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December 7, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
Sharon
or Arafat:
Who's the Real Terrorist
December 6, 2001
Sam and
Leila Bahour
The
Psychology of a
Suicide Attacker
December 5, 2001
Edward Hammond
The Only
Real Way to
Prevent Biowarfare
Harvey
Wasserman
Atomic
Treason in the House
Carl Estabrook
America's
Israel
Don Williams
Questions
Barbara Walters Didn't Ask George Bush
Cockburn/St. Clair
Liberals
Hail War as
Return of Big Government
Robert
Fisk
The
Last Colonial War?
Bahour/Dahan
It's About
the Occupation
December 4, 2001
Dave Marsh
A
Plea for Byron Parker
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
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December
7, 2001
The Coen
Brothers' Minstrel Show
Brother Brother Brother
By David Vest
Oh, brother, here
we go again.
I finally broke down and rented "O
Brother, Where Art Thou," against my better judgment. I
found found it both mildly entertaining and oddly embarrassing.
It felt like watching old movies that portray African-Americans
as shuffling people-pleasers who are comic by their very nature.
This time it is poor white pre-Depression-era Southerners offered
for our amusement. "How can anyone look at these people
and not laugh," I can imagine one Coen brother saying to
the other, grabbing the point that had eluded such observers
as James Agee.
The Coen project was to take people deemed
ludicrous in their very existence and lend them the dignity of
myth by using the unwitting yokels to retell the Odyssey.
One might as well argue that "The
Beverly Hillbillies" was a retelling of The Grapes of Wrath.
Which brings me to my main concern, the
film's use not of myth but of music. The brothers have done for
Ralph Stanley and a handful of artists what "The Beverly
Hillbillies" did for Flatt and Scruggs: made them famous
by ridiculing their art and its origins, with the willing participation
of the objects of ridicule, now on tour cashing in.
The principal difference between the
film and the series is that "O Brother, Where Art Thou"
is done with a hipster flick of the wrist, whereas "The
Beverly Hillbillies" was ham-fisted.
After watching all these fake beards,
squinched faces and chicken wing moves, I wonder whether Bill
Monroe's reaction to the film would have been very different
from his take on the TV series. The father of bluegrass music
was famously upset with Flatt and Scruggs for allowing the genre
to be stripped of its essential dignity in "The Beverly
Hillbillies." While Monroe's sense of humor was legendary,
he never perceived himself as a clown. He was no "Keela,
the Outcast Indian Maiden."
It's one thing to have a sense of humor
about yourself. It's quite another to help people mock you.
And so what if Monroe's reaction was
mixed with jealousy of the greater name recognition and commercial
success enjoyed by his former employees? Why shouldn't he have
felt a little bitter? He'd been on the road for decades, struggling
to stay in business and keep a band together, while never making
or permitting the slightest compromise in his vision of the music.
This was a man, remember, who declined to participate in the
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's hugely popular "Will the Circle
Be Unbroken" projects.
What do you suppose Monroe would have
thought of the scene in which the Ku Klux Klan entertains itself
by lip-synching Stanley's acapella version of "O Death"?
If he were still alive, can you imagine having the nerve to ask
him? How does Ralph Stanley himself feel about it?
If watching this film with Bill Monroe
would have been unthinkable, can you imagine what Bill Faulkner
would have thought of it? If the Coen brothers were half as hip
as we'd like to think they are, they'd have left some clue that
they'd ever read Faulkner's "Old Man."
Maybe they have read it and just couldn't
afford to call attention to it. The thought of one of these rustic
clowns writing a literary masterpiece would be damned inconvenient.
It might spoil the mood.
Similarly, the use of any actual blues
music (such as, Heaven forbid, John Lee Hooker's great flood
song, "Tupelo") would have spoiled the tired old "crossroads"
joke that the film's one Black character was inserted to tell.
(And hey, if we got a Black guy, we need some Klan guys, right?
said one anti-establishment Coen brother to the other, as hiply
as you please.)
That the music from the film is apparently
more popular than the film itself may represent a kind of subversive
triumph. Is it useful to imagine Gillian Welch infiltrating this
project, as opposed to being exploited by it? If people like
sorrowful music because they think it's funny, should the artist
really care? Does the dollar make you holler? Will it bother
Welch if we snicker the next time we hear "Orphan Girl,"
after seeing her in this movie? (I won't.) Is this the final
revenge of Louis Armstrong, seen as a comic figure by generations
deaf to his music?
Whatever, it is telling that the hit
song from the movie, "Man of Constant Sorrow," is heard
not in Ralph Stanley's classic original version (or in any serious
bluegrass legend's version) but as performed by what amounts
to a third-generation studio pick-up band. Not that they don't
do a good job on the song, but the implication is that the real
thing wouldn't quite satisfy the need.
Here's my real problem with the Coen
Brothers Circus. As Bob Dylan (and as Flatt and Scruggs themselves,
in a stunning cover version) once said, "You never turned
around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns/When
they all did tricks for you."
David Vest
is a writer, poet and piano player for the Cannonballs. A native
of Alabama, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. Visit his webpage
for samples of the Cannonballs' brand of take no prisoners rock
& roll and other Vest columns: http://www.mindspring.com/~dcqv
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