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When I was little, the Soviet bogeyman was The Capitalist. A fat, Dickensonian capitalist in a gold pince-nez (like in most state communism initiatives, intellectuals were a counter-revolutionary, subversive class; in USSR there was a particular metonymy that wed Jews, French-speaking intellectuals and other problematic elements on the road to building a socialist paradise), who would take the children away and starve them in factories and whip them and probably lynch them: the narrative of the Evil West was a potpuorri imaginary comprised of the following historical narratives: post-Industrial Revolution Europe, antebellum American South and the decadence of the French royalty before the invention of the guillotine put a stop to all of that (the decadence was captured in a popular poem, which started out: "Eat pineapples, chew the phaesants / Your last day is coming, you Bourgois!")
I wonder if the terror meme in the U.S. today has gotten to the point that when children are misbehaving, "patriotic" parents tell them to be good or the terrorists will come for them.
The quote in the subject line of this post is the opening line of Osip Mandelsham's poem about Stalin, the one that got him sent to the gulag. In the Russian original, the verb that is translated as "feeling" is chuya, which is a derivative of the actual verb "to feel"--chuvstovat', but has different connotations and nuances. chuvstvovat' is a very plain, proper verb, referring either to articulated emotions, or physical, tactile sensations; chuyat' connotes "feeling" which is more primal, intuitive, paralingual, animalistic. More approrpate to a zeitgeist where fear comes from metallic air, from demagnetized compass needles.
I don't believe in the End of History thesis. But I believe in the bottleneck effect. It works a little like a traffic accident, but with decades, instead of cars, crashing into each other. Hence the collapse of a proper time bracket between "now" and "retro." Hence the pomo bricolage of the 50s and 40s, and now, the 20s coming back to the South. And I don't mean the flapper age, either.
Clarence Darrow must be rolling over in his grave, while the William Jennings Bryan Zombie project is eating brains and gathering its strength back, even though Bryan himself had reasons more complicated and sophisticated for waging his stand at the time than could be dreamt of today.
So, today's lesson is on the Scopes Monkey Trial, which has been diluted by decades into a popularly accessible form, a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, called Inherit The Wind which is dramatic and heroic as plays should be. Later it became a movie, starring Spencer Tracy, who was as dramatic and heroic as Spencer Tracy should be. The play and the movie are historically inaccurate, and have replaced the public memory of the actual trial, as fictionalized accounts tend to do. It has a "feel-good" ending, with the underdog "Scopes"* found guilty, but "Bryan" dying, like, on the spot, and "Darrow" putting the Bible and Evolution books together before leaving the courtroom, which is supposed to symbolize harmony twixt the two in some theistic evolution-type synthesis. Here is the thing that got lost between the cracks of the decades:
From the get-go, the Scopes monkey trial was a test case. And a calculated one at that. It was originally orchestrated by a man named Joe Rappalyea, who presented the town leaders with an ACLU announcement that it would offer its services to anyone challenging the Tennessee anti-evolutionary statute. Rappalyea was convinced that a public challenge of the new law would help put their town in decline on the map, and revivify it. You see, the population of Dayton had shrunk from 3,000 down to 1,800 in a matter of years. He conscripted Scopes for the test case; the prosecutors, Herbert and Sue Hicks were two local attorneys that were friends of Scopes. Rappalyea originally wanted H.G. Wells to head the defense team, but H.G. wasn't interested. Eventually, after William Jennings Bryan, who hadn't practiced law in years, offered to lead the prosecution, Clarence Darrow signed on for the defense, despite ACLU's original reservations due to Darrow's reputation as a "atheistic zealot," and their reticence of the trial turning into a free-for-all ideological attack on religion in general.
The theatrical setting of the whole endeavor sounds fabulous: "A carnival atmosphere pervaded Dayton as the opening of the trial approached in July of 1925. Banners decorated the streets. Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought to town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a side show on Main Street. Anti- Evolution League members sold copies of T. T. Martin's book Hell and the High School. Holy rollers rolled in the surrounding hills and riverbanks. " [Douglas Linder, An Introduction to the John Scopes (Monkey) Trial]. Unlike the play would have it, Scopes did not receive medieval villagers-with-torches treatment from his fellow townsfolk.
The interesting part is that after Bryan's defeat ( "Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes." Both old warriors grew testy as the examination continued. Bryan accused Darrow of attempting to "slur at the Bible." He said that he would continue to answer Darrow's impertinent questions because "I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee--." Darrow interrupted his witness by saying, "I object to your statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes." After that outburst, Raulston ordered the court adjourned. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to the stand and that his testimony the previous day should be stricken from evidence."-ibid, emphasis mine), Darrow asked the jury to return a guilty verdict so that the case could go to the Tennessee Supreme Court; the jury obliged, and the judge fined Scopes a nominal fee for breaking the law.
What happenned next is very important, and very forgotten: a year later, when the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the Dayton court decision it wasn't on constitutional grounds, as Darrow and ACLU had hoped for. It was on a technicality: since the fine exceeded $50, the jury was supposed to have fined Scopes, not the judge. The case was dismissed, and for all the hoopla, even though it was a setback for the anti-evolutionists, it did not set a constitutional precedent. So ends the heroic narrative of the Scopes monkey trial, and I know it's a big disappointment to everyone justifiably outraged by Georgia's attempts to remove the word "evolution" from high school science curriculums, who has been invoking it in the last few weeks.
My point is about false victories, and the American tendency to seize onto them. A legal advance may turn out to be futile, or even detrimental, unless it is brought into being for the right reasons. So, if the anti-sodomy case in Texas had been decided on the basis of equal protection (as Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her concurrent opinion), rather than the libertarian-in-ethos right to privacy, the victory, would have been more nominal as it would have done nothing for the stigma deployed by the anti-sodomy laws. It's easy to claim legal precedent, or legal victory. Legal obfuscation, sesquipedalian loopholes, they all create a below-rudimentary understanding of law and its applications, and worse, they contribute to the myth of due process, which, of course, is isomorphic with the myth of checks and balances and the three branches. This unwavering faith, in this myth, is what will let Bush off the hook, yet again, now that he has ordered "an independed investigation" into the intelligence failures leading to the war. People are confident! No one is above the law! But can the public explain, or fuck explantions, even understand, what it meant a couple of months ago, when Aschroft recused himself from the investigation into CIA leak fiasco? It created an illusion of following a procedure to ensure objectivity. How many people know that the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald to lead the probe, violates the Justice Department's own regulations with regard to choosing a Special Counsel, which stipulated that "The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government." Fitzgerald, as a current Justice Department employee is ineligible to be a "special counsel." But what we see on the news is some flimsy thin Potemkin Villages of objectivity and self-censure, cardboard cutouts that appear three-dimensional to people blinded by the orange mist. My point is, it's easy to construct heroics. It's too bad when decades later, at a Benjaminian moment of danger, we can't feel the ground beneath us.
* in the play and the movie all the names were fictionalized
I wonder if the terror meme in the U.S. today has gotten to the point that when children are misbehaving, "patriotic" parents tell them to be good or the terrorists will come for them.
The quote in the subject line of this post is the opening line of Osip Mandelsham's poem about Stalin, the one that got him sent to the gulag. In the Russian original, the verb that is translated as "feeling" is chuya, which is a derivative of the actual verb "to feel"--chuvstovat', but has different connotations and nuances. chuvstvovat' is a very plain, proper verb, referring either to articulated emotions, or physical, tactile sensations; chuyat' connotes "feeling" which is more primal, intuitive, paralingual, animalistic. More approrpate to a zeitgeist where fear comes from metallic air, from demagnetized compass needles.
I don't believe in the End of History thesis. But I believe in the bottleneck effect. It works a little like a traffic accident, but with decades, instead of cars, crashing into each other. Hence the collapse of a proper time bracket between "now" and "retro." Hence the pomo bricolage of the 50s and 40s, and now, the 20s coming back to the South. And I don't mean the flapper age, either.
Clarence Darrow must be rolling over in his grave, while the William Jennings Bryan Zombie project is eating brains and gathering its strength back, even though Bryan himself had reasons more complicated and sophisticated for waging his stand at the time than could be dreamt of today.
So, today's lesson is on the Scopes Monkey Trial, which has been diluted by decades into a popularly accessible form, a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, called Inherit The Wind which is dramatic and heroic as plays should be. Later it became a movie, starring Spencer Tracy, who was as dramatic and heroic as Spencer Tracy should be. The play and the movie are historically inaccurate, and have replaced the public memory of the actual trial, as fictionalized accounts tend to do. It has a "feel-good" ending, with the underdog "Scopes"* found guilty, but "Bryan" dying, like, on the spot, and "Darrow" putting the Bible and Evolution books together before leaving the courtroom, which is supposed to symbolize harmony twixt the two in some theistic evolution-type synthesis. Here is the thing that got lost between the cracks of the decades:
From the get-go, the Scopes monkey trial was a test case. And a calculated one at that. It was originally orchestrated by a man named Joe Rappalyea, who presented the town leaders with an ACLU announcement that it would offer its services to anyone challenging the Tennessee anti-evolutionary statute. Rappalyea was convinced that a public challenge of the new law would help put their town in decline on the map, and revivify it. You see, the population of Dayton had shrunk from 3,000 down to 1,800 in a matter of years. He conscripted Scopes for the test case; the prosecutors, Herbert and Sue Hicks were two local attorneys that were friends of Scopes. Rappalyea originally wanted H.G. Wells to head the defense team, but H.G. wasn't interested. Eventually, after William Jennings Bryan, who hadn't practiced law in years, offered to lead the prosecution, Clarence Darrow signed on for the defense, despite ACLU's original reservations due to Darrow's reputation as a "atheistic zealot," and their reticence of the trial turning into a free-for-all ideological attack on religion in general.
The theatrical setting of the whole endeavor sounds fabulous: "A carnival atmosphere pervaded Dayton as the opening of the trial approached in July of 1925. Banners decorated the streets. Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought to town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a side show on Main Street. Anti- Evolution League members sold copies of T. T. Martin's book Hell and the High School. Holy rollers rolled in the surrounding hills and riverbanks. " [Douglas Linder, An Introduction to the John Scopes (Monkey) Trial]. Unlike the play would have it, Scopes did not receive medieval villagers-with-torches treatment from his fellow townsfolk.
The interesting part is that after Bryan's defeat ( "Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes." Both old warriors grew testy as the examination continued. Bryan accused Darrow of attempting to "slur at the Bible." He said that he would continue to answer Darrow's impertinent questions because "I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee--." Darrow interrupted his witness by saying, "I object to your statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes." After that outburst, Raulston ordered the court adjourned. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to the stand and that his testimony the previous day should be stricken from evidence."-ibid, emphasis mine), Darrow asked the jury to return a guilty verdict so that the case could go to the Tennessee Supreme Court; the jury obliged, and the judge fined Scopes a nominal fee for breaking the law.
What happenned next is very important, and very forgotten: a year later, when the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the Dayton court decision it wasn't on constitutional grounds, as Darrow and ACLU had hoped for. It was on a technicality: since the fine exceeded $50, the jury was supposed to have fined Scopes, not the judge. The case was dismissed, and for all the hoopla, even though it was a setback for the anti-evolutionists, it did not set a constitutional precedent. So ends the heroic narrative of the Scopes monkey trial, and I know it's a big disappointment to everyone justifiably outraged by Georgia's attempts to remove the word "evolution" from high school science curriculums, who has been invoking it in the last few weeks.
My point is about false victories, and the American tendency to seize onto them. A legal advance may turn out to be futile, or even detrimental, unless it is brought into being for the right reasons. So, if the anti-sodomy case in Texas had been decided on the basis of equal protection (as Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her concurrent opinion), rather than the libertarian-in-ethos right to privacy, the victory, would have been more nominal as it would have done nothing for the stigma deployed by the anti-sodomy laws. It's easy to claim legal precedent, or legal victory. Legal obfuscation, sesquipedalian loopholes, they all create a below-rudimentary understanding of law and its applications, and worse, they contribute to the myth of due process, which, of course, is isomorphic with the myth of checks and balances and the three branches. This unwavering faith, in this myth, is what will let Bush off the hook, yet again, now that he has ordered "an independed investigation" into the intelligence failures leading to the war. People are confident! No one is above the law! But can the public explain, or fuck explantions, even understand, what it meant a couple of months ago, when Aschroft recused himself from the investigation into CIA leak fiasco? It created an illusion of following a procedure to ensure objectivity. How many people know that the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald to lead the probe, violates the Justice Department's own regulations with regard to choosing a Special Counsel, which stipulated that "The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government." Fitzgerald, as a current Justice Department employee is ineligible to be a "special counsel." But what we see on the news is some flimsy thin Potemkin Villages of objectivity and self-censure, cardboard cutouts that appear three-dimensional to people blinded by the orange mist. My point is, it's easy to construct heroics. It's too bad when decades later, at a Benjaminian moment of danger, we can't feel the ground beneath us.
* in the play and the movie all the names were fictionalized
