Long Pauses

Author: Darren

  • Resplendent

    Resplendent

    What to hear a perfect song? “Resplendent,” by Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love, is as close as it gets. There’s the Bruce Cockburn-like guitar, that sweet snare drum shuffle, and Emmylou’s harmonies. And then there’s the lyrics. When Mallonee sings, “Honey, we’re all resplendent,” you just know that he’s right. (Thanks for this song, Candace.)

    I remember the dark clouds raining dust for days on end
    Blew all the Earth out to California
    Just left us here with the wind
    Desperate times, you know everbody’s part
    It’s your own lines you’d like to forget
    Till what you were meets what you’ve now become
    And grins and says, “Hey, haven’t we met?”

    Lost my first born that Winter
    My wife on the first day of Spring
    So I poured my sweat to the Earth
    To see what that harvest would bring
    And I remember how the fury
    Just like a plague of locusts
    Egypt’s punishment for sins of pride
    Is that now what has come over us?

    How much of this was meant to be?
    How much the work of the Devil?
    How far can one man’s eyes really see
    In these days of toil and trouble?

    Honey, we’re all resplendent,
    Yeah, Honey, we are all thrift store
    Like a wine-o with a $20 bill
    Yeah, forever and eternally yours
    And I can make you promises
    If you don’t expect too much,
    Yes, and I will run the distance
    If you’ll please, please excuse my crutch

    How much of this was meant to be?
    How much the work of the Devil?
    How far can one man’s eyes really see
    In these days of toil and trouble?

    How much of this is failing flesh?
    How much a course of retribution?
    My, my, how loudly we plead our innocence
    Long after we made our contribution

  • Different Perspectives

    Last night I gathered with my English as a Second Language students for our final class of the semester. Before digging into another dry reading comprehension exercise, we just sat and talked, which, to be honest, is the main reason that Thursday night is often the highlight of my week. At various points over the last few months, I’ve learned that: my friend from Turkey is a Kurd whose parents live just north of the Syrian border (I learned this on the day that Turkey gave the U.S. permission to do fly-overs); my friend from the Sudan, a refugee, spent several weeks circumnavigating the civil war in the south, much of his trip on foot, before finally receiving his papers in Khartoum and heading north to Cairo, where he spent several more weeks waiting for asylum; and my friend from Ethiopia, a person who now works in “food service,” was once a speaker in the Upper House of her country’s Parliament. Unbelievable. I need to get out more.

  • Red Five Standing By

    I subscribe to the Pop Culture Association & American Culture Association listserv, which typically fills my in-box only with announcements of calls for papers and research queries. But occasionally someone’s dander will rise and an interesting discussion will follow. This week, several participants have been debating the merits of the various Cultural Studies textbooks, and from that debate has blossomed a chat about the practical impact of myth and heroes on American politics. I was only skimming the messages until I discovered this note, written by John Shelton Lawrence, co-author of The Myth of the American Superhero (2002):

    I would challenge people to think about President Bush’s donning of the flight suit today, engaging in flight, appearing with his flight helmet on deck of the Abraham Lincoln and place it in the context of the film Independence Day. Is the president being scripted to match the plot of a superheroic action president in the film? The question seems worth exploring.

    If you’re at all intrigued by this question, Dr. Lawrence has posted an interesting article on his Web server. “Post 9/11: Who Can Save the Day?” is an anecdotal but historically sensitive discussion of the “relationships between U.S. foreign policy makers and some important popular artifacts.” He takes on, in short order: Teddy Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, FDR and William Randolph Hearst, Clinton’s and Dole’s celebration of Independence Day, and Dubya’s affinity for Rambo. The last section, as you might have guessed, is the most relevant today. After describing the administration’s push for the American Services Members Protection Act, Lawrence concludes with this fun little anecdote (and by “fun” I mean horrifying):

    In February 2002 the president’s pleasure in superheroic fantasy and his eagerness to use it in conveying his own political values was revealed in an incident with Germany’s leading news magazine, Der Spiegel. To accompany a “Masters of the Universe” article on the Bush administration’s crusade against evil, Spiegel created a satirical cover depicting each national security player in the role of a zealous destroyer from American popular culture. George W. Bush, surrounded by his advisers, received a muscular Rambo body holding an automatic weapon and ammunition belts.

    Daniel Coats, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, visited Der Spiegel‘s editorial offices — not to protest the caricature or the article’s viewpoint about reckless unilateralism — but to report that “the President was flattered,” whereupon he ordered thirty-three poster-size renditions of the cover for the White House. Each policy maker on the cover reportedly wanted a copy.

    [insert loud guffaw, deep sigh, profane tirade, or sarcastic insult — whichever best suits you.]

  • Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

    Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

    Dir. by Andrei Tarkovsky

    Images: Expressionistic camera angles, most notably in Ivan’s more terrifying dream sequences. Striking but occasionally heavy-handed symbolism, such as that beautiful cross amid the bombed-out landscape. Most memorable images are those that display Tarkovsky’s emerging aesthetic: the slow tracking shots through the birch forest, the close-ups of Ivan, the use of found footage, the final fantasy sequence.

    • • •

    A few summers ago, I had the rare opportunity to see Stanley Kubrick’s “lost” films at a special screening presented by the Mary Pickford Theater at the Library of Congress. His early shorts were interesting, of course, but the main attraction was his first feature, Fear and Desire (1953), a film that so embarrassed Kubrick in his later years that he reportedly collected and destroyed every print in circulation. According to the librarian who introduced the series, their print was discovered quite accidentally — a treasure among a collection of films shipped from a storehouse somewhere in Puerto Rico, as I recall. And much to Kubrick’s dismay, I’m sure.

    I’m hesitant to introduce a response to Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood with mention of Fear and Desire for fear that the latter’s reputation might somehow tarnish the former’s. So let me make this point clear: Tarkovsky’s is a much, much better film, a great film even. But both suffer the effects of youth. This can on occasion be a good thing, of course. There’s often a refreshing fearlessness in the works of those artists who are still seeking a voice, who haven’t yet learned the rules and mastered the fundamentals. But that fearlessness is often matched by a naïve worldview and reckless ambition. Actually, in Kubrick’s case, I would go so far as to call that ambition hubris, as he and co-screenwriter Howard Sackler — who, like Kubrick was only in his mid-20s at the time — set out on a shoestring budget to make a film about “the two greatest motivating forces in human history,” or some such nonsense. Set in a fictional, dreamlike landscape amid a fictional, dreamlike conflict, Fear and Desire is a war picture drowning in banal allegory, notable only for its notoriety and for the occasional startling image that hints at all that would come in Kubrick’s five-decade career. I’m glad I saw it. Once.

    That Ivan’s Childhood continues to impress and teach with repeat viewings is perhaps the best testament to the film’s lasting import. Like Fear and Desire, it is a war film that deliberately transcends many of the genre’s conventions, but it does so with a grace and humility that prevent Tarkovsky’s occasional missteps from spoiling the experience. Clearly, his aesthetic is still in gestation here. We’re offered brief glimpses of that mysterious poetic logic that informs his later work, but it is at times encumbered by weighty symbolism and Bergmanesque expressionism. Dare I say that Tarkovsky’s hand feels a bit heavy at times? If Paths of Glory is the first complete Kubrick film, the first to combine each of the particular stylistic devices and thematic obsessions that have come to define his status as an auteur, then I would argue that Andrei Rublev is our first taste of the full Tarkovsky, unburdened by another’s source material (he inherited the Ivan project from another director) and enlightened by palpable maturity, insight, and confidence.

    Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev) is a hollow-eyed orphan who, after watching his parents and young sister killed, fashions himself as a spy on the eastern front. In the film’s opening act, Ivan trudges through a swamp under the glow of enemy tracers, carefully working his way from behind enemy lines to a Russian outpost where he’s greeted by Lieutenant Galtsev (Yevgeni Zharikov), a commanding officer only a few years his senior. The twelve-year-old spy is exhausted and sickly but determined to deliver his intelligence to Colonel Gryaznov (Nikolai Grinko), who, we eventually learn, has become something of a father figure to Ivan. Gryaznov and Captain Kholin (Valentin Zubkov) conspire to secret Ivan away to a military academy, but the young soldier proves too stubborn and determined. He runs away, then, after being discovered hiding amid the desolate, bombed-out landscape, convinces his friends and superiors of his unique value to the cause. The remainder of the film documents the making of preparations for Ivan’s subsequent mission back into Nazi territory.

    As with all of Tarkovsky’s work, a simple plot summary makes for an insufficient record of the film itself. Although it is the director’s most traditionally narrative-driven feature, Ivan’s Childhood is less concerned with war’s stories than with war’s human experiences and its aftermath: physical, emotional, and spiritual. At the risk of sounding pedantic, I would argue that, in this film, Tarkovsky forsakes the terrain of the traditional battlefield in order to more fully explore that of the embattled body. In an early scene, for instance, we watch as Ivan strips naked and bathes in a small metal drum. It’s a stunning image — Burlyayev, the young actor, is a pathetic, emaciated mess of ribs and knees and shoulders — an image that strips away the naïve romanticism that tends to accompany the genre. Tarkovsky’s camera exposes both Ivan and Lieutenant Galtsev not as the manly war heroes who they (and most war films) would imagine themselves to be, but as children without options.

    When Galtsev later says of the young spy, “A war is no place for children,” his words are all the more poignant and absurd for coming from this teenaged officer’s mouth. He uses a similar line — “War is a man’s business” — after deciding to send Masha (Valentina Malyavina), a young nurse, home from the front. But, again, the line falls flat. It’s a false, empty performance of bravado, a deflation and deconstruction of the countless odes to heroic sacrifice that inform our stories of war — epic, mythological, literary, and cinematic. By treating such conventions truthfully and with seriousness, Tarkovsky manages to expose the dehumanization of war without slipping into cynicism or satire. (Would that an American filmmaker could avoid the same trap today.) The film’s final shot of Galtsev is also one of its most memorable. A few years older and with the war now behind him, Galtsev is quite literally scarred by his experience. But the actor’s young face refuses to lend the image the symbolic weight we might expect from the coda of a war film. He is not a wizened, toughened officer — a “man” who has proven his mettle in the manliest of arenas. Instead, like Ivan, he remains a boy, but one carrying tragic wounds.

    Throughout the film, Tarkovsky makes remarkable use of close-ups of his actors’ faces (most notably, the final shots of Ivan) as a traditional technique for blurring the boundaries between objective and subjective experience. That blurring is critical to the success of this film, which is as much a psychological profile as it is a biography or war picture. We are offered access to Ivan’s subjectivity, in particular, through a series of dream sequences — some idyllic, others terrifying. But, really, the entire film is so closely bound to his perspective that it plays, with only a few notable exceptions, like Ivan’s psychic projection. Tarkovsky’s tack works quite successfully, for the most part. In Sculpting in Time, he writes:

    in film, every time, the first essential in any plastic composition, its necessary and final criterion, is whether it is true to life, specific and factual; that is what makes it unique. By contrast, symbols are born, and readily pass into general use to become clichés, when an author hits upon a particular plastic composition, ties it in with some mysterious turn of thought of his own, loads it with extraneous meaning.

    Ivan’s Childhood, I think, offers examples of both. There are, surprisingly for Tarkovsky, occasional missteps into symbolism — that beautiful but strangely empty image of a cross on the battlefield, for instance, or the cock-eyed camera angles that compose Ivan’s nightmares and that would feel more at home in Wild Strawberries than in Rublev. More often, though, the director manages to create moments that could only be described as Tarkovskyan — those amazing moments that make him one of the few geniuses of film. He’s at his finest in a sequence involving Masha and Captain Kholin, who pursues the nurse into a thick forest of birch trees. Tarkovsky’s camera tracks their movements at a distance before joining them, finally, in a strange, low-angle embrace over a small trench. The scene achieves his artistic ideal:

    A true artistic image gives the beholder a simultaneous experience of the most complex, contradictory, sometimes even mutually exclusive feelings.

    Kholin’s and Masha’s encounter is a desperate act of human contact, but it’s also vaguely degrading; it’s a moment of near transcendent delight, but it’s one that feels debased and compromised. I can’t make sense of it, really, though I feel compelled to, which is probably why Ivan’s Childhood is one of the few war films that I return to with any frequency. That complexity of emotions and motivations should always form the foundations of our war stories, or we’ll make the mistake of flattening the world, reducing its rich textures and varied peoples to stark black and white.

  • The Agenda

    At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me begin by saying that, within the strange confines of my personal experience, many of the “Regular Joes” who support President Bush and his agenda seem to do so because he is pro-life and because he evidences publicly the recognizable signs of a “committed walk with God.” Within this community — this large, evangelical sub-culture — voting Republican is a “moral” act, a single gesture by which evangelicals hope to restore America to its Christian foundations (whatever that means — and, of course, it doesn’t mean anything, which is the beauty of empty, historically-blind rhetoric, but that’s another rant entirely).

    So with that out of the way — along with the obligatory acknowledgement that there are, of course, notable exceptions to my rule — I want to dig into William Grieder’s recent piece for The Nation, “Rolling Back the 20th Century,” which does a nice job, I think, of summarizing the Neoconservative agenda. The thesis of his argument, as implied by the title of the article, is that, since Reagan’s election in 1980, the Right has moved slowly but steadily toward a dismantling of New Deal America with the ultimate goal of returning us to the “lost Eden” of the McKinley Era. This is the line that really grabbed by attention:

    Many opponents and critics (myself included) have found the right’s historic vision so improbable that we tend to guffaw and misjudge the political potency of what it has put together. We might ask ourselves: If these ideas are so self-evidently cockeyed and reactionary, why do they keep advancing?

    If you’re a regular reader of Long Pauses, then you know that I’m plagued by the word “praxis” — the symbiotic relationship of theory and action. I was reminded of it again last night as I finished reading Radical Chic, Tom Wolfe’s 1970 account of a fund-raising party held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Bernstein in honor of the Black Panthers. At one point, the trio of Bernstein, Otto Preminger, and Barbara Walters (!) assail Don Cox with pointed questions concerning the risks of violent revolution, and the leather-clad, afro-ed Panther is able only to regurgitate the Maoist jargon of “petty bourgeois oppression” and “individual freedoms.” He isn’t very convincing.

    But the Neocons are. I keep thinking of a line from Angels in America, when Joe, the mostly-closeted Mormon, Republican lawyer, asks Louis, his Jewish, progressive lover: “Do you want to be pure or do you want to be effective?” The Neocons seem to have discovered praxis in spades, though it’s praxis built upon grossly immoral theories of capital. Grieder summarizes the main points of that agenda, each of which is explained in much greater detail in the article:

    • Eliminate federal taxation of private capital, as the essential predicate for dismantling the progressive income tax.
    • Gradually phase out the pension-fund retirement system as we know it, starting with Social Security privatization but moving eventually to breaking up the other large pools of retirement savings, even huge public-employee funds, and converting them into individualized accounts.
    • Withdraw the federal government from a direct role in housing, healthcare, assistance to the poor and many other long-established social priorities, first by dispersing program management to local and state governments or private operators, then by steadily paring down the federal government’s financial commitment.
    • Restore churches, families and private education to a more influential role in the nation’s cultural life by giving them a significant new base of income — public money.
    • Strengthen the hand of business enterprise against burdensome regulatory obligations, especially environmental protection, by introducing voluntary goals and “market-driven” solutions.
    • Smash organized labor.

    Later in the piece, Grieder boils it down even further: “Dismantle the common assets of society, give people back their tax money and let everyone fend for himself.” It’s an oversimplification, obviously, but it’s also a frighteningly accurate summary of Bush’s domestic policy. I guess the question that plagues me is: How did this agenda become the guiding light for America’s evangelicals? How did a Church founded on Christ’s ministry become united behind a political ideology that elevates market forces over justice and mercy? Do we so completely lack imagination and understanding of history that we’ve concluded that this is the best we can do?

    Grieder concludes:

    I do not believe that most Americans want what the right wants. But I also think many cannot see the choices clearly or grasp the long-term implications for the country. This is a failure of left-liberal politics. Constructing an effective response requires a politics that goes right at the ideology, translates the meaning of Bush’s governing agenda, lays out the implications for society and argues unabashedly for a more positive, inclusive, forward-looking vision.

    Perhaps it could be modified slightly and still retain some of its weight:

    I do not believe that most Christians want what the right wants. But I also think many cannot see the choices clearly or grasp the long-term implications for the country. This is a failure of the evangelical church. Constructing an effective response requires a theology that goes right at the ideology, translates the meaning of Bush’s governing agenda, lays out the implications for society and argues unabashedly for a more graceful, just, and merciful vision.

    Just doing my part for the cause.

  • Bomb the World

    Bomb the World

    Given my general musical tastes, one of the oddest birds in my CD collection is Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Ten years later it still gets a good bit of play in my house, mainly because of Michael Franti’s voice and his witty, literate, progressive lyrics. “Television” and the title track are both classics. And “Satanic Reverses” (can’t find the lyrics online) is more appropriate now than in ’92. (How many hip-hop artists can say that?) In ’94, Franti formed Spearhead, one hell of a roots-based band, and has remained politically engaged. “Bomb the World” is his response to recent events.

  • Eight Dollar Magazines

    I never buy eight dollar magazines. Ever. On principle. Even the really tempting ones like Paste that come with those nifty CD samplers. Which is why it’s so odd that, tonight, I bought an eight dollar magazine. But I didn’t really have any choice in the matter, because, well, The Believer might just be the coolest damn magazine I’ve ever seen.

    A small sampling of the contents of The Believer Vol.1, No.1, March 2003, 127 pages:

    • “Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard! A Call for a New Era of Experimentations and a Book Culture That Will Support It” by Heidi Julavits
    • “The Most Pre-Protested Would-Be War in History” by Marc Herman
    • “Badlands and the ‘Innocence’ of American Innocence” by Jim Shepard
    • “Magical Realism: A Short, Loose History”
    • “A Conversation between Salman Rushdie and Terry Gilliam”
    • “An Interview with Beth Orton“
    • “An Interview with Kumar Pallana“

    So what are you waiting for? Go subscribe already! A magazine this interesting won’t be around for long — at least not without our support. (Oh yeah, and go subscribe to Beyond while you’re at it.)

  • Deep South

    I spent the long Easter weekend in Monroeville, “The Literary Capital of Alabama.” It earned its moniker by virtue of being the home of Nell Harper Lee and the setting of her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. (Gregory Peck came to town for the local film premiere. I’ve seen pictures.) A young Truman Capote was also known to roam its streets on occasion, as was my wife, who grew up there and whose family still calls Monroeville home. Miss Nell was invited to our wedding, actually. She didn’t come, but, as I recall, her sister sent a nice note.

    After spending the last decade or so transplanted in various locales throughout the South, I feel pretty comfortable calling Monroeville a typical deep South town. It’s filled with nice folks and big churches. It’s got a Wal-Mart and a Rite-Aid, a McDonald’s, a Hardees, and a Burger King. Two courthouses fill the town square (the old one is now a museum), and the air smells of azaleas and paper mills. It also has that Old South segregation — unofficial, of course. Most of the whites who can afford to, send their kids to the private Academy — the new “white flight,” you could say. According to the 2000 Census, about 25% of Monroe County’s residents live below the poverty level and only 55% of those over the age of 16 are employed (that last one’s a complicated statistic, I know). Just over 40% of the population is African-American. I can only guess how closely all those figures are linked. But I seldom see that side of Monroeville.

    We were married at the Baptist Church — not because anyone in the family attends there (they’re mostly Presbyterians and Methodists), but because it was the only one large enough to hold all of the guests. I kept my nose out of the arrangements, so I don’t have an exact figure, but I clearly remember standing up there, looking out over the deep rows of pews and the hundreds of strange faces as my bride walked towards me. Quite a sight. Then I remember being whisked away to the reception, which was held beneath an impressive encampment of rented tents in the back yard of a restored Victorian home. If you’ve seen Sweet Home Alabama and remember the wedding that wasn’t to be, then you can probably picture it. My midwestern family and Yankee friends from back home had never seen anything like it. Several of them still call it the “Big Party in Alabama.”

    “The Party” was, of course, paid for by my father-in-law, the honorable small town doctor who reduced my wife to tears at our rehearsal dinner by stepping up to the microphone and delivering flawlessly Steve Martin’s monologue from Father of the Bride:

    I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. A boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say “I do.” I was wrong. That’s getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition. I know. I’ve just been through one. Not my own. My daughter’s. Annie Banks-MacKenzie. That’s her married name. MacKenzie. I’ll be honest with you. When I bought this house seventeen years ago, it cost me less than this blessed event in which Annie Banks became Annie Banks-MacKenzie. I’m told that one day I’ll look back on all this with great affection and nostalgia. I hope so.

    You fathers will understand. You have a little girl. An adorable little girl who looks up to you and adores you in a way you could never imagine. I remember how her little hand used to fit inside mine. How she used to sit in my lap and lean her head against my chest. She said that I was her hero. Then the day comes when she wants to get her ears pierced and she wants you to drop her off a block before the movie theater. Next thing you know she’s wearing eye shadow and high heels. From that moment on, you’re in a constant state of panic. You worry about her going out with the wrong kind of guys, the kind of guys who only want one thing–and you know exactly what that one thing is because it’s the same thing you wanted when you were their age.

    Then she gets a little older and you quit worrying about her meeting the wrong guy and you worry about her meeting the right guy. And that’s the biggest fear of all because then you lose her. And before you know it, you’re sitting all alone in a big, empty house, wearing rice on your tux, wondering what happened to your life.

    See, that’s one of the perks of marrying into the South. In all of the weddings I’ve attended up north, I’ve never seen anything that cool. That gentle, soft-spoken man put himself on display, but managed still to turn the spotlight on his daughter on her day. That’s the part of Monroeville that I see. The part where cousins drive you out onto the property they manage for a day of catfishing. The part where friends take you for a morning horseback ride and let you spend the day in their camphouse. It’s Utopian. Kind of.

    One of my best friends is writing his dissertation on the intersections of race and class in Southern literature. I’m hoping that, by the time he finishes, he’ll have some advice for me, something that will cure me of the paralyzing ambivalence I feel whenever I visit Monroeville. I tend to slip quietly into a reserved resignation when there. I smile politely at the jokes and find excuses to leave the room when talk turns to politics. It seldom seems worth the effort to me then. Pass the pie, please.

  • A Good Read

    The only way to be in the world was to write himself there. His thoughts and words were dying. Let him write ten words and he would come into being again.
    — from Don DeLillo’s Mao II (p. 204)

    I’ve been reading quite a bit lately. I tend to go in fits and starts, alternating between binges on books and on films, my twin addictions. Given a choice between the two, I’d take the books. No doubt about it. Reading is a richer, more intimate experience, demanding more from the audience and offering greater rewards in return. On the plane Saturday, flying back from Fort Lauderdale, the woman sitting beside me noticed my book and recognized in me something of a kindred spirit. She asked me about the author, jotted down his name, then offered a quick review of her latest read. Wallace Stegner. Can’t remember the title. “I like people with an intellectual curiosity,” she told me. “I wish more people had it.”

    When I was studying for my comprehensive exams, I often felt like I was training for a marathon. It required the same discipline and exhausting effort. 100-150 pages a day. Everyday. Type up the notes. Check it off the list. Memorize and move on. I’m grateful for that experience now, but I thought it might kill me at the time. I had to take one of them twice, actually — a major disappointment and a story in itself. But I finally got through it all, and it was worth it. On good days, I even feel qualified to hold an opinion.

    On Saturday, on that plane, I was reading Illuminations, a collection of “Essays and Reflections” by Walter Benjamin, the influential, early-20th century German literary critic. In the first essay, “Unpacking My Library,” Benjamin exposes himself as another of my kin. Describing the ideal “Bookworm” and his meticulously acquired, obsessively organized library, he writes:

    For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector — and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be — ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting.

    Back to the books.

  • Children of Heaven (1997)

    Children of Heaven (1997)

    As an antidote to the American media, lately I’ve been spending my precious down time with films from the Middle East. Quick tangent: Long Pauses attracts an odd assortment of readers — undergraduates looking for “Benito Cereno” papers to steal, disenfranchised Christians seeking fellow travelers, and film buffs, mostly. For those of you not in the latter group, let me just say that, for the last decade or so, Iran has produced many of the world’s most remarkable films and filmmakers. Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi, and Majid Majidi, to name just a few, are among a select group of active directors who consistently meld craftsmanship, beauty, honesty, and a vital social-political voice. For more info, check out my friend Acquarello’s invaluable site, Strictly Film School.

    Majidi’s Children of Heaven is a sweet little film that I can’t help but compare to two of my all-time favorites: Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955). Like De Sica’s classic of Italian Neo-Realism, Children of Heaven concerns a hard-working father who wants only to provide for his wife and children, but who is trapped in a world that seems determined to frustrate him. Like Ray, Majidi tells his story from the low-angle perspective of the children, a boy, Ali, and his younger sister, Zahra. The plot turns on Ali’s having lost Zahra’s only pair of shoes and on their efforts to recover them, which are often pathetic but never overly sentimental. Majidi must surely have been thinking of Ray’s original Apu (Subir Bannerjee) when he cast Amir Farrokh Hashemian as Ali, for the two share that wide-eyed yearning on which the success of both films depends. (As a strange aside, both boys also remind me a great deal of my oldest nephew.)

    Like his predecessors, Majidi shoots on location and employs non-professional actors, which lends the film an urgency often lacking in Western productions. But it’s also quite beautifully filmed, contrasting stunning images of Tehran’s superhighways, mansions, and high rises with its alleys, markets, and elementary schools. Children of Heaven would be a great rental for any of you who might otherwise be reluctant to enter the “Foreign Films” aisle. Most reviews in the popular press have described it as “heartwarming,” which it certainly is, and it also delivers a deliriously tense finale. While the film lacks the explicit political critique of something like Panahi’s The Circle (banned by Iranian officials) or Kiarostami’s Close-Up, it offers a wonderfully told story, and it also performs a service that is terribly important right now: Our hearts should be warmed to the people of the Middle East, the people who are (or who soon will be) hiding out under the devastation of our bombing campaigns.

    (P.S. I realize that that last sentence smacks of stereotypical bleeding-heart liberalism. But, well, sometimes that’s a good thing.)

  • Until the End of the World

    Until the End of the World

    I usually use the “Song of the Moment” to promote music that readers might not hear otherwise. So why U2? I’m just stuck on “Until the End of the World” right now, and I’m not sure why. It has nothing to do with politics (although I’ve certainly admired many of Bono’s recent statements). And I never even got around to buying Achtung Baby. I think it’s because I’ve had Angels in America on the brain lately, and the production we saw blared late-80s, early-90s U2 during the scene changes. Yep. That’s gotta be it. Enjoy.

  • News from the Front

    Tonight, I listened to Shane Claiborne tell stories about Baghdad. He’s taller than I expected (6′ 3″, maybe) and skinnier and younger. I mean, I knew he was young, but after reading his diaries for the last few weeks I somehow expected him to carry the weight of his experience in his skin. He’s just a kid, though — a couple years younger than I am, in fact. Looks like that skater kid who annoys you at the mall. The one with the flared pants and chunky glasses who you avoid making eye contact with. Shane had the pants and the glasses, along with a light brace around his chest that restrained his left shoulder. The one he dislocated while riding at high speed through a militarized zone on the road from Baghdad to Amman. The one he dislocated while bombs fell in every direction. The one he dislocated while his friends’ skulls cracked open beside him.

    Shane is a local boy — a graduate of Maryville High School who went off to college in Philadelphia a few years ago and decided to stay. He and several friends committed to spending five years together in community, living Christ’s example in an inner-city neighborhood. After his talk tonight I told him that I was glad he was home safe, that I had prayed for him. Then I thanked him for being one of those voices that has brought me comfort in recent months, when I have felt so alienated from so much of American religion. With typical grace, he smiled and said, “That’s the struggle, isn’t it? At some point you have to stop complaining about the Church and start being the Church.” The Simple Way, they call it.

    Shane left for Baghdad a few weeks ago as part of a Christian Peacemaker Team, in cooperation with Voices in the Wilderness. He went, he told us, with two goals in mind: first, to comfort the people of Iraq, showing them the other face of America, and second, to document that experience so that it could be shared with everyone willing to listen. I was deeply discouraged to hear him confirm my worst suspicions. Whenever they fought to bring specific humanitarian crises to the attention of reporters, the international media would soon be on the scene, asking questions, conducting interviews. Shane’s one experience with the American media — a live interview on one of the morning news programs — was cut off soon after he began answering the first question: “How does it feel to be considered a traitor in your own country?” A quick sidenote: one of the crises that they experienced was the bombing of the Baghdad market. Shane visited the scene the next day, and tonight I held a small part of a civilian vehicle that was incinerated in the attack, immediately killing all of its passengers.

    He had plenty of stories to share, many of which are posted in his diaries. There’s the one about the thirteen year old girl whose birthday party he attended. She wished for “Peace” as bombs blasted the horizon, an image that I would dismiss as cheap sentimentality in a film, but not in life. There’s the one about the bombs that explode before impact, spraying uniformly sized cubes of shrapnel into homes and families — the cluster bombs that we promised we wouldn’t use this time. (Shane has photos of those cubes, scraped from the bloodied walls of apartments near his camp.) There’s the one about the well-spoken (in English, that is) Iraqi doctor who stitched Shane and his friends back together after their accident, refusing payment. He asked only that they tell the world that the Americans had bombed their smalltown hospital three days earlier.

    My favorite story was of an Iraqi Christian who Shane met during a worship service. I didn’t realize that there were so many Christians in Iraq — upwards of one million, he told us. After a service, this man and Shane were discussing the war, and the man asked, “Do Americans support this war?” “Some do, but there is growing opposition.” “And the church?” Shane said that his heart sunk when he heard that second question. “Well, most do not, but some parts of the Church do support the war.” “Not Christians,” the man said, startled. “Yes, Christians.”

    “But, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’”

    What I love about this story and about this man is that his mind could not reconcile such a gross contradiction. It was impossible for him to imagine a Christian Church that imagines disaster and that accepts Bush’s heresy of redemptive violence as so many segments of ours have. He is such a wonderful reminder of the catholicity of Christ’s church and of how powerful it is despite our best efforts to castrate it.

  • New and Improved

    With more than one hundred html documents, nearly three hundred images, and thousands upon thousands of words, Long Pauses was getting a bit unwieldy. If I’ve done this correctly, the redesign will help in a number of ways.

    • CSS — God bless Cascading Style Sheets. My main goal in this whole endeavor was to make better use of CSS, giving me site-wide control of formatting. More than a hundred pages and not a single <font> tag to be found. It’s a thing of beauty. I originally planned to design everything with CSS, even abandoning nested tables, but there were just too many browser issues. One of my earlier designs absolutely exploded in Netscape 4. This one is a good compromise, I think. Not bad for an English major, eh?
    • Variety — That gray background was getting old. This design, as you’ll see in the coming weeks, allows me to change the entire look of the site in about two minutes. Should be fun. So, if you don’t care for the current Long Pauses banner (bonus points if you can name that film), be patient. It will change often.
    • Content — I also wanted to continue paring down the design, focusing more of my efforts on the content rather than flashy images. I’m hoping that you’ll find the new format more readable, and it should print more accurately, too.
    • Spring Cleaning — Revisiting every page gave me a much-needed opportunity to fix broken links, check spelling, and clean up fat code. At times I was also tempted to revise history — to edit some of the writing that no longer seems quite as insightful or clever as I once imagined it to be — but I fought the urge. The only links I didn’t check are those from my blog to external sites. I’ve always assumed that most of them would break. It’s just the nature of this beast.
    • Blogosphere — Since I launched Long Pauses, the Internet, along with many other media and traditional journalism, have been reshaped by blogging. This new design reflects that change to some extent. My blog now looks and functions more like others, including the addition of permalinks (Karen!). I decided against making it interactive, though, for several reasons that aren’t really worth sharing.
    • Experimentation — Long Pauses will always be a blank canvas, of sorts. If I were able to draw or paint or sculpt or create in other ways, I probably wouldn’t spend nearly so much time sitting behind a computer. But I can’t, so I do. Hopefully it’s worth the effort.

    So, what do you think? I’m guessing that an assortment of bugs and CSS quirks will reveal themselves over the next few days. Let me know if you stumble upon any. Unfortunately, blog updates will continue to be few and far between for the next week to ten days. Things are a bit hectic around here.

    Thank you for reading, and thank you especially to everyone who has sent kind notes over the last few days, asking for updates. I genuinely appreciate it.

  • Snippets

    When asked by Michael Cunningham (author of The Hours) about one of my favorite scenes in Angels in America — the moment when the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg delivers the Kaddish for Roy Cohn — Tony Kushner had this to say:

    Forgiveness is a very complicated thing. It certainly became, as I wrote Perestroika, the chief issue because it became a big issue in the world, starting with perestroika, and all of these sort of democratic revolutions that were going on, not just in Eastern Europe, but also in Latin America for instance, where people really had to ask themselves, “Can you let go of the past?” Can you forgive somebody that’s done something really, really terrible to you? It’s undertheorized and underdiscussed in the Left. We don’t really have a morality that encompasses it, because Christian morality, which is a complete forgiveness, seems emotionally inadequate to most people. It’s an act of that kind of forgiveness; it’s something that most people aren’t capable of doing. And it also seems unjust in a way.

    After finally seeing Angels performed last fall, I left the theater thinking, “I’ll be damned. I never realized that these plays are about grace.” I wonder how Kushner would respond to that, particularly if he knew what kind of mystery that word holds for me. I hope that he would be encouraged. Along similar lines, Charlie Rose once asked him about “spirituality in America.” Kushner replied:

    I’m very ambivalent and undecided and confused about it. I’m a genuine agnostic. I don’t know, but I think that as we approach the millennium, it becomes clearer and clearer that there are features of human experience that the Left has traditionally not touched upon, including a sense of the miraculous and a sense of the magical. And as the Left develops in the face of whatever kind of world we’re looking at now, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the spiritual has to be factored in. The spiritual has to be examined in a new way. We don’t know how to do that yet, but we’re working toward that.

    That was in May, 1993. I wonder if they’ve made any progress.

  • Kushner on Bush

    Tony Kushner on President Bush and military intervention in Iraq:

    It’s very hard for me to ever say that I think unilateral military action on the part of United States can be a great thing at this point. The idea of the United States armed forces going in and suppressing and controlling a population of any sort is so fraught with history. . . . The minute we start dropping bombs on anybody, everybody feels very good for five minutes. And there is a fantasy sense that we’re still the number one country on earth because we can go in there and kick this person, and we forget we’re talking about this completely decimated country that was annihilated [a few] years ago and has never rebuilt.
    — from an interview with Craig Lucas on January 20, 1993.

    Yep. 1993. He was talking about that President Bush. I’ve just begun working through Tony Kushner in Conversation, edited by Robert Vorlicky. Here’s another interesting tidbit. Turns out that the Reagan administration wasn’t all bad. Kushner describing a federal grant that helped to fund the writing of Angels in America:

    The application for it was very honest. I said I was going to write a play about gay men and Mormons and Roy Cohn, sent it in to the federal government under Reagan, and thought, this will come back immediately with no money attached. Then they gave us this huge check. . . . It was Washington money with an eagle stamped on the check. So I felt, when I was writing it, that it was taxpayers’ money, and I do think that had some impact on the play’s scope.

    I wonder if Jesse Helms — the homophobic, anti-NEA Helms of old; not the kinder, gentler, post-Bono, pro-AIDS relief Helms — ever found out.

  • Frontline

    I watched the address last night and got exactly what I expected. As an aside, I don’t understand why the President’s staff informs the media of what he will be saying hours before he says it. I guess it is just more time for the administration to disseminate its message.

    I watched a fantastic installment of Frontline last night called, The Long Road to War. The first half hour was devoted to a political biography of Saddam, the second segment dealt mostly with the ’91 Gulf War, and the final bit addressed the Clinton and Dubya years. I’m so glad I caught it because it helped fill in a lot of holes for me. It was also nice to get the story from a relatively objective source, which was then supplemented with original interviews with prominent Iraqi officials and neo-cons like William Kristol and Richard Perle, who offered a fascinating peek inside the Hawk mentality. Here’s a helpful chronology from Frontline’s Website.

    Some interesting facts (that were news to me):

    Saddam’s relationship with the CIA goes back to the early-60s, when he was an up and coming enforcer (torturer/killer) for the Bath Party. The CIA helped them overthrow the existing government, which was pro-Soviet, and Saddam slowly rose through the ranks until he deposed his mentor in 1979. To inaugurate his regime, Saddam, at a formal dinner, had several of his best friends removed from the room and executed. Video footage of the dinner (which was shown on Frontline) was also broadcast throughout Iraq to let the people know what kind of a leader they now had. An odd moment: you can see Saddam crying after he gives the orders. Even in the 1960s, by the way, Saddam had a separate library devoted to Stalin. Nice.

    One interesting segment dealt with the feud between Saddam and Bush 41. All commentators, American and Iraqi alike, agreed that each man had disastrously misjudged the other. Bush made the regrettable mistake of making it personal — calling out Saddam by name — and in the process he did nothing but elevate Saddam’s status in the Middle East. Not only was Saddam taking on the United States, but he was now actually taking on the President himself. What a hero. Saddam, for his part, assumed that Bush would never actually attack him. After being supported by America throughout the 80s during his war with Iran and in his suppression of the Kurds, Saddam guessed that Bush would never risk American lives in the Iraqi desert.

    The big revelation for me was learning about the massive mistakes that we made at the end of the Gulf War (and that were strangely well-intentioned). After beating down the Iraqi army and destroying most of Saddam’s Republican Guard, our forces planned to eliminate what remained of enemy opposition. Powell, who was on the scene and who was disturbed by what he was seeing (on Frontline they showed footage of American helicopters gunning down retreating soldiers), Powell called Schwarzkopf and suggested that they call it off. Schwarzkopf passed the recommendation onto the White House, who went along with Powell. Rather than risk more American lives and needlessly kill more Iraqis, a truce was declared and Schwarzkopf was sent alone to sign off on Iraq’s terms of surrender. Here’s where it gets interesting.

    The Iraqis asked for permission to fly their helicopters. Knowing that we had destroyed most of their roads and bridges, Schwarzkopf agreed. Then, the Iraqis asked for permission to fly their armored helicopters. Again, Schwarzkopf agreed. Why did the Iraqis need those helicopters? Both in the North (the Kurds) and in Baghdad itself (Shia Muslims), opposition forces were rising up to depose Saddam — just as Bush had hoped! What did we do about it? Well, after allowing Saddam’s troops to use their armored helicopters, we just threw up our hands and said, “We did our job. Now it’s up the Iraqi people to deal with Saddam.” Tens of thousands of resistance forces were wiped out while our military looked on from a safe distance, forbidden to intervene.

    I’m really frustrated by the frequent comparisons of Saddam to Hitler — Saddam is contained, after all — but the footage of the crushed uprising was eerily similar to what I saw in The Pianist this weekend. Young men were dragged on the ground and shot point blank in the back of the head. Women and children had no choice but to put their belongings on their back and step in line. Everyone fought for bread and water. Bush didn’t act until several weeks later, when Saddam turned his attention to the Kurds. We set up and protected relief camps that were filled with Kurdish refugees, but by then the resistance had been quashed and Saddam was firmly in power again. Several interviewees said that, had America intervened, even for only a few days, Saddam would have been ousted by his own people.

    I also enjoyed the program because it dealt explicitly with the divide in the Republican party between what they called the Neo-Reaganites and the Practicalists. The divide has created an interesting tension in Dubya’s administration. On one side are folks like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who have been pushing Bush toward war with Iraq since well before 9/11; on the other are Bush 41 and Powell, who warned the President months ago that he would never get support for war from the U.N. The Hawks versus the Diplomats. I was well aware of this divide, of course, but the show cast it in a new light. I have more sympathy for the Practical thinkers, especially for Powell, who has been dutifully fighting an honorable diplomatic battle that he has always known would never amount to more than ceremonial political maneuvering. But I have to admire (in a sick, sick way) the Machiavellian efficiency of the neo-cons, who exercise such remarkable control over affairs. That they’ve managed to do it under the flag of “Christian Providence” is just forehead-slapping.

    I have to admit that some of the administration’s attitudes toward Saddam make more sense to me now. I am so ready to see his reign brought to an end, and to think that that will happen without actual military force is, at best, idealistic, at worst, hopelessly naive. But I’m still horrified by the prospect of our looming war because I genuinely believe — and the Frontline special only reinforced this belief — that our administration honestly thinks that it will be stage one (or maybe stage two, after Afghanistan) in a military-supported, imperial quest to democratize the world. Talk about naive.

  • Rilke’s “The Man Watching”

    Less than an hour until President Bush’s national address, and I’m too tired, too frustrated, and too stunned to think. I know that there’s not much lower on the blog food chain than posting a poem without comment, but, well, a friend sent this to me today, and it’s been a source of welcomed comfort. And besides, great poetry speaks for itself.

    The Man Watching
    by Rainer Maria Rilke

    I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
    so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
    that a storm is coming,
    and I hear the far-off fields say things
    I can’t bear without a friend,
    I can’t love without a sister

    The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
    across the woods and across time,
    and the world looks as if it had no age:
    the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
    is seriousness and weight and eternity.

    What we choose to fight is so tiny!
    What fights us is so great!
    If only we would let ourselves be dominated
    as things do by some immense storm,
    we would become strong too, and not need names.

    When we win it’s with small things,
    and the triumph itself makes us small.
    What is extraordinary and eternal
    does not want to be bent by us.
    I mean the Angel who appeared
    to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
    when the wrestler’s sinews
    grew long like metal strings,
    he felt them under his fingers
    like chords of deep music.

    Whoever was beaten by this Angel
    (who often simply declined the fight)
    went away proud and strengthened
    and great from that harsh hand,
    that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
    Winning does not tempt that man.
    This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
    by constantly greater beings.

    Okay, one comment . . . I’ll never write a line this good:

    the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
    is seriousness and weight and eternity.

    Read it out loud. There is so much dramatic force in those three nouns. The stanza, up until that point, is almost romantic — filled with images of a storm and a mythical landscape. But then you hit the word “seriousness,” and the tone, even the tempo of the line changes. The light, fluid reading is brought to a halt, and we’re forced to confront those words, individually and in relation to one another: “seriousness and weight and eternity.”

    A perfect poem for today, I think.

  • A Bush Win?

    Mark Levine, an assistant professor in the History Department at UC – Irvine, has written a piece for Alternet that asks a simple but important question: How will the Left respond to a “Bush Wins” scenario? In other words, what will happen to the energies and coalitions formed around the anti-war movement this year when American forces depose Hussein quickly and with relatively few casualties — few enough, at least, to avoid swaying public opinion back home? What will happen when Bush successfully establishes something resembling (superficially, at least) a democratic-like regime in post-war Iraq? Remember that the general opinion of the American populace is that we have already achieved an overwhelming victory in Afghanistan — a victory against terrorism, a victory for democracy. Problem solved. Time to move on.

    The political Left, having established its most public position in decades, could be heading toward another in a series of significant embarrassments. With war now only days away (I assume), parts of the anti-war movement seem to be — and I say this with some hesitation — relishing the prospect of disaster. Today, Antiwar.com posted a link to this article, which promises “thousands of U.S. fatalities.” Surely the Left — which, you must admit, expresses its concerns in moral terms as often as the President does — can stake out its position on stronger grounds than, “Well, when thousands of Americans die, then, then the whole world will finally see how misguided Bush really is.” Surely the Left can hope for better than a bloody “I told you so.”

    Levine writes:

    the reality is that if the war is quick and a U.S.-occupation established effectively, progressive forces need to accept the removal of Hussein as a great opportunity to build democracy and justice in Iraq, whatever the actual motives of the Bush Administration. The social and political forces unleashed by the end of decades of Hussein’s murderous rule will not easily be penned in by a US-sponsored show-democracy; but whether these forces use a reopened public sphere or turn to violence to respond to the likely betrayal depends in good measure on how adroitly the world progressive community can lay fast but deep roots in Iraq.

    Levine argues that the Left should be working overtime now “to inoculate the American people against what the Carnegie Endowment for Peace has already labeled the ‘mirage’ of democracy that will likely be planted in Iraq after a short war.” Doing so is a tricky game, though, especially when American attention spans are busily occupied by American Idol and Anna Nicole. Harkening back to the finest hours of the New Left, Levine suggests that our greatest potential might lie in student movements. But he warns that the Left’s credibility also rests on its ability to refocus “on the larger world systems which have produced toxic conflicts such as Iraq, Sudan, Colombia and the Congo. In other words, taking steps toward a more holistic approach to peace and justice.” I hope I get to see it happen.

    But, of course, the Left continues to hold out hope for peaceful resolution, and the White House waffling of the last few days has offered occasional glimpses of promise. The best initiative for peace that I’ve found was offered this week by Sojourners – Christians for Justice and Peace. After meeting with Tony Blair and Clare Short, an ecumenical delegation of church leaders worked with Sojourners to draft a 6-point “Alternative to War for Defeating Saddam Hussein.” It seems remarkably pragmatic and just to me — a welcomed relief after months of naive anti-war sloganeering. Instead of annotating the proposal, I would encourage you to read it for yourself and pass it along.

  • God Bless Norman Mailer

    My wife is convinced that I’m the only person in America who is grateful that C-Span 2: Book TV comes standard with basic cable service. (If the shoe fits . . .) On Saturday night, I flipped it on and was pleased to find Norman Mailer answering questions from a large audience, doing so with his typical blend of blustery arrogance and spot-on insight. He was there to discuss The Spooky Art, his latest collection of essays, but I tuned in too late and only caught the last few questions. Two of them caught my attention.

    First, a man near the back of the room stood up and told Mailer that he felt “cheated.” His comment was something along the lines of, “While I’ve enjoyed your latest turn toward novels, I hate that I’ll never get to read Mailer on Clinton or Mailer on Bush, because I really cherish Mailer on Kennedy and Mailer on Nixon.” The second question-asker was more to the point: “Mr. Mailer, what is your opinion of American fascism?” I was pleasantly surprised by Mailer’s response. After first pointing out that he had, in fact, written about Clinton — and after taking several well-deserved jabs at the former President for the despicable connections between his policy in Kosovo and a certain Oval Office blowjob — Mailer suggested that, instead of addressing the issue with less care and time than it obviously deserved, he would defer to a speech he had recently delivered, which would soon be published in The New York Review of Books. From the shift of tone in his voice, it was obvious that Mailer was genuinely troubled by recent events, that he had paid them considerable attention, and that he was generally satisfied with the resulting speech.

    Only in America is now available online, and it is the best piece on Bush, Iraq, religion, and America’s political troubles that I’ve read. As I’ve mentioned around here often, I’ve been a champion of Mailer’s political commentary since first reading Armies of the Night and gasping at his prescient analysis of the Cold War. Sure, he can be as subtle as a sledgehammer, but the combined weight of his experience, intelligence, and confidence strike me with a welcomed force. (As an Onion headline put it this week, “Fox News Reporter Asks The Questions Others Are Too Smart To Ask.”) Man, I’d love to see an 80-year-old Mailer hand Bill O’Reilly his ass.

    One of that remarkable generation of Jewish-American authors (along with Miller, Malamud, Salinger, Bellow, and Roth, among others), and as its most explicitly political member, Mailer is, of course, intimately familiar with the long-standing and oft-troubling relationship between America’s faiths in God and country. Bush’s triumphalism has not gone unnoticed. For Mailer, Bush’s brand of “Flag Conservatism” is a natural and deeply disturbing by-product of America’s schizophrenia.

    And, of course, we were not in shape to feel free of guilt about September 11. The manic money-grab excitement of the Nineties had never been altogether free of our pervasive American guilt. We were happy to be prosperous but we still felt guilty. We are a Christian nation. The Judeo in Judeo-Christian is a grace note. We are a Christian nation. The supposition of a great many good Christians in America is that you were not meant to be all that rich. God didn’t necessarily want it. For certain, Jesus did not. You weren’t supposed to pile up a mountain of moolah. You were obligated to spend your life in altruistic acts. That was still one half of the good Christian psyche. The other half, pure American, was, as always: beat everybody. One can offer a cruel, but conceivably accurate, remark: To be a mainstream American is to live as an oxymoron. You are a good Christian, but you strain to remain dynamically competitive. Of course, Jesus and Evel Knievel don’t consort too well in one psyche. Human rage and guilt do take on their uniquely American forms.

    I love Mailer because of moments like this — blunt-force observations with remarkable consequences. Here’s another, where he takes a cliched symbol — in this case, plastic, which has been neutered of its metaphoric value at least since The Graduate — and wrestles from it more significance and poetic delight than I imagined possible:

    Marketing was a beast and a force that succeeded in taking America away from most of us. It succeeded in making the world an uglier place to live in since the Second World War. One has only to cite fifty-story high-rise architecture as inspired in form as a Kleenex box with balconies, shopping malls encircled by low-level condominiums, superhighways with their vistas into the void; and, beneath it all, the pall of plastic, ubiquitous plastic, there to numb an infant’s tactile senses, plastic, front-runner in the competition to see which new substance could make the world more disagreeable. To the degree that we have distributed this crud all over the globe, we were already wielding a species of world hegemony. We were exporting the all-pervasive aesthetic emptiness of the most powerful American corporations. There were no new cathedrals being built for the poor— only sixteen-story urban-renewal housing projects that sat on the soul like jail.

    The current tenor in D.C. seems to reflect a more general suspicion of intellectualism that is seeping across the country (much to the delight of cable news architects). Well, I’m going to say something that will sound terribly elitist to many: phrases like “that sat on the soul like jail” matter — and not just because of their content. Mailer knows precisely what effect that 64-word sentence — the one that begins “One has only to cite” — will have on his readers, just as he knows precisely how much dramatic weight will be carried by each of those seven monosyllabic words that end the paragraph. As do all good readers and writers. Despite the claims to the contrary made by Bush’s defenders, a love of and attention to words cannot be so easily divorced from a love of and attention to ideas, which is why I choke on my fist every time I hear America’s most public evangelical reduce the complex machinations of foreign policy, morality, and theology (most of all) down to good and evil. Is his world really so simple? Is his mind?

    Mailer continues (and in a manner that makes me think he’d enjoy Long Pauses):

    “Flag conservatives” like Bush paid lip service to some conservative values, but at bottom they didn’t give a damn. If they still used some of the terms, it was in order not to narrow their political base. They used the flag. They loved words like “evil.” One of Bush’s worst faults in rhetoric (to dip into that cornucopia) was to use the word as if it were a button he could push to increase his power. When people have an IV tube put in them to feed a narcotic painkiller on demand, a few keep pressing that button. Bush uses evil as a narcotic for that part of the American public which feels most distressed. Of course, as he sees it, he is doing it because he believes America is good. He certainly does, he believes this country is the only hope of the world. He also fears that the country is rapidly growing more dissolute, and the only solution may be—fell, mighty, and near-holy words—the only solution may be to strive for World Empire. . . .

    From a militant Christian point of view, America is close to rotten. The entertainment media are loose. Bare belly-buttons pop onto every TV screen, as open in their statement as wild animals’ eyes. The kids are getting to the point where they can’t read, but they sure can screw. So one perk for the White House, should America become an international military machine huge enough to conquer all adversaries, is that American sexual freedom, all that gay, feminist, lesbian, transvestite hullabaloo, will be seen as too much of a luxury and will be put back into the closet again. Commitment, patriotism, and dedication will become all-pervasive national values once more (with all the hypocrisy attendant). Once we become a twenty-first-century embodiment of the old Roman Empire, moral reform can stride right back into the picture. . . .

    More directly (even if it is not at all direct) a war with Iraq will gratify our need to avenge September 11. It does not matter that Iraq is not the culprit. Bush needs only to ignore the evidence. Which he does with all the power of a man who has never been embarrassed by himself. Saddam, for all his crimes, did not have a hand in September 11, but President Bush is a philosopher. September 11 was evil, Saddam is evil, all evil is connected. Ergo, Iraq.

    I feel obliged to comment on those snippets, but mostly I just want them to be read. Mailer slips so easily into flag conservative “logic” here — coloring it all with much needed irony — which makes his moments of genuine outrage all the more powerful. Mailer on post-war Iraq (as an aside, it’s good to see that he still holds impotent liberalism in such high contempt):

    Real democracy comes out of many subtle individual human battles that are fought over decades and finally over centuries, battles that succeed in building traditions. The only defenses of democracy, finally, are the traditions of democracy. When you start ignoring those values, you are playing with a noble and delicate structure. There’s nothing more beautiful than democracy. But you can’t play with it. You can’t assume we’re going to go over to show them what a great system we have. This is monstrous arrogance.

    “This is monstrous arrogance.” Consonance. I love it. I wonder if we’ll ever again have a president who values the life of the mind, one who can recognize or even define consonance. Take it home, Norman:

    The need for powerful theory can fall into many an abyss of error. I could, for example, be entirely wrong about the deeper motives of the administration. Perhaps they are not interested in Empire so much as in trying in true good faith to save the world. We can be certain Bush and his Bushites believe this. By the time they are in church each Sunday, they believe it so powerfully that tears come to their eyes. Of course, it is the actions of men and not their sentiments that make history. Our sentiments can be loaded with love within, but our actions can turn into the opposite. Perversity is always ready to consort with human nature.

  • American Triumphalism

    First, read Ashes to Alvin by Ann Lamott, whose name has come up so often in my life recently that I feel downright compelled to go get some of her books.

    Hats off to Rev. Fritz Ritsch, pastor of Bethesda Presbyterian Church, for his wonderful op-ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post. Taking to task both President Bush — who has consistently and brazenly appropriated bad theology in an effort to forward his agenda — and those portions of the American church that have graciously accepted that agenda without criticism, Ritsch likens Bush’s self-image to that longed-for “Davidic ruler — a political leader like the Bible’s David, who will unite [the American church’s] secular vision of the nation with their spiritual aspirations. All indications are that they believe they have found their David in Bush — and that the president believes it, too.” Ritsch distinguishes between this attitude of “American triumphalism” and the alternative message that should be emanating from our churches: “grace, hope and redemption — the truth of Biblical faith.”

    For months now, as I’ve grown increasingly concerned by the administration’s evocations of Providence as a justification for war, I have often accused Bush of a type of Fundamentalism that is difficult for me to distinguish from the “Evil” that he is so determined to eradicate. Ritsch echoes these concerns, but does so more eloquently than I’ve been able to manage:

    In the aftermath of 9/11, people came to church in droves, looking for larger meaning, and then they left again, frustrated. That’s a problem churches need to address, not least because our failure to give them what they were looking for may have lent potency to presidential theology. When people were searching for meaning, the president was able to frame that meaning. In a nation of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a secular society, a president who can confidently quote scripture is that man.

    The president confidently (dare I say “religiously”?) asserts a worldview that most Christian denominations reject outright as heresy: the myth of redemptive violence, which posits a war between good and evil, with God on the side of good and Satan on the side of evil and the battle lines pretty clearly drawn.

    War is essential in this line of thinking. For God to win, evil needs to be defined and destroyed by God’s faithful followers, thus proving their faithfulness. Christians have held this view to be heretical since at least the third century. It is the bread-and-butter theology of fundamentalists, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian.

    In contrast, the Judeo-Christian worldview is that of redemption. Redemption starts from the assumption that all of humanity is flawed and must approach God with humility. No good person is totally good, and no evil person is irredeemable. God’s purpose is to redeem all people. Good and evil, while critical, become secondary to redemption.

    I can’t seem to get that “one-eyed man is king” line out of my head. It occurred to me again and again as I read the cover story in this week’s Newsweek, “Bush and God.” Everything about that article rings so true to me — its portrait of evangelical training (weekly Bible studies, “quiet times”) and “personal relationships” with God. There’s the sense that fluency in the lingo — “laying-on of hands,” being “called” to service, having a “walk” — is no longer an inevitable by-product of the contemplative life, but an end in and of itself. Somewhere along the line, American Christian “culture” seems to have superseded Christianity, diluting its call for humility and forgiveness and replacing them with strict codes of acceptable behavior (which, it seems to me, are decidedly white, suburban, middle class, and Protestant). It’s all so terribly frustrating and confusing.

    I so want Bush to be the Christian President that many of my friends claim him to be, but then I read articles like this, in which he makes such ridiculous comments. Asked about the 30 million marchers who protested against his policies a few weeks ago, he responded:

    “Of course, I care what they believe. And I’ve listened carefully. I’ve thought long and hard about what needs to be done,” he said. “And obviously some people in Northern California do not see there’s a true risk to the United States posed by Saddam Hussein. And we just have a difference of opinion.”

    As if “California liberals” were the only Americans upset right now. It’s difficult for me to believe that he has “listened carefully” when he has refused to even meet with leaders of his own church, who were counted among the protesters.

  • Strange Bedfellows

    After twenty-three straight days of precipitation, the sun is finally shining again on East Tennessee. It’s the type of day that demands grilled something-or-other for dinner. And beer. Not a lot of beer, mind you, but definitely some beer. Cold beer.

    Mmmmmmmm . . . cold beer . . .

    In Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer calls himself a member of the “Conservative Left,” which makes more and more sense to me as I spend more and more time arguing with friends about this unnecessary, but apparently inevitable, war. The cable news networks would like for us to believe that America’s political dialogue can be reduce to a simple dichotomy: conservative versus liberal. That sure would make things easier, wouldn’t it? Right/wrong. Black/white. Good/evil. Problems solved.

    In fact, we’re being led by a cabal of neo-conservatives in the White House (who trade in a strange language that melds religious fundamentalism with liberal interventionism), aided by a sad lot of liberal moderates in Congress (both Republicans and Democrats alike), who cower under the political pressures applied so efficiently by the administration. As a result, the only American politicians who are making any sense right now are those at the extreme ends of the spectrum, those who actuallystand for something. I can’t decide which side is making the stronger anti-war argument at the moment, but I applaud them both. John Duncan, my traditionally conservative Representative to the House, gave a great speech earlier this week that had him quoting Robert Byrd of all people.

    It is a traditional conservative position to be in favor of a strong national defense, not one that turns our soldiers into international social workers, and to believe in a noninterventionist foreign policy, rather than in globalism or internationalism. We should be friends with all nations, but we will weaken our own Nation, maybe irreversibly, unless we follow the more humble foreign policy the President advocated in his campaign.

    Finally, Mr. Speaker, it is very much against every conservative tradition to support preemptive war. Another member of the other body, the Senator from West Virginia, not a conservative but certainly one with great knowledge of and respect for history and tradition, said recently, “This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This upcoming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.”

    If only the anti-war movement could manage to unite those two poles. That would be a fun march.

  • Beau Travail (2000)

    Claire Denis’s Beau Travail is a remarkable film. A loose adaptation of Billy Budd, it transposes Melville’s sea voyage to a French foreign legion outpost in East Africa, where the Claggart character (Sergeant Galoup, played brilliantly by Denis Lavant) plots the inevitable destruction of Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin), who stands in for Billy. Melville’s novella provides only a rough narrative framework, though. Denis seems less concerned with that epic, allegorical showdown between good and evil — although in one remarkable image, her camera looks down on the men as they circle one another, spiraling closer and closer until they are face to face in a tight close-up — and less concerned, also, with the Christian iconography that punctuates Melville’s prose.

    Instead, Beau Travail foregrounds the concerns of much contemporary Melville scholarship and would probably make a wonderful teaching tool because of it. So, whereas post-colonial critics have, in turn, criticized/praised Melville for his appropriation of racist stereotypes (or his subversion of those stereotypes, depending on which side of the debate each critic stands), Denis situates Melville’s moral dilemma in an explicitly post-colonial situation, complicating further the relationships between European and African, Christian and Muslim, and calling into question the political value and motivations underlying those relationships. In several memorable scenes, the legionnaires exhaust themselves in senseless and utterly futile chores — digging holes, moving stones, repairing unused roads — all the while Africans look on, curious and silent but unmistakably present.

    Likewise, the homoeroticism of Melville’s texts is displayed in beautiful shot after beautiful shot of the legionnaires in training. At one point, they perform a training exercise in which each man throws his body at a partner, ending in an embrace that is both menacing and welcomed. Appropriating the tropes of stereotypical “basic training” sequences (see Full Metal Jacket), Denis brings to the fore those odd narratives that write gender onto our fighting men. She makes particularly good use of Galoup, whose voice and memories narrate the film. Galoup is not an embodiment of pure evil and jealousy like Claggart. Instead, he seems to be motivated by repressed desire — desire for authority and acceptance, but also, the film suggests, homosexual desire. Lavant is just a marvel throughout Beau Travail. As I recall, we hear him speak only in a stylized voice-over (there might be a few exceptions of diegetic speech), but he communicates with perfect clarity through his body language. The film’s final sequence might be impossible to explain, but it felt to me like another of those moments of grace that I’m constantly seeking.

    Beau Travail is also just a beautiful film to look at — stunning images cut together using a poetic logic that is part Eisenstein montage, part neo-realism, part Tarkovsky mysticism. The directors who most often came to mind were Kiarostami, Dumont, and Malick, though I never would have guessed beforehand that those three would ever be found sitting around the same table. A couple useful links:

  • And In University News . . .

    It’s a small blogoshpere after all. Thanks to this week’s cover story in the Metro Pulse, I’ve discovered that Instapundit (a.k.a. Glenn Reynolds), one of the world’s pioneer and most heavily-trafficed bloggers, spends his days in an office just a few yards from my own. How odd. And after I’ve spent so much energy lamenting Knoxville’s isolation. Reynolds recently took on a more high profile blogspot at MSNBC.com, where he offers a counterpoint to Eric Alterman’s Altercation.

    And some good news: My dissertation proposal was accepted this morning without revisions by my committee, who were all remarkably complimentary of my work. I’ve spent the last five years waiting anxiously to be discovered — waiting for everyone in the department to realize that I have absolutely no idea what in the hell I’m talking about. Apparently, I’ve fooled them all.

  • Beautiful

    I had planned to post a rambling personal narrative today, describing in minute detail my particular experiences in Saturday’s anti-war demonstrations. But when I sat down to it, the idea seemed a bit too self-indulgent, even by blog standards. Here’s the long and short of it: On a rain-drenched day that never climbed out of the mid-40s, an estimated 500-650 Knoxvillians lined the city’s busiest street, stretching in a line of protest across the front face of its largest shopping center. There was a handful of long-hairs and radical-looking college kids in attendance, but most — maybe as much as 95% of the crowd — looked as though they had carpooled to the event in minivans. Hardly a ragtag cabal of jobless anti-Americans, as some would characterize the peace movement. It was pretty beautiful.

    One anecdote: During the two-hour protest, only four or five passersby felt compelled to hurl profanity at us, with maybe three times that many making their voice be heard by way of creative hand gestures. At one point, though, a nicely dressed man in a luxury car came to a complete stop, rolled down his windows, pointed to the group of Muslim women standing beside me, and yelled for them to “just go home.” I was stunned and began muttering under my breath, “I can’t believe that happened. I can’t believe that just happened.” Apparently I was saying it pretty loudly, because the woman beside me — a beautiful older woman wearing a head scarf and a “Human Shield” sign — grabbed my elbow, looked up at me, and said, “It’s okay. This is our country, too.” I can’t get her face out of my head — so kind and welcoming, well-worn and somewhat resigned. That’s the memory that will stick.

    It was such a treat to go home that afternoon and end temporarily my cable news boycott. On every channel I saw footage of global dissent. As many as 30 million people gathered throughout the world’s cities, small and large, from Alaska to Antarctica to India and all points in between. Pretty cool.

    Some notes from around the globe:

    “What astonished everyone who marched on Saturday – let’s settle on a million, shall we? – was the apparently limitless variety of those with whom they shared the roads of central London. Not just a diversity of banner-bearing interest groups but of individuality, brought into focus by the single underlying feeling that gave this day its resonance.”
    — Richard Williams

    “On streets of beauty, the warm people inched along or stood and chanted and laughed against a war and for peace and their warmth made the winter temperature irrelevant.”
    — Jimmy Breslin

    “This is not an America we recognize. When we recited the pledge of allegiance in our long-ago scout meetings, it was to a different America, one with different principles. It was an America that lived by the rule of law. An America that was a land of compassion and brotherly love. An America that took seriously a promise to be a good neighbor, both across the street and around the globe. Sure, some of it was myth but we believed in the heart of the story. Others envied our good fortune to be born in America, and we nodded with recognition of that truth.”
    — Nancy Capaccio

    “The whole world is against this war. Only one person wants it,” declared South African teenager Bilqees Gamieldien as she joined a Cape Town antiwar demonstration on a weekend when it did indeed seem that the whole world was dissenting from George W. Bush’s push for war with Iraq.
    — John Nichols

    “But on Saturday, Feb. 15, I emerged from the largest demonstration I’ve ever attended in Dallas with more hope than ever before that our situation will improve. It wasn’t just that 5,000 or so people from one of the most right-wing regions of the world, the former home of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the fictional J.R. Ewing and many others who represent cold-hearted, selfish economic and political policies, had braved the wind and cold and threats and everything else to make a statement to Bush Inc. that a ‘blood for oil personal revenge world domination military boost’ war against economic sanctions – wracked Iraq was unacceptable.”
    — Jackson Thoreau

  • Duck and Cover

    I’ve heard the soundbite hundreds of times over the years, memorizing subconsciously its particular pauses and inflections. Not until the weeks following September 11, though, did FDR’s most memorable message resonate in any meaningful ways for me. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He was speaking, of course, within the context of our Great Depression, but that notion — that America must choose to never surrender its defining characteristics to irrational fear — has since been rightly applied to a host of economic, social, and political concerns.

    The peculiar dangers of “fear” — its threat to democracy, humanism, rationality, diplomacy, spirituality — have been on dramatic display in recent days. I’ve instituted a boycott of all 24-hour news channels in my home, but last night, as I burned off my frustrations at the local Y, I was deeply disheartened by what I saw on the TVs that surrounded me. Connie Chung’s silent lips mouthing the latest terror alerts. “Survival experts” providing how-tos on terrorism preparedness. Home Depot employees reporting raids on their duct tape and plastic sheeting inventories.

    I’m trying so hard to avoid surrendering to cynicism, to have sympathies for those who are genuinely afraid right now, to understand why Our Christian President (TM) has felt it necessary to whip us into such a frenzy of excitement and paranoia. As I’m prone to do, my thoughts have lately been drifting toward the 1950s and its obsessive/compulsive fixation on communism. I can practically hear Senator L. B. Johnson, his Texas drawl demanding that we respond to Sputnik before the Russkies take control of the atmosphere and unleash catastrophic weather on us (which he really did). I can hardly flip on the news without hearing Bert the Turtle reminding me to “duck and cover” at the first sight of a nuclear flash.

    The lines between fact and parody are blurring in frightening ways. Look at this bit from The Onion:

    Saddam Enrages Bush With Full Compliance
    WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush expressed frustration and anger Monday over a U.N. report stating that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is now fully complying with weapons inspections. “Enough is enough,” a determined Bush told reporters. “We are not fooled by Saddam’s devious attempts to sway world opinion by doing everything the U.N. asked him to do. We will not be intimidated into backing down and, if we have any say in the matter, neither will Saddam.” Bush added that any further Iraqi attempt to meet the demands of the U.N. or U.S. will be regarded as “an act of war.”

    And now this from yesterday’s White House press briefing with Ari Fleischer:

    And I have a document — I’ll be happy to release this to you — about the fact that Iraq has not complied, they cover up their compliance in seeming efforts to comply, such as their statements about unconditional U-2 flights, which we now know from the letter that was sent by the Iraqis, so-called conditional became — so-called unconditional became conditional as soon as the ink was dry on their letter. It was never unconditional to begin with; it always had conditions attached.

    It’s all just too much at times, which, I guess, is precisely their point. Lull us into exhausted submission. I heard a report on NPR a couple weeks ago about the effect of impending war on our economy. The general consensus among those interviewed was, “Well, if we’re going to blow up Baghdad, I wish we’d go ahead and get it over with. I’ve got stuff to buy and episodes of American Idol to watch.” I don’t use this term lightly — and I’ll probably retract this in a day or two — but it all stinks of fascism to me.

    On Saturday, I’ll be standing at the corner of Morrell Road and Kingston Pike, smack dab in front of Knoxville’s largest shopping center and busiest intersection, participating in a peace vigil. I’m of two minds about it. I’m not so naive as to think that my presence will change the minds of those drivers zooming by, conducting their Saturday morning errands. But I’m excited by the idea of taking part in a global protest, and I also like the idea of being a living representative of that significant section of Christian America that feels increasingly alienated by an administration that so frequently claims our interests.

  • Therefore, I Am

    Therefore, I Am

    The tunes have begun to roll in. A few weeks ago I offered to send copies of my mix CDs to anyone who returned the favor. The new Song of the Moment — Jim O’Rourke’s “Therefore, I Am” — is a surprise from disc 1 of a 2-disc set sent by David in Edmonton. This track is just so rock and roll. I love it. A little advice: the louder you play it, the more transcendent it becomes.

  • The Sweet Sting

    The Sweet Sting

    With nothing better to do last Saturday night, my wife and I found ourselves watching Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused again. Aside from my lingering obsession with Sixteen Candles, I’ve never been a big fan of teen comedies. Most are cut-and-paste collages of cliches and bad pop that are too busy romanticizing high school to remember how much it sucked and how damn interesting the typical teenager really is. I’m not being ironic this time. Seriously.

    The best compliment I can give Dazed and Confused is that it makes me deliriously nostalgic. My American Heritage calls “nostalgia” a “bittersweet longing,” which gets it just about right, I think. I’ve never been one to miss high school. I would guess that in the last ten years I’ve spoken to three people from my class. But I do occasionally find myself longing for something from those days, something lacking in the day to day management of adult life.

    Joanna and I chatted about this as we watched Dazed and Confused Saturday night (as adults are wont to do — we chat), and we decided that that something is an “intensity of experience” only found amidst the stew of anxiety and wonder that is adolescence. Think about it. When you’re in high school, whose car you ride around in on Friday night matters. And who sees you in that car matters even more. It’s not trivial, although I think we adults like to console ourselves by pretending it is. In fact, I’m not sure that anything I’ve done in the last ten years has mattered as intensely as almost everything mattered when I was fifteen. Dazed and Confused gets that just right, which makes it the only teen movie that, well, that matters.

    Watching it again, I was really struck by this conversation, which is also just right.

    Mike: I’m serious, man, we should be up for anything.
    Cynthia: I know. We are. But what? I mean, God, don’t you ever feel like everything we do and everything we’ve been taught is just to service the future.
    Tony: Yeah, I know. It’s like it’s all preparation.
    Cynthia: Right. But what are we preparing ourselves for?
    Mike: {glib} Death.
    Tony: Life of the party.
    Mike: {glib again} It’s true.
    Cynthia: You know, but that’s valid. Because if we’re all gonna die anyways, shouldn’t we be enjoying ourselves now? You know, I’d like to quit thinking of the present, like right now, as some minor, insignificant preamble to something else.
    Mike: Exactly. Man, that’s what everyone in this car needs is some good ol’, worthwhile, visceral experience.

    Sure, it’s a bit carpe diem-ish — and I usually recoil at anything that smacks of Robin Williams sentimentality — but there’s also something wonderfully freeing in that existential naivety. That “insignificant preamble” stuff has come up often in my conversations with other well-adjusted adults lately. Odd.

  • A Mid-’80s Mix

    A Mid-’80s Mix

    Between roughly April 1987 (a month before my 15th birthday) and June 1988 (a month after my 16th), I did all of the following:

    • Traveled to Europe, where I had my first real crush.
    • Received an electric razor as an unexpected present from the folks.
    • Made my one failed attempt at traditional high school popularity (J.V. football).
    • Attended my first arena rock concert (Rush’s A Show of Hands Tour)
    • Got my first real job (“sandwich artist” at Subway)
    • Began blowing all of my money on audio equipment (including my first CD player).
    • Attended my first stadium rock concert (Pink Floyd’s Delicate Sound of Thunder Tour).
    • Got my driver’s license.

    The March mix is a collection of songs that now leave me paralyzed with nostalgia. As best as I can remember, these are the some of the more important songs that accompanied my life that year, when everything, it seemed, was so painfully important. This one could easily have grown to a 2- or 3-disc set. Conspicuously absent are: Peter Gabriel, Sting, King Crimson, INXS, The Police, Robert Plant, The Clash, Yes, Roger Waters, Indigo Girls, Howard Jones, Led Zeppelin, and Boston (yes, Boston).

    • “Litany (Life Goes On)” by Guadalcanal Diary
    • “Pretty in Pink” by The Psychedelic Furs
    • “Subdivisions (Live)” by Rush
    • “Medicine Show” by Big Audio Dynamite
    • “Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode
    • “Dear God” by XTC
    • “Welcome to the Occupation” by R.E.M.
    • “Abacab” by Genesis
    • “It’s Over” by Level 42
    • “One Slip” by Pink Floyd
    • “Just Another Day” by Oingo Boingo
    • “Cool for Cats” by Squeeze
    • “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” by The Pogues
    • “Another Tricky Day” by The Who
    • “Give Blood” by Pete Townshend
    • “The Working Hour” by Tears for Fears
    • “Bullet the Blue Sky” by U2
  • Un Chien Andalou

    Un Chien Andalou

    Over the years, I have, of course, heard and read a great deal about Luis Bunuel’s surrealist masterpiece, Un Chien Andalou (1929), but until Friday I had never actually seen it. Created in collaboration with Salvador Dali, Bunuel’s first film is most remembered today for one of its opening sequences, which cuts between shots of a razor blade, a woman whose left eye is being forced open, and a thin line of clouds passing before a full moon. Just as we’ve become convinced that the cloud and moon will serve as a symbolic gesture, comfortably eliding the violence implied by the sequence, Bunuel cuts to a close-up of the eyeball being sliced open. The scene still works, more than seven decades later.

    My favorite discussion of the sequence can be found in Virginia Carmichael’s Framing History, where she compares Bunuel’s film to E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, a novel that attempts to make sense of the early Cold War years. There’s a remarkable and disturbing moment in the novel when the title character reaches over to burn his young wife with a car cigarette lighter. Instead of showing the horrible scene, though, Doctorow (through his narrator) attacks the reader, writing:

    Shall I continue? Do you want to know the effect of three concentric circles of heating element glowing orange in the black night of rain upon the tender white girlflesh of my wife’s ass? Who are you anyway? Who told you you could read this? Is nothing sacred? (60)

    Carmichael on the scene:

    What seems merely gratuitous cinematographic aestheticism on Bunuel’s part becomes something more radically critical in a political sense when considered as [Daniel’s] symbolic discovery of the function of symbolism in history to mask the horrors of reality—realities such as Stalin’s purges, the U.S. government’s knowing exposure of government workers to high-level radiation. (143)

    So much of contemporary filmmaking is about misdirection, about exciting the emotions and disregarding the consequences. I appreciate Bunuel’s film for its refusal to let us off so easily, though I must admit that, as with so much of Modernist surrealism, I found myself often stunned by the images but unwilling to engage in the intellectual gamesmanship necessary to decode them. I’m sure that great articles have been written that carefully trace contours through the fifteen minute film, but I couldn’t find the motivation to do so myself.

  • February Mix

    February Mix

    • “How It Should Be (Sha Sha)” Ben Kweller
    • “Sister Cry” The Jayhawks
    • “Mata Hari Dress” Marlee MacLeod
    • “Two Knights and Maidens” Crash Test Dummies
    • “Pyramid Song” Radiohead
    • “Rest of Yesterday” Alana Davis
    • “The Way We Get By” Spoon
    • “Indian Summer Breakdown” Varnaline
    • “There She Goes Again” The Velvet Underground
    • “Moving” Supergrass
    • “It’s Alright, Baby” Komeda
    • “Bitterblue” Cat Stevens
    • “A Common Disaster” Cowboy Junkies
    • “Aunt Avis” Widespread Panic and Vic Chesnutt
    • “Crumbs” Jonatha Brooke
    • “Uninhabited Man” Richard Thompson
    • “California” by Phantom Planet
    • “The Past and Pending” The Shins
    • “Why I Lied” Mychael Danna (The Sweet Hereafter)