STUDYING
IMMIGRATION THROUGH HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKERS’ EYES
Presented
at the 21st Annual Conference on the Teaching of Public
Administration
Colorado
Springs
Monday,
March 23, 1998
Professor
Mark L. Drucker
Department
of Public Administration and Policy Analysis
Southern
Illinois University at Edwardville
(618)
692-3762
This paper will detail how a course (defined as interdisciplinary) can be
offered by a university department of public administration to teach students
about immigration to the United States, in substantial part through the use of
film. Hopefully, in this way, this
faculty member’s experience can serve as a case study in the instructional
integration of film into the classroom.
The
course – and this paper – will review key concepts defined in the
substantive (social science) literature on the topic, e.g. from the work of John
Bodnar.
The
contribution of the films ultimately selected for presentation then will be
discussed – part of THE GODFATHER PART II, THE EMIGRANTS, HESTER STREET, and
PICTURE BRIDE.
Some
issues of immigration law were dramatized in the course by posing questions
raised in an episode of MICHAEL HAYES to an immigration attorney meeting with
the class. This will be examined as
an example of an opportunity for students to interact with video.
A
second opportunity for interaction within the course was in the presentation of
the final, through both written questions and clips from other films (GREENCARD,
HEAVEN’S GATE, BIG NIGHT, ALAMO BAY). This
paper will discuss the efficacy of capturing the value of insights derived from
film as part of the evaluation of students’ learning experience from such a
course.
Finally,
the paper will take up the questions of required student reading of fiction,
associated with the course content (immigrant novels, in this case), and of the
selection of the specific films which were employed, compared to other choices.
Immigrant
Homeland and Capitalism
·
U.S. immigration wasn’t based on the pull of jobs created by the growth
of American industrial capitalism, and on the abandonment of underdeveloped
backward regions abroad.
·
Instead, the flow of immigration depended upon diverse and much more
specific transformations abroad, based on the response to capitalism there of
the local populations.
·
In particular, the production of cheaper manufactured goods, and the
expansion of transportation modalities, undercut the economic base of those
farmers who supplemented their income by producing other goods. (Early immigrants often were small independent farmers who
also were craftsmen and artisans.)
·
Such immigrants possessed modest financial resources and migrated to
avoid a perceived decline in status.
·
A second immigrant population consisted of those with some land who hoped
to return home to purchase more land with the earnings they accumulated.
·
These immigrants were not tradition-bound peasants, they were more
literate than those who remained, and they brought with them their ideas of
mutual aid societies, agricultural improvement, credit unions – and socialism.
·
Many immigrants (25%-60%) returned home, or wanted to do so.
Family
Life
·
Family-based household immigration predominated during the early decades
of settlement.
·
American employees often sought out clusters or groups of foreign workers
who, if not related, were at least acquainted previously with one another; there
was a symbiotic relationship between the industrial economy and the immigrant
family structure (not typically the breakdown of families).
·
New immigrants were adept at knowing where they wanted to go (to find
work), and how to get there (often with their passage paid for), since relatives
and friends helped them to find jobs and homes (not the “huddled masses” of
the poem).
·
Until World War II, “family” superceded all other immigrant goals and
objectives in providing order and purpose in their lives; sometimes, the cost of
the family’s new home meant children would forfeit years of schooling to go to
work at a sufficiently early age to contribute income in order for the family to
purchase its home.
Rise
of the Middle Class
·
Fragmentation and contention, as well as cooperation and solidarity,
characterized immigrant communities; they were not harmonious and united, but
stratified according to their population’s unequal skills and resources, old
world backgrounds, and status and class distinctions.
·
Entrepreneurship separated the shopkeepers from the other workers, and
the middle class celebrated opportunities for individualism (far more than did
the workers.)
·
Social hierarchies among immigrants were based on length of stay in the
U.S., ethnic organizational involvements, wealth, occupation, and education.
·
Ethnic immigrant communities should be understood as “decompression
chambers” or transition zones, where newcomers obtained the values and
behavior patterns they needed to succeed in the U.S.
Folklore
and Civic Institutions
·
Immigrant culture reinforced group identity as each group met new people,
and gave meaning and understanding to a world over which they had so little
control (introducing them to others, and providing explanations of their
status).
·
Folk culture was a source of power-alternative knowledge, unknown to
other Americans who held power over them.
·
Often cultural traditions from homelands were modified and adapted.
·
The American school appropriated childhood for the state, childhood which
had been the private province of the family and the household, and this led to
conflict – compulsory school attendance, anti-child labor laws.
·
While voluntary associations expanded and modernized, the church had an
“entrenched premodern cadre of leaders,” and often ethnic nationalism was in
conflict with religious commitments.
·
The clergy’s disagreements with lay leaders disrupted community
harmony, and alienated many immigrants, as they were forced to take sides.
Jobs
and Mobility
·
Immigrants typically decided before they left home that they would deal
with working in a capitalist system and were not predisposed one way or the
other to joining unions.
·
Native labor leaders first had to decide that immigrant labor wasn’t
their enemy, and then overlook differences in skills, culture, and ethnic
background; they were most effective when they dealt with the immigrants’
needs, not their ideals.
·
Employers enlisted the help of shopkeepers to deny credit to union
members and of clerics to condemn unions as secret organizations unacceptable to
the church.
·
While the immigrants’ salaries enabled them to acquire property,
dramatic gains in socioeconomic status advancement were not the norm (and would
be predicted by the skills they had acquired in their homelands, and by where
they located themselves in the U.S.).
·
Most would labor in routine, difficult jobs throughout their careers, and
so would the majority of their children.
Once the course’s themes were established, it was possible to employ these themes as criteria in the selection of the films which would be screened and discussed. The students themselves, would be asked, while viewing the films, to identify and write down the course themes they recognized. These notes, they were told, would be read to help define the agenda for the class discussion. In this way, they would be making active contributions to that agenda (and also, of course, be encouraged to focus their attention).
One other assignment for the course was a semester-long requirement for each student to undertake a genealogical study of their own families, hopefully going back to a period during which family members might have immigrated to the U.S. Several guest speakers helped motivate this research, by discussing their own excitement at achieving success in such inquiries. But best of all, the course was team-taught by Dr. Stanley Kimball, an expert in just such areas as well as a scholar of local ethnic history and of the Mormon trails west.
SELECTING FILMS FOR THE COURSE
Which film would be the best choice to orient the class on how to identify key course themes for class discussion? A film that might integrate concepts of the homeland, the family, immigrant work, culture, and the rise of the middle class. The early historical parts at the beginning of THE GODFATHER SAGA (from PART TWO) accomplish this goal. A synopsis of what is to be found of curricular value in THE GODFATHER is followed by synopses of the other three films that focused the course: THE EMIGRANTS, emphasizing the Swedish rural homeland and journey in the mid-nineteenth century; HESTER STREET, featuring turn of the century urban Jews of New York, as they adjusted their family lives in response to American modernism; and PICTURE BRIDE, depicting the conflict of the young and the old over issues like staying or returning home, among the Japanese sugar cane field workers of early twentieth century Hawaii.
THE GODFATHER: In Sicily, Antonio Andolini is murdered by Don Ciccio, and then his oldest little boy Paulo, who swore revenge, is killed. The widow begs the Don for the life of her younger son Vito (“he’s dumb-witted and weak and couldn’t hurt anyone”). Don Ciccio denies the widow’s request, and she too is martyred to allow Vito to escape to America. At Ellis Island, he is tagged and quarantined for three months with smallpox.
Vito, married and with three sons, is introduced by a friend to a folk opera (the singer wails, “I left Naples and Mama for a no-good. And now Mama is dead”). A real no-good, Don Fanucci is extorting money from the theater owner, at the threat of his actress-daughter’s life. Eventually this same Fanucci forces Vito’s grocery storeowner boss (“like a father to me”) to fire Vito and hire a Fanucci nephew. Vito then becomes involved with Clemenza and Tessio in hiding guns, burglarizing a home for a rug, and stealing and fencing dresses. Fanucci asks this new gang for respect and a piece of the action (“just enough to wet my beak in”). Vito bargains down his price, impressing Fanucci (“too bad you’re married. I have three daughters”). Clemenza and Tessio had been worried, but Vito calmed them down (“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”). But Vito isn’t through yet: he stalks Fanucci at a great street festival, and murders him and takes over the neighborhood.
Vito becomes powerful, for instance, helping prevent the eviction of a widow. But he also returns with his family to Sicily to promote the importation of olive oil, and, while he is there, of course, to visit the villa of Don Ciccio.
THE EMIGRANTS: Christina and Karl Oscar’s Swedish Family has doubled the size of its holdings (“but we can’t better our lot”). Problems mount up: a loan from his father is needed to make mortgage payments; the harvest looks bad; no oxen, and they owe more money (“we toil our guts out, and we are worse off than ever”). They argue over having had three children (“how can we feed them?”).
Karl Oscar’s brother Robert doesn’t show up for work, and is cuffed by his employer (“How many lords and masters do we have over us?”). Christina is very devout (“Trust to God.” “God won’t feed the children.” “You made them; you’re constantly getting me pregnant.”). Robert would sell his share in the farm and move to America, where there are excellent prospects for farmers growing wheat.
Christina’s uncle Daniel Andreason is an unordained minister providing sacraments to a congregation of outcasts (“I’m guided by the commandments”). He defies the clerical hierarchy which arrives to break up an “illegal assembly.”
When Karl Oscar and Christina’s little daughter Anna dies, Christina announces: “I’m not against moving to America any longer.”
The households are gathered together, and they emigrate on a terrible journey eventually leading to Minnesota. There is a sequel to THE EMIGRANTS, the equally powerful THE NEW LAND.
HESTER STREET: The Turn of the Century Lower East Side of Manhattan is a place where you can marry for love, and Jake, a thoroughly modern New Yorker who laughs at greenhorns, would marry the sophisticated and prosperous Mamie. Except that regrettably he’s already married, a point brought home to him when, after his father’s death, his wife Gittel arrives with their son Yossele at Ellis Island. Gittel’s a traditional woman with her modesty and wigs. She throws salt to keep the evil eye away. Jake’s roommate Bernstein, whom (ironically) Jake has been trying to marry off, is very taken with Gittel. But Bernstein the scholar works at a sewing machine for $12 a week. America is truly a world turned upside down.
Jake is not happy with Gittel (“It’s different here – the wigs! The kerchief!” “You’d have me show my hair, like a gentile!”). But he has hopes for Yossele, now called “Joey”: “My son’ll be President!” And Joey helps his mother (“Joey, what’s this in English?”). Gittel’s problem is clear to her; she inquires of a neighbor: “Maybe you have something that will make him love me again.”
But Jake’s not to be satisfied so easily. He talks to Bernstein again about his life as a single man: “A single man is a bum.” “You give something up, when you marry.” “I don’t want a greenhorn wife.” “You and Mamie aren’t worth your wife’s little finger!”
Jake insists: “Here, a Jew is a mensch. In Russia, I wouldn’t get within ten feet of a gentile.” “Where are the gentiles in America?” “They live in another place.” But there’s a reasonable resolution for all this angst, and Gittel may even come to grow out her own hair – like an American. (The education department at the national offices of UNITE, the garment workers union, provided copies of some video footage on the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a grimmer perspective on the world of Hester Street).
PICTURE BRIDE: She’s very young when she arrives in Hawaii from Yokohama to marry a man of 43, older than her father. He has a place for them of their own, but the field work is new to her, (“My parents said you’d worked in the fields before1”). Broken-hearted, she’ll save her money to return to Japan (“Going back seems like an old dream . . .” “I’ll never be stuck like you!”).
He’s saddened by the failure of the mail order marriage: “She looks at me with tired eyes. I feel such a failure.” He’ll gamble. “How can you save?” “Maybe I’ll just save up for a new wife!” He meets with a friend after seeing a samurai movie, and the friend asks: “Why do you gamble?” “She only wants to go back to Japan. I fooled her, and now I’m being punished.” “She’s a modern girl, better. Be romantic, like a movie.” They practice samurai moves, and he promises himself that he’ll take her to a real Hawaiian paradise.
Work in the fields is very hard. There are tragedies and talk of a strike. She confesses to him that her family fled a volcano in Kagashima when she was five. But they became sick at their work in a Yokohama factory, and died – of tuberculosis. Although she’s well, her aunt had misinformed him about this (her shame), just as he had misrepresented himself. When a festival is celebrated, they honor her parents.
INTERACTING WITH NETWORK TELEVISION
An opportunity for the class to interact with a current television program arose, when, on December 2, MICHAEL HAYES, the new series about a crusading Manhattan prosecutor, aired an episode about the prostitution of young Chinese immigrant girls. A class session previously had been scheduled for two days after the broadcast with St. Louis’s leading immigration lawyer, Darwin Portman, who chairs the immigration section of the local bar association. Using a taping of the episode, it was possible, in effect, to have some of the characters pose specific legal problems to Darwin Portman, who responded by helping the class with their understanding of legal concepts, and by providing the full legal answer.
In the episode, business leader Henry Khan has been targeted as the figure behind the slavery ring, and so far has been unreachable for the prosecutors. Alice Woo, who was picked up in a raid, is illegal but needs to stay in the U.S. to escape political reprisals.
First Hayes meets with INS officer Bellamy. He explains that Alice may be able to provide compelling testimony to help convict Khan. What can Bellamy do in return for Alice? Darwin Portman then provided us with a discussion of INS legal and administrative discretion.
In the episode, Alice explains how she was forced to carry messages to Khan (at threats to both her own life and the lives of her family in China). While doing so, she also regularly was molested. But Alice stole earrings and a Rolex watch to finance her escape from New York, and she tells all this to Hayes. The prosecutors meet and discuss this point. Alice has committed a felony, which also happens to help connnect Khan to evidence of his crimes. But if she testifies, and Khan presses charges, and if she is convicted, she will be deported. The $5,000 Rolex watch would bring the charges up to grand theft. The prosecutors would like to make a deal – they make deals with major criminals who are U.S. citizens, after all – but, in this case, if Alice testifies, she will face deportation. Yes? Darwin Portman then had the opportunity to discuss the eligibility requirements for visa status, residence, and retention, and whether there were extenuating circumstances (political refugee status, behavior under duress, etc.) that might mitigate against the case for Alice’s deportation.
AN INTERACTIVE FINAL
The course focused both on the major sociohistorical themes in American immigration, and also on the interpretation of these themes by filmmakers. It seemed in the spirit of this interdisciplinary relationship to fashion a final that was in itself a film experience. The following four films were reviewed for possible inclusion in the final, and the final itself follows these reviews.
HEAVEN’S GATE: The Stockgrowers Association in Johnson County, Wyoming is convinced that small immigrant landowners are rustling their cattle (“openly preying upon their ranges . . . an ignorant depraved band of paupers with their ragged children”). And in this county, politically controlled by the immigrants and their handpicked law officers, there have been 180 indictments for these crimes, but only one conviction.
The cattlemen have hired a private army of 50 men at $5 per day and $50 per immigrant (shot or hanged) to eliminate a death list of 125 immigrants. They successfully have solicited the support of the Governor and key individuals in Congress and in the White House to end the anarchy they claim is plaguing this part of Wyoming.
The immigrants believe that they must butcher an occasional steer (“Or watch our children starve in front of my eyes”).
Marshall James Averill presents the immigrants with the death list: “An armed mob of paid men is about to invade your County to destroy the lives and property of your friends. The Stockgrowers Association has the names of some of you on this list of 125.” “That’s almost everyone here!”
An immigrant argues: “The rich are opposed to anything that would improve things in the country and make it anything more than cow pasture for eastern speculators. Poor people are to have nothing to buy in the affairs of this country.” But the immigrants fight back and surround the mercenary army, which only is saved by the arrival of the U.S. cavalry which “arrests” them to protect them from the people’s uprising
BIG NIGHT: Primo the chef and Secondo, his brother and partner, are failing to attract customers for their authoritatively genuine (and early upscale) Italian cuisine. In fact, the local market has been won over down the street by Pascal, an immigrant like themselves, who has been successful with a much more mundane menu.
Secondo and Pascal meet: “Your brother’s a great chef, but you give people what they want, and then, later you give them what you want1” What does Pascal want? “There’s only ‘not enough.’” One diner at Primo’s restaurant is given risotto, but requests spaghetti, as well. Primo cries out that she also might wish a side order of potatoes. Pascal promises that the singer Louis Prima will attend and publicize a great dinner banquet that Primo will prepare.
A sensational formal dinner is presented, and the diners revel in every moment of the experience, dish by dish. But as the evening passes by, they all wonder, will Louis Prima ever arrive?
ALAMO BAY: A shrimp wholesaling business on the Texas Gulf is under great pressure, because they hire Vietnamese immigrant workers. In fact, Vietnamese fishing people, following their own traditions, have not always followed U.S. regulations (flotation cushions, life jackets, throwing things overboard that rip the nets of their Anglo competitors). But a new immigrant in town and on the docks promises the game warden that he will obtain and obey the regulations.
Incidents do occur in town, as well, for example over the weighing of fruit in the supermarket, and at a bar, when the new Vietnamese appears (“we’ll filet that yellowtail”).
At a public meeting, the wholesaler speaks up for his workers: “The federal government abandoned them without teaching them our ways.” “They have food stamps and welfare . . . You’re exploiting them!”
A schoolteacher points out: “The kids get along. Adults should set an example.”
But nativist American fishing people, encouraged by the Ku Klux Klan, blockade the harbor against Vietnamese fishing and shrimping (“History is with the white race. We need a little ‘search and destroy’”). The blockaders turn a flag upside down and rage: “We won’t allow Vietnamese boats to come into port. The harbor’s closed!”
Most of the local Vietnamese leave Alamo Bay for Houston in school buses, but the young newcomer stays and tries to keep the wholesaling business open: “I don’t like people who try to scare me.” “You’ve got to be one of the last cowboys left in Texas!” The blockaders however will escalate the conflict into a modern-day version of a Texas gunfight.
GREEN CARD: Bronte, a horticulturist working with a Lower East Side of Manhattan community gardening group, and Georges a writer, marry to obtain a green card for him – and a marriage certificate for Bronte, so she can be allowed to rent an apartment with a greenhouse. The INS though will come to visit, so Bronte finds Georges and arranges for him to join her in “their” apartment for an interview with Mr. Gorsky and Ms. Sheehan, two INS agents (“There’s a major clampdown on illegal aliens marrying for residency status. From the White House”). The couple improvises, but INS will return.
Bronte meets with her lawyer, who suggests some temporary cohabitation. “Let him move into my apartment?” “You married him to get a greenhouse. If marrying a stranger doesn’t shock you, then letting him sleep on the couch shouldn’t either. You’ll be cramming for an exam. What you like to eat, the color of each other’s toothbrushes. Otherwise: he’ll be deported. You’ll face charges. No more greenhouse” “A police state?” “It’s called: ‘breaking the law.’ But after you meet with them, it’ll all be over, and we can start planning the divorce!”
In simultaneous INS interviews, Bronte and Georges are told to keep the answers
brief and to the point. They
movingly – and briefly – express their love for one another: “He’s a very sensitive man . . . He has to learn to give
. . . he has passion. He eats life
. . . “ And:
“She’s very kind to people. Me,
I don’t think that way . . . She has peace.
I don’t have peace . . .” But
it takes very little to slip up. And
when they meet later, he explains, “We made a deal:
if I leave quickly, you’ll keep your beautiful garden . . .”
“Immigration in America” Professors Drucker and Kimball
Fall
1997
IS 341
Professor
Drucker’s Half of Final (Worth 20% of Course Grade)
Due
at Rest of Final, 10:00 a.m., Thursday, Dec. 18, Lovejoy 0044
(Equivalent
of two single-spaced word processed pages, open book (please keep a copy for
yourself, hand in two copies with a stamped self-addressed envelope)
Please
answer three of the following four questions:
1.
1880’s – Johnson County, Wyoming HEAVEN’S GATE (Community
Development)
The
cattlemen’s association has hired an army of mercenaries to assassinate 125
East European immigrant homesteader heads of households.
The immigrants counter attack the mercenary force successfully, but the
cavalry arrives to rescue the surviving defeated killers.
From
the themes discussed by Professor Drucker in class, what are specific examples
of the kinds of benefits the new immigrant community might provide the
unpopulated plains of Wyoming Territory? Or
an abandoned neighborhood of a 1990’s American city?
2.
1940’s – New Jersey Shore THE BIG NIGHT (Entrepreneurship)
Two
Italian immigrant entrepreneurs meet to discuss the future of the less
successful of their two restaurants. Pascal,
who’s very successful, encourages Secondo by reassuring him of the
opportunities for status advancement and wealth in America.
Secondo’s restaurant has had problems drawing customers because his
brother, the chef, has been trying to introduce risotto and other upmarket
dishes to a clueless public.
Based
upon Professor Drucker’s lectures, what were the realities of the immigrant
experience in the last 19th and early 20th century, in
terms of immigrant success? How did
immigrants help one another in financing their own small businesses?
3.
1970’s – Port Alamo, Texas Gulf Coast ALAMO BAY (Labor/Work)
A
state official meets with new immigrant Vietnamese fishermen and shrimpers on
the docks. The work practices of
the Vietnamese are not meeting governmental standards of safety and
environmental responsibility. Meanwhile Anglo fishermen and shrimper attitudes have been
enflamed by Ku Klux Klan agitators, and they believe that government subsidies
have provided the refugees with unfair competitive advantages.
Please
describe in detail how this cross-cultural conflict, just like the experience of
the Chinatown clothing factory workers, leads the American workers to believe
that the immigrants are undercutting their position.
How might unionization of the immigrants change this situation?
4.
1990’s New York, New York GREEN CARD (Marriage)
Bronte,
an American botanist, needs a husband to rent an apartment in a selective
Manhattan highrise. Georges needs
an American wife to remain in the United States past the expiration date of his
tourist visa. They meet and marry,
but then immediately separate. However,
the INS has decided to visit them at home to try to verify whether their
marriage is genuine. Georges and
Bronte are about to meet for the second time in order to be interviewed by two
INS agents.
According
to Darwin Portman, the attorney who met with us, what is the problem with what
Bronte and Georges have done, and how are they now at risk?
As dramatized by Lea and Boris, what advantages to the United States can
there be from the marriage of a U.S. citizen to a foreign national?
IMMIGRATION
FICTION
Each
student was asked to select two works of immigration fiction to read during the
first three months of the semester. The
students’ assignment was to identify at least three of the course’s themes
which they found to be significant in each novel, and, in a two-page report,
detail and discuss how the novelists had treated each theme.
After
reviewing several different sources of listings of novels involving the
immigration experience, it was possible to merge a list of 77 different titles,
including several new novels, recently reviewed or advertised in the New York
TIMES BOOK REVIEW. The students
also were encouraged to propose additional titles that they had discovered on
their own (which would be accepted, if they were likely to provide sufficient
coverage of three of the course themes).
The
course’s readings list included 77 different titles, writing about the
experiences of 26 different nationalities or ethnic groups.
The groups most frequently represented within the list were:
Jews (10), Norwegians, and Chinese (7 each), Greeks and Poles (5 each),
Armenians and Italians (4 each), Irish, Japanese, and Swedes (3 each), and
Czechs and Mexicans (2 each). Also
represented were the Slovaks, Bohemians, Russians, Germans, Croatians,
Barbadians, Danes, Finns, Puerto Ricans, Welsh, Austrians, Cubans, Vietnamese,
and French.
Unsurprisingly,
in retrospect, of the 38 different titles that the students selected, 25 were
written by Willa Cather (17 read MY ANTONIA and 8 read O PIONEERS!), no doubt
still a staple of secondary school English curricula. Next in popularity were:
THE JOY LUCK CLUB by Amy Tan (5), A GLASS ROSE by Bankowsky (3), and two
selections each of PAPA’S WIFE by Bjorn, THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY by Cahan,
LOUISIANA PURCHASE by Hotchner, BROWN GIRL, BROWN STONES by the Barbadian Paule
Marshall, RIVINGTON STREET by Meredith Tax, and THE TREE OF DARK REFLECTIONS by
Rocco Fumento. Other selections
included:
MAMA’S
BANK ACCOUNT (Norwegian) APRIL
SNOW (Swedish)
GIANTS
IN THE EARTH (Norwegian)
THIS IS MY LIFE (Swedish)
AN
UNTAMED LAND (Norwegian) THE SETTLERS
(Swedish)
EAT
A BOWL OF TEA (Chinese)
THE ODYSSEY OF KOSTAS VOLAKIS (Greek)
CHINA
MEN (Chinese)
PERICLES ON 31ST STREET (Greek)
YEAR
OF THE DRAGON (Chinese) RAIN OF GOLD
(Mexican)
ANGELA’S
ASHES (Irish – not fiction)
CHICANO (Mexican)
HANSI
(German)
ABOVE THE LAW (Mexican)
HOLCROFT
COVENANT (German) THE FORTUNATE PILGRIM
(Italian)
HOMELAND
(German)
THE GODFATHER (Italian)
AMALIE’S
STORY (Danish)
UMBERTINA (Italian)
KRISTI
(Finnish)
KAFFIR BOY IN AMERICA (S. African)
BIG
LEAGUE DREAM (Jewish)
SACKETTS’ LAND (English)
DANCING
AT RASCAL FAIR (Scottish)
HOW
THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS (Dominican)
REVIEWING
OTHER FILMS
Other
films about immigration were reviewed, but didn’t seem sufficiently useful to
include in the Fall 1997 offering of the course. They may be of value to other courses:
O
PIONEERS!: Alexandra Bergson, a
Swedish teenager on the prairie, is entrusted by her dying father with the
management of the family farm and her three brothers.
(And: “Don’t begrudge
your mother her garden. She’s
been a good mother, and she’s always missed the old country”). Her mother: “You
must do this for Emil (the youngest), so he can break free of this place some
day.” She’ll grow fruit in her
orchard, so that they can dine on fruit to remember that they are civilized.
“I’ll be buried with Father. I
don’t want to leave him alone in the prairie for the cattle to run over.”
Alexandra’s
friend Karl climbs a post to save Emil’s kitten (“I’ll climb the posts to
get off the ground. Don’t you
imagine leaving here?”). But
Alexandra sees her future stirring in the long grass.
So, she makes a great success of the farm by growing alfalfa, an
innovation. Her brothers move on to
their own land and raise families.
They
quarrel with Alexandra about institutionalizing the elderly eccentric Evart.
She tells Evart: “Let
people talk what they like. We’ll
live as we see fit. They want
everyone to be the same, to fit in. People
are afraid of what they don’t understand.”
Karl
visits, returning from his life in the east as an engraver, on his way to the
Alaska gold fields. Alexandra’s
two older brothers tell him, “We’d march to Wall Street and blow it up.”
He laughs at them, “You’re all rich as barons.”
And tells Alexandra that, while he’s done a lot, he has nothing to show
for it. She replies, “I’d rather have your freedom than my
land.” Her brothers worry that
Karl may be a suitor, and their children then might not also inherit
Alexandra’s farm: “The property
of a family belongs to the men of the family!”
She corrects their legal interpretation:
“The only authority you’ll exert over me is just what the law will
allow.” Karl is reluctant to
marry money: “To take what
you’d give me, I’d have to be a very large man or a very small one.
I’m just in the middle.” She
argues: “People have to snatch at
happiness when they can.”
THE
PEREZ FAMILY: “Perez” is a
common name in Cuba, and it brings together two Marielitos: Dorita, a prostitute, and Juan Raul, just released from an
interminable political prison sentence for burning his sugar cane fields.
Juan Raul hopes to reunite with his wife (the princess in the tower) and
his daughter. Families are to
receive relocation preference at the Sugar Bowl refugee relief center, so, when
Juan Raul’s family fails to appear, Dorrie manufactures a family by
appropriating a street urchin and a senile elder.
Carmela
the princess in turn actually wants nothing so much as to find Juan Raul, but
the latter’s prison term has been lengthened by the bribes from Carmela’s
rich brother, Angel (why put an end to a source of income by releasing the
prisoner?) Even now, Angel is
placing security systems all over Carmela’s home, effectively locking her in
her tower. Rescue comes from an
attentive police officer responding to false alarms.
Juan Raul seeks out the help of a Santeria priestess, but football season
has come, and the Sugar Bowl must be returned to the Dolphins for their
preseason training. Juan Raul makes
love to Dorrie: “I believe hell
is here on earth – waiting for your own execution, and it never comes, for
something good to happen and it never comes.
Our only deliverance is to stop waiting, to expect nothing, and to make
love.” Dorrie reflects on this:
“I want a man who is free, like the U.S. is free.”
But
these two unrelated Perezes make love, and Juan Raul and Carmela are reunited.
What about Dorrie, and Carmela's Prince Charming police officer?
HEAVEN
AND EARTH: Ly’s Buddhism and
energy carry her through a calamitous life in Vietnam: service with the Viet Cong, imprisonment and torture by both
sides, a relationship and a son with a married man, a life of poverty at her
sister’s brothel. Her father had
warned her: “Freedom is not a
gift. It must be won again and
again.” Falling in love with
Steve Butler, a Marine, has its risks also.
Her mother is opposed to this: “Americans
have no beginning and no end. They
don’t care about their ancestors, so they feel free to do any bad thing they
want.” Steve, Ly, her son, and a
second son born to their new marriage, flee Vietnam, as Saigon falls. Steve’s fantasy for a second wife is an “oriental
woman,” and he’d like to return to the Far East, after completing his Marine
Corps Service. His skills are
highly specialized – training counterinsurgency forces, and black operations. He seems tormented by the work.
Back
in San Diego, Ly meets her in-laws, who are surprised at how little she eats:
“Think of all those starving children in Vietnam.”
Steve: “She can’t eat
for her whole country! Don’t
expect her to do headstands.”
Crosscultural
issues abound. Ly wants to work,
while Steve wants to be married to a housewife, so, she sneaks off to a second
(business) life. The boys refuse to
speak Vietnamese, and tell classmates that they are Mexican.
Steve wants to take the boys to the mountains to learn how to hunt and to
shoot. “Like an American, I talk
back to my husband.” They have a third son.
She
tells him: “I hurt many people.
Bad karma, but we have to try. Different
skins, same suffering.” But
eventually she sees a divorce lawyer. Steve
kidnaps his own two sons to blackmail Ly into a better settlement.
When she gets the boys back, he kills himself.
Finally,
after great business success, 13 years later, Ly returns to her old village in
Vietnam and visits her mother and a surviving brother, introducing them to her
teenage sons. She is a rich lady,
and her brother worries that once again she will turn the village against their
families. Ly: “Mom, I have no more tears.”
“You’ve completed the circle – from a beggar to a fine lady, from
sad to happy, from poor to rich.”
THE
MOLLY MAGUIRES: McFarland, a
Pinkerton detective, is sent to infiltrate this secret subunit of the Ancient
Order of Hibernians in the Pennsylvania mine fields.
Previous spies have been killed, so it’s unclear how McFarland will
succeed (“This is not the kind of work a man generally comes for, with hands
like yours”). McFarland addresses
this problem by demonstrating his brawling skills, being willing to confide to
Molly leader Jack Kehoe that he’s a murderer on the run, and, once
provisionally accepted, by willingly beating up a peeler (mining company police
officer).
The
police captain meets McFarland on the sly (to justify a whole lot of
exposition), and tells him that he wants to convict the Molly leaders (“I got
to get them red-handed.”). So
McFarland takes rooms at Mary Raines’s, she being the daughter of a mineworker
retiree left pale and weak by his life of toil.
They go to church and meet the dynamic local priest:
“This country was founded by exiles, immigrants, people like you.
They too were scorned and exploited and subject to the terrible
temptation of violence, an easy step and a false step in trying to change
conditions . . . God will judge last night’s violence as sin, and those that
did it as sinners. They’ll be
damned. According to the Archbishop, the church condemns secret
societies. What you risk is nothing
less than excommunication. Sisters
and mothers of these men, pray that they are not cutting themselves off from the
church.
After
Molly leader Jack Kehoe tells his wife of McFarland’s confession to him, she
warns, “Be careful of him. He’s
bold. Don’t get too fond of
him.” Jack believes that if he is
a spy, and they execute him, the mine owners will just send another spy in his
place. Instead, Jack will ask
McFarland to carry out the assassination requested of them by workers at the
nearby Shenandoah mine of their new superintendent.
So, the spy is brought to his knees to be initiated into the A.O.H. and
into the Molly Maguires, as well (passwords, the little finger recognition
signal). The A.O.H. works on
getting out the vote for governor (“He issues pardons.
We may need them.”), and on charitable fundraising.
The Molly Maguires discuss killing the superintendent (“the same heel
on the necks, as on ours. It’s
all one quarrel”).
Mary
and McFarland fall in love amid the ruins.
Mary: “Even in summer, the
trees are black with coal dust.” She
urges him to listen to the priest. “I
envy your morality, and that’s the truth.
Decency is not for the poor. You
pay for decency.” But the
assassination fails, and a Molly and his wife are murdered in their beds in
reprisal by the peelers: “They
kill us in the pits. Now, they’ll
kill us in our sleep.”
Mary’s
father dies, sad, silent man that he became.
Jack eulogizes him: “He
knew how to use the powder. Why not
use it once for himself?” He
lacks a suit to wear at his burial, so Jack -- and McFarland – break into the
company store to obtain one, and then destroy the store.
But the police have constructed their case, and Jack and other Molly
Maguires go on trial for their lives.
THE
MAMBO KINGS: Nestor and Cesar
Castillo are brothers and Mambo Kings in Havana.
Nestor, the songwriter and a gifted musical artist always is protected by
the love of his brother, who leads them to New York to escape a death threat to
Nestor. Cesar:
“You write the music, and I’ll take care of the business.
We’ll get rich and famous.” A
New York family member: “Just off
the boat, and you think you’re going to land a gig in a downtown club!”
They go to hear Tito Puente at the Palladium, and Cesar plays the drums
with Tito – and is magic. They
are a sensation, but Cesar insults Perez, the promoter, who has all the evil
magic, and the brothers go to work as butchers.
“Just when you won it, you didn’t play the game!”
Nestor
dreams of his lost love in Cuba (of Cuba: “America’s
not my country. I feel like a
ghost. It’s a dream.” Cesar:
“There’s no dream. It’s
our life.”). The brothers
struggle, and Nestor marries and has a son.
Then: their big break, a
friendship with Desi Arnaz, and an appearance on I LOVE LUCY.
Nestor
believes that Cesar is using him, and Cesar explains why they left Cuba, which
Nestor previously never understood. The
band is saved, but at the price of Nestor’s innocence.
Nestor tells Perez that he’ll work for him, but, after Cesar’s
girlfriend explains how much he loves Nestor, Nestor renegs.
Perez with his evil magic promises Nestor that they will only have one
more great night of entertaining. Nestor
dies in a car accident after that performance.
Will Cesar carry on, or will he be lost in his grief?
AVALON:
Sam Krichinsky came to Baltimore in 1914:
“There was an enormous celebration of light, fireworks, people cheered,
and I thought it was for me.” Actually
is was July 4, and this is a story he finds occasion to retell (verbatim) over
and over again to his children and grandchildren, to establish his family’s
oral history. Among Sam’s
occasions are family July 4 and Thanksgiving holidays and family circle
meetings, covering 60 years of life.
Sam
doesn’t know in 1914 where his four brothers live, but a good Samaritan takes
him around until he finds Avalon, their apartment building.
He joins the brothers’ business, paperhanging, with time out for a
period running a nightclub. Most of
the film occurs in the 1950’s, as Jules Kaye, Sam’s son, and Izzy Kirk,
Sam’s nephew, leave their sales jobs to open up a television discount store
(“The war’s over, and there’s a lot of people with money out there.
It’s time to go out on our own”).
As Sam had always said, “It’s not the product.
It’s the salesman. A good
salesman can sell anything.” The
store will be wall-to-wall, filled with television sets, and they’d be
discounted, eventually “the guaranteed lowest price in town.”
Little programming initially is offered by the networks.
Sam advises: “You’d better hope that they get some more interesting
programs.”
Soon,
it’s off to the suburbs for the two families (Jules’s father and mother live
with them; Jules’s wife Diane implores, “Someone’s always watching over
me. I’d like to be the mom in my
own house.”). Michael, their son
inquires, “What does it mean: ‘the
suburbs?’ Am I going to like it
there?” But, from now on, as the
cousins continually expand their business, the risk is defined as having to move
back to the city, “to the row houses” in which they had lived.
As Sam is moving, he says, “I get very nervous about making changes.”
“You came all the way to America.”
“I was a younger man. I’m
getting further and further away from Avalon.
I’m getting too old to change.”
Sam’s
brother-in-law Simka arrives from Europe with a wife and daughter fresh from the
displaced persons camps, and the family circle must decide whether to subsidize
them. The brothers however have
been fending (“disrespect!”), so it is two of their sons, the cousins, who
put up the funds to help the refugees. It
is only a year later this new American family moves on to a better chance,
managing a farm in New Jersey (“Eva waited 30 years to be reunited with family
from Europe. They leave, in one
year. Some family reunion.”).
Nor will Eva’s brother and sister-in-law be able to get away from that
farm to attend her funeral.
Jules
learns to golf (Sam: “A working
person doesn’t play golf. That’s
for people with sweaters and caps.” Jules
never had learned to play the piano Sam had bought him. Diane learns to drive, but Eva won’t ride with a woman
driver. Eventually, Jules and Izzy
face a major uninsured business reversal and a bankruptcy. Jules decides to go back to working for others.
He sells television time for commercials (it’s not the product, it’s
the salesman). And everyone in the
family begins bringing their dinner into the living room to watch television
while they eat.
Other
films not reviewed for this paper, but involving major immigration themes,
include:
AN
AMERICAN TAIL
YEAR OF THE DRAGON
AN
AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST
MATTEWAN
MOSCOW
ON THE HUDSON
FOUR FRIENDS
MY
ANTONIA
EL NORTE
FAR
AND AWAY
THE BORDER
I
REMEMBER MAMA
LONE STAR
THE
IMPORTED BRIDEGROOM
ENEMIES: A LOVE STORY
AMERICA
AMERICA
LITTLE ODESSA
PAY
OR DIE
THE FIRE WITHIN
SCARFACE
(DePalma version)
CAUGHT
ONCE
UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
THE NEW LAND