The Southern Gothic Archies

A couple pieces of "Baby Doll" memorabilia I have around the house.

One of my favorite movies is "Baby Doll," a low-budget 1956 picture starring Caroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach, directed by Elia Kazan and adapted for the screen by Tennessee Williams. As you might expect from Williams, it has a weird story, fraught with sexual tension and forbidden desires, and a script filled with memorably odd expressions that may or may not be based on things people in the South might have said in real life. 

When I first saw "Baby Doll" more than 20 years ago, I thought it was a fascinating, if somewhat exaggerated portrait of another time and another place. Lately, events have made me think about the movie and realize it has something to say about our current political climate.

First, about those odd expressions: The most famous line in the movie is probably, "I been to school in my life and I am a magazine reader!" To get the effect of that line you have to really drawl it out. The "I"s should be pronounced as "Ah"s and "magazine" should have at least four syllables.

That line is delivered memorably by Carroll Baker, who plays the title character, Baby Doll, a young woman who is married to Archie Lee, an older man, and living in a decrepit antebellum mansion he can't afford to, or doesn't know how to, maintain. Baby Doll is a beautiful but spoiled child-woman who was married off to Archie Lee when she was too young. (Tennessee Williams was not subtle. She sleeps in a crib!) Her dying father consented to the marriage because he wanted Baby Doll taken care of, but made Archie Lee promise he wouldn't consummate the marriage until she turns 20. (Eeew, Dad!) Most of the action in the movie occurs on her last day of being 19, as she dreads what her birthday will mean, while simultaneously discovering her sexuality in her budding attraction to Silvio Vaccaro, a visiting Italian immigrant businessman.

But there's another line in the movie I've been thinking about lately. This one is spoken by Archie Lee, as he tries to talk a police officer into letting him chase after Vaccaro with a gun. With fire in his eyes and sweat on his face, Karl Malden delivers the line: "Ain't I a white man?"

The point he's trying to make is that, as a white man, he deserves justice. In fact, he believes he deserves to decide what justice means.  He believes he deserves justice more than Vaccaro does, and more than Baby Doll does. He believes he deserves financial success, the big house and the beautiful blonde wife, simply because he's a white man, and he lives in a white man's world.

When Cotton Was King

The story of "Baby Doll" takes place in the 1950s, and in many ways it paints a picture of a Jim Crow South that has barely changed since the end of Reconstruction. White men still order black people about and use the N-word freely. Still, there are signs everywhere that the old order is changing. Most importantly, the immigrant Vaccaro has opened a new, more technologically advanced cotton gin in town, making Archie Lee's machine obsolete and driving him into financial ruin. 

Archie Lee responds by setting fire to Vacarro's cotton gin, which leaves his own outdated machine as the only one available in the area. Soon, Vacarro and his associate show up with all their cotton at Archie Lee's place, offering to pay to use his equipment, though they secretly suspect that he was the arsonist. Archie Lee greedily accepts the work, but gets more than he bargains for as his old machine breaks down and Vacarro flirts flamboyantly with an increasingly receptive Baby Doll. 

This flirtation finally becomes too much for Archie Lee, who chases Vacarro off with a gun. It is as the police come to deal with him that Archie Lee delivers that line, "Ain't I a white man?"

I thought about that line when I read about the strange case of Sam Clovis, a former right-wing talk radio host who withdrew his name for consideration for the job of top scientist at the USDA after it was revealed that not only does he have no science or agriculture background, but he also, as a Trump campaign operative, encouraged at least one staffer to seek out ways to conspire with the Russian government in its hacking and propaganda campaign that was meant to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections.   

In his letter to the president asking to withdraw his name from consideration, Clovis wrote, as quoted in the Washington Post: 

 “The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position ... The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases with intensity each day.”

Don't I deserve "balanced and fair" consideration for a position I have no qualifications for? Shouldn't I get any job I'm nominated for, even if I have no qualifications for it? Even if I am under federal investigation for conspiring with a hostile foreign power? Ain't I a white man? Shouldn't I get the big house and the cotton business and the beautiful wife? If someone tries to sleep with her before I get to, shouldn't I get to shoot him? Shouldn't I get to do that without the police stopping me? 

"Baby Doll" is a Southern Gothic story from the 1950s, while Clovis is from Iowa, and the equally unqualified president is from New York City. But their stories have something in common with the fictional story of Archie Lee. 

Technology and a global economy have made things harder in many ways for the Archie Lees and Archie Bunkers of America. They live in this grand old mansion that they don't know how to maintain, and it angers them when other people question their lack of ability. And so they lash out at the immigrants, the people of color, the urbanites, or whoever else. "Ain't I a white man?" But the future keeps coming, whether or not they are ready for it.