O my God, they killed Petey!

“I generally refrain from speech during gustation. There are those who attempt both at the same time; I find it course and vulgar. Where were we?”
“Makin’ money in the Lord’s service.”
“…Yes, Bible sales…One, where to find a wholesaler. The word of God in bulk as it were!” (52:25)

In this film, the Coen brothers do a fantastic job of creating vast caricatures of stereotypes of the South, often to the point to ridiculousness. This technique has often been used in TV and film for the purpose of destroying a stereotype. Examples of this can be seen in the 1970s’ blaxploitation films, often featuring a black male that heavily exaggerates the many stereotypes of black men. It’s a way to expose the absurdity of racism inherent in our society. While this particular scene is dealing with a different subject, I believe the Coen brothers are doing something similar. Big Dan T is a character that knows how to exploit the southern religious system for his own benefit. He makes his living as a con man, hiding behind the pious title of a Bible salesman. Using religion as the means to an end is not isolated to this scene. It is also reflected in Stokes’ speech to the KKK, essentially saying that Tommy must be hanged; it’s the will of God. Religion has been used as a failsafe for many years in the South, with misused and misinterpreted verses in the Bible quoted to support acts of violence, greed, and hate. Of course this is not isolated to the South, but growing up in the Bible Belt made this scene stick out to me. As evidenced in this movie, people do ridiculous things in the name of the selfish and greedy god of the South.

Writing this post made me curious; is this the way southerners outside of religion view the Christian church?

Not a moment too soon.

“No, they're flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole darn state. Yes, sir, the south is gonna change. Everything's gonna run on a paying basis. Out with the spiritual mumbo-jumbo and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they hook us all up to a grid. Yes, a veritable age of reason. Like the one they had in France. Not a moment too soon. Not a moment too soon.”(96:00)

This is the moment in the film that summed up some of the themes and ideas we have encountered throughout the works we’ve covered in class. As we’ve seen in the novels, the stereotypical representation of the old South as backwards and flooded with zeal is alive and well throughout the film. (We get somewhat the same notion of backwardness that we see in the Bundren family in Faulkner’s “As I lay Dying”). 

The technological advancement the South finally goes through, marks an important shift in the film’s plot. Whether it have been an act of God or not, the shift into an age of modernization is the very thing that saves Everett, Pete, Delmar, and Tommy. On a side note, I find it a bit ironic that Everett gets on his knees and prays for God’s mercy and just moments after he is finally “saved” (perhaps baptized, depending on how you look at it), he goes on to say “Out with the spiritual mumbo-jumbo and the backward ways.” 

The film plays with religion similar to ways Flannery O’Conner’s “The Displaced Person” does. The Coen Brothers paint us images of religion being misused and abused (the Bible salesman taking advantage of Everett and Delmar) contrasted with positive images of the way things should be (the surreal baptism ceremony). As Mark wrote, this is ultimately a clash between good and evil in which good triumphs, but evil still prevails.

I really enjoyed the film. It had the perfect mix of comedy and really neat allusions. I’ll never forget the part where they ask Tommy why he would sell his soul to the devil and he simply responds with “Well I wasn’t usin’ it.”

Q: Everett always seems to have an explanation for everything. He claims the manner in which they were saved (at the end) has a “scientific explanation.” Are you entirely on board with this? Does the film give you enough evidence or reason to believe that this was an act of God and not mere coincidence?

A Simple Tale of Good vs. Evil

"Oh, no.  No, sir.  He's white.  As white as you folks.  With empty eyes and a big, hollow voice.  He loved to travel around with a mean old hound.  That's right."  (19:24)

This is, of course, Tommy's description of the Devil, whom he "sold his soul to at the crossroads to learn to play the guitar real well."  I had viewed this film many times before I fully paid attention to this line, but, once I did, I realized who Tommy was describing.  This statement perfectly describes Sheriff Cooley, the man in pursuit of our protagonists throughout the film.  As soon as I realized this, I picked up on the overall story of this film.

On the surface, O, Brother is about three men in pursuit of treasure.  However, I view the inclusion of Tommy's description of Sheriff Cooley adds a much deeper level to the story.  Overall, it is about good versus evil.  At the beginning of the film, Pete and Delmar accept the Lord into their hearts, but Everett is still "unaffiliated," as he describes it.  Because of Everett's lack of faith, there is still room for the Devil to claim there souls.  Their lack of unity in their faith makes them an easy target for Satan, a.k.a. the Sheriff.  At the end of the film, during their final confrontation with him, Everett finally lets the Lord into his heart, right as the flood waters arrive and kill everyone around them.  These three men serve as a metaphor for the entire human race.  It's not so much about religion as it is just about the general forces of good and evil.  Religion is just the way the Coen Brothers get their message across.  As long as there is still room for evil within the human race, then, no matter how much good there is, evil can still prevail.

This is actually a common theme in many of the films from the Coen Brothers, my personal favorite filmmakers!  In Raising Arizona, it's Hi McDunnough versus Leonard Smalls, "the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse."  In The Hudsucker Proxy, it's Norville Barnes versus Sidney J. Mussberger (as well as a physical confrontation between an angel and a demon).  In The Ladykillers, it's Marva Munson versus Professor G.H. Dorr.  There is always a good, innocent person who must go up against a personification of evil.  Whom better to play that in O, Brother, a film set in the rural South during the Depression, than a Sheriff?  The law was always seen as one of the most racist forces during these times, and so a sheriff seems like the perfect person to represent evil.  Also, I should note that the films I have mentioned here are comedies.  In all of them, good has triumphed over evil.  However, the Coens have also made some darker, more serious films which also contain personifications of evil, such as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men.  The outcome was not so positive in that film, and it is always a lot murkier in their more serious fare.

QUESTION: Tommy said that he sold his soul to the Devil, so he has already willingly turned to evil.  Yet, at the end of the film, he is "allowed" to live?  Why do you think this is?

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?