Category Archives: In My Opinion: The World Around Us

WORLD CUP STORYTELLING and MORE

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Once upon a time, the story was the terrible deeds of the autocratic, despotic, perhaps barbarous government of Qatar. How they paid their way to become Host of the World Cup and how they treated not only the workers they grossly mistreated to build the infrastructure for one of the hugest, grandest events in all of sports but also expected fans to kowtow to their Prohibition era ways,all seemed headed toward a reckoning of some kind.

But no. Something happened.

It became a question of how fans would manage without beer.

The story shifted: now the games were on and all that merited discussion was who won and who lost.

Did journalism lose its moral compass in all of this?

Or was it the organizers and sponsors and fans and teams–all of whom did the ostrich thing and just said Get on with it?

I thought this might be an ethical question about reportage but it seems more a political question about courage: the courage to admit mistakes, to not conscience human rights violations, to refuse to abide by a Let’s Pretend there is no context for the pleasures we take in sports, to insist on principles above all.

It reminds me of the many appalling tales the waft around the NFL, the governing body for American football, from racist owners to sexist players, from minimizing concussions to overlooking domestic abuse.

Ditto for the ex-President who could be exposed as a sexist pig, in so many words, as well as a pathological liar, who could be the root cause of an attempted coup against our government and who wants to scrap our Constitution, but who only needs to wait out to the news cycle to go on his next outrageous act, indifferent to consequences that have yet to arrive (though they might, someday!).

Stories get told and our storytelling journalists can claim they just provide what we want to hear.

Perhaps it’s part of the loss of confidence in public institutions and public figures generally. What do you think?

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San Francisco on Foot

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During the time of the plague–the virus mainly, more than the orange man in that white house–I have been taking long hikes in the city, first in Golden Gate Park, discovering nooks and crannies off the beaten path and now, along the bay side and the shore, south of the new Warrior stadium. Under siege now by the developer caste, and their paint-by-number, utterly hideous box buildings, mostly 2 or 3 story apartment complexes that could be anywhere, are always somewhere in the gray spectrum, and have absolutely nothing to do with the style or tone that distinguished this once unique city, it remains, so far, a largely neglected, semi-industrial zone. The photos catch parts of it, beginning, though with the UCSF medical complex which is a massive hospital/research array of buildings that have almost zero street level identity and  hence feel barren even though some of the buildings are above average in their architectural distinction. South of there the waterfront is still mostly industrial and those two areas are where the photos come from so, if each is worth a 1000 words, it’s time to move to pictures.

balls

4 balls, highly reflective, outside the Chase Center

Pier 70 STeel w fence

See all the unbroken windows

Cemex 2

Not cement

Heron Head ruin

The jetty and the pier

More to come

Document or Art?

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A friend is making an art project by shooting each flight of stairs in a five story building. There is a quiet, haunting quality to the work that struck me as quite impressive. It made me wonder if this casual, random shot I took of a new stairway railing to document its existence might qualify as art?

Does intention matter? Might something done for one reason fulfill another? Did Mr. Campbell think his soup cans would wind up in museums?

Heady questions and perhaps unanswerable, but there’s something worth pondering in all this.  Anyway, here’s the photo I took; what do you think?

stair railing

Anniversaries

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Everyone has a birthday every year but we save anniversaries for yet more special occasions, from long-term survival in marriages and jobs, to the continued existence of vital institutions, documents and countries.
And even Film Departments.
In this case, the Film Department, now, of course, the Film and Media Department, at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Founded in the late ’60s by the noted Canadian scholar Peter Harcourt, it was quickly off and running, hosting distinguished faculty, turning out grads who went on to considerable success, and becoming a fixture in the staid landscape of a venerable but quite traditional university.
Now fifty years later, it’s time for an anniversary and I have a chance to attend and make a small contribution. I haven’t been back but once since spending the first thirteen years of my career there and I am looking forward to offering a report on what the intervening time has wrought.
It seems, at the very least, that the Department has managed to age gracefully and to mature into a major player on the national stage.

Factory Fetishism

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The de Young museum has its Cult of the Machine show on. Machines: futurists loved them; Constructivists praised them; Precisionists fetishized them, or, at least, some of them did. Charles Scheeler, Charles Demuth sure did love ’em. The show gives them their due and they deserve it. Scheeler, in particular, reveres the majesty and mystery of machines, industry, power as an alchemist’s brew of transformation. It even transforms humans right out of the picture.  His and most of these guys pictures are of industrial might, not as menacing but majestic, sublime, beyond our capacity to fully appreciated even if we created it.

But the show has an underbelly. They’re the works that fascinated me for having some sense, as some do now, of what lurks beneath the utopian dreams, the ones heard now of a world of communication, connection and Friends(hips).

They saw things a little differently.

ault

Void of humans but abristle with energy and motion, there is an ambiguity at work. Seen from on high, the New York city waterfront runs like a ribbon through a tissue of industry, but one that sends up signals of smoke and steam whose meaning is unclear. Perhaps the ambiguity is what convinced Georgia O’Keefe to move to New Mexico.

And then there’s this:

o'keefe

In this work by George Ault, factory and ship smoke, white and black, obliterates whatever lies beyond it.  And the far shore is entirely grey with waterfront wharves and buildings that seem to emerge from or plunge into the water. Up close it is as if the water swallows the buildings; man has not fully emerged from his watery beginnings.

o'keefe 2

Here, O’Keefe captures two great, black monoliths and a white one beyond, all dwarfing the silvery moon that sneaks out between them all. Boldly bleak, capturing the canyon like enormity of New York, it also lacks warmth or comfort, a far cry from the desert world of flowers she later turned to.

ault 3

Ault didn’t see the rural American of the ’30 as much better. Black, devoid of any enlivening detail, absent humans, a warped and pointless fence, the shapes and geometry that give the city its dynamism appear here more as a sepluchral loss than a rustic retreat.

IMGnham and Twinkie thibaut_073Cunni0

With a little hint of mischief the show also includes this shot of Imogene Cunningham and the model Twinkie where Cunningham appears as if she might be coming upon Susanna before the elders find her. Her camera seems to be the main link to the other works and the humor of the shot is largely absent elsewhere, save for the inevitable clip of Charlie Chaplin caught in the gears and cogs of an assembly line from Modern Times.

And for a finale,

c carter

Charles Holbrook Carter’s War Bride, faceless and alone before the altar, or machinery (of the church?), with pews that look like aircraft hangars and two gear works on either side that could be totems from another era. Who gets to marry the machine? Who is left behind? Can anyone survive the marriage of heaven and hell, or man and machine–questions we seem to ask in one form or another every day.

Across the Atlantic

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Long ago in a far away place, my mom took my sister and me to see Aunt Marie off to lead a guided tour in Europe. She sailed on the Queen Mary. She gave me a sip of champagne. I became light-headed. Ever since I have wanted to make a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary (now 2).

I just did it. On a New York Times package that included several talks per day.

So we wandered New York one night, visited a drab and weakly guarded Trump Tower, saw Jeff Koons up to his usual materialist shenanigans (pimping at Saks):

Jeff Koons art

Koons does a van Gogh imitation and festoons Vuitton handbags with his “artistry”

Toured the NYT building and then beheld the ship.

QM2 at dock

Bigger than a Skyscraper it is

Somehow an upgrade befell us.

QM2 room

So the cabin and the sea were large and calming.

VC on QM2 bed2

Thank the Queen for Upgrades

Bill sees the sea

Alert for pirates and buccaneers

Dinners and after-dinner entertainment were formal several nights, after all it is the Queen’s ship.

Bill and Victoria on QM2

And then life went on. On to Salisbury and Stonehenge

Stonehenge4

What compelled their maker to heave this massive stones together over decades if not centuries?

Salisbury Cathedral had some stunning art by Ana Marie Pecheco

7 Lust

Lust: about 12″ x 15″ each sin had its own illustration

Wandering 2

Full size wood carvings: The Wanderers. Pacheco’s work was very impressive

Then Oxford, a town aswarm with tourists, mostly youthful, perhaps future graduates of this ancient site.

Of course, I thought, we have to hear a lecture by a Professor on an arcane, esoteric topic that could only happen at Oxford, or maybe Berkeley.  Luckily the Ashmolean was celebrated something and there was a lecture of Riddles in Early Anglo Saxon literature.

The room was packed and the professor, Andrew Orchard, whipped from Greek to Latin to old English as if it were all simple nursery rhymes, reciting poems and dashing off explanations of what they did to make their riddle work. A perfect Oxford moment.

And then London.

MacBeth was in the courtyard of St. Paul’s at Covent Garden and the production was superb. Visceral and imaginative with fine acting.

Macbeth 3

Banquo returns from the grace to haunt the already guilt ridden MacBeth.

And to keep up to date, a visit to the West End to see “the play of the year,” The Ferryman. a fabulous exploration of guild, betrayal, family, desire, loyality and memory in the Ireland on 1980. It built to a climax of massive proportion just like the classic Greek tragedies.

VC at west end

There was also the Tate Modern but I could not take photos of the Giacometti exhibit of the powerful and comprehensive survey of African-American art in the 1960s and 70s that resonated with the issues of civil rights and black power.  It originated here but I can’t imagine it won’t find its way to the States.

Forget the Past

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A Short Comment about our Leader

Our Congressional Democrats see the daily blunders, endless lies and massive policy disasters of the President but not what explains them.

He, and others like him, have returned to a medieval system of belief. He lives in the time warp where beliefs prevail by the sheer force of will exercised by potentates and their minions.

The medieval mind knew nothing of scientific evidence. Science, reason and the Enlightenment had not yet arrived.The Dark Ages depended on blind faith, unquestioned fealty, and willful ignorance. Rulers, in their privileged isolation, lived in an idyllic world of riches and prosperity in which poverty, pollution, despair and desperation did not exist or was the natural fate of those who deserved such misery through faults entirely their own.

To recognize that dignity and respect for others matter, that good healthcare should be a right, that a financially secure retirement should be assured, that the working class isn’t the only or even main place to find deplorable actions and thoughts—all this matters greatly. But without a firm grasp on Trump’s medieval worldview, it appears as mere disagreement about ways and means rather than a rejection of a world cut to the measure of a small elite who disregard proven truths and established facts. Normally the province of religious extremes of all faiths, Trump proves that it can also be the default position of the insecure, uninformed, belligerent and defensive ones for whom curiosity and compassion no longer exist. 

 

When will the Democratic Party wake up?

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This is an open letter to the DNC (Democratic National Committee) about their failure to confront Trump effectively. I haven’t sent it yet and welcome feedback.

Putin makes his mark

Dear Democratic National Committee and Surrogates:

They say any publicity is good publicity and by that standard the DNC is doing a world of good for Donald Trump. Every fund request I get tells of another blunder or outrage, acts that do little to upset his base.

What I don’t hear is what the Democratic Party offers as an alternative. That means zero publicity for what really matters: a radically different vision for an America we can once again recognize as our own.

You lost the election, on multiple levels. Put your house in order and invite us in.

Address, at the very least:

Will you revitalize and pursue the Democratic platform devised at last year’s convention and use it as a building block to the future?

What will you do to return us to a Post-Enlightenment (17th century on) world that understands how science freed us from myth, superstition and folly? The Republicans have opted for a medieval system of belief that denies scientific evidence in favor of blind faith and willful ignorance. How will you make clear the difference, especially among those susceptible to a system the nurtures unverified claims and demagogic appeals?

When will you stop pretending the working class does not exist, or is populated with undesirables? Factory workers are not members of the middle class as President Obama seemed to believe. They earn wages not salaries and have much less security, just for a start. Saving the middle class, the sub-title of Elizabeth Warren’s new book, ignores those whose future stands in yet starker jeopardy. When will you speak to and for a core constituency you have overlooked and sometimes disdained?

How will you stop corporations and rich individuals for shirking their responsibility to pay taxes? We may have a high corporate tax rate but it is a fiction, obviously so when companies like Apple can shelter vast amounts of profit in foreign nations, untaxed.

When can Medicare be gradually extended downward to become a universal health care system?  How will you handle the vested, private interests that turn health into a profit center?

How can we acknowledge the difficult status quo of semi-legal and illegal immigrants and offer a path to citizenship as well as a well-coordinated plan to limit illegal entry in the future?

What tangible steps and new legislation will secure equal rights for all genders and sexual orientations as well as all ethnic and religious groups?

How will you acknowledge the fear, resentment and even hatred expressed by some whites who can no longer take their historical racial or gender privileges for granted? How can the sense of an all-inclusive American People can be restored?

What concrete steps do you propose to counter terrorism by building democratic institutions, especially in countries that lack democratic traditions?  What texts should be read in schools, what role can local and regional governments play, how can citizens make their voices heard and respected, when can tribal leaders and warlords have their power reduced?  Isn’t it time to step back from endorsing monarchs, oligarchs, patriarchs and illiberal ultra-nationalists who refuse to find a way to accommodate and respect minority groups of all kinds?  We say we want to bring democracy to others but more other bring little more than death and destruction. What will you do to change this?

Why do I not hear about action, real action, in these directions?

I can vote against someone, but I also want to ACT FOR something.

This are hard questions but without answers the Democratic Party will remain a party of the past.

 

Scenes from Budapest

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i’m back in Budapest, teaching in the DocNomad program, a grad program where students spend the year going from Lisbon to Budapest to Brussels making docs along the way. It’s a great program.  And here are some impressions from the city where Orban’s rubber stampers just voted to close the Central European University, a great university too liberal, it seems, for Orban and his far right policies.

outside the Parliament Bldg where the right wing prevails

parliament with the protest.

The Grand Stairway, and Red carpet but it’s not the Reds who rule but the modern day Arrow Crossers

A mural inspired by Chagall outside a cafe named after him. There is still the charm to hide the lessons in darkness

And the oddities: Albanian Liver? I didn’t get to try it.

A provocative show of anti-totalitarian art from the Eastern bloc in the Soviet era.

Marina Abramowic doing her thing: all wrapped up and ready to go

Another part of the show

 

More protest. The large statue references Hungary’s occupation by Germany near the end of WW2 but the foreground items all denounce the soft pedaling of government collusion with the Nazis throughout the war, including, near the end, the Final Solution

Snowden the fiction film

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We’ve had Citizenfour, the documentary film, and now Oliver Stone gives us the true story as a dramatic fiction.  Laura Poitras is there, as a character, filming Snowden in Hong Kong, and it is from this scene that we flashback over his life.  That concept works well; between his own recollections and what Laura draws out (which is everything of interest about his transition from gung ho CIA operative to whistle blower; the Guardian reporter and Glenn Greenwald are only interested in The Big Story, not in Snowden’s story), we get a well developed portrait of what it takes to induce repugnance and indignation in someone who wants to serve his country.

As far as I can make out, the only real justification for the surveillance is that the enema is everywhere, security is paramount, and secrecy is vital to security, hence spying on everyone all the time. That’s what Snowden’s CIA mentor tells us and it feels like a half-baked half-truth; in  other words, as Stone tells it the whole program is a fantasmatic effort to find needles in haystacks that could be better spent pursuing specific leads and launching counter-offensives.  There is no discussion of how to promote democracy or how to build democratic institutions  among our middle east “allies,” or how to rely on “good” Muslims to help feret out the bad, etc.  There is a “hide inside the fortress” mentality to the CIA and NSA that makes effective action almost inconceivable.

All in all, an excellent complement to Poitras’s portrait of Snowden and a film with more suspense than I would have imagined.