Musings

--Back to Prose Contents--

America Sings

I thought he’d howl, at least a little, after seeing America the Beautiful, but he walked beside me, head down, scowling, lips working silently, as if communing with his muse. What the hell had I done? I’d taken Allen Ginsberg to the most egregiously chauvinistic film ever made about the US (along with six Chinese writers, an interpreter, and Annie Dillard). At the start of a VIP tour of Tomorrowland!

Delighted by the UCLA conference and their upcoming three-week US tour, the Chinese writers were enthralled—at one point, several felt free to dance with Mickey on Main Street. But I sensed this place appalled Allen. He had chanted Howl, the Beat Generation’s song of itself, in San Francisco the same year Disneyland opened, 1955, one hundred years after Whitman barbarically yawped his Song of Myself.

Did this latest song of American identity, far less diverse than Whitman’s or his own, cause Allen’s frequent shifting from side to side throughout the movie’s 360 degree montage of a uniformly white America? A visual tribute to its namesake, our national anthem, America the Beautiful featured prosperous families at play, spectacular views of wilderness, and attractions such as Mount Rushmore and the Lincoln Memorial. Much of it was set to music celebrating military might—warriors training at the service academies and parading, roaring jets above, massive tanks below.

I’d asked Allen if he was upset, but he ignored me, again shifting his hips. I expected angry howls when we walked into the stark September sun, blinking away the military images—which I imagined had curled the vatic poet’s toes. Oh, yes, he would howl.

Making some lame cracks about star-spangled jingoism, I apologized, sorry the movie made him so uncomfortable.

“No, no, not exactly that,” he said, now smiling beatifically: “This goddamned heat’s inflamed my hemorrhoids.”

Allen limped on ahead with Annie and Liu Binyan, an urbane journalist whose dissidence had led to his imprisonment and being unpublished for 20 years. Liu spoke fluent English as well as Chinese and Japanese, so I didn’t think they would need the interpreter. But I wondered about some strange gestures Allen made, tracing forefingers of both hands around his ears and in loops above his head.

Annie reported later that when Liu asked if Allen liked the movie, Allen snapped, “It was Mickey Mouse.”

Mickey Mouse? Liu knew about the mouse. He was a popular figure in China. And upon arriving here today, we’d assembled for a group photograph with the Royal Rodent—a man-sized mouse wearing white gloves, his rosy smile a rictus.

“But he was not in this movie,” Liu noted.

“No, no,” Allen said, “Mickey Mouse. The MOVIE’s strictly Mickey!” Now gesticulating, drawing ears in the air to provide a visual. Liu looked more mystified, so Allen elaborated: “Mickey Mouse, man, Mickey Mouse—all that military shit was Mickey-fucking-Mouse. Delooosional!”

A barbaric yawp! A definite howl!

Liu shrugged, still puzzled, and looked to Annie. She shrugged back as the interpreter and I caught up with them. Liu lit a cigarette and smiled at a gangly Goofy, who took Allen by the arm and led our party straight to the Carousel Theater’s attraction, America Sings.

Ralph La Rosa A happy wanderer, Ralph La Rosa has taught English at eight American colleges and universities and one in the Soviet Union. He’s sold screenplays and essays on American literature, but his current passion’s poetry. Adventures in the Soviet Union, coordinating conferences of American and Chinese writers, and having his first poem published are among the most intense and gratifying experiences of his life—so far.

His work has appeared in various journals, including Sewanee Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Lyric, Pivot, and Folly.