From God
There is something majestic and grand about urging newly graduating students to use their knowledge for "the glory of God and the honour of your country."
This is what the chancellor of the University of Alberta traditionally advocates on graduation day.
But, a group of students of the University's Atheists and Agnostics society want to abolish this statement, saying it discriminates against them.
This is normal talk in today's modern society. I am used to it.
What interests me, though, is how knowledge is (was) so intertwined with God in traditional universities, that chancellors felt compelled to advise, or even warn, students that their knowledge be used for the glory of God, since otherwise it could (can) be used for the glory of Satan.
Surely, that was the very first sin that caused the downfall of mankind. Eating the apple from the tree of knowledge, after the explicit prohibition by God to do so, and thus aligning knowledge with Satan rather than with God.
Universities understood the adverse nature that knowledge could take, and prefaced the final days of students by alerting them to keep God's presence nearby, so that knowledge can come from His guidance rather than from his adversary.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Hard Work
And its incredible payoff
Blogger Captain Capitalism, in keeping with these financial times, is encouraging readers to go on a "financial fast" where "starting October 31st, people will have to live on less than $5 a day discretionary spending for two weeks (discretionary meaning outside the mortgage, car payment and various utility bills)."
What I found more relevant than the fast was why Captain Capitalism initiated this "holiday." He talks about his student days, when he worked very long hours for minimal pay, went to school full time, and graduated in 31/2 years. He said he went to MacDonald's only four times during his college years because it was too expensive. Just read his account which is quite exemplary.
How many times in our lives have we worked so hard, so intensely, and with such a purpose that we literally could move mountains in the process? What does it cost for us to work like that now? Are we now in a nation of entitlements, where debt and not balancing our checks, is just a matter of fact? And hard work to buy that house is no longer felt necessary in these days of borrowed money?
And yes, there have been times, during and after student life, when I feel I have worked at the level that Captain Capitalism describes, and the incredible sense of satisfaction after accomplishing the near impossible.
Blogger Captain Capitalism, in keeping with these financial times, is encouraging readers to go on a "financial fast" where "starting October 31st, people will have to live on less than $5 a day discretionary spending for two weeks (discretionary meaning outside the mortgage, car payment and various utility bills)."
What I found more relevant than the fast was why Captain Capitalism initiated this "holiday." He talks about his student days, when he worked very long hours for minimal pay, went to school full time, and graduated in 31/2 years. He said he went to MacDonald's only four times during his college years because it was too expensive. Just read his account which is quite exemplary.
How many times in our lives have we worked so hard, so intensely, and with such a purpose that we literally could move mountains in the process? What does it cost for us to work like that now? Are we now in a nation of entitlements, where debt and not balancing our checks, is just a matter of fact? And hard work to buy that house is no longer felt necessary in these days of borrowed money?
And yes, there have been times, during and after student life, when I feel I have worked at the level that Captain Capitalism describes, and the incredible sense of satisfaction after accomplishing the near impossible.
Merging a Nation
A new painting in Rideau Hall
Androgyny, by Norval Morrisseau
The ever-bold Dr. Charles McVety of the Institute for Canadian Values and President of Canada Christian College has now brought another hot button issue to the front.
He writes an article entitled: "Canada is now officially a homosexual country." And he bases this on a painting installed recently at Rideau Hall by the Governor General.
I think he would be better off using "androgynous" instead of "homosexual", following the title of the painting.
Governor General Michaelle Jean considers herself a patron of the arts. In fact, she loves art so much that she took it upon herself the arduous task of re-decorating Rideau Hall by removing paintings of seasoned British monarchs and Canadian leaders and replacing them with more contemporary art.
I have written before about Jean's insistence on bringing her own imagery (and pagan gods) to the Canadian visual landscape. And her redecoration of Rideau Hall is simply an extension of her initial project.
She has chosen now to decorate the back wall of the Rideau Hall Ballroom with the painting of Indian artist Norval Morrisseau entitled "Androgyny." Here is her quote explaining her choice:
But Jean's choice of a painting is more insidious than that. She is advocating the merging of peoples, and not just of their sexuality. Of truly making the multicultural landscape of Canada into one people.
But this multicultural merging is now obviously one big myth. Even homosexuals are distinct from heterosexuals, just as much as Haitians are different from Ukrainians.
What Jean is doing is really making a public affirmation of the Policy of Multiculturalism Canada has upheld for decades. A concerted effort to make the Other into the One: the Filipino with the Somali with the Slovakian and the Ghanaian into the One Canadian. The dream project of multiculturalists.
But, like I said, the reality is very different, as is Jean's actual behavior. However many tableaus extolling androgyny she puts up in the Ballroom, people will continue to form niches of their own kind - Somali with Somali, Filipino with Filipino, and a Haitian immigrant clearly attached to Haitian symbols.
 |
The ever-bold Dr. Charles McVety of the Institute for Canadian Values and President of Canada Christian College has now brought another hot button issue to the front.
He writes an article entitled: "Canada is now officially a homosexual country." And he bases this on a painting installed recently at Rideau Hall by the Governor General.
I think he would be better off using "androgynous" instead of "homosexual", following the title of the painting.
Governor General Michaelle Jean considers herself a patron of the arts. In fact, she loves art so much that she took it upon herself the arduous task of re-decorating Rideau Hall by removing paintings of seasoned British monarchs and Canadian leaders and replacing them with more contemporary art.
I have written before about Jean's insistence on bringing her own imagery (and pagan gods) to the Canadian visual landscape. And her redecoration of Rideau Hall is simply an extension of her initial project.
She has chosen now to decorate the back wall of the Rideau Hall Ballroom with the painting of Indian artist Norval Morrisseau entitled "Androgyny." Here is her quote explaining her choice:
The title itself, "Androgyny", is an invitation to dive into the vision [Morrisseau] had of the fusion of beings and elements, the harmony that exists between people, the complementarity of the meeting of civilizations. With "Androgyny", [Morrisseau] invites us to join the conversation and shows us that when One unites with Other, they become One.What irked Charles McVety was the "androgynous" part, and he quotes Michaelle Jean describing the Okanagan tribes concept of how a human being is formed where "finally as an elder you emerge as both male and female, a complete human, with all skills and capacities complete." He thinks this alludes to the melding of the sexes, and specifically in advocating homosexuality.
But Jean's choice of a painting is more insidious than that. She is advocating the merging of peoples, and not just of their sexuality. Of truly making the multicultural landscape of Canada into one people.
But this multicultural merging is now obviously one big myth. Even homosexuals are distinct from heterosexuals, just as much as Haitians are different from Ukrainians.
What Jean is doing is really making a public affirmation of the Policy of Multiculturalism Canada has upheld for decades. A concerted effort to make the Other into the One: the Filipino with the Somali with the Slovakian and the Ghanaian into the One Canadian. The dream project of multiculturalists.
But, like I said, the reality is very different, as is Jean's actual behavior. However many tableaus extolling androgyny she puts up in the Ballroom, people will continue to form niches of their own kind - Somali with Somali, Filipino with Filipino, and a Haitian immigrant clearly attached to Haitian symbols.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
New Post Up
Muslims entering the minds of young Canadian children
I try to update regularly "Our Changing Landscape" with information about how Muslims and Islam are slowly - stealthily - changing our environment. Recently, I found that Toronto Star journalist, Haroon Siddiqui, had a book out a couple of years ago targeted at readers 14 years and up.
One of the strategies of ideologues is to get at the children, via school systems.
I give quotes of dhimmi librarians and teachers praising this book, and promising to include it in their schools.
You can read the full entry here.
I try to update regularly "Our Changing Landscape" with information about how Muslims and Islam are slowly - stealthily - changing our environment. Recently, I found that Toronto Star journalist, Haroon Siddiqui, had a book out a couple of years ago targeted at readers 14 years and up.
One of the strategies of ideologues is to get at the children, via school systems.
I give quotes of dhimmi librarians and teachers praising this book, and promising to include it in their schools.
You can read the full entry here.
Temptations of Christ
And Mohamed
Blogger The Hesperado makes a great comparison between the Koran and the Bible and the offerings made to Muslims and Christians (actually Jesus). Jesus refused and Muslims continue to accept.
Jesus refused the temptation and prohibited his followers from doing so by example. The Koran, however that temptation was initially introduced ( to Mohamed?), has made it a part of an ascribed promise of the book, and part of every Muslim's final desire.
I hope The Hesperado continues to develop this theme.
Blogger The Hesperado makes a great comparison between the Koran and the Bible and the offerings made to Muslims and Christians (actually Jesus). Jesus refused and Muslims continue to accept.
Jesus refused the temptation and prohibited his followers from doing so by example. The Koran, however that temptation was initially introduced ( to Mohamed?), has made it a part of an ascribed promise of the book, and part of every Muslim's final desire.
I hope The Hesperado continues to develop this theme.
The Trial of Joan of Arc
Video in 7 parts
I've written that Bresson has redeemed himself with his film "The Trial of Joan of Arc." In every way, it encapsulates all his themes (see my posts here, here, here and here), his most prominent being spirituality (although he might describe it as Christianity).
I've posted below a pretty good Youtube version of "The Trial of Joan of Arc", with English subtitles. It is hard to find Bresson's DVDs, let alone cinemas that will screen his films. It is 100 times better to see the actual film (in celluloid) on a large screen in a dark room. The beauty and craft (sound, editing, lighting, etc...) are of course at their best in such a setting. But, these Youtube versions do pretty OK.
Bresson scripted the whole film based on the original trial proceedings. You can read a translated version here.
My great interest in trying to decipher Bresson started when an esteemed professor of mine - Bruce Elder, an experimental filmmaker and recipient of the Governor General's award - encouraged us to watch and study Bresson's films. I never understood his great admiration for Bresson, and still don't, but I do understand Bresson's methods and ideas now after studying them. And because of this, I think I found a very fine and exemplary film in "The Trial of Joan of Arc."
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
I've written that Bresson has redeemed himself with his film "The Trial of Joan of Arc." In every way, it encapsulates all his themes (see my posts here, here, here and here), his most prominent being spirituality (although he might describe it as Christianity).
I've posted below a pretty good Youtube version of "The Trial of Joan of Arc", with English subtitles. It is hard to find Bresson's DVDs, let alone cinemas that will screen his films. It is 100 times better to see the actual film (in celluloid) on a large screen in a dark room. The beauty and craft (sound, editing, lighting, etc...) are of course at their best in such a setting. But, these Youtube versions do pretty OK.
Bresson scripted the whole film based on the original trial proceedings. You can read a translated version here.
My great interest in trying to decipher Bresson started when an esteemed professor of mine - Bruce Elder, an experimental filmmaker and recipient of the Governor General's award - encouraged us to watch and study Bresson's films. I never understood his great admiration for Bresson, and still don't, but I do understand Bresson's methods and ideas now after studying them. And because of this, I think I found a very fine and exemplary film in "The Trial of Joan of Arc."
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Donations
Donation drive for the rest of this week
If you enjoy your visit here, a small donation would be much appreciated.
To donate, please click the "donate" button below, and follow the directions.
If you would rather send your donation via mail, you can email me at cameralucidas@yahoo.com and I can send you my mailing address.
Thanks for your support.
Kidist
If you enjoy your visit here, a small donation would be much appreciated.
To donate, please click the "donate" button below, and follow the directions.
If you would rather send your donation via mail, you can email me at cameralucidas@yahoo.com and I can send you my mailing address.
Thanks for your support.
Kidist
Hollywood Gets Welfare
Local subsidies for film productions
"No Country for Old Men" filmed in New Mexico and subsidized by the local government
Brad Pitt, one of the richest men in the world, is costing the Louisiana tax payers $27,117,737 for his latest film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
States have been aggressively bidding to win over film productions, with Louisiana being the most aggressive of them all.
One of the reasons states have jumped in on film productions is the decline in private investors. The other is to counter the effects of American productions in Canadian cities such as Toronto and Vancouver. Ultimately, the goal is to increase local economies.
Still, one has to wonder if Louisiana residents will be pleased to know that they are paying double for their tickets to see Brad Pitt's film, one through their taxes, and the other through their theater tabs. And given that Brad Pitt's recent films aren't doing too well, what do they think of their state's investment?
Ironically, Brad Pitt is also doing his humanitarian bit in New Orleans by helping revive a section of the city devastated by Katrina. I wonder how he feels about getting subsidized, by the government no less, to revive his own profession, which then allows him to be the humanitarian that he is.
 |
"No Country for Old Men" filmed in New Mexico and subsidized by the local government
Brad Pitt, one of the richest men in the world, is costing the Louisiana tax payers $27,117,737 for his latest film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
States have been aggressively bidding to win over film productions, with Louisiana being the most aggressive of them all.
One of the reasons states have jumped in on film productions is the decline in private investors. The other is to counter the effects of American productions in Canadian cities such as Toronto and Vancouver. Ultimately, the goal is to increase local economies.
Still, one has to wonder if Louisiana residents will be pleased to know that they are paying double for their tickets to see Brad Pitt's film, one through their taxes, and the other through their theater tabs. And given that Brad Pitt's recent films aren't doing too well, what do they think of their state's investment?
Ironically, Brad Pitt is also doing his humanitarian bit in New Orleans by helping revive a section of the city devastated by Katrina. I wonder how he feels about getting subsidized, by the government no less, to revive his own profession, which then allows him to be the humanitarian that he is.
Sarah As The Perfect Target
For John McCain and Tina Fey
Saturday Night Live, like many other comedy shows, has degenerated into lewd skits and sophomoric frat-boy style jokes. So, I didn't watch any of the Sarah Palin/Tina Fey SNL skits - not live anyway. But Youtube and other news channels have given us an array of venues to choose those specific skits from.
I'm not here to critique Tina Fey on her impersonation of Sarah, although she does an uncannily great job at it, both with her accent and her mannerism (especially where she has the set jaws in Sarah's trademark doggedness.)
Sarah's meteoric rise into pop and political culture is equally uncanny. It is almost as though a supernatural force had a hand in all of this. What are the chances that she has her perfect double in an SNL comedian, and that an old Senator running for president will use her to revive his failing and flailing campaign?
I remember many times finding such uncanny situations where everything seems to align perfectly, but then realizing that they were really the devil's propositions.
Friends have also told me of these "perfect situations" which they just have to accept, and I as an outsider can have enough foresight to warn them of their predicament. Some listen, others go on to their folly.
I think this is what Sarah Palin is facing. Sometimes our most difficult choices are our easiest, those moments when the only answer seems "yes". How easy it must have been for Palin, bar her initial surprise, to agree to go on with her dogged, strong-jawed determination to face challenges and work her talent at a national level? Being who she is, how can she refuse? Her answer is almost set in her personality.
Still, she has a husband, two parents, a household of sisters and brothers, and surely a sane friend here and there who can show her the flip side of the this janusian proposition.
But her other choices, such as bringing her pregnant daughter and her boyfriend to parade before the RNC and starting her possible role as the second most important person in the world with a small infant at home, should have told us that her mind might not have been as lucid as we (or she) would have liked to think.
Somehow, Sarah Palin managed to be right in the firing line for McCain's vice presidency and Tina Fey's SNL parodies. We can blame them for using her, but we should also wonder what it was in Sarah that put her in such a perfect spot as such a perfect target.
 |
Saturday Night Live, like many other comedy shows, has degenerated into lewd skits and sophomoric frat-boy style jokes. So, I didn't watch any of the Sarah Palin/Tina Fey SNL skits - not live anyway. But Youtube and other news channels have given us an array of venues to choose those specific skits from.
I'm not here to critique Tina Fey on her impersonation of Sarah, although she does an uncannily great job at it, both with her accent and her mannerism (especially where she has the set jaws in Sarah's trademark doggedness.)
Sarah's meteoric rise into pop and political culture is equally uncanny. It is almost as though a supernatural force had a hand in all of this. What are the chances that she has her perfect double in an SNL comedian, and that an old Senator running for president will use her to revive his failing and flailing campaign?
I remember many times finding such uncanny situations where everything seems to align perfectly, but then realizing that they were really the devil's propositions.
Friends have also told me of these "perfect situations" which they just have to accept, and I as an outsider can have enough foresight to warn them of their predicament. Some listen, others go on to their folly.
I think this is what Sarah Palin is facing. Sometimes our most difficult choices are our easiest, those moments when the only answer seems "yes". How easy it must have been for Palin, bar her initial surprise, to agree to go on with her dogged, strong-jawed determination to face challenges and work her talent at a national level? Being who she is, how can she refuse? Her answer is almost set in her personality.
Still, she has a husband, two parents, a household of sisters and brothers, and surely a sane friend here and there who can show her the flip side of the this janusian proposition.
But her other choices, such as bringing her pregnant daughter and her boyfriend to parade before the RNC and starting her possible role as the second most important person in the world with a small infant at home, should have told us that her mind might not have been as lucid as we (or she) would have liked to think.
Somehow, Sarah Palin managed to be right in the firing line for McCain's vice presidency and Tina Fey's SNL parodies. We can blame them for using her, but we should also wonder what it was in Sarah that put her in such a perfect spot as such a perfect target.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Donations
Will be much appreciated
At Camera Lucida, I try to give you carefully composed mini-articles about the state of our current culture, following my mandate as "a place to explore and shed light on how art, culture and society converge."
Highlights of my topics include:
- Architectural styles that are destroying or harming our heritage buildings.
- How spiritual and religious elements enter (or don't) in modern films.
- What happened to the Western? Or the decline of film post 1960s.
- Book and film reviews.
- How good design relates to the society at large.
- Changes are occurring in our society and culture, and are they for the better?
- And many more on the arts: film, design, painting, photography, fashion, dance.
If you enjoy your visit here, a small donation would be much appreciated. Writing accurate and informative articles with my own take on them takes time. I have to read and research (both on-line and off-line) to get my posts to the standard where I am satisfied to publish them.
To donate, please click the "donate" button below, and follow the directions.
If you would rather send your donation via mail, you can email me at cameralucidas@yahoo.com and I can send you my mailing address.
Thanks for your support.
Kidist
At Camera Lucida, I try to give you carefully composed mini-articles about the state of our current culture, following my mandate as "a place to explore and shed light on how art, culture and society converge."
Highlights of my topics include:
- Architectural styles that are destroying or harming our heritage buildings.
- How spiritual and religious elements enter (or don't) in modern films.
- What happened to the Western? Or the decline of film post 1960s.
- Book and film reviews.
- How good design relates to the society at large.
- Changes are occurring in our society and culture, and are they for the better?
- And many more on the arts: film, design, painting, photography, fashion, dance.
If you enjoy your visit here, a small donation would be much appreciated. Writing accurate and informative articles with my own take on them takes time. I have to read and research (both on-line and off-line) to get my posts to the standard where I am satisfied to publish them.
To donate, please click the "donate" button below, and follow the directions.
If you would rather send your donation via mail, you can email me at cameralucidas@yahoo.com and I can send you my mailing address.
Thanks for your support.
Kidist
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Bresson's Perfect Film
"The Trial of Joan of Arc"
"Dans ce palais archiepiscopal
le mardi 29 Mai 1431 a été tenue
la séance du procès Jeanne d'Arc
où elle fut citée à comparaître
le lendemain au vieux Marché"
Commemorative plaque for Joan of Arc
in Rouen Cathedral, in Normandy
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Bresson found his perfect film in The Trial of Joan of Arc.
His cinematography was mesmerizing in the sparse, austere style he has perfected with his black-and-white films. His "choreography" of hands and feet is more restrained here than in Pickpocket, and there is no musical score to accompany even what there is. But, he occasionally uses his realistic, magnified sounds when he focuses on the scratching of a feather pen, or the marching boots of soldiers (anachronistically transplanted from WWI, the only flaw in the film.) He places a soft light on Joan, drawing out a gentleness out of her otherwise stern face.
But, more than his style, it is the story that redeems him.
Joan, like many of his characters, considers herself a special, entitled being. But, her entitlement is enveloped in her humility. She owes it all to the greater will of God, saying all her actions are based on personally revealed messages from God to her.
Mouchette, Jacques from Pickpocket and even the perennially romantic (other) Jacques from the aptly titled Four Nights of a Dreamer have decided on their own that their value in society is very high. Joan, on the other hand, attributes her's to the Grace of God.
Bresson's films always convey this sense of the transcendent. His characters do seem endowed with some kind of grace, but in his secular films, their arrogance and self-centeredness always get the better of them. But, Bresson never fully accepts that, and subtly tries to coerce us into seeing the specialness that he sees in them.
In The Trial of Joan of Arc, we need no coercion. It is in the genius of his method that he decided to use the real trial proceedings to write the script for this unusually short, but dramatic film. The story is enough to tell us that Joan is the real element, and his film makes her especially so.
On a more skeptical note, one of the reasons that I think Bresson was attracted to this subject (besides the usual attraction of French directors to a part of their French history) is that Joan was on trial before the Catholic establishment, and stood fast against all their condemnations.
Bresson is more of a spiritualist than a Catholic Christian. In this particular story, he found the perfect confrontation between a truly pious woman and a (momentarily) corrupt Catholic body. The battle between the Spirit of God and the House of God. The incorruptible and the corruptible. But Joan never condemned her church, and fully realized that her presence there, as throughout her life, was a miraculous event, difficult for even some priests to grasp.
Bresson's other spiritual (quite possibly non-Christian) beings, Jacques, Mouchette and even the young priest in Diary of a Country Priest, would have benefited by interacting more humbly with the establishment to which Bresson appears to show such aversion, and to which Joan despite her trials, was certainly attached.
 |
"Dans ce palais archiepiscopal
le mardi 29 Mai 1431 a été tenue
la séance du procès Jeanne d'Arc
où elle fut citée à comparaître
le lendemain au vieux Marché"
Commemorative plaque for Joan of Arc
in Rouen Cathedral, in Normandy
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Bresson found his perfect film in The Trial of Joan of Arc.
His cinematography was mesmerizing in the sparse, austere style he has perfected with his black-and-white films. His "choreography" of hands and feet is more restrained here than in Pickpocket, and there is no musical score to accompany even what there is. But, he occasionally uses his realistic, magnified sounds when he focuses on the scratching of a feather pen, or the marching boots of soldiers (anachronistically transplanted from WWI, the only flaw in the film.) He places a soft light on Joan, drawing out a gentleness out of her otherwise stern face.
But, more than his style, it is the story that redeems him.
Joan, like many of his characters, considers herself a special, entitled being. But, her entitlement is enveloped in her humility. She owes it all to the greater will of God, saying all her actions are based on personally revealed messages from God to her.
Mouchette, Jacques from Pickpocket and even the perennially romantic (other) Jacques from the aptly titled Four Nights of a Dreamer have decided on their own that their value in society is very high. Joan, on the other hand, attributes her's to the Grace of God.
Bresson's films always convey this sense of the transcendent. His characters do seem endowed with some kind of grace, but in his secular films, their arrogance and self-centeredness always get the better of them. But, Bresson never fully accepts that, and subtly tries to coerce us into seeing the specialness that he sees in them.
In The Trial of Joan of Arc, we need no coercion. It is in the genius of his method that he decided to use the real trial proceedings to write the script for this unusually short, but dramatic film. The story is enough to tell us that Joan is the real element, and his film makes her especially so.
On a more skeptical note, one of the reasons that I think Bresson was attracted to this subject (besides the usual attraction of French directors to a part of their French history) is that Joan was on trial before the Catholic establishment, and stood fast against all their condemnations.
Bresson is more of a spiritualist than a Catholic Christian. In this particular story, he found the perfect confrontation between a truly pious woman and a (momentarily) corrupt Catholic body. The battle between the Spirit of God and the House of God. The incorruptible and the corruptible. But Joan never condemned her church, and fully realized that her presence there, as throughout her life, was a miraculous event, difficult for even some priests to grasp.
Bresson's other spiritual (quite possibly non-Christian) beings, Jacques, Mouchette and even the young priest in Diary of a Country Priest, would have benefited by interacting more humbly with the establishment to which Bresson appears to show such aversion, and to which Joan despite her trials, was certainly attached.
Canada's National Question
And its stubborn persistence
The ever-erudite Ambler has an article at Vdare summarizing the Canadian elections and what that means for the "National Question". The Ambler prophesies that Canada's dissolution is imminent, and he's just surprised that it is taking longer than he expected.
Well, I take the contrary view.
Canada's "National Question" will continue to rear its head regularly, sometimes frightening the whole country into some kind of action. But each "secessionist" province has had its day. Albertans, with their riches and legendary independence, write about what Ottawa is doing to them, but ultimately have found a comfortable medium of keeping their distance and staying within the Dominion. Quebeckers will bully politicians into giving them their "cultural" identity, never quite mustering the strength (and why should they, since they are getting it all for free) to make a clean break. Maritimers are too weak, and perhaps too unprepared, to fight the behemoth that is Ottawa. And Ontario is losing ground as the economic leader, and may have to do many more compromises in the years to come to sustain itself.
There will be no dissolution of the nation. Each potential break-away has found a way to accommodate itself to the rest of the country. Part of it is historical, and part of it is opportunistic. Part of it is is also that Canadians are more left than they think, this despite the minority "conservative" government just voted in.
In the name of unity, the country has pledged itself into a centrist position. Sometimes left-leaning as with the Liberals, and now right-leaning with Harper's minority government. Provinces are willing to shell out funds for immigrants, Quebec, the environment, health care and many more programs. The overriding position is to keep the country together by forcing (coercing, convincing?) each other to take up the slacks. Which means heavy government involvement, or maneuvering. Albertans will pay for Quebec's cultural identity. The Maritimes may have to forfeit their transfer payments, and even start getting Ontario out of the hole. Everyone gets to pay for immigrants' assimilation. And universal health care will plod along with minor adjustments here and there.
Symbolic national identities are continuously eroded. Apologies and financial remunerations to Chinese and Indian laborers of almost a century ago went uncontested by taxpayers. The Governor General boasts of being a Haitian immigrant, has her Coat of Arms full of pagan and foreign symbols, and a husband who was a former Quebec separatist. The 2008 Olympics uniform was an array of Chinese imagery and symbolism, and no-one made an ounce of protestation about the design, accepting it as a Canadian expression.
This is the national accommodations that Canadians have agreed upon.
How this got started is a whole other question. I believe it was with the premise of the country's foundation. But, I will leave that for another blog. For starters, here is a recent, excellent, biography of John A. MacDonald, and the birth of Canadian confederation, by Richard Gwyn.
 |
The ever-erudite Ambler has an article at Vdare summarizing the Canadian elections and what that means for the "National Question". The Ambler prophesies that Canada's dissolution is imminent, and he's just surprised that it is taking longer than he expected.
Well, I take the contrary view.
Canada's "National Question" will continue to rear its head regularly, sometimes frightening the whole country into some kind of action. But each "secessionist" province has had its day. Albertans, with their riches and legendary independence, write about what Ottawa is doing to them, but ultimately have found a comfortable medium of keeping their distance and staying within the Dominion. Quebeckers will bully politicians into giving them their "cultural" identity, never quite mustering the strength (and why should they, since they are getting it all for free) to make a clean break. Maritimers are too weak, and perhaps too unprepared, to fight the behemoth that is Ottawa. And Ontario is losing ground as the economic leader, and may have to do many more compromises in the years to come to sustain itself.
There will be no dissolution of the nation. Each potential break-away has found a way to accommodate itself to the rest of the country. Part of it is historical, and part of it is opportunistic. Part of it is is also that Canadians are more left than they think, this despite the minority "conservative" government just voted in.
In the name of unity, the country has pledged itself into a centrist position. Sometimes left-leaning as with the Liberals, and now right-leaning with Harper's minority government. Provinces are willing to shell out funds for immigrants, Quebec, the environment, health care and many more programs. The overriding position is to keep the country together by forcing (coercing, convincing?) each other to take up the slacks. Which means heavy government involvement, or maneuvering. Albertans will pay for Quebec's cultural identity. The Maritimes may have to forfeit their transfer payments, and even start getting Ontario out of the hole. Everyone gets to pay for immigrants' assimilation. And universal health care will plod along with minor adjustments here and there.
Symbolic national identities are continuously eroded. Apologies and financial remunerations to Chinese and Indian laborers of almost a century ago went uncontested by taxpayers. The Governor General boasts of being a Haitian immigrant, has her Coat of Arms full of pagan and foreign symbols, and a husband who was a former Quebec separatist. The 2008 Olympics uniform was an array of Chinese imagery and symbolism, and no-one made an ounce of protestation about the design, accepting it as a Canadian expression.
This is the national accommodations that Canadians have agreed upon.
How this got started is a whole other question. I believe it was with the premise of the country's foundation. But, I will leave that for another blog. For starters, here is a recent, excellent, biography of John A. MacDonald, and the birth of Canadian confederation, by Richard Gwyn.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Bresson, Again
Pickpocket
Final scene from "Pickpocket"
I managed to see Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket" after a couple of false starts in previous years. Each time I watch Bresson's films, I have to brace myself to accept his acrid version of expiating sin. It was the same with "Mouchette" and "Au Hazard Balthazar."
In "Pickpocket", a lazy man full of self-entitlement falls into pickpocketing pedestrian Parisians. He is noticed by a policeman, who keeps an eye on him, as a well as a group of professional pickpockets who put him in their group. He is not as clever as he thinks, and soon gets caught.
His only redemption comes from a young woman who used to take care of his mother. She transfers her care over to him after his mother's death, even when he goes to prison.
Bresson's main characters are always extremely difficult to like. Martin (the pickpocket) is no exception. My big question is that after Martin has gone to prison, and the only one who has faith in him is the young woman, will he really change his ways?
His reaction to the young woman's love is akin to his previous self-centered focus on himself. He will accept her love, but will he love her back? And most of all, will he find it in him to live an honest life, or will he return to thievery and deceit, which for him has always been easy to do?
Bresson seems to say that the young man lacked love, and that was why he behaved the way he did. But Martin had his mother's love before Jeanne came along, and his friend Jacques was as loyal as any friend can be. Even the policeman was trying to help him.
These irritating, self-centered characters make up much of the Bresson cinematic landscape. I am obliged to watch them if only to record my misgivings about Bresson.
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I managed to see Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket" after a couple of false starts in previous years. Each time I watch Bresson's films, I have to brace myself to accept his acrid version of expiating sin. It was the same with "Mouchette" and "Au Hazard Balthazar."
In "Pickpocket", a lazy man full of self-entitlement falls into pickpocketing pedestrian Parisians. He is noticed by a policeman, who keeps an eye on him, as a well as a group of professional pickpockets who put him in their group. He is not as clever as he thinks, and soon gets caught.
His only redemption comes from a young woman who used to take care of his mother. She transfers her care over to him after his mother's death, even when he goes to prison.
Bresson's main characters are always extremely difficult to like. Martin (the pickpocket) is no exception. My big question is that after Martin has gone to prison, and the only one who has faith in him is the young woman, will he really change his ways?
His reaction to the young woman's love is akin to his previous self-centered focus on himself. He will accept her love, but will he love her back? And most of all, will he find it in him to live an honest life, or will he return to thievery and deceit, which for him has always been easy to do?
Bresson seems to say that the young man lacked love, and that was why he behaved the way he did. But Martin had his mother's love before Jeanne came along, and his friend Jacques was as loyal as any friend can be. Even the policeman was trying to help him.
These irritating, self-centered characters make up much of the Bresson cinematic landscape. I am obliged to watch them if only to record my misgivings about Bresson.
Harper Is No Conservative
But is just after cold expediency
From an irate commentator called "attitude" over at The Shotgun, following Chris Reid's thoughtless "Le't go get the majority" post. I've made some minor editing.
From an irate commentator called "attitude" over at The Shotgun, following Chris Reid's thoughtless "Le't go get the majority" post. I've made some minor editing.
Harper voted for the gun registry.The rest of the exchange, especially with one named "Snowrunner" is worth reading.
Harper believes the answer to the drug war is more cops. The soviets had a cop on every corner and heroin use was rising %400 a year through the 1980's.
Harper stole money from seniors by raiding their income trust accounts.
Harper has moved to eliminate alternative medicine.
Harper has just injected $25B into the economy, which will cause inflation.
And Harper has grown the Canadian government by 14.8% above the size of the Liberals. We now have the biggest government in Canadian history, because of Harper.
What's In A Name?
A lot, it seems
A line from a poem by Gertrude Stein
I know that at the very least, our foreign names are often hard to pronounce, although in these multi-culti times, people don't seem to mind that about mine (and others') and have some curiosity about its meaning. But in earlier years, many names that did not fit in with the general Scottish, English, Irish or even French were camouflaged or changed. Even Eastern Europeans didn't have it easy.
To give a short example, many early famous Jews and Jewish immigrants changed their names to sound less Jewish. Ira and George Gershwin, lyricists of the early 20th century, were born Israel and Jacob Gershowitz. Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidore Beilin. I'm sure the Jewish Johnny Marks, of "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" fame, also changed his name.
These Jewish composers and lyricists had to have gotten their energy and creativity from their name changes. A new name, in a new country, is surely a fresh way to start and to fit in. And I'm sure that with each new lyric, including those memorable Christmas songs, their attachment and indebtedness to their new society grew.
These days, though, the more foreign the name, the better. That is why a writer like Takuan Seiyo, who writes for the Brussels Journal and Vdare amongst other publications, not only advertises his unfamiliar name, but also his convoluted background. We are not quite sure who he is. Where does he fit in: in Japan, in Switzerland, in a US university?
Perhaps it is too harsh to blame Takuan Seiyo for what he does. After all, everyone these days gets to keep his name. And not only that, he is encouraged to keep alive whatever strangeness and foreignness that comes with it.
Here is an excerpt from a piece by Takuan Seiyo at the Intellectual Conservative in April 2007. He is writing about the Virginia Tech murders by a Korean national (and student at the university):
Well, firstly, from many empirically sound articles out there, it is clear that the value of “ East Asian” – who exactly are they, Korean, Chinese, Japanese? - immigrant technical workers is their lower wages, and not necessarily their high IQ. Secondly, the lassitude he talks about regarding native American workers is false, since it is government and corporate policies that are providing unfair competition in favor of "East Asian" immigrants, preventing native Americans from working. Finally, there is absolutely no proof that the American pool of qualified people would diminish were it not for the "East Asian" immigrants. What happened for all those centuries in the US and in Europe before these "East Asian" saviors came along?
Now, why bring up Tekuan Seiyo in the first place? Well, for someone who hasn't even resolved his name and thus his place in a (some) society, why should we expect a loyal, or even a clairvoyant explanation of events from him? His mind is after all still with the "East Asians."
His little breach of facts is not a careless mistake, but a state of mind. As a journalist, it is inexcusable that he reports these myths as fact. Rather, it seems that he wants to believe them in order to validate whatever definition he has of himself. And this definition certainly doesn't exclude "East Asian" from his list. His "East Asians" become bigger than life, the saviors of America. Maybe that is the role he wishes for himself.
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I know that at the very least, our foreign names are often hard to pronounce, although in these multi-culti times, people don't seem to mind that about mine (and others') and have some curiosity about its meaning. But in earlier years, many names that did not fit in with the general Scottish, English, Irish or even French were camouflaged or changed. Even Eastern Europeans didn't have it easy.
To give a short example, many early famous Jews and Jewish immigrants changed their names to sound less Jewish. Ira and George Gershwin, lyricists of the early 20th century, were born Israel and Jacob Gershowitz. Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidore Beilin. I'm sure the Jewish Johnny Marks, of "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" fame, also changed his name.
These Jewish composers and lyricists had to have gotten their energy and creativity from their name changes. A new name, in a new country, is surely a fresh way to start and to fit in. And I'm sure that with each new lyric, including those memorable Christmas songs, their attachment and indebtedness to their new society grew.
These days, though, the more foreign the name, the better. That is why a writer like Takuan Seiyo, who writes for the Brussels Journal and Vdare amongst other publications, not only advertises his unfamiliar name, but also his convoluted background. We are not quite sure who he is. Where does he fit in: in Japan, in Switzerland, in a US university?
Perhaps it is too harsh to blame Takuan Seiyo for what he does. After all, everyone these days gets to keep his name. And not only that, he is encouraged to keep alive whatever strangeness and foreignness that comes with it.
Here is an excerpt from a piece by Takuan Seiyo at the Intellectual Conservative in April 2007. He is writing about the Virginia Tech murders by a Korean national (and student at the university):
East Asian immigrants, as a group, may be the most valuable human capital imported to the United States, perhaps on a par with the Europeans. Our moral and cerebral lassitude is such that if it weren't for the East Asians, the American pool of people with the IQ and discipline necessary to become an engineer, scientist or physician would decline precipitously.I think it is his unresolved, tangled mental state that makes him write this. But what is wrong with it, you may ask?
Well, firstly, from many empirically sound articles out there, it is clear that the value of “ East Asian” – who exactly are they, Korean, Chinese, Japanese? - immigrant technical workers is their lower wages, and not necessarily their high IQ. Secondly, the lassitude he talks about regarding native American workers is false, since it is government and corporate policies that are providing unfair competition in favor of "East Asian" immigrants, preventing native Americans from working. Finally, there is absolutely no proof that the American pool of qualified people would diminish were it not for the "East Asian" immigrants. What happened for all those centuries in the US and in Europe before these "East Asian" saviors came along?
Now, why bring up Tekuan Seiyo in the first place? Well, for someone who hasn't even resolved his name and thus his place in a (some) society, why should we expect a loyal, or even a clairvoyant explanation of events from him? His mind is after all still with the "East Asians."
His little breach of facts is not a careless mistake, but a state of mind. As a journalist, it is inexcusable that he reports these myths as fact. Rather, it seems that he wants to believe them in order to validate whatever definition he has of himself. And this definition certainly doesn't exclude "East Asian" from his list. His "East Asians" become bigger than life, the saviors of America. Maybe that is the role he wishes for himself.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Black-And-White Films
An argument for their superiority over color
Left: Moon and Half Dome, Ansel Adams, 1960
Right: Dogwood Blossoms, Ansel Adams, 1938
Here is a long and illuminating article about black-and-white films. The author says that some of the most memorable films are in black-and-white.
It is true that in photography, no nature study in color can equal the majesty and poetry of Ansel Adams' black-and-white work. While color sceneries can be spectacular, it is the black-and-white ones that are exquisitely beautiful. It is the same with portraits. Imagine all those Hollywood stars whose portraits were taken in black-and-white, and look at what we have now in the era of color.
I haven't had much time to think about this, but what I think is happening is that black-and-white is about poetry and the subliminal. Nothing in nature is black-and-white, therefore the photographer and cinematographer has to aim for something else besides replication, and go for representation instead. He therefore has to convince his audience of the authenticity of his work. Thus black-and-white photographs and films require more of the artist, since simple realism (replication) will not work. The photographer or the filmmaker has to compose the work, requiring him to do more than just clicking the shutter speed. That is why those studio portraits of movie stars are of such high quality, compared to what we get of the flashy, superfluously quick color shots of our modern-day "celebrities."
It is the same with paintings. However close to nature oil and water color pieces come, they are not replicas of that nature. The artist, like in black-and-white works, has to recreate his piece with his less-than-perfect medium. This strain on the artist is actually what makes great art. He leaves a trace of something other than the subject in these pieces - it could be the artist's presence that we feel, or God's, or as in poetry, something sublime and enigmatic. The artist's vision, however he comes by it, becomes part of the piece.
The writer of this article goes through almost all the genres of cinema - Westerns, Musicals, Comedies, Film Noir - and he very successfully argues that no color film can be compared to the best of these black-and-white films.
I agree with him. The flickering of the silver light, the high contrasts, the shadows, and the ethereal quality of the celluloid (which I especially appreciate since I've worked directly with black-and-white film strips) is a pleasure to behold.
It may be hard to get used to at the beginning, given our inundation with color. But there was no aesthetic reason for the switch to color other than that the technology became available, so, a switch to black-and-white is ultimately very fulfilling. And fortunately, as the author of the article states, there are plenty of places, from the internet to the Turner Classic Movie Channel, to find the black-and-white classics.
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Right: Dogwood Blossoms, Ansel Adams, 1938
Here is a long and illuminating article about black-and-white films. The author says that some of the most memorable films are in black-and-white.
It is true that in photography, no nature study in color can equal the majesty and poetry of Ansel Adams' black-and-white work. While color sceneries can be spectacular, it is the black-and-white ones that are exquisitely beautiful. It is the same with portraits. Imagine all those Hollywood stars whose portraits were taken in black-and-white, and look at what we have now in the era of color.
I haven't had much time to think about this, but what I think is happening is that black-and-white is about poetry and the subliminal. Nothing in nature is black-and-white, therefore the photographer and cinematographer has to aim for something else besides replication, and go for representation instead. He therefore has to convince his audience of the authenticity of his work. Thus black-and-white photographs and films require more of the artist, since simple realism (replication) will not work. The photographer or the filmmaker has to compose the work, requiring him to do more than just clicking the shutter speed. That is why those studio portraits of movie stars are of such high quality, compared to what we get of the flashy, superfluously quick color shots of our modern-day "celebrities."
It is the same with paintings. However close to nature oil and water color pieces come, they are not replicas of that nature. The artist, like in black-and-white works, has to recreate his piece with his less-than-perfect medium. This strain on the artist is actually what makes great art. He leaves a trace of something other than the subject in these pieces - it could be the artist's presence that we feel, or God's, or as in poetry, something sublime and enigmatic. The artist's vision, however he comes by it, becomes part of the piece.
The writer of this article goes through almost all the genres of cinema - Westerns, Musicals, Comedies, Film Noir - and he very successfully argues that no color film can be compared to the best of these black-and-white films.
I agree with him. The flickering of the silver light, the high contrasts, the shadows, and the ethereal quality of the celluloid (which I especially appreciate since I've worked directly with black-and-white film strips) is a pleasure to behold.
It may be hard to get used to at the beginning, given our inundation with color. But there was no aesthetic reason for the switch to color other than that the technology became available, so, a switch to black-and-white is ultimately very fulfilling. And fortunately, as the author of the article states, there are plenty of places, from the internet to the Turner Classic Movie Channel, to find the black-and-white classics.
Incantations
How Muslims convert churches into mosques
The conversion of a church into a mosque
Here is the program notes for TVO drama screenings:
This is one of a series of BBC dramas which TVO projects every week, and many of them have actually been very uncompromising and honest.
Why, then, were the programmers at a loss with how to deal with religion? In fact, the very English Mr. Harvey, and his love for the majestic cathedrals (he went to every single cathedral in England during his honeymoon), defends Islam as a religion equal to Christianity.
The directors (writers, producers, actors) of the film also felt no qualms about having one student paint a graffiti of an angel with Arabic script clearly from the Koran within a room in the cathedral.
Like so many other things which are nonchalantly being blasphemed against - the preceding link is to an email I sent to Vision TV which has an Islamic program on the Koran on Sundays - this behavior didn't even trigger the remotest aversion by any of the protagonists. The story-line continued as though this were the most natural thing to happen.
"Christians" of the 21st century feel compelled to support and condone all religions, including Islam, as though they are on par with Christianity. This is unprecedented. Beautiful and holy English churches and cathedrals are slowly being transformed into mosques by forceful Muslims, who at least know who they are and what they believe in.
Here is a video of the planned conversion of a stately English church into a mosque. The incantation is eerie; chants to envelope this English town and church into the strongholds of Allah. Muslims know what they have to do to rid themselves of any vestiges of Christianity and call on their higher power to complete the transformation. English Christians, on the other hand, arrogantly give up their God and their faith in the name of their tolerance.
For greater effect, make sure to watch the video above with the sound on.
The conversion of a church into a mosque
Here is the program notes for TVO drama screenings:
TVO presents thoughtful, relevant dramas and films that provide insight into our society and culture from diverse perspectives and serve as a starting point for discussion and understanding of the world, our communities and the environment around us."Mr. Harvey Lights a Candle", a made-for-TV drama by the BBC, was a poignant story abut a man who finally reconciles with the loss of his wife , and whose belief in God returns during a field trip he planned to Salisbury Cathedral with his high school class.
This is one of a series of BBC dramas which TVO projects every week, and many of them have actually been very uncompromising and honest.
Why, then, were the programmers at a loss with how to deal with religion? In fact, the very English Mr. Harvey, and his love for the majestic cathedrals (he went to every single cathedral in England during his honeymoon), defends Islam as a religion equal to Christianity.
The directors (writers, producers, actors) of the film also felt no qualms about having one student paint a graffiti of an angel with Arabic script clearly from the Koran within a room in the cathedral.
"Christians" of the 21st century feel compelled to support and condone all religions, including Islam, as though they are on par with Christianity. This is unprecedented. Beautiful and holy English churches and cathedrals are slowly being transformed into mosques by forceful Muslims, who at least know who they are and what they believe in.
Here is a video of the planned conversion of a stately English church into a mosque. The incantation is eerie; chants to envelope this English town and church into the strongholds of Allah. Muslims know what they have to do to rid themselves of any vestiges of Christianity and call on their higher power to complete the transformation. English Christians, on the other hand, arrogantly give up their God and their faith in the name of their tolerance.
For greater effect, make sure to watch the video above with the sound on.
Harper's Sweater
Amberly Thiessen would have sang circles around him
Harper by the fireside in his sweater
The Conservative Machine, which clever Harper was pushing seems to be lacking momentum. The indispensable Quebec vote has declined, the gap between the Liberals and the Conservatives is diminishing, and the majority government which appeared so likely might never occur.
So what went wrong?
I've been wondering if Harper could pull off his "by the fireside with the sweater" ads trying to appeal to those who think he's a distant, unsympathetic leader. Well, after his gaffe on the Stock Exchange, Dion has run off with the gift that Harper inadvertently gave him. Harper is a phony, after all. In fact, one thing that struck me about those ads was his weird inability to make a sincere eye contact with the camera (of course this means with us.)
But, surely, it is the message that counts, not the home-spun sweaters. Well here is a more telling youtube:
when Harper was secretly (deviously) appealing to the immigrant communities. Someone adroitly superscribed words that Harper spoke only a few years ago over the video, where he was stating the problems inherent in the "we are a nation of immigrants" mentality that all Canadians seem to have. I think Harper still believes this. But, anything to get the vote! In fact, just before the election call, Harper sent one of his emissaries to announce an $11-million pledge for new immigrants in Toronto's suburbs. Why are such pledges not part of an open election platform? I've already said that Harper is trying to get his votes in any way possible. He has to juggle hard not to alienate competing groups. So, immigration, despite wise advice to include it as a separate issue, has been bundled up under "Jobs for the Future."
But, he's losing those feisty Brampton "Indo-Canadians", and he was obliged to turn out "public notice" ads back in April exclusively for the "ethnic communities" telling them not to worry. Of course, what they are worried about is how to get the sister, mother and grown son to come and join them in this land of plenty. This is obviously a territory Harper wasn't willing to tread. How soon, though, before he succumbs?
All this, together with whatever he has done to irritate the Quebeckers (the media says it is something to do with his lack of acknowledgment of "culture" funds) is diminishing his hopes.
Cold expediency soon catches up with you.
He never tried the real Conservative way. He will never know if it would have worked or not. So far, his gamble to do it "his way" is not giving the dividends he was banking on.
A true gritless man.
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The Conservative Machine, which clever Harper was pushing seems to be lacking momentum. The indispensable Quebec vote has declined, the gap between the Liberals and the Conservatives is diminishing, and the majority government which appeared so likely might never occur.
So what went wrong?
I've been wondering if Harper could pull off his "by the fireside with the sweater" ads trying to appeal to those who think he's a distant, unsympathetic leader. Well, after his gaffe on the Stock Exchange, Dion has run off with the gift that Harper inadvertently gave him. Harper is a phony, after all. In fact, one thing that struck me about those ads was his weird inability to make a sincere eye contact with the camera (of course this means with us.)
But, surely, it is the message that counts, not the home-spun sweaters. Well here is a more telling youtube:
when Harper was secretly (deviously) appealing to the immigrant communities. Someone adroitly superscribed words that Harper spoke only a few years ago over the video, where he was stating the problems inherent in the "we are a nation of immigrants" mentality that all Canadians seem to have. I think Harper still believes this. But, anything to get the vote! In fact, just before the election call, Harper sent one of his emissaries to announce an $11-million pledge for new immigrants in Toronto's suburbs. Why are such pledges not part of an open election platform? I've already said that Harper is trying to get his votes in any way possible. He has to juggle hard not to alienate competing groups. So, immigration, despite wise advice to include it as a separate issue, has been bundled up under "Jobs for the Future."
But, he's losing those feisty Brampton "Indo-Canadians", and he was obliged to turn out "public notice" ads back in April exclusively for the "ethnic communities" telling them not to worry. Of course, what they are worried about is how to get the sister, mother and grown son to come and join them in this land of plenty. This is obviously a territory Harper wasn't willing to tread. How soon, though, before he succumbs?
All this, together with whatever he has done to irritate the Quebeckers (the media says it is something to do with his lack of acknowledgment of "culture" funds) is diminishing his hopes.
Cold expediency soon catches up with you.
He never tried the real Conservative way. He will never know if it would have worked or not. So far, his gamble to do it "his way" is not giving the dividends he was banking on.
A true gritless man.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
New Article
Islam's Missionary Women
I have a new article at Chronwatch.com entitled: "Islam's Missionary Women."
I start off with a video installation of an Iranian-American - I really don't like these hyphens, but that is how she calls herself - artist Shirin Neshat, and end off with another installation of hers, to make my point that Islam's women have come to the West with a strong mission, and this mission doesn't fit in with what the West is all about.
I have a new article at Chronwatch.com entitled: "Islam's Missionary Women."
I start off with a video installation of an Iranian-American - I really don't like these hyphens, but that is how she calls herself - artist Shirin Neshat, and end off with another installation of hers, to make my point that Islam's women have come to the West with a strong mission, and this mission doesn't fit in with what the West is all about.
All About Lucy
The perfect match of celebrities and art
It looks like movie stars aren't just branching out into fashion and singing, but trying their hand at serious art these days.
That is what Lucy Liu has declared, saying that she recently had an exhibition of her work in Germany.
What turns out to be her "art" is really just another Damien Hurst look-alike. All concept and no skill. This was what Farrah Fawcett also revealed a few years ago, only to disappoint.
At least Lucy is bringing in the money, with her work selling for $330,000 at a UNICEF auction. If people want to buy it, that's their prerogative.
Here's a youtube of a Jimmy Kimmel show where Liu displayed her talents. Just scroll to the 8:21 point.
This is the era when art went to the, well, celebrities. A very embarrassing glitch in its prestigious history.
It looks like movie stars aren't just branching out into fashion and singing, but trying their hand at serious art these days.
That is what Lucy Liu has declared, saying that she recently had an exhibition of her work in Germany.
What turns out to be her "art" is really just another Damien Hurst look-alike. All concept and no skill. This was what Farrah Fawcett also revealed a few years ago, only to disappoint.
At least Lucy is bringing in the money, with her work selling for $330,000 at a UNICEF auction. If people want to buy it, that's their prerogative.
Here's a youtube of a Jimmy Kimmel show where Liu displayed her talents. Just scroll to the 8:21 point.
This is the era when art went to the, well, celebrities. A very embarrassing glitch in its prestigious history.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Ingrid Mattson: Portrait of a Convert
The most revelatory thing about Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society for North America (ISNA) and Muslim prayer leader at the ecumenical National Prayer Service at Obama’s inauguration, is that she studied Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
Ingrid Mattson grew up as a Catholic. By all accounts, she was a spiritually precocious child. She talks about feeling God’s transcendence in the quiet buildings of the Catholic Church as a young girl, and about her “simple, naïve piety.” Then, in adolescence, she lost that faith and stopped going to church despite her brother telling her to stick it out – one hour a week at mass is not a high price to pay for eternity. His advice was far from flippant. It was more about not disrupting her family and community, and that she could still return to her faith and even secure paradise. She ignored this advice, but did find that transcendence somewhere else not too much later, leaving her family and her Catholic faith for good.
While in university, she immersed herself in her art studies; in the darkened classrooms with giant slide projections of Western art, in her department’s archives cataloging those same slides, and in the thick library art books she assiduously studied. But, these images didn’t touch her as she wished they would. She had expected them to take her to the same place she had found so easily in her childhood, to the realm of God. “ What was I seeking in such an intense engagement with visual art?” she asks. “Perhaps some of the transcendence I felt as a child in the cool darkness of the Catholic Church I loved.”
It is a mystery that despite the gentle Madonnas, the heartbreaking Pietàs, the dignified saints, and the joyous infant Jesuses, none of these works touched her into returning to her original faith. They fell short, or more precisely, she did. She was unable to receive God in her non-believing heart, which had ended up at a dead end, following the “barren outcome” of her philosophy course in Existentialism.
Her journey towards Islam started when she went to Paris for a summer during her junior year at university, a time which she calls “the summer I met Muslims.” She was charmed by these West African Muslims, whom she met at an anti-racist concert, and who, according to her, lived in Paris with grace and generosity despite suffering a “very overt prejudice and racism.” She lived with them in their student quarters for several weeks observing their behavior and their religion.
She started to study the Koran upon her return to Canada, and converted to Islam in her senior year at university. The God that would never appear to her during her hours of isolated contemplation, when she looked at image after image trying to find His spirit, finally announced himself to her as Allah “The Hidden, veiled in glorious light from the eyes of any living person.” He has accepted her in his transcendent invisibility, and he has relieved her from the burden of her endless quest to find him in images. Her newfound Islamic tradition also miraculously prohibits visual representations, which absolves her further from such futile search . She realizes “[her] mistake of thinking that seeing means knowing”, and that one knows about Allah without “construct[ing] statues or sensual paintings.” S he can now begin the task of simply worshiping her one true Allah.
What is it that impressed Mattson that she felt such admiration for those influential African Muslims she met in Paris, calling them “remarkable human beings…[who] had a dignity and a generosity of spirit”? And what makes her talk about Muslims she meets later in her life as the most generous people she has ever met? Of course, in making these superlative statements about Muslims, she has to be comparing them to something. That surely is her own community back in Ontario, whose faith she had abandoned a few years earlier. And those racist Parisians and their mistreatment of the black Muslim students, who, it never occurs to her, were accepted into the great learning institutions of France by these same prejudiced French.
There is a strange family history that might explain some of her behavior. Her much older sister married a Jewish man and converted to Judaism with minimal protest from her Catholic parents. Would this sisterly (and parental) betrayal affect her so much during her deeply pious Catholic childhood that she, in adulthood, would turn away from her family and religion to adopt something that would not remind her of this pain?
In a poem she wrote against waterboarding, she talks of a brother Joey, who had drowned.
I used to love swimming underwater
Until Joey drowned
Dear sweet brother
Pulled down by the Kicking Horse River
Another family death, her father’s when she was only twelve, had left her and her siblings with a mother working in a factory to support them. Is this part of her family saga of disappointments and betrayals, where those closest to her have abandoned and hurt her to such an extent that their sins can never be expiated, or at least she can never forgive them? Better to find another set of people, another religion, another God, and she will make sure they will never wound her in this way. Better to find the truly pious.
At the end of her undergraduate studies, Mattson makes another trip, this time a cross-country bus ride to British Columbia, for a summer job planting trees. By chance, she finds Fazlur Rahman’s book Islam a few days before she leaves. By the end of her trip “ as I traveled across the Canadian prairies”, she says, she makes a life-long pledge to Islam . She then spends a year working in Afghan refugee camps where she meets and marries an Egyptian Muslim, and bears two children. She goes on to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies, and eventually rises to prominence, dedicating her career to Muslim causes by running various academic and political Islamic institutions. The apex of her profession so far is her post as President of ISNA, which she achieved in 2006, having been Vice President since 2001.
Mattson’s many activities at ISNA focus on Muslims’ perceived discrimination against them by white Christian America. She doesn’t consider 9/11 Islam’s problem, for example, complaining that it has caused Muslims to spend too much time trying to build positive images to the external world, rather than concentrate on improving themselves. She compares “Death to America” slogans, shouted in unison by thousands of Muslims, to the few Christian preachers who – Nazi-like, according to her – speak out about the dangers of Islam. These preachers, notably, never wish death on any Muslim. She’s one of the many “moderate” Muslims who felt that the Pope’s apology for quoting a medieval text that described Islam as “evil and inhuman”, words that were not the Pope’s, was not enough. Behind her quiet demeanor, there is an unflinchingly dogmatic person at work. Whites and Christians are to blame for everything, and Muslims can do no wrong.
And Muslims never disappoint her personally. “Look to his people, and you will find the Prophet” she writes, and she does indeed find them and her prophet in a double dose of good fortune. Having left her own people and their God, this is surely a gift from her new deity commending her judgment. She finds examples of the Prophet in the Afghani refugees who sewed her a wedding dress using their meager possessions, in her young son’s Koran teacher, and in those distant African Muslims in Paris who shared their food and religion with her. Her journey is over, it seems, and she has found her true home.
But her strange, quiet, droning voice suggests otherwise. She sounds like she’s on anti-depressants or sedatives. And she makes little grammatical mistakes as she speaks, hinting at a lack of focus (or truthfulness?) that at times prevents her from completing her thoughts to the ends of her sentences. Her expression is often detached and impassive, with the occasional smile, and a pucker ever so slightly when mentioning those atrocities aimed at her beloved Muslims.
During a television interview with Patty Satalia’s Penn State’s Common Ground Lobby Talk on December 2006, Satalia quotes a line from the Koran, “Whenever God wants the destruction of a people, he makes a woman a leader”, and asks how she relates to that, especially given her recent appointment as President of ISNA. Mattson gets defensive saying that some of Mohammed’s messages were invented by opportunists and politicians. She adds that one has to look at the totality of Mohammed’s sayings to get a better idea of “gender equality” in Islam (which exists, in her view). She also becomes evasive and says that is for the hadith scholars to decipher these discrepancies.
When asked by Krista Tippett in the public radio program Speaking of Faith during a March 2008 interview (in the unedited version of the interview, cut from the final version), on her exultant response after her first reading of the Koran and what she did about all the “upsetting, bewildering and foreign” parts, Mattson becomes evasive once again. She offers no explanation for the many violent and destructive passages in the Koran except to say that she was “reading the Koran for myself”, which might translate to her extracting what she wanted from it, and leaving the unpleasant parts alone. This seems to be her modus operandi to this day.
Tippett asks astutely, “Many people had become aware of Islam for the first time through that act of very dramatic violence [of 9/11]... Where [could] non-Muslims look to find [benevolent] images as vivid as those images of towers crashing to the ground?” Mattson does give a vivid and sensitive tableau of “the beautiful, beautiful image of 3,000 Muslims in absolute peace and harmony making the pilgrimage together to Mecca every year.” But then her distrust of images comes to the fore when she goes on to say, “Could that image [of the 3,000 Muslim pilgrims] really outweigh this daily bombardment of bombardments we get on TV? We just have to get away from that.”
Images of violent Muslims are deceitful, is her message. And since these images are so overwhelming, they will render even the most beautiful ones ineffective. It is better, as her hadiths have said all along, to reject them all. Her pious and good Muslims, reflections of Mohammed himself, cannot do any harm.
Know us by our actions, has become her mantra. “ There are millions and millions of Muslims engaged in good works”, she explains, and that is where we will find the true Islam, not in the horrific images that television, magazines, films and photographs continually portray. Yet, it is actions that those shocking images depict. And it was those actions by Muslims, who led 3,000 innocent, beautiful, Americans to their deaths, that were caught on camera, images of actions that will haunt us for an eternity. What can she say about that? “We just have to get away from that”, will be her dispassionate and dogmatic response. What a far cry from the fine arts student who imbibed images from her Western tradition throughout her university days. But relinquishing that tradition has not brought her any closer to the truth, which must have been what she was searching for all these years.
One has to wonder how she reconciles this schizophrenic mind to achieve her eerie calm, which is nothing like the genuine calm so easily discernible on the face of a pious nun, but which on hers looks like a blanket stifling something deep and dangerous. If this is the end of her journey and what she calls home, then it must be full of torment.
Ingrid Mattson grew up as a Catholic. By all accounts, she was a spiritually precocious child. She talks about feeling God’s transcendence in the quiet buildings of the Catholic Church as a young girl, and about her “simple, naïve piety.” Then, in adolescence, she lost that faith and stopped going to church despite her brother telling her to stick it out – one hour a week at mass is not a high price to pay for eternity. His advice was far from flippant. It was more about not disrupting her family and community, and that she could still return to her faith and even secure paradise. She ignored this advice, but did find that transcendence somewhere else not too much later, leaving her family and her Catholic faith for good.
While in university, she immersed herself in her art studies; in the darkened classrooms with giant slide projections of Western art, in her department’s archives cataloging those same slides, and in the thick library art books she assiduously studied. But, these images didn’t touch her as she wished they would. She had expected them to take her to the same place she had found so easily in her childhood, to the realm of God. “ What was I seeking in such an intense engagement with visual art?” she asks. “Perhaps some of the transcendence I felt as a child in the cool darkness of the Catholic Church I loved.”
It is a mystery that despite the gentle Madonnas, the heartbreaking Pietàs, the dignified saints, and the joyous infant Jesuses, none of these works touched her into returning to her original faith. They fell short, or more precisely, she did. She was unable to receive God in her non-believing heart, which had ended up at a dead end, following the “barren outcome” of her philosophy course in Existentialism.
Her journey towards Islam started when she went to Paris for a summer during her junior year at university, a time which she calls “the summer I met Muslims.” She was charmed by these West African Muslims, whom she met at an anti-racist concert, and who, according to her, lived in Paris with grace and generosity despite suffering a “very overt prejudice and racism.” She lived with them in their student quarters for several weeks observing their behavior and their religion.
She started to study the Koran upon her return to Canada, and converted to Islam in her senior year at university. The God that would never appear to her during her hours of isolated contemplation, when she looked at image after image trying to find His spirit, finally announced himself to her as Allah “The Hidden, veiled in glorious light from the eyes of any living person.” He has accepted her in his transcendent invisibility, and he has relieved her from the burden of her endless quest to find him in images. Her newfound Islamic tradition also miraculously prohibits visual representations, which absolves her further from such futile search . She realizes “[her] mistake of thinking that seeing means knowing”, and that one knows about Allah without “construct[ing] statues or sensual paintings.” S he can now begin the task of simply worshiping her one true Allah.
What is it that impressed Mattson that she felt such admiration for those influential African Muslims she met in Paris, calling them “remarkable human beings…[who] had a dignity and a generosity of spirit”? And what makes her talk about Muslims she meets later in her life as the most generous people she has ever met? Of course, in making these superlative statements about Muslims, she has to be comparing them to something. That surely is her own community back in Ontario, whose faith she had abandoned a few years earlier. And those racist Parisians and their mistreatment of the black Muslim students, who, it never occurs to her, were accepted into the great learning institutions of France by these same prejudiced French.
There is a strange family history that might explain some of her behavior. Her much older sister married a Jewish man and converted to Judaism with minimal protest from her Catholic parents. Would this sisterly (and parental) betrayal affect her so much during her deeply pious Catholic childhood that she, in adulthood, would turn away from her family and religion to adopt something that would not remind her of this pain?
In a poem she wrote against waterboarding, she talks of a brother Joey, who had drowned.
I used to love swimming underwater
Until Joey drowned
Dear sweet brother
Pulled down by the Kicking Horse River
Another family death, her father’s when she was only twelve, had left her and her siblings with a mother working in a factory to support them. Is this part of her family saga of disappointments and betrayals, where those closest to her have abandoned and hurt her to such an extent that their sins can never be expiated, or at least she can never forgive them? Better to find another set of people, another religion, another God, and she will make sure they will never wound her in this way. Better to find the truly pious.
At the end of her undergraduate studies, Mattson makes another trip, this time a cross-country bus ride to British Columbia, for a summer job planting trees. By chance, she finds Fazlur Rahman’s book Islam a few days before she leaves. By the end of her trip “ as I traveled across the Canadian prairies”, she says, she makes a life-long pledge to Islam . She then spends a year working in Afghan refugee camps where she meets and marries an Egyptian Muslim, and bears two children. She goes on to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies, and eventually rises to prominence, dedicating her career to Muslim causes by running various academic and political Islamic institutions. The apex of her profession so far is her post as President of ISNA, which she achieved in 2006, having been Vice President since 2001.
Mattson’s many activities at ISNA focus on Muslims’ perceived discrimination against them by white Christian America. She doesn’t consider 9/11 Islam’s problem, for example, complaining that it has caused Muslims to spend too much time trying to build positive images to the external world, rather than concentrate on improving themselves. She compares “Death to America” slogans, shouted in unison by thousands of Muslims, to the few Christian preachers who – Nazi-like, according to her – speak out about the dangers of Islam. These preachers, notably, never wish death on any Muslim. She’s one of the many “moderate” Muslims who felt that the Pope’s apology for quoting a medieval text that described Islam as “evil and inhuman”, words that were not the Pope’s, was not enough. Behind her quiet demeanor, there is an unflinchingly dogmatic person at work. Whites and Christians are to blame for everything, and Muslims can do no wrong.
And Muslims never disappoint her personally. “Look to his people, and you will find the Prophet” she writes, and she does indeed find them and her prophet in a double dose of good fortune. Having left her own people and their God, this is surely a gift from her new deity commending her judgment. She finds examples of the Prophet in the Afghani refugees who sewed her a wedding dress using their meager possessions, in her young son’s Koran teacher, and in those distant African Muslims in Paris who shared their food and religion with her. Her journey is over, it seems, and she has found her true home.
But her strange, quiet, droning voice suggests otherwise. She sounds like she’s on anti-depressants or sedatives. And she makes little grammatical mistakes as she speaks, hinting at a lack of focus (or truthfulness?) that at times prevents her from completing her thoughts to the ends of her sentences. Her expression is often detached and impassive, with the occasional smile, and a pucker ever so slightly when mentioning those atrocities aimed at her beloved Muslims.
During a television interview with Patty Satalia’s Penn State’s Common Ground Lobby Talk on December 2006, Satalia quotes a line from the Koran, “Whenever God wants the destruction of a people, he makes a woman a leader”, and asks how she relates to that, especially given her recent appointment as President of ISNA. Mattson gets defensive saying that some of Mohammed’s messages were invented by opportunists and politicians. She adds that one has to look at the totality of Mohammed’s sayings to get a better idea of “gender equality” in Islam (which exists, in her view). She also becomes evasive and says that is for the hadith scholars to decipher these discrepancies.
When asked by Krista Tippett in the public radio program Speaking of Faith during a March 2008 interview (in the unedited version of the interview, cut from the final version), on her exultant response after her first reading of the Koran and what she did about all the “upsetting, bewildering and foreign” parts, Mattson becomes evasive once again. She offers no explanation for the many violent and destructive passages in the Koran except to say that she was “reading the Koran for myself”, which might translate to her extracting what she wanted from it, and leaving the unpleasant parts alone. This seems to be her modus operandi to this day.
Tippett asks astutely, “Many people had become aware of Islam for the first time through that act of very dramatic violence [of 9/11]... Where [could] non-Muslims look to find [benevolent] images as vivid as those images of towers crashing to the ground?” Mattson does give a vivid and sensitive tableau of “the beautiful, beautiful image of 3,000 Muslims in absolute peace and harmony making the pilgrimage together to Mecca every year.” But then her distrust of images comes to the fore when she goes on to say, “Could that image [of the 3,000 Muslim pilgrims] really outweigh this daily bombardment of bombardments we get on TV? We just have to get away from that.”
Images of violent Muslims are deceitful, is her message. And since these images are so overwhelming, they will render even the most beautiful ones ineffective. It is better, as her hadiths have said all along, to reject them all. Her pious and good Muslims, reflections of Mohammed himself, cannot do any harm.
Know us by our actions, has become her mantra. “ There are millions and millions of Muslims engaged in good works”, she explains, and that is where we will find the true Islam, not in the horrific images that television, magazines, films and photographs continually portray. Yet, it is actions that those shocking images depict. And it was those actions by Muslims, who led 3,000 innocent, beautiful, Americans to their deaths, that were caught on camera, images of actions that will haunt us for an eternity. What can she say about that? “We just have to get away from that”, will be her dispassionate and dogmatic response. What a far cry from the fine arts student who imbibed images from her Western tradition throughout her university days. But relinquishing that tradition has not brought her any closer to the truth, which must have been what she was searching for all these years.
One has to wonder how she reconciles this schizophrenic mind to achieve her eerie calm, which is nothing like the genuine calm so easily discernible on the face of a pious nun, but which on hers looks like a blanket stifling something deep and dangerous. If this is the end of her journey and what she calls home, then it must be full of torment.