I used to attribute the following statement to a notable lyrical poet, but after consider searching for the attribution to that particular wordsmith—or an attribution of anything even resembling the quote—I guess I'll step up on my soapbox platform and take the blame for it. If anyone wants to debate that... let's sit down for a cup of coffee and spend some time talkin shop.
If one isn't otherwise presenting itself to you, here's a guideline for your consideration:
The first line of a story should be a simple statement of fact.
· • ·
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Honors Project: Thesis Statement V.1
Ken Kesey said, "Some things can't be true even if they happened." In considering this statement, (notes from) The Tourist would be a consideration that if accounts of history—even by the people involved in particular events—are subjected to the same rubrics with which literature is critiqued, history takes on a questionable veracity similar to that told by an unreliable narrator. Specifically, The Tourist would present the quest for understanding the Siege of Sarajevo (1992-95) and its confusing array of participants as analogous to the various methods with which we consider meaning in a given work of literature.
"Some things can't be true even if they happened."
To paraphrase Ralph J. Gleason:
Sarajevo was like that.
· • ·
"Some things can't be true even if they happened."
To paraphrase Ralph J. Gleason:
Sarajevo was like that.
· • ·
Monday, March 15, 2010
In case you didn't notice, I was being sarcastic.
I don't watch tv. Don't even own a tv. Well, that's not precisely true; I own one, but it lives in the storage unit. The point being: commercials. Even without tv, there are still commercials.
I've taken to watching recently an old tv show on Hulu. I used to watch The Daily Show on Hulu but now that's not on Hulu anymore. Hulu is thick with commercials. Not as bad as tv, but hell, we could go on about that for hours.
In my lifetime I've seen some pretty bad commercials. Awful ones. Those Doxidan commercials linger far longer than they should have. Imitation country music singer: "Doxidan, gentle Doxidan/When nature needs a helping hand..." Oldies are no match for the entire series of amazingly insipid Axe Spray/Shampoo/Stink-fume commericals. It leads me to believe that in addition to strange rather lurid chemicals, it also features a high content of brain repellent. My favorite awfulness—you know, the sort of trainwreck aspect of any given subject, horrifying in the extreme but also alluring in its grotesqueries?—is a wonderously STOOPID movie within an already moronic tableau of brief scenes for the Verizon Network G231/2 or whatever: a man is riding a roan horse cross the surf of a deserted beach with his hot babe straddled behind him. And what is he doing...? Texting or twittering or what-have-you.
Her: "This horse ride on the beach is so romantic, so sexy. I want you."
Him: "Hey, look. With the new Verison Network, I can GPS our exact location right here."
Her: "You use Axe Body Spray, don't you?"
Him: "And I wear Dockers."
Her: "Tell me just one thing..."
Him: "Anything."
Her: "Are you a Pepper, too—?"
Him: "—Hold on, I just got a text."
Brain repellent. Must be the brain repellent.
Hc Sunt Dragones.
· • ·
I've taken to watching recently an old tv show on Hulu. I used to watch The Daily Show on Hulu but now that's not on Hulu anymore. Hulu is thick with commercials. Not as bad as tv, but hell, we could go on about that for hours.
In my lifetime I've seen some pretty bad commercials. Awful ones. Those Doxidan commercials linger far longer than they should have. Imitation country music singer: "Doxidan, gentle Doxidan/When nature needs a helping hand..." Oldies are no match for the entire series of amazingly insipid Axe Spray/Shampoo/Stink-fume commericals. It leads me to believe that in addition to strange rather lurid chemicals, it also features a high content of brain repellent. My favorite awfulness—you know, the sort of trainwreck aspect of any given subject, horrifying in the extreme but also alluring in its grotesqueries?—is a wonderously STOOPID movie within an already moronic tableau of brief scenes for the Verizon Network G231/2 or whatever: a man is riding a roan horse cross the surf of a deserted beach with his hot babe straddled behind him. And what is he doing...? Texting or twittering or what-have-you.
Her: "This horse ride on the beach is so romantic, so sexy. I want you."
Him: "Hey, look. With the new Verison Network, I can GPS our exact location right here."
Her: "You use Axe Body Spray, don't you?"
Him: "And I wear Dockers."
Her: "Tell me just one thing..."
Him: "Anything."
Her: "Are you a Pepper, too—?"
Him: "—Hold on, I just got a text."
Brain repellent. Must be the brain repellent.
Hc Sunt Dragones.
· • ·
Friday, March 12, 2010
Talkin Shop: Unexpected Turns
So in the midst of this novel/novella, I-as-writer (as opposed to the I-as-narrator function) ask myself, where as this is going? Sometimes I know, but other times I'm writing my way towards something and don't know what. This is one of those sort of stories. And, as I-as-narrator answered that, I initially thought, how ludicrous. But then I realized that was exactly the way this Brett Easton Ellis-meets-Shirley Jackson tale goes. And the path there is quite wonderful. I hope sometime to find out if you think so as well.
Such unexpected turns are one of the tasty reasons I love what I do—the thrill of being in the midst of pure story as it manifests from the what-it-is-not. If it can surprise, challenge, convince, and thrill me, I suspect/think/hope/pray it may do similar things for others.
· • ·
Such unexpected turns are one of the tasty reasons I love what I do—the thrill of being in the midst of pure story as it manifests from the what-it-is-not. If it can surprise, challenge, convince, and thrill me, I suspect/think/hope/pray it may do similar things for others.
· • ·
Forbidden Boolean String
According to this article in the LA Times, the internet makes it easier to become a terrorist. Easier than what? I ask, but deduce from the open-ended question they mean easier than without. The logic in that is shoddy, but we'll ignore such a discrepancy in order to have the discussion move past the poor rhetoric it displays.
Another objective flaw in the article is its attention solely to Islamic radicals.
Okay, to rationally discuss this topic, instead of pointing fingers at just one religious sect of wingnuts, how about point our fingers at all spectrum of wingnuts.
Hmmmm, that really doesn't work either, sing who defines who the wingnuts are?
"Decent society" I guess. Although I've seen damn little proof such a place exists.
And so I tried something. I used Google to help my terrorist indoctrination. But alas! Google failed me. I shan't be able to join my hoped for radical group since, apparently, they don't exist:
· • ·
Another objective flaw in the article is its attention solely to Islamic radicals.
From charismatic clerics who spout hate online, to thousands of extremist websites, chat rooms and social networking pages that raise money and spread radical propaganda, the Internet has become a crucial front in the ever-shifting war on terrorism.to
[F]iery Internet imans who use English to preach jihad and, in some cases, to help funnel recruits to Al Qaeda and other radical causes.I've encountered plenty of radical hate-mongering from far more than Islamic voices. I think the easy way to rationally discuss this sort of thing is by just killing everyone who's viewpoint is different than . . . hmmm, that doesn't work because then . . . we'd all have to . . . end up shooting . . . each other.
Okay, to rationally discuss this topic, instead of pointing fingers at just one religious sect of wingnuts, how about point our fingers at all spectrum of wingnuts.
Hmmmm, that really doesn't work either, sing who defines who the wingnuts are?
"Decent society" I guess. Although I've seen damn little proof such a place exists.
And so I tried something. I used Google to help my terrorist indoctrination. But alas! Google failed me. I shan't be able to join my hoped for radical group since, apparently, they don't exist:
· • ·
Talkin Shop: The Pure Stream Flows
But turn from my tongue, o gods,
the madness of these men,
and from hallowed lips let a pure stream flow.
Empedocles
In my time of writing, I've completed more than 40 short stories and two novels (with a third novel that expanded to 260-280,000 words before I had to walk away from for mental and spiritual health), and several novellas in between that mix.
This past week I've knocked out the better part of another (almost 40k words since late Fri/Early Sat). Although it is very first draft sort of material, parts of it are among the best things I've ever written.
Which brings me to the reason of this post (the intent is less clear to me right now). I suspect this may be true with other writers but is certainly so with me: every time I write something that is shiver-worthy, I think, Where did this come from? and Thankfully, I'm the faucet for this, and How will I ever write something this phenomenal again?
Then, at some point, I write something else that is shiver-worthy and end up with the same trio of questions again, and for a few moments, am absolutely sure nothing I write will ever drip with such epiphanic dew again.
Until the next time it does.
It just amazes me that this has been a recurrence since 1991 when I wrote my first novel (the last couple of lines of which are still among the best things I've ever written) and my first really solid stand-on-its-own short story. I learned a lot from them and in the gulf of time between then and now.
In this novella/novel I've been recording these past six days, I've written some great material. And a few of them triggered those old, familiar questions.
Ah, the wondrous, fucked-up, glorious life of creativity.
There's a celestial reservoir of story-water in the universe. And sometimes, I'm fortunate enough to be a faucet through which that pure stream flows.
Thank you, O muse who sings* to me. Thank you.
I look forward to as many more years of this as possible.
* Ok. My muse doesn't so much sing to me as whispers sacred mysteries in the velvet hush of unknown tongues.
· • ·
Monday, March 8, 2010
Talkin Shop: Lingering Depth
I first read the following paragraph in the Atlanta Library. This is the opening of the book and it gripped me then and it grips my attention now. Something my friend Sean and I call the delicious morsels of writing: those tasty bits that explode with delight on the tongue and on the lips and in the heart-spirit center in the brain and linger wonderfully in memory's taste buds long after the meal/snack/dessert was first tasted.
Following the paragraph as it appears in the book, I included it again with some words underlined. These would (will) be what I would look up in a close reading/textual analysis, but also serve as the keyholes through which we'd peep (for if I were leading this critical mission, there would certainly be other voyeurs there beside me—I mean besides me...) to reveal what lurks beyond the edge of the page that is conjured there by referential association.
I also did this back in Fall 08 at Columbia, but I wasn't ready yet. Now, I think I am.
~•~
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies—everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages—the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Elusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
—Jay Stevens,
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies--everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages--the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Eleusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
That's 101 unique words in two paragraphs totaling 147. 45 of those words are reference keys (18 are "the"). I love this kinda thing. Confectionery words. Tasty. Yum.
· • ·
Following the paragraph as it appears in the book, I included it again with some words underlined. These would (will) be what I would look up in a close reading/textual analysis, but also serve as the keyholes through which we'd peep (for if I were leading this critical mission, there would certainly be other voyeurs there beside me—I mean besides me...) to reveal what lurks beyond the edge of the page that is conjured there by referential association.
I also did this back in Fall 08 at Columbia, but I wasn't ready yet. Now, I think I am.
~•~
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies—everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages—the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Elusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
—Jay Stevens,
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream
•
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies--everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages--the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Eleusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
•
That's 101 unique words in two paragraphs totaling 147. 45 of those words are reference keys (18 are "the"). I love this kinda thing. Confectionery words. Tasty. Yum.
· • ·
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Talkin Shop: Writing Superstitions
It's funny what sort of story ideas capture my imagination and what sort drive me to the page immediately.
In the midst of something like the latter. No story idea, just those characters/place/event. Playing reporter and following them around. Gets deep and twisted and complicated and so-very-human so quickly, doesn't it?
Going back to an old adage/superstition. Don't talk about the contents of the story until the first draft is done. A couple got away from me by talking about them.
But those are occupational hazards. • y a w n •
Now if you wanna talk shop . . . you know how to reach me.
· • ·
In the midst of something like the latter. No story idea, just those characters/place/event. Playing reporter and following them around. Gets deep and twisted and complicated and so-very-human so quickly, doesn't it?
Going back to an old adage/superstition. Don't talk about the contents of the story until the first draft is done. A couple got away from me by talking about them.
But those are occupational hazards. • y a w n •
Now if you wanna talk shop . . . you know how to reach me.
· • ·
"You can't keep lettin' it get you down."
~•~
This may not be the greatest musical/art project in the history of this universe—and, quite possibly, any other—but it is certainly on the shortlist for the position.
· • ·
This may not be the greatest musical/art project in the history of this universe—and, quite possibly, any other—but it is certainly on the shortlist for the position.
· • ·
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Ink Blots and Answers
The final paper due for Terrorism in Literature class. A critical opinion paper. Pick a point of view about one of the books read and defend it with examples; must include sources outside the text.
This was really the only book of 9 for the class that I enjoyed reading. It was provocative, alluring, and seductively, like, perhaps, since in a foreign hookah bar and slowly getting stoned from the air you've been breathing for the past hour. And the story has been going on now for a while and is over before you know it.
~•~
(1st draft)
ENG 290
December 10, 2009
What is it about some novels that lead a reader to forget they are reading a novel and take what is written to be an actual accounting of events? What sort of protagonist's identity confuses someone into believing the character is the author?
I sit with a cup of Sikkim tea and ponder my own considerations of Mohsin Hamid's short novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It is a curious book, combining several aged literary techniques and devices to tell the sort of a story that is genuinely modern. The two mercenary-archetypal main characters could certainly have met at almost any place—in almost any time in history—but the complexities of national identity and extenuating circumstance bred by the modern age of terrorism, is uniquely contemporary. The two blend in Hamid's novel, and we as readers, are given a brief and wonderfully rich tapestry to assess or formulate our own opinions about national identity and to consider what circumstances could drive an individual to the actions they take.
The framing device of a dramatic monologue is no longer common in modern written literature—although in film, the benefit-from-hindsight voice-over is not uncommon—and the story-within-story technique (placing the characters in a tavern to weather a storm, even if that storm exists only symbolically within themselves) predates The Decameron. Both are used to great effect by Hamid, and, along with a curiously successful second-person narrative voice where the protagonist speaks directly to the reader through a narratively silent stranger he meets in a café in Lahore, Pakistan. We are pulled in to become intimately involved with the story this man reveals—even as he obscures his own motives. Yet in using such literary devices, Hamid never goes long without reminding us we are reading a novel.
Early on, Changez (our Pakistani story-teller), sits in a café and courteously offers assistance to a stranger. Changez quickly shares his assessment of this stranger with us—basing his assumptions on what is presented to him, "Your hair, short-cropped, and your expansive chest ... are typical of a certain type of American; but then again, sportsmen and soldiers of all nationalities tend to look alike" (Hamid 2). Even as Changez strikes directly at some particulars to this individual, we are shown that even with such astute observations, generalities still exist. The framing technique of the novel is set firmly in place a paragraph later when Changez asks this nameless stranger, "Come, tell me, what are you look for? Surely, at this time of day, only one thing could have brought you to the district of Old Anarkali ... that is the quest for the perfect cup of tea."
We are invited to civil discourse over a cup of tea, but the civility of conversation belies the depth of fervor and animosity within these stories revealed, for this is a modern tale of extremist beliefs in action and worldwide repercussions of the September 11 terrorist attacks It is these attacks that lead our protagonist—long before he sits in civil discourse with an American stranger in the Lahore café—to alter his own life and desires to become a radical terrorist himself. Which leaves us, the readers of his tale—to wonder about any sympathy we might offer him. Why do we feel for him and his situation? Or, contrarily, why don't we? Just as the story he tells us is left deliberately ambiguous, our emotional involvement with Changez is left in this vague state.
Mid-way through his tale, Changez shares with us his personal feelings about the attacks of September 11: "My thoughts were not with the victims of the attack—death on television moves me most when it is fictitious and happens to characters with whom I have built up relationships over multiple episodes—no, I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees. Ah, I see I am only compounding your displeasure" (73). Again, Hamid reminds us of our place as readers—as an audience to his tale. This literary self-awareness does break the theatrical "fourth-wall" in addressing us as readers, but this is a device in the story which leads some readers—if they haven't already—to mistake the real and the fictional.
In a popular review of the novel, Amazon.com user Freefall comments, "The book is a semi-autobiographical sketch of a fundamentalist who is only too willing for the cause ... There is nothing in the novel or in the realpolitik that would make a Western audience appreciate his world view. Why should a westerner feel any warmth for the protagonist being a Pakistani...?" This assessment begins with a misunderstanding and concludes with a thinly-veiled prejudice. To have a protagonist share certain traits with an author is nothing new in fiction. Just as assuming some events in a novel might stem from an author's real life is common in some readers. But to make the statement that a novel is semi-autobiographical, is, in this case, akin to hoping that belief is true so that the bigoted opinion already held can be rationalized and given some validity. It is also common in human nature to believe much of what one hears or reads, especially if it sounds like something we already believe.
In the New York Review of Books, Sarah Kerr strikes to the heart of this matter. "Maybe we the readers are the ones who jump to conclusions," she offers, "Maybe the book is intended as a Rorschach to reflect back our unconscious assumptions." This Rorschach analogy allows us to make sense of the confusion this novel breeds in readers. S. Mitra ("A reader from India/USA"), illustrates this confusion: "The authors [sic] initial reaction to September 11th was to be 'remarkably pleased' because somebody had so visibly brought America to her knees.(Pg 72)." Finding the poetic irony about a superpower Goliath struck by a tiny David is not necessarily reflective of sympathetic feelings for that David. Especially when that irony is discovered in the context of a character created for a fictional story. To confuse the creator with their work is myopic of a reader and shows—like a Rorschach ink blot—more about that reader than the novel they opine.
Another Amazon.com reviewer of Hamid, "David" Wordsworth, complains at length and summarizes numerous points which are repeatedly mistaken in popular reviews, "As a Pakistani, you have come to know the best that America has to offer. Were you not admitted to the Ivy League at Princeton ... receive a high-paying job at a prestigious New York financial firm...? Did you not fall in love with a ... woman from New York? Did you not enjoy prime business assignments and bonuses at the expense of your American counterparts...? And yet you sympathize with the 911 attackers. Isn't this odd attitude of yours quite curious? It makes me think. You then become an anti-American advocate in your native land."
Again, the mirror of art has been misunderstood to be a window. It is the prerogative of fiction to create characters who express viewpoints which might otherwise not be heard in any kind of rational forum. It is in the author's realm of creativity to present a character that may be similar in many way to themselves, but should not be taken as ciphers for their own identities. If we examine Lolita, are we to jump to the conclusion that since Humbert Humbert is a literary scholar just as Nabokov was, that the novel is auto-biographical?
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is certainly not a work of complete fabrication; it is a fictional story deliberately designed to be a complex metaphor for this very real and confusing world in which we live. This is why the soil is fertile to grow such ripened misunderstandings. Hamid himself seems to have foreseen this in the final equivocal scene: "I know you have found some of my views offensive; I hope you will not resist my attempt to shake you by the hand. But why are you reaching into your jacket, sir? I detect a glint of metal ... I trust it is from the holder of your business cards" (184).
Even as Changez gives us every reason to expect bloodshed after we turn this last page, he remains civil and courteous to both us, his audience, and to his unnamed American companion, who may well be dead a moment after the book concludes.
A literary critic once stated that good fiction should ask more questions than it answers; if an author has answers, they should write religious tracts. When we as readers close this book, having finished Changez's story, when might pour ourselves another cup of tea and consider the motives, meanings, and intentions demonstrated in this novel. What we are likely to find—from an objective viewpoint, in any case—is that Mohsin Hamid has given us more ink blots than answers.
Freefall. "Willing Fundamentalist." Amazon.com.
"Mohsin Hamid." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
· • ·
This was really the only book of 9 for the class that I enjoyed reading. It was provocative, alluring, and seductively, like, perhaps, since in a foreign hookah bar and slowly getting stoned from the air you've been breathing for the past hour. And the story has been going on now for a while and is over before you know it.
~•~
(1st draft)
ENG 290
December 10, 2009
Ink Blots and Answers
What is it about some novels that lead a reader to forget they are reading a novel and take what is written to be an actual accounting of events? What sort of protagonist's identity confuses someone into believing the character is the author?
I sit with a cup of Sikkim tea and ponder my own considerations of Mohsin Hamid's short novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It is a curious book, combining several aged literary techniques and devices to tell the sort of a story that is genuinely modern. The two mercenary-archetypal main characters could certainly have met at almost any place—in almost any time in history—but the complexities of national identity and extenuating circumstance bred by the modern age of terrorism, is uniquely contemporary. The two blend in Hamid's novel, and we as readers, are given a brief and wonderfully rich tapestry to assess or formulate our own opinions about national identity and to consider what circumstances could drive an individual to the actions they take.
The framing device of a dramatic monologue is no longer common in modern written literature—although in film, the benefit-from-hindsight voice-over is not uncommon—and the story-within-story technique (placing the characters in a tavern to weather a storm, even if that storm exists only symbolically within themselves) predates The Decameron. Both are used to great effect by Hamid, and, along with a curiously successful second-person narrative voice where the protagonist speaks directly to the reader through a narratively silent stranger he meets in a café in Lahore, Pakistan. We are pulled in to become intimately involved with the story this man reveals—even as he obscures his own motives. Yet in using such literary devices, Hamid never goes long without reminding us we are reading a novel.
Early on, Changez (our Pakistani story-teller), sits in a café and courteously offers assistance to a stranger. Changez quickly shares his assessment of this stranger with us—basing his assumptions on what is presented to him, "Your hair, short-cropped, and your expansive chest ... are typical of a certain type of American; but then again, sportsmen and soldiers of all nationalities tend to look alike" (Hamid 2). Even as Changez strikes directly at some particulars to this individual, we are shown that even with such astute observations, generalities still exist. The framing technique of the novel is set firmly in place a paragraph later when Changez asks this nameless stranger, "Come, tell me, what are you look for? Surely, at this time of day, only one thing could have brought you to the district of Old Anarkali ... that is the quest for the perfect cup of tea."
We are invited to civil discourse over a cup of tea, but the civility of conversation belies the depth of fervor and animosity within these stories revealed, for this is a modern tale of extremist beliefs in action and worldwide repercussions of the September 11 terrorist attacks It is these attacks that lead our protagonist—long before he sits in civil discourse with an American stranger in the Lahore café—to alter his own life and desires to become a radical terrorist himself. Which leaves us, the readers of his tale—to wonder about any sympathy we might offer him. Why do we feel for him and his situation? Or, contrarily, why don't we? Just as the story he tells us is left deliberately ambiguous, our emotional involvement with Changez is left in this vague state.
Mid-way through his tale, Changez shares with us his personal feelings about the attacks of September 11: "My thoughts were not with the victims of the attack—death on television moves me most when it is fictitious and happens to characters with whom I have built up relationships over multiple episodes—no, I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees. Ah, I see I am only compounding your displeasure" (73). Again, Hamid reminds us of our place as readers—as an audience to his tale. This literary self-awareness does break the theatrical "fourth-wall" in addressing us as readers, but this is a device in the story which leads some readers—if they haven't already—to mistake the real and the fictional.
In a popular review of the novel, Amazon.com user Freefall comments, "The book is a semi-autobiographical sketch of a fundamentalist who is only too willing for the cause ... There is nothing in the novel or in the realpolitik that would make a Western audience appreciate his world view. Why should a westerner feel any warmth for the protagonist being a Pakistani...?" This assessment begins with a misunderstanding and concludes with a thinly-veiled prejudice. To have a protagonist share certain traits with an author is nothing new in fiction. Just as assuming some events in a novel might stem from an author's real life is common in some readers. But to make the statement that a novel is semi-autobiographical, is, in this case, akin to hoping that belief is true so that the bigoted opinion already held can be rationalized and given some validity. It is also common in human nature to believe much of what one hears or reads, especially if it sounds like something we already believe.
In the New York Review of Books, Sarah Kerr strikes to the heart of this matter. "Maybe we the readers are the ones who jump to conclusions," she offers, "Maybe the book is intended as a Rorschach to reflect back our unconscious assumptions." This Rorschach analogy allows us to make sense of the confusion this novel breeds in readers. S. Mitra ("A reader from India/USA"), illustrates this confusion: "The authors [sic] initial reaction to September 11th was to be 'remarkably pleased' because somebody had so visibly brought America to her knees.(Pg 72)." Finding the poetic irony about a superpower Goliath struck by a tiny David is not necessarily reflective of sympathetic feelings for that David. Especially when that irony is discovered in the context of a character created for a fictional story. To confuse the creator with their work is myopic of a reader and shows—like a Rorschach ink blot—more about that reader than the novel they opine.
Another Amazon.com reviewer of Hamid, "David" Wordsworth, complains at length and summarizes numerous points which are repeatedly mistaken in popular reviews, "As a Pakistani, you have come to know the best that America has to offer. Were you not admitted to the Ivy League at Princeton ... receive a high-paying job at a prestigious New York financial firm...? Did you not fall in love with a ... woman from New York? Did you not enjoy prime business assignments and bonuses at the expense of your American counterparts...? And yet you sympathize with the 911 attackers. Isn't this odd attitude of yours quite curious? It makes me think. You then become an anti-American advocate in your native land."
Again, the mirror of art has been misunderstood to be a window. It is the prerogative of fiction to create characters who express viewpoints which might otherwise not be heard in any kind of rational forum. It is in the author's realm of creativity to present a character that may be similar in many way to themselves, but should not be taken as ciphers for their own identities. If we examine Lolita, are we to jump to the conclusion that since Humbert Humbert is a literary scholar just as Nabokov was, that the novel is auto-biographical?
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is certainly not a work of complete fabrication; it is a fictional story deliberately designed to be a complex metaphor for this very real and confusing world in which we live. This is why the soil is fertile to grow such ripened misunderstandings. Hamid himself seems to have foreseen this in the final equivocal scene: "I know you have found some of my views offensive; I hope you will not resist my attempt to shake you by the hand. But why are you reaching into your jacket, sir? I detect a glint of metal ... I trust it is from the holder of your business cards" (184).
Even as Changez gives us every reason to expect bloodshed after we turn this last page, he remains civil and courteous to both us, his audience, and to his unnamed American companion, who may well be dead a moment after the book concludes.
A literary critic once stated that good fiction should ask more questions than it answers; if an author has answers, they should write religious tracts. When we as readers close this book, having finished Changez's story, when might pour ourselves another cup of tea and consider the motives, meanings, and intentions demonstrated in this novel. What we are likely to find—from an objective viewpoint, in any case—is that Mohsin Hamid has given us more ink blots than answers.
•
Works Cited
Freefall. "Willing Fundamentalist." Amazon.com.
17 Jul. 2008. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.
Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist.London: Harcourt, 2008. Print.
Kerr, Sarah. "In the Terror House of Mirrors."New York Review of Books.
11 Oct. 2007. Print.
Mitra, S. "A not (entirely) amusing piece of11 Oct. 2007. Print.
"Mohsin Hamid." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
28 Nov 2009, 21:43 UTC. 10 Dec 2009.
Wordsworth "David" "A Reluctant Counterpoint· • ·
Stylized Denial: The Liminal Journeys in Carnival of Souls and Dead Man
The final paper for Writing About Film. Take one of the films we viewed for class (or clip thereof—which threw Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys in as a qualified sources material—and compare it with another film.
This one didn't go where I wanted it to, but it arrived somewhere nonetheless.
~•~
ENG 317
December 8, 2009
Final Essay
The world of departed souls is said to be to the west—towards the setting sun. The path leads through a dim world of twilight. Another trail intersects this first; used by shamans as a shortcut to encounter the souls in journey to that other world. At some point along its westward travel, the path encounters water—a running stream, a lake, the great black ocean when the soul crosses to the sunless lands. At the brink, before this point is reached, the soul comes upon a lodge or passageway, where the guardians wait. When the soul reaches the lodge, it comes face-to-face with these guardians. Sometimes the guardians welcome the soul with laughter and drumming, and they carry the soul on to where it will ultimately pass alone. Often times the soul is not greeted warmly, fear and denial dominating what transpired in leading the soul to this point on its journey.
In Mary Henry's voyage from the river where the car she rode in plunged—killing all its occupants—she travels westward to Salt Lake City. Once there, she is drawn to a ruined structure on the outskirts of town that to her is hauntingly familiar. This is the Saltair Pavilion, and in Herk Henry's bleak supernatural tale Carnival of Souls (1962), it acts as Mary Henry's ghost lodge, through which she must pass en route to her ultimate destination.
Similarly—and more directly linked to our analogy of the journey of the soul—Jim Jarmusch's 1995 film Dead Man, shows us William Blake's westward movement from Cleveland to the Pacific Northwest and beyond the reaches of the living. Unlike Mary, Blake is lead by a guide rather than making the trek on his own.
The two films share many semblances. Both are shot in black-and-white, and both have distinctive soundtracks which use only a single instrument performed in a minimalist capacity and employed with deliberate effect to push its constraints. In Carnival of Souls, Gene Moore uses the pipe organ to create the eerie soundtrack which keeps the audience as unsettled as the protagonist, who, incidentally, is an organ player herself. This brings the sense of music into being part of the narrative created by the film and is a vehicle for Mary sense of place within the liminal space of her journey. For Dead Man, the weapon of choice is Neil Young's electric guitar, which fades and rises like a waning heartbeat behind William Blake's travel towards some unknown westward land.
Another trait both films share is their lack of adherence to a single genre. Like their main characters, the films exist in an over-lapping, in-between space of convenient labeling. Carnival of Souls is at once a B-grade horror film, a supernatural thriller, has grown to be seen as an art film, transcending the trappings of its genre. Dead Man is, on its surface, a Western, yet William Blake is no Shane, and the almost surreal Old West town of Mechanic is not a place we're likely to find Clint Eastwood; its theme is far closer to the religious ecstasies displayed in the paintings of the other William Blake—18th century visionary writer and painter who is the namesake of the protagonist.
In Carnival of Souls, the culmination for Mary Henry comes when she walks through the angular curvature of deep shadow at the Saltair, in a north-western direction, passing beneath a framed Arabesque arch. She looks across a barren salt beach, where the jutting piles of decayed docks rise like tombstones, markers of the afterworld. In a reprise of an earlier scene—where Mary played the church organ and fancifully imagined this one—white-faced ghouls rise from the dark water the lake that could as easily be her subconscious. A dozen ghouls amble to the pavilion and, amidst the framework of the decrepit ballroom, they begin to waltz. Circling back and forth, they leer, dancing to the organ music of a malicious merry-go-round.
Mary stands at the periphery, terrified of this totentanz. She has chosen to come to this place, but upon her arriving, denies her own part of this world. Having "seen" this waltz before—while playing the organ at church—she has called this world to her. The organ could be her heart, and she plays it hoping for more life, while all around her evidence of her death dances. When the music stops, the ghouls cease their waltz and turn towards her in sudden pursuit.
They chase Mary out of the pavilion, onto the white salty shoreline of the afterworld. Mary runs beneath the pavilion, among the pylons of the foundation—into the base foundation of her own consciousness—but everywhere she turns she finds a white-faced ghoul waiting. She's returned to her primordial mind and death courts her from every shadow.
The ghouls act as shepherds, herding Mary towards the lake. She runs from beneath the pavilion and out on the featureless salted shore, she stumbles, and the ghouls are upon her. Mary's fall is not so much to the salt and sand of the beach beneath her, but back through a liminal world to the place of her long-procrastinated death.
The denouement is two-fold. Three men, the policeman, the doctor, and the minister—male representation of the Three Fates—follow Mary's path along the beach to where she fell and discover no tracks beyond that point. Following their observations, there is a cut to back east, where the car Mary had been in—and plunged off a bridge into a river—is towed up from the water. Mary's body is, of course, inside.
When it comes to William Blake's moment of passage, he is delirious from his long trek through the dark woods of his own fear and dark night of the soul. Unlike Mary Henry, Blake's journey has had a guide, a psychopomp named Xebeche, a Wakashan who calls himself Nobody. Numerous times along the way, Blake has insisted that he's not dead, but in reaching the gate—both a literal as well as figurative—of a Makah village, he cannot walk through of his own power, his own body allied with his vocal denial of death. Blake leans awkwardly against a section of fallen tree, the rings—its lifespan and evidence of its death—visible around him. Nobody, having lead Blake here, continues his own role as spirit guide, and brokers a deal for Blake to pass through the gate. The solo guitar of the soundtrack pulses in a desultory staccato, as Blake stares up at a carved raven totem and his consciousness fades.
When Blake comes to, more than a dozen Makah stare at him like the faces of ancestral spirits. They appear concerned, confused, menacing. Blake has little choice now, and they seemingly witness his death finally catch up with him. His consciousness fades again.
Blake lays on a shale beach, birds can be heard overhead, the ocean crashing at his head. He is wrapped in funerary cloaks and attempts one last look around, bewildered and uncertain. As his perspective is our own perspective, we are left in this ambiguous state of understanding, having left one world—one film story—but have not yet arrived entirely in another. When he next opens his eyes, Blake is on a canoe laden with, Nobody says, cedar boughs. "It is time for you to leave now, William Blake," Nobody tells him, "Time for you to go back where you came from ... The place where all the spirits come from and to where all the spirits return."
Nobody pushes the canoe into the vast dark waters to the west, but Blake looks back, to the east. He watches helpless as Cole, a bounty hunter who has pursued him, approaches Nobody from behind. In a choreographic death, Cole and Nobody shoot each other—manifestations of Blake's higher and lower ideals; that which wisely guides and that which gives feral chase. William Blake's burial canoe is pulled out to sea by the tides as the staccato guitar pulses and then dies.
Carnival of Souls and Dead Man are cyclic stories which don't so much end where they begin but meander a pre-destined path before finally settling at the conclusion. Upon first-glance Carnival of Souls has a straight-forward understanding at its finish—that Mary died in the car wreck which began the tale, and her spirit continued on a path much the same as if she had lived—Dead Man's ending is left far more metaphysical and ambiguous: At what point did William Blake die? Shot in Thel's room in the town of Machine? In the forest where he fled? On the canoe drifting out to the open ocean?
In both instances the protagonists of these films have made stylized westward journeys through the twilight at the edge of the world to reach acknowledgment of their deaths.
Carnival of Souls. Dir. Herk Harvey.
· • ·
This one didn't go where I wanted it to, but it arrived somewhere nonetheless.
~•~
ENG 317
December 8, 2009
Final Essay
Stylized Denial:
The Liminal Journeys in Carnival of Souls and Dead Man
If I go first, I'll wait for you there,
on the other side of those dark waters.
―James Jones
The Liminal Journeys in Carnival of Souls and Dead Man
If I go first, I'll wait for you there,
on the other side of those dark waters.
―James Jones
The world of departed souls is said to be to the west—towards the setting sun. The path leads through a dim world of twilight. Another trail intersects this first; used by shamans as a shortcut to encounter the souls in journey to that other world. At some point along its westward travel, the path encounters water—a running stream, a lake, the great black ocean when the soul crosses to the sunless lands. At the brink, before this point is reached, the soul comes upon a lodge or passageway, where the guardians wait. When the soul reaches the lodge, it comes face-to-face with these guardians. Sometimes the guardians welcome the soul with laughter and drumming, and they carry the soul on to where it will ultimately pass alone. Often times the soul is not greeted warmly, fear and denial dominating what transpired in leading the soul to this point on its journey.
In Mary Henry's voyage from the river where the car she rode in plunged—killing all its occupants—she travels westward to Salt Lake City. Once there, she is drawn to a ruined structure on the outskirts of town that to her is hauntingly familiar. This is the Saltair Pavilion, and in Herk Henry's bleak supernatural tale Carnival of Souls (1962), it acts as Mary Henry's ghost lodge, through which she must pass en route to her ultimate destination.
Similarly—and more directly linked to our analogy of the journey of the soul—Jim Jarmusch's 1995 film Dead Man, shows us William Blake's westward movement from Cleveland to the Pacific Northwest and beyond the reaches of the living. Unlike Mary, Blake is lead by a guide rather than making the trek on his own.
The two films share many semblances. Both are shot in black-and-white, and both have distinctive soundtracks which use only a single instrument performed in a minimalist capacity and employed with deliberate effect to push its constraints. In Carnival of Souls, Gene Moore uses the pipe organ to create the eerie soundtrack which keeps the audience as unsettled as the protagonist, who, incidentally, is an organ player herself. This brings the sense of music into being part of the narrative created by the film and is a vehicle for Mary sense of place within the liminal space of her journey. For Dead Man, the weapon of choice is Neil Young's electric guitar, which fades and rises like a waning heartbeat behind William Blake's travel towards some unknown westward land.
Another trait both films share is their lack of adherence to a single genre. Like their main characters, the films exist in an over-lapping, in-between space of convenient labeling. Carnival of Souls is at once a B-grade horror film, a supernatural thriller, has grown to be seen as an art film, transcending the trappings of its genre. Dead Man is, on its surface, a Western, yet William Blake is no Shane, and the almost surreal Old West town of Mechanic is not a place we're likely to find Clint Eastwood; its theme is far closer to the religious ecstasies displayed in the paintings of the other William Blake—18th century visionary writer and painter who is the namesake of the protagonist.
In Carnival of Souls, the culmination for Mary Henry comes when she walks through the angular curvature of deep shadow at the Saltair, in a north-western direction, passing beneath a framed Arabesque arch. She looks across a barren salt beach, where the jutting piles of decayed docks rise like tombstones, markers of the afterworld. In a reprise of an earlier scene—where Mary played the church organ and fancifully imagined this one—white-faced ghouls rise from the dark water the lake that could as easily be her subconscious. A dozen ghouls amble to the pavilion and, amidst the framework of the decrepit ballroom, they begin to waltz. Circling back and forth, they leer, dancing to the organ music of a malicious merry-go-round.
Mary stands at the periphery, terrified of this totentanz. She has chosen to come to this place, but upon her arriving, denies her own part of this world. Having "seen" this waltz before—while playing the organ at church—she has called this world to her. The organ could be her heart, and she plays it hoping for more life, while all around her evidence of her death dances. When the music stops, the ghouls cease their waltz and turn towards her in sudden pursuit.
They chase Mary out of the pavilion, onto the white salty shoreline of the afterworld. Mary runs beneath the pavilion, among the pylons of the foundation—into the base foundation of her own consciousness—but everywhere she turns she finds a white-faced ghoul waiting. She's returned to her primordial mind and death courts her from every shadow.
The ghouls act as shepherds, herding Mary towards the lake. She runs from beneath the pavilion and out on the featureless salted shore, she stumbles, and the ghouls are upon her. Mary's fall is not so much to the salt and sand of the beach beneath her, but back through a liminal world to the place of her long-procrastinated death.
The denouement is two-fold. Three men, the policeman, the doctor, and the minister—male representation of the Three Fates—follow Mary's path along the beach to where she fell and discover no tracks beyond that point. Following their observations, there is a cut to back east, where the car Mary had been in—and plunged off a bridge into a river—is towed up from the water. Mary's body is, of course, inside.
When it comes to William Blake's moment of passage, he is delirious from his long trek through the dark woods of his own fear and dark night of the soul. Unlike Mary Henry, Blake's journey has had a guide, a psychopomp named Xebeche, a Wakashan who calls himself Nobody. Numerous times along the way, Blake has insisted that he's not dead, but in reaching the gate—both a literal as well as figurative—of a Makah village, he cannot walk through of his own power, his own body allied with his vocal denial of death. Blake leans awkwardly against a section of fallen tree, the rings—its lifespan and evidence of its death—visible around him. Nobody, having lead Blake here, continues his own role as spirit guide, and brokers a deal for Blake to pass through the gate. The solo guitar of the soundtrack pulses in a desultory staccato, as Blake stares up at a carved raven totem and his consciousness fades.
When Blake comes to, more than a dozen Makah stare at him like the faces of ancestral spirits. They appear concerned, confused, menacing. Blake has little choice now, and they seemingly witness his death finally catch up with him. His consciousness fades again.
Blake lays on a shale beach, birds can be heard overhead, the ocean crashing at his head. He is wrapped in funerary cloaks and attempts one last look around, bewildered and uncertain. As his perspective is our own perspective, we are left in this ambiguous state of understanding, having left one world—one film story—but have not yet arrived entirely in another. When he next opens his eyes, Blake is on a canoe laden with, Nobody says, cedar boughs. "It is time for you to leave now, William Blake," Nobody tells him, "Time for you to go back where you came from ... The place where all the spirits come from and to where all the spirits return."
Nobody pushes the canoe into the vast dark waters to the west, but Blake looks back, to the east. He watches helpless as Cole, a bounty hunter who has pursued him, approaches Nobody from behind. In a choreographic death, Cole and Nobody shoot each other—manifestations of Blake's higher and lower ideals; that which wisely guides and that which gives feral chase. William Blake's burial canoe is pulled out to sea by the tides as the staccato guitar pulses and then dies.
Carnival of Souls and Dead Man are cyclic stories which don't so much end where they begin but meander a pre-destined path before finally settling at the conclusion. Upon first-glance Carnival of Souls has a straight-forward understanding at its finish—that Mary died in the car wreck which began the tale, and her spirit continued on a path much the same as if she had lived—Dead Man's ending is left far more metaphysical and ambiguous: At what point did William Blake die? Shot in Thel's room in the town of Machine? In the forest where he fled? On the canoe drifting out to the open ocean?
In both instances the protagonists of these films have made stylized westward journeys through the twilight at the edge of the world to reach acknowledgment of their deaths.
•
Bibliography
Carnival of Souls. Dir. Herk Harvey.
Perf. Candace Hilligoss.
Criterion Collection 63, 1962. DVD.
"Carnival of Souls." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.14 Nov 2009, 12:31 UTC. 1 Dec 2009.
Curnutte, Rick. "Mad Poets: William Blake,Jim Jarmusch and Dead Man."
The Film Journal 1 (2002).
The Film Journal.
May 2002. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.
Dead Man. Dir. Jim Jarmusch.The Film Journal 1 (2002).
The Film Journal.
May 2002. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.
Perf. Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer.
Miramax, 1995. DVD.
Kawin, Bruce. "Carnival of Souls."Carnival of Souls
Criterion Collection 63 (2000). Print.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "A gun up your ass:Criterion Collection 63 (2000). Print.
An interview with Jim Jarmusch."
Cineaste 22.2 (1996). Print.
Taubin, Amy. "Dead Man Talking."Cineaste 22.2 (1996). Print.
The Village Voice 14 May 1996, 41.20. Print.
· • ·
Saturday Night at the Speedway
The final paper for Reading Popular Culture is something of a magna opus for me. I wrote this, and the following two final papers for my other English course over the span of about nine hours (fairly continuous span with breaks for a bit of food, more coffee, and less-than-healthy amount of breaks for stretches and peeing; such is the life I signed up for in doing this— I've been in the real world, this stuff is easy).
I'm still waiting to do my paper on musical hijacking of popular culture circa 1990-92, but like that one, the idea for this one has long been germinating.
The date it was due was precisely the fortieth anniversary of the concert.
~•~
ENG 384
December 6, 2009
Final Essay
"New Speedway Boogie" was written and recorded by the Grateful Dead two months after the Altamont Free Concert, and appeared in June 1970 on the album Workingman's Dead. Robert Hunter, lyricist and non-performing member of the band, penned the song in in direct response to a series of articles that had been written over the course of the previous summer by the music critic Ralph J. Gleason in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was in the column "On the Town" where Gleason first challenged the Rolling Stones to perform a free concert in the Bay Area of California and months later, after they did so, condemned most everyone involved with the event (never acknowledging his own role in antagonizing the Rolling Stones to stage the concert). In this context, "New Speedway Boogie" offers unflinching yet cryptic views of Altamont and—more importantly—the blameful aftermath of it.
In the opening lines, Robert Hunter directly addresses us as listeners, using a proper name in a generic sense, calling us "Jack" just as if we might be called "son" or "friend." But with this use of Jack, Hunter cites Ralph J. Gleason by name, even if it is not his commonly used moniker, and suggests he not continue to use his words to fuel any more fires, unless he has something more useful to impart.
The mountain, in this case, can be equated with the source of wisdom and understanding, a mythic place of retreat where one can rest a while to accumulate balance and objectivity. But just as quickly as we have ascended that mountain, we are sitting on a hillside, showing that our narrative guide isn't claiming superiority for having been to that mountain where wisdom may be found. In the lore of rock lyric analysis, the Marxist and/or Freudian baseline of measurement can be equated to the Beatles and Bob Dylan, it is difficult to make references to a hill and not come around to Lennon and McCartney's "Fool on the Hill." In this case, Altamont was a hill seated with 300,000 fools.
Once more—in a recurring theme not only to this song, but in much of Robert Hunter's repertoire—our story-teller assures us that they are not the authoritative voice on the subject, but they might know a thing or two nonetheless. The narrator has never done so, but has heard that being burdened with gold (ill-gotten or freely acquired) makes it difficult to move very quickly. However, a burden carried is still a burden no matter what the substance may be.
With Altamont, there was plenty of blame to go around and yet no one seemed to step forward and pick up any share of it. While it may be true that no one involved toted away sacks of money from Altamont, what weighed on the conscience of anyone who had been there was, in some respects, far heavier than lead.
These lines offer a pair of rhetorical questions and express uncertainty about purpose and distance to reach what is needed or intended. Both of these factors—viewed with the benefit of hindsight—are easily placed upon the era in which Altamont took place. Following the success of the Woodstock Festival, the counter-culture of the late sixties felt they had achieved what few other cultures had in history, that of staging a libertarian ideal society—albeit, for only a few days in a relatively small location. Altamont would prove to be the undoing of any naïve considerations that such a congregation could be staged at will.
During the summer of 1969, Gleason used his column in the San Francisco Chronicle to harangue the Rolling Stones about exorbitant ticket prices and accused them of having contempt for their audience. Since they had given a free concert in London's Hyde Park in early July, Gleason antagonistically baited the band into offering a free concert in San Francisco. The band responded with plans to perform in Golden Gate Park at the end of their tour.
Logistics and city ordinances prevented Golden Gate Park from being the site of their planned show, and, after a location at the Sears Point Raceway fell through, a last-minute—literally two days before the event was scheduled—the Altamont Speedway was offered as a suitable site for the concert. Even amidst the planning of the concert, Gleason kept his antagonistic attitude in print, "Are the Rolling Stones seriously going to appear next weekend? Your guess is as good as mine" (Gleason, "A Few Guesses").
At some point in the process, the Hells Angels were hired to act as security at the concert. The decision to use the Hells Angels remains a source of contention among all parties involved. The Angels had often been present at Grateful Dead concerts around the Bay Area, and having been involved with Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, were considered to be the "noble savages" of the counter-culture movement in California. But Altamont was no Grateful Dead concert, and Ken Kesey's workingman's charisma was far closer to the Angels disposition than the androgyne prancing and preening of Mick Jagger. In the Maysles' film Gimme Shelter, Angel Sonny Barger can be seen glaring at Jagger with an unstoned look that would make contempt and disgust seem serenely pleasant.
In a diatribe heard the day after Altamont on KSAN radio station, Barger claimed that the Angels were asked to sit on the edge of the stage and keep people away from equipment and performers. But Barger also claimed that at one point in the evening he held a gun to Keith Richards' head and told him to keep playing or he'd be killed—a claim that has no corroborating witnesses. Various other stories hold that the Angels were given $500 in beer to police the event, or, as Gleason reported afterwards, a "truckload." Whatever specific arrangements were made between organizers and the Hells Angels, as the day progressed, and beer and other substances were consumed, the Angels seemed less like a security force and more like domineering vigilantes; like outlaw bikers. The pool cues they wielded—as ubiquitously seen in the film Gimme Shelter—were pre-loaded with lead weights, brought along with obvious intention on using them.
In a brief essay written for the Criterion Films release of Gimme Shelter, Stanley Booth shares a first hand opinion of the day. "The violence at Altamont, being completely unexpected, came afterward to seem inevitable." That sentiment is shared by many, regardless of their proximity to the event itself. Forty years later Robert Hughes quotes, "'It was a day that was oppressive and dark,' recalls Chris Hillman, whose Flying Burrito Brothers shared the bill, 'and the ending was the worst scenario you could imagine.'"
Even before mid-afternoon, there was something menacing in the air. "The Stones arrived by helicopter and walked, flanked by their mysterious New York musicians guards, through the crowd, when a long-haired youth ran at Jagger screaming, 'I'm gonna kill you! I hate you!' He slugged Jagger in the face. Jagger wasn't hurt, only bruised; but it was an ill omen for the day" (Gleason, "Aquarius Wept").
During the Jefferson Airplane's performance, singer Marty Balin jumped off the stage into a melee of Angels and audience members in an attempt to break up the fight. As Gleason recounts, "One of the Angels decked Balin and when Thompson [the Airplane's manager] asked, 'What did you do that for?' replied, 'He spoke disrespectful to a brother Angel.' Paul Kantner, still onstage, asked, 'What's going on? They're beating up on my lead singer!'" (Gleason, "Aquarius Wept"). Upon their arrival, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead were told about the Hells Angels beating up Marty Balin and that the scene was rapidly deteriorating—had gone from terrible to horrid. The Grateful Dead elected not to perform and quickly departed. But they would not remain silent about the event for long.
Once again citing an unauthoritative stance, our narrative guide offers up another paradox, this time in almost strictly folklore terms, of someone freezing to death as they feel the warmth of sunshine. It calls to mind a line in "Oh Susannah"—"the sun's so hot I froze to death, Susannah don't you cry."
We are also given another question, and even if it is rhetorical, it is asked with a sense of urgency as to what might happen if the question isn't at least addressed, if not answered outright.
Altamont is often cited as being the death of the sixties—the expiration of the ideal that seemed to have reached its epoch with the Woodstock Festival a few months earlier. In this light, the question asked by our nameless story-teller in "New Speedway Boogie" could be just that. Was Altamont the end of an era? Or was it just as likely that it exposed an era for what it really was—stripping away the Day-Glo paint and psychedelic visions for something cold and festering that lurks in the shadows the places sometimes better left unseen? Ethan A. Russell wrote, "Mick Taylor [of the Rolling Stones] responded when asked if he thought Altamont was the end of the '60s, 'Well, it was the end of the sixties, wasn't it? It was December 1969.'"
If, as Wavy Gravy stated numerous times about Woodstock, for a few days a cow pasture became a little piece of heaven (and Jimi Hendrix became the Celestial Gypsy at the summit of the psychedelic era), then for a few hours one dark evening, Altamont became a smoldering pit of hell (with Mick Jagger cast as Lucifer in brimstone).
Regardless of medium—film, essay, radio rant, song—Altamont seemed doomed from the moment it was pressured into conception. It would be easy to formulate the situation as being one of a rape victim giving birth. Ralph Gleason, in this scenario, would be the rapist, the Rolling Stones a willing, if slightly reluctant, accomplice, and Altamont the unwanted child born. The victim would be not only Meredith Hunter, but also everyone who participated, even with the best of intentions. But, since we are discuss myth and folklore, it is fitting to cite the proverb about those intentions—that this road with no signs nor lines to guide, is smoothly paved en route to some infernal place up ahead in the unknown darkness, The experience at Altamont scarred the psyche of people who were there, the era which spawned it, and the history and mythology of rock and roll itself. What "went down we don't understand" and even forty years later, we struggle with the questions it has left us.
"Perhaps Ralph J. Gleason was responsible for Altamont," Norma Coates wrote in an lengthy essay about the event. She doesn't shy away from indicting numerous participants: "Or Mick Jagger? Sonny Barger? Woodstock? All or none of the above? After all, one could, based on the evidence, argue that it was the venerable San Francisco Chronicle music critic [...] who goaded the Rolling Stones into performing a free concert at the Altamont Speedway..." From these cutting remarks, Coates lapses into the dialogue of folklore, and strays from the evidence she so recently cited. "As the story goes, the Stones danced a little too close to the devil, in the form of the Hells Angels, that fateful day. The Angels beat up a lot of people and then killed a young black man, while Mick Jagger callously sang and danced along to 'Sympathy for the Devil'. Thus, the 1960s ended, along with the utopian promise of that decade and the youth counterculture."
Coates condemns Gleason, Jagger, and the Angels, but misses the tiny fact that Meredith Hunter came to the foot of the stage armed with a pistol, which he fired shortly before his grotesque demise. Perhaps that day was fated to be the taint of an era? As was previous quoted, "The violence ... seem[ed] inevitable" (Stanley Booth); "A day ... oppressive and dark" (Chris Hillman); and from Gleason himself: "Jagger wasn't hurt, only bruised; but it was an ill omen for the day."
If a pack animal—or, in modern terms, a motorized vehicle—ceases to haul what it should, the only immediate option is to pick up what is needed and move forward as best as is able. Concerning Altamont, the load to be shouldered is that of responsibility. But as Russell considers, "No one ever really took responsibility for what happened at Altamont. Not the Angels, not the people in the crowd, not the Rolling Stones. Each person involved seemed to conclude, each with their own reason, that somehow what happened had nothing [...] to do with them."
But even as no one wants the responsibility for the collision of cultural history with musical folklore at the foot of the stage in the Altamont Speedway the night of December 6, 1969, more than a few would like to offer their opinions on how it all went wrong and who should take the blame.
In a July 1972 Newsday article, Robert Christgau famously wrote, "Writers focus on Altamont not because it brought on the end of an era but because it provided such a complex metaphor for the way an era ended." But a paragraph later, Christgau gives us more than an apt summation of our interest in the complex metaphor of Altamont, instead of genuine facts in the transpiring of events, he lays a powerful cornerstone in musical folklore—that apocryphal rock and roll history that perhaps should have been but wasn't. "Denouement:" Christgau tells us, "An Afro-American bohemian is murdered by a lower-class white Hells Angel while the Englishmen do a song called 'Sympathy for the Devil.'"
Not that actuality survives long in the midst of rock and roll mythology, but fact of the matter was, when Meredith Hunter was murdered, the Rolling Stones were playing "Under My Thumb." But doesn't the story sounds better—more gruesome and grim; more dire and bleak—if the song being performed was "Sympathy for the Devil"?
When Stanley Booth commented that the violence at Altamont later seemed inevitable, we can place in the confluence of events up to Altamont—and the lingering bitterness of its blameful aftermath—something else that seems more metaphoric than real. In February 1969 the Rolling Stones recorded the song "Gimme Shelter" in which Jagger sings—
Which brings us back to Ralph Gleason's quote of Ken Kesey. "Some things aren't true even if they did happen."
Even a cursory glance at the matter shows that Altamont was just that.
It happened. But it can't possibly be true.
Altamont Free Concert. By Mick Jagger, Keith Richards,
6 Dec. 1969. Performance.
"Altamont Free Concert."
I'm still waiting to do my paper on musical hijacking of popular culture circa 1990-92, but like that one, the idea for this one has long been germinating.
The date it was due was precisely the fortieth anniversary of the concert.
~•~
ENG 384
December 6, 2009
Final Essay
Saturday Night at the Speedway
Exposing Altamont in a Textural Analysis of
the Grateful Dead's "New Speedway Boogie"
Exposing Altamont in a Textural Analysis of
the Grateful Dead's "New Speedway Boogie"
"Some things aren't true even if they did happen,"
Ken Kesey once said.
Altamont is like that.
―Ralph J. Gleason
"New Speedway Boogie" was written and recorded by the Grateful Dead two months after the Altamont Free Concert, and appeared in June 1970 on the album Workingman's Dead. Robert Hunter, lyricist and non-performing member of the band, penned the song in in direct response to a series of articles that had been written over the course of the previous summer by the music critic Ralph J. Gleason in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was in the column "On the Town" where Gleason first challenged the Rolling Stones to perform a free concert in the Bay Area of California and months later, after they did so, condemned most everyone involved with the event (never acknowledging his own role in antagonizing the Rolling Stones to stage the concert). In this context, "New Speedway Boogie" offers unflinching yet cryptic views of Altamont and—more importantly—the blameful aftermath of it.
Please don't dominate the rap Jack,
if you've got nothing new to say
If you please don't back up the track
this train has got to run today.
In the opening lines, Robert Hunter directly addresses us as listeners, using a proper name in a generic sense, calling us "Jack" just as if we might be called "son" or "friend." But with this use of Jack, Hunter cites Ralph J. Gleason by name, even if it is not his commonly used moniker, and suggests he not continue to use his words to fuel any more fires, unless he has something more useful to impart.
I spent a little time on the mountain,
I spent a little time on the hill
Like some say you better run away,
others say you better stand still.
The mountain, in this case, can be equated with the source of wisdom and understanding, a mythic place of retreat where one can rest a while to accumulate balance and objectivity. But just as quickly as we have ascended that mountain, we are sitting on a hillside, showing that our narrative guide isn't claiming superiority for having been to that mountain where wisdom may be found. In the lore of rock lyric analysis, the Marxist and/or Freudian baseline of measurement can be equated to the Beatles and Bob Dylan, it is difficult to make references to a hill and not come around to Lennon and McCartney's "Fool on the Hill." In this case, Altamont was a hill seated with 300,000 fools.
Now I don't know, but I been told
it's hard to run with the weight of gold
On the other hand I heard it said
it's just as hard with the weight of lead.
Once more—in a recurring theme not only to this song, but in much of Robert Hunter's repertoire—our story-teller assures us that they are not the authoritative voice on the subject, but they might know a thing or two nonetheless. The narrator has never done so, but has heard that being burdened with gold (ill-gotten or freely acquired) makes it difficult to move very quickly. However, a burden carried is still a burden no matter what the substance may be.
With Altamont, there was plenty of blame to go around and yet no one seemed to step forward and pick up any share of it. While it may be true that no one involved toted away sacks of money from Altamont, what weighed on the conscience of anyone who had been there was, in some respects, far heavier than lead.
Who can deny, who can deny,
it's not just a change in style?
One step gone and another's begun
and I wonder how many miles?
These lines offer a pair of rhetorical questions and express uncertainty about purpose and distance to reach what is needed or intended. Both of these factors—viewed with the benefit of hindsight—are easily placed upon the era in which Altamont took place. Following the success of the Woodstock Festival, the counter-culture of the late sixties felt they had achieved what few other cultures had in history, that of staging a libertarian ideal society—albeit, for only a few days in a relatively small location. Altamont would prove to be the undoing of any naïve considerations that such a congregation could be staged at will.
During the summer of 1969, Gleason used his column in the San Francisco Chronicle to harangue the Rolling Stones about exorbitant ticket prices and accused them of having contempt for their audience. Since they had given a free concert in London's Hyde Park in early July, Gleason antagonistically baited the band into offering a free concert in San Francisco. The band responded with plans to perform in Golden Gate Park at the end of their tour.
Logistics and city ordinances prevented Golden Gate Park from being the site of their planned show, and, after a location at the Sears Point Raceway fell through, a last-minute—literally two days before the event was scheduled—the Altamont Speedway was offered as a suitable site for the concert. Even amidst the planning of the concert, Gleason kept his antagonistic attitude in print, "Are the Rolling Stones seriously going to appear next weekend? Your guess is as good as mine" (Gleason, "A Few Guesses").
I spent a little time on the mountain,
I spent a little time on the hill
I saw things getting out of hand,
I guess they always will.
At some point in the process, the Hells Angels were hired to act as security at the concert. The decision to use the Hells Angels remains a source of contention among all parties involved. The Angels had often been present at Grateful Dead concerts around the Bay Area, and having been involved with Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, were considered to be the "noble savages" of the counter-culture movement in California. But Altamont was no Grateful Dead concert, and Ken Kesey's workingman's charisma was far closer to the Angels disposition than the androgyne prancing and preening of Mick Jagger. In the Maysles' film Gimme Shelter, Angel Sonny Barger can be seen glaring at Jagger with an unstoned look that would make contempt and disgust seem serenely pleasant.
In a diatribe heard the day after Altamont on KSAN radio station, Barger claimed that the Angels were asked to sit on the edge of the stage and keep people away from equipment and performers. But Barger also claimed that at one point in the evening he held a gun to Keith Richards' head and told him to keep playing or he'd be killed—a claim that has no corroborating witnesses. Various other stories hold that the Angels were given $500 in beer to police the event, or, as Gleason reported afterwards, a "truckload." Whatever specific arrangements were made between organizers and the Hells Angels, as the day progressed, and beer and other substances were consumed, the Angels seemed less like a security force and more like domineering vigilantes; like outlaw bikers. The pool cues they wielded—as ubiquitously seen in the film Gimme Shelter—were pre-loaded with lead weights, brought along with obvious intention on using them.
In a brief essay written for the Criterion Films release of Gimme Shelter, Stanley Booth shares a first hand opinion of the day. "The violence at Altamont, being completely unexpected, came afterward to seem inevitable." That sentiment is shared by many, regardless of their proximity to the event itself. Forty years later Robert Hughes quotes, "'It was a day that was oppressive and dark,' recalls Chris Hillman, whose Flying Burrito Brothers shared the bill, 'and the ending was the worst scenario you could imagine.'"
Even before mid-afternoon, there was something menacing in the air. "The Stones arrived by helicopter and walked, flanked by their mysterious New York musicians guards, through the crowd, when a long-haired youth ran at Jagger screaming, 'I'm gonna kill you! I hate you!' He slugged Jagger in the face. Jagger wasn't hurt, only bruised; but it was an ill omen for the day" (Gleason, "Aquarius Wept").
During the Jefferson Airplane's performance, singer Marty Balin jumped off the stage into a melee of Angels and audience members in an attempt to break up the fight. As Gleason recounts, "One of the Angels decked Balin and when Thompson [the Airplane's manager] asked, 'What did you do that for?' replied, 'He spoke disrespectful to a brother Angel.' Paul Kantner, still onstage, asked, 'What's going on? They're beating up on my lead singer!'" (Gleason, "Aquarius Wept"). Upon their arrival, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead were told about the Hells Angels beating up Marty Balin and that the scene was rapidly deteriorating—had gone from terrible to horrid. The Grateful Dead elected not to perform and quickly departed. But they would not remain silent about the event for long.
Now I don't know, but I been told
in the heat of the sun a man died of cold
Do we keep on coming or just stand and wait
with the sun so dark and the hour so late?
Once again citing an unauthoritative stance, our narrative guide offers up another paradox, this time in almost strictly folklore terms, of someone freezing to death as they feel the warmth of sunshine. It calls to mind a line in "Oh Susannah"—"the sun's so hot I froze to death, Susannah don't you cry."
We are also given another question, and even if it is rhetorical, it is asked with a sense of urgency as to what might happen if the question isn't at least addressed, if not answered outright.
Altamont is often cited as being the death of the sixties—the expiration of the ideal that seemed to have reached its epoch with the Woodstock Festival a few months earlier. In this light, the question asked by our nameless story-teller in "New Speedway Boogie" could be just that. Was Altamont the end of an era? Or was it just as likely that it exposed an era for what it really was—stripping away the Day-Glo paint and psychedelic visions for something cold and festering that lurks in the shadows the places sometimes better left unseen? Ethan A. Russell wrote, "Mick Taylor [of the Rolling Stones] responded when asked if he thought Altamont was the end of the '60s, 'Well, it was the end of the sixties, wasn't it? It was December 1969.'"
If, as Wavy Gravy stated numerous times about Woodstock, for a few days a cow pasture became a little piece of heaven (and Jimi Hendrix became the Celestial Gypsy at the summit of the psychedelic era), then for a few hours one dark evening, Altamont became a smoldering pit of hell (with Mick Jagger cast as Lucifer in brimstone).
You can't overlook the lack Jack,
of any other highway you ride
It's got no signs, no dividing lines,
and there's very few rules to guide.
I spent a little time on the mountain,
I spent a little time on the hill
Things went down we don't understand
but I think in time we will.
Regardless of medium—film, essay, radio rant, song—Altamont seemed doomed from the moment it was pressured into conception. It would be easy to formulate the situation as being one of a rape victim giving birth. Ralph Gleason, in this scenario, would be the rapist, the Rolling Stones a willing, if slightly reluctant, accomplice, and Altamont the unwanted child born. The victim would be not only Meredith Hunter, but also everyone who participated, even with the best of intentions. But, since we are discuss myth and folklore, it is fitting to cite the proverb about those intentions—that this road with no signs nor lines to guide, is smoothly paved en route to some infernal place up ahead in the unknown darkness, The experience at Altamont scarred the psyche of people who were there, the era which spawned it, and the history and mythology of rock and roll itself. What "went down we don't understand" and even forty years later, we struggle with the questions it has left us.
"Perhaps Ralph J. Gleason was responsible for Altamont," Norma Coates wrote in an lengthy essay about the event. She doesn't shy away from indicting numerous participants: "Or Mick Jagger? Sonny Barger? Woodstock? All or none of the above? After all, one could, based on the evidence, argue that it was the venerable San Francisco Chronicle music critic [...] who goaded the Rolling Stones into performing a free concert at the Altamont Speedway..." From these cutting remarks, Coates lapses into the dialogue of folklore, and strays from the evidence she so recently cited. "As the story goes, the Stones danced a little too close to the devil, in the form of the Hells Angels, that fateful day. The Angels beat up a lot of people and then killed a young black man, while Mick Jagger callously sang and danced along to 'Sympathy for the Devil'. Thus, the 1960s ended, along with the utopian promise of that decade and the youth counterculture."
Coates condemns Gleason, Jagger, and the Angels, but misses the tiny fact that Meredith Hunter came to the foot of the stage armed with a pistol, which he fired shortly before his grotesque demise. Perhaps that day was fated to be the taint of an era? As was previous quoted, "The violence ... seem[ed] inevitable" (Stanley Booth); "A day ... oppressive and dark" (Chris Hillman); and from Gleason himself: "Jagger wasn't hurt, only bruised; but it was an ill omen for the day."
Now I don't know, but I been told
if the horse don't pull you got to carry that load
I don't know whose back's that strong
but we'll maybe find out before too long...
If a pack animal—or, in modern terms, a motorized vehicle—ceases to haul what it should, the only immediate option is to pick up what is needed and move forward as best as is able. Concerning Altamont, the load to be shouldered is that of responsibility. But as Russell considers, "No one ever really took responsibility for what happened at Altamont. Not the Angels, not the people in the crowd, not the Rolling Stones. Each person involved seemed to conclude, each with their own reason, that somehow what happened had nothing [...] to do with them."
But even as no one wants the responsibility for the collision of cultural history with musical folklore at the foot of the stage in the Altamont Speedway the night of December 6, 1969, more than a few would like to offer their opinions on how it all went wrong and who should take the blame.
In a July 1972 Newsday article, Robert Christgau famously wrote, "Writers focus on Altamont not because it brought on the end of an era but because it provided such a complex metaphor for the way an era ended." But a paragraph later, Christgau gives us more than an apt summation of our interest in the complex metaphor of Altamont, instead of genuine facts in the transpiring of events, he lays a powerful cornerstone in musical folklore—that apocryphal rock and roll history that perhaps should have been but wasn't. "Denouement:" Christgau tells us, "An Afro-American bohemian is murdered by a lower-class white Hells Angel while the Englishmen do a song called 'Sympathy for the Devil.'"
Not that actuality survives long in the midst of rock and roll mythology, but fact of the matter was, when Meredith Hunter was murdered, the Rolling Stones were playing "Under My Thumb." But doesn't the story sounds better—more gruesome and grim; more dire and bleak—if the song being performed was "Sympathy for the Devil"?
When Stanley Booth commented that the violence at Altamont later seemed inevitable, we can place in the confluence of events up to Altamont—and the lingering bitterness of its blameful aftermath—something else that seems more metaphoric than real. In February 1969 the Rolling Stones recorded the song "Gimme Shelter" in which Jagger sings—
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away‚ it's just a shot away . . .—it's seems only appropriately poetic a year later to hear the Grateful Dead reply in the last lines of "New Speedway Boogie":
One way or another
One way or another
One way or another, this darkness has got to give.
Which brings us back to Ralph Gleason's quote of Ken Kesey. "Some things aren't true even if they did happen."
Even a cursory glance at the matter shows that Altamont was just that.
It happened. But it can't possibly be true.
Bibliography
Altamont Free Concert. By Mick Jagger, Keith Richards,
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club,
Ralph J. Gleason, Meredith Hunter.
Altamont Speedway, California.Ralph J. Gleason, Meredith Hunter.
6 Dec. 1969. Performance.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
1 Dec 2009, 17:51 UTC. 2 Dec 2009.
Bangs, Lester, and etc. al."The Rolling Stones Disaster at Altamont: Let It Bleed."
Rolling Stone 21 Jan. 1970. Print.
Booth, Stanley. "The True Adventures of Altamont."Rolling Stone 21 Jan. 1970. Print.
Gimme Shelter
Criterion Collection 99 (2000). Print.
Burks, John. "Rock & Rolls' Worst Day:The Aftermath of Altamont."
Rolling Stone 7 Feb. 1970. Print.
Christgau, Robert. "The Rolling Stones:Can't Get No Satisfaction."
Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics.
Robert Christgau. Web.
Coates, Norma. "Chapter 6: If anything,Robert Christgau. Web.
blame Woodstock - The Rolling Stones:
Altamont, December 6, 1969."
Performance And Popular Music:
History, Place And Time.
Ashgate, 2006. Print.
Dodd, David. "The Annotated "New Speedway Boogie"Altamont, December 6, 1969."
Performance And Popular Music:
History, Place And Time.
Ashgate, 2006. Print.
The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.
Univ. of Calif. at Santa Cruz,
Univ. of Calif. at Santa Cruz,
6 Oct. 2003. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.
Gimme Shelter. Dir. Albert Maysles, David Maysles,and Charlotte Zwerin.
Perf. The Rolling Stones.
Maysles Films, Cinema 5,
20th Century Fox, 1970. DVD.
"Gimme Shelter (documentary)."Perf. The Rolling Stones.
Maysles Films, Cinema 5,
20th Century Fox, 1970. DVD.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
5 Nov 2009, 04:40 UTC. 2 Dec 2009.
Gleason, Ralph J. "Aquarius Wept."Esquire Aug. 1970. Print.
—. "Bad Vibes for the Rolling Stones."San Francisco Chronicle 5 Dec. 1969. Print.
—. "A Few Guesses on Rolling Stones."San Francisco Chronicle 28 Nov. 1969. Print.
—. "More Questions for the Rolling Stones."San Francisco Chronicle 12 Dec. 1969. Print.
—. "The Rolling Stones Are Right On."San Francisco Chronicle 5 Dec. 1969. Print.
—. "Stones’ Plans for Free S.F. Concert."San Francisco Chronicle 24 Nov. 1969. Print.
—. "Who's Responsible for the Murder."
Hughes, Robert. "Gimme Shelter and The Rolling Stones'San Francisco Chronicle 19 Dec. 1969. Print.
nightmare at Altamont."
The Times Online. The Times,
13 Sept. 2009. Web. 6 Dec. 2009.
Hunter, Robert, and Jerry Garcia.The Times Online. The Times,
13 Sept. 2009. Web. 6 Dec. 2009.
"New Speedway Boogie." Rec. Feb. 1970.
Workingman's Dead. The Grateful Dead.
The Grateful Dead, Betty Cantor,
Bob Matthews, 1970. Vinyl recording.
Jagger, Mick, and Keith Richards.Workingman's Dead. The Grateful Dead.
The Grateful Dead, Betty Cantor,
Bob Matthews, 1970. Vinyl recording.
"Gimme Shelter." Rec. Feb. and Nov. 1970.
Let It Bleed. The Rolling Stones.
Jimmy Miller, 1969. Vinyl recording.
Lydon, Michael. "The Decade That Spawned Altamont."Let It Bleed. The Rolling Stones.
Jimmy Miller, 1969. Vinyl recording.
Gimme Shelter
Criterion Collection 99 (2000). Print.
Russell, Ethan Adam. Let It Bleed:The Rolling Stones, Altamont,
and the End of the Sixties.
Springboard, 2009. Print.
Taubin, Amy. "Rock and Roll Zapruder."Springboard, 2009. Print.
Gimme Shelter
Criterion Collection 99 (2000). Print.
Wood, John "Hell's Angels and the IllusionCriterion Collection 99 (2000). Print.
of the Counterculture."
Journal of Popular Culture 37.2 (2003):
336-351. Academic Search Premier.
EBSCO. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.
· • ·
336-351. Academic Search Premier.
EBSCO. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.
· • ·
Fun and Laughing in an Iranian Prison
Jon Stewart saved the day on this one. I had a couple of sketches I'd written as responses to other articles but didn't care for either one. Then I watched the Daily Show and saw this piece.
The response is always easy to write when I find the source of the article exasperating.
~•~
ENG 290
December 1, 2009
Portfolio 5: Fun and Laughing in an Iranian Prison
Maziar Bahari was arrested following the 2009 Iranian elections and jailed for 118 days. While in prison, Bahari was repeatedly beaten and tortured. One of the principle pieces of evidence for the prosecution was an interview Bahari gave to the Daily Show as part of a comedy news story. The Iranian government didn't seem to comprehend sarcasm.
In mid-June, in the aftermath of the Iranian Elections, Bahari met Jason Jones of the Daily Show at a café in Tehran. In the comedy piece as aired, Jones interviews three people who had been detained in the few days since they had filmed. One of them, as Jones tells it, is "Iranian-born Newsweek contributer Maziar Bahari," who shares with Jones "his message of radical reasonableness" (sic).
On the morning of June 21, Bahari was arrested without charge and held in the Evin Prison until October 20. The story of his detention is detailed in several "mainstream" news outlets, a segment on CBS's 60 Minutes and an article in Newsweek. But Bahari also paid a visit to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Opening the interview, Stewart says, "You were imprisoned in Iran—" and Bahari interrupts, "—because of you."
Bahari speaks of seeing the absurdity in his situation—being under arrest primarily for a seemingly innocuous interview with a comedy report—even as he was being interrogated about the election protests and questioned about accused dissidents. This situation, a clash of staunch theocratic minds of official Iranian government and sarcastic satire of an American comedy show interview, speaks loudly in microcosmic tones about the larger situation.
Terrorism no longer is seen in association with blown up city pubs or civilian bodies in a bread market, but is thrown in among political protests, public gatherings, and, it seems, comedy skits.
Satire and sarcasm have long be held forth as primary evidences of guaranteed freedom in the United States—the Western World. Which makes the clash of culture and understanding that much more sorrowful—more tragic—when it becomes the reason for someone's imprisonment and torture.
But in such a misunderstanding, it seems as well that there is something poetically ironic that humor has such power. For, in facing great tragedy, being able to laugh afterwards is one sure sign that compassion and humanity have survived.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
"Maziar Bahari." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
· • ·
The response is always easy to write when I find the source of the article exasperating.
~•~
ENG 290
December 1, 2009
Portfolio 5: Fun and Laughing in an Iranian Prison
Maziar Bahari was arrested following the 2009 Iranian elections and jailed for 118 days. While in prison, Bahari was repeatedly beaten and tortured. One of the principle pieces of evidence for the prosecution was an interview Bahari gave to the Daily Show as part of a comedy news story. The Iranian government didn't seem to comprehend sarcasm.
In mid-June, in the aftermath of the Iranian Elections, Bahari met Jason Jones of the Daily Show at a café in Tehran. In the comedy piece as aired, Jones interviews three people who had been detained in the few days since they had filmed. One of them, as Jones tells it, is "Iranian-born Newsweek contributer Maziar Bahari," who shares with Jones "his message of radical reasonableness" (sic).
On the morning of June 21, Bahari was arrested without charge and held in the Evin Prison until October 20. The story of his detention is detailed in several "mainstream" news outlets, a segment on CBS's 60 Minutes and an article in Newsweek. But Bahari also paid a visit to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Opening the interview, Stewart says, "You were imprisoned in Iran—" and Bahari interrupts, "—because of you."
Bahari speaks of seeing the absurdity in his situation—being under arrest primarily for a seemingly innocuous interview with a comedy report—even as he was being interrogated about the election protests and questioned about accused dissidents. This situation, a clash of staunch theocratic minds of official Iranian government and sarcastic satire of an American comedy show interview, speaks loudly in microcosmic tones about the larger situation.
Terrorism no longer is seen in association with blown up city pubs or civilian bodies in a bread market, but is thrown in among political protests, public gatherings, and, it seems, comedy skits.
Satire and sarcasm have long be held forth as primary evidences of guaranteed freedom in the United States—the Western World. Which makes the clash of culture and understanding that much more sorrowful—more tragic—when it becomes the reason for someone's imprisonment and torture.
But in such a misunderstanding, it seems as well that there is something poetically ironic that humor has such power. For, in facing great tragedy, being able to laugh afterwards is one sure sign that compassion and humanity have survived.
Works Cited
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
"Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - Persians of Interest."
22 Jun. 2009. Online video clip.
Thedailyshow.com. Accessed on 1 Dec. 2009.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.22 Jun. 2009. Online video clip.
Thedailyshow.com. Accessed on 1 Dec. 2009.
"Maziar Bahari." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
1 Dec 2009, 05:47 UTC. 1 Dec 2009.
· • ·
Don't Call it a Genocide
In Terrorism and Literature, we watched a few films (the paper on Munich I have previously posted). This one was the collection of international shorts about September 11. Each film was exactly 11 minutes 9 seconds and one frame long. The most powerful ones were from Burkina Faso and Mexico. The most pedantic was from the U.S. and directed by Sean Penn. My favorite was the one I wrote about and will likely be included in my upcoming English Honors Project.
~•~
ENG 290 (491)
November 12, 2009
A duality runs through the "Bosnia-Herzegovina" (Danis Tanović) segment from the film 11'09"01 (Alain Brigand, 2002) of what is shown by the visual cues provided and what can be seen by their showing. As a whole, this narrative unfolds along two historical timelines. One is the history in which the story is obviously framed—being part of a series of stories concerning the U.S. tragedy involving hijacked planes on September 11, 2001. But there is an untold history in this film that lies buried with more than 7,000 bodies in several mass graves in the municipality of Srebrenica. As the film's author, Tanović does little to go digging for the identities of those people murdered a half-dozen years previous to what he presents to us in this narrative, yet their presence permeates the story like the stench of genocide that remains in the soil long after the glossy words of ambassadors and politicians freshen their spring gardens. Instead of preaching from a grand pulpit, Tanović whispers quietly to us about a single day in, principally, one individual's life, half a world away from New York City and the Two Towers of the World trade Center. That day is, of course, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and that person is a displaced widow or daughter in her mid-twenties, Selma—refugee from the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.
When this segment opens, Selma lays in bed not sleeping as her clock ticks away the final seconds before midnight and the first moments of September 11. Awake in the dark, the moments of her life literally tick away. She holds a red scarf and measures out lengths of it like Clotho might measure threads of a person's fate; Selma lies in stasis, the long night looming in front of her just as the emptiness pulls from behind her, seen in the small family photo—in which the red scarf she now holds in bed can be seen—propped on the shelf next to the clock, ticking claim on each passing second, marking each empty moment. The contrast between the people in the photograph (ostensibly Selma and her family) and the present surroundings is stark and immediately evidence in the mere atmosphere of the scene. The photograph depicts a sunny day in a lush forest (even though a harsh shadow blots out a large section of the photo), while the room in which Selma lies is dark, which shifting shadows in curious splashes of light. When morning does arrive, Selma crouches next to the river near her house, hugging her legs to her chest in a posture of defensive protection and hollow comfort. She wears the red scarf over her head in Islamic fashion. The river, untethered by any sense of past trauma and never clinging to anything other than its own endless moment, rushes downstream.
Nadim, a legless man in a wheelchair who keeps a sense of humor about the blisters on his feet and his need for new shoes, drops by the house looking for Selma. Here then, are several examples of duality in one portion of the scene. A man who, by some perspectives, is the worst off of our three characters, but injects the only shades of humor in the segment. Nadim also represents the duality of change inherent in the aftermath of war, shown when he replies to Hanka telling him that instead of yelling for Selma as he did, why can't he use the doorbell: "Lower it and I will," he tells her. Life has changed for him and the simple act of reaching a doorbell is beyond his current faculties; the world can't and isn't going to change for him, just as he is never going to have his own legs to stand on. Nadim banters with Hanka (whom we can take to be Selma's mother, but could as well be her aunt or even someone now kindred only due to circumstance), and hears that neither of the women slept last night—"It's always like this on the 11th"—he refuses the common display of courtesy, being invited to coffee, and leaves a bag of "creams and lipstick" for Selma and Hanka to share between them. This bag of relief items seems not only ridiculous to be given to a man, but perhaps pathetic to be given to women survivors of a massacre. A way of helping them stay pretty even in these remarkable times of murderous horror.
Hanka finds Selma at home and lectures her about still living out of boxes six years after. "After" exactly what is part of the untold history Tanović isn't explicitly telling us. Selma gives a response that has probably been said a hundred times before: she'll unpack when she gets home (obviously intent on going somewhere). Hanka ruminates about "home" and how they'll never be able to go "home." She speaks of someone's house being burned again and if that still happens, how would she and Selma being able to survive. Even though the two women live in an apparently comfortable house and have their immediate needs taken care of, they are not home, having being driven from it six years before and still unable to return. Hanka gives Selma the bag of make-up and goes to make coffee. Selma stands where her reflection is cast into a broken mirror. Again several dualities are on display. The mirror can only reflect what is on the outside, and physically, there seems to be nothing to indicate the trauma of the past Selma has experienced. And like the director veiling history from us as viewers, the mirror does not show the scars Selma hauls around with her like the boxes of things from a past that can never be reached again.
Selma has use of the make-up, albeit not in the manner it had been intended. Checking the color of the lipstick by lining some on her hand, Selma uses it to write her protest sign. The people of Bosnia showed a remarkable ability to invent placebo utilities any given item may be subject to in a region torn by strife and warfare (Zlatko Dizdarević). What would otherwise be an innocuous tube of make-up has been transformed into a vehicle of political statement—a cry from the depths of resigned despair. Completing he placard, Selma heads off, as she apparently does on the 11th of every month, to the town square to take part in a monthly protest. En route, she encounters Nadim in his wheelchair, who accompanies her there. Nadim is the only male represented in this segment, although being legless, as he himself might joke, he's only half the man he used to be. Nadim's singular presence examples some small fragment of that untold history about to be revealed to us.
The voice of the radio is already heard when Selma enters the small building designated as the "Association of the Women of Srebrenica." Here, with this piece of evidence Tanović offers, our dual histories merge, clash, and meld: the radio tells of planes crashing into the Two Towers and another one hitting the Pentagon. This is history with which we are familiar. The images we are not shown (hearing this only on a radio) are easy for us to conjure. It is a public history. The weighted history that suffocates the women in the room listening to the radio is a very private history, without regard to how many—or how few—directly share it.
Selma sits down in the room of Muslim women (each wears a colored scarf as a hijab) and listens to part of the news about the terrorist attack in the United States. "After this, we can expect anything," the radio says. "It's total confusion … Pictures coming in from New York show people running in the street… There are many wounded, blood everywhere, everyone is covered in dust." There is little movement or reaction from the women in the room. There faces blank, their hands completely still. After their experiences, they've long ago learned to expect anything.
Selma looks to the back wall of the room, where photographs, maps, and other documents recall their collective tragedy. Included on the wall's montage is a photograph like the one she has at home, next to her clock. Her family; mother, father, and brother. Given that Hanka is her mother, she has lost the males in her family. Just as the radio says, "The number of victims isn't known," Selma stands and says she's going to go to the square for the demonstration, the other women look at her carefully. "Sit down," the woman next to her says, "There'll be no demonstration today. You can hear what's happened." "Exactly," Selma replies, "We have to demonstrate. For them and for us!" The other woman sighs, resigned to listening to the radio tell of the tragedy fallen upon the United States. Selma pauses at the door before stepping outside, passing a large sign with a date and bold red letters: "12.07.95 DA SE NE ZABORAVI." This is the final clue Tanović reveals to us, reinforcing what we already knew: these women are survivors of the Srebrenica Genocide.
The segment closes with Selma going to the square with her three linked protest flags. She is joined only by Nadim, who attaches the end of the flags to his wheelchair and rolls out, a marching line of two people (one of them cripple). As they walk, Hanka appears behind Selma, the other women lined up behind Hanka. They tie their flags together and walk across the vacant town square, in silence. Their protest has become representative of dual tragedies. But just because people were killed by terrorism in the far-off land of New York City, the women of Srebrenica remain alive with their memories and pain.
It is crucial to understand that at the moment Selma stood up in the room of women, the radio made reference towards the number of people dead. This brings to the fore that quantifying the devastation is the basis for classification of a tragedy. The sheer number of dead and wounded gives credence to how much more terrible a particular event may be in comparison to others. This again brings us to the duality within this narrative. On one hand, these women listening to their single radio in an emptied small town in eastern Bosnia have survived a massacre that, when not being denied as to ever happening, is listed by some accounts as the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II. A fact itself which immediately conjures the duality of indirect reference to non-European massacres which might include the systematic mass murders perpetrated by the regimes of Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Hutus—to name but a trio out of several hundred post-WWII examples—and the direct reference to quantifying tragedy into some sort of hierarchical scale.
And using such a scale as our model for this comparison (inadequate though it is), it becomes clearer what these women of Srebrenica have survived. Having been refugees in a designated "safe area" under the protection of the UN, they had their families devastated with Bosnian Serbs systematically murdered all males without any interference from the protecting UN forces. The quantifiers involved place the figure between 6,000 and 8,500 men killed over a period of five days, culminating with the night of July 11, 1995. Srebrenica is certainly one of three jewels in the crown of UN relations involving Bosnia. The first could be heard as early as August of 1993, when the British ambassador, Lord David Owen, stood on the tarmac of the militarily-controlled Sarajevo International Airport and offered words of advice to the besieged Sarajevans, "Don't, don't, don't live under this dream that the West is going to come in and sort this problem out. Don't dream dreams." The third jewel wouldn't come until more than a decade later when, in February 2007, the International Court of Justice ruled that Bosnia had not suffered through a "genocide" (Vesna Peric Zimonjic, Jan Willem Honig). The figures just weren't enough to quantify the term.
Another parallel becomes evident and—among many historians, scholars, and interested parties—somewhat more tenuous. This parallel draws a connection between the Bosnian Massacres (we aren't allowed to use the term "genocide" now) and the Jewish Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis. And like the Holocaust, there are many prominent (and not-so-prominent) voices of denial that many of the Bosnian Massacres never occurred, or, at some extreme, were highly exaggerated events taken well out of context. Most of these voices are, not surprisingly, Serbian and high-ranking UN personnel, but—ironically—many critics are from Jewish quarters as well (Mark Chmiel, Petar Pasic, Lewis MacKenzie, Edward Herman). When you sit atop any hierarchy, it may be difficult to accept anything less than that as being worthy of measure.
Drawing back to the film, we can apply Lord David Owen's heart-felt advice to Hanka and Selma at the beginning of the segment. Selma doesn't sleep, so at least she isn't going to fall into a dream that, with the world watching, the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated in Bosnia by the dueling agents of Serbia and Croatia would be stopped. This may seem a stretch, to equate the comment from Lord Owen with Selma's insomnia, but it cannot be underestimated the effect such advice had upon the conscious and psyche of the Bosnian population: to have an official from what is seen as the world's great protectors (or, if not protectors, at least arbitrators) tell you that your plight and exile is your own problem and quit complaining about it.
Where then, on our scale model, does September 11 rank? Thousands of dead and wounded, all in a few hours time? Is it possible to consider the scale of human devastation in terms only based on the number of bodies left in its wake? In that case which is worse, the Virginia Tech shooting or the Columbine High School shooting? What about Charles Whitman and the University of Texas shooting in 1966? Who do we vote off the list? Who moves on to the finals and awarded the title of The Worst Shooting in History? Numbers and statistics are not governors of this province. Circumstances and aftermath play a factor. As does good PR work.
So at the end of all this, aside from details of quantification and examples of the evil that spills out from the human soul, what have we learned? After witnessing eleven viewpoints of a single day and the connection with the events in New York and Washington, D.C. (we still seem to forget about that fourth plane in all of this mess) to circumstances in vastly different parts of the world, I have come to wonder: What 11'9"01 story would each of us have to tell? What would I, personally, be able to say about that day; would my perspective resonate on some unseen level deeper than mere facts and statistics and yawping rants atop a soap box in the train stations of the world?
What stories will remain untold in the recorded history of these events?
Danis Tanović wants us to hear at least one of them.
~•~
ENG 290 (491)
November 12, 2009
Don't Call it a Genocide
(or: How to Quantify Terrorist Acts and Mass Murder
in Eleven Minutes, Nine Seconds, and One Frame)
(or: How to Quantify Terrorist Acts and Mass Murder
in Eleven Minutes, Nine Seconds, and One Frame)
You who wronged a simple man
Bursting into laughter at the crime [...]
DO NOT FEEL SAFE. The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.
―Czesław Miłosz, 1950
Bursting into laughter at the crime [...]
DO NOT FEEL SAFE. The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.
―Czesław Miłosz, 1950
A duality runs through the "Bosnia-Herzegovina" (Danis Tanović) segment from the film 11'09"01 (Alain Brigand, 2002) of what is shown by the visual cues provided and what can be seen by their showing. As a whole, this narrative unfolds along two historical timelines. One is the history in which the story is obviously framed—being part of a series of stories concerning the U.S. tragedy involving hijacked planes on September 11, 2001. But there is an untold history in this film that lies buried with more than 7,000 bodies in several mass graves in the municipality of Srebrenica. As the film's author, Tanović does little to go digging for the identities of those people murdered a half-dozen years previous to what he presents to us in this narrative, yet their presence permeates the story like the stench of genocide that remains in the soil long after the glossy words of ambassadors and politicians freshen their spring gardens. Instead of preaching from a grand pulpit, Tanović whispers quietly to us about a single day in, principally, one individual's life, half a world away from New York City and the Two Towers of the World trade Center. That day is, of course, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and that person is a displaced widow or daughter in her mid-twenties, Selma—refugee from the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.
When this segment opens, Selma lays in bed not sleeping as her clock ticks away the final seconds before midnight and the first moments of September 11. Awake in the dark, the moments of her life literally tick away. She holds a red scarf and measures out lengths of it like Clotho might measure threads of a person's fate; Selma lies in stasis, the long night looming in front of her just as the emptiness pulls from behind her, seen in the small family photo—in which the red scarf she now holds in bed can be seen—propped on the shelf next to the clock, ticking claim on each passing second, marking each empty moment. The contrast between the people in the photograph (ostensibly Selma and her family) and the present surroundings is stark and immediately evidence in the mere atmosphere of the scene. The photograph depicts a sunny day in a lush forest (even though a harsh shadow blots out a large section of the photo), while the room in which Selma lies is dark, which shifting shadows in curious splashes of light. When morning does arrive, Selma crouches next to the river near her house, hugging her legs to her chest in a posture of defensive protection and hollow comfort. She wears the red scarf over her head in Islamic fashion. The river, untethered by any sense of past trauma and never clinging to anything other than its own endless moment, rushes downstream.
Nadim, a legless man in a wheelchair who keeps a sense of humor about the blisters on his feet and his need for new shoes, drops by the house looking for Selma. Here then, are several examples of duality in one portion of the scene. A man who, by some perspectives, is the worst off of our three characters, but injects the only shades of humor in the segment. Nadim also represents the duality of change inherent in the aftermath of war, shown when he replies to Hanka telling him that instead of yelling for Selma as he did, why can't he use the doorbell: "Lower it and I will," he tells her. Life has changed for him and the simple act of reaching a doorbell is beyond his current faculties; the world can't and isn't going to change for him, just as he is never going to have his own legs to stand on. Nadim banters with Hanka (whom we can take to be Selma's mother, but could as well be her aunt or even someone now kindred only due to circumstance), and hears that neither of the women slept last night—"It's always like this on the 11th"—he refuses the common display of courtesy, being invited to coffee, and leaves a bag of "creams and lipstick" for Selma and Hanka to share between them. This bag of relief items seems not only ridiculous to be given to a man, but perhaps pathetic to be given to women survivors of a massacre. A way of helping them stay pretty even in these remarkable times of murderous horror.
Hanka finds Selma at home and lectures her about still living out of boxes six years after. "After" exactly what is part of the untold history Tanović isn't explicitly telling us. Selma gives a response that has probably been said a hundred times before: she'll unpack when she gets home (obviously intent on going somewhere). Hanka ruminates about "home" and how they'll never be able to go "home." She speaks of someone's house being burned again and if that still happens, how would she and Selma being able to survive. Even though the two women live in an apparently comfortable house and have their immediate needs taken care of, they are not home, having being driven from it six years before and still unable to return. Hanka gives Selma the bag of make-up and goes to make coffee. Selma stands where her reflection is cast into a broken mirror. Again several dualities are on display. The mirror can only reflect what is on the outside, and physically, there seems to be nothing to indicate the trauma of the past Selma has experienced. And like the director veiling history from us as viewers, the mirror does not show the scars Selma hauls around with her like the boxes of things from a past that can never be reached again.
Selma has use of the make-up, albeit not in the manner it had been intended. Checking the color of the lipstick by lining some on her hand, Selma uses it to write her protest sign. The people of Bosnia showed a remarkable ability to invent placebo utilities any given item may be subject to in a region torn by strife and warfare (Zlatko Dizdarević). What would otherwise be an innocuous tube of make-up has been transformed into a vehicle of political statement—a cry from the depths of resigned despair. Completing he placard, Selma heads off, as she apparently does on the 11th of every month, to the town square to take part in a monthly protest. En route, she encounters Nadim in his wheelchair, who accompanies her there. Nadim is the only male represented in this segment, although being legless, as he himself might joke, he's only half the man he used to be. Nadim's singular presence examples some small fragment of that untold history about to be revealed to us.
The voice of the radio is already heard when Selma enters the small building designated as the "Association of the Women of Srebrenica." Here, with this piece of evidence Tanović offers, our dual histories merge, clash, and meld: the radio tells of planes crashing into the Two Towers and another one hitting the Pentagon. This is history with which we are familiar. The images we are not shown (hearing this only on a radio) are easy for us to conjure. It is a public history. The weighted history that suffocates the women in the room listening to the radio is a very private history, without regard to how many—or how few—directly share it.
Selma sits down in the room of Muslim women (each wears a colored scarf as a hijab) and listens to part of the news about the terrorist attack in the United States. "After this, we can expect anything," the radio says. "It's total confusion … Pictures coming in from New York show people running in the street… There are many wounded, blood everywhere, everyone is covered in dust." There is little movement or reaction from the women in the room. There faces blank, their hands completely still. After their experiences, they've long ago learned to expect anything.
Selma looks to the back wall of the room, where photographs, maps, and other documents recall their collective tragedy. Included on the wall's montage is a photograph like the one she has at home, next to her clock. Her family; mother, father, and brother. Given that Hanka is her mother, she has lost the males in her family. Just as the radio says, "The number of victims isn't known," Selma stands and says she's going to go to the square for the demonstration, the other women look at her carefully. "Sit down," the woman next to her says, "There'll be no demonstration today. You can hear what's happened." "Exactly," Selma replies, "We have to demonstrate. For them and for us!" The other woman sighs, resigned to listening to the radio tell of the tragedy fallen upon the United States. Selma pauses at the door before stepping outside, passing a large sign with a date and bold red letters: "12.07.95 DA SE NE ZABORAVI." This is the final clue Tanović reveals to us, reinforcing what we already knew: these women are survivors of the Srebrenica Genocide.
The segment closes with Selma going to the square with her three linked protest flags. She is joined only by Nadim, who attaches the end of the flags to his wheelchair and rolls out, a marching line of two people (one of them cripple). As they walk, Hanka appears behind Selma, the other women lined up behind Hanka. They tie their flags together and walk across the vacant town square, in silence. Their protest has become representative of dual tragedies. But just because people were killed by terrorism in the far-off land of New York City, the women of Srebrenica remain alive with their memories and pain.
It is crucial to understand that at the moment Selma stood up in the room of women, the radio made reference towards the number of people dead. This brings to the fore that quantifying the devastation is the basis for classification of a tragedy. The sheer number of dead and wounded gives credence to how much more terrible a particular event may be in comparison to others. This again brings us to the duality within this narrative. On one hand, these women listening to their single radio in an emptied small town in eastern Bosnia have survived a massacre that, when not being denied as to ever happening, is listed by some accounts as the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II. A fact itself which immediately conjures the duality of indirect reference to non-European massacres which might include the systematic mass murders perpetrated by the regimes of Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Hutus—to name but a trio out of several hundred post-WWII examples—and the direct reference to quantifying tragedy into some sort of hierarchical scale.
And using such a scale as our model for this comparison (inadequate though it is), it becomes clearer what these women of Srebrenica have survived. Having been refugees in a designated "safe area" under the protection of the UN, they had their families devastated with Bosnian Serbs systematically murdered all males without any interference from the protecting UN forces. The quantifiers involved place the figure between 6,000 and 8,500 men killed over a period of five days, culminating with the night of July 11, 1995. Srebrenica is certainly one of three jewels in the crown of UN relations involving Bosnia. The first could be heard as early as August of 1993, when the British ambassador, Lord David Owen, stood on the tarmac of the militarily-controlled Sarajevo International Airport and offered words of advice to the besieged Sarajevans, "Don't, don't, don't live under this dream that the West is going to come in and sort this problem out. Don't dream dreams." The third jewel wouldn't come until more than a decade later when, in February 2007, the International Court of Justice ruled that Bosnia had not suffered through a "genocide" (Vesna Peric Zimonjic, Jan Willem Honig). The figures just weren't enough to quantify the term.
Another parallel becomes evident and—among many historians, scholars, and interested parties—somewhat more tenuous. This parallel draws a connection between the Bosnian Massacres (we aren't allowed to use the term "genocide" now) and the Jewish Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis. And like the Holocaust, there are many prominent (and not-so-prominent) voices of denial that many of the Bosnian Massacres never occurred, or, at some extreme, were highly exaggerated events taken well out of context. Most of these voices are, not surprisingly, Serbian and high-ranking UN personnel, but—ironically—many critics are from Jewish quarters as well (Mark Chmiel, Petar Pasic, Lewis MacKenzie, Edward Herman). When you sit atop any hierarchy, it may be difficult to accept anything less than that as being worthy of measure.
Drawing back to the film, we can apply Lord David Owen's heart-felt advice to Hanka and Selma at the beginning of the segment. Selma doesn't sleep, so at least she isn't going to fall into a dream that, with the world watching, the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated in Bosnia by the dueling agents of Serbia and Croatia would be stopped. This may seem a stretch, to equate the comment from Lord Owen with Selma's insomnia, but it cannot be underestimated the effect such advice had upon the conscious and psyche of the Bosnian population: to have an official from what is seen as the world's great protectors (or, if not protectors, at least arbitrators) tell you that your plight and exile is your own problem and quit complaining about it.
Where then, on our scale model, does September 11 rank? Thousands of dead and wounded, all in a few hours time? Is it possible to consider the scale of human devastation in terms only based on the number of bodies left in its wake? In that case which is worse, the Virginia Tech shooting or the Columbine High School shooting? What about Charles Whitman and the University of Texas shooting in 1966? Who do we vote off the list? Who moves on to the finals and awarded the title of The Worst Shooting in History? Numbers and statistics are not governors of this province. Circumstances and aftermath play a factor. As does good PR work.
So at the end of all this, aside from details of quantification and examples of the evil that spills out from the human soul, what have we learned? After witnessing eleven viewpoints of a single day and the connection with the events in New York and Washington, D.C. (we still seem to forget about that fourth plane in all of this mess) to circumstances in vastly different parts of the world, I have come to wonder: What 11'9"01 story would each of us have to tell? What would I, personally, be able to say about that day; would my perspective resonate on some unseen level deeper than mere facts and statistics and yawping rants atop a soap box in the train stations of the world?
What stories will remain untold in the recorded history of these events?
Danis Tanović wants us to hear at least one of them.
•
"Bosnia-Herzegovina." Dir. Danis Tanović. 11'09"01.
· • ·
Works Cited
"Bosnia-Herzegovina." Dir. Danis Tanović. 11'09"01.
Empire Pictures, Inc., 2003. DVD.
Chmiel, Mark. Elie Wiesel and the politics ofmoral leadership.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
2001. Print.
Dizdarević, Zlatko. Sarajevo: A War Journal.2001. Print.
Fromm International, 1993. Print.
Herman, Edward. "The Politics of theSrebrenica Massacre."
Honig, Jan Willem, and Norbert Both.Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime.
London: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.
MacKenzie, Lewis. "Globe and Mail:London: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.
The real story behind Srebrenica."
Pasic, Petar. "Serbs did not commit genocide:Interview with Dr. Milan Bulajic."
Srpska Mreza—Serbian Network.
Srpska Mreza, 20 May 2005.
Web. 2 Nov. 2009.
Miłosz, Czesław. "You Who Wronged." Światło dzienne.Srpska Mreza—Serbian Network.
Srpska Mreza, 20 May 2005.
Web. 2 Nov. 2009.
Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1953. Print.
Zimonjic, Vesna Peric. "UN court rulesSerbia did not commit genocide in Bosnia."
The Independent.
Independent News and Media Limited,
27 Feb. 2007. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.
The Independent.
Independent News and Media Limited,
27 Feb. 2007. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.
· • ·
Sometimes, A Hat Is Just A Hat
The directions for this assignment were to write a purely textual analysis paper on Miller's Crossing. Then write a critical response paper to your own analysis.
It was an identical assignment I had for Reading Popular Culture class (same professor), the difference is that the film class understood the assignment completely. The pop culture class bumbled and stumbled and fumbled around in the dark looking for comprehension of that vastly complicated instruction for the assignment. Write an analysis paper on a text. Then write a critical response to your own work.
Common sense ain't often common, and for some folks, simple directions ain't so easy to understand.
~•~
(Essay: 2nd/Response 1st draft)
ENG 317
November 10, 2009
Essay & Response 2: Miller's Crossing
Almost an hour into Miller's Crossing (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1990) we encounter the only scene in the film where a hat of some kind is not visibly represented. Yet even in being physically absent within the frame of what is seen, hats—or at least one hat—still play(s) a crucial, an integral, part of what takes place between Tom Reagan and Verna Bernbaum (Gabriel Byrne and Marcia Gay Hardin) at this point.
The scene opens in Tom's apartment. Wearing suspenders over his undershirt, Tom sits hunched forward on the edge of his bed smoking a cigarette. A (presumably empty) flask of whiskey sits on a small stand nearby. Through stain-yellowed lace curtains the sky outside lightens with dawn. The telephone rings and Tom answers it as though he's been waiting for it to ring. His side of the conversation is sparse and seemingly uninformative: "Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Where? Okay." He hangs up the phone and pulls the chain to turn on the bedside lamp next to the telephone. Verna stirs in the bed, asking if he's been up all night and what he's chewing over. Tom replies with a comment about a dream he had once. A dream about his hat.
Tom describes his dream to Verna; it's a scene we've already witnessed. In the opening credits of the film the camera looks up towards the sky through the limbs of a forest of pine trees. Without context as to where this forest is or why there is a sudden—seemingly disconnected—shift from urban gangster film and this rural forest, we move as if walking slowly through the trees. Then, cutting to a view from ground-level, a hat falls to the leaf-covered path. The hat is picked up by the wind and swept further along the path away from us, disappearing from view as the opening credits fade out. Only later do we learn that this forest path is the eponymous Miller's Crossing, a remote place where the criminal henchlings take people to be killed.
Verna's response to hearing Tom's dream is somewhat Freudian in nature, in that she assumes a conclusion that is based on stereotypical ideas of what happens in dreams and that symbolism holds sway no matter what the context. When she hears Tom tell her that, in his dream, his hat blew off his head while he was walking in the woods, she interrupts saying, "And you chased it, right? You ran and ran and you finally caught up to it and picked it up but it wasn't a hat anymore. It had changed into somethin' else—somethin' wonderful."
Tom berates Verna's interpretation, almost as if scolding her for her fanciful ideas, "No, it stayed a hat..." He gets up abruptly and starts getting dressed. His demeanor has quickly shifted —as if at the drop of a hat—from quiet rumination to aggravation. We can deduce that the phone call was asking him to meet someone and now he must go throw his hat into the ring. But in this narrative of gambling against double-double-crosses, Tom Reagan plays all angles. He collects as many secrets as he can (keeping them under his hat) and tells others, like Verna, only as much as they need to know; only sharing enough necessary details to get the information he needs. And in this conversation with Verna, Tom continues his habit of talking through his hat.
He asks her where her brother Bernie is—the double-dealing source of the current downward spiral of trouble between crime bosses in this corrupt town—telling her that since Bernie isn't protected anymore, Tom should warn Bernie to split town. Of course, the reason Bernie isn't protected anymore is because of Verna and Tom betraying Leo with their volatile hidden affair.
The banter between Tom and Verna is filled with sharped quips and untold history. Just the sort of hard-boiled dialogue that distinctly marks the noir genre of gangster films Miller's Crossing mimics, draws itself from, and, in many ways, satirizes and contradicts. This scene can be held as a microcosm of the entire film—of the entire genre in its way—filled with variations on the traits and clichés of film noir. The dingy apartment of a down-on-his-luck boozing gambler who's having an affair with his boss's vampy girlfriend; the constant swirl of cigarette smoke; the barbed witty comments between characters; ambiguous motives that form only certain pieces of the puzzle the viewer is invited to figure out but will never fully understand because of the gaps between the information given and the information withheld. And, of course, the hats.
When watching the archetypical film noir movie, a single line of summary could suffice for the entire genre: "I think the man in the hat did something terrible" (The Big Chill, Lawrence Kasden, 1983). Taking that as being true (at least for Miller's Crossing), it becomes ultimately significant that this scene in the middle of the film is glaring empty of any visual hats is itself centered on the talk of a dream in which a hat is lost. The connection between the opening credits (which evidently portray Tom's dream of his hat blowing away in the woods—down a path he will later walk on two separate occasions—once to kill a man ad then again when he is almost certainly going to be killed; both times the expected murder is avoided by a double-cross) and this scene must not be forgotten, bridged, in a way, by the scene following the opening credits, in which Tom awakens from a drunken stupor with his hat missing.
At the close of this scene, Tom—who is already plotting how to play the next series of angles he's been given via the information Verna gives him about Bernie—stares coldly at Verna as she voices a statement that displays the ethically ambiguous nature that pervades Miller's Crossing, "The two of us, we're just about bad enough to deserve each other." As if rationalizing the nature of his own actions—holding himself to a set of moral ideals reserved exclusively for himself—Tom replies with the opened ended question, "Are we…?" Of course, Verna thinks so and answers the question accordingly. But Tom disagrees, and his almost-righteous certainty leads us as witnesses to this tragicomedy of betrayal to remain unsure of what moral and ethical principals are at work here, and, perhaps, where his hat is.
Ayto, John, comp.
Miller's Crossing. Dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
Perf. Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney,
Marcia Gay Hardin, John Turturro.
20th Century Fox, 1990. DVD.
· • ·
It was an identical assignment I had for Reading Popular Culture class (same professor), the difference is that the film class understood the assignment completely. The pop culture class bumbled and stumbled and fumbled around in the dark looking for comprehension of that vastly complicated instruction for the assignment. Write an analysis paper on a text. Then write a critical response to your own work.
Common sense ain't often common, and for some folks, simple directions ain't so easy to understand.
~•~
(Essay: 2nd/Response 1st draft)
ENG 317
November 10, 2009
Essay & Response 2: Miller's Crossing
Sometimes, A Hat Is Just A Hat
Nothing more foolish than a man chasin' his hat.
―Tom Reagan
―Tom Reagan
Almost an hour into Miller's Crossing (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1990) we encounter the only scene in the film where a hat of some kind is not visibly represented. Yet even in being physically absent within the frame of what is seen, hats—or at least one hat—still play(s) a crucial, an integral, part of what takes place between Tom Reagan and Verna Bernbaum (Gabriel Byrne and Marcia Gay Hardin) at this point.
The scene opens in Tom's apartment. Wearing suspenders over his undershirt, Tom sits hunched forward on the edge of his bed smoking a cigarette. A (presumably empty) flask of whiskey sits on a small stand nearby. Through stain-yellowed lace curtains the sky outside lightens with dawn. The telephone rings and Tom answers it as though he's been waiting for it to ring. His side of the conversation is sparse and seemingly uninformative: "Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Where? Okay." He hangs up the phone and pulls the chain to turn on the bedside lamp next to the telephone. Verna stirs in the bed, asking if he's been up all night and what he's chewing over. Tom replies with a comment about a dream he had once. A dream about his hat.
Tom describes his dream to Verna; it's a scene we've already witnessed. In the opening credits of the film the camera looks up towards the sky through the limbs of a forest of pine trees. Without context as to where this forest is or why there is a sudden—seemingly disconnected—shift from urban gangster film and this rural forest, we move as if walking slowly through the trees. Then, cutting to a view from ground-level, a hat falls to the leaf-covered path. The hat is picked up by the wind and swept further along the path away from us, disappearing from view as the opening credits fade out. Only later do we learn that this forest path is the eponymous Miller's Crossing, a remote place where the criminal henchlings take people to be killed.
Verna's response to hearing Tom's dream is somewhat Freudian in nature, in that she assumes a conclusion that is based on stereotypical ideas of what happens in dreams and that symbolism holds sway no matter what the context. When she hears Tom tell her that, in his dream, his hat blew off his head while he was walking in the woods, she interrupts saying, "And you chased it, right? You ran and ran and you finally caught up to it and picked it up but it wasn't a hat anymore. It had changed into somethin' else—somethin' wonderful."
Tom berates Verna's interpretation, almost as if scolding her for her fanciful ideas, "No, it stayed a hat..." He gets up abruptly and starts getting dressed. His demeanor has quickly shifted —as if at the drop of a hat—from quiet rumination to aggravation. We can deduce that the phone call was asking him to meet someone and now he must go throw his hat into the ring. But in this narrative of gambling against double-double-crosses, Tom Reagan plays all angles. He collects as many secrets as he can (keeping them under his hat) and tells others, like Verna, only as much as they need to know; only sharing enough necessary details to get the information he needs. And in this conversation with Verna, Tom continues his habit of talking through his hat.
He asks her where her brother Bernie is—the double-dealing source of the current downward spiral of trouble between crime bosses in this corrupt town—telling her that since Bernie isn't protected anymore, Tom should warn Bernie to split town. Of course, the reason Bernie isn't protected anymore is because of Verna and Tom betraying Leo with their volatile hidden affair.
The banter between Tom and Verna is filled with sharped quips and untold history. Just the sort of hard-boiled dialogue that distinctly marks the noir genre of gangster films Miller's Crossing mimics, draws itself from, and, in many ways, satirizes and contradicts. This scene can be held as a microcosm of the entire film—of the entire genre in its way—filled with variations on the traits and clichés of film noir. The dingy apartment of a down-on-his-luck boozing gambler who's having an affair with his boss's vampy girlfriend; the constant swirl of cigarette smoke; the barbed witty comments between characters; ambiguous motives that form only certain pieces of the puzzle the viewer is invited to figure out but will never fully understand because of the gaps between the information given and the information withheld. And, of course, the hats.
When watching the archetypical film noir movie, a single line of summary could suffice for the entire genre: "I think the man in the hat did something terrible" (The Big Chill, Lawrence Kasden, 1983). Taking that as being true (at least for Miller's Crossing), it becomes ultimately significant that this scene in the middle of the film is glaring empty of any visual hats is itself centered on the talk of a dream in which a hat is lost. The connection between the opening credits (which evidently portray Tom's dream of his hat blowing away in the woods—down a path he will later walk on two separate occasions—once to kill a man ad then again when he is almost certainly going to be killed; both times the expected murder is avoided by a double-cross) and this scene must not be forgotten, bridged, in a way, by the scene following the opening credits, in which Tom awakens from a drunken stupor with his hat missing.
At the close of this scene, Tom—who is already plotting how to play the next series of angles he's been given via the information Verna gives him about Bernie—stares coldly at Verna as she voices a statement that displays the ethically ambiguous nature that pervades Miller's Crossing, "The two of us, we're just about bad enough to deserve each other." As if rationalizing the nature of his own actions—holding himself to a set of moral ideals reserved exclusively for himself—Tom replies with the opened ended question, "Are we…?" Of course, Verna thinks so and answers the question accordingly. But Tom disagrees, and his almost-righteous certainty leads us as witnesses to this tragicomedy of betrayal to remain unsure of what moral and ethical principals are at work here, and, perhaps, where his hat is.
Response
As in almost any gangster or film noir movie, hats play a significant role in setting the tone, creating atmosphere, and casting a particular style to the visual narrative. In the Coen brothers film Miller's Crossing (1990) this tone atmosphere and style involving hats is taken to the extreme.
The scenes discussed in "Sometimes, A Hat Is Just A Hat" (Barrett, 2009) exemplify how even in missing from visual context, the hat is an integral part of the story being told. This then unequivocally demonstrates the symbology involved in what a hat can represent, as well as the importance of meaning placed upon its presence, even if that is a presence via absentia.
When Verna asks Tom what he's chewing over, he tells her he's thinking about a dream he had once. This comment, follow one about having been up all night, inherently implies that the dream he relates to her was one that happened some time ago. It's still in his head some days, if not weeks, later. Powerful imagery to linger in his conscious mind for so long. Taking visual cues from the story, the dream he describes is a scene we witnessed with the opening credits of the film, and subliminally connects us to the importance not only of hats in general, but more specifically, each individual man's hat as being something crucial of himself.
This idea plays out several times in the film. When Tom visits the boxer Drop Johnson, he finds a hat on a table that is far too small to fit Drop, thus the hat left behind becomes more than a hat on a table, it becomes crucial evidence of a double cross in the works. By Tom discovering it, the hat, being citing as too small for Drop, also comes to represent the emasculation of the hat's owner—most likely Bernie Bernbaum. Later, when Bernie himself shows up for the second time at Tom's apartment, his mere presence being a threat to Tom, hats come to represent power and protection. While Bernie is seated in the apartment, his hat rests on his knee as if it were some sort of shield or royal crest. Tom sits across from him in his long underwear and suspenders, almost naked in his hatless state. When Bernie leaves, Tom—only one of two instances in the film where he's been caught off-guard or is defenseless—leaps into action, grabbing—not his shoes and coat, but his pistol and his hat. He short-cuts his way downstairs trying to get the drop on Bernie, but trips and falls to the floor, losing his firearm and hat in the process. Walking past a prostrate and hatlessly naked Tom, Bernie has all the power in this scene.
Towards the end of the film, when secrets are slipping out from the hats they've been tucked under, Verna meets with Tom strolling along a sidewalk in the rain. She asks him what he's doing. "Walking…" he replies curtly. "Don't let on more than you have to," Verna says, obviously frustrated. Tom deigns to elucidate this one time. "…In the rain." When they pause a moment, the rain pelts his hat, rivulets running off as if it can wash clean the secrets and blood causes by the numerous betrayals, lies, and double-crosses we've witnessed in this film. But of course, there is no absolution for this is gangster film noir, and in this scene Tom's hat merely serves to keep the rain off.
As in almost any gangster or film noir movie, hats play a significant role in setting the tone, creating atmosphere, and casting a particular style to the visual narrative. In the Coen brothers film Miller's Crossing (1990) this tone atmosphere and style involving hats is taken to the extreme.
The scenes discussed in "Sometimes, A Hat Is Just A Hat" (Barrett, 2009) exemplify how even in missing from visual context, the hat is an integral part of the story being told. This then unequivocally demonstrates the symbology involved in what a hat can represent, as well as the importance of meaning placed upon its presence, even if that is a presence via absentia.
When Verna asks Tom what he's chewing over, he tells her he's thinking about a dream he had once. This comment, follow one about having been up all night, inherently implies that the dream he relates to her was one that happened some time ago. It's still in his head some days, if not weeks, later. Powerful imagery to linger in his conscious mind for so long. Taking visual cues from the story, the dream he describes is a scene we witnessed with the opening credits of the film, and subliminally connects us to the importance not only of hats in general, but more specifically, each individual man's hat as being something crucial of himself.
This idea plays out several times in the film. When Tom visits the boxer Drop Johnson, he finds a hat on a table that is far too small to fit Drop, thus the hat left behind becomes more than a hat on a table, it becomes crucial evidence of a double cross in the works. By Tom discovering it, the hat, being citing as too small for Drop, also comes to represent the emasculation of the hat's owner—most likely Bernie Bernbaum. Later, when Bernie himself shows up for the second time at Tom's apartment, his mere presence being a threat to Tom, hats come to represent power and protection. While Bernie is seated in the apartment, his hat rests on his knee as if it were some sort of shield or royal crest. Tom sits across from him in his long underwear and suspenders, almost naked in his hatless state. When Bernie leaves, Tom—only one of two instances in the film where he's been caught off-guard or is defenseless—leaps into action, grabbing—not his shoes and coat, but his pistol and his hat. He short-cuts his way downstairs trying to get the drop on Bernie, but trips and falls to the floor, losing his firearm and hat in the process. Walking past a prostrate and hatlessly naked Tom, Bernie has all the power in this scene.
Towards the end of the film, when secrets are slipping out from the hats they've been tucked under, Verna meets with Tom strolling along a sidewalk in the rain. She asks him what he's doing. "Walking…" he replies curtly. "Don't let on more than you have to," Verna says, obviously frustrated. Tom deigns to elucidate this one time. "…In the rain." When they pause a moment, the rain pelts his hat, rivulets running off as if it can wash clean the secrets and blood causes by the numerous betrayals, lies, and double-crosses we've witnessed in this film. But of course, there is no absolution for this is gangster film noir, and in this scene Tom's hat merely serves to keep the rain off.
Works Cited
Ayto, John, comp.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
17th ed. London: Collins Reference, 2006. Print.
Coen, Joel, and Ethan Coen."Miller's Crossing Screenplay."
Screenplays For You.
Kinozol. Web. 2 Nov. 2009..
Kinozol. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.
· • ·
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