Oh, how I wish you were here inTucumcari, on Route 66, watching Rawhide eps with me and my “other” fan friends, and eating (REALLY! NO KIDDING!!) “Favor Stew” and “Rowdy Cobbler” and “ Pete’s beans” and Mushy soft drinks”
steinberg: this is john silver. he’s smart and cunning and manipulative and selfish and loyal and loving and [abruptly cuts off, tipping the proverbial microphone at the crowd] me at the top of my lungs: HE’S TRAUMATIZED AND HE’S JEWISH AND HE’S BI AND HE’S TERRIFIED AND COMPLICATED AND HE’S SPANISH AND HE’S GREEK AND HE’S MIDDLE EASTERN AND HE’S EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE AND HE’S ME AND HE’S YOU AND HE’S– steinberg:
Oh yes. Silver can “be us”, much more so than Flint, because we know so much more about Flint’s backstory, and emotions, and weak spots. It’s great to read about all those different Silvers, provided they have the two (imo) essential features of “who John Silver is”, namely self-sufficiency and irony.
Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? If no one remembers a time before there was an England, then no one can imagine a time after it.And they know that.That’s why they’re so terrified of you and I.If we were able to take Nassau, if we are able to expose the illusion that England is not inevitable, if we are able to incite a revolt that spreads across the New World then, yeah I imagine people are gonna notice.-Flint,4×03
Had fun sightseeing with other baby boomer nutcases, ahem, Rawhide fans. We all watched two Season 1 Incidents, “Dry Drive” and “Golden Calf”. Golden Calf is a fairly predictable redemption story, “Dry Drive” I read as a complex discourse on masculinity:
– Old Jesse Hode’s model (authoritarian, violent, law-flouting) is doomed to be defeated by everyone (see below)
– Favor’s model (somewhat less authoritarian, less violent, law-abiding) is the dominant discourse, BUT …
– … even this model is eventually going to be superseded by Jim Hode (not authoritarian, prefers negotiation to confrontation, almost completely non-violent, with the exception of the fist-fight with Rowdy)
Up until tonight I had unreservedly approved of Mrs Hode (tries to negotiate, tries to make a clean, attractive room of her own, even if it’s a parlourful of fringes and knick-knacks, AND defeats her husband by turning his tactics against him). BUT the end of the episode sees her confined to her parlour, advised (nay, told) by Favor to leave her men alone to sort themselves out.
I know that it is unwise to read old texts with today’s eyes and values, but analysing the way they are constructed can help us recognise the strategies of, in this case, patriarchal power in order to oppose them if (when!) they reappear in our time. P.S. Tried to make this point with the other 8 baby boomers. Two agreed, a couple said nothing, the others sighed at my tendency to step onto soapboxes. Oy.
mici's campfire 