Sinatra Bobby Soxers: clip from Teenage

Your point about body fat probably stands, but I should clarify that they did not look the way teenagers looked during the time that I was a child or a teenager. (EDIT: which was a while ago)

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Thanks for that link! It doesn’t make me all that much more hopeful, though, that white gets labeled as such in the movie. It’s nice that this film on teenagers “addresses multicultural perspectives.” I wonder, though, if African American, say, is one such labeled “perspective” in the film, is “European American” or maybe “middle-class white” another one?

I also read this in the linked article:

Though the film is a directorial achievement on its own, another notable aspect of Wolf’s project is his choice of music. An intoxicating original soundtrack by Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox establishes the setting of the film through recognizable beats and also blurs the line between past and present, establishing a poignant and lasting connection with the viewer.

I haven’t heard this film’s music yet (and I’d still love to see the film), but if the frontman of (white) Indie band Deerhunter did music for it that strikes some as intoxicating, helping to create a “poignant and lasting connection with the viewer,” I would bet cash money that the viewer here is a white one (whether the filmmakers are consciously thinking so or not).

Oh sure, others could feel this connection too, but just as Laura Mulvey pointed out long ago that there’s a presumed male gaze in cinema, there’s usually a white one too. And again, part of how it works (and I’m not assuming that you don’t know this) is how white stands in as, instead, a norm, and how “multicultural” add-ons mean that we’re suddenly talking about race, but mostly just the racial experience of people who aren’t white. As if white people don’t have a race, as if it doesn’t matter in their lives, when it does in so many ways. They just tend not to see that most of the time.

Which is less about this movie in particular than about the way that movies by white filmmakers tend to be when it comes to race, and when filmmakers address such supposedly “universal” experiences as life as a teenager. If this movie actually addresses middle-class white kids AS middle-class white kids, recognizing as it does so how their experiences tended to differ from others (instead of just saying it was those others who had some that were “different,” which would mean different from “normal,” that is, actually, different from “middle-class white”), then yay! But I doubt it does.

I was in the same checkout lane as Bradford Cox at the Hipster Kroger not long after it opened. It was like 2am and he looked paranoid as fuck. And yes, he’s as skinny as they say. I’m a 6’3"/150 stick man, and I can say he’s skinny without it being hypocritical.

/useless, idle gossip

But anyway, you guess correctly, Deerhunter is super white-people music.

You make a lot of great points that we as a culture fail to understand/choose to ignore. I agree it’s both true and also annoying and troublesome.

But it bears mentioning there’s also the tendency of whites to pick apart our own behavior under a microscope in an effort to–as a black teacher of mine used to say–“go to heaven,” which is equally wack. To whatever extent I’ve stopped doing this is because, one, it has been pointed out to me; and also that my social circle has expanded beyond the mostly white one that was available to me before I moved to Chocolate City. We honkys play this game of “gotcha” with each other in an effort to feel good about ourselves and prove how not-racist we are. A white who dares call this ridiculous is a redneck (which, unfortunately, may also be true….) Meanwhile, non-whites don’t obsess over our failings nearly as much because they assume white folks are all nuts anyway (me writing all this tends to support that view :slight_smile: )

I suppose there’s no getting around the fact that I’m assuming you’re white, too. Which I may well be wrong about (and: sorry!) But surely this is something you’re familiar with. Speaking for only myself, the pitfalls I’ve fallen into, seeing other whites fall into these games, and seeing the reactions of non-whites when we do it, this is definitely a thing.

But then, does this mean the burden of fighting our bullshit falls on non-whites and we just get off scot-free? I don’t mean to imply that, either, although it seems that I may have. If we don’t tell each other, then a merely clueless white may remain so, and an out-and-out racist can just wholly write-off any criticism as the provenance of someone they don’t give any credit to in the first place. I cannot really determine what the line is, but there must be one, if for no other reason than that I personally know black people who get annoyed when we fuck it up.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, but it’s something I think about and seldom see expressed. Your wall-of-text tangent (which, again, I agree with) spurred me to voice this particular conundrum with you (also as a wall-of-text : P ) I guess as a “clearing the air” gesture.

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Thank you for your thoughtful reply, which is refreshing.

I do recognize, and have often seen, that “gotcha” tendency, and the often accompanying motive of doing it merely to make oneself feel superior to other supposedly clueless white people, and thus the narcissistic circle jerk back into the belly button of whiteness that such gestures ultimately peter out into. I’m so glad you didn’t stop there, and I hope my comments about this film don’t come across that way.

I agree with what you seem to go on to say, which is that it’s good to call out whiteness, to label it, to recognize that being white has a lot to do with one’s perspective and, probably, with one’s place in the order of things. People of color often see white people AS white, and simply doing so is not racist; clearly (and we seem to agree on this), white people should see themselves that way more often too. Then they could learn how to fuck up less often, for starters, which they usually do a lot more than they realize, and maybe some of them could even work against what remains a racist social order. Perhaps, for instance, by making a film that speaks explicitly about the whiteness of teenagers while also speaking of of the blackness or brownness and so on of other teenagers. :smile:

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right. let’s say for example that a doc was exclusively about the young Sinatra phenomenon. there shouldn’t be anything wrong with–and to leave it out is a lie of omission–saying that it was tied to how the concept of “teenaged-ness” emerged in the white community. but, you know, white folks get paralyzed by the self-doubt of “wait, is that racist? i’m excluding blacks/non-whites,” so they don’t address it or they just don’t consider it at all. double whammy.

but then, if it were a doc on James Brown’s impact a couple decades later, there would be a lot of forthright talk about how important he was to the black teens then.

this culture is so convoluted, it’s a wonder anything gets done at all, you know?

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Also 100% less hoodies.

Yes, it’s like most white people want to get to “postracial” by skipping over all the facts about whiteness. Convoluted indeed, though in these terms, whites are generally a lot more blind to the convolutions, not having been forced to navigate them, allowed to sail right past them, etc. So, I label whiteness a lot. When I mention white people, I say things like, “This white guy I know,” and so on, instead of just This guy I know. I also say “historically white college” (or university). Raises white eyebrows, which is a good thing I think.

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