Monday, March 5, 2007

the Paper

The partner to this project - the final paper - can be found at the following site:

http://adamae.blogspot.com/

An explanation precedes it (which I suggest you read first, as the actual paper is much, much longer).

According to Me

"Some will win, some will lose, some were born to sing the blues."

In a fit of burnt-out exhaustion on Sunday night, and from an excess of both disillusionment and illusion(ment?) all due to the American dream, which I was not feeling at all kindly disposed to at the time, I stumbled across that lyric from a famous eighties power ballad, and thought it was the most profound thing I had ever heard regarding the dream they call American. I believe my exact words were, "HOW does no one understand the genius that is Journey?!"

In the light of morning (or, in this case, waning afternoon), here's what I actually think:

I think the American dream is becoming increasingly demanding to expect of a nation. Whomever thought of adding the disclaimer of "pursuit" in the preamble to the Constitution was thinking ahead, and it's lucky they were, lest the Supreme Court be even more tied up with additional lawsuits from pissed-off Americans, claiming they haven't gotten the happiness promised to them by the United States government.

I think the American dream started with the need for change, and I think that is the way it will end. Whether that change takes the form of slow decay, of constant progress, of a sudden collapse, or from all of its people taking Jack Kerouac's advice and taking their act on the road - Change is Gonna Come, like Otis Redding said. It always does.

I still think Journey is kind of great.

I think the American dream is just another method of survival, invented during a time when methods of survival were badly needed.

I think if this is true, than there are worse methods. And even though I don't believe it is possible for everyone to achieve the dream as it concerns them, I think that having at least one period of life that is filled not with cynicism and disenchantment but with hope and anticipation for the fruition of dreams, is invaluable.

I think that despite their two-cent catchphrases, no one really knows what the American dream is at all, and though they can tell you in a word ("opportunity," "freedom," "the Pursuit of Happyness" or "rags-to-riches"), they can never seem to expound on it.

I think no one will ever know, because dreams are impossible to ever fully understand. Freud failed at it, and so will I. On that note, you may want to know what my American dream is. Well kiddos, when I figure it out, I'll post it first thing. Until then...

"...tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out out our arms farther… And one fine morning ——"

the Dream According to Dylan

Excerpt from "Subterranean Homesick Blues and Blond Waltz," a bootleg poem published in the Tarantula collection

"let me say this about Justine-Ruthy & Zonk - none of them understood each other at all - Justine - she went off to join a rock & roll band & Ruthy - she decided to fight cocks professionally & when last heard from, Zonk was working in the garment district....they all lived happily ever after


where i live now, the only thing that keeps the area going is tradition - as you can figure out - it doesn't count very much - everything around me rots...i don't know how long it has been this way, but if it keeps up, soon i will be an old man - & i am only 15 - the only job around here is mining - but jesus, who wants to be a miner...i refuse to be part of such a shallow death - everybody talks about the middle ages as if it was actually in the middle ages - i'll do anything to leave here - my mind is running down the river - i'd sell my soul to the elephant - i'd cheat the sphinx - i'd lie to the conqueror...tho you might not take this the right way, i would even sign a chain with the devil...please don't send me any more grandfather clocks - no more books or care packages...if you're going to send me something, send me a key - i shall find the door where it fits, if it takes me the rest of my life"

-Bob Dylan

American Dream Playlist

"A Change is Gonna Come" - Otis Redding
"Allentown" - Billy Joel
A Love Supreme - John Coltrane (album)
"America" - Simon & Garfunkel
American Idiot - Green Day (album)
"Born to Run" - Bruce Springsteen
"Boston" - Augustana
Bringing it All Back Home - Bob Dylan (album)
"Chicago" - Sufjan Stevens
"Come Together" - the Beatles
"Don't Stop Believin'" -Journey
"Float On" -Modest Mouse
"Fred Jones, pt. 2" -Ben Folds
"Gimme Shelter" -the Rolling Stones
"Happy Go Lucky Local" -Duke Ellington
"Idle Dreams" -George Gershwin
"Immigrant Song" -Led Zeppelin
"Leaving Town" - Dexter Freebish
"Lost Highway" -Jeff Buckley
"Man in Black" -Johnny Cash
"Old Man River" -David Roe and the Royal Rounders
"Pictures of Success" -Rilo Kiley
"Sloop John B." -the Beach Boys
"Songs from an American Movie" -Everclear
"Waiting for my Real Life to Begin" -Colin Haye
"Want One" -Rufus Wainwright
"Windowsill" -Arcade Fire

Blueprint for the American Dream

...according to Kurt Vonnegut

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11122832/kurt_vonneguts_prebush_blueprint_for_the_american_dream

Wrap-Up (According to Some Other People)

"There are no second acts in American lives....Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over." -F. Scott Fitzgerald

"No American can wait he can stand around and do nothing but he cannot wait, that is why he is not like Milton who served by standing and waiting, Americans can neither serve nor wait, they can stand and sit down and get up and walk around but they can neither serve nor wait." -Gertrude Stein

"In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die or boredom."

"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers."
- William S. Burroughs

"In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway american dream. At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machine." -the Boss

"Americans are overreachers; overreaching is the most admirable of the many American excesses." -George F. Will

"This I Believe. By that name, we present the personal philosophies of thoughtful men and women in all walks of life. In this brief space, a banker or a butcher, a painter or a social worker, people of all kinds who need have nothing more in common than integrity, a real honesty, will write about the rules they live by, the things they have found to be the basic values in their lives." -Edward R. Murrow

"Build up your credit, build up your self-esteem, build up your bank account, moving up in the scene, everyone's living the American dream so we can build up an army and smash it to pieces" -Christine Anderson

"I've not only pursued the American dream, I've achieved it. I suppose we could say the last few years, I've also achieved the American nightmare." -Kenneth Lay

"We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans." -Ruben Askew

"The American dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam..." -J.G. Ballard

"America is like an unfaithful love who promises us more than we got." -Charlotte Bunch

"To think that a once scrawny boy from Austria could grow up to become Governor of California and stand in Madison Square Garden to speak on behalf of the President of the United States, that is an immigrant's dream. It is the American dream." -Arnold Schwarzenegger

"There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream." -Archibald MacLeish

"People are so busy dreaming of the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Errour." -Florence King

"If the American dream is for Americans only, it will remain our dream and never be our destiny." -Rene de Visme Williamson

"I see all this potential, and I see us squandering it. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." -Tyler Durden

"Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them." -John Updike

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning ——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." -the Great Gatsby

Wisdom of a Waitress

"Yeah sure, a Porsche is my dream car, but I'd like to keep it that way. I mean, why would you want all your dreams to come true?"

Britt said this with no hint of sarcasm as she stared out the window of her Pontiac Grand Am. She had just gotten out of an interview with a twenty-four year old in an Armani suit. It was at the turn of the millenium, when pyramid schemes were all the rage. The company in question bought chunks of cellullar airwaves from Sprint and sold them at a lower cost - the Armani manchild had twenty-nine employees under him, all of whom had to give him a percentage of their commission. "I could retire at forty," the manchild bragged. He lured her with the everlasting temptation of the get-rich-quick scheme, appealing to her impatience.

With only one more employee to go before he hit an even thirty, he must have thought he nailed it. She shook his hand and took her leave politely. He looked on as she walked away, cutting a less than intelligent figure with her platinum blonde hair her indiscreet double-Ds. He thought he had it in the bag.

And really, he should have. At the time we were completely broke. The only food in the house was peanut butter (which we would eat straight out of the jar with our two recycled plastic spoons) and instant noodles. We sold most of our CDs and DVDs, to the point where we only had one movie left, a battered VHS copy of Center Stage which we would watch quite literally every day when we got home, while eating the aforementioned peanut butter. We really could have used the money.

I picked her up in her car, and she told me what the manchild had said about retiring at forty. "Why would you want to retire at forty?" I asked. She didn't know either.

We talked for a long time, about the dilemma of taking a job you know is unethical to pay the bills, about getting rich quick, and about the dream in general. "He had a Porsche," said Britt. "A Porsche at twenty-four. Can you imagine that?" I thought for a moment. "I don't know, I don't think I'm ready for a Porsche," I said. She pondered this. "Yeah, I know what you mean. A Porsche is my dream car, but why would you want all your dreams to come true?"

I jotted it down in the tiny composition book I was in the habit of carrying, saving it to ponder until years later. In the meantime, Britt didn't take the job, and we continued on for another year or two, scraping by on whatever limited funds we could pick up in between classes and our far too active social lives. The company she interviewed with eventually shut down, and the manchild who had foolishly invested most of his earnings into both his car and the company stock lost mostly everything, and went back to just being a twenty-five year old boy. Britt is still a waitress.

I lived with Britt and our other roommate Hildie, for over a year. It wasn't an easy year. In fact, most people who knew me back then still refer to it as the worst living situation I've ever been in. They're not entirely wrong, but that's not what any of us remember when we think about that year. We think about being young and poor and full of ideas about what life was going to be. The best part about dreams, like Christmas, is the anticipation. It's how Britt knew not to take the job, and it's how we all knew to embrace each other and our situation equally, living as fully as we could within out limited means. This took different forms with all of us, and all resulted in their own unique set of consequences.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "Riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again." He elaborated on this in a lettre to his daughter, saying, "a whole lot of people have found life a whole lot of fun. I have not found it so. But, I had a hell of a lot of fun in my twenties and thirties;" His old friend Hemingway verified this in his memoir of their time in Paris, noting at the beginning of his account: "This is how Paris was in the early days, when we were very poor and very happy."

This is how LA was in the early days, when we were very poor, and very happy. A lot of bad things happened to us, and we happened to a lot of bad things. We behaved stupidly on more than one occasion,including but not limited to each and every one of us dropping like dominos out of school: first Britt, then Hildie, and lastly, in one last effort of defiance, me. But before all that, back before we knew much about the consequences of having dreams, we were really quite happy to be young, and living in America.

Mass Media of the Day

iTunes download:
Gimme Shelter - the Rolling Stones (live, if you can find it)

Obscure film:
"God Grew Tired of Us" (dir. by Christopher Dillon Quinn, co dir. by Tommy Walker)

Relevant Internet Reading:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/polls/2004/immigration/

Sunday, March 4, 2007

the Immigrants, pt. 3 (the Interview)

Amir is my brother-in-law. He is a Tunisian, and one of my favourite people on earth. He was asked to leave the US in 2004, a month after my other sister's wedding. He has been trying ever since then to come back, and despite some genuinely horrible encounters with the biggest bitch at the INS, having the validity of his marriage come into question, being sujected to the ignorance of people who would assume the worst of him because of his language and his looks, and the constant red tape of the world's biggest buearacracy, his biggest dream is still to be able to come home to America. I asked him why the other day, in the form of the following questions:

What do you think the American Dream is, generally speaking? Do you think it is a valid concept?

"The American Dream is all about opportunity. I think this concept is true because you can achieve your dreams."

What would you say your version of the American Dream is?

"The specific version to me is, if you have the will and if you are a hardworker and you love what your doing, you will succeed in the States. What I like about it too is out of nothing you can become something."

Why is America your first choice for a place to live?

"Because I feel it's like my second home. There is freedom of speech, a lot of outdoor activities (and indoor) and you just live with a peace of mind. Plus there are a lot of opportunities and it's a land of immigrants."

List the top five flaws and benefits of living in America/being an American citizen.

Benefits

1. Freedom
2. Success
3. Fun
4. Opportunities
5. Respect

Flaws

1. Bills
2. Being far away from my family
3. Racist confrontations
4. Too much negative media (example: Dr Phil, Oprah, the news)
5. No nationwide health insurance


Amir's visa was finally approved last fall. My sister came to visit with her daughter Nadia this Christmas, as we celebrated joyfully that she would soon be able to come home. My family has been going through this alongside my sister for three years, and it has been hanging like a subconscious cloud over our heads, broken through only by rays of sunlight in the form of my faithful optimism of our mother.

In January, my sister called me crying at three in the morning to tell me that the embassy had gotten a cable from the State Dept., putting a permanent halt on their authority to issue visas. Before the halt, their counselor estimated their wait time for the visa itself at about two weeks. After the cable, she had no estimate at all. Concurrently, I put a halt on both my acknowledgement of God and the American government until the halt was lifted.

A week or so later, the State Department amended their preious statement to say that the visas who had already been approved would still be valid. It's going to take months longer, but Amir should still eventually get his visa. I've let up on my God embargo, but America is still on shaky ground in my book. It just seems like an awful lot to go through for the privilege of living in America. But it seems to be worth it, at least to Amir. And on that note, it's worth it to me as well, because if there were a million more like Amir in America, I think I would be happier with it as a whole. To me, he is as much and more of an American than all past season American Idol winners. I hope his dream comes true, not just because he deserves it, but because it would do a lot for mine as well.

The Immigrants, pt. 2

If you want to see the American dream, go to the consular section of an embassy and wait outside. The asphalt is paved with it, and it can be seen in every one of the faces of the people standing on it.

In one such embassy, there was an old Russian woman who was moving to America to be with her daughter and grandson. She had won the visa lottery - literally. Every year there was a lottery in this country, and the lucky winners got, instead of money, pre-approval on an immigrant visa to America. Were they able to provide all the necessary documentation, and to pass all the necessary tests, physical checkups, and background checks, they would get a free ride to America.

We called the woman a week before her last appointment at the embassy and congratulated her. She had passed all the preliminary requirements for acquiring her visa to the United States. She was to come to the embassy on Friday and take her picture, sign the visa, after which we would print it up and put in her passport, stamp it with our approval, and she would move to America.

The woman was ecstatic. She left her apartment, sold her furniture, bought her plane ticket, and began packing her things. On the day she came to the embassy, the raw delicacy of hope that has tentatively come true was written all over her face, and it made her look adorable, and it made what we had to tell her about a hundred times harder.

We had made a mistake, you see. In the interval between our phone call to the woman and her appointment the next week, we discovered that we were not in possession of one of the aforementioned necessary documents - a Russian police certificate. It was our fault. Had we notified her of its missing status earlier, she would have had time to acquire it from the Russian embassy. As it was, however, the certificate to took a minimum of three months and a maximum of six to process, after which time the lottery would have expired. We called the Russian embassy, and confirmed that she had no criminal record. The document at this point was a formality, but one that we were not permitted to forego, for reasons I have never been clear on. On the day the woman came to collect her visa and her dream in her hands, it was snatched from her.

As if that weren't enough, she was also denied a non-immigrant visa on every count. If you are ever denied an immigrant visa to the US, it stays on your file, and in most cases will prevent you from obtaining any other kind of visa, because of the logical assumption that you will use it to remain in the country illegally instead of waiting another ten years to reapply for an immigrant visa.

Because yes, one must wait ten years after applying for their denied immigrant visa to apply for another one. And in the meantime, it's not at all likely you will be able to visit the States under any other pretense. That was five years ago. The woman has another five years to go before she can even start the process of being able to be with her only remaining family members. She was seventy-two when I met her.

My friend Katia (also Russian) and I took it harder than anyone else because of our youth and because we were the two most closely involved with the project. For the next two weeks, we asked every higher-up for their intervention in this matter. I used every connection available to me, even the borderline unethical ones. No one did anything. This woman fell through the cracks. I didn't speak much for those two weeks, losing myself in the music of the revolution, enjoying the irony of listening to Dylan and Zeppelin on the way to my government job ("the Immigrant Song" struck me as particularly apt). I lived five minutes from the beach and found myself there often after work for those two weeks, standing in the water and thinking about the debilitating hopelessness that hit me like a mack truck sometimes, living where I did. I was ashamed of my luck, that I could leave it whenever I wanted for the greener and highly secured pastures of America. Mostly, I hated that I was the one behind the glass. There was just a thin sheet of glass separating me from that woman, that and fifty years, and I was the one who had to tell her that her dream was dead in the water.

I left my job at the embassy shortly thereafter, and I have had a hard time believing in the American dream ever since. Sometimes the people who are most skeptical of their product are the ones peddling it.

The Immigrants, pt. 1

Two Philippino women, one named Beatrice and one named Tillie, met in Tel Aviv Israel. Odd as it seems, it's a pretty common practice for Phillippinos to immigrate to Israel and surrounding areas, especially after the US military base in the Phillippines closed, thus cutting off a significant amount of employment opportunities for its citizens.

Beatrice was a dentist in the Phillippines, but because of the harsh state of the economy's effect on her ability to provide for she and her husband's three kids, she moved to Israel to become an embassy-provided maid. She managed to get home to see her kids usually once a year. Her dream was to get one of the embassy families she worked for to sponsor her so she could immigrate to the States. For people in Beatrice's position to immigrate, it was necessary for a family to cover their expenses and provide proof that the person in question would have a job working for them. The problem with this plan was that most families who had maids had them simply because they were provided by the embassy. Had it been at their own expense, they probably would not have been in the position to afford it. Therefore, the only maids who usually got sponsored were those who worked for people in highly paid positions, such as ambassadors, and then only when those ambassadors actually returned to the States. Eventually, when she became pregnant with her third child, Beatrice gave up for the moment on moving her family to the States, and contended herself just with moving back to be with them.

Tillie, on the other hand, finally found a family to sponsor her and her husband back to the States. They were awaiting the approval of their visa through the embassy, when an unexpected cable came from the State Department in early January, instituting a new immigration policy - immigration visas, from then on, would no longer be allowed to be issued through embassies. People whose visas had already been approved, they amended a few days later, would still be able to immigrate, but those who hadn't been approved yet, like Tillie, would just have to wait for another opportunity.

Both Tillie and Beatrice wanted to move to the United States because of the opportunity afforded them - because Beatrice didn't have to be a maid to make a living, and could get paid a full salary for her dentistry skills. Tillie could afford to start a family. Neither of them have achieved that particular dream yet, not because of lack of determination, not because of disillusionment, and not because of dumb luck, but because they have been prevented from doing so by the ever-stricter immigration laws imposed by the US government.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Mass Media of the Day

iTunes download:
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan

Not-So-Much-Obscure-As-It-Is-Badly-Reviewed Film:
"Bobby" (dir. Emilio Estevez)

Relevant Internet Reading:
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002173.html

The Disillusions, pt. 2 - a random sampling

"I always thought of the American dream as disillusionment, but nevertheless an inevitable pursuit by both citizens and immigrants of America." -a college student

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning ——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." -a novelist

"Remember the generational battles twenty years ago? Remember all the screaming at the dinner table about haircuts, getting jobs and the American dream? Well, our parents won. They're out living the American dream on some damned golf course in Vero Beach, and we're stuck with the jobs and haircuts." -a comedian

"I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare." -an activist

"...and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio..." -a poet

"When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." -a journalist

"The dream is over." -a musician

The Disillusions, pt. 1 - Dylan and Nelson

There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
And the bankers are takin' my home and my land from me
There's a big achin' hole in my chest now where my heart was
And a hole in the sky where God used to be

There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
There's a well with water so bitter nobody can drink
Ain't no way to get high and my mouth is so dry that I can't speak
Don't they know that I'm dyin', Why nobody cryin' for me?

My American dream
Fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means,
You tell me what it means.

My American dream
Fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means,
You tell me what it means.

(from "Heartland")

Friday, March 2, 2007

Mass Media of the Day (the Optimistic Entry)

iTunes download:
"A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane

Not-Remotely-Obscure-Film
"It's a Wonderful Life" by Frank Capra

Relevant Internet Reading:
http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1066

*Notes
-"A Love Supreme" is available only as an album - as well it should be. It's the best ten you've ever spent.
-all of the above, though seemingly disconnected, serve to illustrate the quieter side of the American dream, which is arguably its only consistently successful form. What they have in common is appreciation. You need it for the first, you see it in the second, and it's argued for in the third. Draw your own conclusions.

The Real Thing


He came from Norway, and she came from Sweden, but they met in Illinois. They got married, as people tend to do. He was the American ideal of an entrepeneur, even mining gold in Alaska for a little while that is now crumbled into glass disks that his grandaughters wear around their necks. They had children, and they moved to California, and the Depression didn't hit them quite as hard as it did the rest of the world. Sometimes they had a lot of money, sometimes not as much, but all in all it seems they had a good life.

Their daughter grew up to be a model, and while engaged to another soldier who was overseas, happened to meet the love of her life - another soldier on detour from his career as an artist - on leave in California. Her parents came from Scandinavia but met in Illinois. They came from Illinois but met in California. She soon broke up with her fiancee, and married her husband. They were together fifty-eight years before she died of pneumonia. He stood by her through cancer, lung disease, and losing both her legs to diabetes. She died while he was out getting lunch. It was a sad funeral, but he seemed content. I have, in fact, never seen someone so grateful just for having known someone. It was enough for him.

He still paints. After the War was over, he worked as an art director for the Coca-Cola corporation, advertising the idea of the American dream on a fizzing bottle of soda. And lest you be the cynical type about the advertisement of the American Dream, I like to think crass consumerism wasn't quite the case here - to him the picture of a smiling boy and girl weren't a lie or an illusion. It was just the truth (sponsored by Coca-Cola). He got to spend his life with his girl.

I asked him once what happened to his wife's ex-fiancee. He said he died an alcoholic after the war. He should've drank Coke instead, I thought.

Most artists back in his generation moved to Paris, opting for the starving artist life in pursuit of the posthumous fame of artistic success. I don't think he would have got on well with them. He's never sold a painting, but he seems content in the knowledge that he had the real thing - the wife he loved, the house, the children, the Life. It's another small story, and there aren't a whole lot of people to testify to it, but his wife died happy and from the looks of it he will someday too.

The happiest people I know just woke up every day, went to work, and came home to their family. Opportunity, to them, was taking what they had and making it into something better, and then regarding it with the satisfaction of a job well done, and of a life well led. It's not what they talk about in the movies we make, but it seems to me like the real thing.

In Its Simplest Form

Sometimes it takes a long time for the American dream to take.

In Cecil's case, it took a few generations. He grew up in an extremely impoverished part of the Scotch-Irish region of Arkansas. There's no written record of his birth, and as such we've never been sure just how old he is. His father says he was born in 1914, his mother insists it was 1915, and the census claims it was 1917. If you ask him how this is possible, he shrugs and says "I don't know, there were lots of babies being born at the time."

Most of his brothers died, and none of them ever finished school. Cecil was the first to finish. He went on to college, and to earn his Masters, and went on to become a director of welfare in California. After his first marriage dissolved, he married a nurse, and together they had nine children and adopted one. They have been together for almost sixty years, and of their ten children, one is a pastor and a professor, one is a special ed teacher, one is a retired fighter pilot and diplomat, one is a hospital administrator, one is a nurse, one is a dental hygienist, one works for NATO security, one is a pilot for Northwest, one is a helicopter pilot for the Coast Guard, and one is a fighter pilot. Between them, they have 32 children (all of which have gone to college, most of which have graduated) and 6 grandchildren. What is perhaps most impressive is that all of them seem genuinely happy - with their careers, in their marriage, for their children. There are fifty members of this family, and between them there has been no jail time or suicides. None of them are rich, but none of them are poor. And all of them seem content.

It maybe doesn't seem like a big dream on paper, but I'm betting it did in Arkansas around 1914, 15, or 17. And Cecil's name might not make history books, but it made quite an impact on at least fifty people in the world. There are no rags to riches stories in this family, no "poor kid from Arkansas who hits the big time," but there are fifty good people with fifty good lives, which seems like just enough.

Sometimes I think Goldilocks had a very good point - had she been a child today, I'm sure she would have shoveled down Papa Bear's porridge and demanded seconds. She didn't though, and I'm inclined to agree with her - there's something to be said for "just right."

A Welsch in Hollywood - Peg Entwistle's Dream



http://www.prairieghosts.com/hollywood3.html

http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=2304

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Welcome to Hollywood, What's Your Dream?

Hollywood is a district of Los Angeles that comprises roughly everything south of Mullholland, Laurel Canyon, Cahuenga and Barham, east of Beverly Hills and WeHo (West Hollywood to you non-Angelenos), north of Melrose, and west of the 5 freeway (or Franklin Ave., depending on who you ask).

And it's a piece of crap.

Nobody here wants to live in Hollywood. The execs live in Burbank, the directors live in the Palisades, the stars live in Malibu, the crew lives in the Valley, the well-paid crew lives on the Westside, or Los Feliz, or even Redondo; anywhere but Hollywood. Hollywood is where the struggling actors live, the failing screenwriters, the naive hopefuls who want to be right in the seedy center of the action. But honestly? There's not all that much action.

There are a few studios still in Hollywood: Paramount is still camped out at its border on Melrose, and Sunset-Gower is an institution of Sunset Boulevard. But for the most part? Movies shoot in Burbank, or Culver City, or sometimes Beverly Hills, but not in Hollywood.

Hollywood is for the fake Marilyn Monroes, who go out every afternoon to stand over fake grates on the Walk of Fame and wink at tourists. Hollywood is for the coked out clubbers, driving buzzed down Highland Ave. to the 101 at 4AM. But mostly? Hollywood is for the tourists. They drive down Sunset Blvd. at night when you can't see the trash on the sidewalks and marvel at the neon lights. They pass the Dome, Chateau Marmont, and the Rock and Roll Hyatt and they take pictures which they later label "Us in Hollywood," not realizing that they passed Hollywood proper back at the Seven Veils Strip Club.

Why am I telling you all this? Because for a shining symbol of the new American dream, Hollywood is really just the dirty center of a dirty city, sucking in the smog overhead and coughing it back out onto the street in the form of people who have been battered down by the dreams passing it and out of it every day. Once a year, they roll out the red carpet for Hollywood at the Kodak theatre, but the gold stansions still block its denizens out, importing instead ethereal figures from New Zealand, South Africa, London, and Malibu.

Everyone in America feels like they're on the outside looking in, and the in they think they're looking at is Hollywood, the glorious Hollywood of the bright sign on the hill - but that sign isn't even in Hollywood. The citizens are still on the outside looking frantically around for that Hollywood, but it's just a mirage coming off of the asphalt of the street that makes the sign look like a sign from heaven. It's just concrete.

The sign itself is now guarded by motion detectors, as a result of both a rash of vandalism (many of them due to Danny Finegood, an art student whom people referred to as "a makeover artist), and suicide attempts. The first of these was in 1932 - a struggling actress named Peg Entwistle dove off the "H," dying on impact. Heretofore, the sign stood for the dreams of thousands of hopefuls - it gave the illusion of shining, bright white opportunity. Peg's suicide established it as the symbol of the Hollywood paradox of failed dreams, and it has remained so to this day, inspiring a rash of copycat attempts until the stricter security measures were implemented. People are still trying to hang themselves from the Hollywood sign, but this time metaphorically, and much slower.

Mass Media of the Day

iTunes download:
"One Hit Wonder" by Everclear (album: So Much for the Afterglow)

Not-So-Obscure Movie:
American Dreamz (dir. by Paul Weitz)

Relevant Internet Reading:
http://deusexmalcontent.blogspot.com/2007/01/reality-check.htmlhttp://www.americansc.org.uk/Online/American_Dream.htm

The Slambook

From some old yearbooks:

Josephine Wallace - "Most Likely To Succeed."
Josie dropped out of her pre-law program when she got pregnant with her boyfriend's first set of twins. She is now pregnant with their third, he's waiting tables, and they're living in her parents basement.

Jennalee Jenkins - "Most Likely to Be a Country Singer"
Jenna tried out and was rejected for Nashville Star five times before landing her first boyfriend. She is now in possession of a heart-shaped rock from the aforementioned boyfriend, and will marry him in June, two days before she turns twenty-one.

Kevin Drake - "Best Smile"
Kevin is on his second tour in Iraq.

Ben Lawrence - "Most Likely to Play in the World Cup."
Ben lost his soccer scholarship because of drugs.

Scott Tanner - "Class Clown"
Scott made quite a lot of money on a really good idea he had for a website.

Jamie Daniels - "Biggest Blonde"
Jamie graduated with a degree in political science and is currently working for the mayor of New York. She's a brunette.

Matt Willett - "Most Likely to Become a Pastor"
Matt did graduate from a Christian college, where he formed a band whose songs have nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible that is currently climbing up the Indie music charts at a surprising rate. Their first tour has mostly sold out.

Laurelie Thompson - "Most Likely to Take Over the World"
Laurelie has been traveling constantly since she graduated summa cum laude from Brown University, (presumably prepping for her eventual takeover). Her travels have included China, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, the Dominican Republic, France, Russia and Kyrghystan. And that was just last year.

Dan Taylor - "Most Likely to Be the Next Stephen Spielberg."
Dan just directed his first music video.

Sarah Pfisterer - Nothing.
A bit of a nerd, Sarah was too quiet to garner a spot on the superlative page in high school. She is currently working her way up Capitol Hill, and has apparently conquered her shyness.

The Three F's: Fame, Fortune, and Failure to Attain Either

This is my friend Damon. He is an American that was born in the nation's capital, and then moved to Thailand three years later. Much to his chagrin, he was shipped back to America at seventeen to attend college.

Damon's not a big fan of Americans. Like many third culture kids, he disdains both the ignorance and arrogance of a large cross-section of Americans who think their country is, without exception, the best country in the world ("How can you even qualify that?!" he used to complain to me, angrily). He likes to think of himself as Thai, but the truth his he is far more American than he realizes. He is av avid tabloid reader, obsessed with Nicole Ritchie, and his ultimate goal is, of course, fame and fortune. I don't think it quite matters to him how he achieves it. He is currently pursuing modeling, but is also working on building up his song catalogue by constantly recording new material on his Mac-powered program for aspiring musicians, Garage Band.

I should qualify all this by saying that Damon isn't a shallow person. He is very intelligent, and his pursuits are backed up by genuine talent as well as hard work. However, he's had a difficult life, and his dreams have been the only thing to keep him going. To start things off, he was born with epilepsy. He grew up in a low-income family,working alongside his mother in the horrour of an AIDS orphanage. He attended the missionary school by right of his father, a Christian translator, and there came under many assaults, both physical and emotional, by schoolmates and teachers alike. He developed an eating disorder at twelve as a result of his epilepsy medication. He is gay, and was sent to counseling to overcome it for most of his life until he tired of trying to change himself and came out of the closet to the dismay of his family. He developed a brain tumour when he was eighteen and had to have surgery to remove it. He is currently living in the middle of the worst year of his life; a culmination of events has left him jobless and unable to afford food in favour of paying the rent. His dreams have always been to him a representative of escape - so much so that he has failed to realize it is this unflinching dream of fame and fortune that is causing him so much trouble in the reality of the here and now.

I met Damon when he was eighteen, and he is now like the wayward little brother I know I'm going to have to watch out for the rest of my life. He called me at three in the morning sobbing earlier this week, having lost another job which rendered him unable to eat for another week, and it had already been four days since his last meal. "Why don't you just come home?" I asked. "I can't give up," he said. "I have to do this." I have never quite understood his manic quest to prove himself, nor who exactly he is trying to prove himself to. Certainly not me, or his parents, or any of his other friends. Probably to himself, if we're honest.

Since his biggest in a long series of breakdowns, Damon has agreed to move back if things haven't improved by the time his lease is up in a month. The plan is for him to go to nursing school. It is, as he says, "his back-up plan."

I haven't yet told him that I don't think modeling is a good idea for him. He is good-looking, but as someone who's already struggled with an eating disorder and with a self-confessed tendency toward vanity, modeling stands out to me as an extremely dangerous career choice, and furthermore, I have never been entirely convinced that he would be happy doing it.

He would make a great nurse. He is good with people, quick to learn, and understands how to deal with patients because he has so often been one. So why is it just a back-up plan? The answer was obvious enough - because it wasn't enough of a creative outlet for his artistic leanings. But he's also an amazing photographer. His best work is undoubtedly his portraiture (which is, incidentally, how we met - I was the subject of one of his first portraits), but he has a wide range of impressive photos that call to mind masters of postmodern photography like David LaChapelle. Photography, however, isn't the dream either. Why? Because Damon, as much as he would like to deny it, is an American and was born with the birthright of an enormous chip on his shoulder and a point to prove. And as with so many people, fame is his way of proving it.

"I think I'm failing here," Damon wrote to me. "I think I'm in denial, and I'm slowly starting to lose hope in myself and my abilities. My fortitude has been a facade and every inch of the supposed confidence with which I write to you is counterfeit in full. Sometimes, no matter how much you hope for something, it never ends up happening. You can plant a thousand seeds in the richest soil on earth, but if there's a drought your hard work was in vain and there is truly nothing you can do to six the situation. The 'starving artist' idea is appealing (and tolerable) for a while...but not for five months. Five months with no real friends. Five months with no real jobs. Five months of dream chasing and I haven't moved an inch. Maybe it is time to throw in the towel, because sometimes dreams just weren't meant to be in the first place, and I think mine
might be one of them."

The failed American dream is the subject of more literature than its predecessor, and it is perhaps more relevant than the original ever was. The American dream is alive and well in its death, proving once again that it might just be time to revise it for the rising generation.

A place to live, food on the table, money in your pocket, and an education to back it up doesn't sound like too bad a dream anymore, does it?

The Upper Middle Class American Dream

Every Christmas, there's at least one commercial that opens with the following question "What do you get for someone who has everything?"

What indeed. There are millions of employees working forty hours a week to figure out the answer to just that question - what to get for the person that has everything - so Christmas gifts don't represent much of a problem anymore. Just ask an advertising agency, they'll think of something.

Less clear, however, is the problem of what the American dream means to someone who has already achieved it by rights of birth. For most middle class Americans, a college education, a home, and a sustainable income is not as out of reach as it once was - in fact, most grow up with these things as a given of American existence. So what is left to dream about?

Fame and Fortune. The two most dangerous words in the English language, and the two most desired. Most people want one or the other, but a rising amount of them will not be satisfied without both in equal measure.

At the Sundance Film Festival of 2003, an old professor of mine was standing in line waiting to get into yet another in a string of networking parties. As he waited, his breath coming out in hazy puffs, a thin whisp of a girl in a skimpy dress covered by a trendy animal print fur coat swept by him, and was admitted immediately.

Who was that? He thought to himself. A couple years and a few unauthorized sex videos later, he had his answer and more. It was Paris Hilton, hotel heiress. He watched her rise to fame with the bemusement of an industry veteran. "That girl's publicist," he said, as did so many others, "should get a Pulitzer Prize." Paris Hilton was started the wave of celebutantes, celebrities whose fame we can never quite trace back to its source. Talent be damnded, fame is now an example of circular reasoning - Paris Hilton achieved fame by being famous, and she's famous because she achieved fame.

According to her father's estate, Paris Hilton is set to inherit a little over $20 million. However, fortune was not enough for her. She wanted fame, and at the tender age of 26 she has more than achieved it, as well as roughly $15 million dollars of her own income.

When faced with the problem of having it all, one can really go either way. They can go the way of Bono, and trade up on their fame for influence, using their status to accomplish what humanitarian goals they have racked up in their lifetime of world travel, or they can go the way of LiLo, trading down for endless and cliche cycles of drugs, rehab, and ever-increasing (if bad) publicity. It should come as no surprise that the gap between the two is usually filled by age.

These are extreme examples, but they mark an important point on the scale of the American Middle Class. Where once to be a member of the middle class was the dream, it is now simply a a standard of mediocrity that one is born into and views as a starting point to something better. Presumably, this is because most people don't ever have to work all that hard to get there, and they cannot be satisfied with what is essentially a given for most. Survival is no longer the goal, nor is moderate success. In a constant quest of dissatisfaction, the sights have been set on immortality, and the closest anyone can get to that in this day and age is fame. Therefore, they will accept nothing less.

But even fame is getting easy. These days, all you need is an exuberant personality to get your fifteen minutes on whatever reality show is currently en vogue. You don't have to be smart to earn money, nor do you have to work particularly hard. You just have to get yourself a spot on Deal or No Deal. Supermodels are no longer ethereal and untouchable, they are that annoying and not all that attractive girl whining at you from your television screen because she got yelled at by Tyra Banks on America's Next Top Model.

So what is left to dream about? Got me, but don't worry - I'm sure the advertisers will come up with something.

Donny Osmond, the Willy Wonka of the American Dream

ABC is currently fasttracking a reality show pilot called "the Great American Dream Vote." It features eight weekly contestants, who pitch their dreams to an audience and square off in several rounds of competition, and ultimately letting America decide who is the most worthy to have their dream recognized. The host of this latest reality experiment is none other than Donny Osmond, who said of the show: "Debuting on network television at the age of 5 was exciting enough, but then 10 years later, a real-life dream came true: My sister and I became the youngest hosts in television history when 'The Donny & Marie Show' premiered on ABC in 1976. So hosting 'The Great American Dream Vote' for ABC represents a homecoming of sorts; moreover, in a clear case of life imitating art, it definitely represents another dream come true for me."

The casting calls all read some variation of this sentiment: "Want to be on the show? All you need is a dream to apply!" Along with the application, there is eight pages of fine print, as well as cautioning against dreams consisting of such things as making more money or finally buying a house. That, apparently, is still the realm of Oprah.

Mike Fleiss, producer of the show and veteran of such past reality events like the Bachelor, and Are You Hot? told Variety, "If it gets maudlin, it doesn't work. It can't be, 'Who Has the Biggest Tumor?'" Instead, he explains, think of "a mother of quintuplets who dreams of having a proper back yard" or "a 22-year-old bald guy who dreams of a life with hair."

According to Fleiss, the casting is open to "Anyone. With or without talent."

Good to know.

http://abc.go.com/site/casting.html
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3ia767a63ba2afa61be2d323cfd09a947f

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Mass Media of the Day

iTunes dowload:
"Old Man River" by Paul Robeson (Live at Carnegie Hall)

Obscure movie:
"Nothing But a Man (1964)," dir. by Michael Roemer

Relevant Internet Reading:
"New Millenium Nigga"
http://musingsnmn.blogspot.com/
(In particular, the video blog "What's Your Dream" and the print entry "Keep it Clean," both posted in February 2007)

*Random Pieces of Trivia:
-The original lyrics to "Old Man River" stated: "I'm tired of living, but scared of dying, but Old Man River, he just keeps rolling along." In Paul Robeson's version, he changed it to "I must keep fighting, until I'm dying, and Old Man River, he just keeps rolling along." It was Robeson's habit to change lyrics of old songs to reflect the current experience of Black America. He performed this version of the song in 1958.
-Though it was one of the first films to be released featuring a primarily African-American cast, "Nothing but a Man" was directed and produced by two Jewish men.

Thirty-Nine Years Later: A Random Sampling

-Victor goes to a private Christian university in Southern California. He cites the "I Have a Dream" speech when you ask him about the American dream, and to hear him tell it his people still have not achieved it. It routinely escapes Victor's notice that he is able to afford a school whose tuition costs over $30,000 a year.

-Lamar is a twenty-eight year old medical intern with a specialty in cardiology. When asked about the American dream, he will most likely shrug and give you the stock answer about opportunity. If you ask him whether he feels he has achieved it, he will indicate his stethoscope and say, "what does it look like?"

-Oprah Winfrey is perhaps the world's biggest proponent of the American dream, passing out like candy on her internationally syndicated television show.

-Darcelle is an officer in the United States Air Force. When asked about the American dream, she'll point you to the words "freedom" and "liberty," which can be found in any speech, pledge, document, or song that features the name "America." And you can forget about asking her whether or not she feels she has achieved it - she protects it every day.

-Barack Obama says this of the American dream: "For that is our unyielding faith - that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it." As far as whether he will achieve his own American dream - check back in November '08.

-Jaden is ten. He lives and goes to school in Crenshaw, a low-rent area of Los Angeles. What do you think of the American dream, Jaden? "I think it's cool," he says, grinning.

That may be the most profound answer yet.

You Can't Legislate Morality...or Apparently, Dreams

I'm a big fan of the aforementioned Martin. I understand most people are - and not just because black history month just ended. His influence seems to me to pass way beyond February.

If you're going to take advice from anyone on the American dream, there are worse resources than a preacher with a Ph D, or for that matter, an American icon.

"It wouldn’t take us long to discover the substance of [the American] dream," he says. "It is found in those majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, words lifted to cosmic proportions: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God, Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'" Martin is a literalist as well, it seems.

This was the dream of the forefathers, and for an exhaustive account of the details that went into it, one could do worse than to read the Federalist Papers. However, for the moment, we will accept the end result of those papers as the summary of the dream: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness....for all. In reference to this dream, Martin has some further things to say on the subject:

"The American dream reminds us, and we should think about it anew on this Independence Day, that every man is an heir of the legacy of dignity and worth....We are challenged to really believe that all men are created equal. And don’t misunderstand that. It does not mean that all men are created equal in terms of native endowment, in terms of intellectual capacity—it doesn’t mean that....what it does mean is that all men are equal in intrinsic worth."

That is what the dream means, according to Martin. So he must have found it ironic then, that a dream so uniquely American that it had been named such had not been even remotely realized within his time.

I don't have to tell you that Martin led a revolution to this end, that he ultimately became a martyr for it. Yet another irony in the life of Martin - to be martyred in a non-violent revolution is a tragic end indeed. And yet, he did what he came to do. It is no wonder he is often looked at as an almost Messianic figure - his death led to a greater good - desegregation, an improved effort on the part of the American government for civil rights, a society where black children are afforded the same rights as white children (for the most part). If Martin were alive today, I think he would be pleased to see that the racism of his day was largely a thing of the past.

However, I have my doubts that he would be satisfied. In his Independence Day sermon on the American dream, he went on to say the following: "This is why we must join the war against poverty and believe in the dignity of all work. What makes a job menial?....What makes it menial is that we don’t pay folk anything. Give somebody a job and pay them some money so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life. And no matter what the job is it takes on dignity."

The racism of yesterday, I believe Martin would say, has given way to classism. Black children are affored the same rights by the government that white children are. However, poor children are not afforded the same rights as rich children, and we often confuse that for racism because they so often look like the same thing.

Poverty is a constant problem for the citizens of the nation, and every new politician has a way to deal with it. As '08 approaches, we will hear more and more about their ideas for change, so I do not feel compelled to go into them now.

The fact is, what Martin was speaking of in this particular sermon had a lot less to do with governmental policies and a lot more to do with individual outlook. It is the reason he chose to deliver this speech in his home church, instead of in front of a national monument, as he did in his other more famous speech. Martin was speaking to the hearts of his people - every single one of them, individually.

Racism and classism, according to Martin, are moral problems above all else. But as the ACLU and other organizations for the rights of the American people often remind us, morality cannot be legislated, only law. You cannot tell a person how to be good, under the law.

The American dream - it's life, it's liberty, and it's pursuit of happiness - is centered around the entity of the individual rather than the government. It is the government's responsibility to ensure the rights of its citizens, and many would agree that following the Civil Rights Movement, it has taken care to correct its mistakes in this matter regarding racism. However, though its citizens rights are ensured under the law, their dreams are not - and this includes Martin's dream:

"I still have a dream this morning that truth will reign supreme and all of God’s children will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. And when this day comes the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'"

If history is any indication, there will never be a day when all men respect the intrinsic worth of other men. It certainly will not come as a result of the government mandate, but instead as a personal mandate, a mandate of conscience. Perhaps then, we would do well to revise our dream from affluence and fame, houses with little white picket fences and college educations, to simply treating each other how we would like to be treated. I believe this is what Martin may have had in mind.

Martin did an amazing amount to secure the fair and continued rights of his people - the "untouchables" of society, but I have to think that were he still here today, he would not be satisfied. I don't believe, however, he would be marching in any more revolutions. I believe he would be preaching quietly to his people, about love, and respect, and how to be good. There is only so much a nation's government can do, after all: it can ensure its citizens the opportunity of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rest we must do ourselves. That's the dream anyway.

Martin's Dream?

...should be obvious enough by now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk

But his American dream? Can be found right here:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/sermons/650704_The_American_Dream.html

Whether it came true or not? Well, that's up for debate.

Friday, February 23, 2007

The Natives are PISSED.

It seems appropriate to start out any exploration on the American dream with the natives of said country, so since I'm a literalist, we're going to start with my friend Roger, who is a Native American.

I lied about two and a half things in that sentence. 1) The Roger in question is not actually my friend. We've met on enough social occasions to be called thus, but to tell you the truth, we're not all that fond of each other; 2) His name isn't Roger either, but we covered that in my welcome post; and the other 1/2 has to do with the fact that the professor of my aforementioned course on the American dream came up with the idea of covering Native Americans first, not me.

Now that we've gotten that disclaimer out of the way, here are the things you need to know about Roger:

1) He prefers to be called an Indian, not a Native American;
2) He was one of the foremost members of the American Indian Movement in the seventies;
3) He thinks the American dream is bullshit.

The easiest of these to explain is the first one. As Roger explains it, Columbus wrote in his journals of Indio, not Indians. According to Roger, the name for the native tribes Columbus and his men stumbled upon came not from his mistaken theory that they had somehow landed in the West Indies, but from the Spanish term Indio - or, "of God," the idea being that Columbus was so impressed by these tribes that he deified them in his writing. I, of course, have no way of verifying this assertion, and nor does Roger. But that's not the point. The point is that, in Roger's mind, he would rather change history to suit his purposes than accept a politically correct term that he views as a condescension from a race he despises. And he does indeed despise them, the "them" in question being white Americans. He will tell you this openly, being the most refreshingly open racist I have ever had the curiosity to meet.

The thing is though, you can't really blame him. The wounds inflicted on Roger and his people from a surprisingly large swath of the aforementioned race are probably more fresh than the wounds on any other race in recent history. In his case, the wounds have become infected and gangrenous, to the point they have embittered him towards anything remotely related to what inflicted this wound on him in the first place: the white man.

Which brings us to number two. Roger was involved in many standoffs between the Indian movement and the American government in the seventies. It was a time, to hear those that were there tell it, of a sort of chaotic hope for revolution; the organized civil rights movements of the sixties had given way with the assassination of Reverend King to rowdy, violent demands for change. It was the time of the Black Panthers, and the time of AIM - the American Indian Movement. Roger was there when they took Alcatraz, and he was there when they raided the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, taking what documents they could use and burning those they could not. He was also there for the standoff at Wounded Knee.

They were coming off a long series of purported victories, and hope was running heedless and high. Things in the Oglala Lakota town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota were dismally bad, due to the goons elected by the BIA to keep the peace, who instead took advantage of its people. The Tribal Council met with and heard from both OSCRO (Oglala Sioux Civil Right Organization) and selected members from AIM (including Roger, among others) as to what to do about the problem at Pine Ridge. To hear Roger tell it, the men were all but bullied by the women of the Oglala tribe into taking a stand.

Take a stand they did. They took over Wounded Knee, and the next seventy-one days were spent in a stand-off with the BIA. Unfortunately, it devolved into violence as two Indian men were killed as well as a BIA officer. At the end of the stand-off, they surrendered willingly, believing they would be protected from any reprisals and that the issues raised would be investigated as promised by the government. This never happened, and on May 5th some sixty people were arrested, though none were ever convicted. Roger was one of them.

Since then, not much has changed for Roger's people except for reparations in the form of Indian casinos. For him, this is not nearly enough. He lives by the treaty of the first Wounded Knee Massacre, when his people were promised sovereignty over their land (South Dakota), and it was never delivered, and he is still waiting for that its delivery.

It should be obvious by now why Roger believes the American dream is bullshit. In fact, he blames it for the bad things that have happened to his people. The American dream, to him, is opportunism, and it is this opportunism that took advantage of his people. Roger would say that the American dream belongs to the white man. His dream is a dream of the past.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out if the problem here is Roger not adapting to the American dream, or the American dream not adapting to Roger. Many Native Americans have managed to live out their own "American dreams" perfectly happily - moving off the reservation, getting jobs, buying houses, starting families. But others (most certainly Roger) would argue that by doing so, they are abandoning a majour tenent of their culture, which is the communal aspect of reservation (formerly tribal) living.

Roger is not suffering, per se. There are people who are much worse off than he, who has three houses in Arizona, California, and South Dakota. He gets on well, but it's likely you will still see him around wearing long hair and a t-shirt that says "Fuck Nixon." To him, Nixon represents his image of the white man: manipulative, condescending, or to put it more simply, "full of shit." His grudge against Nixon extends to the entire American dream, and I can't imagine he is the only one to have ever held a grudge against such a sacred entity. For everyone who has accomplished their own American dream, it seems there is another who has been screwed over by it, and no matter where you look it seems there is always dissatisfaction. At least that's how it looks from the rez, and how it looks to Roger.

A Welcome and an Explanation

This blog was started in effort to form a conceptual map of the American dream. Since I'm in favour of both literalism and random samplings, this map will be formed geographically by choosing random representatives of different geographical and ethnic areas of the US. Names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

As far as the "Me" in the title is concerned - I am an American expat who has made the rounds throughout this country and a lot of others, met a lot of people, had a lot of dreams, taking a class on this very subject, and still couldn't tell you in a sentence just what this whole idea of an American dream is all about. That's kind of what this is about. That's really all you need to know about me, because contrary to what the title suggests, this blog has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the three hundred million other people populating the United States, what they want out of life, and what they get. So let's see what they (and I) come up with....