Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Recent viewings
Saint Joan. Play by George Bernard Shaw, performed by Shaw Festival players in Niagara on the Lake.
This is one of those plays that somehow got printed in one of my school textbooks years ago, despite its intellectually subversive content. I read it instead of what the class was supposed to be reading. That happened a lot.
I was impressed, at the time, by the relentlessly analytical and evenhanded approach which Shaw, that famous Bad Boy of early 20th century English theater, takes toward his subject. His subject, of course, is the famous Joan of Arc, the religiously-inspired peasant girl who rallied the French to several notable military victories against the occupying English in the 15th century, and was eventually captured, tried, and executed by those same English. Although I'm hardly competent to evaluate theatrical performances, I find that seeing the play performed live does at the very least remind me why I found it so interesting in print.
On the one hand, Shaw's Joan is sincere and devout. In the beginning she is deferential both to the established Church and its representatives, and to the political ruler whom she believes to be appointed by God to rule the French, even as it becomes clear to the audience that both of them see her as a dangerous nuisance once she has exhausted her immediate usefulness to them. Joan is sympathetic, attractive, well-intentioned and well-spoken. Her devotion to God, and the arguments that she makes for local, nationalistic self-governance, are appealing. And yet Shaw throws in some troubling reflections on her ideas, as well.
The example of a certain Arab camel-herder, who also claimed to receive special individual revelations from God, is invoked by one character as he argues that visionaries like Joan are threats to the peace and good order of the world. Modern-day "visionaries" like David Koresh and Jim Jones remind the modern viewer that this fear is well-founded in every age. One of the characters in the play gets a laugh by complaining that individuals like Joan, who wish to deal with God directly rather than through a priestly or churchly mediator, are always "protesting" about something. "I would almost call them protest-ants," he says, and the audience chuckles. But it's not entirely a humorous moment, since Shaw clearly has in mind that this is exactly what the later Protestant Reformation was about, both for good and for ill.
Joan's rather simplistic ethnic nationalism still resonates in everything from racist nativist movements to anti-colonial revolts to "ethnic cleansing", and Shaw, writing shortly after the horrific bloodbaths of the First World War, could hardly have avoided seeing such nationalistic concepts as ill-starred.
The play's well worth seeing. Shaw has some fun with the idea of the Catholic Church first denouncing Joan as a heretic, then canonizing her as a saint a few centuries later, but he plays fair in terms of presenting the real and serious conflicts that surround any claims of personal divine revelation or of ethnically-based nationalism.
Saint Joan. Play by George Bernard Shaw, performed by Shaw Festival players in Niagara on the Lake.
This is one of those plays that somehow got printed in one of my school textbooks years ago, despite its intellectually subversive content. I read it instead of what the class was supposed to be reading. That happened a lot.
I was impressed, at the time, by the relentlessly analytical and evenhanded approach which Shaw, that famous Bad Boy of early 20th century English theater, takes toward his subject. His subject, of course, is the famous Joan of Arc, the religiously-inspired peasant girl who rallied the French to several notable military victories against the occupying English in the 15th century, and was eventually captured, tried, and executed by those same English. Although I'm hardly competent to evaluate theatrical performances, I find that seeing the play performed live does at the very least remind me why I found it so interesting in print.
On the one hand, Shaw's Joan is sincere and devout. In the beginning she is deferential both to the established Church and its representatives, and to the political ruler whom she believes to be appointed by God to rule the French, even as it becomes clear to the audience that both of them see her as a dangerous nuisance once she has exhausted her immediate usefulness to them. Joan is sympathetic, attractive, well-intentioned and well-spoken. Her devotion to God, and the arguments that she makes for local, nationalistic self-governance, are appealing. And yet Shaw throws in some troubling reflections on her ideas, as well.
The example of a certain Arab camel-herder, who also claimed to receive special individual revelations from God, is invoked by one character as he argues that visionaries like Joan are threats to the peace and good order of the world. Modern-day "visionaries" like David Koresh and Jim Jones remind the modern viewer that this fear is well-founded in every age. One of the characters in the play gets a laugh by complaining that individuals like Joan, who wish to deal with God directly rather than through a priestly or churchly mediator, are always "protesting" about something. "I would almost call them protest-ants," he says, and the audience chuckles. But it's not entirely a humorous moment, since Shaw clearly has in mind that this is exactly what the later Protestant Reformation was about, both for good and for ill.
Joan's rather simplistic ethnic nationalism still resonates in everything from racist nativist movements to anti-colonial revolts to "ethnic cleansing", and Shaw, writing shortly after the horrific bloodbaths of the First World War, could hardly have avoided seeing such nationalistic concepts as ill-starred.
The play's well worth seeing. Shaw has some fun with the idea of the Catholic Church first denouncing Joan as a heretic, then canonizing her as a saint a few centuries later, but he plays fair in terms of presenting the real and serious conflicts that surround any claims of personal divine revelation or of ethnically-based nationalism.
Recent viewings
The Lathe of Heaven (1980). Based on the book by Ursula K. LeGuin.
Unlike the producers of the pretty-but-vacuous Earthsea miniseries of 2004, the makers of this adaptation actually consulted with the author. The result is a movie that honestly and directly focuses on the thought-provoking premise of the book (What if your dreams really did come true?) but is badly marred by 1980 television production values and an incoherent ending.
The visual effects are not much better than one would expect from a contemporary episode of Doctor Who or Blakes 7, but the acting and the camera work are servicable. The futuristic aspects of the movie -- at least as long as the protagonist is dealing with our reality -- are actually fairly low-key, consisting mainly of some scenes in which the protagonist deals with what appears to be a national single-payer health care system.
Our protagonist has one big problem. His dreams alter reality retroactively, so that the world he dreams of becomes the world he inhabits when he awakes, with only himself to remember the former reality that has ceased to exist. The psychologist he consults, a specialist in sleep and dreams, sees an opportunity in this. ("First, we'll need an institution....")
The screenplay effectively illustrates the way that the law of unintentional consequences inevitably plays havoc with hubristic human attempts to remake the universe according to what we think is "good". A dreamed wish for sunny weather produces a devastating drought. A "directed dream" about a solution to overpopulation results in a reality in which six billion of the world's population have been eradicated by an epidemic. Unfortunately, toward the end the movie succumbs to the temptation to dissolve everything into trippy psychedelic incoherence a la 2001 and tie everything up with a deus-ex-machina that solves everything without explaining anything.
It's a moderately entertaining take on the old caution to be careful what you wish for, but badly handicapped by its final descent into laser-light-show incoherence.
Texas trivia: Dallasites will recognize several local buildings as "futuristic" structures in the film, including Reunion Tower.
The Lathe of Heaven (1980). Based on the book by Ursula K. LeGuin.
Unlike the producers of the pretty-but-vacuous Earthsea miniseries of 2004, the makers of this adaptation actually consulted with the author. The result is a movie that honestly and directly focuses on the thought-provoking premise of the book (What if your dreams really did come true?) but is badly marred by 1980 television production values and an incoherent ending.
The visual effects are not much better than one would expect from a contemporary episode of Doctor Who or Blakes 7, but the acting and the camera work are servicable. The futuristic aspects of the movie -- at least as long as the protagonist is dealing with our reality -- are actually fairly low-key, consisting mainly of some scenes in which the protagonist deals with what appears to be a national single-payer health care system.
Our protagonist has one big problem. His dreams alter reality retroactively, so that the world he dreams of becomes the world he inhabits when he awakes, with only himself to remember the former reality that has ceased to exist. The psychologist he consults, a specialist in sleep and dreams, sees an opportunity in this. ("First, we'll need an institution....")
The screenplay effectively illustrates the way that the law of unintentional consequences inevitably plays havoc with hubristic human attempts to remake the universe according to what we think is "good". A dreamed wish for sunny weather produces a devastating drought. A "directed dream" about a solution to overpopulation results in a reality in which six billion of the world's population have been eradicated by an epidemic. Unfortunately, toward the end the movie succumbs to the temptation to dissolve everything into trippy psychedelic incoherence a la 2001 and tie everything up with a deus-ex-machina that solves everything without explaining anything.
It's a moderately entertaining take on the old caution to be careful what you wish for, but badly handicapped by its final descent into laser-light-show incoherence.
Texas trivia: Dallasites will recognize several local buildings as "futuristic" structures in the film, including Reunion Tower.
Recent viewings
Hot Fuzz (2007). I didn't think I was going to like this movie. However, at the behest of a couple of Friends-o-Fiend, we went to see it, and I was pleasantly surprised.
This may be partly because the movie's promotional trailers, if one watches them absentmindedly, seem to be promoting a conventional cop/action flick. You know, the one where the cop who Does His Job Too Well gets shuffled into a new position because he's making life too difficult for his official superiors, and then Makes Good anyway because he's SuperCop. But instead, to my pleasant surprise, it's a rather clever, if monstrously over-the-top, satire of the genre, in which humorless SuperCop Nick Angel, after being transferred against his will to an improbably idyllic rural village.... ah, but why should I spoil the surprise by revealing the Dark Secrets which his dogged police work uncovers?
The movie starts slowly, but by the time it becomes clear what Angel is up against, the visual puns and allusions to classic action movies are flying almost as fast and furious as the bullets in a John Woo film, with scenes lifted from everything from spaghetti westerns to Point Break to Walker, Texas Ranger, and absurdly frenetic editing straight from the CSI playbook. The hyperviolence may be a bit much for some viewers, especially one or two scenes that literally have blood spurting across the screen by the bucketfull, but for those who can stomach absurdist violence and have even a passing familiarity with the action-movie genre, it's a very funny trip.
Hot Fuzz (2007). I didn't think I was going to like this movie. However, at the behest of a couple of Friends-o-Fiend, we went to see it, and I was pleasantly surprised.
This may be partly because the movie's promotional trailers, if one watches them absentmindedly, seem to be promoting a conventional cop/action flick. You know, the one where the cop who Does His Job Too Well gets shuffled into a new position because he's making life too difficult for his official superiors, and then Makes Good anyway because he's SuperCop. But instead, to my pleasant surprise, it's a rather clever, if monstrously over-the-top, satire of the genre, in which humorless SuperCop Nick Angel, after being transferred against his will to an improbably idyllic rural village.... ah, but why should I spoil the surprise by revealing the Dark Secrets which his dogged police work uncovers?
The movie starts slowly, but by the time it becomes clear what Angel is up against, the visual puns and allusions to classic action movies are flying almost as fast and furious as the bullets in a John Woo film, with scenes lifted from everything from spaghetti westerns to Point Break to Walker, Texas Ranger, and absurdly frenetic editing straight from the CSI playbook. The hyperviolence may be a bit much for some viewers, especially one or two scenes that literally have blood spurting across the screen by the bucketfull, but for those who can stomach absurdist violence and have even a passing familiarity with the action-movie genre, it's a very funny trip.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Refgrunt for an hour
6:00 My instant-messenger program doesn't work.
6:05 Where's the internet icon?
6:10 My computer froze.
6:15 My husband needs a visiting nurse to administer his prescription. Can you help me find one?
6:16 Puzzle Lady wants Saturday newspaper. Fortunately no one has stolen her favorite puzzles. She grumbles about having to "keep our newspapers straight for us."
6:17 Internet visitor card.
6:18 Someone wants to put money on his printing account. That's at the checkout desk.
6:20 Internet visitor card.
6:21 Internet visitor card.
6:23 No, you can't print from the express internet terminal.
6:25 "This internet visitor card doesn't work. No.... wait a minute.... never mind. She's just blonde...."
6:27 Puzzle Lady wants change for copy machine.
6:28 Looking for a vacant internet terminal.
6:29 Shonen Jump magazine.
6:30 Study room reservation.
6:32 How do the rules for internet time work again?
6:33 "I need a computer with a scanner." You're in luck, miss. The computer you're using has a scanner. Right there under your left hand.
6:35 Can we put up a public flyer advertising our medicinal-plants nature walk?
6:38 MS Word says I need to insert a different disk to use the clip art. Where is it?
6:41 Computer with scanner "cannot perform this task due to restrictions on this comnputer." Call the Good Computer Fairy, who instantly knows what the problem is and flitters out from the Tech Cave to fix it. I like Good Computer Fairies.
6:45 Puzzle Lady returns Saturday puzzle section and makes a great show of putting the sections of the newspaper back together. She tells me I'm a nice young man.
6:50 Book Club Lady wants eight holds placed on the same book for her book club. There are only three copies in the library network. Oh well, then, let's place eight holds on this other book instead.
6:55 Glance at work e'mail. Note that a young man who spoke with me at the desk a few days ago is now considered a Suspicious Character to be watched, for various reasons which need not be discussed here.
7:00 I've never used a word processor before. Can you show me how?
6:00 My instant-messenger program doesn't work.
6:05 Where's the internet icon?
6:10 My computer froze.
6:15 My husband needs a visiting nurse to administer his prescription. Can you help me find one?
6:16 Puzzle Lady wants Saturday newspaper. Fortunately no one has stolen her favorite puzzles. She grumbles about having to "keep our newspapers straight for us."
6:17 Internet visitor card.
6:18 Someone wants to put money on his printing account. That's at the checkout desk.
6:20 Internet visitor card.
6:21 Internet visitor card.
6:23 No, you can't print from the express internet terminal.
6:25 "This internet visitor card doesn't work. No.... wait a minute.... never mind. She's just blonde...."
6:27 Puzzle Lady wants change for copy machine.
6:28 Looking for a vacant internet terminal.
6:29 Shonen Jump magazine.
6:30 Study room reservation.
6:32 How do the rules for internet time work again?
6:33 "I need a computer with a scanner." You're in luck, miss. The computer you're using has a scanner. Right there under your left hand.
6:35 Can we put up a public flyer advertising our medicinal-plants nature walk?
6:38 MS Word says I need to insert a different disk to use the clip art. Where is it?
6:41 Computer with scanner "cannot perform this task due to restrictions on this comnputer." Call the Good Computer Fairy, who instantly knows what the problem is and flitters out from the Tech Cave to fix it. I like Good Computer Fairies.
6:45 Puzzle Lady returns Saturday puzzle section and makes a great show of putting the sections of the newspaper back together. She tells me I'm a nice young man.
6:50 Book Club Lady wants eight holds placed on the same book for her book club. There are only three copies in the library network. Oh well, then, let's place eight holds on this other book instead.
6:55 Glance at work e'mail. Note that a young man who spoke with me at the desk a few days ago is now considered a Suspicious Character to be watched, for various reasons which need not be discussed here.
7:00 I've never used a word processor before. Can you show me how?
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Recent viewings
A Prairie Home Companion (2006). The story begins slowly. Like one of Garrison Keillor's slow-voiced monologues, it seems to ramble aimlessly in all directions at great and self-indulgent length before its internal connections and direction become apparent. For a good long while, I wondered whether a plot was ever going to develop. I should have had more faith. Robert Altman's once again telling a story indirectly, as he did in Gosford Park, through the things that characters mention in passing, the glances they give one another, the things that happen in the background, sometimes literally behind the scenes.
It's the last performance of the last radio variety show in America, an alternate-history version of The Prairie Home Companion which has just barely managed to struggle into the twenty first century. Like its real-world counterpart, it's a homey, self-effacing, sometimes-sentimental, sometimes-ironic echo of the radio shows that once entertained and comforted the inhabitants of isolated farms and small towns all across the land in the days before television's baleful glowing eye consumed the world of popular culture. Unfortunately, the family that kept it going for years has sold its home, the Fitzgerald Theater, to a philistine corporation from Texas which finds it expedient to bulldoze the theater and replace it with a parking lot.
The show's performers and musicians react to its impending end in different ways. Garrison Keillor's character -- practically indistinguishable from his real-world persona -- is blase to the point of hardly even acknowledging that this may be his last evening in the role that has defined him through most of his adult life. The two singin' cowboys, Dusty and Lefty, have their own issues to deal with. There's a pair of singing sisters who don't always agree; a faded romance that may still have a spark or two left; an aging singer whose career is probably ending with the show; and a petulant teenager who resents being dragged along to a show that doesn't feature songs about her favorite topic, suicide.
In the film's second-biggest departure from our reality, Guy Noir has escaped from fiction and been embodied as a somewhat seedy former detective, played by Kevin Kline, who's given up the investigative business for a steady job working security at the theater. It's a dull job, but one that keeps him in cigarettes and gin. Not too challenging. But on this, the last night of the show, something strange is going on. A mysterious, beautiful woman has been seen lurking about the theater. Is she a danger? A fan of the show? A psycho? A stalker? Or perhaps something else entirely? And how can he, shall we say, spend some Quality Time with her?
Tommy Lee Jones puts in a coldly reptilian and thoroughtly hissworthy performance as The Axeman, avatar of the amoral Texas corporation whose impersonal dynamic destruction is poised to dissolve the camaderie and history and good humor of the Prairie Home Companion and wash it away.
Some of the movie's most enjoyable moments play off the difference between what radio audience hears and what's actually going on on stage. At one point, "G.K.'s" much-put-upon personal assistant frantically fumbles through a disorganized stack of her boss's papers, searching for a missing script while he effortlessly vamps to fill the time, improvising an extended paean to one of the show's ubiquitous small-time commercial sponsors while papers tumble and fly in all directions. Other acts encounter similar difficulties, but the show goes on at its leisurely, unhurried pace, while the house band and the amazingly talented sound-effects man effortlessly adapt to the ongoing chaos with the practiced ease of long time professionals.
Like the radio show, the movie is good humored, easygoing, and in no particular hurry to get to any destination, but it's an enjoyable trip. As always on The Prairie Home Companion, the music is a joy to hear, and the sly humor helps keep the sentimentality of the situation and some of the songs from becoming cloying. If the various threads of the plot don't all tie up neatly and explicitly, even if some of them seem to be afterthoughts with no connection to any other threads, well, that's a lot like life itself.
A Prairie Home Companion (2006). The story begins slowly. Like one of Garrison Keillor's slow-voiced monologues, it seems to ramble aimlessly in all directions at great and self-indulgent length before its internal connections and direction become apparent. For a good long while, I wondered whether a plot was ever going to develop. I should have had more faith. Robert Altman's once again telling a story indirectly, as he did in Gosford Park, through the things that characters mention in passing, the glances they give one another, the things that happen in the background, sometimes literally behind the scenes.
It's the last performance of the last radio variety show in America, an alternate-history version of The Prairie Home Companion which has just barely managed to struggle into the twenty first century. Like its real-world counterpart, it's a homey, self-effacing, sometimes-sentimental, sometimes-ironic echo of the radio shows that once entertained and comforted the inhabitants of isolated farms and small towns all across the land in the days before television's baleful glowing eye consumed the world of popular culture. Unfortunately, the family that kept it going for years has sold its home, the Fitzgerald Theater, to a philistine corporation from Texas which finds it expedient to bulldoze the theater and replace it with a parking lot.
The show's performers and musicians react to its impending end in different ways. Garrison Keillor's character -- practically indistinguishable from his real-world persona -- is blase to the point of hardly even acknowledging that this may be his last evening in the role that has defined him through most of his adult life. The two singin' cowboys, Dusty and Lefty, have their own issues to deal with. There's a pair of singing sisters who don't always agree; a faded romance that may still have a spark or two left; an aging singer whose career is probably ending with the show; and a petulant teenager who resents being dragged along to a show that doesn't feature songs about her favorite topic, suicide.
In the film's second-biggest departure from our reality, Guy Noir has escaped from fiction and been embodied as a somewhat seedy former detective, played by Kevin Kline, who's given up the investigative business for a steady job working security at the theater. It's a dull job, but one that keeps him in cigarettes and gin. Not too challenging. But on this, the last night of the show, something strange is going on. A mysterious, beautiful woman has been seen lurking about the theater. Is she a danger? A fan of the show? A psycho? A stalker? Or perhaps something else entirely? And how can he, shall we say, spend some Quality Time with her?
Tommy Lee Jones puts in a coldly reptilian and thoroughtly hissworthy performance as The Axeman, avatar of the amoral Texas corporation whose impersonal dynamic destruction is poised to dissolve the camaderie and history and good humor of the Prairie Home Companion and wash it away.
Some of the movie's most enjoyable moments play off the difference between what radio audience hears and what's actually going on on stage. At one point, "G.K.'s" much-put-upon personal assistant frantically fumbles through a disorganized stack of her boss's papers, searching for a missing script while he effortlessly vamps to fill the time, improvising an extended paean to one of the show's ubiquitous small-time commercial sponsors while papers tumble and fly in all directions. Other acts encounter similar difficulties, but the show goes on at its leisurely, unhurried pace, while the house band and the amazingly talented sound-effects man effortlessly adapt to the ongoing chaos with the practiced ease of long time professionals.
Like the radio show, the movie is good humored, easygoing, and in no particular hurry to get to any destination, but it's an enjoyable trip. As always on The Prairie Home Companion, the music is a joy to hear, and the sly humor helps keep the sentimentality of the situation and some of the songs from becoming cloying. If the various threads of the plot don't all tie up neatly and explicitly, even if some of them seem to be afterthoughts with no connection to any other threads, well, that's a lot like life itself.
Recent viewings
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. Documentarian Robert Greenwald puts paid to the notion that Fox New's "Fair and Balanced" slogan is anything but conscious deception. Copies of internal memos dictating the political "talking points" of the day, video footage collected from Fox's broadcasts by a team of volunteer monitors, and interviews with Fox reporters exhaustively document what can only be called a pervasive system of centrally-directed thought control. In some of Greenwald's most effective moments, he highlights the degree to which Fox News, like Orwell's Ministry of Truth, blatantly alters the facts, even contradicting or denying its own past statements, to fit whatever the propaganda need of the day happens to be. In one horribly funny segment, Bill O'Reilly piously claims that he has only told one person on his show to "shut up". A montage of several minutes, in which a sneering, nostril-flaring O'Reilly bellows "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!" at a succession of interviewees who have failed to toe the party line of the day, follows.
Of course, people who watch Fox will never see this information, and if it is pointed out to them they will automatically dismiss it as "liberal propaganda", because that's what their "fair and balanced" news source tells them. No doubt they will also believe, after the 2008 election, that executive privilege has always been a fraudulent claim used by evil Democratic incumbents to cover up Presidential wrongdoing; that executive privilege is a vital privacy protection that keeps former Republican presidents from being unfairly persecuted by evil Democratic politicians; that presidential pardons issued by Bill Clinton are an underhanded trick to keep his criminal cronies from being justly prosecuted by brave Republican statesmen; that presidential pardons issued by George W. Bush are noble efforts to keep brave patriots from being persecuted by evil Democratic politicians; that the war in Iraq is the fault of the Democratic incumbent president; and that the Republican party has always been against excessive government spending.
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. Documentarian Robert Greenwald puts paid to the notion that Fox New's "Fair and Balanced" slogan is anything but conscious deception. Copies of internal memos dictating the political "talking points" of the day, video footage collected from Fox's broadcasts by a team of volunteer monitors, and interviews with Fox reporters exhaustively document what can only be called a pervasive system of centrally-directed thought control. In some of Greenwald's most effective moments, he highlights the degree to which Fox News, like Orwell's Ministry of Truth, blatantly alters the facts, even contradicting or denying its own past statements, to fit whatever the propaganda need of the day happens to be. In one horribly funny segment, Bill O'Reilly piously claims that he has only told one person on his show to "shut up". A montage of several minutes, in which a sneering, nostril-flaring O'Reilly bellows "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!" at a succession of interviewees who have failed to toe the party line of the day, follows.
Of course, people who watch Fox will never see this information, and if it is pointed out to them they will automatically dismiss it as "liberal propaganda", because that's what their "fair and balanced" news source tells them. No doubt they will also believe, after the 2008 election, that executive privilege has always been a fraudulent claim used by evil Democratic incumbents to cover up Presidential wrongdoing; that executive privilege is a vital privacy protection that keeps former Republican presidents from being unfairly persecuted by evil Democratic politicians; that presidential pardons issued by Bill Clinton are an underhanded trick to keep his criminal cronies from being justly prosecuted by brave Republican statesmen; that presidential pardons issued by George W. Bush are noble efforts to keep brave patriots from being persecuted by evil Democratic politicians; that the war in Iraq is the fault of the Democratic incumbent president; and that the Republican party has always been against excessive government spending.
The war against American freedom
A DailyKos diarist explicates why the religious fundamentalists who want to rewrite American history are liars, and how the Bush Administration has deliberately sought to undermine American freedom by infiltrating would-be theocrats into governmental posts and funnelling public money to sectarian proseletyzing and propaganda projects.
Certain right-wing relatives of mine perpetually forward e'mail propaganda promoting theocracy and bemoaning the "traitorous" libruls who prevent this "Christian nation" from fulfilling its supposed mission to persecute gays, persecute Muslims, force schoolchildren to proclaim their belief in God under threat of punishment, and so forth.
I wonder. How happy would they be to see their own children required, under threat of punishment or expulsion from the tax-supported public schools, to proclaim the divinity of Joseph Smith, to proclaim the Mormon Church to be the sole valid representative of God's Kingdom on Earth and all other churches to be Satan's tools to deceive humanity? To be taught that "when the leaders of the [Mormon] Church speak, all the thinking has been done?" If they happen to live anywhere in the vast swathes of the American West that are dominated by the Mormon church, that's a very real possibility should the separation of church and state be abolished.
What about schoolchildren, or prospective public officials and employees, being required to proclaim the infallibility of the Catholic Church, if the local Catholics were energetic and numerous enough to seize control of the local government?
There are areas in Michigan where Muslims are the local majority. How about public schools teaching a curriculum based on the Koran? What about science classes teaching that Jews are descended from pigs, social studies classes teaching that it is a law of nature that women must cover themselves from head to toe and that men, like wild animals, cannot or should not control their sexual urges when presented with the awful temptation of an uncovered ankle? Or that it is the duty of all true servants of God to pursue the establishment of a worldwide Islamic empire?
It never seems to occur to them that all these would likely result, on a local level, from the abolishment of the separation of church and state that they so loudly clamor for. Having lived practically all their lives in sections of the American Midwest where their own particular denomination of Protestant Christianity has a comfortable majority, they are apparently unable to comprehend that there are any places in which turning over the government to sectarian control would result in the persecution of people like themselves. Having never lived in an area where any other religion is dominant, they blithely assume that on that Great Day In The Mornin' when the trumpet of theocracy sounds, they will be in the catbird seat, righteously dictating terms of submission to everybody else.
And, like George W. Bush launching what he thought would be a Splendid Little War in Iraq, they imagine that if they were to successfully impose a single majority faith on the country, people of all other persuasions would welcome their domination and happily allow their children to be indoctrinated to hate their parents' faith, their status in the eyes of the law to be determined by their religion, their tax money to be used to subsidize churches that relentlessly campaign against them.
A DailyKos diarist explicates why the religious fundamentalists who want to rewrite American history are liars, and how the Bush Administration has deliberately sought to undermine American freedom by infiltrating would-be theocrats into governmental posts and funnelling public money to sectarian proseletyzing and propaganda projects.
Certain right-wing relatives of mine perpetually forward e'mail propaganda promoting theocracy and bemoaning the "traitorous" libruls who prevent this "Christian nation" from fulfilling its supposed mission to persecute gays, persecute Muslims, force schoolchildren to proclaim their belief in God under threat of punishment, and so forth.
I wonder. How happy would they be to see their own children required, under threat of punishment or expulsion from the tax-supported public schools, to proclaim the divinity of Joseph Smith, to proclaim the Mormon Church to be the sole valid representative of God's Kingdom on Earth and all other churches to be Satan's tools to deceive humanity? To be taught that "when the leaders of the [Mormon] Church speak, all the thinking has been done?" If they happen to live anywhere in the vast swathes of the American West that are dominated by the Mormon church, that's a very real possibility should the separation of church and state be abolished.
What about schoolchildren, or prospective public officials and employees, being required to proclaim the infallibility of the Catholic Church, if the local Catholics were energetic and numerous enough to seize control of the local government?
There are areas in Michigan where Muslims are the local majority. How about public schools teaching a curriculum based on the Koran? What about science classes teaching that Jews are descended from pigs, social studies classes teaching that it is a law of nature that women must cover themselves from head to toe and that men, like wild animals, cannot or should not control their sexual urges when presented with the awful temptation of an uncovered ankle? Or that it is the duty of all true servants of God to pursue the establishment of a worldwide Islamic empire?
It never seems to occur to them that all these would likely result, on a local level, from the abolishment of the separation of church and state that they so loudly clamor for. Having lived practically all their lives in sections of the American Midwest where their own particular denomination of Protestant Christianity has a comfortable majority, they are apparently unable to comprehend that there are any places in which turning over the government to sectarian control would result in the persecution of people like themselves. Having never lived in an area where any other religion is dominant, they blithely assume that on that Great Day In The Mornin' when the trumpet of theocracy sounds, they will be in the catbird seat, righteously dictating terms of submission to everybody else.
And, like George W. Bush launching what he thought would be a Splendid Little War in Iraq, they imagine that if they were to successfully impose a single majority faith on the country, people of all other persuasions would welcome their domination and happily allow their children to be indoctrinated to hate their parents' faith, their status in the eyes of the law to be determined by their religion, their tax money to be used to subsidize churches that relentlessly campaign against them.
Those evil Canadians
The US government warns its contractors that our sneaky neighbors up north are surreptitiously planting items that appear to be nanotransmitters on US citizens travelling across the border. Could this be linked to the terrorist enclaves of South Toronto? It's suspicious. It's scandalous. It's....
Oh. Never mind.
The US government warns its contractors that our sneaky neighbors up north are surreptitiously planting items that appear to be nanotransmitters on US citizens travelling across the border. Could this be linked to the terrorist enclaves of South Toronto? It's suspicious. It's scandalous. It's....
Oh. Never mind.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Poetry in review
There have been a few times recently when I have wondered why I subscribed to Poetry magazine. Much of the poetry published in its pages is either so opaquely self-referential that a mere layman like me cannot see any meaning in it, or so pretentiously simplistic that it seems to consist of nothing but banal statements of the obvious chopped up into short lines. The critical commentary about poets I have never read and am unlikely to ever wish to read holds little interest to me, especially when there are strong hints that many of the reviews and letters have more to do with personal vendettas and factional maneuvering than with the beauty and usefulness of the written word.
Fortunately, the May issue carries enough valuable freight to justify receiving it. Donna Malech's "Makeup" contains some lines that mystify me. ("Sorrow, a rabbit harbored in the head." Huh???) But I like its sometimes witty, sometimes doubtful commentary on appearance and substance, which uses images not only from cosmetics but from the world of the theater and other aspects of life.
Marilynne Robinson's review of the Library of America's collection of American Religious Poems (edited by Harold Bloom, or at any rate by someone working under his aegis) discusses at some length the history of American religion and the poetic traditions associated with it. Although this has the unfortunate effect of making the volume at hand seem almost incidental to the discussion, Robinson puts forth enough thoughtful and sometimes provocative ideas to be worth the reading. ("Elegies present another problem. They tend to be expressions of pious assurance and are therefore religious poetry, but they are for the same reason unlikely to push beyond conventional sentiment -- that is, to be good religious poetry....")
"The Pure Product" is, according to the editor's note, "the first of a series of exchanges in which we are bringing poets of different aesthetics together to discuss new books." It's an intriguing notion, something like a cross between a formal intellectual debate and a critics' cage match. The two critics occasionally give in to the inevitable temptation to take potshots at each other and at the critical schools with which they associate each other, but in the process they convey a better idea of the content of the books being discussed, and the viewpoints and thought processes that go into the critical response, than the reader would have otherwise. Their radically different reactions strongly suggest that the critical reception which a poet receives is largely a matter of whether the reviewer perceives the poet as being one of Us, the "correct" school of poetry, or one of Them, the Enemy who must be Destroyed At All Costs (lest They get some of the academic patronage which We should receive). Like the tag-team reviewing of films popularized by Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, it brings the existence of different critical viewpoints and reactins onto the open,rather than presenting a facade of impartial infallibility. By doing so it broadens the viewpoint of the reviews and keeps one person's idiosyncratic response from comprising the whole of the "critical reaction". It's a feature that I will make a point of looking for in future issues, and one which I hope the magazine will continue.
There have been a few times recently when I have wondered why I subscribed to Poetry magazine. Much of the poetry published in its pages is either so opaquely self-referential that a mere layman like me cannot see any meaning in it, or so pretentiously simplistic that it seems to consist of nothing but banal statements of the obvious chopped up into short lines. The critical commentary about poets I have never read and am unlikely to ever wish to read holds little interest to me, especially when there are strong hints that many of the reviews and letters have more to do with personal vendettas and factional maneuvering than with the beauty and usefulness of the written word.
Fortunately, the May issue carries enough valuable freight to justify receiving it. Donna Malech's "Makeup" contains some lines that mystify me. ("Sorrow, a rabbit harbored in the head." Huh???) But I like its sometimes witty, sometimes doubtful commentary on appearance and substance, which uses images not only from cosmetics but from the world of the theater and other aspects of life.
... The skin, a silly one-act, concurs.P.K. Page's "My Chosen Landscape" (not available online) riffs on a short quatrain by Gwendolyn MacEwen about "a continent, a violated geography.... [a] naked country" of sand dunes, burning winds, and emptiness. It seems to me at least partially an internal country of intellectual and spiritual isolation, in which the speaker sometimes longs for fresh, unmediated contact with the world, even while admiring its spare, ascetic beauty:
At the carnival, each child's cheek becomes
a rainbow. God, grant me a brighter myself.
Each breath, a game called Live Forever....
Restless in all this emptiness, I seekI've been to that country, I think, and it's always interesting to compare notes with other travellers. If a landscape is a metaphor for a life, then the last quarter of the poem seems an appropriate expression of the mixture of ambivalence and affirmation with which many people view their own chosen landscapes.
a fellow traveler, search for a sign --
a secret handshake, a phrase, some unusual color
like periwinkle, for instance, or bright citrine,
but the monotony of sand persists
and nothing improbable finds entry
into the appalling platitudes of speech --
the lingua franca of everyone I meet --
in this land devoid of flags and pageantry.
"Yet still I journey to this naked country,"....
Marilynne Robinson's review of the Library of America's collection of American Religious Poems (edited by Harold Bloom, or at any rate by someone working under his aegis) discusses at some length the history of American religion and the poetic traditions associated with it. Although this has the unfortunate effect of making the volume at hand seem almost incidental to the discussion, Robinson puts forth enough thoughtful and sometimes provocative ideas to be worth the reading. ("Elegies present another problem. They tend to be expressions of pious assurance and are therefore religious poetry, but they are for the same reason unlikely to push beyond conventional sentiment -- that is, to be good religious poetry....")
"The Pure Product" is, according to the editor's note, "the first of a series of exchanges in which we are bringing poets of different aesthetics together to discuss new books." It's an intriguing notion, something like a cross between a formal intellectual debate and a critics' cage match. The two critics occasionally give in to the inevitable temptation to take potshots at each other and at the critical schools with which they associate each other, but in the process they convey a better idea of the content of the books being discussed, and the viewpoints and thought processes that go into the critical response, than the reader would have otherwise. Their radically different reactions strongly suggest that the critical reception which a poet receives is largely a matter of whether the reviewer perceives the poet as being one of Us, the "correct" school of poetry, or one of Them, the Enemy who must be Destroyed At All Costs (lest They get some of the academic patronage which We should receive). Like the tag-team reviewing of films popularized by Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, it brings the existence of different critical viewpoints and reactins onto the open,rather than presenting a facade of impartial infallibility. By doing so it broadens the viewpoint of the reviews and keeps one person's idiosyncratic response from comprising the whole of the "critical reaction". It's a feature that I will make a point of looking for in future issues, and one which I hope the magazine will continue.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Saturday, May 05, 2007
The news from Rathillien
There's a long and quite extraordinary Biblio File interview with P.C. Hodgell freely available on Talkshoe today. It's extraordinary because the interviewer has clearly read her books and knows what he's talking about, and because the interview goes on for over an hour, during which time Hodgell, after some initial reticence, talks about JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, the origins of her character Jamethiel, future directions that her stories might take, horses and their relationship to "carnivorous unicorns", the tribulations of her academic and writing career, and myriad other subjects. It's well worth checking out for anyone who's read her books and is even mildly curious about them.
It appears that the Biblio File has also done interviews with other authors (Mercedes Lackey, Peter S. Beagle, Diane Duane, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, et al), which are also freely available. This may be a site to check back on frequently.
There's a long and quite extraordinary Biblio File interview with P.C. Hodgell freely available on Talkshoe today. It's extraordinary because the interviewer has clearly read her books and knows what he's talking about, and because the interview goes on for over an hour, during which time Hodgell, after some initial reticence, talks about JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, the origins of her character Jamethiel, future directions that her stories might take, horses and their relationship to "carnivorous unicorns", the tribulations of her academic and writing career, and myriad other subjects. It's well worth checking out for anyone who's read her books and is even mildly curious about them.
It appears that the Biblio File has also done interviews with other authors (Mercedes Lackey, Peter S. Beagle, Diane Duane, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, et al), which are also freely available. This may be a site to check back on frequently.
Another one bites the dust
Meisha Merlin has announced that it will close its doors this month, reducing by one the number of small presses that publish high-quality fantasy and science fiction, including John Morressy's tales of Kedrigern and P.C. Hodgell's stories of the Kencyrath (God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, Seeker's Mask, To Ride a Rathorn, et al).
Currently, Hodgell's books are available as an e'book from Baen's Webscription service under the omnibus title "The Godstalk Chronicles". This, I suppose, is better than disappearing completely from the world of readily-available books, but I hope that another paper-and-ink publisher will take her up on her fifth and subsequent books. Jamethiel and the world she inhabits are well worth exploring.
Meisha Merlin has announced that it will close its doors this month, reducing by one the number of small presses that publish high-quality fantasy and science fiction, including John Morressy's tales of Kedrigern and P.C. Hodgell's stories of the Kencyrath (God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, Seeker's Mask, To Ride a Rathorn, et al).
Currently, Hodgell's books are available as an e'book from Baen's Webscription service under the omnibus title "The Godstalk Chronicles". This, I suppose, is better than disappearing completely from the world of readily-available books, but I hope that another paper-and-ink publisher will take her up on her fifth and subsequent books. Jamethiel and the world she inhabits are well worth exploring.
News noted
Students at a Virginia high school sue www.turnitin.com, a plagiarism-prevention service, for copying, archiving, and commercially profiting from their work without permission. Such irony! A number of documents related to the case are available at dontturnitin.com , including letters and editorials.
An Ohio appeals court throws out child-pornography charges after the FBI raids the office of the defendant's expert witness, seizing evidence which had been provided by the state, and charging the expert witness with illegally possessing it. The expert witness's possession of this material as part of his work for the defendant was apparently authorized under state law, but not under federal law. The same material was also provided to a prosecution expert witness, but there's no indication that his office is due for any similar raids. Court rules that this effectively denied the defendant full legal representation. Your humble correspondent can't help but agree, no matter how sleazy the defendant might be.
Students at a Virginia high school sue www.turnitin.com, a plagiarism-prevention service, for copying, archiving, and commercially profiting from their work without permission. Such irony! A number of documents related to the case are available at dontturnitin.com , including letters and editorials.
An Ohio appeals court throws out child-pornography charges after the FBI raids the office of the defendant's expert witness, seizing evidence which had been provided by the state, and charging the expert witness with illegally possessing it. The expert witness's possession of this material as part of his work for the defendant was apparently authorized under state law, but not under federal law. The same material was also provided to a prosecution expert witness, but there's no indication that his office is due for any similar raids. Court rules that this effectively denied the defendant full legal representation. Your humble correspondent can't help but agree, no matter how sleazy the defendant might be.
Your tax dollars at work
Riverbend reports that she and her family are fleeing from their home in Baghdad. Over the past three and a half years she has provided an occasional glimpse into the chaos of the U.S. occupation and the sectarian civil war that now pervades every aspect of life in that unfortunate country. She notes in her blog that religious-minority neighborhoods are now being surrounded by enclosing walls.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed government not only refuses to prosecute sectarian crimes committed by thugs in uniform, but actively rewards them and arrests victims who file complaints.
But flag-waving Bush supporters in the U.S. don't have to worry about dangerous Riverbend and her family settling down anywhere near them, since the U.S. refuses to accept any responsibility for the refugees fleeing from the war which it insisted on starting. Many of the people now being persecuted, kidnapped, or assassinated are the educated and professional people who, under other circumstances, would be the best hope for establishing a rational civil society. The interpreters and others who worked with U.S. forces are also reportedly being targetted for retribution. But I suppose it's more important to keep them from telling their stories to U.S. voters than to allow them any legal escape route from the hell that we have created.
Riverbend reports that she and her family are fleeing from their home in Baghdad. Over the past three and a half years she has provided an occasional glimpse into the chaos of the U.S. occupation and the sectarian civil war that now pervades every aspect of life in that unfortunate country. She notes in her blog that religious-minority neighborhoods are now being surrounded by enclosing walls.
The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.She's mistaken about the origin of the concentration camps, but I can see how someone inside such a wall might be reminded of the enclosing of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed government not only refuses to prosecute sectarian crimes committed by thugs in uniform, but actively rewards them and arrests victims who file complaints.
But flag-waving Bush supporters in the U.S. don't have to worry about dangerous Riverbend and her family settling down anywhere near them, since the U.S. refuses to accept any responsibility for the refugees fleeing from the war which it insisted on starting. Many of the people now being persecuted, kidnapped, or assassinated are the educated and professional people who, under other circumstances, would be the best hope for establishing a rational civil society. The interpreters and others who worked with U.S. forces are also reportedly being targetted for retribution. But I suppose it's more important to keep them from telling their stories to U.S. voters than to allow them any legal escape route from the hell that we have created.
Poetry Saturday
Cliche Came Out of its Cage by C. S. Lewis
1
You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'.
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.
Hestia's fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. at the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen's children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears ...
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.
2
Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;
You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event
Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).
Cliche Came Out of its Cage by C. S. Lewis
1
You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'.
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.
Hestia's fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. at the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen's children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears ...
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.
2
Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;
You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event
Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Just imagine the possibilities.
Rupert Murdoch, who's given us such wonderful things as the all-Republican, all-screaming, all-the-time Fox News Network, wants to take over the Wall Street Journal.
Sounds like a wonderful opportunity. Just imagine how useful it would be to talk stock prices up or down through centralized control of editorial "talking points".
Surely the staid, just-the-facts approach of the WSJ could be made more appealing by adding, say, full-color front page coverage of Girls Gone Wild! and bloody car wrecks to the front page, matched with heroic profiles of such noble culture warriors as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly bravely defending American decency against the wicked hordes of evil libruls who Hate America, caused 9/11, and look French.
Here's one take on a possible Murdoch-controlled WSJ. Other visions are possible. Either way, its intellectual and financial credibility would instantaneously vanish.
Rupert Murdoch, who's given us such wonderful things as the all-Republican, all-screaming, all-the-time Fox News Network, wants to take over the Wall Street Journal.
Sounds like a wonderful opportunity. Just imagine how useful it would be to talk stock prices up or down through centralized control of editorial "talking points".
Surely the staid, just-the-facts approach of the WSJ could be made more appealing by adding, say, full-color front page coverage of Girls Gone Wild! and bloody car wrecks to the front page, matched with heroic profiles of such noble culture warriors as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly bravely defending American decency against the wicked hordes of evil libruls who Hate America, caused 9/11, and look French.
Here's one take on a possible Murdoch-controlled WSJ. Other visions are possible. Either way, its intellectual and financial credibility would instantaneously vanish.
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