ANCIENT SPARTA AND THE BEARS MEET ON CABLE
If you surf cable channels at night, your choice falls into three general categories: Political bombast, nature documentaries, and anything they can find about World War II. Millions of male viewers are nightly immersed in the bloodshed of warfare very much like they are on the networks in the bloodshed of football...!
There are dozens of explanations. Freudian, Jungian, and especially those from frustrated wives and girlfriends. Blend them all together and you usually come up with the intuitive conclusion the male of virtually every species has this genetic predisposition for combat, conquest, and crowing. In the case of American homo sapiens, it's virtually foreordained right from their frisky little blue-bonneted births.
From early on there is a semi-conscious dash of ancient Sparta to this. He is given soldier and gun toys...he is programmed for hard sports...he is offered athletic heroes....and he is generally convinced that the maleness that most attracts the femaleness is of the John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise genre. And while it's quite true some of this one-dimensional programming has been diluted in recent decades, there's just something deep and dark in the male animal which instinctively responds to the smell and roar of battle.
Now while many psychologists speak of the feminizatioin of American men in today's more equal society. it would seem that even the gentlest and most esoteric respond to cable's endless gorge of World War II battle footage. Especially inasmuch as it so nicely plays out with irrefutably good vs evil casts. Militarists from Generals Grant and Sherman to MacArthur and Patton have repeatedly spoken of the glories of war, because in these epic gladiatorial clashes, our species is said to be functioning at the very peak of both its rational and primitive forces. Patton exalted it thus: "You give me a fighting sonofabitch who knows how to hate, and I'll show you man at his most complete!"
I don't imagine Bears fans read the General on their way to the game. When you watch them there, you realize they don't have to....!
WILLIE LOHMAN DIES FOR THE LAST TIME
Arthur Miller famously killed Willie Lohman in Death of a Salesman in 1949. However, there were millions of real Willies who succeeded him "on the road" thereafter. Now a half-century and E-Bay later, the very last of the breed have finally been laid to rest...!
As Marshall McLuhan predicted back then, "the electron has replaced the wheel." There is no longer much need for Willies or Music Men. A fabled age that began with the first Yankee peddlers in 16th century America has at last come to an inglorious end.
However, I'm here to report that when Willie's wife laments her husband's tragic death, her lament was never more torturous and terminal than it was in a Steppenwolf audition hall 35 years after the Broadway run. Another wife -- mine! -- brought one-of-a-kind tears to the Steppenwolf company that day in her portrayal of the haunting cemetery scene. Joan knew the part with profound understanding, because she had in her own way lived the part.
The theatre world missed that portrayal, because there was a conflict of schedules. But I didn't! Even all those years later, Arthur Miller would have been reduced to tears even he had not experienced before.
To Willie and to all the memories of all the Willies buried by their grieving wives -- Rest In Peace.
If you surf cable channels at night, your choice falls into three general categories: Political bombast, nature documentaries, and anything they can find about World War II. Millions of male viewers are nightly immersed in the bloodshed of warfare very much like they are on the networks in the bloodshed of football...!
There are dozens of explanations. Freudian, Jungian, and especially those from frustrated wives and girlfriends. Blend them all together and you usually come up with the intuitive conclusion the male of virtually every species has this genetic predisposition for combat, conquest, and crowing. In the case of American homo sapiens, it's virtually foreordained right from their frisky little blue-bonneted births.
From early on there is a semi-conscious dash of ancient Sparta to this. He is given soldier and gun toys...he is programmed for hard sports...he is offered athletic heroes....and he is generally convinced that the maleness that most attracts the femaleness is of the John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise genre. And while it's quite true some of this one-dimensional programming has been diluted in recent decades, there's just something deep and dark in the male animal which instinctively responds to the smell and roar of battle.
Now while many psychologists speak of the feminizatioin of American men in today's more equal society. it would seem that even the gentlest and most esoteric respond to cable's endless gorge of World War II battle footage. Especially inasmuch as it so nicely plays out with irrefutably good vs evil casts. Militarists from Generals Grant and Sherman to MacArthur and Patton have repeatedly spoken of the glories of war, because in these epic gladiatorial clashes, our species is said to be functioning at the very peak of both its rational and primitive forces. Patton exalted it thus: "You give me a fighting sonofabitch who knows how to hate, and I'll show you man at his most complete!"
I don't imagine Bears fans read the General on their way to the game. When you watch them there, you realize they don't have to....!
WILLIE LOHMAN DIES FOR THE LAST TIME
Arthur Miller famously killed Willie Lohman in Death of a Salesman in 1949. However, there were millions of real Willies who succeeded him "on the road" thereafter. Now a half-century and E-Bay later, the very last of the breed have finally been laid to rest...!
As Marshall McLuhan predicted back then, "the electron has replaced the wheel." There is no longer much need for Willies or Music Men. A fabled age that began with the first Yankee peddlers in 16th century America has at last come to an inglorious end.
However, I'm here to report that when Willie's wife laments her husband's tragic death, her lament was never more torturous and terminal than it was in a Steppenwolf audition hall 35 years after the Broadway run. Another wife -- mine! -- brought one-of-a-kind tears to the Steppenwolf company that day in her portrayal of the haunting cemetery scene. Joan knew the part with profound understanding, because she had in her own way lived the part.
The theatre world missed that portrayal, because there was a conflict of schedules. But I didn't! Even all those years later, Arthur Miller would have been reduced to tears even he had not experienced before.
To Willie and to all the memories of all the Willies buried by their grieving wives -- Rest In Peace.
I would love to have seen Joan in that role. A natural for it....
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