Going 90, I ain’t scar-ied…

Of course, Cool Hand Luke had to come into the conversation, just as did the Jackson Five and Star Wars. Always. I used to use Cool Hand Luke to teach close reading (it’s remarkably easy to do this for freshman–shoot, for anyone). And you know why I do this? Because my comp 2 teacher did the same thing for me, and it was the first time I EVER got textual analysis or close reading, of any kind, literary or rhetorical. In fact, Cool Hand Luke is the one film I can watch over and over again and think every time, “Yep, a Warner Bros. prison film helped me become an English major.”

Prior to the confluence of being a math major, history major, dance major and taking a comp 2 class, I was certain of several things: 1) I couldn’t write my way out of a wet paper sack with a bazooka; 2) I hated writing; 3) I had no idea what analysis was and wouldn’t have been caught dead doing such a thing. But then that thing happened to me: I made a bunch of connections between disciplines. I’m been traveling that path a long time now. Mashing up. I just never thought of my life as a mash-up before, but it is. I like that. I see a smashed and double fried plantain as a metaphor for my existence: essentially very nutritious but I needed some serious treatment before being palatable. Little sea salt and I’m fabulous.

Okay, so what does that have to do with now? I’ll get there eventually.

Paul Newman, the star of Cool Hand Luke, sings a song at one point with a banjo–not particularly well-played but heartfelt: “Plastic Jesus.” He sings because his mama just died. It’s a poignant moment in the film. And on some days, I weep with him, but no matter how I feel, I appreciate the grit he displays at the end of the song–a dogged determination that gives us a clue about his character’s end. He will not give into the system; he will not cave; he will not shift his pugilistic world view to align with the authority figures in his life that have failed to communicate (a key concept in the film). He will continue to go 90 and be unafraid. He’s heartbroken but he is undefeated. There’s a difference.

Lyrics:

I don’t care if it rains or freezes
‘Long as I got my Plastic Jesus
Sittin’ on the dashboard of my car.
Comes in colors, pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark ’cause it’s iridescent
Take it with you when you travel far.

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sittin’ on a
Pedestal of abalone shell.
Goin’ 90, I ain’t scar-ied [it sounds like “scary” when he sings it–but it’s written this way]
‘Cause I got the Virgin Mary
Assurin’ me that I won’t go to Hell.

There are multiple versions of the lyrics, but this is what Newman sings in the film.

[Spoiler Alert–skip the next few sentences and go directly to the video if you ever want to watch the film and not be disappointed by knowing the end.]

I love that Luke doesn’t give up or give in. Of course, he’s shot in the neck at the end and dies. A horrific metaphor for his “failure to communicate,” really for so many moments where communication fails. It’s a perfect film to use to teach writing, textual analysis, literary analysis, film analysis. I love it. But it’s a grim prison movie–not a pretty film.

And I love this song. Apparently, it was written as a goof, but it’s been recorded several times by a wide range of artists from the folksy to the punkish (in 2005 by Billy Idol–holy rock and roll–I about fell out of my chair when I learned that—BILLY IDOL). He does have great hair.

Billy Idol (in concert in 2006, photo by JohnBrennan06)

I think I’ve always liked the “Plastic Jesus” song because it’s part of the film that changed my academic life and it reminds me of an hour-long cab ride I took up the Mexican coast once. I didn’t want to get in the first cab in line… there was a bullet hole in the windshield… from the inside out. Looked like it might have come from the backseat, angled just over the shoulder of the driver. I swear. But one of my friends pointed out that a plastic Virgin Mary was perched on the dashboard, so we would probably be fine. So into the taxi I got, and it was a wild ride–think New York cabbie in a hurry on mountain roads with no guard rails and a cab with no seat belts. At some points, we were doing over 90 on straightaways. NASCAR had nothing on this dude. We slammed from side to side on the slick vinyl bench seat in the back (there were three of us) and looked out the windows onto canyons far, far below us. (Like seat belts would make a difference if we’d careened down a 1,000 foot cliff.) The driver honked every time he approached a blind curve because he would not slow down and the roads were really not wide enough for two cars, so it was a generous gesture on his part toward other drivers. Yep. That’s what it was.

How could I not always feel a fondness for plastic religious iconography? Well, I don’t mean icons, exactly, but you know what I mean–elaborate metaphors for a godly protectorate. And I mean no disrespect to any belief system based on Jesus or the Virgin Mary, but the facts remain that the song exists, Paul Newman sang it, the cab in Manzanilla had a plastic Virgin Mary on the dash. And the song reminds me of the film AND how hard it is to write, how afraid I was, how I avoided it for years, and that the most unexpected things bring us comfort.

You know this: you have to want to write. I can’t make students do it; you can’t make other people do it; if you teach, you can’t make your students do it. You can assign it, but students may or may not do it. Sure, they might do it, but they might not put their hearts into it. That’s the like the subtle difference between heartbreak and defeat. Folks have to want to do something in order to do it and do it well. Paul Newman’s character, Luke, cannot be made to do anything in the end. When he feels like working hard, he does. When he feels like placating The Man, he does. He’s beaten and abused and hurt, but he is not defeated. He fakes it for awhile, or so we want to believe that’s what a momentary breakage means, but he is a “hard case” as he describes himself–unable to be persuaded into action or inaction. And he cannot communicate with others, nor they with him.

We all have to do things we don’t want to do that are hard, but writing has gotten a whole lot easier over the years. Writing in public, too. I make mistakes all the time. When I was being officially observed by my boss I said the same wrong thing several times before a student corrected me with a gentle question about what exactly I meant. Good heavens. I could have died right then, but I just blew it off as something I couldn’t change and plowed on. Writing in a blog is less frightening than it used to be. It’s just a part of me–not all of me. I have to write so many memos. I dread it… every week. But there it is. I do cave in, and we all have to, in some degree, in order to work or collaborate–I think of it all as grand compromise for the betterment of all. The most important part of powering through a rough patch is that we become better communicators, right? When you can articulate something, anything, and someone gets it, that’s the reward for sometimes doing what we wish we could avoid. (I’m really really really tired and have another class I am starting to teach tomorrow–and I miss you all so much already.)

We get to do an end-around our own unhappy tasks because we do this writing for ourselves, for our own growth, and we side step failure to communicate in this class and through studying theories of WAC and what it means to be open to writing across/through/in the disciplines–what it means to be open and embrace open. We don’t have to fail at communication. It doesn’t really matter what good luck charm I tote around (I do have a few actually–even one in my purse–and wore a medal of St. Anthony of Padua for about 15 years–Roman Catholic patron saint of lost things), or what items any of us use as feel-good symbols, the act of writing, right now in our blogs for this class, prevents a failure to communicate.

As we go 90 (and we all are, aren’t we?), we don’t need to be “scar-ied” because our success at writing across the curriculum, in this very moment, saves us from that.

Interesting the way the writer of these lyrics chose to insert the hyphen just there between “scar” and “ied”… isn’t it?

Hmmm.