makes her more dangerous.

Our sympathies at the outset of the movie are entirely with Lily. Despite her rich surroundings, she is plainly uncomfortable with her life and especially with her creepy stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks). By her weird interactions with him, we are inclined to suspect the worst of him and to infer that Lily has every reason to hate him. When Amanda and Lily hypothetically discuss murdering him, we scarcely blame them. Yet, as the movie progresses our assessment of Lily shifts. Mark, to be sure, is a jerk, but being a jerk is not a capital offense and it is possible that it is his only offense. When Mark threatens Lily with boarding school the murder plan moves beyond the hypothetical. Just maybe Lily is not a victim who has been pushed too far but a narcissistic psychopath. (Psychopaths have feelings; they just don't care about yours very much.) Yet, Lily never entirely loses the viewers’ sympathies – or at least their sneaking admiration.

Cory Finley has made a dark comedy thriller that is well written, well shot, well acted, and thoroughly enjoyable.

**** ****

If there is a common lesson in Skink and Thoroughbreds, it seems to be, “Don’t threaten young ladies with boarding school.” Is boarding school as bad as all that?