Pirates 2....

                                             (Credit: WBAL TV)

This week in class we viewed Inside Deep Throat, an odd documentary about an odd porn movie from the 70’s.  As far as I knew, Deep Throat was only famous because of Watergate but was it more than that? The discussion of porn made me immediately think of the University of Maryland and the censorship that was forced upon it from the state government over its desire to show a porn movie on campus.

The University of Maryland, College Park, canceled the screening of a hard-core pornographic film because state lawmakers objected to the movie and threatened to cut funding. The movie, Pirates 2: Stagnetti’s Revenge, was to be shown at the student union and had been approved by a student programming committee. “That's really not what Maryland residents send their young students to college campus for, to view pornography," (Stephen Kiel 2009)said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller. He acknowledged the legislature should not get involved in censoring movies but went onto say “the General Assembly is not going to support screening hard-core pornographic movies on a state campus paid for by taxpayer dollars” (Stephen Kiel 2009). 

 “Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a Republican from Baltimore and Harford counties, suggested amending the state's annual budget to deny any funding to a higher education institution that allows a public screening of a film marketed as a XXX-rated adult film, unless it is part of an official academic course” (Stephen Kiel 2009). 



The students planned to show the movie with the help of a Planned Parenthood presentation on safe sex. A few years earlier the students showed Deep Throat and felt that showing this movie would be a better alternative to drinking or drug use.

After all of the bickering between the State and the students, the students got their way and showed the film. As of the writing of the article, the Student Union did not receive any complaints.

Bibliography

Stephen Kiel, Laura Smitherman, Gadi Dechter. "Creening of Porn Film at University of Maryland Canceled." The Baltimore Sun, April 2, 2009.

The Way We Were

The Untold History of the United States and most other history books spend some time with Vietnam, Nixon and the anti-war protests right here in the U.S.  But what about in Maryland? What happened here?   The University of Maryland has already asked that question and answered it.

In this day and age of information at your fingertips, brings the late 60’s and early 70’s to you in a way that you haven’t seen. The archives of the University of Maryland is alive with thousands of pictures and articles about every incident that had ever occurred. The biggest conflict came in May 1970 when students reacted violently to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.  UMD reports “Thousands of students and protestors occupied and vandalized the university's Main Administration building and the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) offices, set fires around campus, blocked Route 1, and fought running battles with riot police. Students threw bricks, rocks, and bottles, while police fought back with teargas, riot batons, and dogs.” (University of Maryland Archives 2007) The next time you read about Kent State or another protest on a college campus remember that the same happened here at home.

Bibliography

University of Maryland Archives. Archives UM. 2007. digital.lib.umd.archivessum (accessed April 2013).

Stone, Oliver, and Peter Kuznick. The Untold History of the United States. 1st Gallery Books hardcover ed. New York: Gallery Books, 2012.

                                            Rioters clash with police at Rt. 1 and Knox Rd (Credit UMD Archives)
             

                                                 Protesters on the lawn (Credit UMD Archives)

Protesters clash with police (Credit UMD Archives)

The Attempted Assassination That Inspired An Attempted Assassination

                                                   George Wallace Shot

                                               Taxi Driver Political Rally Scene

Reading Chapter 9 of the Stone/Kuznick book The Untold History of the United States I realized that it barely mentions George Wallace. Just a 2 sentence mention and that’s it. Nothing more. What the book doesn’t even say that Wallace was shot by a gunman. But Wallace was. George Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremmer in Laurel, MD on May 15, 1972. Growing up near Laurel I know the area well. It’s the open shopping center that contains the Giant and even as child I remember my parents telling me the story. But what my parents never told me or didn’t know was that event inspired the movie Taxi Driver. Considering the site where Wallace was shot and the scene from the movie are very similar.  

While I can find many references that have been made by Scorsese, nothing that has any validity until I found an article from the University of Pennsylvania library. The entry states “He also confirms the fact that Arthur Bremer and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground influenced Paul Schrader’s script.” (UPENN 2005) What might be the most interesting of all is that the Bremmer shooting Wallace inspired Taxi Driver, Taxi Driver inspired John Hinckley Jr. to shoot Ronald Reagan. What crazy world we live in.

Bibliography

UPENN. PENNTAGS tags/dreams?arthur+bremmer. october 11, 2005. tags.library.upenn.edu/tag/dreams/arthur+bremmer (accessed march 2005).

Our Nixon

This week we watched the Oliver Stone movie Born on the Fourth of July. To me this movie captures America through the eyes of Ron Kovic, a Vietnam vet who once would have done anything for his country but now back from the war feels differently and attempts to do his part to get America out of the war and Nixon out of office. The Oliver Stone movie from this era that I prefer is Nixon. While Born on the Fourth of July is very believable, Nixon is like Natural Born Killers meets JFK, going over the top in every category to make a point about how bad Nixon was. While researching the movie Nixon, I found out something rather interesting about Richard Nixon that I never knew.

We are all aware of Watergate and Nixon’s secret tapes but did you know that his top aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin all videotaped events with small home movie cameras? The event has already expired but in October of last year, MoMA had a screening of the movie Our Nixon. The film is all of the archival footage put together to create a 90 minute video consisting of “Official banquets, parades, ceremonial balls, campaign rallies, and world-historic state visits “become mere episodes in one man’s life, rather than political events.” This special—dare we say, historic?—program includes a selection of raw camera rolls, several restored sequences (among them Nixon’s 1972 trip to China)” (Museum of Modern Art 2012)

I’m sure Our Nixon is nothing like Oliver Stone’s Nixon, but it would be interesting nonetheless. A man so disliked, even hated, during his time in office and nearly caused a revolution but to this day people find fascinating.

Bibliography

Museum of Modern Art. The White House Movies: Nixon on Super 8. October 2012. www.moma.org/visit/calendar/screening/16477 (accessed March 2013).

Our Nixon

Nixon

I Learned to Love the Bomb

                                            (credit:" Photofest)

                                                            George C. Scott as Gen. Buck Turgidson in Kubrick's 1964 nuclear satire, "Dr. Strangelove.'' Urging an all-out pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union, he exclaims, "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10-20 million killed, tops!"

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a movie that I was forced to watch in an American Cinema class. It was released in 1964 shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, an event that most people would agree could have ended life on Earth, I now kind chuckle at.

For every history class that I have taken, including the one I’m in now, reviews the events that lead up to the crisis itself. The Stone/Kuznick book The Untold History of the United States continues with that “tradition” when they try to examine a little bit of the behind the scenes negotiations. The book states that the crisis was over when “Robert Kennedy met with Ambassador Anatoly Dobryinn on Saturday, October 27 and told him the United States was about to attack unless it received immediate Soviet commitment to remove its bases from Cuba. He promised to withdraw the Jupiter missiles from Turkey within four to five months but only if Soviet Leaders never publicly disclosed this secret arrangement”.[1]  Though the book I feel only scrapes the surface of the closed-door discussions that US and Soviet leaders had in private discussing the options they had before them and how they could live with those outcomes.  

Fred Kaplan for the New York Times did a story on this movie in 2004 and discussed how eerily accurate the movie actually is. Kaplan writes how Stanley Kubrick, the director, sets out to make an accurate movie based on the novel “Red Alert” but after much research finds the entire thing to be crazy and makes a dark comedy instead. Kaplan writes, “what few people knew, at the time and since, was just how accurate this film was. Its premise, plotline, some of the dialogue, even its wildest characters eerily resembled the policies, debates and military leaders of the day.”[2] (Kaplan 2004) Kaplan goes onto say “Those in the know watched "Dr. Strangelove" amused, like everyone else, but also stunned. Daniel Ellsberg, who later leaked the Pentagon Papers, was a RAND analyst and a consultant at the Defense Department when he and a mid-level official took off work one afternoon in 1964 to see the film. Mr. Ellsberg recently recalled that as they left the theater, he turned to his colleague and said, "That was a documentary!"[3] (Kaplan 2004)

While Dr. Strangleove is a fictional movie, it does give some insight into the minds of the people who were running our government and those who had their finger on the trigger. It also paints a grim reality for the future if nuclear weapons are to be used on a large scale. I feel if you haven’t seen this movie I suggest you should.

Bibliography

Kaplan, Fred. Truth Stanger than "Stranglelove". october 2004. www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/movies/10kapl.

 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, 1st Gallery Books hardcover ed. (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

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[1] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, 1st Gallery Books hardcover ed. (New York: Gallery Books, 2012)

[2] Kaplan, Fred. Truth Stanger than "Stranglelove". october 2004. www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/movies/10kapl.

[3] IBID