| OK, here are my reactions to the RB/MM affair, three months late. First feelings: chagrin, disappointment, embarassment for RB. Something wrong in his contention, "It's My Title, I'm offended, MM needs to ask me before he plays off it."
I thought: RB does not seem to understand cultural diffusion --- how events, personalities, and artworks enter into the public mind, and become part of each person's private universe, and emerge transformed. Case in point: Marilyn Monroe. Although Marilyn Monroe created her own persona, her image has entered into everyone's imagination, and she has emerged, reworked, in dozens of novels --- which could be called invasive --- such as Norman Mailer's. The term 'Suicide Blonde', though now denoting a familiar type, is part of her legacy. Impersonators appear in nightclubs and tour the country.
As the Bible says, 'Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you a thousandfold.' RB's bread is on the waters. The movie title is one way it returns, and it seems singularly ungracious for him to object to what is in effect a tribute. He either cannot or will not understand the processes of cultural fermentation and osmosis; this suggests, at best, a petulant mind setting itself against a natural tide.
Now, if he's expressing dismay because he disagrees with the film's message, then that's another matter, and understandable, and is quite probable, actually, considering his quote from the Swedish interview that I read on another message board at this site. But that sets a large problem for the millions of readers who read his book in their youth and now think that MM's allusion is entirely appropriate. We have to ask, What has changed in this man since the 1950's --- what, and why? How has the former friend of privacy and decency and the intricate flourishing of feeling, layer upon delicately described layer --- how has the enemy of commercial banality, this enemy of the harsh incipient fascism that always lurks at the edge of American politics --- how has this man whom we liked and trusted come to 'go over', lost his bearings?
This problem preyed on my mind for awhile, till some answers floated up from the depths, but this post has been way long enough. To enter the argument that has been raging, let me just say that MM's title is an 'allusion'. Some books in their titles 'allude' to earlier works. Satires usually do this: who can forget National Lampoon's "Tarzan of the Cows"? But RB did it himself in publishing "White Whale, Green Shadows". It was published in 1992; the title alluded to a screenplay that was filmed in 1990. The title of the screenplay was "White Hunter, Black Heart." Both RB's book and the screenplay describe movie-making with that fabulous monster, John Huston; one, "Moby Dick", the other "The African Queen." Were any of the MM-is-a-thief accusers outraged by BRadbury's "theft"? I think not, nor was I. Both titles are a knowing reference, and are enjoyable as such. 'Nuff said. |
