America Reflected: Language, Satire, Film, and the National Mind. Peter C. Rollins
guide to the collection and always has been ready to work with serious researchers.
In the late 1960s, Mrs. Celia Peckham Whorf invited me into her home on a number of occasions where she shared her personal knowledge of the more metaphysically ambitious half of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.” No researcher could be more grateful for the generosity shown by Mrs. Whorf, especially her sharing of unpublished manuscripts.
Work in film was encouraged and fostered by John E. O’Connor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. The Vietnam era in academe was a frosty one for this veteran; although John as citizen was adamantly against the war, he welcomed my ideas, even when he disagreed with them. Over the years, I have striven to reciprocate his generosity.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of my Marine Corps years. It was truly a “hands on” experience with the realities of history—or at least one set of them. While I was across the globe in a distant land, America fragmented. As a scholar, I have sought to gather the shards I found on my return, fusing together their slivered reflections of identities and ideologies into a picture that is richer and more meaningful than the whole of its sometimes jagged, diverse parts—a stained glass vision of hope and faith that echoes my admiration for the Oliver LaFarge windows at Boston’s Trinity Church. In 2010, the Marine Corps Memorial and Museum in Quantico, Virginia, will include a brick in its Walk of Honor. Maneuvering within the terse limitations on text, the brick will read: “ROLLINS. Daniel G., Dan. Jr., Peter C. WWII, Korea, Vietnam” in a dedication which celebrates family, corps, and country.
It would be impossible to thank everyone who provided intellectual inspiration, but those teaching in the undergraduate History and Literature Program at Harvard and, later, in the History of American Civilization graduate program gave me inspired academic training. As for my awareness of standards, all graduates from the “Am. Civ.” program in my era are constantly signaled by a “Perry Miller satellite” circling the earth in geosynchronous orbit, telling us to work harder, to work smarter, and to remember that Jonathan Edwards was the greatest mind America ever produced—despite his many detractors and misleading anthologizers. God bless Perry Miller and his industrious disciples who have studied the American Mind!
Beginning in 1997, Deborah Carmichael became a worthy colleague and friend. We toiled endless hours together. The professionalism she brought to the journal Film & History has carried over into her current performance as managing editor of The Journal of Popular Culture. In more recent days, this collection of essays was enhanced by the computer skills and dedication of Debbie Olson. Dr. Leslie Fife devoted considerable time and talent to shaping the text for publication. In all these instances, it has been a joy to see former students evolve into productive, scholarly peers.
Susan Rollins has been a steadfast companion and helper for the last two decades and, by her watchful supervision of the medical regimen, has kept me alive for the last eight of them. I am most grateful for her caring help and want to be one of the first to thank her for creating a cadre of docent “Ropers” at the Will Rogers Memorial. No one could have predicted such an important contribution to the cultural life of our State, but we are all grateful!
A number of these chapters first appeared in scholarly journals and general reader publications, only some of which are accessible—even in the day of the Internet. Ray Browne, as Editor of the Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of American Culture, published early versions of Chapters 1, 7, 12, 16, 19. The American Quarterly graciously published Chapters 9, 18. Always supportive of Will Rogers and film scholarship, the Chronicles of Oklahoma published Chapters 2, 3, 4, 32. John O’Connor of Film & History cheerfully carried Chapters 6, 14, 31. The World and I commissioned journalistic efforts that were the starting points for Chapters 10, 13, 15. Chapter 5 first appeared in the Literature/Film Quarterly. Last, but not least, the Proceedings of the Brookline Historical Society carried early talking papers expanded into Chapters 28 and 29. Chapter 8 began as a slide show for the Mid-America Linguistics Association and was published in its Proceedings. Special issues of the Journal of the Vietnam Veterans Institute carried early versions of Chapters 21, 22, 23. Many thanks to these publications for the opportunity to put them under one editorial roof. John Deveny contributed his Spanish language expertise to Chapter 24.
Like the chapters of this collection, its photographs have accumulated over the last forty years after visits to the Library of Congress; the U.S. Archives; the Marine Corps Historical Center; the Sherman Grinberg Film Libraries; the Houghton Library; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library; the Museum of Broadcasting; the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University; the Vietnam Archive, LaSalle University; the UCLA Film and Television Archive; the archives of ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS; the LBJ Presidential Library; the JFK Presidential Library; the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library; the Film Archive; the Bartlett Art Library; the Cadre Films Archive; the Center for the Study of Film and History Archive. Many thanks to these institutions for their support and encouragement.
Introduction
Peter C. Rollins
First as student and then as scholar, I found myself drawn to Orestes Brownson, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Will Rogers, and Hollywood’s motion pictures. Does such a diverse list suggest a fickle heart? Before you draw that conclusion, let me tell what I have found them to have in common. All show an acute consciousness of American values, reflecting them in creative ways that can deepen our awareness of their times. Will Rogers did this in syndicated weekly and daily newspaper articles as well as in more than seventy motion pictures. Benjamin Whorf, whose “linguistic relativity hypothesis” stemmed from his studies of Native American languages, stepped outside his time, hoping to share an Emersonian vision of human harmony with self, society, and Nature. Audubon, Stowe, and Brownson all wrestled in unique ways with the political and spiritual aspirations of their day while Brookline’s Frederick Henry Hedge and Amy Lowell evinced mind-sets cultivated by a privileged Boston suburb. And, of course, the movie culture has constantly influenced and reflected American values and visions—as much now as ever. Wars are constantly with us and so are war films, often shaping and reflecting national mood swings. These journalists, artists, philosophers, and genre influences are the focal points for America Reflected: Language, Satire, Film, and the National Mind, a selection of my scholarly efforts over the last forty years.
America Reflected: Beginning with Brownson
My initiation to cultural studies began with an undergraduate honors thesis devoted to Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876). Brownson seemed like a productive choice because he had been committed to so many different movements and publications from the 1820s through the 1870s: he was more than just a social activist and prominent democratic spokesman; he was also a philosopher for whom epistemology and faith were paramount.
Orestes A. Brownson (1803-1876)
Orestes A. Brownson: Epistemology of a Crucified Redeemer explored the relationships among the following elements: political activism for a just society, epistemological investigation of how we know, and a search for faith in an era of “isms.” Brownson sought salvation through service as a public intellectual. Like John Bunyan’s allegorical Pilgrim, he trudged from movement to movement, ultimately losing faith in the demos after the “hard cider” presidential campaign of 1840—it was won by the Whig, William Henry Harrison, rather than the incumbent democrat, Martin Van Buren. After a few years of wandering in a spiritual wasteland, Brownson embraced Catholicism—which he valued as a hierarchical faith privileging the intellectual elite, while also caring for the laboring classes. The lesson derived from a close study of the evolving perspective recorded in Brownson’s Boston Quarterly Review (1838-1842) was that cultural historians must be simultaneously attentive to politics, and myth, as well as philosophical issues often overlooked by historians who can be myopic in their search for “cold, hard facts.”
During my undergraduate years (1959-1963), students and teachers were excited by such books as The Virgin Land (1950) and Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (1962)—both pioneering studies of America’s popular myths and symbols. Henry Nash Smith, in his classic Virgin