Pretentious Thoughts of a PostTheorist

2005-06-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

Wellness on Graduation Day

Graduation Day 2005. A Day I Dread. I hate graduation ceremonies. To me, they are events in which an institution (rather than a community) attempts to enact a meaningful ritual, a rite de passage if you will…and they are dull and endless. I never went to any of mine, except those for my alternative high school and my junior high school, but I would have been happy to miss those. I found myself clinging to experiences I wasn't sure were mine. I went to my brother's graduation from Harvard, which ended up okay as I got to stand quite near Jackie Onassis as Carolyn was also graduating.

How many ways can one say congratulations before the oratory descends into personal narratives that are not that interesting? Or reveal pathology?

Well it started out well. A Buddhist monk, who actually lives on Staten Island, gave the invocation. A delight to see in someone in orange (rather than the dark suits and robes of everyone else on the dais). He offered some words that he suggested “might have relevance, but then again they might not have any at all.” He quoted Fred Rogers and Rilke and Rumi which seemed quite suitable. And then it went downhill. The female administrators representing the college and the university spoke meekly into the microphone, attempting to relate their own triumphs of self-betterment to those of the students. The ceremony was going long, even before the surprise guest speakers showed up: Chuck Schumer (who wants to continue to be senator) and Anthony Weiner (who wants to be mayor). They boomed loudly into the microphone, literally waking up the faculty who nodded in front of the dais, in great contrast to the female speakers who whispered. Schumer gave the same speech he gave last year apparently. The event was going long. The students were restless; the parents were concerned about their lunch reservations at the island’s finest restaurants.

Then came the keynote speaker, Erica Jong. I was excited to hear her, as I knew her to be controversial, even though when I re-read Fear of Flying as part of my research into cultural events of the early 70s, I realized something. It wasn’t that the novel was dated, it was almost impossible to read. As a roman a clef, the protagonist is virtually unbearable, cloying, embarrassingly self-analytical, who drains sex and fantasy of any eroticism and then complains of the dearth of pleasure. They were warning signs that her address might be an event to endure, but she is the mother-in-law of a faculty member I respect so one hoped she had mellowed into a distinguished poet, writer, and essayist, one who would be critical of contemporary right wing culture. Giving the students one last encouragement to maintain (or finally adopt) a critical stance...

Well I was right and also frighteningly wrong. She began expressing the need for clarity and truth and warning about how our current administration is lying to us at the same time it insists that it is speaking the truth when its mouthpieces state that they are guided by peace and democracy. The Orwellian emphasis of her speech was right on, and the radical faculty looked at each other and nodded, some mustered the energy to clap. But then it went downhill—Jong attempted an analogy, by comparing the recent publicity hoax of Tom Cruise’s new love (with Katie Holmes to sell their movies). Her point, that we as a populace, are being lied to by our leaders be they celebrities or elected leaders, was lost on me, when she also extended her indictment to new age phonies (I felt bad for the Buddhist monk, who was the real thing, but he also made a living by bending the meanings of words). New age phonies are not as pernicious as Karl Rove, and the use of the word “wellness” is not an offense akin to “transfer cases” instead of body bags. Tom Cruise’s hiding of his probable homosexuality in order to sell movies is wrong, but it is not akin to insisting the weapons of mass destruction are hidden in order to justify war. But Jong, in her bizarre yellow glasses, repeated her weird analogy, as if repetition would make it sensible. She spoke for the need to be clear, yet a dense fog of misguided discourse surrounded her place on the dais.

As I learned later, many parents started booing her anti-Bush lines (one yelling that this was treason). As Jong went on, and discussed her own place in American literature (23 books apparently—lets face it, most people who publish that often and are only in their 60s, are not always going to write the best books—they have just become convinced that every thought of theirs is stunning), quoting herself, and then went on attacking our government, the students began clapping in the brief pauses in the middle of her sentences. I thought that this was shameful behavior at first: the students were disrespecting her and she deserved to be listened to. But now I realize she was not showing the students any respect, and as I know so well you can’t clobber them over the head with one's own educated radical views and how silly they are to believe the mainstream media and its talking heads. You have to provide ways to be critical.

Jong thought this applause was related to the brilliance of her every phrase, even as it seemed so similar to her previous line. A smile would show on her face. Yet the students were applauding because they hoped she might be finishing.

The woman’s solipsism had inoculated her against reality. She thought the parents’ boos were cheers, and the students’ applause an encouragement to go on and make pronouncements about every issue. And even as her outlook was a leftist one (albeit an articulate one) she insisted it wasn’t about right and left anymore! I hate that: if you are a leftist, please stand up and say so. Except I suppose it is okay if she insists that she is not a leftist, because I actually think she has gone loony.

And this is one of the effects of the Bush regime, it makes edgy smart people go bonkers and indulge in rant and raves that one can become deluded are articulate responses to the madness of our government’s policies. New age people who talk about wellness might be annoying to one’s sharpened Upper West Side mind when one has read a lot of Freud and Lacan (or Zizek one is really in the know), but its really not the part of the problem. We could all use a bit of wellness right now.

2005-04-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

GWB's iPod

Okay its a trend upon learning that the President has an iPod, but lets think of some of his favorite tunes he listens to while mountain biking (other than My Sharona -- I always hated that song!).

White Lines--Grandmaster Flash
Casey Jones--Greatful Dead
One Bourbon, One Shot, and One Beer--George Thorogood
I've Been Everywhere Man--Johnny Cash
Is That All There Is--Peggy Lee
100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall--traditional
Tequila Sunrise--The Eagles
All My Rowdy Friends Are Comin' Over Tonight--Hank Williams, Jr.

2005-04-11T06:44:00.000-07:00

SKETCHES FROM A CHRONICLE

On Friday 8 April, I went to see the Martha Graham Dance Company. I think this is the fourth time I've seen the company live, and the second since Martha Graham has died. The company seems to be in sturdy hands now with dancers who are ecstatic to have the chance to pray in the Temple of Martha. (Of course there are Martha's in other lands, but it is such an American name [Martha Washington, Martha Stewart, Martha in Who's Afraid...] and Martha Graham insisted upon creating an American concert dance.)

I didn't read the program so I didn't know that the piece "Sketches" was a response to the Spanish Civil War, though I did learn it premiered in 1936. I wanted to be left to a more contemporary interpretation of the dance. In the last section, four groups of dancers in black, attend to, ignore, and reflect the movement of a dancer in white who is restricted to move only atop a podium that like a Olympic platform has three levels. The dancer in white moves independently of them, but without the pleasure of uniformity and synchonicity that the dancers in black express. The struggle for these dancers is to recognize the force that the dancer on the podium embodies, and this becomes the story of the dance. The dancer in white/the dancer on the podium: she is the sacred in society, the medium, an artist or a priestess who has to be acknowledged deeply in order for the culture to gain cohesion; she is not a person or character but a force at the creative core of culture. The tension between the groups is absorbing but frustrating and seemingly endless but, finally, it moves into a harmony at the end when the dancers in black form a circle around the dancer in white. She raises her arms slowly over head, so strongly, with such resistance and determination, like the eternal diva, triumphant and expressive, finally completely recognized.

Of course, an intensely melodramatic piece, but my face became wet because in our America (an America in which Martha's are jailed) there is no dancer on the podium, there is nothing at the core, no flame at the center (and virtually no funding for the arts). And we are at war, endlessly.

2005-04-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

Death Pope

Just because he died doesn't change the fact that he reinforced outdated sexist and homophobic orthodoxy. He criticized the greed of capitalism, and spoke of the poor, but what exactly did he do to try to change such inequality?

As with the death of Reagan, the mainstream media loves to turn the deceased into a heroic, universally loved figure. Its a lie.

The local cable news channel has been doing almost nonstop coverage of the Pope. When they begin their segment they use a new broadcast title that is badly designed. The words Death and Pope are in large font and the words "of a" are virtually unreadable due to the font and size. It reads "Death Pope."

One of the reporters who was covering the Papal Illness for CNN described how the Vatican provided new information on the Pope's condition to reporters. First, they text messaged all the reporters, informing them to check their email. Then the reporters would check their email and sure enough there would always be a letter from the Vatican, the last one of course describing the pope's death. The Vatican used the Pope's worsening condition, and the latest communications technology, as a way of gathering up the mainstream media's attention, hence the title: Death Pope.

2005-04-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

I'm Back

Terri Schiavo:

1. No one can agree how her name is pronounced. Its Skiavo...
2. She was the ultimate helpless female, damsel in distress par excellance--and the religious right wanted to play the hero, rescuing her from the oncoming train (of death). And the media desperately wanted to televise this narrative, rooting for the law to intervene to resume her enforced life. Shame on Jesse Jackson for trying to use this event to get his name in the news! Shame on the mainstream media for drooling at the story! Shame on Congress for trying to extend their authority. Thank Goddess for the courts.
3. As F declared if Schiavo had been a known abortionist who performed late term abortions, those right wing freaks would have been shooting at her. Or if she had been a lesbian trying to get married, they would have been secretly chanting "pull the plug on the bitch."
4. Since Pres. Bush was governor of TX and his brother is currently governor of FL, they are both mass murderers due to the wanton use of the death penalty in both states. They lie when they repeat they believe in a "culture of life." They are natural born killers. (To say nothing of the war dead in Iraq)
5. As Wahday and I remarked last night, the right wing wants us all brain dead, like Schiavo. This is their "culture of life." Force fed lies that only barely keep you alive in country where you are not ensured health care with no hope of consciousness.

2005-01-26T07:46:00.000-08:00

iPod log

Yesterday I took the L train from Bedford St to 1stAvenue. There were eight iPod users in the car, two were carrying guitars. They nodded to each other. Another's head was moving to the music. Six men, two women. Similar shaggy Williamsburg hairstyles.

2005-01-21T06:18:00.000-08:00

Letter to the New York Times

The irony of President Bush advocating freedom in all nations was completely lost on the Times' editoralist of January 21. The administration of President Bush has unnecessarily curbed personal freedoms in this country, refused to allow international human rights monitors access to detainees, decided that the principles of the Geneva convention may be obsolete, and suggested that women should not be ensured of reproductive rights. Bush's talk of freedom is akin to an arsonist speaking of fire safety.

2005-01-19T07:17:00.000-08:00

Barbara Boxer vs Condi Rice in her confirmation hearing. Barbara is a tough gal who is the only one in the Senate that shows real guts. I love the reaction shots of Rice when Boxer is accusing her of being a liar and a zealot in order to sell the Iraq War. Boxer is reminding Rice that she may be a scholar of foreign policy with a doctorate but the Bush regime has rendered her no better than a guy at a streetcorner selling miracle cleaning products. Rice looks furious as if she wants to jump out of her chair and slug her. Tragically does Rice know she is lying when she is lying? Boxer lets her know that she thinks so in order to sell her product--this misguided and horrid, ongoing war.

The Senate is going to approve a women who didn't protect us from terrorist attack after reading a presidential daily briefing that warning of such an attack and someone who has led us in this quagmire in Iraq. And then this white boy republicans want to salute her for her achievements!

2005-01-17T07:19:00.000-08:00

Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi for a "fancy dress" party! When this news hit, the mainstream news media ran snipets of interviews from people (including some survivors) who are concerned that young people do not know about the horrors of the Holocaust and the history of WW2. I think almost the opposite is true. From Spielberg movies to tv shows like "1941 House", I imagine that English youth are tired of the cliched lessons of WWII and just want to get on with it. Instead they need to know more about the history of English imperialism in and around Iraq, not how people suffered in WW2. That they know--for example, the plight of the English during the blitz is part of the official popular history of London.

Archly, what is more dubious to me is that the fancy dress party had a "native and colonial" theme to it -- how does a Nazi ensemble fit into that theme? He probably should have dressed up like a "Kenyan native" or Laurence of Arabia (as played by Peter O'Toole).

Well of course, I am a bit contrary, and I read Susan Sontag's Fascinating Fascism and I remember a dramatization of a Genet story where a Parisian is eroticized by the marching German army (related to their outfits) who have come to occupy his city. I also remember when some punk rockers when I lived in London started to wear swastikas (and Siouxsee Sioux told them to fuck off) but I didn't see this as fascism. Rather it was an attempt to shock the middle class (after all NF members were not sporting swastikas as I remember it, nor do KKK members and other American fascists--they come up with their own insignia) and a way to get media attention.

Perhaps his wardrobe choice is a misguided attempt at individuation for poor Harry.

Prince Harry should know that every outfit he wears is subject to scrutinization. The public wants him to be as beloved as Lady Di. Meanwhile he probably wants to have his moment of being a rebellious teen...and he is probably not very clever.

2005-01-17T07:13:00.000-08:00

a pretentious poem, inspired by hearing that the murder case in Truro has been reopened and the police are asking for DNA samples from all of the town's year-round residents (I suppose the summer people are unable to drive out and kill someone in the winter?).

Murder in Truro (or Wellfleet?) -- as Viewed from Provincetown

Now is the time to cross-examine those clouds.
Each is a witness; each winks at the turtles and seals.
They tittle-tattle on the beaches once the New Yorkers leave.
Yes, those tiny seaside shacks are named for flowers—
From wisteria to azalea, every rental unit is a potential crime scene.
Years later I find the view remains both quaint and insufferable.

Behold the etiquette used to apportion the sunshine.
The lady-like land squeezes itself into an isthmus.
Later the lighthouse will croon--
Such sounds covet the form of a boomerang.
Low tide may be inevitable but it is so sluggish.
Yet when the bay’s bottom is finally revealed,
I am always shocked.
True, the surfeit of fiddler crabs should embarrass the locals.

If you need to know, the trickle of water between the two ponds is called the sluice.

2004-12-30T05:58:00.000-08:00

It is going to be very sad and odd to live in NYC without Susan Sontag. Not that I knew her (I had met her twice if that means anything) but she always weighed in on every important issue and always insisted upon her own importance and the importance of her views. In NYC, we gossiped perhaps too much about her lovelife (and debated why she wasn't more publicly open about her own gayness) but she was always at BAM or at the theatre or ballet, looking so intense and striking, yes glamourous, in the fierceness of her brow and gaze. I'd always imagine what did Susan really think?

I didn't always agree with her pronouncements, but regardless she was always contrary and against the most recent American regime. She never became a nasty born-again neocon so that she could get on television all the time. Yet within NYC, she was always visible, and brought forth her own voice--we heard her and saw her. We heard her and saw her loving the City and its arts and artists and its people. Her connection to the world and to peace, I think, came through her connection to New York.

2004-12-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sorry Everybody

The first time I cried about the US election was as I combed through the submissions sent to this website: http://www.sorryeverybody.com/.

Americans post their apologies to the world for electing G.W. Bush (and many people from other countries accept the apologies and send their condolences). The apologies take the form of a captioned photo of the person (or groups of people) either holding up words, or with words superimposed over the image via simple software like Dell Picture Studio. The site has really taken off with many heartfelt sincere outbursts of shame, sadness, forthrightness, forgiveness. Taken collectively its like a cyber version of Munch's painting The Scream, expressing a deep frustration with living in the U.S.A. under its current regime.

I also appreciate the tone of much of the artwork--even as contributors remind the viewer that they voted for Kerry, everyone seems to take responsiblity for what has happenned. None indulging in conspiracy or assertions that the election was thrown or stolen--all realizing that yes, probably, most Americans voted for Bush.

These bitter self portraits of dejected, confused yet, resilient Americans are so pure--and remind me of myself. As K noted (she told me about the site, and W told her), many of the photos have their mouths shut up, or words over their mouth, as if their voices have been silenced. Some are clever, and clearly art directed, others are so endearingly sloopy, with hard to read writing scrawled onto a notebook held up by a weary arm.

The replies from abroad--many from Finland, and France, and Canada, but other nations as well--are so sweet, reassuring the Americans that they know we are not like the President. Its a kindly act of forgiveness, and so I, melodramatic me, I cried.

2004-11-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

undulating provocative abstract reflective iconic curvaceous

Those are the words--all lower-cased in Times New Roman i believe--that are on the temporary walls that protect the new building on Astor Place. The building is going up remarkably quickly and is mirrored and looks like the sort of early 80s midrise that Alexis Carrington might have an office suite in. The fact that it is mirrored lends the building a startling visual interest, as the buildings and the intersections of the location is dynamic (the site was a parking lot for so long but the main building of Cooper Union is there as well as other handsome structures--and that icky sculpture of the movable cube in the small square).

But these words -- and their order -- haunt me. Their reference to semiotics on one hand and to sexuality and sex acts on the other (and the desirable body of a voluptous female in motion) ...I suppose that's kind of early 80s too. In buying a "loft" in this building, one is buying something so sexy and so symbolic of itself at the same time...a sleekly dressed up corporeality that ultimately only projects images of other structures and intersections in distorted fashion...the veneer of a fashionable women (80s shoulder pads almost cartoonish) coating a building.

2004-11-17T06:20:00.000-08:00

Tarnation

Much has been made of how inexpensive the production costs were--$218.30, and that it was edited on a Macintosh computer. But as F and I discussed walking along Houston Street (weird new 80-esque building on the corner of Bway and Houston that looks like transparent legos or a set piece for Gattaca--what happenned to postmodern whimsy?) after seeing the film, this is misleading. This does not include post-production costs. Original music for the film was recorded in Austria, and the soundtrack includes excellent and entirely appropriate songs that the producers no doubt had to pay for the rights to use. Also the producers hired Lucas Sound to ensure that the film's sound presentation is excellent, even if the look of the film bears the marks of the editing program iMovie and the scratchiness of old super-8 home movies that have been converted into digital format.

Before I get lost in bickering about costs for the movie, it must be said that Jonathan Caouette's film is excellent, and as the critics have repeated, Tarnation is entirely original nonfiction storytelling. One aspect of its originality, is that it takes the use of text and font so common in the visual arts in the last 20 years to the cinema. To see Tarnation is a readerly affair. Caouette refuses his experimental documentary to be tainted by an omniscient narrator using a voice-over, explaining and anchoring stilled images. Rather he uses words to narrate his experience, sometimes over an image, sometimes over a blackened screen to describe and to place an image or scene within a chronology. The film is read as much as it is watched. If there is a voice-over, it is music and song on the soundtrack.

The text in the film is written in the third person, even though we know that the author is the filmmaker, who is documenting and portraying and representing his own experience or that of his mother (who as we learn he is doomed to identify with and through her he gains an expressivity.) We find out through the film that the filmmaker suffers from depersonalization disorder (his mother is implicated because this disorder occurs after a drug dealer friend of hers gives him a PCP laced joint), and the written narration is a demonstration of this. It narrates without emotion (though the size and color of the font often flirts with melodrama and foreshadowing) and explains shocking occurrences as if it was happening to someone else, not the filmmaker. The images of the film are always in relation to the filmmaker, and so many of them are of the filmmaker as a child and a teenager (and he was angelic looking as a child, and as a teenager his sexuality is compelling, complicated, and self-indulgent, crying out for others to be attracted to him). And compared to his grandparents who do not age well (his grandmother looses her teeth, his grandfather becomes curled up, and his mother's attractiveness dissipates through the cruelty of her life), he becomes the desired object of beauty in his own film. This narcissism is mediated through the depersonalizing text. I know that the filmmaker has to navigate the effects of this disorder, but the demonstration of this disorder as a filmmaking technique saves the film from being tiresome and unbearably solipsistic.

So when Caouette finally addresses the camera (his camera) to admit what he is feeling and fearing as he is feeling and fearing it (that he loves his mother and at the same time he is scared that he will duplicate her collapse in his own life), the scene moved me not only because it seemed authentic (but after all he could be a good actor) but also because I realized that the filmmaker wisely avoided this kind of on-camera confession throughout the film. Importantly he cuts the scene short as he starts to cry, he doesn't want to show too sorrow and fear. All of his characters too avoid admitting too much emotion on camera and when Caouette tries to interview his mother and grandparents, they deny him entrance into real "feelings." Instead they consistently want to put on a show in front of the camera, even when they are diminished. They don't want to be interviewed and forced into confession -- either of any wrongdoing or actually experiencing any emotion--from anger to ennui.

As we are told that this is a true story, I have a few "feelings" myself about the filmmaker and his family. What happened to his mother--particularly the repeated shock treatments--is a human rights violation. This human rights violation is worthy of investigation by Amnesty International. Her parents and their doctors committed repeated crimes. I wonder about the filmmaker's fury toward this real injustice.

I also want to emphasize, as F suggested, that the real hero of the film is Caouette's boyfriend, David. Though he is virtually without voice in the film (one imagines that he also served as cameraman quite often), he agrees not only to take on Jonathan but also his mother (their dog doesn't seem quite so demanding, but you never know). Not only is David leading man handsome, but he takes on this dysfunctional family from the heart of darkness of the reddest of red states, and appears to take care of them, without judgement, and with love. As the credits rolled to the list of "thank-you's", I said to F he better thank his boyfriend! And maybe his dog. As F said maybe with the money he is making from this movie, Jonathan can find an apartment for his mother where she can have a nurse or a caretaker look after her. He deserves this. And especially David needs a bit of peace from his lover's family.

One more thing--when F and I were walking down Houston Street after the movie, discussing it (my confession--both of us were emotionally undone by it--and had to think of our own mother's immediately!), we couldn't think of the first name of the filmmaker. (I also don't know how he says his last name). We could remember the name of his father (a very minor character whose name I can't think of now) and everyone else's name including his boyfriend in high school (Michael). Perhaps an indication of our limited memory, I'd also suggest that this is an indication of the filmmaker's depersonalization, the lead character in the film is almost unnamed and instead he is so marked (or should I say tainted) by those around him.

2004-11-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

Well I hope that the conservatives are happy...soon they will be able to stop women from having legal abortions, soon they will be able to stop stem cell research, and it looks like for now, they have stopped possibilities for marraige rights to be extended to all. Soon they will be able to write the word "God" (read Yahweh) into all documents of the State and buy as many weapons as possible. It sure does look as if they will be able to rid the airwaves of dissident, noncorporate-sponsored voices (and voices that speak of sex and sexuality). Congratulations to them. It appears as if they have won. Americans have successfully fought for the right to be destitute (and deemed moronic and manic by much of the world), but at least we are safe from debauchery. Repeat the alliterative mantra to yourself--god, guns, and gays...its kinda catchy isn't it? Can anyone spell "false consciousness"? Can anyone do the Texas two-step to that old song called "opium of the masses"?

But what will these moralists do when they need to have a medical procedure but can't afford it...or are prescribed unbelievably expensive medicines...or one of their loved ones realizes s/he is gay (or one of them realizes that s/he is as queer as a three dollar bill)...or that they NEED an abortion...or that Bin Laden decides to launch a real offensive again...or their unemployment benefits run out. Will they be able to feed themselves on the fatty empty calories of a shallow, misguided moral victory? I guess there is a whole lot of dirt in the backyard if you can't afford McDonald's anymore. I say bitterly to them (yes, as a queer, secular, perverted half-Jew with an immigrant boyfriend loving his life making/critiquing media in the dirty godless big city)...Mazel Tov.

I guess like Zell Miller, I should study fencing, and challenge one of you moralists to a duel...

2004-11-03T06:43:00.000-08:00

Here is the email I sent out yesterday...trying to prepare myself and my friends for what I worried was inevitable.

Friends--
Just wanted to let you know that on election day I am
keeping the focus...on myself!
For example: So as to avoid watching CNN endlessly and
fretting needlessly, I am going to stop in at the
Marquee this afternoon to make some get out the vote
calls (and maybe order a Manhattan w/Maker's Mark to
loosen up my vocal cords--I've got a post nasal drip
cough). Marquee is the gay bar on Bowery next to
Marion's. I should be there from 1-3 or so. Then I'm
going shopping (for shoes of course) and then off to
my shrink for an appropriately-scheduled appt. If I
don't have too many drinks in the middle of the day, I
might hit the gym in the early evening. I love that
elliptical training machine!
Anyways, it would be great to see you at the Marquee
if possible. Bring a recently recharged cell phone.
Remember how important you are...regardless of what
happens and what you do on this day. see the below
standard letter.
e

2004-10-30T23:42:00.000-07:00

if kerry loses and bush wins fairly, keep in mind...

10. Kerry was never the strongest candidate. He's not a feel good handsome populist like Bill Clinton. Nor is he articulate like Howard Dean. I have never been a Kerry supporter, even though I have made calls for him and sent money to his campaign--and I know this is true for many people. I still like his wife, and maybe she can help Hillary next time.
9. Kerry will not lose by much, at least in the popular vote. This means that the country is not entirely full of people who have been blinded or hoodwinked by repeated Republican campaign slogans.
8. In NYC, Kerry will win by a landslide, as he will in most of the main cities. Maybe NYC, San Fran, Chicago, Boston, LA should secede and form a necklace of city-states.
7. More people will vote than ever before. Many of those people realize that voting is only part of being an active progressive force in a democracy.
6. The War in Iraq and the social turmoil in this country will not make Bush/Cheney very effective. We will protest his every move. If we were sleeping, we have woken up. If we have been awake, we are not dozing off now.
5. W is the worst of the Bushes, and though it will be a hardship for us and the world, we will get through it--and he can't be elected/selected again.
4. Enough new people are involved that maybe we can reform our political system and get rid of the electoral college. This college helps elect Republicans and it is anti-democratic. We need a parliamentarian democracy, so that we can have parties that reflect the diversity of the populace. Republicans and democrats suck. They will always fail to represent people. Look at the conventions, they are mediated carnivals. We need a green party, a transgender party, a libertarian party, a social democratic party, a mixed race party, a women's party, a a male metrosexual party, all of which have to contend with each other in order to form a government.
3. Regardless we have a new senator from Illinois who looks like he can unite and energize.
2. We have new internet-based political action groups that have been effective. They certainly email me often enough, and their emails are well-written and enthusiastic, and have made me feel part of something that works.
1. it will be very very depressing if Kerry loses, but I have always been scared of gun-toting, bible-holding white people anyway, and they have always been scared of the likes of me.

2004-10-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

Letter to NY Times about horrendous obituary about Derrida

Dear Editor:The obituary of Jacques Derrida (October 10) was a distressing example of the kind of writing (one thatrelies upon simplistic oppositions, for example) thatDerrida spent his life critiquing. Rather thanengaging with the complexities of Derrida's thought,the writer chose to dwell upon on a scandal involvinga colleague and belittle the concept ofdeconstruction. Moreover, instead of quoting prominenttheorists who were influenced by Derrida, the writerchose to use sources outside the academic fieldsDerrida transformed. The result is a reductive,anti-theoretical take, one that attempts to discreditthe career and work of a man.

Edward D. Miller
David Gerstner

2004-08-03T05:20:00.000-07:00

Kerry--the War Hero in a Spielberg Movie

I confess. Last week I was out on Cape Cod and the weather was cold and clammy so I had the chance to watch quite a bit of the Democratic Convention. As you know I am voting for Kerry, mostly because of my pre-existing condition--that is, I hate Bush (and all the Bushes) and hate what he has done to the country. I also hate his smug chimp face, the way he walks, and his use of language. Let's face it--he could cut a check to each American for one million dollars (drawn from an energy company bank account) and I'd still think ill of him. I think the whole family should seek exile in Saudi Arabia, where they can at last be treated as if they were royalty and golf and hunt away their days.

I respect that Kerry and his party have decided that they really want to be elected and will do what ever the nythic focus group oracle or its hired PR agencies recommend--so if this means toning done the anti-Bush rhetoric in order to show that Kerry fought for the country and is tough on the enemy and crime and all that so that middle of the road independents and intelligent Republicans can feel confident voting for him, it is okay by me. Well almost okay. By Thursday, after endless retellings of tale of his 'band of brothers' in Vietnam and how he lifted a now rather corpulent 'brother' from the dangerous river, saving him, an old Jewish expression came to me--"Enough already!"

I felt as if a John Williams score was magically going to resound from the heavens as yet another polticians skipped over what an asshole Bush is and instead recounted Kerry's bravery. His band of brothers on the stage started to look to me like talented Hollywood character actors who look familiar (but you never remember their names). Of course, the silly documentary about Kerry did have swelling, sentimentalizing music (and a pseudo sincere voice over by what sounded like Morgan Freeman) and was saved only by interviews with Teresa and his daughters, who at least seem to tap against the glass of the simulation to signal that someone actually lives and breathes behind the veneer.

At times I felt as if Kerry et al were on a press junket for the new Spielberg movie Band of Brothers II: Vietnam. American democracy is not about voting for candidates who represent, it consists of endorsing one of two Hollywood hybrided genres. In this election, we have the "male tear-jerker/coming of age war movie" versus "cowboy western/action-revenge movie." I know what genre I'm voting for--in Kerry's movie the men may not get to marry each other, but they sure do hug each other quite a bit as they hide their tears of brotherly love!

2004-07-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

Note: Kerry should never appear. As in last night's convention he should only be talked about in mythic ways as if he were almost beyond belief. a fabled figure. a conjured up deity.

Note: The way the grand old dems talked of kerry one could almost imagine that they had a stellar candidate w/his selfless bravery when young and his considered and measured strengths now that he is a seasoned politician...He is much more intruiging when he is absent and is the protagonist of other's telling of the tale of his life ... Perhaps there is a way for him to be only placed into narration or with recorded images and voice over so that he can truly seem presidential.

I'd rather have Teresa talk about him and talk about herself than have Kerry waffle on himself. I'd rather have Clinton retell the story of Kerry in Vietnam (or the reverend who was on the boat with him) than have Kerry tell the story himself. I am sure tonight Edwards will spin a (truthful) yarn about Kerry that will be riveting, far more involving than what Kerry himself will say. Kerry is great when described and disconcerting when he is actually there.

Let's keep him hidden from view...he should only exist through the stories told of him...his presence must not be]visible one, but an orated one. this works. it seems effective when you see his effect on others...and their desire to explain him...as he can not explain himself. like a spirit who wafts in when one chants intensely enough and provides some needed communal ecstasy. John Kerry. John Kerry. John Forbes Kerry.

But I hope I am proven wrong on Thursday when he makes his way to that stage/plasma screen. Did he go to storytelling camp?

2004-07-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

O No I've Written a Pro-Kerry Letter to the New York Times

I appreciate the savviness of David Brook's essay "Values, Values Everywhere" (17 July) inpointing out the inherent contradictions of Sentor Kerry talking about middle class values. He is right too that President Bush, like his Democratic foe, is also part of an elite group of prime real estate holders. Both are not everyday,smalltown Americans and both are clearly told by advisors to act as if they were. To me, Bush is somewhat more successful at faux-folksiness than Kerry. He seems to be true to his campaign"meta-narrative"--perhaps because he is in fact ordinary.

Yet the fact that Kerry chose to defend his country in a war that he later came to question actually makes his values more like those of a middle class American. This also gives Kerry insight into what many of our young men and women in the armed forces may be experiencing right now in Iraq.

Whatever the truth of Bush's service, we know that he used his privilege to keep him safe. It is worth keeping this difference in mind when comparing the two men's "authenticity."

2004-07-12T05:07:00.000-07:00

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

What happens to a rock n roll band when their management company hires a therapist/performance enhancement coach to work with them (at 40,000 dollars a month)? Watch this documentary and you shall see.

No one is safe from the therapy sponge it seems. Its soaks up all...and asks you about your feelings and wonders if you can make that about yourself. A wonder to see 40-something heavy metal professionals in a pseudo-group therapy formation trying to figure out how to work together so that they can record an album. What is revealed is that Metallica is really Joni Mitchell confessional-type music not for sensitive romantically prone girls but for straight male teenagers (or ex-teenagers).

The film is also a great parable about the ability/inability for people to work together, especially when egos are towering. We all believe in a band, not only for the music they make, but for the fact that a band is evidence that talented individuals can work collectively (or at least contractually). A band suggests that three or four people (or more or less) can figure out how to gain expression at once. Of course, it rarely works or rarely works for too long (nor should it in all cicumstances)...so we have the Beatles breaking up...or the Sex Pistols...or Nirvana or the Smiths...often one of the members develops a drug or suicide problem...or the lead singer or lead guitarist/singer front man feels creatively stifled by the band and wants to go out on his own.

Now I'm not a big Metallica fan or heavy metal afficiando, but one of the the aspects of the band is their drumming and drummer, Lars. Though he comes across as an asshole (and his father a real MONSTER, not some kind of one) with his anti-Napster tirade and his horrendous anxiety making millions when he sells his art collection (many Basquiats), he is unique. Not only his drumming style (more of a timpanist) who doesn't just pound out the beat (in fact one time singer James complains of his missing the beat completely) but the fact that he is a leader of the band who also writes the music. (the lead guitarist Kirk--deprived of solos--is the quiet one in the film, conscious of draining his musicality of ego).

Yet no matter what, Lars is never going to be as charismatic as the lead singer, James Hetfield. Even when he disappears from the movie while he is in rehab, he is the center of attention, and the focus of the therapy talk as they wait for his return. He is brooding, pock-marked and wounded, self-involved, self-destructive but also clearly full of love. There is nothing that Lars can do to make him a more dynamic and sympathetic character on screen, even when he is right. Also, there is nothing that the therapist (who is a shady character) or the guitarist Kirk Hammet can do to really mediate the conflict between these two men. Band members have died, others have left, both are in some sort of near post-trauma even as they are amazingly successful. Ultimately the only tactic to create civility is for them to indulge in working together (and to bring in another band member, the ever so dynamic and younger Robert Trujillo, who can supply the onstage theatrics--plus he is not balding so he can do the heavy metal hair tossing with his immaculate braids) without talking endlessly about their feelings about each other, or their feelings about the band. Then of course they unite in turning on the therapist, Phil Towle, who has outstayed his welcome--even though he reveals that he had plans to go out on tour with them and working with each of the band members. Phil reaches rock bottom in his desperation to prove his worth when he scotch tapes pithy bogus statements about "getting into the zone" around the studio in order to encourage creativity. What he is really doing is working to ensure his own place in the band, as some kind of weird fathery figure endorsing partial confessions from the band. Part of the freakish horror of the film is to see the rise and fall of this therapist...and to have his own tactics laid bare and he fights for his job and admits his own desires to stay with the band, while he tries to keep to his own brand of corporate therapy-speech.

By the way, did I say that I loved the film. Hope all Metallica fans go, so that they can see that their heavy metals gods are also just mortals prone to struggle with the high notes of their soap opera arias.

Of course, all is well in the end as the band takes to the stage energized, united, and triumphant.

2004-06-29T06:14:00.001-07:00

Michael Moore

The scariest part of the movie for me was the beginning. Revisiting the coup d'etat and the voter disenfranchisement of the 2000 election that brought of all the disaster of the last 4 years upon us literally undid me. The black congressmen and congresswomen bravely protesting the election results, with Gore and the other Senators silencing them was so chilling. I have not been completely revivified from these events, and neither has the country.

In psychological terms, the election is the trauma that I haven't recovered from. I was viscerally affected when watching the footage, thought I might vomit for a moment, and felt weak, watching Moore's retelling of the fraudalent election (of course there was nebulous music framing the visuals). Everything that followed the election felt inevitable, a filling in of the blank, a coloring in of the outline made by that election. Why O why didn't we revolt en masse after the supreme court decision? why didn't the American people set the roof on fire? why didn't I? we all watched the events unfold as if it was happening elsewhere, on a cable channel that came as part of a Time/Warner package, one we didn't know we had ordered. Not a dream/nightmare as Moore suggest, but a simulacram.

For me the events of 9/11 and its aftermath--by teaching my students who were so devastated by the event, it helped me go through what had occurred and try to make sense of it. I feel as if I witnessed and know the event and its aftermath to the extent that I was exposed to it by my everyday proximity to the site and to the people I encounter through the course of my life. In traveling to my job, I went by the WTC so often, I know the site and I breathed that noxious air--I have my own experiences and memories separate from the media and its sentimentality. In other words, I have processed it. In as much as I can, I understand what went on, and comprehend the horror of it, know it as history and as a personal event and recognize it as an event that affected people I know much more than I. I know too the kind of silence the Bush regime tried to provoke through its use of "9/11" and the ways they tried to claim the event. In teaching, I had to negotiate with that silence. Believe me it was not easy.

That Bush and his family's relationship with the Saudi's serves to make him complicit with the attack is not news to me. The shenanigans of the oil rich oligopoly do not startle me, even that the Saudi's own seven percent of the country is not chilling. That terrorism/American geopolitics renders us in NYC vulnerable was not news to me. It seem as if it no longer affects me unconsciously and it might make me embrace and feel life itself as a shared and solitary experience.

But part of me is still in shock over the election. Even though I was born into a left-y family and moved on to adopt my own cynicism toward electoral politics, I guess I had some faith toward the process as it had been amended, that women and blacks had gained the right to vote, that 18-21 yr olds had earned it too, and that even with all of the coercions and manipulations, "we" still elected our leaders. That even as America was economically conservative, there was an innate and evolutionary progressiveness to us, a progressiveness that would serve to include more and more of us in the running of our own lives and involve us ever more intensely in the creation of a shared culture. We could trust in the system of representation, even if we could not trust the leaders we elect.

What pill was I taking? I guess it was called "naivete" and I was taking a double dose.

I have a nausea that has nothing to do with my own physicality but I feel it in my body. I suppose this is what happens when one's hope for democracy is stolen. As Whitman suggests democracy is also embodied, a sensory experience, a desire, an erotics: to crave self expression and yet having that expression though another's representation.

It makes me very sad to realize the extent of the theft. A system of representation (that is a belief in our own words to bear some relationship to us) was stolen from us.

2004-06-28T04:26:00.000-07:00

Weekend of Parades

First the Mermaid Parade on Saturday in Coney Island. Spurred on by B, who said she was going (never got to see her there), I decided to give this parade another go. I hadn't been in about ten years and I had a strange yearning for the noisy grime of Coney Island. I remember that the parade used to be quite small marching back and forth in front of CI Sideshows, with everyone in tow. Now its huge, filled with drunken straight boys salivating at the huge tits of the corpulent pseudoMermaids, marching down Surf Ave, which is truly one of the nastiest streets in the world. H and I stood near a stand with a carnie shrieking "Shoot the Freak and he won't shoot you back." Some silly NYU girl yelled at a local junkie to sit down so she could see the parade. Imagine sitting down on Surf Ave and then yelling at people to sit down--at a parade! The parade was huge, beer drenched, and disappointing. On the way back on the ole F train, I was able to remember those days of yore on the boardwalk....with not much more than a handful of carnival freaks and East Village wannabes getting really wasted in the sun and hanging our with the horny homeboys of Ave X. More about that in my x-rated memoirs. Now of course, its all about the sunblock and hurrying back to the relative calm of the F train.

Well our afternoon was salvaged by a trip to the renovated redone Acquarium. Can I say that it would be okay to be reincarnated as a sea lion in an aquatic show? Loved those barking, needy, crowd-pleasing, fish-eating greasy fatsos. The best way to get attention from humans is not to be one. As long as you are cute of course and tame. When H and I were leaving the new acquarium park, we saw a trainer playing with a penguin (some penguins are subtropical apparently) and getting the penguin to blow bubbles and then pop them with its beak. The cutest thing was to watch these two other penguins atop a rock, watching the trainer and their bubble-blowing brethren with a befuddled expression that gave me shivers of cuteness aprreciation. I suppose the moral of the story is that "nature"--in this instance taking the form of captive animals--is more fascinating than drunken NYU kids trying to have fun at a folky parade that has suffered from too much media exposure. It had become a show-us-your-tits kind of Mardi Gras event. As we left Coney Island, H urged me to go faster as we passed two drunken guys get into fight, with beer bottles and a chair. Bleak, very bleak, as people gathered round to watch the event, seemingly forgetting that it was actually happening. The blood was real, not a carnie trick to get you to shoot some defenseless freak.

Somehow Bush is to blame for all of this. Can I just say with the release of Clinton's book, it was enjoyable to hear him speak. Smarmy bill is nevertheless articulate, he's gone through therapy, he's self-obsessed, forgives himself endlessly. And I miss him. He is smart and he knows how to talk in full sentences that he knows how to end before he gets to it. Bush can barely talk.

The gay pride parade was fun, full of antiBush sentiment. Bawdy, bitchy, brawny. I love those bouncing floats with the blaring music jam-packed with people dancing and waving to bad dance music. Each one of those dancers--not matter their beauty or body--is a celebrity for the day. It is so fun to watch them loving themselves. My favorite corporate sponsor once again is Altoids. Also a few banks and Starbucks. Once again, an annoying NYU girl (yes I have a problem with them) said to her friend near me, "I feel like I'm watching an advertisement" as if this was the worst thing in the world. Well sweetie, you are...And whether you like it or not, some have fought hard to sell that ad space (while you were auditioning for the Real World)!

I couldn't help but observe that both Act-Up and "Clean and Sober" (12-steppers not 2-steppers) have such a small presence now. Back when I used to actually march down 5th ave or hang out with my old posse at 23rd St, yes, yes in the late 80s, early 90s, that those groups were huge. I guess its now about drunken would-be newlyweds who want just want Bush out of office...and freshen their breath with Altoids!

2004-06-10T17:27:00.000-07:00

My friend Kathy wrote to CNN, tired of the endless lionizing of Reagan. She tells them:

I hope that very soon many other public health professionals like
myself will rush to remind the public of one key aspect of Reagan's
legacy - overlooking AIDS - and to protest so much misplaced public
sentiment given the horrible toll that disease took on the lives of
young, productive Americans during his Administration. Reagan may not
have sent young people to war, but his silence certainly sent them to
hospital wards.

Indeed, Reagan's life is a poignant reminder about how someone in a
position of power who is profoundly short-sighted, possesses deadingly
conservative values and is inattentive to details so exclusively
available to a President can cause serious harm to others.

In the future, let's keep it real and far less maudlin, shall we?

2004-06-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

My oped piece that no newspaper has published (so far)...

I feel as if I want a tshirt that says I SURVIVED THE DISGUSTING LIONIZING OF REAGAN BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WHEN HE DIED...

Losing a Bet in President Reagan’s Shining City

The news that Ronald Reagan died reached me as I was putting money on Smarty Jones at the Belmont Racetrack. A voice came on the PA system and announced the former President’s death. This voice asked the sell-out crowd for a moment of silence.

The requested moment lasted barely a second, at least in the area of the stadium where I stood. Bets continued to be placed. Chatter went on unimpeded. Beers and pretzels continued to be purchased and consumed. The line outside the men’s bathroom continued to move (not the women’s room, however). The reason for our lack of recognition: we were preoccupied. The hope for a Triple Crown winner was too engrossing for us to notice the gravity of this perhaps more historic event. The sadness of the death of a former President was just going to have to wait. Perhaps this was not the most respectful behavior for us proud citizens of the Shining City of America. But it was all too human.

Or perhaps some of us in the audience still had a memory of what of it was like to live through the Reagan era. I remember a fellow student spray painted the words “1980: Prelude to Fascism” the morning after Reagan’s election in 1980 on the college dormitory where I lived. I thought then that such a warning was caustic and exaggerated. Yet now with the curtailing of civil liberties via the Patriot Act and the lack of engaged and enraged public discourse, I worry that the words were in fact prophetic. We are living in a right wing era that began with Reagan and its movement rightward is accelerated by George W. Bush. Reagan used “big government” and the “evil empire”; Bush is using the “evildoers” and the threat of terrorism to curtail our freedoms. Economic policy means cutting taxes for the very rich; foreign policy means showing the country’s military might in action.

Yet the conservatism of George W. Bush is a far less secular version of the version espoused by Reagan. George W. Bush’s Christian beliefs influences his policy decisions and thus restricts the federal funding of stem cell research. Such research has great potential to help the plight of people suffering from Alzheimer’s, a disease that afflicted Ronald Reagan and caused much sadness for his widow.

Of course, Smarty Jones lost his lead in the last few leagues. The cheering, jumping audience once united in what seemed like an inevitable victory, fell unbelievably silent in an instant. Perhaps it was in that moment that many in the audience realized the loss of the former President. There were tears and distraught expressions. For whom or what I wonder--the elusive triple crown or the lost leader who had returned America to its greatness? Maybe both.

Or perhaps the realities of our precarious lives returned: alerts, warnings of further attacks, the fact that most of my friends that I went out to Belmont with are independent contractors for corporations and have to pay for their own health insurance (if they can afford it) and don’t have job security. None of us have any significant savings for retirement. All of us feel vulnerable. The War in Iraq has made us feel less safe and we are disgusted by the recent abuse of prisoners. We are outraged by how this country is being run. And I for one, I can’t wait to yell at the out-of-town Republicans later this summer.

Reagan was fond of citing Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who exhorted his new land to be "as a city upon a hill.” Reagan’s speechwriters’ included the word “shining,” perfectly suited for a former Hollywood star. But the rest of Winthrop’s sentence is “the eyes of all people upon us.” I think this phrase is especially true now when so many in the world are disturbed by American leadership--in fact many are staring at us in disbelief.

But Reagan was not wrong about this City--as much as I personally dislike its biblical overtones. I have seen and felt its sheen, especially in my beloved New York, but not recently. Perhaps one step toward returning its patina would be to support stem cell research in honor of our controversial former President and First Lady. After all it does us no good to bet all of our hopes on a great horse from Philadelphia. We need intelligence responses to a complicated world not pseudo-commandments on what it means to be an American. A city can not shine if its citizenry is anxious, angry, and worried about becoming elderly or ill.

2004-06-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

Ronald Reagan:

was a bad actor and a terrible president.

refused to address the AIDS crisis. He couldn't even say the word as I remember it.

moved this country to the right where it still remains. The fact that Blair and Clinton were so mainstream has much to do with Reagan and Thatcher. Certain ideas about governing become obsolete.

may have been a somewhat skilled talking head. But he was stupid and we used to joke about it.

joked about deploying nuclear bombs against the "evil empire." Now we have W joking about killing evil-doers. Reagan paved the way for this simplistic cowboy republicanism.

and even when Nancy begged for stem cell research that could have helped her beloved, W remained silent. And now W wants to throw a solemn party that will help his reelection.

he was probably involved with the Iran Contra stuff which gave this country that Nazi Ollie North.

when Reagan was elected in 1980, I remember someone sprayed graffitti where I lived that said "1980: Prelude to Fascism." I thought those words were extreme. I thought there's a difference between right wing Republicanism and fascism per se. Now I realize how prophetic these words were. Reagan paved the way for W. Reagan's shining city is rundown and lacks civil liberties. Reagan's shining city on a hill has very high gas prices and suffers from global warming. The people in the shining city do not trust each other and accuse each other of being evil. This is what Reagan has wrought.

I was at the Belmont Stakes placing a bet on the hyped-up horse that was supposed to win the Triple Crown, when a voice came on the loudspeaker to say that Reagan had died. The voice asked for a moment of silence. I was very proud of my fellow Americans for not paying attention to such a request. People in the line kept chattering away, complaining about its length, making last minute changes to their bets. They didn't give a shit--winning was more important that this dead President. Reagan fooled the American people. He brought us debt. He stared down the Soviet empire, which has proven to be disastrous for our security. He planted seeds of disorder. The weeds are abloom with noxious fumes.

2004-05-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

Abu Ghraib prison photos

I know that ole Walter Benjamin warned of turning political ritual/performance into "aesthetic events of the first order" and saw this as a defining trait of fascism. But I can't help it.

I should say before I whisper my forthcoming observations that these photos point to rampant torture that I believe was ordered by someone and encouraged by others. I believe that this treatment was official--if unwritten--policy. I also ask that if we investigate this torture, we also look at the treatment of prisoners within the continental United States.

But can't we also look at these photos as aesthetic events?

And if we do, and I cite a recent conversation with my colleague D., aren't these photos reminscent of fashion photography, especially the work of the recently trendy David LaChappelle? http://www.davidlachapelle.com

In fashion photography, images sticky with s/m inferences and same sex desire are rampant. They work to sell clothes and other products to a straight, vanilla audience that is eager to cop a feel (yes, of the other) by way of a fetishized product.

I wonder: Have future art directors and fashion photographers infilitrated the army? The GI Bill after WWII helped vets go to college and buy homes. Will Rumsfeld sponsor another bill for today's vets so that they can work for ad agencies (as independent contractors of course, as the agency won't want to pay for healthcare for fulltime staff)?

2004-05-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

Donald Rumsfeld

Well the world has rendered me somewhat speechless, and the politics at my job have involved most of my nonsleeping hours (and have infilitrated my dreams) but I do pledge to be back here more.

I know that people on the left and even now some in the center are calling for Rumsfeld's resignation. Yes, yes of course he an asshole and his ideas about war have now been proven wrong, and all that.

But he continues to be riveting entertainment and he knows it (yet its true he could barely act contrite in front of the Senate, but did you really think he was going to do that shtick--after he is limited as a performer). At a certain moment of every day, Rumsfeld wonders who can play him in the movie. During the other moments, Rumsfeld actually believes he is in a movie (and he is the star.) His pathology, embedded in each of us (my life is a movie, I am ready for my closeup, and so forth), has escaped its enclosure, and runs rampart through his corporeality and psyche. It is fascinating. He could also be insane in the legal sense or psychotic in the clinical sense.

Of course, George C. Scott, in his Patton-y persona, could play Rumsfeld. And Rumsfeld is playing him.

I don't think Jack Nicholson could play Rumsfeld, but he thinks he could and is practicing the part. Of course Rumsfeld is in part playing Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

This points to a part of Rumsfeld's delusion. He is in fact not a military man. He is a policy wonk. But he styles himself after this mythic figure--clarity, poise, the ability to plow through the bullshit to see the simple beauty of the conflict. This is not true of course for Rumsfeld. He actually experiences life as totally horrid and ugly chaos, filled with disloyal people and inept soldiers. His words in front of the camera and the way he utters them are a desperate attempt to hold on...he does this in front of us. It is compelling and scary especially since he generates policy.

I apologize for getting lost in the drama of Rumsfeld's pathology...but it is part of my own obsessions.

Maybe one of those again British actors who is good at American accents could play Rumsfeld. Tom Wilkinson?

2004-04-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

My Dream Last Night

In the dream, I was going to a dance concert (not an odd excursion for me) and I think it was the Martha Graham company, which has recently successfully reassembled in real life. I arrived late and it was intermission. It was a hall I had never been to in the middle of a park. I was forced to show my ticket to a male usher outside the theatre which got my upset becuase other people just walked in as one usually does at the end of an intermission. Once inside the theatre, everyone was already seated, including some of the choreographers I know who were there (all of whom I know to love Martha Graham). A very pretty female usher sat me in the second row (my ticket was for a seat further back I noticed) and the second part of the concert began.

Dancers walk out in front of the thick tangerine-colored curtain. I think there was musical accompaniment. They grabbed hold of some of the fabric and the curtain was raised slightly and then came back down, each time allowing the dancers to climb up the fabric a bit more. The repetition of the event became funny, teasing the audience about what might be behind the curtain and what might happen to the dancers who seemed so intent like rock climbers.

Finally the dancers and the curtain were completely raised, and as that happenned, my gaze become interrupted (by a sneeze I think) At that moment, the stage and its wings disappeared. A park was revealed with such vibrant colors and intense light upon in it. Very green grass, a dog (a boxer) jumping on and off a bench, kids in a sandbox, and behind people walking on a boardwalk, like the one that borders Carl Schulz park uptown on the East Side. It was an everyday scene but entirely active. People in the audience started clapping. No one in the scene responded; they were completely invested in the activities. I started to tear up, in part because the sight was almost hard to bear due to the light (I am slightly photophobic) but also because it was so composed, so typical and yes very beautiful in its seeming choreography and the embrace of life that was so evident in the scene. It was a beautiful show that for us in the audience soon brought us to our feet in a standing ovation in salute to the everyday embrace of light and movement. I was crying and clapping.

Then I woke up.

2004-04-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

Abandoned Proposal (for Now)

Sound and Radio Art: Avant-Garde Practices and Popular Experiences
Edward D. Miller

In this project, I investigate the relevance and meaning of sound art and its relationship to popular media and contemporary culture. I am particularly interested in art that uses such objects as radios, television, computers, telephones—and other devices that reproduce the human voice and human-made noises. In order to understand the “ontology” of these technological puppets, I examine the role of live and recorded sound in the recent history of art and popular media and its correlation to the audience’s experience of temporality and continuity.

Sound and radio art of the 50s and 60s challenged notions of continuity and lived experience and is especially pertinent to contemporary everyday life. Such art brackets time and subverts the hierarchy of the senses that privileges seeing over hearing. Such art is seemingly endless and elastic (think of how long the elongated silence of John Cage’s 4’33” must have lasted for his audience at the Museum of Modern Art). Yet sound art is restricted by its duration; it relies upon its own disappearance to end. It is instantaneous reminding us that in our culture using the term “live” describes a shared temporality and transmission--not spatiality and distance. Hearing a performed sound at the same time as its creation and projection produces a momentary lacuna, or a hiccup in the advancement of time.

I propose to study the work of postwar composers John Cage, David Tudor, Pierre Schaeffer, 60s fluxus artists Joseph Beuys and Yoko Ono, and contemporary sound artists such as Christian Marclay and Gregory Whitehead. In addition to various avant-garde and experimental practices, I also examine the more popular innovations provided by FM radio disc jockeys in the 60s and early 70s who experimented with their voices via the freeform style, such as John Leonard, Bob Fass, and Lorenzo Milam, and later Allison Steele (“the Nightbird”) and the contemporary DJ artist, Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky). In this project, I foreground the experience and the depiction of temporality in the artwork and investigate how technology serves to reveal this experience. These artists’ work is timed; it emerges and lasts only a set amount of hours, minutes, or seconds. During the moments of the work, it elongates a suspended moment of interaction between the object and the auditor. These moments are seemingly original yet repeatable, predictable yet haphazard. They expose time in its constructs and illusions.

In this study on the poetics of sound art, I use the work of film theorists to guide me, especially Michel Chion. His notion of the acousmatic medium (where the actual, originating source of the sound is not in the visual field), developed from Pierre Schaeffer, and of the acousmetre, the sound-being, is key to understanding the dynamics of speaking objects. The presence of the ventriloquial object, the voice box of the absent artist, is an increasing phenomenon in today’s culture: from the answering machine/voice mail system, to voice exchanges on the internet.

Today’s consumers—like avant-garde artists before them—let objects speak for them, and permit these objects to act as their spokesperson and substitute. In contemporary culture, one leaves one’s recorded voice at dozen of sites and locations. Such sounds are nicks that chop away at linearity. Each recording lasts only a certain amount of time and is heard later than its initial production. They preserve and deteriorate. This dynamic at work in sound art and in the recording and broadcasting industries, is now part of the experience of the consumer in the current information age. This phenomenon needs to be considered in all its philosophical, political, and aesthetic ramifications. For example, human interactions have not enabled the arrival of the cyborg as many cultural theorists—and Hollywood films--have predicted. Rather, this interaction has created acousmetres or virtual ventriloquists. We store our voices in surrogate objects that speak at timed intervals, while we remain silent.

Performed sound, whether it is from a visible, live source or an acousmatic, unseen one, appears to fill an empty space (particularly a gallery), while it can seem to empty a crowded space (especially a concert hall) in the listener’s singular response to the creator of the sound. The performance of sound can provide the audience with suspension and sequence. Territorial sound—a refrigerator’s hum, the din of traffic in a city--can provide the illusion of continuity in their omnipresence, but the repetition and familiarity of such sounds allows for them to move from the foreground of a space to the background.

The project is built upon philosophical foundations that are especially concerned with temporality. Using Bachelard’s The Dialectic of Duration (1990) as inspiration, I posit that continuity is a narrative applied retroactively to experience. One is taught sequence and the ability to identify order. Yet the initial experience of specific aesthetic events is often fractured and interrupted by innumerable distractions. Bachelard insists that listening to a series of sounds does not necessarily equate to systematic progression:
The continuity of the fabric of sound is so fragile that a break in one place sometimes causes a break in another. In other words, step by step connection does not suffice; this partial connection is dependent on a loose-knit association, on the continuity of the whole. We must in fact learn the continuity of a melody. It is not heard straightaway, and it is often the recognition of a theme that makes us aware of melodic continuity. (italics in the original; 122-23)

Thus the listener does not necessarily identify melody as it is being heard; the initial encounter with “melody” can be heard as a near chaotic and simultaneous eruption of noises. When the perception of a pattern is recognized, melody (or in other words, a kind of narrative) can then be discerned. Linearity is at risk via repetition, even though repetition is also that which enables the perception of a pattern that moves from one point in time to another.

Psychoanalysis also reminds us that an experience can be repressed by the psyche, causing the subject to maintain an unconscious where there is no linear time or progression of events. An event in the past can superimpose itself onto the present. An event in the past can be recorded and like a sampled bit of sound, placed atop an experience, transforming its texture and tone. Recorded sound and live noise intertwine. Technology has radically changed the experience of the everyday, and avant-garde artists have proven to be prophetic in their incantations. This project aims to integrate philosophical concepts and avant-garde theory with an analysis of popular culture.

2004-04-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

Air America

I have been listening to Air America a bit in the morning. It is great to hear people railing against Bush. Finally to hear such voices on a commercial station, which I think is important. And also not extremist voices like one often hears on Pacifica. After my pleasure on hearing voices that I agree with, I found the sound of endless talk shrill, and well, then its boring. A big exception is Chuck D, formerly of Public Enemy, who has a great sounding voice, and although he might be the angriest person there, never launches into an unnecessary, high-pitched rant and rave.

In coming up with a progressively oriented station the programming should also be progressive in its style and format. Its not a progressive format, it is a traditional talk-radio format. This feeds obsessive personality types, who find endless repetition nutritious, when really it is high carb. The producers should not mimick the rightwing talk radio, and just change the content from right wing talk to slightly left wing talk. That is novel at first, but then it is boring. They need to work on their format that doesn't rely on calls from listeners and smug banter between hosts.

I am listening now and someone from Staten Island is calling in. Now that is exciting to me! He says he feels patriotic listening to the show, now that he has a left wing option! That is sweet!

2004-04-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

Washington DC

I suppose I was a bit overdramatic in my prediction for Condi Rice. Her future is ensured. She can lie with the best of them. Tho she was tricked into saying the name of the August 5 PDB, which again in my overdramatic way makes me think (hope) that Bush might lose the election.

It was fun to watch the Rice testimony while I was in Washington, staying in my Priceline Marriot near Dupont Circle and Foggy Bottom (love that name). DC is impressive looking, stately, always in a pose and barely in motion, and yes quite dull, preppie and segregated, though it is well-mannered. But impossible to find an apple in an all night Korean grocery, because there is no such thing. The only all night shopping one can do is at the CVS in Chinatown (not bad for Healthy and Beauty aids for sooth).

S came down one night to stay with me in the Marriot. We went to go see Shakespeare's Henry IV part two. Falstaff was great and what a terrific play to stage in DC, right now, as it is the story of a partying son who hangs out with undesirable types (Hank) who returns to the court to inherit the throne (and takes the crown even before his dad dies) as Henry IV dies. The director was clearly trying to telegraph to the boring bureaucratic--and suit-wearing,aging--audience that this is what has happenned in the States. An undeserving son has put on the mask on a leader in order to grab the power to which he is certain he is entitled. Falstaff is foolish, excessive, but also keen to the workings of power and like the elite of DC will always try to gain favor from whoever sits on the throne. The audience seemed to me reluctant to go there, to see their own implication in the saga of undemocratic governing (of which we are in the midst). Also, they are anxious too because their ruler is hardly in town, as he is off in Crawford TX all the time.

We also the Douglas Gordon exhibit at the Hirschhorn. I loved the 24 hour Psycho. The piece is a video projection screen, 20 feet wide, set diagonally in the middle of a room, and the film is slowed way down, 2 frames per second, and no sound. Gorgeous. I love the way he uses cinema to make sculpture. Through a Looking Glass which uses the you looking at me segment from Taxi Driver is great as well. Projected on two walls in a loop, with mirrors affixed to the ends of the wall, it ends up giving an endless reflection of DeNiro and an echo of his voice. Of course in the "original" scene, DeNiro is also in the mirror, staging his threat also for himself, as well as rehearsing for another. The video piece Play Dead, Real Time depicted elephants moving around a large white gallery space and the camera movement made it seem like the floor they walked on was moving, giving the gallery in which the screen were installed an eery simulation of the simulated event, in which a nearly lifeless creature endlessly tried to reach a place it never achieves. Gimicky work for sure, but inventively repititious and involving. Perfect for DC, in fact, which operates via slights of hand.

2004-04-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

Condi Rice

My prediction: The Bush people are going to feed her to the lions. And then act like they never really knew her. Even though she has been the one who has explained the world to W (not very well).

She is a tragic hero in the classical sense.

Her way of looking at the world is very flawed and old-fashioned. She still believes that the enemy lies in nations and superpowers and their leaders, when it is clear that terrorist networks have taken the lesson of the Internet (and the corporation) very literally. Diffuse information and leadership, make it not locatable on the map. Put forward a spectre of power that has nothing to do with the operations of power and subterfuge. From Clarke, we learn that Clinton was beginning to view the world (at least from the perspective of sitting in the throne in the Empire) more accurately; the barbarians at the gates of Rome may get money from state leaders but they are not allied with any government. Even after 9/11, Rice returned to the axis of evil, which immediately asserted the "evil" was in nations, not networks and links and encodings.

Bush has been fighting against a world that is not there. Fighting windmills like a Cervantes hero (without the charm) and never fighting the energy itself. In fact his stance and his missteps, encourages the terrorist energy. Iraq is now a factory producing terrorism, rather than averting it. The U.S. gov. has done the terrorists' bidding, it has been reactive and wrong. And Rice is partly to blame, because she IS smart, but so blinded by ideology and the limitations of the discourse she chose to inherit.

She bought into this old white boy way of looking at the world, and she is smart and poised, and as she is female and black and rightwing, she has been advanced into visibility so quickly. Never realizing how vulnerable she is because she is black and female, she can be sent out into the coliseum at any moment, with only a spear to defend her against the lions... A symbol of inclusion, she is evidence that her actual body (as referent) is excluded. Perhaps she can go on tour with Janet Jackson...singing Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama."

I know that many media studies people want to frame politics and entertainment as "spectacle." But this is wrong. Politics are antispectacular as they take place on the media and provide the media with stories to follow. We are all wating for the theatrics of Rice's visit in front ot the Commission. In this the government is not giving us a spectacular entertainment (no Baz Luhrman event here, no special effects that provide us with the illusion of unity as in DeBord), rather its more of an Ibsen drama, where the heroine self destructs and the narrative illustrates how structurally confined she is...All sorts of efforts have been put into motion so that we can have this denouement. Its very stagey and static--no elaborate choreography, no arias, but each member of the commission is going to demand their moment in reciting their lines. The script already exists...but no lines have been memorized.

And this is Mary J Blige's point. She is very frustrated and wants to break free from the story she has been given. She wants to know why her life conforms to the narrative strategies of late 19th century theatre. Can't she live the logics of a postmodern pastiche, or even a modernist experiment that defies linearity? Why not grand opera or even a Broadway musical? No. Its always the old story, of the impossibility of being a woman, without the hysterical outburst that we all wait for. Drawing room drama, restrained, reliant upon dialog and not action, but nevertheless intense.

Moreover, why are our political events also conforming to this strategy? Not spectacular, not really the entertainment state in the Busby Berkeley way that Louis XIV ruled or in the eloquence of the state-sponsored musical as in ole Bali? No we get Ibsen.

I suppose in part we get Ibsen because these old white guys at Stanford, Yale, and Harvard are still running graduate seminars where they talk about nation-states and not networks and multinationals. And their students see their futures in agreeing with this paradigm, and sign away their lives to bourgeois tragedy.

We suffer from their signature; the one that seals their fate as embeds to outdated ideology.

2004-04-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

My Birthday

My birthday was two days ago. I am now an undisclosed age; this information is only known to my official IDs and even then recquires the use of mathematics. My personnel forms know this "fact" too. Let's just say, that Botox is in my future and when an administator from the Dean's office says to me "Professor I thought you were a student" I am humming Patti Smith and Dead Kennedy songs all day long!

I can no longer celelbrate it in one big party, at a restaurant, or even once at a rented hall, though I still know quite a few people. But my social world is smaller than it once was, and it has splintered into smaller sets of people, some of whom don't even know each other, or have met each other only once. So to get people in a large group would feel like work for me, requiring social skills that I now use only for my job and job related get-togethers.

Don't worry though I am milking it and getting lots of attention. Last night, H took me out, and gave me some beautiful shirts and a stuffed lion (he insists my snore has a bit of a roar to it!). Tonight F is taking me to dinner. Saturday the Lady S is having a small dinner party. And Sunday I am having drinks with R & M! On my birthday evening itself, I had dinner with B, who insists I have not mentioned her in this here blog, could it be true....So for sure I am mentioning her now. She has a newish man-friend who is meeting her folks this Passover....oy another goy goes to a Seter....last year I took H to one of those nontraditional seters--I could tell he was craving hot sauce!

Anyways B and I have been friends since I was in 8th grade and she was in 6th grade and she has been a constant in my life--except for the months we lived in England separately and the time I changed friends completely when I was on Prozac (I could only be seen with very trendy club kid types at that time, many of whom were also on Prozac as well as other uncontrolled substances). B took me to Ginger, a sushi place down the street, and I ordered a weird roll consisting of mackerel and Korean pickles. The waitress warned me: the roll is only for Japanese people.

I knew what she meant, that nonJapanese people don't appreciate the oily salty fishy spicy vinegary taste. But it sounded like it was a law--that the roll can only be ordered by Japanese people and I had issued forth with a verbal transgression. B and I looked at each other in that conspiratorial way that has been available to us over the years, and said no that is what I want. The dish wasn't much of a challenge at all, certainly not more than some of those ceremonial Seter dishes. Actually the salmon appetizer had so much wasabi in it that I felt as my sinus cavity was comletely numbed and inflamed at the same time, providing me with a rush that was positively transformative.

I should also say as it is my birthday week that although the government and much of this culture is driving me nearly crazy, I am very happy and love my friends and love NYC and the L-word and salute the fact that I can imagine what a younger Richard Clarke looked like!

2004-03-25T03:21:00.000-08:00

Richard Clarke

Give that man a daytime Emmy. He was riveting.

O how I hope he helps to bring down this regime! He knew how to play it for the camera--sell books, criticize his boss, avoid silly questions of morality from Bush loyalists, and finally give what the victims' family what they want--someone to say they are sorry for failing to defend the citizenry. But during his testimony he expertly moved the blame toward his old bosses. Very exciting and yes, melodramatique...and just what can unseat a president.

2004-03-23T07:14:00.000-08:00

The L-Word

Okay I admit it. I love the L-Word. Its taken me awhile to come out and have the strength of convinction to say it...with no embarrassment. There are others like me.

On Sunday H and I went to happy hour at Three of Cups, where they have three dollar Bloody Mary's. They were very strong and we got three of them--is there a pattern here? (and what does this have to do with the L-Word....you'll see). We ordered greasy Chinese food but felt okay with it coz it had tofu and vegetables in it instead of pork, and after dinner we fell asleep. Before I dozed off, I said to myself, "bitch you better wake up in time to watch the L-Word." And I did! I woke up a few moments after 10 pm to see my show.

Why do I love this show?--after all, its badly directed and edited, and the dialog is so implausible and often ridiculous.

Is it because all the lesbians are beautiful and horny? (and the disgruntled, betrayed hustband has a good body)?

Is it because it is set in LA and fuels my fantasies of tinsel town?

Is it because it is a soap opera and its plot lines have hooked me and just won't let go?

Is it because the character Shane looks like a pretty rock n roll lead guitarist and has a deep voice and has sex with a celebrity (and is almost seduced by the celebrity's daughter)?

Is it because one of the plotlines is similar to the actual life of a friend of mine? (I'm not allowed to say more, but it is the dilemma recently faced by the bisexual magazine writer....)

Or is it because Jennifer Beal is acting her ass off (and doesn't have to dance!) and is making the role my favorite tv character? Imagine what she has to contend with:

She is realizing she may not be so attracted to her girlfriend.

The museum that she is the curator of is showing video art from a Portuguese artist that depicts Jesus sodomizing a woman. Hence she and her museum are being attacked from the right wing, especially by a vicous homophobic Christian who it is revealed used to be a teen age prostitute appearing in sleazy porn movies.

She may be attracted to the girlfriend of an angry black lesbian who once yelled at her for not being black enough (during a group therapy session of expectant mothers and fathers).

Her sister, a RnB star who may be having a resurgent career, is in recovery and relies on her for support.

Her girlfriend suffers a miscarraige, but she can't cry. She needs to defend her museum. She needs to console her girlfriend. She needs to get dressed to go on TV and argue the right for her museum to show controversial art.

Bette has much to contend with (and is involved in so many plotlines ) but she is usually composed, elegant, intelligent, and appropriate. I love that.

The scene when she and her enemy, the Christian homophone named Fay, was one of the most riveting TV moments I've ever seen. Bette, feeling that she may be losing the argument shows Fay that she has one of Fay's videos (no one knows that Fay was in the porno industry) and begins to allude to what may have been Faye
s past and the exploitations she suffered, distinguishing pornography's exploitation from the vision of the Portugese artist. She threatens Fay with revealing her past, but also lets Fay know she understands her misguided motives. Instead of Fay backing off, she goes for the jugular and mentions that Bette's lover's miscarraige was God's way of punishing them. In a great bit of tv acting, we see Bette finally starting to cry, almost defeated but able to muster up the words to at last call Fay what she is: a monster.

So riveting...

So good to see the Christian right depicted for what they are: victims of traumatic pasts that they try to hide, they are monsters with a sadistic tendency. Bette's attempt to understand Fay's pain is an invitation for Fay to further attack Bette. Hats off to Rose Troche to remind us not to show undue humanity to these pigs, but they will use it against "us."

If they could time travel back to Jesus's time, these maimed Christians reactionaries would identify more with the whip of the Roman torturers than the wounds of the body of Christ -- Jesus' pain and not his resurrection furthers their agenda. Jesus' s love for Otherness becomes their ability to conviently condemn others (and their own hidden selves that they will protect at all costs).

And this is what I learned from the L-Word!

I love that show.

2004-03-16T06:58:00.000-08:00

Spain

Three cheers for the Spanish people for being brave enough to vote out the right wing government that failed to keep them safe...and tried to blame a terrorist attack on a domestic group that clearly was not involved in order to get re-elected. Congratulations to Zapatero for pledgin to remove Spain from the flawed Blair-Bush alliance.

Cynics are saying that Bin Laden is now dictating elections in Europe but one must remember that 90% of the Spanish public were already against the nation's involvement in Iraq (as were the socialists)...the voters came out to protest an attempt attribute an attack on the wrong group.

And here in the States the Bush campaign continues to try to use images of 9/11--and none of them are being shown in NYC, except in the news. They are using images of our city--one most hate---to sell their reelection to the rest of the country. And they are going to try to do this during the convention. Use the city as a backdrop to the spectacle of the recovery from the terrorist attack. I resent this as a New Yorker. Especially since in so many ways we have not recovered.

2004-03-15T04:53:00.000-08:00

Electrocuted Doggies

Two dogs were electrocuted outside my local liquor store. They were German Pointers and just standing on a Con Ed metal olate on the sidewalk. They live luckily; the liquor store owner took them inside and comforted them. This happened a few weeks after a woman was electocuted to death while walking her dogs--again the shock came from a plate on the sidewalk. Is the electric company trying to kill us East Villagers? Is there a conspiracy? We were the last neighborhood in Manhattan to get our electricity back during last summer's blackout--and now we have so much electricity that our sidewalks are vibrating with it, waiting to shock us. Is it because we are always late in paying our bills and management has had it with us.

Of course, I have now changed how I walk down the street. When I was a child we would all play that sidewalk game of avoiding "the crack"--(step on it and you break your mamma's back...). Now I avoid all the metal plates on the sidewalk for fear of getting electrocuted. Let me tell you there are many plates, more than one would imagine, some for gas, some for electricity, some for water, some for some undisclosed reason--and they are in various sizes. In fact a high percentage of the sidewalk is not entirely cement---metal makes up perhaps 5-10% of it. Avoiding these plates requires concentration and grace. Avoiding these plates has given me the opportunity to realize how much I truly do love life. Avoiding these plates has encouraged me to imagine all that freefloating dangerous energy underneath the ground. And now I see Con Ed workers everywhere, especially in the middle of the avenues, frantically trying to fix something, and sometimes they are yelling at each other....I suppose the fear of electocution can increase tension levels...something I am learning swiftly as I make plans to never leave my apartment and order in food and send out my work...

2004-03-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

Howard Stern

Its really fun to listen to Howard Stern, now that he has been kicked off of Clear Channel stations and is waiting to hear how much the FCC is going to fine him for obscenity. He is railing against Bush and Powell's son and the religious right nonstop (its almost like listening to WBAI). Yesterday he said Bush was ten goosesteps away from being Hitler! He continually screams to his Nascar dad audience that Bush has to go. I love hear such words from a commercial broadcaster. (Of course part of the reason he is so antiBush is becuase the admin is now after him...he was a great supporter of Bush during the Iraq War...and really misinformed...) But as one students explained in a paper he wrote on the Bush's media campaign leading to the Iraq War, Howard Stern influence his opinion...and if all those mostly straight white males are turning against Bush, there is hope that we can get him out of office...

Regardless its great to hear Stern's newly fueled diatribe against the Pres. Then Robin brings up the gaty marraige during the news segment and he rails against the religious right and their shameful hatred.

Speaking of gay marraige...not my biggest issue but since the religious right is so against it, I am for it. But I think the organizations who are arguing for it should think in terms of branding and marketing...that extending marraige rights is a way of protecting the institution and the reason that gay people want these rights extended is because of their respect for the institution, not because they want to destroy the practice. That they have found the wisdom in a heterosexual, patriarchal norm...theirs is a mimicry that complements and supports the "original." They are defending marraige, not ending it.

I also think that gay marraige activist should hint to straight men and women that they can marry their best friends... Goddess knows, I have seen that some of the strongest same sex "couples" are best friends...they may not have sex, but they are inseparable companions, who feel such ease with their pal or best girlfriend. I know people in traditional couples who would far rather spend time with their best friend...why not marry your best friend and have extramarital sex with your lover. I hope that with "gay marraige" can be recast as the extension of the right to marry to all sorts of human relationships, so that it can actually subvert tradition, and wreak havoc of the tyranny of the couple and mutate marraige. That potential for subversion should be kept on the down low for now though...because this is exactly what the religious right fears...extending marraige rights might benefit all women...

2004-03-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

Martha Stewart

Why O why in the Goddess's name do I feel sorry for Martha? Yes I admit I secretly wanted her to get off...Instead I wanted all the Enron boys to go to jail--in Riker's Island.

I'm not even a Martha fan, though I do like her towels at K-mart. And sometimes her sheets and pillow cases, though I am surprised that she would let polyester seep into her fabrics. But they are cheap and the colors are good. And one does feel as if one is getting value when buying something with her name on it.

I've never read Martha Stewart Living, and when I glance at it I just check to see if an acquaintance of mine is still an editor there. Well, that's not exactly true, Someone I was in group therapy with once. So I do have some Martha Stewart stories. You know the standard ones...that she's hard assed, works endlessly, and is yet oddly lovable. Through him, I know someone whose house was shot in the magazine.

Yes, yes its true as my friends friday night were insisting its a story about greed. She only lost a couple of thousand dollars, an amount she probably would make up in a few minutes through sales of ad space or paint at Kmart...she knew exactly what she was doing and knew it was illegal but thought she was invulnerable...and besides if you have info that is going to save you from losing some money, wouldn't you do the same? The hope is that you wouldn't do it now.

But I am not so sure. Even as news of the verdict was bouncing around the streets of NYC, there were people selling and buying with the aid of insider information.

You know what I think? No matter what Martha Stewart does and how much money she makes, she is always an upstart, an outsider to a very tightly controlled old boys network. She's still a tacky Polish girl, smelling of garlic and borsht to those who run the Street, and she is a sacrifice so that business can go on as usual. But that doesn't make her innocent. But somehow I did want her to get away with it, so that really nasty waspy Texans could be the example.

2004-03-02T06:34:00.000-08:00

Showing Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer to my Undergraduates:

In class, I was moving from explaining basic terms in semiotics to trying to discuss Barthes' The Photographic Message (using a Daily News photo of a subway riders stuck in a smokey car) (connotation and denotation, leaving myth for another day). Imploring the students to apply this theory to their lives...and to a large degree it was working and the students were saying some smart things, talking about reality effects in films

Some were bored and slightly irritated. I hated to hush them a few times. A few wondered out loud are there are only white people in France. Another wanted the volume louder so that he could hear the French language. A smart young woman sitting near me, whispered that this is depressing but seemed completely engrossed with the Renault factory laborer discussing his unhappiness. Students laughed as Rouch condensed the daily life of a worker--one student who works in a dental office remarked out loud--he didn't even brush his teeth...

We watched about 1/2 hour of the film. When I stopped it, I reminded the students that Rouch might be trying to present a mood in Paris/France during one summer, but despite any attempts at creating a truth it is always a representation. They seemed to nood. I challenged them though, and said that how impressed I am by how articulate the people interviewing and interacting are, able to put into words how they feel about their lives, which I think is not possible for Americans in 2004...no matter how many hours of therapy have prompted them.

2004-03-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

One more thing about Passion:

although I found it dull, it shares an important aspect with the male adventure genre for which Mel Gibson is known: the tortured male body is put on display and his wounds are made visible. Yet the male hero endures and survives. Think of the limping, in pain, yet vengeful Mad MaxLike Canetti's paranoiac, he is resilient. So is Christ. Christ becomes a movie super hero.

And when Christ is resurrected he is without his cuts and bruises...his skin looks like he just got back from an exclusive spa...

The Oscars

Didn't see all of it--and it seemed terribly predictable. Except in their salute to those who died in the last year--it included Leni Reifenstahl...and Stan Brakhage. It would have been lovely if they included Jean Rouch...

2004-02-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

Passion

Well I admit I went to go see Mel Gibson's latest adventure movie. My one word review: Boring!

But this was not the reaction I sensed in the audience around me, and not for H either who was near tears throughout--but I am not Catholic or Christian. I found myself wanting to see more of the devil/satan character who looked like an early 80s new wave rock n roller--androgynous, pale, red-headed, and well kind of sexy. S/he energized every scene s/he slinked into--I grew tired of the wails of the Marys--and again Satan proves the old Hollywood belief that a film is only as good as the villain.

I didn't find the film anti-semitic, but it was definitely anti-Rabbi. The Roman leadership don't come off so bad, but their torturing underlings are truly despicable sadists. The spectacle of the tortured body made it clear that Catholicism is all about carnality, and to me a kind of nurturing male body that offers itself into some weird pseudo-cannibalistic ritual. I'm sorry I have always found Catholicism very pagan--
instead of a chicken or virgin sacrifice the believer gets Jesus. If there is a Christian god I suppose I will be zapped very soon...

In listening to the beginning of a debate of the Democratic candidates--they all cite God a Christian god in referencing America. It sounds very sincere...but it also makes me worry as a secular spiritualist and it is also very calculated to the presumed god-fearing voter. Part of me understands why France is banning the wearing of certain religious garments and symbols in public school...

And what is striking in Gibson's film is that the character Jesus never leaves love and forgiveness, even though he never acknowledges how arrogant his position sounds to those who believe a son of God is not possible (without endorsement from the priestly elite or the leaders of the Empire). American Christians though need to be reminded about this forgiveness, but many right wing Protestants seem so unforgiving and use Christianity to exclude and condemn--the suffering, wounded body of Christ is never one that hated (though it did kill a demonical snake rather expertly!).

2004-02-25T06:36:00.000-08:00

Marraige

Truth to be told--I can still remember listening to the lesbians and the lesbian feminists and the feminists who were my friends or professors back in Northampton MA talking about how marraige was an instrument of the patriarchy--one that served to enchain women to a subordinate position. Of course many of those gals are now straight married women (with babies)!

Call me nostalgic, but I still don't trust marraige as an institution, but I know that it is legally necessary in many situations in order to protect people's rights--and property. Otherwise when one's lover dies, everything can be taken away by the family, for example. Or the kids. I know that many of those gay couples getting married in San Fran are feeling free and enjoying a recognition of their romantic love, but they are really protecting each other, in case one of them gets sick or they separate later (and have kids), and one of their families tries to move in to manipulate bloodlinks and take the kids or the money or both. Gay couples are establishing legal evidence that they are a family, evidence that might prove necessary later. Gay marraige is always about money/property as much as it is about romance and postAIDS monogamy--and equal rights.

And now that Bush is advocating a constitutional admendment defining what marrraige is and is not, I am of course for marraige rights to be extended to all. Bush might unite us. Bush might make me forget my reservations.

But what about the rights of the single bar dyke who doesn't want to get hitched or the promiscous fag who likes sex in public parks, or the young chick with a dick that has a crush on a straight guy? Does the law protect them? Gays and lesbians might get the right to get married in states where there are no other laws protecting them from discrimination in housing and employment. Marraige rights will be extended precisely becuase they do not challenge notions of property and the strange tyranny of the couple as the cultural norm...and this is why I am for "gay marraige" -- it is a dreaded necessity. But gays and lesbians--and especially transgendered people--should realize that marraige does not guarantee equality and equal rights---just ask a divorcee waiting for alimony...or a bankrupted husband for that matter...Marraige has never given freedom to straight women...

2004-02-24T07:36:00.000-08:00

None of my Students Are Planning to Vote!

Shocking--I asked my students who was planning to vote in the Democratic primary in NY State--and no one raised their hands. They barely knew who was running. Rather than giving them a lecture about how women and blacks (and yes their allies) had to fight for the vote, I used a bit of reverse psychology, reminding them they have the right to be totally apathetic and to pursue absolute ignorance...

Of course, most of them are probably Republicans, with parents who would vote for Guiliani endlessly if they could. They are Staten Islanders after all. Mind you, I sense I have some misfits and independent thinkers who have yet to become more boisterous. And they are so cynical--I think they see the campaigns as being just advertising for products they have no interest in buying. To give them their due, they are not entirely wrong.

Well goddess knows that I used my descriptions of The People's Choice study to provide some context of today's campaign and our predispositions toward certain candidates. Again, some of them like to disagree with me, so I am going to argue the Republican cut taxes for the rich and cut back on government spending in order to generate the economy to see if it inspires them -- after all many of them are going to end up working for the city (as police, as firemen, as low level bureaucrats in various city agencies). Non

2004-02-23T08:46:00.000-08:00

What is wrong with Ralph Nader? I can imagine that he might not be safe right now. Why doesn't he run for a local office? Like the f_cking school board of Washington DC? Or mayor? or congress? If he enables GWB to win again, I will personally banish him to...Mozambique or some other place that Ms. Heinz Kerry left behind because she loves America and American men!

This shtick that there is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats is very tired. I used to repeat those words, back in college, when I had joined a leftist organization that had no hope of a membership over 1,000. Yes, yes both parties represent the ruling class, both parties stand for capitalism, neither stand up to the large corporations. yes, yes, its true. But Ralph, Bush/Cheney/Rice/Rumsfeld represent a small segment of that ruling class, the oil oligopoly. This oligopoly wants to damage the earth for profit and does business with some of the most horrible rulers of the world, and does this business gladly. This oligopoly does not care about deficits and continues to do well in a bad economy, If it comes down to a choice between oil and ketchup, I'd choose ketchup any time!

If there's hope for a third party that challenges economic structures and is socially progressive at the same time (I'm not sure that there is any hope mind you), it has to be built up from the grassroots, and inspire young leaders to go for local offices--and maybe this is what the kids involved with Howard Dean will do. To have just a presidential candidate is meaningless--there is no movement behind Nader now and there was none when he ran on the Green ticket. I'd vote Green locally...but I can not afford to do so in a national election when every vote really matters.

2004-02-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

I went yesterday with D to go see some Dance in America's that feature works of Balanchine. First of all Edward Villela who introduced the show, in a velvet mock turtleneck next to a fireplace, one arm akimbo, was a babe in the late 70s. Elegant, trim, and rather eloquent using the words of Arlene Croce. And Balanchine is such a genious in the way he restaged his ballets for the television medium. Using fades, and cuts, staying frontal with the camera, never moving much along the x axis, but moving in to medium close ups only when appropriate.

It was great to see Suzanne Farrell dancing...and Merrill Ashley, Patricia McBride, Bart Cook...even Peter Martins had a certain nobility to his movement. Especially exciting to see a piece called Tzigane to violon music by Ravel that opens with a five minute solo by Farrell. An exquisite expression of the choreographer and herself in moments of gypsy like ecstasy of loving the shape of the violin sound and applying it to the stark female body. I don't see that now when I go to see NYCBallet, not in the solos and pas de deux's, but sometimes when the corps arrives at a unity and a pattern I see hints of such impassioned precision. Maybe Maria Kowrowski can offer this soon....

I must confess to not liking the Four Temperments so much, at least in this televising. Choreographed in 1947, there was so much East Side Modern Dance angularity and flex foot and midCentury angst seeping in, contaminating what I usually love about Balanchine--grace, pattern, a concern with The Dance itself rather than movement and arriving at position. I did love the ending, when all the movement themes come together in the almost crowded set (strange not to hear the gentle pounding of the ballet shoes though), when the dancers move into calligraphic forms elaborating some strange alphabet.

By the way, Peter Martins had really bad late 70s hair. Thank God for punk, which if nothing else might reminded people, and especially men to cut their feathery hair. Balanchine should have insisted that his boys cut their hair or least pull it back like the girls!

2004-02-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

Saw Bertolucci's The Dreamers. Let's face it, there were some very nice youthful genitals on display. Bertolucci produces this intense enclosed environment--a decaying sprawling and labrythine Paris apartment full of books, paintings...busts of Chairman Mao (and one lamp that is the visage of the man) in the room of the stormy, pensive, incestous son. Ah that strange French Maoism of the 60s...luckily Bertolucci pays homage to its impulses and also ridicules a rather silly leftist exoticism just by its setting. I was happy that the film allows the confused young American, who is seduced into another kind of Jules et Jim situation, a bit of wisdom: he knows that Jimi Hendrix is better than Eric Clapton and Buster Keaton exceeds Charlie Chaplin...and in the end he leaves the two bourgie/boho children to their ill-advised Molotov cocktail thrown to the police, instigating an attack on the protestors, when they really have no sense of the conflict or the revolt, but can only experience the moment as dramatic, filmic, attempting a spontaneity, but really just a repetition of some footage they've seen or imagined.

There are many memorable scenes. One I think that W pointed out before I saw the film that might become the most memorable---the two boys are in the bathtub, with a tripartite mirror affixed to the middle of the tub that reverses their images. The daughter/lover inserts herself into the tub slowly, moving her body and then her image perfectly into the mirror also in the middle. The movement is so composed, an elaborate pas de trois asserting a female presence that the boys rely upon for their own connection, but also sums up how the three cinephiles experience themselves as images...always in part contained within frames.

My two other favorite scenes occur at the end. The three teens have wreaked havoc in the apartment, raiding the parent's enclave of rare wine, running out of food, and forgeting any need to wash dishes or tend to any notion of responsibility. The girl, instead of cleaning up the place, clears a space in one of the salons, and creates a tent-like structure out of exquisiste fabrics and some sort of pole. She brings her brother and her lover to it as a kind of site of tranquility where they continue to drink...and then fall asleep intertwined with each other. As I said to F later who saw the film with me--that it is so typical of a deranged mind...rather than spending a few minutes cleaning, she clears a space within the clutter for sanctity, leaving a messy apartment to be discovered by her parents. Her parents are aghast at the spectacle and the incestous confession of their sleeping children curled up with a oddly articulate young American (a 60s version of a Henry James character). Yet the parents also immediately accept it and the wife makes the decision not to wake them, but just to get her husband to write them a check and leave them. When the daughter awakens alone, upon viewing the check she realizes she has been discovered and as she stated before she'd kill herself if her parents her discovered her crime, she starts to try to off herself by ingesting the gas meant for the stove. A great plot moment insues...the protestors throw a brick into the bourgeois apartment, awakening her brother and Michael Pitt...and forcing her to abandon her suicide. If the protestors failed in their revolution, they succeeded in saving a self-involved young girl who knows how to imitate the great actresses of the cinema. Enough of a cause (and an effect) for me.

2004-02-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

As far as I am concerned, if Cheney can hand all those governmental contracts to the corporation that he was recently head of (haliburton), Kerry should just nominate his wife as Vice President. After all Teresa grew up in Mozambique and went to college in apartheid South Africa--hence she knows what it is like to live in a rightwing dictatorship (like the one the USA is quickly becoming) and yet Teresa choose America instead. And she has done quite well, attaching herself to powerful Senators. She also funds professorships in Harvard in environmental science. Teresa for Vice President. It makes me happy that at least some of the money that poor Kmart and Piggly Wiggly (or Stop n Shop) shoppers spend on ketchup is going to fund scholarship on the environment.

As we had thought the Republicans are getting dirty (and probably scared). Rumours of Kerry's having an affair have hit the Drudge Report. Okay democracts get very, very dirty. Find the people that GWB snorted cocaine with and prove that is easy to locate his former drug buddies, and almost impossible to find his buddies who were in the National Guard with him. Taint him and his family and that horrid Vice President Dick "halliburton" Cheney. Do not take the moral high road...as if there could be such a thing...give us the mud slinging we so deserve...

2004-02-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Well the Emmas came through. The show was quite funny, and my bit was definitely crowd-pleasing. Guests: Joan River and Moby. Moby is the most annoying person and as W said after the show I am never buying any of his music. He sucks the energy out of a room and is so self important and icky. He reminds everyone at all times how straight and white he is by trying to insist that he is "tolerant" of those who aren't, even when he's really only concerned with hearing himself. Yucky. I hope they edit him. Joan Rivers is a pro--she hits her marks quick, has a trademark bitchiness that is evened out by self-deprecation.

J was especially worried about the show being too tawdry, making fun of the audience...but the show was actually quite cuddly and tame. When Moby said something antiBush and the New Yorkers cheered, Graham chastised the audience, with a wink and said this is a tv show not a political rally!

2004-02-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

Tonite I am going to the taping of the new Graham Norton show. The production team has been after me, as apparently they are featuring the audience even more in this new version of the show. Everyone there is named Emma--in fact 50% of the women I have met who work in tv in England are name Emma. I'm sure if you walked into those private media clubs in Soho London and yelled Emma, you might be trampelled by eager young production managers and assistants!

They pretaped me for the show on Tuesday. One of the Emmas brought me outside a soundstage and told me that I shouild walk in and "read the situation" and respond however I wanted. Well bring it on as they say! I walked in and bright white lights were on me, and photographers clicking, and an audience clapping. It seemed a bit ordinary! (just kidding). In a second, I realized that the stage I had walked on, was a fashion runway, and as I have been watching some of the fashion shows on TV, I just did my model walk as H and I have been doing round the apartment. I did that for a few minutes (the runway was a bit short I might complain) and stopped. All the Emmas seemed impressed.

J decided not to go to the show as he was offended by a lot of the very personal and sexual questions they have been asking the audience in advance of the show. He does have a point and if they decide that I am there to be laughed at they are in for a surprise, but I am happy to laugh along with my own silliness...but I am not bringing in any photos of me with bad hair or skimpy underwear in order to get attention! I have made stuff up in response to Emma's endless surveys--for example, that I make up gossip about celebities deliberately and see how long it takes for the faux gossip to come back to me! Not true though I have been accsused of this! Especially when I insisted the Tom Cruise was seeing Ben Affleck and brought Ben in to rehab (S did hear this at Vanity Fair) and Nicole Kidman was seeing that crazy blonde actress that used to go out with Ellen (which someone else did really tell me but I can't remember who.)

Anyways I played darts last night as part of K's birthday celebration at this bar around the corner. H and K were really good at it, I was happy to keep the darts on the board but got into it. W threw the dart as if it was a javelin--he had a long approach and an arc to his throw. H insisted he was good because of his Incan ancestry (and the arrows they used to shoot! yeah right!). K studied the board in advance of her throw. Maybe they will have me throw darts as part of the Graham Norton show...in which case I am ready!

2004-02-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

Those crazy students! Its definitely Welcome Back Kotter time again for me! Working overtime to sell the material and trying to make it applicable to their lives. I only get their full attention when I curse or make fun of Staten Island! In my lecture describing the development of mass society and mass media (talking about urbanization, industrialization, modernization, anomie, and so forth), a few of the students repeated comments that surprised me and of course I blame the Republicans!

A few students repeated this opinion (maybe originally from their parents?): the city is more full of crime than ever, it is more dangerous, and there is more media now that helps to produce this near lawlessness. Wrong. This city is safer than ever (both in my memory and in my knowledge of the history of the city). I remember the late 70s and early 80s---the Lower East Side was either dangerous or safe only due to the functioning of the drug economy (not because the police were effective). I got mugged three times in one year, and my apt got broken into twice. In the 20s NYC had rampant gangsterism and all sorts of illegal activity. NYC is only recent efficiently over-policed, and it seems to me that young people--especially black men--are more in danger from the police than they are from each other and "gangs." These Republicans are able to instill this faux nostalgia that makes those who don't know better feel as if there was this earlier era when things were orderly and safe. Not so.

Of course we have this fear of terrorism thang now, but now that the dust has settled somewhat, I realize that the everyday fear I felt under the threat of nuclear war and especially with Reagan (would he really push that button...when he is supposedly off-mic he plays with the idea) was greater than the one I feel now under the spectre of Bin Laden's devious plotting. As a child and teenager, I grew up with the feeling that the world would end in a horrid toxic bang and then when I was an adult, I was sure for a few years that there would be very few survivors of AIDS. That the world is dangerous is just now new, and Bush always reminds his citizenry of the resolve of our enemies--as if this is a new configuration. Horrid, violent attacks against waning empires has many precedents.

Republicans trade on this faux nostalgia schtick in order to sell a law and order agenda where so-called traditions reign. My students suffer from this illusion, thinking how unsafe they are now from all sorts of potential contaminants. Somehow they think that back in some earlier era, everyday life was calmer, easier, less threatening. Its just not so.

2004-02-09T06:09:00.000-08:00

Lat night's dream: I was sleeping and my cat came over to sit atop me (I don't have a cat anymore, I used to have one called Heavy Metal). The cat found a comfy spot on my left shoulder and arm. In my dream I had to shift my body to adjust to the cat's weight, but then the sound of the purring put my back to a great, soothing sleep. (I suppose its weird to dream yourself sleeping). But then, in my dream, I woke up, with the feeling that the front door had just shut and an intruder had entered my home. The cat jumped off me and I went to look for the intruder. I found him, gaunt and tall, 50ish and bearded, standing against a door, acting as if he didn't move I wouldn't notice him. I wasn't sure if he was a friend of mine. Then I woke up. I wanted to turn on CNN and hear those talking heads sputtering on about the end of George W. Bush's presidency. I also wanted to go back to sleep but I had to wake up to get ready for class later.

2004-02-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

Saw "In America". Should have been called "In New York City in an Unspecified Year...with some really cute daughters and the kindest noble savage who lived downstairs...who will later pay my wife's hospital bills." What a tearjerker, set in some mysterious other New York where junkies give you food stamps and then try to stab you the next day. This "you" I am refering to is an aspiring youngish Irish actor who can't yet cry...especially about the son his family lost...but the beauty of the NY skyline and the brazen honesty of his daughter (and the sacrifice of the noble savage downstairs) brings him to the truth of his tears...Oy! Not a dry house in the house...and of course yours truly was giving himself a facial with his own moisturizing system!

But drinks afterwards were fun with W and S and J. We didn't go to Bubba Shrimps alas, but the waitress where we went was named Kwanza (J thought she said Wanda) and W wondered if one of her coworkers was named Christmas or Hanukah. Such musings keep a NYer happy! By the way, W and S are definitely getting a mini-daschund (red, short-haired). I can't wait.

When I got home H was there, wanting to go for more drinks...luckily we opt for a late-night snack...and amazingly in the morning, he goes for a run over the Brooklyn Bridge. I stay in bed for a good loud midWinter snore. H comes back with breakfast...

2004-02-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

Oh no. back at school this week and my rate of entries is really dropping. W gave me a deserved hard time for that. At least I know I've got a readership...if anyone wants to be able to add their own two cents in, I will give them access to this page.

2004-02-03T07:48:00.000-08:00

Reasons why Janet Jackson's reveaked but bejeweled breast caused such a scandal during the Super Bowl show:

1. We live a neo-puritanical culture where displays of sexuality are calculated marketing strategies for a repressed youthful consumer.
2. Her brother is Michael Jackson, who is an alleged child molester, and she and her whole family are tainted by his aberrance.
3. Justin Timberlake, although a professional wigger whose dancing style is a homage to Michael Jackson, is white. This display of interracial lust--even though it was soo stagey--provokes anxiety amongst a primetime audience and corporate sponsors. Perhaps more than the kiss between Madonna and Britney who are both flirty white girls. The thing that was shocking about that kiss was the age difference. America still freaks out about such representations of interracial desire, especially between white and blacks.
4. There is a tension between different corporate elements such as MTV and NFL. Both are reliant upon the display of African-American bodies but MTV shows the sexual dancing/rapping/desirous (especially the revealed female) body; whereas the NFL parades the athletic hardened male body. Both types are bodies are contained within the televisual frame, but in varying scenarios of movement, appealing to different audiences. MTV is oriented of course to a youth market and intends to tittilate with bling and booty; NFL has a more traditional corporate branding, with a great corporate following--and the game is about capturing territory, through the use of surrogates in the field (the real game is devised on the sidelines).
5. Although Guy Bebord in Society of the Spectacle insists that societal spectacles are an attempt to create unity and harmony masking division and conflict in the social order, such unity is hard to sustain in this country. We are very deeply divided; racially, generationally, as regards to gender and sexual orientation, and as what demographic we have been placed in. Marketing experts have divided us up so successfully that no event can successfully be geared to everyone. The political system is so fraught and there is such a schism between the Red and Blue states, for e.g., that some part of the audiences is going to be deeply offended by an event that an urban sophisticate is going to find just funny or unimportant. Every event or spectacle in the media becomes impacted with meaning and interpretation because the nation is (unlike the Pledge) so divisible. For this reason, a yelp of excitement from Howard Dean suggests that he is a deeply flawed candidate rather than excited. We partol the airwaves for inappropriate behavior, and nothing can unite us, not even our real or imagined enemies. Janet Jackon's body thus causes an uproar, provoking the need for apology and condemnation; while in other quarters it brings about an adolescent snicker or bored, knowing expression of "whatever." Next.

2004-02-02T18:36:00.000-08:00

Teaching was okay. Must admit that its good to be in front of group of people prattling on about this and that. Not enough foreign born students but I have got some funny characters to contend with. There are some students who look so tired that I had to trot out my old song and dance (use a couple of curse words, make references to the Super Bowl. Students include one guy whose brother I used to teach (and whose cousin used to teach here) and his entire family works in the film business and their local cable access show is something of a legend.

The one thing that I am trying to do is to announce my teaching techniques to them as I use them in attempt to make them conscious of being taught, but also to make them aware of how they are performing the role of student. Such as I am using a joke to get you to pay attention....I am asking a question using the Socratic method and I am looking for one particular answer that I consider right....of course it is all about me yet again. it is always so amazing to realize that the only way to get students to pay attention is to stray so far off topic and tell a funny story....and then try to reel them back in to a them of the class.

can't wait to get home and watch tv!

2004-02-02T07:59:00.000-08:00

Teaching tonite. Each semester when I start, I must confess to a bit of nervousness--even though I have taught for so long and I have taught this course--Comm Theories--a few times. Another confession: I hope my class is full of foreign-born students. I realize that having a group of Staten Island natives is my encounter with the Other, big O. They are my Foreigner (and I don't mean the 70s/80s hair band). Why?

Here are my ongoing presumptions/stereotypes about the population:
1. They do not believe they can advance in society--they are doomed to be low level civil service workers--cops, firemen, sanitation workers--and they do not challenge themselves.
2. They are wary of Manhattan and all that it means.
3. They think I am some freakish deviant and just want me to be funny and entertain them.
4. They have relatives that are in the mafia and are proud of it.
5. They live under a regime of strict gender adherance where aberrance is punished.
6. They are almost incapable of listening for longer periods that 15 minutes if that.
7. They live in neighborhoods where the parking places are designated in hierarchical fashion related to the importance of the family.
8. They are racist even though the men imitate the blacks they see from the popular culture.
9. They are loyal almost to a fault.
10. They are anti-intellectual.
11. They do not realize how George W. Bush has made their lives worse.

Listen I could go on and on. I will try to stay clear of these preconceptions--though I have earned them. Instead, I will make fun of my snobby Manhattan ways and let them know how strange they are to me in hope of some Brechtian a-effect, but gently done.

2004-02-01T10:18:00.000-08:00

On Friday night, F came over to watch one of the shows in the new AfFab season. Probably not as good as in the old days, but it was sooo fun to watch with her. Especially as Safie broke her water right onto Patsy's outfit (for her emcee-ing gig at the Royal Albert Hall). Very funny Chicago parody! Edie's ex husband (the one that's not gay) and his new wife tried to convince Safie to sell her baby to some Hollywood couple who wanted to adopt but who would later turn it into a servant. F and I looked at each other and we thought you know probably those assholes probably do that--adopt these poor children of color and turn them into house servants when they are teenagers.

After the show, we watched the metro channel's fashion channel (H makes fun of me watching it. ) But F was fascinated and we made fun of the clothes and the models' prancing which I have always thought was such a funny, unsexy gait. As she left, F gave her impression of the dangerously waify, childishly pouting, prancing model, who looked like she was about to throw a temper tantrum, wearing some see-through baby doll dress. F put on her spikey wool cap and gave us some superb runway! H and I howled in delight.

2004-02-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

Before gong to see Taboo, K insisted we go to Bubba Shrimps, a new theme restaurant in Time Square. I have to go back there and do some "ethography." Owned by Paramount Studios, it is devoted to the film Forrest Gump, which I guess I will have to see now (that and Schinldler's list are two films I have refused to see--and the world knows I saw "Freddy vs Jason"). The decor, the menu, and the quizzes that the waitress gives you as you wait for the food (not bad) refer to the film. The staff were so sunny and upbeat which is odd to see -- they were very young and probably feed those Disney-esque drugs that make the workers almost annoyingly sunny, but ever able to turn yr frown upside down. I don't know if this an already saturated form of corporate branding but I suggest other theme restaurants for films--How about The Godfather (italian joint with faux killings going on), LOTR with "middle earth cuisine" and hobbit favorites? or Matrix with green and red pills that reveal different veneers on the same surfaces.

This Forrest Gump restaurant took the theme every which way, returning the diner to the gift shop downstairs. It was a dazzling display of corporate perfection. I can't wait to go back again--for research purposes!

2004-02-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

Superbowl Sunday today as CNN reminds me intermittingly--in between talking about the non-existence of WMDs.

H got new shoes from Century 21 when he went running yesterday. Cute Mecca brown ones for only $15. I am tempted to go but I have been outside a lot this weekend and its still soo cold.

Yesterday I waited outside for cheap tckets to see the Boy George musical (which really was a tribute to Leigh Bowery). Its closing due to bad reviews and I guess Rosie O'Donnell doesn't want to lose more on her investment. Boo hoo to her -- even though the crowd before the show and during the intermission were cheering her and lining up for autographs. Can you imagine? Boy George is a real star with such presence and succeeding in quite a feat -- being always himself and Leigh Bowery. The story was made maudlin and linear which I imagine it wasn't in London (probably just more bitchy and spectacular) but they didn't have that icky of so middle class drag queen what's her name writing the dialog. Mark Dendy's choreography looked very trampled on--in the first number the chorus were doing the can-can. W and I looked at each other with a disdainful frown as if to say is this what we are store for the next two hours? But the show got better with some really committed performance and I think that Boy George's point came through. He--and the people who he surrounded himself with--were desperate for fame as a way to survive. Disturbingly narcissistic that borders on indugent self-loathing, doing almost unforgivable things to each other, there is still room for a bit of forgiveness and a way to celebrate such gimicky outlandishness. In the death scene for Leigh, a scrim is pulled across the stage and the audience sees some photos and video still of the real Leigh, and one is reminded that this was a real original person, who saw his almost unsightly and yet kind of luscious body as a canvas or as clay that could be transformed by fabric, makeup, and unlikely adornment. That the show is a homage to him, it is great, and Boy George singing "I am Art" is both definat, a sendup, and hilariously funny as he steps out of character to make fun of Republicans! I love Boy George and I love those ole Culture Club numbers. Let me be annoying American and doris day-y--gosh, I hope he is happy in his life. The audience loved him. K and I reminisced about Boy George on the way home and say his songs crossing Second Avenue.

2004-01-30T07:17:00.000-08:00

When to Sing

Do not be fooled by the latitude.
The Gulf Stream protects us from the artic.
And even when the light leaves so early,
noise never freezes.
It lands it lifts it boomerangs.
Fir trees, craggy cliffs, sea lions:
words are boiled down to sound.

Do not be fooled by the Gulf Stream.
You can hear the air shivering.
Something else is howling from the
center of the darkness.
Life reminds you of a song.
Living prompts you when to sing.
And O the night so long-winded
saved by the succinct moon.
Forgive me my intentions.
I am drawn to trace your trajectory on the map.
The candle is light.
It is heat it is shape it is movement.
That could be a call. This could be a response.
My speech stains the space between then and now.
Please free this composition:
Hum the melody, whistle the tune,
intone the chant.
Whatever you do--
Just remember to shake off the cold wet words.

Do not be fooled by the calendar.
Winter is no longer only the destination—
it is our route.
I can’t bear to live when
the nape of my neck is freezing:
Warm me with the foxtrot of your breathing.
The high notes of your pulse divert me so.
Please sentence me to cozy wordlessness.

2004-01-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

Last night I drank two glasses of wine at dinner and fell asleep during an action movie set in a time before the Pyramids. It had the Rock in it. Woke up at about 11. H was snoring but not too loud. I snore louder. Remembered that the Australian Open was on at ESPN so I watched a semifinal between Andre Agassi and Marat Safin. I always get too emotionally involved with Agassi's play. He often seems like he is in a trance, and even though he is still only 33, he seems much older and that he has been around for ever with his patient, persistent kind of play. He always looks a little sad to me too, all of this is of course my own projection, but there you are

And Marat Safin is huge and so incredibly sexy. His sweat is sweet from testosterone. He is moody and enraged and berating himself seems to encourage his play. When Agassi makes him tired from running around the court, he just serves aces.

Of course I rooted for Agassi as he is older and my longtime favorite (I have even grown fond of seeing the reaction shots of his wife, Steffi Graf, who is now quite beautiful, not that I am sure that both of them are really heterosexual). I was watching a replay of the match. So I could have gone to the Internet to find out who won but I didn't. So I could indulge the drama queen in me I suppose. Agassi came back from a two sets deficit, but then in the fifth set, the reenergized Russian came back. He had fooled Agassi, making him think that he was tired and fading. He was fierce, almost rabid, but just restrained enough to keep his shots in. Up 4 to 1, I had to turn off the game, as I could see the end, and I knew that I might just cry at the end of the match. And I didn't want to embarrass myself -- to me! And then to stay awake wondering why I get so involved with these games and move from an appreciation to such a self-indulgence. Poor Agassi. Poor me. Steffi was looking so sad toward the end, cracking her neck, putting her fingers through her hair, unable to change her husband's fate...

2004-01-29T10:04:00.000-08:00

Email me if you have any comments or if I have inspired any of your own rants or ramblings!

2004-01-29T09:35:00.000-08:00

Kerry's wife gained my respect when she announced in an interview that Iowa reminded her of Mozambique. (I guess she is from an upperclass Portugese family that lived in Mozambique). Clearly this is a comparison that is going to make a lot of sense to us Americans--especially those of us who live in those snobby (blue) places on the East Coast!

D suggested that if Kerry is elected we will all get free passes to the Opera! DVD sales for Out of Africa will skyrocket. Gourmet versions of Heinz ketchup (or is it catsup) at every diner. Yes, yes, he is a veteran but he is as much a man of the people as I am--and lets
face I come from a very distinct segment of the population! In Kerry, we are talking about another Yalie with lots of money. But I think I like his Eurotrash-y wife for she is going to say some very uncanny things. I hope the media gets to her son...I'd love to her more about dysfunctional Heinz family stories...and her colonial upbringing...but I will leave it to those nasty Republicans to drag it all out...and believe me unless there was some secret Yale society meeting to keep it quiet, all sorts of exposes are forthcoming!

2004-01-29T09:06:00.000-08:00

even though we just had a major snowstorm (snicker, snicker), do you remember the summer when we had a blackout?

Blackouts and Moodswings: A New Yorker's Diary

Yeah sure it brought out the best in us. For awhile.
In my East Village neighborhood some astute dog owners
adorned their canines with glow sticks and paraded
about as if they were in the Easter Parade. One
bicycle rider also affixed glow sticks and flashlights
onto him and his vehicle as the street went dark,
turning himself into an instant, Cirque de
Soleil-esque spectacle--as someone clever remarked.

People barbecued and shared meat, saving it for from
spoiling. Fireworks were set off to the joy of those
of us in the street. Music blared from cars, and for
once it was welcome. At the local bar, strangers
conversed with ease, and the drinks flowed, and
suddenly ice was a luxury and talk was deliciously
cheap. People walked the streets with candles, and
even the most sinister looking, emaciated rock n
roller took on the look of a pilgrim. A confirmed
atheist, I couldn’t resist humming a few bars of
“Onward Christian Soldiers”--with irony of course.

Yes, we didn’t need electricity to have fun. New Yorkers
once again proved that not only are they cranky
poseurs prone to elaborate e-mailing, they are also
good simple folk. Easily seduced into sentimental
submission, I found myself a bit weepy at the
carnivalesque display of communitas. But enough
already.

After the celebration, and a bit drunk, I tried to
sleep. Not much luck there. Hot sticky, bed linens
were annoying, and cold showers torturous. In the
morning, my companion and I decided to go the East
River Park in pursuit of a breeze. Bringing a sheet,
we thought we might sleep. Well, there was a gentle
wind, and it was delightful, but then too there were
flies. And they bit. To add to the insect aerial
attacks, the shade dissipated as the hot sun reached
the top of the sky. Back at the apartment and
famished, we decided to cook up the last of the food
before it went rancid. It tasted good but how many
dumplings can one person eat? The apartment became an
oven and we had to leave again. I missed my
electricity. I felt powerless without power.

We ran to the air-conditioned bus. Sure it was free
but it was also a bit too filled up with sweaty
refugees from downtown, all of us in search of an ATM,
an open bodega, or a Greek diner. We heard that above
34th everything was open and there was power. Well not
really. After numerous free bus rides (and a very
irritable me starting to mutter) we did find the
promised land: a cash machine in a grocery store and a
diner next door. I felt relief, but by this time I was
at the mercy of my moods and my stinky discomfort. I
knew the only thing that would restore any balance to
me—and to my fracturing relationship with my
beloved--was to see a movie. Not any movie. A movie
that was supposed to open that very day, Friday the
15th of August. We decided to see if the movie
theatres on the new 42nd Street were open yet.

A few more crowded bus trips, with most passengers
exhausted with making the best of a bad situation and
some still frighteningly chipper, and we made it. But
the theatre was still closed. A happy looking fellow
turned to us and said the complex was opening in two
hours. He seemed quite delighted to wait, but I was
far beyond being able to relish standing in the heat
and the stench of the city. I snarled thank you to
him. What a simpleton I thought. The bars were still
closed on the block, but around the corner the
Marriott had reopened. I was okay with the $14 glasses
of wine but still felt the urge to complain to the
bartender: The Sauvignon Blanc better be good god damn
it. Or you are in big trouble. There was no way to
stay on my meds today, not any more.

We made it back to the cinema just as it was opening.
There was a rush of people excited at the premier. I
pushed my way past less pushy teenagers to the
automatic ticketing terminal, and managed to follow
its directions. Tickets in hand, we went up the
seemingly endless escalators with the rest of the
pilgrims. We found good seats. They were massively
comfortable, but the room was not yet over cooled in
that superb reassuring way that cinemas in the city
are in the summer (I love bringing a jacket). Still we
had made it to the only film that was going to make us
happy—“Freddy vs Jason.” I won’t tell you who won, but
I will tell you even though I had had it with other
people and was especially fatigued with the limits of
being moody me—the audience was great. We hooted,
cheered, ridiculed, and indulged in guilty guffaws at
the expense of soon-to-be decapitated characters.
Thanks Freddie. Thanks Jason. The two great
mythological figures of adolescent American horror,
punishing dreamers and pleasure seekers, your faces
should be added to Mt. Rushmore! Long may you battle!

When we made it back downtown the lights were still
out below 14th Street. When I saw the darkness, rage
erupted inside me, like the Hulk. Or Freddy. Or Jason.
Walking down the street, I imagined hurting our
political leaders (I won’t name which ones!). It is
shocking to admit now but yes, a yearning to loot
entered into my consciousness. And me a middle class
critic of consumerism and corporate capitalism! I
started to yell curse words like the crazy New Yorker
I had long feared I might end up becoming. Here it
was—utter madness. I was my own mob. Gone were the
good manners from my supposed understated New England
upbringing. But then the lights came on. Right then.
The city was safe—from me.

2004-01-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

Pledging Allegiance to a Performative

Many Americans were shocked in the summer of 2002 when a three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco suggested that their Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. This decision in this case, brought to the court by a father who argued that the pledge injured his daughter’s legal rights by the inclusion of the words “under God,” was immediately stayed. The entire court reviewed the case. On 26 February 2003, a majority of the entire 24 judges let stand the previous decision. Thus the court asserted that the official oath of loyalty to the nation violates the separation of Church and State. In its ruling, the court urged that schools allow children to decide if they want to say the following: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The pledge has long been controversial. It has undergone at least three major changes since it was first written in 1892. It is now attributed to the pen of Francis Bellamy, who was both a religious man (he was a Minister) and, like his cousin the novelist Edward Bellamy, a socialist. In 1954 at the urging of an Italian-American organization, the Knights of Columbus, President Eisenhower signed a law that inserted the words “under God” (upper case G, of course) into the once secular pledge. According to United States Statue 36 USCA Sec. 172, the pledge of allegiance should be accompanied by a particular bodily posture. One should stand “at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute.” In many public schools, children are taught to stand hand on heart and unlike military men join in the proclamation of the words of oath.

The case continues to be the cause for a legal “theater of war” for God-fearing Christians and atheists alike—especially when the need for expressions of American patriotism is seen by many to be especially helpful for the nation. After the Ninth Circuit’s decision, Attorney General Ashcroft announced that the Justice Department will ensure that the Court of Appeal’s decision is revisited by the highest court of the land. Ashcroft noted that the Supreme Court itself begins each session with the invocation “God save this honorable court.” In this view, expressions of American identity have long referenced what is assumed to be the deity originally known as Yahweh, revered by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. And these references do not necessarily impinge upon religious freedom, they are mere common expressions.

In October of 2003, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case in the following year, with a verdict announced in June. There is precedent that suggests that the Supreme Court might agree with Ashcroft. In 1984, members of the Court argued that statements such as "In God We Trust" (which appears on U.S. money) are protected from First Amendment application because the religious significance of such a reference is lost “through rote repetition.” Actually, in my opinion, the opposite is more accurate. Printed reproductions and parroting of phrases that include the word “god” might act as tacit accommodation to a nation-state that is increasingly theocratic. The words we are invited or obliged to include in our speech acts matter very greatly. Language’s significance does not disappear when phrases are repeated.

J.L. Austin’s insights into the workings of language, recently revisited by contemporary philosophers such as Jacques Derrida as well as queer theorists such as Eve Sedgwick, alert us to the power of routine speech. In How to Do Things with Words (1975), Austin divided spoken language into two categories--constatives and performatives. Performatives occur when word matches deed or when "to say something is to do something (12)." One example he uses to illustrate the performative is the marriage ceremony--the groom becomes wedded at the exact moment he issues forth with the words "I do." Another example Austin uses is the ceremony of naming a boat--when the dignitary declares "I christen this boat....(5)." In these utterances, words not only narrate or describe (like constatives). They act upon the environment; they enter the speaker into a contract or a promise or initiate a pronouncement upon an object or an action that continues to have an impact upon the future.

The Pledge of the Allegiance then is a performative in the Austinian sense. Those who speak those words enter in an agreement with the Republic and perform their adherence to the meaning of the words, and hence the social ritual, by saying them out loud. In this performative, speakers promise to be true to the symbol of the flag and to that which the flag symbolizes--a nation that cannot be divided. Reciting this performative is accompanied by a gesture, a hand on the heart, which underlines the sincerity and conviction of this spoken act of patriotism. Indeed, many performatives that are social conventions involve a matching gesture or movement. The gesture that matches the naming of a boat is, for example, the smashing of the bottle; the gesture for being sworn into an elected office--or into a court of law--is a hand on the bible. (Is this utterance also a constitutional contradiction?) Importantly, for Austin, though, one must speak the performative--and be heard by an auditor--in order for the event to be completed.

As a student in the New York City public schools in the mid-to-late1960s, I was impelled by the structure of the morning assembly to repeat this now controversial performative in its revised form, with the words "under God" added to the original. After this repetition, I also remember that we had to sing "The Star Spangled Banner"--even though no ball game followed! No one asked us if we agreed to participate in this daily ritual even though in 1943 the Supreme Court ruled this was our right. Nor do I remember anyone explaining the meaning of the words (especially "indivisible"), although I remember we lined up in rows with our teachers in front and the flag facing us. Even as we inherited these rules of conduct, we still found room for improvisation. We invented new versions of the pledge, indulging in substituting words and relishing in all sorts of deliberate mispronunciations (I leave these to your imagination!). Our main struggle was not in the mixed emotions this caused us. Rather we strived to cover up our snickers in order not to be noticed by the rather serious Principal, Mr. Blitz. He stood near the flag and seemed to scan our faces for smirks and suppressed laughter.

J.L. Austin was keen to this kind of vocal delivery, calling them infelicities. Examples of infelicities include an unforeseen divorce rendering that "I do" null and void or crossing one's fingers while promising to keep a secret or lying on the stand after solemnly swearing in a court of law. Using Austin's classifications of such "performatives," our youthful treatment of the Pledge of Allegiance might be deemed as an "abuse"--"an act professed but hollow (18)." We knew we were going through the motion. We pledged to be playful. We were misbehaving kids. Whether we knew it or not, as kids in the late-1960s, we were rebelling against much of the conformity of the previous decade--including the Cold War impulse to add God to the official words of allegiance. The 1954 revision of the original was meant to suggest, I suppose, that if Communism was godless, American capitalism and democracy, even if the Constitution underlined the importance of the separation of Church and State, was nonetheless under the dominion of God. Even though we were kids, did we smell the odor of this contradiction?

Of course, not only are there many atheists in the U.S., there are many Americans who believe in many gods--at once. There are also loyal taxpayers who believe in a distinctly female divine presence and not a presumed male one. Indeed there are dedicated voters who follow religious principles and practices that do not involve a god at all. In addition, there are citizens who believe that near-mandatory displays and recitations of national pride are in fact not patriotic at all. Perhaps they believe that celebrating the nation through rituals doesn't always encourage debate and diversity and inhibits free speech. Such "radicals" may never burn the flag or even appear at a protest against the war with Iraq. Yet one can imagine that these law-abiding Americans still believe in democratic principles and remain convinced that patriotism, particularly one purportedly endorsed by "God" may lead to chauvinism and exclusion (If we are so good at being us, then they must be bad being them.).

I believe that back in grade school we were acting as good future citizens in our mockery (sorry Mr. Blitz). We didn't know the meaning of the performative and thus we refused to be convinced of its imperative by repetition (sorry Mr. Austin). We didn't take an invented tradition seriously and challenged authority as it was being imposed upon us. Don’t get me wrong—none of us sported a Che t-shirt or clutched Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man. We simply rallied against boredom at the beginning of the school day, preparing us to be alert for our more important lessons and playground games to follow. Such “activism” sounds quite American to me.

Austin's emphasis of language as event allows us to realize words form the world and do not merely skim and bounce against its surfaces. They are not rote. Words are events and actions. It is thus crucial when and what we say and in whose presence. We enter into agreements that are binding via our utterances and we move into a group structure--for better or worse--by saying socially rehearsed phrases. A young girl in California with an atheist father is going to grade school during an era that is more conservative than the time when I was a child, even though we share growing up during wartime. There is less domestic rebelliousness and more talk of God now. The words she uses--and when she performs them--are crucial, now more than ever. If she agrees with her father and believes she is living not only in a secular nation but also a godless universe, she should be supported to exercise her legal right to be true to her word and avoid an infelicity. Best of all, she should be encouraged to recite a pledge she improvised herself.

Reference
Austin, J.L., How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2nd edition, 1975.

2004-01-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

K said I should do a book called Regional Disorders. (we are New Englanders--I won't speak for her but I have my share of pathology based in part from where my formative years were spent. NE'ers--stoic to a fault, insanely private yet endlessly gossiping about others.)

Mid-Atlantic people: they freak out when there is a rumour of a snow storm. Schools shut down when even there is a hint of a Nor'Easter approaching. And then they think nothing will run and that stores will be shut and they will have to leave on the tuna and beans that they in their cupboards. Meanwhile, in NYC at least, every bodega and Korean store is always open.

Meanwhile after the ballet, we tried to go to this very elegant Mexican restaurant. But such icky people were sitting and standing around posing--as if they might be in an outtake from Sex and the City or something, in their expensive clothing. I thought I might scream. We ended up going to an Irish Bar up the street, and even though the waitress forgot W's mustard, the hot toddies were good. Like good nyer's we talked about rodents (evil) and pets (saints).

When I came home H was awake, watching a horror movie in Spanish. I had seen in before--corporate evil, Milla Jahovowitch waking up to find out that she is a trained killer, humans have ingested some gas mistakenly released into the underground research park. I was like sweetness you are going to have to sleep my darling, but part of me wanted to go on watching it, coz I remember the scene where she had to kill an enraged and diseased Doberman Pinscher by kicking it in mid-air! Luckily though we cuddled, and I think I beat him to the finish line--of who is going to start snoring first!

2004-01-29T08:10:00.000-08:00

Sometimes in life,
One becomes conscious of unhappiness.

It may not be explained by the people around you, or the structure of your existence, or the institutions that bear down on you.
Or even a past that encircles.
Yet you dream of escape without accepting it as a possibility.
You find refuge in your senses, and stare at objects, read words over and over, dissolve your being into sounds.
You are philosophical by default.
You experience yourself as incoherent.

You hope you don’t run into old friends because you are afraid that even they might arrest you for not being annoyingly manic like them.
And even as they disapprove, you imagine that they will get a very important cell phone call that they have to take.
Right there on the street where everyone can see you.

Without a plan nothing happens. This nothing hurts.

A plan is not a list or a statement of intent or a memo or an e-mail.
It is a path one discerns where there was none.

Let’s face it:
Chance finds its way to those who can muster up a smile. This we learn.

I can entrance you with my honesty.
I can let you see me cry.
I can spin inside this small space.
Around us the air moves.

2004-01-29T08:07:00.000-08:00

Capturing the Beauty of the Beast: Aileen Wuornos, Charlize Theron, and Monster

As soon as the new Aileen Wournos biopic Monster was released in the States, talk of an Academy Award for star Charlize Theron was immediate. Her performance as America’s “first lesbian serial killer,” put to death in Florida in 2002 for killing seven men, is in fact quite good. She is far better than the film itself, which simplifies and unnecessarily fictionalizes the now classic tale of murder, mayhem, and media sensationalism. Truth be told, though, Ms. Theron is not nearly as captivating as the real Aileen (or Lee) as seen in the two Nick Broomfield documentaries (Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer [1992} and Aileen-Life and Death of a Serial Killer [2003]). On film, the actual woman invites sympathy but then spits in the face of pity. Lee can instantly turn an almost charming smile into a show of defiant rage with a glare that scorches.

Before I delve into the American myth of Wuornos (subject of a play and an opera as well), it is worth coming clean about the one of the main reasons for all this Oscar talk (she just won a Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press). It is because Charlize Theron is beautiful and thin and was often thought of as no more than a former model/dancer trying her hand at acting. When a beautiful actor, such as Nicole Kidman in The Hours (2002) or Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball (2001) (there’s that word again, “monster”) is so confident of her good looks that she can let herself in the name of film acting and fame appear ugly, she’s a shoe-in. Charlize not only had her visage altered like Nicole, she also had imperfect teeth installed and appeared with very bad early 80s hair—and put on weight. With this, we learn that Theron is not just a pretty face and a leggy blonde, and the fact that we know she really doesn’t look like Lee heightens her status as a great beauty and performer—she is now a star willing to transform herself for the right role. Make no mistake, the back story of Charlize, an attractive heterosexual woman who willing endures a transformation into the deranged, and “dyke-y” Lee has aided the marketing of the film. She is such a stunner that it took hours of makeup to make her appear otherwise! (Her transformation is featured on the film’s official web site.) I suppose for the normal looking woman, it would take only a few minutes of badly applied Max Factor to look “monstrous.”

Another real-life tale of the performer has been strategically revealed in the marketing of the film: Theron’s mother shot her father. In a retelling of the star’s life in South Africa that has appeared in many newspapers and magazines, one night when she was 15, Charlize’s drunken father started to shoot into the bedroom of his daughter. Defending her daughter and herself, his wife shot him dead. Although Theron discusses this event in some interviews, she then insists that this experience has nothing to do with her decision to play Wuornos. Expertly she insists that it was the strength of the script and the intensity of her meeting with the director, Patty Jenkins. Yet the question of self-defense is central to the life of Aileen Wuornos.

Nick Broomfield believes in part that Lee killed to save her life, especially with her first victim/assailant Richard Mallory. In Monster, this is also shown as self-defense; the trick is depicted as a torturer. The screenplay follows Lee’s own testimony. In the film, the audience is prompted to believe that this violence unleashes Lee’s rage and suggests that it can no longer be effectively contained—the character lets loose a chillingly triumphant wail after she has killed her attacker. Unlike Broomfield, the legal authorities involved never believed in self-defense, for this is a legal tactic better reserved for middle class housewives and not lower class prostitutes. Lee is always already guilty due to her social class and her profession and her sexuality—and she is no lipstick HBO-type lesbian.

As Lynda Hart argues in the book Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (1994) the discourses of criminal anthropology, sexology, and psychoanalysis share a tendency to link female “criminality with deviant sexualities” (28). Hart reminds us that Wuornos’s victims were middle class white men and her refusal to be at first remorseful—and to let the experts explain her behavior as due to her tormented abusive past, causes a representational meltdown. If Wournos’s story appears as if it could be an instance of “paranoid male fantasies,” Hart also recognizes that “the fantasy has crossed a certain boundary” and “the hallucination has been realized” (141). Lee becomes all too frightening and inexplicably enraged and impossible to explain through ordinary terminology describing bizarre male projections—her Hollywood biopic could, I suppose, in this way only be titled Monster, although its name cheapens the film.

But Broomfield, undaunted by Lee’s own attempts at self-depiction, frames her as mystery that must be solved. Was it because she lived in the chilly Michigan woods after she gave birth to a child at the age of 13…and that her grandfather might have in fact been the father of her child and not the nearby child pervert whose home youths used as a hangout? Or that her mother left her shortly after her birth (a birth where the infant emerged unbelievably bended, butt first)? Perhaps we will never know…

But during the shooting of Broomfield’s follow-up, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003; codirected by Joan Churchill), Lee is resistant to this search for explanations. Her story has changed. She now insists that she killed simply to rob. She wants forgiveness. She doesn’t want her past revealed because as Broomfield theorizes, this may delay her death through some humanitarian appeal, and she just wants the State to hurry up and murder her. (By the way if you want to talk about serial killing, Governors Bush of Florida and Texas presided over 46 executions in the year 2000 alone). Lee refuses any sympathetic pathologizing on her behalf. What can a concerned social scientist/cultural theorist or even a sensationalist or sensitive filmmaker do with her?

Although Lee returns to her story of self-defense when she is off camera (Nick Broomfield is still taping her voice), she remains steadfast in her one consistent conspiracy theory about the police. She believes that they let her go on killing so that they could later sell the tale of her capture to Hollywood. Lee argues that she was no expert at murder and made little attempt to hide evidence, yet the police let her continue on her rampage. Broomfield’s discounting of her speculation is surprising in that he is a conspiracy theorist par excellence—in Kurt and Courtney (1998), he suggested that Courtney Love may have actually plotted the murder of Kurt Cobain and in Biggie and Tupac (2002) he implicates the L.A. police in the murder of the rap stars. My speculation about our concerned “stalkumentarian”: he has to be the prime author of preposterous theory; he won’t let the subject of his documentary have a leading role in the creation of any narrative that connects all the scattered dots of conspiracy.

Yet Aileen is not entirely wrong--even though she probably had lost any recognition of shared reality. Her perception is off, not her conception. Of course, the police did not sit around and decide to let her go ahead and kill so that they could sell screenplay rights – although it does appear that some of the cops in the case tried to profit from the case (as does Broomfield). Yet if she had been caught after her first murder (of a known sex offender), a good lawyer could have been able to argue self-defense successfully without having to bring up the abuses she suffered in her childhood, or suggest that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The fact the she was in a sense allowed to kill serially, and to murder at least a few men who may have only wanted sex and not to inflict physical harm, enabled her to become legendary. The number of her killings (seven) and their subsequent media coverage embedded her into the American landscape as a female outlaw and a real-life figure of fantasy that must be stopped. Wuornos surpasses the conservative’s worst fears of the lawless lesbian—she not only hates men, she kills them—and she is no sultry femme fatale.

Aileen knows that she was in a sense permitted to come into being as that which American loves and abhors (and loves to abhor). Yet, even though we covet a good bloodthirsty gangster or disorderly cowboy on the rampage, we ultimately cannot permit a gal like Lee to be idealized. Catching her (or rehabilitating her) would have prohibited the destiny that the mainstream media craves—the crazed killer who has no remorse and kills methodically. America needs its serial killers and the freak show entertainment and uncanny threat that they provide. But they must never make it across the border to Mexico; they must be caught. And they are supposed to be male not female.

Lee senses that no one ever gave her the chance to move into a normal middle-class life (as a prostitute, as a homeless girl, as a sexual deviant, and as a victim of sexual abuse she suffered from multiple exclusions). In a telling scene, she admits that if her childhood had been different, she might have been an archeologist (a profession concerned with finding evidence of the past). If Lee had no support from social services, she had all the encouragement in the world to go crazy and kill—either in self-defense or as repetition compulsion or even just as the accompaniment to a robbery so that her apparently lazy lesbian lover could sit around the trailer park.

Although Lee is dead, Wuornos just won’t go away. And as diagnoses and theories fail to fully explain her, the legal authorities and politicians can mumble on about the presence of evil. It is now impossible to discern the extent to which she killed to protect herself from real or imagined harm. Even as the real Lee can easily be deemed a beast, our fascination with the mythic Wuornos intensifies when she is played by a beauty. Another kind of Terminator, rest assured she’ll be back.

Details

Monster
New Market Films
Directed by Patty Jenkins

Starring: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern

Reference
Hart, Lynda. Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

2004-01-28T13:04:00.000-08:00

Well I suppose that's enough pretentiousness for now. Don't worry I will be back and back for more. In a few hours, K is taking me to the ballet (Balanchine of course, silly) and then we are going to meet up with W and S who are celebrating their 9th anniversary of being a gay couple (they are going to the opera (Madama Butterfly of course, silly). Years ago, we might all have stumbled out of the Rat in Boston after seeing Lou Miami or La Peste or gone for breakfast after dancing the night away at Danceteria or what have you. But here we are still alive, beyond even our own predictions, and I am tired of downtown attempts at innovation...and people talking while they are dancing/moving...and have developed haute bourgeois affection toward perfection...so bring those skinny bitches on in tutus and the promise of some sublime pattern.

2004-01-28T13:01:00.000-08:00

If Theory is Over, Philosophy is Back

In After Theory, Terry Eagleton, one of the high priests of literary studies, reports that he has interpreted the utterances of the oracle: “The golden age of cultural theory is over.(1)” The great authors are now gone, including those who declared (while alive) that authorship was dead (Barthes, Foucault). In his estimation, no one of much distinction has risen up to carry the flame of theory onto Mount Olympus. Those of us who labor on in such endeavors in the West do so narcissistically, pointlessly lazing about in our subjective positions, our only success is in avoiding all the key philosophical and political necessities of the day as we prattle on about the meaningfulness of popular culture.

Well, Eagleton has a point. It does seem a bit impractical at times to issue forth with yet another reading of the subversiveness of Buffy (especially after the show’s been cancelled) or indulge in one more attempt at decoding some detail in The Matrix trilogy or LOTR or Kill Bill in order to support an interpretation of a dead French theorist’s work. Indeed this may be an especially extravagant detour when a cowboy ayatollah such as George W. Bush doesn’t know how to pronounce “nuclear” (or is being told by Karl Rove to deliberately mispronounce it so he can seem like just a normal, uneducated guy), admits to not reading any newspapers, and insists that the United States doesn’t need “a permission slip” (as he asserted in his State of the Union speech on January 20) to invade another country.

But Eagleton also misses the point. Judging by the number of times that he quotes ole’ William Shakespeare, and refers to D. H. Lawrence and W.B. Yeats and by the veracity of the jabs he makes at those intellectuals who study popular culture, he has an ongoing love for the greats of Anglo-Irish literature-and a disdain for mass cultural products (especially those manufactured in the U.S.A).Yet surely as a Marxist, isn’t it crucial to study and analyze the use of such cultural products that “the masses” enjoy either unabashedly or reluctantly--or even make attempts to resist--rather than always to resort to the Greats for wisdom? Slavoj Žižek, a “post-theorist” who also rejects postmodernism and much of American cultural studies and liberal multiculturalism, renders himself almost accessible because he illustrates his concepts via popular film and media. Also Slavoj loves sex and sexuality (and fetishism and perversity) and I’m not sure the same is true for Terry—at least in this most recent writing.

Eagleton distrusts the academic obsession with embodied pleasures (which I’d argue was related to the relative frivolity and carnality of the Clinton/Blair/Mitterrand era and has now subsided with the illicit primness of the Bush/Blair/Chirac era). Eagleton writes:
Socialism has lost out to sado-masochism. Among students of culture, the body is an immensely fashionable topic, but it is usually the erotic body, not the famished one. There is a keen interest in coupling bodies, but not in laboring ones. Quietly-spoken middle class students huddle diligently in libraries, at work on sensationalist subjects like vampirism and eye-gouging, cyborgs and porno movies. (2-3)

And yet when one stifles discussion of the body and reverts to the old universalisms of truth and class and the grand narrative of capitalism and superstructure, one eliminates any way to address the theoretical and political concerns of radical women and gay and lesbians—and to guard against current right wing prohibitions. American cultural studies’ and queer theory’s obsession with the theoretical body was in large part a response to the Christian right wing’s return to the surveillance of marginalized actual bodies. Living in England and Ireland, Eagleton may not experience how prevalent and pervasive post-Puritanical ideology is in the States--Hollywood films and Friends don’t always reflect this state of affairs. When one is endlessly confronted by these particularly outspoken American Christians, one laughs along to some very obvious double entendres from Joey or Phoebe (or Buffy and Willow) in search of solidarity, even if those characters will never use a Lacanian term such as jouissance.

Of course the poor need food, and yes American imperialism, especially in its current aggressive and reactive stage, needs to be challenged in its every maneuver and utterance. But women and gay and lesbians—even those in the States--also need to wrest control of their corporeality away from conservative ideologues, who wish to patrol their bodies and outlaw certain expressions of pleasure. There are connections to be made between struggles for equal rights and self-governance of the body in the West and the non-West. But Eagleton does not go there: for him the suffering of the Other is more important than the care of the Self.

Instead he offers his later chapters to suggest new ways to re-use those old concepts such as objectivity and truth and virtue in order to confront the realities of fundamentalism and death and a re-energized American imperialism. His writing is often lucid and succeeds in being both philosophical and approachable. Eagleton ends the book with a postscript supporting those American citizens who remain free-thinking despite the country’s current regime, which hints at his own sentimentality and subjectivity.

Eagleton is not alone is his return to truth and objectivity, mind you. Alain Badiou in Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, advocates a new questioning with those once passé words. Also critical of postmodernism and disdainful of mass communication and popular media (and parliamentarian politics), Badiou reinvigorates these terms with very specific meanings and processes, which might lead the reader out of the cul-de-sac to which Eagleton repeatedly brings the reader. Badiou writes: “For the process of a truth to begin, something must happen. What there already is – the situation of knowledge as such – generates nothing other than repetition” (62). To attempt an explication de texte (Badiou is difficult): An event is an innovation which interrupts an ongoing situation. Truth is initiated by a faithfulness to this event or innovation. Examples of the outbreaks of such truths are the beginnings of tragedy with Aeschylus or mathematical physics with Galileo. In more simple terms, truth is an opportunity that arrives from a newness, not an a priori or a given. It is the opposite of a cultural inheritance. Objectivity is an acknowledgment that the world is not only made of words, but also of objects, objects whose perception of we might share, thus ending the poststructuralist obsession with language as reality.

Although more demanding, Badiou’s operational definitions allow for more possibility than the retracing that Eagleton enacts. Regardless, if postmodern theory is over, post-theory threatens to be quite philosophical in nature. Get ready to be re-told about the relevance of the Greats.

2004-01-28T12:58:00.000-08:00

LOVESICK PUPPY

One afternoon, I watched you skipping stones.
We were in Love--a beach two lefts past the third traffic light.
I was enraptured by your movements.
Admit it:
You were intensified by the intensity of my gaze as you demonstrated your technique.
Relax:
Show-offs can be such good providers (of pleasure) (of flowers).

Later I will include myself in the memory from a perspective I never experienced.
The lighting will be different.
Your darkened hair might have implausible curls.
Yet every detail projects the scent of accuracy.
Such blooms bear perfume.

I know what is taking place--a countdown to a reunion.
My confession:
When you are not here, I take your seat at the table.
Later I lie in your indent on the mattress.
For sooth, there is a diagnosis that can explain all this.
But I’d rather imagine the remembrance of what I will look like when you return--
Slim of course, with no creases, smelling sweet, accepting your flowers.