Hot. Again. I spend the mornings watching the birds upstairs, on the balcony and in surrounding trees. Nuthatches, a young finch, flocks of fluff ball bushtits and the familiar band tailed pigeons all make a daily appearance, happy for the water dish.
Later I’ll move to the cooler (daylight) basement to hang out on the couch and unapologetically watch movies, junk and otherwise. The perks of retirement.
I blame my fried brain for all the recent fare I liked for little reason, but the truth is I would have liked it anyhow. I’m a sucker for delicious trash, as you all know.
What fits that description to a tee is Netflix’s new show A Perfect Couple, a star studded mystery that reviewers called “profoundly unserious in all the best ways.” The Who dunnit element of an Agatha Christie-like country-estate dinner- party murder (can you tell my brain is hot with all these haphazardly placed dashes?) soon recedes in the background when the spotlight falls on what rich people all do to keep up appearances.
An icy matriarch, Nicole Kidman is half of that perfect couple, botoxed into porcelain doll – existence, with a cemented cascade of hair to match, emphasized by delft and wedgewood blue outfits. Her husband is a drug addled lecher, whose pregnant mistress is the murder victim. Multiple children, partners, (Dakota Fanning shines)and house guest complete the assembly of outrageously overdrawn character, romping through the beauty of Nantucket Island. One wonders during this search for the culprit, how many real sins we are exposed to, besides murder, given that there are so many of them spoofed. The sin of binging, in my case.
Also over the top, but growing on you after a few episodes, is the British black comedy Kaos, a retelling of Greek Myths supplanted into modern times. It is equal parts trying hard and exceedingly clever, star studded as well, with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, Nabhaan Rizwan as a ravishing Dionysius and Billie Piper as a perfectly cast Cassandra. Someone, I swear, tried to reference as many famous film makers as possible in the visuals, from Antonio, to Bergman, to Eisenstein. I had a blast.
If you like historical dramas with a twist, I was quite taken by The Serpent Queen, featured on Amazon. It is a retelling of Catherine de Medici’s role in France’s politics, her steady rise to power from Italian orphan to queen consort to regent in lieu of her under-age son. The acting shines for both the young Catherine (Liv Hill) and the old one (Samantha Morton), with a super strong cast surrounding them.
Visually it is a feast. Narratively, it tends to cast one of the most scheming women in history into a role that demands empathy for her plight, and understanding for her cruel moves. It does so with dishonesty via omission – the rise to her ultimate power, we are told, rests on her desire to protect a France free of religious compulsion, inclusive to both Catholics and Protestants (in contrast to her daughter in law, Bloody Mary, known for her persecution of Protestants.)
The series, however, conveniently ends with the coronation of Catherine’s second son (and her regency,) before she herself becomes the killers of the Huguenots, one of the most heinous religious persecutions in history. Oh well, artistic license, I gather, extending to the decision to underscore the period costume drama with utterly modern music. Somehow it all worked.
And there is always Season 2, relying on our forgetfulness of Season 1, I suppose.
The election results for the European Parliament are in. While not surprising, they are horrifying regarding the advancing power of the extremist right, with France’s Macron, facing terrific losses, even calling for new elections in the middle of preparation for the Olympics.
How shall we escape a monstrous present? If you are like me, by watching monster movies, of course, where all the horror is safely contained in a make-believe world. All the better if they amuse you – and today, for all the reviews I’ve read with people claiming they shed tears over the moving melodrama in question, I have to admit, mine were tears of laughter.
I am talking about the newest Netflix addition, fresh from a short, extremely successful run in real cinemas, praised to the heavens by most who know their cinematic stuff and adorned with an academy award for special effects: Godzilla Minus One.
The public loves it. The critics loved it. (Reviews from the US and abroad here, here and here.) It was shot on a minuscule budget as these kaiju – strange creatures – movies go, and it has two parallel storylines allowing you to focus either on a human interest drama, or the frisson of seeing a mega-monster trample Japanese cities, throw large ships and train cars miles through the air, and dooming all the extras.
So what’s wrong with me that I felt it provided a huge amount of comic relief? Particularly since the underlying message is really an anti-war stance and a reminder of what hell nuclear bombs created (viz. monsters) and what trauma a government forced upon a population asked to sacrifice for war without sufficient militaristic, technological or other support?
The movie’s title already introduces the idea of devastation. Set in 1946, the war has brought Japan to ground zero. A potentially successful attack by Godzilla, a sea creature that grew, radioactive flame throwers included, from the exposure to nuclear bombs and later nuclear testing at surrounding atolls, would move the needle even further into the dark ages – from zero to minus one. Would I have known that if I hadn’t scoured the internet for explanations? Of course not. Maybe not the best start.
Here’s the (abbreviated) plot line (spoiler alert!): Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima chickens out during the war and lands his plane with a pretext on a small island outpost with Japanese mechanics. Godzilla appears and our “hero” freezes again, not shooting the monster who then kills the crew but one. Returning to Tokyo after the war, Koichi as well as everyone else counts their losses, but with a large heart takes in a plucky young woman, Noriko, and an orphaned baby, Akiko, supporting them with dangerous work as a mine sweeper. On the job, he bonds with a band of diverse characters, the typical roster for action movies (think Ocean 11) with geeks and planners and musclemen well represented.
His shame and guilt prevents him from reentering life, attaching to the love interest, or becoming passionate about just about anything. When Godzilla reappears, now even more humongous than before, and destroys a city where love interest works, seemingly killing her in his spree as well, our hero decides to join the desperate attempts of civilians – with the government once again leaving them to their own – to tame and maim the monster, back to his old tricks as a kamikaze pilot. Except this time a mate provides his plane with an ejection seat, something the Japanese government had not afforded to war pilots before.
Curiously many ships get destroyed in the battle with Godzilla except for the ones manned by our merry band of misfits. After much fiddling and nail biting, the monster is slain, although some of the last underwater shots show parts of him regenerating already. Hero and love interest are re-united and he feels he has done sufficient restitution to his honor that he can “live” again.
The core story is indeed: war is bad, human bonds are good, trauma can last forever unless there is an occasion to redeem yourself. Survivor guilt dominates the post-traumatic stress experience. But it also hints at taking honor seriously, and being a bad person if you don’t sacrifice everything for the nation, or your fellow countrymen.
My problem? The acting is so cheesy, and the hero having not even a smidgen of charisma, that you feel you are in a method acting exercise with superlative special effects thrown in. Add to that the complicated approach to honor in imperialistic systems, with revisionism just about kept at bay, and a lack of familiarity with the details of these monster film scenarios on my part, and there you have it: I just felt amused, not riveted.
The special effects, though, and the visuals in general, were truly impressive. Shot in real water, the ocean-faring scenes are striking, the creature itself half terrifying, half exhilarating. I’d recommend watching it on a large screen rather than a small laptop, as I did.
Here is the trailer.
Funny thing is, I remembered having seen another monster story that struck me for its wooden acting and sappy melodrama many years ago, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall which one it was. A dear old friend came to the rescue, pointing to the 1954 movie Creature of the Blue Lagoon that we watched in the early seventies, feeling extremely confident that our scorn was justified.
I just rewatched it and must admit that the entire narrative about evolution, ecology, the value of science and the rotten nature of economic extraction was lost on this then 20 year old. At least I didn’t remember the white bathing suit of the heroine either, which apparently was a main attractant for scores of male movie watchers at the time….
And since things like to come in threes – here is another horror movie – and, yes, not a spoof. Apparently this 2 minute music video depicts what lots of Americans genuinely believe and why DJT’s scandals don’t impact his Christian support. Fanatics having found the CHOSEN one.
And with this, it’s back to the real world.
Photographs today from war ships and other fleet items echoing the movie’s maritime scenery.
Let’s treat ourselves with something amusing, if slightly moralistic, at the end of this week: a short animated film about the strenuous efforts of parental love. Enjoy the clip while you can, because much darker contemplations follow in short order…
Would a parent risk their own life, like we’ve seen in that charming animation, if that pregnancy was violently imposed on them, created by rape, and secured by laws that demand forced birth? You probably have seen the same statistics as I did this week, horrifying enough that I could not just ignore them.
Since the SC Dobbs decision revoked the rights and protections offered by Roe vs Wade not so many months ago, some 64.500 pregnancies resulted from rape in the 14 states that now have complete abortion bans. (If that number is not horrifying enough, think about this one: it is estimated that 5% of all rapes result in pregnancy. That means that you have a 20 fold number of rapes that occurred in these states, within less than two years.
Friderike Heuer Jupiter’s Moons (2023) Figures by Paula Modersohn Becker (1876 – 1907)
What do we know about children born from rape? Psychologists have identified a number of factors that severely impact the development of these secondary victims of the crime. Risk factors are pregnancy and delivery, bad parent-child relationships, stigmatization and discrimination, identity issues, and, last but not least, significant numbers of infants being farmed out to foster care where they often enter a cycle of violence themselves since that system is not in good shape or under supervision.
The post-traumatic stress experienced by the mothers who were raped can influence the development in utero of these babies, as does the frequent intake of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications to deal with the horrors of PTSD, or self-medicating with alcohol and/or drugs, substances that affect embryonic development.
For many mothers it is hard to love a child that was forced on them twice, first by the rapist and then the state depriving them of bodily choices. According to the research literature, communities treat children of rape with disdain and families, communities and the children themselves are hyper-vigilantly looking for negative traits that might have come down to them from the criminal.
Many of these children, later on trying to get a handle on their identity, want to know their fathers despite the harm those brought upon their mothers, and that leads to internal conflict and a sense of guilt, particularly if these rapes occurred during war times.
These combined factors, exacerbated by the rape victims’ shame and/or anger, predict serious mental health consequences for the majority of children born this way.
Friderike Heuer Aphrodite (2023) Portraits by Helene Schjerfbeck (1862 – 1946)
As I said, I could not avoid touching on these issues, given their political importance in a country that is trying to take rights and decisions away from women, and willfully ignores what happens to their children as well.
Let’s have music that might lift the mood a bit, again related to some sort of animation. When was the last time you listened to Peter and the Wolf? There is a reason it has had such staying power.
Today’s photomontages are from an ongoing series that attempts to bring painters I cherish into my contemporary world. The two on offer happen to depict women protecting their children in landscapes I photographed in the US and in Europe.)
Today I am offering a selection of favorite photographs from New Mexico. Reading a few things related to the new film that was hyped this weekend, Oppenheimer, led me to peruse the archives.. (I did not go to Los Alamos, so no footage from there.)
I have not seen Oppenheimer despite being quite interested – I have to be patient until it streams. So, my own review has to wait, but I do suggest you check out an author who I usually completely agree with, Greg Olear from Prevail (one of my all time favorite writers.) Here is the link to his assessment of the film.
And here are some choice words by another author about the depiction of nuclear testing in NM, with a side of the story apparently not fully, if at all, covered in the movie. Here is Alisa Lynn Valdes, a journalist and film producer from Albuquerque, NM:
“This quote, from the @nytimes review of the OPPENHEIMER film: “He served as director of a clandestine weapons lab built in a near- desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico” It was inhabited by Hispanos. They were given less than 24 hr to leave. Their farms bulldozed.
Many of those families had been on the same land for centuries. The Oppenheimer’s crew literally shot all their livestock through the head and bulldozed them. People fled on foot with nowhere to go. Land rich, money poor. Their land seized by the government.
All of the Hispano NM men who were displaced by the labs later were hired to work with beryllium by Oppenheimer. The white men got protective gear. The Hispano men did not. The Hispano men all died of berylliosis. These were US citizens, folks. Their land taken, animals killed, farms bulldozed, forced to work for the people who took everything from them, and killed by those people.
For 20 years I have been trying to sell a film based on the story of Loyda Martinez, a remarkable whistleblower whose family’s land was seized for the labs. Her dad was one of the men who died from beryllium exposure at the labs. She later went to work there too. She is a computer whiz who rose to the top of her department at Los Alamos. Then she started digging for info on the Hispano men the labs killed, like her father. She filed a class action lawsuit, and won. The first Hispano governor of NM, Bill Richardson, appointed Loyda to run the state’s human rights commission. She then filed a second class-action against Los Alamos, on behalf of women scientists not paid fairly.
But, no. We want more films about the “complex and troubled” “heroic” white men, who conducted their GENIUS in a “virtually unpopulated” place. These are ALL lies. This is mythology in service to white supremacy and the military industrial complex, masquerading as “nuanced.” Because of what the labs did to the local Hispano people in northern NM, our communities now have the highest rates of heroin overdose deaths in the nation. The generational trauma and forced poverty is outrageous. We need the real stories of Oppenheimer to be told.”
We are talking tens of thousands of people who lived within a 50 mile radius of the test site. These downwinders are still seeking justice after the federal government’s exposure of citizens to nuclear fallout 78 years ago. The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, founded in 2005 by a victim descendant Tina Cordova and others, is trying to expand a government program, RECA, to compensate for the damage done. (The link above brings you to an informative website).
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), passed in 1990, came after decades of above-ground testing in the American West and Pacific Islands, but did not acknowledge the victims from the NM site. It is also about to expire. A planned amendment that includes new populations and longer pay-out schedules is currently on shaky feet, being deemed ” too expensive.” In three decades, RECA has paid out $2.6 billion dollars to more than 40,000 people. That’s a fraction of a percent of the $634 billion the federal government plans to spend on nuclear weapons and development in the next decade, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. (Ref.)
Cordova about the Oppenheimer film: “When they came here to develop the Manhattan Project, they invaded our lands and our lives, and they treated us like collateral damage. When they came here to make the movie, they took advantage of our tax incentives. They invaded our lands and our lives, and they walked away.”
In the meantime, there is always the book on which the movie was based, which has its own fascinating story. American Prometheus was co-authored by two men, Sherwin and Bird, after the former had a serious case of writer’s block or inability to stop extensive research into the topic, the other in dire need of a job and happy to push the project to completion. It took about 25 years. Martin Sherwin died a couple of years ago. Kai Bird was interviewed at length last week here. The tome will tie me over until the movie becomes available on streaming sites!
Music had to be John Adam’s Dr. Atomic even though I don’t like it.
Alternatively let’s listen to Master’s of War by Dylan. Building shelters won’t help….
Last night I watched a movie, Tár, Todd Field’s 2022 film starring Cate Blanchett (fabulous performance) as a famous female conductor whose life unravels, seemingly, when her past actions catch up with her. Honestly, I cannot describe what I saw with anything amounting to a rational interpretation. It is a labyrinth, proud of its plethora of cues and hints dropped all over that allow for multiple readings of what the whole thing is about.
A story about the evils of cancel culture? A story about the need for calling out perpetrators who then deserve a fitting fate, or an exploration of how rumors and innuendo destroy a life? Is it a ghost story, or a horror story or a warning tale of what happens when you pop too many pills that were not meant for you in the first place? A psychological profile about addiction to pills that might induce hallucinations, or lead to physical falls that in turn might give you concussive brain damage leading to hallucinations? Is it a tale about how lies, ambition, greed and taking no hostages along the way eventually lead to someone’s downfall, greek mythology for the modern consumer in a Me-Too era? Perhaps.
Reviews ranged from drooling (in the NYT,) to scathing (in The New Yorker,) to at least helpful (in Slate) with every single one I read, including the adoring ones from the British media, written by a man. The protagonist, Lydia Tár, originally Linda Tarnowsky, who grew up in a working-class, immigrant household that she has long obscured, is a woman of major talent and equally large appetites, for the good life and young flesh, respectively. There is clear evidence of some seductions of proteges, and more that are insinuated. Conveniently she is depicted as a lesbian, in a relationship with another woman who served her originally to get to her goal to conduct a major symphony orchestra in Berlin, and whose medications (for heart problems or anxiety, unclear) she hoards for herself. Her role as “father” in that couple’s family is enough of a male attribute to allow the viewer to buy into the me-too scenario that unfolds, as if being a cis woman would not suffice to make accusations swallowable.
We see her genuinely passionate about music, interpreting composers, getting the best performance out of her players. We also see her as being transactional in every relationship on the scene, and full of contempt, coldness or scathing for those who stand in her way or won’t do her bidding.
One of her former proteges and lovers who she actively undermined in the professional music field, commits suicide. Weird events start to intrude into Tár’s days that might or might not be auditory and visual hallucinations, or skillfully placed signs by revenging entities that slowly drive her into some form of madness.
Eventually, the chickens come home to roost; not only is she rejected by her newest paramour, but there seems to be an organized movement by many of the victims, competitors or offended people that lead to her down fall. She loses everything, her child, her marriage, her professional standing.
In the last part of the movie she is en route to the only new job she could find, in some unnamed place in Asia. She travels down a river, which might as well be the river Styx, in a tourist boat, and crouches, submerged, in a cave behind a waterfall, cut off from humanity, in what might as well be the entrance to Hades.
In the final scene we see her conducting a mediocre orchestra in front of an audience of fans dressed up and masked in the bizarre costumes of Manga conventions, with a movie about to be screened that seems to be a super-hero or science fiction tale. Whether it is all a dream or the reality remains unclear, but the unraveling is clearly linked in time to when she took a bad fall while fleeing a seeming monster, imaginary or not.
Death is Scandalous. Philosophizing at the Cemetery. (Lecture announcement.)
Is she a monster? Is she a victim? Both? Are there ghosts lurking out there bringing about revenge? Can you tell that I have been thinking out loud, trying to grasp something when I didn’t? Any suggestions are welcome, as is your opinion whether a director of Field’s caliber (and gender) should have devoted his first film in 16 years to exposing a woman in a me-too scenario, without ever committing to a clear differentiation between perpetrators and victims. I don’t know what to make of that.
What I do know is that there went a lot of care into the visuals, with admirable success in creating a gothic, grey, white and black ambience that colored everything in the upper strata of social life: from white private jets to dark-grey tailor-made suits; dark lecture halls for interviews, or restaurants that might have served the mafia dons or members of the House of Lords; cold concrete wall of Brutalist architecture in a cold marital home.
And finally white pants of those who’ll rise as avengers of the oppressed and abused, white blouses for a betrayed spouse.
Red comes in sparingly, and always associated with outrageous action. The hair of the suicidal protege, glimpsed like a ghost from behind, or with her face covered up by Tár’s body, is red.
The luxury bag of one of Tár’s admirers, coveted and snatched as a prize by Tár for a one-night-stand with the groupie, is red. The jacket of a child bullying Tár’s daughter, a child she accosts with unimaginable cruelty and threat, is red. A forgotten toy that leads to the accident at the turning point of Tár’s life, is brownish red. And the number 5, which plays a crucial part in the narrative of Tár’s ascent to stardom in her ruthless pursuit of conducting Mahler’s Fifth as her masterpiece, appears in red late in the film, leading her to be violently, physically ill.
Fiasco
Not a bad choice for a film that scatters clues in countless other ways. After all, red is the color in the visible spectrum that scatters least due to its long wave length (620-750 nm). Scattering refers to light getting deviated from its straight path upon striking an obstacle, such as dust, gas molecules or water vapor. The light is redirected in different directions (said scattering) after hitting the particles present in the medium. Red, then, makes for a good choice when you want a signal that catches attention even when visibility is compromised by obstacles, like fog or smoke (I guess literally as much as metaphorically.) In real life, of course, it serves as a warning signal: think brake lights, traffic lights, red warning flags, flags in bull fights or the ones of old that were wave at the commence of action on the battle field.
Red might also elicit emotions like anger or fear, given that it is often associated with dangerous stimuli, like fire, poisonous snakes, insects or berries, wounds and blood. “Seeing red” is a term that in fact correlates with an individual’s personal traits: people who rate high in hostility see far more red in ambiguous stimuli (colors that are faded and could be either red or blue) and also prefer the color red ( which might bias them towards the interpretation above.) They also engage in more interpersonal hostility, if they prefer the color red over blue. And of course, their anger raises the blood to their face, looking red. (Ref.)
I guess Field (who grew up in Portland, by the way,) has done his homework in the psychological literature or was just intuitively spot on, when he designed his color markers for the film. Alas, despite all visual signals, the meaning still feels scattered. Maybe I simply don’t run on the same wave length….
Music today is another composition that plays a major role in the film: Elgar’s Cello Concerto, here performed by a very young Jaqueline du Pré. It is a sad, contemplative work written directly after WW I, in 1919, echoing a world full of anguish. Elgar was ill, depressed and disillusioned. Fits entirely well with the unfolding of Tár’s drama.
Don’t you believe everything you read….nothing is closed, things are just going to switch to travel mode. I will be reporting from the road, intermittently first, then hopefully on a more regular schedule again.
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In the meantime you have several cultural riches to choose from in March:
Do NOT miss the special showing of our newest documentary at Cinema 21:
WHEN: March 12, 2023 at 3-5 p.m. Informational tables start at 2:30 p.m., film starts at 3 p.m.
WHERE: Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave, Portland, OR 97209
I had written about the project and shown part of my set photography here along the Hanford site at the Columbia River earlier. Below is the official description from the film makers:
ATOMIC BAMBOOZLE is a feature-length documentary which exposes the claims of the nuclear energy industry to be a cure for the climate crisis.
This film grew out of the NECESSITY project @necessitythemovie as tribal communities raised concerns over false solutions to the climate crisis being presented in the form of small-modular reactors and a renaissance of nuclear power. Members of the core NECESSITY team found a need to share the story of nuclear resistance in the Northwest and chronicle the development of advertising aimed at convincing the public to trust nuclear power.
We are pleased to bring this story to the big screen with the premiere of ATOMIC BAMBOOZLE at @cinema21_portland. Join us for the premiere which will include a screening of a short film by Vanessa Renwicke, as well as a panel discussion to follow.
These are the slated speakers:
Jan Haaken, director, professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, and documentary filmmaker
Lauren Goldberg, executive director for Columbia Riverkeeper with over a decade of experience advocating for Hanford Nuclear Site cleanup
Lloyd Marbet, executive director Oregon Conservancy Foundation and longtime anti-nuclear activist
Cathy Sampson-Kruse, associate producer, enrolled member of the Waluulapum Tribe of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, retired social worker, and a champion in protecting clean water from fossil fuels and nuclear waste
Greg Kafoury, attorney in private practice with Kafoury & McDoougal Attorneys, served as Co-Director of Don’t Waste Oregon
Moderated by Dr. Patricia Kullberg, former medical director of Multnomah County Health Department and member of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility
Also in March you can visit Bonnie Meltzer’s newest show tied to water and land, providing a retrospective of 15 years of work.
And if you happen to live in the NorthEast: God made my Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin would be my first choice of all there is to explore:
“This group exhibition is a special iteration of God Made My Face, originally organized by Hilton Als for David Zwirner Gallery in 2019. It presents works from iconic artists such as Richard Avedon, Marlene Dumas, and Kara Walker alongside archival materials in order to explore the life, work, and legacy of James Baldwin (1924–1987). Baldwin’s ways of seeing and being evolved through his relationships and exposure to the work of visual artists, during an era when the harsh realities of racial oppression were confronted with aesthetics emphasizing self-love, pride, and validation. God Made My Face explores Baldwin through his words, relationships, and the works of other artists produced during his own lifetime and today.
Unbeknownst to many, Baldwin served as professor and Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities at UMass Amherst from 1983-86, finding a home within the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies and teaching students from across the Five Colleges. This period of Baldwin’s life highlights how far his reach extended beyond the cultural capitals of Paris and New York, where he resided for much of his life, as a writer. Baldwin’s engagements as an educator convey his legacy as a mentor to generations of intellectual and creative communities.”
In the meantime, I’ll be sending dispatches from the road, and eventually L.A. if all goes according to plan. Stay tuned!
Music appropriately Mahler’s songs of a wayfarer (one of my favorite song cycles of all time.)
⅔ into Black History month I figured it’s time to contemplate cultural offerings that embody what’s encapsulated by the terms above. Coincidentally, my friend Catón Lyle posted photographs I had taken of him and his students 8 years ago this week on Facebook, images of people I deeply care about and worked with, now likely strong and resilient young adults either in Highschool or off to college. Institutions where Black history is no longer guaranteed to be taught across the country.
Catón Lyes, drummer extraordinaire
Let’s look at possibilities to learn about Black History outside of the educational settings, then. When it comes to ferocious women, none portrays them better than Viola Davis in her magnum opus, now on Netflix, The Woman King. The actress is a marvel (in everything she touches). Here she was training in her late 50s for a physically demanding role as an African warrior leading an army of women in the State of Dahomey (now Benin) in battle and for the political future of a kingdom contemplating to step away from participating in the slave trade.
The film is an epic mix of action movie, intergenerational, intra- and inter-tribal conflict, serious depiction of slavery, with a hint of romance thrown in, involving a non-African man at the behest of the studio bosses who wanted a White man role for sales points and settled for someone with a White father and a Black mother. Various, really numerous, subplots tug on every emotional register imaginable.
Davis and director Gina Prince-Bythewood together with screenwriter Dana Stevens had to fight for 6 years to get this film made, and only got green light after the success of the Black Panther pointed to the possibility of having this kind of film be a box-office success. It was “the product of a thousand battles.” The obstacles the production team faced when pitching a historical epic centered on strong Black women and a State that celebrated gender equity until the French colonialists crushed it, are at length described in this review in the Smithsonian. The public reaction to the finished product has also been fierce: the extremist Right condemned it for Black women killing White men. Some Black organizations found fault with the depiction of African nations actively participating in the slave trade, which is of course historically correct, and brave to be acknowledged in a Hollywood film that wants to convey history, if you ask me. But the worry remains in the eyes of many, that it partly absolves the Euro-American slavers from their responsibility.
Then there is the complaint that the film’s narrative alters what actually happened, making the Kingdom of Dahomey into a place that abandoned the slave trade, when it actually didn’t. A general complaint regards the fact that a major Blockbuster Movie could have chosen a positive event in Black history, rather than one marred by complexity of historical trade alliances.
The film’s take on history is indeed stretched and to be taken with a grain of salt, or with the understanding that movies need to entertain, and have some lines that help us identify with good or evil. The choice of featuring a female standing army, the historically real Agoodjies with all their strength and complicated lives, though, should be a boost to a current generation of women who are searching for role models in an era that is dead set to roll back both women’s and civil rights (not necessarily in the setting of the military, but fighting everyday challenges.) If you want to learn more details about the actual history of the Agoodijes, there is a smart guideline, The Woman King Syllabus, provided by a group of US-based historians, Ana Lucia Araujo, Vanessa Holden, Jessica Marie Johnson and Alex Gil.
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When it comes to brave women, do I have a book for you. Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writing is a stellar compendium of sources that help us understand the Black radical tradition, from the early 1920s to the late 1980s. If we can, for a moment, put aside our immediate reaction to the term “communist” in the title, still associated with extreme negative reactions, we might particularly benefit from the section that exposes how White supremacists have always successfully used the tool of the communist specter as a weapon in their political crusade. The book, edited by Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean, also teaches a lot about the fight against fascism on the one hand, and organizing of labor on the other, both topics of obvious contemporary relevance.
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And last but not least, when we look for resilience and decisive action, there is a new, digitally available, resource that I strongly urge you to sign up for: Hammer and Hope, a magazine of Black Politics and Culture, founded by Jen Parker and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
Or at least read the poem, Come In, by Ashley M. Jones, the current poet laureate of Alabama, in call and response with an image by photographer and performance artists Carrie Mae Weems, who was born in Portland, OR 69 years ago and is one of our most impactful and famous contemporary artists. It sets the tone and invites all of us to cross a threshold into a community of diverse backgrounds but shared goals.
The name for the new magazine, suggested by Derecka Purnell, a brilliant young lawyer and abolitionist, is a riff on a book, Hammer and Hoe, by Robin D. G. Kelley, a professor of American history at U.C.L.A.
The goals could not be clearer and more decisive:
“….a hammer to smash myths and illusions.”
“And our hope? It is not the false optimism of liberals or the fatalism of armchair revolutionaries or the pessimism of pundits waiting for the end of the world. James Baldwin understood hope as determination in the face of catastrophe: “I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I’m forced to be an optimist. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.” … victory is never certain but if we don’t fight, we can only lose. Hammer & Hope is here to fight.”
In tune with my surrealist forbears, I worked on a series of photomontages this fall: Turmwächter – Guardians of the Towers. The montages were propelled by two considerations: For one, they all depicted towers that I had photographed in Europe during multiple trips with my friends there across the years, a reminder of shared sights and better times. (The friends get a calendar each year with montage work that picks up on our travels.)
Secondly, I placed animals I had photographed (mostly) in the wild into these urban environments. I wanted to acknowledge the issue of habitat loss, ever closer contact between humans and animals, with all that that implies: the danger for those displaced and for those thrown into the company of wild animals, or the illnesses that animals now share with us, even if they themselves are harmless.
I was also thinking how our relationship to animals might change if we saw them as actors in environments belonging to us, rather than out on the pasture or other defined spaces (still) allotted to them. Would proximity and shared space make a difference, particularly when the non-humans seemingly had assigned human functions: guarding the towers? Would we afford them agency or still be masters, tempted to shoot the bears, hunt the geese, confine the giraffes to cramped zoo exhibits or slaughter the goats and sheep?
All this is a long-winded introduction to movie reviews that made me sad, because my immunocompromised body can’t sit in a theatre and watch films that I lust after, having read about them. The film in question is one that – if the reviews are on point – picks up on the issue of the relationship between animals and humans, ingeniously presented from the perspective of a donkey. What drew me last week to read the reviews of EO, the new film by the legendary Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, was this image – I gather I don’t have to explain why.
Here is an early review of the film that describes in detail what a master can pull off when putting his mind (and technical brilliance) to telling a story that covers so many relevant dimension of the anthropocene. It opened in PDX on 12/23, go see it if you can! (Update: After reading the blog a friend uttered intense disagreement with the film-critics’ raving reviews – she and her companion left the screening half way through, despised the music and urged me to withdraw the recommendation. What can I say – as explained above, I have not seen it.)
***
I’ve talked about quite a few movies this year that were available on-line, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. C.G.Jung in the Wild West, delving into Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog, probably was the one that made me think hardest, and therefor lingers. If you are into violent and politically progressiv, astute modern Westerns – not for the faint of heart or stomach – there is a new series these days, The English, by Hugo Blick (on Amazon and BBC). Review from The Guardianhere. Visually stunning, but goosebumps for the entire ride, be warned.
Music is the sound track for EO, by Pawel Mykietyn.
Disaster-porn: “to satisfy the pleasure that viewers take in seeing other people’s misfortunes, as by constantly repeating vision of an event, often without commentary or context”. – Australia Macquarie Dictionary
My morning readings include the news from Europe, brought to me among others by Der Spiegel, a German weekly and the country’s largest news platform on the web. All photographs but one today were seen on their site last week, and elicited decidedly mixed feelings. They lure with beauty while depicting disaster, simultaneously drawing attention to human suffering as well as away from it.
An ice vendor waiting for customers during the worst heat wave in decades. In neighboring Nawabshah (Pakistan) the highest value ever recorded: 128.7 F on May 1st.
Somehow the term disaster-porn came to mind. It is a phrase often used to define depictions of suffering in the developing world, but also applied to the increasing number of end-of-world or other catastrophe movies coming out of the film industry, and not just in Hollywood. Is it ethical to depict, create and watch all this stuff? Let me put the answer right in front: it can be, theoretically. At least this was what I concluded after reading the essay that I am summarizing today while trying to solve my dilemma.
The remnants of a container depot in Bangladesh that stood in flames and then exploded, throwing heavy objects through the air for hundreds of yards. Dozends dead, hundreds injured. Foto: picture alliance / dpa / AP
The term disaster-porn can be found as early as 1987 when a Washington Post editorial about the stock market crash. It described that those of us doting on the disasters in cinematic action dramas are lured into believing that it is either all fake, or that we personally will escape bad fate in the end, never mind the millions we watch dying in catastrophic scenarios. The term has been popularized ever since, sometimes in specific ways, like in Pat Cadigan’s 1991 Sci-Fi novel Synner which used “porn” as a suffix denoting an excessive, overly aestheticized focus on a single topic. (The award-winning novel, by the way, envisions a world where the line between machines and reality becomes porous, a possible disaster scenario now in the real-life news 30 years later…just google AI.) The phrase is thus applied not just to fictional descriptions of disasters but also to round-the-clock depictions of round-the-world catastrophes by the media.
Iraqi boys herding sheep in a sandstorm. They are not allowed to enter into the province of Najaf, to avoid spreading the Crim-Congo fever. They are stuck at the border in the middle of the storm. Foto: Quassem Al-Kaabi / AFP
What is the problem? On the one hand, in an ever more interconnected world where we might be called on or able to help with disasters even at distant locations, information about them helps our collective mind to make decisions. In other word, the depictions might elicit empathy and understanding, which can turn into human solidarity.
On the other hand, there are multiple problems. Disaster-porn can be gratuitous and exploitative – published to sell clicks, or used as justification to simplify complex geopolitical realities, and thereby encourage military operations under the guise of humanitarian action.
In addition, over-exposure to images of doom can lead to a muting of your reaction, draining our reserves of pity, desensitizing us to others’ pain. It can be experienced as damaging our own sense of well-being, thus having us turn away from the suffering in the world. Compassion fatigue elicited by a pity crisis.
Boy amidst storks sifting garbage in the Indian province of Guwahati. Dangerous because of the extreme heat – several garbage dumps have spontaneously caught fire and combusted. Foto: Biju Boro / AFP
There is some inherent psychological truth to the fact that we better protect ourselves from too much exposure to bad news. If we feel that there is absolutely no way we can interfere with the starvation, drowning, imprisoning, wounding, torture, and killing of people, seeing them exposed to these situations will create a sense of anxiety that we will try to resolve by averting our eyes. A barrage of doom scenarios leads to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, both associated with depression, and subsequent paralysis when we think about possible action – just no sense left, that we could make a difference. Here is just one of the studies that lays out that scenario.
Another way to cope with extreme heat across Asia.
And yet…
“Disaster porn, then, in all its iterations and for all its flaws, is a vital political terrain in which publics are at least implicitly asked to struggle with the social significance of the suffering of others. It connects public issues like war, famine, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks to the private lives of those they affect, and shows us how disruptions of social structure become disruptions in individual biographies. This is the case in even the most seemingly stereotypical news reports of suffering in the developing world, and in even the most outlandish Hollywood disaster epics as well.” (Ref.)
Literature and disaster movies contribute in an odd way: they do describe the role chance plays with some people being more endangered than others, some surviving when others don’t. Yes, there are heroes (or villains) who manage to suggest that with some amount of smarts and vision you can still control the outcome (echoing our sense of exceptionalism in U.S. culture), but there are all the others who are not so lucky, because it is often determined by the vicissitude of geographical location alone, rather than specific talents or skills. Chance confers the privilege of survival. It might make us think about our own privilege and so raise compassion, since so far chance has spared us, amidst the forest fires, or floods or infectious diseases.
The Clark Ford River flooded the houses of many of the inhabitants of Fromberg, MO. This is a lawn ornament submerged in the waters. Foto: David Goldman / AP
Leave it to me to read and watch these kinds of novels and films, if only to spare you to have to do it yourself…..
My current target is a 1973 science fiction novel by Sakyo Komatsu, Japan Sinks, which took 9 years to write.It has been made into numerous films, a highly praised animé version among them. Some had altered endings, some were withheld during certain time periods because they were too close on the heels of real life disasters in Japan, given the exposure to earthquakes and the Fukushima catastrophe. The latest, a Netflix production, is so bad that I recommend it on a day where you need help to erupt in laughter – the acting – if you can call it that – guarantees that you will.
The book, however, is worming its way into my brain. The basic story concerns a scientist’s discovery of the likelihood that all of Japan, the entire archipelago, is going to go under due to earthquakes, ocean floor faults, and what not. One of the narrative lines concerns how the government is handling the crisis, from negligence to obstruction to panic. Don’t look up, this year’s U.S. disaster movie that I discussed here, probably took a page out of that book. Another line focusses on the distribution of millions of people around the world, with nationalist impulses against immigration vying with empathy for a drowning people. The philosophical question it raises, though, is one that we will have to think through in climate change migrations to come: what does it do to your identity, as member of a nation, or a tribe or a culture or a language group, when the place that defines you ceases to exist? Literally is no longer there to return to? Is it destructive to lose that connection to place which is a base for underlying sense of self, or is it empowering because you can shed the debt you incurred as a member of the nation (say of an imperialistic or fascistic past) and start from scratch?
Think it through – time not spent doom scrolling…
We could also focus on the message conveyed by a random stranger who was kind enough to let me photograph her t-shirt 2 days ago.
Today’s post is dedicated to my grandfather Eduard (1894 – 1977) a musician, bird lover and gentle soul. His birthday was yesterday.
Canada Geese
Buckle up folks, it’s going to be all over the map today.
It all started with a reminder notice that one of the strangest pieces of music, John Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP –As SLow aSPossible – was about to change to a different tone on February 5, 2022. The longest composition ever – duration 639 years, you read that right – started in 2001, with a seventeen month-long pause before the first tone of the organ, especially built for the performance of this piece, was to be heard. Here is a video clip that shows the special organ in a small church in Halberstadt, Germany.
One particular tone emanates continually, and is changed at irregular time intervals according to the composer’s instructions. (Here is a calendar that shows the me changes and tone variations.) The current sound will last 2 years. This announcement had me wonder:
While we had to wait for more than 6 long years for the 14. sound change in 2020 , the next one is occurring only a few months hence, on February 5th. Quite a challenge for a subjective sense of time to get the hang of this. For those clinging to their subjective sense of time we might mention that the new sound will last exactly 24 months. Could very well be that those months will pass in a flash.
Honestly, I could not tell if this was meant seriously or ironically – probably a combination of my addled brain and being German. But be that as it may, it reminded me of a dominant topic in my current conversations. How is our sense of time shaped by the pandemic, the isolation, the sameness of the days and, admittedly, by aging?
Snowgeese yesterday
Snowgeese from other years
Cage’s composition was not the only reminder of the languid, unending spread of hours and days that I – many of us – feel, like time stalling. (This stands, of course, in extreme contrast to young families for whom the double burden of professional work and unrelieved childcare at home leads to a sense of having not enough time ever, time on 3x speed fast forward.)
One of the best cinematic experiences I’ve had in these last months also managed to capture a sense of time that is altered, aided by the elongated storytelling formats of TV series—those time-indulgent, episodic ways to weave a tale, unhurried by a two-hour time limit of movies. And no one knows how to unfold a plot in slow-mo better than the modern Korean film makers.
Steller’s Jay yesterday – Grey herons from other years
In Beyond Evil (directed by Shim Na-yeon, available on Netflix) it’s not just about the tempo of the narrative, though. Time itself seems to stand still in a small town haunted by age-old murders and secrets, with an unlikely coupling of 2 unmatched policemen churning the dregs and bringing new sorrow. It is not a serial murder case in the traditional sense, but rather a psychological study of a variety of characters stuck in time as flies are on those strips hanging in country kitchens. The protagonists are honing their compulsions, tending to their losses, and deciding what to sacrifice to remain on the ethical side of things. I know, does not sound enticing, but honestly, it was brilliant.
Sandhill Cranes yesterday
Sandhill cranes from other years
So, I thought, perhaps we should delve into the scientific psychology of time perception, since a lot of research has happened in the field lately. Nah, you can read up on it here. I much rather learn from poets than deal with my own field today.
Hawk from yesterdayHarrier HawkRedtail Hawks from other years
Both of the poems below managed to drag me away from moping about the altered sense of time’s passing, the feeling of being hermetically closed off from a perception of forward movement. They helped me, pushed me towards remembering what I sort of know but always forget: what matters is attention to the moment, the noticing and processing of what is afforded to you by grace of nature or the kindness of others or the tasks that give you pleasure or a sense of having something gotten done or the simple acknowledgment you’re still functioning reasonably.
Bald Eagle from yesterday
Baldies from other years
With Forever- is composed of Nows – Emily Dickinson celebrates recurrence, sameness, un-differentiation, all the while she spent her life in something akin to self-imposed lockdown.
Hummingbird (in February!) from yesterdayKingfisher from other years
Seems like good advice. I figured I’d drag a series of “nows” out of the archives, selecting samples of the last 5 years of early February photographs all taken without travel, in my immediate vicinity (2021 excluded since it was spent in hospital…) The same ducks and geese, sandhill cranes and variety of raptors, the same small folk and an occasional outlier (elk!) thrown in – a forever of joy from repeat excursions, the last one just yesterday afternoon. It helps to live in Oregon, one of the most beautiful places imaginable.
Elk from other years
You can slow down time as much as you want, if you ask me, if it still contains the possibility of momentary encounters, anchoring us in the NOW. Even robins, bushtits, woodpeckers and sparrows in the yard suffice.
Forever – is composed of Nows – ‘Tis not a different time – Except for Infiniteness – And Latitude of Home –
From this – experienced Here – Remove the Dates – to These – Let Months dissolve in further Months – And Years – exhale in Years –
Without Debate – or Pause – Or Celebrated Days – No different Our Years would be From Anno Dominies –
Rufus Towhee from yesterdayDowny woodpecker from other years
With Clocks, Carl Sandburg extends a warning that a focus on the measurement of time can distract us from using or enjoying the one we still have, since we don’t know when time will be cut short for good. Don’t focus on the perception of passage then, but what you can do to fill time with. (Never mind that that opens another problem set during a pandemic…)
HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes. A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams. A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands. One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail. And of course … there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France…
White throated sparrow from yesterday
Sparrows from other years
And for good measure, let’s throw in the advice of Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh who died last month:
“While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.” Why? If we are thinking about the past or future, “we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.” (from The Miracle of Mindfulness.)
Told you, it would be all over the map. Off to wash the dishes now.
Sandhill from yesterday. Music today in honor of my Opa who played the stand-up bass in a small-town orchestra named Fidelio. Here is a creative – and timely – version by the Washington National Opera of Beethoven’s Fidelio, with an explanation of how the new version came to be. Fidelio is a story of hope and resilience, a more desirable focus than speed of time…..
