That Annie should magically combine meekness and moxie is so important.
January 17, 2015 1:57 AM Subscribe
The Teflon Kid: How ANNIE enables apathy about inequality.
Little Orphan Annie on going to public school for free (November 8, 1935 comic strip):
"Free!" Hun~ Nothin' is free -- It all costs somebody-- Too many people are livin' "free" off o' other people -- I'll keep trying to earn my way.
Little Orphan Annie on going to public school for free (November 8, 1935 comic strip):
"Free!" Hun~ Nothin' is free -- It all costs somebody-- Too many people are livin' "free" off o' other people -- I'll keep trying to earn my way.
Following in the footsteps of Harold Gray, the creators of this new Annie do not propose that Americans should try to fix such faltering state-run systems. Rather, they suggest that those who have the means should retreat into the shelter of the privatized family. How acceptable is it nowadays to admit that you don’t care about what happens to other people’s children? So acceptable that the happy ending of this movie involves Daddy Stacks choosing to give up the idea of public service completely. He withdraws from the mayoral race, explaining, “I want to take time out to concentrate on things that really matter to me … And that’s this amazing little girl, Annie … That’s my family.” No need to fix the public schools that are so conspicuously failing to educate poor children. Better to focus your resources on private philanthropy that privileges a lucky few.
So this may not be about apathy so much as an unconscious belief that the politicians are the CAUSE of the inequality to begin with. ...and if you look at the actions of the federal government over the past 20+ years! that's not that bizarre a belief.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:32 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:32 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
It's true that politicians are supposed to be public servants, but when's the last time you saw a movie or read a book depicting them positively as such?
I'm quite sad that this is the final season of Parks and Recreation.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:40 AM on January 17, 2015 [28 favorites]
I'm quite sad that this is the final season of Parks and Recreation.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:40 AM on January 17, 2015 [28 favorites]
As opposed to Daddy Warbucks, the arms industry tycoon. They always get portrayed positively.
posted by idiopath at 4:50 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 4:50 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
If you read the article, though, idiopath, the 1930's strips showed him doing things like using unexpected profit to give his workers a wage because "it's only fair".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:55 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:55 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
If you read the article, though, idiopath, the 1930's strips showed him doing things like using unexpected profit to give his workers a wage because "it's only fair".
It's very much like Downton Abbey showing the Crawleys caring for and well paying their domestic staff.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:56 AM on January 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
It's very much like Downton Abbey showing the Crawleys caring for and well paying their domestic staff.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:56 AM on January 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
Yes, I read it too. I just find it funny that the original can make an ideological point of valorizing a war profiteer, and the new one can't even be bothered to justify being a politician. From blatant right wing propaganda to I dunno, kind of apathetic conservative family values tripe?
posted by idiopath at 5:01 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by idiopath at 5:01 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm quite sad that this is the final season of Parks and Recreation.
Parks and Recreation does a great job of humanizing government employees and bureaucrats as people who serve their community and who really want to do the right thing, but the politicians on the show are still mostly portrayed as corrupt, amoral, and/or out of touch (see Jeremy Jam, Bill Dexhart, Fielding Milton)
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:33 AM on January 17, 2015 [13 favorites]
Parks and Recreation does a great job of humanizing government employees and bureaucrats as people who serve their community and who really want to do the right thing, but the politicians on the show are still mostly portrayed as corrupt, amoral, and/or out of touch (see Jeremy Jam, Bill Dexhart, Fielding Milton)
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:33 AM on January 17, 2015 [13 favorites]
It's true that politicians are supposed to be public servants, but when's the last time you saw a movie or read a book depicting them positively as such?
I'm quite sad that this is the final season of Parks and Recreation.
Politicians are not depicted positively in Parks and Rec. Quite the opposite. Leslie tried elected office, but it didn't work out. She wouldn't sell out her values and lost reelection. Parks and Rec does portray non-elected civil servants, Leslie in particular, positively. But aside from cops, firefighters and prosecutors, it is one of the few shows that does. Or what RonButNotStupid said.
posted by tommyD at 5:33 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm quite sad that this is the final season of Parks and Recreation.
Politicians are not depicted positively in Parks and Rec. Quite the opposite. Leslie tried elected office, but it didn't work out. She wouldn't sell out her values and lost reelection. Parks and Rec does portray non-elected civil servants, Leslie in particular, positively. But aside from cops, firefighters and prosecutors, it is one of the few shows that does. Or what RonButNotStupid said.
posted by tommyD at 5:33 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
It's true that politicians are supposed to be public servants, but when's the last time you saw a movie or read a book depicting them positively as such?
It's been all downhill since the Bartlet administration.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:52 AM on January 17, 2015 [18 favorites]
It's been all downhill since the Bartlet administration.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:52 AM on January 17, 2015 [18 favorites]
I just find it funny that the original can make an ideological point of valorizing a war profiteer, and the new one can't even be bothered to justify being a politician.
....Whut? The article was all ABOUT how Daddy Stacks should have STAYED a politician. It was complaining that he ended the movie by saying he was retiring from public life to "take care of his family" and complaining that he should have stayed in office where he could do more to serve the public good the way politicians are supposed to.
My point was that - exceptions like The West Wing aside - these days, in pop culture, politicians are seen as being bad guys, so the script making him give up office at the end wasn't an example of "fuck the public commons," the way the article was claiming it was, but rather an example of "yay he is no longer a selfish Machiavellian heartless dude any more". I was speaking more to how pop culture is not quite accurate when it comes to depicting how things are, so the Times trying to hold a pretend politician up to real life is kind of blind to how the rules of pop culture work.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:03 AM on January 17, 2015
....Whut? The article was all ABOUT how Daddy Stacks should have STAYED a politician. It was complaining that he ended the movie by saying he was retiring from public life to "take care of his family" and complaining that he should have stayed in office where he could do more to serve the public good the way politicians are supposed to.
My point was that - exceptions like The West Wing aside - these days, in pop culture, politicians are seen as being bad guys, so the script making him give up office at the end wasn't an example of "fuck the public commons," the way the article was claiming it was, but rather an example of "yay he is no longer a selfish Machiavellian heartless dude any more". I was speaking more to how pop culture is not quite accurate when it comes to depicting how things are, so the Times trying to hold a pretend politician up to real life is kind of blind to how the rules of pop culture work.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:03 AM on January 17, 2015
So it seemed possible that although the original creators of Annie didn’t manage to renounce Gray’s right-wing politics, Jay-Z and director-screenwriter Will Gluck just mightDoes the author have zero familiarity with Jay-Z's oeuvre? They might as well have given him a frizzy wig and cast him as the hustling, undefeatable, pull yourself up by your bootstraps right-wing annie.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:04 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Fun Fact: at one point, Harold Gray killed off Daddy Warbucks. He brought him back immediately upon FDR's death, saying that Warbucks' condition had mysteriously much improved.
Dude had an axe to grind.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:06 AM on January 17, 2015 [15 favorites]
Dude had an axe to grind.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:06 AM on January 17, 2015 [15 favorites]
Little Orphan Fuck You Got Mine
posted by oceanjesse at 7:24 AM on January 17, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by oceanjesse at 7:24 AM on January 17, 2015 [11 favorites]
She mentions but sort of glosses over how explicitly pro-New-Deal the original '80s musical was, as is made explicit in two musical numbers: We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover and A New Deal for Christmas, in which FDR joins Daddy Warbucks and Annie to announce to the other orphans that their problems are over because new laws will protect them and allow them to go to school instead of working.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:50 AM on January 17, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:50 AM on January 17, 2015 [9 favorites]
Morrison’s African American child protagonists struggle to maintain a sense of self-worth at a time when magazines, movies, children’s books, dolls, and even candy wrappers proclaimed that white children had cornered the market on cuteness.
So much for Buckwheat
posted by IndigoJones at 8:34 AM on January 17, 2015
So much for Buckwheat
posted by IndigoJones at 8:34 AM on January 17, 2015
"The Bolsheviks? Leapin' lizards!"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:39 AM on January 17, 2015
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:39 AM on January 17, 2015
That Benito Mussolini'll give 'em what for!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:27 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:27 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just gotta wait around for your rich benefactor. If all the poor people would just turn into eleven year old girls and find a billionaire we wouldn't have poverty.
posted by Talez at 9:34 AM on January 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Talez at 9:34 AM on January 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
So I realize I'm harping, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's really weird that she doesn't do more to address the '77 musical. So for instance, here's what she says about the musical's big number, "Tomorrow":
I know that sounds like a joke, but that's what actually happens in the Broadway musical. I think there are hugely legitimate critiques of how it all goes down: basically, Annie saves the US by being loveable and optimistic and inspiring politicians with her optimistic lovableness. That's a sort of pernicious message to give to little girls, that all you need to do to get political change is to be adorable. But it seems really perverse to argue that the musical Annie, which is probably the only children's musical ever to have a solo sung by the Secretary of the Interior, sends the message "fuck you, I've got mine."
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:46 AM on January 17, 2015 [23 favorites]
Given the musical’s cheerful acceptance of the socioeconomic status quo, it’s no surprise that Annie’s most memorable anthem glorifies inaction. If things are hard, “Tomorrow” tells us, don’t do anything to the world around you. Just adjust your attitude by saying to yourself,Here's an actual scene in the musical that, from that description, you wouldn't guess exists. So Annie goes to Washington and gets to meet the president. When she meets FDR, he's surrounded by his cabinet. She starts to sing "Tomorrow," and the cabinet tells her to be quiet. FDR, though, wants to hear her song! She belts out "Tomorrow," and FDR and two members of his cabinet, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, are inspired to join in. (Perkins and Ickes were, in real life, among the chief architects of the New Deal.) Buoyed by Annie's optimism, FDR decides that America needs a New Deal. Literally: in the musical, the song "Tomorrow" inspires the New Deal.
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
So you got to hang on till tomorrow,
Come what may!
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow
You’re always a day away.
Ah yes, the inspirational message that you should passively wait for things to improve, which will happen not because you (or anyone else) takes positive action, but just because things tend to improve as naturally as the sun rises in the east. Charnin’s lyrics reassure us that the future will be better than the present while simultaneously hinting that this brighter future will never actually arrive, since it’s “always a day away.”
I know that sounds like a joke, but that's what actually happens in the Broadway musical. I think there are hugely legitimate critiques of how it all goes down: basically, Annie saves the US by being loveable and optimistic and inspiring politicians with her optimistic lovableness. That's a sort of pernicious message to give to little girls, that all you need to do to get political change is to be adorable. But it seems really perverse to argue that the musical Annie, which is probably the only children's musical ever to have a solo sung by the Secretary of the Interior, sends the message "fuck you, I've got mine."
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:46 AM on January 17, 2015 [23 favorites]
In case you guys think I'm making this up, here is the cabinet scene from Annie.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:05 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:05 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Having seen the movie, I was really struck by the way new!Annie staged "Tomorrow." Instead of Annie singing it to inspire those around her, Annie is singing it to convince herself of what she's singing. She's walking down the street alone, seeing happy families around her in the reflections of shop windows and the sides of buses, and telling herself to hang on for one more day. It's actually really well-done.
posted by nonasuch at 10:17 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by nonasuch at 10:17 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos: I am not even sure why you think we were ever in disagreement at this point.
posted by idiopath at 10:23 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by idiopath at 10:23 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
> "I know that sounds like a joke, but that's what actually happens in the Broadway musical."
I've always thought that was hilarious; it's such an f-you to the original author's politics. It'd be like making a musical version of Atlas Shrugged with this scene:
HANK REARDON: No one wants to buy my new alloy! Orren Boyle's Associated Steel is just too powerful!
(FDR enters)
FDR: Reardon, I'm going to see that you get government research funds to continue to develop your new metal.
HANK REARDON: Hooray! When the government encourages innovation in support of the public interest, everybody benefits!
(Song and dance number)
posted by kyrademon at 10:27 AM on January 17, 2015 [34 favorites]
I've always thought that was hilarious; it's such an f-you to the original author's politics. It'd be like making a musical version of Atlas Shrugged with this scene:
HANK REARDON: No one wants to buy my new alloy! Orren Boyle's Associated Steel is just too powerful!
(FDR enters)
FDR: Reardon, I'm going to see that you get government research funds to continue to develop your new metal.
HANK REARDON: Hooray! When the government encourages innovation in support of the public interest, everybody benefits!
(Song and dance number)
posted by kyrademon at 10:27 AM on January 17, 2015 [34 favorites]
Kyrademon, that would truly be the BEST MUSICAL EVER.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 11:58 AM on January 17, 2015
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 11:58 AM on January 17, 2015
Okay, I'm going to ask this here because I've been wondering it for a while:
Somehow before this movie came out, I was under the impression that the "present-day" update was actually going to be to the 1980s. I have no idea how I came to this conclusion, as there's nothing anywhere that I can find on the internet now that suggests this was ever an idea. The best I can reach for is that I guess the costume and art design sort-of-kind-of suggest that it could be? IDK.
Anyway, I was so convinced that this was true that I actually spent some time thinking "oh man! That's actually pretty brilliant! Jamie Foxx as a high-finance guy who made it big on the stock market boom while the rest of New York (and especially the African American community) was being ravaged by Reagonomics and crack! That's a pretty good contemporary equivalent to a free-market-loving war profiteer, as well as a nod to the timing of the original film!"
but, no.
posted by kagredon at 1:41 PM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Somehow before this movie came out, I was under the impression that the "present-day" update was actually going to be to the 1980s. I have no idea how I came to this conclusion, as there's nothing anywhere that I can find on the internet now that suggests this was ever an idea. The best I can reach for is that I guess the costume and art design sort-of-kind-of suggest that it could be? IDK.
Anyway, I was so convinced that this was true that I actually spent some time thinking "oh man! That's actually pretty brilliant! Jamie Foxx as a high-finance guy who made it big on the stock market boom while the rest of New York (and especially the African American community) was being ravaged by Reagonomics and crack! That's a pretty good contemporary equivalent to a free-market-loving war profiteer, as well as a nod to the timing of the original film!"
but, no.
posted by kagredon at 1:41 PM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
a good article. Although, I think it would have been hilarious if they had pulled a Starship Troopers on the original.
posted by rebent at 2:03 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by rebent at 2:03 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
An Atlas Shrugged musical would only be good done over-the-top, Springtime for Hitler fashion. Sadly, I think most Rand devotees are devoid of humor and thus would take it exactly at face value and miss every joke.
posted by emjaybee at 4:25 PM on January 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 4:25 PM on January 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
Each cartoon or series always has a political slant one way or another.
I never got into Annie, I didn't like musicals. I never knew that it was right-wing propaganda either.
In the modern day of reboots in Hollywood they change the gender or race of the main characters not for the sake of diversity, but for the shock and awe from the fans that grew up with the classic version. For example this was done to The Honeymooners and it was a big flop. They even follow stereotypes and other unfunny stuff. Comic books do the same thing as well, Thor is now a woman, Falcon became Captain American when Steve Rogers got too old, etc.
Instead of creating all new scripts and all new characters, they just change the existing ones and it doesn't always work.
posted by Orion Blastar at 5:38 PM on January 17, 2015
I never got into Annie, I didn't like musicals. I never knew that it was right-wing propaganda either.
In the modern day of reboots in Hollywood they change the gender or race of the main characters not for the sake of diversity, but for the shock and awe from the fans that grew up with the classic version. For example this was done to The Honeymooners and it was a big flop. They even follow stereotypes and other unfunny stuff. Comic books do the same thing as well, Thor is now a woman, Falcon became Captain American when Steve Rogers got too old, etc.
Instead of creating all new scripts and all new characters, they just change the existing ones and it doesn't always work.
posted by Orion Blastar at 5:38 PM on January 17, 2015
EmpressCallipygos: I am not even sure why you think we were ever in disagreement at this point.
You said the article "didn't bother to justify being a politician", when justifying being a politician was the biggest thing the article WAS trying to do in the first place. "He should have stayed in politics, how dare they end things that way" was their whole point.
Unless you meant the MOVIE didn't bother justifying his being a politician, in which case I thought you were talking about something different so never mind.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:41 PM on January 17, 2015
You said the article "didn't bother to justify being a politician", when justifying being a politician was the biggest thing the article WAS trying to do in the first place. "He should have stayed in politics, how dare they end things that way" was their whole point.
Unless you meant the MOVIE didn't bother justifying his being a politician, in which case I thought you were talking about something different so never mind.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:41 PM on January 17, 2015
I said the movie didn't. I have no critique for the article.
posted by idiopath at 6:28 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by idiopath at 6:28 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Then I misunderstood.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:54 PM on January 17, 2015
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:54 PM on January 17, 2015
You know why Little Orphan Annie doesn't want to go to school?
You know why she *giggle* doesn't want to *tee hee hee* go to school?
THEY HAVE PUPILS THERE!
*runs off cackling madly, jumps under covers with box of Fig Newmans*
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:17 PM on January 17, 2015 [10 favorites]
You know why she *giggle* doesn't want to *tee hee hee* go to school?
THEY HAVE PUPILS THERE!
*runs off cackling madly, jumps under covers with box of Fig Newmans*
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:17 PM on January 17, 2015 [10 favorites]
In keeping with her creator’s reactionary views, Annie’s famously empty peepers signal that she lacks a vulnerable inner self who could be harmed by harsh circumstances,
I'm getting a sense of someone in their first year of college who has just learned they can make Essays about Important Subjects.
posted by corb at 8:44 PM on January 18, 2015
I'm getting a sense of someone in their first year of college who has just learned they can make Essays about Important Subjects.
posted by corb at 8:44 PM on January 18, 2015
I'm getting a sense of someone in their first year of college who has just learned they can make Essays about Important Subjects.
Boy, is the Literature department at MIT going to feel silly when they realize they hired a freshman as a professor.
posted by naoko at 7:30 AM on January 21, 2015
Boy, is the Literature department at MIT going to feel silly when they realize they hired a freshman as a professor.
posted by naoko at 7:30 AM on January 21, 2015
Yeah, seriously. I mean, I know it's literature at MIT, but they don't have to just hire people off the streets. It is still an important subject.
posted by corb at 9:08 AM on January 21, 2015
posted by corb at 9:08 AM on January 21, 2015
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posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:30 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]