#classic American satire

[eat-my-cake-records]

Cosmic Chaos and Revenge: Jade Ann Byrne’s 50 Ft. eGirl Dominates Halloween in a Retro Sci-Fi Parody

The 50 Ft. eGirl Takes on Halloween: A Classic American Satire by Jade Ann Byrne It’s finally here! This Halloween, we at Eat My Cake Records are thrilled to present the long-anticipated Attack of the 50 Ft. eGirl, a remake that honors and twists the iconic 1958 cult classic Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. Staying true to the original’s succinct runtime of 66 minutes, this modern version—directed,…

[screamingeyepress]

Should I Watch Thanksgiving?

A Black Friday sale gone wrong triggers a psychopath to embark on a murderous rampage targeting everyone involved in this latest Grindhouse spinoff.

Buttonface says…

Probably. If you’re into Scream-quality whodunits with a bit more comedy, and you don’t mind that coming with a subpar plot, some witty dialogue, and creative gore, then you should definitely watch it.

Read On https://www.screamingeyepress.com/review/thanksgiving-2023/

[recursive360]

🫡

[blogmollylane]

Newly acquired: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Currently reading: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson

[bkenber]

'Blazing Saddles' Movie and 4K Review

The following review was written by Ultimate Rabbit correspondent, Tony Farinella. When it comes to comedy, it’s all a matter of opinion. Comedy, even more than film criticism, is subjective.  For example, I’m not an Adam Sandler fan and I find his films terribly unfunny, but there is a reason why his films keep getting released by studios. There is really no right or wrong when it comes to…

[missbehavior0u0]

WHAT IS PIN-UP STUCK?

A humorously raunchy zine inspired by and intended to satirize classic American pin-up calendars, open to all artists in the Homestuck community!

DETAILS:

People of all ages are welcome to apply!

Despite the theme, no sexually explicit content will be allowed, since I am not legally permitted to publish that.

24 artists (maximum) will be selected. Each artist will be responsible for one month, and one character. Two calendar sets will be made in total, one with all trolls and the other with kids + cherubs + bonus characters.

Neither of the calendars will be printed physically. ( I don’t have the resources for that ; u ; )

The zine will be sold on itch.io, either pay-what-you-want or with a set price, and all of the proceeds will be donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

The deadline for applications is November 15th.

The overall deadline for the project is December 23rd. While the type of piece involved isn’t especially intensive, if you have a busy couple months ahead, it might not be a good idea to apply.

Good luck, and happy applying! ^u^

[swampjawn]

Soooo…. what ever happened to the puppets from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? And why was Santa such a grumpy bastard?

Well, the answer to that first question ended up being a much more complicated story than it first appeared, even complete with a twist ending. And while researching it, I stumbled across the tale of a forgotten Japanese animation pioneer who revolutionized animation industries in Japan AND China, made a whole bunch of propaganda during WWII and the Chinese Civil War, and then created the Rankin/Bass "Animagic" animation style and animated all those classically American classic stop-motion Christmas classics that we know and love. Tadahito "Tad" Mochinaga (持永 只仁).

That's right, Rankin/Bass was an anime studio!

Born in 1919, Mochinaga was inspired by early Walt Disney shorts to become an animator. Much like Disney, he built Japan's first ever multi-plane camera rig,

Ari-chan (アリチャン, 1941)

before being contracted to make war propaganda.

Ironically at the same time he was working under Mitsuyo Seo (瀬尾 光世) on Momotarou's Sea Eagles (1943)—a delightful picture about a bunch of cute little animals triumphantly bombing the shit out of those fat, stupid Americans at Pearl Harbor—his biggest inspiration was working on his own exciting propaganda cartoons from the exact opposite side of the same conflict.

But it was during his time working under the Chinese Communist Party that he inadvertently popularized stop-motion puppet animation in east Asia.

Tasked with making a puppet film that satirized the Nationalist Party's leader, but also dealing with an extreme shortage of film in the country, Mochinaga realized that if he stiffened the joints of the puppets, posed them manually and shot them frame-by-frame instead, he could use only the exact number of frames necessary.

He would continue to refine that stop-motion style after returning to Japan,

and eventually catch the eye of an American producer, Arthur Rankin Jr, who had just started a studio with his friend Jules Bass.

The story continues in much greater detail in this video, which completely obliterated my other plans for the month, and which I promise, does actually answer the question at the start of this post. I really didn't expect this project to balloon into an epic that spans an entire century, but in order to understand the ending, you have to start at the beginning!

Seriously though, I think this is the best video I've made yet and you KNOW I spent an absurd amount of time learning 3D modeling/rigging/texturing/animation to make what amounts to just some stylistic icing on the cake, but it's a bit different from what I usually make and youtube can punish you for that so if you do find the video interesting and feel like sharing it with someone you think would also be interested, I will personally show up at your house with an old satchel bursting with deliciously ripe oranges and squeeze all that sweet, sloppy nectar by hand, one-by-one directly into your expectant, gaping maw.

[volkswagonblues]

@alluroa asked me about book recs, so I'd thought I'd do a combined

2023-24 fav books in review

I've grouped them together in pairs for thematic relevance

The God of the Woods // North Woods

God of the Woods is set in a girl's summer camp in the 1970s; North Woods is a long American historical novel that traces the history of one patch of New England land from the first European settlers onwards. I them together because they cover similar geographical regions. I thought both of them had an incredible sense of time and place, very good if you enjoy new england

2. Breakfast of Champions // Penance

To me, both are just fucking MASTERPIECES that defy genre. Sorry guys that I'm trying to toot Vonnegut's horn in 2024, like wow, check out this tiny indie writer that no one has ever heard of. But Breakfast of Champions truly feels shockingly fresh for something written fifty years ago. Race inequality, gender relations, the rot of late capitalist America... 1973 Vonnegut had already seen and nailed it all.

Penance by the way is a must read for every tumblrina. It has the most perfect pastiche of fandom I had ever seen, it's got me HOWLING multiple times. And the way that Clark depicts female friendships...it's like those photorealistic dutch paintings of flowers where you can't believe it was painted. I can't believe anyone just. Made this up. Her fucking mind.....

3. The Invisible Kingdom // Strangers to Ourselves

The Invisible Kingdom is about the writer's struggle with chronic illness, which I think precedes long covid but very relevant to the Current Conditions Of Our Times. Stranger to Ourselves's chapter on eating disorders and the chapter on schizophrenia reframed how I thought about those things. Maybe I'm shallow but I genuinely found it so profound in the way it framed mental illness as a "career" that people fall in to. That's a very bad summary. Go read it yourself.

4. The Guest // The Master Key

Okay, sorry, but I felt like the entire world was reading The Guest last summer so I won't explain too much, but I'll say I really like this style of prose. The language is simple, but so elegantly done. Very sharp social satire. I wish I could write like this. The Master Key is a Japanese mystery novel that's a pastiche of the Golden Age of 20th century mysteries. Very classic "locked room" mystery, but with a really brilliant dose of social drama. It's set in an apartment building where only unmarried woman are allowed to live. The tenants who remained after decades are often sad, lonely, and hiding some bizarre secret. So good I almost forgot it's a murder mystery

[penny-anna]

fanfiction writing culture was like. pretty different when My Immortal was new. the 'no concrit' culture we have now evolved out of a scene in which openly mocking 'badfic' was heavily normalised.

like. i started posting fanfiction when i was about 14 & once had someone come into my reviews to pick apart everything they felt was wrong w a story i'd posted. i'd been online long enough to know not to engage w that kind of behaviour and also when i was 14 i was convinced i was some kind of Literary Genius so i just deleted it and moved on.

but every so often i remember this fucking review. the tone was so sneering & condescending and what really gets me is that it was pretty obvious that they'd pegged me as a teenager (they mentioned that i'd made the character i was writing about 'talk like a 21st century american teenager') so it's like. you saw someone you thought was a teenager writing something harmlessly stupid and went out of your way to tear it apart? who does that??

anyway the author of My Immortal was, supposedly, a teenager girl and to be blunt the initial response to it was Kinda Mean. like at this point it's a fandom classic (and also i 100% believe it was satire) but like the culture around it began in a climate where a lot of people did fervently believe in this Boogeyman of idk like. teenage girls who were ruining everything with their badfic and Mary Sues.

all this to say no im not surprised that a lot of people Fell For It. i'd say the people who thought it was real were prolly as much its target as the kind of fic it was spoofing lmao.

[gollancz]

Happy North American publication day to HIGH VAULTAGE, by @victoriocity! And many thanks to @terribleminds for the boost. (not least to my ego since I get a shout-out)

It's available through all good bookstores, AND you can get signed copies here!

OTHER NICE THINGS PEOPLE HAVE SAID:

'Hilarious' - Matt Young, co-creator of Hello from the Magic Tavern

'A joyous, delightful romp...filled to the brim with clever jokes - perfect for anyone looking for a Pratchett fix' - Caitlin Schneiderhan, screenwriter, Stranger Things

'More please' - SFX

‘High Vaultage is exactly what I've come to expect from the Sugdens - inventive, imaginative, and hilarious’ – Lauren Shippen, creator of The Bright Sessions

‘There are some very big concepts in this novel, ambitious settings, and amazing new discoveries. The satire is even more smart, the wit even more sharp’ – @skyfullofpods

'Absolutely overflowing with imagination and creativity . . . I also loved how witty and clever the writing and dialogue was and I found myself genuinely laughing' - @foreverlostinliterature

'High Vaultage is endlessly entertaining - a classic mystery adventure with 10,000 volts of mad science put right through it. It's not just the type of story I wish I could read every day, it's the type of story I wish I could write. Reading it would make me furious with envy if it didn't keep me so busy grinning from ear to ear' - Gabriel Urbina, creator of Wolf 359

[hp-hcs]

(Fine, I’ll do it my damn self: part 1 of my silly lil mlm stories <3)

Gay Awakening (Chapter One) — smitten! mattheo riddle x male! reader

TWs: tobacco & alcohol use, internalized homophobia, homophobic slurs (once)

hella ooc mattheo. congrats, ur his gay awakening, and he’s an absolutely smitten lil gay mess for you but yk he’s trying

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

“Hey, dude. Who’s that?” Theodore asked, bumping Mattheo’s arm to get his attention, then pointing his fork in your direction. You were sitting at the very end of the table’s bench, wearing an oversized black muggle hoodie with your green tie loose and haphazardly slung around your neck. You were animatedly talking with, out of all people, a Hufflepuff. The Hufflepuff girl sitting at the Slytherin table either seemed to be completely unaware of the looks she was receiving, or she was steadfastly ignoring them. Your laugh cut through the room, the Hufflepuff cracking up with you.

“American transfer students,” Malfoy sneered. “They clearly don’t know the rules yet.”

“Oh, shut up, Draco,” Pansy rolled her eyes, resting her chin on her hand and looking at the Hufflepuff for a moment too long.

Draco scoffed, clearly offended. “Whatever. They’re probably faggots anyway.”

Pansy whirled around with a furious expression. Mattheo himself flinched slightly at the slur, which caused Blaise to look at him questioningly. Once Mattheo had waved Blaise’s unspoken question off, Zabini shrugged, leaning over and muttering in his ear, “Ten galleons says she brings up Potter.”

“-and everyone knows that you have a crush on Harry Motherfucking Potter, so maybe you should take your bigotry and shove it right up your-”

“Pansy?” you questioned, awkwardly standing across from her. “Here, ‘m supposed t’ give this to you.”

You leaned across the table to drop a folded up note in front of her, allowing Mattheo to catch a faint whiff of your cologne. You looked back down at the floor shyly, hurrying back to your spot at the end of the table.

“He’s hot,” Theo shrugged, taking a bite of his toast. “I call dibs.”

“You can’t call dibs on the guy who just asked Pansy out, dipshit.”

“Actually, it’s a note from the ‘puff,” Pansy interjected, twisting her wrist around to show off the neat cursive written in a purple glitter gel pen. “She wants to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend, dipshit.”

“Yeah, dipshit,” Mattheo teased Theodore. “Plus, I think Malfoy already called dibs on him, so tough luck.”

Theo blew a raspberry at him, only a slight distraction from where Mattheo’s comment had fueled another Pansy-rant and left Draco sinking low in his seat as if he wanted to disappear.

~~~

“Alright, Zabini, you’re up. What classic novel is a satirical adaptation of R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island?”

“Why the fuck would I know that, Berkshire?”

“Blaise forfeits! Sudden death round is down to just us, Riddle,” Theo crowed excitedly, watching as the score quill of the charmed muggle trivia game scratched Blaise’s name off of the paper score sheet, drawing a condescending frowny face next to it.

Enzo laughed, flipping over the little hourglass timer. “If anyone can answer in the next thirty seconds, they automatically win the game.”

“No idea,” Mattheo shrugged. Theodore spun his rings around on his fingers before shrugging too.

“The Lord of the Flies,” your quiet voice pipes up. The game players all look over in your direction from where you’ve just entered the common room—coming back from the library, it looked like, if the stack of books in your hands explained anything.

“What?” Draco asked, raising an eyebrow and sneering.

“The Lord of the Flies,” you repeated. “William Golding. Fantastic book.”

Malfoy huffed. “And who are you, exactly?”

“Y/n L/n,” you introduced yourself, nodding politely in their direction before wordlessly disappearing up the dorm room stairs.

Mattheo stared after you alongside his friends, none of them immediately noticing the charmed quill writing your name down on the score card as the winner.

~~~

“C’n I bum a smoke?” your sleepy voice called softly from behind Mattheo. He turned around from his spot on the otherwise unoccupied balcony to see you rubbing your eyes, a fuzzy green blanket draped around your shoulders. He cleared his throat and nodded, fishing a fresh cigarette out of the pack and holding it out to you. His heart rate stuttered for a moment when your fingers brushed against his.

“Thanks,” you muttered, using a wandless incantation to light it. Mattheo leaned back against the railing, taking a drag from his half-finished cigarette and blowing the smoke out thoughtfully.

“Why’re you up? It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

Maybe it was his well-meaning-but-patronizing phrasing or the confidence-imbued late night cigarette, but you clicked your tongue once and said in a short, clipped tone, “Oh, shut the fuck up, you hypocrite.”

Mattheo barked out a surprised laugh, choking on his lungful of smoke and falling into a coughing fit.

“Language, L/n,” he teased.

“English, Riddle,” you snickered back.

He grinned at you, blushing a nice pink color as you both smoked in a comfortable silence for a moment.

“My roommate brought some girl back from the party he went to,” you say after a while. “Didn’t want to deal with all that.”

“Ah,” Mattheo nodded slowly. “Boys seem to lose all of their brain cells as soon as they come within a ten-foot radius of a hot girl.”

You snort. “Not all of us.”

“Yeah?” he questioned, in a way he hoped came off as nonchalant, even though he was internally freaking out. “No lucky lady piquing your interest?”

“This may shock you, but believe it or not, I’m not actually into girls at all,” you snort again, dropping the cigarette butt and grinding it into the ground with the toe of your sneaker.

“Really?” he asked in a high voice before loudly clearing his throat. “I mean- really? That’s cool. Uh, m-me too.”

“Yeah?” you glanced up at him curiously. “Huh. I wouldn’t’a guessed.”

“Can I kiss you, Y/n?” Mattheo blurted out, immediately snapping his mouth shut and mentally facepalming.

“Sure,” you shrugged.

“Huh?”

“I said sure.”

The poor boy was frozen in place, gaping at you. Taking pity on him, you made the first move—tugging on his tie to pull him down to your level.

His hand found the back of your neck, gripping it while kissing you softly—much more gently than you would’ve expected.

When you broke apart, he looked like he’d just been enlightened. Like he might've actually shouted eureka! and run off.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “I’ve never kissed a guy before- holy shit.” He laughs freely, cupping your face to kiss you again.

“So what now, Archimedes?” At his confused expression you elaborated, “Muggle reference, sorry.”

He nodded slowly, his fingers automatically winding their way into the hair at the nape of your neck. “Well… you could sleep with me tonight,” he offered after a moment. “Y’know, so you don’t have to deal with your roommate.”

“Oh, um, I’m not really that type of guy, Mattheo…” you trailed off.

“Oh!” His eyes widened in panic. “I didn’t mean to imply- I mean, not that I wouldn’t love- I meant we could just literally sleep in the same bed!”

You giggled, a bit relieved. “I’d like that.”

He took a deep breath, smiling hesitantly at you. “No funny business, promise. All at your discretion.”

He held out his hand to you, and you took it immediately, leaning into his side.

“So about that fight between Malfoy and Pansy…”

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Chapter Two

[stirdrawsandreblaws]

gotta disagree here; the main purpose for including honorifics in translation is to emphasize the social dynamics put on display in the original works, and provide additional cultural context so the authorial intent comes across as clearly as possible.

those elements of speech aren't "used the same way in english" because they straight up don't exist in english, or at least don't exist in the same capacity. omitting or changing them is going to flatten the intended nuance 80+% of the time.

keeping them isn't exoticizing the work by unduly romanticizing japanese language or culture: it's preserving tone, which is what translation is supposed to do. that's literally the point of translation: carrying the original meaning and/or intention across as closely as possible while being intelligible to the audience

take, for example, when honorifics change: the shift from calling someone [name]-san to [name]-chan is usually significant to the portrayal of the relationship between two characters, and even moreso when the honorific is dropped entirely--usually either as a sign of intimacy, or a mark of disrespect via over-familiarity.

you get a bit more wiggle room with localization, since that's about converting the original into something more familiar and palatable for western audiences (like most anime dubs), though sometimes in that process you get, say, jelly donut rice balls or my neighbor joe toro...

tbh this is a massive point of contention in translating and localizing just about anything from anywhere, esp since localization usually goes hand-in-hand with expurgation

but this is why a lot of translated works include footnotes/sidebars/glossaries with translation notes for foreign concepts, references, or linguistic conventions. sometimes you just can't convey the original intent without keeping parts of the original language.

really, the main purpose for including honorifics in translation is to emphasize the exotic and foreign nature of Japanese media by including an element of speech which isn't used the same way in English

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed: Head

Star vehicles for musicians are hardly a rarity in Hollywood—after all, creatively bankrupt studio executives are perfectly willing to exploit pretty much any intellectual property that might be marketable, artistic integrity be damned—but even within that niche genre, Head stands out. Whereas A Hard Day’s Night (The Beatles) and True Stories (Talking Heads frontman David Byrne) are ultimately sincere and earnest despite their surface-level whimsy, the motion picture “adaptation”—more like antithesis!—of popular sitcom The Monkees is deeply cynical beneath its absurdist humor and psychedelic visuals, mercilessly deconstructing the superficiality of the entertainment industry, the elusive (and illusive) nature of the American Dream, and the manufactured public image of the band around which it revolves (exemplified by such sanitized, inoffensive lyrics as, “We’re too busy singing to put anybody down”).

The satire is as caustic as it is deliberately unsubtle. In an early scene, Micky Dolenz stumbles across a Coca-Cola vending machine in the middle of a barren desert—a condemnation of rampant commercialism and mindless consumerism that is subsequently reinforced by a rapidly edited montage of roadside billboard advertisements. Later, Peter Tork briefly breaks character mid-take to fret about how slapping a woman, even within the context of his work as an actor, might damage his reputation (“The kids won’t dig it, man!” he complains to the indifferent director)—lampooning the inherent egotism of celebrity. In the movie’s most scathing sequence, a concert is intercut with archival footage of the Vietnam War; as the performance ends, the frenzied audience storms the stage and literally tears the group apart—exposing them as nothing more than hollow mannequins. The medium itself can barely contain the filmmakers’ moral outrage: metafictional conflicts frequently disrupt the narrative; flashbacks within interludes within digressions overlap and interweave, making the “plot” borderline indecipherable. It can only be summarized in terms of its individual episodes and the loose thematic associations between them—which is akin to trying to explain a fever dream (or a drug-induced hallucination) to your pet cat.

Featuring cameo appearances by Jack Nicholson, Frank Zappa, and Timothy Carey and punctuated by stylistic flourishes that anticipate such cinematic classics as Raging Bull and Skyfall (no, seriously), Head is a fascinating countercultural artifact. Even amongst its New Wave contemporaries, it remains defiantly unconventional, incomprehensible, and unclassifiable; it must be experienced firsthand to be properly understood—though your mileage may vary in that regard.

[justforbooks]

James Earl Jones

American actor hailed for his many classical roles whose voice became known to millions as that of Darth Vader in Star Wars

During the run of the 2011 revival of Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy in London, with Vanessa Redgrave, the actor James Earl Jones, who has died aged 93, was presented with an honorary Oscar by Ben Kingsley, with a link from the Wyndham’s theatre to the awards ceremony in Hollywood.

Glenn Close in Los Angeles said that Jones represented the “essence of truly great acting” and Kingsley spoke of his imposing physical presence, his 1,000-kilowatt smile, his basso profundo voice and his great stillness. Jones’s voice was known to millions as that of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars film trilogy and Mufasa in the 1994 Disney animation The Lion King, as well as being the signature sound of US TV news (“This is CNN”) for many years.

His status as the leading black actor of his generation was established with the Tony award he won in 1969 for his performance as the boxer Jack Jefferson (a fictional version of Jack Johnson) in Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope on Broadway, a role he repeated in Martin Ritt’s 1970 film, and which earned him an Oscar nomination.

On screen, Jones – as the fictional Douglass Dilman – played the first African-American president, in Joseph Sargent’s 1972 movie The Man, based on an Irving Wallace novel. His stage career was notable for encompassing great roles in the classical repertoire, such as King Lear, Othello, Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

He was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, the son of Robert Earl Jones, a minor actor, boxer, butler and chauffeur, and his wife Ruth (nee Connolly), a teacher, and was proud of claiming African and Irish ancestry. His father left home soon after he was born, and he was raised on a farm in Jackson, Michigan, by his maternal grandparents, John and Maggie Connolly. He spoke with a stutter, a problem he dealt with at Brown’s school in Brethren, Michigan, by reading poetry aloud.

On graduating from the University of Michigan, he served as a US Army Ranger in the Korean war. He began working as an actor and stage manager at the Ramsdell theatre in Manistee, Michigan, where he played his first Othello in 1955, an indication perhaps of his early power and presence.

The family had moved from the deep south to Michigan to find work, and now Jones went to New York to join his father in the theatre and to study at the American Theatre Wing with Lee Strasberg. He made his Broadway debut at the Cort theatre in 1958 in Dory Schary’s Sunrise at Campobello, a play about Franklin D Roosevelt.

He was soon a cornerstone of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare festival in Central Park, playing Caliban in The Tempest, Macduff in Macbeth and another Othello in the 1964 season. He also established a foothold in films, as Lt Lothar Zogg in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1963), a cold war satire in which Peter Sellers shone with brilliance in three separate roles.

The Great White Hope came to the Alvin theatre in New York from the Arena Stage in Washington, where Jones first unleashed his shattering, shaven-headed performance – he was described as chuckling like thunder, beating his chest and rolling his eyes – in a production by Edwin Sherin that exposed racism in the fight game at the very time of Muhammad Ali’s suspension from the ring on the grounds of his refusal to sign up for military service in the Vietnam war.

Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs (1970) was a response to Jean Genet’s The Blacks, in which Jones, who remained much more of an off-Broadway fixture than a Broadway star in this period, despite his eminence, played a westernised urban African man returning to his village for his father’s funeral. With Papp’s Public theatre, he featured in an all-black version of The Cherry Orchard in 1972, following with John Steinbeck’s Lennie in Of Mice and Men on Broadway and returning to Central Park as a stately King Lear in 1974.

When he played Paul Robeson on Broadway in the 1977-78 season, there was a kerfuffle over alleged misrepresentations in Robeson’s life, but Jones was supported in a letter to the newspapers signed by Edward Albee, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman and Richard Rodgers. He played his final Othello on Broadway in 1982, partnered by Christopher Plummer as Iago, and appeared in the same year in Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard, a white South African playwright he often championed in New York.

In August Wilson’s Fences (1987), part of that writer’s cycle of the century “black experience” plays, he was described as an erupting volcano as a Pittsburgh garbage collector who had lost his dreams of a football career and was too old to play once the major leagues admitted black players. His character, Troy Maxson, is a classic of the modern repertoire, confined in a world of 1950s racism, and has since been played by Denzel Washington and Lenny Henry.

Jones’s film career was solid if not spectacular. Playing Sheikh Abdul, he joined a roll call of British comedy stars – Terry-Thomas, Irene Handl, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan and Peter Ustinov – in Marty Feldman’s The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977), in stark contrast to his (at first uncredited) Malcolm X in Ali’s own biopic, The Greatest (1977), with a screenplay by Ring Lardner. He also appeared in Peter Masterson’s Convicts (1991), a civil war drama; Jon Amiel’s Sommersby (1993), with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster; and Darrell Roodt’s Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), scripted by Ronald Harwood, in which he played a black South African pastor in conflict with his white landowning neighbour in the 40s.

In all these performances, Jones quietly carried his nation’s history on his shoulders. On stage, this sense could irradiate a performance such as that in his partnership with Leslie Uggams in the 2005 Broadway revival at the Cort of Ernest Thompson’s elegiac On Golden Pond; he and Uggams reinvented the film performances of Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn as an old couple in a Maine summer house.

He brought his Broadway Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to London in 2009, playing an electrifying scene with Adrian Lester as his broken sports star son, Brick, at the Novello theatre. The coarse, cancer-ridden big plantation owner was transformed into a rumbling, bear-like figure with a totally unexpected streak of benignity perhaps not entirely suited to the character. But that old voice still rolled through the stalls like a mellow mist, rich as molasses.

That benign streak paid off handsomely, though, in the London reprise of a deeply sentimental Broadway comedy (and Hollywood movie), Driving Miss Daisy, in which his partnership as a chauffeur to Redgrave (unlikely casting as a wealthy southern US Jewish widow, though she got the scantiness down to a tee) was a delightful two-step around the evolving issues of racial tension between 1948 and 1973.

So deep was this bond with Redgrave that he returned to London for a third time in 2013 to play Benedick to her Beatrice in Mark Rylance’s controversial Old Vic production of Much Ado About Nothing, the middle-aged banter of the romantically at-odds couple transformed into wistful, nostalgia for seniors.

His last appearance on Broadway was in a 2015 revival of DL Coburn’s The Gin Game, opposite Cicely Tyson. He was given a lifetime achievement Tony award in 2017, and the Cort theatre was renamed the James Earl Jones theatre in 2022.

Jones’s first marriage, to Julienne Marie (1968-72), ended in divorce. In 1982 he married Cecilia Hart with whom he had a son, Flynn. She died in 2016. He is survived by Flynn, also an actor, and a brother, Matthew.

🔔 James Earl Jones, actor, born 17 January 1931; died 9 September 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[contemplatingoutlander]

Worried by Florida’s history standards? Check out its new dictionary!

As always, Alexandra Petri is spot on in satirizing the right-wing censorship and educational nonsense happening in Florida. This is a gift 🎁 link, so you can read the entire column, even if you don't subscribe to The Washington Post.

Below are some excerpts 😂:

Well, it’s a week with a Thursday in it, and Florida is, once again, revising its educational standards in alarming ways. Not content with removing books from shelves, or demanding that the College Board water down its AP African American studies curriculum, the state’s newest history standards include lessons suggesting that enslaved people “developed skills” for “personal benefit.” This trend appears likely to continue. What follows is a preview of the latest edition of the dictionary to be approved in Florida. Aah: (exclamation) Normal thing to say when you enter the water at the beach, which is over 100 degrees. Abolitionists: (noun) Some people in the 19th century who were inexplicably upset about a wonderful free surprise job training program. Today they want to end prisons for equally unclear reasons. Abortion: (noun) Something that male state legislators (the foremost experts on this subject) believe no one ever wants under any circumstances, probably; decision that people beg the state to make for them and about which doctors beg for as little involvement as possible. American history: (noun) A branch of learning that concerns a ceaseless parade of triumphs and contains nothing to feel bad about. Barbie: (noun) Feminist demon enemy of the state. Biden, Joe: (figure) Illegitimate president. Black history: (entry not found) Blacksmith: (noun) A great job and one that enslaved people might have had. Example sentence from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R): “They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” Book ban: (noun) Effective way of making sure people never have certain sorts of ideas. Censorship: (noun) When other people get mad about something you’ve said. Not to be confused with when you remove books from libraries or the state tells colleges what can and can’t be said in classrooms (both fine). Child: (noun) Useful laborer with tiny hands; alternatively, someone whose reading cannot be censored enough. [...]

[See more select "definitions" below the cut]

Classified: (adjective) The government’s way of saying a paper is especially interesting and you ought to have it in your house. Climate change: (noun) Conspiracy by scientists to change all the thermometers, fill the air with smoke and then blame us. [...] Constitution: (noun) A document that can be interpreted only by Trump-appointed and/or Federalist Society judges. If the Constitution appears to prohibit something that you want to do, take the judge on a boat and try again. [...] DeSantis, Ron: (figure) Governor who represents the ideal human being. Pronunciation varies. Disney: (noun) A corporation, but not the good kind. [...] Election: (noun) Binding if Republicans win; otherwise, needs help from election officials who will figure out where the fraud was that prevented the election from reflecting the will of the people (that Republicans win). [...] Emancipation Proclamation: (noun) Classic example of government overreach. Firearm: (noun) Wonderful, beautiful object that every person ought to have six of, except Hunter Biden. [...] FOX: News. Free speech: (noun) When you shut up and I talk. Gun violence: (noun) Simple, unalterable fact of life, like death but unlike taxes. [...]

Jan. 6: (noun) A day when some beautiful, beloved people took a nice, uneventful tour of the U.S. Capitol. King Jr., Martin Luther: (figure) A man who, as far as we can discern, uttered only one famous quotation ever and it was about how actually anytime you tried to suggest that people were being treated differently based on skin color you were the real racist. Sample sentence: “Dr. King would be enraged at the existence of Black History Month.” Liberty: (noun) My freedom to choose what you can read (see Moms for Liberty). Moms for Liberty: (noun) Censors, but the good kind. [...] Pregnant (adjective): The state of being a vessel containing a Future Citizen; do not say “pregnant person”; no one who is a real person can get pregnant. Queer: (entry not found) Refugee: (noun) Someone who should have stayed put and waited for help to come. Slavery: (noun) We didn’t invent it, or it wasn’t that bad, or it was a free job training program. Supreme Court: (noun) Wonderful group of mostly men without whom no journey by private plane or yacht is complete. Trans: (entry not found) United States: (noun) Perfect place, no notes. [emphasis added to defined words]

[uwmspeccoll]

Classics Spotlight

This 1928 edition of The Eleven Comedies by Aristophanes was published by American publisher Horace Liveright in a limited edition of 2050. While the translator is unknown, the work was translated from its original Greek to English. Originally published by the Athenian Society, a renowned literary society in London, in 1912, this edition was exclusively available to its subscribers.

It consists of two volumes with chromolithographic plates as well as black and white illustrations created by Belgian artist Jean de Bosschere. His artwork brings the characters and scenes of the comedies to life, enhancing the reader's engagement with the text.

Aristophanes, a playwright from late 5th-century Athens, was known as the "Father of Comedy" for his significant contributions to the genre. His plays, characterized by their satirical and often political nature, set the standard for comedic writing and continue to inspire modern comedians and playwrights.

-- Melissa, Special Collections Classics Intern

View other Classics posts.