“A dagger at my heart…”

Once again (see this post) I return to the story of mass arrests in NYC - peaceful protesters, or people not even demonstrating, hauled into the precinct station, some of whom were held for days.  Only two people tried - acquitted of course - in proceedings that surely must have been absurd to witness given the evidence available that totally undermined all of NYPD’s claims. Everyone else released, no charges.  Why were they arrested?  HYSTERIA!

The New York Times has been following, and sometimes editorializing about the process by which the lawsuits against the city are being settled.  Today, it describes how at great cost in legal fees and staff time, after much stalling and stonewalling, the city is paying out millions of dollars to settle claims related to its violation of civil rights.  Of course, the NYPD admits no wrong doing - state organs never do.

The article quotes the fellow shown in the picture above:

Then they started arresting us, one by one. At that point, I got emotional — I could not believe in my country, in my city, I could get arrested for doing absolutely nothing and standing on the sidewalk,” Mr. Shirazi added.

Are there any lessons from the day? The Law Department said the $2 million payout did not mean the police had done anything wrong. “This settlement was reached without any admission of liability on behalf of the city and the individual defendants,” said Ms. Halatyn, the city lawyer.

The Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement.

Mr. Shirazi said that as he was being handcuffed for the first time in his life, he told the officer that the plastic cuffs were squeezing him. “He said, ‘You should have thought about that before you came out this morning.’ It was like a dagger in my heart, that a police officer of my city would come up with anything like that.”

In what does patriotism and love of country consist?  Following orders motivated by unthinking fear or hallowing and practicing the ideas that gave it rise in the first place?

Did ya hear the one about the war hero?

Did John McCain listen in on Obama as he was interviewed?  He was not in the “cone of silence.”  His aid had this to say:

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Get ready for more of the same.  I foresee something like this:

Mr/Ms fill in name stated that it was

choose one: [outrageous, scurrilous, sickening]

to imply that John McCain, a FORMER PRISONER OF WAR AND A WAR HERO had

choose one: [lied, failed to fully disclose the truth, made a mistake, mispoke, voted for something he now opposes, opposed something he now supports, accepted money from rich people, insulted anyone, etc.]

Are monsters sad?

I went to a wonderful exhibit of prints by Albrecht Durer today, including many of his most famous - The Knight, Death, and the Devil, Melancholia, and St. Jerome in his study. Looking at the detail from an image in his Apocalypse series shown above, (full image) I was struck by the forlorn aspect of this beast from hell as he vomits fire onto the world.  He doesn’t want to do it, but he must.  It’s his life.  Laying waste to the world.  Godzilla had his tragic aspect too, no?

I was also struck by the vomit imagery, so much like this visual trope that is to be found in Maakies again and again.  See the whole strip here.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Tony Millionaire were a fan of Durer.

And then, there is that beautiful image of the Prodigal Son at the moment when he is inspired to return to his father and beg his forgiveness.  I can’t help but think that the pigs, on which Durer has lavished so much loving attention, are looking at the wayward son slyly, a little knowingly…”Oh, you’re leaving are you?  Well, be gone with you.  We have eating to do…“

I was much taken as well by this image of Christ before Pilate, a woodcut from his Small Passion series.  I love the slightly crazy steps, rendered carefully in perspective but not like any steps I’ve seen lately.  They give it a slightly dreamlike atmosphere, I think.

A blast from the past

In utrumque paratus…That little bit of Latin means “prepared for either…”  In this case, the either refers to peaceful defense or war.  War, as in World War III, that is.  Nuclear annihilation by intercontinental ballistic missiles, aka ICBM.

We were vacationing up north in the Lake Champlain area of Vermont, riding our bikes through pleasant rural vistas, when we stopped at a visitors’ information site in Alburgh, a very small town.  There was a solid historical marker set on a post that identified the area as the site of the first US ICBM missile silo - set way up north near the border with Canada to minimize the flying time to the USSR.  I left without remembering to take a picture of the marker, but obviously others have had similar thoughts (see here).  I didn’t know there was so much touristical interest in Cold War armageddon.  Just seeing that marker was chilling to me.

Soul Man

As the television world watches the Olympics in Beijing, the Party is ensuring that certain things will not be seen.  In order to stage a protest of any sort, especially during the festivities, you must get a permit and only exercise your right to speech in selected zones.  (Sounds a bit like the Republican convention in NYC, 2004, eh?)  According to this article in the NYTimes, quite a few of those who sign up for the right to voice their grievances publicly are ending up disappearing into the maw of the Chinese Communist Party security apparatus.  It reminds me of that grim old joke about Stalin and the Soviet constitution that was packed with liberal human rights.  They only published it to see who would sign on, so that then they could be dealt with.

The fellow shown here is a veteran protester, profiled briefly in the article:

Despite what seem to be the perils of applying for a permit, scores of people continue to flock to the capital seeking an opportunity to publicize their grievances. Gao Chuancai, 45, a farmer from Heilongjiang Province, evaded a police cordon in his hometown and arrived in Beijing with a handwritten poster describing a litany of abuses by local officials.

Mr. Gao said in an interview that he had no delusions about his prospects. Over the years, he said, he has been jailed a dozen times and beaten repeatedly for trying to publicize corruption in Xingyi, a village just outside Harbin in China’s northeast. Security officials from Harbin had in the past even tracked him down in Beijing and stopped him from petitioning higher authorities in the capital, he said.

Early this month, after he learned of the Olympic protest zones on television, he mailed in an application to Beijing.

On Wednesday, he worked up the nerve to visit the application office. “Whatever happens, happens. I don’t care if I die,” he said as his taxi pulled up to the building.

Just what makes a person act this way?  Some sort of glorious stubborness that might, under most circumstances, make him a rather unpleasant person?  Surely, the authorities are asking themselves the same question:  “Why won’t he just shut up!!“  Philip Pan’s engrossing new book, Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, tries to answer just this question.  He profiles several men and woman, inspiring, brave people with   tremendous grit, who won’t buckle under to the the Chinese state.  He also describes others who are cynical, rapacious, brutal, and totally unprincipled, and he sees it as an open question as to which group will carry the day in China, ruled as it is by an entrenched, corrupt, kleptocracy.  (Communist ideology dropped by the wayside long ago.)

Meanwhile, Mr. Gao…

At the reception area, a pair of officers questioned him about the nature of his protest and asked him to fill out a lengthy form that included the names and numbers of the officials who had wronged him. Mr. Gao was reluctant, but he complied.

After an hour, they smiled and told him to return in five days. As he walked out the door, he overheard one of the officers on the phone. He was calling the police station in Harbin.

I wish him luck.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Stupid…

Once again, David Brooks clocks in with a column that makes me ask, “what planet do you live on?”  Visiting the countryside in China that was recently traumatized by earthquake, he comments:

We’d visited the village without warning and selected our interview subjects at random, but some of the answers were probably crafted to please the government. Still, there was no disguising the emotional resilience and intense mutual support in that village. And there was no avoiding the baffling sense of equanimity. Where was the trauma and grief?

For someone who bills himself as a libertarian-leaning conservative Republican, and a “pop” sociologist, his response is remarkable.  Does he not read the newspaper that publishes his drivel?  He hasn’t heard of the protests by grieving parents, their children crushed to death in shoddily built schools, that were broken up by police, the parents beaten?  He is not aware of the concerted effort by the Party to buy silence with a hush money policy?  It never occurs to him that the vast network of Party officials throughout the country has made it perfectly clear what sort of statements are acceptable?  Does he think that these people are as stupid as he is?  Does he really think that the Chinese collectivist spirit, as he calls it in his superficial maunderings of the last week or so, precludes grief over the death of a child, especially when such mind boggling political corruption is involved?

And speaking of ideas that are so stupid only an educated person could believe them (to use George Orwell’s phrase here for the umpteenth time), what about that “End of History,” eh?  People like Francis Fukuyama are why the word “intellectual” is, for some, a slur.  Just add the pointy headed… How could anyone take this idea seriously?  Well, it seems that Vladimir Putin didn’t.   Fellow neo-con Robert Kagan gets a jab in at FF with his new article, “The End of the End of History,” commenting on the return of 19th century history as Russia pursues the “Great Game” with renewed vigor.

Yeah, every movement is supposed to end history.  The same thing in art - we had Modernism…then Post-Modernism.  In the end, all we have are styles and fads.

Architecture: that human scale…

There is a story about a press conference with Minoru Yamasaki before construction on the World Trade Center began:

“Why did you scale down your design from 150 stories to 100, Mr. Yamasaki?”
“We wanted to keep the human scale.”

Uh, yeah, right!

What’s up with this building of the Chinese State TV headquarters now going up in Beijing?  It’s designed by Rem Koolhaas, shown here in a presentation drawing.  Is it a Moebius strip?  I can’t decide whether it’s some kind of wonderful or a vision from the hell of 1984.  I don’t like to pass judgments about buildings I’ve never seen, but this one does give me the creeps.  I can imagine the minions of the state propaganda apparatus having a fine old time inside trying to control the minds of the nation.  And they say it is the largest office building in the world next to the US Pentagon.  Talk about human scale…which is something that Koolhaas does talk about.

Architects are a funny bunch.  Creative, ego-centric, perhaps a bit megalomaniac when they turn their hands to urban planning and “urbanism” writ large.  After all, don’t they want to see their drawing board visions brought to life?  Not that they want to impose them…except for our own good…

Here’s a gallery of images of buildings that seem to lack that loving, human touch…starting with a photo of the CCTV in progress:

We’ve got the Chinese TV headquarters under construction, then two shots of the late, great twin towers.  I know it’s heresy to say this, but I think that they destroyed the skyline of Manhattan.  Quite honestly, I hated them and found them to be soulless, overpowering buildings set in a windy plaza above a depressing subterranean shopping mall.  Now I look down from my window and watch their successors take form.

Next up, Le Corbusier’s vision for Paris - knock down the buildings and set up rows of cruciform skyscrapers.  The street must die!  It’s so noisy, chaotic, and…lacking in ORDER!  (Jane Jacobs knew where he was coming from.)  Corbu’s vision was realized in part in NYC in Cooper Village and Stuyvesant town, two mega developments that provided a lot of low-cost living space to WWII veterans coming home.  The towers are dull, even ugly, and set in a rather boring and uninspired “park” setting which is, however, lovingly, even lushly tended.  A saving grace…Now the subsidies are gone and the apartment rents and prices are through the roof.

Some visionary stuff a la Francaise. Claude Ledoux’s spherical house, pure geometry, but not overly large.  Still, what’s the point of living in that other than to prove an artist’s point?  And the Great Arch of La Defense, located on the edge of Paris.  Another exercise in pure form - lovely isn’t it?  Nearby, the National Library, in the shape of an open book.  Nevermind that functionally it is a failure, i.e., it doesn’t store books very well.

Next up, two images of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, the capital of New York state.  “Empire State” is the nickname of  New York (thus the Empire State Building…) but it seems a bit ironic here.  A plaza in capital of a state ruled by democracy, named “empire,” and in a style that would seem at home in an evil empire anywhere, cinematic, soviet, futuristic fascist, and the like.  It was built by Nelson Rockefeller, a man not known for his humility.  The huge reflecting pool on the left has a pavilion at the end that seems like an imperial Persian review stand on steroids.  And that weird floating thing on the right in the middle picture?  That’s a theater, not a cast off from The Jetsons.  The last picture on the row, a shot of Brasilia, carries on the theme with a little more elegance.

Closing out, we have some fantastic visions - never built, of course, but today..? - by Etienne Boullee.  A pryamid a la modern, an enormous, cavernous, seemlingly infinite design for a national library, and a monument to Issac Newton.  The latter at least makes a nice match of over the top design with the size Newton’s ego, his subject, and his accomplishments as well.

I wonder if we do and say the right things…

…You mean about the children?

David Bowie as Mr. Newton, in The Man Who Fell to Earth, is abducted.  His long-time attorney and corporate manager is murdered by being tossed out of his apartment window.  Cut from his fall to earth to the man who planned the killing as he dives into a pool to the sound of unearthly music.  After he puts his children to bed, he says to his beautiful wife…

Art by the numbers…

Today, in the New York Times, there was an article about an economist who has reordered the canon of art history by using market statistics and counts of the appearance of works in standard texts.  After his quantitative ranking is done, what will know about art?  That is, will it deepen or alter our appreciation of the works?  I think not, though it may have some interest as cultural history.  As Arthur Danto pointed out succinctly,

“I don’t see the method as anything except circular. The frequency of an illustration doesn’t seem to me to really explain what makes an idea good.

“Somewhere along the line you’ve got to find answers to why it’s so interesting.”

If you’re interested in art, that is…

Unmentioned in this article, is the fact that it seems to reverse Marx’s comment on history playing out twice:  first as tragedy, then as farce.  This economist is engaging in a travesty of thought, a tragedy of …well, maybe it’s just farce all around, but the farce certainly came before him.  Has he not heard of Komar & Melamid?  These two tricksters did extensive polling - market research - to discover what art people want and then they gave it to them!  That’s art by the numbers!!

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Dead at 89

A few brief quotations from The Gulag Archipelago, not intended to be representative of his work, but merely ones that struck me and that I recorded as I moved through the massive three-volume reminiscence of the camps:

On members of the engineering profession, mine.  This is not the planet I inhabit!

An engineer?  I had grown up among engineers, and I could remember the engineers of the twenties very well indeed: their open shining intellects, their free and gentle humor, their agility and breadth of thought, the ease with which they shifted from one engineering field to another, and, for that matter, from technology to social concerns and art. Then, too, they personified good manners and delicacy of taste; well-bred speech that flowed evenly and was free of uncultured words;  one of them might play a musical instrument, another dabble in painting; and their faces always bore a spiritual imprint.

The Gulag Archipelago vol. I

A bit of sardonic humor:

But then, only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings.  Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.

The Gulag Archipelago vol. III

Homespun philosophy of the Gulag:

All the problems which tease and torment men who have been free we solve with a single click of the tongue…”Things have been worse!”

The Gulag Archipelago vol. III

Has a geographer taken up this challenge?

Yes, and in the twenties the Archipelago was one thing, whereas in the fifties it was quite a different thing.  How would one indicate its march through time?  How many maps would be required?…But we hope to see such a map yet.

The Gulag Archipelago vol II?

That old rub between theory and practice:  A piece of really black humor:

As for the theory of escape - it is very simple.  You do it any way you can. If you get away, that shows you know your theory.  If you’re caught - you haven’t yet mastered it.

The Gulag Archipelago vol. III

The meaning of it all:

And how can you bring it home to them? By an inspiration? By a vision? A dream? Brothers! People! Why has life been given you? In the deep, deaf stillness of midnight, the doors of the death cells are being swung open–and great-souled people are being dragged out to be shot. On all the railroads of the country this very minute, right now, people who have just been fed salt herrings are licking their dry lips with bitter tongues. They dream of the happiness of stretching out one’s legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in summer and only to the depth of three feet—and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy. So what’s this about unwiped feet? And what’s this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life—don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart—and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how your are imprinted in their memory!

But the convoy guards stroke the black handles of the pistols in their pockets. And we sit there, three in a row, sober fellows, quiet friends.

The Gulag Archipelago, vol. I

Give my love to the sunrise…

Elsa’s farewell to Michael - she looks glamorous even when she seems to be really dying.  How many times do you see that in an old ‘B’ movie?  This is after the famous shoot out scene in the house of mirrors, a location that reflects (no pun) the nature of Michael’s befuddled nature throughout the film.  He knows he’s been taken for a chump.  A wonderful femme fatale noir flick, and the local scenes in Frisco’s Chinatown are another entertaining piece of it.  Not to mention watching Hayworth running through the market streets in high heels and furs and speaking Chinese!  She is the Lady from Shanghai, after all.

In noir, everything is foreshadowed, pre-ordained, determined.  Michael rescues Elsa from some clumsy thugs who jump her while she’s riding in the horse drawn carriage  in which he first saw and spoke to her in Central Park.  Later, saying goodbye after declining to work on her yacht because he suddenly discovers that she’s a married woman…

…he hands her the gun he found …”Would it be this you’re lookin’ for?  You were smart to carry a gun, traveling alone in the park.  But if you knew you had the gun in your bag, why through away the bag?”

“I meant for you to find it…I don’t know how to shoot.”

“It’s easy.  You just pull the trigger.”

It’s all summed up in Michael’s monologue on sharks, inspired my Melville?  Inspiration for Spielberg’s Quint’s tale of the Indianapolis?

And of course, pull the trigger they do in the fabulous and famous shootout in the crazy mirror room of the funhouse.

Kubrick - Falling Woman

On my noir journey, I just watched Stanley Kubrick’s first film (oh, second - he removed his first feature from circulation himself), Killer’s Kiss. The title doesn’t make all that much sense to me, despite the labored voice over on the theatrical trailer that leads up to announcing it, (”Her Soft Mouth Was the Road to Sin-Smeared Violence”) but the film is pretty good.  Not great, not even really good, in fact, it’s seriously flawed, but Kubrick is so imaginative, and it has such great location shots, and so much weird and fascinating imagery, that I like it.  Of course, I am a huge fan of Stanley K.

The film is short - 67 minutes - and is narrated by Davy while he waits for a train in Penn Station, NY.  The use of that glorious setting, now long gone, gives the film an unintentional kick for the architecturally aware.  Davy is a nice guy and a boxer, but a has-been boxer.  He’s just had his last chance in the ring, and he failed.  He needs to start fresh in life.  Kubrick shows boxing as unglamorous and brutal.  Just the shots of Davy being prepped by his trainer are disturbing.

Davy lives in a tiny one-room apartment across an airshaft from a pretty girl who works nights in a sleazy dance hall.  They are aware of each other, and intrigued - the watch each other through the window, each unaware of the other’s gaze.  Voyeurism, objectification of women, mediation of sex - the usual Kubrick drill.  Here Davy watches her undress, and later she, in a perfectly composed shot, watches him.  Kubrick’s background as a Magnum photographer shows here.

At the dance hall, we are treated to the sight of the advertisements showing busty women, “Couples Invited,” “Dance with Us!”  More women as objects for sale.  And the girl’s name is Gloria Price.  She’s the not-so-willing lover of the owner of the hall, Rapallo, and they watch Davy’s last fight on TV together.  At least one of them is getting very turned on by the spectacle of a man being beaten…and Rapallo suspects that Gloria may be keen on him anyway…

When he returns to his apartment to rest after his defeat, Davy gets a sympathetic call from his uncle.  As he talks to him, he looks at Gloria undressing across the way.  In this wonderful sequence, Davy looks out at us who stand in the space occupied by Gloria.  We see him looking at her in the mirror behind him.  You can barely make her out in the bright window in this still, but he’s watching!  Space, mirrors, the two lovebirds watching each other through windows and on TV…will they ever get together?

Davy falls asleep, but awakes from a nightmare of driving through Brooklyn to the jeers of the audience at his last fight.  The dream is in negative, another Kubrick favorite.  Remember that trip to Jupiter in 2001? 

When he awakes, he hears Gloria screaming as she is threatened by Rapallo.  He rescues her, and that’s the start of their romance.  Rapallo is the jealous type, so he orders his thugs to rough up Davy, but they grab his manager by mistake, and then kill him.  This all happens in Time Square, the source of some great NYC location shots c. 1955.  At times, the camera is hand-held and jumpy.

From there, it gets nasty, as Davy uses his wits and brawn to get even.  Rapallo has kidnapped Gloria, so the fight is over the woman too.

Talk you scum!  Where is she!?  They drive to a deserted loft neighborhood.

There’s a chase over the roofs of NY that is remarkable again for the location shots, and then the final duel to the death between Davy and Rapallo in a mannequin warehouse.  As they fight, female figures are hacked to pieces, skewered, used as weapons, and tumbled upon.

As a surreal commentary on this brutal chivalry, these body parts tremble in the dark, silent and mysterious like a de Chirico painting.

In the end, he gets the girl…