Monday, September 30, 2002


Every Picture Tells a Story redux
Michael, I know, I know, I swore I would never look at another of Gil Elvgren’s paintings—they are simply too deeply felt, too eloquent on the human condition for a sensitive soul such as myself. But I couldn’t help it. Apparently, in art, all roads lead to Elvgren! I was minding my own business, leafing through a book I own, called “Art at the Turn of the Millenium.” (It’s one of those books you can tell is ultra-hip because it’s in both French and English—although, oddly, the editors are both German.) Suddenly, I came across some documentation of Vanessa Beecroft’s installation pieces. I got really excited because Ms. Beecroft’s work is totally cutting edge, in the sense that like most performance pieces you have to be there to really get it—the perfect mechanism for separating the hipsters who go to art openings from the unwashed masses who, er, don’t. Vanessa does Tokyo! I decided to research the insider line on Ms. Beecroft in case some sophisticate started throwing her name around at a party. On the designboom.com website, which is apparently too hip even for capitalization, I found this penetrating commentary on one of her performance pieces: the one evening event (09.05.2000) is the first solo project by beecroft in the uk. it's art; it's fashion. it's good; it's bad. it's sexist; it's not. it's vanessa beecroft's performance art. the primary material in her work is the live figure, which remains ephemeral, separate and unmediated by any device we normally accept as artform, such as painting or photography. I don’t know about you, but I am just knocked out by any writer who can work ephemeral, separate and unmediated in one sentence—without even beginning it with a capital letter! I could tell I was out of my depth. I retreated back to my book “Art at the Turn of the Millenium,” pausing to marvel at the way it had a whole second title: “L’ART AU TOURNANT DE L’AN 2000.” There I picked up some more prosaic background info (in both English and French): Since the mid-1990s, Vanessa Beecroft has been parading before us a succession of scantily clad girls. Recently, they’ve been appearing with nothing on at all. In Beecroft’s performances and exhibition openings they silently take up their positions, moving very little, standing before the public like living pictures. Standing Like Living Pictures--Early Version, Late Version Before I could control myself, I remembered that Elvgren too had painted pictures of scantily-clad girls (and some apparently wearing nothing at all!) Was it possible that the Elvgren, uber-artist that he was, had successfully anticipated performance art 50 years or more in the future? I manfully suppressed the thought and went on: Wholly in keeping with the late 20th century happening culture, Beecroft is offering something that obviously cannot be conveyed through the media. And yet she is playing in her mind with the very images communicated by the media. Elvgren & Beecroft: Master & Disciple? This was simply too much. I... posted by Friedrich at September 30, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Sunday, September 29, 2002


The Economics of Mozart
Michael Everyone knows the story of Mozart, the composer who was so childishly self-indulgent and self-destructive that, despite his immense gifts, he descended into poverty, illness and an early grave. After all, how could such a talent have failed to make a brilliant career in Vienna, the "Holy City" of music, except by self-sabotage? Actually, Mozart’s fate seems to have been more the result of the failings of late 18th century Viennese economy than any flaws of his personality. Vienna’s economy was quite simply based on being the capital of the Hapsburg Empire. Cash to sustain its opulence migrated to Vienna via imperial taxes and feudal rents from productive centers as far apart as Belgium, Italy, Poland and the Balkans. As Peter Hall puts it in “Cities in Civilization”: …Vienna thus remained essentially a capital of conspicuous consumption, not a center of production…The aristocracy enjoyed fabulous wealth…The professions and the services—medicine, law, education, entertainment and information—ministered to them, at adequate if not lavish terms. …Industry was small-scale, inefficient and badly paid…This was an extraordinarily backward city technologically and organizationally… Overall, in Vienna few lived well and the poor, who were the great majority, lived miserably. Imperial Vienna: Capital of Conspicuous Consumption In the early 18th Century, Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI recognized the Austrian empire’s economic backwardness as a strategic liability. When his daughter Maria Theresa came to the throne, she began administrative and economic reforms. These “reforms” did not entail any liberalization of the economy; rather, quite the contrary, they focused on creating a centralized bureaucracy directly responsible to the monarch. Maria Theresa’s political and economic model, in short, was not England but the France of Louis XIV. Maria Theresa’s reforms were continued after her death by her son Joseph during the 1780s—the decade of Mozart’s career in Vienna. While not very interested in private enterprise, the Hapsburgs were very supportive of music and had been for over a century. The houses of the great nobles imitated them in this. As a result, music throve in Vienna, and musicians could too--but only if they attracted patronage. Gluck, Haydn and Salieri spent most of their lives on either imperial or aristocratic salaries. Predictably, as far as the “business” of music went, Vienna remained rather backward. Peter Hall points out: Vienna was not the innovator [in the professionalization of classical music]: formal concerts…first developed in London in the 1720s and grew greatly in number between 1750 and 1790 …In Vienna concerts developed later, becoming frequent only in the 1780s…[Moreover, in Vienna] most concerts were developed by middle-class amateurs, ‘resembling the events of most provincial cities.’ Mozart arrived in Vienna in 1781, fleeing the stifling “security” of a poorly paying patronage job in Salzbourg, and looking to make good in the big city. The choice that greeted him was whether to chase the possibility of someday obtaining a secure paycheck as a patronage employee, or to pursue the immediate if limited opportunities in the local commercial music business. As Maynard Solomon points out... posted by Friedrich at September 29, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Saturday, September 28, 2002


Free Reads -- Oakeshott
Friedrich -- One of the greatest things I've ever read is now online, readable for free: Michael Oakeshott's "Rationalism in Politics," here. Sample passage: Nevertheless, when he is not arrogant or sanctimonious, the Rationalist can appear a not unsympathetic character. He wants so much to be right. But unfortunately he will never quite succeed. He began too late and on the wrong foot ... Like a foreigner or a man out of his social class, he is bewildered by a tradition and a habit of behaviour of which he knows only the surface; a butler or an observant house-maid has the advantage of him. And he conceives a contempt for what he does not understand; habit and custom appear bad in themselves, a kind of nescience of behaviour. And by some strange self-deception, he attributes to tradition (which, of course, is pre-eminently fluid) the rigidity and fixity of character which in fact belongs to ideological politics. Consequently, the Rationalist is a dangerous and expensive character to have in control of affairs, and he does most damage, not when he fails to master the situation (his politics, of course, are always in terms of mastering situations and surmounting crises), but when he appears to be successful. Very eager to hear how you react to this mind-opening essay, Michael... posted by Michael at September 28, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Samuel Brittan
Friedrich -- Samuel Brittan, an impressive British econ commentator, writes about Stephen Pinker's brilliant new book "The Blank Slate," here. Brittan also touches on John Gray's new "Straw Dogs," and does some profitable musing of his own. Sample passage: People embrace a morality that usually does not embrace all human beings but only the members of their own clan, village or tribe. History and ethnography suggests that people can treat strangers the way we now treat lobsters. In early societies between 10 and 60 per cent of men died at the hands of other men. Studies of warfare in primitive societies have confirmed that men do not have to be short of food or land to wage it. One factor in why some countries are more willing to wage war than others is that they have a much higher proportion of the population consisting of men in that wage group. Saudi Arabia is an obvious instance. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 28, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Bye bye France redux
Michael Napoleon to Sartre: What Happened to France? You might be interested in what Saul Bellow had to say on the decline of the French in "Ravelstein": ...Chick is a great skeptic when it comes to the French. He...thinks their cooking is all they have to show for themselves since the disgrace of...1940 when Hitler danced his victory jig. Chick sees la France pourrie in Sartre, in the loathing of the U.S.A. and worship of Stalinism and in philosophy and linguistic theory...But you have to admit you can't get a meal like this anywhere else. And this: [Ravelstein] took a special interest in Great Politics. In that line, of course, France today was bankrupt. Only the manner was left, and they made the most of the manner but they were bluffing, they knew they were talking twaddle. What they were still good at were the arts of intimacy. Eats still rated high--e.g., last night's banquet at Lucas-Carton. In every quartier, the fresh-produce markets, the good bakeries, the charcuterie with its cold cuts. Also the great displays of intimate garments. The shameless love of fine bedding...It was wonderful to be so public about the private, about the living creature and its needs. Slick magazines in New York imitated this but never got it right. Perhaps the decline of the French was underway long before but only became evident to the American eye in the 1980s. (After all, after World War II Americans thought of France half as an elderly relative after a stroke, and half as a cultural theme park--in neither case expecting anything terribly serious.) Cheers, Friedrich P.S. But I still want know why French women are so instantly recognizable as such. I'm guessing there is something about a distinctly French style of makeup, but I've never been able to quite work it out. Can anybody out there help me?... posted by Friedrich at September 28, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Bye, Bye France
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- Some sociological phenomena seem to pass by completely unnoticed, and (for no good reason) I'd like take note of one of these: the way that France has grown to be of so little interest to Americans. I'm happy to mock France as a nation of underbathed, self-important cowards and showoffs; lord knows they ask for it. Still, I once spent a (miserable) year there, I was drawn to the arts via French movies, novels and painting... Anouk Grinberg in "Mon Homme" However pathetic those personal fact are, France for a very long time meant a lot to Americans. Many of the best American artists and architects of the 19th century went to Paris to polish off their educations. Throughout the 20th century, serious American artists, modernist division, took inspiration from early 20th-century French art. France meant love, food, beauty, fatalism, pleasure, wine, absinthe, unfiltered cigarettes. Oh, and sophisticated actresses who didn't mind disrobing, and who did so with a queen's gravitas. Everyday people took France seriously too. Wifeys and hubbies plotted out their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimages to Paris. Anyone interested in taste and food bowed down before French cuisine. Kids studied more French than they did any other language, and college students flocked to spend a semester or two in Paris -- this seemed especially important to a certain class of girls, who appreciated learning "how to be a woman": ie., learning how to wear a scarf and boots, how to use makeup, how to conduct an affair, and how to use a bidet. Going to France was a way of symbolizing that you put such ooh-la-la values above (patooie) business, economic efficiency and convenience. It was an American's one stab at what Americans feel so divided about: Sophistication. Then the French lost their magic. When? How? And why? As far as I can tell, it happened around 1980. There was a micro-mini-genre of movies about American kids in France ("French Postcards" in 1979, and the immortal "Summer Lovers" in 1982). And, really, have we heard much about France as a cultural magnet since? Perhaps readers can fill in a few blanks here. Marie-France Pisier in "French Postcards" Why have Americans lost interest? Perhaps it's because we've made so much progress where quality-of-life questions go. Who needs France when American food has gotten better and American clothes have grown less dorky, and at a time when sex is, to put it mildly, not in short cultural supply? But perhaps the French themselves have blown it: A friend who lives in Paris tells me that even the food in Paris isn't good any more. What, in fact, does France have left to sell? I still find their fashions alluring, or at least the way they present them. I'd rather leaf through an issue of Marie-Claire than an issue of Playboy any day, and one fashion-crazy friend of mine still takes off for some serious Parisian shopping a couple of times a year. Camgirl, French-style Even on... posted by Michael at September 28, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Non Negotiable Demands redux
Michael As you may recall, yesterday I decided to go see “Barbershop” on the theory that it was my duty as a freedom-loving American to patronize any film that the P.C. patrol was trying to censor. Being the man of action I am, I took my mother-in-law, my daughter and her friend to see this dangerous work of art that very same night, contributing a cool $30 to the movie’s bottom line (when did they raise the price of a standard movie admission to $9.50?) Deeply Subversive Hit Movie The movie is a largely successful remake of Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” set in a modern-day poor black Chicago neighborhood. The hero, portrayed by Ice Cube, inherits a not-very-profitable family business (the titular barbershop). He, of course, has big dreams of his own and wants to ditch this unwanted inheritance. In the course of the film he comes to realize how much the community depends on his family’s barbershop and why it’s essentially up to him to defend the weaker members of that community, already menaced by urban blight and poverty, from the forces of evil represented by a sinister businessman/criminal. The director, Tim Story, although not as polished with his camera, has much the same touch as Capra did with actors, getting a series of energetic, vivid performances in the service of an ensemble comedy. (Rapper Eve, in particular, is a stand out in her first movie role.) Talented Girl The screenwriters, Mark Brown and Don D. Scott, made a rather interesting change in adapting the story, leaving out Clarence the angel of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and substituting for him the eccentric and ambiguous character of the barber Eddie. Played by Cedric the Entertainer and obviously representing the folk character of the “Trickster,” Eddie first enters the shop pretending to be a hold-up man and continues to stir things up throughout the film with his subversive opinions. These include a lack of reverence for the heroes of the civil rights movement; he seems to imply that putting such people on a pedestal undercuts the sense of personal moral responsibility and self-respect of the black community at large, whose own everyday life has a heroic element to it. This refusal to genuflect towards the P.C. altar is ostensibly what has landed the film in hot water with the P.C. patrol, although I’m guessing that Eddy’s belief in the redemptive quality of even a humble profession (cutting hair) and his insistence on complete freedom of expression within the sacred precincts of the black barbershop (“our country club”) is even more threatening to the patrol’s orthodoxy. Eddy is a one-man political pluralism movement, and obviously certain leaders in the black community who want followers rather than thinkers feel he needs to be stamped out, and fast. (Jesse Jackson and the King family have demanded “apologies” and Al Sharpton has threatened a boycott of the film if the producers don’t accede to his demand that Eddy’s central speech be censored from... posted by Friedrich at September 28, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Amiri Baraka
Friedrich -- Amiri Baraka, the African-American who is poet laureate of New Jersey, has written a poem entitled "Somebody Blew Up America" which includes these lines: Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day Why did Sharon stay away? James McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey, has asked Baraka to resign; Baraka has refused. Matthew Purdy writes about the mess for the New York Times here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 28, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Porn 101
Friedrich -- In the Weekly Standard, Matt Labash looks at a series of how-to videotapes entitled Porn 101, here. A caveat: it takes Labash, who seems determined to achieve a tone of dry bemusement, a few tedious paragraphs of disclaiming any real interest in porn before he starts delivering the ever-interesting goods. Earth to Matt: your interest in porn is prurient, our interest in porn is prurient, and that's ok. No need to keep your hands quite so clean. Sample passage: Keep in mind that there's a lot of downtime between scenes. "Bring something to read or needlepoint or something," says [Nina] Hartley. Likewise, bring slippers. Nothing's worse than spending a hard day astride your fellow actor, then wanting to take your heels off after the scene, but not having any slippers. "You don't want to walk around barefoot in some of these places," warns Hartley. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 28, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Friday, September 27, 2002


If I Were an Editor 6 redux
I made a major breakthrough today in my technological evolution which made me think of your posting, "The E-book Revolution." I actually ordered a book online from Amazon, and took delivery about an hour later. Well, actually, it was potentially ready for delivery an hour later; I had to download Microsoft "Reader" and then install and activate it. (Activating the software, by the way, involves telling lots and lots of information about yourself to Microsoft.) Anyway, after fooling around for about half an hour (and getting help from my staff computer professional) we got the Reader issue resolved, and then it only took a few minutes for the actual download. The book when it appeared came up on my screen formatted with really little pages. I guess that makes reading it on screen easier, but the result was that there were a daunting 756 pages to this rather short screed. Trying to skim the book, I got quite tired of hitting the "forward" button which takes a few seconds to operate each flip of the page. About page 168 I thought there must be a better way to read this, but I couldn't find any way to print the book out. I grant you, that's probably just my clutziness. And anyway, not being able to print the book out was for the best because I didn't really want to go through one-and-a-half reams of paper and three toner cartridges. It was a little frustrating when I actually found one useful sentence and I tried to block and copy it; the "copy" button appeared to be disabled. They could have just had a little sign pop-up at that point: Napster this, asshole! Ha ha ha ha ha. On top of that the book itself--"The Culture of Opera Buffa In Mozart's Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment"--turns out to have virtually no historical information on Viennese musical culture or even on Mozart. I mean, not even one funny anecdote about an opera singer. (How hard is it to dig up funny stories about opera singers--I ask you? The whole profession is an invitation to levity.) Let me sum up the book this way: I cannot imagine Mozart, despite a very healthy ego, managing to read this book all the way through, and it discusses more than one of his operas! I know, I know, I got what I deserve for disobeying Book Buying Rule #248--Never purchase any book with the word "poetics" in the title. Still, I'm feeling pretty "hip" and "groovey" about my technological prowess. That is, except for the fact that once I closed the Reader dialogue box the book disappeared and I can't find it on my hard drive anyplace. But hey, it was only $14.95--and it didn't cost me anything for shipping and handling! The Revolution Lives, My Techno-Brothers! Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Fun With Flash
Friedrich -- In my amateurish way, I enjoy following commercial art: ads, book jackets, posters, etc. My current fave amateurish observation to make is that Flash animations are having more influence on the general visual culture than any other form these days. I may be right, I may be completely wrong, as the Wife never tires of pointing out. But there's no question that the Flash animation field is a hopping one. Weebl's Stuff is a British website run by a guy who makes Flash animations in his spare time. Sample his work here. I think Weebl's a hoot. Be sure not to miss "Kitty Bash," featuring kittens and a bloody hammer. Hey, if Weebl is making these things in his spare time, that means his animations aren't strictly speaking commercial art. But they certainly represent something more than just a hobby. So should they be considered a kind of art-for-art's-sake fine art? But some of them are interactive games, which aren't usually considered art... Hmm: Maybe the time has come for me to revise some fundamental assumptions. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Stereotypes redux
Friedrich -- As a fan of stereotypes, I often find life hard these days, what with all the stereotype-bashing that goes on. Wouldn't life be a pleasingly looser thing if we could only take occasional note (within decent limits) of what caricatures-of-ourselves we all are? Still, I sometimes stumble across ethnic news (so to speak) that's heartening. Mexican-Americans, for instance, loved that TV ad with the talking chihuahua. A majority of Native Americans don't mind the way sports teams are sometimes named "Indians" or "Chiefs." An Italian-American friend of mine loves "The Sopranos" and says he'll "whack" anyone who disses the show. More such news this morning, via Tom King in the Wall Street Journal, who reports that, while a small number of Greek-Americans were offended by the way Greek-Americans were portrayed in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," the movie has not only been a big hit with Greek-Americans generally, it's now #2 at the box-office in Greece itself. Cheerily, Michael... posted by Michael at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Non Negotiable Demands
Michael Have you heard of the latest target of the P.C. Patrol? It is the movie "Barbershop", the number one movie at the American box office and written, produced, directed by, and featuring blacks. As the L.A. Times reported on September 25: Although the film is shaping up as one of the most successful movies with a strong African American theme, leaders such as [Jesse] Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and members of Parks' and King's families are incensed over one scene that pokes fun at Parks, King and Jackson. They have called for a public apology from the filmmakers and demanded that MGM remove the scene from its eventual home video release. Sharpton has gone so far as to threaten a boycott of the film if MGM does not reply to their requests by Friday. Apparently Jackson, who has not even seen the movie, maintains that certain historical figures should never be “disrespected”—apparently starting with him. In a telephone interview quoted in the Times, he maintains: “While we support these [black] actors, we still must have some line of dignity. That is nonnegotiable." The “offensive” characterizations are included in one character’s speech which also criticizes numerous other black public figures, including Rodney King and O.J. Simpson. MGM, to its credit said the studio would not issue an apology and would not censor the movie. As the Times story notes, the film is playing chiefly to black audiences: [Barbershop] has begun to cross over to a broader audience, although as of last weekend 60% of the audience was still African American. What is it, exactly, that Sharpton doesn’t want the black community to see? Free expression of opinions among his chosen constituency? I’m beginning to feel a patriotic duty to go see this movie. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Cultureblogs
Friedrich -- Do you marvel, as I do, at the paucity of cultureblogs? Political blogs are everywhere you look, me-blogs everywhere else. But cultureblogs? Not even enough to fill a screening room. Here are the pure culturebloggers I’m aware of: * The one-of-a-kind personality-kid and opera buff, Sasha Castel, here. (She does let fly on politics from time to time, but -- blush -- who doesn't?) * Kelly Jane Torrance, a newcomer to blogging and already the leader in the race for the year’s “most classy” award, here. That’s it, though there are other web enthusiasts who do something related. Pro writers, for instance, often include a blog as part of their personal site. An example: * The wittily resourceful and entertaining sci-fi novelist Neil Gaiman, here. And then there are the hybrids, bloggers who occasionally comment about the arts: * The fearless and ever-thoughtful A.C. Douglas, here, seems to split his blogging time about equally between politics and the arts. * Dave Trowbridge brings together his interests in sci-fi, German Shepherd dogs, religion, and poetry, here, showing a mind that's both mystical and down-to-earth, opinionated yet open-spirited. * The Canadian journalist Colby Cosh can give Andrew Sullivan some serious competition in terms of sheer volume of brainy-words-on-politics published daily. He pauses occasionally, though not often enough, to make an observation or a crack about rock and movies, here. * That impossible-to-categorize, multipurpose giant Steve Sailer (evo-bio specialist, immigration skeptic, movie reviewer), does what only he can do here. And there are the sites that might well be considered metacultureblogs. * Mobylives, delivering some of the best-informed inside-publishing chat available anywhere, here. * Arts & Letters Daily, here, for whom the “best of the web” Oscar has already been retired. Lord knows I’ve spent too much time surfing the blogosphere looking for fellow culturebloggers. But it’s still possible I’ve missed many, many sites. Do you know of any others? Do any readers out there know of any others? Culture fans: Don’t be such wimps! For god’s sake, stand up for your oddball set of interests! If you don’t, who will? Set down roots in the blogosphere while there’s still room! Don’t let the general culture pass you by yet again! Assert the importance of the aesthetic! Go! Go! Go! Culture fans, sheesh. Gotta love ‘em. Gotta kick ‘em in the butt occasionally, too. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

New Lefty Ploy
Friedrich -- At a liberal-media-elite party I was for some reason asked to attend last night, I encountered a lefty argumentation ploy I hadn't run across before. Here's how it goes: A rightie was being discussed, and someone said of her that she just wanted to be respected as a rightie; she wasn't a homophobe, a fascist, an environment-despoiler, etc. She was just a conservative. One lefty-media-elite type said: "So who's getting in her way?" Another lefty-media-elite type shrugged and said, "A little paranoid, eh?" Of course the media elite lean left, and of course they type anyone to the right of them as racists/homophobes/etc. (And of course they'll never admit it -- less, in my experience, because they're devious and more because they aren't aware it's the case: Lefty-ness is simply the water these fish swim in.) Bernard Goldberg has them nailed good; and, loose cannon though she may be, Ann Coulter is spot-on when she describes their attitudes. Still, what a great rhetorical ploy: Undercut the right's case by accusing them, in a very bored-and-blase tone, of paranoia, and of imagining things. (For all I know, apolitico that I am, righties may indeed tend to be paranoid.) What kind of response to this move do you see righties coming up with? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Art and Markets
Friedrich -- Many thanks for the fascinating rundown on the economics of the Elizabethan theater. Why don't art-history professors tell kids these things? I'm still reeling, all these years later, from the shock of discovering that most art hasn't been done out of the sheer love of doing it. I have nothing like your background in history, but I did stumble across one book on the topic of the economics of art that I found very useful, In Praise of Commercial Culture by an econ prof named Tyler Cowen. (Buyable here.) A history of art and markets, it's a little once-over-lightly (which may suit me better than it suits you), and he isn't good on the actual art. But he's a zillion times more down-to-earth, shrewd and better-informed about such topics as "making a living at this" than the art history profs are. Cowen teaches at George Mason, which seems to have a lively department -- Walter Williams, the libertarian econ columnist I enjoy so much, teaches there too. Cowen's own website is here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Short Stuff
Michael Perhaps you noticed this in the Los Angeles Times of September 25: Alligator Bites Off Man’s Arm at Garden in Florida That’s got to hurt sales at plant nurseries around the Sunshine State. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

New Godard Redux
Michael I must publicly praise your Godard piece. It was better than I hoped, and I was hoping for a lot. Your review is, itself, poetry. Your sensitivity to fugitive meanings, colors, textures, etc., combined with your willingness to comb through intellectual gravel (and French intellectual gravel at that) for emotional gold is quite impressive, at least to this doggedly linear thinker. It is an honor to blog with you. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 27, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thursday, September 26, 2002


Moviegoing: "In Praise of Love"
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Herr Doktor Friedrich Thanks for nagging me into catching the new Godard, "In Praise of Love." I had two completely different reactions to it. One was to vague out, doze, feel annoyed, and marvel that anyone should be expected to care (although I doubt Godard does expect anyone to care). The other was, here and there, to feel touched, moved and heartbroken. Most of the time, it's hard to imagine who'd be interested these days, apart from a handful of graying old '60s-relic film buffs. The film is divided (in a very fancy way) into two parts -- no three-act structure for Jean-Luc. The first half, mostly a snooze, is in a very sumptuous, solemn black and white akin to Bill Brandt's sooty views of London. (Though this was Godard's first time filming in Paris in 30 years, he certainly wasn't feeling joyful about it.) There's an estheticized melancholy everywhere Godard takes you. He turns the actors away from the camera most of the time -- I wouldn't recognize the actor who played the main character if he stood before me now. This main character seems to have a project of some sort in mind, though he doesn't know what he wants it to be: a cantata? A novel? In any case, he's interviewing actors and is very taken by one young woman who has an odd kind of beauty. There are scenes by the river, among train tracks, in cafes. It's all jumbled up. Noises cut in for presumably nihilistic/modernistic reasons. White-on-black intertitles interrupt the flow. There's a kind of placid acceptance of sadness. My attention wandered, and I dozed off. When I woke up, the girl the lead character was fascinated by had committed suicide. Cut to the second part of the film, shot on video. This part has its share of annoyingnesses, but it also has more beauty and poetry. It takes place a couple of years before the opening section. In it, the main (Jean-Luc-ish) character seems to be doing research for a project. He's in Brittany, meeting with old members of the French Resistance. Their granddaughter (or grandniece, or some such) shows up, and darned if it isn't the young woman who committed suicide in the first part of the film. Aha: Conceptual hijinks! The second section's in the past, but it's in color, which feels more present, but video's of the future, so everything feels flipped, or maybe like a sock being pulled inside out. A nostalgia-for-the-dream-of-a-future-that-may-never-be kind of effect. Je suis sorta impressed, M. Godard. As I'm not the first to observe, Godard's a rarity in this sense: while he seems to have lost all his verve and much of his interest in life and movies, his moviemaking technique has become, if anything, more delicate and refined than ever. But as a moviemaker, he's also become something of an empty shell, prone to dwelling on the empty-shellness of it all. No surprise, really; he may have burned up everything... posted by Michael at September 26, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Short Stuff 3
Michael In the New York Time's World Briefing of September 26: GREENLAND: U.S. TO RETURN A TOWN You know, you just shouldn't lend some people stuff. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 26, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Wednesday, September 25, 2002


Economic History of Shakespeare
Michael Given my previous discussion of cities and their artistic “golden ages,” I thought it might be entertaining to look at the economic underpinnings of a cultural high water mark. I chose Elizabethan London during the golden age of English theater. My discussion is largely based on Peter Hall’s book, “Cities in Civilization” (which I would definitely recommend.) Peter Hall London was Europe’s most dynamic city at the end of the 16th century. It had grown from approximately 120,000 people in 1550 to 200,000 in 1600. (In comparison, Paris had only 70,000 people in 1600.) And London's growth had paralleled that of England, which had doubled in population between the 1520s and the 1640s. The English economy grew even more rapidly: agriculture prospered because of the significant increase in demand for food, and London became the leading center of the international woolen cloth trade after Antwerp was sacked in 1576. The overall European money supply had grown rapidly as a result of the gold and silver being brought in by Spain from Latin America; the resulting inflation had proved good for capitalists because it lowered the cost of labor and debt. The great merchants had prospered mightily during this “Age of Exploration”--a prosperous London merchant could earn 2-3000 pounds a year, making him the financial equal of an aristocrat. The total volume of trade increased rapidly in the early 17th century, notably between England and the countries around the Baltic, the Mediterranean, India and the Americas 17th Century Globablization During this period the upper middle and middle classes were visibly prospering. Increased social mobility seems to have led to the breakdown of social tradition. Education was on the rise, with the number of students at Oxford and Cambridge growing from 450 a year to nearly 1000 a year between 1575-1642, far in excess of the growth in the numbers of the aristocracy. And this democratization of education happened despite the rising cost of a university education: 20 pounds a year in 1600. (For comparison, a common laborer earning minimum wage made about 8 pounds a year--in the unlikely event that he worked steadily throughout the year ) The number of active lawyers tripled between 1570 and the 1630s; the Inns of the Court where they were trained was a center of theatrical activity and the students were active playgoers. London was the epicenter of all the new economic activity. The city’s new affluent class demanded entertainment. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 had left the English with a sense of infinite possibilities and confidence. Continental travel became a fad, and the classical manuscripts brought back from Europe and translated into English were hugely significant for English culture generally, and, of course, its theatre. Acting troupes started putting on so many plays (using converted inns as outdoor theaters) in London during the 1560s that the city authorities took notice, fearing riots or the plague (not without reason--the theaters were shut down every ten years or so during outbreaks.) In... posted by Friedrich at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

Hollywoodize Yourself
Friedrich -- If you have a snapshot and 25 bucks, you can be the star of your own George Hurrell production, here. Digital: be your own fantasy. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

NEA Smackdown
Friedrich -- A reader from rural Arkansas responds to a comment I made a while back about how much I'd like to see the National Endowment for the Arts terminated: Yes, the NEA funds some crappy art, and down in the Never-Never-Land of the Village that's probably what it's best known for. But there are a lot of rural areas that would never encounter the arts (save through TV), were it not for the NEA and other publicly funded organizations of that ilk. I'm forever grateful to the NEA and its Arkansas equivalent for financing the ArtMobile, an art museum the size of a Winnebago which rolled into my high school when I was in ninth grade (and never returned, by the way). That was the first time I ever saw a Rembrandt in person. Granted, it was a very small Rembrandt, and a pencil sketch at that, but it still beat the hell out of those grainy slides from art class. A private company would never have done anything like that, because there was no money or publicity in it. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Glenn Gould
Friedrich -- Arts & Letters Daily, pointing out that the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould would have turned 70 today, includes a pinata of links to Gould sources and sites, here. Among the offerings, Robert Everett-Green's short appreciation in the Globe and Mail is a standout, here. Have you ever gone through a Gould phase? It's hard not to become a Gould fiend once you catch the bug. He was intellectually brilliant (classical-music performers are usually about as intellectually keen as actors and painters are), was an entertaining and enlightening critic ("The Glenn Gould Reader" shows his brains and writing chops off well), and, according to people who know these things a zillion times better than I do, probably the greatest performer of contrapuntal keyboard music who ever lived. In his performing and his writing he was a real philosopher of music. His two versions of "The Goldberg Variations" are legendary. Of his other recordings (the Wife is a longtime Gould nut and has been my guide here), I especially love his version of Bach's English Suites and his album of pieces by the Renaissance composers Byrd, Gibbons and Sweelinck. The Canadian film "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould," written by Don McKellar, directed by Francois Girard and starring Colm Feore as Gould, is a fab intro to Gould (it stays very close to the facts), and an interesting film in its own right. It attempts to give a multi-perspecitival, nonlinear, musical account of Gould's life -- ie., Gould seen entirely in Gouldian terms. Gould, by the way, died at 50, as complete a physical wreck as Elvis was at the end, and probably as drug-dependent (although Gould apparently used prescription drugs only). Amazon has a good intro-to-Gould page, with many links to books, videos and recordings, here. By coincidence, I happen this week to be leafing around "American Normal," a book about people with Asperger's Syndrome by Lawrence Osborne, which, despite its title, has a chapter devoted to Gould. (On sale here.) Did he or didn't he have Asperger's, which is often described (apparently semi-accurately) as a mild form of autism? Gould was a beyond-quirky character, with more than a little of the idiot-savant about him. He dressed in wool even in summer, abandoned the concert life as soon as he was able to, subsisted largely on arrowroot biscuits, hummed while he played, and preferred to interact with people over the phone -- a behavior package apparently highly suggestive of Asperger's. According to Osborne, the question has become a highly-charged one, with some Gouldians and members of the Asperger's community saying "no question," and many other fans (and even some Asperger types) saying "no way." In one passage, a Gould scholar named Dr. Tim Maloney, who is convinced that Gould indeed had Asperger's, says to Osborne: He was on his own planet. No one else really mattered to him. He was alone. He loved being alone. According to him, and he said it countless times, the artist had to be... posted by Michael at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (5) comments

Free Reads -- Barnes Foundation
Friedrich -- What in the world is really going on at the Barnes Foundation (website here)? The great art collection, left in 1951 by Dr. Albert C. Barnes to be housed (and very quirkily displayed) in his mansion outside Philadelphia, is in bad financial trouble, and there's now talk of breaking Barnes' will in order to merge the Foundation with several others. Things have been bizarre in Barnes-land before. Dr. Barnes specified that the collection was never to tour, for instance, or to be displayed in color reproductions -- yet a large part of it was put on tour in 1993, accompanied by a color catalogue. No matter how bad the place's financial situation, these repeated violations of Barnes' will have got to be giving pause to anyone who wants to leave behind an art collection. Ralph Blumenthal writes about the mess for the NYTimes here. Roger Kimball gives a more opinionated view for the WSJ here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Walter Williams
Friedrich -- Week after week, Walter Williams makes succinct, snappy cases for libertarian positions. This week, here, he examines what's really meant by the word "right," as in a "right to this" or a "right to that." Sample passage: Decent housing, good medical care and decent jobs are not rights at all, at least not in a free society -- they're wishes. As such, I'd agree with most Americans because I also wish that everyone had decent housing, a high paying job and good medical care. Best Michael... posted by Michael at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Scruton on Islam
Friedrich -- The brilliant Roger Scruton has a book on Islam and the west coming out shortly, onsale at Amazon here. This week, National Review Online is running a series of excerpts from it. Installments so far: here, here, and here. Sample passage: People in the West live in a public space in which each person is surrounded and protected by his rights, and where all behavior that poses no obvious physical threat is permitted. But people in Muslim countries live in a space that is shared but private, where nobody is shielded by his rights from communal judgment, and where communal judgment is experienced as the judgment of God. Western habits, Western morals, Western art, music, and television are seen not as freedoms but as temptations. And the normal response to temptation is either to give in to it, or to punish those who offer it. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Short Stuff-2
Michael In the September 25 Wall Street Journal, a headline: Mexico's Crusade to End Corruption Stalls Government Sure, pick on poor Mexico. Like the same thing wouldn't happen anywhere else. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Maybe We Need a Sports Page
Michael My wife is a fanatical tennis player, and as a result we have lots of tennis-oriented publications laying around, none of which have ever brought even a twitch to my lips while reading them (chiefly, I admit, in the bathroom.) As a result, I was stunned to pick up a rag called Inside Tennis and discover, well, humor. In particular, the "Short Shots" column, also oddly known as the IT Notebook. One example: Justin Time: Just as our spirits were getting soggy due to all the mid-tournament rain [at the U.S. Open], Justin (low ranking, high entertainment value) Gimelstob came on the air to analyze how he defeated Edwin Kempes, No. 249 in the world. A yoga kind of guy, Gimelstob referred to himself as a "peaceful warrior" (think New Age writer Dan Millman) and confided that he sweats more than most human beings because of his "Jewish nerves." Gimelstob admitted, "The mainstay of my game is significant prayer," and added that "hitting a triple-bouncer to the net post is never a good strategy...[in fact], my game plan then was to sweat on the court and hope Kempes falls on a wet spot." Time and time again, Gimelstob referred to Brad Gilbert's curious forehand (e.g., "I greased that point and 'Gilberted' my way through.") Then Justin admitted, "I was one point from sick manic depression." When he started to cramp, he joked with the trainer, pleading, "Bring out the good stuff--the stuff the Spaniards use." Ultimately, Gimelstob admitted, "Like many things in my life that go wrong, I just blame my parents." Justin the Great If Gimelstob decides to hang up his racquet, I'd like to offer him a spot on our blog. Are you with me on this? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thong World
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- Are you as amazed as I am by the culture's embrace of the thong? I'm surprised I haven't read more about this phenomenon. Lord knows we've seen a lot of thongs in recent years. But who has tried to make sense of the vogue for them? Camille Paglia is one. She argued somewhere, persuasively I thought, that the butt awareness of the last decade or so has to do with a couple of things: the way the American population has become less vanilla Anglo-German (ie., breast-fixated) and more dark and Latin (ie., butt-fixated), and the way the aesthetics of pop culture have become more frankly gay. I'm not sure I can do better than that. Can you? Sure fun to think about, however unsucessfully. Here's my attempt to initiate a conversation on this vital topic. Back in paleolithic days, thongs and g-strings were naughty-naughty, worn by strippers, or by obliging sex partners in the boudoir. In the '80s, thongs came to mean pumpy, muscular aggression, as some women began wearing thong-back ("t-backs," weren't they called?) leotards to the gym. And wasn't it about then that some European and South American women began to wear thongs and g-strings on the beach? About 10 years ago, visiting a friend whose daughter was then about 13, I was given a tour of the apartment. On the wall of the daughter's bedroom, she'd taped ripped-out pages from teen fashion magazines. One of them was a page of panties, and several of the panties were thongs. Heavens! Young teen girls were now thinking of thongs as everyday undie options. Thongs were becoming poppy, peppy, healthy. A couple of years ago I noticed my first thong line. (The upside of doing a lot of walking on crowded NYC sidewalks is getting to watch a lot of women's behinds.) This one crisp, confident woman striding along before me was wearing a clingy skirt that made it clear she was wearing a thong. There was no doubt about it, it was meant to be noticed. Up till then, I'd thought of thong undies as something worn to avoid the dreaded "panty line." This was the first time I'd seen the "thong line" as its own signifier. But of what? I'm struck these days by a couple of things: how ubiquitous thongs have become (the Wife just brought home a few that she picked up on sale at the Gap), and how, given the new, stretchy-smooth fabrics and cuts, it seems downright necessary for women to wear thongs. Traditionally-cut panties, worn under cyberstreamlined clothes, make even a pretty-good butt look like a lumpy sack of potatoes. In any case, thongs these days seem to be everywhere, which is bliss. But, then again, they're everywhere, which also means they don't have that old sweaty, prurient, uncomfortable, assholey-buttocky, naughty allure. The element of forbidden, wicked surprise is gone. Instead, thongs are now part of the well-prepared young woman's portfolio, along with the cell phone, the... posted by Michael at September 25, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Tuesday, September 24, 2002


DVD Journal: "Fatal Attraction"
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- A hundred years ago, when I was an even bigger hick than I am now, and I loved the arts but knew zero about them, I used to imagine that if I could only meet the artists whose work I loved most, we'd hit it off instantly. How could we not connect when their work affected me on such a deep, personal level? Then I spent years and years as an arts reporter, as well as living in the media and arts world, and I learned a sad fact -- that sometimes you like the artists whose work you like and sometimes you don't. Sometimes they strike you as real assholes. And that sometimes (even more of a shock) you hit it off really well with artists whose work you aren't crazy about, and maybe even look down on. My useless, grizzled-old-vet generalization: You just can't know in advance. Adrian Lyne: Drinking buddy I was thinking about this tonight because the Wife and I rented the DVD of "Fatal Attraction" and watched it with the Adrian Lyne commentary track on. I never liked an Adrian Lyne movie. I thought he was facile, silly, commercial, all surfaces, a symbol of everything wrong, blah blah, froth froth ... Then, doing a story about something or other, I interviewed him for a good half hour and found him perfectly charming. And, wouldn't you know it, on the "Fatal Attraction" DVD, he's once again charming -- diffident, appreciative of everyone else's contributions, generous to the performers, willing to laugh at himself and to confess to uncertainty. Maybe it's all an act, but I'd still rather have a drink with him than I would with many artists whose work I love. And thank god for "Unfaithful." Have you seen it? Really brilliant, I thought: adult, subtle and amoral, open-ended and "objective" in the French fashion, fabulously performed, with moments of surprising visual poetry. Better than (and quite different from) the Chabrol picture it was based on. Phew: now, if I ever do have a drink with him, I can tell him quite honestly how much I admire his work. And, hey, tonight "Fatal Attraction" looked pretty darn good. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 24, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Every Picture Tells A Story
Michael When I went to lunch today I lost my head and took not only one but two books with me: E.H. Gombrich’s “The Image & The Eye” and a book of reproductions of Gil Elvgren’s paintings. This sort of thing is always a mistake. I can never decide which book to read, and often try to look at both of them and get horribly dizzy. Anyway, I decided to start with theory and began with Gombrich’s essay on “Action and Expression in Western Art.” There my eye lit on the following passage: [T]here must be a great difference between a painting which illustrates a known story and another that wishes to tell a story. No history exists of this second category, the so-called anecdotal painting…It is likely, however, that the student of non-verbal communication would find a good deal of interest in these systematic attempts to condense a typical dramatic scene into a picture without any…contextual aids... Wow, I thought, I have an example of that right here. I opened the book of Elvgren’s paintings and my attention was immediately drawn by this narrative masterwork: Obviously Elvgren had decided to depict the intense drama of the witness facing the opposing attorney. Of course, space considerations apparently dictated the elimination of the opposing attorney, but Elvgren’s artistic mastery overcomes this by showing the young woman’s twisting posture as she writhes under his savage cross-examination. Of course, her expression is a bit ambiguous; why do you suppose she is smiling and batting her eyelashes? Perhaps she sees her brother in the courtroom crowd, and wants to let him know how well she is bearing up under the strain. Well, even if the context is a little unclear, I think Elvgren’s penetrating analysis of the human condition is quite powerfully rendered. I went back to Gombrich: One could think of other topics and social functions which have driven the artist towards the exploration of non-verbal communication. Advertising, for instance, frequently demands the signalling of rapturous satisfaction on the part of the child who eats his breakfast cereals, the housewife who uses a washing powder or the young man smoking a cigarette. To find an example, knowing that Elvgren had done advertising work, I again leafed through the book of his paintings, until I saw this example of what appeared to be art for a home workshop ad. I thought, this must explain why the woman in the advertisement is making such a kissy little mouth while feeling the edge of the axe blade—she’s surprised at how sharp her new grindstone has made her dull old axe! It was a little unusual, granted, to use a woman in the ad at all, of course. I mean, you’d think grindstones would be more of a guy’s thing—and sharpening axes, too. And her choice of legwear is a bit unorthodox for a workshop, even if it is at home—I don’t think my old shop teacher would have thought that sitting so close to a grindstone... posted by Friedrich at September 24, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Short stuff
Michael, I noticed the following item in the Wall Street Journal's "What's News" column for September 24: Dole shares surged on expectations of a...sweetened bid for the pineapple company. Well, that would only be appropriate. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 24, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Crunchy Cons rereredux
Friedrich -- Before letting go of the subject, can I point out a few things that I value in Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Conservatives" piece? * I celebrate it as a journalistic gesture. Dreher's a primarily political person (a PPP) daring to remind other PPPs that many if not most people aren't PPPs. Bravo to that. An unpolitical person myself, I favor (partly as a consequence of being unpolitical) smaller government, strong national defense, and freer markets, and I object to affirmative action and most social-justice meddling. These positions strike me as sensible and humane public-policy positions. But in my private life, I enjoy erotic French art novellas, edgy off-off-Broadway theater, Bertrand Blier films, well-preserved old neighborhoods and buildings, Kanda Bongo Man, Glenn Gould, Poussin, fusion cuisine, Son House, some crazy-lefty artist friends, and a few kinky web sites. A PPP might well have a hard time with this; I don't, and I don't see why I should -- my political views and personal pleasures are all, as far as I'm concerned, about leading the good life. Thanks to Dreher's piece, maybe a few PPPs will recall that politics is best when it serves the good life, not when it dictates it. M. Friedman, K. Bongo Man: Inconsistency? What inconsistency? * I wonder if you and I differ on one point. Your view seems to be that lefties are always useless and wrong. I take lefty criticisms of life-under-capitalism somewhat differently; I sometimes find them useful, and often agree with them. Pop culture generally is vulgar, the opening of everything to freemarket principles often does generate a lot of ugliness and resentment, people do pursue getting-and-spending as though it were a religion, we do seem to be living in something more and more resembling "the society of the spectacle," etc. (Hey, these lefty critiques sound like the criticisms of market liberalism that traditionalist-conservatives make! But I suspect I'm not the first to notice this.) What I find awful about leftyism isn't the perceptions and critiques, it's the remedies and solutions, as well as the dream that every problem has a solution, preferably a government one. In my view, lefties are like children: overexcitable and full of naive fantasies, potential little tyrants who ought to grow up and sometimes need to be spoken sharply to. We need to defend ourselves against their delusions and enthusiasms. But, like children, they're also sometimes able to see things in fresh and charming new ways. And their energy can be intoxicating as well as infuriating. So, like Dreher, I tend to react sympathetically to at least some lefty critiques. Like him, I also say, good lord, a little perspective here, please: even if some people are stuffing too much junk food into their fat faces, at least they aren't going hungry. And let's remember that on any sensible scale of evil, a dumb sitcom ranks mighty low. All that said, I'll be damned before I develop the habit of eating that shitty food or watching those... posted by Michael at September 24, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Social History of Advertising
Michael I believe you once expressed the opinion that advertising was the true offspring of the traditional visual arts, serving business today with the same subtlety and skill as painting, sculpture and architecture once served church and state. I got to thinking about this, and I guess there’s not much question in my mind that advertising is sort of the “essence” of all pop culture art forms, the way math is the "essence" of the hard sciences. So over the weekend I picked up a book by Philippe Lorin on “5 Giants of Advertising.” While this book reads as if it had been written to the publisher’s specs in about a week (and then translated into English), it did introduce me to a remarkable individual, Albert Lasker. Lasker is “the founder of the modern advertising industry” according to the website of the American National Business Hall of Fame. During his life he was a successful journalist, art collector, inspiration behind the creation of the National Institutes of Health, part-owner of the Chicago Cubs and, as you might expect, really rich guy. However, he is remembered in advertising chiefly for creating the first modern American agency, Lord & Thomas, and for playing a significant role in the launching of a whole series of products that changed the way Americans live. That's Mister Lasker to you Lasker’s first exposure to changing-the-world via advertising came at the turn of the century while he was a Chicago-based ad salesman and copywriter making a lot of trips to Battle Creek, Michigan. This diminutive city was the epicenter of the newfangled packaged cereal industry, in which as many as 24 companies fought out the “Battle of Battle Creek” for commercial dominance. Eventually Post and Kellog were the last men standing, but the true significance was that by the time it was all over, oatmeal and home-made grits had been replaced across America by packaged cereal. As Lorin observes, “[t]his experience taught him…that a good product supported by advertising could revolutionize consumer habits throughout the country overnight.” A few years later, Lasker got a chance to try his hand at this game when the California Fruit Growers Exchange (later known as Sunkist) became a client. The fruit growers were in the process of cutting down many of their orange trees, as the current market demand wasn’t large enough to justify the acreage in cultivation. This outraged Lasker (who didn’t like wasting natural resources like mature fruit trees) and led him to suggest that the growers needed to sell Americans on drinking orange juice in addition to eating the fruit. It’s kind of weird to realize that one guy was responsible for the mass consumption of orange juice. Drink an orange? No one-hit-wonder, Lasker went on to launch such consumer staples as Pepsodent (the first mass market toothpaste), Kotex (the first mass-market sanitary napkin), and Kleenex (well, you know.) He was also the guiding hand behind Lucky Strike cigarettes and tobacco advertising targeted specifically at women. And this... posted by Friedrich at September 24, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Sunday, September 22, 2002


If I Were an Editor 6
Friedrich -- If I were an editor, I'd commission a piece on the theme of: "The E-book Revolution Is Over, and E-books Have Won." Did you follow any of the publicity and press about E-books over the last few years? Big question: How will we be reading in the electronic future? A few devices got manufactured, some novels and nonfiction were issued in e-formats. Squabbles erupted over e-rights, which were assumed to be worth plenty. Publishers got terrified, authors' organizations waved flags, stories ran in magazines, segments ran on news shows. E-books were the next big thing; they were set to explode... And then: kerflop, or such is the conventional wisdom. No one really liked using the machines and few people bought them. Stephen King perpetrated an e-publishing stunt or two, then lost interest. So how could I argue that E-books have won? In fact, my headline is just a come-on. What I'd argue instead is that the discussion was always a little off the mark. E-books, E-books...What's this fixation on "books"? Why haven't we been focusing instead on the broader issue of reading and writing? When I do, I notice that I now do 99% of my writing electronically. I also notice that I'm doing more and more of my reading electronically. Last night, for instance, I spent a couple of hours surfing the web instead of reading the book that's on my desk (Machado de Assis' really amazing "Esau and Jacob," as it turns out). I'm certain that I'm reading more electronically-displayed words these days than I am words on paper. Even the world of on-paper reading has been transformed by electronics. Books and magazines are being created electronically -- in word processors, then in programs like Quark and Photoshop. (And if you don't think word processors, Quark and Photoshop have had a big impact on the look and feel, and probably the substance, of books and magazines, I'm pretty sure you don't work in the publishing business.) Let's not even talk about the impact of the databases that bookstores, distributors, warehousers and publishers nearly all rely on these days. It was 20th-century sentimentality to think that the victory of electronics wouldn't really be complete until books themselves had become electronic. In the 21st century, why let "the book" carry such symbolic weight, when, looked at more objectively, "the book" has almost no significance? It isn't even a cultural form, like a gangster movie or a dictionary. It's just a container, akin to a box or a cupboard; it just houses words, ideas, drama, images, whatever. Why use it as a standard by which to measure anything? Though, as it turns out, the transforming of nearly everything into data does seem to have a characteristic impact on how that everything is used and experienced. Once digitized, material will get sliced and diced; it becomes chunky. Users will tend to search out a one-blast-after-another experience. (Ie., click here, poke around a bit; then click there.) Digitized information is conveniently... posted by Michael at September 22, 2002 | perma-link | (2) comments

Saturday, September 21, 2002


A Good Day's Handwringing redux
Michael Thanks for the tip regarding Robert Fulford's article in Canada's National Post. He examines how universities neglect what the public expects them to do--that is, educate students--to pursue their true priority: research. The article reviews a recent book by two political scientists at the University of Alberta, Tom Pocklington and Allan Tupper, "No Place to Learn: Why Universities Aren't Working." You can read the entire article here. A selection from Fulford's article: Pocklington and Tupper go so far as to question the principle that research and teaching are interdependent and that good researchers make good teachers. This is a sacred belief in academe, but no one has ever demonstrated it; the only evidence for it is anecdotal, the kind that professors reject when it's offered by students. Anyway, say Pocklington and Tupper, if that idea is valid, why do universities reward good researchers by lightening their "teaching load?" They also argue that professors, driven to justify themselves, often do research of no value to anyone. By the way, I'm not sure I ever mentioned a friend of mine who dropped out of our Lousy Ivy League university for a year and who took some classes back home at a very unprestigious local college (at best, one notch up from a community college.) When he returned, I asked him about how the classes were, expecting from what he had told me about the school that they would be a joke. His reply: "Actually, what was surprising was how much better the instruction was." Shocked, I asked him how such a rinky-dink place could offer better instruction than our august institution. "Well," he said, pondering that question, "I guess it's because they work at it. It's like their job, you know?" Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 21, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Conservatives and Art reredux
Friedrich -- A political scientist writes in to remind us that the two strongest grassroots constituencies for the Republican party are Protestant fundamentalists and small business people. The first have always been anti-urban and anti-intellectual, going back to the 1920s backlash against religious modernism (and earlier backlashes against what they saw as an effete, overeducated clergy). (Some of the more thoughtful religious conservatives have admitted that their movement has been hurt by a lack of intellectual candlepower). They're not a likely constituency to support art (unless you mean the "Left Behind" novels). The second have never been much interested in art, either. That's not to say there aren't plenty of conventional suburban Republicans who go to museums or attend concerts. And of course, it's money donated by Fortune 500 types (usually Republicans) that keep the arts afloat. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 21, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Women's Mags
Friedrich -- The magazine industry is going through what many say is its worst period in decades. All sectors are suffering -- except one. According to the Economist (online, but subscription only), the women's glossies are not just thriving but booming. Why? Two reasons. The first is that, in a gloomy era, advertisers seem to prefer seeing their ads run next to pretty pictures rather than downbeat stories. The other, and larger, reason is that, despite the recession, American women continue to buy and spend as enthusiastically as ever. Sample passage: Certain items, such as luxury watches, cars or mobile telephones, seem to be as content nestling next to articles entitled "I'm a monster in bed" or "The truth behind the Britney backlash" as they once were amid stories on corporate strategy. You go, girls! Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 21, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Crunchy Cons, Reredux
Michael I got around to checking out the on-line version of "Granola Conservatives" by the National Review’s Rod Dreher which you recommended. I agree that it is quite interesting and I'd like to respond to it. For those of you who haven't read it, Dreher’s main thesis is that despite being a conservative, in some respects his life and values have "more in common with left-wing counterculturalists than with many garden-variety conservatives.” Garden Variety Conservatives? I have little to argue with Dreher's somewhat obvious (but true) point that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in anybody’s philosophy, and his more subtle suggestion that one should always look closely at what you can learn from your intellectual opponents. After all, these people spend a lot of time engaged with exactly the same issues that engage you--they're bound to dig up something you should think about. But Dreher takes his argument further, using two examples where he thinks lefties have a point that conservatives are not taking. The first is that capitalism, with its emphasis on economic growth, can be bad for the environment, and that conservatives often fail to support environmentally-friendly policies or will even actively oppose them. The second is that modern capitalist society creates a sort of relentless, debased, lowest-common denominator culture, leaving Dreher little choice but to--eeek!--seek relief from National Public Radio and PBS. (The horror!) Regarding the environment, I can only analyze my own feelings about this in detail. I would be lying if I denied that I constantly feel suspicious of environmentalism. Why? To be honest, it bothers me that the environmental "movement" is so clearly just a new vessel that has been filled with the same old anti-capitalist wine that used to slosh around in the socialist/communist winesack. I don't think it is unnatural to be suspicious of a movement that seems so frankly opportunistic and disingenuous about its arguments, if constant in its goals. But this is a sort of ad hominen argument; forgetting environmentalism, what of the environment itself? As a father and a link in a genetic chain that I hope will still be going strong many generations in the future, I think one would have to be insane to be indifferent to the fate of the environment. However, I still have reservations about the ways and means of current-day left-wing 'command and control' environmentalism. Let me give a real-world example of why I have these reservations. There is a land use dispute taking place in my home town. A large (3,000 home) residential development, backed by a major savings & loan, is stalled because of the presence of an endangered animal. Now, I live in a neighborhood which is in the next valley over and just as environmentally un-friendly as the proposed development but which got built before the Endangered Species Act was passed. Nobody in my neighborhood gives a damn about the threat to this endangered animal or pretends to; they oppose this development because... posted by Friedrich at September 21, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Film vs. Digital, rerereredux
Friedrich -- A conversation in ICG between the cinematographers Bill Bennett, David Darby and Allen Daviau, here. (It's a site with frames, so once there you'll then have to click on the feature on the righthand side that says "evolution or revolution.") Their topic is film vs. hi-def video. Sample passage: Bennett: In Hi-Def demonstrations, the manufacturers carefully select scenes where video does look like film. And you can, shooting in very controlled situations, create scenes where the image looks very similar. But, in other situations and in broader use, a child could tell the difference...In the piece that was shot digitally, the green outside the window was a bright green mass. Whereas in the piece that was shot on film, you could see individual blades of grass. There's detail there. The ferns blowing in the breeze were discernable. Darby: Video is great for documentaries. If you're all about gathering information, then shoot video. But if you're specifying the information and having control over it, for the time being, you absolutely have to shoot film. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 21, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Friday, September 20, 2002


Time-stopping Redux
Michael Did you know there is a whole niche of er, erotic literature called "time stopping?" I'd tell you more but it's not my bag and I didn't poke into it. I'm always surprised to see how sexual fetishes and fantasies, which people usually consider deeply private, are almost always common to many. And, of course, since the Internet came along, shared among many. (Hey, you name the fantasy--furry people, shrinking or growing people, gender-switching, smoking, hypnotizing your hot schoolteacher into being a bit more friendly--there's a community for you online, with an associated literature.) I'm also surprised by the ways in which culture, whether "high" or "pop," seems to often be informed by "underground" sexual literature. Wasn't it Delacroix who commented that the arts of his time were covertly saturated with the influence of the Marquis de Sade? What was Delacroix reading? You could do a whole Ph.D. thesis on the meaning for modern pop culture of Betty Page, who modelled for Irving Klaw's (classic name!)rather furtive plain brown wrapper publications in the 1950s--I've given up counting the number of references I've seen to her in the past 10 years. A few days ago I was rather surprised to see Michelle Pfieffer on a woman's magazine cover wearing a black dress that overtly refers to rubber/PVC- fetish ware. (Although, thinking of her "cat suit" in Batman, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.) Betty and Michelle--sisters under the skin? Ubiquitous pop culture and still-ghettoized erotic culture are only separated by a razor's edge--and it's gotten to be a very sharp razor indeed since the launch of MTV. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Currin Redux
Friedrich -- Thanks for tipping me off to John Currin. I enjoyed the interview with him that you linked to. I notice that at one point he says: I like things to be still, I'm interested in a still image...There's a pleasure in freezing movement, a voyeuristic pleasure in being able to see one moment and look at it forever. So true. Have you ever read Nicolson Baker's "The Fermata"? On the same theme: the hero can stop time. Baker: Time-stopper The only thing, it turns out, that Baker's hero can think of to do with the stopped time is to walk around undressing and feeling up women. A wonderful creepy/sexy/funny novel, the only Nicholson Baker book where I felt the obsessiveness and virtuosity got in synch and paid off. Plus some amazingly specific (and bizarrely convincing) descriptions of what time, when stopped, feels like. I wonder how John Currin and Nicholson Baker would get on. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Gombrich Redux
Friedrich -- I think you're really onto something when you bring Gombrich and evo-bio together. They're both useful; they both help explain the arts. They may not explain everything, but they get you in the ballpark, and that counts for a lot. Gombrich I don't think I ever encountered any explanation Marx-derived or Freud-derived that did me any good. Structuralism, decon -- fooey to all that. Back when we were in college, discussions of the arts were often discussions of greatness and transcendence. I found and find that kind of discussion almost useless. I may be interested in your opinion, or the Wife's, or for that matter a given professor's. But only because I know and enjoy and respect you. (Even so, I do have hopes that your opinion will then open out onto something further -- observations, jokes, musings.) Besides, discussions about what's great lead to stupid arguments ("X is better!" "No, Y is better!") and tend to get stupidly political ("X should be in the canon!" "No, Y should!"). Who cares? Well, someone probably does and should, but not me. And what's really to be said about "greatness" or "transcendence" anyway? Although I can enjoy critical and fannish rhapsodizing up to a point. For whatever dubious reasons, I'm more interested in what's helpful. And what I tend to find helpful is the study of artistic forms -- their history, their components. Narrative genres, visual genres, musical types and structures, etc -- these are the building blocks of art, as well as the grammar of it. Where did the various artistic forms and genres come from? That's where I think evolutionary psychology comes in useful. They evolved. From what? From innate structures, probably, as well as from what showed itself from experience to work over time. For instance, when I first read my favorite novel, Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma," I read it in isolation from most of the lit and entertainment of its time, so I (dimly) had the impression that Stendhal made it all up. Wow, what a god of creativity he seemed. Stendhal Since then, I've learned that for content he was lifting from a particular kind of Italian romantic narrative, and for structure he was leaning heavily on the then-very-popular swashbuckler-romance form. My respect for Stendhal hasn't diminished -- hey, he was a human: good job! -- and my enjoyment of the novel hasn't either. This is simply the way art works. Nobody makes it all up. Structures and forms evolve; and, as they do, artists do their best to add their two cents to the mix. But, also, so much seems to be innate. I'm no scientist, but I can't see how anyone can argue that it isn't part of being human to try to read figurative imagery into anything we see; to try to read narrative and/or argument into anything long-ish that we read; to hear and/or look for melody into anything we're asked to listen to as music; and to try to... posted by Michael at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Crunchy Cons, Reredux
Friedrich -- The debate over how to handle environmental challenges is a good one. (You go, free-market environmentalists, as far as I'm concerned.) I'd love to hear more of your ideas on the subject. I think Dreher's subject is a slightly different one, though. He's saying that it's possible to be generally pro-market, and generally conservative, yet like art, be glad that environmentalists have saved a few acres here and there, and care deeply about "quality of life issues" -- traffic, trees, food, the built environment, the fate of the media, etc. Righties Can Care About Nature This ain't news to you and me. But readers who are bored with the usual distinction between crunchy-hysterical-left and sensible-but-cold-right may find something fresh in his piece. I'd love to know if you think so too. As for me, I'm seizing on the opportunity to gas on for a sec about something related but slightly different, which is this: how can the conservative/libertarian/rightwing/sensible team let the lefties own such topics as art, beauty, poetry, and nature? Let's ignore the larger fact that a classical-liberal/conservative/libertarian mindset may in fact better suited to the arts ("freedom of thought+respect for tradition=potentially really good art") than a lefty ("brainwash, then police outcomes") mindset is. Simply from a p-r point of view, why don't righties understand what a problem it is to let the left lay exclusive claim to these issues? Why don't they understand that A) it's ok to care and talk about these questions, and B) their political fortunes might improve if they let themselves do so? Ie., instead of letting themselves be perceived as saying, "Fuck the environment, economic growth is everything," why not insist, "Hey, we care about the environment, and we think that private initiatives are the best way of ensuring a healthy environment"? Instead of letting themselves be perceived as saying, "Fuck the arts, profit growth is all," why not insist that "Hey, we care about art, and we think it thrives best under non-government-subsidized conditions"? By letting themselves appear to care only about business and money, righties are letting themselves look ugly, and ugly means that lots of potentially sympathetic people turn away. Righties Can Care About Art For instance, no one's going to believe that righties care about art -- although many do -- if, on the topic of art, they're perceived only as wanting to kill the National Endowment for the Arts, richly though the NEA deserves to be killed. Why not instead create a (sincere!) fuss about the arts, speak about how important they are, laud the cause, participate in the arts, honor artists, fund huge private endowments for the arts, challenge the left to do likewise -- and then kill the NEA? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Crunchy Cons, redux
Michael My problem as a right-wing Neanderthal is not with “tree huggers” or environmentalism per se. My difficulty is with the left’s method of distributing the costs of environmental protection. This is to stick private landowners with 100% of the costs, while the general public all shares in the benefit. (In the case of Superfund cleanups, the private party getting stuck with the cost may not—and in most cases, doesn’t—have any connection with the actual business practices that caused the pollution.) I’ve always wondered why the Sierra Club, with the extremely high average per capita income of its members, doesn’t just pass the hat and buy up endangered “old growth” forests, etc.? The same process is at work in affirmative action in college admissions. The benefits of a more diverse workforce and society are, presumably, general. But the cost is laid entirely on the marginal white and Asian applicants to universities, the people who get bumped to make room for the affirmative action candidates. I’m not aware of any data showing that such marginal white or Asian students bear any particular responsibility for previous racial discrimination, yet the prevailing solution is to say, “Tough luck guys, hope you applied to another school.” If the public benefits, then—ahem—the public oughtta pay. The left’s favorite criticism of markets involves externalities (that is, benefits or damages that are not included in the costs of the goods being sold through the market.) The price of electricity from a coal-fired power plant, for example, should (but doesn’t) include the cost of the damage it will do to the environment through its pollution. Fair enough. But the left doesn’t scream when it uses the government to create externalities. Forcing private landowners to undertake expensive endangered species protection without compensation—sounds like a governmental ‘externality.’ Kicking marginal white and Asian students out of a more prestigious university so they'll make less money the rest of their life—sounds like a governmental ‘externality.’ Make the wealthiest 10% of the citizens pay for half or more of the cost of government—sounds like a governmental ‘externality.’ Have you ever noticed that ‘social justice’ always seems to involve ‘us-them’ dichotomies in which the ‘them’ are ripped off to provide bennies for the ‘us’ group? (And these bennies are then presented as "free"?) Have you ever wondered at the constant use of dehumanizing language in leftist rhetoric—the evil Rich, the self-centered Yuppie bastards, etc., etc. (The funniest one is to describe lower middle class people as “Working Families”—like the wealthy don’t work longer hours.) Well, you can reliably follow the language—the people being trashed are being softened up for plucking.... posted by Friedrich at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Crunchy Cons
Friedrich -- The National Review this week runs a good Rod Dreher cover piece on "Granola Conservatives." It isn't online, but an earlier version of Dreher on the theme is here. I'd be curious to know how you respond to it. I found it a refreshing piece. Dreher, with an openness rare in anyone primarily political, admits that while his own political preferences are conservative, he also likes organic vegetables, listens to jazz, mistrusts unbridled development, and dislikes his fellow conservatives' disdain for nature. I cheer virtually any attempt to show that life is more complicated than doctrinaire politicos make it out to be, of course. But, political naif that I am, I'm also forever amazed that neither major party ever seems to wake up to the fact that there's a fair number of people in the country who favor a package that roughly corresponds to this: freer rather than tighter markets and respect for family and most institutions, but also a reverence for art, history and nature. Business has to be able to do what it does, but let's not let it and its values run roughshod over what we personally care most about. Sample passage from Dreher: The music we like — jazz, hard country, bluegrass, Cuban son — is something you can only hear on, umm, public radio or see on public television. When we began talking about buying a house, we realized we wanted something old and funky, in the sort of neighborhood that your average Republican would disdain. We found that though the Shiite environmentalists drive us nuts, there was also something off-putting about the way many conservatives speak with caustic derision about environmental conservation. Two weeks ago, some conservative friends were driving me down the Pacific Coast Highway, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty, as they are. "I'm afraid we have to tip our hats to the tree-huggers," said one. "If it weren't for them, much of what you see would be covered with tract houses and malls." Let's see, would a similar piece from the reverse point-of-view go something like: "I love NPR and Greenpeace, but I gotta admit that I also love my paycheck, hot running water and my car, and, y'know, it's really thanks to business that we have them"? Funny: I'm not aware that such a column has ever been written. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Helpful Movie Ratings
Friedrich -- You know the little ratings boxes that run in the lower lefthand corner of movie ads? When did they become so specific? The ratings are still the ratings, but these days we also get details. For instance, we learn not only that "BarberShop" is rated PG-13, but that it contains "Language, Sexual Content and Brief Drug References." I know these details are supposed to help responsible parents choose their children's entertainment more wisely. But they sure help art-loving salacious types like me too. "Secretary"? The ratings box tells me it features "Strong Sexual Content, Some Nudity" and much else -- hmm, I might consider going. But I want yet more information. One of the cast members of the new French picture "8 Women" is Virginie Ledoyen, who I'm a big fan of. She's talented, and has a cheerful/tragic, chic baby-doll assertiveness I find almost irresistable. The film is probably dreadful, but I'd see it anyway if Virginie does something daring in it. So let's see... The film's rated R -- that's good. But the details for some reason only specify "Some Sexual Content." What sexual content, exactly? And involving who? Darn it, why isn't the MPAA telling me? Virginie: Worth Seeing Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Artist's Quote of the Day
Michael I found a great interview with John Currin, one of my favorite contemporary painters: You can find it in full here. An excerpt: You can't make a painting without embracing your own desire as something good…That's why I've always thought of myself as an expressionist artist. I think in terms of expressionism because it's involved with dumb ideas, really stupid ideas; and even if my strategy would seem to be mapped-out, some people would even say "smart," that's not what I mean when I say "stupid." I'm talking about stupid urges and stupid desires, things that don't involve any irony or anything intellectual… I think about things that are not ironic, like sexual desire, fear of death, basic things that are by no means new concepts. A semiotician would say that the entire world is ironic, that it's about understanding where the misapplied labels are, that the very idea of a label describing something is a lie anyway. It seems to me that great art always makes you feel like there isn't a misapplied label. Currin's "The Veil," "The Bra Shop" and "Jaunty & Mame" And they say breast men aren't smart cookies! Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Times Arts Frownlines 10
Friedrich -- The Friday New York Times includes two arts sections, one about movies and theater, the other about what the newspaper calls the "fine arts." The headlines today in both show the paper's usual light touch. In the performing arts section: * Revival Works a Transformation * Maazel Shows His Firm Hand From the Start In the fine arts section: * The Face (and Soul) Of Africa * A Tower of Dentists Wears a Golden Crown Boogie down! I'll admit that that "dentists" touch is a nice, if bewildering, one. The tone of the story, though, disappoints. It concerns the history behind a monumental old Brooklyn landmark, the Williamsburgh Savings building, and it has a characteristic Times tone: semi-camp, semi-whimsical, a little bratty. "The basilicalike banking hall remains a pretty awe-inspiring place to fill out a deposit slip." Good gosheroonie! And so much for history and grandeur. Hmm, the Times never seems to use that tone for discussions of modernist buildings. I wonder why not? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Cultural Evolution
Michael I was reading “The Image & The Eye” by E. H. Gombrich last night and stumbled across what may be the common link between our interest in socio-biology and the arts. Discussing the development of what he terms 'the convincing image' in Western Art (a process by which any element of realism subjects the rest of the image to a critical process that will, in time, make it more realistic too), Gombrich offers a little tangential insight: There is a real Darwinian parallel here which should not be overlooked. For the evolution of convincing images was indeed anticipated by nature long before human minds could conceive this trick. I am referring to the wonders of protective colouring and mimicry, of deterrent and camouflaging forms in plants and animals. As we have learnt at school, and as we can see with amazement in zoological displays, there are insects that look exactly like the leaves of the tree which is their habitat…. Moth on Tree The eye and the brain of the bird from which protective colouring must hide the butterfly surely differ in a thousand ways from ours. And yet we can only assume that both for the bird and for us the butterfly and the leaf have become indistinguishable…[M]ight it not be argued that the shapes of art are also arrived at through adaptation to various functions…we may assume that evolution in art as in nature could also approximate other specifications than that of effortless recognizability. Maybe the immensely disquieting and expressive forms of those tribal styles we call ‘primitive’ also evolved step by step towards awe-inspiring or terrifying configurations… One might imagine that it was merely felt that certain masks, images or ornaments were charged with more potency, more mana, than others, and that those features that made for their magic power survived and increased in the course of time. Maybe the reason I like art history, in addition liking individual pieces of art (a combination of tastes that, when you think about it, is by no means necessarily automatic) is that I’m seeking a sense of functional development in art. I’m like a paleontologist, looking for fossils that document the evolution of artistic ideas. Or maybe my interest in art stems from the fact that it offers a handy, concrete manifestation of the processes of cultural and biological evolution which one can more dimly sense occurring around us every day. What do you think? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 20, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thursday, September 19, 2002


The Oldenburg Story, Part II
Michael Have you heard of bad boy Belgian artist Wim Delvoye? He’s a sort of a latter-day Claes Oldenburg, but then I always liked Claes Oldenburg. Obviously a joker, he has gone in for such exercises as a full-sized wooden copy, elaborately guilded, of a cement mixer: Rococo Cement Mixer He revisited this theme more recently by creating a full-size, wooden replica of a cement truck, fussily ornamented like spooky Old World furniture in your Grandmother’s house. Grandma's Cement Truck What can I say, he seems to like cement. Changing media to photography, he took pictures of massive cliffs towering above villages and added (presumably by computer) what appear to be enormous, neatly incised messages to the rock face, like inscriptions carved into Roman buildings. Of course, these imperial, more-than-billboard sized messages are utterly banal in Delvoye's work: “SUSAN, OUT FOR A PIZZA, BACK IN FIVE MINUTES." Mr. Delvoye seems to have made quite a stir with his latest installation piece, entitled “Cloaca” in which food is pulverized, subjected to various enzymes, and comes out as something rather close to shit. While I wouldn’t hurry out to see this, I grant you that it is the kind of thing that will get you written about—and I suppose that’s the point. (Hey, I’ll forgive a lot in artists who have a sense of humor…so few do.) Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

No Respect for L.A.
Michael As a Southern Californian, I am indignant that so little attention was ever paid to Translating L.A.: A Tour of the Rainbow City. It’s a great travelogue by Peter Theroux, who moved to L.A. in 1985 after 10 years in the Middle East. He finds it far better than advertised: At first glance, Los Angeles is such a spreading ethnic sprawl, and such a pretentious mess, that newcomers often compare it to the Third World—a sly insult that was immediately given the lie to me, after ten years in the Third World, by the simple fact that practically everyone was coming here instead of leaving. One of Theroux's more amusing adventures comes in a talk given to a group of professional translators (both multinational and racially mixed) by a corporate diversity consultant, Fred. After trying (and failing) to get a rise out of the translators by hinting that they are unwitting cogs in the mechanism of cultural domination, Fred changes his tack: “How are we supposed to treat others? How did our mothers tell us to treat others?” “The way you want to be treated. I mean, the way one wants to be treated himself. One is supposed to treat others in the manner in which oneself wishes to be treated,” offered Gaon Shabazi. “Three wrong answers,” marveled Fred, as if impressed. “I mean, that is what our mothers said, but Mother wasn’t on the money, was she?…[R]emember that the slow poison of prejudice at work in every American body,” he intoned, “begins with thinking everyone is like me. Everyone should be treated like me. Others want to be done unto the way I want to be done unto. This is our egoistic culture…Could it be—do you think—could it just possibly be that we should treat others the way they want to be treated? How about that, people?” The longish silence was broken by the gay laughter of Tillie Albright, a Dutch-to-English translator with a small agency… “You are very young, my dear!” She actually shook her finger at him gently. “Do you know how people want to be treated? Like kings and queens, if you please! Believe me, translators would love to be treated as if the words ‘hard work’ and ‘discipline’ were not in their dictionaries. Treat me as I wish to be treated? Lots of coffee breaks, and martinis at lunch! A little discreet harassment from the right person will not be a problem! Even some dancing!” "We will come back to this point when we get to our role playing," Fred announced, to cut off the laughter she had set off by winking at him. Check it out. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- L.A. Cathedral Redux
Friedrich -- Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker reacts to the new, Rafael Moneo-designed, Our Lady of the Angels cathedral in L.A., here. Though, to be honest, it's hard to tell quite how he's reacting. Praise-quickly-retracted follows on criticism-quickly-hedged, over and over. Give Me that Big-Box Religion Goldberger's a strange one. He's much more broadminded than most establishment architecture critics, willing not only to acknowledge that such phenonomena as the New Urbanism and the New Classicism exist but also to treat them semi-respectfully. But he seems terrified that if he goes too far -- either in lacing into the absurdities of late Modernism or in praising non-avant-garde work -- he'll lose his establishment membership card. (He's probably right.) I can only guess, of course, but my impression from his amazingly waffly piece is that Goldberger really doesn't like the new cathedral one bit. How do you read him? Sample passage: The new cathedral has more in common with the familiar Los Angeles megabox. It's a big, horizontal mass, like the Beverly Center, the vast shopping mall built atop a parking structure; and the Pacific Design Center, a beached whale in blue glass; and the factorylike Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. I don't say this to be disrespectful. I think Moneo has tried to take a particular kind of Los Angeles building and make it into something spiritual, although it's not a natural leap. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Policy Break: News Flash--Socialism Corrupts
Michael In the September 19, 2002 Wall Street Journal, leftist Albert R. Hunt in his column “Politics and People” notes approvingly: In a survey last month for Alliance for Retired Americans, Democratic pollster Peter Hart found prescription drugs are the main voting issue for seniors, who turn out disproportionately in off-year elections…Mr. Hart accurately described the more costly and generous Democratic prescription drug plan and the cheaper and less generous GOP plan without identifying the partisan sponsors. Seniors, by an overwhelming majority, prefer the Democrats approach. Gosh, that’s a surprise. The people who stand to benefit from a new income transfer plan (and who would pay no taxes to support it) approve of a more generous version of that transfer—overwhelmingly! Well, you know what they say: Transfer payments corrupt, and entitlement programs corrupt absolutely. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Sullivan on Sontag
Friedrich -- Andrew Sullivan takes on a Susan Sontag op-ed piece, and demonstrates what a ditzy sillikins she really is, here. By the way... Sontag: absurd caricature of an intellectual? Or all too common an example of such? Sample passage: [The war against terror] is not and never has been a metaphor. Metaphors didn't crash into New York, Washington and Pennsylvania a year ago. Metaphors didn't liberate Afghanistan. Special Forces troops, even now defending Sontag's freedom to write her Op-Ed, are not metaphorically trying to hunt down al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan. From our enemy's perspective, the war has been real for decades. The only people who didn't see it were those trying not to see it, or those who were distracted elsewhere. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Free Reads -- Kors
Friedrich -- Two professors, Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate, have formed an outfit called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (website here) to battle the P.C. thought police on campuses. Stanley Kurtz of National Review points out a stirring interview with Kors, here. Sample passage: Kors: Truth in advertising applies to universities. If you continue the current regimes, have the decency to advertise it openly in your catalogs: "This university believes that your sons and daughters are the racist, sexist, homophobic, Eurocentric progeny or victims of an oppressive society from which most of them receive unjust privilege. In return for tuition and massive taxpayer subsidy, we shall assign rights on a compensatory basis and undertake by coercion their moral and political enlightenment." And another: The last refuge of self is one's inner being, conscience and private thoughts. Decent people do not pursue other human beings there... Thoughts are free. What indecency to deny that innermost freedom. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Freund
Friedrich -- Eakins' "Four-in-Hand": Photoshopped? Charles Paul Freund of Reason magazine has been doing some venturesome thinking and writing about art. He's much more freewheeling and openminded (and also direct and to-the-point) than the art world's own writers are. Freund writes about Eakins, Vermeer, Hockney and technological helping hands here. Sample passage: What Eakins did with the photos was a laborious version of what many digital artists are doing today. Eakins didn’t merely create painted versions of photographs. Using a "magic lantern" to project a series of disparate images on a single canvas, he made composites. The final painterly conception is entirely his own, and is apparently what drove his creation of the photos in the first place. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Homeland Security
Friedrich -- National Review talks to Michelle Malkin about why the term "Homeland Security" is currently a joke, here. Malkin tells some scary tales, and has some suggestions to make. Sample passage: Malkin: I would advise President Bush to stop pandering to pro-illegal alien ethnic groups and start treating immigration as a national-security issue. I would advise him to view immigration-related issues through the cold eyes of a terrorist killer like Mohammed Atta. I would advise him to ask at every turn: "What would Mohammed do?" How would he exploit our entry points, evade detection, and blend into the American mainstream? Then I would urge him to push for policies, like a moratorium on nonimmigrant visas to Middle Easterners, that will make it harder for the next Mohammed Atta to infiltrate our country. If the policy of preemption makes sense abroad, why not at home? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Pauline Kael
Friedrich -- WNYC interviews Slate's David Edelstein and the screenwriter Robert Towne about their late friend, the film critic Pauline Kael, here. Sample passage: Robert Towne: In the case of Bonnie & Clyde, when that was released. I don't remember a movie that got more systematically battered by prominent critics, and Pauline reviewed the movie and the reviewers, and a month later it was on the cover of Time Magazine which had dismissed it in a kind of small kind of anonymous paragraph as being in the vanguard of the new cinema. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 19, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Wednesday, September 18, 2002


Policy Break: Learning from Athens
Michael Donald Kagan, in his Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, describes a key element in the success of democratic government: For more than two thousand years, democracy has had many powerful enemies and few friends...Most ancient writers...called democracy unstable, a scene of devastating struggles between factions and classes, where the poor majority trampled on the better-off minority, careless of the rights of the individual...The facts about Periclean Athens, as we have seen, were very different. Through the horrors of almost three decades of the Peloponnesian War, military defeat, foreign occupation, and an oligarchic coup d'etat, the people of Athens showed that combination of commitment and restraint that is necessary for the survival of popular government and life in a decent society. This restraint is all the more remarkable when we consider how simple it would have been for the Athenian majority to plunder the rich and take revenge upon their enemies... Plato...blamed Periclean democracy for its excessive commitment to equality. Twentieth century critics, on the other hand, have largely complained of its inequalities, demanding not equality of opportunity for all citizens, but equality of result...Political equality was the cornerstone of Athenian democracy, but economic equality, as we have seen, was no part of the democratic program in the age of Pericles or after. Early in the sixth century, the Athenian peasantry had demanded a redistribution of land and isomoiria (equal portions) of the land of Attica, but the demand was not met; nor was it ever renewed. The experience of social revolutions in other states, where violations of the right to property had produced civil war, anarchy, tyranny, and poverty, showed that equality before the law, not equality of possession, was the only form of the principle compatible with prosperity, freedom and security. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

You Want Us
Friedrich -- I'm collecting the Google searches that have led surfers to this site. Here are some favorites so far: +naxos +gay +video +gymnastic +teenage +boys +PowerPoint +presentation +girls +sexy Are there people out there making porn versions of PowerPoint presentations? Hey, journalists: there's a story to be done here! My very favorite is one that'll be hard to top: +movie +girl +fucking +horse How do you suppose these surfers reacted to what they found on 2blowhards? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Free Reads -- Genetics of Maleness
Friedrich -- In the Observer, Sean O'Hagan interviews geneticist Steve Jones on the topic of what scientists know about maleness, here. Sample passage: There are over 500 courses on men's studies in American universities. I mean, what the hell are they on about? This idea that if you understand how men work, emotionally or even biologically, the problems affecting men will simply go away. It's nonsense. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Modern Poetry Redux
Michael There you go again, making me read poetry. I thought I was over that, but your posting on “Modern Poetry” made me pick up my copy of John Donne to see what makes "Ancient Poetry" any different. A selection from a poem written during Donne's final illness: Since I am coming to that holy room, Where with thy choir of saints for evermore, I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instruments here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before. While my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown That this is my south-west discovery Per fretum febris, by these straits to die I joy, that in these straits, I see my west; For, though their currents yield return to none, What shall my west hurt me? As west and east In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, So death doth touch the resurrection. One major difference is that Donne can view his own predicament "from above" so to speak; he doesn't have to convince you that he's really writing from the bed of a dying man, or that he's scared of death, or that he looks to his religion for hope, etc. He doesn't need to, as the orthodox Christian framework simply incorporates all of this. Donne wasn't forced to invent a system of meanings for himself and then to educate his readers in it. Does this imply that the true reason for the rise of "difficult" modern art was the decline of religion as an intellectually respectable system in the last quarter of the 19th century? Lacking this supporting infrastructure places a lot more work on the backs of artists and poets. It may also make it nearly impossible to deal successfully with eschatological subjects. Who can communicate on any topic, let alone one like death, without a pre-arranged code book, a manual of shared assumptions? You can signal and signal, but can anyone translate your message? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Joshua Muravchik
Friedrich -- For a few years I've been boring Wife and friends with my theory that modern art, Marxism, Freudianism, and socialism are replacement religions -- that the whole modernist ball of wax is a credo for those seeking redemption but beyond the reach of traditional religions. But I can offer little to back up this argument beyond my years spent among the true (Marxist, Freudian, modern-art, etc.) believers. Joshua Muravchik can do a lot better. He has written a book, "Heaven on Earth," arguing that socialism was indeed a religion for many of its adherents/believers. It's a good, substantial work: mucho research, many facts, all of it professionally presented and thoughtfully argued -- it has everything my presentation of the theory doesn't have, in other words. American Enterprise runs a well-chosen passage from the book here. Sample passage: The pursuit of a life liberated from the “superstition” of religion proved surprisingly difficult. Even Diderot, whose Encyclopedia was the flagship of the Enlightenment, confessed that he could not watch religious processions “without tears coming to my eyes.” Perhaps such unbidden feelings explain why, as most anthropologists agree, religion is universal. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Free Reads -- Rape in Australia
Friedrich -- Two years ago, over the course of several months, gangs of Muslim boys raped seven Australian teen girls in Sydney -- "pack-raped" is the term that's now used. View from the Right (website here) points out a long narrative and analysis of the crimes that ran in The Age, a Sydney newspaper, here. Sample passage: All the rape victims were from a different cultural world to their attackers, who did not touch girls from their own community. Why? Discussions with family members and other Lebanese Muslims and court evidence show that fear of retribution played a part. Their parents, or the girl's parents, would have killed them, perhaps literally. Some people believe the boys were also conditioned to divide women into the saints who are their mothers and sisters, and the sinners who inhabit the world beyond. You mean, multiculturalism isn't always and everywhere the hippie paradise it's sold to us as? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Times Arts Frownlines 9
Friedrich -- Headlines from the front page of today's NYTimes' Arts section: * China is Warming to Hollywood's Glow * Not All Sunshine for Teensy Set's Troubador * Decades After Their Pop Hits, 2 Singers Show What Else They Have * An Uphill Effort for World Harmony Who knew being interested in the arts could be such a burden? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Andres Duany
Friedrich -- American Enterprise magazine runs a good interview with Andres Duany, one of the ringleaders of the New Urbanism, here. Sample passage: The real problem is the impulse to be avant-garde, which severs our ties with the past. Avant-garde buildings can occasionally be quite beautiful. But the win-loss ratio is horrible; unacceptable. To get those very, very few successful, glorious, modernist buildings, you sacrifice an enormous percentage of failed buildings at every level, because each designer tries to reinvent the wheel instead of improving on established forms. Curious what a New Urbanist town looks like? Click here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 18, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Tuesday, September 17, 2002


A Good Day’s Hand Wringing
Michael From his piece in today’s New York Times Op-Ed pages, we learn that Richard R. Beeman, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania is concerned about the effect of the U.S. News & World Report annual rankings of undergraduate programs at American colleges—deeply concerned. And this isn’t just sour grapes; U Penn is a top ten school again this year. But all is not well in UPennville. Beeman spends “most of every day working to improve the quality of educational opportunity that we offer our undergraduates, and I know that my counterparts at other research universities do the same.” But do Beeman’s students appreciate the Dean working his fingers to the bone (apparently, 7-days-a-week, 365-days-year) on their behalf? (Perhaps the Dean meant to say he spent most of every working day improving the quality of educational opportunity--those Times editors are pretty sloppy.) Apparently, the students are not nearly appreciative enough: [T]he rankings further exacerbate the rampant consumerism that is now so prevalent among entering students and their parents, encouraging an attitude that admission (and payment of tuition) to one of the ‘top 10 schools’ is somehow a guarantee of a ‘top 10 education.’ [emphasis added] He confides that …the most frustrating aspect of my work is seeing students respond passively, treating their education at Penn as something that is given to them rather than as something they must aggressively fashion for themselves. I mean, what do these kids expect for their measly annual tuition and fees of $38,830? Just because they could buy themselves a new Audi A6 ($35,700 MSRP) or Volvo S80 ($38,450 MSRP) every year for that kind of dough, they’ve got a lot of nerve expecting the college to actually, you know, do something for them. Don’t these students understand how low on the list of the University of Pennsylvania’s real priorities their education is, anyway? A quick look at the figures would set them straight. During the twelve month period ended June 30, 2001, the University recorded revenue of almost $3.2 billion—of which only a modest $531.8 million came from tuition and fees. In other words, the Trustees are running a big, multisector business here, and education only amounts to 16% of it (and not a particularly profitable part, either). The real bucks in the academic sector came from what the FY 2001 report refers to as “sponsored programs (primarily sponsored research)” which fortunately increased “in excess of 8.2%.” I mean, no wonder Dean Wormer, I mean Beeman, refers to U Penn as a research university--that's where the action is. The education business is really pretty much a loss leader for U Penn! Fortunately for those ungrateful undergraduate brats, Dean Beeman is on the job, working hard to keep that Top Ten rating. Why does he bother, you may ask? “I have found," he admits, "the task of keeping alumni and donors [read donors and donors] happy about Penn’s status has been made much easier by our rise to... posted by Friedrich at September 17, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Policy Break: The Iraqi Chessboard
Michael According to a NY Times editorial for September 17 on “The Iraqi Chessboard,” Saddam’s unconditional offer to allow U.N. inspection “could open the way to resolving the crisis peacefully and should certainly be tested.” Of course they admit that Saddam may just be trying to jerk the U.N. Security Council around on his program to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, but they opine that “[i]t shouldn’t take long to tell whether Iraq will really give inspectors a free hand, or will follow its invitation with limitations that render it meaningless.” Really. We seemed to go on for years back in the middle-1990’s with an impotent game of cat-and-mouse inspection; how long d’you suppose the Times means by “too long” in this instance? After all, the 34 years that separate us from 1968 haven’t been long enough for the Times editorial staff (in the interests of full disclosure, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party) to abandon its knee-jerk opposition to the use of force by the U.S. Maybe we could throw a few cruise missiles at the Iraqis and then forget about them for a decade or so. We’ve got an unemployed ex-president who could serve as a crackerjack consultant for that sort of program. Cheers, Freidrich... posted by Friedrich at September 17, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Search Engines
Michael Since our blog seems to be developing into a tribute site to Euan Uglow,I went web-surfing and found some Uglow nudes, one of which is pictured below. Uglow's "Zagi" of 1981-2 Still, it leaves me with an uneasy feeling. How could somebody I like as much as Uglow never have popped up on my radar? I've spent a good part of the last twenty years when I should have been busy earning a living looking into the visual arts. Despite that, I have a nagging feeling that most (much? a largish chunk?) of the art world may well be lurking out of my sight, like the underwater part of the iceberg. Have you ever looked on a newsstand and spotted the magazines devoted to "Western" art (you know, cowboys, Indians, horses, landscapes)? There are a ton of these Western artists out there who seem to make a living at this stuff. They even have their own museums(!) It was quite a shock to me about ten years ago when I discovered that the art-world is divided into formats, like radio stations: oldies, alternative, Country & Western, etc. Why? Because it dawned on me that this sort of distinction made it even more unlikely that I would ever see the ULTIMATE PAINTING that would explain the world and my life to me! I'm not really ranting about class distinctions in art, as silly and pervasive as those are. It goes beyond that. There are great draftsmen of the nude who for one reason or another won't get big museum shows in my lifetime--does that mean I don't get to see their drawings, except by lucky accident? (I mean, check out Henry Ossawa Tanner's life drawings some time. Smokin'! )It was one thing when I went to our Lousy Ivy University and they spent four years talking around the really important stuff, but that was when I was just a young punk. I'm getting too old to be feeling like I'm gonna wind up a day late and a dollar short on good art. I want better art-world visibility, and I want it NOW. My suggestion is that we need a much better art world search engine. I want to be able to type in "Euan Uglow and his ilk" and find other artists who share his salient characteristics. This brilliant idea came to me while I was searching on "Google" for Uglow JPEGs. I looked at one art reproduction site and found an alphabetical list of artists whose art you could buy as a poster, and happened to notice that Uglow directly followed Uccello. That got me to pondering the similarity in feel of the two artists, which are considerable. Uccello's Chalice And this got me to thinking about the role of obsessive discipline in the visual arts--Michelangelo with his endless anatomical studies, Uccello with his perspective, Uglow with his structured drawing techniques. That's the kind of thing a good art search engine...or art history class...or art publisher...should be suggesting... posted by Friedrich at September 17, 2002 | perma-link | (2) comments

Monday, September 16, 2002


Times Arts Frownlines 8
Friedrich -- In case you enjoyed yourself too much over the weekend, Monday's NYTimes Arts section is here to wave an admonishing finger at you. Two of its front-page headlines: * Advice and Songs on Death Row, but No Easy Answers * A Cairo Storyteller With Time to Dream I don't know about yours, but my sense of fun just deserted me. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 16, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Modern Poetry
Friedrich -- I spent my walking-around-the-city time over the last few days listening to poetry audiotapes: Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, Anne Sexton, and John Ashbery. (I work in the media; I get mucho arty toys for free.) How do you do with modern poetry? I tend to grumble in annoyance and laugh in scorn -- it brings out the rube in me. What a put-on! Hooo-eee, are these people having one at our expense! What are they doing, trying to impress other people in their class? If poets only write for other poets they're going to disappear up their own ass any day now! Have any of them ever worked for a living? And you know what? I'll take good country-western lyrics any day! Haw haw haw. But if I persist, I can start to slide past my resentment. I get to feeling not exactly benevolent, but tolerant. What the hell: it's just a specialized taste, a niche market. Where's the harm? Even the pretence that what they're doing has earth-shattering importance seems forgiveable -- people engaged in teeny-tiny, overlooked activities will tend to puff themselves up. I also got over some of my aversion to high-modern poetry when I took a how-to-write-poetry class. To my intense disappointment, the teacher didn't drill us in traditional forms, but instead immersed us in a modern-poetry bath. Annoying as I found that (and rooked as I felt of my tuition money), I went along. A few things came to me that I found helpful. Herewith my rules for appreciating modern poetry: Don't take a modern poem as "poetry," take it instead as a short piece of writing that has had some poetic techniques applied to it for effect. Don't even bother to read a modern poem unless you're ready to read it twice, the first time just to get through it, the second to look at it holistically, out there hovering in space. It's a little verbal, words-on-the-page, made thing -- try to see it as such. And (best Michael rule), pretend a good friend wrote it. I'm still anything but crazy about modern poetry, and I do root for the current rebirth of traditional poetic forms that's going on. But I'm not as clogged full of exasperation as I once was. And, once past some of my exasperation, I start to make distinctions. Randall Jarrell The distinction I award Jarrell, unfortunately, is that he has got to be one of the worst readers of poetry ever. He's got the whiney tone of a country pastor who's watching his congregation shrink with every passing year. I found the poems themselves ok but also embarrassing. This was an era when autobiography, psychoanalysis, and action painting -- picking open wounds, then keeping them from scabbing over -- was felt to be the royal road to truth. When Jarrell writes about his grandma killing a chicken (awww!) and then reads it in his wavering voice, you want to take him aside and suggest politely that maybe... posted by Michael at September 16, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Saturday, September 14, 2002


Free Reads -- Adorno Redux
Friedrich -- Knowing what an Adorno fan you are, I'm passing along this Edward Rothstein piece in the NYTimes about him, here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 14, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- New Webzine
Friedrich -- "The Mixture," a slick new online magazine with much to offer multimedia-wise, here. Don't miss the video footage of surfer Laird Hamilton -- an hour and 30 minutes shorter than "Blue Crush," ten dollars cheaper, and far more enjoyable. Sample wisdom from Laird: If you see waves like what you saw here and you don't believe there's something greater than we are, you got some serious analyzing to do and you should go sit under a big tree for a long period of time. Athletes know what the Zone is. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 14, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Funny Bloggers
Friedrich -- Though no longer totally new to bloggerdom, I continue to be amazed by the number of smart, funny, and free-thinking bloggers out there. Many of them make the conventional media look like a bunch of stiffs. This morning I find myself wondering, for my own whimsical reasons, "Who’s the funniest blogger of them all?” Lileks? Hmm: He’s a pro, and his Bleats, while brilliant, are pulled-together pieces. He’s playing a different game than the one I'm thinking about. How about people who toss off a lot of stuff on the run, in true blogger spirit? Allowing for the fact that there are seventy-nine quadrillion people whose blogs I haven’t yet had time to sample, I’ve narrowed my personal “funniest blogger” competition down to three contestants. On the right is IMAO (site here), who has as good a brainy-redneck act down as I’ve ever run across. Here's a sample: Search Engines are the Opiate of the People Now China has blocked AltaVista in addition to Google just to make it clear to everyone they're still evil Commies. They can't have information going unfiltered to their populace making them realize how much better life would be if they just lynched all the Reds in charge. There doesn't seem to be any official statement on either AltaVista's or Google's webpage, but hopefully they'll do the proper American thing by responding, "Screw you, you stupid Commie bastards!" and then make one result of every search something embarrassing to the Chinese government. On the other hand -- no, actually, also on the right -- is Natalie Solent (site here), a wiz at libertarian-party-girl chat. Natalie? Stolen: one peal of thunder. The Blogger Sex War enters its second day. Godless Capitalist and Mrs Elizabeth Capitalist join forces in Gene Expression to make all my best points before I could in response to this post about sexism by Meryl Yourish. Letter from Gotham fires off a few salvos, too. Scroll up, down and sideways for more highly provocative commentary. (Did you know that in blind auditions orchestras hire more female musicians? That Venus Williams ran a 5:29 mile when she was nine years old?) Though I have to say Diane E misses the point about Stephen Den Beste. Although I am not well enough informed myself about Israeli politics to say which of the two is stronger on that topic, surely a high proportion of his audience consists of technically-minded men to whom what she refers to as an "overlay of wargame theories that look to me as if he got them from science fiction novels" is a feature not a bug. And finally here's Scott Ott, whose blog is called ScrappleFace, here. He shows the Onion how it's really done. INS to Probe Breaches in Microsoft Windows (2002-09-12) -- The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched a probe today to determine how many illegal aliens are actually entering the U.S. through gaping holes in the Microsoft Windows operating system. Good work from all... posted by Michael at September 14, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Uglow Model
Friedrich -- From an online talk with Lisa Coleman, an English actress, about working as a nude model for the artist Euan Uglow: At first I was very prudish about it, but then I felt really liberated. During coffee breaks I used to walk about the studio still naked, with a fag in my mouth. I posed for him for two years - and he never finished the picture. That did irritate me. Picture below is by Euan Uglow, though not of Lisa Coleman. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 14, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Friday, September 13, 2002


Free Reads -- L.A. Cathedral
Friedrich -- Michael S. Rose has come out swinging against contemporary church architecture. (About time someone finally took that fight on.) Why do they look like drive-ins, food courts, and shoeboxes? In "Ugly As Sin," his new book, Rose explains the reasons. Few new churches have received the kind of ecstatic press that Our Lady of the Angels, the new L.A. cathedral designed by the Spanish modernist Jose Raphael Moneo, is currently getting. Rose has a contrarian's view in the Wall Street Journal, here. Geometry and Faith? I haven't seen the finished church myself. Have you? When the Wife and I drove by it during construction, it looked well on its way to resembling a chic parking garage. [Readers can take a few looks for themselves at the church's website, here.] Sample passage from Rose: The building consciously breaks with the historical continuity of two millennia of Catholic church architecture. Instead it pays homage to the past 50 years of banal and uninspiring utilitarian office structures that have littered the landscape of downtown Los Angeles (and many other American cities). Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

If I Were an Editor 5
Friedrich -- If I were the editor of a book-review section, I'd provide coverage and reviews of the usual, but also of visual books, pop fiction, joke books, self-help, and more. I'd also make a point of running profiles of and interviews with the many non-author people who help make the world of readin'-and-writin' what it is: designers, editors, artists, agents, booksellers.... It's bewildering that "books coverage" limits itself to the small cast of characters it does. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Pontormo and Ingres
Michael I just got a new book on Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci), the Florentine Mannerist. As I went through it, I was struck less by the similarity between Pontormo's art and that of his contemporaries (e.g., Andre Del Sarto and Agnolo Bronzino) than by the way it seemed to find an echo in the work of J.A.D. Ingres, some 300 years his junior. I'm not suggesting anything very mystical here; Ingres spent 20 years of his career in Rome and 4 years in Florence, so his opportunities for exposure to Pontormo were significant. But since Ingres' "worship" of Raphael is an art-historical cliche, I think it's useful to examine if his affinities were not closer to the less academically acceptable Pontormo. Both Ingres and Pontormo were masters of an extremely refined style, and with both painters they caressed the "strings" of style with as much attention, if not more so, than the "music" of their subject matter. Their palates were so fastidious that neither could really choke down Michelangelo's example, although they both spent time attempting to do so. Raphael, on the other hand, could and would shove everything he could find into his artistic maw (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Gorgione, you name it), burped and went on to the next course. Both Ingres and Pontormo preferred a rather distant and subdued rhetoric in their treatment of subject matter, while again Raphael is far more of a showman, now refined for the royalty in the gallery, now coarse and playing to the crowd. Neither could remotely be envisioned as the painter of Raphael's "The Transfiguration" which is one of the showiest, "Hey Ma look at me!" paintings ever made. And both Ingres and Pontormo were aesthetes who turned to private visions of sensuality while adrift on the seas of war and turmoil; Ingres (1780 - 1867) experienced the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars as a young man, while during Pontormo's lifetime Italy went from chaotic independence to being dominated by outside powers, with episodes like the Sack of Rome tossed into the mix. Anyway, just to give you a little visual thrill, I include some examples. The first is "The Grand Odalisque" by Ingres (painted 1814). Note the similarity of the pose to that of the Pontormo's figure study for the loggia frescos in either Careggi or Castello (drawn sometime after 1530.) [I'll get back to you shortly on this] The second is Ingres' "Woman Bathing" of 1807. Again, although the pose is quite different, notice the Madonna of Pontormo's "Madonna and Child with a Young St. John" (sorry, I don't know the date.) With a little hair coloring, it could be the same woman. Cheers Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Alan Ayckbourn
Friedrich -- The Telegraph runs a brief but amusing excerpt from playwright Alan Ayckbourn's new book "The Crafty Art of Playmaking," here. Do you know Ayckbourn's plays? I like 'em: Sly and virtuosic, even while working a familiar dowdy-yet-amusing Brit vein. Sample passage: Ironically, when the play went to the West End in the so-called Swinging Sixties, I was asked to reset the first scene to the day before, around 4pm - the argument being that the audiences would be less shocked at seeing a young unmarried couple waking up together in the afternoon than in the morning. The logic in this confounded me. You mean they couldn't have been making love in the afternoon? So much for the traditional unities. I guess Aristotle hadn't reckoned with that one. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Media Overload
Friedrich -- The book I finished last night I got free; the audiobook I listened to this morning also came free. That's one of the upsides to working in an arty corner of the media world -- free stuff. One of the downsides is: too damn much free stuff. Keeping up with the product, even from a mere housekeeping point of view, can clog your brain, swamp your desk, and make you forget what you really enjoy, as well as how you'd really like to spend your time. Let's see... Before me right now are invites to movie screenings: "Spirited Away" (Japanimation -- don't think so); "Moonlight Mile" (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon -- hmmmmmm, nope); and "Ballistics: Ecks vs. Sever" (spy thriller rated R not for sex but violence -- puhleeze). Into the circular file. There, my head's clear again. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Times Arts Frownlines 7
Friedrich -- Headlines from the front page of today's NYT "Weekend" (ie., popular arts) section: * Mob Life Resumes, Darker by the Day * Tragedy Kindles Dance of Hope Phew. I'd almost forgotten what a heavy burden the arts are meant to be. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Jealousy of America
Michael I was sitting in the food court at a local mall yesterday, eating lunch while pondering European and Middle Eastern anti-Americanism. As hard as I tried to feel the pain of a European or a Middle Easterner, I kept getting distracted by the steady stream of lightly dressed 18- to 45-year-old women strolling by. September is the hottest time of the year in Southern California and, while the ladies are always quite impressive, the heat made it possible to inspect their virtues far more thoroughly than at some other times of the year. Thoughts like "Why do those decadent, pushy Americans think they can tell everyone else what to do?" kept suddenly making a left turn into "Where do they find these unbelievable women?" Suddenly, a light bulb went off in my head. The reason these guys hate us is...THEY'RE JEALOUS OF OUR WOMEN! And...THEY'RE RIGHT TO BE! WE'VE GOT ALL RACES, COLORS AND CREEDS OF FIT, STYLISH, GORGEOUS BABES! Well, as I always say, it's better to know the score when you're dealing with these thorny international issues. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (13) comments

Free Reads -- Michelle Malkin
Friedrich -- Michelle Malkin's been doing a bang-up job of covering how lax the U.S. can be about policing its borders. She's got another good column on the topic today, here. Sample passage: Barely two months after the September 11 attacks, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated his commitment to preserve the Big Apple as a formal sanctuary for illegal aliens. "People who are undocumented do not have to worry about city government going to the federal government," Bloomberg vowed. This assurance was stunning coming from the new mayor of a city still covered in rubble as a result of foreign terrorists who exploited our lax immigration policies at every turn. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reading -- Random Jottings
Michael All Friends of Truth and Humor! Ye must check out "Random Jottings: A weblog by John Weidner," here -- especially the running comments on New York Times demogogue Paul Krugman. These run under the heading of "Krugman Truth Squad" and are now up to 40 installments. His mix of careful analysis (where does Mr. Weidner get the time to put graphs and such together?) and street-smart language is to die for. A brief example from installment #36: In effect, the whole field [of macroeconomics] has been reduced to a battle of anecdotes, usually based on a sample of one event. The death of the Blinder/Rubin doctrine [that high taxes increase fiscal discipline, fiscal discipline gives lower long-term interest rates and lower long-term rates promote investment and economic growth] is just the latest casualty of a single-event macro theory. And it has left Paul Krugman up shit creek without a paddle. He's probably hoping no one will notice. But the Squad is on the case. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 13, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thursday, September 12, 2002


Free Reads -- Steven Pinker
Friedrich -- The ever-resourceful Arts and Letters Daily (here) points out a long q&a with Steven Pinker, here. Have you read Pinker? He's immensely brainy, interested in things that interest me, and a good popularizer. He brings together neuroscience, evo-bio and linguistics, and then explains himself in verve-y, plain English. His new book, "The Blank Slate," is a terrific intro to these subjects and their intersections, although most of what he says won't come as startling news to people already familiar with the material. But his thesis -- the ludicrousness of the notion that there is no such thing as human nature, that people are endlessly malleable "blank slates" -- is always pleasing to hear argued. And he writes a useful chapter (that'll be of special interest to readers of this blog) where he discusses the implications of this kind of thinking for the arts, and introduces the reader to evolutionary esthetics. (Rah, rah! Sis boom bah!) Sample passage from the book: Western societies are good at providing things that people want: clean water, effective medicine, varied and abundant food, rapid transportation and communication. They perfect these goods and services not from benevolence but from self-interest, for the profits to be made in selling them. Perhaps the aesthetics industry also perfected ways of giving people what they like -- art forms that appeal basic human tastes, such as calendar landscapes, popular songs, and Hollywood romances and adventures. So even if an art form matured in the West, it may be not an arbitrary practice spread by a powerful navy but a successful product that engages a universal human aesthetic. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Kapuscinski
Friedrich -- I just finished making my way through Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Shadow of the Sun." Have you read him? A Polish foreign correspondent with a knack for showing up just when things go insane. I'm a big fan of some of his books, which struck me as among the very best new things I've read in the last few decades, fiction or nonfiction. "The Emperor" (about Haile Selaisse's Ethiopia), "The Soccer War" (about a war in Latin America that broke out over a soccer match), and "Shah of Shahs" (about the Shah of Iran) were all standouts -- intense, to the point, atmospheric. ("Imperium," about Russia, was awfully good too.) The books are all more like hallucinations than conventional "reportage." I seem to remember that there's been some controversy about how literally accurate they are. I don't worry about that much myself; I doubt anyone's likely to be tempted to use them as reference books. You read them as nonfiction poetry, really. "The Shadow of the Sun" struck me as the weakest book of his I've read. It covers 40ish years of visits and work in Africa, and it's like sitting next to a friend who's determined to take you through his travel photo album, picture after picture, one after another. Maybe he's traveled to amazing places and seen amazing things, and maybe some of the material and the sights are amazing too. But the recitation, whatever its virtues, drones on, and the attention wanders. It's a surprise that Kapuscinski, so tough and shrewd in his better books, comes here to seem conventional, and a little hysterical, even silly. When he's on his game, he's focused on what strictly needs to be conveyed. Here, he keeps losing himself in his own responses. (A journalist friend tells me that many foreign correspondents are like that -- intense, overdramatic, urgent.) Maybe it's just that Kapuscinski isn't at his best when writing about his own experiences. When he's got a real story to tell, one that's about someone else, he's superb, able to line his material up and make it flow. And a few of this book's chapters are keepers -- there's a good one about Idi Amin, and another about Liberia and Samuel Doe. For a few minutes the history, personalities and tribal rivalries all make cruel sense. "The Shadow of the Sun" has its virtues, lord knows: it's atmosphere- and information-rich. But it's also pretty shapeless, and can be passed up without too many regrets. But some of his other books? Whew: just amazing. A good Guardian piece about Kapuscinski, here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Europe vs. America
Michael Somewhat to my surprise, there is an excellent piece in the September issue of Harper's, entitled "Le Divorce: Do Europe and America have irreconcilable differences" by Nicholas Fraser. It is full of wonderful bits, including a Frenchwoman explaining why America no longer inspires confidence (it has newscasts with aggressive special effects, and President Bush uses primitive theological concepts like "evil" and other low-class rhetorical effects in his speeches), the homogeneity of British television coverage of America (the only topics include the underclass, innocent people on death row, the history of lynching, the fences separating Texas and California from Mexico, and American obesity), the frustrations resulting from the inability of Europe to create sufficient political unity to serve as a balance to American power, and the sense of overall political impotence giving rise to European xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism. One brief quote: Otherwise the European future consists of wishes--that nation-states should somehow cease to exist, that the nations of Eastern Europe might by ingested by the Union without excessive inconvenience, that less money might somehow be squandered on cows or olive trees, and that against expectations the world will somehow prove itself capable of being a less dangerous place, more in keeping with the carefully policed, air-conditioned, and wholy unexceptional space colonized by the E.U. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- immigration
Friedrich -- Lawrence Auster over at View from the Right has a posting about anti-Jewish riots in Montreal, the rioters being Palestinian immigrants, here. Sample passage: In the supreme irony, Jews and other Westerners decided that the meaning of the Nazi Holocaust was not evil, but intolerance, which must be overcome by eliminating all racial and ethnic discrimination from public law. So, in the name of counteracting Nazism and advancing tolerance, the Jews helped admit en masse into North America the most virulent Jew-haters on earth. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Artistic Problems
Michael In my posting, "Godard redux," I referred, rather mysteriously, to the concept that art needs sustained engagement with artistically nurturing emotional/technical "problems." Reading that over, I'm highly confident (as Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham Lambert used to say) that nobody could guess what the hell I'm talking about. So here's an example. In 1481 Leonardo Da Vinci got a commission for an altarpiece on the topic of "The Adoration of the Magi." Leonardo, not having an ounce of Christian piety in him, saw this as an opportunity to explore some formal ideas he was playing with. (Of course, this being the Renaissance and not the 20th Century, Leonardo had no intention of shocking or alienating the religious order who were paying his bills--he was perfectly happy to "illustrate" the Gospel story in such a way that it could be used as a backdrop for their church services.) Leonardo apparently began his thinking with Boticelli's version of the same story which was about six years old at the time. Botticelli Leonardo obviously didn't think Botticelli had said the last word on the subject. If you notice, Botticelli's brightly daylit painting describes space largely by having his figures (conveniently clothed in different colored outfits) overlap, and having them stand under a structure that is obviously constructed in one-point perspective. Only in the upper corners does Botticelli use atmospheric perspective to show that the landscape background is far, far behind the foreground. Leonardo seems to have had a brainwave: what if he could use atmospheric perspective (or something closely related to it) to describe the foreground figures and bring them into a clear spatial relationship with each other. He would have discovered a new "unity" for painting, that could make the figure groups attain the monumentality of sculpture (albeit by a completely unsculptural device). Leonardo seems to have found the technical effect he was looking for in dim, highly diffuse yet still directional light. Leonardo, after two years of playing around, brought the picture to this state: Leonardo He then abruptly left town, abandoning the project and leaving the poor monks with this unfinished picture. I'm sure he had a cover story (artists always do) but I believe the real reason Leonardo gave up on the picture was that he couldn't figure out how to take it any further. To be more specific, when he started superimposing local color over his monochrome underpainting, how could he keep the "picture puzzle" effect of differing local colors from disrupting the unifying effect of light, shadow and atmosphere that he had already created? The altarpiece sat unfinished for years, serving as a challenge to ambitious painters. Leonardo, on his travels around Italy, kept playing with this problem, although not, in my opinion, really solving it. The best he could do in his later paintings was to introduce very quiet, subdued, grayed-out colors (e.g., The Mona Lisa). However, in the fall of 1504, a youth from Urbino showed up in Florence, eager to prove his mettle.... posted by Friedrich at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Spy Novels
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- Do you have any patience with the spy-novel genre? I keep giving it a try, as though one of these days I'll catch on and start grooving to it. And I never do. I'm reading a Robert Ludlum right now. (Ludlum website here.) I've read an Ambler, a couple of Le Carres, a Jack Higgins. And it all strikes me as silly-little-boy fantasy stuff I'm being asked to take seriously. I enjoy the apparatus: the telegrams, the mysterious communications from MI5, the former Nazis still scheming to take over the world, the dark nights at the Geneva airport, the deadly devices hidden in the heel of the shoe, that athletic blonde Nazi/Commie with the cheekbones who always seems to beat up the hero. But, my failing, I'm sure I can't take any of it seriously. Spoofed-up or sexed-up, spy fiction can amuse me: I like the Bond novels, I enjoy "Ramba" and "Modesty Blaise." Spoof 'n' Sex: Modesty Blaise But without the sex or the humor, I have a terrible time even paying attention. The events and conspiracies go by, and after a while I find myself taking it all as modernist collage-poetry -- all scrambled motifs, bizarro moments out of expressionist movies, and inexplicable, misterioso plots. Who's "Helmut"? Why are we in Curacao right now? That blonde woman the hero's sleeping with -- is she really his sister, or was I dozing again? My response to the spy novel genre is so basic that it gets me wondering about genres generally -- where they come from, what purpose they serve, how they function. It's striking how some genres simply work for a reader and some don't. Why should this be? In my case, I like some crime novel subgenres, I can stand thrillers, I can make my way through some romances, but I have no interest in serial-killer novels, sci-fi, or spy novels. These tastes and preferences -- which are so gut-level basic -- seem built into the system itself. I find myself wondering if -- convinced, really -- they're based in the organism, down in some deep physical level. Historically, genres are certainly evolved semi-biological phenomena, something like language. I'd argue that they are the language, or are at least part of the language, of narrative itself. Why not conclude that, like language, they have a basis in biology? Which genres do you find you can go with? Which do you find you can't go with? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

Times Arts Frownlines 6
Friedrich -- More headlines from the NYTimes' Arts section that'll set your pulse racing with anticipation. On the front page: * Journey Back From the Abyss in Beijing (about a Chinese director who has made a movie about his own struggle giving up a drug addiction) * Poet Turned Antic Architect Keeps Exploring Inner Space And inside: * Zurich Theater Director Becomes a Public Issue (subheaded "A shrinking audience, a firing, a petition of protest" -- be still, my heart!) When did the arts become a branch of the social services industry? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Policy Break -- Legal System Redux
Michael In today's Wall Street Journal there's a priceless nugget: One county [in Mississippi] popular with forum-shopping trial lawyers has 21,000 asbestos cases but only 9,700 people. For all of you out there in the stock market, you should pay attention to companies having the slightest asbestos exposure (including, for example, GE)--the ONLY strategy that has permitted any such company to manage its legal risks is bankruptcy. Have a nice day, trial lawyers. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Pygmy Negritos
Friedrich -- Steve Sailer talks with George Weber, a Swiss businessman who's knowledgeable about the Pygmy Negritos of the Andaman Islands (in the Indian Ocean), one of the few remaning Stone Age cultures, here. Sample passage: It is thought that the surviving Negritos are a remnant population representing an early -- perhaps the earliest -- migration out of Africa of modern Homo sapiens. That such an early population could have survived into our days is a major miracle, made possible only by the Andamanese ferocity toward outsiders and their geographical isolation over tens of thousands of years. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Wednesday, September 11, 2002


Nietzsche
Michael I haven't spent a whole lot of time on Nietzsche lately myself, although from time to time I have pondered how his writings, bursting with contempt for late 19th century socialism, could have been hijacked by the left. As best I can tell, without making an extensive study of post-modern thought (for which I will never, ever have time or interest) post-modernists were enraptured when they read that Nietzsche denied the "objectivity" of human thought and pointed out the primacy of the "will to power"--and then just took the bit between their teeth and galloped off to pursue their left-wing agendas, feeling empowered to say or do anything in their pursuit of power--oops, I meant to say, in their pursuit of perfect social justice for the oppressed and equality between the sexes. Nietzsche, on the other hand, as best I can tell, was attempting to treat logic, morality, etc., from an evolutionary (biological) point of view. In other words, Nietzsche was opposed to the ahistorical, acultural idealism of German philosophy of his day, e.g., Kant, who segregated mental processes into a priori ideas (that provide an "organizational context" for experience, such as 3-dimensional space, time, etc.) on the one hand and concepts derived from experience on the other, thus raising the a priori ideas far above any historical or cultural context. In other words, Nietzsche is saying that we use all ideas (a priori as well as experiential) because they are useful, and will use other ones when the current set become useless--not because a particular set of ideas are, in some Platonic/metaphysical sense, true now and true always, as the idealists keep trying to suggest. I think Nietzsche would have been very amused at the way relativity and quantum mechanics have "blown up" many of the concepts that Kant (man of the 18th century that he was) assumed lived safely in the pristine, crystaline world of the a priori. None of this is to say, however, that Nietzsche considered himself or the concept of "usefulness" as above mere "facts," and especially not above inconvenient facts. In his Darwinian world, vital new thought had to pass the test of usefulness--it really had to "work" (e.g., using structural mechanics to design bridges that have stood for centuries) or it would be found out and rejected by power-seeking humanity, (e.g. Marxism-Leninism.) I think he would have had the greatest scorn for the post-modernists and their sloppy thoughts, which appear to have all the long term usefulness of schemes developed by con men. Maybe I'm wrong, but I place Nietzsche in the whole current of modern evolutionary thought along with Darwin, Hayek, and sociobiology. Cheers, of a "Joyful Science" sort, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

New Classicists
Friedrich -- Robert Adam's Sackler Library at Oxford If you're interested in the New Classicism, here are some treats. First, the thoughts of a few New Classicist intellectuals: *Leon Krier on how absurd modernist architecture is, here. *Carroll William Westfall compares classical and modernist architecture, here. *David Watkin, a brilliant British architectural historian, arguing that classical architecture is the language of Western civ, here. *Lucien Steil, himself a New Classicist, runs Katarxis, a terrific webzine about traditional and classical architecture, here. You can taste-test some of the work of the New Classicists at these sites: *The Institute for the Study of Classical Architecture, in NYC, here. *The studio of Robert Adam, one of the more bold New Classicists, here. *The native-born and still-young Eric Watson of Tampa, Florida, who has worked with many of the New Urbanists, here. *Julian Bicknell, one of the stricter but also most romantic of the group, here. [Note to the zillions of journalists (small joke) who frequent this site looking for ideas to steal: go wild! And lotsa luck with this one, which I tried to sell for years, and for which I never found any takers.] Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Free Reads -- Catesby Leigh
Friedrich -- One of the most interesting developments in architecture in recent years has been the resurgence of classical (not just traditional, but actual columns-and-porticoes) architecture. It's also been one of the most unremarked developments, at least so far as the mainstream and official architectural press go. Catesby Leigh writes about the rebirth of classical architecture for the Weekly Standard, here. It would also be worth buying a copy of the magazine, which includes photos of the buildings discussed. Sample passage: The romantic stereotype of the architect as a Promethean genius--a man who invents the terms of his art more or less ex nihilo--has done the profession considerable harm. Most clients haven't much use for visionaries who aspire to erect gigantic upside-down woks. A small number of high-profile jobs allows a well-placed coterie to inflict their "creativity" on the hapless public. But meanwhile, more and more work slips away from architects, as clients get the job done with construction engineers and tradesmen. Add on top of this the preservationists' listing of everything they can get their hands on, and the average architecture-school graduate finds it very hard to be "creative" and make a living. Some good news: one of the best of the New Classicists has been engaged to build a new $100 million quad at our Lousy Ivy College. I didn't like much about the place but I did think it was pretty, and it's been awful to see the mess the administrators (and their fave postmodern architect) have made of new construction in the years since we left. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Free Reads -- Terry Teachout
Friedrich -- Terry Teachout meditates for Commentary magazine on the future of recorded music, here. Sample passage: In the not-so-long run, the introduction of online delivery systems and the spread of file-sharing will certainly undermine and very likely destroy the fundamental economic basis for the recording industry, at least as we know it today. Nor can there be much doubt that within a few years, the record album will lose its once-privileged place at the heart of Western musical culture. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Colored Prints
Friedrich -- I had no idea that Renaissance prints were often hand-colored, or colored at all. Did you? The Baltimore Museum of Art (website here) opens a show of 80 such colored prints on October 6th, which they describe as "the first extensive exploration of hand-colored prints of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. During the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, the application by brush of washes, body color, and precious gold, and silver paints to engravings, etchings, and woodcuts was a common aspect of print production." Here's an example, a hand-colored Durer woodcut from 1511. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Media Bitch
Friedrich -- Good lord. Here's the publicity copy for a book Morrow will be bringing out later this month. Girl becomes woman, and woman becomes bitch. It is a matter of self-preservation and the beginning of independence. Just as women begin to celebrate their freedoms, anger sets in. Sometimes harrowing, always intriguing and each time hitting close-to-home, THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage is the polar opposite of what Virginia Woolf coined, "The Angel in House." To Woolf, the angel in the house symbolized the domestic goddess who kept her family content and cared for at all costs, especially her own. The Bitch in the House is a flawed goddess. She often must do the work of the angel, but while balancing myriad roles. The bitch is sometimes selfish, sometimes angry. As Hanauer says in her introduction, "This book was born out of anger." And the bitch realizes that sometimes her anger fuels her. But ultimately, she doesn't want to be angry. I've got whiplash -- partly from trying to make sense of the above, but mostly from running for cover from the kinds of people who'd publish such a thing. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Godard redux
Michael In your posting Walter Hill redux you remark: "I can't think of another filmmaker so talented whose work has gone so completely to hell. Can you?" Unfortunately, I can: Godard. Maybe precipitous declines are a risk of greatness in movie-making, something like "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." Or maybe because art in movie making (at least in the modern movie industry) seems to be much more a matter of balancing on some unconscious or at best semi-conscious razor's edge than in some other media. I suspect that's because the conditions of modern movie making don't seem propitious for the sustained engagement with artistically nurturing emotional/technical "problems." (See, I can make you mutter "Say what?" with the best of those post-Modernists.) What I'm getting at is that few of today's movie makers are lucky enough to have anything like the sustaining "problems" of physical comedy underlying, for example, the films of a Buster Keaton. I think a lot of them would be grateful to be goaded from one inventive "solution" to another. If you want to skip seeing Godard's most recent piece, fine by me. Just rent one of his pre-1968 movies and write your heart out. I mean, if we're going to discuss Greek architecture, I'm happy to go straight to the Parthenon and skip the little plastic knick-knacks now on sale at the Athens Airport gift shop. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Ashley reredux
Friedrich -- Why we love actresses, part 742: A page of links to interviews with Ashley Judd, here. She's a charmer. Here's a sample, from a talk with Salma Hayek for Interview magazine: When I accept a role, I feel that as an artist I have to submit completely to the tutelage of my director. And while I expect to be heard and encouraged and honored, at the end of the day, man, it's the way the director wants it. And that gives me a great adrenaline rush, because I like the challenge of doing it the way they want it done. If they ask me to do it, I can get to a place where I can deliver completely what they're looking for - with my own oomph. Grrrrr. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Moviegoing: "XXX"
Friedrich -- Today (a hot one) the Wife and I went to the multiplex in seach of good air conditioning and mindless entertainment, and wound up in a theater showing "Xxx." 15 minutes in, I offered to leave if and when the Wife saw fit. Five minutes later, air conditioning or no air conditioning, she saw fit, and we were outta there. Necessary preface: I'm capable of all sorts of snobbism; I'm also all in favor of brainless, dynamic fun. "Xxx," which wants to be a post-Gen X/ESPN2/Xtreme- sports reworking of a Bond-like franchise, was brainless and dynamic, but it wasn't fun. All it was, as far as I was concerned, was a blur of noise and hyperactivity happening at a very far distance -- one of those duds that sends you out of the theater wondering why you never once felt involved or interested. It proposed its world, its premise, and its game, then failed completely to lure me in. Vin: Icon of Edge? Larger Michael Musings: 1) How does "involvement" occur? And what is it that happens, or fails to happen, when it doesn't occur? The Wife points out that while "Xxx" had lots of cleverness and energy, it had no playfulness and no spark. I felt like a column of numbers that the movie was determined to crunch. 2) Some performers -- such as Cameron Diaz, or (here) Vin Diesel -- are so striking in supporting roles that you can't wait for the pleasure they'll deliver as stars. Then, presented in a starring role, they can't hold you. Why? Cameron Diaz is a charmer in "My Best Friend's Wedding" but seems all-used-up in "The Sweetest Thing." Vin Diesel seems like an instant icon in "The Fast and the Furious" but fails to hold the camera in "Xxx." What gets lost in the move from striking-supporting-player to not-really-a-star? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 11, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Tuesday, September 10, 2002


Walter Hill redux
Friedrich -- Thanks for the Walter Hill update. I'm not exactly surprised "Undisputed" is a turkey. I remember how exciting Hill's early movies were, and how quickly his work deteriorated. Thenish I haven't seen many of the movies he's made since "48 HRS," but each one has been awful. Downright bizarre how bad Hill's work has become. It seems lazy and pointlessly "dynamic," as though he now thinks that tons of footage, camera angles and edits can make up for a lousy (albeit "mythical") script and an aversion to staging. Nowish I can't think of another filmmaker so talented whose work has gone so completely to hell. Can you? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 10, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Schopenhauer redux
Friedrich -- Glad to hear you're enjoying Schopenhauer. I'm no Schopey scholar, but I've loved what I've read: grimly (but enjoyably) pessimistic, poetic, influenced by some of my favorite Eastern ideas. Schopenhauer's basic vision of life suits me pretty well, but the writing is what makes me love his work. It's breathtaking. Plus his view of art suits me. Here's a nice passage from Bryan Magee, a British professor who writes first-rate intros to philosophy: In Schopenhauer's view there is one way in which we can find momentary release from our imprisonment in the dark dungeon of this world, and that is through the arts. In painting, sculpture, poetry, drama, and above all music, the otherwise relentless rack of willing on which we are stretched out throughout life is relaxed, and suddenly we find ourselves free from the tortures of our existence. For a moment we are in touch with something outside the empirical realm, a different order of being: we literally have the experience of being taken out of time and space altogether, and also out of ourselves, even out of the material object that is our body. You go, Schopey. Schopenhauer: Cheerful Zen pessimist Confirming once again just how shallow and pleasure-oriented I am -- go ahead, call me an aesthete -- I find that I react much more to the quality of writing in philosophy than most readers seem to. The tone, the words, the style, the energy -- all mean a lot to me, at least as much as the ideas. I love and (not that anyone needs to know) basically agree with Hume, for instance. But if he weren't so drily amusing and incisive I wouldn't bother with him at all. Hume: Cosmic yet bemused There's more meaning in the writing itself, or so I'd contend, than is usually acknowledged. I remember once discussing Nietzsche with some professor and doing my lame best to ask him why more discussions of Nietzsche didn't take his humor and style into account. (I always found it hard to take Nietzsche's goofy ideas seriously -- but what a dazzling writer.) The prof (a perfectly bright and helpful guy) kept doing his best to steer me back to the exact meaning of the words. Which was probably the sane and responsible thing to do. Because when you read philosophy scrupulously, it's helpful; you sharpen your brain a bit, you polish your tools, and you find out pretty quickly which team you're cheering for. But, good lord, it can also be pleasurable, dammit, and that's not nothing. I marvel that that isn't discussed more. But perhaps I'm weird. I find that generally I'm more interested in what reading a philosopher is like than I am in his ideas, which seem to me to be mere parts of a much more rich experience. And in most cases I'd rather talk about the experience than hash over the ideas. How do you tend to read philosophy? For the ideas alone? For the literary... posted by Michael at September 10, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Walter Hill
Michael I made a rather discouraging pilgrimage to a local multiplex last night. I went to see "Undisputed," a film co-written and directed by the once-great Walter Hill. Unfortunately, it was like paying a visit on an old friend and being shocked to see how far downhill they’ve gone since you saw them last. Walter Hill first burst in upon my consciousness in 1979 with a TV ad for his movie, "The Warriors." My roommate and I were so pumped up by the ad (hey, we were 25) that we literally ran several blocks to a local theatre to catch the next showing. "The Warriors" was a weird brew of a movie--a disco-era remake of Xenophon's (431-354 B.C.) "Anabasis." (For those of you unfamiliar with your Classic literature, this is the true story of ten thousand Greek mercenaries, including our author, who, having signed on with the Persian Cyrus to help take the throne from the emperor Artaxerxes, end up stranded a long way from home by Cyrus’ death and have to fight their way out against a series of foes.) In “The Warriors,” the Greek mercenaries have become a Coney Island street gang, summoned to a pan-gang conference in the Bronx (conducted under a turf-war truce) in which gang-leader Cyrus’ vision of taking over the city is short-circuited by his assassination. When the assassination is blamed on the Warriors, they become the target of all the other gangs whose turf lies between the Bronx and home. On the one hand, the movie is a series of action movie set-pieces of increasingly kinetic violence as the Warriors—refusing to remove their gang insignia—run or fight their way past hostile gangs. On the other hand, the movie, shot largely on city locations—grafitti-sprayed playgrounds, the subway, Central Park, Coney Island, etc.—also functions as a sort of nightmarish documentary of 1970’s crime ridden, bankrupt, neon-lit, disco-decadent New York. The same artistic strategy of using real city locations as backdrops for action-movie gymnastics is applied to the actors. Our heros, while directed to give highly stylized, strike-a-pose, ultra-tough-guy performances as they confront one blood-chilling opponent after another, also come across as believably teen-aged: scared, stupid and full of the redeeming adrenaline-and-hormone charged energy of adolescence. “Undisputed,” in regrettable contrast, is a tired, middle-aged, improbable fantasy that takes off from the adventures of Mike Tyson (famous boxer convicted of rape and sent to the big house.) The movie spends a good deal of time on the Tyson character, here called Ice-Man, and on the gripping question of whether or not he is actually guilty of rape. Unfortunately, we never really find out who to believe before the movie suddenly loses interest in the whole question. I bring this piece of “extended character development” up only to point out, that like most of the film, it is just window dressing. Ice-Man is really a walking plot device, brought onstage so that we can see the climactic boxing match between the him, the undefeated World Champion and our... posted by Friedrich at September 10, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Saturday, September 7, 2002


Taboo
Friedrich -- We marvel at the way people deprived of traditional religion will promptly start believing (and in a religious way) in something else -- Marxism, say, or Freudianism, or modern art. But they do, and they will. A friend of mine laughingly says that we might as well resign ourselves to the fact that people have a gene for religion. It occurs to me that maybe people also have a gene for taboo. I find myself thinking this as I'm pondering today's young performers and today's styles of sexiness. Sex is everywhere; so is sexiness. And it's all, literally, out there -- porn, gayness, bellybuttons, discussions of anal sex. Underwear is outerwear. At the same time, sex seems to have stopped being something mysterious. When sex was taboo, it had radiance and power. Alluring experiences circled around it: religion, poetry, art, feelings of exaltation and bliss. (All that=eros.) These days sex seems to be about as fascinating as programming a macro, or as double-clicking on an icon. The de-sacralization of sex is a triumph or it's not. What I notice is this: that as taboo has come off sex, it hasn't simply vanished. Instead, it's landed somewhere else. To be precise, it's landed on race questions and sex-difference questions -- all the subjects P.C. prevents people from talking about openly. Perfectly nice vanilla kids adore rap, and Eminem is a huge star. How to explain this? Questions of talent aside, what strikes me about these stars is that they're acting out cartoonish fantasies of sexual and racial stereotypes. They're acting out what's forbidden (masculinity, heightened racial attributes), and they make use of what are today's dirty words: ho, nigga, etc. It gives the fans a thrill -- more of a thrill, as far as I can tell, than does sexual titillation. These, and not sex, are now the subjects that have a mystique, and an aura. Thus my conclusion: that something will always be taboo. Lift taboo off one area of life, and it'll simply settle on another. Taboo, like religion, is part of the basic and inescapable furniture of life. It's standard, unavoidable equipment. And, hey, wouldn't it be something if the gene for religion and the gene for taboo (and, hey, maybe the gene for art too) are all kinda intertwined, ya know what I mean? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 7, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Friday, September 6, 2002


Free Reads -- Toby Young
Friedrich -- Toby Young, who has written a book about his years trying and failing to make it in the New York media world, marvels for the New York Observer at the thin skins and dreary souls of big-time journalists, here. An excerpt: I arrived in New York in 1995 with tales of the legendary bad behavior of Ben Hecht, Herman J. Mankiewicz and Dorothy Parker swimming in my head, expecting to find their modern-day equivalents in the offices of Vanity Fair. I imagined this zany, madcap community where no one stood on ceremony and everyone had a wisecrack at the ready. But that devil-may-care attitude, that sense of fun, was nowhere to be found. Instead, I was confronted with a regiment of pinched and hidebound careerists who never got drunk and were safely tucked up in bed by 10 p.m. In London, I’d seen chartered accountants behave with more abandon. If you want to find out what life is like in the NYC midtown-media world, you could do worse than to read Young's memoir, "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People." It's fast and amusing, like a nonfiction version of "Bright Lights, Big City." Young does a spankingly good job of bringing back to life the Conde Nast and Tina Brown '90s. (A nightmare time, believe you me.) Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

If I Were an Editor 4
Friedrich -- I've said it before, and you can be sure I'll say it again: if I were an editor, I'd be doing a much more aggressive job of covering immigration than most publications are doing. (Jeez, are bigtime editors just not listening to me?) The topic is on people's minds, the walls preventing discussion are starting to crumble, the foolish old dichotomy of pro vs. anti is falling apart -- yet mainstream outlets are by and large ignoring the subject. Spiked Online (formerly LM, or Living Marxism, magazine) to their credit -- because they're very pro open borders -- runs a good piece by Anthony Browne about why he thinks immigration should be slowed in Britain, here. Excerpt: Having resorted to intellectual dishonesty to hoodwink readers into thinking that immigration is at a lower level than it is, the pro-immigrationists tried another tactic: smear the opposition. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Prissy Art Classes Redux
Michael I was looking at a book I picked up on vacation, "Realism in 20th Century Painting" by Brendan Prendeville. I discovered that what I termed "structured" drawing (i.e., mapping out your image by measuring everything visually using pencil or paintbrush) was a central theme of the art of various postwar British painters. William Coldstream (1908-1987) insisted on painting from observation: "By systematically gauging vertical and horizontal distances on the person or object, seen against a brush held at arm's length, and marking his canvas accordingly, Coldstream sought to let his subject emerge as if by itself, without having been merely willed. Equally, he was intent on respecting the integrity of the painting's surface, its beauty." Coldstream set up something called the Euston Road School with a couple of other artists, Claude Rogers and Victor Passmore. The book, which is regrettably short on illustrations, does reproduce two intriguing canvases: one of Victor Passmore's paintings, "The Studio of Ingres," and another by one of Coldstream's students, Euan Uglow, "Curled Nude on a Stool." Passmore Uglow In both cases the reduction of three-dimensional data to a set of completely two-dimensional marks is very evident (the work almost becomes conceptual art), and yet its conceptualness (conceptualosity? conceptitude?) is in rather interesting tension to the fleshiness of the nudes. (Oddly, both renderings seem to focus on buttocks. Accident--or Hidden Meaning?) Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Godard
Michael A long time ago I sent you my musings on having seen "Band of Outsiders." In it I ventured the theory that Godard's central issue (at least in his pre-1968 movies) was the fact that he just fit in better with books and movies than in "real life"-- that he had found art to be the only true home of love, tenderness, devotion, etc., while reality was just a place where people "playacted" such emotions and generally looked out for themselves. In short, the work of a brilliant, but really needy, guy. You never responded to this. You swine. I just read a review of Godard's "In Praise of Love" which I understand is now playing in New York. It is your DUTY to write up something brilliant about Godard. This new movie, which according to the review is gorgeous nonsense, is an obvious hook. Now, get busy. If necessary it is permissible for you to dismiss my theories on Godard with Degas' line about a critic: "Don't worry about HIS opinions. He arrived in Paris by way of the treetops." Dictatorial cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

If I Were an Editor 3
Friedrich -- If I were an editor, I'd run lots of pieces about the impact of evolutionary biology (and evo-psych) on thinking about the arts. I'd do more than that; I'd go out of my way to use the evo-bio crowd as standard sources for quotes and thoughts about the arts. It's where the best, or at least most useful, new thinking about the arts is coming from. Structuralism? Deconstruction? Postmodernism? They're, like, so five minutes ago. And thank god for that. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Amazon Humorist Redux
Michael Your posting "Amazon Humorist" reminds me of a Mark Twain story. On a speaking tour, Mark Twain was introduced by a local politician. This politician, as he walked around, waiting to make his introduction, never took his hands out of his pockets. Finally, he introduced the writer as "Mark Twain, a comedian who is really funny." Mark Twain stood up and replied: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a far rarer creature in our midst than a comedian who is really funny. We have a politician who keeps his hands in his own pockets!" Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Amazon Humorist
Friedrich -- A reviewer on Amazon who uses the "Amazon Reader's Comment" form as a comedy vehicle, here. Plus, he's genuinely funny. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Policy Break -- Continuum, Reredux
Friedrich -- In our different ways we're both nibbling around the edges of an irksome question. Setup: Given that politics, like any other field, wants to expand; given that any individual or party that succeeds in the field will tend strongly to be one that is seen by the field to be promoting the field's own interests; given that, let's face it, anyone who goes into politics is likely to be driven by a taste for power (and whose attitude towards power, whatever the surface rationale, is generally "More!")... How then can those of us whose preference is to see the political realm minimized and the political grasp frustrated ever expect that anyone in politics (any individual, any party) should ever represent our side? In working for our best interest, he'd be working against his own. A subset of this question: how to explain that a few people over the years (G. Washington, for instance) seem to have done more or less that? (Ie., worked in the best interest of the larger organism, not his own particular component thereof.) Can political progress, if by progress you mean a freeing-up of individuals from the reach of politics, ever occur from within the political realm itself? I haven't the foggiest, myself. But I'd hate to have to depend on altruism and/or luck. All of which explains my general voting strategy: vote for whoever seems likely to do the least damage. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Policy Break -- Continuum, Redux
Michael You ask a question about matters, as the Buddha remarked, which are truly questionable. I too have extreme doubts about politics. In essence, politics is about power, and power is about coercion: whether exercised by the ballot box or by dictatorial fiat, politics always involves "enforcement" by men with guns (or arrows, spears and rocks.) The Great and Powerful Oz The Japanese, who are notorious for pursuing decision-making by 'consensus' also have an expression that reveals the coercive underside to that pursuit: "The nail that stands up gets hammered down." Even so hallowed a concept in American life as majority rule, among other things is a great way to push minorities around. (If you had asked a black person in 1920 what they thought of majority rule, how fond of it do you think they would have been?) Clauswitz's doctrine about war being the continuation of politics "by other means" can just as accurately be turned around: politics is also the continuation of war "by other means." Military history is quite illuminating on this score: it reveals that Jericho, a fertile oasis, was fortified with mud-brick walls approximately 10,000 years ago, not long after the establishment of agriculture, the domestication of animals and the beginnings of long-distance trading. (And it was fortified with sophisticated stone defenses within a few thousand years after that.) Obviously, as economic advances have made some human communities highly productive, it has also made for a human "food chain"--human "carnivores" who prey on the productive labors of the human "herbivores." Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic on this score, but there are times when it seems to me that governments are just bigger and more successful versions of the street gangs that run many neighborhoods here in sunny Los Angeles. If war is the negative outcome of humanity's natural tendencies towards greed and aggression, the business world seems to me to be the positive outcome. As I go to work each morning I marvel at the scale and scope of the cooperation and trust I see around me. I have thousands of customers and hundreds of suppliers--our mutual interactions are voluntary and blessedly non-coercive (if occasionally fractious and always spiced with a degree of suspicion). They are based around a shared perception of fairly simple rules (essentially, the negotiation of deals and then sticking to them). The Grand Illusion I used to think that an element of coercion (i.e., the law) was necessary to keep the system humming, but after 16 years in business and a few experiences with our woeful legal system, I honestly no longer believe that. In the vast majority of cases, agreements that actually need to be "enforced" by the legal system are effectively worthless. I've found it pays better to walk away and try my hand at something new. And that "pragmatic" attitude is very general: the actual, real-world sanction against most "bad" behavior--as long as it is not violent-- is typically that people won't continue to do business with you.... posted by Friedrich at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

The Mind, Part 7,342,941
Friedrich -- Another sensible science column by Sharon Begley in the Wall Street Journal, again, unfortunately, unavailable online. This one's about how research is suggesting that we can know little about why we feel what we feel. Some excerpts: Introspection about the unconscious can be worse than useless...We don't have meaningful access to the causes of our feelings...If you have a gut feeling about love, work or life, it's probably best not to analyze it to death. The unexamined life has its virtues. All of which jibes pretty closely with some of Michael Oakeshott's arguments -- that, for instance, we're by and large creatures of habit, taste, and temperament, and that that's ok, it's what it is to be human. And that the determination to pick 'em apart -- to make sense of them -- almost always represents the agenda of the power-and-control-hungry "rationalizer." And beware of them. You'd think this sort of research would make arts critics question what they do, not that many arts critics follow science, even the more popular expressions of science. After all, isn't much of what critics are up to an attempt to explain why a given work of art or entertainment made them feel the way they did? After years of befouling the air with too many rationalizations of my own, I've come to think that we like what we like and dislike what we dislike just because we do. Education, discussion, adventure -- all these can open us to experiences and pleasures we might not have encountered otherwise. But our responses remain based nonetheless in temperament. Lord knows that a big part of the fun of following the arts is letting our tastes and pleasures guide us, musing (in my case ad nauseum) about what we encounter. Lord knows it can be fun to give our responses a poke from time to time just to see how they respond. But fancy explanations for what are basically temperamental preferences are usually just disguises for political or esthetic agendas. And are much to be mistrusted. Or so I've found. You? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

America the Goofy
Friedrich -- Priceless Americana, here. I ran across the above via another blogger, but I can't credit him/her because I neglected to keep track -- a gross violation of netiquette, I gather. Sorry and many thanks, Unknown Blogger! Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thursday, September 5, 2002


Policy Break -- Continuum
Friedrich -- I notice that Jim Kalb at "View From the Right" has a good "What Is Conservatism" essay, here. Where do you find you feel most comfortable on the political spectrum? Myself, I feel most comfortable off the political spectrum. I'm anti-political, and whatever politics I have comes from that fact. So I reason my way to political opinions this way: I'm not really political; which means that I like limits being put on politics; which means I'm wary of people who put great hopes in politics; and, besides, I like to be the one doing the picking and choosing whenever possible. I'll take "negative liberty" over "positive liberty" any day. And I spend much too much time gnawing at questions like these: Who are these people who put their hopes for redemption and salvation in politics? Haven't they read any history? But maybe that's just because I live in NYC. If I were forced to take a stand (Oh, please no! Not that!), I guess I'd wind up wearing this team's uniform: classical liberal with conservative social concerns and a deep-dyed hatred of any kind of fanaticism. But I want to live a bohemian life myself. I should come up with a name for my team. Something other than "Morons," I mean. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 5, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Prissy Art Classes
Friedrich -- Snappy work! John Singer Sargent, watch out. More artists should start making use of JPEGs, blogs and email as distribution systems. Smash the gallery cartel! How do you like prissy art classes? I took one that qualified: a couple of weekends, very intense. Everything we drew we had to measure and then measure again. We used plumb lines, straight sticks and other devices. It was the Art 101 equivalent of taking a really severe-and-precise cooking class. I wouldn't want to work like that all the time, but the process became rather absorbing; it was fascinating to learn about the techniques, and to let whatever was going to happen to your head and eyes just happen. I got more out of it than I did out of most of the "express yourself" art classes I've taken. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 5, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Mein Own Art
Michael I tried out your idea of shooting some art with an electronic camera over the weekend. Following are three of my drawings from the art class I took in the fall of 2001. They were done as "structured" drawings--that is, everything in them was measured (the face measured in "eye-width" units, the body in head-length units.) This turns out to be trickier than it looks; the body doesn't always give you landmarks where'd you'd like to have them. They were drawn with conte pencil on newsprint, a medium I don't pretend to have mastered, especially for modelling purposes--which is why these are rather low contrast, linear images. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 5, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Bebe, Musicals
Michael I saw a production of "Chicago" in London, but Bebe wasn't in it. Some German chick was the star. I really liked the music, but somehow--I don't know if it was the staging or the costumes or what -- it seemed like the girls' abdominal muscles were supposed to be the subject of the play. Great as those abs were, it was about as erotic as watching people strip down to get deloused. I suppose the idea was to throw the "meat" in your face, but was it supposed to be vaguely depressing? Maybe I was just in the wrong mood. But I find musicals a challenge. It always strikes me as a great idea going in, but never seems to have delivered as I shuffle out of the theatre. I heard the soundtrack album of "Rent" the other day which was painfully jejune. I mean, I need some guidance here. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 5, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Columnist Shootout
Friedrich -- After much enjoyably self-important mulling and musing, I’ve decided that the best journalistic essayists now writing are John Derbyshire, Theodore Dalrymple, Mark Steyn, and Robert Fulford. Do you know their work? In case you don't, here are examples of each of them in fine form: Mark Steyn, here. Theodore Dalyrymple, here. John Derbyshire, here. Robert Fulford, here. Civilized, provocative, stylish and brainy, each one. Do you marvel, as I do, at the inability of Americans to enjoy examples of what they disagree with? It seems terribly difficult for an American to read or hear something he disagrees with and yet enjoy it. Why, do you suppose? Years ago, I spent a while writing for an English magazine. What a treat. There may be much to be said against the English, but in their favor is the fact that many seem to have no trouble enjoying provocation as a form of intellectual entertainment. It's a ritual and a game: the writer takes an extreme stance, the reader cheers or is annoyed by the point of view, but applauds the presentation if and when it strikes him as well done. In fact, without sufficient provocation the English reader seems bored. Americans, on the other hand, are often earnest beyond belief. If we don’t agree we go ballistic, in one way or another. Big-city types, I find, often go (ponderously, savagely) on the personal attack. Small-city and backwater Americans tend to feel hurt or enraged; they often look like they’re going to cry. I wonder if this is because we're so hopelessly mixed-up about sophistication. We either revere it and identify with it (the big city), or it ticks us off and makes us feel like we're being looked down on by snobs (mid-America). In any case: ah, for the chance to enjoy both sides of a debate. But maybe I'm perverse. Most people seem to want to root for a team; I usually find myself rooting for the game. (After all, it's not as though my opinion is going to effect the result.) Culture partisan that I am, I find myself wondering plaintively why there aren’t people writing (commenting, etc.) at a similarly high level in the arts. Though Steyn does write well about the theater, and Fulford checks in with the occasional good piece about cultural matters… Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 5, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Rightwing Babes
Michael Eyeball the Republican Babe of the Week, here. Very cheerful, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 5, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Schopenhauer
Michael Have you ever read any Schopenhauer? I happened on this bizarre website called "Frownland: Pessimists speaking the truth," here., which has a couple translations of the old boy. He appears from these excerpts to be a German philosopher who could actually write (very surprising) and who possessed amazing 'tude (not so surprising, but still pretty amusing.) Following is an excerpt from "The Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes": So then, after what has been called to mind, no one can doubt either the reality or the importance of the matter [i.e., romantic love]; and therfore, instead of wondering that a philosophy should also for once make its own this constant theme of all poets, one ought rather to be surprised that a thing which plays throughout so important a part in human life has hitherto practically been disregarded by philosophers altogether, and lies before us as raw material. The one who has most concerned himself with it is Plato, especially in the "Symposium" and the "Phaedrus". Yet what he says on the subject is confined to the sphere of myths, fables, and jokes, and also for the most part concerns only the Greek love of youths. The little that Rousseau says upon our theme in the "Discours sur l'inegalite" (p. 96, ed. Bip.) is false and insufficient. Kant's explanation of the subject in the third part of the essay, "Ueber das Gefuhl des Schonen und Erhabenen" (p. 435 seq. of Rosenkranz' edition) is very superficial and without practical knowledge, therefore it is also partly incorrect. Lastly, Platner's treatment of the matter in his "Anthropology" (sect. 1347 seq.) every one will find dull and shallow. On the other hand, Spinoza's definition, on account of its excessive naivete, deserves to be quoted for the sake of amusement: "Amor est titillatio, concomitante idea causae externae" (Eth. iv., prop. 44, dem.). Accordingly I have no predecessors either to make use of or to refute. The subject has pressed itself upon me objectively, and has entered of its own accord into the connection of my consideration of the world. Moreover, least of all can I hope for approbation from those who are themselves under the power of this passion, and who accordingly seek to express the excess of their feelings in the sublimest and most ethereal images. To them my view will appear too physical, too material, however metaphysical and even transcendent it may be at bottom. Meanwhile let them reflect that if the object which to-day inspires them to write madrigals and sonnets had been born eighteen years earlier it would scarcely have won a glance from them. Moreover, his theory of love is extremely sociobiological. Richard Dawkins of "The Selfish Gene" would have little to argue with in this account: That this particular child shall be begotten is, although unknown to the parties concerned, the true end of the whole love story; the manner in which it is attained is a secondary consideration. Now, however loudly persons of lofty and sentimental... posted by Friedrich at September 5, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Wednesday, September 4, 2002


Policy Break -- Social Security
Michael Are you nervous about the future of Social Security? As an aging boomer with my stock portfolio in the crapper, I know I am. I mean, I try to keep up with all this public policy stuff, but it’s not easy with all the contradictory information out there. For example, I checked out the website of “The Women & Social Security Project.” There I found a page on “The Privatization Debate.” Well, that sounded good—I mean, a debate sounds like a discussion of both sides of the issue, right? The headline made me a little nervous, though: “4 Ways to Win The Privatization Debate & Strengthen Social Security for Women.” Well, I’m all for women. My wife and daughters are women. My best times have uniformly involved women (along with, you know, the odd controlled substance). The Women & Social Security Project website was put up by the The National Coalition of Women’s Organizations, a group of more than 100 women’s groups representing over 6 million women! Hell, I’ve been married for 15 years, I know better than to argue with 6 million women! I carried on. The pro-privatization side of the debate apparently got the first word in. It read, in full: When They Say: "Social Security is going bankrupt.” That was it. I’ll admit, I often feel stupid when I talk to women, but this made me feel really dense. Not only was it short on information, but I wasn’t even sure it was a complete sentence (that colon had me a little worried.) And anyway, who was this “They” going around saying such nasty things? Fortunately, right next to it was what appeared to be the “We” side’s response: You Say: Fix it, don't scrap it…especially don't ‘fix it’ with a scheme that would destroy the intent of the program which is to provide a foundation of retirement/disability and survivor insurance. Well, I don’t know about you, but that STILL left me wondering: IS Social Security going bankrupt? I mean, after Enron and Worldcom and all, maybe somebody’s been cooking the books. So I checked out another website: “Social Security’s Treatment of Postwar Americans: How Bad Can It Get?” by a couple of fellas named Jagadeesh Gokhale and Laurence J. Kotlikoff from Boston University’s National Bureau of Economic Research. They were a bit more specific on the question, if not very reassuring: How large is the total present value imbalance of the [Social Security] system? If we discount all future taxes and benefits at a 3 percent real rate, we arrive at a present value imbalance of $8.1 trillion. This figure represents the difference between a) the present value of all future benefit payments and b) the sum of the present value of future payroll tax revenue plus the current [Social Security] trust fund.” Yikes! What did these Social Security bozos do, use Arthur Andersen for their accountant and Ken Lay for their budget director? Ken Lay: Architect of Social Security? And then Jagadeesh and Larry... posted by Friedrich at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Nozick
Friedrich -- I just ran across this: an interview the blogger Julian Sanchez did with the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick back in 2001, here. In my dilettantish way, I thoroughly enjoyed the 20% of it I understood. Sample: JS: Are Marxists less dangerous in the English department than they were in the politics and philosophy departments? RN: Well, I guess so in that their students don't go on to as many positions of power. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Surf's Up
Friedrich -- The Wife and I drove by a surfing beach recently. There were a few gals on surfboards and a few guys lolling about. But about 95% of the guys were strutting or surfing (ie., showing off their prowess), and about 95% of the gals were oiled, bikini'd and languourous (ie., showing off their desirable flesh, like juicy roasted chickens). I pointed this out to The Wife. She, a sexy, fit 6 footer who could probably bench-press me, laughed and said, "And so it ever shall be." One of many reasons we get along so well. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

DVD Journal: "The Sweetest Thing"
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- The Wife and I caught up with "The Sweetest Thing" on DVD. Have you seen it? A painful misfire. Cameron Diaz, Cristina Applegate and Selma Blair in a slapstick, road-trip romance that wants to combine "There's Something About Mary" (charm, gross-outs) with "Sex in the City" (charm, satire, glamour). Almost nothing in it works. The girls twinkle and laugh, show off their underpants, wink at the camera, sing and dance a satirical song about the penis -- and almost none of it is funny, let alone charming. They Wish Fascinating to read viewers' comments about the movie, which generally divide this way: it's gross and raw and therefore bad (the "tut tut" reaction); or it's gross and raw and isn't that cool and it's therefore good (the "you go, girls" reaction). My own reaction: it's interesting to think about how to put across a chickflick that features guffaws and grossouts, but this particular team certainly didn't solve the problem. The actresses shriek, horse around, and seem to amuse themselves. But from minute one you're staring at the movie in disbelief as it lays egg after egg: How could it have gone so wrong? Cameron Diaz has nothing like the technique it takes to put over this kind of extreme, stylized material; Cristina Applegate is fine; Selma Blair I adore (that comic earnestness and overintensity!), and I was glad to see her manage a few droll moments. But all three seem terrified of not being found charming, and overcompensate wildly. More general musing: I'm glad girls and young women feel free to be more rambunctious than they supposedly used to be, although I wonder whether we don't paint earlier generations as more uptight than they were. (My mom had an out-of-the-house job, like many of the moms in my small town; and I recall being chased, beaten up, and outplayed by many neighborhood girls my age, lucky me. It's a funny myth, this idea that American women were until recently so repressed: I remember an article in Salon whose young-woman author had apparently been convinced -- by some women's-studies prof? -- that before the 1970s women didn't enjoy sex.) But it's about time, in any case, that some of that rambunctiousness started showing up in movies. Do you, by the way, as the daddy of teen girls, find the new girls much different than those of our generation? The Penis Song But girls seem in conflict in ways boys don't. A boy can be obnoxious, extreme, and gross and still semi-reasonably hope to be found entertaining. Girls still often want (biology or culture, I'll let others fight it out, although I know which side I vote for) to be found charming, and even cute. Allowing for that, has any female performer successfully brought together funny, gross. and charming? Margaret Cho, maybe? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Videobooks
Friedrich -- More evidence (I learn slow) that TV is the center of the culture: on the cover of Book Magazine this month is the newscaster Peter Jennings. (Article is here.) No mention on the magazine's cover of Jennings' co-author, Todd Brewster... Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Bebe
Friedrich -- Reasons to love actresses, part 326: a cute interview with Bebe Neuwirth in the Telegraph, here. Sample: "A magazine asked me to comment on an article called 'How to Be Sexy After 40'. What could I tell them? If you have to ask, you probably can't do it." Best Michael... posted by Michael at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

More from "Intellectuals"
Michael I can't resist posting another excerpt from Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals"--again on Marx. Why Are You Resisting My Theories? Chapter Eight [of Marx's "Capital"], 'The Working Day'...present[s] itself as a factual analysis of the impact of capitalism on the lives of the British Proletariat; indeed, it is the only part of Marx's work which actually deals with the workers, the ostensible subject of his entire philosophy. It is therefore worth examining for its 'scientific' value... The truth is, even the most superficial inquiry into Marx's use of evidence forces one to treat with skepticism everything he wrote which relies on factual data...[H]e uses out-of-date material because up-to-date material does not support his case. ... [H]e selects certain industries, where conditions were particularly bad, as typical of capitalism. This cheat was particularly important to Marx because without it he would not really have had Chapter Eight at all. His thesis was that capitalism produces ever-worsening conditions; the more capital employed, the more badly the workers had to be treated to secure adequate returns. The evidence he quotes at length comes almost entirely from small, inefficient, undercapitalized firms in archaic industries which in most cases were pre-capitalist-pottery, dressmaking, blacksmiths, baking, matches,wallpaper, lace, for instance. In many of the specific cases he cites (e.g., baking) conditions were bad precisely because the firm had not been able to afford to introduce machinery, since it lacked capital. In effect, Marx is dealing with pre-capitalist conditions, and ignoring the truth which stared him in the face: the more capital, the less suffering. Where he does treat a modern, highly-capitalized industry, he finds a dearth of evidence; thus, dealing with steel, he has to fall back on interpolated comments ('What cynical frankness! 'What mealy-mouthed phraseology!') and with railways he is driven to use yellowing clippings of old accidents ('fresh railway catastrophes'): it was necessary to his thesis that the accident rate per passenger mile traveled should be rising, whereas it was falling dramatically and by the time Capital as published railways were already becoming the safest mode of mass travel in world history... What Marx could not or would not grasp, because he made no effort to understand how industry worked, was that from the very dawn of the Industrial Revolution, 1760-90, the most efficient manufacturers, who had ample access to capital, habitually favoured better conditions for their workforce; they therefore tended to support factory legislation and, what was equally important, its effective enforcement, because it eliminated what they regarded as unfaircompetition. So conditions improved, and because conditions improved, the workers failed to rise, as Marx predicted they would. The prophet was thus confounded. What emerges from a reading of Capital is Marx's fundamental failure to understand capitalism. Gee, is it just me, or do I hear echoes of the today's professional-environmentalist-prophets-of-doom in that? Try re-reading this passage using "the environment" in place of "the workers" and making similar substitutions. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Times Arts Frownlines 5
Friedrich -- Another enticing front-page-of-the-NYTimes-arts-section headline: * "London Stage, a Social Mirror" Well, I'm sure curious to find out more! Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Tuesday, September 3, 2002


The Big Picture, Derbyshire Style & TV Into Movies redux
Michael As regards "alternative consciousness" and "art," one small anecdote: When I was in my late twenties, I was in art school and was working 14-hours a day, seven days a week. (I was also supporting myself via part time work in addition to going to art school full time.) More oppressive than the burden of work or school, however, was an obsessive idea -- almost unnoticed because it was omnipresent -- of being driven to accomplishments that were never quite within my grasp, but were nonetheless urgent, very urgent. Things were not -- and never had been -- just okay with me. I always had things to do, and they all needed to have been done yesterday. On a whim after classes one Friday, I visited a nearby natural history museum. It was at the end of the day and there were few visitors. I ended up sitting alone in a huge darkened room filled with dimly lit dioramas, listening to the echoing sounds of children shrieking as they ran around thefloors below. (Yes, yes, it was the exactly the echoing sound of childish laughter that is a cliché of the haunted house movie.) As the sound faded -- the only indication of human presence I could hear or see -- I had a strange moment. I was entirely at peace. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do; everything was (astonishingly) just fine. I was suddenly aware of another version of myself, which seemed to me to be my "seven-year-old" self. My seven-year-old self and I reviewed the 20-odd years that had passed since I had in fact been seven, during which I had struggled to impress teachers, employers, girls, colleagues, fellow students, parents. It came to me, very peaceably and with great calm, that this had all been a complete fucking waste of time. What became clear was that in fact, what I had liked and been willing to invest time in at seven was exactly what I still liked; anything I wouldn't have thought was 'cool' or 'neat' at age seven I still really had no interest in. I sat very pleasantly on that bench for another 15 or 20 minutes, and then realized that it was time to go back to my "ordinary" life. I knew I would have to continue to struggle with my own compulsion to impress the world, but that was just the way things were. My seven-year-old takes a very long view of things; the concept of time seems foreign to him. So what does all this have to do with interest in art? Well, my inner seven-year-old is definitely the part of me that cares about art. What my inner seven-year-old likes is the re-working or re-presentation of some aspect of the world so that it becomes a more meaningful version of itself (at least to me.) During my tour of the museum, just prior to this unusual moment, I had been inspecting the painted landscape backgrounds of the wildlife... posted by Friedrich at September 3, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

DVD Journal: "8 1/2 Women"
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- My Sadist-within ran away with me last night (it happens occasionally), and I made the wife sit through Peter Greenaway's "8 1/2 Women" -- on DVD, thankfully, so we were able to riffle through the movie quickly. (Have you noticed how DVDs turn movies into something like books? Linear and/or nonlinear -- it's up to you. If you want to taste-test instead of submitting to the whole one-course-after-another process, go right ahead.) Have you checked out any Greenaway? He has his loyalists and fans; I find his films about as annoying as can be. He's theoretical and presentational, like a too-brilliant-for-his-own-good professor putting together an art installation. Here, he seems to want to fuse Baroque opera practice with Kabuki, and both with the most up-to-date (ie., incomprehensible) ArtForum theory. Baroque Kabuki? His fans love that he's "challenging" (he certainly is), find his imagery beautiful, and love his hyperintellectual approach to story, which they seem to enjoy as a stinging rebuke to the usual squaresville approach. (Do you understand the contempt a lot of semi-sophisticates feel for straightforward storytelling? I don't. Or rather, I do, and ain't it a pity.) There's a gaudily narcissistic quality to his movies. He makes you feel stupid (he's so smart!) and superior (because you're sitting at his table) at the same time, which I guess has its appeal. He lays on the grotesquerie (sudden, strikingly repulsive closeups), yet it's all very strict and controlled. "8 1/2 Women"'s story is about a rich father and son who, having lost the family's mother and having gone to see "8 1/2," set out to surround themselves with women (one is pregnant, hence the half). But mainly what you're watching are avant-garde hijinks, spiced with a slashingly-defiant and confident lot of nudity and sex talk. (It's set in the present, but it feels like everyone in the film is wearing a perruque, and overdoes the rouge and cosmetic facial moles.) Almost unwatchable, is my verdict, not because Greenaway isn't talented (he is), and his movies aren't impressive (they are), but because I hate his sensibility, which I find inhuman. He reminds me of a far-out academic architect, whose highbrow reputation is based on incomprehensible MIT Press-published musings and who impresses the likes of the Times' Herbert Muschamp. Ie., lauded and admired because he's so impossible and difficult. He makes Kubrick, to whom his work bears a little resemblance (presentational, intellectual), seem like a hustling, garrulous guy-next-door. A question runs through my brain as I think about Greenaway's movies: why do I find the kind of thing he does fairly easy to take at the theater? I don't mind sitting through the occasional (as in once every five years) Robert Wilson production at BAM. I'm able to sit there thinking, ahhhh, Euro-state-subsidized avant-garde theater, let's see what they're up to now. But when the same thing is given to me in the form of a movie, I find it offputting. I'm not sure how... posted by Michael at September 3, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

And That's Putting It Mildly
Friedrich -- From the British magazine Philosophy Today: The death of man, the death of the subject and the death of the author were celebrated rather than mourned in the 1960s, and brought in their wake the end of ethics, the end of agency, and the end of committed literature. The anti-humanistic hubris of the heyday of structuralism seems retrospectively not so much radical as suicidal. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 3, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Monday, September 2, 2002


Readers and Writers
Friedrich -- A novelist friend who teaches creative writing at a local college tells me that she recently mentioned William Faulkner in class, and asked who in the class knew his work. It turned out that not only were none of the kids familiar with Faulkner's fiction, only a couple of them had even heard his name before. Another novelist friend, who also teaches creative writing at a local college, tells me that his students don't read much fiction (apart from a few big-name thrillers). So what makes them want to write? "They read news reports about the latest hot writers and the latest big advance," he tells me, "and it strikes them as a glamorous career possibility." Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 2, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Sunday, September 1, 2002


If I Were an Editor 2
Friedrich -- If I were an editor, I'd run a cover story about today's 20somethings, focusing on looks and attitudes. I notice two contrasting types, flip sides of each other: the kids who favor stretchy synthetics, depilation, bare lower bellies, and sleek Gap-ad hair; and the other kids who favor a Burning-Man, neohippie, cut-and-paste gestalt. Both look like they just stepped out of a computer screen. I'd entitle my cover package "The Photoshop Generation." If Tom Wolfe uses this, he'll be hearing from my lawyers. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 1, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

When Harry Met Alfonso
Friedrich -- It's just been announced that the third "Harry Potter" movie will be directed by Alfonso ("Y Tu Mama") Cuaron. A little visual magic, perhaps? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 1, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

DVD Journal: "Blue Crush," "Fallen Angels"
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- I recently watched the chicks-surf-too movie "Blue Crush," and then a few days later watched (on DVD) Wong Kar-Wai's "Fallen Angels." Worlds apart, of course, but also similar in a few ways that I take to be important, or at least interesting. Neither one's a movie in the sense I mean when I think "movie" -- i.e., neither uses classical movie language. Instead, they're long-form audiovisual vehicles that use the elements of TV and publicity as building blocks. They're jumbles, ragbags strung out linearly in the case of "Blue Crush" with a Simpson/Bruckheimeresque, love-or-trophies, you-go-girl storyline, strung together in the case of Wong Kar-Wai with downtown-style rawness and edge. When you and I were art-and-movie-struck kids imagining the movies we'd make, what we pictured (is it fair to say?) was bouncing our ideas and experiences off movie history, leaning on painting, poetry and lit, and setting it all to pop music. What many of the current movies seem to reflect is an idea of movies as, basically, big-screen TV. It used to be that TV tried to be like movies. These days all the effort seems to be going into making movies like TV and computers. In Hollywood's mind, a movie is TV made larger and louder; Wong Kar-Wai is doing something more collage-y and poetic. "Blue Crush" is for mall teens and 20somethings; "Fallen Angels" is for kids going into the arts. Even the Bikinis Disappoint Years ago I took a course in how to use the computer video-editing program Premiere. During the very first class something became evident to me. In Premiere, you can organize conventional footage in a conventional way; you can use the program as an aid to achieving traditional goals. But Premiere allows you to do much else: to process the images, to mess with wild effects, and to Cuisinart your supercharged elements together. It was clear, both from the jammin' way I found myself using the program and from the evidence of the much-younger people I was taking the course with, how computer-video editing was going to be used in the future. (Hint: not to make the classical thing more elegant.) Yikes, thought this lover of traditional movie language. A year or two later, reporting a piece about how the people who put together feature films had begun to edit them on computers, I visited with professional film editors. They were delighted with the new Avid systems. When I asked what impact the computers would have on movies themselves, the editors said, Oh, none at all. Sure you can mess around, but you just have to learn the craft and some self-discipline. Then I asked them if they really, really, really thought that young people coming along will do that take the time to study the art and learn the language before cutting loose. Wasn't it just a teensy bit more likely that kids would simply grab the technology and rock out? The editors all gave me the... posted by Michael at September 1, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments