Joe Public vs. Joe Strummer The Future is Unwritten

Article first published as DVD Review: Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten on Blogcritics.

Why do some find the need to make rock star bios? The recent and dreadful Lennon Naked added absolutely nothing to what anyone knows or has thought or felt about the Beatles and Lennon—if anything, it took away from the man, made him quite unlikable. Walk the Line didn't do much for Johnny Cash, or for me. Val Kilmer did a great Jim Morrison impersonation in a not-great-at-all film. Gary Oldman was a fantastic exception as Sid Vicious in the great Sid and Nancy. What all this is leading up to is that there is a film biography of musician Joe Strummer rumored to be in the works, Joe Public. There's not much to be known about it yet, except there is the desire to make the film. And I'm not exactly excited about the prospect.

I'm not sure I could stand to watch someone "play" Joe Strummer in a film. I was just finally able to make myself watch Joe Strummer The Future is Unwritten. I was a huge Clash fan growing up, and an even huger Joe fan. Some kids growing up love comic books and idolize superheroes. I had a few posters of singers and the New York Yankees on my bedroom wall, but I never really had a teen idol phase like some of my girlfriends. But when I put the first Clash record on my parents' stereo in suburban southern New Jersey, my world changed. I took London Calling with me to art school and Joe & Mick & Paul & Topper were the soundtrack of my college years.

The Clash were different from any other band or music that I had ever heard. Their lyrics made me think, exposed me to issues and people previously unknown (Sandinista).

But how could we know when I was young
All the changes that were to come?
All the photos in the wallets on the battlefield ("Something About England" Sandinista!)

They created an aural collage—straight-up rock and roll, punk vocals and values, Allan Ginsberg reading ("Ghetto Defendant"), lines from cult movies like Taxi Driver ("Red Angel Dragnet"), pop culture references galore. Plus, you could dance to it. Joe Strummer was my first and maybe only idol. I looked up to him. He was an artist who made me glad that I was an artist.

It's sometimes hard to meet your idols. It can be very disappointing, which was why I had been avoiding Julien Temple's film. But I finally sat down and watched it and was impressed. It wasn't just a rock star rise and fall story, although there are those aspects to Joe's career (and anyone's life after a certain age.) It wasn't just about the Clash. It didn't sanctify or trash Joe, although it didn't shy away from showing some of his less-than-stellar moments. It was as honest and hyper-kinetic and three-dimensional as the man.

For Clash fans it confirmed, through Joe's own words and interviews with Mick Jones, that not only did Joe break up the Clash, but he broke Mick's heart when he fired him from the band in 1983. But it also showed more clearly than any other film about a band that maybe there really is only one pattern for rock stars—walk over everyone and work your ass off to get to the top, get addicted to drugs on the way, clean up, finally get to the top, find out that success isn't so great when you get there, freak out at the inevitable slide down (all except possibly the Rolling Stones who never seemed to notice their slide and are as happy as they could be, to be where they are.) As Joe says when he the Clash have made the big time, playing before huge crowds at Shea Stadium, "I couldn't believe we turned into what we tried to destroy." Boys together are great until the boys grow up to be men.

Elevator! Going up!
In the gleaming corridors of the 51st floor
The money can be made if you really want some more ("Koka Kola" London Calling)

Joe was brought up all over the world, which definitely was a factor in the world-view politics expressed in his art. He also experienced the typical English boarding school environment, hardly seeing his parents for his formative years. His brother David, a year older, was a lost soul—he joined the National Front, became more and more alienated from his family and eventually committed suicide at the age of 19. Joe went to art school, "The last resort of malingerers and bluffers and people who don't want to work" (as an art school graduate I adore that quote), and eventually found a group of like-thinking hippies and squatters who also were musicians. He soon chucked art school and dove into music full-time, deciding that he wanted to be a rock star. This led to the 101ers, which had some wonderful rockabilly-influenced songs such as "Keys to your Heart" and "Letsagetabitarockin."

But Joe always had his eyes on the prize and it was a short hop to the future by dumping his old friends and old life when he met Mick Jones—he "grabbed the future by its face." The film interviews Joe's friends from his college years, and although they acknowledge how hurt they were when he walked away without a second glance, they don't seem to have hard feelings about it. It was very punk rock of him, after all. And considering what everyone is like in their me-oriented 20s, we can probably all come up with some similar examples of callous behavior from our pasts.

Anything I want he gives it, but not for free
It's hateful
And it's paid for and I'm so grateful to be nowhere
This year I've lost some friends
Some friends? What friends?
I dunno, I ain't even noticed ("Hateful" London Calling)

When Joe first started playing with Mick he was clearly in awe of him, "Mick can hear chords and the bass, make arrangements in his head." Mick was the man with the music, Joe brought the words. Joe chopped off his hair and threw himself full force into the punk ethos, but he was always still a bit of the hippie, and held on to his rockabilly style with his ever-present slicked-back locks and modified pompadour (even with the mohawk) that is an heir and homage to Elvis. Joe never completely tossed his hippie "love everybody" beliefs. He may have perfected a punk snarl with hapless interviewers, but when it came to playing music in front of a live audience, Joe wanted to share the experience fully, "We were one with the audience. You should never put yourself above anyone." He wanted the Clash to be the people's band. "Without people you are nothing, that's my spiel."

This is a public service announcement
With guitar! ("Know Your Rights" Combat Rock)

What really makes the film work for me is that so much of it is narrated by Joe himself, culled together from interviews and his radio program, London Calling, from the 90s. Joe is always honest and frequently funny. When asked why the son of a diplomat who went to boarding school had a famously dentally-challenged look early in his career, he says offhand, "I never brushed my teeth."

I'm so glad I conquered my fears of toppling my idol and watched Joe Strummer The Future is Unwritten. It brought back some of the spirit, some of the rawness that was life in the 80s. Or maybe that's just life when you're young. Joe never lost his love and interest in life. Post-Clash he played with the Pogues, Mick Jones's Big Audio Dynamite, and formed Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros. He also wrote music for films and did some acting, working with filmmakers Alex Cox and Jim Jarmusch.

A.M., the F.M., the P.M. too
Churning out that boogaloo ("The Magnificent Seven" Sandinista!)

I was shocked and upset when I heard that he died at the age of 50 of a congenital heart condition in 2002. But I didn't experience that tragic feeling you get when someone too young has left this world. Joe was too young, definitely, but he also lived a full life, at full tilt, and left a great legacy. He is no James Dean or Buddy Holly or Heath Ledger. As someone says near the end of the film, "He sang every word like he meant it." He did, and I can still listen to his music today and get meaning from it, get inspired by him. Will some fictional biopic be able to do that? Not very likely. Mick Jones and Paul Simenon are also reported to be producing a film about London Calling. Hmmm. At least Joe Strummer The Future is Unwritten is chock-full of Joe's voice and words, with some great film and music clips. It's a worthy glimpse into a punk rock and roll idol's life.

Related articles

• Paul Viragh Scripting JOE PUBLIC, Biopic About The Clash Frontman Joe Strummer (collider.com)
• Big Audio Dynamite: more pioneering than the Clash? (guardian.co.uk)

the afflicted girls

Article first published as Book Review: The Afflicted Girls by Suzy Witten on Blogcritics.

The Salem Witch Trials have always held a fascination for me. I've had a hearty dislike for Cotton Mather ever since reading The Crucible in junior high. It's difficult for me to relate to a learned man who can be forward-thinking in relation to disease, by encouraging inoculations against smallpox, but be so backward-thinking when it came to witchcraft in Puritan New England. It's hard not to think that there might have been a misogynist angle to his attitudes, as Mather called one of the accused, Martha Carrier, "A rampant hag" and reporting the trial of Bridget Bishop in his Wonders of the Invisible World, he wrote "John Louder testify'd, that upon some little controversy with Bishop ... he did awake in the Night by moonlight, and did see clearly the likeness of this woman grievously oppressing him; in which miserable condition she held him, unable to help himself, till near Day. He told Bishop of this; but she deny'd it, and threatened him very much. "

Mather is just a shadow figure in The Afflicted Girls, but the petty neighborly conflicts that Mather took such copious notes of that were at the root of a lot of the evil goings-on in Salem Village in the late 17th century are well-described in this fictional account. The author, Suzy Witten, takes her time building up the very large cast of characters and their layers of history, jealousy, and petty grievances in the daily life of Salem Village, and does it well. She has done her research, incorporating the threats of disease, Indian raids and poverty that also were factors in what happened. A real sense of the hard choices facing a young woman, no matter what social strata she belonged to, is also well-delineated. A daughter of a prosperous merchant or gentleman may not have to perform the menial household tasks of an indentured servant, but she had about as much freedom as did Mercy Lewis in the male-ruled Puritan society.

Witten takes an interesting tack, even a risk, in making her protagonist nineteen year-old Mercy Lewis. Thanks to the internet, the Salem Witch Trial transcripts can be read, and original documents even viewed. One can quickly learn that it's a big departure from history making Mercy a heroine, as she was one of the most frequent and vocal accusers of witches in the trials. I had a real shock of sadness and excitement when I discovered last year that I was actually descended from Sarah Averill Wildes, who along with Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Good and Susannah Martin, was hanged as a witch in Salem on July 19, 1692. Since I found our Salem connection I have been cruising the internet, visited Salem and its environs, and read quite a few books on the subject, fiction and non-fiction, to try and learn as much as I could about my ancestor. One of the things I discovered was that Mercy Lewis was one of the accusers of my ancestor, Sarah Averill Wildes. But no hard feelings. I don't mind the author's angle, and I liked Mercy as a character in this book.

House of Ann Putman Jr, Off Dayton Street, Danvers, MA, where Mercy Lewis was indentured, ca. 1891

The real Mercy Lewis lost her family to an Indian raid when she was just a child in Maine. In fact it is believed she may have seen them all killed and carried that gruesome memory with her to Salem. An orphan, the only way she could survive was to be indentured as a servant, first to the Reverend George Burroughs, who was also executed in Salem as a witch, and later the family of Thomas Putnam, where she met Ann Putman, Jr. (Lucy in this book). She had virtually nothing and could only survive on her wits and her employer's good graces until her term of indenture was over, which typically lasted seven years. She would have no prospects for marriage until she was free. If she had a child while indentured, her length of term would be increased. Witten endows Mercy with herbalist and midwife skills and introduces the possibility that what happened with those crazy Salem kids might have been drug-related (from a hallucinogenic plant). It's not a bad twist to take. Her hypothesis may be right or wrong, or possibly partly the truth. Why Salem still fascinates—it's about human nature—the not-so-nice side of people. It didn't take much for fear and accusations to take root, whether drug or mischief-fueled.

I had some major historical questions and quibbles while reading The Afflicted Girls. Witten changed the most well-known of the accusers, Ann Putnam, Jr.'s, name to Lucy—maybe to differentiate her from her mother, who also was an accuser? But it actually made it more confusing for me, waiting for the real Ann jr. to show up. Also, a scene at Gallows Hill had a cherry-picked assortment of the people who were accused, not as they actually died. And there was a daring jail escape was beyond fictional, but in the realm of fantasy, considering how meticulously she had tried to depict the Village in earlier chapters. The author's note stated that the book started as a screenplay, so some of these changes may have been made in that light, to bring her most flamboyant "characters" together in one big scene. In fact, sometimes it felt as if there were parts that were written for the book, and scenes which were put in to sex things up.

Deposition of Mercy Lewis v. Susannah Martin

Which brings me to my major bone of contention with the novel. It's probably easiest to use the movie Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd as a similar example. Sweeney Todd had beautiful music and great acting by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, but that was all but drowned out for me by all the endless, repetitive decapitations — one after another after another after another. The sex scenes had the same effect in The Afflicted Girls. It's not bodice-ripping romantic novel sex. It's repeated, multiple scenes of rape and unpleasant coupling by unpleasant people. Salem Village surely had its share of horrible men and women, but were they all sexually messed up or predators? Witten may be trying to comment on the Puritan ethic and attitudes toward sex, but the reader is the one who gets degraded too many times along with poor Mercy. I'm not sure it would have been appropriate to make her a feminist hero, either, but she is victimized or sexualized by basically every man who meets her, and she doesn't become much more than a victim, buffeted about by the claustrophobic and brutal world she inhabits.

Unsavory sex aside, there are some interesting aspects to The Afflicted Girls and I definitely felt like I was back in Salem Village, it's just not a nice place to be.


Book #8 in reading challenge Cannonball Read 3, sponsored by Pajiba

Full disclosure: The author sent this book to me after reading another book review I had written for The Heretic's Daughter, also a book about the Salem Witch Trials. I'm very thankful to be considered a critic of books, movies and other pop culture and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

Related articles

• Book Review: The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent (blogcritics.org)
• Famous Trials: The Witches of Salem (neatorama.com)
• Book Review: The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent (seattlepi.com)

who do you think you are

Article first published as TV Review: Who Do You Think You Are - Season Premiere on Blogcritics.

There is something about the show Who Do You Think You Are? that hits an emotional chord and makes the viewer really connect with the discoveries made by the featured celebrities searching for their ancestors. I guess it's that history is so much more interesting and affecting when you hear the stories of individual lives. Most of our ancestors have had an impact on history and participated in events we may or may not have read about while in school, but we never knew their names or their stories. That's why I love genealogy—I might get a chance to uncover some of these untold stories.

This long-form advertisement for ancestry.com had this geneaology geek front and center. I enjoyed the first season, which featured producer Lisa Kudrow, Emmitt Smith, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, whose quest led to the discovery of a family participant in the Salem Witch trials.

I went on my own journey to discover my family's roots last summer, after I found out that one of my ancestors, Sarah Averill Wildes, was one of the first people tried and hanged as a witch in Salem on July 19, 1692. I came across this unknown bit of family history while searching on ancestry.com. Some interesting stuff can be found on the website if you're willing to go on a hunt. To access most vital records, ancestry.com is not free, but hiring a professional researcher or genealogist isn't either.

My grandmother hired a genealogist to help her trace her roots in the '60s. To become a member of the Colonial Dames she needed to perform extensive family research to prove and document our connection to a Revolution-era ancestor. But she didn't need to go as far back as the 1690s, so she never found out about this more infamous slice of our history. Parker's Salem ancestor had like mine been accused of witchcraft, but had a better ending. The court of oyer and terminer was dismissed before she could go to trial, so Parker's relative escaped execution.

The new and second season of Who Do You Think You Are? started off with Ugly Betty star Vanessa Williams, who wanted to go farther back on her father's side of the family. What she was able to find was pretty amazing. Luckily for Vanessa, her family lived in the same area of New York for over 100 years, so she was able to start her search in a cemetery which included headstones of many generations. Her great-great-grandfather from Oyster Bay, NY was married to a white woman, which in itself was interesting and unusual for the time, mid-1800s. He had been born a free man, or, as he had written on one of the documents she found, "Never a slave." He enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and received a bounty of 300 dollars for serving in the colored regiment, which he immediately invested 200 of to buy land for his family. What is even more lucky is that her search to find out what he did in the Civil War unearthed a tintype photograph. A find like that must have been unbelievably thrilling for her and her family, and also proved that good looks ran in the family.

As if that weren't enough, she followed another line on her family tree and found that her other great-great-grandfather was a schoolteacher, justice of the peace, and also one of the first black legislators in Tennessee, serving from 1888-89. Another American history lesson for me—from 1888-1965 no more blacks served elected office in Tennessee. As a Civil War/reconstruction backlash, the KKK and Jim Crow laws squeezed out blacks from public life in the early nineteenth century. Williams discovered her forebear's pioneering and proud history, but also how his strides were almost negated by the not-so-proud history of segregation in the South. Stories like her family's definitely led to the civil rights movement and Williams's own triumph as the first black Miss America in 1983.

The show may gloss over all the hard work involved in tracking down one's ancestors. But it does mange to capture the obsession that grips folks once a connection to the past is made. Vanessa Williams's episode did show the enormous amount of travel and all the different individuals—archivists, librarians, local government employees—that a person might need to consult to really find out details about their own family tree. All of these people can help a person researching their family and what's more, would like to, if you're interested enough to ask. I've had an ongoing correspondence with an archivist in Connecticut to help me dig a little deeper into one of our lines; who is always on the lookout for something that might help take me a step further in my search.

So many more of these records are now available via the internet, where before a researcher might have had to travel and book time at a library or archive to wade through roll after roll of microfilm. Ancestry.com is a good place to start on an internet genealogy search. Whether a viewer decides to start digging into their own family's past or not it's hard to resist getting hooked on the fascinating stories that are uncovered on Who Do You Think You Are? I'm looking forward to seeing the next show in the series and going on a vicarious journey with Tim McGraw as he searches for answers to questions he has about the past. Who knows what he might turn up and what little bits of history might be learned along the way.

Related articles

• TV Review: Who Do You Think You Are - Season Premiere (blogcritics.org)
• Ancestry - Ancestry.com (itunes.apple.com)

monkey with ball and chain

We went to the Norton Gallery of Art today and saw a load of interesting stuff, but what really still stands out in my mind are two paintings from the European gallery, both featuring "fettered monkeys."

According to the Courtauld, "Fettered monkeys, like this one, are traditionally used to symbolize man entrapped by earthly and sensual desires." and that "The monkey shown here ... would have been an object of curiosity and wonder in his own right. He is thus as "collectable" as the ... portrait ... that stands nearby."