Dr. Seuss: Five things about Theodor Seuss Geisel March 1, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture.Tags: cat in the hat, children, children's books, children's literature, curtis rush, dr.seuss, green eggs and ham, roger hollander, seuss birthday, theor seuss geisel
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TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
Dr. Theor Seuss Geisel.
Around the world today school children are paying tribute to Dr. Seuss’ birthday (which is actually March 2).
Dr. Theor Seuss Geisel, the acclaimed author of dozens of popular children’s books such as “Green Eggs and Ham,” was born March 2, 1904 and died Sept. 24, 1991 of throat cancer. He was 87.
The American writer and poet was born in Springfield, Mass., and later adopted the pen name Dr. Seuss. He died in La Jolla, Calif.
His birthday has been adopted as the annual date of national Read Across America Day.
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Here are the five most important things you should know about Dr. Seuss.
- He came up with the pen name Dr. Seuss after he was caught drinking in his room at Dartmouth College and was banned from extra-curricular activities, which included writing for the college humour magazine. He came up with Seuss to hide his identity. He added the “Dr.” title afterward.
- Dr. Seuss made a point of not beginning the writing of his stories with a moral in mind. “Kids can see a moral coming a mile off,” he once said.
- Mulberry St. in Springfield, near where he grew up, was made famous in his first children’s book “And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” That book had been rejected by around 30 publishers.
- He completed “Cat in the Hat” after receiving a challenge to write a book that children couldn’t put down and to use only 250 words that were important for first-graders to recognize. Seuss used 236 words to complete the book.
- Although he was so devoted to producing children’s books all his life, Dr. Seuss never had any children of his own. When asked about this, his stock answer was: “You have ’em. I’ll entertain ’em.”
Dr. Seuss trending worldwide as world marks his birthday
March 2 is the birthday of acclaimed children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel, kicking off celebrations in schools across North America and around the world today. Dr. Seuss’ birthday has been adopted annually as the day of National Read Across America Day. Dr. Seuss died Sept. 24, 1991 at 87.
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Teachers and students are paying tribute to the “Green Eggs and Ham” author for his remarkable stories and inspirational quotes.
Here’s how people on social media sites are reacting to Dr. Seuss’ birthday. -
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” – Dr. Seuss http://pic.twitter.com/GLyKjv7YZG·Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. -Dr. Seuss -
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Dr. Seuss #love http://instagr.am/p/WUSAtuA2eP/
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Oh the places you’ll go…..Dr. Seuss Day!! http://instagr.am/p/WUR5GuQdeQ/
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Dr. Seuss had a few different form letters with which to reply to fans. Here’s one: http://pic.twitter.com/0tJ9oOA8lx -
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!! http://instagr.am/p/WUSWaBwJjL/
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my little cousin ready for Dr. Seuss day at his school (: ! http://pic.twitter.com/qfK884YrfU
Oscar Prints the Legend: Argo’s Upcoming Academy Award and the Failure of Truth February 25, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Iran.Tags: american exceptionalism, argo, ben affleck, best picture, cia, film criticism, iran hostages, iranians, ken taylor, oscar, political movie, roger hollander
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February 23, 2013, http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2013/02/oscar-prints-the-legend-argo.html
Posted by Nima Shirazi
One year ago, after his breathtakingly beautiful Iranian drama, “A Separation,” won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, writer/director Asghar Farhadi delivered the best acceptance speech of the night.
“[A]t the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians,” he said, Iran was finally being honored for “her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.” Farhadi dedicated the Oscar “to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.”
Such grace and eloquence will surely not be on display this Sunday, when Ben Affleck, flanked by his co-producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, takes home the evening’s top prize, the Best Picture Oscar, for his critically-acclaimed and heavily decorated paean to the CIA and American innocence, “Argo.”
Over the past 12 months, rarely a week – let alone month – went by without new predictions of an ever-imminent Iranian nuclear weapon and ever-looming threats of an American or Israeli military attack. Come October 2012, into the fray marched “Argo,” a decontextualized, ahistorical “true story” of Orientalist proportion, subjecting audiences to two hours of American victimization and bearded barbarians, culminating in popped champagne corks and rippling stars-and-stripes celebrating our heroism and triumph and their frustration and defeat. Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir aptly described the film as “a propaganda fable,” explaining as others have that essentially none of its edge-of-your-seat thrills or most memorable moments ever happened. O’Hehir sums up:
The Americans never resisted the idea of playing a film crew, which is the source of much agitation in the movie. (In fact, the “house guests” chose that cover story themselves, from a group of three options the CIA had prepared.) They were not almost lynched by a mob of crazy Iranians in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, because they never went there. There was no last-minute cancellation, and then un-cancellation, of the group’s tickets by the Carter administration. (The wife of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor had personally gone to the airport and purchased tickets ahead of time, for three different outbound flights.) The group underwent no interrogation at the airport about their imaginary movie, nor were they detained at the gate while a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard telephoned their phony office back in Burbank. There was no last-second chase on the runway of Mehrabad Airport, with wild-eyed, bearded militants with Kalashnikovs trying to shoot out the tires of a Swissair jet.
One of the actual diplomats, Mark Lijek, noted that the CIA’s fake movie “cover story was never tested and in some ways proved irrelevant to the escape.” The departure of the six Americans from Tehran was actually mundane and uneventful. “If asked, we were going to say we were leaving Iran to return when it was safer,” Lijek recalled, “But no one ever asked!…The truth is the immigration officers barely looked at us and we were processed out in the regular way. We got on the flight to Zurich and then we were taken to the US ambassador’s residence in Berne. It was that straightforward.”
Furthermore, Jimmy Carter has even acknowledged that “90% of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian [while] the movie gives almost full credit to the American CIA…Ben Affleck’s character in the film was only in Tehran a day and a half and the real hero in my opinion was Ken Taylor, who was the Canadian ambassador who orchestrated the entire process.”
Taylor himself recently remarked that “Argo” provides a myopic representation of both Iranians and their revolution, ignoring their “more hospitable side and an intent that they were looking for some degree of justice and hope and that it all wasn’t just a violent demonstration for nothing.”
“The amusing side, Taylor said, “is the script writer in Hollywood had no idea what he’s talking about.”
O’Hehir perfectly articulates the film’s true crime, its deliberate exploitation of “its basis in history and its mode of detailed realism to create something that is entirely mythological.” Not only is it “a trite cavalcade of action-movie clichés and expository dialogue,” but “[i]t’s also a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology.”
Such an assessment is confirmed by Ben Affleck’s own comments about the film. In describing “Argo” to Bill O’Reilly, Affleck boasted, “You know, it was such a great story. For one thing, it’s a thriller. It’s actually comedy with the Hollywood satire. It’s a complicated CIA movie, it’s a political movie. And it’s all true.” He told Rolling Stone that, when conceiving his directorial approach, he knew he “absolutely had to preserve the central integrity and truth of the story.”
“It’s OK to embellish, it’s OK to compress, as long as you don’t fundamentally change the nature of the story and of what happened,” Affleck has remarked, even going so far as to tell reporters at Argo’s BFI London Film Festival premier, “This movie is about this story that took place, and it’s true, and I go to pains to contextualize it and to try to be even-handed in a way that just means we’re taking a cold, hard look at the facts.”
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Affleck went so far as to say, “I tried to make a movie that is absolutely just factual. And that’s another reason why I tried to be as true to the story as possible — because I didn’t want it to be used by either side. I didn’t want it to be politicized internationally or domestically in a partisan way. I just wanted to tell a story that was about the facts as I understood them.”
For Affleck, these facts apparently don’t include understanding why the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun and occupied on November 4, 1979. “There was no rhyme or reason to this action,” Affleck has insisted, claiming that the takeover “wasn’t about us,” that is, the American government (despite the fact that his own film is introduced by a fleeting – though frequently inaccurate1 – review of American complicity in the Shah’s dictatorship).
Wrong, Ben. One reason was the fear of another CIA-engineered coup d’etat like the one perpetrated in 1953 from the very same Embassy. Another reason was the admission of the deposed Shah into the United States for medical treatment and asylum rather than extradition to Iran to face charge and trial for his quarter century of crimes against the Iranian people, bankrolled and supported by the U.S. government. One doesn’t have to agree with the reasons, of course, but they certainly existed.
Just as George H.W. Bush once bellowed after a U.S. Navy warship blew an Iranian passenger airliner out of the sky over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 Iranian civilians, “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” Affleck appears inclined to agree.
If nothing else, “Argo” is an exercise in American exceptionalism – perhaps the most dangerous fiction that permeates our entire society and sense of identity. It reinvents history in order to mine a tale of triumph from an unmitigated defeat. The hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days and destroyed an American presidency, was a failure and an embarrassment for Americans. The United States government and media has spent the last three decades tirelessly exacting revenge on Iran for what happened.
“Argo” recasts revolutionary Iranians as the hapless victims of American cunning and deception. White Americans are hunted, harried and, ultimately courageous and free. Iranians are maniacal, menacing and, in the end, infantile and foolish. The fanatical fundamentalists fail while America wins. USA -1, Iran – 0. Yet, “Argo” obscures the unfortunate truth that, as those six diplomats were boarding a plane bound for Switzerland on January 28, 1980, their 52 compatriots would have to wait an entire year before making it home, not as the result of a daring rescue attempt, but after a diplomatic agreement was reached.
Reflecting on the most troubled episodes in American history is a time-honored cinematic tradition. There’s a reason why the best Vietnam movies are full of pain, anger, anguish and war crimes. By contrast, “Argo” is American catharsis porn; pure Hollywood hubris. It is pro-American propaganda devoid of introspection, pathos or humility and meant to assuage our hurt feelings. In “Argo,” no lessons are learned by revisiting the consequences of America’s support for the Pahlavi monarchy or its creation and training of SAVAK, the Shah’s vicious secret police.
On June 11, 1979, months before the hostage crisis began, the New York Times published an article by writer and historian A.J. Langguth which recounted revelations relayed by a former American intelligence official regarding the CIA’s close relationship with SAVAK. The agency had “sent an operative to teach interrogation methods to SAVAK” including “instructions in torture, and the techniques were copied from the Nazis.” Langguth wrestled with the news, trying to figure out why this had not been widely reported in the media. He came to the following conclusion:
We – and I mean we as Americans – don’t believe it. We can read the accusations, even examine the evidence and find it irrefutable. But, in our hearts, we cannot believe that Americans have gone abroad to spread the use of torture.
We can believe that public officials with reputations for brilliance can be arrogant, blind or stupid. Anything but evil. And when the cumulative proof becomes overwhelming that our representatives in the C.I.A. or the Agency for International Development police program did in fact teach torture, we excuse ourselves by vilifying the individual men.
Similarly, at a time when the CIA is waging an illegal, immoral, unregulated and always expanding drone execution program, the previous administration’s CIA kidnappers and torturers are protected from prosecution by the current administration, and leaked State Department cables reveal orders for U.S. diplomats to spy on United Nations officials, it is surreal that such homage is being paid to that very same organization by the so-called liberals of the Tinsel Town elite.
Upon winning his Best Director Golden Globe last month, Ben Affleck obsequiously praised the “clandestine service as well as the foreign service that is making sacrifices on behalf of the American people everyday [and] our troops serving over seas, I want to thank them very much,” a statement echoed almost identically by co-producer Grant Heslov when “Argo” later won Best Drama.
This comes as no surprise, considering Affleck had previously described “Argo” as “a tribute” to the “extraordinary, honorable people at the CIA” during an interview on Fox News.
The relationship between Hollywood and the military and intelligence arms of the U.S. government have long been cozy. “When the CIA or the Pentagon says, ‘We’ll help you, if you play ball with us,’ that’s favoring one form of speech over another. It becomes propaganda,” David Robb, author of “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies” told The Los Angeles Times. “The danger for filmmakers is that their product — entertainment and information — ends up being government spin.”
Awarding “Argo” the Best Picture Oscar is like Barack Obama winning a Nobel Peace Prize: an undeserved accolade fawningly bestowed upon a dubious recipient based on a transparent fiction; an award for what never was and never would be and a decision so willfully naïve and grotesque it discredits whatever relevance and prestige the proceedings might still have had.*
So this Sunday night, when “Argo” has won that coveted golden statuette, it will be clear that we have yet again been blinded by the heavy dust of politics and our American mantra of hostility and resentment will continue to inform our decisions, dragging us closer and closer to the abyss.
***** ***** *****
* Yes, in this analogy, the equivalent of Henry Kissinger is obviously 2004′s dismal “Crash.”
*****
1 The introduction of “Argo” is a dazzingly sloppy few minutes of caricatured history of Iran, full of Orientalist images of violent ancient Persians (harems and all), which gets many basic facts wrong. In fact, it is shocking this intro made it to release as written and recorded.
Here are some of the problems:
1. The voiceover narration says, “In 1950, the people of Iran elected Mohammad Mossadegh, the secular democrat, Prime Minister. He nationalized British and U.S. petroleum holdings, returning Iran’s oil to its people.”
Mossadegh was elected to the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) in 1944. He did not become Prime Minister until April 1951 and was not “elected by the people of Iran.” Rather, he was appointed to the position by the representatives of the Majlis.
Also, the United States did not have petroleum interests in Iran at the time.
2. After briefly describing the 1953 coup, the narrator says Britain and the United States “installed Reza Pahlavi as Shah.”
Wow. First, the Shah’s name was not Reza Pahlavi. That is his father’s (and son’s) name. Furthermore, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was not installed as Shah since had already been Shah of Iran since September 1941, after Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran and forced the abdication of his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi.
During the coup in 1953, the Shah fled to Baghdad, then Rome. After Mossadegh had been forced out, the Shah returned to the Peacock Throne.
This is not difficult information to come by, and yet the screenwriter and director of “Argo” didn’t bother looking it up. And guess what? Ben Affleck actually majored in Middle East Studies in college. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t graduate.
The rest of the brief intro, while mentioning the torture of SAVAK, glosses over the causes of the revolution, but lingers on the violence that followed. As it ends, the words “Based on a True Story” appear on the screen. The first live action moment we see in “Argo” is of an American flag being burned.
So much for Affleck’s insistence that “Argo” is “not a political movie.”
Still, as Kevin B. Lee wrote in Slate last month, “This opening may very well be the reason why critics have given the film credit for being insightful and progressive—because nothing that follows comes close, and the rest of the movie actually undoes what this opening achieves.”
Instead of keeping its eye on the big picture of revolutionary Iran, the film settles into a retrograde “white Americans in peril” storyline. It recasts those oppressed Iranians as a raging, zombie-like horde, the same dark-faced demons from countless other movies— still a surefire dramatic device for instilling fear in an American audience. After the opening makes a big fuss about how Iranians were victimized for decades, the film marginalizes them from their own story, shunting them into the role of villains. Yet this irony is overshadowed by a larger one: The heroes of the film, the CIA, helped create this mess in the first place. And their triumph is executed through one more ruse at the expense of the ever-dupable Iranians to cap off three decades of deception and manipulation.
And brilliantly concludes,
Looking at the runaway success of this film, it seems as if critics and audiences alike lack the historical knowledge to recognize a self-serving perversion of an unflattering past, or the cultural acumen to see the utterly ersatz nature of the enterprise: A cast of stock characters and situations, and a series of increasingly contrived narrow escapes from third world mobs who, predictably, are never quite smart enough to catch up with the Americans. We can delight all we like in this cinematic recycling act, but the fact remains that we are no longer living in a world where we can get away with films like this—not if we want to be in a position to deal with a world that is rising to meet us. The movies we endorse need to rise to the occasion of reflecting a new global reality, using a newer set of storytelling tools than this reheated excuse for a historical geopolitical thriller.
*****
UPDATE:
February 25, 2013 - On the heels of Oscar Night’s unsurprising coda (made all the more bizarre by the inclusion of Michelle Obama, surrounded by awkward-looking military personnel, presenting the Best Picture to “Argo” from the White House, providing a deeply disturbing governmental imprimatur to the entire proceedings), The Los Angeles Times published a report Monday morning about how “Argo” is being perceived in Iran by Iranians themselves.
The conclusion is clear from the headline: ‘Argo’s’ Oscar gets a thumbs-down in Iran. Journalists Ramin Mostaghim and Patrick J. McDonnell quote several Iranians who have seen the movie, bootlegs of which are widely available, all of whom clearly have a better grasp on, not only the politics, but also the art (or lack thereof) of cinema itself. ”The perception that the film portrayed Iranians uniformly as bearded, violent fanatics rankled many who recall that Iran’s 1979 revolution had both secular and religious roots — and ousted a dictatorial monarch, the shah of Iran, reviled as a corrupt and brutal puppet of Washington,” Mostaghim and McDonnel explain. Here’s what we hear from Iranians themselves:
“I am secular, atheist and not pro-regime but I think the film ‘Argo’ has distorted history and insulted Iranians,” said Hossain, a cafe owner worried about business because of customers’ lack of cash in a sanctions-battered economy. “For me, it wasn’t even a good thriller.”
“I did not enjoy seeing my fellow countrymen and women insulted,” said Farzaneh Haji, an educated homemaker and fan of romantic movies who was 18 at the time of the revolution. “The men then were not all bearded and fanatical. To be anti-American was a fashionable idea among young people across the board. Even non-bearded and U.S.-educated men and women were against American imperialism.”
“As an action film or thriller, the film was good, but it was not believable, especially the way the six Americans escaped from the airport,” said Farshid Farivar, 49, a Hollywood devotee, as he stretched his legs in an office where he does promotional work. “At any rate, it was an average film and did not deserve an Oscar.”
The piece ends with the reporters speaking with Abbas Abdi, one of the revolutionary students who planned the seizure of the American Embassy in 1979 and who spent some time in prison a decade ago for criticisms of the Iranian government:
In a brief telephone interview on Monday, Abdi said the Oscars had plummeted to the feeble level of Iran’s own Fajr Film Festival, not exactly one of the luminaries on the international movie awards circuit.
“The Oscars are now vulgar and have standards as low as our own film festival,” he said. “The Oscars deserve ‘Argo’ and ‘Argo’ deserves the Oscars.”
USA Today also has an Oscar follow-up entitled, “Tourists see a different Iran reality than ‘Argo’ image,” which details the warmth, generosity and hospitality of Iranians experienced by travelers when visiting Iran.
The Moral Depravity of “Lincoln” February 24, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Civil Liberties, History, Race.Tags: abolitionists, abraham lincoln, bill moyers, Civil Rights, civil war, clinton presidency, history, lincoln movie, Obama presidency, roger hollander, sam husseini, slavery, steven spielberg, tony kushner
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Roger’s note: This article points to a serious malaise in political discourse, the judging of the ideal against the real instead of judging the real by the ideal. It speaks to cynicism and defeatism that ignores the voice of the oppressed, of the revolutionary subject, in favor of the voice of the comfortable middle class pundit. It was the Abolitionists who defeated slavery, not Lincoln. His Emancipation Proclamation cynically and strategically freed the slaves only in Confederate held territory, while slavery remained in existence everywhere else. Read Gore Vidal’s “Lincoln.” Lincoln made it clear that if he could maintain the Union without ending slavery, that would be all right. He would have sent African Americans to a far away colony to solve the “problem” if he could. As a politician, yes, Lincoln was a genius, one of the best ever. To me that is not such a worthy accolade; but as a moral leader, Lincoln was no Gandhi.
There is not a substantial character in the movie “Lincoln” who argues — on moral grounds — that African Americans are equal to whites.
The movie opens with President Lincoln listening to a soliloquy of a young black man who argues for how he wants to get ahead; which is fine I suppose, but hardly the same as a moral case against slavery.
Abolitionists — who should be regarded as heroes — are viewed throughout the movie as near nut jobs on the few occasions when they are not ignored.
The radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens is depicted going through contortions to not argue that blacks are inherently equal to whites.
A pivotal scene is between him and Lincoln in which he pleads for Lincoln for follow his moral compass. Lincoln responds that one cannot go straight north when there is a swamp there. And there the matter was settled, as if there was no response to such an argument. Compromise was the higher calling, not actually standing for what is right, which is regarded as ineffectual or counterproductive.
Even if one were to concede that that might be what politics should be about, and I don’t think that’s the case, what sort of “art” exactly glorifies that while dismissing those standing boldly for what it true and just? What sort of “art” says it’s the highest calling to be conniving in alleged purist of some higher goal? What sort of “artist” uses his talent and resources to convince the public of this message?
It’s something “Lincoln” director and producer Steven Spielberg has depicted before, for example in “Schindler’s List,” Oskar Schindler chastises German soldiers who might exterminate Jewish children by going on about how he needs their small fingers for work in his factory. And that might be a poignant case. But does lying to Nazis really apply to the U.S. in 1863? Or today?
To some extent, this is a stance of alot of progressives since the beginning of the rise of the current president: “In Obama’s Lies We Trust” has been their defacto motto. To another extent, it probably reflects the actual interests they hold while themselves pretending to want change while knowing that Obama will not actually deliver meaningful change. Most everyone is a triangulator now.
But all these games, played by Obama and supporters who glorify alleged “compromise” — does Obama “compromise” or give away the store from the get go? — not only betrays art’s higher callings, but are also ahistoric.
For a tangible glimpse into the mindset behind “Lincoln,” consider what Tony Kushner, who wrote the screen play, recently said to Bill Moyers:
“But at the same time that level of criticism has to allow for the possibility that during election cycles people who have maybe not done everything we wanted them to do can get reelected so that we can build a power base so that we can actually do things. And I think we have a balancing act. And I think we’ve gotten unused to that balance we’ve spent the entire years of the Reagan counterrevolution out of power. And so we’ve become critics.
“But it’s nonsense. You can’t pretend that Wall Street doesn’t have horrendously strong and undue influence on the country. But if you want to get regulation of the financial sector you’re going to have to unfortunately to some extent work with Wall Street. Because if you go in naively, you’ll find out very quickly how much of what happens in this country Wall Street controls. And one thing I love about Obama is that he is absolutely not naive. And you know, you don’t get elected president, when you’re a black guy if you’re naive. This man — you know, I couldn’t get elected, you know, dogcatcher in my building. He’s managed this miracle, he’s reelected American president.”
Talk about nonsense. Tony Kushner here not only pretends that Clinton was not in office for eight years, he incredibly pretends in his depiction of the interaction between Wall Street and politics that Clinton and Bob Rubin and Larry Summers (who was also Obama’s economic adviser) didn’t pass the deregulation of Wall Street in the late 90s. Now, Moyers has done good shows on this, but he totally lets Kushner and all his nonsense off the hook on this.
So who’s really naive here?
What’s the responsibility of artists in depicting the moral course of history?
Where are the movies about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis? About Nat Turner who lead a slave uprising? About John Brown, who, the the words of David S. Reynolds’ biography: “Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights”?
No, Obama’s not naive, nor is Kushner. Anyone who takes at face value what Hollywood represents is.
Sam Husseini is a writer and political activist. He is the communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a D.C.-based nonprofit group that promotes progressive experts as alternative sources for mainstream media reporters. He’s the founder of WashingtonStakeout, his latest personal writings are at http://husseini.posterous.com and tweets at http://twitter.com/samhusseini
Nina Simone – Pirate Jenny Live 1964 January 31, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Race.Tags: afro-american singer, black singer, brecht, kurt weil, music, nina simone, pirate jenny, roger hollander
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This is a performance everyone should experience.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7awW5nrDHk
I could give my hand that Brecht and Weil anticipated Nina Simone. She sings so revengefull… No one sings like that that song. God bless her soul.
LAND FILLHARMONIC December 14, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Environment, Latin America, Paraguay.Tags: documentary, land fill, landfill, Latin America, music, musical instruments, paraguay, recycling, roger hollander, waste managment
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Roger’s note: this is truly amazing and inspring.
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This is the teaser for Landfill Harmonic, an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Paraguay, where the young musicians play instruments made from trash. Inspiring! (See more info on their ‘Landfill Harmonic’ Facebook page.)
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The Strange Story Of The Man Behind ‘Strange Fruit’ September 8, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Criminal Justice, History, Race, Racism.Tags: abel meeropol, anne meeropol, billie holiday, Civil Rights, communist party, dewitt clinton high, elizabeth blair, history, lewis allan, lynching, McCarthyism, michael meeropol, racism, robert meeropol, roger hollander, rosenberg fund, rosenbergs, strange fruit
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September 5, 2012
Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol
Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set.
September 5, 2012
One of Billie Holiday’s most iconic songs is “Strange Fruit,” a haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism. Many people know that the man who wrote the song was inspired by a photograph of a lynching. But they might not realize that he’s also tied to another watershed moment in America’s history.
The man behind “Strange Fruit” is New York City’s Abel Meeropol, and he really has two stories. They both begin at Dewitt Clinton High School, a public high school in the Bronx that has an astonishing number of famous people in its alumni. James Baldwin went there. So did Countee Cullen, Richard Rodgers, Burt Lancaster, Stan Lee, Neil Simon, Richard Avedon and Ralph Lauren.
Meeropol graduated from Dewitt Clinton in 1921; he went on to teach English there for 17 years. He was also a poet and a social activist, says Gerard Pelisson, who wrote a book about the school.
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Evolution Of A Song: ‘Strange Fruit’
In the late 1930s, Pellison says, Meeropol “was very disturbed at the continuation of racism in America, and seeing a photograph of a lynching sort of put him over the edge.”
Meeropol once said the photograph “haunted” him “for days.” So he wrote a poem about it, which was then printed in a teachers union publication. An amateur composer, Meeropol also set his words to music. He played it for a New York club owner — who ultimately gave it to Billie Holiday.
When Holiday decided to sing “Strange Fruit,” the song reached millions of people. While the lyrics never mention lynching, the metaphor is painfully clear:
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.
In 1999, Time magazine named “Strange Fruit” the “song of the century.” The Library of Congress put it in the National Recording Registry. It’s been recorded dozens of times. Herbie Hancock and Marcus Miller did an instrumental version, with Miller evoking the poem on his mournful bass clarinet.
Miller says he was surprised to learn the song was written by a white Jewish guy from the Bronx. “Strange Fruit,” he says, took extraordinary courage both for Meeropol to write and for Holiday to sing.
“The ’60s hadn’t happened yet,” he says. “Things like that weren’t talked about. They certainly weren’t sung about.”
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New York lawmakers didn’t like “Strange Fruit.” In 1940, Meeropol was called to testify before a committee investigating communism in public schools. They wanted to know whether the American Communist Party had paid him to write the song. They had not — but, like many New York teachers in his day, Meeropol was a Communist.
Journalist David Margolick, who wrote Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, says, “There are a million reasons to disparage communism now. But American Communism, one point it had in its favor was that it was concerned about civil rights very early.”
Meeropol left his teaching job at Dewitt Clinton in 1945. He eventually quit the Communist Party.
And that’s where the second part of Meeropol’s story begins. The link is the pseudonym he used when writing poetry and music: Lewis Allan.
“Abel Meeropol’s pen name ‘Lewis Allan’ were the names of their children who were stillborn, who never lived,” says his son, Robert Meeropol. He and his older brother, Michael, were raised by Abel and his wife, Anne Meeropol, after the boys’ parents — Ethel and Julius Rosenberg — were executed for espionage in 1953.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to give atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs had also been Communists.
Keystone/Getty Images
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are taken to prison after being found guilty of nuclear espionage. They were subsequently executed.
The couple’s trial and execution made national headlines, and there was also something of a salacious element, given that the Rosenbergs were a married couple. News accounts described it as “the first husband and wife to die in the electric chair.”
At the time, the Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael, were 6 and 10, respectively. News photographs of the boys show them dressed in suits visiting their parents in prison.
“They’re these little boys and they’re wearing these caps, and they look so young and so vulnerable. It’s really a very poignant image,” says Margolick.
Robert Meeropol says that in the months following his parents’ execution, it was unclear who would take care of him and his brother. It was the height of McCarthyism. Even family members were fearful of being in any way associated with the Rosenbergs or Communism.
Then, at a Christmas party at the home of W.E.B. Du Bois, the boys were introduced to Abel and Anne Meeropol. A few weeks later, they were living with them.
“One of the most remarkable things was how quickly we adapted,” Robert says. “First of all, Abel, what I remember about him as a 6-year-old was that he was a real jokester. He liked to tell silly jokes and play word games, and he would put on these comedy shows that would leave me rolling.”
There is something else about Abel Meeropol that seems to connect the man who wrote “Strange Fruit” to the man who created a loving family out of a national scandal. “He was incredibly softhearted,” Robert says.
Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol
Anne Meeropol plays a song on guitar for her sons, Robert and Michael.
For example, there was an old Japanese maple tree in their backyard, which sent out many new seedlings every year.
“I was the official lawnmower,” Robert says, “and I was going to mow over them, and he said, ‘Oh, no, you can’t kill the seedlings!’ I said, ‘What are you going to do with them, Dad? There are dozens of them.’
“Well, he dug them up and put them in coffee cans and lined them up along the side of the house. And there were hundreds of them. But he couldn’t bring himself to just kill them. It was just something he couldn’t do.”
Abel Meeropol died in 1986. His sons, Robert and Michael, both became college professors. They’re also both involved in social issues. Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children. And he says that even after all these years, he still finds himself unable to kill things in his own garden.
Orwell’s 1984 Solution to Criminalize War: “If There was Hope, it must Lie in the Proles” August 28, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, War, Revolution.Tags: roger hollander, war, orwell, 1984, mass media, howard zinn, public opinion, james tracey
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Roger’s note: It is no dramatic discovery that the vast majority of Americans (and people everywhere around the globe) hate and oppose not only warfare, but the legalized theft of human rights and human labor and the destruction of the biosphere that is perpetuated by every government of every capitalist state and largely bolstered by the mass media and the political culture. Change (the accomplished dissimulator Obama notwithstanding) will not come via electing leaders in contests where the option for peace and justice are never represented. From the Paris Commune to the Russian Revolution to the successful overturning of oligarchic capital rule in places like Cuba and Nicaragua, it was the common people who took things into their own hands. Although in each of the cases the humanistic revolutionary goals were corrupted by a combination of internal and external pressures, nevertheless, our guide for future humanistic revolution lies with these historic victories. Today’s Arab Spring and the Occupation movement are the heirs of the previous popular uprisings.
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance-it is the illusion of knowledge.”-Daniel Boorstin
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Mystified by its own credentials, surrounded by peers who conceive of reality along similar lines, and underscored by the corporate media’s overwhelming tide of disinformation, much of today’s professional class is impervious to “rumors” and “conspiracy theories” that all too often captivate the sordid masses—from unreasonable suspicion over mysterious terrorist attacks to the poorly-informed questions surrounding their leader’s hidden background. Much like the expert officials and agenda setting outlets they look to for prepared interpretations of the world, the opinion leading class’ constituents understand themselves as above all well informed, similarly disinterested and unmoved by groundless passion.
In fact, the programming necessary to attain such a degree of self-assuredness often tends to distance one from reality. For example, revulsion towards war in the United States has historically tended to run strongest among those who have escaped the heavy indoctrination of the professional class—those members of the non-or semi-skilled, working class majority. As historian Howard Zinn observes,
Recent public opinion indicators point to the enduring nature of antiwar sentiment. For example, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press shows that on March 19, 2011, one week before President Obama announced the NATO bombing of Libya, 77% of the US public opposed the destruction of the country’s air defenses. Polling one year later revealed a 62% majority against NATO “bombing Syrian military forces to protect anti-government groups in Syria,” even though almost the same percentage (64%) admitted to having heard “little” or “nothing at all” on “recent political violence in Syria.”
May we thus safely conclude that a majority of the population despite ceaseless propaganda still recognizes how war remains the supreme crime and the greatest demarcation between master and slave? “If there was hope, it must lie in the Proles,” Orwell wrote, “because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.”
James Tracy is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He blogs at memorygap.org. |
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| James F. Tracy is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James F. Tracy |
Let’s Honor the Music and Spirit of Pete Seeger with the Nobel Peace Prize August 7, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture.Tags: folk music, nobel peace prize, nobel prize, peace prize, pete seeger, peter dreier, political activism, protest music, roger hollander, stephen colbert, weavers, woody guthrie
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At 93, Pete Seeger can still get people singing.
Pete Seeger and his banjo. (Photo: Don Davis)
On Monday, he had Stephen Colbert’s studio audience singing “Quite Early Morning,” a song he wrote in 1969, in the midst of the Vietnam War, to inspire people to keep the faith that a better world is possible, even in the midst of suffering, tragedy, and setbacks.
Pete chatted with Colbert about his life, his politics, and his new book, Pete Seeger In His Own Words, played the banjo, and sang “Quite Early Morning.“
While Pete was singing, the camera focused briefly on his banjo head, where he’d written the words, “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender.”
Despite his age, Pete’s recognizable voice and innovative banjo-playing were on display on the Colbert show, as was his tried-and-true technique of pausing between stanzas to provide the words so people in studio, and viewers at home, could sing along. And Pete kept his cool while Colbert tried to throw him off-balance with questions about his politics and his influence on American culture. It was clear, though, that Colbert held Seeger in high regard for his lifetime of political activism, conscience, and principle.
A few years ago some of Pete’s fans launched a campaign to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. The effort faltered because its activists, despite their sincerity, lacked the media and organizing savvy to mount a vibrant campaign to build on the global public’s widespread admiration for Pete Seeger.
It is time to resurrect that crusade. But this time, perhaps Stephen Colbert could lead that campaign, now that Pete has graced his show with his presence. Colbert’s show — including his faux campaign for president, his Super PAC, and his nightly send-up of Bill O’Reilly’s right-wing buffoonery — brilliantly satirizes the absurdities of America’s corporate-dominated political culture. By heading a campaign to get Pete Seeger the Nobel Peace Prize, Colbert would actually demonstrate that the forces of social conscience can triumph, against the odds.
If anyone deserves that honor, it is Pete Seeger.
Every day, every minute, someone in the world is singing a Pete Seeger song. The songs he has written, including the antiwar tunes, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, “If I Had a Hammer,” and “Turn, Turn, Turn,” (whose text is drawn from Ecclesiastes), and those he has popularized, including “This Land Is Your Land,” “Guantanamera,” “Wimoweh,” and “We Shall Overcome,” have been recorded by hundreds of artists in many languages and have become global anthems for people fighting for freedom. His songs are sung by people in cities and villages around the world, promoting the basic idea that the hopes that unite us are greater than the fears that divide us.
In addition to being a much-acclaimed and innovative guitarist and banjoist, a globe-trotting minstrel and song collector, and the author of many songbooks and musical how-to manuals, Seeger has been on the front lines of every key progressive crusade during his lifetime — labor unions and migrant workers in the 1930s and 1940s, the banning of nuclear weapons and opposition to the Cold War in the 1950s, civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s, environmental responsibility and opposition to South African apartheid in the 1970s, and, always, human rights throughout the world.
For several years, Pete has kept coming out of semi-retirement to do one more concert, give one more interview, write one more book, record one more album. His remarkable spirit, energy, and optimism has keep him going through triumphs and tragedies, but he’s outlived all his enemies and remained one of the greatest American heroes of this or any other era.
Several biographies of Seeger have been published in the past decade, including David King Dunaway’s How Can I Keep from Singing? The Ballad of Pete Seeger, Alec Wilkinson’s The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger and Alan Winkler’s To Everything There Is a Season: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song. Five years ago Jim Brown produced a wonderful documentary film, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.
The new book presents Pete in his own voice. With Pete’s cooperation, Rob Rosenthal (a sociology professor at Wesleyan University) and Sam Rosenthal (a musician and writer) dug through Pete’s extensive writings — letters stored for decades in his family barn, notes to himself, published articles, rough drafts, stories, books, poems, and songs — to chronicle and illuminate Pete’s incredible life as America’s troubadour for social justice. Pete, who is modest and self-effacing despite his remarkable accomplishments, has never written an autobiography. This is the closest thing we’ll get to hearing Pete discuss his life in his own words.
Pete Seeger In His Own Words chronicles his remarkable life and the fascinating people whose lives he touched, including Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, and even Bill Clinton, as well as his wife Toshi, his family, friends, and fellow musicians and activists.
The son of musicologists Charles and Ruth Seeger, Pete spent two years at Harvard, where he got involved in radical politics and helped start a student newspaper, the Harvard Progressive, but he quit in 1938 in order to try his own hand at changing society by making music. He worked at the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song (where he learned many of the songs he would sing throughout his career), traveled around with Woody Guthrie singing at migrant labor camps and union halls, and perfected his guitar- and banjo-playing skills.
In 1941, at age 22, Seeger formed the Almanac Singers with Lee Hays and Millard Lampell, later joined by Guthrie, Bess Lomax (daughter of musicologist John Lomax), and several others who rotated in and out of the group. The Almanacs drew on traditional songs and wrote their own songs to advance the cause of progressive groups, the Communist Party, the Congress of Industrial Organizations unions, the New Deal, and, later, the United States and its allies (including the Soviet Union) in the fight against fascism. The Almanacs were part of a broader upsurge of popular progressive culture during the New Deal, fostered in part by programs like the federal theater and writers’ projects. Even so, the group was hounded by the FBI, got few bookings, and was dropped by its agent, the William Morris Agency. After Seeger and Guthrie joined the military, the group disbanded in 1943.
The Almanacs cultivated an image of being unpolished amateurs. Guthrie once said that the Almanacs “rehearsed on stage.” Among them, however, Seeger was the most gifted and disciplined musician, with a remarkable repertoire of traditional songs. He carefully crafted a stage persona that inspired audiences to join him, a performing style that he perfected when he began working as a soloist. Every Seeger concert involves a lot of group singing.
Immediately after World War II, American radicals and liberals sought to resume popular support for progressive unions, civil rights, and internationalism. The left’s folk-music wing hoped to build on its modest successes before and during the war. In 1946 Seeger led the effort to create People’s Songs (an organization of progressive songwriters and performers, dominated by but not confined to folk musicians) and People’s Artists (a booking agency to help the members of People’s Songs get concert gigs and recording contracts). They compiled The People’s Song Book (which included protest songs from around the world), sponsored a number of successful concerts, and organized chapters in several cities and on college campuses.
When Henry Wallace ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948, his campaign relied heavily on folk music. Seeger traveled with Wallace during the campaign, distributing song sheets at every meeting or rally so that sing-alongs, led by Seeger, could alternate with Wallace’s speeches.
By 1949 folk music had become increasingly popular, with performers like Burl Ives, Josh White, and others gaining a foothold in popular culture, but the folk music of this period had lost much of its political edge.
For a brief period, as a member of the Weavers folk quartet, Seeger achieved commercial success, performing several chart-topping songs that reflected his eclectic repertoire. The group was formed in 1948 by Seeger and Hays (both former Almanacs), along with Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman. They exposed audiences to their repertoire of songs from around the world as well as to American folk traditions, but without the overt advocacy of left-wing political causes. Decca Records signed the Weavers to a recording contract and added orchestral arrangements and instruments to their music, a commercial expediency that rankled Seeger but delighted Hays. The Weavers performed in the nation’s most prestigious nightclubs and appeared on network television shows.
In 1950 their recording of an Israeli song, “Tzena Tzena,” reached number two on the pop charts, and their version of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene,” reached number one and stayed on the charts for half a year. Several of their recordings — “On Top of Old Smokey,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” the African song “Wimoweh,” and “Midnight Special” — also made the charts. Their 1951 recording of Guthrie’s song “So Long It’s Been Good to Know You,” reached number four.
But the Weavers’ commercial success was short-lived. As soon as they began to be widely noticed in 1950, they were targeted by both private and government witch-hunters. The FBI and Congress escalated their investigations. Seeger and the Weavers were mentioned in Red Channels and Counterattack, the semiofficial private guidebooks for the blacklist. A few performers, notably Josh White and Burl Ives, agreed to cooperate with the investigators and were able to resume their careers; others refused to do so, and some were blacklisted. The Weavers survived for another year with bookings and even TV shows, but finally the escalating Red Scare caught up with them. Their contract for a summer television show was canceled. They could no longer get bookings in the top nightclubs. Radio stations stopped playing their songs, and their records stopped selling. They never had another major hit record.
Seeger left the Weavers to pursue a solo career, but he was blacklisted from the early 1950s through the mid-1960s. In 1955 he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to discuss his political affiliations at a hearing called by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, although he never spent time in jail. (The conviction was overturned on appeal in May 1962.) Many colleges and concert halls refused to book Seeger. He was kept off network television. In 1963 ABC refused to allow Seeger to appear on Hootenanny, which owed its existence to the folk music revival Seeger had helped inspire. During the blacklist years, Seeger scratched out a living by giving guitar and banjo lessons and singing at the small number of summer camps, churches, high schools and colleges, and union halls that were courageous enough to invite the controversial balladeer. In 1966, on New York City’s nonprofit educational television station, he hosted a low-budget folk music program, Rainbow Quest, that gave exposure to many little-known country, bluegrass, and folk singers.
Eventually, however, Seeger’s audience grew. In the 1960s he sang with civil rights workers at rallies and churches in the South and at the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. He popularized the song “We Shall Overcome” in the United States and during his concerts around the world. In a letter to Seeger, Martin Luther King Jr. thanked him for his “moral support and Christian generosity.” In 1967 Tom and Dick Smothers defiantly invited Seeger onto their popular CBS television variety show, the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. True to his principles, Seeger insisted on singing a controversial antiwar song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” CBS censors refused to air the song, but public outrage forced the network to relent and allow him to perform the song on the show a few months later.
Seeger helped catalyze the folk music revival of the 1960s, encouraging young performers, helping start the Newport Folk Festival, and promoting the folk song magazine Sing Out! that he had helped launch. His book How To Play the 5-String Banjo taught thousands of baby boomers how to play this largely forgotten instrument. On stage, he always taught his audiences songs from around the world, often sung in their original languages, such as the South African song “Wimoweh” and the Cuban song “Guantanamera.”
Many prominent musicians, including Bob Dylan, Bono, Joan Baez, the Byrds, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Morello, and Bruce Springsteen consider Seeger a role model and trace their musical roots to his influence. Many of his 80 albums — which include children’s songs, labor and protest songs, traditional American folk songs, international songs, and Christmas songs — have reached wide audiences. His travels around the world — collecting songs and performing in many languages — inspired today’s world music movement. Among performers around the globe, Seeger became a symbol of a principled artist deeply engaged in the world.
In 1969 Seeger launched the group Clearwater (near his home in Beacon, N.Y.) and an annual celebration dedicated to cleaning up the polluted Hudson River, an effort that helped inspire the environmental movement.
Through persistence and unrelenting optimism, Seeger endured and overcame the controversies triggered by his activism. In 1994, at age 75, he received the National Medal of Arts (the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the U.S. government) as well as a Kennedy Center Honor, when President Bill Clinton called him “an inconvenient artist, who dared to sing things as he saw them.” In 1996 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because of his influence on so many rock performers. In 1997 he won the Grammy Award for his eighteen-track compilation album, Pete.
In the 21st century, some of the nation’s most prominent singers recorded albums honoring Seeger, including Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions. In May 2009 more than 15,000 admirers filled New York City’s Madison Square Garden for a concert honoring Seeger on his 90th birthday. The performers included Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Rufus Wainwright, Bela Fleck, Taj Mahal, Roger McGuinn, Steve Earle, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dar Williams, Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco, and John Mellencamp.
Next month, Pete will release two new albums. A More Perfect Union features 16 original songs written with singer-songwriter Lorre Wyatt and includes duets with Springsteen, Morello, Earle, Harris, and Williams. The two-CD Pete Remembers Woody honors his friend as part of the centennial celebration of Guthrie’s birth. It includes reminiscences, songs, and anecdotes.
Probably no song reflects Pete’s indomitable spirit more than the one he sang Monday night, “Quite Early Morning.”
Don’t you know it’s darkest before the dawnAnd it’s this thought keeps me moving on
If we could heed these early warnings
The time is now quite early morning
If we could heed these early warnings
The time is now quite early morningSome say that humankind won’t long endure
But what makes them so doggone sure?
I know that you who hear my singing
Could make those freedom bells go ringing
I know that you who hear my singing
Could make those freedom bells go ringingAnd so keep on while we live
Until we have no, no more to give
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones strongerSo though it’s darkest before the dawn
These thoughts keep us moving on
Through all this world of joy and sorrow
We still can have singing tomorrows
Through all this world of joy and sorrow
We still can have singing tomorrows
Thanks to Pete Seeger, we can have many “singing tomorrows.” But before Pete’s fingers can strum no longer, let’s honor him with the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program, at Occidental College. He is coauthor of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century and The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City. He writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and American Prospect. His next book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, will be published by Nation Books in the spring.
Pussy Riot and the Two Russias August 4, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Civil Liberties, Russia.Tags: dissent, free speech, katrina vanden heuvel, political protest, protect, protest music, punk rock, pussy riot, putin, roger hollander, russia, russia opposition, russia patriotism, russian orthodox
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(Credit: Igor Mukhin)
Pussy Riot is here to stay. International attention has mounted over the months since three members of the punk rock/protest group were imprisoned for a fifty-one-second stunt. All the more so this week, as their trial—on “hooliganism” charges—finally began.
As I’ve described before, members of the group seized the stage of Russia’s iconic Christ the Savior Cathedral just before the country’s March elections, performing (and recording) a musical plea to the Virgin Mary to oust Vladimir Putin. The cadre of Russian artists and activists descended from the performance artists Voina (“War”), who were influenced by the US punk movement Riot grrrl. Its story might have ended there, if not for a truly authoritarian response from the Russian government. Three alleged participants were arrested, threatened with seven years of imprisonment, and placed in a pre-trial detention that’s been extended for months. Now, Pussy Riot is world famous—as is its stunt. The longer they’re in prison, the more attention they get.
It’s been gratifying to see the outpouring of support for these women. It’s come from insiders and outsiders alike, in Russia and abroad. Key Putin backers have broken with him on Pussy Riot. More than 400,000 Russians have signed an online petition protesting their arrest and detention. The Washington Post editorialized in defense of the activists. Punk artists around the world have voiced their solidarity. British writer Stephen Fry has called on his more than 4.6 million Twitter followers “to do everything to help Pussy Riot” and “pressure Putin” in connection with the trial. Amnesty International named Pussy Riot prisoners of conscience; its US activists have planned a guerilla art exhibit and a solidarity concert at the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC.
The crackdown on Pussy Riot is part of a broader attack on dissent in Russia. In recent weeks, we’ve seen the introduction and rapid passage of a quartet of laws that undermine Russia’s democratic ambitions: (Re-)criminalization of “defamation”; a blacklist of “harmful” websites; punitive fines on participants in “unsanctioned” protests; and a mandate that nonprofits declare foreign funding and brand themselves “foreign agents.” Russia, alas, is not the only country cracking down on political freedom. But these broadly worded, swiftly passed laws represent another wave in Russia’s de-democratization, a process started under Boris Yeltsin and continued under Putin.
The righteousness of the Pussy Riot cause is clear-cut: courageous activists up against punitive suppression. As someone who’s worked with the women’s movement in Moscow, and as a longtime student of Russia, it’s horrific to watch the mistreatment of these women, and heartening to see them draw the support they deserve, both outside the country and within it.
But lost in much of the coverage is a sobering reality: there are two Russias. The country’s deep divisions are reflected in the polling on Pussy Riot, with only a 43 percent plurality telling pollsters that a potential two-to-seven-year sentence is disproportionate. Why? There’s more in place here than simple offense at their act.
To many Russians, Russia feels like two different countries: one is urban, hyper-Westernized, aggressively modern, and seems condescending in its attitude to ordinary people; the other is the Russian heartland in the regions and provinces, where people are suffering economically and believe they’re guarding the country’s traditional values and religious convictions. This is the lens through which some Russians view Pussy Riot’s imprisonment: not individual freedom of conscience versus the state but national pride and religious faith versus a well-off, urban elite. Putin has masterfully stoked such resentments, framing the resistance to his authority as an affront to the values of the nation (a segment on state TV last month called protests in defense of Pussy Riot a “vanity fair”). Too many Western journalists ignore or underestimate the effectiveness of that appeal.
Putin’s key partner in this has been the Russian Orthodox Church. In recent years, the church has grown in clout while growing ever closer to the Kremlin. The church’s spokesperson announced that God had personally shared with him, “just like he revealed the gospels to the church,” that He “condemns” what Pussy Riot did. Cynically or in earnest, church leaders are nurturing a patriarchal, paternalistic form of patriotism, and its power and popularity are growing as a result (US readers: this may sound familiar). The prosecution’s indictment against the artists cites “blasphemous acts” and “weighty suffering” of believers—despite Russia’s supposed separation of church the state. That’s a sign of how flimsy the legal case against Pussy Riot is, but also of the church’s role in modern Russia.
In a case replete with ironies, here’s the final one: even as Putin reaps political benefit from the resentments of this other Russia, his economic and social policies are poised to hit its citizens hardest—and his most prominent critics in the opposition are on board as well. Last month ushered in a fairly dramatic increase in utility and transit costs. And austerity, Russia-style, is coming to other sectors as well: neoliberal “reforms” are on the way in education, housing and pensions. These changes will mean socio-economic disaster for already-suffering Russians, many in regions far-flung from Moscow. What is little reported in the West is that Putin’s own critics, those who’ve led many of the street protests in Moscow, also back these measures. These include elite critics like former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, Boris Nemtsov and Ksenia Sobchak, once the Paris Hilton of Russia until she became its Pasionaria. Perhaps that should be no surprise: they’re not the ones about to get hurt.
It is heartening to see the broad attention being paid to the three women of the Pussy Riot group. But perhaps it’s time for some reporting on the millions of working or unemployed Russians who will bear the brunt of economic policies hatched by the Putin government and supported by many of its opposition critics. Putin’s repression has sparked vibrant pro–Pussy Riot activism. The efforts on behalf of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion and Freedom from Fear have been important. But if the opposition really wants to mobilize a mass movement for political, social and economic change, it will have to bring the Two Russias back together. That will mean developing a program that calls for fair elections and combating corruption, while also resisting neoliberal measures that will privatize public education and gut pensions. Simply put, the activism we’ve witnessed in these last months will need to expand to encompass Freedom from Want. The fate of the next Pussy Riot could depend on it.
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“Argo” is bad, embarrassing and wrong February 26, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Iran.Tags: roger hollander, Iran, islam, muslim, oscar, iran history, iran hostage, islamic revolution, film criticism, best picture, argo, addullar antipli, imam antepli, stereotype
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Roger’s note: Here is another analysis of Argo. I am afraid only the critical minded see the pernicious subtext of this movie. An intelligent and fairly progressive friend said, “what is all the fuss about, it only portrayed what really happened.” One critic I read alluded to the eerie scene where Michelle Obama appears on a huge screen to award the Oscar, comparing it to Big Brother/Sister watching. Chilling.
The Chronicle
By Abdullah Antepli | February 26, 2013
Imam Antepli is the Muslim Chaplain at Duke University. He writes a regular column for the Duke Chronicle.
I wonder if I am the only one deeply disturbed and troubled by the recent Hollywood movie, “Argo.” My increasing sense of loneliness and alienation with “Argo” has been fed by the movie’s overrated fame, its undeserved success in the movie theaters and now more painfully by the multiple Oscars that it has won. To me, “Argo” and the response it has created shed light on larger problems that we face in our society, especially in our movie industry. “Argo” demonstrates how out of touch we are with crucial global realities and how disconnected we are from how we come across to the rest of the human family through these kinds of expressions.
I welcomed the news of “Argo” when I first heard of it, hoping that it would help us face one of the ugliest chapters of our recent U.S. history with Iran. I was misled by the initial publicity of the movie and excited to see how the movie would unveil our government’s miserably failed foreign policies prior to the Islamic revolution in 1979. I was eagerly waiting to see how the movie would enable an honest, self-critical assessment of Uncle Sam’s—especially the CIA’s—shameful involvement in the toppling of the democratically-elected government in Iran in the early 1950s and the empowering of a reprehensibly corrupt and oppressive regime in the country for over four decades. More importantly, I hoped the movie would show how, in part, these ethical and moral failures helped the conception and the birth of the so-called 1979 Islamic Revolution that ruined Iranian society.
After giving a puzzlingly brief lip service to my expectations at the beginning of the movie, “Argo” moved on to be another embarrassing “Rambo III” movie in many despicable ways: an innocent, white, Western David beating up ugly, exotic, monstrous oriental Goliaths and emerging as victor despite all odds. It caters to its home audience’s starvation for self-glory and self-serving, happy endings. More troublingly, the movie does all of that by distorting the obvious facts about one of the most important events in our recent history and dehumanizing a rich civilization irresponsibly. Film critic Kevin B. Lee expressed my heartache best when he recently reviewed “Argo” for Slate:
“Looking at the runaway success of this film, it seems as if critics and audiences alike lack the historical knowledge to recognize a self-serving perversion of an unflattering past, or the cultural acumen to see the utterly ersatz nature of the enterprise: a cast of stock characters and situations, and a series of increasingly contrived narrow escapes from third world mobs who, predictably, are never quite smart enough to catch up with the Americans.”
“Argo” also disturbingly caters to the biased, post-9-11 image of Islam, Muslims and Middle Easterners and effectively serves to re-assert existing stereotypes. The movie skillfully markets once again the newly found international enemy of Western civilization. The movie describes and pictures the monolithic, black-and-white, pejorative, primitive, archaic, vengeful, unforgiving, irredeemably ignorant and forever dangerous nature of this new and scary enemy.
Since the release of the movie, many of my friends from all over the world, both Middle Eastern and otherwise, expressed their dismay and distaste about “Argo.” Much of what they said can be summarized in the following questions: “Who the heck do these people think they are?” “Who will buy this self-serving, biased and inaccurate propaganda in 2013?” “Do they (the filmmakers) not realize they make fools of themselves? For God’s sake give us a break!”
I also wonder how many Americans watched Argo and asked these kinds of questions. My friends’ rightful frustrations over “Argo” mirror certain realities of us as a society. It is no longer the 1980s, the Reagan days where movies like “Rambo” can fly. This kind of self-glorifying distortion of history can no longer go unnoticed or unpunished. What will it take to wake up from our self-delusions and express ourselves as we are, not what we wish to be? Again, Slate’s Kevin B. Lee puts it perfectly:
“We can delight all we like in this cinematic recycling act, but the fact remains that we are no longer living in a world where we can get away with films like this—not if we want to be in a position to deal with a world that is rising to meet us. The movies we endorse need to rise to the occasion of reflecting a new global reality, using a newer set of storytelling tools than this reheated excuse for a historical geopolitical thriller.”
I can’t agree with him more and I fully share his disappointment and deep sense of embarrassment over “Argo.” U.S. society in general and our movie industry in particular have so much to catch up on with modern day realities and global responsibilities. Let’s stop making fools of ourselves.
Abdullah Antepli is the Muslim Chaplain and an adjunct faculty of Islamic Studies. His column runs every other Tuesday. You can follow Abdullah on Twitter @aantepli.