Q: Haynes has seemingly taken radical shifts in direction from film to film. Is there a commonality that can be found in each of his works?

White: Roughly speaking, Haynes alternates between films about “rock’n’roll suicide” (Superstar, Velvet Goldmine, I’m Not There) and domestic melodramas (Safe, Far from Heaven, Mildred Pierce). Then there are Poison and the TV short Dottie Gets Spanked, which make up a kind of early 1990s “New Queer Cinema” interlude. The music films are narratively complex mosaics whereas the family movies are linear, and that difference reinforces the pattern of alternation. It’s unusual for a filmmaker to split his work like this but of course it’s not a hard and fast division. There are numerous interconnections and one in particular comes to the fore in my book: it’s the drama of leaving home—which is both a specific story incident in almost all of Haynes’s films and something more symbolic. This ordinary life event takes on a larger metaphorical significance as a defining act of social noncompliance.

Home in Haynes’s films isn’t a happy place, even when it’s loving and protective. It’s a place of danger, especially for the misfit (though normality is tough too). Sometimes home is horrible or haunted—somewhere to get trapped or go mad. In perhaps the most powerful scene in the glam-rock fantasia Velvet Goldmine, away from all its music-industry glitz and glamor, the teenage Arthur (Christian Bale) is humiliated by his father. Soon afterward he escapes on a bus from Manchester to London, and while the scene is made poignant by the fact that his mother runs after the vehicle to wave goodbye, it’s a scene of liberation, temporary and insufficient though it proves to be.

A more complex example is the journey Safe’s Carol (Julianne Moore) takes from her affluent life in southern California to a recovery community in New Mexico. Her conventional life has become unendurable—the comfort of it has actually started to make her sick—but her search for something better is much more risky than she realizes. Through such stories, Haynes dwells on the fundamental political question of what it means (and costs) not to belong, and I very much wanted in the book to stress the
consistency, coherence, and seriousness of this preoccupation in his work.

Q: How useful is the “New Queer Cinema” label to describe Haynes’s work?

White: Haynes’s place in gay cinema is somewhat paradoxical and this goes for the narrower question of his affiliation to New Queer Cinema too. The difficulty is that Haynes doesn’t dwell on gay subject matter in the obviously direct (and oppositional) fashion of New Queer Cinema films like Greg Araki’s The Living End, Derek Jarman’s Edward II, or Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. Haynes’s gay stories and characters are more ambivalent or tangential. For example, the men who have sex with men in the “Homo” storyline (adapted from Jean Genet) of Poison couldn’t be called role models. Then there’s tormented Frank (Dennis Quaid) in 1950s Far from Heaven, who meets a young man by the pool while on holiday and later admits desperately to his wife before he leaves her that only now does he comprehend what love is. Self-hatred and inhibition are burdens it’s hard to imagine ever lifting from him.

The problem is only resolved if “queer” is understood to be something that encompasses but goes beyond homosexuality itself. In a Film Quarterly interview published in 1993, a year after critic B. Ruby Rich baptized the New Queer Cinema movement, Haynes said: “People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it’s a gay film. . . . I think that’s really simplistic. Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be?” Queer is perhaps most usefully thought about in relation to Haynes’s films not as a sexual orientation but as a general name for refusing social and artistic norms. (After all, gay people can be just as
conservative as straight.) Once the idea is broadened like this, the heroically rebellious queers in Haynes’s films include not only the centrally important character of Richie in Poison’s “Hero” story, a boy who kills his father and abandons his mother, but also Carol in Safe and even, perhaps, for a little while, Mildred (Kate Winslet) in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce.  

Q: Unlike many “serious” filmmakers, Haynes does not shy from melodrama. Why does he embrace this cinematic tradition?

White: Haynes’s relation to melodrama really needs a whole book to itself. Haynes inherits both from directors like Douglas Sirk and Max Ophuls—emigrés who mastered the Hollywood domestic melodrama after World War II—and from the validation of their work in the 1970s by radical film critics and by German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder as stinging critiques of the American mainstream rather than apolitical lightweight entertainment. (This question of the politics of melodrama continues to be debated, particularly in regard to Sirk: some insist that there’s no true subversive force in his films, though I certainly disagree.) Fassbinder updated Sirk in films like The Merchant of Four Seasons and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul by making the attack on normality more explicit: the depiction of social cruelty and regimentation isn’t ambiguous in Fassbinder’s melodramas, as it mostly is in a Sirk film such as All That Heaven Allows. Haynes knowingly revives a lot of the Sirkian ironic varnish, but in full consciousness of and
affinity with Fassbinder’s less guarded reinvention.

Perhaps the crucial thing is that cinematic melodrama allows its exponents to play on
two boards: sympathetically exploiting the dramatic pathos of family strife at the same time as exposing the dark side of small-town conformism. Perhaps what appeals to such intelligent directors about melodrama is precisely that it can work in different and even conflicting ways at the same time. You can consider Far from Heaven, Haynes’s most direct homage to Sirk and Ophuls and Fassbinder, to be mainly a playful postmodern pastiche full of knowing allusions; you can be moved to tears by the characters’ struggles; or, as I do, you can regard the film as Haynes’s most hopeless and disturbing account of social entrapment. Maybe you can even do all three, and no doubt there are other alternatives too.

Q: You interviewed Haynes at length for the book: what struck you most about his responses?

White: There were three interviews, which were eventually edited together. The first two
occurred when the writing was underway, the last when it was nearly finished. Talking to the subject of a book of criticism is of course both rewarding and potentially inhibiting because of a certain “anxiety of influence.” Even by the high standards of many directors, Haynes is precise and persuasive about the intended meanings of his films—his DVD commentary tracks are particularly interesting and absorbing. (There wasn’t a commentary available on Velvet Goldmine for a long time, but fortunately for my research the 2011 Blu-ray edition put this absence right.) We discussed each of Haynes’s films, including his high-school effort (which unfortunately wasn’t available to view), The Suicide, and his graduation film, Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud (which I did see and so could identify its traces in the subsequent Bob Dylan film, I’m Not There). As it happened, by the way, Haynes’s comments about Safe ended up being the most directly influential on my interpretation.

I decided after the first interview not to quote from these new discussions in my analyses. There were a couple of reasons for this decision. The first is that the commentary tracks have a particular immediacy—Haynes is there actually watching the film while commenting—that gave plenty of detail to engage with. The second is that to partition analysis and interview in this way offers the reader the opportunity to consider Haynes’s statements without my explicit commentary on them. The separation obviously isn’t complete, the interviews permeate the analyses, but I hope this decision makes the reader’s experience more interesting. In any case, at the heart of my sense of Haynes’s work are representations in his films of mysterious solitude and psychic remove—but I
think it’s fair to add that the author himself doesn’t stress these depictions to the same degree.

What was very interesting to me about the interviews was Haynes’s undiminished
commitment to a radical critique of society—for example, when he affirms the continuing inspiration of Jean Genet or says: “The society is telling you that if you do these things you’re gonna be fine, and everything’s good, and you’ll be accepted, but you never really believe it, and we’re haunted by that.” But such remarks aren’t surprising, finally. Of all his films, I’m Not There probably has the bluntest political edge and for a while it could have seemed like Haynes was mellowing. But then, in many ways unexpectedly, along came the really tremendous Mildred Pierce, which is as edgy and haunted as anything Haynes has made (and in many ways the best synthesis yet of the different strands of his work). It’s just a masterpiece and I absolutely relished the opportunity to write about it early on in its life.

*****

Photo courtesy of Rob White.

The interview ran on the March 9, 2013, broadcast of Only a Game.

Q: What is the Wheeler-Lea Amendment that was passed in 1938?

Stole: The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 had given the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jurisdiction over advertising, but only in cases where one business used advertising to gain an unfair advantage over another.  This meant that the FTC lacked the authority to intervene on consumers’ behalf when they were wronged, even harmed, by false and misleading advertising.  Thus there was considerable momentum for stricter advertising regulation by the time of Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933.  In June of that year, a bill to amend the 1906 Food and Drugs Act was introduced in Congress.  The measure called for new labeling laws and mandatory grading of goods to help guide consumers in the marketplace.  It also sought to empower the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prohibit false advertising of food, drugs, or cosmetics.

Major manufacturers generally had no objection to a ban on false advertising, but their reaction to the proposed ban on the use of “ambiguity and inference” caused strong and adverse reactions.  It was exactly the use of clever advertising to create enough ambiguity for consumers to infer the desirability of one product over another, even if none existed, that drove most of the consumer industry, and thus much of capitalism in general.

This set the stage for a five-year legislative battle, with congressional hearings on several revised versions of the bill.  Helping the advertising industry’s cause was a set of well-developed public relations and lobbying strategies combines with considerable influence
over the commercial mass media. Few among the general public were fully informed about the issues at stake.  With each new version of the bill, industry concerns took the front seat, and the issue of consumer protection, which been the original impetus for the measure, gradually faded from the agenda.  Despite demands from consumer groups, New Dealers, and government regulatory agencies, advertisers survived the battle with surprising ease.  The Wheeler-Lea Amendment to the Federal Trade Commission Act was passed in 1938, but it only minimally affected existing advertising practices.  Although false advertising was banned, the bill did not outlaw the use of “ambiguity and inference” and the call for commodity grading never materialized into law.  Today, 75 years later, The Wheeler-Lea Amendment is still the reigning law on advertising in the US.

Q: Did it have the intended effect on the advertising industry?

Stole: Although the FTC managed to crack down on the advertising practices of some big national advertisers and slap them with rather mild fines, the mass media, with their
close financial ties to these manufacturers, did not publicize the cease-and-desist orders. Because of this, the lengthy appeals procedure might be well underway before the public ever learned, for example, that the FTC had found several advertising claims by Listerine antiseptic to be unsubstantiated or that it had ordered a stop to Helena Rubenstein’s claims that its “Eye Lash Grower Cream” would cause the lashes to grow and that one of its face powders would prevent skin blemishes.  The immediate and somewhat ironic result of the law on advertising copy was a tendency to glamorize products and employ indirect assertion.  Because it was relatively easy to check the truthfulness of verbal claims, advertisements relied more heavily on illustrations to get around the law.  A pictorial illustration could pass whereas a verbal presentation might not.  This practice revealed the shortcomings of the new law as well as its general failure to encourage advertisers to provide consumers with more factual information.

Q: How did the advertising industry come to support the U.S. war effort during the 1940s?

Stole: After having secured The Wheeler Lea Amendment as legislative victory, the advertising industry faced a set of new and severe challenges.  During the Great Depression, the advertising industry and its business allies, with strong support from the advertising-based news media, had stressed the importance of advertising as a tool for creating consumer demand and eventually getting the economy back on track.  By early 1940, with an impending war on the horizon, the argument was unraveling.  Raw materials for domestic consumer goods had quickly become in short supply, causing the government to impose rationing and price control.  Thus, for advertisers to promote products that were scarce or unavailable might have an inflationary effect and possibly cause black markets. Although desperate to keep their brand names before the public, the advertising industry  worried that product advertising might be viewed as problematic, if not downright unpatriotic, by the American public.

The government’s need for increasing revenues added to the industry’s concern.  Ever since the First World War, businesses had been allowed to claim their advertising as a tax deductible expense.  By all accounts this had the effect of dramatically increasing the amount of advertising that businesses did.  Now, however, considering the limited need  for advertising, advertisers faced the possibility of having this tax-deductible privilege revoked.  Moreover, in a period in which the government was begging, borrowing and taxing at unprecedented levels to support the war effort, the notion that businesses could deduct advertising expenses from their taxable income when advertising served no purpose was problematic.  In November 1941, a few weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, key members of the advertising industry met to discuss their dire situation. The meeting produced the outline of an industry-wide public relations program to protect  advertising.  The crucial idea was for the industry’s leading trade associations to establish a new group to advance the industry’s PR agenda.  Then, within weeks, America was embroiled in an all-out war.  Soon thereafter, and to the advertising industry’s surprise, the government’s newly created Office for War Information (OWI) approached the industry, asking for help in mobilizing popular support for its home front campaigns.

By early 1942, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) officially formed the Advertising Council Inc., which was renamed the War Advertising Council (WAC) between 1943 and 1945 and  positioned as a private adjunct to the government’s war information efforts, in part to protect the advertising industry from regulations.  Because the OWI had too small a  budget for the task at hand, it wanted the Advertising Council to serve as a de facto part of the OWI.

Q: Were the advertising efforts successful?

Stole: When war ended in 1945, the advertising industry believed it had done its patriotic duty and was not afraid to say so.  During the 1,307 days of war, it had encouraged the  American public to purchase more than 800 million war bonds and to plant 50 million victory gardens, as well as raising several million dollars for the Red Cross and the National War Fund Drives.  It had also fought inflation, recruited military personnel, spread information about a wide variety of salvage campaigns, and enlisted workers for industrial war-plants.  All in all, the (War) Adver­tising Council had been involved in more than 150 different home-front campaigns and, by its own estimate, had contributed more than $1 billion in time, space, and talent toward the war effort.

While the advertising industry proudly reminded the public of these contributions to the war effort, it was less likely to publicly discuss the PR rewards it had reaped from its war related activities.

Q: What were the long term postwar effects of the advertiser/politician relationship?

Stole: Largely as a result of the Advertising Council’s relentless work, the advertising industry enjoyed improved relations with the public as the war faded from view.  Moreover, and just as importantly; the intimate working relationship between industry, and government leaders continued into the postwar era, growing ever more congenial.  The Council continued its cooperation with the US government into the postwar era, working on campaigns to defend “American values” and capitalism at home and abroad, blurring the lines between industry goals and government concerns.

Q: What was the most interesting thing that you learned while researching the book?

Stole: Writing this book made me (increasingly) aware of the advertising industry’s political and economic impact.  To the extent that advertising is discussed in our contemporary society, it is a conversation that tends to focus on advertising’s symbolic nature; how certain advertising images help shape people’s views of themselves, other and society in general.  While interesting and important questions, they fail to address the issue of why we have the kind of advertising we do or why advertising, which after all is a regulated industry, has assumed such a central role in our political economy.  My work on Advertising At War has confirmed the importance of historical research to fill some of the gaps.

“Chicago Tonight” also posted a gallery of some of the postcard art featured in Picturing Illinois.

My favorite part of the interview is hearing Stephen discuss his excitement in finding the origin of the classic song Rock Island Line.

From the Only a Game website:
Everybody knows people gamble on college sports, but few have collected evidence of that phenomenon as energetically as has Albert Figone. . . . Figone has collected chronicles of fixes, point-shaving scandals, and various other sketchy endeavors occurring at schools large and small, most of them over the past 70 years. Some fixes, like the ones at Arizona State and the University of Georgia during the ‘90s, were masterminded by student bookmakers. Others, such as the Boston College basketball scandals of the late ‘70s, have seen players working with professional gamblers. And some grand embarrassments, such as the scandals that brought the University of Michigan, Southern Methodist, and Miami into the headlines, have involved the generous fellows who bankroll some of the nation’s most accomplished teams, the boosters:

“If you’re a booster in sports, football or basketball, you’re in control of the program and the university kind of sits back and kind of watches the boosters as they control what’s going on,” Figone said. “And there’s evidence of that in many places.”

Greg Adams: Stephen, you are certainly no stranger to Banjo Newsletter’s readers. For example, in addition to your own interviews with fellow players, you yourself were featured on the cover of three previous issues of BNL—September 1983, September 1989, and November 1998. You also did cover stories of Tony Ellis, Tom Paley, and your mentor, Fleming Brown. Then, in November 2005, BNL included an interview for your Smithsonian Folkways release “Hobart Smith, In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes.” Today I’d like to speak with you about your two recent milestones—“Banjo Diary,” and your new book, “The Beautiful Music All Around Us”What were your motives for doing these two projects?

Stephen Wade: Well, maybe the first question should be, “Why did it take you so long to finish these projects?” Well, it’s interesting. For “Banjo Diary,” because I was dealing with great guys—my fellow great players on the album—it took two days to record, two days to do some fixes, two days of mixing, and one afternoon of mastering. On the other hand, in the purported solitude of a writer’s garret, “The Beautiful Music All Around Us” took eighteen years to complete, sixteen of it spent in writing and research. In May 2011 the book was finally accepted for publication. But because I was just so energized by then, I couldn’t slow down. So I worked from that May to October trying to figure out what might constitute a new banjo record. Originally, my idea for “Banjo Diary” focused on DC’s banjo history, quite different from what it became. Ultimately, it very much connects to my film, “Catching the Music.” And as you know, that documentary addresses the music that inspired my teachers.

MT: What are you currently working on?

FB: I wrote a number of the biographies of Bluegrass Hall of Fame members for the International Bluegrass Music Museum website. I think it would be good to compile the 50-some profiles into a book with great photographs, and the Museum and I are working on putting that project together.

“This book began in an unexpectedly twenty-first-century way. In late 2008 my grandson Zachary had just set up a Facebook account for me. In one of my first posts, I mentioned that I was looking for some new projects. Barry Willis, author and compiler of America’s Music: Bluegrass (Pine Valley Music, 1989), who saw the post, knew of my sideline career—as a bluegrass historian, journalist, and broadcaster—pursued in fits and starts since 1965 when I attended the first multiday bluegrass festival at Fincastle, Virginia, at the age of fourteen.

Willis asked if I’d like to take up an endeavor he had begun years ago and never been able to finish. Over eight days in November of 1994, he had conducted extensive interviews with Josh Graves¹ at Graves’s home in suburban Nashville. Their intention was to work these materials into an “as told to” Josh Graves autobiography. At the time, Barry Willis was a commercial airplane pilot based in Colorado. Mike Dow, a business associate there, had offered the services of his assistant to transcribe the tapes. The assistant was familiar with neither bluegrass nor the southern dialect and expressions used by Graves, but nevertheless she produced, to the best of her ability, a 113–page, single-spaced transcript.²

I agreed to review the material, and Barry Willis shipped from his present home in Hawaii a notebook containing the transcript and a handwritten cover note: “To whom it may concern: I, Josh Graves, hereby give my permission to Barry R. Willis and Mike Dow to write my official biography. Josh Graves 3/25/95.”

The rest of the introduction from the editor will be posted tomorrow. The book is on sale now at a 40% discount–only $13.17–from our website with promo code MAL40.