 |
| MAIN | SEARCH / ARCHIVES / NOTES | RSS |
I saw Errol Morris’s film Standard Operating Procedure, the “documentary” about the Abu Ghraib photos. I have the term documentary in quotes because, as the interviewees describe past events, the film re-enacts scenarios not filmed or photographed at the time. For some, these re-enactments are a problem, as documentary convention prescribes a style and logic that, in most cases, simulates truth telling and objectivity. Many assume that in documentaries, the camera is a mute witness to “facts” and “events” and any interference or fictional techniques or touches destroys this, well, myth.
The re-enactments do not adhere to the form typical of those criminal investigation TV shows, which recreate the crime scenes with actors, out of focus, slow-motion shots, and voiceover narration. Instead, Morris employs fragmentary images: a close up of snarling dog, its teeth lunging at the camera; a close up of skin covered in swarming ants; and most expensive, a helicopter exploding above our heads, the flaming parts descending on the camera.
It should be obvious that all documentary filmmakers have an agenda they hope to put forward. I’m not talking about Michael Moore and Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, The Smartest Guys in the Room) who obviously have a polemic to deliver, but about the countless docs, TV shows, news reports and educational pieces that evince a style that says, “We don’t have a point of view. We’re simply recording what’s in front of the camera and you make up your own mind.”
These ostensibly objective works invoke specific filmic devices that audiences have come to accept and recognize as indicators of truth telling and impartiality. Upon examining these “unbiased” films, we may sense their deep, inherent agendas, but for the most part, the style masks the filmmakers’ underlying prejudices, and we buy into it.
In a sense then, fiction films are also just recording what’s in front of the camera, but in their case, it happens to be costumed actors staging events. Fiction films are documentaries of the performances of actors.
Next, I watched Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA, an incredible, award-winning documentary about a violent mine strike in Kentucky. It took her four years to make the film, which she originally intended to be about something related, though different. It’s obvious that Kopple was embedded with the miners. During some particularly violent confrontations, the camera is clearly on the “side” of the striking miners, as scabs and corporate toadies take shots at them. The filmmaker hung with the mining families and otherworldly community in these hollers in order to secure some of the intimate details. Upon release, the film was an exposé, drawing attention to lives and injustices that otherwise would have been ignored.
Likewise, as Errol Morris and some of his interviewees point out, the photos taken at Abu Ghraib are responsible for drawing attention to the prison’s systemic practice of abuse. Had these photos never surfaced, the whole situation would have been swept under the rug, as was the violent, habitual torture practiced by the CIA and MI, never photographed. Since these practices can’t be proven, most media outlets pretty much ignore them. To paraphrase one of the film’s talking heads: ‘These photos made the President of the United States have to apologize to the world, so someone was going to pay.’ Unsaid, although implicit, is that those who caused the embarrassment to Bush would pay over those responsible for setting up a situation where abusive behaviors were condoned and encouraged.
Morris doesn’t broach the “Chain of Command” issues Seymour Hersh examines in his book of the same title. Hersh carefully traces the legal maneuvers of Gonzales and the policies of the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush tripartite, effectively encouraging and excusing torture and anything goes behavior.
The film details the fascinating use of forensics to establish accurate information about the photographs. Metadata embedded within the digital images is extracted and cross-referenced to handwritten logs to recreate a timeline, and uncover who took the pictures and with what camera. Morris limits the focus to the Americans, not the Iraqis. Some interviewees have the look of those whose experiences have twisted and mangled their souls deeply. They seem haunted and possessed. Especially the young women, former innocents who, like characters out of some horror movie, were fucked over by some invisible, monstrous entity.
So maybe the film is not a documentary in the accepted sense, or maybe we must realize that docs are not exactly what they appear to be. At any rate, by examining a set of infamous photos, how they came to be, who authored them, and how they survived, Morris creates a meditation on the meaning and reception of images—particularly news images—in our culture at large.
As these photos are reexamined, one can’t help but wonder whether a people often rounded up, imprisoned and tortured for no reason—many prisoners are simple cab drivers and local shopkeepers—will keep their grudges and desire for revenge close. And of course, one wonders whether a terrible price will be paid somewhere down the line. George Bush might be dead by then, Cheney will surely be gone soon—he’s running on watch batteries as it is—but some naïve and “innocent” generation will pay for our current government’s policies and actions and wonder, “What did I do to deserve this?”
Went to see “Transformers” last night by Times Square (there are hardly any places to lock one’s bike on 42nd st). It was long, for a CG based action flick. 2 and 1⁄2 hours I think. I realized today, per my earlier post re video games, movies and emotional involvement that video games could achieve what this and a few other recent blockbusters do without too much further development. Add some amusing quips and asides based on “character” and behavior patterns, scattered them here and there, ditto base the actions and gestures on “character”, maybe insert a love (or a pinup, in this case) interest — and then let the fights, battles, puzzle solving and chases commence — the McGuffin, whatever it is, leads one, as it does in video games, to the conclusion of the movie, or the game. The path could vary somewhat, but by clever design one could somehow always return to the main plot thread. One leaves the cinema drained, but energized — one imagines 42nd street (in my case) rocked by alien monsters, fighter jets, tanks and girls in halter-tops. Then, 1⁄2 hour later, the adrenaline rush has worn off, and that’s it. There’s no more of a take home than there is in a video game. When movies aspire to be video games — although on larger screens — they’ve given up already.
I realized that in these movies the military and the government ministries that are involved with them are often portrayed in a flattering light — the military, despite their initial difficulties and surprise, are fairly competent in these movies — there isn’t any evidence of careerist backstabbing, politicking, ideologically based decision making and lame excuses. Granted, those are mostly the arenas of our political leaders, but lately, since the military have been slow to stand up to them, they’ve been infected as well.
Watching the Italian epic, “Best Of Youth”. Beautifully done and written. There’s metaphor and thought in every scene, yet it feels somehow unforced, except for the fact that everyone is much better looking than they have a right to be. The 2 brothers, the main characters, are reunited during the catastrophic floods in Firenze. All types chip in to save the books and the city. Can you imagine that here? Elliot G. and family just returned from NO working for Habitat for Humanity, but for the most part I can’t imagine the feeling that a city, its artifacts, are precious, important to humanity as a whole. And it’s hard to imagine acting on it en masse, bipartisan. Of course home and infrastructure is necessary for the folks who live there or are homeless. We might think of saving businesses and homes, schools and hospitals — but books? Maps and manuscripts? Artworks? Don’t we normally expect other agencies — FEMA, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity or even insurance companies to step in and do the rescue and reconstruction job for us?
What towns here would be rescued not just for saving lives and property, but also for cultural patrimony? That thing that makes life worth living, as the Italians seemed to understand. Most U.S. towns are made of ephemeral buildings housing ephemeral institutions; we know they will be gone within our own lifetimes, and there is no sense of continuum. In New Orleans the continuum and deep unique roots are there, powerful — but they are not physical. There are social clubs and there is Preservation Hall and bars and lounges and Black Indian costumes — all of which are where that city’s culture was manifest, but in that town the culture was in the habits, cultural knowledge and attitudes of its people — and those, the ones who lived it, are dispersed.
Maybe it’s time. Maybe as Dickie Landry was quoted as saying, there is an upside in that the music and culture finally are more widely dispersed. They’ll influence, over time, Houston, Austin, Baton Rouge, and St. Louis, making each of those places a tiny bit funkier. That’s an awfully generous view and reaction to a city that was needlessly destroyed by willful negligence.
From When The Levees Broke: “Most people think that is was Katrina that brought about the destruction of New Orleans. But it was a breaching of the levees that put 80% of the city underwater. It wasn’t the hurricane.” — Spike Lee
The Best of Youth plot moves on to the Italian street riots and demonstrations in the 70s. I remember playing concerts in Italy in the late 70s. There would be rival promoters, one of whom would have the local politicians on his side, the other the youth — battle lines drawn, tear gas would be thrown on stage and in the dressing rooms. Audiences at that time felt that “music needed to be free”, and therefore they decided they should not pay to attend concerts. Barriers and fences were pushed down by mobs. (Woodstock too was made “free” after a couple of days.) Audiences with handkerchiefs and bandanas on their faces so their could stay and hear the music despite the choking sour smell of tear gas. Talking Heads was the first (international rock) act to play all over Italy since Frank Zappa who had toured the year before. In Italy it was a moment when politics, pop music, love, and sex all swirled around sucking everything into the vortex. Everything was vitally important. Things mattered — music mattered.
I sound like whining from a boomer, I know. Maybe the music was just a symbol, another flag to wave. It was a handy way to bring people together. I think it was also a symbol of international solidarity, that new ways of thinking were happening everywhere, and that music embodied possibility.
I wondered to Danielle if the crisis in the music industry was partly self-created. If, by catering to mass tastes, to the largest number of buyers possible, and therefore by trying to make music and movies that are palatable and may appeal to everyone, if the big companies haven’t created an audience that doesn’t give a shit, that has no allegiance, no loyalty to any particular artist or movie makers. This fickle audience can buy millions of CDs one year and then the next year buy nothing, no big deal. So the majors embark on a desperate search for singles, the bait that they believe will entice this careless crowd to buy records again. It becomes a vicious cycle, chasing this crowd, who by nature of their inevitably young age and the stuff that’s being fed them will be a temporary audience.
I’m talking about the mass audience, not the little piece of the human pie that will always be passionate about artists and whose work inspires them — and I’m not talking about those artists either — there are plenty of them. But the big percentage of sales is to an audience that wouldn’t miss the artist whose song they just bought if they never released another song or movie ever. Maybe it’s the same as it ever was, and I am idealizing, romanticizing, based on my own past. Everyone feels they (and others) were more passionate about music when they were younger. I am still passionate about many artists and bands, and I don’t think I have any disdain for genuinely popular music — I don’t think I’m a snob — but I don’t know if I harbor any illusions about pop music enlightening the world.
Free Will Part 1
A Times article on free will (does it exist or not?) used a lovely metaphor — that our conscious minds are like a monkey riding a tiger, who with powers of mind and reason, convinces himself that he is driving, is in control, when actually it is the massive tiger of the unconscious that will take little monkey for a ride. Here’s the illustration by Jonathon Rosen.
Our pal the Evildoer
Saddam Hussein is hung until his neck snapped. His trial was engineered by the Americans, at a human rights/war crimes court, which the Americans have created and so engineered such that no American can ever be tried. Justice for not quite all. It seems to be a court created expressly to punish the evildoers of choice — Saddam and Milosevic…not Pinochet or Kissinger, God forbid. To me the hanging was meant as a message — “look what happens when you mess with us” — but in Iraq it seems to be perceived as an in-your-face taunt by the Shiites against the Sunnis. In this way it aggravates the situation more than ever.
Was he killed because he’s an unpleasant reminder that he used to be a U.S. ally, that the U.S. created him and supported his wars, sold him arms, and looked the other way when he committed the crimes for which the U.S. is now punishing him?
Bush School Of Government
Holy shit! This is real! No doubt it’s just family money that prompted the name of the “school” at Texas A&M — home of the Aggies! The impression though is that the wisdom of the Bush clan will be imparted here to a new generation — if so, we are in deep deep shit. Drinking, snortin' and religious conversion are majors.
Thoughts while watching Fernando Trueba’s documentary El Milagro de Candeal on the Candeal neighborhood in Salvador, Bahia, where Carlinhos Brown led a transformation effort. It’s the neighborhood and Afro-Bahian culture viewed through the eyes of a Trueba favorite — Bebo Valdés, the Cuban pianist who won numerous awards for his recent recordings on Trueba’s Spanish record label.
The links between Afro-Cuban music and culture and Afro-Brazilian culture are many. The religious roots are similar — Shango, Oxum, Oxala, Yemanja are all worshipped in both countries, with some variation. Musically, rhythmically, the son and the samba are, for example, quite different, but the way the music is organized is very similar, so there is a lot of jamming together in the film.
John Cage goes Funky
Here (above) either Bebo or Brown comments on the rhythmic clickety-clack and thrum as they cross a bridge in the rural town of Cachoeira.
Carnival and musical groups are seen filling the streets. There are connections here with the “saints”, too — the Afro-Atlantic gods and goddesses. One senses, just watching a street procession, a kind of openness, a generosity, an embrace of the universe.
When I was there shooting my own little documentary I felt this non-judgmental religion and ethos, which is maybe something many have sensed in Buddhism and other eastern philosophies, but here it is funky, sexy…and loud!
Maybe here is a god (or Gods) without God. A prayer to that which is greater than ourselves.
O mia Pae (oh, my father) sings a vocal group in a church built by slaves. But it’s not necessarily the Christian God they are singing to — though he’s welcome to join in as well.
A song to the mystery, to that which is beyond out comprehension, and biologically will ever be thus — I suspect that our brains are not built for understanding everything, evolutionarily it’s not necessary.
And there is acceptance that there are things we will never understand. Many call it God, but I prefer Mystery. It could be called “father”, in the sense that nameless ethereal whirligigs made us, begat us, formed us and the world, but that is a metaphor — it is certainly not necessarily a literal male, a man with a long white beard. Another common metaphor is Mother, and often Africa is invoked as the mother of us all — our evolutionary mother and spiritual mother. That’s where we all came from and that’s where what we are was established.
Musically, here is Africa in Spain, in Brasil, in North America, in Cuba — the roots of RnB, samba, rhumba, son, funk, rock and roll, swing, hip hop, humor, language, cool, digital culture — improvisation and innovation.
Here is Brown’s Mae de Santo (mother of the saints) and mentor, Dona Angelina, as she goes into a trance following Brown testifying to what she and the saints have done for him and the community.
The mysterious may be things we suss the mechanism of, the parts and the mechanics, but which still remain marvelous in their existence.
The awesome power of the sea, of the air, wind, of the earth below us, of ourselves — even of those psychological forces we acknowledge, whose mechanics we sort of think we understand, but whose manifestations are, and remain, like water and air, like a bird or a tiger — somehow still beyond our deep comprehension….and certainly beyond our control. Drugs, therapy and surgery may throw up roadblocks and signposts — but we’re never really in control, like the Gnarls Barkley song says.
Here are Brown, Bebo and Marisa Monte singing together. What does this have to do with the rebirth of a neighborhood? Maybe everything.
Malu and I watched the V for Vendetta DVD. How did this get made? To me, it’s a pointed and direct critique of the present U.S. government — with the “Strength Through Unity” posters substituted for “United We Stand”. (It was written during the Thatcher/Reagan years, but seems like it’s been updated — I haven’t read the comic.)
The Wachowski Bros. is the answer, I guess — it was a long standing project of theirs, since even before the Matrix movies, so the making-of featurette says. My guess is that they did some sort of quid pro quo deal, trading the Matrix sequels for a green light on this one.
Anyway — secret prisons, politicized religion and symbols, militarism, accusations of insufficient patriotism and terrorism. One of the lead characters is a terrorist, though they are careful that he doesn’t slaughter civilians — it all seems scarily prescient, especially the attitude, which isn’t gung ho, smash the “terrorist”, but rather smash the corrupt secretive lying government. The “terrorist” quotes Jefferson and Shakespeare and wears a mask throughout, making his acting task near impossible, and also making it somewhat frustrating for the audience. Like the 1st Matrix movie — a treatise wrapped in a heavily art-directed thriller.
Conversion via e-mail between an old friend and myself: Friend: Just got back from X where a relative now lives. It was in many ways like the perfect town — super liberal, nice old Craftsman homes on cozy, tree-lined streets; friendly people; no one locks their front door; the stores are locally owned (no chains); free movies in the park; free outdoor concerts where kiosks sell Thai food or locally-made ice cream made with local ingredients; there's communal compost; a massive farmer's market; the health food store is huge and carries mostly local, organic food (not Horizon or big pseudo-organic companies); gorgeous scenery — really the closest thing to a utopian society that I’ve experienced. But there was an essential ingredient missing that made it seem kind of boring to me. It was the whitest place I've ever been. I was on the lookout for people of color and didn't see a single African American person in 5 days. (There were a couple of Native Americans and a few Asians, but that was it. Certainly not enough for an influence to be felt.) Heaven is indeed a dull, one-dimensional place. The locals we met were very happy there but made comments about how the town was a little too perfect, that there was something eerie about it — but I wondered whether they would actively want economic and ethnic diversity and the complex and challenging issues that go with it? I couldn’t help thinking that these people live in a bubble, that they're missing out, that it's sort of unhealthy or just plain wrong in today's multi-culti world. Maybe I’m acutely aware of this because we live in the most economically and ethnically diverse part of our area where the whites may complain about crime, but the multi-cultural aspect makes it anything but boring.
Me: Hmmm, paradise is boring, eh? Well, I guess it would be. Maybe we need difference, the unexpected, the not perfect and even the undesirable to keep our edges as beings and as a species? We sharpen and hone ourselves against the nasty old world, and we become who we are as a result. You buying any of this? We need something to push against, some resistance and some reminders that we can’t just coast — some tests, surprises, practice, uncertainty and even unpleasantness to make us ask ourselves constantly who we are, what do we want, where are we going and do we really want to go there?
Or maybe I’m simply justifying the [somewhat bumpy] life I lead? [NY is more suited for the wealthy now, but it is still a place where ambitious creative types struggle against the odds in tiny apartments and with not quite enough money.] Maybe I’m secretly jealous of your relative and others who have made a place that eliminates all the bad stuff. (And the “other”, as you say.)
Friend: I totally buy what you say. In my opinion, we do need the nasty stuff — the struggle and resistance give life purpose. How can you strive to achieve if you're already there? Can art and great ideas flourish in a stagnant environment? I think about things like The World cruise ship where millionaires live year round — is it the perfect existence or total hell?
Anyway, I like what you say about surprises, unpleasantness and uncertainty as motivation — little kicks in the butt. No fun, but perhaps necessary.
Daniel (a journal reader) wrote in the following: When the Bass brothers financed the first Biosphere, that earth in a bubble out in Arizona, the trees all failed in an interesting way. All the trees in the biosphere were droopy and lacked the strength to stand upright. They grew, but were too weak to stand. They studied the problem and found the answer. No wind. The Biosphere bubble lacked any wind so the trees had nothing to make them sway. It was the swaying, pushing against an invisible yet very palpable force, that gave them the strength to grow upright, stand reaching up to the sky. I met one of the Bass brothers at an American Museum Association show and he took me to a Blues club that he owned in Fort Worth. The band was rocking and he was so down home I forgot all about the Biosphere so I never got to ask if the story was true.
…
A religious procession on 9th ave in the 50s yesterday (phone picture):
The brass behind had a novel way of keeping their music in front of them:
Saw a screening of a documentary called Jesus Camp. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears.  Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)
Awareness of the rest of the world is curtailed — one can only view or read that which agrees with the agenda.
Naturally, the kids being so young, there is no questioning of any kind — they simply accept what grownups Fischer and the others say — they get pumped up, agitated, they memorize right wing and Jesus slogans and shout them back obediently. They become part of a support group — a warm, safe, comfortable feeling for anyone, for any social animal, for you and me. No one strays or gets out of line even the slightest bit. (More on peer pressure later.)
There were some perfect sound bites — at one point Pastor Fischer instructs the little ones that they should be willing to die for Christ, and the little ones obediently agree. She may even use the word martyr, which has a shocking echo in the Middle East. I can see future suicide bombers for Jesus — the next step will be learning to fly planes into buildings. Of course, the grownups would say, “Oh no, we’re not like them” — but they admit that the principal difference is simply that “We’re right.”
In another scene a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, with his trademark smirking smile, is brought out and the children are urged to identify — many of the little ones come forward and reverently touch his cardboard hands.
I kept saying to myself, “O.K., these are the Christian version of the Madrassas (those Islamic religious instructional schools in Pakistan and elsewhere, often financed by Saudi oil money)...so both sides are pretty much equally sick, there’s a balance." (Although it must be said the Madrassas provide some regular education and literacy where no other option is available, they do community work that is non-religious...and they take in aimless troubled youth.)
They want to turn the U.S. into the "Christian" version of Iran or Saudi Arabia. A theocracy. The separation between church and state, already shaky with Bush in charge, is under full frontal assault by this bunch — and they are well organized, too. The megachurches tell their parishioners who to vote for, what judges to support, letters to write, and where they should stand on the issues. Well, we all do this to some extent — even in casual chats with friends we attempt to deduce and arrive at a consensus of opinion; a sloppy democratic give-and-take on any number of subjects often gives way to agreement. But this is top-down messaging — no discussion allowed. There’s a scene in the Colorado Springs megachurch run by the Preacher who talks with Bush once a week — same deal as with the kids, only most of the attendees are pliant adults.
What is it about Colorado Springs? Littleton is right next door to these megachurches. I think they are 2 sides to the same coin. One breeds the other. The dissatisfaction and alienation that leads folks to join this weird non-“Christian” Christianity (much the same has been said about fundamentalist Islamic groups, that they are a perversion of the Islam of the Prophet) leads down a road to both Littleton and Colorado Springs — and in the sense that they allow the mind to be pleasantly emptied, they are identical.
The documentary juxtaposes scenes of an Air America radio call-in guy, a former preacher himself — who rants against this version of Christianity. These scenes seemed almost unnecessary, as to many of us in the audience Becky was pretty much indicting herself, though she wouldn’t see it that way. But they did give some relief from the scary view of the heartland as harboring an army in formation. Zombies from the wheat fields.
Sad, as the heartland and areas untouched by the big city sicknesses are also the home of much practical down-to-earth wisdom. Wisdom borne of the land and of experience, unsullied by the trendy political and ethical philosophies that periodically sweep the urban jungles.
When one sees religion perverted — in the U.S. or in Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan or India, one wonders if the spiritual seeds, planted by visionaries and enlightened prophets like Jesus, Mohammed, Marx and others, are just too volatile for large societies to deal with. One asks if religious visions are better off kept as a personal thing, or at least confined to a small group — otherwise the death and destruction sown by and in the name of religions more or less balances out their moral and personal virtues (which are many.)
It’s official, what’s going on Iraq is a civil war.
Malu and I went to see A Scanner Darkly. I tried to untangle the plot for her afterwards — an almost hopeless task, but I suspect that all the plot twists are actually followable — I simply missed a jump or two. I also guessed that the dedications from Dick at the end, just before the credits, were a list of his friends and acquaintances who had died or been permanently damaged by drugs in the late 60s and early 70s. We agreed that the rotoscoped animation was the perfect medium for this story and that Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. were great. At times I was reminded of The Strangerhood, the machinima made from The Sims game characters — also a bunch of existentially lost stoners who can’t figure out who or where they are.
There are lovely visual metaphors — the scramble suits as the façades one wears at work, the view of Keanu Reeves's baffled face — his “real self” — inside a suit, trying to sort his life out. Spying on oneself as a metaphor for consciousness and the two halves of the brain at war with each other.
Denote refers to the literal thing. If one screams “fuck” when one makes a mistake is one denoting rough sexual intercourse? Not likely. To connote is to refer to qualities implied or suggested by that thing, but not the thing itself. In trying to apply the above example I am therefore lost — obviously we often use the F word solely for emphasis…as far as I know when one says, “that’s a big fucking tree” one does not imagine the tree engaged in sexual intercourse. So how did “qualities implied or suggested” by sexual intercourse become an intensifier, how did a word for sex become a word for adding emphasis?
Parallels
Here are some frames from Blind Spot — Hitler’s Secretary, that is pretty much one long contemporary interview with that woman. It is a wonderful example of how we humans can deceive ourselves, delude ourselves and blinker ourselves.
Now, of course, she realizes what she had willed herself not to see or admit, just as now many people (many less than previously) refuse to admit what the Bush admin is doing because the politicians and others push their buttons with words or national security, terrorists, democracy, small government…
Our ability to live in denial and hide from facts in front of our faces is obvious. I am thinking that it must have evolved out of a survival mechanism — some mental ability that helps one focus on the hunt, on courtship, on our children and on other ancient behaviors that are essential and absolutely necessary…necessary at the time that they are needed.
The fact that demagogues, advertisers, marketing experts and religious leaders have learned to tap into these powerful instincts is unfortunate, but maybe inevitable. In fact, since it is natural that we have these abilities, maybe it is also natural that they will be exploited and that some will become skilled at this exploitation.
However, as powerful and irresistible as these buzzwords are, it is possible to resist them and be aware when they are being employed — employed for better or worse. And then to make a decision whether one wants to be manipulated or self-deluded, or not. There are times when a certain amount of self delusion is “good”, when it allows us to accomplish a necessary task, create something unlikely or new, or even speak out — and in those cases it might be deemed worthy.
E.B. White, Death and Hope
Read E.B. White’s skinny little book This Is New York. It was written in 1948 as an assignment for Holiday magazine — I’m not sure travel and leisure mags would accept a piece like this these days — it concludes with some very prescient meditations on death and war.
When he wrote this piece, a few years after WWII, the UN building was either just completed or was being built. He points out that after that war all cities, New York being a prime example, were opportunities for massive carnage and destruction on a scale not hitherto imagined:
"A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal passages, cremate the millions."
Cities once were secure refuges for people — whether walled like the Medieval ones or not — they were places where people met, haggled and were to a degree protected. Now, with the atomic bomb especially, the protection part has been turned upside down.
But he notes that just as this shadow begins to loom over great mixtures of humanity like New York, an institution, the UN, rises to attempt to put an end to this threat. Death and hope, simultaneously, as always.
That the U.S. has clearly and brazenly taken an anti-UN stance in recent years — failed to pay their bills and has acted in defiance of UN resolutions and principles is a bad sign. The U.S. are not the only ones to have done so, but being the biggest kid on the block, it’s the most obvious, visible and ominous. It sends a sign to all the other kids that this kind of behavior is OK. A sign that death is sometimes more powerful than hope, temporarily. The UN is far from perfect — self interested parties and nations skew its abilities to perform its mission, its members are human — but the fact that that a little ray of hope still exists and it is unavailable to corporate lobbyists, religious demagogues and crooked election rigging is something.
Saw Al Gore on a Wired Magazine-sponsored panel discussion at Town Hall last week. He was good, though not as thought-provoking as James Hansen, a scientist on the same panel. Gore timed this appearance to coincide with the film on global warming made around his slide talk called An Inconvenient Truth. I saw the film last night and it is devastating — and incontrovertible. At Town Hall Gore mainly speechified — his comments were like live excerpts from the filmed slide presentation — but although some spontaneity was lost what he has to say was real, important, and he’s justifiably passionate about it. In the movie, for some reason, there was more emotion in his voice. Maybe it was the editing and the juxtaposition of the background images. Sometimes what you see changes what your hear, and vice versa. But regardless of who was saying this, or how, it needs to be heard.
The movie theater (Sunshine) was packed, there was applause at the end of the movie and Paramount asked those leaving to fill out a card — which to me implies a possible wider release. It is something everyone in this country should see. Gore mostly avoids political harping, so even Republicans might give a listen, although I overheard the man behind me as I was exiting say to his companion “propaganda”.
Propaganda it may be, but it’s reality based propaganda at least. I think Gore presents the facts in an orderly and understandable way, interspersed with moments of pure and personal emotion — well, if you can extrapolate from scientific facts to obvious personal and social consequences then it is indeed deeply emotional. And the images — even the graphs and diagrams — tap some potent buttons, as they should.
It was not all doom and gloom — the ending presents a ray of hope, but hope only if there is the political will to implement change. (Which scientist Hansen pointed out was indeed the case with fluorocarbons — the ozone hole problem is being turned around! So it can be done) I won’t go into details on all of it, it’s all on their website — but all the usual criticisms — “green policies will wreck the economy” (gee, Bush has been doing pretty good at wrecking the economy without being green at all!) — “it’s just a “theory” — “it’s a normal cyclical event”…are all dealt with.
Props to my friends at Wired for supporting this — Chris Anderson proposed a branding — “neo-green” — which, even if the wording changes, seems viable — it leaves behind the images of spaced out hippies, kooks and freaks and replaces them with possible remedies that are economically sound and technically hip. Re-branding green makes everyone who denies that global warming is human induced and is going to be devastating seem like a bunch of losers headed for the human landfill.
Example: Here is Florida (green part) after a 6 meter rise in water level (Greenland ice sheet slips off, as it seems to be doing frighteningly quickly). Maybe that Miami real estate wasn’t such a good idea?
Of course, by the time this happens all kinds of other shit will be going down, so the refugees from South Beach will be a minor issue. This could happen within our lifetime.
I hope this movie triggers some serious thought and action on this issue, otherwise…I have just finished the Jared Diamond book, Collapse, and, yes, it could happen here.
Eve, below, might still be around after a global collapse, though her batteries would have run down. Nice eye contact, Eve.
May 15, 2006—She can hold a conversation, make eye contact [uh huh], and express joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. These school-age tots seem to be making friends with EveR-1, a female android that made her debut this month in South Korea. The robot was built by Baeg Moon-hong, a senior researcher with the Division for Applied Robot Technology at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH). Fifteen motors underneath her silicon skin allow her to express a limited range of emotions, and a 400-word vocabulary enables her to hold a simple conversation.
The android weighs 110 pounds (50 kilograms) and would stand 5 feet, 3 inches (160 centimeters) tall—if she could stand. EveR-1 can move her arms and hands, but her lower half is immobile.
KITECH scientists are now working on EveR-2, which they say will have improved vision, a wider range of facial expressions, and the ability to stand and move all four limbs.
Went to a screening of Cameron Jaime’s videos accompanied by live bands last night. The bands were The Melvins and Keijii Haino so it was excruciatingly loud. Noise metal minimalism. The videos are of odd rituals from here and there — backyard wrestling in Michigan, a hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, a Joan of Arc procession in France and Kranky Klaus Christmas “festivities” in either Germany or Austria. All were accompanied by the live musicians who produce loud portentous rumbles, roars and pounding, signifying momentous epic events. It was well attended by the Chelsea art crowd, as Jamie’s videos are included in the Whitney Biennial.
A great idea to present the videos this way. The editing, and they are edited, unlike some art films, is far from tight — everything goes on a bit too long for my taste — but with the live music it all becomes more about the general atmosphere and presenting a thesis than it is about didactic understanding. The videos presented together are a thesis that all these cultural phenomena are tied together in lurching towards a slightly silly chthonic apocalypse. Viewed solely as filmmaking they might seem a bit weak, but presented as an experience they are a much better visual accompaniment to this music than the usual smoke and colored lights. And vice versa. In addition, the combination of sound and image has that (simple) point to make, though I would argue that the bringer of the apocalypse will actually be all smiles and charm, good intentions and noble deeds, and the snarling whirlwind will only be unleashed when it is too late. The devil will look like Jerry Falwell, Martha Stewart or Tony Roberts and not like a metal band — who only sometimes hurt themselves.
Other videos and films with live music I’ve seen recently are Bill Morrison’s Descasia and the old Panleve poetic nature docs accompanied by Yo La Tengo. All and all, it’s often a mutually beneficial joining of forces.
The head of the CIA has stepped down and a new guy has been nominated. The press goes on and on about “the beleaguered agency” and their faulty intelligence. But I seem to remember the CIA warning the Bush administration NOT to use the intelligence and information that the Bush Krew planned and did use to support their WoMD justification for the invasion. It was a case of data mining — the Bush Bunch used whatever data, however faulty, they could find to support their made-in-advance-plans — the “facts” were selected to fit the policy, as the Downing Street memo made clear. Then, when caught with their pants down, they made the CIA the fall guy and the U.S. press curiously fails to remind us that it was the administration who promoted the erroneous intelligence, not the CIA. Is the press STILL afraid to call Bush and Co. on their lies? Far be it for me to hold up the CIA — toppler of numerous democratic governments — as a paragon of truth and virtue — but in this case I think they are being treated unfairly.
Saw "The Road To Guantanamo" last night — it was a screening — it will be out in June, I think. Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross directed. It’s the story of the Tipton 3, and it’s great, absolutely amazing.
I vaguely remember this story being in the news. The Tipton 3 are three Pakistani Brits who happened to be in Afghanistan when the U.S. began bombing and were stupid or unlucky enough to be picked up by the Northern Alliance (enemies of the Taliban and therefore allied with the U.S.) and were then turned over as bounty to the U.S. ground troops.
These poor lads barely survive their capture by the Northern countrymen — many others around them die like cattle. Before long they are passed on to the Americans and they think their troubles are over. Think again. They are likewise beaten and abused by the U.S. “intelligence” dudes. Soon enough they are spirited away to Gitmo for further torture and further questioning.
I don’t have to go into the details of what was done to them — it’s all on the record (though the U.S. military and Republicans say they are lying.) Theirs was maybe the first unimpeachable unofficial testimony of what was going on in there. Not as bad as Abu Ghraib, but still illegal, stupid, counterproductive (these lads were politicized by what was done to them) and, maybe saddest of all — completely incompetent and useless. Almost none of the hundreds of “informants” know anything and most are innocent — just like these lads — the abuse and rendition of prisoners like these is a recruiting poster for terrorist groups worldwide. It actually creates the enemies it is trying to eliminate.
The film intercuts the real guys and docudrama recreations of their story — creatively a risky move. But as the decision was to recreate everything in scrupulous detail as described by the boys it comes across as one gripping super bad trip rather than as a dogmatic anti-Bush diatribe.
Here is one lad:
I thought the film mainly concentrated on their tragic and stupid story rather than insisting on political points — the lads on lark are as dumb as Beavis and Butthead, and their journey through Hell has almost no rhyme of reason. They could be ordinary American lads who one night get a little too palsy with Tony Soprano’s daughter and find themselves in a nightmare they could never imagine. The Americans are just lads too, as dumb as dirt and full of righteous bluster. Looking at the film still below I am reminded of the adage that when one turns one’s enemies into non-human things, then anything is possible. The head shaving and the bags over the heads are essential if one seeks emotional and physical revenge for a wrong.
City of Little Factories
Did the 5 Boro Bike Tour this morning. 42 miles! I thought I’d be more tired at the end than I am. It’s loads of fun. People in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island put signs in their yards and cheer the crowds of bikers on. The organizers close the FDR drive, the BQE, the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano-Narrows bridge on one side — so we get the thrill of riding in the middle of the street, not having to stop at red lights and no worries of the ubiquitous jaywalking peds on suicide missions.
Occasionally there are rest areas where they give out free bananas and water (and candy bars and peanut butter crackers sometimes.) One rest stop was mandatory — so things don’t get too spread out, I guess. There was lots of spandex, way way too much spandex.
9:30AM — The view to Randall’s Island under a RR bridge:
12 Noon — Riding over the Varrazano:
Of course, some guys (and gals) are little behind on their bike courtesy — or maybe they are trying to prove how manly they are — to both themselves and everyone else. So there was some high speed zooming and jockeying for meaningless leads — but mostly there was a great feeling of civic togetherness — which sounds corny and clichéd, and it is, but that’s what it was.
Maybe it was the route — the longest parts of the route go through waterfront neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens — but it gave one the impression that the old nutty industrial city that NY once was still exists. These neighborhoods are an endless series of little factories that make plastic wrapping, cardboard boxes, Ex-Lax, coat hangers, hairbrushes and, of course, wooden water tanks. Sure, some neighborhoods like Williamsburg are filling up with art galleries and bookshops, others are all Hasidic or Italian, but mostly the waterfront is still funky factories — a million miles from the industrial parks, high tech campuses and corporate headquarters that we see out west. These are factories on a small scale, sometimes family run. These are the places that make those widgets that you look at and think, “who thought of that?” “who designed that?”
A neat summary of recent advances in evolutionary theory and embryology is in the recent The New York Review Of Books. The writers point out that Hox genes, recognized not so long ago, direct the growth and development of an organism by acting as a series of switches and growth guides. Many of these newly discovered genetic agents were noticed by studying embryonic development, as the big puzzle in evolution is now how exactly can simple genes dictate the growth of and evolve into such complex organs like eyes and hands.
Well, it seems the “simple” genes don’t exactly dictate all of that, that it happens in development, gradually, where the Hox genes act as switches that allow some genes to be expressed and others to remain silent. They do this piecemeal, as an organism grows, so all the information doesn’t have to be stored in one massive genetic file, it’s like a series of trap doors that get opened when the right triggers are activated. Therefore the Hox genes “direct” the development of each specific organ and evolutionary changes and mutations don’t therefore have to happen in the whole gene, which would increase the risk of catastrophe (a dead freak) but instead mutations can happen within the confines of the Hox “instruction manuals” for specific organs. In fact, many organs’ developments are self-regulated. The complex network of blood vessels or nerves, for example, is not mapped out in advance. An algorithm is set in motion and the network then more or less creates itself, reacting to its environment. So, the instruction manual does NOT have to be as big and as complex as the thing it describes. And instruction such as “keep the river on your right” eliminates that need for an elaborate map.
This reminds me that yesterday Jane, who is working on the video elements of Here Lies Love, found the film that Marcos’ mistress Dovie Beams was brought to Manila to star in many years ago. We all assumed that Imelda, discovering Marcos’ affair, squashed the film shoot back in the 70s before it was even done. The film was to be a dramatization of Marcos’ supposed exploits and his affair with a Filipina resistance fighter during WWII. Heroism and romance — with the Filipina warrior gal to be played by an American B movie actress! Jane discovered on the web that a print of this film exists in Germany — or it was released in Germany in the late 80s and the print is floating around somewhere.
Here’s the network analogy:
Previously to Jane’s German discovery, on the IMDB database, only two films featuring Beams as an actress ever showed up. Now, although she never entered this new information into their database, this third film pops up as well. The web has “noticed” a new connection, a new path through the jungle, and has incorporated it into itself, where relevant. No one did anything; the web did it by itself. Or so it seems.
So, it seems that the Hox genes allow for a more and more complex organism than the number of genes should be able generate by themselves. Previously it was thought that complex organisms like us should have many many more genes than simple life forms — and that evolution happened when these new genes gradually got added to the sequence by accident. But it now seems that the difference in the number of genes between lower life forms and us is nowhere near as large as it “should” be. The Hox genes offer an explanation of sorts as to how this is technically possible — the series of switches and triggers are a system in which less can be made to do more. Ingenious.
The Hox gene and regular gene combination raises questions.
Isn’t it odd that, to some extent, the genes present in even the lowliest bacteria contain much of what is necessary to make vastly larger and more complex creatures? Quantitatively there is not that much less information even in lowly lifeforms. Does this mean there is a lot of redundant unused information in the genes of a simple organism? What is the “extra” information doing there? Why would any organism have stuff it doesn’t use? How could anything like that possibly evolve? Creationists probably have a ready answer here.
Darwinists claim the opposite — that this common genetic base or framework proves that we all came from the same place. That to have needed real genetic additions evolution would have happened even more slowly than it did. So, in their opinion, this system was the way it had to happen. At least in the time scale we observe. And the genius of the design is that it uses simple building blocks but makes the absolute most out of them. One can make a simple brick, or a skyscraper, but the ingredients are identical.
What that says to me then is that most life on Earth is, genetically speaking, one organism. I don’t mean this metaphorically, I mean it literally. The various shapes and forms that life takes are ways that it, the uber organism, has found to occupy every available niche — but it is the always the same genetic framework that is being propagated everywhere, more or less. Darwin would claim that a lineage exists from one primeval single celled creature to almost all the world’s bacteria, sloths, ants and people. There may be other primeval things that offer radically different genetic frameworks, but this one genetic model has prevailed, and did so well that it pretty much took over the planet. (I wonder if some viruses are the seeds of alternate genetic design possibilities, as yet unrealized?)
So, to an alien species from another galaxy, all life on earth might appear almost as one organism, vast and shape shifting. Where we see difference they would see similarity. To them it would appear as if this one organism had not only flourished, but was so spread out across the planet and that the Earth itself might be seen as one seething being — an organism (of which we are just a part) filling every available nook and cranny. A creature that even created an environment conducive to itself. Oxygen, an atmosphere, soil — all, to some extent, made by life. The One that is All has a relationship with its host rock that is symbiotic.
Saw the 2nd half of The New World on 42nd St. Young Q'orianka Kilcher is the entire movie. The entire drama takes place on her amazing face. The movie is that and a bunch of metaphorical shots of birds soaring and sunlight through trees. No wonder the 42nd St. crowds were frustrated. Where were the battles, the raping and the pillaging? The revenge and the desperate struggle for survival? The guts and the glory? Wasn’t all that in the trailer? Where’d they go? Not here. Instead we watch her smile, and the mood lightens, the audience becomes optimistic and then her face goes blank, and we sense trouble, tears — and we sense she and her whole culture are falling to pieces. It’s like Carl Dreyer’s Joan of Arc film disguised as a commercial movie. A movie made entirely of close-ups of a beautiful face intercut with nature footage. What a concept! One face tells the whole story. And it does.
Time limits on Justice?
The people of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, have been attempting in recent years to reclaim the farming lands taken from their ancestors by the white settlers. The whites have sometimes lived on a farm for 3 generations or more and naturally they think of it as theirs, that it is their homeland now too. The whites accept that the nation should not be ruled by outsiders anymore, but they see their homes as their own. They have raised children, built infrastructure and improved the fields. But as the political tide has recently turned and they are no longer the bosses, their right to hold on to the 80% of the arable land in the area that they claimed seems less likely to continue.
Is this fair? Not exactly, but neither was the appropriation of the land years ago. Justice, one might say, was simply delayed. If I can steal from you and you are powerless to reclaim your property or land for generations does it then become mine? At some point does time itself transfer ownership?
Most likely justice will be skewed. Whites will be forcibly removed, land will go unused and some of it will be wasted by the new owners, unaccustomed as they might be to managing it. There will be unscrupulous land grabs and struggles for property amongst the new owners. But maybe after some time, if things don’t get completely out of hand, a kind of balance will be achieved. Some will argue that not even a single white person belongs on this land, and they have a point. But with some compassion and forgiveness the descendents of thieves might find a place and a home.
Historical Justice
When does the clock run out? Can the Lenape, or their descendants, claim a share of NYC? If they somehow became fabulously oil rich, let us say, would that make it seem less ridiculous? Can Miami Cubans claim their ancestral homes in Havana in the not too distant future? German Jews their houses in Leipzig and Berlin? Russians exiled since the revolution their beautiful homes in St. Petersburg? Chinese their family homes, where they’d lived for generations, that they were tossed out of during the Cultural Revolution? Can everyone simply make history go backwards — and is that justice?
Saw Grizzly Man, Herzog’s new documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a surfer dude who decides to live with the bears in Alaska and documented it all on video — until he and his girlfriend got eaten.
From the first scene the movie is amazing. Treadwell is a nut the likes of which Herzog has always been drawn to… a loner who sets an impossible task for himself. A person with a vision who will defy death to realize it. I recently saw another of his docs about an Englishman who decides to fly a homemade hot air balloon over the Guyana jungle. His previous attempt had ended in the death of a cameraman, but, ever determined, the loopy Brit soldiers on — and succeeds.
What’s also similar about the Brit and the surfer dude is that they both play to the camera — they’re both always “on”, playing as being someone. In the Englishman’s case he adopts the persona of a BBC presenter, loudly and simply explaining things to the invisible viewer. Treadwell in turn adopts the persona of something similar to Steve Irwin, the hyper Aussie Crocodile “Hunter”. He’s got his cool shades and bandana and he’s constantly jumping in front of his video camera, whispering to the imaginary audience, while a massive grizzly forages immediately behind him. He names them all, and is constantly telling them he loves them.
This, to Herzog, points to the true subject of the doc — the skewed view that people have of nature. Treadwell, according to one Alaskan, seemed to think the bears were like people in bear costumes. Like a child he sees them as cute, lovable and therefore if he can “be” like one of them, they will accept him, and he probably believes, love him back. He goes on about how dangerous they are, but seems to feel he, with his willingness to join them, is somehow and exception.
Herzog believes Treadwell and others idealize nature, or more likely turn to nature when civilization becomes difficult or too much to deal with. They’re escaping into a vision of nature that doesn’t exist, in his opinion. Herzog believes that nature is indifferent, cruel, violent and chaotic… and sometimes beautiful. These somewhat New Age folks seem to feel that they have some spiritual kinship and connection with animals and thus with forces of nature (at one point Treadwell summons rain)… a connection civilized people have lost.
In the end what seems like a hungry and unfamiliar bear eats Treadwell and his girlfriend, effectively making Herzog’s argument for him.
I also think the movie has another subject — the desire of some of these nutters to recreate themselves as television personalities. It doesn’t seem isolated — even the coroner in the grizzly movie seems to adopt a TV-inspired persona. He becomes a sort of nightmare version of Mr. Rogers, smiling a crooked smile and gently explaining in detail exactly how the bear dismembered Treadwell and the woman.
I wonder if there is afloat a strange notion that if one is adrift, lost, floundering in life, one can simply take on the persona of some imaginary TV personality and problem solved. You’ve found the escape hatch! It leads into the tube! (or flat screen, these days.) It also seems that the virtual world of TV is as real as the real world for these people — the “spirit world” is visible, and there are lots of channels too! Sometimes it seems that this mythical world validates the real world for many people — things are good and important depending on how much they conform to the TV reality.
From the first scene I thought I could have been watching Owen Wilson playing this guy — it was too perfect to be real. Now I think that it’s a mobius world — Treadwell is playing a character that is possibly inspired by a character Owen Wilson played in a movie, which was probably based on someone like Treadwell.
My head hurts.
Saw Rize, the David LaChapelle documentary, which has amazing footage, and the whole image of ghetto clowns furiously dancing is a beautifully insane metaphor in search of a connection. (He does begin with L.A. riot footage, implying that L.A. willfully ignores its black communities, and that this fierce dancing is partly the result.) But the doc is a bit shapeless — though the dancing was wonderfully edited, I thought — there were about 4 endings too many. Out of the clown dancing emerged a splinter group — Krumpers. And the ending should probably have been the big showdown between the Clowns and the Krumpers. It’s amazing, unifying and all that. But then would we have missed the footage of someone saying they are krumping for Christ? Maybe.
Watching nature documentaries with Malu.
The lyrebird of Australia imitates other birds — and other sounds as well. It puts on a real performance, clearing a space in the bush and then stringing all its accomplishments together in a 5-minute extravaganza, ending with, in this footage, the sounds of a camera shutter, a car alarm, loggers’ footsteps and finally the sound of the loggers’ chainsaws cutting through a tree — these last were perfect, impeccable mimicry, like recordings! “Rationality will not save us” — Robert McNamara
Saw a screening at Tribeca Film Festival of a documentary called Punk: Attitude directed by Don Letts, former Clash associate, video director, etc. It’s a history of Punk using a lot of archival footage intercut with interviews with survivors that draws a crooked line from the Stooges and garage bands of the 60s to Blink-182 and other slicker more manufactured versions of the sound that exist today. The interviewees, many of them, featured stunning examples of British dentistry at its worst. Or maybe I’m being unfair, maybe it’s the British diet that fosters rampant tooth decay. I can talk, my teeth are far from straight and perfect — I didn’t have braces when I was younger the way lots of American kids do now. Not that I really desperately needed them — which was the accepted justification back then. Now the bar has been raised and mere functionality and suitability of chompers is not enough, they have to be “improved” and made as close to perfect as possible. Anyway, New Yorkers will be pleased at Letts’ version of punk history — it corrects the often mistaken impression that it originated in London. Henry Rollins, who is one of the interviewees, is amazingly articulate, funny, good looking and incisive. Many of the others seem sadly aged or somewhat damaged, unsurprisingly.
Earlier in the day Malu and I visited The Nomadic Museum, a massive temporary structure covering an entire pier designed by architect Shigeru Ban to house the photos and a film by Gregory Colbert (Ashes and Snow). That’s all it will ever be used for. Colbert, according to New York Magazine, “got the idea (and funds) for the museum after his one-man installation in 2002 at the Venice Biennale’s Arsenale, a vast shipyard dating from the Renaissance. “Ashes and Snow” was the first solo exhibit ever to occupy the entire space. And every last piece of art in it was bought up by the chairman of Rolex, who then encouraged the artist to use the money to mount the show — as is — in other cities. So, Colbert asked the avant-garde Japanese architect Shigeru Ban to design a museum large enough to travel with it.” Predictably the NY art critics hated it — it was panned and disdained — but the people come in droves. There is almost always a line, especially on weekends, and there must be some word of mouth bringing people in, because there are none of the arts section covers that usually hype an event of this magnitude — unlike The Gates, which was hyped to the max. Here’s the temporary building under construction:
And an artist's conception of the inside — pretty accurate, too:
It does indeed inspire a sense of awe, induced by the massive scale of the building and the images of elephants and whales consorting with humans. The new age music that plays inside kind of puts the nose on the clown. Malu was amazed at first, then soon began a guessing game — How did he get the elephant to do that? Was that landscape, with a perfectly flat horizon, Photoshopped? (answer: yes) How does the man (Colbert, doing some “modern dance”-type aquatic ballet) hold his breath underwater so long? (the camera people had a tank ready for him to take big gulps of air was my guess.) Why is everything in slow motion? Malu also initially asked if he simply took these pictures of existing situations and peoples. A beatific young boy with a shaved head rests his head, eyes blissfully closed, against a docile elephant. A woman in a white flowing robe walks through an Egyptian temple as a hawk swoops over her shoulder. I think that initial impression of documenting a preëxisting place and people is intended, that we are meant to think a little bit that these things did happen and that in some exotic far-flung locales humans and animals happily coexist. That Colbert simply searched these places out and then photographed what he saw. That the world shelters amazing things beyond the civilized world. Malu began so seriously doubt this “authenticity” after a bit. She sensed the situations were arranged, set up and even sometimes photoshopped. She didn’t completely understand why the sepia still photos looked like they’d been smudged, smeared or painted. She was mesmerized then eventually bored by the film (a lot of scenes seem to repeat) but many people were rapt and stayed for the whole hour before it looped around.
Colbert seems quite the messianic type — the need for a whole building/museum, the hushed, worshipful atmosphere. And placing himself in many of the scenes. This extreme romanticism and self-exaltation is somehow disturbing to me. On one level it could be seen as a celebration of the wonders of nature and life on earth. Cavorting underwater with the whales and manatees looks like fun — I wish I was there — but his attitude and posture seem more than a little Christ-like. Maybe I’m just another arty cynic. If we can, after the passage of time, “appreciate” the romantic awe-inspiring work of Leni Riefenstahl — whose images, from Nüremberg to the Nuba, are now seen by some as beautiful in and of themselves and divorced from their service to the Nazis — then why not this? Aren’t they more or less the same? Here’s Leni:
and again of a romantic ruin:
Colbert:
 The interior of the museum: 
And Leni’s stadium lighting:
Now, I’m not saying Colbert is a closet Nazi. Just pointing out many stylistic similarities (there are more congruencies, but I can’t locate the images.) Does all romanticism lead down the road to fascism and ruin? I think not, but it does seem to work in reverse — extreme nationalism, fanaticism, the feeling of a manifest destiny — have in their pasts a romanticization of history, culture and nature. And to merely find this attitude lurking behind evil, well, does that really imply that it was the cause of the evil? Not exactly. If that were true we’d have to check ourselves every time we took in an inspiring scenic vista or gazed in awe at amazing structures and lifeforms. Gazing at the Grand Canyon would be outlawed in case it fostered fascist tendencies. Went to see the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room. As the movie was about to begin I heard a young man behind me say to his date, “the reason the teachers didn’t like me was because they all knew I was smarter than they were.” How appropriate his attitude would be for this movie, where Greed is good, survival of the fittest and free market economics were the guiding “ethical” principals for the Enron set and their traders. As we watch the heinous behavior and complete lack of ethics and morals of this bunch we wonder, “how can people do this, behave like this, destroy other people, lie cheat and scheme and justify it to themselves?” (I’m currently reading books about dictators as well as Vollmann's tome on violence, so the question comes up a lot.) The filmmakers attempt to answer that question by including some clips and information on the Milgram experiment, a series of psychological tests done decades ago. In these tests the test subject was required by a “scientist” to help an unseen person learn some phrases by administering small electric shocks when the unseen person got the answer wrong. As they got more wrong answers the “scientist” instructed the subject to increase the voltage. The point of the test was to see just how far the subject would go before ethics and morals would kick in and they would refuse to harm the invisible person.
As it turned out, people go depressingly far before stopping. The invisible subjects would be screaming in simulated pain (no real shocks were administered), begging the subject to stop, while the “scientist” urged use of increased voltages. Many subjects “killed” their invisible students, partly because they could say they were just doing their job, that the scientist was obviously an “expert” and maybe partly because the person was unseen — though the screams could be heard. The inference is that, yes, as the Greeks and every other civilization knew, left unbridled (deregulated, free market) and given some quick reward — Enron execs and traders made fistfuls of money — people will destroy one another and social order will quickly crumble. One might say that the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and others proves that the market is working. Tell that to all the little people who lost their life savings. I think it shows that deregulation and free markets are an excuse for bullies and unethical types to swindle as many as they can — and that while too many regulations stifle creativity, too few encourages people's worst instincts.This is not Nature at work. Not even animals get to behave like this for very long. There are checks and balances in the wild that rein in extreme behavior. Only viruses and plagues seem to run unchecked for lengthy periods.
Malu and I went to see The Incredibles, the new Pixar film about disgruntled retired superheroes. I laughed and cried, as I do at lots of animated movies. I wonder if I get more emotionally involved in animated characters than in films using real actors? Other than Spielberg movies that deliberately work the sentimental buttons it's much easier to identify with drawings than with real people.
Maybe this isn't strange. Maybe the fact that they're drawings makes them more ambiguous, more universal, and easier to identify with. Well, it's true with lots of other things — things that use metaphor, allegory and poetic ambiguity are generally more powerful emotionally than straight narrative.
Went to a theater piece at BAM and met up with Marianne Weems and her friends Diller and Scofidio for dinner afterwards. Talked with Marianne about my disco Imelda idea, which she approves of, and about her own developing piece about surveillance.
I'd liked Diller and Scofidio's show at the Whitney but they said when I asked were they busy touring it that it couldn't travel to other museums — the cost of the installation and the fact that the Whitney, as originator, was charging any potential institution a huge fee for the rights to the show. Which one can understand pragmatically, but it seems there might have been room for just a little negotiation and compromise in the name of disseminating the arts.
I was kind of shocked as we talked over dinner at the sheer number of their projects that came up in conversation (an arts district in Brooklyn, for example) that have never gotten past the drawing board. Differing points of view between institutions and developers seems to be a recurring theme.
They are doing The High Line, which is good news — the former elevated rail line running through Chelsea up to 34th Street that will become an weird skinny park.
Here is the marching band from Lehigh University. There aren't very many of them:
Jade Dellinger, an independent curator, offers to drive a small group to St. Petersburg to catch the Dali show at that city's Dali museum during the afternoon. It's maybe the first show there that isn’t made up entirely from their own collection — which is an incredible collection. I saw it last time I was here.
This show originated in Spain and is called Dali and the Media; it's excerpts from films, some fake newspapers, the House of Venus from the 1939 World's Fair, the Spellbound sequence (Hitchcock) and even a 7-minute Disney animated short that has never been seen. (Apparently the Disney folks, after stonewalling numerous enquiries about this legendary film, looked at their contract and realized that it said that none of the sketches and preliminary paintings for the film were theirs unless they completed the film — so it was completed recently. It sort of looks like a Daliesque sequence from Waking Life.)
There are a few video monitors with hilarious TV ads that Dali did in the 60s — one for Braniff Airlines, in which a parade of celebs exit a plane all saying, "If you’ve got it, flaunt it!" And a wonderful one for Alka Seltzer in which he paints the route to a woman's stomach on her unitard torso.
I join Terry, Jo Harvey, Bukka, Ron, and Sandy at a sort of political road show event organized by director John Sayles and Maggie Renzi, his producer.
It starts with political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, then Steve Earl performs an acoustic set of mostly recent, politically oriented songs. My favorite involved reciprocal generosity. A cashier in a coffee shop gives some kids a break on some candy, and, overhearing this, two truckers leave the waitress a too big tip.
Sayles' new movie Silver City is a political critique with a Bush-like nincompoop who media handlers and powerful businesspeople freely manipulate. There are a lot of story threads that involve developers, immigrant workers, the press, and it all seems pretty indicative of the way things really are. Chris Cooper gives a hilarious performance as the politician.
Afterwards, Sandy introduces me to Daryl Hannah, whom she knows from Colorado. I arrange to meet up with Steve Earl to try to do his radio program on Air America when we get to Nashville.
Terry told me he once shipped a whole load of tumbleweeds to Philadelphia for a theater piece. But when they opened the packages, they had become square.
Went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Malu didn't want to go: "It's been out too long." I loved it. It was one of those movies that make everything look different when you leave the theater.
Just outside the theater, a man rides by on a bike — one of those low rider bikes. He's a grown man and seems pretty normal by appearance, except he's got a monstrous boom box strapped to the front of his bike. Usually I think of this as a Puerto Rican thing — strapping the boom box to the front of the bike and "sharing" the music with everyone, but with this man it just seems improbable.
I ride off on my own bike.
I can hear the not-too-distant sound of a helicopter. It seems it could be almost overhead, just over the rim of the concrete canyon I'm going through. I look up. Nothing. The sonic reflections could make it either behind of in front of me. Very confusing.
I can see one hovering over a building in midtown — maybe the Empire State. But the one I'm hearing seems it must be closer. This hovering helicopter thing always seems slightly ominous in NY. I crane my neck this way and that as I ride but never see the one that sounds near.
Another boom box biker passes by.
A Jane Austen readin', sensible-shoe wearin' woman on a regular bike, but again with a (smaller) boom box strapped to the rear. I can't hear what the music is.
|
