Adrienne Rich on Art and Politics

In 1997, Adrienne Rich was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by (as you could probably guess from the name of the medal) the National Endowment for the Arts (I guess it's a thing they do every year). Rich was no doubt due this honor: not only has she has been writing brilliant poetry since the early 50s, but as a lesbian, has also served as a strong, consistent voice for the oppressed and marginalized--even during the 50s and early 60s, at the height of American homogeneity.

But Rich had serious reservations about accepting an award from the Clinton administration, whose "cynical politics" had only exacerbated the "brutal impact of racial and economic injustice in our country." So she refused the award and sent this letter to the NEA (note the cc at the end):

July 3, 1997

Jane Alexander

The National Endowment for the Arts, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington 20506

Dear Jane Alexander,

I just spoke with a young man from your office, who informed me that I had been chosen to be one of twelve recipients of the National Medal for the Arts at a ceremony at the White House in the fall. I told him at once that I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration. I want to clarify to you what I meant by my refusal.

Anyone familiar with my work from the early Sixties on knows that I believe in art's social presence--as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright. In my lifetime I have seen the space for the arts opened by movements for social justice, the power of art to break despair. Over the past two decades I have witnessed the increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice in our country.

There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art--in my own case the art of poetry--means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A President cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored. I know you have been engaged in a serious and disheartening struggle to save government funding for the arts, against those whose fear and suspicion of art is nakedly repressive. In the end, I don't think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist. I could not participate in a ritual which would feel so hypocritical to me.

Sincerely,

Adrienne Rich

cc: President Clinton

Rich's letter raises an important question about the nature of art and politics. It's a debate I often find myself having particularly with friends who write (or hope to) for a living. They will often argue that art should somehow be above politics--that art explicitly directed at political issues might not be art at all.

So does that rule out John Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel" or Arthur Miller's "The Crucible"? Few would argue that David Simon and Edward Burns' "The Corner" is explicitly political in nature, but it's hard to walk away from that book (or mini-series I suppose) without seriously questioning the dysfunctional institutions that more or less determine how this country works. Maybe the act of reading literature itself--an act that requires looking at the world and human behavior from various perspective, times, and places--is inherently political.

I happen to agree with Adrienne Rich and admire her for challenging the concept of art as decoration for the "dinner table of power which holds it hostage." Artists don't need to have an agenda in mind when they work (in fact, they probably shouldn't), but they should engage issues--at whatever depth is appropriate depending on the situation--that do matter in some way outside the act of creation itself. Otherwise, is there a point? Unless there doesn't need to be a point--or there can never be a point, even if you want one--but I'll save my post about postmodernism for another day.

(Adrienne Rich)

Resuscitating "Stories from Suburbia"

I realize my last post was well over a year ago (something lame about my favorite movies of 2010) and before that I was posting once a month (at the most), but I've recently felt compelled to bring this blog back to life.

As I scrolled through pages and pages of old entries in order to remind myself of why this blog exists/existed in the first place, I came to a startling realization: I have no idea. The contributors to this blog will write about anything they find interesting at the moment. This usually breaks down to several large categories (movies, literature, history, video games) but can also include commentary (usually humorous) about a current event (like Dommy's collection of responses to the Northeast earthquake from last August or David's depiction of WATSON competing on Jeopardy!).

Ultimately, the discussion going on here is as random and flexible as a discussion you might have with some college buddies over pancakes and hash browns at a dingy, 24 hour diner on New Jersey's route 130 (after a night of drinking, of course). Feel free to join the conversation (as long as you're not SPAMing us with Asian porn).

(A photo of Route 130 North I found on Flickr. Courtesy of Dougtone's photostream)

Philly Responds to Earthquake

One of the most amusing, frustrating, embarrassing, offensive, and witty parts of philly.com are the responses left by fellow readers. Between Eagles games and flash mob attacks, there's enough political slogans, racist screeds, and off-beat comments for any town, let alone the fifth largest city in the U.S. The almost unique experience of Tuesday's earthquake elicited emotional responses in the street, and that Philly flavor came to the website almost as soon as the story broke there. Here are some of the best/worst/stupidest/funniest - no editing, just copy and pasted for your pleasure!

First time I've ever felt one. Damn near shat myself.

I got up screaming and run into metal pipe. I'm ok though, just my nose is squished.

I felt it and thought it was my cat clawing my bed.

I thought My bed had turned into a motel bed.

Felt it in my pants!

Was making love to my woman...she said she felt the earth move...I said be quiet and get busy.

that was me, making love to the ladies

I felt it while taking a dump. At first I thought it was the big beef and bean burrito I had for lunch!!!

The end is near! Y'all need to hide your kids, hide your wife hide your husband!

IS THERE GOING TO BE A TSUNAMI? I FELT IT OUT HERE IN WILDWOOD!

All these years of expecting California to fall into the ocean...maybe it will be Jersey? Would make the commute to the beach much nicer.

Gov Christie tripped and fell, but he's ok.

I heard Gov Christie fell off his bed

That was no earthquake, just Ackerman slamming her big bag of cash on the desk of a local bank.

Did someone already say that the earthquake was actually Arlene Ackerman leaving the city?

Why all the fuss? After all, Philadelphia is the Quaker City.

No Day Shall Erase You from the Memory of Time

The problems with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum have been and continue to be legion. The most recent controversy has been the planned use of a quote from Vergil's Aeneid. The quote is from Book 9, line 447:

Nulla dies umquam memori uos eximet aeuo.

No day shall erase you from the memory of time.

This is a quite touching sentiment at first sight. However, journalist and author Caroline Alexander believes that the line has been grossly misappropriated. Her argument is that the line has been taken out of its context inappropriately. The line concerns a pair of Trojan warriors, Nisus and Euryalus, who are amongst Aeneas' band of refugees resettling in Italy after the sack of Troy. The poet addresses the pair after they are killed in an ambush by native Italians. Vergil celebrates the masculine, homoerotic military virtue that brought Nisus and Euryalus to their deaths, side-by-side. Alexander finds the application to the 9/11 dead indecorous:

The central sentiment that the young men were fortunate to die together could, perhaps, at one time have been defended as a suitable commemoration of military dead who fell with their companions. To apply the same sentiment to civilians killed indiscriminately in an act of terrorism, however, is grotesque.

Yet is not appropriation the stuff of reception? Do we not pick and choose from the past and change meaning according to our present conditions, biases, and purposes? Does the original context create a static interpretation and do origins make meaning?

Nisus and Euryalus by Jean-Baptist Roman, 1827; The Louvre, Paris.

Cervantes to Melville, Parnassus to Nantucket

The Battle of Lepanto by H. Letter (?), late 16th century; National Maritime Museum, London.

I previously wrote about Miguel de Cervantes' participation in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, which pit an allied European navy against the Ottoman fleet in the waters outside Nafpaktos, Greece. Though ill that day, Cervantes led a boat of men into the battle, for which he was repaid with three bullet wounds, including one that rendered his left hand lame.

Recently I unexpectedly ran into Cervantes so far from his Spanish shores and deluded comic heroes. In Moby Dick, as Ahab's Pequod leaves the whaling port at Nantucket, Herman Melville extols the ideal man in every man, that divine spark which gives rise to the dignity of the democratic state. And there amongst the men raised aloft by the "great democratic God," I was surprised to read, is Cervantes and a reference to his injuries.

Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commoners; bear me out in it, O God! (Chapter 26)

Cervantes himself wrote about his wounds in his 1614 work Viaje del Parnaso - "Voyage to Parnassus," referring to the mountain above the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and the home of the poetic Muses. Dressed shabbily on the road to Parnassus, Cervantes meets Mercury who addresses him as "Adan de los poetas." And Mercury notices his "stumped and paupered arm."

Que, en fin, has respondido a ser soldado
antiguo y valeroso, cual lo muestra
la mano de que estás estropeado.
Bien sé que en la naval dura palestra
perdiste el movimiento de la mano
izquierda, para gloria de la diestra.

Thine is the answer of a soldier true,
Of antique glory, testified aright
To all by that maimed hand which now I view:
I know that, in the naval bloody fight,
Thy left hand shattered lost the active power
It once possessed, for the glory of the right! (Capitulo I, 211-215; trans. J.Y. Gibson)

Cervantes at Nafpaktos reaching forth his right hand.

The Perfect TV Show?

Hulu is a pretty decent site. If I had my druthers, I'd change some things (sometimes the video gets a little choppy and a month can be way too long to wait for awesome Bartleby references on "Archer").

As for the selection, it's also fairly good, containing a good selection from popular shows on different networks. But where Hulu really sets itself apart is at the bottom of the barrel: shows that remind us, "You know what? There are too many channels on TV these days."

It was in these darkest reaches of the Internet that I stumbled upon what may be the perfect television show: "Heidi Klum Hosts Seriously Funny Kids."

As far as I can tell, this show appears on the Lifetime Network (new slogan: "We're not just crappy movies... We're crappy TV!"). Aside from that fact, I know nothing about it.

Basically, here's how it works. It's a show. With kids. And Heidi Klum.

It's like "Kids Say the Darndest Things" in that Heidi interviews kids in heavily edited clips with mildly amusing results. It's like "Candid Camera" in that Heidi subjects the kids to pranks involving hidden cameras. It's like "America's Funniest Home Videos" in that throughout it there are long segments where Heidi hosts nothing while grainy home footage of toddlers talking about poop play (although there's a fairly fantastic intro in which Ms. Klum gleefully exclaims, "We're going to talk about POO!!!").

And finally, it's like "Yo Gabba Gabba" meets "Lolita" as Heidi dances suggestively with toddlers and young children in cut scenes between segments in front of a green screen and pries on kindergarteners' dating lives in too-personal-for-comfort interviews.

Through it all, Heidi Klum goes through about a dozen wardrobe changes by my count in 22 minutes. Being a studio audience member must be torture as you watch one line get delivered and then wait for makeup, wardrobe and hair to remake the supermodel.

In short, "Heidi Klum Hosts Seriously Funny Kids," or "HKHSFK," is a variety show that contains everything great TV has to offer... circa 1955.

But there's something about it that's at once disarming and hypnotic. You must watch. The kids are so socially fucked up you try to pick out which will become serial killers and which will live in their mothers' houses long after they are dead (and yes, there is overlap between these two groups). You need to see what horrificly suggestive joke will be made about little boys being players and little girls being loose.

In short, this is the perfect show. Tinkering with any aspect of it will only detract, never add to its appeal. No amount of booze can make it more non-sensical. No amount of illegal narcotics can make it more surreal.

Presumably this show was born of a contract rider in the "Project Runway" shift to Lifetime. But from there, it was crafted by the hands of gods into television's logical conclusion.

We're out of ideas; we're through the looking glass. Nothing is new. Therefore, the old must be compiled and preserved for the ages. On Hulu. And presumably on Lifetime somewhere, although God knows when.

WATSON to compete on Jeopardy!

During Alex's segment getting to know the contestants things take an unexpected turn.



WATSON learns an important lesson of the consequences of a psych-out.

(Click images to enlarge until legible)