wolkenfuehlen

I think Ryder appears in ep 3 already. So not very long until you see him again, Chris!

s e r e n i t y

Oops, wrong info Sheida

wolkenfuehlen

lol: I really thought you'd know exactly when Charlie makes his first appearance!

s e r e n i t y

I thought so too, it just seems like theres so little of Charlie I never thought he made an appearance so soon Bad fan You can have him now Anja, I dont deserve him

wolkenfuehlen

Awww. I'm so nice, I'm willing to share him from time to time.

s e r e n i t y

Thank you, ... how often is time to time?

wolkenfuehlen

That depends on how nice you are to me.

s e r e n i t y

I am always nice ...

Finnegan

Yes, a very artful episode. In my view, the best of the series, presumably because they had nine months to work on it.

The scene that resonates most strongly with my own youth is the one in which Will Krudsky translates Rawley's motto, "Truth is Virtue," for one of the rich kids there, who responds: "Yeah, whatever." Will looks dejected. I recall that feeling so well, from when I was a working-class kid arriving at an Ivy League university. I thought that now I'd finally be among people concerned with truth, wisdom and justice, and found that instead I was among students obsessed with sex, money and power. Will manages to find a circle of friends who really are concerned with truth and virtue. I never did: concern with truth and virtue, or even learning, was bad form among the scions of privilege. Even the professors were just "hired help:" after all, if they were really smart, they'd be rich, like daddy! That is just one of the many ways in which Young Americans is a dream of possibility, not a description of reality.

In that context, the character of Scout Calhoun is so very appealing. He's what we wish that privilege could produce, but what it rarely does produce. If privilege produced people like that even a large minority of the time, our ruling class would be worth every penny it costs. Is it just my imagination, or is Mark Famiglietti made up to remind us of John or Robert Kennedy, conspicuous exceptions to American upper-class vacuity?


At left, John, Robert and Edward Kennedy at the family summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusettts
At right, Mark Famiglietti as Scott Calhoun

By the way, many of the comments on the first pages of this thread are very perceptive. Excellent discussion.

wolkenfuehlen

I wonder if anyone's around already?

street serenade

So, wait, I didn't miss it?! Yay

Finnegan

I'm with you, Anja.

Pending instruction to the contrary, I’ll post comments on the relevant episode-specific threads of this board rather than on this thread.

wolkenfuehlen

Nope, Sheida somehow forgot about me/us

Finnegan, I figured we'd use a new thread each week for the rewatch so it wouldn't be ~confusing for new people that stop by the board, and then after a week or so either Sheida or me would merge them with the already existing ones.

Finnegan

Re-watching episode 1, does anyone else see the immersion-in-the-lake scenes as symbolic baptisms?

There are three such scenes in this episode:
-- (1) at minutes 5:55 to 7:10 of this clip;
-- (2) at minutes 7:00 to 7:55 of this clip; and
-- (3) at the end of the episode, minutes 0:15 to 1:30 of this clip.

There are also no lake-immersion scenes for any character in any subsequent episode, save for Bella in episode 7 (after she "comes clean" by telling Sean that Scout is allegedly her brother) and Will in episode 2 (when he arrives late to crew practice and swims out to the boat). In other words, the lake-immersion scenes are clustered at the beginning, which in itself suggests baptism. Moroever, the baptism symbolism in episode 1 seems the beginning of Antin's framing of the eight aired episodes of Young Americans by a sequence of religious life-cycle symbols:
-- episode 4 centers on a wedding-like event, the cotillion (an eye-feast of altar-like white-draped tables and white clothing, featuring the wedding dress of Bella's mother, which makes the wedding symbolism explicit);
-- the final episode proves to be a journey to a cemetery, that is, a symbolic funeral; and
-- in episode 3, where we might expect some symbolism of a "coming-of-age" rite, like a first communion, we instead get a symbolic cursing of "star-crossed lovers:" the movie shown at the drive-in is "Bell, Book and Candle," which refers to the Church's traditional ritual for imposing the curse of excommunication.
This framing seems unlikely to be accidental, especially because it is paralleled by Antin's musical framing of the eight aired "Over the Rainbow," played at the end of episodes 1 and 8, which underscores that Rawley is, as Krudsky observes in his voice-over at the start of episode 3, a land where dreams come true.

The first of the three first lake-immersion scenes in episode 1 involves Scout, Will, Hamilton, and a host of Rawley-student extras. For Scout and Will, it is aborted by Rawley senior-classmen who haul them out of the water and dump them nearly naked in the town square. This "baptism" of Scout and Will is aborted because it is, for them, premature; they have not yet been catechized by Finn or cleansed of their sins (specifically, of exam-cheating and putative albeit still unknown incest). It is also an immersion in lust as yet unsanctified by love, from which only Hamilton, who proves able to immerse himself in lust without loss of innocence, need not be hauled out. However, the most interesting aspect of the "aborted baptism" of Scout and Will is their conversation after it, as they walk back from town to school through the lakeside woods. They confess to each other sins that (with one exception, Will's cheating) they never committed. That conversation defines what Young Americans will not be about -- the sinfulness of ordinary reality, the routine material of many teen TV shows. It recalls the renunciation of "the world, the flesh, and the devil" that must precede baptism. This scene originated in the "unaired pilot," of the moral tone of which it was typical; but in the morally-elevated tone of the aired version of episode one, it serves to highlight, by contrast, the elevation of YA's moral tone that Antin undertook between making the unaired and aired versions of episode 1.

The second of the three lake-immersion scenes in episode 1 involves the whole crew team, that is, all the Rawley-student protagonists (but not Bella). This "baptism" is more spiritual, following Finn's "catechisation" of the crew team that articulates the goal of Young Americans: to edify us be reborn to moral striving, to grasp our opportunities to fulfill our potential, to exceed our expectations. This baptism is not aborted, but neither is it fully effective. Will and Scout still need a third baptism, in part because they remain uncleansed of cheating or of putative albeit unknown incest. And Jake rejects her catechisation and baptism by calling Finn a "wanker;" she remains a "lost soul" in deep emotional distress of which her cross-dressing is an external manifestation, and from which it is Hamilton's appointed task to try to help her escape. For Hamilton, already in a "state of grace" at the start of the series, this second baptism is as redundant as the first, as his sarcastic comment, "Thanks, Finn," suggests.

The last of the three lake-immersion scenes in episode 1 involves Bella, Scout, and Will. Before this final baptism, a truer catechisation than Finn's is provided by Will: the moral perfection of Rawley is something that we do not deserve, something for which our striving to exceed expectations is necessary but not sufficient, and rebirth into which is a gift of sheer grace (i.e., possible only in art and by imagination, if we secularize the traditional religious context). Perfection entails not only that children surpass their parents (as Senator Calhoun suggests in episode 4) but that students surpass their teachers; hence it is fitting that Will rather than Finn expound the matter truly. This time, the baptism is fully effective for Scout and Will; no repetitions of it are needed, partly because Scout and Bella have resolved to transform their putatively incestuous eros into agape, while Will has understood that he need not enter Rawley (and cannot enter into the moral perfection that Rawley represents) by cheating. (Bella will need a second baptism in episode 7, when she belatedly acts on a moral obligation to tell Sean that her relationship with him is based on uncertain information that Scout is her half-brother; but as of the end of episode 1, before her relationship with Sean begins, she is cleansed.)

The lake is a core symbol in YA. Situated between the girl's school and the boy's school, and between the school and the town, and providing both the means by which the crew team practices cooperative mutual support and the context for appreciating literature or writing poetry, the lake symbolizes love in all its interconnected varieties and manifestations. True to the culture of New England, in which religiosity is lively but remains "below the surface" because deeds rather than words are held to be its best expression, the lake is whatever may remain to us of what our forebears called "God." The lake baptism symbolism in episode 1 betokens not only that YA will be about rebirth and redemption into an idyll of moral perfection by means of love, but also that how love can serve that purpose -- how love can be "true" -- is Antin's theme, a theme underscored both by the "Getaway People" theme song and by the citation of the first line of Dylan's Love minus Zero/No Limit on Finn's blackboard in episode 1. The themes of Finn's first and last lectures, in episodes 1 and 7, interconnect: moral rebirth exceeds the power of individual free will; our individual moral destinies depend upon the love of others, of our community, which in turn depends on each of us freely willing to love. Finn's lectures come full circle, and reach closure, over the aired episodes of YA: they, no less than "Over the Rainbow" and religious life-cycle symbolism, neatly frame the series.

Finnegan

Thanks, Anja. Although I've already posted my first "rewatch" comment on the "Episode 1 discussion" thread (feel free to move it here and/or replace this post with it, if you like), I'll post rewatch-related comments on this thread in future.