Adventures in Being and Time

Martin and Finn

 

There are two major works of philosophy in the 20^th century: Heidegger’s Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), published in 1927, and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, published in 1953. The first is the magnum opus of existentialism – a culmination of phenomenology (the study of experience and consciousness) and ontology (the study of being). The latter launched the field of language philosophy.

 

Of course, outside of these two massive fields, there were other philosophical trends. Postmodernism, represented by Foucault, and deconstructivism, represented by Derrida, both were important philosophical breakthroughs – but arguably both arose only because of Wittgenstein’s pivot to focus on language. (Other philosophers and movements certainly made breakthroughs in the 20^th century, in areas such as political philosophy with the important work of John Rawls.)

 

Heidegger’s existentialism is difficult – harder to access than either his 19^th century forerunners, such as Nietzsche, or his successors, such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Being and Time is an incredibly challenging work to read, but its general ideas, vastly oversimplified, are as follows:

 

We are Dasein – “being-in-the-world”. Dasein is an apparently unique experience to human beings: our existence presents problems of identity, as does our constant engagement with the world (including other people) around us. Our being is not distinct from our world in which we live – in which we are thrown into without any choice or initial understanding. How we make sense of our self, and how we make sense of our world, are therefore fundamentally linked. That is why we are “being-in-the-world”.

 

When we are living “authentically” we are confronting Dasein – but most of the time, it seems, we aren’t really engaged in such existential awareness. A nice example: I am walking down the street, and I notice a friend walking towards me. My mind goes to my experiences with this friend, memories, feelings, context. My mind is now “far away” from what is actually happening to me, walking down the street. I’m focused on someone further away, and on a time that maybe has passed or is yet to come. Our experience of the world, therefore, is infrequently focused on the here and now in such a way that supersedes other, more “distant” thoughts and concerns. If it were otherwise, and what was proximate to us demanded our attention here an now, think of the result: Seeing my friend approaching would not be as important, due to their lack of immediacy, as the socks on my feet, which are, after all, much closer to my experience in that moment!

 

But we don’t think about our socks in that scenario. And that is actually very interesting, and important – there is insight in that observation of how we experience the world, and what it means to be a human in this world.

 

Like other existentialists, Heidegger’s focus on being also is interested in death, and how our “beings-towards-death” is the source of meaning in our lives. My existence is not just defined by being thrown into this world, but also from the inescapable fact that I can’t stay forever – that I will die, and cease to exist.

 

*          *          *

 

When I read Being and Time in a philosophy course dedicated to the tome my senior year, I had a question, which I asked a few different times: “But what about children?”

 

As an adult I think Heidegger’s description of our lived experience is fairly spot-on, as shown in the sock story above. We walk through life with our minds on other things, rarely focused on our existence in the moment, in that place and time. Our experience of life is defined by our death. Being “thrown into” a world which we have to make sense of – that is very true, but also very much a focus of developmental psychology. I think Heidegger is right, that an in media res understanding is how we all must take the world around us. Yet a child’s understanding, and sense-making, of the world is fundamentally different from an adult’s. They experience life fundamentally differently, and, therefore, there must be an element of becoming, or developing into, Dasein.

 

I was, at the time, taking classes on child development and psychology, pursuant to my studies in education and in preparation for my career in teaching. Throughout college I took at least one philosophy course per term: Existentialism, Ancient Greek, Leibniz and Hume, Philosophy of Religion, Wittgenstein, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Theoretical Ethics, Logic, and Heidegger’s Being and Time. But the papers I was reading in psychology and child development were equally as fascinating. And, as Piaget had begun to realize, by the same time Heidegger was writing in the 1920s, children’s brains are not like ours. They do not make meaning the same way. Arguably, then, they are not Dasein – that Dasein is something we become with age. The meaning in a child’s life is not based on their appreciation of mortality. Children – quite often – do focus more on their socks than their approaching friend.

 

Philosophy, as far as I can tell, has typically avoided the ontology or metaphysics of childhood. Certainly, the big names, from Socrates to Descartes, Hegel to Rorty, didn’t seem to spend much time considering how children understand and make sense of the world. There are great exceptions – epistemology, studying how we know and make sense of the world – sometimes considered in the context of education, as seen in Plato and Rousseau.

 

Generally, though, the existentialists seemed unmoved by childhood – that state that, along with adolescence, encompasses roughly a quarter of the average life-span. Perhaps the psychologists, with their various theories of understanding, under the title ‘cognitive development’ – such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Montessori, Erikson, and the behaviorists – had taken care of all that.

 

This is a shame, because the lived experience of most people is of a sea change in our ability and means by which we make sense of our world. Our awareness of this process, deeply tied to awareness of our self and identity, and comprehension of what it means to exist, begins to really take hold in the years transitioning from childhood to adolescence. While we have a sense of our selves, and our world, prior to this time – one which has undergone numerous critical developments since our infancy – this age’s deepening sense of identity and vastly broadened horizons is, in some sense, the first tentative steps into Dasein.

 

And that experience, that is so fundamental to our lives and our existential experience, is why Adventure Time is one of the most important documents of recent popular culture.

 

 

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In 2019, The New York Times made a list of the 20 best television dramas since The Sopranos. On that list: Lost, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Americans… and Adventure Time. From an excerpt of their reasoning:

 

“The story of Finn, a foundling in the magical and once-devastated Land of Ooo, “Adventure Time” evolved from a whimsical action-adventure into a sprawling story of abandoned children, surrogate families and self-discovery. It grew up as its protagonist did, teaching its viewers that while the battle of good against evil can be thrilling, it’s rarely simple. It had the vast, well-imagined cast of a saga like “Game of Thrones,” along with a stunning visual language and a through sense of empathy.

 

“If you still need convincing, let me direct you to the Season 4 episode “I Remember You,” which begins to reveal the back story of the series’ original mad villain, the Ice King. Once a mild-mannered human named Simon, he saved a young girl (now Marceline, the goth-punk vampire) by embracing a magic that took his sanity and memory. As Marceline pieces together the story and he grasps at the fragments of his past — a story with familiar echoes to anyone who’s seen a loved one fall to dementia — the episode’s 11 minutes build to an emotional climax, a villainous character reframed and given depth on the spot.

Surreal, wise and often heartbreaking, “Adventure Time” may look like kids’ stuff. (It is, in fact, outstanding kids’ stuff.) But under its confectionery surface lies the material of great drama. It’s a wonderland of broken, misfit toys learning to fix one another.”

 

All of that is true, but it buries the lead – “it grew up as its protagonist did”. And this is really interesting, because I know of only one other drama that charts that process of development as its focus: Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. But, unlike the 2.5-hour 2014 film, Adventure time slows down, focusing on episodes of Finn’s development from the age of twelve to seventeen, those same key years of becoming Dasein.

 

Dramas rarely have ‘filler’ episodes – in which nothing happens that develops either plot or character. But Adventure Time is comfortable, and very clever, with this. Lived experience does not follow a narrative dramatic story arc – so neither does Adventure Time. Finn’s experiences are sometimes incredibly meaningful, and sometimes entirely pointless, and sometimes seemingly pointless, but meaningful later on. The show does this again and again – showing you things which they don’t explain, or hint at, or leave in the background until later. The importance of characters waxes and wanes, in often unpredictable ways. Think back to your own life: Five years ago, would you have predicted you’d be where you are now? That the people in your life would be the people who are important to you now? Were the major turning-points, in hindsight, identified by you at the time? Even in the final season there are seemingly pointless episodes, because of course there are! That’s how the course of life runs.

 

As Finn develops, his understanding mirrors ours, and how he makes sense of his world develops, too. As a tween he runs around and sees things as simple adventures – good and bad, scary and comforting – some things being too confusing for him to make sense of, so he doesn’t try (while we, the audience, start to learn to sock those elements away for later). As he ages, he starts to learn the history of his world, the history of the people around him, and his own place and story – just as we do. All the two-dimensional characters get fleshed out, and his horizons expand. His maturity drives the framing, narrative, and context – in this case what the animated world presents to us, as the viewer. Episodes from the later seasons would be totally out of place earlier on, because Finn, developmentally, wouldn't have experienced the world like that yet. The example given by the Times shows this: As Marcy and Ice King figure out their painful, complicated, past, Finn and Jake look on in bewilderment. The last lines have Jake ask: "What is going on in there?" To which Finn honestly replies: "I have no idea." But he will - when he is older.

 

*          *          *

 

Most shows geared to young people are age-specific. Daniel Tiger, Arthur, Transformers, Sesame Street, Yogi Bear, and so forth. Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer were designed for a certain audience, just as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Lizzy McGuire were. So often, the characters are ageless – or only progress a few years in time between start to finish, most commonly in shows geared to adolescents.

 

A show that aged appropriately with its characters, was, by itself, a major breakthrough. Further, Adventure Time covered new, interesting, developmental ground. For one of the first times ever, in popular culture, if not the first, it charted how we become aware of our existence as Dasein, and how that awareness evolves, doing so in a way that mirrors lived experience. It managed this insight with humor, drama, creativity, all while tossing in some truly intriguing philosophical concepts. As such, as the culture of our time is passed on, Adventure Time should be treated as a major artifact – a critically important document of how we as a culture in the early 21st century made sense of our being.

New Comedy - Bo Burnham: Inside

It’s not a novel thesis to say that mediums change content. But I wanted to examine that idea in the light of comedy performance.

 

Ignoring the vast realms of visual and written comedic works – for which, of course, the same thesis applies – formal performance comedy begins, I suppose, with theater. The works of Aristophanes are specifically linked to the theater medium, as seen best in The Clouds, when the play’s author walks on stage and argues with the audience.

 

For centuries, comedy performance was relegated to the stage, from Juvenal’s satires, to Italian opera buffa, to Oscar Wilde. All of this comedy was subsumed under the category ‘theater’ however. The only other performative comedy was comedy songs – a tradition that was anything but formal. While La Donna e Mobile may have enchanted Verdi’s audience, most comedic songs were more at home in taverns and were generally regarded as informal entertainment, not far removed from an American hootenanny.

 

Entering the 20^th century, radio and recording technology began to change all this, along with the advent of film. Comedy song, in particular, made a big leap, as you could now buy comedy records – initially humorous songs, and eventually 45s. Already by the 1920s artists were professionally recording the previously informal songs about moonshiners, cuckold husbands, and other classic tropes. Radio, meanwhile, is where the first situation comedies arose – consider Fibber McGee and Molly, which began broadcasting in 1935. A few years into the show there was the now-iconic audio joke of opening the hall closet, only to have the foley artist’s mountain of sounds fall out and bury the luckless door-opener. How many times has that joke been referenced in American comedy since?

 

A later, televised, version of the gag

 

Besides sitcoms, radio also provided more general radio shows. Les Paul and Mary Ford, by 1950, were recording musical comedy sketches, but this tradition goes back to the 1920s, and vaudeville. Burns and Allen had made comedy films since 1929 (notably Lambchops) and performed on the radio starting the same year, becoming regulars in the mid-30s.

 

George Burns and Gracie Allen bring their vaudeville routine to film in 1929

 

Vaudeville, basically, was where stand-up comedy started, alongside variety shows and revues, such as the Ziegfeld Follies. The growth of vaudeville was a decades-long process, from local concert halls in the mid-1800s to national fame by the turn-of-the-century. Some of these later comedians, like Burns and Allen, Eddie Cantor, WC Fields, Will Rogers, and the Marx Brothers, made the jump to the new formats, like film and radio. But film was already quickly developing its own rules. Movies were replacing comedy nickelodeon shorts, and silence didn’t lend itself to standup, anyway. Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Kops – these films were embracing what you could do with a camera, and were a far cry from the stand-up performances given on stage.

 

Television helped resuscitate stand-up comedy. Of course, sitcoms were copied from radio, but variety shows and late-night television emerged quickly, already in place by the 1940s. Hosts like Bob Hope and Milton Berle ushered in this new comedy, with proper late night, as a platform for standup, emerging in the 1950s. Here was the new comedy performance stage, presented in a way that worked well for introducing Borscht Belt humor to America. By the late 1950s standup had found a television home, and, with mass audiences, new cultural relevance and power.

 

Bob Hope roasting Frank Sinatra in 1950

 

Simmering in the background of all this was the continuing development of comedy songs. In 1948 the LP had been introduced, and so novelty songs gave way to full-length comedy albums, initially comprised of songs, such as Tom Lehrer’s Songs by Tom Lehrer in 1953. Spoken comedy followed, with the first live comedy album in 1958, recorded by Mort Sahl.

 

A song off of Lehrer’s full-length album

 

Soon comedy albums hit their stride – in the early 1960s comedians like Bob Newhart, Vaughn Meader, and Stan Freberg made popular full-length spoken comedy albums. Comedy songwriting, now blended with standup elements, continued with the works of performers like the Smothers Brothers – who eventually, like Newhart and the others, also jumped genres to television.

 

Newhart and Dean Martin in the 1960s. Standup comedians began working in the sitcom and sketch format that leant itself so well to television.

 

‘My Old Man’ parodied by the Smothers Brothers in the 1960s

 

Within these two mediums, LPs and television, standup comedy flourished for decades. Boundaries were pushed, counterculture embraced. Some acts were improvisational (Firesign Theater), some captured live audience energy (Steve Martin’s 'A Wild and Crazy Guy'), others were carefully rehearsed monologues. Richard Pryor, in the 1970s, presented the next big leap forward, with his concert movies. By the end of the decade HBO began making George Carlin standup specials. These merged into a form of standup performance that came to dominate the next twenty years.

 

A famous scene from Pryor’s 'Live on the Sunset Strip', 1982

 

By the 1980s radio was a largely defunct medium, but television soldiered on, providing late night as a standup haven. For comedy musicians, the MTV decade was a blessing – this was the era of Weird Al’s stardom with his parodies and parody music videos.

 

Eat It, 1984

 

The next big innovation, in terms of medium, was with the internet, although its role in performative comedy was actually fairly slow, given that audio and video were so demanding for 90s-era computers. Basically, then, it’s the advent of YouTube, in 2005, that ushers in a new era of comedy performance, blending video and film techniques to provide comedy material. That said, YouTube – which was great, not incidentally, great for comedy songs – remained mostly a skit and sketch venue.

 

2006 – ‘Shoes’ by Liam Kyle Sullivan. An early iconic YouTube song/skit.

 

So, too, with the other popular video apps that emphasized short bursts of observational humor: Vine from 2013-2016, and TikTok, which launched a year after Vine’s demise. Comedy and standup specials were still largely relegated to HBO and Comedy Central, but a new platform emerged from the internet to help, and help transform: Netflix.

 

In 2012 Netflix launched it’s first exclusive special, Bill Burr’s ‘You People Are All the Same’. Initially, Netflix was just a new home for concert-style comedy specials. But an older tradition of comedy began to merge with standup specials: the one-person show.

 

One-person shows have been around for ages, developing a niche in the world of theater. Hal Holbrook, famously, created Mark Twain Tonight! in 1954. Lily Tomlin found success in the 1980s with The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, written by Jane Wagner. In the 2010s comedians like Colin Quinn carried on the tradition, with shows like Long Story Short, written by Jerry Seinfeld. It was shown on HBO – a rare honor for these usually Broadway-bound performances.

 

An excerpt from 'Long Story Short', regarding Canada

 

The tradition, in theater, continues. Heidi Schreck’s Pulitzer-shortlisted 2017 play ‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ is a fine example: but on Netflix it began to merge more with comedy. 2017 also saw Hasan Minhaj release ‘Homecoming King’ which was part one-man show, and part comedy special.

 

From 'Homecoming King'

 

This was a banner year, because 2017 also saw the release of Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Nanette’ on Netflix. Here was what appeared to be a concert movie, but which took a wild turn into raw, vulnerable, performance. Gadsby pushed the boundaries of what a standup special was, just as Minhaj had, but in a very personal, very challenging way.

 

From 'Nanette'

 

These lines continued to blur when, in 2020, Dave Chapelle released ‘8:46’ directly to YouTube. Filmed during the pandemic, and shot outdoors, it’s hard to classify it as standard standup. There’s a lot of real rage and pain in the work. There are jokes, but they seem almost auxiliary. Here is a further step past ‘Nanette’ even, into the realm of personal struggle, anger, and hurt – while still being a performance that, on the surface, looks and sort of feels like standup.

 

Tackling these subjects isn’t new, of course. Pryor, Carlin, Hicks, CK – this sort of introspection mixed with commentary and tinged with anger and/or depression has been around a long time. But now it was as though the medium of a standup special was being used to monologue and chasten, to wake people up, or just to express their pain. (Gadsby addressed this in her 2020 show ‘Douglas’.) Clearly, standup comedy is in an unusual place.

 

Netflix/YouTube’s 8:46, in its entirety

 

And then along came Bo Burnham.

 

*     *     *

 

‘Bo Burnham: Inside’ is something new. In the Netflix special all the concert elements are stripped away – because he’s stuck inside. Just as we all were during the pandemic. Burnham has to deal with this new reality in a way that’s still a comedy special. Blending the emotional honesty and rawness of Gadsby and Chapelle, and the one-person show aspect in a non-traditional special, Burnham provides a truly remarkable experience. Seemingly cobbled together (but meticulously edited) over a period of more than a year we watch Burnham’s hair and beard grow, his adeptness with technology increase, his mental deterioration, his challenges confronted.

 

For fifteen months late night hosts have complained, like Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, about doing a show without an audience. But for standup, this experience of loss provided a whole new field of material for Burnham to explore, which he does on ‘Inside’. Loneliness and isolation, the dark side of technology, mental health, the need for audience approval – all had been covered before in standup, in a joking way. That said, you can’t actually convey these concepts very well in front of an adoring, sold-out concert hall crowd. But stuck inside a room for a year you can. Burnham makes this clear right from the start, as he focuses on what it means to perform for just a camera lens. Each of these heavy themes now becomes all the more apparent due to our witnessing the actual lived experience of them. This isn’t standup storytelling – this is standup viewing.

 

I never had watched Burnham before, and had ignored his comedy career in the early 2010s. It’s a style of comedy that focuses on music – and the songs of ‘Inside’ are superb. This sounds like Tim Minchin’s best comedy music, only a little bit better, and deeper. The songs are where he parodies our times: sexting, Instagram, internet addiction, and so forth. The many interludes between songs show us the deterioration and struggle (although this is present in some of the songs as well). The final layer is a different type of parody, where he searingly makes fun of common videos – reaction videos, watching people do playthroughs on services like Twitch, and the like. All of these layers merge into an incredible document of our times.

 

Welcome to the Internet, from 'Inside'

 

Will this special, ‘Bo Burnham: Inside’ stand the test of time? Some of the great milestones of comedy are terribly dated now – relics that we watch or listen to as epitomizing a moment. Meader’s comedy LP ‘The First Family’ won the Grammy for Album of the Year – lampooning the Kennedys. After Dallas, his career, and his album’s fame, were over. Comedy that’s focused on the zeitgeist and trends has a short shelf-life. Lenny Bruce is too much of a hipster to watch today, as is the topical humor of Mort Sahl, or the increasingly-stale stoner jokes of Cheech and Chong.

 

Lenny Bruce being hip in 1965

 

Will Burnham’s references to sexting and YouTube ensure that his performance not last? I don’t know. But whether or not we’re watching ‘Inside’ in thirty years, it’s still a worthwhile special for right now. We all experienced ‘Inside’ to differing extents, during the pandemic. I think ‘Inside’ is likely to become the definitive statement on life during this particular moment in time, the strange, reflective, and deeply troubling, start of this new decade. And it is, undoubtedly, one of the more interesting developments in the long story of how medium changes content.

 

Let's end this tour with a lighter moment from the show

The Bad Husband Parade

Roughly a decade ago I read Middlemarch, and immediately understood, having just completed The Brothers Karamazov prior, Woolf’s famous description of Eliot’s novel, as “one of the few English novels for grownup people.” Really, the descriptor isn’t limited to the English, though – Middlemarch is one of the first grownup novels in any language. Karamazov was published later, and remains an enjoyable, but decidedly adolescent, work – full of the Sturm und Drang and heady philosophical ideals of youth. Having read it just before Middlemarch, the contrast between the two books couldn’t be more stark.

            There’s certainly a place for such works, and shelf space should be reserved for Karamazov and its brethren – the novels of Camus, Celine, Doblin, Kafka, and Orwell, among others. But certain books are best read before 30, and philosophical novels, and philosophy generally, should predominate in those intellectually formative years.

            However, since life doesn’t, in fact, end at 30, a different sort of novel has to sustain us for the majority of our lives, and, for those seeking serious intellectual stimulation (as opposed to “mere” entertainment), that brings us back to the novels for grownups, such as Middlemarch (or Woolf’s own works: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse).

            When I read Middlemarch, at 25, the character that jumped off the page was the noxious Casaubon. He was utterly loathsome, provoking the same response as Dickens’ Uriah Heep, but, even more revolting, dared to be a fully-fleshed character, and not a mere Dickensian caricature. Casaubon wasn’t a scraping sycophant, but instead a bitter, frustrated, jealous miser of love, whose last act before dying is to create a vicious will against his young wife, with the intent to shame and hurt her for the rest of her life.

            So it was, for the past decade, that Casaubon was my go-to for bad husbands in literature.

            Unintentionally, however, for the past six months, I’ve encountered a slough of terrible, fictional, husbands. Consequently I thought I’d consider them here, especially in light of the fact that, also during the past six months, I’ve gotten engaged. Good time to take stock.

            When I pick up a book I don’t want to know anything about it. Usually I read the first few sentences, and decide from there. Occasionally I’ll pick a work because I feel like it’s the right time, or prioritize a book I’m not interested in, but that’s on my shelf regardless. There’s an aspect of delayed gratification: I’m going to read this low-priority novel first, and then the one I really want after. That delayed gratification is how I came to The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford, which I was not excited for.

            To be fair, the main character in Ford’s novel, Frank Bascombe, is a divorcee, not a husband. Bascombe is intellectually dishonest, delusional, and a hypocrite who blames others for faults he is blind to in himself. Really, it’s not all that surprising he’s divorced. His myopic self-centeredness and hangdog self-pity make him tiresome and unpleasant company for a few hundred pages.

            After what I had assumed would be light fare, I polished off The Sportswriter, and moved to heavier, more enjoyable, stuff. Two of the heaviest novels I began to read were both by Nobel Laureates, and both bricks. Tackling these tomes would take months. Unwittingly, too, though, both would be examples of bad husbands in literature.

            First, Norwegian author Sigrid Undset wrote an 1100-page magnum opus called Kristin Lavransdatter. Set in Norway in the medieval 1300s, it’s a vast story of a woman’s life told in three parts: her youth, her middle age, and her autumn years and death. But the great challenge of her life (beyond the novel’s central themes regarding Catholic guilt and sin) is her husband, Erlend. Circumstances transpire to create a standoff between Kristin and her husband, and Erlend, in his stubbornness and selfishness, screws up everything about their life, wasting their chances for happiness. His hubris is his unrelenting convictions: at one point it nearly gets him killed, solely out of pride, while managing to lose his estates and wealth; at another juncture it leads to him losing his child; at a third his wife is dishonored and is going to be exiled or executed before he gives in, at the last moment, to try and save her.

            As Dorothea suffers Casaubon, Kristin suffers Erlend – with the primary difference that she, Kristin, deeply loves Erlend, and vice versa. But their affection for each other only makes Erlend’s stubbornness worse, denying them the happiness they could and should have had together. Near his death, when Erlend finally gives up his tiresome moral high ground and ends the standoff, his realization comes with the same sort of tragic insight as Alec Guinness’ Col. Nicholson, in The Bridge on the River Kwai, when he exclaims, “What have I done?” But, like Nicholson, it comes too late for Kristen and her husband.

            While I was reading that tale, I began a different novel, again, unwittingly continuing the Bad Husband Parade. This new entry was by British author John Galsworthy, namely his lengthy novel cycle The Forsyte Saga, for which he was specifically awarded his Nobel citation. Unlike Undset’s Kristin, however, with Galsworthy our main character is the bad husband in question, the despicable Soames.

            Galsworthy writes with irony, and clearly is no fonder of Soames than we are. The purpose of his work is to critique middle class Victorianism, and the petty bourgeois with their obsession over property. Soames takes property, and the mania of ownership, to a disgusting conclusion, namely the ownership of his wife, Irene. She separates from him after he rapes her, yet, a decade later, he feels as if he still owns her, and is owed a son. Spending time with Soames, who wanders around London in a miasma of middle-class propriety and self-righteousness makes you mighty glad to have been born long after Victoria’s reign.

            Three novels, then, in six months, all dealing with wretched husbands. After this Casaubon is no longer alone in my mind as the sine qua non of lousy spouses: he has become merely the central figure in a larger pantheon of terrible partners. Erlend, Soames, and Bascombe – the cause of their hubris varies with each. Soames suffers from an obsessive need to possess. Bascombe is blind to his own egotism, and instead considers himself humble and virtuous. Erlend is well aware of his faults, but too proud to sacrifice his ideals, spreading misery, heartache, and hardship.

            From this accidental survey embarked upon during my period of engagement, we’ve really only gained further examples of what most people have known all along: that all these bad husbands (and for that matter bad spouses of any gender) have the same problem, namely, selfishness. While in manifests in different forms with each, selfishness is the primary flaw for the jealous Casaubon just as it is for the possessive Soames. Inflated self-worth defines both Bascombe and Erlend. If there is a warning to be taken from the Bad Husband Parade, it is that, in any romantic partnership, you must put your relationship, and your partner, before yourself. Fail to do so, and, besides inviting predictable romantic unhappiness into your life, you will also find yourself defying the prudence and wisdom of the grownup writers.

Oscar-Nominated Shorts 2021

So, since we weren't able to go to theaters, we watched this year's Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts on a screen in our home. It was a bit less fun, of course, but the contents were still good. 

Our local indie theater didn't make it through the recession, closing back in November - which was a shame. The Osio in Monterey, CA was a great little spot. Hopefully something opens in its place, or it reopens, so that we can do this in person next year.

Anyways, here are the nominated-shorts. Spoilers, of course.

Burrow

This was the Pixar offering. The rabbit wants to build a burrow, and learns the value of having neighbors. I thought it was fairly boring, and not as cute as other recent Pixar offerings - there's no real character development.

Genius Loci

I liked this a lot. The main character is struggling, and we are left wondering if she's having mental problems, drug use, or something else (until the end, which is admittedly still a bit vague). The artwork is beautiful, and there are nods to modern artists like Kandinsky, Chagall, and Picasso. I really thought this was going to be my favorite.

Opera

I don't know what this hot mess was. It was interesting, I guess, but overwhelming - maybe I'd have enjoyed it if I was able to explore it and interact with it? As it was, it felt sort of like a glorified screensaver. I think I figured it out, but only by accident.

If Anything Happens I Love You

This. Destroyed. Me. And by God, it had better win. Rarely has a work of art had such a crushing emotional impact as this animated short had on me. You should watch it. It's on Netflix. This is why we make art: to make you feel something.

Yes People

After weeping, this was a nice palate cleanser. But, on its own, these Icelandic apartment-dwellers are really nothing special. Again, the characters are two dimensional (at least figuratively) and there's basically no plot. A few amusing moments though, which none of the others had.

And there you have it, that's this year's crop. Even if one of the weaker offerings wins, there aren't really any bad ones. Three of them are *fine*, and one is Great, and one is Phenomenal. Seriously. Go watch it!

As always, there was a Highly Commended section that followed, comprised of the following three shorts:

Kapaemahu

This was a rather pretty short, with really nice visuals. It told an interesting little story, based on a real site and its legends in Hawaiian mythology and culture. Could have replaced any of the other fine entries.

The Snail and the Whale

I like Diana Rigg, and I like Rob Brydon, and I like very pretty background animation, but no. Hells no.

NO. Run from this as you would run from a whale that gave you that look.

To: Gerard

An older man passes on his sleight-of-hand to a young girl who takes his inspiration and then builds it into a career as an adult. This was rather saccharine, but not poorly animated or anything. Again, it was definitely *fine*. 

Go watch If Anything Happens I Love You.

RIP, Osio Monterey.

How to Teach US History (Units)

In my previous post, I mentioned that schools dedicate grades 6,7,9, and 10 to World History. I said that leaves grades 5,8, and 11 for U.S. History, with 12 for Civics. If a textbook has 35 chapters, on average, I tried to figure out how to cover the material.

So here are my ideas, based on the same premises, of what those U.S. History sections would look like.

5^th Grade: Early American History

 

1: Indigenous Settlement of North America

2: Eastern Cultures

3: Western Cultures

4: Daily Life in Mesa Verde

5: Spanish Arrival: Columbus to Conquistadors

6: Early French and British Exploration

7: The Mission System

8: French and British Colonies and Slavery

9: The Seven Years War

10: Leadup to the American Revolution

11: The American Revolution

12: Aftermath of the Revolution

13: Articles of Confederation to the Constitution

14: Early American Culture

15: The First Administrations

16: The War of 1812 and Tecumseh’s War

17: Expanding West

18: Jacksonian America

19: The Mexican-American War

20: Wars with Native Americans

21: The Gold Rush and Slavery Compromises

22: American Culture in the Midcentury

23: Industrialization in the North

24: Plantation Life in the South

25: Lead up to the Civil War

 

8^th Grade: America Transitions to the Modern

 

1: Outbreak of the Civil War

2: Civil War Battles

3: Daily Life for a Union Soldier

4: The End of the War

5: Aftermath and the Death of Lincoln

6: Early Reconstruction

7: Reconstruction’s Failure

8: Further Westward Expansion

9: Wars with Native Americans

10: The Reservation System

11: Increasing Industrialization

12: Nineteenth Century Feminism

13: Urbanization and the Great Migration

14: Tenement Living

15: American Imperialism

16: The Spanish-American War

17: The Philippine-American War

18: Economic Colonialism in the Pacific

19: Economic Colonialism in Latin America

20: Panama

21: Revivalism and Freethinkers

22: Populism

23: Progressivism

24: The Gilded Age

25: Early Labor Movements

26: The Second Industrial Revolution

27: Medical Breakthroughs at the Turn of the Century

28: Scientific Breakthroughs at the Turn of the Century

29: American Culture at the Turn of the Century

30: Labor Movements Gain Strength

31: Progressive Victories

32: Women’s Suffrage

33: Leadup World War I

34: America’s Role in WWI

35: Aftermath of WWI

 

11^th Grade: Modern America

 

1: The Roaring Twenties

2: The Causes of the Great Depression

3: The Depression and Dust Bowl

4: Roosevelt and the New Deal

5: Leadup to World War II

6: America Enters the War

7: The African and European Theater

8: The Pacific Theater

9: The Rise of Big Science and the End of the War

10: International Cooperation After the War

11: The Origins of the Cold War

12: The Intelligence Agencies

13: The Military-Industrial Complex

14: Suburban America

15: The Korean War

16: Midcentury American Culture

17: Midcentury Scientific Breakthroughs

18: Midcentury Technological Advances

19: Civil Rights from WWII to 1960

20: Political Realignment: Kennedy and Johnson

21: Civil Rights after 1960

22: Vietnam: Covert Years

23: Vietnam: Open War

24: Nixon and The End of Vietnam

25: Watergate and Scandals

26: Environmentalism

27: Feminist Movement and Gay Rights

28: Civil Rights for All

29: Conservatism Returns

30: End of the Cold War

31: Internationalism and the Turn of the Century

32: Terrorism and New Wars

33: Political Divisions and Culture Wars

34: Twenty-First Century Technologies

35: The Trump Era and Climate Change

 

12^th Grade: Civics

 

1: Prelude to the Constitution

2: The Constitutional Convention

3: The Articles

4: The Bill of Rights

5: Later Amendments

6: Non-enumerated Rights

7: The Legislative Branch: The House of Representatives

8: The Legislative Branch: The Senate

9: How a Bill Becomes a Law

10: The Judicial Branch: The Supreme Court

11: Key Supreme Court Decisions 1789-1920

12: Key Supreme Court Decisions 1920-2020

13: The Attorney General and the Justice Department

14: The Executive Branch

15: The Treasury

16: Taxes

17: The Department of the Interior

18: The Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development

19: The Departments of Energy and Commerce

20: The Department of Labor

21: The Department of Education

22: The Department of Health and Human Services

23: The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security

24: The Department of Defense

25: The Armed Forces

26: The Intelligence Agencies

27: Immigration and Citizenship

28: The State Department

29: Ambassadors and Diplomats

30: Sovereignty and International Law

31: Federal Parties and Elections

32: State Governments

33: The Lower Courts

34: Law Enforcement

35: Other Government Agencies and Groups

How to Teach World History (Units)

In California (and many other states, apparently) History, in a chronological sense, begins in 4^th grade. That year you learn state history. Then you study U.S. History in 5^th, 8^th, and 11^th grade. I’m down with that – and then I think 12^th should be Civics.

That setup means 6^th, 7^th, 9^th, and 10^th can be devoted to World History. I was looking at the textbooks I use, and their about 35 chapters long. So here’s how it should break down, in my ideal curriculum:

 

Sixth Grade: Ancient History

 

1: Archaeology

2: Hominid Ancestors

3: Transition from Gathering to Farming

4: Rise of Sumer

5: What is Civilization? Life in Sumer

6: Mesopotamian Societies

7: Rise of Egypt

8: Daily Life in Egypt

9: Kush

10: Judaism: Origins

11: Judaism: Beliefs

12: Mohenjo-Daro

13: Hinduism: Origins

14: Hinduism: Beliefs

15: Buddhism: Origins

16: Buddhism: Beliefs

17: Maurya

18: Guptas

19: Shang China

20: Philosophies

21: Daily Life in Zhou China

22: Qin Dynasty

23: Han Dynasty

24: Silk Road

25: Mycenaeans and the Bronze Age Collapse

26: City-states: Athens and Sparta

27: The Persian Wars

28: Daily Life in Classical Greece

29: Macedonian Empires

30: Roman Republic

31: Transition to Empire

32: Daily Life in Rome

33: Christianity: Origins

34: Christianity: Beliefs

35: Collapse of the Roman Empire

 

Seventh Grade: Medieval History

 

1: From Rome to the “Dark Ages”

2: Feudalism in Europe

3: Catholicism in Europe

4: Daily Life in the Middle Ages

5: The Byzantine Empire

6: Islam: Origins

7: Islam: Beliefs

8: Islamic Golden Age

9: Islamic Expansion: Middle East, North Africa, and Europe

10: Crusades

11: Early West Africa

12: Ghana

13: Islam in West Africa: Mali

14: Great Zimbabwe and the Swahili

15: Mughals and Sikhism

16: Tang and Song Politics

17: Daily Life in the Song Dynasty

18: Medieval Chinese Discoveries

19: Ming Dynasty

20: Japan: Origins to Heian

21: Daily Life in Medieval Japan

22: The Shogunate and Samurai Era

23: Southeast Asian Kingdoms: Khmer

24: Daily Life in Majapahit

25: Australia’s Peoples

26: Polynesia and the Tonga Empire

27: Mayas

28: Aztecs

29: Daily Life in the Aztec Empire

30: Inca

31: The European Renaissance

32: Renaissance Culture

33: Printing and the Reformation

34: Voyages of Exploration: Portugal and Spain

35: Conquistadors and Consequences

 

Ninth Grade: Transition to the Modern

 

1: Scientific Revolution

2: The European Enlightenment

3: The French Revolution

4: Napoleon and Conservative Monarchies

5: Early Industrialization: Steam Power

6: Factories

7: Anti-Industrial Movements

8: Nationalism and Romanticism: Greece

9: South American Revolutions

10: North and Central American Revolutions

11: Imperialism and Colonization

12: British India

13: Daily Life in British India

14: French Southeast Asia

15: China: Qing Dynasty

16: Opium Wars and Westernization

17: Taiping and the Boxers

18: Colonizing Oceania

19: African Imperialism

20: French Africa

21: British Africa

22: International Trade and Colonialism

23: Transitioning Societies: South America

24: Second Industrial Revolution

25: Modern Technologies and Medicine

26: Science Entering the 20^th Century

27: Feminism

28: Modernism in Culture

29: Leadup to World War I

30: WWI in Europe

31: Daily Life on the Western Front

32: The Bolshevik Revolution

33: Aftermath of WWI and the Spanish Flu

34: Middle East after the Ottomans

35: The Rise of Mass Culture

 

Tenth Grade: The Modern World

 

1: The Roaring Twenties

2: The Great Depression

3: The Rise of Fascism in Europe

4: Fascism in Japan and War with China

5: Europe Enters WWII

6: The Holocaust

7: The European Theater

8: The Pacific Theater

9: Internationalism After WWII

10: The Early Cold War

11: Chinese Communism: Mao

12: Decolonization and the Third Way

13: British Decolonization

14: The Partition of India

15: French Decolonization

16: The Rise of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

17: Cold War Proxy Wars

18: Latin American Communism and Dictators

19: Counterculture in the West

20: Feminism and Rights Movements

21: Environmentalism

22: Rise of Computing

23: Mid-Century Scientific Breakthroughs

24: The Collapse of the Soviet Union

25: The End of the Cold War

26: China After Mao

27: Remaining Tensions: India-Pakistan

28: Remaining Tensions: Israel-Palestine

29: Global Peace Movements

30: The Internet

31: “Tiger Economies”

32: Global Terror

33: Climate Change

34: Far-Right Populism

35: Looking to the Future