Prizefighters, Circus Freaks & Gangsters
The 19th Century - the American Spirit really comes from here. Fighting, Food, Fashion & Fraud Plus mayhem, bombast, fornication, mendacity, debauchery, slander, sensationalism and vapid triviality... and swearing. Yet it's the least understood American century - far more than the Civil War, the Railroad & Cowboy Movies. Through 20th & 21st century TV & Movies, Jamie Lewis of Plague Of Strength & Greta Hardin of The History of American food will take up on a wild ride through the most exciting parts. These history junkies will talk you through a wild assortment of media as we discuss things like: physical culture & body building medicine shows carnivals & the circus sex work organized crime & ever so many fights Plus the 19th century is the source of: artificial purple dye, electricity, coast to coast instant communications, gas lighting, photography, the bowie knife, the colt revolver and the gatling gun, cardboard boxes, cigarettes, refrigerated train cars, bodybuilding as entertainment, modern gymnastics, all the current fighting sports, the submarine, and the very first automobiles.
Episodes
I mean let's not kid ourselves, the swashing and the buckling and the fact that there MUST be bad guys means that there's going to be a body count - but let's face it. Here we are in Telanovela-land so it's going to be less gruesome that Star Trek.
Which - ya' know what? It's fun sometimes to just escape into the past and only be confronted with sh...
Plus THE OUTFITS
and finally Party Food.
But wait, there's also the reveal that some of the bad GUYS are bad Girls. This show has everything, including an evil priest.
There's nothing more to...
But don’t worry Jamie - the 19th century is here to fight about it. And all the competing technologies are here to play. Tomahawk/hatchet v. Knife v. ...
Memory construction is a hell of a thing... and we definitely are experiencing a new version of it with video, with rewind... and now with fake video creation.
But back in the day when you didn't see anything - and you just got one vivid entertaining newspaper report, what does that do? Many of us are quite excellent at creating images to go along with a description - and then that becomes the...
Bust seriously - your 6 eps in to a 10 episode season and you're just going to send this many hares running in the field of story.
What Gives?
Also - Greta admits she entirely absolutely was guessing and was WRONG.
But that's happened before & will most likely happen again.
You better start paying some things off in the next few episodes. That's all I ask.
Oh - and ...
Now that we have our major players set up - and the relationships are established we can really get the plates spinning:
Secret Societies - check
Love Triangle - check
Twin Brothers - check
Mysterious/Nefarious Death - check
and a SLAP! - check and check
There's some fun close quarters fighting, riding off frantically into the moonlight, and jaw clenching to beat the band. Capt. Monestario get's to emplo...
Greta badly speaks more Spanish - but mainly in the service of the 2! DOS! Zorros issue.
Jamie is baffled by the twins issue - not twin Zorros, just regular Telenovella twins.
Excitement as we are in New York. Consternation as a transit across the Panama Isthmus is proposed.
And as always we...
And well, as viewers always trying to figure things out we may have brought it on ourselves.
One approach of course is to take one story line and then make it endlessly twisty - each twist more diabolical than the last and it's some of the these post Game of Thrones shows where eventually people just can't care anymore. The characters are so contradictory - not...
Go watch this episode first on Amazon Prime. Twists, Turns, Escándalo! & we just sorted out that Dani Rojas from Ted Lasso is Zorro 1. This series is SO MUCH FUN.
Jamie and Greta are here to absolutely enjoy every last minute of the escapist nonsense. Ok Ok - not just for the fun of it, but how it shows so much of what was up in 19th century ...
After watching the movie Zorro - it became clear, we need more of Zorro. We also need more of the 19th Century Americas... from something other than the USA America perspective. Because, during the 19th century, the Americnan America was a very different shape than the USA we live in now. There were lots of other nations in those spaces we conveniently forget about.
Also...
It starts with Zorro.
The 19th Century didn't just have rapidly changing food, fashion, fighting and all new ways to do crime - with the rise of the novel as popular entertainment, the crime fighters also changed. And so did the adventure story.
Sure Zorro may have been created in the 20th century, and inspired a rash of 20th century urban heros (Hullooooooooo! Batman), but he ri...
The excection? A stinker.
But don't worry, you don't have to watch the movie because we did it for you. And we won't be doing it again. That aside, there is all the luxe you'd expect of the the mid-19th century, along with the frontier rought and tumble. And Germ...
Regardless, Letitia Wright kills everyone who does her wrong. Or at least gets to see them die. It's a revenge flick, but first with suffering. And yet strangely, the glory isn't in the gore. Rather it's in the fight - and coming out the other side.
Want to know what it was really like to travel in a 19th Century Stage Coach in the high coutry of the Southweat? Well, this gets...
And it has to do with the ghost that has taken up residence inside his head - Esau.
That insidious speech: I, the Evil Guy - am not so different from you, The Good Guy who has messed up a bit along the way in the pursuit of good.
The thing where cruel people doing cruel things to make their personal life better is somehow equated with good people trying to reduce cruelty in the world. And th...
But our man Bass - it's all off kilter now. He's lost his way, and Justice somehow is no longer the way to redemption. In fact, it seems to be feeding Evil.
What's a man to do when a...
The Medicine Show or Carnival with spiritualism, menageries and mountebanks.
And then the merging of the ancient work songs with the modern era - to create the soundtracks we now live with.
And of course, the beginnings of traveling to go some place - just to see it.
The idea that the world is a big giant plac...
For as much as people like to look back on the past, on the 19th century as simpler times with more direct paths and clearer values...
Turns out it was not. There were fewer distractions sure, but there were still hard decisions that had to be made, becasue people were just as much out for themselves then as they are now, an...
David Oyelowo had this story he wanted to make and share... and for some reason Hollywood wasn't ready to do a story that rotated on the axis of a black lead Lawman.
But with the success the 19th century stories around Yellowstone the same money decided this was worth a shot.
So WE - w...
Technically not in the 19th C last round... too early
And now we blow right by the 19th C and end up in the 20th C.
What is WRONG with us? Well, after all the death and blood, it's time to watch no blood and all the jokes. Mel Brooks takes on the The Western as an institution, as well as the Hollywood Production codes, which had just been axed in the early 60's to be replaced by the voluntary rating syste...
Racist, Orientalist - as a book, YES! But this version. as far as I'm concerned redeems the Entire Venture.
And as a 1970's work written by a former prisoner of war during the Japanese Occupation during WW2, writing a book trying to get into the somewhat legendary history of Japan - it did what James Clavell wanted, it introduced ...
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