I can't seem to embed this West Side Story parody, but do yourself a favor and watch it.
Read this article…
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
"Please God Make Me Not Queer"
David Lancaster, a St. Louis artist whose work I admire, is having a show.
Quoting the gallery: "'Give me chastity... but not yet.' St. Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo and one of the major figures of early Christianity, uttered this famous prayer in his struggle to gain mastery over his earthly desires. In the spirit of brazen honesty with which Augustine addressed his deity, David Lancaster proposes a collection of modern prayers, painted in oil on aluminum, designed to explore and question the nature of communication with the divine. Sad, bold, frank and funny, the prayers challenge our collective notions of supplication and gratitude--what we should ask of an omnipotent God and for what we should give thanks--and the very idea that prayer is a catalyst for divine action. Ten of Lancaster's studded aluminum paintings and sculpture will be on view in PHD's Portfolio Gallery June 27 through August 15, 2009 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, June 27 at 7:00 pm."
David happens to be my uncle, but that should not in any way sway your opinion of my judgment in this matter. His stuff is great.
Read this article…
Quoting the gallery: "'Give me chastity... but not yet.' St. Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo and one of the major figures of early Christianity, uttered this famous prayer in his struggle to gain mastery over his earthly desires. In the spirit of brazen honesty with which Augustine addressed his deity, David Lancaster proposes a collection of modern prayers, painted in oil on aluminum, designed to explore and question the nature of communication with the divine. Sad, bold, frank and funny, the prayers challenge our collective notions of supplication and gratitude--what we should ask of an omnipotent God and for what we should give thanks--and the very idea that prayer is a catalyst for divine action. Ten of Lancaster's studded aluminum paintings and sculpture will be on view in PHD's Portfolio Gallery June 27 through August 15, 2009 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, June 27 at 7:00 pm."
David happens to be my uncle, but that should not in any way sway your opinion of my judgment in this matter. His stuff is great.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Michael Jackson died for our sins
When I heard that pop singer Michael Jackson had died, I could not help but remember what a staple he was in the late-night monologues. What would all the hacks, myself included, do now? Crypto-queer GOPers and philandering family-values types can only get you so far. Perhaps Roseanne Barr could be coaxed out of retirement and given the Ambassadorship to Iran. Perhaps Oprah could be slipped some chemical that turned her into a combination of James Brown, Wilhelm Reich, and Minnie Pearl. Even then, they'd be no Michael Jackson. Everything Jackson did was a set-up; everything he was, a punchline.
For his entire adult life, Jackson was ridiculed in public by the best in the business. Think about that for a second. He knew what everybody thought of him--he must've known. At what point did all that weirdness change, from something inside of him, to something caused by all of us? Only he could know, if he ever did, and now he's dead.
Some portion of this ridicule was earned: the compulsive plastic surgery, the persistent whiff of child molestation, the bizarre marriage to Elvis' daughter--these were, if not earth-shattering events, deviations from the norm reasonably worthy of a satirist's attention. But I think anyone not getting paid on a 13-week contract has to admit that at a certain point it became a peculiar kind of public torture. Most of the time that Michael Jackson made the monologue, he hadn't done anything genuinely newsworthy. Yet there he was, the butt of another joke about gayness, or pedophilia, or plastic surgery, or germophobia...I could go on, but there's no point. There never was.
One of the biggest changes in American pop culture has been the demise of humor based on stereotypes (or at least its widespread concealment). This is a good thing, but as the humor of stereotype has waned, other things have had to step in. The things that have filled the void are
a) celebrity humor; and for those intellectuals among us
b) absurdism about "inhuman autopilots"--zombies, pirates, robots, ninjas, etc.
Add in reflexive taboo-busting--sex and drug jokes--and you have described 99% of what passes for comedy in these United States. Most political humor is celebrity humor with a veneer of importance; it comes from no political viewpoint, only comments on behavior. Most of the NPR/New Yorker brand is absurdist autopilot humor, with enough celebrity to satisfy their timeliness fetish.
All that is another post, so I'll leave it and finish this one. Unlike say, Cary Grant, Michael Jackson had the ill fortune to be a celebrity when nightly scrutiny of a pop singer's personal habits became what passed for incisive commentary. Precisely when American power needed all the restraining that satire could throw at it, satire became obsessed with celebrities. Coincidence? Surely not. Part of this was the entertainment industry's self-aggrandizing belief that nobody in the audience knows about anything but entertainment--which, after fifty years, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even more powerful was simple risk-aversion. Any Jackson joke was risk-free. Since he was both celebrity and inhuman autopilot, the material flooded forth; and in that flood was protection, safety in numbers. That's why it all felt strangely impersonal, as if this "Michael Jackson" we were all laughing at didn't exist as a person. To the extent that anybody I knew spared a thought for the guy, the human being, they decided he deserved it for being so weird. Such is the compassion of the herd.
But so what? you might say. Life's rough, and Jackson didn't have to be rich and famous. He didn't have to get nose jobs and sleep in a hyperbaric chamber. Well, here's what: It's inconceivable to me that all this concentrated ridicule did not drip down, poison-like, to the man himself, and make a difficult life even more difficult. And it would be one thing if the enjoyment generated as a result of this pain was in any way instructive, constructive, or substantial. It wasn't. It was just meanness. Occasionally Jackson deserved our scorn, but most of the time he didn't, and it says a lot about the culture in which we live that Michael Jackson--a pop singer--was the target of so much vitriol. Anybody who runs for President, much less does what it takes to win, is just as weird as Michael Jackson was. They simply hide it better. Here was a guy so terrorized by his father that he'd vomit at the sight of him; a guy whose talent robbed him of his own childhood; a guy who spent the rest of his life mutilating himself and possibly mistreating others in an utterly doomed attempt to release from his pain. Apportion the blame however you like, but what the hell is funny about that? The moment you stop to think about it--for one second--it no longer becomes fodder for humor. So when we laugh at a Michael Jackson joke, we should know: that's not laughter, that's keeping yourself dead inside.
To accept that there is a limit to how much we can make fun of a celebrity, is to accept that certain behavior is more important than other behavior, and proportionality is a dangerous thought in our politicized times--if you want to get another 13-week contract. Yes everybody knew about Michael Jackson, and his existence as shorthand predisposed him to be joked about; but every second of airtime that he was being ridiculed, other much more worthy targets were escaping without critique. It's not a stretch to suggest that this, too, has created our troubled world.
If satire has a salutary effect (which is debatable), its benefits come in proportion to the importance of the target: what sort of danger is being curtailed or avoided by the force of ridicule. In blasting away at Michael Jackson, American comedy did more than merely shoot a perfectly motionless fish in a tiny glass barrel; it ignored some authentic sea monsters cruising the coast. And for that, everybody in the satirical end of comedy needs to take a long, hard, look--not at the spectacle of Michael Jackson, but at ourselves.
Which was maybe why we were so content to look at him in the first place.
Read this article…
For his entire adult life, Jackson was ridiculed in public by the best in the business. Think about that for a second. He knew what everybody thought of him--he must've known. At what point did all that weirdness change, from something inside of him, to something caused by all of us? Only he could know, if he ever did, and now he's dead.
Some portion of this ridicule was earned: the compulsive plastic surgery, the persistent whiff of child molestation, the bizarre marriage to Elvis' daughter--these were, if not earth-shattering events, deviations from the norm reasonably worthy of a satirist's attention. But I think anyone not getting paid on a 13-week contract has to admit that at a certain point it became a peculiar kind of public torture. Most of the time that Michael Jackson made the monologue, he hadn't done anything genuinely newsworthy. Yet there he was, the butt of another joke about gayness, or pedophilia, or plastic surgery, or germophobia...I could go on, but there's no point. There never was.
One of the biggest changes in American pop culture has been the demise of humor based on stereotypes (or at least its widespread concealment). This is a good thing, but as the humor of stereotype has waned, other things have had to step in. The things that have filled the void are
a) celebrity humor; and for those intellectuals among us
b) absurdism about "inhuman autopilots"--zombies, pirates, robots, ninjas, etc.
Add in reflexive taboo-busting--sex and drug jokes--and you have described 99% of what passes for comedy in these United States. Most political humor is celebrity humor with a veneer of importance; it comes from no political viewpoint, only comments on behavior. Most of the NPR/New Yorker brand is absurdist autopilot humor, with enough celebrity to satisfy their timeliness fetish.
All that is another post, so I'll leave it and finish this one. Unlike say, Cary Grant, Michael Jackson had the ill fortune to be a celebrity when nightly scrutiny of a pop singer's personal habits became what passed for incisive commentary. Precisely when American power needed all the restraining that satire could throw at it, satire became obsessed with celebrities. Coincidence? Surely not. Part of this was the entertainment industry's self-aggrandizing belief that nobody in the audience knows about anything but entertainment--which, after fifty years, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even more powerful was simple risk-aversion. Any Jackson joke was risk-free. Since he was both celebrity and inhuman autopilot, the material flooded forth; and in that flood was protection, safety in numbers. That's why it all felt strangely impersonal, as if this "Michael Jackson" we were all laughing at didn't exist as a person. To the extent that anybody I knew spared a thought for the guy, the human being, they decided he deserved it for being so weird. Such is the compassion of the herd.
But so what? you might say. Life's rough, and Jackson didn't have to be rich and famous. He didn't have to get nose jobs and sleep in a hyperbaric chamber. Well, here's what: It's inconceivable to me that all this concentrated ridicule did not drip down, poison-like, to the man himself, and make a difficult life even more difficult. And it would be one thing if the enjoyment generated as a result of this pain was in any way instructive, constructive, or substantial. It wasn't. It was just meanness. Occasionally Jackson deserved our scorn, but most of the time he didn't, and it says a lot about the culture in which we live that Michael Jackson--a pop singer--was the target of so much vitriol. Anybody who runs for President, much less does what it takes to win, is just as weird as Michael Jackson was. They simply hide it better. Here was a guy so terrorized by his father that he'd vomit at the sight of him; a guy whose talent robbed him of his own childhood; a guy who spent the rest of his life mutilating himself and possibly mistreating others in an utterly doomed attempt to release from his pain. Apportion the blame however you like, but what the hell is funny about that? The moment you stop to think about it--for one second--it no longer becomes fodder for humor. So when we laugh at a Michael Jackson joke, we should know: that's not laughter, that's keeping yourself dead inside.
To accept that there is a limit to how much we can make fun of a celebrity, is to accept that certain behavior is more important than other behavior, and proportionality is a dangerous thought in our politicized times--if you want to get another 13-week contract. Yes everybody knew about Michael Jackson, and his existence as shorthand predisposed him to be joked about; but every second of airtime that he was being ridiculed, other much more worthy targets were escaping without critique. It's not a stretch to suggest that this, too, has created our troubled world.
If satire has a salutary effect (which is debatable), its benefits come in proportion to the importance of the target: what sort of danger is being curtailed or avoided by the force of ridicule. In blasting away at Michael Jackson, American comedy did more than merely shoot a perfectly motionless fish in a tiny glass barrel; it ignored some authentic sea monsters cruising the coast. And for that, everybody in the satirical end of comedy needs to take a long, hard, look--not at the spectacle of Michael Jackson, but at ourselves.
Which was maybe why we were so content to look at him in the first place.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Secret Policeman's Ball(s)
As some of you know, I celebrated my 40th last weekend with a viewing of several rare versions of "The Secret Policeman's Ball" series. It's really worth seeking out for anyone the least bit interested in that great Oxbridge generation of British comedy (from Cook to Cleese to Atkinson). Film critic Gregory Weinkauf was there, too, and here's his round-up for HuffPo.
Read this article…
Monday, June 15, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
More Adam Curtis documentaries
The Living Dead 1 of 3: On the Desperate Edge of Now
This documentary explores how the narrative setting up World War Two as "the good war" required significant parts of the past to be buried, ordinary Germans to be made into unfathomable monsters, and the experiences of the soldiers to be forever at odds with the accepted myth.
The Living Dead 2 of 3: You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
A history of brainwashing and mind control, and its mutation into artificial intelligence.
The Living Dead 3 of 3: The Attic
Margaret Thatcher's use of, and imprisonment by, Winston Churchill's patriotic but problematic vision of Britain.
Read this article…
This documentary explores how the narrative setting up World War Two as "the good war" required significant parts of the past to be buried, ordinary Germans to be made into unfathomable monsters, and the experiences of the soldiers to be forever at odds with the accepted myth.
The Living Dead 2 of 3: You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
A history of brainwashing and mind control, and its mutation into artificial intelligence.
The Living Dead 3 of 3: The Attic
Margaret Thatcher's use of, and imprisonment by, Winston Churchill's patriotic but problematic vision of Britain.
The Century of the Self
I am currently working through a wonderful BBC documentary on how the ideas of Sigmund Freud have been used to control the masses (don't worry, it's anything but dry). It's called "The Century of the Self." The four episodes are below; I highly recommend it.
Part 1 of 4:
Part 2 of 4:
Part 3 of 4:
Part 4 of 4:
Read this article…
Part 1 of 4:
Part 2 of 4:
Part 3 of 4:
Part 4 of 4:
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Talk: JFK and the Unspeakable
This is a talk by Jim Douglass, a peace activist and the author of the book "JFK and the Unspeakable." Perhaps I will get a copy for my birthday. From everything I have read about "Unspeakable," I think it gets closest to explaining why I've always been fascinated with the JFK assassination (from the age of seven or eight!), and why I think it is a keystone event in our national life.
It is always very difficult to discuss this topic, because spoken or unspoken it becomes clear that any deviation from the "Oswald did it alone" story is an indictment of our entire shared reality, and hints at a level of ineptitude and/or corruption and/or outright evil that is almost impossible to live with. This is why the mass media has come down so firmly in favor of the Warren Commission over the years; from Life in '64 to CBS in '67 to ABC in '98, and on and on, the self-appointed shapers of public opinion have relentlessly toed the government line, and resented the public's determination to believe differently.
People want to believe in the lone nut template, not only in this case but in all political murders, because it requires no action from them. It is only the vastness and depth of the evidence which keeps the pro-conspiracy viewpoint from dying off. It is, after all, a profoundly uncomfortable place to be. But there are greater virtues than comfort.
Interesting video (JFK and Vietnam)
For those (like my commenter) who desire a more conclusive discussion, one can be found in James K. Galbraith's article here.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Twitter Updates
0 comments | Edit this Post
Videos