What Almost Made Me Cry Today: Killer of Sheep

Stan (Henry G. Sanders) looks like he's about to cry.

Usually, when I write these “What Almost Made Me Cry Today” episodes, they revolve around some movie I’ve just watched on an airplane. Well, today’s is no different—except that the movie was quite unusual. Most airplane movies are of the recent-blockbuster type. Or, if the plane has a complicated entertainment system, there’s some inoffensive classic like “The Wizard of Oz” or “Caligula” “Big.”

Well, on my Air Canada flight home from Montreal last night, the “Classics” section of the entertainment system included a big surprise: “Killer of Sheep.”

Unless you’re a film d00d, you’ve probably never heard of it. But the 1977 movie, directed by Charles Burnett, is amazing. Shot in black and white in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, it loosely tells the story of a family led by Stan, whose long hours of work at a slaughterhouse have left him exhausted, insomniac and anhedonic. For about 88 minutes, we see his kids play in the dust of vacant lots, and we watch Stan try to buy an engine for the shell of a car he plans to fix up. It’s thoroughly depressing, especially one scene in which Stan dances with his wife and then, when she kisses him, he pushes her away. Totally heartbreaking.

But the part that almost made me cry comes a few minutes later, when Stan’s daughter, who’s maybe 6, comes to play with him. He’s bouncing her on his knee and, for the first time in the whole movie, starting to smile. From the other room, his wife watches, nearly bursting into tears, happy her husband can take joy in something but miserable she can’t bring him that joy herself. Oh man.

I probably would’ve cried right there, but I was distracted. At just that moment, the plane was flying down the length of the island of Manhattan, and at 8pm the city was completely lit up. Is there any more beautiful sight than that, electrified New York on a clear night? As we circled around the city and back toward LaGuardia, I could even pinpoint my house in Brooklyn and imagine my wife and kid inside. No need to almost-cry anymore.

Never Let the Parents Practice

In a DadWagon first this post comes to us from one of our Facebook friends, Alexandria. It’s via the website, Parent Dish, and its about “practice babies.” Apparently, and shockingly, from 1919 to 1969, children from orphanages were taken to American colleges for use by young women in home economics classes.

The writer Lisa Grunwald used this item of historical–what is the right word: trivia, horror?–in her novel, “The Irresistible Henry House,” which may be fantastic, but could have come under the heading of something odd enough that it could have been true (and therefore written as nonfiction).

Here’s a passage from Parent Dish’s interview with Grunwald, which offers some detail on the practice babies, and also includes an improper use of the word “yummy”:

PD: Describe how the classes worked.
LG: At Cornell, “Practice, 126,” was a required course for a Bachelor of Science in home economics. Half a dozen or more students worked rotating shifts of five weeks each, weighing and measuring, feeding and changing, taking the baby out for walks and losing sleep when he cried at night. The babies were supplied by child welfare groups and leased on contract by the universities before they were eventually returned to the orphanages and put up for adoption. The “moms” were very proud of their role and even kept scrapbooks of the baby’s milestones.

PD: What has happened to the practice babies?
LG: Adoption records were hard to come by and there was no evidence, because the babies weren’t followed and studied as they grew up. Just a couple weeks ago, I got my first call from a woman who said her mom was one of the practice moms, but I haven’t had a chance to follow up yet. So, because I couldn’t find out what happened to them, I figured it would be better to try to imagine what happened. It makes a much yummier novel.

Alexandria, thanks very much. You learn something new every day.

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A Week on the Wagon: Matt was kidnapped edition

Matt, "on assignment" in Montreal

I don’t mean to question the work habits of DadWagon co-founder and super-huge-bigshot-famous-journalist Matt, and I am impressed that he’s been able to post this week while out of the country (check out his true feelings about Nathan, procreation, and the sound of his voice), but still we always worry when he’s away.

It’s good to keep track of all the DadWagoneers as they progress through a week. Nathan, while in the city, I believe, hasn’t been his typical productive, sarcastic, brilliant self. True, he doesn’t much like Matt, and yes, he’s continued to pimp this whole Russian thing, and admittedly he’s exposed himself as both anti-arab and anti-immigrant, but where’s the verve? Where’s the elan? We’ve come to expect more here at DadWagon, Nathan, that’s all.

And me? Well, as the least accomplished and best-looking member of DadWagon, I’ve basically just continued treading water: ridiculing both Matt and Nathan (please see: “Matt and Nathan are disgusting, perverted donkeys”), poking fun at the PR industry, and defending my right to sexual profligacy. Ho hum.

Thus, on behalf of the entire DadWagon team, including staff, interns, press reps, sales staff, office monkeys, pets, children, and spouses, I apologize. Next week Matt will be funnier.

The Opposite of Honor

Noor al-Maleki

If Hosni Mubarak, as was discussed here not long ago, saw himself as the father of his nation, during his demise he came across more like the dotty old bastard who tried to raise the belt one last time but got his ass kicked by his teenager.

Muammar Ghaddafi, on the other hand, is obviously trying out for the role of the father who murders his kids rather than lose control of them.

This may be rare moment of paroxysm in Arab politics, but this same filicide happens, unfortunately, every day within families, not least in the Arab world. And sometimes, here in the United States.

I’ve got a longish and very self-involved story in this week’s Time magazine (in which I mention, without naming it, this blog and, with naming it, the very fine DadLabs and their forays into yoga). I can’t link to it, because, like all my other non-newsy pieces, it’s malingering behind a paywall. But there is an article you should read right now at Time.com by Nadya Labi: An American Honor Killing.

It’s the story of the death of an Iraqi-American teen named Noor al-Maleki, who was run over and killed outside of Phoenix by her father Faleh because she had become, in his eyes, too westernized. Faleh was recently convicted of murder in the case. It’s strong reporting about an awful story, but the final paragraphs provide the real punch in the gut. The Iraqi community, it would seem, learned all the wrong things from Noor’s death:

It is easy for the community to distance itself from Faleh now that he is a convicted murderer. But who spoke up for Noor when she was reportedly being brutalized at home and forced into an arranged marriage? Did any of Faleh’s contemporaries defend her right to dress herself how she wished? Why is Khalaf’s husband so quick to insist that Noor was a virgin and never involved with his son? Why do the teenage girls at al-Rasool mosque scold Noor for violating the precepts of their religion?

The attitudes that fueled Faleh’s rage are widespread in his community. It is no coincidence that Faleh believes that Iraqis in the U.S. and abroad will judge him more kindly if they think it’s an honor killing. “Connect it to honor,” Faleh advised Jamal from jail.

Asked whether the community has taken away any lessons from Noor’s murder, the owner of an Iraqi grocery store in Peoria nods, explaining, “They don’t want their daughters to become like Noor.”

Saher Alyasry, a mother in her mid-30s praying at al-Rasool mosque, speaks out firmly, in Arabic, while her teenage daughter, rocking a newborn, translates. “I think what he did was right. It’s his daughter, and our religion doesn’t allow us to do what she did,” she says. “A guy who cares about his reputation, he should do that because people will start talking about him if he doesn’t.” When asked if honor is more important than love, she responds, “Yes. What’s the point of loving her if she’s bad?”

The story had mentioned earlier that Faleh was a gambler, deep in debt, who didn’t even go to mosque. That he, and his apologists, are allowed to decide that wearing tight jeans is a sin punishable by death but gambling and blowing off services are fine, is appalling. I’m all for the salad bowl theory of immigration, whereby people get to keep their culture and language until they slowly begin to become part of this country. But this tribal crap needs to be checked in with immigration at the door. It is pure darkness–what on earth could compel a father to murder his daughter?–that has no place here.

I am not qualified to debates the merits of western feminism versus cultural sovereignty. I understand we can’t dictate our values to the rest of the world. But I know that having children has taught me–as a human, not as an American–that fatherhood is about caring for and, for a time, providing for and protecting a completely unique individual. Roberto Bolaño got it right: we are graced by the presence of our children and they owe us nothing. That’s just one American view, but it’s somewhere near the mainstream, I’ll bet. So you’ll forgive my cultural absolutism when I say that throttling your child into submission based on batshit duplicitous tribal rules that DO NOT EVEN APPLY IN THIS COUNTRY has nothing to do with honor and everything to do with being an honorless bastard.

Kudos to Labi (and to her editor, former Time Baghdad Bureau Chief Bobby Ghosh) for sticking with the story. Kudos to strong Iraqis like Amal Khalaf, the woman who took in Noor after her family shunned her and who was injured in the attack on Noor. She spoke up and spoke out and paid the price. All shame, however, on that part of the Iraqi-American community that persists in treating its women like goats on Eid, animals to be slaughtered up to God.

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