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Frank Zappa/Sinclair Lewis: It Can’t [Can/Is] Happen[ing] Here? [1]
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Date: 2023-08-17
"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry."— Frank Zappa
"Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill."— Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here
The recent indictments of Donald Trump and the police raid on the Marion County Record, in Marion, Kansas, brought back a memory of Frank Zappa’s 1986 appearance on CNN’s Crossfire where he talked about the growing threat of fascism in the U.S. Zappa’s song “It Can’t Happen Here” was a clarion call to all Americans that, as Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D wrote in a piece titled “It Can’t Happen Here,” “Like Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 satirical novel of the same name, [Zappa’s] song was a warning that no matter how safe we may think we are, we are not immune to the shocks befalling people in other places.”
Zappa’s “It Can’t Happen Here” didn’t fall from the sky. It apparently was a direct reference to Sinclair Lewis’ book It Can’t Happen Here. In 1935, during the rise of fascism in Europe, the dystopian political novel It Can't Happen Here: What Will Happen When America Has A Dictator, was published by Doubleday, Doran and Company. Set in the 1930s, the novel followed an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, as he becomes America's first outright dictator, promising a return to America's greatness, and Doremus Jessup, an American newspaper editor, who dedicates his work to exposing Windrip's fascist policies.
Although It Can't Happen Herewas adapted into a play and produced by the WPA's Federal Theater Project, it never became a movie.
According to a 1936 story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California, It Can’t Happen Here, with a cast featuring Lionel Barrymore, Walter Connolly, Virginia Bruce, and Basil Rathbone, was set for production, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s studio head Louis B. Mayer postponed it indefinitely, citing, among other things, costs. The Nazi regime in Germany was clearly pleased by Mayer’s decision.
In a June 2013 Tablet story titled “Hollywood’s Creepy Love Affair With Adolf Hitler, in Explosive New Detail” (
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/hollywood-nazi-urwand) David Mikics wrote: “Adolf Hitler loved American movies. … [and] As it turns out, Hitler’s love for American movies was reciprocated by Hollywood.” According to Mikcis Ben Urwand’s scrupulously researched book The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler maintains “that some of the Hollywood studio heads, nearly all of whom were Jewish, cast their lot with Hitler almost from the moment he took power, and that they did so eagerly—not reluctantly. What they wanted was access to German audiences. What Hitler wanted was the ability to shape the content of Hollywood movies—and he got it.
“During the ’30s, Georg Gyssling, Hitler’s consul in Los Angeles, was invited to preview films before they were released. If Gyssling objected to any part of a movie—and he frequently did—the offending scenes were cut. As a result, the Nazis had total veto power over the content of Hollywood movies.”
In 1986, as a guest on CNN's Crossfire, Frank Zappa warned that the Reagan administration was "moving America toward a Fascist theocracy." Conservative columnist and co-host Robert Novak couldn't believe his ears, and right-wing pundit John Lofton was beside himself with incredulity. Imagine what the late Zappa living through the Trump administration’s full-blown attack on democracy, might have produced?
In 1991, on the Mothers of Invention "Freak Out" album, came the song "It Can't Happen Here":
It can't happen here
It can't happen here
I'm telling you, my dear
That it can't happen here
Because I been checkin' it out, baby
I checked it out a couple a times, hmmmmmmmm
And I'm telling you
It can't happen here
Oh darling, it's important that you believe me
(Bop bop bop bop)
That it can't happen here
Who could imagine that they would freak out somewhere in Kansas...
Kansas Kansas tototototodo
Kansas Kansas tototototodo
Kansas Kansas
Who could imagine that they would freak out in Minnesota...
Mimimimimimimi Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
Who could imagine...
Who could imagine
That they would freak out in Washington, D.C.
D.C. D.C. D.C. D.C. D.C.
It can't happen here
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
It can't happen here
It can't happen here
Everybody's safe and it can't happen here
No freaks for us
It can't happen here
Everybody's clean and it can't happen here
No, no, it won't happen here
I'm telling you it can't
It won't happen here
(Bop bop didi bop didi bop bop bop)
Plastic folks, you know
It won't happen here
You're safe, mama
You're safe, baby
You just cook a TV dinner
And you make it
(Bop bop bop)
No no no no
Oh, we're gonna get a TV dinner and cook it up
Go get a TV dinner and cook it up
Cook it up
Oh, and it won't happen here
(No no no no no no no no no no no
Man you guys are really safe
Everything's cool).
Who could imagine
Who could imagine
That they would freak out in the suburbs
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool.
And they thought it couldn't happen here
(duh duh duh duh duh)
They knew it couldn't happen here
They were so sure it couldn't happen here
But...
Suzie...
Yes yes yes--I've always felt that
Yes I agree man, it really makes it...yeah...
It's a real THING, man
And it really makes it
(Makes it)
Suzie, you just got to town,
And we've been, we've been very interested
In your development,
Since you first took the shots.
Forget it!
Hmmmmmmmmm
(It can't happen here)
(Can't happen here)
(Can't happen here)
[For more on Zappa, check out Kevin Courrier excellent piece titled “American Composer: Frank Zappa's Understanding America” --
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2013/03/american-composer-frank-zappas.html]
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