Kim XVIII -- chapter 12: TO SEE ONESELF IN A CLEFT STICK

"The Wheel of Things"

1. Were somebody else writing this book, I'd be less inclined to think there's nothing to what I'm about mention, but, as it's digging me, here it is: what do you make of the use of a serial number, essentially, as designation for and in place of a name for the young spy Kim saves?  Does the lack of name alter our perspective of the character?  Why not have Kim--and this would not, I think, be out of his character--press the young man for his rightful name and thence use it?
2. "...by the curse of the Queen's stone ... and by an assortment of Gods with wholly new names."  (haha)
3. new word (as always, new, anyway, for me): ruck: n. a crease or wrinkle (as in fabric, cloth), or crowd of people; v. to compress into untidy folds.  Off-hand, I wonder if this word might apply to the waves and bowing of very old panes of glass.
4. Potential for a complication!  Will Kipling take advantage of the opportunity he's created for himself?  It seems to me that the misjudgment by the Lama on Kim early in the chapter could open up a conflict.  Will this have lasting effect on Kim or the relationship between him and [one of] his [many, though this the first] master[s]?
5. Kim, as Friend to all the World, lives in more than world.  In particular, of course, is his duel citizenship to that of the Sahibs and of the Lama.  What do you make then of the Lama's words, "No matter what thy wisdom learned among Sahibs, when we come to my River thou wilt be freed from all illusion," inasmuch as it may indicate a required choice, and therefor abandonment of one World for another, of Kim, especially as it was the Lama who essentially paid for Kim's tuition to the Sahib's world?
6. "Let us get to the yolk of the egg":  What is this chapter even about?
7. On racism (this time brought up by Kim's discussion with Huree Babu): I'm feeling the need to defend, at least for the moment, and maybe by some personal tendency toward devil's advocacy, against accusations of Kipling's racism.  Can it be racist to indicate, and often as dominant label, race and caste if this too is the manner by which individuals of the story--time and place--identify themselves?  Would it have been even possible for Kipling to avoid the potentially racist labels (and why would he, as there was little cultural reason for him to do so)?
8. On finger-snapping (an aside): There are, obviously, I think, two or three general applications of the finger-snap (aside from musical), that is [1] the "darn-it", [2] the "hurry-up" or otherwise indication of velocity, and [3] the less-common-to-US impatience, irritation, or disagreement (that of finger-snapping under another's nose, for example).  The first two, and their derivatives, I've seen and used most of my finger-snapping life.  The third, however, I've only observed in connection to British and other European cultures, until my son (6-years-old) mentioned an observation of his from a student in his kindergarten class: a girl, of apparently long-term family residency in the USA, snaps her fingers under the nose of anyone she disagrees with when she corrects that person.  Thoughts or other applicable experiences?
9. "There is no hurry for Hurree" (haha).
10. "He believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the science."
11. How often Kipling appears to fully narrate the unimportant or disinteresting while glossing over the stuff I think I'd actually enjoy reading!
12. What does the Lama require of Kim in return for the latter's paid tuition for his three-year sahib's education?

KIM XI -- chapter 6.1: Trousers and Jacket Cripple [the] Body and Mind

"First I will take my pay."

Stop reading at: "This somewhat consoled Kim for the beatings."


While I enjoyed this chapter perhaps more than much of the rest of the book to this point, there's not really a lot to discuss or question.  One thing, however, that caught my eye here as well as previously, and which also connects to something I learned prior to beginning the reading of the novel, is the issue of Kipling's racism.  While decidedly racist (and how could one supporting imperialism not be, really?), his bigotry appears to toe a line.  In this chapter we see the distasteful word, "nigger," repeatedly, but Kipling's use thereof is about as favorable as that of Twain's--that is an indicator of ignorance, stupidity, or simply [the stultifying, as opposed to Kipling's subtler and entirely non-self-conscious, brand of] racism and superstition on the part of the one uttering it.  Kipling appears here to recognize a line dividing acceptable and unacceptable "levels" of racism.  Thoughts?  In support of this, there is the issue of Kipling's use of the swastika as an accompaniment to his signature and emblem appearing in early editions of his books.  Despite the immensely negative connotations of the swastika, it's originally/etymologically intended use is markedly innocuous.  The word itself is Sanskrit for "auspicious object" (and I prefer Princeton's definition of "auspicious" simply for its simplistic elegance).  In other words, a swastika is pretty much a good-luck charm.  Yet, according to Wikipedia and its pertinent article's sources, Kipling tossed aside the symbol as soon as there was even the slightest possibility that it might associate him with the Nazi movement, which, of course, was founded nearly entirely upon racism, bigotry, and supposed biological superiority.  But isn't this essentially what an imperialist movement is also built on? --that one race (or government/religion) is exactly what makes the moving country better than / superior to the one it's invading and conquering?  Kipling supported imperialism.  Where did his racism lie?

KIM III -- chapter 2.1: De-Plane! De-Plane! :: Te-Rain! Te-Rain!

Kim and the Lama

STOP READING HERE: "The last of the Great Ones," said the Sikh with authority, "was Sikander Julkarn (Alexander the Great). He paved the streets of Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds to this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God."

1. Evaluate the racism of India as it appears in the book.  Is there racism about Kipling himself, Kim, or simply the culture in general.  If not Kipling, since the narrative is essentially described through Kim's eyes, does Kipling, do you believe, possess any of that racism?
2. Cool pun: "I know the ways of the train" :: "I know the ways of the te-rain/terrain."
3. By continuation of the number 1, what happens on the train--at least the night trains--that can never happen elsewhere?  Judging by the so-public display between Husband and Wife, is there more "freedom" (for my lack of a better word) here than elsewhere?  Notice which individuals (as much as I can tell by my limited understanding of India back then (or now, for that matter)) don't care about caste and which do.
4. "Are we Rajahs to throw away good silver when the world is so charitable?"
5. Check Google Earth if you get a chance for the relative locations of Lahore (in Pakistan) to Umballah (Ambala, modern spelling) to Benares (or Banaras, official called Varanasi).
6. There is a crazy amount of folklore throughout the world built around rivers, and, more often than not, their healing effects, from La Llarona to Naaman and Styx to the Ganges (also called, as it is in Kim, the Gunga), not to mention the general Buddhist comparison (if I'm not mistaken, which is always a possibility, unfortunately) between the flow of life and the flow of a river.  Also, there's an obvious visual correlation between the path of an arrow as compared to that of a river.  Thoughts about this general confluence?
7. "He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his own thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese book of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently. All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues."  Tolerant, nonplussed, or numbly indifferent?

Huck Finn meets Oscar Wilde, and they talk about Accent

It seems that every blog out there that has anything to do with literature or language is posting opinions on the recently publicized and new edition of Huck Finn.  How could I pass up this opportunity to conform, and late, to the writing norm?  Well, I'm passing.  I just saw on my little feed updater (technical term) that The Economist's blog, Johnson, has now made public their stand.  Well, I have already stood (via Facebook, email, and a comment at unmoderatedcaucus.blogspot.com, not to mention a pertinent post on the issue at hand here at The Wall).  However, I heard a bit of local news recently (local to here in Utah) that reminds me, obliquely, of our current culture's particular tendency to change things in the name of correctness (and isn't this stupid coming from the same industry that invented shock value?).

A local theater troop is putting on Oscar Wilde's The Importance of being Earnest (or maybe it was An Ideal Husband).  Anyway, as it will be a local production, most auditioners will surely have an accent with dominant influences almost certainly Western, and likely Utahn, not to mention linguistic quirks specific even to just Utah County.  Despite this, the ad in our local paper says that interested parties must be capable of speaking with a British accent.

(Now allow me to step upon my soap box.)

...uh....   Really?

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is spectacularly stupid.  Aside from the fact that there's no such thing as a "British accent," the likelihood of a consistent accent is so slight as to render to product utterly muddled to distraction from the actual intent of this (either) brilliant play.  Of course, maybe the audience wouldn't notice; and not that I'm some expert in accents, and not that the local audience is so stupid.  Quite the contrary (either).  But if the audience is unlikely to notice discrepancies in accent, and if said accents are implemented, and also if said accents fit the pathetic stereotype United Statesians hold for Britons' accents (though apparently this director thinks there's but one), then would they notice if the actors simply spoke with their own "American" accents, or at least some other standardized accent?

I see this as precisely the opposite problem of the demonized changing of the "n-word" for slave, done in effort to palatize a book with otherwise distasteful words to our modern palate; that is using an accent one believes to be British to make more "authentic" a play that, well, can stand on its own two amply strong, well-balanced, and -proportioned feet without some misguided director's decision.  If that director wanted truly to be accurate in re-representing the accents from the time and location of the play's original and intended performance (and does anyone really think Oscar Wilde would have had such limited purview?),  that director would have to train all his actors in using accent (the noun "accent" left deliberately indefinite and abstract) not only from a specific part of England, but of the specific time.

BUT ACCENTS CHANGE WITH TIME!

Okay, I'm stopping.

I had to get that off my chest.

It's POINTLESS!

DO IT IN STANDARD ENGLISH!  Words = important.  Don't change the words.  The words alone are more than adequately representative of time and place and culture.  Accent = unimportant (well, accent nationality), unless the intent of an accent is to represent archetypes of education or social status, in which case, consider how the movie Airplane (though I've never seen it, I know the story) was translated into Italian: in the original there is a scene where an actor uses a heavy "Ebonics" accent (time and place, people).  In the Italian translation, instead of having the voice actors overdub with Italian words in an "Ebonics" accent (not only absolutely absurd, I'm sure you'll agree, but--I'm pretty sure--impossible), a deep Southern Italian accent was implemented and to equivocal effect.

So:

Dear Utah County Director of Oscar Wilde's Play, An Ideal Husband (or The Importance of being Earnest): there is a wide array of American English accents available and ample enough to supply all the linguistic needs of economic, educational, and social stereotypes present in the play.  Our English is good enough!

Okay.  Now I'm really done.

Wednesday's for Kids III -- UNCLE REMUS (a day early)

My dad was a funny dad, whose preferred method for inducing laughter, save tickle-torture, was voice imitations of Sesame Street and Disney characters.  I remember dinner table performances from The Count, Cookie Monster, and Brer Rabbit.  At bedtime he’d come to tuck in my younger brothers and announcing his arrival, booming, “Why it’s you, Ebenezer, the richest man in the cemetery,” after Jim Cummings’ turn as The Ghost of Christmas Future, in Mickey’s Christmas Carroll.  Tickle torture always followed.  (Mr. Cummings, I just learned, heralds from Youngstown, Ohio, not all too far from my parents.)

Among all voice imitations and nightly story time, the movie recommendations, and all the other general Dad-ness, two collections have settled more deeply and heavily than the rest: Baum’s The Magical Monarch of Mo (for another time) and today’s focus, the tales of one Uncle Remus, made temporarily famous by Disney’s self-banned feature, Song of the South. 

Yes: self-banned.

This surprised me.  I knew it wasn't available, but banned by Disney?

Mr. Fox and Mr. Rabbit, by A.B. Frost

Uncle Remus is the narrator of folktales recorded by former reporter Joel Chandler Harris.  The stories were an integral part of Harris’ childhood, and he sought only “to write out and put in print the stories I heard all my life” (Harris, Joel Chandler, The Favorite Uncle Remus, from "To the Reader," Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975, New York, New York).  The stories are those of the anthropomorphized Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear, Brer Fox, and so on, brought to life by the collective Georgia plantation storyteller’s avatar, Uncle Remus, who, according to Disney, was a slave version Santa Claus, bushy beard and all.

The written stories don’t have near the spurious reputation of the movie, and the illustrations are fantastic.  (Go ahead and google A.B. Frost.  Great stuff all around, not just for Harris.)  In them, my dad found perhaps the greatest realization for his spectacularly kid-friendly gift for voices and dialect.  Here is one of my favorites (also, perhaps, the most recognizable):

“DIDN’T the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Remus?” asked the little boy the next evening.

“He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho’s you born—Brer Fox did. One day atter Brer Rabbit fool ’im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got ’im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun w’at he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot ’er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer to see what de news wuz gwine ter be. En he didn’t hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin’ down de road—lippity-clippity, clippity -lippity—dez ez sassy ez a jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come prancin’ ’long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz ’stonished. De Tar Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘Mawnin’!’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee—‘nice wedder dis mawnin’,’ sezee.

“Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox he lay low.

“‘How duz yo’ sym’tums seem ter segashuate?’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.

“Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.

“‘How you come on, den? Is you deaf?’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘Kaze if you is, I kin holler louder,’ sezee.

“Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘You er stuck up, dat’s w’at you is,’ says Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘en I’m gwine ter kyore you, dat’s w’at I’m a gwine ter do,’ sezee.

“Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummick, he did, but Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nothin’.

“‘I’m gwine ter larn you how ter talk ter ’spectubble folks ef hit’s de las’ ack,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘Ef you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m gwine ter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee.

“Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“Brer Rabbit keep on axin’ ’im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin’ nothin’, twel present’y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis’, he did, en blip he tuck ’er side er de head. Right dar’s whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ’im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘Ef you don’t lemme loose, I’ll knock you agin,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch ’er a wipe wid de udder han’, en dat stuck. Tar-Baby, she ain’y sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de natal stuffin’ outen you,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’. She des hilt on, en de Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don’t tu’n ’im loose he butt ’er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa’ntered fort’, lookin’ dez ez innercent ez wunner yo’ mammy’s mockin’-birds.

“‘Howdy, Brer Rabbit,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin’,’ sezee, en den he rolled on de groun’, en laft en laft twel he couldn’t laff no mo’. ‘I speck you’ll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain’t gwineter take no skuse,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.”

Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes.

“Did the fox eat the rabbit?” asked the little boy to whom the story had been told.

“Dat’s all de fur de tale goes,” replied the old man. “He mout, an den agin he moutent. Some say Judge B’ar come ’long en loosed ’im—some say he didn’t. I hear Miss Sally callin’. You better run ’long.”

There’s a fantastic website, http://www.uncleremus.com/, which offers 34 additional stories for free, as well as clips from Song of the South, and audio clips of readings. 

While there are many children’s books, even by the aforementioned L. Frank Baum, that are unfortunately heavy in racism and other unfair and cruel stereotyping, I don’t see it in the Uncle Remus stories.  They are respectful of their sources, recounted lovingly by the demur Harris, particularly in his uniform goal of reporting via faithful retelling; and as folktale, it reflects most accurately what life was at the time, evincing if anything racism of community and culture, not embodying racism in its essence. 

So here’s my problem.  I want to get my hands on a copy of Song of the South.  I remember clips from the movie fondly.  I love the music.  Splash Mountain is among my three favorite rides at Disneyland.  Is the movie really so bad that it got itself banned for racism?

Well, maybe.  Disney pulled it from the shelves themselves, because their publicists believed it idealized the slave situation in Georgia, where the stories take place, and didn't want to incur their employers a lawsuit.  Supposedly (I have never seen the whole thing, but I can see this claim as a strong possibility) the movie does nothing to damn slavery and its immorality, and shows good ol' Uncle Remus as fat, jolly, and perfectly content with his lot.  I agree that this isn't good.  It's bad.  Whether it merits the movie's ban is another story entirely, and perhaps beyond the scope of Wednesday's for Kids, but I'm going to touch on it just for a moment in order to expose a possible hypocrisy.  

Is the portrayal of Uncle Remus any more racist than that of Dumbo's ravens, Aladdin's Jafar, Pinocchio's Stromboli, or Peter Pan's Indians (these among many others), or is it just closer to home?  Do the movies themselves demonstrate racism on the part of the movie makers, or does the lack of ban on the others reflect racism yet in our culture?  Or both?

I don't know.  Regardless, you can't watch the whole movie, because it's just not available, but you can read all the stories.  The stories are brilliant, beautiful, and fun, and I highly recommend them to you and the kids you know.

***

If you're interested in further discussion, check out James Smith's review, HERE, of The Woggle-Bug Book, by L. Frank Baum, at his blog, Motion for a Five Minute Unmoderated Caucus.