On the fifth anniversary of war in Iraq, I have been looking back to the 19th century. And back to New Hampshire and over two long months ago, when Senator Barack Obama gave his “Yes We Can” speech that has since sparked its own pop cultural movement reflected in will.i.am’s video. Embedded within that speech are the foundational U.S. nationalist seeds that culminated in a Manifest Destiny and an imperial colonialism that are at the root of the U.S. continued domination of Iraq. Particularly when one considers that it was the 7th Calvary–once led by Custer and responsible for Wounded Knee–who rolled into the streets of Bagdad on April 5, 2003.
Senator Obama said in January:
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes, we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Yes, we can.
The “unforgiving wilderness” here functions as metonymy for American Indians against whom those pioneers pushed. As the pioneers, immigrants, slaves and abolitionists progressed towards a more perfect union, the light of civilization sought to drive American Indian nations to the margins and then out of the picture altogether. A month later in Madison, Senator Obama repeated the refrain,
That’s how this country was founded, a group of patriots declaring independence against the mighty British empire. Nobody gave them a chance, but they said, “Yes, we can.”
That’s how slaves and abolitionists resisted that wicked system and how a new president chartered a course to ensure we would not remain half-slave and half-free…
…That’s how pioneers went west when people told them it was dangerous. They said, “Yes, we can.”
That’s how immigrants traveled from distant shores when people said their fates would be uncertain. Yes, we can.
And exactly what were the dangers of the West? In a telling elision, the struggles of slaves and abolitionists are linked with the pioneers who were in the process of “taming the wilderness” through theft and often outright murder. And despite indigenous peoples’ constant refrain of “No, you can’t.”
Lately, I’ve been pondering this quote from Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”:
The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves.
Which has been resonating oddly with Alex Timber’s and Michael Friedman’s musical that recasts Andrew Jackson as emo mass murderer, found via The Edge of the American West.
There’s more at their myspace page, along with songs including a version of “Ten Little Indians” that is inspired by Septimus Winner’s 1868 version. If it’s the will of the people that leads to colonization and genocide, what does that say about populism in general? Populism Yea Yea.
Take a stand against the elites.
They don’t care anything for us.
And we will eat sweet democracy.
Let them eat our dust.
‘Cuz it’s the early 19th century
and we’ll take the land back from the Indians.
Since he was very young, Senator Barack Obama has been something of a mediator of racial concerns, shuttling between black and white worlds and trying to translate the concerns of one to the other.
But how might the Hawai‘i of Senator Obama’s youth signify outside black/white divides where the history of the islands isn’t so much about the legacies of African slavery haunting the landscape? Answer: In the questions that Hawaiian sovereigntists have raised over whether Senator Obama was born in the United States or in the independent Kingdom of Hawai‘i. Via the Honolulu Advertiser.
A few independence advocates claim that Hawai‘i legally remains a country today, making Obama and hundreds of thousands of others born in the Islands over the past 50 years not “natural-born” citizens or eligible to be president.
“It had nothing to do with the concern of the remote settler to defend himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves and bears and grizzlies and things like that?”
Vanity Fair is running a series of photos of current Hollywood stars in classic, iconic moments from Hitchcock’s oeuvre here. Having just taught Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in my undergrad critical theory course, I was struck by the refashioning of the male gaze. And of course, Jodie Foster models for The Birds.
Trying to come up with a first post is always the joy of a blog. It’s like composing a masterpiece, tracing a subject from A-Z and only ending up at R. It’s the dense blank of fog over Silent Hill that hides the design imperfections with the possibility of atmosphere. And then, there’s this post. Which is none of those things and only an attempt to begin with that Dickinsonian (Dead Man, anyone? What, did you think I was referencing some Victorian literary giant?) gesture, “Where’d you get that clown suit? Cleveland?”
