Praise the Lord, I saw the light

"Well that was some fun, though, wasn't it, George?"

"Yeah."

"Almost makes me wish I hadn't been saved. Jackin' up banks! I can see how a fella'd derive a whole lot of pleasure and satisfaction out of it." (36:33)

I can't even bring myself to call Delmar a hypocrite- he's just so much fun. The essence of Delmar is that he goes along with everything, and does it so cheerfully and good-naturedly that it never seems insincere. When Delmar and Pete rush so eagerly to get themselves baptized, they seem to do it for little more reason than that the congregation happens to have come by at that moment. One senses that, for all his religious enthusiasm, Delmar wouldn't have given the salvation of his soul a second thought if he and his friends hadn't stumbled onto a baptism ceremony. Yet in the scenes following his encounter with the congregation, Delmar takes his newfound faith quite seriously- this doesn't stop him, though, from being delighted by George's bank robbery. He observes the contradiction between this delight and the religious ideals he should be upholding, but brushes his doubts off without worry ("almost makes me wish I hadn't been saved"). One would be tempted to call it a parody of religious hypocrisy if Delmar weren't so earnest and bighearted about everything he did. He'll commit himself to Christian morality one minute and take pleasure in a bank robbery the next, and to him, there's nothing terribly problematic about that.

At the risk of reading too much into things, I think that the Coen brothers are painting a great portrait of the Southern Baptist faith here, with its odd balance of rigid morality and gleeful licentiousness. That's not a slight to Southern Baptism either, by the way- it has always struck me as one of the most complicated and interesting of Christian denominations.

Questions: What, if anything, does O Brother Where Art Thou say about Southern religious assumptions? How representative of Southern Baptist thinking is Delmar?

"'I just don't think it's right, keeping him under wraps like we's ashamed of him'
'Well, if it is Pete, then I am ashamed of him!" (48:49 49:04)

I had never watched this movie prior to yesterday and it's already one of my favourites. Like Stuck Rubber Baby, the story is dependent upon various elements to produce a coherent and believable recreation of the post-war South. In the case of O Brother, Where Art Thou, the plot, the acting, the cinematography, and the music do a fantastic job of this. The movie has a weird but pleasant blend of history and a certain kind of surrealism that makes all the ridiculous events that take place seem perfectly logical.

I don't have a specific moment to comment about (I apologise about this) - I chose this because I thought it was hilarious (the timing was perfect). My question is: do you think the more serious matters in the movie (such as the KKK scene) should have had less humour? What I mean to say is, do you think that the level of humour present in the movie detracted from the seriousness of the issues of the South or did it serve to highlight them? Basically, could the movie have worked without its undercurrent of humour?


(Sorry for the confusing wording!)

"...I blundered into it full force... and went sprawling. If i just hadn't- (lemme start again.) If i just hadn't bumped my damn head into his shoes" pg 177-78.

 I wanted to comment about some of the artwork in this story considering that it is the only book we have read that contains illustrations. Earlier we talked about how the illustrations and the narration are two equal parts of the same whole. I found that this particular scene truly embodies this relationship. When read without the drawings, this scene would be confusing and almost completely ambiguous. Cruse dosent explicitly explain that sammy has been lynched and is now hanging from a tree in the backyard and the illustrations don't show any images of sammy's body in full detail. In one frame all we see is sammy's leg, disguised as a tree trunk and even when we are shown the whole of sammy's body, his face is strategically covered by a concerned Riley. All of the images and language seem to be delicatley hiding the more graphic truth about the scene. I was brought back to the first class session when we talked about the softness contained within Cruse's art work. It seems that this soft, roundedness is what makes the very real and frighteneing subject matter more surprising and emotionally striking. I cant help but wonder why Cruse chose to hide one of his more striking moments behind so much static.

Questions: Why did Cruse choose to hide some of the more gripping parts of this scene? and Does anyone else think it is creepy that sammy was hung from a tree house?

Be Like Them

"I'm a coward in some ways... but in other ways, I'm brave. Nobody's brave all the time. But for goodness sake Toland, don't act so deprived! If you want me to sing for you, I'll sing for you. Just come over here to the house now an' again when you've got time to kill. We'll come out here on the stoop an' you can watch me sing for the birds in the yard! They don't review me for the newspapers! They don't cluster in chairs to stare at me! An' they don't expect me to be anybody besides who I naturally am! Be like them honey, an' I'll sing for you whenever you like" (205).

Although taken out of context, Anna's impassioned advice to Toland may seem just a little corny or hackneyed, this moment stands as one of the most powerful and cathartic moments in Stuck Rubber Baby. Toland wrestles with the weighty issues of Sammy's death and his implicit belief that he played a part in it, his child, and coming to terms with his sexuality. All of these factors become the focal point through which his world and the decisions made within it become all the more confounding and difficult. It is for this reason that Anna's down-to-earth wisdom comes as a refreshingly simple breath of air. Amidst the immense struggles that Toland has faced throughout the novel, this brief, although powerful, piece of advice alleviates some of the intense drama that both he and the reader have endured through the story and almost miraculously, sets the story up for a happy ending. Even amidst the nearly unimaginable suffering and unbearable guilt Toland reckons with, a happy and even exciting ending can be reached, perhaps signaling that the Civil Rights Movement that the story is framed around, like Toland's own story, can have a satisfying outcome as well.

Question: Is the connection between Toland's struggles and the struggles of the emerging Civil Rights Movement compatible and was it Cruse's intention to offer a ray of hope for both battles at the end of his story?

"It could've been me" (196)

When I climbed onto the bus Monday with "Stuck Rubber Baby" in hand , I noticed a woman reading a copy of a book titled:" The Lynching of Emmett Till". It was a lengthy, dense looking novel. It got my blog-post process going as I once again thought of the similarities between our two stories: between Sammy's death and Emmet's, the effects of the deaths, and the culture surrounding them.

The ending of the book harkens back to the beginning section mentioning the Till case. As Toland is remembering the scene of Sammy's death, we see the same depiction of a face exploding that we saw when he was describing Emmet Till's head wounds (pg 2). Toland is hit in the skull while Sammy is murdered, the same part of the body where he draws such pain from Emmet's murder. Also, Toland's grief over having physically touched Sammy's body runs in the same vien of the haunting received from Emmet Till's skull, and the crooked cops who care about Sammy's justice about as much as did the cops for Emmett's.

It's clear the author thickens the strings tying the two cases together. Sammy's murder was Toland's Till case; it propelled him forward through the pain of loss. But the question I'm left wondering is how far the similarities go.

Q: Would Toland have come out publicly had Sammy not been murdered? Was his death a necessary evil for the spark of bravery?

-Hunter

It was ME that murdered Sammy Noone

"Toland... it was me that murdered Sammy Noone."
"Looking at it in retrospect, it's plain that I wasn't giving the bastard any quarter because what he'd said to me had hit way too close to home. Y'see I'd known for years that I was really the one who'd murdered Sammy Noone."

I guess I should of foreseen something terrible happening like the lynching of Sammy Noone, but unfortunately I did not. When I started to read the scene where Sammy is killed my pulse began to race, my palms began to sweat, and I started muttering warnings at the pages as if the characters could hear me and react. I was completely engulfed in the story and like every other character my emotions were at a high. I was terribly sad at the incident, which soon turned to anger. This anger searched for someone to blame, but it did not point a finger at either Orley or Toland.

So, I thought it was interesting that both of these characters felt responsible for Sammy's death instead of blaming the people truly responsible for putting the noose around Sammy's neck. Guilt and misplaced anger seem run rampant through this book and while Toland feels them frequently, it seems that almost every character feels these emotions as well.

With this in mind I cannot help but wonder if these emotions are also apparent in the South during this time. Within this book the reader witness acts of violence and hate, and the victims described feel these emotions, but what about the abusers? Are they committing these acts because they are part of that old generation and are resisting the changing ways? Or are they attempting to fill the south model that perceives African Americans below Caucasians? Could they possibly feel any guilt for their actions?

My Question: Who do you think is responsible for Sammy Noone's death? And what is the purpose for all of this guilt, does it tie any way to the southern ideologies or methods of the time?

Galaxies Away And Never Closer

"And I'll be damned if I can recall what any of them were in particular - except for these four: It could've been me." (193)

When Toland speaks before the crowd at the Alleysax, and confesses his similarities and regrets for the fallen soldier Sammy, our stuck rubber baby seems to pry himself from the cold recesses of confused and silent homosexuality in the South, and come out to the community he believes he has hurt. He finally understands what may happen when one is not completely true to oneself. What I mean to say, is that it was not enough for him to frequent the Rhombus or be nice to his newfound group of Subterraneans, his heart really needed to be able identify, in order for his position as a gay white man in the South to allow himself to sympathize with the more race related plight of those around him and find the acceptance from himself, alongside the acceptance from his group of friends; Shiloh becomes an expression of this movement, and from one foot in and out of the closet to crying before those that he really cares for, the cold hard microphone takes the cold hard feelings from Toland and his heart becomes humbled before the death and pain that the Dixie Patriot seems to have impressed upon those different of skin and sexuality.

What does it mean for the future of the South and for the future of Toland, that he could finally become unstuck, and be able to show a great deal of humanity in the face of such horrible tragedies? AND why is it important that here in the story (192) he imagines himself as Sammy, galaxies away from his own unconscious body on the night he was murdered?