I’m on a quest for the perfect pop song. “Bathsheba Smiles” isn’t quite perfect, but it comes awfully darn close: an infectious melody, a sing-along chorus, a simple chord progression, and a sweet lyric. Heck, you could almost dance to it.
What do you think? It’s time to make this blog interactive. Nominate your favorite pop song and tell me why it’s perfect. I’ll post your responses as I get them.
Dir. by Tsai Ming-Liang
Images: This is a beautiful film. Tsai and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme combine warmly saturated interiors with cold, stark, exteriors (particularly in the Paris scenes). The film is composed almost entirely of static, medium shots, each typically lasting more than a minute. Favorite images: Hsiao Kang drying his hands in a movie theater lobby, the mother sharing her misery with a fish, and the beautiful close-up of Chen Shiang-chyi in the final moments. Actually, the entire final sequence is one of the most stunning I’ve ever seen (so stunning, in fact, that I decided to not spoil it with a screen capture).
• • •
Charles Taylor opens his fine review of What Time is It There? with the question, “How do you praise the films of Tsai Ming-Liang without making people dread the prospect of going to see them?” The temptation when writing about a film such as this is to lose oneself in an intellectual dissection of its most explicit and admittedly somber concerns: alienation, sorrow, mourning, loss. Hardly the stuff of a Saturday matinee. Tsai has certainly invited such thoughtful analysis throughout his career — I even took him up on the offer after watching Vive L’Amour — but doing so with What Time is It There?, which I’ve now watched on each of the last three days, seems almost dishonest. I’m reluctant to reduce this film to just another Antonioni-like lament (though those echoes surely remain) because doing so would require that I neglect the joy and humor of the film and would force me to too casually equate sadness with irreparable decay, loneliness with nihilism. The film, I think, carefully avoids this trap, so I’ll try to do the same.
Tsai’s favorite everyman, Lee Kang-sheng, returns as Hsiao Kang, a Taipei watch vendor mourning the sudden death of his father. In an early scene, Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi), a beautiful young woman preparing for a trip to Paris, convinces Hsiao Kang to sell his own watch to her. Their brief encounter inspires in him a sense of longing, which he acts upon by systematically resetting clocks to Paris time and by watching, again and again, Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. While Hsiao Kang pines away in Taiwan, Shiang-chyi wanders through Parisian cafes and Metro stations, adrift in the rituals of loneliness: listening silently to the late-night sounds of an upstairs neighbor, longing for contact with random strangers. To this strange pairing, Tsai adds Hsiao Kang’s mother (Lu Yi-ching), a woman paralyzed by grief who also seems to find relief only through ritual, both religious and domestic. The images of her preparing her dead husband’s meals are complex and contradictory, beautiful and devastating.
And it is precisely that tension between beauty and sorrow, a hallmark of great drama at least ever since Aristotle defined “catharsis,” that I would offer in response to Taylor’s opening question. Implicit in Tsai’s critique of an increasingly disjointed, impersonal modern world — and, really, hasn’t this position lost some of its novelty over the last century and a half? — there exists ample evidence of the possibility of honest human communion. What Time is It There?, more than any of the other Tsai films I’ve seen, takes delight in that possibility, marking avenues of escape from alienation by way of the film’s style if not necessarily by its content.
The mother is as good a starting point as any. In one of the film’s most touching scenes, she dresses formally for a private dinner, accompanied only by her husband’s empty chair at the table. Like Hitchcock’s “Miss Lonelyhearts,” she raises a toast to her imagined companion before breaking into tears. It’s a trademark Tsai moment: his camera remains static throughout the long take, framing his subject in a medium long shot; the actress works alone in silence, her movements measured and deliberate. The tendency of most critics, myself included, has been to reduce these signature scenes to meditations on Modernist dismay, but doing so too easily dismisses the honor and wonder of mourning. Hsiao Kang’s mother is not a desperate individual adrift in an irrational, alienating world (or some such cliché); instead, she is like the rest of us, one who has obviously known love and companionship and now, suddenly, must make sense of loss. Tsai’s style, which is often rightfully compared to the silent cinema, frees us to experience the full brunt of attendant emotions: agony, nostalgia, despair, desire, hope.
The wonderful paradox at the heart of this film is that, while exposing the dehumanizing conditions of contemporary life, it simultaneously celebrates the breadth and value of all emotional experience. Shiang-chyi, for instance, certainly suffers profound loneliness and longing in Paris, but those perfectly legitimate feelings are accompanied also by a joyful freedom and curiosity. The first time I watched What Times is It There? I was confused by an enigmatic scene in which she climbs a flight of stairs to investigate her noisy neighbors and becomes distracted by a hallway window. By the third viewing, I was anticipating the moment because it so perfectly characterizes her recognizably conflicted nature. She desires contact with others, of course, but she is also surprisingly content to explore the world on her own. Hsiao Kang is likewise a young man like so many of us, marked at times by deep despair — the image of him crying in his sleep rings more true to me than any other in the film — and at others by absurd humor. As I recall, I also didn’t laugh out loud until that third viewing, when the frequent critical comparisons of Tsai and Buster Keaton began to finally make sense. All three characters in What Time is It There? represent Tarkovsky’s ideal — those who are “outwardly static, but inwardly charged with energy by an overriding passion” — and that passion alone is reason enough to watch.
A friend from Canada wrote, asking what friends and neighbors in the States are feeling and saying to each other. This is how I responded.
I’ve been noticing a really odd disconnect between the American political climate as it’s depicted in the media (a too-easy target these days) and what I hear in typical conversations. Generally speaking, I think that most media outlets are slightly more liberal than the average American, which makes the media’s apparent disregard for the popular anti-war sentiment all the more frustrating (and borderline suspicious). Though estimates have varied wildly, something like 100,000 people gathered in Washington last weekend, and if I hadn’t actively sought out coverage, I wouldn’t have even known about it. In most major papers it was literally page 8 news.
I have also yet to speak to a single American who is adamantly in favor of war. Sure, a certain portion of the population will simply parrot the words of those politicians who they most respect — “You’re either for us or against us” — but that tendency is hardly exclusive to Americans. Instead, everyone I speak to is, at best, unsure of the President’s motives, and most are downright upset. Granted, I spend most of my time in a university environment, which also tends to be more liberal, but I have yet to detect anything like a swell of broad support for war. In the days following 9/11, most Americans wanted to fire back. Now, there seems to be a more healthy skepticism.
As an amateur political nut, I’m really intrigued by all of this. Bush and his buddies dug deep into the well of standard Republican tactics. They demonized an enemy (the axis of evil) in order to unite support, they reminded Americans of our “moral responsibility” to police the world, and they distracted us from traditional Democratic issues (social reform, health care, workers rights, etc.). Now, though, they’re obviously surprised to discover that their political rhetoric isn’t as stable as it was during the Cold War years. You can practically see it on Bush’s face. He says, essentially, “The U.N. won’t tell us what to do,” fully expecting every American to back up his claim. But a lot of us don’t, and now he’s stuck in quite a battle with France and Russia, frustrated that he even needs their input. I have no doubt that if a majority of Americans *really* wanted war, this UN resolution would be irrelevant.
The war issue is obviously really complex — I think there are some very compelling arguments for the ouster of Saddam — but I have no doubt that Bush’s motivations have always been largely political. War has always been a good Republican issue, especially leading into election season. But I think it might just backfire on him this time. I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday, when we have our midterm elections. If the Democrats maintain control of the Senate, which just might happen, then I think Bush’s saber rattling will go down in history as a political mistake.
I’ve come to take great delight in the stranger dissonances of everyday life. Last night, while waiting to be seated at Calhoun’s — which, by the way, really is the place for ribs in Knoxville — I was thrilled to hear Parliament’s “Chocolate City” come on the radio. Something about hearing these lyrics float, almost subliminally, through the restaurant struck me as unexplainably odd and wonderful. . .
And when they come to march on ya
Tell ’em to make sure they got their James Brown pass
And don’t be surprised if Ali is in the White House
Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasure
Richard Pryor, Minister of Education
Stevie Wonder, Secretary of FINE arts
And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady
Are you out there, CC?
A chocolate city is no dream
It’s my piece of the rock and I dig you, CC
God bless Chocolate City and its (gainin’ on ya!) vanilla suburbs
Can y’all get to that?
Gainin’ on ya!
Gainin’ on ya!
If America needs anything right now, it’s more P-Funk.
I live on the western edge of Knoxville, an area that, over the last twenty years, has been transformed from rural countryside into one of those middle- to upper-class, golf course and shopping mall suburbs that now populate so many American cities. I’m guessing that my friends in the older parts of town have not been greeted each day this week, as I have, by mass mailings from the Tennessee Republican Party, encouraging me to get out and vote. It’s a wise move. East Tennessee is the Republican stronghold of the state, and they know that the success of their two most prominent candidates — Van Hilleary for Governor and Lamar Alexander for U.S. Senate — depends largely on high turnout.
The piece that came in yesterday’s mail is pretty remarkable. The front of the four-section foldout features a full color photo of a tranquil lake, surrounded by trees just beginning the fall turn. Above and below the photo, in red and blue print, is the caption:
As soon as you vote. . .
A new day will begin in Tennessee.
Though I was only twelve at the time, I can still remember Reagan’s ’84 campaign, the one in which he called on America to wake up to a new dawn. In After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse (1999), James Berger sees that campaign typified in one of Reagan’s stump speeches. In the months leading up to the Los Angeles Olympics, Reagan would imagine a Vietnamese immigrant passing the torch to a black man, who would then pass it on to an 80-year old woman. “My friends,” Reagan would preach, “that is America.” But, of course, the problem with Reagan’s rhetoric was that his America was one founded on nostalgia and misdirection. Reagan’s speech, writes Berger, “alludes to the most traumatic events of the 1960s, the Vietnam War and racial turmoil, and eliminates all their traumatic content in an image of perfectly achieved social harmony.”
And now that rhetoric is back and in Tennessee. I get to read about Hilleary’s plans to “reform” education by giving financial incentives to the best performing schools (could it be that the failing schools actually need the money more desperately?) and by focusing his efforts on reading and math in the early grades (has anyone told him that American 4th graders read at a higher level than children in almost every other nation, and that literacy levels, in fact, begin to drop off in middle school?). I get to read about his promise to “jumpstart” our economy by stopping any proposed income tax (have I mentioned lately that Tennessee now has the most regressive tax structure in the country?).
A new day. Hurrah.
And I get this piece of crap in my mail on the same day that Paul Wellstone is killed in a plane crash. Last night, Charlie Rose reran an interview with Wellstone that he conducted in July, 2001, soon after the Senator announced that he would run for reelection. Wellstone was passionate, informed, and articulate. I didn’t realize that they still made politicians like that.
Note: The following was written for an issue of Findings devoted to common grace and contemporary culture. This piece is inspired by, if not specifically about, Waking Life.
• • •
Seeking “Holy Moments” at the Movies
“My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.”
— Andrei Tarkovsky
Midway through Richard Linklater’s Waking Life (2001) — a wonderful film that is equal parts documentary, animation, philosophical enquiry, and bildungsroman — a remarkable thing happens: Caveh Zahedi, an experimental filmmaker, launches into an impassioned defense of Andre Bazin, the French film critic most known for publishing Cahiers du Cinema and for inspiring the careers of Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer, among others. What most excites Zahedi is Bazin’s peculiarly Christian film aesthetic, his faith in the cinema as a medium uniquely capable of recording and revealing God’s active presence in our lives. Because God is manifest in all of creation, or so the argument goes, film by its very nature necessarily documents those manifestations, capturing them on celluloid or video and representing them to us in a darkened theater. For Bazin, the master filmmakers are those most adept at filtering out the mind- and soul-numbing white noise of life in the process, thereby offering us brief glimpses of the transcendent. Zahedi argues that, by revealing these “Holy Moments,” film should (though it seldom does) reorient our perspectives not only toward the arts but also toward the beautifully varied and complex creation in which we live. “We walk around like there are some holy moments, and there are all the other moments that are unholy,” he says, his hands gesturing wildly:
But, this moment is holy, right? Then, in fact, film can let us see that. It can frame it so that we see this moment: holy. Holy, holy, holy, moment by moment. But who can live that way? ‘Cause if I were to look at you and just really let you be holy, I would just stop talking. . . . I’d be open. Then I’d look in your eyes, and I’d cry, and I’d feel all this stuff, and that’s not polite. It would make you uncomfortable.
What follows are several minutes of silence as Zahedi and his companion do just that, deliberately engaging one another — and by extension the Waking Life audience — in a truly transcendent “Holy Moment.”
It is a remarkable scene for a number of reasons. Waking Life follows twenty-something actor Wiley Wiggins as he floats through dream-state conversations with a varied assortment of academics, artists, and travelers, each of whom offers some strategy for making sense of the world. Imagine Dante’s Virgil leading us by hand on a spirited voyage through the Inferno of an undergraduate liberal arts curriculum. Yet even in such an intelligent and joyful film — Roger Ebert has praised Waking Life for its ability to cleanse us of “boredom, indifference, futility and the deadening tyranny of the mundane” — the holy moment sequence stands out as both its most explicitly religious and its most deeply affecting. (And surely any Christian who has watched an American film in recent years can appreciate the welcomed novelty of said combination.) Here, Linklater successfully melds “theory and action,” an ongoing concern of the film, by providing a commentary on the potential contemplative and revelatory uses of film, while simultaneously modeling that process. As Zahedi stares at his friend, his eyes beginning to tear, Linklater cuts to a close-up of Wiggins, who we now discover is watching the scene in a movie theater just as we are. As our surrogate, Wiggins becomes suddenly alive to the strange, inarticulate experience of an encounter with Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. And with the proper orientation, this moment teaches us, so can we.
Working from certain assumptions about common grace — particularly, as Richard Mouw has written, the belief that “God also takes a positive interest in how unbelievers use God-given talents to produce works of beauty and goodness” (49) — I would like to follow Andre Bazin’s lead and propose that Christians take a more active and deliberate approach to the arts, in general, and toward film, in particular. Too often Christian commentary, most notoriously among evangelicals, has reduced “the movies” to morally bankrupt mindless entertainment from which we must be protected. Even those Christian critics who are obviously well-versed in matters of aesthetics seem disproportionably concerned with gleaning banalities from, or simply attaching relevant Bible verses to, the latest Hollywood pabulum. I would argue, instead, that the chief goals of the Christian critic are to inspire in film viewers a thirst for the transcendent by intentionally reorienting their expectations, and to equip them with the skills and knowledge necessary in order to become more fully engaged with the medium itself and with the cultures in which it has been produced. The same goals might also be transferred to all church leaders and “regular Christians” who are concerned with finding the proper place for the arts in their lives as God’s creatures among God’s creation. Seeking holy moments, then — like meditation, study, and isolation — becomes a process, a spiritual discipline that, through devotion and practice, can help us to “enter into a conscious and loving contact with God.”
The influential French film critic Serge Daney defined a “cinephile” as one “who expects too much of cinema.” By that standard, one might argue that a large segment of the church in America today is characterized by an unfortunate paradox: we do often expect too much of cinema in that we genuinely fear its corrupting influence, gladly denouncing it publicly when our sensibilities are threatened. And yet we also expect so very little of films, deeming them unworthy of display in our buildings, or discussion in our classrooms and Bible studies. Except on those rare occasions when a particular film is given the mysterious Christian Seal of Approval, we willingly surrender all of cinema to the secular world, choosing to remain silent in a global, century-long conversation with wide-ranging implications. This strikes me as odd, particularly considering that the film viewing habits of most Christians I know are not terribly different from the general population’s.
Our fear of the movies is not, of course, completely unfounded. The impact of violence and explicit sexual content on viewers, both young and old, has been well documented, for instance. But, with the proviso of St. Paul’s warnings against “passions and desires” of the flesh, I would suggest that our greater concern should be with the cinema’s uncanny ability to transform even the most enlightened audiences into passive consumers, a word with obvious moral, theological, and political implications. The Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, a devout Russian Orthodox, called this tendency “tragic”: “if art can stimulate emotions and ideas, mass-appeal cinema, because of its easy, irresistible effect, extinguishes all traces of thought and feeling irrevocably. People cease to feel any need for the beautiful or the spiritual, and consume films like bottles of Coca-Cola.” Instead of entering the New Releases aisle with only a checklist of objectionable words and situations in hand, we should also be consciously aware of our own thirst for “mindless entertainment,” a concept — at least as it is typically employed — for which I have yet to find Biblical precedent. As Richard Foster has noted, “Superficiality is the curse of our age,” and superficiality is precisely the stock and trade of the movies. Fortunately, we can combat this tendency by choosing to become actively engaged in the viewing process, which begins by learning something of how films work.
A grammar of filmmaking slowly evolved during the medium’s early decades, thanks in large part to the experiments of people like Louis and Auguste Lumiere in Paris, Sergei Eisenstein in Moscow, and D.W. Griffith in Los Angeles. Their various styles finally coalesced in what is typically called “standard continuity editing of the classical Hollywood cinema.” Nearly a century later, most of us now internalize these standards before we have even learned to read. Knowing the jargon of continuity editing — shot/countershot, dissolve, match on action, etc. — is useful in discussions, but is less important than becoming consciously aware of their general effect, which is to precisely direct the audience’s viewing experience, often with discomforting moral consequences.
The textbook example is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), which accomplishes the unthinkable by forcing us, midway through the film, to transfer our emotional allegiances from Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) to her murderer, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). For the first forty minutes, we experience the world of the film through Marion’s subjectivity, a feat that Hitchcock accomplishes by cutting constantly from close-ups of her face to medium shots of her surroundings. Through these “eyeline matches” we come to identify with Marion, quite literally experiencing her anxiety as she decides to leave town, and her terror when she wakes to the sight of a policeman’s face. Once at the Bates Motel, though, our perspective slowly shifts to Norman’s, the transition becoming complete when he peers at Marion through a hole in the motel wall. Now, instead of seeing the world through Marion’s eyes, we are staring at her, joining Norman in his voyeuristic thrill. The hand-wringing nervousness that we experience as Norman attempts to cover up his crime is testament to Hitchcock’s prowess as a master crowd-pleaser.
And it is also testament to just how easily films co-opt our imaginations, manipulating us into experiencing an intensity of emotion for characters and situations that are completely unworthy of our empathy. Offering as an alternative to this style Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), a film that refuses such manipulation by its combination of long takes and deep focus shots, Bazin writes:
Classical editing totally suppresses this kind of reciprocal freedom between us and the object. It substitutes for a free organization a forced shot breakdown where the logic of each shot is controlled by the reporting of the action. This utterly anaesthetizes our freedom. . . . It ‘subjectivizes’ the event in the extreme, since each moment or particle then becomes the foregone conclusion of the director.
Hence, in Psycho we become personally invested in the plights of, first, a thieving adulteress, then a psychotic murderer because Hitchcock has given us no other option. We have no choice but to become passive participants, simply along for the ride. (Not by coincidence, popular films are often compared to amusement park entertainments, a fact that Hitchcock would have found quite gratifying.)
Bazin’s critique is not unlike that leveled by fiction writers of the mid- and late-19th century, who reacted against the sensationalism of the popular sentimental novel by proposing a new brand of Realism. William Dean Howells could be describing any number of Hollywood blockbusters when he writes, “Let fiction cease to lie about life; . . . let it leave off painting dolls and working them by springs and wires.” Trained like Pavlov’s dogs to feel heroic when we see a low-angle shot of a movie star, or nostalgic when we hear a Frank Sinatra tune (regardless of whether or not we actually possess any genuine memories of his music), our ability to properly experience, process, and share authentic emotion tends to atrophy. Thomas Merton writes:
The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear, he doesn’t think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes clichés. . . . But to live in the midst of others, sharing nothing with them but the common noise and the general distraction, isolates a man in the worst way, separates him from reality in a way that is almost painless.
This “anaesthetized” way of life is perhaps the greatest threat facing the church today. While film is not the primary remedy, of course — the spiritual disciplines should be practiced intentionally — we need to recognize and exploit our body’s submersion in film culture, raising their expectations and training them to meditate, thoughtfully and spiritually, on the movies that they watch.
In a useful (and typically beautiful) analogy, Tarkovsky describes modern man standing at a crossroads, “faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of a blind consumer, . . . or to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, a way that ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large; in other words, to turn to God.” Tarkovsky is unquestionably cinema’s most eloquent and persuasive spokesman for the potential of film to render man’s soul capable of improvement. For him, as has been the case for so many of history’s saints and theologians, great art is a profound vehicle through which God offers brief glimpses of his unfathomable holiness. Film, for Tarkovsky, is like the bolt of lightning described by Calvin that illuminates the path of an unbeliever before plunging him back into darkness, still wandering but forever altered by the vision. “The idea of infinity,” Tarkovsky writes, “cannot be expressed in words or even described, but it can be apprehended through art, which makes infinity tangible.” This sentiment is echoed by Ingmar Bergman, who has claimed to make films because they allow him to touch “wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover.”
In a word, film is capable of offering that rare experience of transcendence. Though casually dismissed by postmodern critics as either biological (a rush of endorphins) or ideological (a ritual construct of dominant mythologies and passé metanarratives), the transcendent power of art has been a constant of human experience, sacred and secular alike. Speaking of his delight in music, Luther wrote that it makes it “possible to taste with wonder (yet not to comprehend) God’s absolute and perfect wisdom.” Friedrich Schleiermacher argued, like every good Romantic, that art gave him a “sense and taste for the infinite.” Calvinist historian Gerardus van der Leeuw wrote: “Every true work of art is in a sense religious. Every true work of art bears within itself the germ of self-abolishment. The lines yearn to be erased, the colors to pale. Every true art is experienced as the incarnation of what is further distant from us, and different.” Richard Foster has marveled at God’s sanctification of our imaginations: “He uses the images we know and understand to teach us about the unseen world of which we know so little and which we find so difficult to understand.” And St. Augustine often defended his excitement for beauty by citing Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes — His eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made.” Tarkovsky likewise makes explicit this connection between the Creator and His creation in the closing sentences of Sculpting in Time: “Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?”
My rhetorical strategy should be obvious here: I am deliberately blurring the boundaries that have grown up between film and the other artistic media, and am attempting to inject cinema into a theological discussion that began several centuries before the medium was invented. More specifically, I wish to elevate film onto the same plane on which Christian critics have gladly placed literature, music, and painting, for instance — that is, art forms through which God reveals His wisdom and in which He takes delight. In Celebration of Discipline, Foster enthusiastically encourages readers to study the plays of Shakespeare and the novels of Tolstoy, those works that “take up the central issues of life,” but Christians seldom expect a similarly enlightening experience from the movies that they watch. This can be attributed to a variety of reasons, most of them associated with the “business” of filmmaking. Ultimately, though, I am suggesting that any serious-minded, Christ-centered discussion of film will necessarily raise the question of taste, a field pocked with theological, sociological, and aesthetic landmines. For instance, Foster would argue, I assume, that a Christian is more likely to benefit from the study of John Milton than of Tom Clancy (and I would agree), but many in the church enjoy losing themselves in a military thriller and see no harm in doing so. Likewise, I believe that the typical film viewer is much more likely to experience a holy moment when contemplating Carl Theodor Dreyer, as opposed to, say, Michael Bay, but many Christians were inspired by the treacly jingoism of Pearl Harbor (2001). What is a Christian aesthetician or cultural critic to do?
Frank Burch Brown has contributed significantly to this discussion by reconceptualizing taste as a spiritual discipline. “What we can affirm, minimally,” he writes, “is that denial or restraint of the senses (not to mention the imagination) is not inherently superior to training the physical eyes to see and enjoy spiritually. And now more boldly: Because we are embodied souls, the physical senses can themselves be spiritual senses, when rightly used and enjoyed.” Brown’s emphasis here upon our behavior, on our need to train our senses in order to use them rightly, carries into his three-pronged definition of taste: aesthetic perceiving, enjoying, and judging. This model closely mirrors Foster’s guide to reading: understanding, interpreting, and evaluating.
Applying this methodology to a viewing of Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927), we would begin by noting how each individual apperceives, or “takes in,” the film differently. Aesthetic perception will inevitably vary because each viewer is biased by his or her own particular experiences and expectations. In one seat there might be a man who has never seen a silent film of any sort, while beside him sits a woman who instantly recognizes Dreyer’s deliberate disavowal of standard continuity editing and the influence of German Expressionism on his cinematography. The two viewers will, in effect, perceive very different films. This disconnect is most obvious today in the prominent debate over worship music. Brown, a composer and music scholar, suggests that rather than discarding Bach’s cantatas (to take one of countless examples), we should instead introduce and discuss them in our church classrooms, “just as one discusses (or hopes to discuss) theology and scripture.” The lesson to be learned here is the importance of actively developing our perceptive faculties so that our senses might become more finely tuned for spiritual purposes, rather than simply absorbing our tastes arbitrarily as if through osmosis — “liking” automatically what is generally liked by others in our social, economic, gender, and age groups.
But perceiving is only the first part of the process. Brown recounts St. Augustine’s boast in the Confessions of having overcome his emotional attachment to the music of the Psalms, which now allowed him to more fully appreciate and meditate upon the truth of the verse. This intellectual distance is a mistake, though, because those desired moments of transcendent inspiration “can transpire only if one can appreciate, enjoy, or be moved by what one is perceiving in the art.” Enjoyment, for Brown, is both spontaneous and carefully orchestrated by cues within the work. The Psalms, then, are so worthy of meditation because of their perfect coherence — their setting of divine content within rapturous rhythms and songs. In Passion, Dreyer transforms St. Joan into an icon of rigorous faith and integrity amid worldly oppression by cutting systematically between close-ups of her desperate face and slow tracking shots along the rows of her angry accusers. This harmony of form and function, a hallmark of all great art, will typically produce a more enjoyable affect. And conversely, when a dissonance arises between a work and its alleged purpose, we are much more likely to be disappointed. By comparison, Luc Besson’s The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) has been roundly criticized for appropriating Joan’s story of faith and conscience and setting it amid a glamorous, computer-generated, historical epic.
This final act of evaluation, of deeming Dreyer’s film better than Besson’s, is part of what Brown means by “judging.” A common mistake, though, is jumping too quickly to the making of appraisals before we have critically examined our own ability (or, more often, our desire) to properly perceive and enjoy a work of art. “We give a critical analysis of a book before we understand what it says,” writes Foster. Tarkovsky railed against this brand of soul-deadening apathy:
The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, ‘I don’t like it!’ ‘It’s boring!’
Tarkovsky’s hyperbole should, perhaps, be forgiven — he spent much of his shortened career defending his aesthetic to Soviet authorities — so that we might, without bias, wrestle with the consequences of his statement. For Tarkovsky, the thoughtless, knee-jerk resistance to art is just one symptom of a more general and increasingly prevalent spiritual malaise. Like Pascal, who reasoned that men are so unhappy because “they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber,” Tarkovsky recognized that, in our surrender to distractions, movies chief among them, we have sinfully distanced ourselves from earthly responsibilities.
While all Christians have been uniquely gifted, meaning that some more than others will be naturally predisposed to experiencing God’s transcendence through the arts, all have been commanded to hunger and thirst for righteousness, a command that extends to all areas of our lives. Rather than “mindless entertainment,” we should instead be seeking from the cinema what the church Fathers called Otium Sanctum, or “holy leisure.” The two concepts are diametrically opposed to one another: the former is an earth-bound escape from heavenly communion; the latter is the restorative peace that comes from seeking God’s truth. Otium Sanctum is what Benedictine monks pursue when they begin each day by praying Psalm 95 with its admonition: “Oh that today you would listen to His voice!” And it is what Richard Mouw is describing when he writes of common grace: “In a society that emphasizes the limitless possibilities of the individual self, it comes as a strange freshness to be confronted by an unfathomable God, indifferent to the petty, self-conscious needs that consume us.” Film, when rightly enjoyed, can offer holy moments such as this during which we are able to escape, even if only temporarily, from this “extraordinary egoism” into the freedom of God’s grace, experiencing anew the beautiful complexity of his creation and our selfless calling in it.
Iraq War Not Justified, Church Leaders Say
The heads of more than 60 Christian organizations issued a statement opposing a preemptive war on both moral and practical grounds. They included leaders of Bush’s and Blair’s own denominations — the United Methodist Church and the Church of England, respectively — as well as other major Protestant groups, Catholic men’s and women’s orders, humanitarian agencies and seminaries.
Evangelical Figures Oppose Religious Leaders’ Broad Antiwar Sentiment
In religious circles, the antiwar voices are vastly outnumbering the those in favor of a war. Forty-eight Christian leaders, including the heads of the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and the National Baptist Convention, an African-American denomination, have sent a letter to the president opposing military action.
U.S. Church Leaders Oppose Bush-proposed Iraq Pre-emptive Strike
We oppose on moral grounds the United States taking further military action against Iraq now. The Iraqi people have already suffered enough through more than two decades of war and severe economic sanctions. Military action against the government of Saddam Hussein and its aftermath could result in a large number of civilians being killed or wounded, as well as increasing the suffering of multitudes of innocent people.
Bishops toughen opposition to war
The government’s hopes of achieving consensus for a pre-emptive war against Iraq were dealt a blow last night when the bishops of the Church of England significantly hardened their opposition. In a submission to the Commons foreign affairs select committee, the bishops say: “To undertake a preventive war against Iraq at this juncture would be to lower the threshold for war unacceptably.”
Uniting Church plans civil disobedience over Iraq
“They’re not fanatics or anything like that – they’re just church people, farmers, business people, ministers, young people, old people, men, women just feeling grave concern and feeling somewhat powerless in the
face of all the saber-rattling that’s going on,” Reverend McCray said.
Fifty-one heads of American Protestant and Orthodox churches and organizations and of Roman Catholic religious orders today announced opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq. In a letter to President Bush, the church leaders acknowledged that “Mr. Hussein poses a threat to his neighbors and to his own people, [but] we nevertheless believe it is wrong, as well as detrimental to U.S. interests” to launch an attack on Iraq.
Minnesota Church Leaders Oppose War with Iraq
At the time of publication, the member denominations of the Minnesota Council of Churches who have publicly declared opposition to immediate war with Iraq include: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), the Episcopal Church (ECUSA), the United Church of Christ, and the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Other state councils of churches who have taken similar stands include those in California, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Dir. by Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Images: Hou cuts constantly between scenes set in contemporary Taiwan, which are in full color, and scenes from the film-within-the-film, which are a tinted black and white. This allows the director to be more traditionally “cinematic” in the filmed footage — beautiful shots of trees, prison hallways, light fixtures. Favorite images: the self-reflexive shots of the actors in costume posing for photos; all of the moments that reveal the emotional intimacy between Liang and Ah Wei; the amazing move from black and white back to color in the penultimate shot.
• • •
The first cut in Good Men, Good Women establishes several dichotomies that, over the next 100 minutes, are beautifully dismantled for explicitly political purposes. The film opens with a long, static, black and white shot of an ancient mainland village. Toward us marches a small group of peasants (we are led to believe), who sing joyfully as they snake closer to the camera before finally exiting to the right of the frame. The sudden cut to a fluorescent apartment in contemporary Taiwan is made all the more jarring by the obnoxious sound of a clamoring telephone. A young woman rises slowly from her bed, retrieves the phone (no answer), sips from bottled water, then tears a sheet of paper from her fax machine. The remainder of the film rewrites the forgotten narratives that connect these seemingly opposed worlds: mainland China and Taiwan, the past and present, truth and fiction, the personal and political.
The young woman, we eventually learn, is Liang Ching (Annie Shizuka Inoh), an actress who is preparing for her role as Chiang Bi-Yu in an upcoming film called, interestingly enough, Good Men, Good Women. This film within the film tells the true-life story of Chiang and her husband, Chung Hao-Tung (Giong Lim), who moved to the mainland in 1940 in order to join the anti-Japanese resistance movement. Chiang would eventually be forced to give up her children for the cause, and would be widowed by it as well. By cutting constantly between the “real world” of Liang’s life and black and white footage from the completed film, Hou blurs the boundaries that might otherwise separate Taiwan from its past, the actress from her role.
And yet even that complex description is a gross oversimplification of Hou’s narrative, which further problematizes any simple notions of the “present” by adding to the mix sequences from Liang’s recent past. Five years earlier, she had been a promiscuous, drug-addicted bar maid, who had found solace only in her relationship with the surprisingly tender gangster, Ah Wei (Jack Kao). Liang is forced to revisit this period of her life when a stranger steals her diary and begins faxing pages of it to her. It’s a remarkable story-telling device, allowing Hou to sound echoes of Chiang’s experience through these various versions of the actress who plays her. The women (all played, of course, by Inoh) share so much in common — in particular, the timeless sorrow over lost lovers and children — but, as the film forces us to acknowledge, the selfless struggle of Chiang’s generation has been realized, tragically, in only the empty consumerism of Liang’s.
In lesser hands, a film like Good Men, Good Women would likely collapse into either a turgid technical exercise or a vehicle for didactic moralizing, but Hou avoids both traps by investing his characters with recognizable life. The film’s most joyful moments emerge from Liang’s and Ah Wei’s lazy familiarity with one another. Like Godard thirty years before, Hou allows his camera to capture the Gangster and His Girl at their most ordinary — impromptu dances in their bedroom, everyday conversations about their future. When watching Flowers of Shanghai and Puppetmaster, I am often frustrated by Hou’s elliptical style, but here — perhaps because of the nonlinear narrative — I feel as though I am being granted brief glimpses into beautifully rich lives. Knowing that Liang’s happiness, like Chiang’s, will be short-lived makes her/their struggle all the more compelling.
Good Men, Good Women would make a textbook study of aesthetic harmony in function and form. Unlike so many recent American films that have reordered the traditional narrative in service of empty excitements or trite analyses of “postmodern truth,” Hou’s cuts and splices history into a well-told tale, revealing those relationships between action and consequence that are so easily elided in our short-term, soundbite memories. Like fellow Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang’s Vive L’Amour, Good Men, Good Women concludes with a remarkable image of mourning, but here the scene is tempered by some promise of potential change. The film ends as it began: with the sight of those marchers, their identities now revealed to us, and with the joyful sound of their voices echoing through the mountains.
I’ll eventually get around to writing (much) more about this, but I want to mention quickly that, while vacationing in Phoenix, Joanna and I had the chance to see Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the Herberger Theater. After reading and rereading these plays over the last four years, after writing about them, after, in fact, creating a dissertation topic just as an excuse to spend more time with these characters and with Kushner’s language, I couldn’t believe my luck when I picked up a Sunday edition of the Arizona Republic and discovered that the Actors Theater was staging both parts on consecutive nights. It was awesome (and I really wish that the common use of that word hadn’t stripped it of its power). I was most looking forward to a scene in which the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg appears to help deliver the Kaddish to Roy Cohn. Like most scenes in these plays, its success depends on the actors and director striking a fine balance of tragedy and humor. I ended up in tears, stunned, once again, by a strange and extraordinary encounter with grace.
I have been following The Tragically Hip since becoming enamored of Atom Egoyan’s film, The Sweet Hereafter. His use of the Hip’s “Courage” is pitch perfect. Although I’ve never had a chance to see them in concert — the Canadian band seldom makes trips to the American South (and I don’t really blame them) — this version of “Grace, Too” just kills me. It has the ecstatic energy of the best live performances, but it’s something about that bass line and the way that Gord Downie unleashes the line, “Armed with will and determination / And grace, too,” that rips me up.
An early update today because I’m at home, trying to kill a cold before it gets out of control. I hate being sick. Although I can’t really knock an opportunity to sleep late, drink coffee, and watch The Dixie Chicks: Behind the Music for the fifth time.
After reading yesterday’s blog, a friend sent me two interesting links. The first is to an interesting article at ABCNews that questions Bush’s claim that “America speaks with one voice.” I wish the article had backed up some of its anecdotal evidence with hard statistics, but it’s comforting to know that other citizens are voicing concerns similar to my own.
The other is to the home page of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. ANSWER is working to organize several high profile demonstrations on October 26, the one year anniversary of Bush’s Patriot Act. Their rhetoric is a bit blustery at times — too often reducing the entire, complicated situation to a matter of “Big Oil” — which is unfortunate because, as the Vietnam era should teach us, public dissent only carries political weight when it becomes louder than the voices of the more radical minority. Still, though, their goal of 100,000 marchers in D.C. and San Francisco is impressive. It’s definitely an exciting start. Dig around the site. Plenty of interesting reading material.
Oh yeah, and welcome to any of you who may have found Long Pauses through my short piece on Ingmar Bergman at Christianity Today. I’d love to hear from you.
Liza Featherstone’s article, “Peace Gets a Chance,” provides a helpful overview of the various coalitions being formed to protest America’s regrettable foreign policy decisions of late. The largest gathering in America so far was on October 6 in New York City, where 20,000 assembled as a response to Bush’s call for war. Strange that such a large gathering took place and I’d heard nothing of it, particularly when I live in a culture dominated by the liberal media. I guess it’s true what they say about a tree falling in a forest.
To me, the most interesting part of the piece is this quote from Global Exchange‘s Jason Mark, who claims that the challenge now is to oppose “the idea of American empire without sounding like 1970s leftists. People don’t want to sound off-the-wall, but the words ’empire’ and ‘imperialism’ are fair game because they’re using them.” With the failures of, first, the New Left, then the collapse of Communism, the left has been struggling for some time now to find a practical approach to global issues, one that acknowledges the potentially positive influence of capitalism without surrendering its progressive stance on humanitarian issues. As a child of the 80s, I’m beginning to feel something like excitement for the first time, guarded but hopeful that a popular movement — one with a moral foundation and genuine political substance — might coalesce in response to America’s economic (and now militaristic) imperialism.
On a whim, I googled “Christian peace movement,” which returned a fascinating assortment of sites. Of particular note are Pax Christi: The International Catholic Movement for Peace and The Quaker Peace and Social Witness Programme. Both links will take you to statements on Iraq — both from a British perspective and both well worth reading. The following is the final paragraph from Pax Christi’s statement:
It is our considered view that an attack on Iraq would be both immoral and illegal, and that eradicating the dangers posed by malevolent dictators and terrorists can be achieved only by tackling the root causes of the disputes themselves. It is deplorable that the world’s most powerful nations continue to regard war and the threat of war as an acceptable instrument of foreign policy, in violation of the ethos of both the United Nations and Christian moral teaching. The way to peace does not lie through war but through the transformation of structures of injustice and of the politics of exclusion, and that is the cause to which the West should be devoting its technological, diplomatic and economic resources.
By the way, Stark hasn’t been the only person making noise on Capitol Hill. I seldom find the motivation to watch C-Span, but lately I’ve been riveted by Senator Robert Byrd’s eloquent, impassioned speeches in defense of the Constitution and its separation of powers. I’ve grown quite fond of that man, who seems now to be the only member of the Senate (on either side of the aisle) that respects history and understands the inevitable consequences of recent decisions. Here’s a tasty snippet from his comments of October 3:
As James Madison wrote in 1793, “In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man….”
Congress has a responsibility to exercise with extreme care the power to declare war. There is no weightier matter to be considered. A war against Iraq will affect thousands if not tens of thousands of lives, and perhaps alter the course of history. It will surely affect the balance of power in the Middle East. It is not a decision to be taken in haste, under the glare of election year politics and the pressure of artificial deadlines. And yet any observer can see that that is exactly what the Senate is proposing to do. . . .
The President is using the Oval Office as a bully pulpit to sound the call to arms, but it is from Capitol Hill that such orders must flow. The people, through their elected representatives, must make that decision. It is here that debate must take place and where the full spectrum of the public’s desires, concerns, and misgivings must be heard. We should not allow ourselves to be pushed into one course or another in the face of a full court publicity press from the White House. We have, rather, a duty to the nation and her sons and daughters to carefully examine all possible courses of action and to consider the long term consequences of any decision to act.
And finally, congrats to Karen, et al, on the relaunch of Beyond Magazine. Good luck.
Four random but interesting links for today:
“On Being Postacademic” — After earning tenure at a research university, the dream of all young academics like myself, Kenny Mostern resigned and entered into the world of non-profits and political analysis. I find this article in which he justifies his decision absolutely fascinating, both because he happened to resign from my department (though I never really knew him) and because he says so much that I have been thinking lately. I’ll go ahead and give away the end:
Even in postmodern times, do-it-yourself art, the art of people who survive through other means, retains a political potential, an intellectual energy, a form of commitment to community building that I believe has fundamentally dissolved in the professional world of the academy.
And, yes, I know the critique of that position. So what?
“The Painter of LightTM” — I can’t even remember how I stumbled up this site — Images: A Journal of the Arts and Religion — but I like it. Gregory Wolfe’s editorial takes on many of the same questions that I’ve been writing about lately: What is the proper response to Christian kitsch? Can ten million people be wrong? How do we step away from the commodification of culture in order to have a genuine experience? And what is wrong with sentimentality? (I have other questions about Thomas Kinkade, but since Wolfe doesn’t go into them, neither will I.) Thanks to Wolfe for my new quote of the week:
The great theologian, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, once wrote: “There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”
“OJ Stupid: Bush’s Iraq Gambit” — Christopher J. Preist’s 4,500 word analysis of current events should be required reading for every American of voting age. Priest is a modern Renaissance man — comic book writer, minister, political commentator, and fellow blog-ist. His site is a great way to lose a day of work, and this article is a powerhouse.
Doing The Pepsi Challenge between Bush’s proposed resolution and the Tonkin Resolution conjures up possibilities that’ll have me sleeping with the light on for quite awhile. Or, am I just being unreasonably cynical? Maybe. But, in the final analysis, the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy boils down to this: these men are either evil or stupid. There’s really not much middle ground. Rallying America for a just cause would seem to invite if not require bipartisanship, and eschewing even the appearance of politics. No component of Bush’s mealy, meandering attempts to convince us of the rightness of his cause presents any compelling reason why the whole matter couldn’t be tabled until the new congress is seated in January. The merits of his case are not my issue here so much as the timing, the urgency being so seemingly transparent. For all I know, the president has a valid case for this policy, but he squanders it on brazen political opportunism, which makes me question his ethics and, therefore, his judgment.
“Make Your Own Bush Speech” — It ain’t mature, or even in good taste, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
I had no idea that George Kennan was still alive. The man who literally wrote America’s containment policy, the policy that has directed our foreign policy for nearly sixty years now, is 98 and living in Georgetown. Speaking about Bush’s desire to wage war with Iraq, Kennan said:
War has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.
He is also critical of Congressional Democrats, who are allowing the President to make this a purely political issue, despite Daschle’s protests.
I wonder why the Democrats have not asked the president right out, “What are you talking about? Are you talking about one war or two wars? And if it’s two wars, have we really faced up to the competing demands of the two?” This is, to me, as a very old, independent citizen, a shabby and shameful reaction. I deplore this timidity out of concern for the elections on the part of the Democrats.
Looking for further evidence of America’s legislated xenophobia? Apparently afraid that his films might remind voters that Muslims are humans too, the State Department has denied a visa to Abbas Kiarostami, who was scheduled to present his latest film, Ten, at the New York Film Festival before delivering lectures at Harvard and Ohio University. Kiarostami’s response?
“I certainly do not deserve an entry visa any more than the aging mother hoping to visit her children in the U.S. perhaps for the last time in her life … For my part, I feel this decision is somehow what I deserve.”
Peter Gabriel has the distinction of being the only musician represented twice in my list of top 10 Desert Island Discs — Security and Passion — so yesterday was a big day for me. The last time I bought an album of new Peter Gabriel solo material I was living in Cawthon Hall at Florida State University, debating whether I should remain a music composition major. I had met my future wife then, but, as she frequently reminds me, I hadn’t yet made much of an impression. Letterman and Arsenio were making fun of the hillbilly governor from Arkansas who was making a run for President. Oh yeah, and I really liked The Spin Doctors. (Don’t laugh. I still kind of dig “Forty or Fifty” and “Refrigerator Car,” though not quite enough to plunk down 20 cents on a used copy.)
A lot has changed in ten years. Well, except for Peter Gabriel, who has apparently spent much of the decade holed up in Real World Studios, listening to his old albums, looping African percussion tracks, and twiddling with his Mac. With only three or four listens under my belt, I’m hesitant to label Up a major disappointment, but I am disappointed. I mean, ten years is a long time. Ten years. Some random thoughts:
Darkness — A strong opening track that, especially during its raucous verses, recaptures some of the noisy excitement of Gabriel’s Robert Fripp-produced second album (“Scratch”). In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that parts of “darkness” would work on those early Genesis albums.
Growing Up — If he can trim this 7:33 song down to 4 minutes, he might have an interesting single on his hands. I certainly prefer “Growing Up” to “The Barry Williams Show” and the songs he released from Us. I’m struggling to find Manu Katche buried under the otherwise bland rhythm tracks, but otherwise it’s pretty strong. (“Well, Dick, I’ll give it an eight. It’s easy to dance to.”) Lots of cool noodling from David Rhodes.
Sky Blue — My main beef with Gabriel’s recent soundtrack, Long Walk Home, is his obsession with a brief melody sung by the Blind Boys of Alabama that is quite beautiful the first four or five times we hear it. Hearing it repeated constantly for nearly five minutes, though, reminds me of the precision of the term, ad nauseam. Unfortunately, that same melody shows up again here, and once again Gabriel works it into the ground, ruining what might otherwise have been an interesting song. The last minute and a half of “Sky Blue” are just painful for me, I mean, like, early-90s techno painful.
No Way Out — This one might also have some chance as a single. All it needs is to show up in the last fifteen minutes of an intelligent romantic comedy, preferably one directed by Cameron Crowe. “No Way Out” has that “In Your Eyes” type of passionate chorus that will work perfectly during a slow motion shot of a reconciled couple kissing in the rain. I do look forward to hearing this one live, though. And, again, some very cool guitar work from David Rhodes. Interesting note: Mitchell Froome shows up here to play “backwards piano.”
I Grieve — Did I mention that Gabriel has been working on this album for ten years? “I Grieve” first showed up in 1998 on the City of Angels soundtrack (which probably sold enough copies to subsidize another five years of studio time at Real World). I’m pretty sure that “I Grieve” was also the first song I downloaded when I discovered Napster, so I’m pleased to finally have it on a full-bit CD, and in a nice new mix. Surprisingly, this is the only track on the album that features Shankar, who I hope will be joining Gabriel on tour. For those who will inevitably criticize Gabriel for overproducing Up (and with some justification) “I Grieve” will make a good test case. I wonder if such a beautifully simple lyric would have benefited from similarly simple instrumentation.
The Barry Williams Show — Did I mention that Gabriel has been working on this album for ten years? This satire of Jerry Springer-ish TV probably had more bite in ’98. Plus, I can’t hear the chorus without thinking of Greg Brady (the only Barry Williams as far as I’m concerned). Gabriel continues his trend of releasing the worst parts of each album to radio, and this one really is bad. “Kiss that Frog” has finally begun to grow on me…a little I doubt that this one will. The only high point: Tony Levin.
My Head Sounds Like That — This is the first new Gabriel song in years that would fit on his first and most eclectic album (“Car”). It reminds me most of “Humdrum,” which has always been a favorite of mine. A simple song built around a simple piano track and an interesting, occasionally dissonant orchestration, “My Head Sounds Like That” slips temporarily into a loud lament: “What’s left out and what’s left in?” I like it.
More Than This — Ever since “Biko” Gabriel has included one or two anthems on each album. Well, maybe “anthem” isn’t quite the right word. I’m thinking of those songs that would likely end a concert, giving the audience a chance to stand up and sing along with a simple, joyful chorus. I can already hear the crowds filing out of an arena, singing, “More than this. More than this. More than this. More than this. More than this. More than this.” You get the point. And did someone say “overproduced?” Not a favorite.
Signal to Noise — This one also first showed up in the late-90s, most publicly at an Amnesty International Concert in Paris. I just realized that I actually have no opinions about this track, which recycles a drum loop from Security and which builds to what should be an emotional crescendo. But, well, it doesn’t build much at all. It’s too easy, too obviously dramatic, and it doesn’t work for me at all. I was hoping that Gabriel’s last recording with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan would be more memorable.
The Drop — An album that took ten years to produce and it’s best track was probably recorded in one take — just Gabriel sitting at the piano. (Well, some completely unnecessary “programming” is added to the mix.) I wish ol’ Pete would knock out a full album like this, beginning with “Here Comes the Flood” and “Blood of Eden” and “San Jacinto” and “Humdrum” and . . .
I might comment later on the lyrics, but right now I’m too pissed at Gabriel for deciding to not print them in the liner notes. They’re included as an enhanced CD “bonus” and can’t be easily copied or printed. Am I the only person who still listens to CDs on a two-channel stereo?
This morning I received one of those e-mails that tend to make the rounds every week or two. This one concerns an address to Congress delivered by a man whose daughter was killed in a school shooting. I googled the first line of his speech and found that it has since been appropriated as a prayer of sorts by certain gun rights activists. (I don’t feel like reproducing the speech here. If you’re curious, follow the Google link.) Both Snopes and Urban Legends confirm that, on May 27, 1999, Darrell Scott did, in fact, testify before a House judiciary sub-committee, but they also debunk the hyperbolic claims often added to the e-mail, claims that the liberal media prevented “the nation from hearing this man’s speech.”
To be honest, I responded to this e-mail the same way I respond to all of its ilk: I read the first line, then deleted it. I didn’t give it another thought until a friend — a friend who happens to be on the same person’s forward list — sent me this fascinating analysis, which I’m posting here with his permission:
It’s the typical evangelical fallacy: it’s true that the most fundamental problem is not guns and their availability (or poverty, or whatever) but people’s fallenness and sinfulness; but the mistake is in thinking that we should only attempt to treat — that is, pray for — the fallenness and sinfulness without dealing with their symptoms. In this line of thought the problem’s not poverty but people’s immorality, so we shouldn’t have welfare because until people’s hearts are changed it won’t do any good, etc.
The parent says that metal detectors wouldn’t have stopped the shooters — but, um, why not? Does their sinfulness act as some kind of cloaking device? As far as I can tell, the only exception to this logic in the sphere of evangelical political thought, is, of course, abortion — according to the standard logic, we shouldn’t attempt to stop people from having abortions, but should rather pray that their hearts would be changed (in school, I suppose). But no one’s advocating that…
The “evangelical fallacy” — I like that.
In my response to Bush’s UN speech, I welcomed his desire to address the human rights violations occurring in Iraq, but did so knowing that he was only paying lip-service to those very real problems for rhetorical and political ends. This hypocrisy is the subject of Fred Hiatt’s wonderful op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post. After detailing the abuses in North Korea and Burma (neither of which is currently scheduled for an American induced “regime change”), Hiatt concludes:
“So it is naive to think that people will link “regime change” to “brutal repression” as a regular matter anytime soon. Yet to the thousands of North Koreans who even today are scraping bark off trees or boiling grasses in an effort to survive, who are chipping coal in labor camps, who are deprived of donated American food because they are deemed insufficiently loyal to the regime, the proposition of international responsibility might not seem so outlandish.”
One day before Tony Blair is scheduled to finally reveal the mysterious dossier that will apparently prove the existence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the Prime Minister must first convince his own cabinet that war is necessary. His international development secretary, Clare Short, voiced serious reservations yesterday, and in the process made a statement the likes of which I have yet to hear from an American politician:
“We should be ready to impose the will of the UN on them if they don’t cooperate but not by hurting the people of Iraq. We can’t inflict pain and suffering on the people of Iraq, they are innocents. Each one of them is as precious as the 3,000 people who were in the twin towers.”
Here is a really interesting Hawk/Dove breakdown of Blaire’s cabinet, including links to further information about each member.
Want a preview of the upcoming war? Here is an overview of the Pentagon’s latest proposal, or, more precisely, the latest proposal shared with the press. This article feels like a sick PR piece to me, complete with the requisite double-speak from Rumsfeld. His intense bombing campaign will be an “attack on a government, not a country”; his target is the “dictatorial, repressive” Hussein: “The United States has not and never has had any problem or issue with the Iraqi people.”
When I read these articles about our precision attacks, our gung-ho bombing campaigns, I’m reminded of Michael Herr’s remembrances of his childhood, when he first saw photos of dead bodies in Life magazine:
“Even when the picture was sharp and clearly defined, something wasn’t clear at all, something repressed that monitored the images and withheld their essential information. It may have legitimized my fascination, letting me look for as long as I wanted; I didn’t have a language for it then, but I remember now the shame I felt, like looking at porn, all the porn in the world.” (Dispatches)
When he says “I remember now,” Herr is referring to his experience in Vietnam, where he saw first-hand the effects of America’s intense bombings. His porn analogy seems even more appropriate today, when technology allows us to watch a precision guided missile hitting its target from a first-person point of view. How disgusting to think that we are now made to identify not with human victims, but with the weapons that kill them. It’s Eisensteinian montage at its most perverse.
Norman Mailer has quite the way with words: “Mediocrities flock to any movement which will indulge their self-pity and their self-righteousness, for without a Movement the mediocrity is on the slide into terminal melancholia.” (Armies of the Night, if you’re curious.) And with that I somewhat reluctantly offer this link.
I heard about Oxfam America’s new report, “Mugged: Poverty in Your Coffee Cup,” on Morning Edition during my drive into work today. This one hit me where it hurts: right in my stained, 16-ounce coffee mug — the one I fill and drain every morning or risk the consequences (first a headache, followed by pronounced napishness). America’s coffee industry, it seems, is one of the few bright spots in our sagging economy, thanks in part to 30-year lows in coffee bean prices (which translate into dire poverty for third world farmers) and to the continued trendiness of designer brands (you can now buy your $3 iced mocha latte in 5,688 Starbucks locations worldwide). I like my coffee strong and black, by the way.
I say all of that so that I can ask this: So what the hell do I do about it? As someone whose political convictions have allowed me to justify the time I waste each day on this blog, I find myself teetering between self-pity and self-righteousness, desperate to stave off the melancholia that lingers nearby. I mean, I’m not going to stop drinking coffee, right?
About a year and a half ago, Eric Alterman found himself engaged in a similar ethical battle. After considering the exploitive practices that resulted, finally, in his favorite meal, along with the humanitarian good that could be accomplished by the price of that meal, he finally came to the conclusion that so many of us are loathe to admit:
“Here’s the problem. I can’t answer any of these arguments, but I can ignore them. At least I intend to (except for the $200 one–I did stop in the middle of writing this article to fork over $200 to Oxfam). The trouble seems to be that I’m a massive hypocrite. I make sacrifices for my principles but not, apparently, ones involving hamburgers and steaks. I like them too much, torture or no torture, starving kids or no starving kids, E. coli risk or no E. coli risk.”
Mailer at least could take comfort from the burgeoning radicalism of his day. Marching on the Pentagon in protest of Vietnam, assuming that he would finally be arrested for a “real cause,” he could write, “some drabness had quit [liberals] since the fifties, some sense of power had touched them with subtle concomitants of power — a hint of elegance.” But that comfort is lost to me. I’m cursed with hindsight, with the failures of the New Left and the reemergence— the institutionalization, even — of banal drabness. In the immortal, irony-soaked words of the late, great Phil Hartman, “Good times. Good times.”
Knowing that I’m a fan, a friend just sent me this link to an interview with Ira Glass. I’ve always been struck by Glass’s even-handed treatment of Christianity, which is somewhat surprising for two reasons: 1) he broadcasts on National Public Radio (I’m an NPR-o-holic, but I know evangelicals who refuse to listen to it on principle – sigh) and 2) he is outspoken about his own atheism. The interview is conducted by re:generation, a Christian publication that I’ve only just discovered. Looks interesting.
There’s much to admire in Glass’s attitudes toward religion, ideas, stories, and people. He’s done much to encourage a dialogue between the sacred and secular and has approached that divide with a rare and open-minded curiosity. A few choice snippets:
Irony is just boring, and it’s also played out; it’s done elsewhere and it doesn’t shed light. I feel like it’s dull. And I feel like it also prevents one from seeing, and it prevents the kind of empathy that I feel like makes for a more engaging movie, story—anything! We view our work as more of a ministry of love. (Laughs.) We feel like the thing that we’re about is empathy, and in fact, the few stories that I regret us ever doing (and there aren’t many) are ones where the writer wasn’t achieving an appropriate level of empathy with the characters in the story. . . .
As soon as you are in that territory, you have left the realm of mainstream reporting, and you have entered a realm that only Christian journalists report on. But I would meet people and they would tell me their stories, and I would talk to their friends and families, and the stories would check out. Their relationship with God had completely changed their lives in a completely undeniable and positive way.
It’s my job to report that. And to report it in a non-dismissive way: this is their experience, so take it or leave it, but this is it. Doing that made me awake to how bad most reporting on religion is. Both in the news and in the fiction we create as a culture, Christians are always portrayed as these intolerant right-wing nuts, as people who are not awake to others. That is so different from any of the Christian friends I have or the people who work here at the office that are Christians. It’s exactly the opposite. Of all the people I know, they’re the most awake, the most interested in the world. It was so crazy to me, it was exactly the opposite, and it seemed so inaccurate. So I found myself always wanting to do variations on that story again and again.
Dir. by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Images: Handheld camerawork is most affecting when it catches Igor and Assita in medium shots and (rare) close-ups. The Dardennes’ style reminds me of Dumont’s, though they don’t share his fondness for self-consciously “cinematic” long shots. Favorite images: Igor whitening his teeth in front of a mirror; Igor sobbing on Assita’s shoulder; the look on Igor’s face as he sits in a bar, drinking with Roger and two women; Roger stretching out his hand, asking for his glasses.
• • •
“How can you be guiltier than anyone in the eyes of all? There are murderers and brigands. What crimes have you committed to blame yourself more than everyone else?”
“My dear mother, my deepest love, know that everyone is guilty in everyone’s eyes. I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel that is so, and it torments me.”
Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne cite the above exchange from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as the genesis of La Promesse, their first feature to garner much attention in America. Marcel’s guilt and torment is played out onscreen in the person of Igor (Jérémie Rénier), the fifteen-year-old son of a slumlord who traffics in illegal immigrants. When one of their tenants dies in an accident, Igor is forced to confront the consequences of his and his father’s actions while fulfilling “the promise” he makes to the dying man: protecting the man’s wife and infant son becomes for Igor both a burden and a vehicle for possible redemption.
La Promesse is a wonderful film whose beauty is born from the Dardennes’ suffusion of honesty and moral complexity into standard narrative conventions: the simple two-act structure, Igor’s bildungsroman, the basic quest for human connection. It came as little surprise when I learned that the Dardennes had worked in documentaries for two decades before moving to narrative films. While watching La Promesse I was reminded most often of Krzysztof Kieslowski and Bruno Dumont, filmmakers whose careers traveled similar trajectories. Like theirs, the Dardennes’ cinematic language is composed of simple observations, deliberately eschewing the conventions of classic continuity editing. I can’t think of a single instance of a shot/reverse-shot, for instance. Instead, the handheld camera lingers at a distance, sometimes peering over shoulders and only rarely moving in for a close-up (and even then only on Igor and Assita, the widow who becomes Igor’s maternal surrogate).
The performances are likewise completely natural—so much so, in fact, that I was surprised to discover such extensive filmographies for both Rénier and Olivier Gourmet, whose turn as Roger, Igor’s father, is utterly convincing. I had assumed that the Dardennes, like Dumont and Robert Bresson (who casts a long shadow here), had employed nonprofessional actors. One of my favorite scenes takes place in a bar, where after singing together, Igor and Roger sit down for drinks with two women. We have learned in an earlier scene that Igor is a virgin, but Rénier’s uncomfortable and self-conscious performance here makes such exposition unnecessary. So “real” is Igor, in fact, that I still find it difficult to believe that Rénier has become something of a teen idol.
The combined force of the Dardennes’ cinematographic style and the natural performances can be felt most powerfully in a few key scenes. In the first, Igor lunges for Assita, who has rejected his help, understandably suspicious of his motives. Instead of fighting her, though, as I had expected, he clings fiercely to her, burying his face in her shoulder and sobbing. I can’t quite explain my response to the scene. I would slip inevitably into the banal if I launched into some discussion of maternal longing, and yet that basic, inarticulate desire for human communion (or comfort or sympathy or love or…) is precisely what the scene communicates. The same could be said of the requisite showdown between father and son, which is staged brilliantly and which generates more suspense than I would have expected from such a film. By crafting Roger and Igor with such care, the Dardennes are allowed to turn what is too often a black and white “coming of age” scene into a confrontation whose emotional and moral consequences must be felt by the viewers, despite our best efforts to avoid them. It’s no coincidence that for most of the scene our focus is directed toward Roger, the man who is being rejected and the man for whom we can still find sympathy despite his often despicable behavior.
I had hoped that by this point in my response I would have “discovered” a solution to the enigmatic ending of La Promesse. Jonathon Rosenbaum apparently had the same problem, writing, “I find it impossible to imagine what transpires between Assita and Igor after the final shot.” I’m going to fall back on an old trick and say, “Well, maybe that’s the point.” The closest analogue I can find is in one of my favorite novels, Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People. (Am I really quoting myself?)
July’s People ends when a helicopter of unknown origins flies over the village and lands nearby. Maureen, acting on instinct like an animal, runs toward the sound, although she is unaware “whether it holds saviours or murderers; and — even if she were to have identified the markings — for whom” (158). Gordimer has referred to the finale as a Pascalian wager, “Salvation exists or doesn’t it?” (Wagner, 112). Stripped of all certainties, removed from all roles and expectations, and armed with only a new self-awareness, Maureen flees both the old which is dead and the new which has just been born.
Igor and Assita are likewise transformed by their experience, suddenly unsure of their roles, their futures, their relationship. I wanted so badly for the Dardennes to cut to a reaction shot of Assita so that I could somehow gauge her emotions, but that desire was rightly frustrated. Instead, they give us only a long shot of two people walking away from us: an African widow with child and the young man who she allows to carry her bag.
Things are getting interesting, eh? Looks like Hussein has called Bush’s bluff. This editorial is the best I’ve found. Of course, the folks in Washington and London are already voicing their doubts about Iraq’s motives, which is neither unexpected nor completely unwarranted. I realize that the Bush administration must continue to pressure both the UN and Iraq, but it sure would be nice to hear someone, anyone, in Washington voice some enthusiasm about the possibility (even this slim one) that we might avoid war after all. But then that $200 million we’ve set aside for anti-Iraq PR would go to waste.
Check out Terry Gross’s interview with M.J. Akbar, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Asian Age, an English language newspaper published in India. Akbar is wonderfully entertaining and the most articulate spokesman I’ve yet heard for “regular” Muslims. His analysis of the Pakistan/India situation is fascinating and more than a bit frightening. He also has some interesting opinions on America’s showdown with Iraq. (I say “interesting” because he generally agrees with me.) Good stuff.
In today’s Post, Dana Milbank lets leading figures from both sides decide if the Bush administration is “Wagging the Dog” in Iraq. It’s a good, well-balanced piece, and worth a read, despite being fairly predictable. (Daschle: He’s wagging the dog. Fleischer: No he isn’t.) This is the first article I’ve read that compiles all of the relevant soundbites from the last few weeks:
Karl Rove argued earlier this year that the war on terrorism should be part of Republicans’ campaigns this year. Last week, White House political aides encouraged GOP candidates to emphasize national security. Also, Andrew H. Card Jr., Bush’s chief of staff, said last week that the White House held back on promoting the Iraq policy in the summer because, “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” And Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, made an Iraq vote explicitly political, saying, “People are going to want to know, before the elections, where their representatives stand.”
Once again, I have to begrudgingly applaud the Republicans, who, as Milbank points out, are winning this round. A few weeks ago a Canadian friend asked me to explain why so many Americans were supporting this war. After ranting about Dubya’s supposed “moral authority,” I predicted that he would apply enough political pressure on Congress to force a vote, leaving even the most hesitant Democrats with a choice between supporting a war that they don’t want or looking “soft on terrorism.” Unfortunately, it looks like I was right. Milbank writes:
Whatever the White House motive, the emergence of Iraq as an issue before the election has spooked Democrats, who find themselves struggling for a response. Though there is no consensus for handling the matter, party strategists said the likeliest course is for Democrats to agree to votes quickly on a resolution authorizing force against Hussein — in hopes of getting back to domestic matters.
Of course, while the Democrats struggle to find an answer, Bush has already turned his attention to domestic matters, in a manner of speaking. While his two most eloquent spokesmen, Cheney and Powell, take turns looking Presidential on Meet the Press, Bush is back out doing what he does best: shaking hands, posing for pictures, and sitting down to $1,000 dinners. Remember the good ol’ days of bashing Clinton for his fundraising exploits? He’s got nothin’ on this guy. After visiting Iowa today, Dubya will spend part of tomorrow in my most recent home state, Tennessee, where he’ll be stomping for Lamar Alexander. Yes, that Lamar Alexander. He’s hoping to return to Washington by filling our vacant Senate seat. (Feel free to support his competition.)
And what message will Bush be pushing on the trail? Why the need for “fiscal responsibility,” of course. It seems that we’ve suddenly run into a $157 billion deficit. A note for Karl Rove: please tell Mr. Bush that his $1.35 trillion tax cut may be partly responsible for that crunch and that the war in Iraq will also cost a penny or two. For more info, listen to Terry Gross’s interview with Steve Weisman, author of The Great Tax Wars, who puts the current situation in its proper historical perspective. He mentions, for instance, that no President has ever cut taxes during war. Interesting.
Apparently this is going to be an unusually “religious” blog today. It had been several days since I last visited Sightings, so I had missed both excellent entries from last week. In “Your Two Cents,” Martin Marty gives voice to the many recent responses by Sightings readers. Then, in “A Just War?” James Evans summarizes the fundamental questions at stake, before concluding:
No one questions the legitimacy of the American government to make the decision, it’s the other criteria that are more difficult to establish. Is our country under a direct threat, or are we dealing with a potential threat, or even a likely threat? In short, do we have a just cause for waging war? And what is our intent? The stated purpose of the war is to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Is that a legitimate cause? Is any part of our action motivated by revenge for the events of September 11?
If we are to be faithful to the ideals of our faith, before we consent to the killing of our declared enemy, we should strive diligently to be sure our cause is just. If we determine it is not, then we should not pursue it. Even if we determine our cause is just, we may only submit to war with a somber spirit, and with repentant hearts. No cause is so just that we may kill without sorrow.
On a related note, I’m becoming somewhat obsessed with this photo of Dorothy Day. Taken in 1924 in Staten Island, it shows her at rest on a front porch, her legs curled to one side, her hat resting against a bare foot. There’s something remarkable in that stare, the sly smile, the ease of her posture. She was younger then than I am now — already a published novelist and a once arrested suffragette; still a decade removed from the birth of The Catholic Worker and even further distanced from her later civil rights protests and week-long fasts for peace.
I stumbled upon the photo while investigating “personalism,” the first philosophy I’ve found that builds upon the radical politics of the Gospels. That phrase will no doubt make some uncomfortable, and perhaps it should. I’ve always joked that Christ was a socialist — joking makes it easier for both my audience and myself to ignore the practical consequences of such a statement — but I’m feeling more at ease now with the thought of saying the same with a straight face.
The examples of people like Day and Peter Maurin make it easier, for they were willing to embrace the Marxist critique of capitalism and bourgeois complacency — and at a time when doing so went completely against the American grain — while tempering their politics with a deep love of Man and the truths of Christianity. More importantly, they put that faith into practice, improving the lives of thousands by their efforts.
Casa Juan Diego is one product of Day’s and Maurin’s work. CJD’s Website provides a host of information and insightful commentary. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours there over the last few days, marveling at the consequences of lives lived in imitation of Christ.
If there’s such thing as a truly legitimate call for the use of art as a practical means to change the world, then it will probably never find a more sure voice than Denise Levertov’s. In the final throes of preparing for my final comprehensive exam, I found this poem, which was included in her 1966 collection, The Sorrow Dance. I couldn’t imagine a better blog for today.
“Life at War” by Denise Levertov, 1966
The disasters numb within us
caught in the chest, rolling
in the brain like pebbles. The feeling
resembles lumps of raw doughweighing down a child’s stomach on baking day.
Or Rilke said it, ‘My heart. . .
Could I say of it, it overflows
with bitterness . . . but no, as thoughits contents were simply balled into
formless lumps, thus
do I carry it about.’
The same warcontinues.
We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives,
our lungs are pocked with it,
the mucous membrane of our dreams
coated with it, the imagination
filmed over with the gray filth of it:the knowledge that humankind,
delicate Man, whose flesh
responds to a caress, whose eyes
are flowers that perceive the stars,whose music excels the music of birds,
whose laughter matches the laughter of dogs,
whose understanding manifests designs
fairer than the spider’s most intricate web,still turns without surprise, with mere regret
to the scheduled breaking open of breasts whose milk
runs out over the entrails of still-alive babies,
transformation of witnessing eyes to pulp-fragments,
implosion of skinned penises into carcass-gulleys.We are the humans, men who can make;
whose language imagines mercy,
lovingkindness; we have believed one another
mirrored forms of a God we felt as good—who do these acts, who convince ourselves
it is necessary; these acts are done
to our own flesh; burned human flesh
is smelling in Viet Nam as I write.Yes, this is the knowledge that jostles for space
in our bodies along with all we
go on knowing of joy, of love;our nerve filaments twitch with its presence
day and night,
nothing we say has the not the husky phlegm of it in the saying,
nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness,
the deep intelligence living at peace would have.
Last night I watched Claire’s Knee (1970), the fifth entry in Eric Rohmer’s series of “Six Moral Tales.” This one is built around Jerome, an unusually self-absorbed rake (even by Rohmer’s standards) who spends the weeks leading up to his marriage on holiday at Lake Annecy. While there he meets an old acquaintance, Aurora, an Italian writer in search of inspiration. Their reunion, as is often the case in Rohmer’s films, leads to long talks about love and life, some genuinely interesting, others much less so. Jerome tells Aurora that he has finally agreed to marry because, after six years with his fiancee, he is surprised to discover that he still finds her interesting. It’s difficult to imagine Jerome finding anyone interesting, though. At the end of the film, for instance, he is shocked to learn that Aurora is engaged. “You never asked,” she tells him.
Much of Claire’s Knee concerns Jerome’s flirtations with Laura and Claire, the two young daughters of his landlady. In typical Rohmer fashion, their courtship rituals are mostly verbal. His protagonists are keenly interested in love and in ideas of love. At times, I find these discussions endlessly fascinating — the late night talk between Jean-Louis and Maud being the best example — but after seeing more than ten of Rohmer’s films, the novelty of his style has begun to wear on me. I’m fascinated by the pacing of his films and by his need to show those parts of life that are so seldom put on film (the boring parts, some would say), but their lasting affect has been lessened by repetition. For more info about Rohmer, check out my friend Gary’s site.
The first editorial I read today is also the best. What I love about this piece is that it makes explicit the paradox at the root of the current administration’s appropriation of Cold War rhetoric: while they have succeeded (though not without difficulty) in reducing the situation to a gross dichotomy (good America vs. evil totalitarianism), they have suddenly abandoned our six-decade policy of deterrence and containment. Every time I hear Dubya speak, I’m reminded of those Congressmen who we point to in our recent history books and laugh at, those who called for a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in order to “guarantee peace.” Our containment policy has, of course, been fraught with problems — ethical problems most of all — but it seems odd to me that our new Cold War logic has made a bigger threat of Iraq than the Soviet Union ever was. I wish I could take some solace from thoughts of Dubya’s inevitable place in future editions of those same history texts, but too many lives are at stake.
A quick note: The Artists Network has built several demonstrations around the slogan, “Our Grief is Not a Cry for War.” I wish I could attend just for an opportunity to hear “REVEREND BILLY & The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.”
Two weeks ago I read a wonderful novella by Joan Didion called, Democracy (1984). Near the end, we learn that one of the main characters is an Ollie North-like agent, a guy who embraces the profit potential and moral ambiguity of international affairs. I love Didion’s treatment of his downfall: “What Jack Lovett did was never black or white, and in the long run may even have been . . . devoid of ethical content altogether, but since shades of gray tended not to reproduce in the newspapers the story was not looking good on a breaking basis.”
So, in pursuit of those gray areas, be sure to read Fred Hiatt’s column. After deftly summarizing the positions of both the hawks and the doves, he turns his attention to the more complex problems associated with our involvement in the Middle East:
After achieving a crushing military victory last fall, Americans said that they would not walk away again from Afghanistan. Bush invoked the Marshall Plan. Yet, incredibly, with not even a year gone, Washington’s attention is drifting away. Administration officials say that they would not oppose broadening the inadequate peacekeeping force. But they wait for others to do the job.
“We have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment,” President Bush said in his State of the Union speech. “We seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.”
That is the right aspiration. No lesser goal could provide a foundation for war. But no speeches on Iraq will carry the day, no matter how inspiring the rhetoric or solemn the promises to stay the course, if explosions in Afghanistan are the accompaniment.
This one’s been making the rounds, but if you haven’t seen it, be sure to check out the New Hampshire Gazette’s Chickenhawk Database. Seems that the folks behind our current war-mongering found some interesting ways of avoiding combat themselves. My favorite response is from Cheney, who apparently “had other priorities” during Vietnam. Also worth reading is Marty Jeezer’s great piece on the subject.
And have I mentioned lately that This Modern World is really funny?
Why am I surprised? The Sunday edition of my local paper leads with two “local interest” stories: one on a couple from Chattanooga who were married hours before driving to Knoxville for UT’s opening game; the other an embarrassing interview with a couple whose first child was born on the morning of September 11. If the folks at The Onion are paying attention, I would encourage them to rerun the story without alteration. My favorite line is from the proud and deeply earnest father:
“We just want Audrey to be an encouragement, a blessing and a symbol of hope and inspiration to the people of America. Terrorists can take life out, but they can’t bring it in,” he said.
I can’t really blame the father, though. When I read stories like this I wonder why the “journalist” felt any need to conduct the interview at all. The story writes itself. And it’s a story that goes down much more smoothly than, say, a discussion of Colin Powell’s curious defense of America’s preemptive attack policy. Did I say “preemptive”? Sorry. I meant “preventive.”
I just spent the last hour in nirvana, listening to Beth Orton’s new album, Daybreaker. Soooooo good. 51 minutes of music without a single weak spot. Emmylou even shows up on a track, so you know it’s good. I think this is her official site, which, by the way, is so well designed that even dial-up folks like myself can listen to the audio samples. Check out “Thinking About Tomorrow,” which is some kind of beautiful blend of Lou Reed and Sarah McLachlan that manages to improve on them both.