What's Missing from Both Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia (From February 2008)

I wrote a letter to Time magazine in response to their article on ABC's Cashmere Mafia and NBC's Lipstick Jungle, Becoming Ms. Big, by James Poniewozik (for which there's also a Tuned In blog entry and an iTunes podcast, Women in Power, and TV) and its sidebar, Reality Check: Women, Work and Money, by Tiffany Sharples, which shows the real-life percentage of women in the professions of the characters on both shows, along with the average salary of the jobs. My question:

Why are there no African American female leads in neither Lipstick Jungle nor Cashmere Mafia? Of all of the aspects for both programs to take from originator Sex and the City, this one is most disappointing.

There are certainly real-life African American female counterparts of the various professions represented, including Mellody Hobson, the UCLA Four Sisters (Felicia D. Henderson, Gina Prince‑Bythewood, Sara Finney-Johnson and Mara Brock Akil), Pam Veasey, Susan L. Taylor, and newly elected New York Junior League president, Gena Lovett.

================================

The e-mail has bounced back (twice!) because the Time magazine letters@time.com inbox is full--probably full of letters about their Senator vs. Senator cover story on Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's presidential campaigns!

It can't be said that the shows neglect actresses of color--Chinese-American actress Lucy Liu stars in Cashmere Mafia, and I don't know whether the character will be portrayed this way, but the mother of actress Lindsay Price of Lipstick Jungle is Korean.

But doesn't it make the shows just all the more unrealistic that it shows a Manhattan so lacking in black women?

Review of "Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Story" (spoilery)

Underwood, Blair, and Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes. Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Story. New York: Atria Books, 2007.

African American film and television actor Blair Underwood’s "Casanegra" mystery novel--written with assistance from established authors Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes--is both fact and fiction, fearlessly defining what is by what it is not, resulting in a brutal, unflinching clarity about its people and their purposes.

It isn’t requested of lead character Tennyson Hardwick that he look into the murder of the famous and wealthy female rapper and actress Serena Johnston aka "Afrodite"--it becomes required when she was not only last seen in public with him just hours before her corpse, beaten and a little bloody, was found in a plastic bag on the streets, but also because the only item found on her body was Hardwick’s business card.

Hardwick’s life has been and still is complicated. The son of a cop, Hardwick went through the police academy himself--although he dropped out just two weeks prior to graduation. This was a blow to his heralded police captain father, helping lead to their current estrangement. Their relationship has been furthered hampered by the father’s presently being confined to long-term medical care due to a recent debilitating stroke.

At present, Hardwick’s an intermittently working actor in Hollywood, best known for having been on a popular TV series years ago, but before that, he trained and worked as an armed bodyguard, and was also a very successful male escort to Hollywood’s lonely top-tier actresses--with a clientele roster that at one time included Johnston.

The trail to Johnston’s killer is a likewise complicated one, taking Hardwick from Johnston’s childhood friend, now her lawyer and business partner, who, unaware of Hardwick’s other training and experiences, ridicules "gigolo" Hardwick’s efforts to find the killer, over to the thoughtless antics of Johnston’s drug addict lookalike half-sister, who almost gets Hardwick killed in a fiery shootout in her and Johnston’s long-abandoned apartment house in the desperate Baldwin Hills neighborhood--to say nothing of the loudmouth rapper who’s all too happy to brag in a noisy dance club full of people that he killed Johnston.

Meanwhile, rumors fly that a disgruntled movie producer had Johnston done in by his mob pals, as revenge for her quitting his film in the middle of shooting, costing him millions of dollars.
Hardwick teams up with Los Angeles Times newspaper reporter April Forrest--in whom he has more than just a passing romantic interest--as he travels the trail, in the meantime saving an underage prostitute, Chela, from his former madam; gaining the trust of another childhood friend of Johnston’s, now a cop, who manages to get word to Hardwick that he’s looking in the wrong place before ending up in the morgue as well; and laying the groundwork for a reconciliation with his father, who provides him with invaluable assistance and sources that lead him right to the real killer--who confesses and surrenders to the police.

"Casanegra" is a mystery novel that is dense with details and backstory, actions and motives, consequences and payback. The mood is electric, sexy and provocative, from Hardwick’s masterful lovemaking to Johnston in the book’s first few pages to the furious physical attacks and handgun threats in the book’s last few pages that leave Hardwick close to losing his life more then a few times in his quest to learn the truth.

There’s more than enough red herrings—Was Johnston killed by that rival rapper? By the mafia? By crooked cops? By her jealous half-sister?--and the killer’s identity is surprising yet makes perfect, sad sense.

If it’s too far-fetched to believe that the novel’s entire murder mystery plot plays out in a matter of days, not even a week, it can’t be ignored that some of the more tragic aspects of the story are drawn from real-life events. One of the novel’s keenest strengths is its sense of history and cultural responsibility.

The book may take its title from the name of Johnston’s production company, which is a color flip on the movie title, "Casablanca," a favorite old movie of her absentee father. But the novel is informed by more recent times--in particular, the last decade or so of Hollywood/Los Angeles history, especially in regards to African American entertainers. The murders of the fictional rapper Afrodite and of her childhood friend and rapper, Shareef, reflect the real-life unsolved murders of African American rappers Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur in the 1990s. Corrupt police officers on the payroll of the loudmouth rapper, who work Hardwick over with fists, feet, and a crowbar, reflect the late 1990s Rampart scandal, in which police officers were found to be on a rap record company’s payroll and may have been responsible for, among other heinous criminal acts, killing Smalls. The loudmouth rapper invites comparisons to singer R. Kelly, for Hardwick remembers that a few years ago, "a video on the Internet turned up showing an underage girl in his bed," similar to Kelly’s present legal troubles.

Standing in contrast to the violence and criminal acts in the current celebrity culture is the comparatively peaceful celebrity past; there are several nods to African American entertainers from decades prior.

Hardwick’s home is a mansion that was willed to him by a former escort client, an actress, and he keeps her framed autographed movie posters on the walls where she originally hung them, including the ones for "Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner" and "In the Heat of the Night." And Hardwick is livid when officers executing a search warrant on his home carelessly drop and break the "Raisin in the Sun" framed poster. These aren’t just meaningless memorabilia for him; he discloses that it was Sidney Poitier, the star of all three of these films, but especially Poitier and his performance in that particular film that made him want to become an actor (and here the blurring of fact and fiction are most apparent, for the novel’s dedication reads simply, "For Sidney").

Further, the mansion’s guest room has prints of Dorothy Dandridge on the wall. Visiting a favorite bookstore, Hardwick ruminates on hating to leave without buying anything and is usually "quick to pick up black DVDs: 1943’s Cabin in the Sky with Ethel Waters, Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson, Lena Horne, Butterfly McQueen, and Louis Armstrong; Carmen [Jones]… My father always said you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been."

Most pointedly, though, a "national civil rights leader" from New York, speaking at Johnston’s star-studded funeral, moves Hardwick with his words:

"A culture that eats its young is a culture that cannot survive," he said in a vibrato preacher’s voice. "What has happened to our young people? What has happened to our music? We’re so lucky nobody killed Paul Robeson and Billie Holiday. I praise God nobody gunned down Aretha, Diane, and Smokey. Stevie’s still with us. Amen. Prince wasn’t shot in a drive-by. We must, we must, we must, stop this violence in our music."

The story’s main strength is the main character, an exquisitely crafted African American male of intelligence, self-reliance, sexuality, and resourcefulness--and pathos. Hardwick consists of many layers; his personal history together with his awesome capabilities arguably make him more Everyman than Superman.

In the place of make-believe that is Hollywood and its movie and music industries, very few people are wearing their "real" faces, of which Hardwick’s own intensely commercial sexual past and troubling criminal history--including a past attempted murder charge, long since reduced and later expunged from his record, but which still completely shamed his father, as he was charged in his father’s old precinct--make him aware. But even he was unprepared for just how much Johnston had to overcome from her childhood--a childhood he comes to find out included sexual abuse, abortion, and prostitution, all by the age of 14--and how they come to figure into the reasons for her murder in adulthood. Hardwick’s prostitution came later in life, but his own sexual abuse came in his early teens also, when he was seduced by his junior high school drama teacher when he was 13, experiences he didn’t know they had in common.

The pursuit of Johnston’s killer forces Hardwick to confront, amongst all his other issues, his loneliness. He has a long list of former clients, both sexual and security, and plenty of acquaintances all over the city, but no real friends. He becomes obsessed with finding Johnston’s killer not so much because he’s the police’s number one suspect and needs to prove his innocence, but because his lovemaking session with Johnston wasn’t one of gigolo and client--no money exchanged hands--but one of a man and woman together out of mutual respect, empathy, and even affection. He didn’t know it at the time, but Johnston was beginning to come out from behind her mask and was reaching out for him, and he realizes that he was reaching out for her as well; he mourns not just her but also the chance he’s lost to learn to truly love her.

Realizing that he is capable of love and arguably worthy of love leads Hardwick to create the makeshift family that ends the novel. He takes his father out of the hated nursing home and brings him to live with him in the mansion--a place the father had never even visited before, refusing, because in his opinion, "the house was the result of ‘ill-gotten gains.’"

Obviously sensitive to the reflection of his own life--and Johnston’s--that 14-year-old prostitute Chela represents, he moves to take her out of the sex trade altogether--he brings her also to live in his home and he sets her up to attend the public high school in his neighborhood.

Chela and his father are a good influence on one another, and it especially helps that Chela can better understand the father’s stroke-slurred speech, after having tended to her dying grandmother (her only relative) before. Hardwick does have to set her straight, that he does not expect or want sex from her in return for his kindness, which had come to be the only language she understood from adult males--which is something he hopes to change.

Finally, he takes the first steps to opening himself up to April emotionally, not just sexually--a new language for him, too, in a way. "I hoped my heart hadn’t buried itself somewhere I wouldn’t find it again… But it was an extraordinary thought, enough to keep my spirit from drowning in the awfulness of Serena’s death: Am I ready for April? I might be…," he thinks to himself, before echoing the end of the end of the "Casablanca" film with "This might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Review of "The Picasso Flop" (spoilery)

Van Patten, Vince, and Robert J. Randisi. The Picasso Flop. New York: Mysterious Press, 2007.

Mystery novel "The Picasso Flop" tells the story of Jimmy Spain, who was a rising poker pro about two decades ago until his ascent was interrupted by a decade-long stretch in prison for murder. A wealthy former inmate and friend uses his influence to get Spain released early, in the hope that Spain will accept a secret paid assignment to "bump into" and tutor his estranged daughter, Kat Landrigan, in the game of poker, with which she’s become obsessed. Spain hesitates, but with little else in his life, he reluctantly agrees to take her on as a pupil--finding her to be an abrasive gum-cracking goth teen, talking perennially and annoyingly in poker lingo. But also talented.

It’s now a year later as Spain and Landrigan arrive in Las Vegas to play in their first big tournament, the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio casino, which is a stop on the World Poker Tour (WPT) poker circuit, whose final table of play of Texas hold’em poker will be televised on an episode of the "World Poker Tour" television show on the Travel Channel cable channel. Landrigan still thinks her running into Spain was pure luck, and Spain does nothing to disavow her of that notion except feel secretly guilty for the deception.

The tournament is littered with a colorful cast of characters, including a group of tactless and obnoxious college-age players schooled in the game via Internet play, a notion which rubs many poker pro old-timers the wrong way. Suddenly, the leader of the online young guns is murdered, found on a massage table in his hotel room wearing nothing but a bathrobe, which has in its breast pocket the so-called "Picasso flop" of Texas hold’em poker--three picture playing cards (cards featuring a king, queen, or jack as opposed to a number or an ace). Spain is then asked to take on yet another secret assignment; that of surreptitiously investigating the murder on the behalf of the WPT under the "guise" of being just another player in the tournament, by virtue of his being the son of a cop.

By chance, his cop father’s old partner is in town on vacation, and with his able assistance, especially after another Internet player is found dead with a Picasso flop and then two more of the online group are found with their throats cut, Spain does discover the identity of the murderer and confronts him, forcing him to publicly confess to his crimes.

Meanwhile, Spain’s poker skills are put to the ultimate test when he makes the final table of the competition along with a slew of high-profile poker pros.

The novel follows many of the conventions of a murder mystery, in that someone is killed, but by whom and for what reasons is not revealed until the end. There are a few red herrings, a few likely suspects, including a female tournament contestant who’s a dangerous former con woman from overseas, who has lied to the police and told them that she was with Spain at the time of the first murder, when she was not, as well as a muscle-bound lout who was frustrated by his numerous failed attempts at cracking the inner circle of the online players. And even though the police are investigating, it is amateur sleuth Spain who is close enough and knows enough about the poker scene and its people to solve the case before the professionals do. Very specifically, Spain’s knowledge of a certain person’s history and character leads to his suspecting the person’s involvement in the murders (and a search of the person’s home, which would be illegal for any police officer to perform, helps confirm Spain’s suspicions).

What’s best about the story is how fully it captures the poker world, knowledgeably presenting the finer points of the game, the colorful lingo for the cards and the hands, the eccentric quirks of the players. The novel is even divided into the four main plays of Texas hold’em poker--Part One: The Deal, which introduces the characters; Part Two: The Flop, in which the first two murders occur; Part Three: The Turn, in which the next two murders occur while the pool of suspects is narrowed down; and Part Four: The River, in which the murderer is found and brought to justice. This is not an introductory poker book in the guise of a mystery; this is a mystery set amongst the amoral high-rollers, the unflappable professionals, the hungry up-and-comers, and the degenerate gambling addicts that populate poker--a world which has been expanding exponentially over the last few years thanks to both the Internet and the newfound popularity of televised poker shows.

Arguably, the latter can be attributed to WPT creator, Steve Lipscombe, who revolutionized the game--and spawned countless imitators--simply by coming up with the idea to install a small camera into the poker tables that let the TV viewers at home see the face-down cards of each Texas hold’em player. And so necessary to note here is that "The Picasso Flop" bears the WPT logo on its cover and is credited as being primarily written by Vince Van Patten, whose day job is to provide color commentary for the "World Poker Tour" TV series. Hedging their bets for success with this book, Van Patten, best known as a modestly successful actor since his teen idol days in the 1970s, who also spent some years as a tennis pro (and is the youngest son of legendary TV actor, Dick Van Patten), was assisted in the writing of this novel by Robert J. Randisi, certainly one of the most prolific mystery writers in recent decades, who also founded the Private Eye Writers of America organization and co-founded "Mystery Scene" magazine.

Van Patten is assisted in his onscreen commentary duties on the "World Poker Tour" TV series by longtime poker pro Mike Sexton--who is depicted in the novel and has a very prominent role in the story. The reader is tipped off to this in a note in the book’s title verso page, which reads: "Most of the events and main characters in this book are fictitious. Certain real locations and public figures are mentioned. Five actual poker personalities are participating as characters in this book: James Woods, Michael Sexton, Antonio Esfandiari, Michael Mizrachi, and Gus Hansen."

So it is no surprise that Sexton is described quite favorably in the book as "a true Southern gentleman, probably the greatest ambassador of the game," and with traits that a longtime partner would notice, including a note that Sexton’s accent "was heavier some times than others," perhaps especially when he’s nervous. Landrigan outright gushes over Hansen when she spots him at the tournament, calling him "’the absolute nuts!’"—which is poker slang for holding two aces, the best poker hand that you can have in Texas hold’em, and so translates as a very high compliment. Woods, unnecessarily noted as having a genius IQ, is true to his acerbic cinema persona when he fills Spain in on some action on the casino floor, informing him that poker pro "’Scotty Nguyen has bet fifty grand that he can eat five packets of saltines in less than two minutes. Fuckin’ wackos.’"

Call them in-jokes or just a blatant lack of shame, but Lipscombe, described as being Sexton’s (and therefore Van Patten’s) boss, also rates a couple of mentions, including how he created "the ultimate poker show" in the "World Poker Tour" TV series, plus one character’s query about an "attractive woman" standing nearby is answered with her being identified as Robyn Moder, Lipscombe’s partner.

Then again, perhaps all this glad-handing and pumping up by Van Patten of his colleagues and associates in the book—including the dream that Spain has at one point that an angry Sexton flips over a poker table with one hand, exhibiting "Arnold Schwarzenegger-type strength"--is offset by there being no similar Van Patten "character" in sight. And when Van Patten is mentioned, the character rather humorously gets his name wrong, calling him that "’Vincent van Gogh guy.’"

Most telling, however, is the other wording on the cover of this book, the phrase, "A Texas Hold’Em Mystery," which suggests a continuous WPT mystery series, with more books to come. And this may be the key to the most severe weaknesses of "The Picasso Flop," both as a narrative and as a mystery. Are this story’s loose ends going to be addressed in future titles?

The Landrigan character also lied to police about where she was when the first murder occurred, also saying that she was with Spain. She also wasn’t, but it’s never revealed where she was.

Most glaringly, Spain’s one-time cell mate, Paulie DiCicca, a "con man, a hustler, a small-time grifter who thought he was the master of the short and long con" is introduced and amusingly described as sounding "like Joe Pesci on helium" before suddenly becoming menacing and coasting toward blackmail when he seems to know and threatens to tell Landrigan about Spain’s arrangement with her father. Spain preys on DiCicca’s fear of cops to give him the slip, one time pretending an approaching tourist is one of the detectives on the case, and then ending yet another encounter with DiCicca by having his father’s former partner show off his gold police shield, but after that, DiCicca completely disappears. Moreover, Spain’s call in to the father to find out how DiCicca might have found out is literally and literarily not returned.

Also, a kind of penultimate red herring late in the story, a warning to Spain from who is ultimately the guilty party, proved completely unsuccessful. Crafted to make it seem like another character is being referred to, the misdirection is too obvious and can easily be sidestepped, resulting in a growing impatience until Spain comes to the same realization too many pages later.

Ultimately, though, this is a fun story for those who are into poker, with the most enjoyment coming to those who are, not ironically, regular viewers of the "World Poker Tour" TV series. The series itself has revealed the generation gap among the pros, the decades-hardened veterans vs. the hyper technohustlers. And so Van Patten does have a unique vantage point of both groups. In the book, he duly notes the grumbles of the seasoned poker pros, having Spain scold Landrigan at one point, "’You know, before poker was plastered on every TV, if you played the game they looked at you like you were crazy. You didn’t brag about this, Kat. Poker was survival then, not glamorous.’" But he doesn’t have complete disdain for all the new attention shifted over to poker now, including that from movie stars such as Woods and Tobey Maguire, who Spain describes as being a "world class poker player" before musing that "Yeah, Hollywood really had invaded the poker world. It was good for everyone."

(Frankly, the most intriguing mystery of the book isn’t any of the murders but Van Patten’s stab at making a comedic reference to rather obscure film and television actor Andy Devine.)

Lead character Spain’s world-weariness comes off as authentic, even well-deserved, even if the story’s contrivance that a multimillion dollar operation like the WPT would rest the fate of one of its showy competitions in the hands of an ex-convict--especially one convicted of murder--does not. It’s also difficult to believe that said ex-convict would not only still be considered trustworthy but also would somehow be assumed to have detective skills just because his father was a cop--are such skills formed out of nature or nurture?? Nearly as outrageous is the idea that his father’s former partner would happen to show up and would also be willing to help--including in the illegal breaking and entering of the main suspect’s residence.

Outwardly, Landrigan goes through the most changes, finally taking heed of Spain’s admonishments to dress more feminine and lighten up on her penchant for sprinkling poker terms into her every conversation.

Assumably, Spain goes through the most inward changes, gaining needed validation in his ability to once again become a top poker pro as well as unexpected insight into his capabilities as a mentor and detective. For Spain, at least, the theme here is poker as redemption.

Most of all, though, it’s easy to see this novel eventually being adapted into a made-for-cable-television movie for the Travel Channel—starring in the role of Spain which former 1970s teen idol? Just guess who--!

Review of "Living History" by Hillary Rodham Clinton

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"Living History" by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Reviewed by Valerie Hawkins

Similar to the sentiment expressed in the July 2 Joe Bob's America column, "Hillary's Magnum Opus," once I began this 562-page memoir by Hillary Rodham Clinton, former First Lady and current Senator from New York, I came to feel that I'd *always* been reading it. My nightmare was that I would awaken and find that my bookmark had been moved back one hundred pages--because another hundred pages had been mysteriously added in the dead of night. Agh!!

It's not that what Senator Clinton has to say isn't interesting. She quickly establishes her identity and her time in the opening chapters. She comes from a solid Midwest family that lived a fairly quiet existence. She is virtually untouched by the world until the turbulent times of the 1960s, which lead her to question and challenge that identity and those times. She comes to move away from the Republican roots of her family and on to the Democratic Party values she now embraces. Clinton zooms along, from her newsmaking speech as the first student speaker at a Wellesley College graduation in 1969, to her meeting with and eventual marriage to Yale Law School classmate and future Arkansas Attorney General, Arkansas Governor, and U.S. President, William Jefferson Clinton.

It was no secret that Senator Clinton was paid an $8 million advance to write this book, and that it was to focus mainly on her eighty--I mean *eight* years--as First Lady in the White House. But at over 500 pages, it's hard not to wonder if there was a dollars-per-word minimum requirement in the contract. In lots of ways, as a woman and as an American, I was fascinated by the dozens of trips to dozens of countries that Clinton made, speaking out and encouraging various cultures worldwide to value their female citizens of all ages, insisting on schooling for girls and financing for women's independent businesses. Her personal encounters with dozens of leaders and their spouses helped these people and their nations come alive for me in a way that none of the 24-hour news cable channels or weekly newsmagazines ever have.

Also evident is the gentle naivete that belies all of her (and, some would say, her husband's) work: an unwavering belief that the way things have always been run not only isn't good enough but also can be changed. This belief did pave the way to successful welfare reform. But it could not disentangle the snarl of health care reform. In leading the latter project, Clinton made herself perhaps the most visible and politically active First Lady ever--or should that be most visible political target? It's hard to remember a time when Clinton was in her husband's shadow, if she ever was. But as much work as she took on in the White House, it seems America was most happy with her when she was performing the more conventional role as mother to daughter Chelsea.

The book inadvertently poses the question of what might have happened if Clinton had paid more attention to her other more conventional role as wife. Certainly President Clinton is wholly responsible for his own actions and his admitted infidelity with intern Monica Lewinsky and its consequences. But the months prior to the impeachment and attempted removal from office show a flurry of trips and extended visits overseas, where Senator Clinton was home for only days at a time. I'll be surprised if President Clinton's own upcoming book doesn't at least hint at the fact of his wife's many long absences.

Joe Bob likened this tome to a speech, but I'll go one step further. As Clinton is a lawyer by trade, I'd say "Living History" is the testimony about her life and activities that she wished she could have given to the federal government during the Whitewater investigation. Clinton clearly establishes who the innocent and guilty parties are, and what everybody had to gain by prolonging this smoke-and-mirrors case, including tying in the Paula Jones civil suit. She makes good use of the books already published about the investigation, especially former adversary David Brock's "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," in which he admits exaggerating and fabricating stories that put the Clintons in the worst possible light.

Hopefully, the book--and its runaway success, which prompted at least one conservative analyst, Tucker Carlson, to eat his disparaging words and, as he promised, his shoe (well, a cake in the shape of his shoe)--has been therapeutic for Clinton and allowed her to more fully move ahead to the challenges of being a new member of the U.S. Congress. She makes no mention of any future political aspirations--she presents her decision to run for senator as more responding to a dare than anything else--but it's hard to foresee an American political future in which she will not figure prominently. Four stars.

Review of The Wind Done Gone

Previously resided at http://www.joebobbriggs.com/bookclub/reviews/W/winddonegone.html

The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall
Reviewed by Valerie Hawkins

As the big red decal on the cover announces, this book is "an unauthorized parody" of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, "Gone with the Wind." Mitchell's "Wind" was an unqualified success from day one, selling over 176,000 copies in its first three weeks of release and securing the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Hollywood turned itself upside down to make a movie of the book, deciding against such talents as Katharine Hepburn and Errol Flynn, to settle on relative unknown Vivien Leigh to play the remarkable Scarlett O'Hara and film star Clark Gable as rascal Rhett Butler, in a 1939 MGM Studios production, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1940.

Perhaps the most well-known parody of the work--admittedly the film version--is the classic 1970s "Carol Burnett Show" TV sketch where Burnett's Scarlett makes a fancy dress out of curtains in order to impress Harvey Korman's Rhett Butler--but leaves in the curtain rod, stretching it across her shoulders! However, the estate of Margaret Mitchell unintentionally brought much attention to this book by suing, unsuccessfully, to prevent its release. The lawsuit stated the objections were due to copyright violations. But is that all?

In reading Randall's "Wind," it helps to have seen the 1939 film, but it most helps to have read Mitchell's original 1936 novel. Characters that were left out of Hollywood's adaptation figure very prominently here. In fact, Randall's main emphasis seems to be to spotlight and expand upon the characters given the briefest attention by Mitchell. Timewise, Randall picks up where Mitchell left off, telling her side of the story through a character "left out" of the novel and film altogether, Miss Cynara "Cindy" Brown, the daughter of Mammy, and "Planter," the owner of "Cotton Farm"--or rather, Gerald O'Hara, owner of Tara, and Scarlett's father. It is Cynara's diary that makes up the bulk of Randall's novel.

Randall's book is full of alternate names for Mitchell's characters (except for Mammy) and its plantations. But she doesn't stop there. Mitchell paints the various slave characters, especially her Pork and Prissy, as dialect-speaking simpletons with not an original thought in their heads. Randall presents a very different view of "Garlic" and "Miss Priss," respectively, showing that their ignorance in front of the white folks is a sham, a shield that hides their true agendas. Gerald may have won Pork in a card game, but "Planter" won "Garlic" after the latter poisoned his original master in the course of the game, to make sure that the former would win, as "Garlic" knew he could better manipulate "Planter" into creating such a destiny as becoming the owner of the "Cotton Farm" plantation. One of the film's most famous scenes shows Scarlett slapping Prissy, who earlier had bragged about her midwife abilities but now admits, in the face of Scarlett's sister-in-law, Melanie, undergoing a painful labor and the town doctor unavailable, that she "don' know nuthin' 'bout birthin' babies!" Randall's interpretation of the scene is much more chilling, saying that "Miss Priss" hoped that "Mealy Mouth" died in childbirth, as revenge for having her brother killed.

Beyond the slaves, Randall also fleshes out the character of Scarlett's mother, Ellen, called "Lady" here, especially Ellen's doomed romance with her cousin, Philippe Robillard. Secrets are revealed in letters that point to Scarlett having more in common with Cynara than she could ever have dreamed.

This book may be "an unauthorized parody" of "Gone with the Wind," but it is clearly so much more. Cynara is an educated young woman who has to make some very difficult decisions, all while she learns more about her family and tries to decide if she really loves the white man who "owns" her, an old friend who is as surprised to see her one day standing nude in the hot sun at a slave auction as she is to be there, and buys her, setting her up in her own home. She struggles to understand the continuous absence of her own biological mother, Mammy, always there to dry Scarlett's tears, but also reflects on the closeness she found with the likewise abandoned "Lady."

Overall, Randall taps into the taboo subject of race mixing and its effects upon racial identity in America. As also explored in such movies as "A Family Thing," starring Robert Duvall, and such non-fiction books as Gregory Howard Williams's "Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black," America's definitions of "white" and "black"--and the extent of the opportunities available to each--are strict and polarizing. The legend goes that one drop of black blood makes you black. But what if, despite the blood, your appearance betrayed that sentiment? Would you stay black--stay back--or would you pass as white, taking the greater opportunities? And how long would you live the lie? Would you ever tell your white spouse the truth--or tell any of your children their true mixed racial heritage? Because of slavery and both its consensual and non-consensual unions that produced children of every shade between "black" and "white," this is a story that continues to play out across America, from the controversy surrounding the descendants of President Thomas Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings to the recent publication of "Just Lucky I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts," by Broadway living legend, Carol Channing, who chose to reveal, however belatedly at the age of 82, that her father was black.

Randall's greatest accomplishment with this book is that through the most well-known fictional slavery-era characters in American history, she legitimizes the experience of blacks in America and gives clues as to why such a persecuted people have been able to survive and even thrive. Four stars.

Mariner, 2001, $13

Review of Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Previously appeared at http://www.joebobbriggs.com/bookclub/reviews/f/fightingtheforces.html

Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery
Reviewed by Valerie Hawkins

It's not every television show--it's barely any television show--that attracts the attention of the university professor, and, even more unexpectedly, inspires article after article of serious critical analysis as opposed to condescending scorn. But "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" turned out to be just that kind of show.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" premiered on the fledgling Warner Bros. television network, The WB, on March 10, 1997. Its last original episode aired on the Paramount Studios television network, UPN (its network home for its last two seasons), on May 20, 2003. No one, including series creator Joss Whedon, adapting the show from his original screenplay for the 1992 film of the same name (which grossed a hardly encouraging $16 million at the box office), ever dreamed that the show would last so long. In seven seasons on the air, "Buffy" developed into a pop culture phenomenon, comparable only to the "Star Trek" TV series in the 1960s. While never a smash ratings success like NBC's "Friends," or an Emmy Award darling like NBC's "ER," "Buffy" nonetheless enjoys countless fiercely devoted fans all over the globe, from New York to New Zealand, from Paris, Illinois to Paris, France. Like "Star Trek," "Buffy" has fan conventions all over the world, often featuring actors and writers from the series; there are hundreds of fan web sites and other online communities, including newsgroups and web rings of fan fiction; and there is a wealth of official and unofficial memorabilia, from posters and magazines and postcards to action figures and coffee mugs and t-shirts. A series of paperbacks and a line of graphic novels chronicle additional stories about the show's characters, both the main and the peripheral.

Even in controversy, the series is distinguished; in August, 2002, a grassroots morals watchdog group, the Parents Television Council (PTC), announced that they'd deemed "Buffy" the #1 Worst Show on Prime Time Network Television, alleging the series contains "graphic" depictions of sex and violence -
http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/release/2002/pr082202.asp

Twentieth Century-Fox Home Video has begun to release whole seasons of the series on home video and DVD, but every episode of the series--including its rarely seen original pilot with different actors in some of the roles--is available on Internet file-sharing web sites, such as KaZaA. In short, to millions of fans, "Buffy" rules!

There are two kinds of TV fans. There are those who enjoy the show purely as entertainment. They laugh at the jokes and/or sob at the troubles. They talk about the show with friends who also watch it, sharing their opinions on the story and the actors' performances. It's chiefly an external experience.

But there are other fans who look at a TV show and truly analyze it, trying to ascertain its role in the larger society. Is the superheroine main character an empowering feminist icon that challenges the status quo, or is her feminist cache thwarted because she clearly seeks the approval of men, both explicitly through her talk and actions and implicitly through her clingy, fashionable clothing? Do Buffy and her best friend, Willow, in any way represent a lesbian coupling? How does the universe of people and creatures--called the "Buffyverse" by fans--compare with the world of such legendary literary vampires as Bram Stoker's Dracula or Anne Rice's Louis and Lestat?

Of course, these aren't your usual fans. The twenty essays collected here were composed chiefly by academics, professors and doctoral candidates in a variety of disciplines, including English, Classical Studies, German Literature, and Sociology, from such American institutions as Stanford, Yale, and New York University and from such overseas institutions as Brunel University in London and the University of Sydney in Australia. "Buffy" may be just a television show--and in the eyes of the PTC, "deplorable programming" and "filth" that is even less appropriate for young children and adolescents than "WWE Smackdown!"--but its execution lends itself to the kind of interpretation and discussion that is usually reserved for great literature and the fine arts. The ideas presented here come out of simply observing the actions and motivations of the characters in each series episode--in other words, from just watching the show.

Certainly not every television series could stand up to such analysis. It's a tribute to "Buffy," especially its writers, that it does. And this was not happenstance. Whedon may owe his talent to both nature and nurture, being a third-generation television writer (father Tom Whedon wrote scripts for such TV series as "Alice" and "The Golden Girls;" grandfather John Whedon wrote scripts for such TV series as "The Andy Griffith Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show"). But as he revealed on the May 14, 2003 A&E "Biography," or rather, "TVography," about the series, he created Buffy very intentionally to be an icon, and he employed writers that could understand that directive. Buffy's very design was to be unlike the standard two-dimensional characters usually seen on television programs, which were crafted mostly with the intent to sell cars, blue jeans, movies, fabric softener, and whatever other products that are advertised during shows like "Friends" and "ER." The "Buffy" series may ultimately submit to this same intent, but it was always meant to be something more, and this book helps to explain that.

For the first three seasons, while Buffy was in high school, the central metaphor of the series was "high school as hell," and it is during this time period that most of the essays present their arguments. Beyond that, the central theme of the series, which had endured all seven seasons, is that although Buffy is the main character, the "Chosen One" Slayer who possesses superhuman strength and superior fighting skills to battle against vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness, she is triumphant against evil often because of the help and support provided by her friends and family. The series has made clear that it is this support system that makes Buffy unique, even among the long line of Slayers before her. The mythology of the Slayers holds that it is to be a young woman who "stands alone" in her clashes with supernatural creatures that would wreak havoc and destruction upon the human race. She is to be aided solely by a Watcher, usually an elder male patriarchal figure, who passes on all manner of wisdom to winning these struggles, but as implied by his title, he merely watches; the Watcher is not expected to assist in the actual fighting nor form any real emotional attachment to the Slayer. Her very identity isn't even important; once a Slayer dies, the powers are simply passed on to another young woman.

The essays expressly detail the moments in various episodes in which Buffy fights against all of these tenets. Buffy certainly knows who she is; being holed up in a cemetery night after night, staking newly-risen vampires, has not dulled her pre-Slayer fashion sense or sharp sense of humor. Buffy fights all manner of monsters throughout the series--from the high school substitute teacher who's actually a sexually predatory praying mantis, to the human-demon-robot hybrid, symbolically named Adam, created by a college psychology professor who's actually the head of a secret government lab charged with capturing and experimenting on those vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness--but with the ever-present knowledge, advice, assurance, and sometimes accompaniment of her two best friends (plus whoever any of the three is dating at the time), her mother, her little sister, and even her Watcher, who is fired at one point by the Watchers Council, the governing body of the Watchers, after demonstrating that he has a father's love for Buffy. And Buffy is always fighting for her life, fighting to prolong her existence and, in effect, her own personal rule-breaking incarnation of The Slayer.

It was editor David Lavery, spurred by co-editor Rhonda Wilcox's 1999 Journal of Popular Film and Television article, "There Will Never Be a 'Very Special' Buffy: Buffy and the Monsters of Teen Life," who contacted her with his idea of collaborating on an entire book of scholarly treatments of the series, in the spring of 2000. Lavery and Wilcox received so many compositions worth sharing in response to their call for papers that no book could realistically contain them all, and so, after performing a final selection of the essays to appear in this publication, they turned to the Internet, and created Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, an online-only journal made up of the critical essays that could not appear here. So far, nine issues made up of over 40 more essays appear on the site, which is located at http://www.slayage.tv/

The essays chosen for the publication range from an examination of the characters' quirky and original turns of phrase, to a comparison of Buffy's complex and ultimately doomed romance with the redeemed vampire (!) Angel, to the similarly doomed true love tales of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Tristan and Isolde," to a study of the various characteristics of the music used on the show and how this soundtrack has helped to reinforce certain episode and series themes. But an essay expanding on the show's use of fairy tales and its insights into parent-child relationships may completely capture how "Hansel and Gretel" figured into an episode focusing on the parents' reaction to the extraordinary powers and abilities of their children, including Buffy's mother's reaction to her Slayer powers. (But the writer noticeably neglects the "Little Red Riding Hood" aspects and mother-daughter interaction of the episode that focuses on Buffy's 18th birthday.) An essay comparing the persona of Buffy with the 1960s TV character Gidget seems to be overreaching to come to its various conclusions, despite both Buffy and Gidget being sunny California teenage girls. And the closing essay giving an extensive history of the message board at the former WB-sponsored official web site at Buffy.com seems completely out of place.

Overall, through no fault of its own, the book feels frustratingly incomplete. Television production moves much faster then book publishing, and so even though the book was published in 2002, at the end of "Buffy's" sixth season, the essays themselves were completed two years earlier, at the end of the fourth season, with observations from the fifth season added in, where appropriate, as the book went to press. As sad as it is to see production of the series come to an end, as Wilcox mentioned on the May 13, 2003 National Public Radio program, "All Things Considered," the story is now complete, allowing all scholarly interpretations and discussions to come to their own final conclusions.

This book will resonate most deeply with regular viewers of the series. To someone who has never watched the series, the book helps explain what the fuss over the show is all about. There are at least three other published collections of critical essays on the series. And "Buffy," for a show which was never able to achieve high ratings (at least partially due to its respective networks not being available in all areas), received a very public send-off; besides the A&E "TVography" and NPR, the series was granted the cover of TV Guide, and both the show and Whedon received lengthy profiles in Sunday editions of the New York Times. The series finale was greeted with dozens of newspaper stories, noting its special place in television history.

Lavery and Wilcox hope to keep the Slayage.tv online journal web site going for as long as interest warrants. As with the "Star Trek" series, who knows where that road will end? Already plans are underway for a Slayage Conference in 2004, which is "intended to be a post-mortem/wake/summing up for one of television's greatest shows." Three stars.

Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, $24.95