tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/biopic-8948/articlesBiopic – The Conversation2023-11-30T10:21:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186662023-11-30T10:21:08Z2023-11-30T10:21:08ZArchie: Cary Grant drama doesn’t shy away from the actor’s dark side<p>Towards the end of <a href="https://www.itv.com/watch/archie-the-man-who-became-cary-grant/7a0170/7a0170a0001">Archie</a>, a new four-part ITV drama about the life of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cary-Grant">Cary Grant</a>, the actor (played at this stage by Jason Isaacs) muses: “Leave the past in the past where it belongs. If you’re not careful, it becomes a trap.” Yet the series suggests that, even at the height of his Hollywood fame, Grant could never truly forget his deprived origins in Bristol as a boy called Archibald Leach.</p>
<p>Archie doesn’t offer a linear account of Grant’s life, but instead cuts continuously between his humble English beginnings and later Hollywood success. There’s particular focus on the period during the early 1960s when he pursued, married and divorced the young screen star <a href="https://walkoffame.com/dyan-cannon/">Dyan Cannon</a>, who was 33 years his junior.</p>
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<p>The remarkable transformation in Grant’s fortunes is evoked by details of colour and setting. Dull browns and greens predominate in the Bristol sequences, whereas the scenes set in California glow red, orange and yellow. The cramped backyard of Archie Leach’s childhood home gives way to the spacious garden of Cary Grant’s Los Angeles mansion, replete with swimming pool.</p>
<p>Yet the fluid composition of the drama suggests that, for Grant, there was no definitive break with his past. Young Archie, carrying memories of material and emotional deprivation in England, remained with him even as Grant lived a glamorous alternative life in the US.</p>
<h2>Light and dark</h2>
<p>Archie’s account of classic Hollywood is, at times, slight rather than probing. While we see Grant’s rechristening by a studio that believes his given name of Archie Leach “won’t cut it”, we seldom observe the workings of the promotional machinery that consolidated his star image. </p>
<p>Fleeting traces, rather than thick evidence, are provided of the “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Heavenly-Bodies-Film-Stars-and-Society/Dyer/p/book/9780415310277">pin-ups, public appearances, studio handouts</a>” and media interviews that were central to the manufacture of a mid-century movie star. </p>
<p>Yet Archie still represents a striking addition to the category of the film star biopic. In demystifying its charismatic subject, it observes genre norms: recall how stars are treated frankly by movies such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103939/">Chaplin</a> (1992) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0352520/">The Life and Death of Peter Sellers</a> (2004). What is distinctive about this series, however, is that it shows the discomfort of a Hollywood icon usually taken to be the epitome of unruffled poise. </p>
<p>Film historian <a href="https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/david-thomson/the-new-biographical-dictionary-of-film-6th-edition/9780349141114/">David Thomson argues</a> that Grant’s screen presence was more complex than is often allowed. He could be “attractive and unattractive simultaneously”, radiating both “light” and “dark”. This sense of Grant’s duality, of sun and shadow coexisting, runs through Archie.</p>
<p>But the series does not look for Grant’s many sides in his film performances. Other than showing him with Mae West in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/She-Done-Him-Wrong">She Done Him Wrong</a> (1934), say, or with Audrey Hepburn in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056923/">Charade</a> (1963), Archie generally keeps away from Hollywood studios. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, in Isaacs’ fine performance as the older Grant, his charm is positioned as adjacent to his cruelty. The portrayal of his relationship with Cannon (Laura Aikman), especially, shows Grant exhibiting increasingly controlling behaviour.</p>
<h2>The women in Grant’s life</h2>
<p>The biopic is among the least generous of film genres – focusing attention upon an individual and depriving others who come into their orbit of oxygen. But Archie deviates from the norm, telling the stories of others besides Grant.</p>
<p>Cultural historian <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=t3qpDwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions">Michael Newton observes</a> that stars in classic Hollywood rarely exist “as individuals”. Instead, they enter into pairings, living in “the realm of relatedness”. He has in mind such on-screen duos as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. </p>
<p>Archie is uninterested in exploring film partnerships: Katharine Hepburn, with whom Grant made four movies, is absent here. As compensation, however, it brings into view two significant women in Grant’s off-screen life: Cannon and his mother, Elsie Leach (Harriet Walter).</p>
<p>The audience is discouraged from sharing Elsie’s withering assessment of Cannon as “a fluttery little thing”, with “no substance”. Instead, in Aikman’s spirited performance, Cannon is marked by pain and vulnerability as well as career aspiration. To a modest extent, the series becomes her biopic as well as Grant’s.</p>
<p>Grant’s relationship with his mother is also given significant screen time – though their dynamic is portrayed as a troubling one. Elsie was incarcerated in a psychiatric institution by her husband following the death of Grant’s young brother and spent 20 years there. Home movie-style footage of her dancing as an older woman with Grant could be showing romantic partners. When Grant tells her he is marrying Cannon, she sounds like another potential suitor in insisting: “I can make you happy.”</p>
<p>It would be wrong to overstate the darkness of Archie. Like its subject, the series is light on its feet and generates easygoing pleasure – and the mood brightens late on, as Grant becomes a parent for the first time. Nevertheless, in its bleaker sequences, the series powerfully shows the high price that Archie paid in becoming Cary Grant.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dix does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The series cuts between Cary Grant’s humble English beginnings and later Hollywood success.Andrew Dix, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Film, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1844622022-09-19T20:13:31Z2022-09-19T20:13:31ZBlonde: Joyce Carol Oates’ epic Marilyn Monroe novel captures the violence of celebrity myth-making<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481446/original/file-20220829-48396-cjqzte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Blonde Netflix</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Marilyn Monroe died <a href="https://theconversation.com/marilyn-monroe-why-are-we-still-obsessed-60-years-after-her-death-187818">60 years ago</a>, on August 4 1962. And on September 28, Netflix will release <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781841153728/blonde/">Blonde</a>, a film by Australian director Andrew Dominik, starring Cuban actress Ana de Armas as Monroe.</p>
<p>It’s an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ bestselling novel of the same name: an epic doorstop of a book that was shortlisted for the 2000 National Book Award and 2001 Pulitzer Prize.</p>
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<p>When Oates’ novel was previously adapted as a 2001 TV miniseries, starring Australian actress Poppy Montgomery, it opened with the disclaimer that it was fiction: an approach that, as Variety critic Steven Oxman <a href="https://variety.com/2001/tv/reviews/blonde-1200468468/">wrote at the time</a>, “allows the creators to be far more imaginative in their suppositions about the characters’ private thoughts”.</p>
<p>Oates has always insisted Blonde is a work of imagination. It’s a towering literary achievement. Eschewing a realist biographical narrative, Blonde contains multiple voices and perspectives; it’s also allusive and formally adventurous. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/would-marilyn-monroes-career-and-life-have-been-different-if-she-had-acted-on-stage-70117">Would Marilyn Monroe's career (and life) have been different if she had acted on stage?</a>
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<p>Rather than seeking to dispel Marilyn’s legend, Oates interrogates its power. She <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/joyce-carol-oatess-blonde-is-the-definitive-study-of-american-celebrity">saw Blonde</a> “as my Moby Dick, the powerful galvanizing image about which an epic might be constructed, with myriad levels of meaning and significance”. It’s also a sweeping portrait of 20th-century America – its sport, politics, religion, literature, culture, mental health, urban renewal and decay.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Netflix’s Blonde, to be released on 23 September, is Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel of the same name.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>A postmodern ‘bio-novel’</h2>
<p>In his 1995 book <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674940987">Visions of the Past</a>, historian Robert Rosenstone describes a “historically reinventive” kind of biopic “that, refusing the pretense that the screen can be an unmediated window onto the past, foregrounds itself as a construction”. </p>
<p>For Rosenstone, such stories don’t </p>
<blockquote>
<p>attempt to recreate the past realistically. Instead they point to it and play with it, raising questions about the very evidence on which our knowledge of the past depends, creatively interacting with its traces.</p>
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<p>Blonde is just such a postmodern bio-novel, and Dominik’s film shows every promise of being such a <a href="https://offscreen.com/view/todd-haynes-im-not-there-and-the-postmodern-biopic">postmodern</a> <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/tesla-movie-review-ethan-hawke-1044700/">biopic</a>. But online pushback against the film has already blistered (like <a href="https://www.self.com/story/joyce-carol-oates-foot-hiking-in-sandals">Oates’ foot</a> after that time she went hiking in sandals).</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://twitter.com/storytails/status/1524322271334223873">angry social media users</a> feel because it’s based on a novel, Blonde will become a misleadingly canonical account of its protagonist’s life, “when what Marilyn Monroe deserves, apart from Respect is The Truth”.</p>
<p>That the film includes sexual violence <a href="https://twitter.com/riverandkurt/status/1557297035509841920">has upset others</a> who interpreted this as Dominik’s own prurient creative choice: a male director symbolically re-violating a now-dead abused woman who cannot speak for herself.</p>
<p>Such criticisms exasperate me. Blonde summons, as only fiction can, the violence of being mythologised. Its protagonist insists heroically on her right to be seen and valued as herself; yet her betrayal, her tragedy, is to be extinguished by the ideas others project onto her.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-postmodernism-20791">Explainer: what is postmodernism?</a>
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<h2>Archetypes and ambiguities</h2>
<p>Oates deliberately characterises separate aspects of her protagonist, to show overlapping views of her. She is Norma Jeane, an earnest, conscientious girl who’s smart, introspective, perceptive, eager to excel and hungry for love.</p>
<p>“Marilyn Monroe” (at first always in quote marks) is the work: the studio confection that bled through painfully into real life, so that many people confused this suite of subtle performances with Norma Jeane, the gifted performer.</p>
<p>The Blond Actress is the celebrity: the Warholian cipher whose “private” life became public property. She is always viewed from outside, sometimes menacingly.</p>
<p>Then there are the almost <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes">Jungian archetypes</a> of the Fair Princess and Beggar Maid (and the Dark Prince). Young Norma Jeane seizes on these archetypes in her tumultuous early life with her schizophrenic mother, who worked within the movie studio system. Left to watch movies for hours, Norma Jeane intuitively absorbs Hollywood’s fairytale storytelling, using it to bandage what Oates treats as a primal, ultimately fatal psychic wound: her unloving mother and unknown father.</p>
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<span class="caption">Norma Jeane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Conover/US Army</span></span>
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<p>The book glides effortlessly from interiority to voyeurism. Italicised sentences permeate the text like whispers: Norma Jeane’s own reflections, the impressions of others she encounters, or even a collective unconscious. “<em>It’s history. What happens to us. No one to blame.</em>”</p>
<p>Sometimes Oates uses a Greek-chorus-like “we”, in the same wistful, retrospective way as Jeffrey Eugenides’ <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780008485160/the-virgin-suicides/">The Virgin Suicides</a>. Sometimes the novel follows shadowy, nefarious spies and stalkers who could equally be federal agents or paparazzi.</p>
<p>Oates sets up an unsettling ambiguity: is the Blond Actress being photographed for the gossip media or surveilled by the state? Blonde is full of satisfyingly traced connections between the different modes of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486">the gaze</a> that characterised a woman whose gift – and curse – was her mastery of to-be-looked-at-ness.</p>
<p>Her soon-to-be husband, The Playwright (the archetype Oates constructs of Arthur Miller) notes, as do her various directors, that <a href="https://theconversation.com/would-marilyn-monroes-career-and-life-have-been-different-if-she-had-acted-on-stage-70117">her magic isn’t theatrical</a>, intended for a live audience. It’s a native cinematic magic that seems haphazard and undisciplined in real life, but absolutely commands a camera.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Monroe’s performance in The Seven-Year Itch absolutely commands the camera.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Performance as magical sacrifice</h2>
<p>Oates emphasises how wrenchingly hard-won this alchemy is. Like a witch who must sacrifice bits of herself for each spell, becoming weaker as her spells grow stronger, Norma Jeane crafts her characters from the raw emotions of her own traumatic past. </p>
<p>She can’t <em>be</em> Marilyn until she can summon her shadow self, her fetch, her Friend in the Mirror: a magical persona through whom she does her acting. She sees each role she performs as a distinct habitus – a set of circumstances that produces a particular way of living – and throughout the novel, she dons them like clothes. Indeed, the chapters are named after her characters.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-moscow-stage-to-monroe-and-de-niro-how-the-method-defined-20th-century-acting-179088">From the Moscow stage to Monroe and De Niro: how the Method defined 20th-century acting</a>
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<p>This is a sophisticated, intellectually exhilarating interpretation of Monroe’s work. Peppered with references to <a href="https://theconversation.com/hollywood-has-got-method-acting-all-wrong-heres-what-the-process-is-really-about-172568">method-acting</a> handbooks by Konstantin Stanislavski and Michael Chekhov, the novel is aware of its own performativity. Because I had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/04/why-are-we-all-still-obsessed-with-marilyn-monroes-eyebrow-pencil">previously researched</a> Monroe’s life and career, I recognised how shrewdly Oates has assembled it from the contested “facts” of Monroe’s life. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Norma Jeane’ crafts her characters from the raw emotions of her own traumatic past – and her performance in Bus Stop was among her most personal.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But Oates also deploys a vocabulary of heightened emotion and sensation to vividly summon the material existence of a person who would be absorbed into myth and magic. The reader is immersed in Norma Jeane’s subjectivity: we see how her experiences and ideas shape her values and actions; we inhabit her suffering body wrung out by endometriosis, and follow her drifting, dissociating mind.</p>
<p>A scene that has already stirred controversy in the film adaptation – in which studio boss “Mr Z” rapes 21-year-old Norma Jeane – forms one of the book’s most thematically rich and formally experimental chapters. Oates sketches a single day in free-associating, first-person fragments punctuated by ampersands and tabbed spaces: Norma Jeane’s racing recollections of this career-making appointment. </p>
<p>Mr Z shows her his “aviary”, where, like Bluebeard’s wife, she’s shocked that his birds are taxidermy objects, posed in elaborate sets “as in a cave inside a box or a coffin”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yet I saw the AVIARY was fascinating the more I stared for the birds were beautiful & lifelike not seeming to grasp that they were dead I seemed to hear a voice like Mother’s <em>All dead birds are female, there is something female about being dead</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Death stalks this stunning novel; but Blonde also confers immortality. To quote one of its epigraphs, from drama theorist <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Actor_s_Freedom/FdZSAAAAMAAJ?hl=en">Michael Goldman</a> (to whom Oates dedicated the book): “The acting area is a sacred space … where the actor cannot die.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mel Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Joyce Carol Oates saw Blonde, her epic novel interrogating the legend of Marilyn Monroe, as ‘my Moby Dick’. Mel Campbell celebrates Oates’ achievement, in the lead-up to the Netflix adaptation.Mel Campbell, Subject Coordinator, Publishing and Communications, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849022022-06-22T18:12:15Z2022-06-22T18:12:15ZWas there anything real about Elvis Presley?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469881/original/file-20220620-24-8ektb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C40%2C2213%2C1450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pinpointing Elvis Presley's true persona can depend on when and whom you ask.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-elvis-presley-looking-tired-and-somewhat-dejected-news-photo/50420521?adppopup=true">Don Cravens/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Baz Luhrmann’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkfplKD46Hs">Elvis</a>,” there’s a scene based on actual conversations that took place between Elvis Presley and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004596/">Steve Binder</a>, the director of <a href="https://www.blogtalkradio.com/feisty-side-of-fifty/2022/04/28/steve-binder-elvis-68-comeback-the-story-behind-the-special">a 1968 NBC television special</a> that signaled the singer’s return to live performing. </p>
<p>Binder, an iconoclast unimpressed by Presley’s recent work, had pushed Elvis to reach back into his past to revitalize a career stalled by years of mediocre movies and soundtrack albums. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_I4h_Wm_aY">According to the director</a>, their exchanges left the performer engrossed in <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/elvis-presley-comeback-special-1968-50th-anniversary">deep soul-searching</a>.</p>
<p>In the trailer to Luhrmann’s biopic, a version of this back-and-forth plays out: Elvis, portrayed by Austin Butler, says to the camera, “I’ve got to get back to who I really am.” Two frames later, Dacre Montgomery, playing Binder, asks, “And who are you, Elvis?”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p072703">scholar of southern history</a> who has written a book about Elvis, I still find myself wondering the same thing.</p>
<p>Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. Once, when informed of a potential biography in the works, <a href="https://www.proquest.com/magazines/making-presley-biography/docview/2509565622/se-2?accountid=196683">he expressed doubt</a> that there was even a story to tell. Over the years, he had submitted to numerous interviews and press conferences, but the quality of these exchanges was erratic, frequently characterized by superficial answers to even shallower questions. </p>
<p>His music could have been a window into his inner life, but since he wasn’t a songwriter, his material depended on the words of others. Even the rare revelatory gems – songs like “If I Can Dream,” “Separate Ways” or “My Way” – didn’t fully penetrate the veil shrouding the man. </p>
<p>Binder’s philosophical inquiry, then, was not merely philosophical. Countless fans and scholars have long wanted to know: Who was Elvis, really?</p>
<h2>A barometer for the nation</h2>
<p>Pinpointing Presley can depend on when and whom you ask. At the dawn of his career, admirers and critics alike branded him the “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Elvis_Presley/NqCQo9nqVHYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22elvis%22+%22bobbie+ann+mason%22&printsec=frontcover">Hillbilly Cat</a>.” Then he became the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a <a href="https://www.historynet.com/rock-n-roll-n-race-a-fresh-look-at-the-keystone-of-the-elvis-presley-legend/">musical monarch</a> that promoters placed on a mythical throne.</p>
<p>But for many, he was always the “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203700648-22/king-white-trash-culture-elvis-presley-aesthetics-excess-annalee-newitz-matt-wray">King of White Trash Culture</a>” – a working-class white southern rags-to-riches story that <a href="https://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51286&sid=9bb9e7df80f341cfbdcc376d828e8d21">never quite convinced the national establishment</a> of his legitimacy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man with blue eyes and sideburns speaks into microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elvis Presley during a press conference at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/elvis-presley-close-up-taken-on-his-first-trip-to-nyc-at-news-photo/529306471?adppopup=true">Art Zelin/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These overlapping identities capture the provocative fusion of class, race, gender, region and commerce that Elvis embodied.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most contentious aspect of his identity was the singer’s relationship to race. As a white artist who profited greatly from the popularization of a style associated with African Americans, Presley, throughout his career, worked under <a href="https://www.southerncultures.org/article/elvis-presley-politics-popular-memory/%20%22%22">the shadow and suspicion of racial appropriation</a>.</p>
<p>The connection was complicated and fluid, to be sure. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/05/25/elvis-presley-rock-and-roll-graceland/%20%22%22">Quincy Jones</a> met and worked with Presley in early 1956 as the musical director of CBS-TV’s “Stage Show.” In his 2002 <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Q/zs1ixtkcJU8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22quincy+jones%22+%22memoir%22+%22elvis%22&printsec=frontcover">autobiography</a>, Jones noted that Elvis should be listed with Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson as pop music’s greatest innovators. However, by 2021, in the midst of a changing racial climate, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/quincy-jones-michael-jackson-elvis-presley-1234955138/">Jones was dismissing Presley as an unabashed racist</a>.</p>
<p>Elvis seems to serve as a barometer measuring America’s various tensions, with the gauge less about Presley and more about the nation’s pulse at any given moment.</p>
<h2>You are what you consume</h2>
<p>But I think there’s another way to think about Elvis – one that might put into context many of the questions surrounding him.</p>
<p><a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellows-book/a-troubled-feast-american-society-since-1945/">Historian William Leuchtenburg</a> once characterized Presley as a “consumer culture hero,” a manufactured commodity more image than substance.</p>
<p>The assessment was negative; it also was incomplete. It didn’t consider how a consumerist disposition may have shaped Elvis prior to his becoming an entertainer. </p>
<p>Presley reached adolescence as a post-World War II consumer economy was hitting its stride. A product of unprecedented affluence and pent-up demand caused by depression and wartime sacrifice, it provided almost <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/highlights-guide-consumer">unlimited opportunities for those seeking to entertain and define themselves</a>.</p>
<p>The teenager from Memphis, Tennessee, took advantage of these opportunities. Riffing off the idiom “you are what you eat,” Elvis became what <a href="https://kennedy.byu.edu/you-are-what-you-eat/">he consumed</a>.</p>
<p>During his formative years, he shopped at <a href="https://lanskybros.com/">Lansky Brothers</a>, a clothier on Beale Street that outfitted African American performers and provided him with secondhand pink-and-black ensembles. </p>
<p>He tuned into the radio station <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/wdia-radio-station-1947/">WDIA</a>, where he soaked up gospel and rhythm and blues tunes, along with the vernacular of black disk jockeys. He turned the dial to WHBQ’s “Red, Hot, and Blue,” a program that had <a href="https://memphismusichalloffame.com/inductee/deweyphillips/">Dewey Phillips</a> spinning an eclectic mix of R&B, pop and country. He visited <a href="https://www.poplartunes.com/">Poplar Tunes</a> and <a href="http://thedeltareview.com/album-reviews/the-young-willie-mitchell-and-ruben-cherrys-home-of-the-blues-records/">Home of the Blues</a> record stores, where he purchased the music dancing in his head. And at the <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4183">Loew’s State</a> and <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14070">Suzore #2</a> movie theaters, he took in the latest Marlon Brando or Tony Curtis movies, imagining in the dark how to emulate their demeanor, sideburns, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducktail">ducktails</a>.</p>
<p>In short, he gleaned from the nation’s burgeoning consumer culture the persona that the world would come to know. Elvis alluded to this in 1971 when he provided a rare glimpse into his psyche upon receiving a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9HWlYoR40A%20%22%22">Jaycees Award</a> as one of the nation’s Ten Outstanding Young Men:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times … I’d like to say that I learned very early in life that ‘without a song, the day would never end. Without a song, a man ain’t got a friend. Without a song, the road would never bend. Without a song.’ So, I’ll keep singing a song.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In that acceptance speech, he quoted “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200215452/">Without a Song</a>,” a standard tune performed by artists including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Roy Hamilton – seamlessly presenting the lyrics as if they were words directly applicable to his own life experiences.</p>
<h2>A loaded question</h2>
<p>Does this make the Jaycees recipient some sort of “odd, lonely child reaching for eternity,” as Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, tells an adult Presley in the new “Elvis” film?</p>
<p>I don’t think so. Instead, I see him as someone who simply devoted his life to consumption, a not uncommon late 20th-century behavior. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/dec/19/highereducation.uk2">Scholars have noted that</a> whereas Americans once defined themselves through their genealogy, jobs, or faith, they increasingly started to identify themselves through their tastes – and, by proxy, what they consumed. As <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/me-the-self-and-i/201904/how-do-we-form-identities-in-consumer-society">Elvis crafted his identity</a> and pursued his craft, he did the same.</p>
<p>It also was evident in how he spent most of his downtime. A tireless worker on stage and in the recording studio, those settings nevertheless demanded relatively little of his time. For most of the 1960s, he made three movies annually, each taking no more than a month to complete. That was the extent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/elvis-presley-was-paid-a-kings-ransom-for-sub-par-movies-because-they-were-marketing-gold-81586">his professional obligations</a>.</p>
<p>From 1969 to his death in 1977, only 797 out of 2,936 days were devoted to performing <a href="https://www.concertarchives.org/bands/elvis-presley">concerts</a> or recording in the <a href="https://blackgold.org/GroupedWork/d29f6423-5784-ccf6-6ca1-cff37b9081e9-eng/Home">studio</a>. Most of his time was dedicated to vacationing, playing sports, riding motorcycles, zipping around on go-karts, horseback riding, watching TV and eating.</p>
<p>By the time he died, Elvis was a shell of his former self. Overweight, bored, and chemically dependent, he appeared <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/04/07/elvis-in-his-prime-was-america-now-america-is-elvis-in-decline/">spent</a>. A few weeks before his demise, a Soviet publication <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/07/29/archives/notes-on-people.html">described him</a> as “wrecked” – a “pitilessly” dumped product victimized by the American consumerist system. </p>
<p>Elvis Presley proved that consumerism, when channeled productively, could be creative and liberating. He likewise demonstrated that left unrestrained, it could be empty and destructive.</p>
<p>Luhrmann’s movie promises to reveal a great deal about one of the most captivating and enigmatic figures of our time. But I have a hunch it will also tell Americans a lot about themselves.</p>
<p>“Who are you, Elvis?” the trailer hauntingly probes.</p>
<p>Maybe the answer is easier than we think. He’s all of us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael T. Bertrand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. His music could have been a window into his inner life, but he didn’t even write his songs.Michael T. Bertrand, Professor of History, Tennessee State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1185992019-06-23T19:50:25Z2019-06-23T19:50:25ZIn Never Look Away we finally have a painter biopic offering insight into the creative process<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280402/original/file-20190620-149835-1y7zil6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tom Schilling as Kurt Barnert – a slightly blurred facsimile of the famous German artist Gerhard Richter – in Never Look Away.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pergamon Film, Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion, Beta Cinema </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Depicting the moment of creative inspiration has been a challenge for filmmakers since the first ribbon of film rattled its way past a camera lens. In numerous films, the artist’s studio has been mythologised as a tantalising mystery, a place of transgression, of wild imaginings and not infrequently, of sexual license and debauchery. </p>
<p>In search of a window into that most mysterious of all human activities – the creative imagination – historians, filmmakers and journalists have tried to prise open the mind of famous artists. </p>
<p>A long list of films purports to show these artists in the throes of inspiration as they create the certified masterpieces we see adorning galleries in the world’s museums. Indeed, we seem to be amid an artist-biopic tidal wave as directors pull focus on yet another famous painter (occasionally sculptor, even more occasionally, a woman) and present their interpretation of what actually goes on in that holy sanctum, the studio. </p>
<p>The most recent is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311542/">Never Look Away</a>, loosely adapted from the life of Gerhard Richter by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It comes hot on the heels of Julian Schnabel’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6938828/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">At Eternity’s Gate</a>, another retelling of Vincent van Gogh’s life story and Thomas M. Wright’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8634406/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Acute Misfortune</a>, which delves into Adam Cullen’s psyche. Other films are in the wings, examining the lives and work of L.S Lowry, Leonardo da Vinci, and Théodore Géricault.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280405/original/file-20190620-149818-1wyvhhh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Henshall in Acute Misfortune (2018).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arenafilm, Blackheath Film, Plot Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Disappointingly, there is still an absence of women artists in filmmakers’ mythmaking biopics. While there are wonderful examples, such as the films documenting the lives and work of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094828/">Camille Claudel</a> (1988), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120679/">Frida Kahlo</a> (2002) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1048171/">Séraphine de Senlis</a> (2008) they are rare exceptions.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uOUzQYqba4Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Frida.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Filmmakers are predictably entranced by their heroes it seems and eagerly trawl the depths of their practice to better understand the processes of artistic creation, but why is this topic of such interest to a general public? </p>
<p>One reason may be that creativity is being promoted as an essential skill for the fourth industrial revolution. </p>
<p>The World Economic Forum is calling for a <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/">lifelong approach to learning</a>
that encourages complex problem solving, critical thinking and creativity rather than the one-dimensional professional focus of the past. So, what better models could there be as the epitome of creative practice, than those great artists embedded in our collective conscience?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-creative-process-is-more-than-one-giant-leap-for-humankind-35901">The creative process is more than one giant leap for humankind</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Queasiness and rebellion</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280404/original/file-20190620-149843-19u8hp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles Laughton in Rembrandt (1936).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">London Film Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Famous artists have been the subject of popular films since Alexander Korda called action in 1936 and the cameras rolled on Charles Laughton shuffling through a vast studio in the guise of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028167/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_38">Rembrandt</a>, sucking his pipe and wielding his <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mahlstick">mahlstick</a> while creating an unseen masterpiece.</p>
<p>At least one scene, in which Rembrandt unveils a portrait of a powerful soldier to a hostile reception – an act of creative rebellion that ends a stellar career – is a total fiction. Still, it makes for a compelling scene.</p>
<p>In At Eternity’s Gate, Julian Schnabel, who is a famous artist himself, infuriatingly depicts Vincent van Gogh’s precarious mental state through a manic hand-held camera that has his audience lurching around in their seats seeking stasis. </p>
<p>Fortunately, Vincent’s own words, through his letters to his brother Theo, reveal something of the inner torment and the process of re-interpretation that brings some clarity and insight into how these wondrous images were formed on the canvas. (These letters also featured in Paul Cox’s 1987 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094269/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_20">Vincent</a>).
Without these voice-overs, Schnabel’s film would invoke nothing other than incoherent queasiness.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T77PDm3e1iE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for At Eternity’s Gate.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-looking-at-vincent-van-goghs-olive-grove-with-two-olive-pickers-76312">Here's looking at: Vincent Van Gogh’s Olive grove with two olive pickers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘The scab that forms on the wound’</h2>
<p>Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s epic portrayal of 30 years of German history, reflected in the life of a young artist seeking his way in the world, is not perfect. Still, it does go further than many of his predecessors in peeling back some of the unhelpful tropes that have blinkered our understanding of the creative process. </p>
<p>Like Korda, he is not squeamish about fictionalising the events in the life of his protagonist in the process of a creative re-imagining. Kurt Barnert – the lead protagonist in the film – is not Gerhard Richter, just a slightly blurred facsimile of the famous German artist.</p>
<p>In this way, von Donnersmarck gives himself license to reinterpret and refocus his understanding of how memory, pain, and anger can be fused in the act of making an image on a canvas.</p>
<p>In his studio in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1963, Barnert thrashes around re-making the works of contemporary American and German artists who have found success in the marketplace. </p>
<p>Waltzing with paint-soaked feet on a roll of paper, making papier-mâché figures and painting geometric abstractions, he finally resolves to fuse his undeniable technical virtuosity with his life experiences. </p>
<p>The black and white photographs he had packed in his bag on his flight from East Germany to the West were the catalyst for the works we associate with Richter; a soft brush drawn slowly over almost dry oil paint to create a blurring that seals the image as memory. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280403/original/file-20190620-149810-1nfi4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tom Schilling in Never Look Away.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pergamon Film, Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion, Beta Cinema</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They are images that elicit complex responses from an audience who may not have experienced the same events but can relate closely enough to find solace. </p>
<p>Von Donnersmarck doesn’t entirely relinquish the stereotypes of depicting the “lightbulb” moment of creative insight. Like Korda’s pensive, pipe-sucking Rembrandt, Schnabel’s whirling dervish van Gogh and Carol Reed’s version of Michelangelo’s epiphany in his 1965 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058886/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Agony and the Ecstasy</a> – when an image of God holding out his hand to touch the finger of a recumbent Adam is revealed in the clouds to a spellbound Charlton Heston – we have Barnert and his blank canvas. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aZHbjT-pZ_I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Agony and the Ecstasy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sitting for days staring at that tabula rasa, the wind rustling the leaves outside framed by the window in his light-soaked studio, the music slowly building to a crescendo, his artistic revelation comes.</p>
<p>However, von Donnersmarck has built layers of experience and memory into a complex amalgam of ideas over two and a half hours before we get to that scene. From a childhood visit to the Nazi Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition and the murder of his aunt, through his training and early success in the DDR under Soviet influence, we have seen Barnert build the armoury of skills and experience from which he will forge his artistic career.</p>
<p>In the process von Donnersmarck has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR0-X6WPKEc">developed his thesis</a> that “creativity is the scab that forms on the wound” of these artists’ lives. “It gives us that wonderful feeling that our suffering can be of use.”</p>
<p>“Never look away, everything is beautiful,” his aunt tells the young Barnert. The transformative power of art is to embrace that freedom to engage without limits and “by freeing yourself, you are liberating the world”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ted Snell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Standing out among the crowd of recent artist biopics, the new film Never Look Away peels back some unhelpful tropes that have blinkered our understanding of the artist’s process.Ted Snell, Professor, Chief Cultural Officer, Cultural Precinct, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1041012018-10-11T10:40:15Z2018-10-11T10:40:15ZNeil Armstrong and the America that could have been<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240097/original/file-20181010-72130-10tqopz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Those mesmerized by NASA's accomplishments and ambitions wanted so much more out of the reticent Armstrong.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Florida-U-/3812593616874fe28336445a4de2f1fa/30/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/landing-man-moon-publics-view.aspx">Gallup Poll from 1999</a>, only 50 percent of those surveyed could even name Neil Armstrong as the first man to land on the moon. </p>
<p>How might the moon walker fare 19 years later?</p>
<p>The film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1213641/">First Man</a>,” starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, may boost public recognition of Armstrong’s name and career. But his fate after his “giant leap for all mankind” mirrored that of public interest in the moon landings and, broader still, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/5392/trust-government.aspx">trust in government</a>, which has steadily eroded since the early 1970s.</p>
<p>It may be hard to imagine today, but from the early 1960s until Apollo 11, Congress essentially gave the space agency blank checks to fulfill the Kennedy administration’s goal of a man on the moon by 1970. In the mid-1960s, NASA <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg">received over 4 percent</a> of the federal budget. Today, it’s funded with less than 0.5 percent of the budget. </p>
<p>While the research ostensibly went to figuring out how to safely transport men to and from the moon, many technologies <a href="https://spinoff.nasa.gov/flyers/apollo.htm">spun off from this program</a>: high-temperature coatings, new fabrics and microelectronics, all of which we use in our day-to-day lives.</p>
<p>Furthermore, for a few ephemeral years, a factious nation thought of itself as a space-faring people. With a populace hurting from the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and the riots of 1968, the moon landing managed to make us stop arguing – albeit briefly – and look up at the sky. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240095/original/file-20181010-72106-17xih6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands gather in New York’s Central Park to watch astronaut Neil Armstrong take man’s first step on the moon on giant television screens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-United-/a8c71232bbe5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/105/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet less than a year later, no television network bothered to carry the Apollo 13 astronauts’ live broadcast on their way to the moon. That sudden public disinterest after the first landing – and the erosion of any sense of national purpose – still puzzles students in my first-year seminar “The Space Race.”</p>
<p>America quickly turned its back on Apollo and began its long, painful slide into Watergate and Vietnam. By the end of the 20th century, <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860871_1860876_1860992,00.html">conspiracy theories about the moon landing abounded</a> – that the astronauts had never left Earth’s orbit; that Stanley Kubrick had played a role in faking the Apollo landings on a sound stage. </p>
<p>Soon enough, Apollo’s triumph became little more than a slogan for our growing cynicism about government: “If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they fill the potholes?” </p>
<p>As for Armstrong, he went on to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Though he did some advertising campaigns for Chrysler and a few other firms, he mostly kept a low profile.</p>
<p>Those once mesmerized by NASA’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program">stillborn plans for lunar bases and manned flybys of Venus</a> wanted more – so much more – out of Armstrong. </p>
<p>When he was chosen for Apollo 11, Armstrong was already one of the most talented test pilots in history. As Andrew Chaikin notes in his book “<a href="http://www.andrewchaikin.com/books/a-man-on-the-moon/">A Man on the Moon</a>,” Armstrong “got his pilot’s license before he learned to drive,” then in the 1950s and ‘60s actually flew the X-15 rocket planes, supersonic fighter aircraft and Gemini capsules that my NASA-obsessed peers glued together in 1:48 scale, following Sputnik in 1957.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240099/original/file-20181010-72103-111i1j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240099/original/file-20181010-72103-111i1j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240099/original/file-20181010-72103-111i1j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240099/original/file-20181010-72103-111i1j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240099/original/file-20181010-72103-111i1j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240099/original/file-20181010-72103-111i1j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240099/original/file-20181010-72103-111i1j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Neil Armstrong photographed by Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Neil_Armstrong.jpg">NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After walking on the moon and right into the afterglow of fulfilling JFK’s promise, what more could America’s “first man” have done? </p>
<p>What if he had run for Senate? President? Could he have convinced an increasingly cynical and weary nation that Apollo was indeed a giant leap to something in space even greater?</p>
<p>Tom Wolfe, author of the epic account of the U.S. space program, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OZ_jQVH3oMwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+right+stuff&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-yOjYi_zdAhXQMd8KHf14CfUQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=the%20right%20stuff&f=false">The Right Stuff</a>,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19wolfe.html">argued</a> that “NASA had neglected to recruit a corps of philosophers.” Wolfe hoped that wordsmiths with the ability to excite and inspire might be the ones flying into space. </p>
<p>Wolfe liked the vision and ambition of Wernher von Braun, architect of the Saturn V moon rocket, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/112308-i-have-learned-to-use-the-word-impossible-with-the">who famously said</a>, “I have learned to use the word 'impossible’ with the greatest caution.” Unfortunately, the engineer had a bit of an image problem related to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/120874/von-braun-by-michael-neufeld/9780307389374/">his Nazi past</a>. </p>
<p>Armstrong, for his part, wasn’t the best with words. Even as he made his initial small step off the ladder, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/62284main_onesmall2.wav">he seemed to wrestle with his tongue</a>. Or the radio link to Earth garbled his sentence. We’ll never know.</p>
<p>When I saw Armstrong in 1996 at the University of Richmond, he let Spaceship One designer Burt Rutan and Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan do most of the talking. When Armstrong did speak, in the precise and succinct way one expects from a careful engineer, the crowd seemed to lean forward. It was him.</p>
<p>In our era of incessant self-promotion and celebrity billionaires, I wonder if there’s a place for a humble yet insanely focused national hero like Armstrong.</p>
<p>Ryan Gosling’s portrayal may offer a glimpse of the Neil Armstrong we never really knew. Perhaps the film will inspire moviegoers with the sort of ambitious visions NASA had in the mid-1960s. </p>
<p>At the very least, it will remind us of a time when government functioned well enough to achieve something momentous. Could the same be done for reversing the effects of climate change? Or the more humble job of rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure? </p>
<p>For now, fixing potholes seems to be a job left for <a href="https://www.pavingforpizza.com/">Domino’s Pizza</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joe Essid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After the first moon landing, the feelings that propelled a unified national mission quickly dissipated. Could Armstrong have played a bigger role in galvanizing the public for future projects?Joe Essid, Director, Writing Center, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/893792018-01-03T05:49:54Z2018-01-03T05:49:54ZBiopic misrepresents Miles Davis in the life of a South African freedom fighter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199899/original/file-20171219-27557-18k0tl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of 'Seven Steps to heaven'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">From: Wolf's Kompaktkiste</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africans had specific attitudes to American jazz during the liberation struggle against apartheid. The late trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-lives-of-two-south-african-music-giants-tell-us-about-culture-under-apartheid-80970">Johnny Mekoa</a> told me in an interview for <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">my book</a>, “Soweto Blues: jazz politics and popular music in South Africa”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People were listening to this music at home because we felt this was our music and these are our black heroes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For South Africans aspiring to freedom, jazz was protest music. In struggle, jazz offered shared, collective messages of black intellectual attainment – and beauty. </p>
<p>It’s therefore not surprising that jazz plays a starring role in Mandla Dube’s 2017 biopic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3487278/">“Kalushi”</a> – the story of South African freedom fighter <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/solomon-kalushi-mahlangu">Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu</a>. Today, few of those born later know Mahlangu’s story. But in telling it, the film takes too little care over factual accuracy, and narrows and distorts what jazz meant to those fighting on the front lines for liberation.</p>
<p>In the opening minutes of biopic we see the young Kalushi parting with his savings for a copy of the <a href="http://www.milesdavis.com/">Miles Davis</a> LP <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/seven-steps-to-heaven-mw0000188023">Seven Steps to Heaven</a> in a general store in the Pretoria township of Mamelodi.</p>
<p>The scene was inspired by Kalushi’s well known fondness for Davis. But <a href="http://www.samro.org.za/newsletter/beat-bulletin-september-2017#Behind%20the%20Scenes%20with%20Kalushi%20Film%20Score%20Composer%20Rashid%20Lanie">according to</a> score composer Rashid Lanie, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I first saw the first scenes of Solly carrying Miles Davis’s ‘Kind of Blue’ album… I said: ‘I don’t think we should use that visual – let’s change it.’ When Solly walks to the gallows, it is 52 steps to the gallows. Five plus two is seven. Did you know Miles Davis also has an album called ‘Seven Steps to Heaven?’</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of ‘Kind of Blue’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.milesdavis.com/albums/kind-of-blue/">Miles Davis website</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That’s why, in the film, Kalushi is seen carrying the ‘Seven Steps to Heaven’ LP.</p>
<h2>Military training</h2>
<p>That’s not the last time Davis appears. The album is used by Kalushi’s struggle contact (a thuggish character first shown stabbing someone in a back alley) to pressure him into political activity. It survives jumping the border, and military training in a camp of the African National Congress (ANC) army in exile, Umkhonto we Sizwe. Kalushi’s final words as he heads for the gallows have become immortal: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tell my people that I love them and that they must continue the struggle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the film, they are reduced to a coda after Kalushi muses: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You know, Miles Davis once said: ‘If somebody told me I only had one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow…’ </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Which is all very well, except that if those words of Davis’s were spoken at all, they were uttered six or seven years after Kalushi’s judicial murder at the gallows by the South African state. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/msW13gUZRVk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The title track from Miles Davis’s album, ‘Seven steps to heaven’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Davis has often been invoked to signify the kind of outspoken black pride that scared the white jazz establishment. But while the trumpeter had his ugly side – especially in terms of how he bullied women – his comments on race were incisive and intelligent: firmly grounded in experience. </p>
<p>South African music professor <a href="http://www.salimwashington.com/">Salim Washington</a> comments in a recent email interview I did with him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Miles flouted the absurd rules while inventing a cooler and more inventive way to be, in a world designed to make black men politically impotent and culturally neutered … But sometimes it seems he is cited as a bad boy and not as a thinker, which he was.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>See, for example, the 1962 <em>Playboy</em> <a href="http://www.alex-haley.com/alex_haley_miles_davis_interview.htm">interview</a> with Alex Haley. </p>
<h2>Questionable provenance</h2>
<p>The “choking” comment, however, has a questionable provenance. It is cited by the American <a href="https://www.jetmag.com/"><em>Jet</em> magazine</a> on 25 March 1985 (Mahlangu was executed on 24 July 1978) as coming from a “recent” interview with <em>USA Today</em> reporter Miles White. <em>Jet</em> <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=FbEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=Miles+Davis+can%27t+shake+boyhood+racial+abuse">completes</a> the quote as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The only white people I don’t like are the prejudiced white people. Those the shoe don’t fit, well, they don’t wear it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before Kalushi, it was widely <a href="http://www.aim.org/wls/i-want-to-choke-a-white-man/">republished</a> on ultra-right white supremacist websites.</p>
<p>Framing Davis this way reinforces other conservative tropes in the movie; tropes already prevalent in hegemonic discourses about revolution. Anti-apartheid youth rebellion in Mamelodi appears as a few isolated young individuals (one, a murderous thug) restrained by their frightened families, echoing multiple Hollywood biopics where the revolutionary is an <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/anomic">anomic</a> individual amid apolitical peasants muttering,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All we want to do is herd our goats in peace.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What’s missing from the film</h2>
<p>Wholly absent from the film is that Mamelodi had for two decades before 1976 been a multi-generational ferment of ANC, Africanist and black consciousness community revolt and cultural activism, led by the kinds of older heroes from whom Kalushi would have learned about both politics and Miles, such as the late cultural activist <a href="http://kaganof.com/geoff.html">Geoff Mphakati</a>. </p>
<p>On top of this the film images Africa – Mozambique and Angola – in “basket-case” terms. The first thing Kalushi sees arriving over the border is a helpless young orphan begging in Xai Xai refugee camp, followed by unexplained executions: his first sight as he arrives at the MK training camp in Angola. Umkhonto we Sizwe political education is portrayed as mindless sloganeering, when ANC stalwart <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03006/07lv03105/08lv03116.htm">Jack Simons’s</a> political <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Comrade-Jack-Political-Lectures-Catengue/dp/1919855025">lectures and diaries</a> (of which I was co-editor) make it very clear the process had significantly more content and nuance.</p>
<p>By the end, Kalushi’s final words – addressed to “my people”: his community, placing love at the roots of struggle – have been negatively re-contextualised by Davis’s supposed individualistic vengefulness. Kalushi faithfully carts his LP around the perilous frontline (something unlikely to the point of fairytale) but “choking a white man” is the only rationale for why.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes,” Davis legendarily said. “Just find one pretty one.” The late trumpeter and Umkhonto we Sizwe combatant Dennis Mpale <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">spoke</a> to me of jazz,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[making] beautiful music in a very ugly world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s freedom fighters yearned for chances to listen. </p>
<p>Sticking out of the charnel-house debris created by the South African Defence Force when they murdered artist <a href="http://kaganof.com/kagablog/2009/01/15/art-lost-in-a-time-of-struggle-thami-mnyele-and-medu-art-ensemble-retrospective/">Thami Mnyele</a> in Botswana in June 1985 was the cover of the <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/john-coltrane-and-johnny-hartman-bonus-tracks-sacd-mw0000263500">John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman jazz album</a>. The story of jazz, in Umkhonto we Sizwe culture and Kalushi’s life, is far more nuanced – and positive – than a poorly sourced quote from <em>Jet</em> magazine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The story of jazz in the ANC army-in-exile, Umkhonto we Sizwe culture is far more nuanced – and positive – than depicted in a new film.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/541172016-02-04T22:41:02Z2016-02-04T22:41:02ZHow will ‘Molly’ help us remember Australian culture?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110377/original/image-20160204-3006-11fskno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Samuel Johnson will play Molly Meldrum in Channel 7 miniseries Molly. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of Channel 7. </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ian “Molly” Meldrum is undeniably one of the great icons of Australian popular culture, one of the most recognisable figures in our television and music cultures. </p>
<p>The unique place he holds in the hearts of Australians was demonstrated clearly in the outpouring of affection and concern following his <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-15/man-rushed-to-hospital-after-ladder-fall/3733838">life-threatening fall in 2011</a> (and his <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/molly-meldrum-returns-to-hospital-with-growing-concerns-his-condition-is-more-serious-than-first-thought/news-story/d0d2405203fccd3dc9bbc83f4806c9a8">more recent fall in Thailand</a>).</p>
<p>So it is not surprising that following on the heels of their successful <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3150144/">INXS mini-series</a> last year, Channel 7 has chosen Molly as the subject of another music-based series, <a href="https://au.tv.yahoo.com/plus7/molly/">starting this Sunday</a>. </p>
<p>Before it airs, it is worth pausing to consider how series such as this construct a version of the past, how this influences collective memory, and how they offer opportunities to challenge or reinforce social orthodoxies. </p>
<p>Entertainment based on events from the past is, clearly, not the same as history. Real life rarely translates exactly into a mini-series or movie, and needs lots of editing to fit into the beginning-middle-end, journey-undertaken narrative form that audiences are used to. </p>
<p>And while audiences are well aware that what they are watching is not “real”, for those with little knowledge of the events being portrayed they can be <a href="http://www.livescience.com/27364-oscars-innacurate-historical-films.html">taken as truth</a>. Inevitably some events are emphasised and others left out, reinforcing for those watching what – and whose – stories are important to tell. </p>
<p>So whose, and what, stories will we be seeing in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4158318/">Molly</a>?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110376/original/image-20160204-3020-1l2as4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samuel Johnson has said it was touch to find ‘the truth’ of Molly Meldrum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of Channel 7.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One possible answer might be found by looking at the <a href="http://liberation.com.au/molly-the-soundtrack-to-the-tv-mini-series-out-now/">soundtrack to the series</a>. These types of fictionalised histories can have specific effects on how we remember and think about music – a factor that is especially relevant in this case. Particular types of music can come to be seen as emblematic of particular time periods because of the way they are used in movies and television. </p>
<p>One example is the way the Vietnam war and rock and protest artists such as Hendrix and the Doors have become so closely associated, partly through the use of this music in films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/">Apocalypse Now</a> (1979) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093105/">Good Morning Vietnam</a> (1987), and series such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092468/">Tour of Duty</a> (1987-1990). That’s despite the actual music soldiers listened to being <a href="http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/11/we-gotta-get-out-of-this-place-the-soundtrack-of-t.html">far more diverse</a>. </p>
<p>So the soundtracks to series and films can become the <em>de facto</em> soundtrack to the past in collective memories, and can influence canon formation.</p>
<p>Given that we know that one of the things that the popular music– and particularly rock – canon tends to do is exclude <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=076712924284030;res=IELAPA">women and people of colour</a>, the music used in a series such as Molly provides an opportunity to either reinforce or counteract that trend. </p>
<p>The soundtrack to the Molly series is <a href="http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2015/11/25/molly-soundtrack-is-the-best-thing-since-ripper-76/">expansive</a> – 60 tracks over three CDs, the last of which is touted as curated by Meldrum himself. But a run-down of the 60 tracks listed on the soundtrack albums reveals a list overwhelmingly dominated by white males. </p>
<p>Blondie, the Divinyls, Lynne Redrum and Suzi Quatro are the only women who feature on the first two discs (although Madonna is also featured in the trailer to the show), and KC and the Sunshine Band the only band with people of colour. </p>
<p>Important Australian acts such as Marcia Hines and Renee Geyer are obvious in their absence – there are three female Australian artists across the three discs. If these disks accurately represent the music that is played in Molly, then there is a question to be raised about the extent to which only white men will be presented as important to popular music in Australia.</p>
<p>The disk curated by Meldrum, however, is somewhat different. It alone has seven songs by female artists or by bands with women members, as well as another Sunshine Band track (people of colour undeniably do not do well on this compilation). In addition to this, Meldrum’s disc is, well, pretty queer. </p>
<p>It includes openly gay acts such as the Pet Shop Boys and Elton John, as well as queer artists such as Culture Club. The contrast in this respect between the first two discs and the third is marked, raising questions about what type of story Meldrum himself might be wanting to tell, as opposed to those making music decisions for Molly. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250846/">Countdown</a> (1974-1987) was groundbreaking in the way it presented different versions of masculinity and femininity to a mainstream audience, so these types of artists definitely deserve a place here. </p>
<p>And this leads to an aspect of the mini-series that will be particularly fascinating to see play out. How will aspects of Meldrum’s life such as his <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2807628/I-m-gay-m-happy-love-Music-legend-Molly-Meldrum-says-dreamed-marriage-family-openly-discusses-bisexuality-recovering-fall-home.html">open bisexuality</a>, and the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/the-countdown-begins-to-nostalgic-70s-spectacular/2006/09/06/1157222201340.html">rumoured hedonism</a> of the Countdown experience, be presented? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/czvCqcl2AIU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 100th episode of Countdown, aired on April 2, 1977, became infamous.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the height of Countdown’s popularity it was still highly unusual to see depictions of anything other than heterosexuality on television – especially in the early evening time slot Countdown occupied. Meldrum’s bisexuality was, for a long time, known but not known, becoming gradually more talked about as attitudes have changed. </p>
<p>If the series can foreground Meldrum’s queerness in the nation’s collective memory as an important part of the identity of this icon, even as it highlights the “Aussie larrikin” nature of his persona (which the trailers seem to do) then it has the potential to disrupt certain conventional ideas about what constitutes masculinity in this country. </p>
<p>I know I won’t be the only person watching with great interest on Sunday to see what version of Molly will be on show.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>The first episode of Molly will air on Channel 7 on Sunday.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54117/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Strong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Molly Meldrum’s life is coming to the small screen with a two-part miniseries. How faithfully can we expect the show to reproduce history? Taking a look at the soundtrack might provide a clue.Catherine Strong, Lecturer, Music Industry, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/507772015-11-17T19:05:34Z2015-11-17T19:05:34ZThe Man Who Knew Infinity: a mathematician’s life comes to the movies<p>The movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787524/">The Man Who Knew Infinity</a> is about <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Ramanujan.html">Srinivasa Ramanujan</a>, who is generally viewed by mathematicians as one of the two most romantic figures in our discipline. (I shall say more about the other romantic later.)</p>
<p>Ramanujan (1887–1920) was born and died, aged just 32, in Southern India. But in one of the most extraordinary events in mathematical history, he spent the period of World War I in Trinity College Cambridge at the invitation of the leading British mathematician <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Hardy.html">Godfrey Harold (G. H.) Hardy</a> (1877–1947) and his great collaborator <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Littlewood.html">John E. Littlewood</a>. </p>
<p>To avoid having to issue spoiler alerts, I will not tell much of Ramanujan’s story here.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102116/original/image-20151117-4970-ulole9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Srinivasa Ramanujan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Srinivasa_Ramanujan_-_OPC_-_1.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suffice to say that as a boy he refused to learn anything but mathematics, he was almost entirely self taught and his pre-Cambridge work is contained in a series of <a href="http://www.math.uiuc.edu/%7Eberndt/articles/aachen.pdf">Notebooks</a>.</p>
<p>The work he did after returning to India in 1919 is contained in the misleadingly named <a href="http://www.math.uiuc.edu/%7Eberndt/lostnotebookhistory.pdf">Lost Notebook</a>. It was lost and later found in the Wren library of the leading college for mathematics of the leading University in England. While in England Ramanujan became the first Indian Fellow both of Trinity and of the Royal Society.</p>
<h2>A man of numbers</h2>
<p>Ramanujan had an extraordinary ability to see patterns. While he rarely proved his results he left a host of evaluations of sums and integrals. He was especially expert in a part of number theory called modular forms which is of even more interest today than when he died.</p>
<p>The lost notebook initiated the study of <a href="http://www.maa.org/news/puzzle-solved-ramanujans-mock-theta-conjectures-0">mock theta functions</a> which are only now being fully understood. Fleshing out his Notebooks has only recently been completed principally by American mathematicians <a href="http://www.math.uiuc.edu/%7Eberndt/">Prof Bruce Berndt</a> and <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/gea1/">Prof George Andrews</a>. It comprises thousands of printed pages.</p>
<p>An old Indian friend, Swami Swaminathan, oversaw the Ramanujan Library in Madras over half a century ago. He commented that had Ramanujan been born ten years early he would have been unable to receive the education and financial assistance that made his pre-Cambridge work possible. </p>
<p>Swaminathan went on to say that had Ramanujan been born ten years later, he would have probably received a more robust and more ordinary education. In either case our version of Ramanujan would not exist.</p>
<h2>Ramanujan and me</h2>
<p>Ramanujan has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father David was a student of one of Hardy’s students. In our house “the bible” referred to Hardy’s masterpiece Divergent Series.</p>
<p>In 1962 on the 75th anniversary of Ramanujan’s birth the envelope (below) arrived at my parents’ house. A kind stranger had put the franked stamps on the back.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102107/original/image-20151117-4961-c10mrd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The anonymous letter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1987 I was fortunate enough to speak with my brother at the major centennial conference on Ramanujan, held at the University of Illinois. We had become experts on and had extended Ramanujan’s <a href="http://wayback.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/papers/borwein/">work on Pi</a>.</p>
<p>Highlights at the conference included the Nobel prize winning astronomer <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1983/chandrasekhar-bio.html">Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar</a>, who described how important Ramanujan’s success in England had been to the self-confidence of himself and the founders of modern India including <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nehru_jawaharlal.shtml">Jawaharlal Nehru</a>, who became the first prime minister of independent India in 1947.</p>
<p>In 2008 David Leavitt published a novelised version of Ramanujan’s life entitled the <a href="http://www.davidleavittwriter.com/books/indianclerk.html">Indian Clerk</a>. While Leavitt captures much beautifully, as a novelist, he takes some sizeable liberties. In particular, he dramatically embellishes Hardy’s (closeted?) homosexuality. I prefer my novels as fables and my biographies straight.</p>
<p>In 2012 on the 125th anniversary of Ramanujan’s birth the Notices of the American Mathematical Society <a href="http://www.ams.org/notices/201211/index.html">published</a> eight articles on his work. This suite forcibly showed how Ramanujan’s reputation and impact continue to grow. </p>
<h2>Gifted with numbers</h2>
<p>There is one famous anecdote about Ramanujan that even a non-mathematician can appreciate. In 1917 Ramanujan was hospitalised in London. He was said to have tuberculosis but it is more likely this was to cover a failed suicide attempt.</p>
<p>Hardy took a cab to visit him. Not being good at small talk all Hardy could think to say was that the number of his cab, 1,729, was uninteresting.</p>
<p>Ramanujan replied that quite to the contrary it was the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two distinct ways:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1,729 = 12<sup>3</sup> + 1<sup>3</sup> = 10<sup>3</sup> + 9<sup>3</sup></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is know known as Ramanujan’s taxi-cab number.</p>
<h2>Mathematicians in the movies</h2>
<p>There has been a recent spate of books, plays and movies, and TV series about mathematicians and theoretical physicists: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/">A Beautiful Mind</a> (2001), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340057/">Copenhagen</a> (2002), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377107/">Proof</a> (2005) and last year’s Oscar winning movies <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/">The Imitation Game</a> about Alan Turing and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2980516/">The Theory of Everything</a> on Stephen Hawking. </p>
<p>When I have read the book on someone’s life, I frequently avoid the movie. As writer Michael Crichton <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/crichton/story.htm">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All professions look bad in the movies […] why should scientists expect to be treated differently?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such movies – even biopics – have to compress a life of the mind into 90 to 120 minutes and give a flavour of genius to the rest of us. Even more than the books on which they are based, they have to make the character more exotic (Turing) or better redeemed (John Nash in A Beautiful Mind) than in the book let alone real life. </p>
<p>So I tend to avoid the movies and to be satisfied with my own knowledge and the corresponding book which can take 500 pages and more if it needs to.</p>
<h2>The Man Who Knew Infinity</h2>
<p>But I do intend to see the movie of The Man Who Knew Infinity. Ramanujan’s presence has been too much a part of my life (intellectually and personally) for me to miss it.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DaOZHN3pCS0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In the movie Hardy is played by Jeremy Irons while Stephen Fry plays Sir <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Spring">Francis Spring</a> who was an early advocate of Ramanujan in India.</p>
<p>Twenty-five year old <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2353862/">Dev Patel</a>, who acted in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/">Slumdog Millionaire</a> (2008), is Ramanujan.</p>
<p>I reviewed very favourably Robert Kanigel’s book <a href="http://www.robertkanigel.com/_i__b_the_man_who_knew_infinity__b___a_life_of_the_genius_ramanujan__i__58016.htm">The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius</a>, on which the movie is based.</p>
<p>The current movie has had the brilliant Canadian-born Fields Medalist and Princeon professor of mathematics <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava">Manjul Bhargava</a> as technical advisor. Bhargava is also an expert tabla player who works in fields well aligned with Ramanujan’s opus. This augurs well for the movie’s accuracy.</p>
<h2>The other romantic</h2>
<p>The other romantic mathematician I alluded to earlier was the even more short-lived French revolutionary <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Galois.html">Évariste Galois</a>.</p>
<p>Galois (1811–1832) died, aged 20, in a duel related to the famous female mathematician <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Germain.html">Sophie Germain</a>. As the story goes, there is a note in the margin of the manuscript that Galois wrote the night before the duel. It read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is something to complete in this demonstration. I do not have the time. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is this note which has led to the legend that Galois spent his last night writing out all he knew about group (Galois) theory. This story appears to have grown with the telling but his life would also make for a very interesting movie.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Man Who Knew Infinity is screening, Wednesday November 18 2015, at selected cinemas in Adelaide, Brisbane, Byron Bay, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney as the closing movie in the <a href="http://www.britishfilmfestival.com.au/films/the-man-who-knew-infinity">British Film Festival</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Borwein (Jon) receives funding from ARC</span></em></p>Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century. His story is told in the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity, screening tonight in selected cinemas in Australia.Jonathan Borwein (Jon), Laureate Professor of Mathematics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/453552015-08-13T05:56:27Z2015-08-13T05:56:27ZCompton commodified: NWA was always a blend of fiction and reality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91651/original/image-20150812-18096-1038mur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The biopic Straight Outta Compton tells the story of rise and fall of Los Angeles rap group NWA.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/artvlive/20461067786/in/photolist-xb5jAN-xdX25X-wgnvfq-wVMjqC-xcC4Ro-wgwBRH-xdp2We-wgwCFZ-xcBVpJ-xdpaEk-wVUp3v-xb5Dmd-wVUq8r-wVM1Qj-xcC2JY-wVM1Xo-wVM1wd-xcC6M7-wVUqGT-wVM1gy-xdp6ye-wVM58G-wVMm23-wVMjvN-mfyyt-xcBPKC-wgwBGV-xb5FY7-xb5CnQ-wgwCA8-xb5F9w-wVUigv-xdp4rt-xdXapc-xb5t13-wgnCKA-xb5s2j-wgwH4r-xcC4X5-xdoQip-xdXjNH-xdXii8-wgnKRQ-wVLNo5-xdX2L6-xdXpsc-wVU7ot-wgwJhP-xdp3KD-wVUp8F">Automotive Rhythms/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, Dr Dre released Compton: The Soundtrack – his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/arts/music/review-dr-dre-compton.html?_r=0">first album</a> in 16 years – with <a href="http://theboombox.com/dr-dre-unveils-cover-art-track-list-compton-a-soundtrack/">cover art</a> that features the iconic Hollywood sign transformed to read C-O-M-P-T-O-N. </p>
<p>The timing, title and cover imagery of the album coincide with the new biopic Straight Outta Compton, a film that details the rise and fall of Dr Dre’s former rap group NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitudes), which, along with Dre, included Eazy-E, MC Ren, DJ Yella and Ice Cube. </p>
<p>NWA was active for only a few years, but their 1988 album Straight Outta Compton gave birth to West Coast gangsta rap – the controversial genre of music defined by its gritty depictions of inner-city street life.</p>
<p>In NWA’s world, however, Compton and Hollywood have never been far apart. In fact, the <a href="http://soul-sides.com/2015/08/the-story-behind-nwas-first-record-cover/">photograph</a> for the cover of the group’s first album – 1987’s NWA and the Posse – wasn’t even taken in Compton. Instead, it was shot in a graffiti-filled Hollywood alleyway near the group’s first record label. </p>
<p>And in a deeper sense, NWA’s brand of rap music was always a cinematic blend of reality and fiction: a blaxploitation film with beats. The genius of the group’s approach – masterminded by member Eric “Eazy-E” Wright – was the way it manufactured a narrative of Compton as a rough, unpredictable place, while placing it at the center of NWA’s identity.</p>
<h2>Selling the hood</h2>
<p>For decades, real estate boosters have packaged the Southern California good life, using images of sunshine and palm trees to entice millions of Americans to relocate to the West Coast. </p>
<p>Under the guidance of Eazy-E, NWA commodified a more sinister version of the Los Angeles story, crafting a new brand of hardcore rap that moved from third-person descriptions of street life to first-person portrayals of the gangstas themselves. </p>
<p>Compare earlier recordings like Eazy-E’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i-n_NhSHmI">Boyz-n-the-Hood</a> – which describes the arrest, trial and failed escape of a fictional drug dealer named Kilo-G – to NWA’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUb2qo5XF3U">Gangsta Gangsta</a>, in which Ice Cube actually assumes the role of an unrepentant criminal, proclaiming:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Taking a life or two, that’s what the hell I do / You don’t like how I’m living? Well, fuck you!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Over Dr Dre’s booming beats and sampled sounds of automatic gunfire, Ice Cube, MC Ren and Eazy-E rapped about their sexual prowess and penchant for violence. Playing upon stereotypes dating back to <a href="http://folkloreforum.net/2009/05/01/%22ten-little-niggers%22-the-making-of-a-black-man%E2%80%99s-consciousness/">blackface minstrelsy</a>, they tapped into a centuries-old American appetite for racialized entertainment.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in interviews, the group members were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VCDWvV4B4Q">cagey</a>. Understanding intuitively that their infamy was tied to record sales, they posed for pictures holding guns and refused to state clearly whether they were gang members, drug dealers or just kids looking to make a quick buck. </p>
<p>In truth, the only rap sheets NWA members had were notebooks full of song lyrics. </p>
<p>Although the group often <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/music/nwa-a-hard-act-to-follow-2151044">claimed</a> they were simply “street reporters,” the violent gang- and drug-filled world of their music ignored more prosaic aspects of Compton, such as its single-family homes and <a href="http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/places/compton-a-beggetting-pop-cultural-icon-in-the-1970s.html">history</a> as a black, middle-class enclave. </p>
<p>But in segregated Los Angeles, whites often avoided predominantly black communities and viewed black youth suspiciously. Straight Outta Compton played to their shrill, pervasive fears about gang violence, offering outsiders a vicarious look into a neighborhood most had only heard about on the nightly news.</p>
<p>Music fans ate it up: the album went double platinum and encouraged music industry executives to focus on developing more hardcore acts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91648/original/image-20150812-9896-6zlnjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91648/original/image-20150812-9896-6zlnjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91648/original/image-20150812-9896-6zlnjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91648/original/image-20150812-9896-6zlnjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91648/original/image-20150812-9896-6zlnjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91648/original/image-20150812-9896-6zlnjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91648/original/image-20150812-9896-6zlnjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NWA member Ice Cube poses with an AK-47.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/47449198@N00/3217214915/in/photolist-7NirZn-58wXwk-5vPtd3-5Ui4UF-nj2SvZ-b9tfcx-8SLYLj-ehzQRq-3PLnp-boodi-82XNrD-vUzuFq-naVm6v">kelosscross/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An underlying social message</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, the larger-than-life personas populating NWA’s recordings spoke to complicated realities.</p>
<p>On tracks like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHaOul8gVVc">Gangsta Gangsta</a> Ice Cube might have sounded invincible – “I’m the type of nigga that’s built to last / Fuck with me, I’ll put my foot in your ass” – but all of that bravado masked real social insecurity. </p>
<p>NWA’s core members grew up in Compton and South Central neighborhoods that had been devastated by <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520248304">massive deindustrialization</a>. The resulting poverty and unemployment proved fertile ground for the influx of cocaine in the early 1980s. They witnessed the dramatic rise in gang violence connected to it and felt the LAPD’s heavy-handed response. </p>
<p>With draconian names like C.R.A.S.H. (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) and Operation Hammer, the LAPD criminalized entire neighborhoods, conducting destructive search and seizure missions with the dual purpose of finding contraband and intimidating residents.</p>
<p>By embracing the role of the “bad guys,” NWA found a profitable way to capture public attention and strike back at the system – a musical strategy I explore in my recent book <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520283992">Sounding Race in Rap Songs</a>. </p>
<p>For example, in the video for <a href="https://vimeo.com/68396301">Straight Outta Compton</a>, the group members rap lyrics about their indomitable strength, but portray themselves at the mercy of one of the LAPD’s terrorizing gang sweeps. NWA’s critique, which came years before the Rodney King beating, provided fans with a glimpse at the LAPD’s worst practices under Police Chief Daryl Gates.</p>
<p>In the group’s most famous and controversial song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5fts7bj-so">Fuck Tha Police</a>, they parodied courtroom proceedings. White police officers stood trial as defendants, Dr Dre presided as judge, and rappers MC Ren, Eazy-E and Ice Cube served as prosecuting attorneys. </p>
<p>Testifying against the LAPD’s widespread racial profiling and excessive force, Ice Cube rapped: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fuck the police coming straight from the underground / A young nigga got it bad ‘cause I’m brown / And not the other color so police think / They have the authority to kill a minority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A year after the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33839261">police killing of Michael Brown</a> and the ensuing protests, the timing the Straight Outta Compton biopic could not be better. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/blacklivesmatter?lang=en">#BlackLivesMatter</a> and the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/04/the-12-key-highlights-from-the-dojs-scathing-ferguson-report/">Department of Justice report</a> on Ferguson have helped shed light on ongoing patterns of police violence and harassment against black people nationwide. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/08/black-and-unarmed/">Current events</a> continue to make NWA look prophetic, and the biopic – along with Dr Dre’s Compton: The Soundtrack – will certainly profit from them. </p>
<p>Whether that feels like a Hollywood cash in for the group or another attempt to say something meaningful remains a subject of much debate.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oyoew4T74_w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Straight Outta Compton.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Loren Kajikawa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though they presented themselves as hardened gangsters, the only rap sheets NWA had were notebooks full of song lyrics.Loren Kajikawa, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/353482014-12-27T09:52:00Z2014-12-27T09:52:00ZThe Theory of Everything is inspiring, despite a hackneyed treatment of Hawking’s work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67382/original/image-20141216-14160-hd49ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The story of two people who fall in love.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Theory of Everything is a film about two people who meet at university and fall in love. But what makes it remarkable is that one of them is Professor Stephen Hawking and that when he and Jane Wilde get married, they do so in the knowledge that Hawking is suffering from a terrible and debilitating disease and is unlikely to live for much more than two years. </p>
<p>Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Hawking is perfect – we could almost be watching the man himself. So much so, that when Hawking himself saw the film for the first time he posted on Facebook: “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=733286033425163&set=vb.710234179063682&type=2&theater">At times, I thought he was me.</a>”</p>
<p>At the beginning of the film, before Hawking’s diagnosis of motor neurone disease, Redmayne plays Hawking as a slightly awkward young man. He’s unsure of what to do with his hands and is a little stooped – although this seems to be more a preemptive apology for clumsiness than it is the early onset of his symptoms. As the disease takes hold he begins walking with sticks, then using a wheelchair and eventually becomes the professor now well-recognised for his speech synthesiser. Throughout the movie the depiction of Hawking remains believable and tasteful. Hawking is shown to be brave, determined, charming and witty in the face of his illness.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A great performance from Felicity Jones, but we could have known more about Wilde.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Likewise, Felicity Jones is wonderful as Hawking’s wife. As the film is based on Jane Wilde Hawking’s book, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wIM4SQAACAAJ&dq=Travelling+to+Infinity:+My+Life+with+Stephen&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2XSRVPuWL8LuUM6EhPgI&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA">Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen</a>, one does wonder whether her character might have been less flattering had it been written by someone else. That said, no blows are softened as she is shown becoming steadily bitter and resentful of the relationship she entered into once believing that it would be so brief. Hawking is not always helpful. His tendency to put a brave face on their problems sometimes blinds him to how much his wife is struggling to cope. </p>
<p>Given that this is at its heart a love story, a biopic about the couple, it is surprising how little of Wilde is in it. We see her as wife, mother and carer and we discover that she likes singing, but she functions largely as a way of telling the audience about Hawking. Her own PhD (in romance languages) is only briefly mentioned at the very beginning of the film and we don’t hear about it again. We know nothing of what she worked on during her time as a graduate student or of what she did later. This is a shame – she’s clearly an intelligent academic in her own right and to ignore this sells her short.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Salz7uGp72c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Hawking’s specialist subject – time – is repeated over and over. It is referred to in every other conversation. Either about how Hawking works on time, or how little time he has to live, or how he has lived an awfully long time given his condition, or how lucky (or unlucky) they are to have had so much time together as a couple, or that he is writing a book called The Brief History of Time. </p>
<p>And it doesn’t stop here. This is laboured even further with two visual devices. One is a series of home-movie-style montages which pepper the main story to indicate time passing between the various major stages of the couple’s life together. The other is Hawking’s tendency to “zone out” when he has an idea which gives the impression of time slowing down for him while it continues at its usual pace for everyone else. Neither technique is ineffective but it is perhaps a touch patronising of an audience who should really have no trouble keeping up given how regularly they are reminded of Hawking’s research topic.</p>
<p>And just to make certain this point is really hammered home, the film finishes by rewinding all those montages, and here we are at the beginning. Time! What’s it like, eh?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Winding back the clock…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite this, the science itself isn’t really touched upon. Perhaps this is deliberate – theoretical cosmology is something of an acquired taste and there certainly isn’t enough time to teach it thoroughly during a two-hour film. However, the few attempts at explaining the basics are a little half-hearted, with multiple scenes where characters are gathered around tables using drinks or dinner as a teaching tool. Aside from being a classic example of telling where showing might have been better the explanations scarcely scratch the surface.</p>
<p>All that aside this is still a very enjoyable film. It was tasteful and engaging and just beautiful visually. It’s the kind of film I want to go see and that I want to tell all my friends to go see, not only because it’s quite a good love story, but because it’s about Stephen Hawking. </p>
<p>I like to see scientists celebrated in films, books and television dramas and that is exactly what happens here. The science itself might be skimmed over but his remarkable achievements and the conditions under which he has been able to realise them are made very clear. This elevates the movie above your standard romance and to something that is – at times – simply inspiring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Becky Douglas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Theory of Everything is a film about two people who meet at university and fall in love. But what makes it remarkable is that one of them is Professor Stephen Hawking and that when he and Jane Wilde…Becky Douglas, PhD Student in Physics and Astronomy, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/227952014-02-12T14:37:12Z2014-02-12T14:37:12ZBBC America’s Fleming and the trouble with author biopics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41357/original/32y4n6b2-1392202018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The many similar faces of Ian Fleming.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sky Atlantic</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first episode of mini-series <a href="http://www.sky.com/tv/show/fleming">Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond</a> is a very glamorised account of the life of James Bond’s creator, and it is certainly entertaining. But should we lament its deviations from biographical accuracy, its endeavours to frame Fleming the author in terms of Bond the character? Or should we just accept it as another layer of the Bond story, and sit back and enjoy the show?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2014/01/biopics/">One reviewer, writing for Wired</a>, takes the former attitude, seeing the series as epitomising the problems of recent biopics. While they used to be previously “a mix of entertainment, education and guilt-free voyeurism”, they have become, he argues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A contradictory mix of hagiography and revisionism, lionising their subjects while somehow managing to diminish them in comparison to the products of their imaginations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Understanding any individual book, film, or programme requires an awareness of its place in the media landscape. And any new production is, of course, going to be heavily determined by what has gone before. So it is inevitable that programmes or films that return or respond to a franchise as significant as that of Bond will attempt to place themselves within the wider narrative.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such disappointment when the new biopic exaggerates parallels between Fleming and his creation is surprising. The show’s title, even, says it will do so. The Bond franchise in particular carries so much cultural heft, so many familiar motifs, that this addition was never going to unfold any other way. </p>
<p>Each episode of <a href="http://www.sky.com/tv/show/fleming">Fleming</a> merges a variety of Bond-in-the-making references with moments where that expectation is comically subverted, for example when the unimpressed bartender plonks down a bottle of beer in response to Fleming’s detailed request for a Martini. </p>
<p>Likewise, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/movies/03jane.html?_r=0">Becoming Jane</a>, the 2007 Austen biopic, was less concerned with scrupulous fidelity to the author’s life story than with bending its basic materials to align the central character to her most famous heroine. Austen, as realised by Anne Hathaway, became more like <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1342/1342-h/1342-h.htm">Pride and Prejudice’s</a> Elizabeth Bennet; a template for whom we were already well-disposed. Had she shown a hint of the milksop Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, or the dozy Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey, we wouldn’t have liked her half as much.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OYViBfUvSOA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Becoming Jane.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I don’t think we should lament the supposed drift from a golden age of educationally sound renderings to a slick but sadly traduced “cult of character”. The biopic has always tweaked the past. Facts and strict chronology rarely stand in the way of the need for a film or television programme to be exciting, coherent, the right length, and saleable. </p>
<p>Author biopics are especially problematic since their makers are assumed to have a double duty. There is the expectation of some kind of fidelity to the person’s life-events; an implicit truth-claim in the choice of subject. And there is the less direct but equally powerful anticipation that the account will somehow connect with stories for which the author is already known. Those are, after all, why we’re interested in the first place. </p>
<p>In instances where writers have clearly drawn on personal experience, Hemingway for example, or Fleming, the matter is ripe for a biopic. When they haven’t, when there’s a gulf between the products of their imagination and the circumstances of their production, why should we care? </p>
<p>J.R.R. Tolkein may have created Middle-earth, but his life writing <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Hobbit.html?id=dFlImpewmqUC&redir_esc=y">The Hobbit</a> and <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XApOPwAACAAJ&dq=the+lord+of+the+rings&hl=en&sa=X&ei=80r7Uq2rMJCrhQfwlYHIDA&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA">The Lord of the Rings</a> from suburban Oxford was by comparison inevitably quotidian. A <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25049475">Tolkein biopic</a> has in fact been mooted but will probably have to look to his First World War experiences and subsequent code-breaking work for much in the way of narrative grist.</p>
<p>At the height of <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/44609/auteur-theory">auteur theory</a> in the 1960s, films were in danger of being scrutinised solely for what they revealed about their makers. Each film was reduced to little more than an additional symptom to be reviewed in order to discern the elusive “truth of the author”. </p>
<p>But this wheel may have come full circle. Now, even as it is the authors who become the ostensible subject, they are de-centred by their characters, their life-stories bent into consonance with the fiction franchises they unleashed. And in the case of Fleming and his proto-Bond screen incarnation in Dominic Cooper, viewers should recall that Bond had already changed in his transit from page to screen. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41366/original/hndgxzrr-1392206540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41366/original/hndgxzrr-1392206540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41366/original/hndgxzrr-1392206540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41366/original/hndgxzrr-1392206540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41366/original/hndgxzrr-1392206540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41366/original/hndgxzrr-1392206540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41366/original/hndgxzrr-1392206540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ian Fleming.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ahmet Baran/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The screen Bond most of us know is not wholly the character Fleming created. There are many similarities, of course, but key aspects of the Bond on the page – the incorrigible reading of racial ancestry when presented with a “foreign” face, the sustained and astonishingly pernickety interest in food – never made it to the screen 50 years ago. </p>
<p>The Fleming of this biopic is clearly – predictably - brought into alignment with James Bond, but that character had long since ceased to be his, and this expected result shouldn’t be something we waste our time bewailing. Once you accept that it’s significantly disconnected from historical reality, there’s much to enjoy in this biopic. </p>
<p>Bond movie aficionados will relish the many references to such recurring motifs as the tropical underwater sequence, the obligatory casino scene, the training exercise, and the skiing sequence. Viewers with a deeper knowledge of the author may also appreciate that, for all the Fleming-as-Bond glamour, it doesn’t shy away from some unpleasant truths either – there’s a whispered reference to <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/tv-radio/372180/The-man-who-would-be-James-Bond-The-dark-world-of-Ian-Fleming">youthful gonorrhea</a>. The dimension that it really plays best is the fraught relationship with his controlling mother. Lesley Manville as <a href="http://www.ianfleming.com/ian-fleming/ian-fleming-inside/family/">Eve Fleming</a> stalks her son and his romantic interests with malevolent aplomb. </p>
<p>But the author biopic I really want? One that poses the most awkward questions. The story with a real “life” vs “works” dilemma: Woody Allen. I’m not holding my breath.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22795/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Strong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first episode of mini-series Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond is a very glamorised account of the life of James Bond’s creator, and it is certainly entertaining. But should we lament its deviations…Jeremy Strong, Professor of Literature and Film, University of West LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.