THE MT VOID
03/29/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 39, Whole Number 2321

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in April (comments
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (Encyclopedia Britannica)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group

Apr 4 WHO? [ROBO MAN] (1974) story (1955) & novel (1958)
by Algis Budrys
story:
<https://sciencefiction.loa.org/biographies/budrys_who.php>
novel:
<https://www.hoopladigital.com/ebook/who-algis-budrys/11561866>

===================================================================

TOPIC: Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in April (comments
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)

In the early days of the 1960s, British filmmakers felt the tight
grip on the public's morals loosen just a bit. One place where the
new British attitudes could be observed was in the movies. In A
TASTE OF HONEY a very ordinary-looking woman (the excellent Rita
Tushingham) escapes her lower-middle-class life and goes to live
with social outcasts. It was banned in several countries for
various reasons; according to Wikipedia, Tushingham said in 2020
that "a lot of the reaction was 'People like that don’t exist'--by
which they meant homosexuals, single mothers and people in
mixed-race relationships. But they did." It is part of a British
social realist movement known as "kitchen sink realism".

[A TASTE OF HONEY (1961), Wednesday, April 17, 12:00 PM]

[-mrl/ecl]

And some comments on some other films:

Other films of interest include:

For Shakespeare's birthday (April 23) we have:
<PRE>
8:00 AM ROMEO AND JULIET (1937)
10:15 AM HAMLET (1948)
1:15 PM A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (1935)
3:30 PM HENRY V (1944)
6:00 PM THRONE OF BLOOD (1957)

Is TCM having a theme of blackface and racial stereotypes this
month? We have:

THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON (1956): A combination of
progressiveness (interracial romance) on one hand, and racial
stereotypying and yellowface (Marlon Brando as a Japanese) on the
other.

TOUCH OF EVIL (1958): Charleton Heston portraying a Mexican police
officer.

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939): And speaking of racial stereotyping, ...

On the positive side, there are:

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1959): A somewhat more nuanced
portrayal of race, though it still came in for criticism. (One
critic noted that since Mel Ferrer was only slightly lighter than
Harry Belafonte, it somewhat soft-pedaled the question of
interracial relationships.)

THE UGLY AMERICAN (1963): Brando plays an American in this one,
leaving the Asian roles to Asian/Asian-American actors.

Also running are:

BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST (1925) and BEN-HUR (1959): In my
opinion, the silent film version has a more exciting chariot race
scene than the 1959 Charleton Heston remake. (It is followed on
April 1 by a half-dozen classic, but lesser seen, silent films.)

CIMARRON (1960): Again, I think the "big scene"--in this case, the
Oklahoma land rush--is better in the older, 1931 version, which
also shows up occasionally on TCM.

MY FAVORITE YEAR (1982) and THE PRODUCERS (1967): Two
"behind-the-scenes" films, one about television, the other about
the theater.

THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1982) and VICTOR/VICTORIA (1982):
Two films that feature--in very different ways--cross-dressing
(which probably means there are states which want to ban them).

[-ecl]

Other films of interest include:

MONDAY, April 1
6:00 AM Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)
8:30 AM The Big Parade (1925)
11:15 AM The Unholy Three (1925)
1:00 PM The Cameraman (1928)
2:30 PM The Crowd (1928)
4:15 PM The Broadway Melody (1929)
6:00 PM Flesh and the Devil (1926)
8:00 PM Grand Hotel (1932)

WEDNESDAY, April 3
8:15 AM The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956)
11:30 PM A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

SUNDAY, April 7
6:00 AM Two on a Guillotine (1965)

TUESDAY, April 9
4:15 AM Cabin in the Sky (1943)
8:00 PM Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

WEDNESDAY, April 10
1:30 AM The Seventh Victim (1943)
3:00 AM The Vanishing (1988)
8:00 AM Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

THURSDAY, April 11
8:00 PM My Favorite Year (1982)

FRIDAY, April 12
2:15 AM The Producers (1967)
3:45 AM The Great Dictator (1940)

SUNDAY, April 14
8:00 PM Gone With the Wind (1939)

TUESDAY, April 16
12:15 AM Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
2:15 AM Ben-Hur (1959)
6:00 AM A Carol for Another Christmas (1964)
9:00 AM Touch of Evil (1958)

THURSDAY, April 18
1:30 AM The Ugly American (1963)

FRIDAY, April 19
2:30 AM Simon (1980)

SATURDAY, April 20
12:00 PM The Magic Flute (1975)
6:15 PM The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)

MONDAY, April 22
6:00 AM Forbidden Planet (1956)
7:45 AM Cimarron (1960)
10:15 AM Doctor Zhivago (1965)
11:00 PM 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

TUESDAY, April 23
3:45 AM Network (1976)

TUESDAY, April 23
8:00 AM Romeo and Juliet (1937)
10:15 AM Hamlet (1948)
1:15 PM A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
3:30 PM Henry V (1944)
6:00 PM Throne of Blood (1957)

WEDNESDAY, April 24
11:30 AM Camelot (1967)

FRIDAY, April 26
9:45 AM Black Narcissus (1947)

MONDAY, April 29
7:45 AM Westworld (1973)
11:45 AM My Favorite Year (1982)
1:30 PM Clash of the Titans (1981)
3:30 PM The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)
10:00 PM Victor/Victoria (1982)

WEDNESDAY, May 1
3:15 AM The Apartment (1960)

===================================================================

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

I have been reading about the Year of the Four Emperors (69 C.E.).
I have previously reviewed Gwyn Morgan's 69 A.D.: THE YEAR OF THE
FOUR EMPERORS here (MT VOID, 01/18/2013), and have a couple of more
books on the subject down the road.

But I have an interest in the entire Roman period, and I decided I
also wanted to read about the lesser-known (or rather,
shorter-lived) emperors. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius are covered
fairly thoroughly in the books about 69 as well as in Suetonius. I
suppose the next would be Nerva, but for some reason I decided to
skip to the Year of the Five Emperors (193 C.E., with Pertinax,
Didius Julianus, Pescennius Niger, Clodius Albinus, and Septimus
Severus). But first there was Lucius Verus, co-emperor with Marcus
Aurelius from 161 to 169. I figured that our 1937 edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica would have a decent article on him, so I
was quite astonished to discover that there was *no* article on
Lucius Verus. The man was a Roman emperor for eight years, and
gets no article in the Britannica?!

(I am reminded of mentioning Jose Saramago on a panel at a science
fiction convention and discovering that no one else in the room had
heard of him. Saramago was a Nobel Prize winner who had written
several science fiction and fantasy novels, yet a room full of
science fiction fans had never heard of him.)

[-ecl]

===================================================================

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself
loving dogs.
--Charles de Gaulle

On 3/31/24 11:36 AM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
> Is TCM having a theme of blackface and racial stereotypes this
> month?   We have:
>
> THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON (1956): A combination of
> progressiveness (interracial romance) on one hand, and racial
> stereotypying and yellowface (Marlon Brando as a Japanese) on the
> other.

It annoys me whenever I see the term "blackface" used in a trivial way.
Blackface was a device used by the minstrel shows of the 19th century.
It isn't simply dark makeup, but _caricature_. You can see it, for
example, in the final scene of the 1927 _The Jazz Singer_. In the
minstrel shows, it was part of a shtick which made black people objects
of ridicule. "Coon songs," sung in fake dialect, generally went along
with it. Even black performers sometimes had to wear that makeup, which
helps to show that it wasn't just to make the actors look like black
people.

Using terms like "blackface," "yellowface," etc. for makeup that simply
alters a performer's skin tone trivializes what it was.

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com