C.L.R. James disrespects John Ford
by zunguzungu
From American Civilization:
…To put it more harshly still, it is in the serious study of, above all, Charles Chaplin, Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, genuinely popular novels like those of Frank Yerby, men like David Selsnick, Cecil deMille, and Henry Luce, that you find the clearest ideological expression of the sentiments and deepest fellings of the American people and a great window into the future of America and the modern world. This insight is not to be found in the works of T.S. Eliot, of Hemingway, of Joyce, of famous directors like John Ford or Rene Clair.
He goes on to mention that “I have never been to see The Informer without being tied up in knots inside for days afterwards.” But it’s too late; the damage is done. C.L.R. James, you are dead to me.
zunguzungu 
Now, now. Don’t do unto CLR James what CLR James done onto Ford.
Ther’es nothing like the relief of finding what you’re looking for.
Sorry, but the temptation to use the phrase “you’re dead to me” is one I can never resist.
It actually might be, more seriously, meant as a kind of sideways compliment, since James’ sense of “American Civilization” is so much more ambiguous than meets the eye. It certainly isn’t deMille’s or Luce’s *politics* that he likes, after all; it might be just his sense that there’s an “American” aesthetic in play, something to do with mass production and democracy, that he finds absent in someone like Ford or Joyce or Eliot.
Or maybe it’s not a sideways compliment. That book is so weird.
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