The Great Movies: "Gone With the Wind"

Gone With the Wind
Victor Fleming, with scenes also directed by George Cukor, Sam Wood, William Cameron Menzies and Sidney Franklin, 1939

Previous Contact: I'd actually never seen Gone With the Wind before, except for twenty minutes worth in high school. It's only here so late in the series because there was a ginormous queue for not many copies at the library.

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Gone With the Wind begins with a montage of sentimental images of the antebellum South behind these words:

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.

Happily, this turns out to have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual content of the film, but it is a disturbing way to kick things off and points a big, fat finger at what the problem is going to be for somebody who, like me, watches the movie for the first time in middle age. Seventy years old but looking twenty years younger -- it was a very early color movie -- Gone With the Wind can't help but embody the values of an earlier stage of our civilization, now gone with the wind. Cases in point are many. Arguments between the heroine and her slave are presented as comic relief: the heroine always wins because she owns the person she's arguing with, get it? Slavery, amIright?!? The men in the film are implicitly but favorably shown sneaking off to join the Klan. The heroine experiences a shockingly blunt marital rape, and likes it -- you know how women are. "Yankee Carpetbaggers" are portrayed with all the sensitivity to historical nuance that you might have expected from, say, George Wallace in 1963.

Now, I am very, very aware that this kind of thing is not the fairest yardstick with which to measure this film, and I want to refer you directly to Ebert's own review, which makes a nice argument for some of the film's progressive ideals at the time it was made. Scarlett O'Hara, he argues,

was a woman who wanted to control her own sexual adventures, and that is the key element in her appeal.... She was the symbol [for empowered women] the nation needed as it headed into World War II; the spiritual sister of Rosie the Riveter.

Scarlett O'Hara is indeed an interesting character. She shows a lot of strength and ability as a woman determined to forge some kind of viable existence in the chaos and turbulance of the Civil War and its aftermath. But she is tough to like, too, as someone whose refusal to acknowledge the nature of her own emotions leaves, like Sherman's army, a wide swath of human suffering in its wake. Well, she is supposed to be a complex character. The performance (by Vivien Leigh) is widely held to be an acting triumph, but here again I am in the wrong or at least the minority -- Leigh's acting seems stilted and amateurish to me (her accent, for instance, is all over the map).

Now, I have written all this at my own peril, as I was under considerable social pressure to like this movie. I am told that for many it casts an almost magical spell, creating a vividly romantic world where events of high and moving passion, tragedy, and excitement occur. I wanted to like it. And it goes without saying that, in disliking Gone With the Wind, I represent a thin minority among seven decades of moviegoers.


Plot: An episodic, highly romantic look at upper-class life in the American South before, during, and after the Civil War. A spoiled young woman is thwarted in her adolescent romantic plans and traumatized by the sack of Atlanta, and subsequently rules her own life and those of everyone around her with something of an iron fist. Her adventures and indiscretions create one emotionally fraught situation after another, and the movie is kind of like those sportscasts that only show the goals: every scene is a moment of high drama. Yet, it's like four hours long.

Visuals: Somewhat uneven, probably due to serious personnel problems in the movie's production (note the list of directors, above). Some extremely effective outdoor shots, especially an amazing one that pulls back from a few wounded men until it is showing a vast railroad yard full of thousands of hurt and dying Confederate soldiers. Lots of grand costume drama with fancy antebellum dresses too, if you are into that sort of thing.

Dialog: The problem with an episodic movie of such length is that the characters are always having to explain anew what's going on. It makes natural dialog hard -- although, having said that, the dialog writing really is pretty good. Lots of memorable lines and quotable speechifying.

Prognosis: Ah, hell, I dunno. It's a cultural literacy piece, if nothing else. I'm glad I saw it, if only because I understand a little chunk of American cultural history now that I didn't before. And, maybe you'll fall under the magical spell. Just because I didn't, doesn't mean you won't.

I Have a Box of Books. Do You Have a Box of Books? I Have a Box of Books.

I spent part of the weekend just past at the Friends of the Library Spring Sale. Niece #3, in town for the weekend, joined me as a volunteer -- although by "volunteer," in this case, I mean "someone whom I told to do something, and I'm a lot bigger than they are." Having said that, #3 took to a fairly complicated public-contact task with alacrity and aplomb.

After our shift ended, we naturally tore into the merchandise like a pair of ravenous uncle-niece beasts. And although I promised not to set myself any tasks regarding my haul -- I'm not going to REVIEW everything I bought or anything, that would be silly -- I am of a mind to gloat about it here.


A Partial Inventory

Two Guidebooks to Classical Music. Have I ever mentioned I have a collection of such books? I don't think I have.

Four Random Michelin Maps. Two of European areas, good. Two of African countries, AWESOME! 25 cents, suckas.

Goode's School Atlas. The classic -- in a 1932 edition. w00T! This will be a Coffee Table Book Party post, I'm thinking.

A Christmas Gift for Dad5000. Not shown. And very excellent, as the man is tough to shop for.

Two Ian Rankin Books on Cassette. I do enjoy me some Inspector Rebus on tape.

The Koran, The Decameron, War and Peace, two Shakespeare plays. I iz in ur bookz, gettin ur cultur.

Howards End, Atonement. Loved 'em on audio, want print copies.

The American Mercury Reader, 1943. Selections from H.L.Mencken's spunky mid-century magazine.

Smila's Sense of Snow. I do enjoy me some Scandinavian mystery. Signed first edition, y'all.

Something by somebody named Jodi Picoult: Recommended by Niece #3.

Other Stuff That Looked Good. When am I going to read all this crap?

Flag Friday VI

Now! With cheesy logo!


Flag Friday is a periodic discussion of the world's national flags; the project is explained and indexed here.

These discussions are about graphic design, and perhaps about nationalism and national symbolism in general. They should not be taken as critical of the countries, ideals, cultures, or people that the flags represent.

Brunei



Parsons: He dislikes this flag's "bad colours" and "bad shape," and notes that it "appears to involve a moustache sprouting from a flagpole." He also finds it "too busy." He gives it “D“, 40/100.

Michael5000: I don't have any problem with the colors here; red, black, and white detail on a yellow field make Brunei's flag easily recognizable. The shape is a minor matter, but unusually long flags do rub me the wrong way. And I have to agree, this flag really does appear to involve a moustache sprouting from a flagpole.

The ease-of sewing test is a real problem here, for although there are only four colors the design is extremely finicky. Those Arabic letters would be insanely difficult to sew in. As for the child-with-crayons test -- or "tests," as the concept has become more complicated after the debate about Brazil's flag last time -- Brunei's is neither one that would be simple to draw, nor one that would seem especially fun to draw.

Grade: C+


Bulgaria

Parsons: Citing "bad colours," he gives it “C+“, 60/100. It is, he thinks, "possibly [the] worst traditional tricolour."

Michael5000: We've seen it before, and we'll see it all the way through: Dr. Parsons doesn't like the combination of red and green. Obviously, JOSH PARSONS HATES CHRISTMAS!

Me, I like Bulgaria's flag. Without using unusual colors, it nevertheless is able to sneak a pretty distinctive tricolor right in there among all the other European tricolors. Putting the white stripe on top, rather than between the two dark colors, is an unusual but not unattractive design choice.

Grade: B+


Burkina Faso

Parsons: Unhappy with "bad colours" and feeling that it is "eyewatering," he gives it “C+”, 64/100.

Michael5000: Again, red and green are not, by most measures, bad colors. They're certainly not "eyewatering." The gold star in the center is a perfectly attractive, if not terribly original, graphic focus. Burkina's flag is not wildly different from those of its neighbors Mali and Ghana, but nor would there likely to be any confusion among the three.

Grade: B


Burma

Parsons: Complains of "graven images" and gives it “C”, 55/100.

Michael5000: Parsons calls Burma "Myanmar" and you may have been taught to do the same. This is reasonable enough, as it is the official name chosen several years back by the ruling government of the country. The government of the country, lamentably, has been an unusually corrupt military junta for these past couple of decades, and my friends and acquaintances in and from the country are unanimous in their preference for "Burma." So Burma it is.

The Burmese flag is distinctive and recognizable, but I agree that the figurative business in the blue field doesn't really work. The food 'n' industry imagery is hard to pick out without fairly close study, and whereas one star is a generic bit of flag imagery, a circle of 14 of them seems like overkill. The whole thing seems more like an old-fashioned logo for a corporation with diverse holdings in agriculture and manufacturing than a real national emblem.

In theory, Burma will hold elections later this year for a parliament that will meet under a new national constitution. Well, we'll see. But if that constitution does go into effect, it will replace the existing Burmese flag with this one:

Whatever else we might think of this new flag, my own feeling is that it sends a strange message to kick off a new era in your country's history with a gesture towards the period when you were a puppet state of the WWII-era Empire of Japan:

But maybe that's just me.

Grade (for the existing Burmese flag): C


Burundi

Parsons: He calls it "too busy," and awards it a “B-”, 65/100.

Michael5000: But... why is green and red OK in Burundi, then?

I don't know if "busy" is exactly the word for it, but there's something about the mixing of a four-part symmetry with a three-part symmetry that makes it hard for me to warm up to the Burundian flag. It's distinctive and has an appropriately flaggy design; it's just a little awkward.

Grade: B-

MapBookFest I: Strange Maps

A few weeks back, occasional L&TM5K commenter Karmasartre sent me an email consisting entirely of the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/books/review/Heller-t.html

This turns out to be a March 7 New York Times review of books about maps. "There’s nothing like sitting by the fire with a good book, except maybe sitting by the fire with a good map — or better yet, a good book about maps," writes the review, Steven Heller. "I’ve noticed an upsurge in cartographic interest these days, especially for maps’ value as conceptual artwork." Well, I've noticed the same phenomenon, attributing it partly to a more general upsurge in interest in good representational graphics (Thanks, Mr. Tufte!) and partly to a more general upsurge in expensive, lucrative-to-publish, image-saturated books. I've been pleased.

Karma didn't say as much, but I read his email as a call to feature some of the books covered in the review in our ongoing Coffee Table Book Party. And so we shall, Karma! Here's the first of four featured books from Mr. Heller's NYT review.

Strange Maps by Frank Jacobs

Frank Jacobs' blog Strange Maps, unlike the L&TM5K, is fortunate enough not only to have a single focus but even a title that explains what that focus is. Strange Maps is about, you know, maps! That are strange! He covers contemporary cartography and map based art, but is also interested in the vintage maps of many periods.

Although, truth be told, Jacobs leaves the door open on what makes a map "strange." Sometimes it's that the map shows familiar data in an unconventional way.


Sometimes it's that the data itself is unusual or unorthodox.



Sometimes the whole idea of the map is a little weird.

This lack of strict definition makes Strange Maps into a bit of a hodgepodge of eccentric cartography -- which is pretty much awesome.

The Strange Maps book is, as you'd expect, a collection of posts from the Strange Maps blog. This points up its only real weakness: it is great to browse through these maps in lovely hard-copy renderings, but if you've been a regular Strange Maps subscriber for a few years, you've already read this entire book except for its two-page introduction.


But it can be found for $13 used and $16 new online, and if you've got that kind of wherewithal this is not a book you are going to regret having on your coffee table.

The Wednesday Quiz II:6 -- The Elements

The Wednesday Quiz -- Season II -- Quiz 6

The Elements

The Wednesday Quiz is a "closed-book" test of knowledge and intuition; please do not look up answers, ask others for help, or answer as a team.

Questions about the rules and the ~Fabulous Prizes~ are answered here.

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This week's Quiz is another is-it-or-isn't-it game. It has fifteen items, and we're scoring it hardball: ten points for every correct answer after the fifth.

Is It or Isn't It One of the Chemical Elements?

1. Boron

2. Brass

3. Bromine

4. Einsteinium

5. Floridium

6. Fluorine

7. Francium

8. Germanium

9. Italium

10. Latium

11. Lead

12. Newtonium

13. Nickel

14. Niconium

15. Veridium

Submit your answers in the comments!

Element of the Month: Yttrium!

April's Element of the Month:
Yttrium!

Y

39

Atomic Mass: 88.90585 amu
Melting Point: 1526 °C
Boiling Point: 3336 °C

OK, first things first: we're talking about Yttrium, element number 39, the silvery-white metal -- NOT Ytterbium, element number 70, the silvery-white metal. They're totally different! By definition! Like, at the atomic level!

OK, now that we have that straight: Yttrium is not one of those super-rare elements like we've talked about before. In fact, it's the twenty-eighth most common element here on the Earth's crust! You even pack a certain amount of it around inside of your body, especially if you eat a lot of cabbage, but it has no known biological function (although exposure to too much of it could possibly damage your lungs, and maybe your liver).

It has some technical uses, the most exciting of which seems to be that it is part of the phosphor that glows red on a TV screen or monitor. How it works is, the Yttrium reacts to a stream of electrons being aimed at it and passes the energy along to other compounds, which in turn glow red. That is, assuming I'm reading this correctly. Yttrium is also a critical ingredient in the production of synthetic garnets! Oh, and maybe superconductors.

The Centerfold!

Now, earlier I said that Yttrium wasn't super-rare, but it is however one of the "rare earth elements." These are a collection of seventeen very shy elements that only tend to hang out together in unusual minerals, and which were historically very hard for chemists to isolate (the shyest, Promethium, wasn't totally proven to exist until the 1940s). In your reading on Yttrium, you will see a lot of loose talk about how it is "never found in its elemental form in nature." And that's true enough... here on Earth! But on the moon, elemental Yttrium is apparently all over the place. However, I can't help noticing that write-ups on Yttrium invariably brag about how abundant it is on the moon, but write-ups on lunar geochemistry don't really have much to say about Yttrium. So I'm guessing it's not all THAT abundant. Whatever.

Still, this lunar Yttrium may be more significant than you would expect. According to a website called "Continuum Network; Expand Your Reality," maintained by a pleasant-looking woman named Amy Leigh,

The symbiotic balance energy brings mutually beneficial energetic frequencies to Earth and her inhabitants & the moon and her etheric inhabitants. Everybody involved is enhanced! This occurs via trace amounts of the element Yttrium in each human body and throughout the Earth's body and oceans.

The Yttrium on the moon is plentiful and as of 11/12/08 it began receiving a massive infusion of Divine-Source energy/pure white light. This energetic infusion entices the moon's Yttrium atoms to RADIATE! A LOT! As the white light energy filters through the moon's Yttrium atoms it becomes supercharged with symbiotic balance energy so that gets RADIATED. Thereby activating the Earth's, and your body's, Yttrium atoms by turning them on and turning up their "volume," enticing them to radiate extra symbiotic balance.

A word of caution, though: I was unable to confirm this information from the NASA website or from any online authorities on rare earth chemistry.

If you want to pick up some Yttrium of your own, incidentally -- say, if you wanted small amounts of it to improve the high-temperature performance of your aluminum or magnisium alloys -- it would put you back about 75 bucks per ounce. That probably seems like a lot, but keep in mind that you might also be infusing your alloy with extra symbiotic balance. Awesome!

How to Rewire an Electric Outlet

Step 1: Tear up the wall behind the outlet that you are going to rewire. Make sure to turn off power to the area first so that the painfully claustrophobic area you will be working in, often lying on your back in filth and fiberglass insulation, is lit only by a finicky trouble light and a head lamp.


Step 2: Remove the outlet that some jackass of 60 or 70 years ago put not only at the midpoint of the wall -- the very spot where it is least likely to be useful -- but also right in the freaking baseboard, thus wedding a general eyesore, the bracing challenges of impracticality, and the excitement of wondering if the carpet might someday catch fire.


Step 3: Drill holes through the wall studs to reroute the existing wiring to the desired location of your new outlet. Using a keyhole saw, it is easy to cut a hole for the new outlet box!


Step 4: Then, drill a bunch of additional holes and run some new wire to a location where you want to add a second outlet box. NOTE: You should probably only be doing this if you know a little bit about wiring.

Step 5: Slap in your outlet boxes and wire up the outlets in the usual fashion.

Step 6: Then return to the hell which is the area behind your new outlets, and spend what seems like the rest of your life rebuilding the wall so that it covers your work. NOTE: I suggest testing the new wiring scheme to make sure it works before sealing it back within the wall.

If your project has been successful, you should look like this:

...and your new outlets should look more or less like this: