Bernard Shaw Major Barbara Rogue Theatre

Last night I saw a very good production of Shaw's comic play of ideas, Major Barbara at the Rogue Theatre in Andersonville. There were signs up in the window, available for rent, because after this production, the theatre is moving out of its current space.

I believe the play is inherently flawed and problematic because Shaw's main characters, Major Barbara, an officer in the Salvation Amry, and her father, Andrew Undershaft, the owner of a large arms plant, are more mouthpieces for arguments concerning the virtues of idealism and pacifism as opposed to pragmatism and militarism, than individuals about whom we learn more about during the course of the play. Instead, we are treated to mini-lectures, arguments, and witty exchanges about pacifism, philanthropy, militarism, pragmatism, capitalism.

And with heavy handed irony, one senses Shaw himself in the background taking delight in pointing how pacifism and militarism are interrelated. For instance, Undershaft contributes money to his daughter's Salvation Army branch, which is on the verge of closing for lack of funds. Convincingly, and without moral qualms, Undershaft argues that though his business of selling arms sows destruction, it also provides steady work for his employees, much more, that is, material well-being, than the Salvation Army, which offers mainly idealistic hope. This sort of argument has an echo in post-WW II United States, because this is just the sort of argument that politicians advance in the name of providing jobs for the constituents in the arms industry of which US constitutes half of the world's production.

To be sure, Undershaft is a study in single-minded ideological bad faith: he claims to serve his nation and provide work for people, but at the same time his products, arms, kill people and destroy civilization or impose colonial occupation. He admits to the destructive consequences of his business, but because he is just playing a part in the game of capitalism and playing according to its rules, he feels no guilt. Of course, any reality outside the logic and rules of capitalism to Undershaft is idealism and to be disdainfully dismissed as idealistic humbug. This includes politics itself, which ultimately serves the arms industry of Undershaft--its needs and profits, not vice-versa.

The cynical character of Undershaft is played with a requisite amount of overweening self-assurance and unctuousness, without overdoing it. There are six more important speaking roles:Undershaft's wife, his son, one daughter in the Salvation Army, another daughter, and both his daughter's fiances. And there are three more important speaking roles, minor characters who make an appearance at the Salvation Army. All these roles are also well-performed, and it's quite an accomplishment for a small theatre company to stage such a demanding play. Most companies settle for plays that don't require so many demanding speaking roles, so it was a pleasure to see this ensemble perform.

Film Review: Transamerica (2005)

Finally, on dvd I got around to watching "Transamerica" which was first screened December 23, 2005. The dvd version includes brief conversations between the director Duncan Tucker and his lead actors, Felicity Hoffman, who plays the transgender woman, Bree, and her son, Toby, played by Kevin Zegers. There is also an optional commentary on the film by the director. I was pleasantly surprised by the film's blend of humor with melodrama, well done scenes of various locales on the road trip that Bree undertakes from East to West Coast with her son. The film begins with Bree eagerly looking forward to move ahead with a new life after surgery, but an unexpected individual from her past--her distant son's reappearance with whom she has had little contact--threatens to delay her long awaited goal. If Bree believes her own life has been derailed, so too, she realizes has that of her son. He is a runaway who lives on the streets of New York City, and who is certain only about two goals--to find his long lost father and to start his acting career.

But a conflict arises because Bree is reluctant to disclose her true identity to her Toby as his father. Exactly, why we don't know--partly, it's a sense of shame that holds her back, and partly it's a fear of taking responsibility for a young man who seeks guidance, yet rejects authority. On the way back to California at a stop at a transgender friend's house in Texas, however, we learn that Toby accepts her friend, but here Bree misses her chance. And so the film tantalizes us--when will Bree talk to her son? how will he react? Doubtlessly, some measure of secrecy is an unfortunate consequence of living with a such a stigmatized transgender identity, but at the same time in some instances, it is harmful to keep a secret.

To what extent is Bree controlled by her own fear we don't get a clear answer; if asked, she herself probably would not have an answer. This becomes the tragic fate of someone who becomes imprisoned by what is an understandable and justified fear. At times the line is very fine and difficult to discern, so often you find transgender individuals erring on the side of caution or boldness.

Bree and Toby are a study in contrasts. Bree is formal to a fault, reserved and guarded, while Toby is brash, spontaneous and outgoing--too much so. The film is as much about Bree as it is about Toby's own growth. Bree needs to confront her deepest fears from her past as a man, that is her son, who she was estranged from; Toby, to stop acting out in anger against the world and himself after having been abused.

The film's flaws were minor. Some scenes were needlessly overdramatized, like Toby's confrontation with his stepfather, and some of the dialog trite, like Toby's crude trashing of the Lord of the Rings.

Ex-Fashion Model out of control, Janice Dickinson

Having an interest in woman's fashion, last night I watched the first six installments on dvd of the realty show, Janice Dickinson, a former model, who decides to begin her own fashion agency in LA. She presents herself as a tough-talking, hard-driving, when necessary, ruthless business woman, who has a soft spot for models that remind her of herself. That is to say models who may look a bit different and not find ready acceptance and promotion. I imagine Ms. Dickinson believes she presents herself as a resourceful, confident and tenacious business woman, worthy of admiration and emulation. Doubtless, we will grant her some of these admirable qualities, but at the same time her manner is so blunt, abrasive, and overbearing that she seems a stock character from stage or film, who serves as source of our laugher, amusement and contempt. Thus her arrogant character, virtually oblivious to criticism and change, serves as one of the chief attractions of this realty show.

During the course of the show, Ms. Dickinson, who herself wears a variety of impressive outfits, ends up making the very indiscretions she counsels her models to avoid, like arriving late to an appointment and behaving oneself at a show. She also can't resist dropping all pretenses of professional conduct, when in one incident, she insists one of her male models to whom she's attracted remove his underwear, so she can check out just how much he packs.

The culmination of Ms. Dickinson's business is almost undermined by her own wild antics. Invited to serve as a queen at the White Party in Palm Springs, wearing a one of a kind designer dress, she meets the designer at the party. Here it should be added that this designer is supposed to be supplying her dresses for her opening day at her fashion agency. Unable to resist temptation, Ms. Dickinson leaps into the white fountain, insisting that she be photographed while doing so, and ruins her dress out on loan. The designer decides to take revenge, so refuses to supply dresses for the opening day of Ms Dickinson's agency. Only the entreaties of her more sensible partner to the offended designer to go ahead and supply the dresses, saves the day for her.

Overall, I enjoyed this show, which offers insight into the world of fashion, a look at fashions, and a larger than life character, Ms. Dickinson, who plays the role quite well of someone quite oblivious to her own shortcomings and flaws, which makes for great theatre.

Film Note: Kalatazov, The Cranes are Flying (1957)

I watched the Russian award winning film "The Cranes Are Flying" (Letiat' Zhuravli, 1957). It was quite an impressive piece of cinematography, featuring beautifully composed shots throughout the film, brilliant acting, moving scenes. The only fault this film, if it can be called that, is the obligatory positive treatment of Russian patriotism during WWII without any hint of the arrogance and incompetence of Stalin and his regime, which allowed the Soviet Union to be caught off guard and to suffer massive casualties, ie, to throw poorly armed or not at all armed troops into combat. Another minor flaw of this film I felt were the occasional and overly done dramatic confrontations scenes. But overall, given the political restrictions under which this was made, it is moving film.

The film focuses on Veronica's plight during the war when her virtual fiance to be, Boris, goes off to fight the war, and she waits for his return. Veronica is the epitome of virtue and dedication, but her ideals are smashed by the war and then by Mark, who manages to have his against Veronica's wishes to marry her. Much of the film depends on key symbols, like a small squirrel that Boris leaves Veronica before he marches off to the front; the migrating cranes seen at key junctures of the film. This film reminded me of Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, which was made few later in that it adopts a different perspective on the war--through the eyes of child, while in Cranes, it's through the eyes of a woman left behind.

Henry Roth, Truth and Stigma, How Silence Stifles Growth

Browsing articles posted in Arts & Letters Daily, an online list compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education, which I provide as a link on this blog, I came across one that caught my eye and caused my pulse to quicken as I was reading it. In an essay, "Memory Unbound" in The Threepenny Review, Morris Dickstein discusses the enigmatic Henry Roth (1906-1995), an American writer, whose first novel, Call it Sleep, published in 1934, and republished with acclaim in the 1960s, but for some reason the career of Roth as a writer faltered, and he never lived up to the promise shown in his first novel. What happened to Roth? What prevented him from continuing to write and publish works like his promising first novel again?

In a word, stigma, the shame of adolescent sexual gone awry, incest. Dickstein explains:

In Shifting Landscape, a collection of essays, stories, and interviews that came out the same year, Roth contemplated the mystery of his aborted career but left out the root cause that most obsessed him. This changed in 1995, when his younger sister, missing from both Call It Sleep and the first volume of Mercy of a Rude Stream, suddenly appeared in his work. He wrote about years of incest with her and a cousin, beginning when both were in their early teens. Though his sister was still living and in her late eighties, he rejected her heartfelt plea that he not shame them by raking up horrors from the distant past. Roth continued to resist any single explanation for his catastrophic writer's block, but it became evident that it was the incest, and the self-loathing that accompanied it, that threw the biggest roadblock across his path. As an autobiographical writer whose work depended on emotional honesty for its devastating power, he found he could not go on in fiction past the ghetto childhood brilliantly evoked in Call It Sleep. In Mercy he at last confronted the dark transgressions he could not face in the years following his first novel.

In his essay Dickstein goes on to make an appeal, arguing that there are strengths in Roth's late and multi-volume autobiographical work of strictly factual reminiscence from the 1990s. According to Dickstein, Roth in a Proustian-inspired manner comes to terms with his long suppressed dark past that clearly haunted him and stifled his writing career; paradoxically Roth does so by using modernist and postmodernist literary devices in a work that is ostensibly factual.

For anyone who has had the misfortune of bearing a stigma from childhood into adulthood, this is a bracing and moving story. Personally, I have a strong connection to this story, because I have struggled with the stigma and shame of my transgender identity in adolescence and young adulthood. But living in a much more tolerant time, the 1990s, I have found validation and solace in being able to write personal essays about my experiences, and my self-imposed prison sentence of guilt-induced silence was thankfully not as long as Roth's near life-sentence.

Stigma is the nemesis of personal growth. If ever there was something we could call a curse in our enlightened age when we regard a curse as a vestige of a supernatural world we no longer believe in, it is the silence of an adult about his or her own stigma. An adult who remains silent about their own stigmatized sexual activity (abuse, incest) or sexual identity (trans or homo or bisexuality) in adolescence is compelled to put a hold on his or her personal life and happiness.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/dickstein_su07.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Roth

The World Naked Bike Ride in Chicago June 2007

In the name of protesting oil dependency, a carnivalesque protest of riding nude in the manner of critical mass rides (when hundreds of cyclists ride one day a month on city streets, taking over lanes and blocking traffic for a time) takes place annually, and this year I joined the Chicago ride. Since I am on the online listservice of Chicago's Critical Mass, I found instructions notifying anyone interested to first arrive at a Chicago park from where they would be directed to a nearby private home of one of the participant-organizers. This is done to avoid creating a distraction in a public area as riders prepare for the ride in the hours leading up to it. By prepare, I mean some put on amusing and outlandish costumes, while others have body paint applied.

The mood already seemed festive with music blaring from a garage set aside to be used as a body painting area, and many cyclists already milling about nude and or with body paint. I went ahead and joined the line to have my body painted, and it turned out to be a bike then fire around it. The ride seemed very well organized with someone in the park, at the entrance, and other individuals talking on cell phones who were going to lead and direct the ride. Finally, the ride set out shortly after nightfall around 9PM. For a time the ride didn't attract too much attention since it was in the industrial Near West side of Chicago where there aren't too many people walking around in the streets, nor many retail stores and restaurants.

Eventually, the ride did come across the first commercial retail street, which usually provoked honks, shouts, cheers, comments, and on occasion you could see people rushing from stores and restaurants to catch a view of the spectacle. People also rushed to take pictures, now quite easy since many cell phones include cameras. In the more crowded streets, the ride assumed a parade-like atmosphere as people lined the streets to look. I should add that not everyone was quite naked, that is, many people wore what look like underwear or bathing suits or various types of costumes. Also, some of the ride organizers were dressed and riding around on bikes or roller blades.

The ride itself was accompanied by speakers in a trailer playing music for most of its entire length. At some moments the music, the festive atmosphere, the notion of violating the rules of social decorum and behavior--all these gave me a sublime sense of pleasure and happiness. I have read Mikhail Bakhtin's book, Rabelais and His World, on the importance of carnival in ritually violating social rules and decorum in order to affirm one's sense of self and connection to others which is restricted and controlled by rigid social hierarchies and status. After a time I did indeed feel this that I could take part in an event and join other people, setting aside the usual barriers that would prevent us from making contact and assembling in an activity.

Personally, I've also had a liking ever since I can recall I was told to wear clothes. Seeing pictures of primitive people from around the world who wore virtually next to nothing always made me think--now why should you wear clothes if it's hot out.

Film Notes: The Lives of Others

Tonight I saw "The Lives of Others" a German film (original release date March 2006) that shows how the secret police, the Stasi, of the former East German Democratic Republic spied on its citizens, compromising, if not ruining their sense of purpose and moral integrity, especially if they were writers and artists. The basic rule to follow is either play along with the secret police, or if not, then face the prospect to not play at all--face silence, neglect, imprisonment, relegation to the margins of the society, and for some artistic death is tantamount to spiritual death, and they commit suicide.

This film won 7 Deutscher Filmpreis awards and the American Academy Award for best foreign film. This is quite a dark film, relieved with some humorous scenes on occasion, but dark in showing how everyone becomes morally compromised in the net of a society founded on mistrust. A lighter look at the East German past is available in the film, Good Bye Lenin (2003).

There are two heroes to the film, not heroes in a monumental, but on a mundane level, who both act when their sense of conscience prompts them to act in a humane way. First, there is the playwright and writer Georg Dreyman, a darling of the state, who writes plays made to order for the socialist government, and in the opening scenes of the film, we see scenes of what looks like a play that focuses on the heroism of a woman laborer in the factory. But a Stasi officer in the audience, Gerd Wiesler, senses something is amiss in the play, even though it seems on the surface to adhere to all the conventions expected of it. And actually it turns out that Wiesler indeed has an acute sense for ferreting out subversion however subtle its hints: he senses it's not the play itself that is the problem, but what it reveals about the director--that he would dare allow a friend, a director who had been punished, jailed for subversion, direct it. This is evidence enough that Dreyman is himself drifting in the direction of subversion.

Ironically, Dreyman regards this act as a simply a gesture of kindness to a friend in need, and not as a political act in any sense. But Gerd's hunch that something is amiss with the reliable writer of state is shared by the chief of the intelligence, who is also in the audience, and Dreyman's apartment is promptly wiretapped. All his conversations are recorded by Wiesler and his associate in the attic above it. Ironically, however, Gerd finds nothing suspicious to report: Dreyman remains a loyal servant for the state; at a party with friends, he dismisses an accusation by his director friend that someone at the party is a secret police informer.

What pushes Dreyman over the edge to question his allegiance to the state and dissent against it is the mistreatment of his friends at the hands of the secret police. His girlfriend, Christa Marie Sieland happens to catch the eye of the chief of the secret police, and the chief cannot resist the temptation to force himself on her sexually, a fact which shakes up Dreyman when he learns about it. This abuse of power, and then the suicide of his former mentor and director who has been silenced by the state pushes him over the edge. He decides to write an article about suicide in East Germany and how the government doesn't publish any statistics on it.

Gerd, who has been listening in on Dreyman, also begins to doubt the state and its ideals he has served selflessly and loyally. The fact that the chief of the secret police has sexually forced himself on Dreyman's girlfriend causes him to question his own institution, the more so because he must leave out his chief's vile practice out of the official transcripts of what Dreyman and all his friends and associates said or did. Gerd realizes that the secret police is corrupt and morally bankrupt. To provide some context, we are told it's 1984, and in only another five years the Berlin Wall will fall, and in the intervening years the hold of the corrupt regimes in Eastern Bloc states like East Germany will begins to unravel.

To say more about the film's plot would give it away. The theme of the film is how loyal servants of the corrupt regimes in the police and arts begin to sense the moral bankruptcy of their government and state are moved to act against it. The quality of the film itself is made with intentionally grainy film in many shots, as if it were made using the available film technology of the 1980s. (If you don't know what year a film is made, you can usually discern if it was made some time in the mid-90s or later by the higher quality of its resolution and color range, thanks to digital production.) Also, the film is generally sombre in its use of color: often the action takes place in night, or in dimly lit rooms, interrogation rooms and eavesdropping rooms. Gerd's apartment room looks like an ascetic cell of a monk with its bare furnishings and absence of any art on the walls. There is not much sunlight in this world, and the weather outside is overcast and a perpetually barren and cold late fall or early spring.

The chief actors--Dreyman, Gerd, Sieland--are first rate. I can't recall the last film that moved me so much but in such a subtle manner with its powerful message. Personally, the film reverberated very strongly, prompting me to ask myself whether I haven't allowed myself to stray too far from engaging in more work that I find meaningful to me. It also made me think about the fact that other former Communist satellite states and Soviet republics have not reckoned with the past as in East Germany; that is, as the epilogue scenes in The Lives of Others shows, the secret service files were not opened to citizens and historians and researchers.

Brecht's The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui

At the suggestion of a friend, I went with him to see Bertold Brecht's play written in 1941, "The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui," which is about a Chicago mobster's rise to power, and which is also an allegory of Hitler's or any dictator's ruthless rise to power. It was performed with a spare set with few props or stage furniture at the Steep Theatre on a second preview evening; and it's ensemble work with fourteen actors and four or five prominent roles. http://www.steeptheatre.com/current.html

This theatre company features ensemble productions; the other and last play I saw here was Arthur Miller's "Incident at Vichy". The actor who played the chief criminal, Arturo Ui, was convincingly and energetically played with animation and sulkiness. The air of someone who observes no rules and limits was conveyed well, though at times I felt as if slouching and sulkiness was overdone; I imagine a mobster, a strong man would keep up appearances of strength and a stoic front, at least in front of his subordinates. Another actor whose performance and roles were powerful was man who played the publisher and the actor, who teaches Ui how to walk, sit, talk in order to impress people.

A few scenes, especially in the second part of the play after intermission were especially powerful and moving. For instance, the court scene in which justice is bent to favor the criminals; the scene in which the newspaper publisher is pressured to remain silent, and then confronts his wife.

I must admit that not being familiar with the details of Hitler's own rise to power made me miss allusions and parallels that Brecht worked into his allegory. In the play, Brecht has a narrator comment on the turning points in Hitler's rise to power after some scenes; in the play itself, we hear an announcer speak over the intercom. Having been regularly reading about the machinations of the current government in Russia, like poisoning a critic in London with radioactive polonium, hacking into and shutting down the internet of Estonian government institutions, I found the play chilling with examples of the close connection between criminality and government that is becoming more apparent in Russia.

Brecht pokes fun at the mobster's rise to power through gaining influence in the grocery, in particular, cauliflower business. I could not quite follow just how one grocer was convinced and pressured to ally himself with the mob in exchange for money in the play's first part, and the allusions this may have had to Hitler's alliance with business in Weimar Germany. In any event, the play picked up momentum in the second part, and I would recommend seeing it.

Art Chicago & The Intuit Show of Folk & Outsider Art 2007

Along with Art Chicago, there was another art show, The Intuit Show of Folk & Outside Art, which occupied about a quarter of the floor below the Art Chicago show. I spent some time looking through this show before proceeding to upstairs, and would just like to mention one gallery, Ridge Gallery, from Oak Park, Illinois, in passing. The paintings of Evarist Chikawe, a folk artist, from Tanzania, caught my eye. The work reminds me of Chagall and Picasso, the latter who freely borrowed from African figurative sculpture and masks in his early paintings.

http://ridgeart.com/paintings2.html
http://www.artshost.org/rafiki/rafiki/artists/evarist.htm

Looking Beyond Borat: A society and architecture of the future, or more state propaganda in Kazakhstan?

I found Sasha Cohen's film "Borat" entertaining, but I was upset and uncomfortable with just how far and for how long the device of ignorant, crude ethnic yahoo was taken by Cohen. For this is the very image of benighted country bumpkin that comes up in and is used to justify an empire's occupation or forceful re-education of its subjects.

For example, it comes up often in the image of the crude and ignorant Ukrainian peasant that was created from an imperial Russian cultural perspective, as evident in many literary works. If the backward Ukrainian peasant, as depicted in fiction, would only learn Russian and renounce his Ukrainian, peasant culture, he would become civilized, and, of course, a proud Russian, as well. Ukrainian writers were quick to jump to the peasant's defense, in particular Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, a recorder and admirer of the peasant's fertile and creative linguistic resources.

After all, peasants possess a rich folk culture with rituals, myths, stories, an extensive knowledge of their surrounding natural world. Modern composers have turned to folk music for their melodies; scientific researchers, to peasants' knowledge of herbs to develop new medications. That said, we can note that the prototype for Cohen's ethnic yahoo is not a peasant as such, but rather a Soviet Man, that is, a descendant of an ex-peasant, one who was forcibly removed from his farm during the process of collectivization and industrialization during the 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union. As part of an intensive and harmful industrialization process imposed from above by Stalin in the 1920s and 1930s, the age-old agricultural communities in Kazakhstan, Russia, Belorus, and especially in Ukraine, were destroyed, individual farms made into collectives. Up to seven or eight million peasants starved to death in an artificial famine that resulted. The descendants of these survivors became Soviet people stripped of their folk and rural culture, religion and customs; conceivably, some could even have become similar to the sort of declasse troglodyte that Cohen creates in his film. But one outcome of destroying the indigenous peasant culture was desirable to the nascent Soviet Union--to create a population that was dependent on the state for work and more likely to buy into its state propaganda.

In any event, Kazakhstan the land, and Kazakhs, the people, are by no means the backward land and people that Cohen's satire makes it out be, as demonstrated by some of its cutting edge architectural projects, like the currently under construction enormous enclosed city space, the Khan Shatyry. What is really backward about Kazakhstan is the deplorably bad situation of democratic rights to free speech and assembly--such speech is censored and banned--as well as the lack of transparency in a corrupt government--with no press and media to fear, the rulers of this Central Asian nation pocket much of its wealth with impunity for themselves. Kazakhstan has in fact had only one ruler, Nursaltan Nazarbayev, and his government, since 1991.

Thus, a really more harmful and cruel joke is being played on Kazakhs by their own president than by the comedian Cohen in his film. The sad truth is that it is likely easier to make and market a film about an imaginary ethnic yahoo than about a corrupt politician in a Central Asian nation, a megalomaniac like Nazarbayev.

While some improvement in the economy is clearly evident, as a result of oil revenues, which has provided the funds for spectacular architectural projects such as the tent city, this land has remained in many ways frozen in the Soviet past circa 1991. The snatches of official Kazakhstan state propaganda, which Cohen includes at the beginning of Borat, and which are in themselves unintentionally amusing because of the heavy handed praise of labor that contributes to state power--this propaganda may well have been updated in Kazakhstan, but it has yet to be satirized by the Kazakhs themselves.

Clearly, Nazarbayev's new and spectacular architectural projects of the future also serve as propaganda for his regime and state, more effective propaganda than that of the Soviet era. At this juncture, this architecture also can serve as a symbol of hope, a utopian dream that one future day Kazakhstan's citizens could enjoy the benefits of a democratically more open democratic and progressive society. But for now this tent city functions like a Potemkin-like distraction and stage-prop on the world stage.
http://www.registan.net/index.php/2006/12/10/the-excesses-of-kazakh-architecture/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Shatyry
http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Projects/1438/Default.aspx
http://newsite.irinnews.org/country.aspx?CountryCode=KZ&RegionCode=ASI

Museum Notes: Art Institute Vollard

Before it ended, I made it to the Art Institute exhibit, Ambrose Vollard: Patron of the Avant-Garde. This art gallery owner and dealer and patron of nineteenth turn-of-the-century and early twentieth-century artists, and later a publisher of illustrated books, had an impressive collection of works by Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Gaugin, and others. What impressed me most were several paintings that I had not seen before, like Picasso's blue period, "The Old Guitarist", Gaugin's massive, mural sized "Where Do We Come From...", and a Van Gogh Starry Night. The book published about the exhibit by the Art Institute, a collection of essays, seems a worthwhile investment to learn more about Vollard's relations to the artists he knew.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/picasso/works.html

Gallery Notes: Morpho and Los Manos

Tired from a busy week and pressed for time, I didn't venture far tonight from where I live to visit a few opening night gallery night exhibits. First, I stopped at Morpho Gallery, which is a relatively isolated and small gallery, but I learned soon to be expanded with another room. There were works by several artists on display, and I've included a photo here of Steven Hazard's color etching, the moose with butterfly wings in place of antlers, as well as Dave Gista's painting, "Yellow Urban Professional, an inventive imposition of the cityscape outline onto figures dressed in suits. The staff of two was solicitous to gallery visitors, and I had a chance to ask them questions about some of the artists.

http://www.morphogallery.com/

My next gallery stop was at the Los Manos Gallery where there were four artists being shown, two of whom worked in larger scale. Striking and original were Tim Hurley's large oil paintings, and the one I included a photo of here was one in a series shown at the gallery tonight. Clearly, these iconic like paintings with brilliant colors and intricate designs have some private symbolic meaning for the artist, but the viewer can read his or her own interpretation into the painting. Fletcher Hayes paintings impressed me as well; he works on a large scale and had several large scale paintings of landscapes.

http://www.lasmanosgallery.org/artists/26/

Note on Readings & Music: The Partly Dave Show at Neofuturarium

Tonight, I went to the Partly Dave Show, which features readings and music, showcasing local talent in Chicago. I especially enjoyed Dave Awl's satire on celebrity relationships as seen from the perspective of the distant future, amused and puzzled about the bizarre lives of movie stars, Kurt Heinz's moving account of a search for love in a bar one evening, and Christopher Piatt's poetic account of his narrator's attempt to find love with someone from the neocon camp. The music of the band Even in Blackouts with acoustic guitars had thoughtful, well written lyrics. John Pierce, the lead guitar and founder of this band, was in a commercially successful punk band, Screeching Weasel. Tonight's show reminds me that there is writing and performing talent aplenty which is on par or better than what can be found in more popular and well funded and publicized work.

I should add a word that Dave Awl's hilarious and zany satire on celebrity relationships took an idea from tabloids and ran with it, that is, introducing an incredible and bizarre rumor about a celebrity. His starting point were two Star Wars erasers of aliens who were mistakenly identified in the distant future as representations of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston.

A podcast of the entire evening should be up soon on Dave Awl's website, Ocelapatomus, so any reader will be able to listen to this and the other parts of the show.

http://ocelopotamus.com/ http://eveninblackouts.com/

Art Project Chicago: 300 Portraits

If anyone has interest in portrait paintings, you can take a look at a link that offers more than 300 of them rendered in distinctive styles by Chicago artists Lisa Parenteau-DePinto and Daniela Ortiz. Lisa takes some inspiration from Alice Neel, a renowned painter of portraits and figures, and her work uses a darker palette than Daniela's. Over a 15-month period, 300 individuals were asked to model for usually one or sometimes two sessions of one to several hours. About half this number may be found on the web page of the project. I was among the subjects selected to pose, since I had met Lisa in a figure drawing workshop. The project culminated with an exhibit opening with performances at a large exhibit space in Chicago named Galaxie earlier this year. http://www.galaxiechicago.com/galaxiesite/home.htm

http://www.300heads.com/heads.asp?p=all

Russia: World Chess Champion Versus KGB Judo Practicing President

I've been reading news stories about disturbing political developments that Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer who has worked for Russian clients, has been posting about Russia on his blog. Not that this is really startling news, but the recent incidents in what's turning out to be a heavy handed and rigged government election to put President Putin's successor in place, a reversion to standard Soviet practice, only reinforces the sense that the Putin government is digging the country into a deeper hole, reverting Russia into a new post-Soviet version of the repressive pre-1985 authoritarian state.

The efforts of retired world chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a Russian politician protesting the charade of an election in Russia, and trying to run for the position of president of the Russian Federation, are courageous, but ineffectual. For the Putin-led government controls all the news sources, so simply doesn't allow dissent or protest to be broadcast, nor for that matter public protests and rallies.

Though it's claimed Putin's government enjoys support of the majority of the population, one can certainly assume that it would decrease--just how much is an open question--with an open press and investigative journalism. Perhaps sensing that a mere spark of protest could eventually start a fire, as it had in Ukraine in late 2005, the Putin government has brutally put down protests, with police beating protesters and arresting them. For now Kasparov has taken to the internet to broadcast his candidacy for president, and more importantly provide much needed criticism of the current president's disregard for adhering to democratic process.

One wonders how the government will choose to handle him, because he is well-known throughout the world. Will one of Putin's henchmen venture to slip some poison in his soup, as was done to current president of Ukraine, Yushchenko, as he was running for office against a Ukrainian pro-Putin candidate? It remains to be seen just how low Putin's government will stoop.

For now thanks to genuine democrats, like Kasparov, the undemocratic transfer of the presidency in Russia will be put in a brighter spotlight, exposing the true thuggish, authoritarian face of the current Russian government, which makes itself out to be a benevolent, paternal government that must rule with force and a strong hand.

Recent attempts to silence Kasparov have shown that it's likely that the transfer of power won't be anywhere as smooth as Putin anticipated. Government justifications for cracking down on legitimate and legal protests and rallies will ring quite hollow. And, Putin won't easily perform a judo flip on a wily rival like Kasparov, at least as long as the world is watching. But it's high time for democratic nations to speak out more forcefully at the travesty of electoral politics in Russia where there are no debates even allowed. To begin with, censure Putin and insist that he and his government respect the rules of democracy. To stop overlooking the increasingly flagrant disregard for rule of law being practiced in Russia only encourages it to continue.

For a recent article by a Russian human rights activist published at Open Democracy see:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/russia_civil_society_4573.jsp#

http://www.robertamsterdam.com/

Art Chicago Part II

More notes about artists at Art Chicago 2007

William Conger is a Chicago painter who works with bold, strong color geometric patterns and designs with distinct lines in abstract patterns. There is a hint of a reference to the natural and man-made world in these paintings, as the titles suggest. The patterns consist of solid, firm shapes of mostly solid color and a sturdily constructed forms that seem to have mass and substance, even though they are rendered for the most part as flat on the canvas surface. Personally, I like the abstract, controlled line and form with which Conger works.
http://www.art.northwestern.edu/faculty/conger_portfolio.html

Don Colley had one painting at the Carl Hammer gallery, a gallery that had a lot of art work I liked. His painting showed a human-like creature, perhaps a gremlin, perched aboard what looked like a bomber plane. This painting evokes a sinister atmosphere with its limitation to conveying the scene in dark blue that turned into violet blue and black. The clown and satiric, cartoon-like figures that Colley paints work well in adopting a critical attitude toward weapons of war. This particular painting reminds me of the social engaged art that satirizes authority in Jose Posada's broadsides and some of the German expressionists like Otto Dix and George Grosz. http://www.artnet.com/artist/153021/don-colley.html

Nathan Slate Joseph creates fascinating works by applying pigment to steel and then riveting the individual sections to a canvas like surface. The subtle variations of one color, here it's blue, the slight hint of surface texture and varying depth created by overlapping the individual mostly rectangular blocks of steel creates quite a visually compelling surface. Also the steel glistens and catches light in different areas and from different angles, adding to making this apparently simple surface quite complex. This is a work of amazing originality and makes you realize that though it's no doubt difficult to use materials originally, it can still be done. http://www.artnet.com/artist/26481/nathan-slate-joseph.html

To be continued.

Visiting Art Chicago April 2007 (Part I):

Another large scale art show, Art Chicago, was held at the Merchandise Mart, an enormous building which is mainly used as a design trade show building. This is the second year for the show at this site, after having been held for thirteen years at Navy Pier. It seems to have been a success, judging by the crowd size, the number or red stickers marking sold artwork, and a bit more of an international presence of galleries than two years ago, which is good news, since there was talk of the decline, and perhaps even demise of this annual exhibit, since it hadn't been doing so well in its last years at the Navy Pier site.

Along with Art Chicago, there were several other large scale shows staged simultaneously, in the same building or nearby building, as well. This is a prudent business strategy, since Art Chicago itself had had difficulty attracting large crowds in recent years, so clearly the strategy is to hope for spill over crowds from the large antique show, the outsider show, on a floor below, as well as a local show, the bridge Art Fair, in an adjacent building.

http://artchicago.com/showInfo.html

I had last visited Art Chicago two years ago and felt the show was much better and the location overall much better this year, for it was more accessible, near an elevated train stop, and there is no need to walk through crass commercial tourist halls and arcades that now fill up Navy Pier in order to get to the exhibit space. A special bonus was offered to bike riders, they I learned got free entry to the exhibit! But probably, if judging by what clothes people wore, few took advantage of this offer.

The only shortcoming of the new location is the unavailability of space for oversize and enormous art works, in particular sculpture, but this probably only leaves out at most a few art works. In addition, it perhaps felt a bit more crowded than it would at Navy Pier, since there was perhaps less floor space overall, but in the future, the exhibit can always spread to another floor. As it was, there was an exhibit of outsider art on another floor, The Inuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art, along with an antique show; I saw most of the outsider show, which seemed to occupy about a quarter of a floor.

It's an exhausting task to try to take the art in, in one day; I spent about five hours looking and was a bit rushed doing so; really two full days are needed to look more thoughtfully and repeatedly at the art to let it sink in, or at least those works that appeal to you. My friend who I met at a nearby cafe, left after a few hours, and I stayed on until closing time. Most of the galleries were from Chicago and New York and the Midwest area of US, there was a considerable international dimension to the show, mostly with galleries from Canada, England, France, Germany, and Korea. Still there are only 33 foreign galleries out of more than 125, which gives us about 25% or so. Especially odd, was not seeing more galleries from this hemisphere, that is, galleries from Central and South America.

There were some familiar and famous living artists featured, like Chuck Close, Fernando Botero, and a few deceased, like Paul Delvaux. Looking through the exhibition catalog, my only quibble with it is that I'd fault some of the galleries for featuring famous artists with a reproduction of their work; of course, they want above all a sale, but why not feature an artist who needs more publicity?!

There was a considerable amount of minimalist art, conceptual art, which I generally don't like, since much of this art is antithetical to beauty. Some of it evokes a negative sense of the sublime often through a minimal use of form, color, line. Much of it eschews elaboration of the basic elements of art--color, light, line. That said, I still do like some abstract art, particularly if it does elaborate elements like color and light, and my own taste is generally for richer, bolder, strong use of color and form and materials, as in William Conger's work.

There is really no way to do justice to every single gallery and every artist, so I will select only a few that caught my eye. Also, I should say that my choices are guided by simply my own taste.

Let's begin with the realist figural artists, of whom only a handful were in evidence, since figural art occupies a small niche on the contemporary art scene, but several notable artists stood out, like Philip Pearlstein, who paints life size, or slightly large than life size female nudes in pairs with symbolic objects near them. A spirit of world weariness and pondering pervades the nudes of Pearlstein's paintings, bestowing a dignified tone to them. His rendering of figures reminds me a bit of figures from Max Beckmann's early work. For a few samples of Pearlstein's work see this link:

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/finch/finch4-9-07_detail.asp?picnum=1

Charles Browning, who is represented by the Schroeder Romero gallery in Manhattan http://www.foundrysite.com/browning/ offers a parodic representation of the past, which provokes us to smile. In Browning's paintings, we are viewing the past informed with a social critique of its purported virtues. Browning's paintings mock historical paintings that monumentalize, celebrate, and thus distort the past. For example, in the painting above, Browning mocks a wealthy man, who sits beside a donkey, or is it an ass, and overindulges in food unceremoniously, while someone who looks like a servant, paints him in a dignified pose.


Vasily Shulzhenko, represented by Maya Polsky, is a Russian painter in whose works there is a Renaissance monumentality of figure and a seriousness of theme, but the subjects are placed in mundane settings, which generates an energizing frisson in our perception that has been conditioned to expect something more noble and sublime. I can't help but think that Shulzhenko is also parodying the monumentality of Socialist Realist work commissioned during Soviet rule in which he grew up and lived as a young man. http://mayapolskygallery.com/artists/shulzhenko/index.html

Caleb O'Connor, who is represented by Ann Nathan gallery doesn't offer any of the critique or parody one senses in the previous figurative artists I have mentioned, and seems a notable exception in this regard on the contemporary art scene. To the left, you can see an example of his work, which is simply an impressive realist work of art. But in other paintings, O'Connor offers realism with a twist, or else, I can't imagine him being in show of contemporary art in which just straight realism is anathema. I couldn't find two other paintings I saw of figures walking a tightrope high above a cityscape, which give a surrealist, Magritte-like dimension to his work. http://www.annnathangallery.com/pages/caleb_o'connor.htm


More artists and paintings will be continued in the next post.

Essays Noted: On Evil

The word evil has been bandied about by the current president Bush more than any other American politician. Too often and too easily. Usually, you hear the word used less frequently, and often to describe someone or an action that defies understanding or whose horrific effects are mind-boggling in scope. Reading through some essays in the online publication Demokratiya, I came across a review of a recent book devoted to the topic, and expected to find a compelling and complex consideration of the topic, but came away disappointed, for the reviewer came up with an unequivocal answer to an inherently complicated topic. You would not expect such an answer from a philosopher or writer. Think of Fyodor Dostoevsky's great detective novel Crime and Punishment.
http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=80

In any event, this is a topic that I considered several times while reading and writing about it in graduate school, only to come away feeling frustrated in not feeling I got a grip on it. Only after I graduated did I come across what I considered a thoughtful, clear presentation of the concept and from what perspectives it can be addressed by Adam Morton, a philosopher, who wrote a brief, lucid book about the topic for Routledge's Thinking in Action series of books. If anyone has an interest in this topic, I would recommend reading this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Thinking-Action-Adam-Morton/dp/0415305195/ref=sr_1_1/104-7265340-8642336?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177720268&sr=1-1

Essays Noted: revising the American literary canon

In light of a new biography of Edith Wharton, a reviewer argues that Wharton, Willa Cather, and Dawn Powell are just as deserving a place in the American literary canon as Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. I could not agree more, having read and used in class novels by Wharton (Ethan Frome) and Cather (O Pioneers!, The Prarie).

Why aren't these women ranked higher in American literature? The reviewer suggests the relatively staid and reclusive personalities of these writers vis-a-vis their male counterparts and a lack of experimentalism in their writing accounts for the critical neglect. Click the link below for the text of the article, or see the comment.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20070412-094043-1459r

Film Notes: Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" (1994; dvd 2004 )

Watching the special edition version of Tim Burton’s biopic film, “Ed Wood” (1994), which came out in late 2004 on dvd was quite moving and entertaining to me. Though the director of B-movies Ed Wood has become the epitome of this film gencre, and his name synonymous with inept, bad film making, Burton's film offers a decidedly sympathetic and idealistic portrayal of this zany, cult director of B-classic films (Glen or Glenda, Plan 9 from Outer Space). Burton focuses not so much on the films themselves, but on how Wood managed to make them despite operating on a shoestring who made makeshift films on the fly and cheap. Burton in his commentary states that he regards Wood as a folk artist, that is, someone who was not educated in the medium nor that skilled in it, yet who had a distinctive and likable style, which has led to his becoming a cult hero among some film buffs today.

Despite Wood's lack of connections, despite his limitations as a film director, still amazingly he managed to find financial backers to produce his films. In one case, he even finds a group of Baptists to fund his film, as long as he agrees to star one of their members in his film, change its title, and join the church for good measure. It was Wood’s vision, his belief in himself—delusional and misguided, to be sure--his indefatigable effort in the face of rejection, criticism, and flat out failure, which allowed him to succeed—if by that we mean—make a film, no matter how shoddy and disjointed.

That quality makes Wood into a likable rogue, but he is more than that. For while he misled or simply deceived his financial backers, he also cared about other people: he gathers together a group of cast off and misfit actors and characters, who he befriends and discovers, to make his films, most notable of all, the aged and forgotten Bela Lugosi. In fact, the film’s most touching relation is Wood’s concern for the Lugosi. Martin Landau, who played the part of Lugosi, received an Oscar for best supporting actor.

To be yourself in the face of disapproval and rejection—that’s the most moving impression I took away from this film. After all, it’s a universally shared sense of sympathy we all have for the underdog and misfit. Surprising was just how Wood dealt with his crossdressing, in particular his predilection for wearing women’s angora sweaters—he made a film about it in 1953! Predictably, the film wasn’t screened, and its producer shocked and angered by just what Wood had done with his purported take on the Christine Jorgenson story of the first recorded sex change by an American from male to female, which was what the film was supposed to be about. But personally, I conjecture, Wood by making this film overcame his own nemesis, his own hidden, dark secret, his desire to crossdress, thus perhaps gained the confidence to believe in himself and not back down from any obstacles. And he didn’t. He continued making films and then writing books until he died, prematurely, from a new nemesis—alcohol, which unfortunately relegated him to the furthermost margins of B-film-making and hack writing.

Another moving aspect of Burton’s film is how Wood manages to assemble a group of misfits around himself to make his films. First, he finds Crispin, the tv medium; then, Tor, the giant wrestler, finally, Vampira, the tv movie show hostess. Just how he joins the group we don’t see, but there is also Bunny, the fey bon vivant, and, of course, Lugosi. The culmination of the group’s success occurs when they all go see the film premier of “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

As in all of Burton’s films, the carefully created sets are a pleasure to see beginning with the opening credits of the film, which allude to images from Wood’s films.

Film Notes & Links: Why We Fight

I had hoped to watch the documentary film "Why We Fight" (2005) by Eugene Jarecki in the theater when I saw the previews for it, but now I have finally watched it on dvd. Though it presents a variety of viewpoints, ranging from the pilots who dropped the first bombs on Iraq, to neocon pundits, like Richard Pearl and Billy Krystal, who support a policy of so-called premptive strike, to Chalmers Johnson, an East Asian scholar, who is now a critic of American militarism, it's evident the director sides with those who criticize American militarism.

The tone of the film is moderate, not polemic, satiric, and confrontational, like Michael Moore's "Farenheit 911." Though less entertaining and humorous than Moore's film, Jarecki does a better job than Moore in dispassionately informing the viewer about what forces are compelling America to wage war abroad. Some of the politicians and people interviewed in the film claim war is waged for the sake of freedom, while critics argue it is either for the sake of power.

Jarecki focuses on how in America after WW II the weapons industry has itself become an invisible force that determines policy, that is, politicians don't dare question it for fear of losing voters. The film begins with old footage of President Eisenhower warning of the possibility that the arms industry will usurp political control, and includes a scene to illustrate its a fact, with one senator after another thankful that the arms industry is operating in their state. Addressing a largely empty auditorium, one senator, Byrd, observes that the issues of going to war have largely remained ignored, and it's obvious that virtually no does care to listen to him. Thus, Eisenhower, emerges as a hero of the film, or rather a politician like Eisenhower, someone who has the integrity to speak his mind, which no other American president has done, or been allowed to do so, regarding the collusion between the arms industry and American military and Congress.

And the best supporting actors or stand-ins for Jarecki's position are several commentators, who offer incisive remarks about American foreign policy--Chalmers Johnson, Gwynn Dyer, a military historian who is critical of American military, and Charles Lewis, the author of several books about American politics.

Jarecki also includes several individuals who lose their trust of the American government during the Iraq war from 2003 to 2005. One a retired policeman, who turns from a fervent supporter to doubter of the war, all the more because he lost a son in a Twin Tower, another a career soldier who balked at adding talking points in briefings about the causes of the war that were misleading, and so quit. With these individuals, Jarecki shows how supporters of American policy have come to question it, but unfortunately, the film also observes that there is little can and is being done to question and stop policies that aren't in the national interest.

Jarecki uses scenes that implicitly comment on other scenes quite effectively. For example, he interviews the air force pilots, who beam with pride about their bombing mission, though lose their smile when they explain that they just do their job which may kill innocent people, and then he offers scenes of the devastation wrought by the bombs dropped, which included innocent victims. It's especially moving to see the morgue director interviewed, and who can't hold back his own tears when talking about the people who died.

Some of the interviewees, I believe, could have been left out, like Pearl, on the right, and Gore, on the left, for both tend to make simplistic overstatements. While interesting in itself, the irony of a Vietnamese refugee who came to US, and who now works in the missile industry, could have been replaced with someone who provides us with more background information. Also, the young man who joins the military constitutes a well done portrait, but does not contribute directly to the film's underlying thesis of how the military-industrial-congressional complex is providing the means and impetus to fight.

Finally, and this may just be my personal reaction, but I think there is too much footage devoted to fighter planes in flight or on the ground. Doubtless, the director is engaging in a form of mock-critical appreciation, simulating awe, but in fact we sense that he is critical of the nefarious destructive force of these planes.

Perhaps to make his film more engaging and entertaining, with human interest stories and provocative statements, rather than a dry, but informative commentary, which some of it is indeed, Jarecki included this material. One realizes that is difficult to make a documentary that is both entertaining and informative, especially on a topic, like American foreign policy.

Moore was criticized for making Farenheit 911 too satiric and entertaining, but how else can a documentary feature film attract a large audience without making its message appealing? Jarecki was criticized for his film because it was too dry, more suited for showing as a television documentary, and too diffuse. Inevitably, Jarecki's fim was not a box office success, but perhaps, and hopefully, Jarecki's film will find a much larger audience distributed as a dvd; this format, I believe, is the most appropriate for viewing it.

A few links to the film and its director:

Photo: Why We Fight was also the title of a series of US WWII propoganda films by the director Frank Capra.

news program of PBS Now:http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/jarecki.html#
more interviews at a conference: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/news_detail.cfm?id=346
http://www.watsoninstitute.org/gs/Transcripts/Jarecki-Transcript1.htm
interview BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/eugene-jarecki.shtml

The Dilemma of Handling a Difficult Student

Recent newspaper articles have brought to light the bizarre and disruptive of behavior of the college student Cho Seung-Hui, who went on a shooting rampage on April 16. He had been behaving strangely in classrooms since 2005. This case brings to stark light one of the most difficult situations in teaching for the college instructor and administration--how to handle a disruptive adult student in a college classroom.

A problem can arise because such a student's behavior must directly threaten the instructor or students or clearly interfere with classroom instruction. Only on evidence of such behavior can such a student be removed from the class; therefore, any behavior that falls short of meeting those criteria will allow such a student to remain in the class. Unfortunately, that leaves room for behavior which can cause considerable discomfort for the students and the instructor, as the recent case of Seung-Hui reveals. In one creative writing class, for example, most of the students dropped out of the class because of his presence. In this case, the disruption is implicit: students felt so disturbed by another student that they voluntarily left. In another class, Seung-Hui refused to speak, participate, and wore sunglasses and a baseball cap. Though he was an inscrutable, dark, brooding presence, he was not a disruptive one.

Repeatedly, Seung-Hui's professors brought the matter of his behavior up to their department, college administration and security, but as long this student did not verbally or physically threaten anyone in the classroom, as long as he did not impede teaching or learning in the classroom, there were no grounds for his removal from the classroom. In one instance, Seung-Hui would meet separately and privately with a professor outside the classroom.

The most incriminating evidence against Seung-Hui was his creative writing, which featured brutality and violence. Students and professors who read it were mortified by it. But again, as long as this writing did not name or implicate anyone in the class or university for that matter, it did not constitute grounds for dismissal from class.

Within the parameters they were able to work under, the professors, administration, and security seemed to have done what they could. They felt frustrated because they sensed something terrible was transpiring and could not intervene, constrained from doing so because of regulations that protect freedom of expression and speech. There seems to be no easily formulated resolution to this dilemma--how to handle a student that deeply troubles other students and instructors, yet who never crosses the line in threatening them. We clearly don't want the classroom to become authoritarian, which would stifle intellectual growth and freedom, but at the same time, we can't allow a troubled and potentially dangerous individual to abuse the freedom offered in a university classroom.

In effect, ever careful and obliged by law to respect one individual's freedom, a student was allowed to harbor and develop his violent delusions, which gradually compelled him to act on them. At some point the humanity of the student Sueng-Hui had been lost, taken over, eclipsed by a violent and inhumane spirit of destruction. This tragic case calls for a reconsideration of when and how university administration and security can and should intervene.

For exceptional cases, guidelines and provisions need to be formulated so the educational experience isn't allowed to deteriorate, as it clearly did for both students and instructors at Virginia Polytechnic. When one student's quest for freedom of expression goes awry that student needs to leave the class. For students and instructors deserve to learn and be taught in a setting where they feel safe and respected.

Note on the image: this is an imaginary portrait by Man Ray of the Marquise de Sade, an eighteenth century French writer, who advocated the right to pursue pleasure with absolute freedom in his writing, which in his life often led to repeated arrest and imprisonment. This image came to mind because Richard Wolin used it for the cover his book, The Terms of Cultural Criticism.

The Rule of Eighteenth Century Rights

Reading more about the recent shooting tragedy, I realize that a ban on handguns is unlikely because most Americans, anywhere from a half to two thirds, cite the second amendment right to bear arms as something they cannot part with. It's intrinsic to their sense of self-identity as Americans.

Considering the second amendment in historical perspective, we see that it was written at a time America was a frontier state in which there was only minimal civil authority and protection in place. Thus, understandably, there was a clear justification for an individual to assert he had a right to protect himself. Clearly, however, society has changed since the late eighteenth century and the justification for the right to bear arms to defend oneself no longer makes sense. There are few if any areas of desolate wilderness and total lawlessness.

But that fact is overlooked by advocates of the right to bear arms. From their perspective, it simply doesn't matter that the environment and society has changed. Of course it has they would acknowledge, but that cannot and should not affect the inviolability of their right to bear arms. Any concession of this principle would undermine it, hence its inviolability.

In this regard, they are correct, and you cannot argue with them, or rather their essentialist argument. Furthermore, without a majority of Americans opposing their claim to a right to bear arms, their position will prevail.

Looking at this issue in a larger perspective, we can see that various areas of the world hold on tenaciously to ideas and customs which puzzle outsiders. To outsiders these ideas and customs don't make sense, but to the people who hold them, they do; moreover, they define their identity. Thus, to part with such an idea and custom that defines you is something that is difficult or that cannot be conceived. In effect, you cannot ask people to change a policy or practice or custom, which they regard as intrinsic to who they are.

Only the cumulative effect of negative consequences or the slow process of gradual education or a political upheaval will result in change. In United States, I would surmise that the former two factors will eventually change the hearts and minds of people, make them consider changing their identity and their views on the issue of restricting and then banning handguns altogether. Practically speaking, for now the most that can be expected in terms of legislation about handgun possession and ownership in United States is that the pressure to impose more restrictions will increase.

Personally, I can play only a small part in this contentious issue of handgun control in America, adding my voice to the chorus of others informing readers in a manner that isn't accusatory or condescending, but thought provoking.

Columbine Again and Worse

Reading the news on Monday, April 16 caused palpable shock and horror. A young and demented man has killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. If this can happen there, it can happen anywhere, where you work, go to class, shop, meet, and you feel vulnerable and threatened. And you feel terrible for those who died and were injured. It feels as if the tragedy of Columbine is being played out again, but this time with even more victims.

This is the deadliest shooting incident in American history. There have been several such terrible incidents since the 1960s. Something needs to change, some policy measures taken, and legislation passed to prevent such incidents from recurring. A debate needs to begin concerning hand gun ownership and purchase. Michael Moore's documentary film "Bowling for Columbine" was a critique of an American obsession with guns and a usually unreasonable fear that fuels their desire for self-protection. Strangely, this insistence on insuring one's own self-protection overlooks the fact that the right to bear arms, handguns, also allows a a few angry individuals to wreak murderous havoc.

My position is that handguns should be banned, as they are in other advanced nations, like Japan and the United Kingdom. These nations don't suffer from the bane of handguns--an annual loss of thousands, tens of thousands of innocent victims, which America suffers. The only exceptions I would make for people who can own and possess handguns in the United States are for police and military personnel.

Is this a fair or just policy to ban handguns? No, by no means, for it punishes the vast majority of law abiding and peaceful registered gun owners who are not murderers, nor who will ever become murderers. But this policy will make our society safer, making it more difficult and less likely for handguns to be obtained by potential murderers, thus reducing innocent lives lost to handgun murderers. A handgun ban will make it less likely individuals such as the young man at Virginia Technical, will carry out their deadly plans. Imagine, it took him only 15 minutes to buy his first gun.

But given the great number of handguns already owned legally or illegally in United States, I am under no illusion that this policy will show significant and immediate results. Doubtless, for the right price, for example, an individual intent on murder, will likely and unfortunately still be able to manage to illegally purchase a handgun from an unscrupulous seller. Still, this will make acquiring a handgun much more difficult to obtain. It will take more than a simple and convenient visit to a gun shop.

Are there really any viable alternatives?! Advocates of the right to bear arms and the gun lobby are the chief opponents of a ban on handguns will argue there are. But it seems to me that no matter what efforts are taken to detect someone planning to carry out murder, there will be someone who eludes detection. And no matter how much security we provide, not every institution and building can be made into a secure place such as a court house or restricted airport area, where you are searched and need to pass through a metal detector before entering.

Unless this step of banning handguns in United States is taken, there will only be more such terrible incidents of senseless murder in the future. My hope is for far fewer, and dream, is for none to occur. Let's learn from and emulate nations like Japan and United Kingdom--and ban handguns in United States.

For a link on this issue, see "Gun politics in the United Kingdom":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom

And I came across a comment in the New Yorker by Adam Gopnick that puts the gun issue in comparative perspective--see the Comment for the text.