Update On Expensive Recruits to Toronto

Where's the proof of immigrant creative equity?

In the previous blog entry, I described how in Toronto's perennial attempt to become a "world class city", Richard Florida was recruited from the US to direct University of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute.

The real world class attraction for him was the "diversity", meaning immigrants and their multiculturalism.

His convoluted, unproven, idea, on which the UofT has spent millions already, is that immigrants, especially the current type, will be part of the creative class now so necessary in the economies of countries - at least according to Florida.

The fact is that there is absolutely no empirical evidence to prove this. Toronto's high-immigrant economy has actually been on a decline, including the much touted "Hollywood North" film industry - that most creative of professions - which is losing to Vancouver, and back to the US via Detroit and Boston.

Florida talks about "20 years down the road", which is just fine with him since he is only proposing a theoretical hypothesis. After all he doesn't lose either way - right or wrong. He's just a researcher.

But, the great influx of immigrants to whom he has such an affinity - the Indians and the Chinese - started almost 15 years ago here in Toronto. So where is the data to prove, after fifteen years, that they are truly part of the "creative class"? Here is actual data from Center for Immigration Studies in the US which indicates that Asians are not the creative types Florida is banking on:

[T]he East-vs.-West pattern observed earlier for the TM* data also holds for levels of expertise, with Asians typically being hired into non-innovative jobs while more Europeans are in the types of positions that could involve innovation.
*TM stands for Talent Measure

VDARE has an infinitely informative report on the cost of mass immigration. The US has an especially unique and pressing problem of illegal immigrants. But, the report focuses on immigration in general. The YouTube accounts show that the costs, hidden and transparent, monetary and societal, are clearly negative.

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Immigration Is Our Biggest Selling Point

Toronto's "creative equity"


Just as Toronto assigned a superstar architect (by their definition) to build one of the most unsightly buildings in the city, now they've got an American, Richard Florida "rock star academic" - a term he doesn't even flinch from - to plan the city's future. His position is Director of The Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto.

TV Ontario had him for an interview - you can listen to a clip here - where he was effusively thankful for being given a chance to work in Toronto. As the interview progressed, it was clear why he made the decision to come here.

Immigrants. Which translates to: Diversity.

Yes, those ever-profitable experiments that businessmen, politicians, social scientists, and now city planners, are using to mold their vision of the future.

Florida, who declared half way that he was more of an NDPer then a Liberal, making him in the far left sliding scale of Canadian politics, mentioned the word "equity" several times. (Also here on a Charlie Rose interview in 2004). His future village is global, where everyone works in harmony - the lion next to the lamb, as imagery goes - and where everyone is creative. In fact, his most successful book is called: The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. The equity of creativity.

Florida found his ideal population in Toronto because of these factors - taken from The City of Toronto's Release of the 2006 census on ethnic origin and visible minorities

46.9% of the city of Toronto's population is visible minorities Visible minorities increased by 10.6% since 2001 and by 32% since 1996 in the the city of Toronto The GTA received 33% of visible minorities between 2001 and 2006 The top four visible minority groups in the city of Toronto are: South Asian: 12% Chinese: 11.4% Black: 8.4 % Filipino: 4.1 % Latin American: 2.6% Percentage change in visible minorities between 2001 and 2006: Latin American: + 19% Filipino: +19% South Asian: + 18% Chinese: + 9% Black: + 2%

A whole city full of experimental visible minority immigrants, where his mantra - we are all equal, we all do things equally, we are all creators - can play itself out. Florida is creating his own heaven on earth, and found just the right petri dish in Toronto. His liberal utopia is a sacrilege on the true lamb and lion story.

Isaiah 11:6

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

Maybe in the future he might consider an office in one of those shiny buildings rising up on the Ryerson Campus. After all, it is the same population group that attracted him to Toronto in the first place that's driving the Ryerson growth.

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Update On Urban Development Keeps on Going...

How Ryerson University envisions the future

Basically, it is glass, glass and more glass. (Read the blog entry here.)
The glass look planned for the downtown area on Yonge street and on campus

The plan for the Image Arts building, right, and the already constructed Centre for Computing and Engineering


Seattle Central Library
President Levy wants the new library extension to resemble the "modern" Seattle Central Library which was designed by one of those glamor architects, Rem Koolhaas of the Netherlands.

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Urban Development Keeps On Going And Going

And how universities are scrambling for the spoils
Statue of Eggerton Ryerson
Founder of Ryerson University

Ryerson University is touted as the "down-town" University of the city of Toronto. The Ryerson campus is expected to receive $210 million over 20 years to dramatically expand the campus. So far, $45 million have been promised by the provincial government. This 20-year project hopes to fund itself both through public and private monies.

A lot of this rationale for this expansion comes from increased student applications, which rose by 20% since last year, and which are expected to spiral up in the upcoming years. The school currently has about 20,000 full time students, and expects this to at least quadruple.

Since this a blog that deals with art, culture and society, I will focus on:
- Architects
- How the aesthetics of Toronto's landscape is changing for the worse
- Multiculturalism

Architects:

I don't have a great deal of respect for contemporary architects as I've outlined here, here, here, here and here.

No less than four architects are now part of the Ryerson campus expansion, with more surely to join the fray in the future. The lucrative deal between university and architects (funded by public funds and generous wealthy private donors - individual or corporate) is not to be take lightly.

Urban aesthetics:

One of my most poignant posts was when I noticed a beautiful three-storey building along Gerrard street across from the Ryerson campus proper, and decided to reproduce it in charcoal and pastel. To my dismay, about a year later, this building was being demolished to what I presumed would become a high rise building.

Well, I was right in that it would be a several-storied building. But, the ultimate irony is that it belongs to Ryerson, who built it as accommodation for its students.

Immigration:

Much of my reasoning to explain the drive for urban development and expansions comes from information provided by blogger Dispatches from the Hogtown Front, and his detailed analysis as to why Toronto's downtown skyscrapers are flourishing.

Succinctly, his point is: immigration. The city of Toronto receives about 1000,000 new immigrants, mostly from India, China and other Asian countries, a year.

And they have to live somewhere, and go to school somewhere.

The president of Ryerson, Sheldon Levy, also commented in an interview that it is immigration which will bring this unprecedented increase in student number.

Hence, Ryerson's ambitious plan to cater for this "growing number of students" by its spectacular development projects, all in all costing upwards of $200 million.

I will later on elaborate on the consequences of this urban development scheme fueled by high levels of immigrants from Asiatic countries, many of them also Muslims.

Addendum:

I should add that the most authentic, and deserving expansion comes from my alma mater department of Image Arts, where the Photography Gallery and Research Center is to house the famous Black Star Historical Black & White Photography Collection which was donated to the department. This has nothing to do with accommodating the latest governmental policy on population regulation, but on the hard work, wise connections and academic excellence which the department has fostered.

That is why universities should expand, and not as boxes to refuge students who have unexpectedly inundated their campuses.

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Musings on Music

How Wagner fooled the music world and got Hitler on his side

Whenever I find a Wagner aficionado, they tend to be of the slightly decadent, hedonistic, type who are obsessed with him. I used to wonder about this, until I started discovering some fundamental things about him.

Take his famous Tristan Chord, which he supposedly invented. Many have written words of praise for this musical invention, but note how even his admirers phrase some of their thoughts:

• Wagner actually provoked the sound or structure of musical harmony to become more predominant than its function [1]

This indicates that Wagner, for all his apparent harmonies, was actually anti-harmony. He was more into sound, rather than music. Many critics also talk about Wagner "hammering out" his music.

• As regards the symbolic meaning of the chord, one might prefer the term "confusion"[2]

Wagner was really after getting the listener under his thrall. His over-repeated, intricately woven leitmotifs, his unresolvable Tristan Chords, his hammerings and crescendos, are all about forcing, confusing and seducing the listener into his orbit.

• Arnold Schoenberg referred to Wagner’s chordal progressions in Tristan as: “phenomena of incredible adaptability and non-independence roaming, homeless, among the spheres of keys; spies reconnoitering weaknesses, to exploit them in order to create confusion, deserters for whom surrender of their own personality is an end in itself.”[3]

"homeless; reconnoitering weaknesses; create confusion; surrender their own personality." These are the words used by Schoenberg to describe Wagner's music.

• It has even been suggested that Hitler used Wagner’s treatment of the leitmotif as a springboard to write his speeches.

Form always follows function. The way your house is built - a condo, a modernist style, a southern mansion, etc... will determine how you behave (move, rest, even your manners). The same with music.

Wagner's form influenced Hitler's speeches. It wasn't just that Wagner was an anti-semite, but his very musical form, with it's homeless, reconnoitering weaknesses, creating confusion and causing surrender of one's own personality was what Hitler was after.

Evil always finds its soulmate.

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Authenticity in Movies: Update

How Charlton Heston fits in

Charlton Heston, RIP. "From my cold, dead hands."

One of the suggestions I had for an alternate title to "No Country for Old Men" was "No Country for Heroes" - old or younger.

Besides the incongruity of seeing a Chinese face in deep Texas, the other disturbing thing about "No Country for Old Men" was the sheriff's retirement while the prowling serial killer was in full force.

Since "No Country for Old Men" is only a pretend Western, I suppose this makes sense, including Tommy Lee Jones (who plays the sheriff) acquiring a progressively perplexed expression through the film.

But, I'm sure Charlton Heston would not have stood for such a film, and such a role. If there was anyone to bring back the authentic Western, and the true hero, it would have been him.

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Authenticity in Movies

More on No Country for Old Men

Film is a peculiar craft. You have to be authentic in order to be creative.

The first, subconscious realization of the inauthenticity of "No Country for Old Men", which I discussed in my article "License for Aesthetics in Wilders' Fitna", probably occurred to me at the very beginning when the bodies scattered all over the arid Texan earth didn't make me flinch. The Coen brothers tried to make it as real as possible, and as gruesome.The bodies just became props.

The second one, which disturbed me more than the first, was Llewelyn Moss' wife, Carla Jean, who looked like a Chinese, most likely mixed Caucasian/Chinese, to me. I would have expected a southern red-neck type wife, or even a Mexican (or 1/2 Mexican.) Someone who looked like she came from there.

Biographical information on Kelly MacDonalnd, who played Carla Jean, is hard to come by. But there is an ominous addition to her biography which states that her mother was a "garment industry sales executive" in Scotland. Could this mean sweat shops and oriental cheap labor?

Nonetheless, I'm convinced that Kelly MacDonald has Chinese background, and for me this was extremely jarring in the movie.

Inauthentic cast? Why? Partly, apparently MacDonald's agent was very aggressive in getting her this "American break." Partly, it is the new transcultural "anything goes" mentality of artists and filmmakers.

It seems that people get excited with breaking up norms and traditions. As though the anti-bourgeois avant-garde is now so much part of mainstream that anything which looks like it might be part of yonder years is to be dismantled.

Sheriffs in westerns used to track down killers. In "No Country for Old Men", they retire instead! Hitchcock's meticulously crafted scenes, where crime and violence is implied rather than spelled out, is now ignored and probably scorned by current filmmakers. Casting is more of an international strategy to secure future acting roles, and garner cult audiences. Good endings are held in contempt, but to leave the audience dangling (to make them think, is that the idea?) with unreconciled horror - well that is the best.

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Fitna Update

License for aesthetics in Geert Wilders' Fitna

It is a relief to get rid of that video still from the previous entry.

Here is the update I talked about.

My full article at Chronwatch.com with the first paragraph:

In an era when gratuitous violence, extreme, incredible violence, is coated malignantly with the pill of aesthetics, Geert Wilders’ Fitna has struck the right chord.

continues here.

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Fitna

License for aesthetics

Fitna: By Geert Wilders

In an era when gratuitous violence, extreme, incredible violence, is coated malignantly with the pill of aesthetics, Geert Wilders’ Fitna has struck the right chord.

Wilders decides to go for the aesthetic effect. He places the translations of the Koranic verses on sepia toned pages of the Koran itself with its beautiful script and gilded borders. His images of newspaper, film and photographic footage are placed within diffused frames in soft-focus, once again on the sepia-colored background. Even the harsh scenes of the soldier’s beheading, whose final horror Wilders spares us by substituting the images with the muffled, still bone-chilling, sounds of the gagged soldier’s last screams, are presented within blurred frames on a softened background. The music is two classical pieces by Tchaikovsky and Grieg.

[More to come]

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