This clip is offered in hope of making available an English-language version of "Young Americans" (YA) of higher visual quality than seems to have been available online, together with critical commentary (below) that may enhance appreciation of YA as dramatic art. Questions that may be worth asking about YA episode 1, part 4, include: -- In the "rooftop kiss" scene, is Hamilton Fleming trying, as "Jake" Pratt initially seems to think, to impress "Jake" with his experience with women? Or is he subtly mocking the gender stereotype (implied tongue-in-cheek by Bella about Scout in the previous scene) that men think only about sex in their relationships with women, trying to ascertain whether "Jake" shares his rejection of that stereotype? Does "Jake" seem to catch his irony before she kisses him? Might this contribute to making her suddenly so strongly attracted to Fleming that she forgets that she's pretending to be a boy? -- Will Krudski tells Scout what he already told us in his first narrating voice-over: that he wants to be at Rawley because "for you guys, anything is possible." Antin , in press interviews in the summer of 2000, repeatedly said that he was writing, in YA, about a "time of life," not an education or a social class, that makes anything seem possible. Similarly, Finn, in his sermon on the lake, suggests that youth confers limitless possibilities. In that context, why might Krudski not feel that he belongs at Rawley? -- Calhoun, in persuading Krudski that his feeling of "not belonging" at Rawley is unfounded, rises to rare heights of effective compassion. At the time, he is in love with Bella and knows of no great impediment to that love. Does he sustain this level of effective compassion later in YA, when his love for Bella founders on a putative incest barrier? What does this tell us about the relationship between passion (eros) and compassion (agape), particularly social compassion, in the kind of love depicted between Calhoun and Bella? Is this the rule or the exception in real life, compared with the kind of love that Fleming is depicted, later in YA, as bearing for Pratt? -- Does Finn seem likely to be authorized to deal with entrance exam cheating at his own discretion, without consulting the Dean? Is the sternness of the facade he projects in this matter matched by the substance of the way he handles it? What does this suggest about Rawley? -- The presence, on Finn's blackboard, of the first line of Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," is conspicuously anomalous: Finn teaches literature, not popular music. Why is it there? What is Antin trying to convey? Consider its lyrics: -- (a) "My love she speaks like silence ... true, like ice, like fire." True love speaks by deeds, not words. Does film or television enable a story-teller to re-tell old tales more wordlessly, through the body language, facial expressions, and eye movements of actors, to a greater extent than do written literature, stage drama, songs and poems? Is any story-line in YA developed to a remarkable extent by such means, "like silence"? Does such "silence" afford greater scope for ambiguity, for multiple possible meanings? -- (b) "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all." How might those two lines apply to YA's two "star-crossed" love story-lines? To the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice? How can a failed saviour like Orpheus be inspiring? Although he cannot save from death, from what can he save by inspiring imitation? Is the moral imperative to compassion contingent upon prospects for success or reward, or is contingency upon such prospects inconsistent with "true love"? -- (c) "My love she's like some raven at my window with a broken wing." Love that is "true like fire, like ice" is also vulnerable, in need of being loved. Which characters in YA might this describe? For example, who is first seen dressed all in black as viewed by another character from a window? To what extent do those characters' relationships with Rawley (or a personification of Rawley) seem suggestive of our relationship with the art of telling old tales in young ways? The two still shots at the start of this clip are of C. G. Kratzenstein's "Orpheus and Eurydice" (1806), displayed in the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek at Copenhagen, and of a scene from Jean Cocteau's 1946 film, "Beauty and the Beast." The lute music played during those still shots is Hans Neusiedler's "Gassenhauer" (a tune heard on the street), composed around 1536. YA's musical theme for its Pratt/Fleming scenes, previous episode recapitulations, and most crew rowing scenes, Hans Zimmer's "True Romance"theme, is adapted from Carl Orff's "Gassenhauer nach Hans Neusiedler" ( 1935). The clips at the end are of Bob Dylan playing "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" for Donovan in his suite at London's Savoy Hotel in May 1965, from footage for D. A. Pennebaker's documentary film, "Don't Look Back."

• published: 17 Jul 2010
• views: 5117