"Death" to America

In 1987, the American academic Gary Engle published an article entitled What Makes Superman So Darned American?

It's a reasonable question. The character of Superman has been associated with America and American values almost from the very beginning. Images of Superman proudly defending the US flag are the very stuff and essence of American popular mythology. 

But (it could be argued) Superman is not American. He was born, as everyone knows, on the planet Krypton and sent to Earth as an infant. He is not human. He has X-ray vision. He's faster than a speeding bullet, can leap tall buildings in a single bound, etc. etc. None of these characteristics are qualities we generally associate with Americans.

And yet, as Engle points out, Superman is the ultimate American. First, and most importantly, he's an immigrant.

No nation on Earth has so deeply embedded in its social consciousness the imagery of passage from one social identity to another: the Mayflower of the New England separatists, the slave ships from Africa and the subsequent underground railroads toward freedom in the North, the sailing ships and steamers running shuttles across two oceans in the 19th century, the freedom airlifts in the 20th. Somehow the picture just isn't complete without Superman's rocketship.

As if that wasn't enough, Superman isn't merely an immigrant, he's a refugee: he's the sole survivor of a doomed culture who has been cast ashore, alone (albeit not exactly defenceless) in a strange land that has subsequently welcomed him as one of their own. This has long been a central pillar of the American mythos: providing a Safe Space for anyone who needs help.

Superman, for his part, wears his ethnic heritage (and his gatkes) with pride, willingly throwing the full richness of his cultural identity towards the betterment of his adopted nation. And yet, as Clark Kent, he also assimilates.

This is the ultimate American fantasy: a refugee who somehow manages to maintain a discreet cultural identity while also, paradoxically, divesting himself of anything visibly foreign or alien.

Perhaps this is Superman's true super-power: he is able to be completely "other" and completely integrated at the same time. Immigrants and their descendants  have been expected to do that for the entire history of the Nation.

What is America?

When I launched this "Genre Fluid" series at the beginning of September, I talked about the difficulty of trying to agree on a definition of terms like "Romantic Music" or "Crime Thriller". I also pointed out that arguing over these definitions can be a fun and stimulating academic exercise, but arguing over the definition of words like "terrorism" or "fascism" or even "gender" takes you into very different territory.

We have seen in recent years that it can be very difficult to start a dialogue about (for example) Gender, when no one is prepared to agree on the meaning of the word itself. These arguments can go far beyond a simple disagreement about dictionary definitions, because it ultimately boils down to conflicting (and incompatible) perceptions of reality.

On Tuesday, the 5th of November, 244 million Americans are going to be asking themselves "What is America?" And this will be neither an empty academic exercise nor a trivial debate about dictionary definitions.

By the time we meet on Thursday for this week's film night, the American election will have come (but possibly not gone). I am writing this introduction on the 28th of October, so I have no idea what is about to happen, and I have no idea what will have happened by the time we actually screen the film I have chosen to mark this event.

I think it's safe to say that very few of those 244 million Americans will be getting much sleep over the next week or so.

Part of the problem is that in a very real sense, America itself (perhaps more than many other modern nations) is "genre fluid". America as a concept has the potential to be many different things, and that is one of the reasons why this election is not about anything as trivial as higher or lower taxes; or whether or not to fund Social Security. 

Americans on Tuesday will be asked to decide how they define themselves and their country.

Defining "America"

It is perhaps ironic that two of the most thoughtful and provocative explorations of American Identity in the the 20th Century came from outsiders.

In 1941, Benjamin Britten and W. H. Auden (while in self-imposed exile in the US) collaborated on a dramatic stage work about Paul Bunyan, the fantastical folk hero of the American frontier.

Auden's text delves into many aspects of the "Paul Bunyan" myth, but it also serves as a reflection on what America was becoming in the 1940s. 

        From a Pressure Group that says I am the Constitution,

        From those who say Patriotism and mean Persecution,

        From a Tolerance that is really inertia and disillusion:

W. H. Auden; Paul Bunyan

As Auden observed at the time, Paul Bunyan was essentially a creation myth: it's a collection of tall tales about the origin of The United States as an entity. So, in turning it into a work of musical theatre in the 20th Century, it seemed appropriate to ask: What exactly is America?

        From entertainments neither true nor beautiful nor witty,

        From a home spun humour manufactured in the city,

        From the dirty-mindedness of a Watch Committee:

W. H. Auden; Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan was not very well received at the time. The lumberjack folk hero was relatively unknown outside the US, and American audiences were less than thrilled with having their national identity explained to them by a pair of gay British conscientious objectors. 

But there is a special clarity that comes from standing outside and looking in. Auden was acutely aware of what America was capable of being, even when it so often failed to live up to its own ideals.     

Whatever the outcome of (or fallout from) this week's election, the film I have selected this week is one that has a great deal to say about America's identity. Britten and Auden had given us a singular reflection on America with Paul Bunyan. 

The film-making duo of Powell and Pressburger gave us...

"Death" to America

A Matter of Life and Death may very well be the strangest wartime propaganda film ever released. 

The United Kingdom had seen a significant influx of American soldiers in the lead-up to the D-Day invasion, and the UK Government requested a film that would hopefully blunt the resentment and antagonism many in this country were feeling towards the new arrivals. 

The UK had already been living through years of rationing, bombing and death, and now these fresh-faced, well-fed, rather hormonal Yanks were turning up at the very end to take all the credit, all the glory, and many of the British girls. So yes, there was bad feeling. Powell and Pressburger were asked to make a movie that would encourage everyone to put up with each other. What they came up with was... unexpected.

Yes, A Matter of Life and Death features a romance between an American and a Briton, and yes, it deals with the issues of loss, love and redemption.

But just as Auden's Paul Bunyan had done four years earlier, A Matter of Life and Death embarks on a lengthy and thoughtful exploration of what it means to be American. And the conclusions reached in both works can only have come from observers on the outside looking in.

David Niven plays Peter Carter, a British flyer who inexplicably survives after bailing out of his stricken bomber (without a parachute). He subsequently learns that the astral conductor who was to have escorted him to the afterlife had missed him in the fog, accidentally granting him an additional twenty-odd hours of life.

When the conductor attempts to collect him a second time, Peter refuses to shuffle off this mortal coil, protesting that he has fallen in love with a young American soldier (Kim Hunter) during those extra hours.

The Celestial trial that follows becomes an unexpected examination of American identity. 

The War Office may have wanted a film that helped to smooth relations between the US and Britain during wartime, but this is probably not what they had in mind.

What A Matter of Life and Death and Paul Bunyan both show us is that "American" is not just a nationality, it's an aspiration. 

By the time we screen A Matter of Life and Death on Thursday, we will know just how that aspiration is doing.

        Every day, America is destroyed and re-created.

        America is what you do.

        America is I and you.

        America is what you choose to make it.

W. H. Auden; Paul Bunyan