Apoycalypse California

The Pale Horse
Left: Death on a Pale Horse, by J.M.W. Turner, 1825-30;
Right: Photoshopped from an image of the 2007 California wildfires

I took the image below of the firefighter with the blast of flame behind him, and photoshopped it to make the one above.

I was struck by the figurative nature of the flame, and it reminded me of a horse-like creature - of course since I was free-associating with the Apocalypse that's probably how the image evolved. The whole idea came from that famous Pope and the bonfire image that was circulating a few weeks ago.

Image downloaded from the internet of the 2007 California wildfires

This is a great image, and I really didn't want to do it a disservice by altering it. The lone, brave firefighter almost being engulfed by the flame still continues his duty of saving lives.

These wildfires are not haphazard. They are Biblical in the convergence of the errors involved. We are the masters of our destiny.

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Skulls and Butterflies

Damien Hirst's blasphemy

Damien Hirst infamously stuck a dead shark in container full of formaldehyde, gave it a title and called it art. One of his worst is a dead lamb, enclosed in a glass cage of formaldehyde which he cruelly entitled Away from the Flock. Later on, he got rid of the formaldehyde, and just started to display rotting animals.

I was pleasantly surprised to see some more recent art works of his that seemed to portray simple beauty and with titles like Crown of Glory. Still they looked just a little too symmetrical at first glance.

My slight suspicion was soon justified. Hirst used dead butterflies, thousands of them, to make his images which look like stained-glass windows.

This is something creepily sacrilegious on many levels.

Firstly, Hirst is demonstrating his inherent laziness. Stained glass are made through skill, creativity and talent. They are created almost out of nothing, coming from deep within the artist's imagination. Hirst forfeited talent and skill, and instead spent his time collecting dead butterflies to mimic these great works of art.

Secondly, why didn't Hirst use collages of paper, if he really cannot draw or carve out glass? Unlike butterfly collectors, who work with one butterfly at a time, one wonders how many Hirst killed, or had killed, to come with the thousands that he needed for his collage.

And finally, stained glass are associated with Churches, and a glorification of God. Hirst has managed to entice us into the beauty of stained glass, and simultaneously spook us with his method. His intention had never been to produce religious pieces, but rather items that would shock and repulse people.

It is no surprise that one his most popular and expensive work is a diamond encrusted human skull. He sold the piece, which he called For the Love of God, for $100 million.

With artists like this, who needs the Devil.

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A Sample of Connected Thoughts

Figuring out the cracks
Shibboleth, by Doris Salcedo. Currently at the Tate

Ugly Betty is a show about an ugly Hispanic woman who ends up working in the New York fashion industry. Yet, in real life, the Ugly Betty star (ironically named America) is cute and charming. Why couldn't she be cute (although she is somewhat charming) in the movie? I suspect it is an attempt to tell the average viewer that beauty is only skin deep, and that we have been judging ethnic women by unfair and wrong standards. Yes, she's ugly, but look at how good she is.

But why not have a show of a "Beautiful Maria", or some such title? Wasn't Maria good enough with beauty to top it off, to be a star in West Side Story? Maybe they're just worried that all beautiful Hispanic female leads might never get their hero.

Still, ugly Betty didn't stop Ugly Betty from becoming a hit.

Julie Taymor made the Lion King, a glorification of Africa with African songs, African American (and African) actors, and African animals.

She also recently directed Across the Universe, using Beatles songs to stage her own anti-establishment movie/musical berating American traditions and culture.

Why is Taymor able to make such a glorified and grand musical about Africans, but does such a terrible job at directing a movie full of the lovely Beatles melodies?

I suspect it is quite simple. Taymor finds more to admire in an alien, distant, culture than she does in her own. Although, for all purposes, she seems to know very little about this alien culture apart from a few clichéd, feel-good examples.

The Tate Gallery has sponsored and set up an installation which required a fissure in its floor. The Colombian artist who made the crack in the floor says "it represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred...It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe."

After the installation is removed, there will be a "scar", which the Tate owners are quite happy about since it will be a "memorial to the issues [the artist] touches on."

Why a scar?

To expiate their deadly sins, which includes not letting in illegal (i.e criminal) Third Worlders into their society. The irony is many British are so overwhelmed by these forsaken immigrants, that they in turn are leaving for Australia, New Zealand, and yes for Canada.

The Louvre will be loaning out some of its master paintings to Abu Dhabi. Critics are concerned they will be censoring religious paintings, and of course the famous nudes. I would think also that other more "benign" paintings will be censored. For example, Delacroix’s Marianne, a strong female figure leading her countrymen to freedom.

Is it all in the name of money?

I doubt it. The Louvre is also expanding its Islamic art section with millions of dollars funding from Saudi Arabia. The French are selling off one of their most famous national words, Liberté, and getting nothing back in return.


Liberty Leading the People, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830

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The Hirsi Ali Debacle

Getting real about Islam


Why did Hirsi Ali take so long to make the unequivocal statement that there is no moderate Islam?

Well, she's actually been saying that all along, but she always qualified it with some kind of possibility for reform or evolution of the religion.

But, especially, she has watered down these beliefs because of her attachment to Muslim women, who she thinks can benefit from a reformed Islam since it is clear that they would never renounce their religion. Therefore, fully admitting that moderate Islam doesn't exist would be tantamount to saying that all those Muslim women are destined to suffer the consequences of their religion.

Her mission has thus been carefully camouflaged with feminist rhetoric above all, and atheistic and anti-religious (of all religions, including Christianity) sentiment, and a wishful thinking that ordinary Muslims can reject the religious Islam and turn it into some kind of an improved cultural non-religious version.

Ali's whole trajectory has been a bitter admission of the truth. And it is her feminist, leftist and atheistic positions that obstructed the truth from her. Like all ideologues, she is a self-proclaimed missionary. She has always felt that her role was to save her fellow Muslim women, despite her terrible film "Submission" which alienated her from those very women.

Still, I think there is a deeper issue here. Ali has nothing concrete or practical with which to replace this fundamental loss. She adheres to no country having moved from one to another all her life; she has no religion; the religion she denounced is also a denunciation of her culture; and she has no political aim other than to allow the individual to manifest himself to the fullest, as she has argued through her faithful adherence to the Enlightenment philosophies.

Thus, although Ali may temporarily bring awareness to these important issues of Islam and its incompatibility with the West, her behavior has repeatedly shown that she alienates friends, irritates governments, brings disastrous projects to the table, and publicly ruminates through her own thought's evolutions to arrive at a comfortable system. What more can she bring? And will she be a female, black version of Mark Steyn, who has the ability to narrow down problems affecting Western Civilization, but is ever-vague (I would say disingenuous) about bringing forth real solutions to these real dangers?

We have to wait and see. But, I wouldn’t idolize Ali too much.

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Fall Season Parody at the CBC I

This is funny

Rick Mercer, the quintessential Canadian America-basher, who manages to cajole politicians into doing embarrassing things, has somehow got Conrad Black to be his pool boy. Now, that could have been funny in itself, but what makes Mercer ever pathetic is his deferential "Lord Black" when he addresses the soon-to-be-jailed-non-Canadian-citizen (quite a mouthful, worthy of a...) British Lord. "Connie", replies the Lord, dryly.

Mercer has hours of parody (his version, anyway) of Black, when Black was a successful, not quite that rich business man and galloping around the world giving soirées with his wife. But that all changed when Black started his bitter fight with the American justice system. That is when Mercer became his ally.

Black must be cursing the days when he has to bow down to the likes of Mercer, on a show he probably hates, in order to get the sympathy of the Canadian audience.

Too late, though. The wheel is already rolling.

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Toronto's Latest Casualty

To urban "development"

This lovely house



which became my inspiration for this rendition



and later on this repeat pattern design



became yet another casualty in the Toronto architectural landscape sometime last summer.



And just as I predicted, a condo-style building is rising up to accommodate all those mystery tenants, and progress is going fine, as of September 2007.



I've blogged about it, and those suspicious new tenants here.

Funny how intuition works sometimes. I wonder who will thank me for making a historical record

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The Global Film Festival

A.k.a. The Toronto International Film Festival

Well, TIFF lives up to its international name.

The winner of the Festival is a film by a Canadian director, whose story is based in London (England, that is, not Ontario) about a Russian mafia group, with an unwatchable fight scene in a Turkish bath. This from the director who gave us The History of Violence in last year's festival.

We were also graced with a new film by Ang Lee (of Brokeback Mountain fame). But this time he comes to Toronto with a Venice Festival win of a Chinese crime story set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, with more unwatchable scenes.

There is also the $10,00 winner of the Telefilm Canada Pitch 2005 which is an incomprehensible, Hindi, film set in India directed by an "Indo-Canadian." The director, Ritchie Mehta, is no relation of Deepa Mehta, whose film Water was chosen as the "Canadian Film" gala opener at TIFF 2005. Water is about the fate of Hindu widows in the holy city Varanasi, with an Indian cast, and in Hindi. Real Indians protested to its filming on location, calling it sacrilegious, and shut down the production, so Mehta had to film it in Sri Lanka.

Modern films have no sense of place. They instead resort to violence, fantasy, or sacrilege to fill in the empty gaps. If the audience can be thrilled or transported, then reality and geography can be ignored without anyone missing them, or recognizing their absence.

Toronto is becoming exemplary at showing us films with these deficits. But, of course, to the film goers and filmmakers, this is no deficit. Film, after all, to them, is the ultimate fantasy.

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