Nice Looking Men

Buster Keaton, silent film star extraordinaire, has some of the creepiest eyes in the whole human race. He is still beautiful. 

Fritz Lang, "Master of Darkness", of Metropolis fame. He's on the list of Awesome People From Austria. Lang emigrated to the US in 1934 for pretty obvious reasons and helped found American film noir. Apparently he was a right bastard to work with and was known to rock a monocle, reinforcing the "evil German with a monocle" stereotype. Sigh. 

I first heard of Paul Robeson when I was feverishly collecting as many versions of the USSR's national anthem as I could possibly find (shut up). He recorded the definitive English version, which you can see here. I immediately discovered several things:

1. He was black. From the date and accent of the recording I had assumed he was some rotund British man, so that came as a bit of a surprise. 

2.  He was one of the most incredible people ever. Son of an escaped slave, he worked his way through Columbia Law School while playing pro football, singing, and acting. He was a lifelong advocate against racism, anti-Semitism, economic oppression, and social injustice. His rich baritone voice was one of the first to bring the spiritual to a concert audience. Seriously, I can't even begin to do justice to his achievements without writing a whole article. 

3. He was a FOX. 

4. He got utterly and supremely screwed over. His blatant socialist sympathies, as well as his support of Stalinism in theory at a time when America didn't completely know about Stalinism in practice, not to mention his race, drew the government's ire. He was forbidden to travel. He was blacklisted. His recordings, film footage, and nearly all official records of him were destroyed.  In short, they did their best to erase him from history. (Does this remind you of anything, comrade?)

I am still angry for his sake. 

Bawwwwww! *ruffles hair* This is Joel Grey. He played the MC in the original Broadway production of Cabaret. It's kind of hard to imagine that this adorkable guy is also...

He's climbin' in your nightmares. Snatchin' your ladies up. Tryin' to seduce them with a nasal German accent OH GOD I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE MAKE IT GO AWAY *hides under sofa*

Let's not end on that note.

You know what? I don't even care. Julie Andrews is magnificent, and you can keep your little gender categories. "Nice Looking People" doesn't have the same ring. I'm a fan of the women-in-male-evening-dress look, but a thoughtful deconstruction of that thought doesn't belong here. I think Halberstam's 'Female Masculinity' is the definitive work on the subject, especially concerning FTM drag in the early 20th century. 

This particular picture is rather amusing--she played a failed soprano who pretends to be a man in drag in Victor/Victoria. 

That's all, folks. The next episode, when it happens, will contain more than your daily average dose of creepers. Huzzah!

The real meaning of Deutschland über Alles: Why can't we all just get along?

Franz Josef Haydn was generally an excellent guy. He was born into a lower-class family and clawed his way up the ranks of musicianship, jobbing for whoever needed a substitute or an extra instrument and even busking occasionally. He might not have been the most creative composer in the universe, but he was honest, genial, loved musical pranks and was good to his employees. Haydn is considered the father of the symphony and the string quartet, offspring which place him pretty high on the list of Awesome Things From Austria.

Not on the list: Hitler, Conrad von Hötzendorf, Falco

Once he had reached success and security, Haydn spent a lot of time in England. During that time, however, he noticed that the British had something Austria lacked—a kickass (or kiss-ass, depending on how you feel about monarchies) song about the head of state.

So he wrote one in 1797. It looked like this:

If the kaiser is named anything other than Franz, we're screwed. 

Franz Josef was extremely proud of this song, which was used as the Austro-Hungarian Empire's national anthem until it finally dissolved from an excess of suck in 1918. As an old man, he often sat down at his piano and plunked it out at least once a day. He also made it the basis for his “Emperor” string quartet, which is quite beautiful. I'd love to have played it in the high school string quartet, but we were all blond and blue-eyed. This fact will become important later. 

A couple of decades after the melody was written, the poet August Heinrich Hoffman von Fallersleben wrote some alternate lyrics for it...

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Über alles in der Welt, Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze Brüderlich zusammenhält. Von der Maas bis an die Memel, Von der Etsch bis an den Belt,  |: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,   Über alles in der Welt! :|

Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world, When, for protection and defence, it always takes a brotherly stand together. From the Meuse to the Memel, From the Adige to the Belt,  |: Germany, Germany above everything,   Above everything in the world! :|

The first stanza, stolen from Wikipedia because I'm lazy

You thought of this, didn't you?

You totally did. Don't even lie.

In other words, you thought of "Germany is superior to everything in the world" rather than "Germany is greater than the sum of its parts". When Hoffman wrote the words, “Germany” as we recognize it today was a bunch of shitty little nation-states--usually pushed around by Austria or Prussia--that constituted the confused remains of the Holy Roman Empire. They were loosely connected by a German Confederation that varied in functionality (indeed, in existence) over time. So when someone said "Germany" in a nationalist sense, they were probably speaking in linguistic terms.

Hoffman was actually advocating the very LIBERAL political goal of a single unified German-speaking state loyal to the rule of law rather than to a monarch. His ideas were so revolutionary at the time that he lost his job and had to go into hiding until the Revolutions of 1848. 

His lyrics, combined with Haydn's tune, became the German national anthem in 1922.

The Nazis, along with pretty much everything else they did, perverted the meaning of Hoffman's poem into something more aligned with their ideology. The brilliant thing was that they didn't even have to change any words. They just left out the other verses about "unity and justice and freedom", because who needs 'em. 

So there you go. The revolutionary liberal behind Deutschland über Alles is turning in his grave.

The current German national anthem is actually the third verse (the one about unity and justice and freedom), but the connotations are still there for many people.

Note: This DOES NOT make the Deutschlandlied any different from any other reasonably old anthem. They’ve all whored themselves out at some point to purposes besides national glory. I’ll write about Russia’s anthem(s) later on, when I’ve introduced you to the Red Army Chorus and can adequately contain my fangirl.

And we're off! Someone has blundered.

Hello, world!

I'm Riet.

Since I don't have enough in-depth experience to maintain a blog about anything except the Red Army Chorus (and there's already a blog for that), and a blog about my life would just be rude, topics will be wildly different almost every day.

Here is what to expect for the next month at least:

TVTropes:
A passing acquaintance with tropes might help. Adequate linkage will be provided.

Stylistic Comma Abuse
I'm sorry. I do this. Deal. You'll be hard pressed to find any other typos. I regularly don the red armband of Spelling and Grammar Fascism.

Extended Metaphors
This will also happen.

Doodle comics!
Drawing is fun. Kate Beaton and Hyperbole and a Half are master doodlers. Perhaps I shall also try.

Unbelievable Bitterness
It's gonna happen. 'Bitter' is the first word I come up with for those weird icebreaker games where you pick one word to describe yourself. However, this blog is NEVER going to describe personal events. The bitterness will come out through other topics, listed below in no particular order.

Social commentary
From the perspective of a female, white, asexual, socially liberal, disillusioned quasi-Catholic with odd dress habits, I shall find things to talk about. The cultural lenses listed above are hard to remove.

Squeeing (this includes Nice Looking Men)
Everyone is allowed to have certain things to fangirl over. Characters, food, literature, people, design, or music--doesn't matter. I like to squee as much as I like to rage.
I used to have an occasional Twitter burst called Nice Looking Men. These bursts consisted of exactly what it says on the tin, genius. Not necessarily sexy, usually fully clothed, aesthetically pleasing men. Women are also in the works. Silent movies, anyone?

Propaganda
The word 'propaganda' has a bad rap. People associate it with evil, psychological coercion and with The Man. They aren't wrong , but they should also consider the argument that propaganda is merely the advertisement of ideology.

Massive amounts of history/music/music history
Oh, you'll see. You'll see.