Sandra Oh
From the poster for the film Catfight (2016)
Thank you Sandra Oh for your multicultural/artist's presence at the Parliament Hill Canada 150 Celebration. But you don't even live in Canada so I don't know how you got onto that stage.
Thank you Sandra, for giving us such wonderful films, the only one which anyone might remembers being Under the Tuscan Sun where she played a lesbian (thank you for giving Canadians the chance to say: "Oh yes she's Canadian!"). This was surely a career move since her Grey's Anatomy role was leaving her stuck on television as someone who acts in a night-time soap opera.
And her entrance into the film world was in an "Indie" playing the daughter of Chinese immigrants whom she leaves for a white boyfriend (no matter that Oh herself is Korean but the Chinese screen writer couldn't find a suitable Chinese-Canadian actress to play her autobiographical character, I guess).
Oh's back again with another film. This time a "fight club" for housewives, and with at Turkish American as director (although he was born in Taylorsville, North Carolina).
Says Onur Tukel about his flm Catfight - starring Oh:
I wrote [a script ] in 2013 called Catfight. It was about women in their twenties fighting over a guy.
[...]
When I reread my original script, I hated it. I didn’t want to make a movie about young women fighting over a guy. The culture has shifted. I wanted to make something more relevant. I rewrote the script with more experienced actresses in mind, fighting over something radically different than a guy.[Source]
And more:
...a rivalry is revived, old wounds are torn open, and a Manhattan stairwell becomes home to a woman-on-woman brawl the likes of which are seldom seen outside of martial-arts epics. And now the gloves are off. Over the course of five years and three bloody, bone-crushing rounds, Catfight's formidable adversaries will lose everything they cherish, and rail furiously as their fortunes are subject to wild reversals.
"The culture has shifted." Says Tukel. "I wanted to make something more relevant."
Yes. Women bashing each other up in a movie which even men would walk out on.
In Chapter 1 : Sitcoms, Cultural Translation and the Paradox of Saleable Diversity
---------------------------------------------
2. Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice
Ed. Peter Dickinson et al.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Mar 27, 2014
I am referenced in Chapter 16 in an essay by Regina Barreca: Layla Siddiqui as Holy Fool in Little Mosque on the Prairie:
Baber and his continual critique of Canadian morality no doubt inspired the claim of columnist Kidist Paulos Asrat that the show's intention is to convert North Americans to Islam.
This is once again based on my article How Canada's Little Mosque on the Prairie is Aiming for our Souls, but it is an incorrect interpretation of what I wrote. This is the usual hyperbole of multiculturalists who wish to find a demon in any critic of multiculturalism.
What I wished to communicate was that the show's intent was to make North Americans sympathetic towards Islam, and not to convert them. Little Mosque on the Prairie was still an exotic sitcom then. The show came out in January 2007 as Canadians were learning about it, and was cancelled in April 2012 as the novelty wore off, and not because of "Islamophobia."
Barreca is a feminist academician (no oxymoron there) who also wants to be funny. She quips:
“I used to assume my students were feminists,” she says. “It seemed like everyone got my jokes and laughed. Now I have to explain myself.”
For more on Baber (and his daughter Layla) see their character descriptions on Wikipedia
Layla Siddiqui (Aliza Vellani) is... a portrait of an average teenage Muslim girl struggling to find the right balance between her desire to be a good Muslim and her desire for the lifestyle of a regular Canadian teenager who's into music, clothes and boys. She can be rebellious and sarcastic, especially at her father's foibles (she refers to their home as "Baberistan"), but is also very perceptive and insightful. [
The book is a compilation of lectures at symposium at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia in 2011. The essays collected in Women and Comedy: History, Theory, and Practice, originally presented and discussed at a 2011 symposium held at Simon Fraser University.
---------------------------------------------
3. Baz Luhrmann
By: Pam Cook
British Film Institute; 2010 edition (July 6 2010)
I am cited in the end notes (104) of Baz Luhrmann, which I presume is in reference to my article: Australia: Whose Land is it Anyway, by Austral filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, in American Thinker. I write about the difficult integration of aboriginal mysticism with British pragmatic colonialism. I come in favor of Nicole Kidman's austere but brave femininity, and her kindly adoption of an aboriginal orphan, rescuing him from being interned in a mission school.
I have been thinking, writing and teaching about moving image culture since the 1970s, and these pages are a record of my work up to the present. Since 2006 I’ve been Professor Emerita in Film at the University of Southampton [UK].
No I'm not on twitter. But my yahoo mail has a red Valentine's heart on the top corner, and it throbs!
I thought it was cute.
But all cuteness aside, a day of lighthearted celebration of love is a good thing. The problem is when people take it so seriously that it means everything (or nothing). Red hearts all over the place are a nice burst of color, in this dark depths of winter, and after the festivities of Christmas and New Year, it brings a holiday mood into February. Our next holiday is Easter, and that is as late as March or April.
I was recently watching You've Got Mail with Meg Ryan (as Kathleen Kelly) and Tom Hanks (as Joe Fox). Kathleen sends herself a dozen red roses for Valentine's. She says to Joe that she does it for the possibility of love.
That is how we should all live: for the possibility of love, for the possibility of goodness, for the possibility of beauty, for the possibility of summer.
So many possibility, it gives us quite a busy schedule!
Here is a simple menu:
- Plate of sweet potato fries
- Glass of Cabernet Sauvignon Vista Point from California
Wine description from the menu:
Intense blackberry and currant, a smooth easy drinking wine for any occasion.
I don't know why the wine is described as "intense" but it is more flavorful than intense.
Here's one moresite (pdf) with this brief description of the wine: "pleasant, semi-dry, smooth."
My evaluation is that the wine's fruity notes makes it a great match with the sweet potatoes.
Below is an article I submitted to the on-line journalThe Imaginative Conservative. It was rejected with the following email from Alyssa Barnes*, managing editor at the journal:
Dear Ms. Asrat:
Thank you for your interest in The Imaginative Conservative; I hope you are well.
Thank you also for your proposal. I regret to inform you that your essay does not meet our current editorial needs.
Sincerely,
Alyssa
First: What is this "conservative" trend (for decades now) with formal letters being signed off with a first name? Odd and deceptively familiar. Deceptively familiar because it looks like I am a "friend" of sorts, whereas I am interacting with Ms. Barnes on a purely professional level.
Second: What does "does not meet our current editorial needs" mean? Do they have too many submissions to consider? Do they not like the topic? Do they not like the religious references?
Conservatives have always been accused of being too stuffy and out of touch with reality. Then suddenly Trump pops up and they are shocked.
A professional interaction does not inhibit (or forbid) one to be out with the common man. And being out with the common man doesn't mean one doesn't treat him with some level of formality.
Does she think that I am being blasphemous in associating Mary Magdalene's love of Christ with Sarah Jessica Parker's profane use of perfume?
Still, stuffiness aside, conservatives, and those who call themselves religious conservatives, keep missing the boat with their grandiose elitism and consequently their inability to read the common man.
They're as bad in their intellectual ivory tower as is SJP in her Hollywood ivory tower.
I should have known better, as I wrote a critique of a post at the IC just a few weeks ago: Mo and Mao: How the East Might Revive the West’s Tradition. Of course, my argument is that it is the other way around.
Probably this post would have made Ms. Barnes' cut. Lainey Gossip is the website of a second-rate Canadian media woman Elaine Lui who makes her income on gossip. She has a degree in French (it must be all those naughty "frrrench" who corrupted her). I doubt it. She seems to link her "harsh" take on life to her Chinese background, Tiger Mom style.
“My grandmother ran a Mahjong den in Hong Kong. My mother played, that’s what they do - they play Mahjong and they talk sh-t, all day and all night. They smoke cigarettes and send out for food and talk sh-t some more. That was how they communicated. Gossip is communication. That's how I was indoctrinated.”
She got her husband to quit his job at a media company to join in with her "bitching" as "the business side" of her enterprise.
She gossips, but so what? How bland and boring.
There's no bigger story, no message, no moral. Just mean-spirited humorless empty gossip.
These days Lainey's dishes have has gone "lo-cal." Perhaps it is all those celebrity endorsements that have told her to cool it down a little. She also smiles a lot on her tv show The Social , but then she can't help herself with her periodic "b..." outbursts.
Here is the short bio at The Imaginative Conservative on Ms. Barnes:
Alyssa Barnes is the Managing Editor of The Imaginative Conservative. She is a graduate student in Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy and Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. Miss Barnes holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Political Science, and Classical Languages from the University of St. Thomas' Honors Program in Houston, TX. She has also been an Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Fellow.
Barnes' Linkedin page shows that she has worked directly in churches and religious institutions, and has attended Catholic schools and universities.
Article submitted to The Imaginative Conservative:
Welfare Advocate Sarah Jessica Parer: The Hollywood Limousine Liberal
John 12:3-8
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,
Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?
This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.
Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this.
For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.
Luke 6:20-21
Then he looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Left: Sarah Jessica Parker promoting her perfume Lovely in 2005
Right: Existential drama at the 2017 Golden Globes, soon after the election of Donald Trump
Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus' feet with expensive perfume to worship him and adore him. Sarah Jessica Parker brands her perfumes as part of her name and uses this fame to promote government dependency by America's poor.
Sarah Jessica Parker used to look pretty, and even lovey at times. Above left is a photo of her in 2005 with her perfume "Lovely," and then in the photo on the right at the 2017 Global Globe awards. By 2017, she is looking up as though searching for some vampire-god's guidance with her blackened nails and elongated claws for eyelashes. Why the spiritual drama?
Well the immediate answer is that she is "shocked" by the election of Donald Trump. Here is her emotional rollercoaster of a reaction over Trump's election:
"I am shocked by what has happened. I’m devastated by…I’m sad..."
That partly explains her appearance: sad/shocked/devastated and trying to put on a happy face.
Parker is wearing a wedding gown for the Global Globe 's, with no hint or irony. Except that this is a mangled and ripped gown touted as the latest design by divorced wedding gown designer Vera Wang.
Vera Wang: Fall 2017 - Dracula's Bride
She is wearing her SJP Shoe Collection heels, having moved up the ranks to a shoe designer. They are a rather tame "spaghetti strap" heels, carefully hidden by the trailing cut-out gown, since they don't fit the vampire theme of the dress. Parker has always been about pretty, which is why she cannot display her black nails and grey eyeshadow with a genuinely happy face.
SJP Shoe Collection: Westminster Metallic Sandals
A rich Hollywoodian, Parker hypocritically "supports" the poor as she lives a lavish, luxurious and indulgent life. Which is part of the "long answer" to her existential malaise. She is rich, wealthy actually, but she wants to (pretend to) be one with the poor. Since she has no religion, or rather since she has abandoned God, even the God of her Jewish ancestors, she has no idea of the meaning of Jesus' words (and even if she did know them, she wouldn't know how to relate to them):
"For you have the poor always with you; but me you have not always. [Matthew 26:11].
Her constant scurrying around, her beaten-down look, her idols, including President Obama, all attest to her deep desire to be this "good person." She has made her charitable missions her religion. But like true hypocrites, such charity, especially when in the presence of the President, come with designer shoes and gourmet-catered dinners, all carefully orchestrated to be hidden away to avoid ostentatious exhibition. After all who questions a little glitter on slippers and a plate of
"Chicken with a mustard sauce, diced tomatoes and a lot of relishes on the side..." dishes Aretha Franklin, one of the honorary guests, to gossip media waiting outside the townhouse "Very tasty," she added.
She has some idea of how goodness from others (strangers and friends) can make life better. She talks about her life in poverty as a young child with her family being on welfare for much of her childhood, and having to get "welfare tickets" for free lunches while in the third grade in a Cincinnati school. More information on her family background shows that her mother divorced Parker's father when she was only a year old and remarried a year later to a Paul Forste. Parker's mother seemed attracted to men with unstable financial prospects. Stephen Parker was an "aspiring writer." Paul Forste was a "theater student" who also worked as a truck driver when he came to live with Parker's mother, bringing with him his five children making the household child count to eight. The family lived off the "theatre student" Forste's truck driver salary and what Barbara brought in on her teacher's wages.
It is never pleasant to criticize someone's poverty. But how much of her mother's bad choices led to Parker's difficult childhood? Still, her enterprising mother managed to find some way out of this poverty by enrolling her children in various entertainment productions. By 1977, at age eleven, Parker had a role in the Broadway musical Annie. By 1979, she had nabbed the lead role. And the rest is history (including briefly dating John F. Kennedy)
Parker is now an advocate for welfare, albeit indirectly, through her vigorous support of Obama and all his failed government policies. She is the epitome of a limousine liberal but one who should know better thus making her a hypocrite. It wasn't the free lunches that catapulted her into the ranks of Hollywood's elite, but her mother's savviness and a little of her own talent.
She now keeps making her films, and concocts more perfumes (she's got about four by now although none as good as the first one). I used to be a fan of hers in her Sex and the City days, which, to its credit, was uncomfortably inhibited with its "sex" part. Kim Cattrall, the sexpot in the series, always performed her scenes as though she were in a rush for them to be over. The prudence was possibly due to Parker (she is a prude).
Her latest media promotion for which she attended the Golden Globes is for a television series called Divorce. Her painful experience with her parents' split when she was a young child seems to have made her wiser, making sure her marriage stays intact. She has been married to Matthew Broderick for twenty-five years now.
“What I do on screen doesn't cross the placenta, do you know what I mean?”
[Parker in an interview with People Magazine in New York at the HBO premier series for Divorce]
But Parker does not really believe in marriage. At least the formal traditional kind.
That is the hypocrisy of the contemporary liberal elite. They make sure their own heterosexual marriages stay intact, and a surprising number are intact albeit many are in long-standing second marriages, or married after several years of "cohabitation." Look at for example Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Meryl Streep and her non-movie star husband (she's the smartest of them all), Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. But everyone else's marriage is up for grabs of freedom: freedom to leave a husband in pursuit of a career; freedom to choose the gender (or non-gender) of one's "partner;" freedom to have children; freedom to adopt a Chinese orphan. Parker sees herself as the spokeswomyn for the common womyn who reconfigures life to suit her agenda and ideology. Parker hasn't gained an iota of wisdom, or empathy, from the difficult, and sad, life of her own parents' failed marriages.
Parker never adopted a Chinese infant, as is the trend amongst these multimillionaire actresses. She has one son with her husband, whom she bore late in life (at 35). And she couldn't leave it at that. Instead, her youngest two children are through a surrogate. Imagine telling your children they have another "mother" out there somewhere.
The "Lovely" woman has become the epitome of the narcissistic Hollywood actress.
40K/plate fundraiser for Obama and his wife in 2012
Parker held a fundraiser for Obama in 2012 in her multi-million Greenwich Village brownstone home and introduced him and his wife thus:
"It is a great, a rare, a very special and I’m assuming a singular treat to welcome you into our home – our radiant, our extraordinary first lady...[and the] beloved current and future president of the United States.”
She is now mum about her retiring president, whom she helped to re-elect for a second term. And the state of affairs in which he left America after his presidency does not make a good pitch for a sitcom.
Video screen shot of interview of Alyssa Barnes on her transfer to
the University of Saint Thomas. Notice the tight jean pants,
the tight short-sleeved t-shirt, the string bracelet,
the heavy make up on her eyes.
I wouldn't blame her rather than the authorities who allow such school "uniform."
Barnes wrote an article titled: Top Ten Ways to be a Man, with the preface to the article:
In an age in which tweed jackets have been replaced by sweatshirts, pants have holes and shoes lack laces, and the “un-done” look is considered attractive, maybe we need to reconsider our codes of conduct, especially when it comes to the art of being a man. Thus, the question is begged: What makes a man?
Video: Why I transferred to the University of Saint Thomas
Here is the Linkedin profile photo of Barnes which implies that it is a much more recent one.
Although Barnes looks much prettier in her the profile, she is wearing a glaring red lipstick and has clearly had her hair tinted. She looks like a natural red-head, and yet added these unnatural and unaesthetic highlights to her otherwise pretty hair. And her eye makeup is as heavy as her lipstick.
Timothy 2:9
In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array
I've always wondered at the color in the "northern" lands. One would expect them to be dreary and grey. But, wherever people cherish the beautiful, they will always have color. Color is part of the world.
Above is the television commercial on Newfoundland and Labrador that is currently showing on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, more similar ones at the link). We have a few more months to plan for that vacation by the sea.
The survey on the website asks me (for a chance at a silkscreen of a whale) if I would travel to Newfoundland and Labrador. I answered honeslty "not very likely."
But, I can still look at the images!
------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
Director Tim Burton next to one of the "Big Eyes" illustrations
Big Eyes is a true story about an "artist" who makes creepy, cartoonish illustrations of little girls with giant eyes.
Who are these drawings for? Young children would be creeped out, and older people, well, why would they want such juvenile art adorning their walls?
This is what Burton says about these paintings, which he saw all over the place as a young child:
“At my doctor’s office, there was a big-eyed girl with a poodle. At my dentist’s office, there was a series of kids with cats. When I went to the market, there were greeting cards with Keane ballerinas, Keane waifs, Keane cowboys, and so on. I was fascinated by their huge, sad, Big Brother–ish eyes. I loved that these strange children always seemed to be watching me. It was like being in a bizarre, captivating dream.”
And now, Burton is directing a film based on these images.
But who would want to star in it? Well, one actress, at least: Amy Adams.
“I happened to be standing next to her at the luncheon for the Academy Award nominees. I was there for Frankenweenie, and Amy was there for The Master. We chatted, and she called me the next day and said she had read Big Eyes. She wanted to play Margaret.”
Actresses all want to look glamorous, a la Old Hollywood.
But, none of these contemporary actresses are making films worthy of those classic times. Instead, they are quite happily playing ghouls, vampires, and now creators of ghoulish art.
Adams was all set on making a movie on Margaret Keane, as Tim Burton recounts:
“I happened to be standing next to her at the luncheon for the Academy Award nominees. I was there for Frankenweenie, and Amy was there for The Master. We chatted, and she called me the next day and said she had read Big Eyes. She wanted to play Margaret.”
Creepy-eyed girl in Margaret Keane's 1963 In the Garden (there are many variations to the tile and date of this image, but here seems to be an authentic one).
Here is Adams as Margaret Keane, next to one of the creepy eyed "Big Eyes":
And here is Adams, in her Versace and Tiffany's:
Amy Adams in her lilac Versace gown at the Golden Globes on Sunday
Adams was fully decked in Tiffany's at the Golden Globes, according to this site, with:
...drop earrings, a platinum and diamond five-row bracelet and a platinum and 2.12-carat square cushion modified brilliant diamond ring.
None of the major film critics are talking about the creepiness of Margaret Keane's illustrations (I cannot call them paintings). But a few dare to voice the obvious (albeit in single lines, or as their article heading).
If you’re like me, perhaps you saw the trailer and groaned, “Why why why Margaret Keane?! Yack.”...What [Burton] can do is tell a stranger-than-fiction story about a creepy man who pretended to paint his wife’s creepy kid art.
Detail of Our Children, painted by Margaret Keane around 1960
In 1961, The Prescolite Manufacturing Corporation bought Our Children and presented it to the United Nations Children's Fund. It is in the United Nations permanent collection of art.
Here is the website of the artist, Margaret Keane.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
The movie You've Got Mail takes place in a tiny radius of the Upper West Side of New York City, which cleverly fits the film's story of two people interacting through "the internet" using pseudonyms. It is a silly romantic story, but it is earnest, and truthful. I like the perseverance of the main characters, determined to get the best of, or at least some happiness in, life.
But, I like it especially because it is the part of New York I know better than other parts (although it is a little further south then I am accustomed to, although the neighborhood - the shops, coffee houses, parks, newspaper kiosks - looks exactly the same). And for all the "big cityness" of New York, it is very much a city of neighborhoods. The two main characters of You've Got Mail hardly venture out of ten blocks from their neighborhood, and bump into each other in the grocery store, the coffee houses, and the bookstores.
On my next trip to New York, I will try to visit these places, as seen in You've Got Mail.
Unfortunately, the Shop Around the Corner was a fictitious place, and it is now an uninteresting dry cleaners. Here is the history of the location, at 69th St., between Broadway and Columbus::
For the exterior, they filmed at Maya Shaper’s Cheese and Antique Shop, which has since closed sadly. Then, it turned into Cafe Sonatina, which has also shut down. These days, it’s La Mode Cleaners.
I have to add that everyone criticizes Meg Ryan, but I find her authentic, and a good actress.
Verdi Square Greenmarket, late summer I'm not sure if the film's Verdi Square Greenmarket on 72nd St. and Broadway, as shown in the film on still exists, but NYC.gov lists several outdoor markets in the Upper Westside, at 79th, 97th, and 125th street.
Kathleen in her "Shop Around the Corner" putting up Christmas Decorations ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a curious soul or two in the not-too-distant future furtively peeling back the layers and learning the cruel truth: that their forbears willingly exchanged all of their precious liberties for tyranny rather than assess and educate and protect themselves against Islamic conquest -- violent, pre-violent, smooth, explosive, financial, political, kafiyya-wrapped or Armani-suited...They will be astonished, also very angry, over the way free men and women in 20th-21st centuries saw fit...to erect a massive and invasive security state that robbed all citizens of their liberties as they fiddled away the Islamic threat. Mustn't offend? Mustn't offend? That was more important than saving the blessed beauty of our lost civlization...?!
Perfect. We try to sympathize with the Islam that we think we can sympathize with. Mine would be the Armani-suited, although I would paraphrase it with the "Islam that attempts to take example from the beauty it finds in the countries it takes over."
I used to have Iranian friends in university. I found their language beautiful, unlike the harsh guttural sounds of Arabic. We used to frequent a couple of Iranian restaurants, where we had dishes flavored with delicate herbs. And my Iranian friends knew about Paris and fashion, although they were careful since those were the days of the Shah's demise and the start of the Iranian revolution, and any Iranian flaunting her assets would be suspect.
But, every single one of them chose their Islam, and their culture, over the Western culture from which they were getting so much. One girl had a terrible time though, louder than her well-mannered friends. She was clearly rebelling. But they put up with her, and protected her. The men, who looked so modern and were so gentlemanly, would marry women they hardly knew, through arrangements made by their families. One married a girl at least eight to ten years his junior, who was into mini-skirts and shaggy hairstyles. During their engagement, he was the model of tolerance and care, letting her go to dance clubs (with him of course). After their marriage, he graduated and they left, so I never knew what became of her.
At one time, I used to to go to every Iranian movie that came out. I even knew the directors, and would look for their new releases. The regular film festivals (the Toronto International Film Festival here in Toronto) used to have whole sections on Iranian films. But, the theme of these films was always the same: the culture of Islam, one way or another, approved or not by the filmmaker, would dominate. The filmmakers were so adroit at going around the restrictions and censorship that are part of Islamic society, that their very endeavor was artistic.
In an article about Muslim women, I describe a video installation by an Iranian woman. I write, taken in by the poetry of her images:
Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat’s video installation "Rapture" shows a group of women traversing a long empty beach with a row boat anchored at a distant shore. The women reach the boat amid ululations. Their long black chadors get caught in the water and the wind. Only a few can board the boat while the rest push them out into the open seas.
Neshat’s women have now reached our shores.
[...]
Another striking video by Shirin Neshat is of a singer. Muslim women are not normally allowed to perform before an audience, but this woman circumvents that order by singing into an empty hall. Her Western film audience is as symbolically absent as are her barred Muslim followers. We cannot understand what she is singing while watching the footage, and they are unable to hear what she’s singing for their absence in the auditorium.
In the end, our attempts at understanding may ultimately be in vain. Even Muslim women cannot clearly articulate, and listen to, their own quandaries and dilemmas.
And it is the same now. As West writes, it is irrelevant the form in which Islam is presented to us, its end game is always the same.
Rapture is a two-channel video projection divided down gender lines. The male protagonists of the narrative are projected on the left wall of the gallery, the women on the right (Neshat exploited this binary technique in a series of films made in the late ’90s, like “Shadow Under the Web” of 1997, “Turbulent” of 1998 or “Soliloquy” of 1999). This binary formulation is stressed by the artist’s stark use of black and white (down to the actors’ clothes — women in black veils and robes, men in white shirts and black trousers). The viewer, meanwhile, is right in the middle, confronted with the constant dilemma of where to focus her attention; she can’t fully grasp the action in one scene without turning her back on the other. [Synopsis source]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is an email interaction I had with a Reclaiming Beauty reader who was getting spam email after commenting on my site. He also informed me that he was a student of Bruce Elder.
I am posting the interaction since it is really a continuation of my posts which I titled Art Thieves.
Dear _____,
Sorry to get back to you late. I cannot "unsubscribe" you at the moment, but I'm looking up how to and hope to do so soon.
[...]
Yes, I had Bruce Elder. He was an odd fellow, and to be honest, not very artistic. I think that was partly his forceful presence in "experimental" film. He started out as a poet, but failed at that, then turned to film.
I was one of his protege's, but I left the group. I criticized him on several occasions, twice during speeches he was making at public lectures. He could never answer my basic question of "why was he trying to destroy the image." He would thoroughly disapprove of my "realist" approach to photography.
I also similarly criticized the big and formidable Stan [Brakhage] during one of his visits to Toronto, in Bruce's home, where I was a member of his "round table" group of students, faculty and artists (we met about once a week for drinks and discussions). My question to Stan [Brakhage] was similar in stance to the one I asked Bruce [Elder], of why he was destroying the image. Stan [Brakhage], for a few brief moments, didn't know what to say. I think he deflected the question and talked about something else.
Your photographs are wonderful. You have a beautiful family.
All the best,
Kidist
Here is the response from my correspondent:
No rush. Thanks.
p.s. I must contact a friend who now lives in Montreal and tell him your thoughts on Bruce Elder. He'll smile. I had Bruce speak at an NPPA seminar once. I gave him a simple task, to talk about two television news reports, one American and one Canadian and both reporting on the same story. The news stories took two different views. The news was clearly biased in one or both countries. Bruce veered off into a very weird talk that literally emptied the auditorium. Hundreds fled his talk. I laugh now but I was the seminar chair and it was an awful moment.
Cheers!
I reply:
Dear ____,
I have removed commenting functions from Reclaiming Beauty. It looks like people send spam email to those who comment, as one reader informed me.
Thanks for your patience.
Here is one really interesting piece of information proclaimed by The Great Bruce himself:
"Years ago, I used to tell people, only half facetiously, that I was a film maker because I wasn't a creative artist."
More at In Conversation with R. Bruce Elder on the "techniques" he developed to make his films (one of which, I should add, which he hasn't, is to stand clothless infront of the camera being "creative" with himself).
He got one other film student, a woman called Izabella Pruska, to take off her clothes and make her "films." Here she in all her non-glory posing for the Toronto Star.
Here is her [film] Garden of Earthly Delights, which is a clever erotica, a la Elder, where we see flashes of her "delights."
They have made porn, basically. The greatest of nudes in classical painting were never so explicit (or subversively explicit).
And here is Pruska's latest: This Town of Toronto, with the Elder imprint of layered images that are difficult to decipher, repetitive, and which I call "destruction of the image." And Brakhage's imprint of flowers as erotica. Also, using old (or found) footage is another lazy way out of making films and photographs, as I write here in my recent post Art Thieves.
Pruska also had funding from Canada Council to make this 3-minute piece. They never think to fund their own films. Pruska is married to a well-positioned pharmaceutical researcher, at INC Research, who I have no doubt has enough money to pay for his wife's "experiments" - (the Elder crowd calls itself "experimental film makers").
Pruska, and MacDonell (subject of Art Thieves) both teach at Ryerson now. The "legacy" lives on.
Macdonell never took off her clothes, but her Masters thesis, which went into the "festival" circuit, was based on the "found" images of a "burlesque dancer" as she calls it, which is another way of saying "a stripper."
Better label for these film makers might be "Subversive porn film makers."
Those that Elder couldn't get to declothe, he got them to shoot him in his exposed glory. One woman who filmed him in his many naked works, never worked in film after that. She is now a manager (or producer, or a freelancer) at some video production company.
Elder tried to get me to film him as well, but that was one of the last straws which convinced me to quit his program. I left without finishing my degree at Ryerson (with only one more year to go!).
But, I got my films exhibited around Toronto [and in Europe], as well as my photographs.
I do not miss those days. As Elder said, there was nothing creative about it. I actually call it 'evil." His aim is to get at your "subconscious," and more precisely, your sexual/Freudian subconscious.
[Stan] Brakhage [an American filmmaker] also worked at this "subliminal" level, and essentially destroyed or distorted the image to make his films. But he was [more] clever than Elder. He made "imageless" films by coloring on the film itself. He is really akin to the abstract expressionists, who "splashed" paint all over the canvass, a la Jackson Pollock.
Elder has a new book out (he is a prolific writer, or re-writer I should say), on Dada and surrealism. Both these movements are dead and gone (probably how their founders would have wanted it), but Elder keeps on churning out the Dada and the Surreal.
Here is the link to Dada, Surrealism and the Cinematic Effect, which came out in 2013. Same old, same old. Elder gets grants from the Canada Council and other government agencies to make his films and write his books. He has convinced them such that he can do whatever he feels like, and they give him the money for it.
Here is a google books link if you want to read large excerpts from the book.
This Dada book was funded by:
- The Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences - Canada Council for the Arts - Ontario Arts Council etc.
The links below are from my old website, Camera Lucida, so images are missing, but here are a couple of posts I did on Elder when his film The Young Prince came out.
Moses and parting of the Red Sea, from Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments
I wrote the article below in 2010, and it was published at Frontpage Magazine.
It is a critique of religion, contemporary American politics, multiculturalism, and Christianity. I am not a politician (nor a student of politics), but I'm surprised at how prescient some of my points were back then (this is four years before Obamacare becomes part of American health care)
Reclaiming Religion From the Left Published in Frontpage Magazine April 19, 2010
[Commentary on the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 film The Ten Commandments should be screening this Easter on television, as it is an annual tradition. "Please check you local listings."]
Two television networks showcased Cecil B. DeMille’s epic 3 ½ hour The Ten Commandments this Easter: ABC and Canada’s CBC. The 1956 film had no need for our 21st century Computer Generated Imagery to convince us that the Red Sea was indeed parting, and that the “bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2). I wondered if the networks made this choice because there is really no superlative modern narrative of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection? We have Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, but its gore and blood is too hard to take at Easter. The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese is too idiosyncratic, and would be something to watch and study at another time in the year. There are plenty of bland and insipid made-for-television versions of Christ’s story, many of which are programmed during Christmas, but for some reason they were not screened this Easter.
Perhaps these channels chose to commemorate Passover rather than Easter, which fell around similar dates this year. Or they’re simply following the ritual of politically correct inclusiveness. Even President Obama has made Passover Seder-at-the-White House a new tradition, hosting it for the second time as President. No other President before him has hosted the Seder at the White House. Obama’s Seder started on a whim, it seems. During his campaign trail, two young Jewish aides were celebrating their Seder in a basement of a Pittsburgh hotel, away from home and family, when Obama joined their festivities.
Obama’s interest in Jewish celebrations may indeed be a liberal’s outreach to cultural diversity – after all, the White House now hosts Ramadan dinners. But, it fits his narcissistic personality, conforming the Seder to any situation he may be experiencing at the time of the holiday. At the first, impromptu, Seder in Pennsylvania when his campaign was steeped in the Reverend Wright controversies and was “in the desert,” as another campaign aide put it, Obama proclaimed “Next year at the White House” as an addition to “Next Year in Jerusalem” commonly said at the end of the dinner. Perhaps, as suggests Judi Kantor from the New York Times, this year’s focus could have been one of the universalist themes that Obama is so fond of: to free Americans from the bondage of capitalist healthcare and to give them the abundance of Obamacare.
The Center for American Progress has another suggestion. In it’s article on Obama’s Seder celebration this year, CAP cleverly used the Bible’s New Revised Standard Version to quote from Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” Almost all the other versions use “stranger”, “foreigner” or “sojourner” in lieu of “resident alien,” clearly portraying a temporary dweller and not the long-term inhabitant that “resident alien” implies. The CAP’s advice to President Obama is that he treat Mexican illegal aliens with the same compassion they interpret from the NRS, and pass comprehensive immigration reform. But when we parse the words, it is clear that illegal aliens are not the “resident aliens” implied by CAP, but emboldened Mexicans, foreigners and strangers, who wish to take advantage of the lax rules and borders that makes it possible for them to enter and reside in the country with impunity.
One has to marvel at the President’s Seder chutzpah after his dismal treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu during his recent visit to the United States. It is one thing to celebrate an ethnic festival, but another to respect the significance that the celebrants give their rituals. The Israelites that Obama commemorates in these Seders were freed from bondage in Egypt, and their descendants later received their Promised Land. Yet, Obama seems intent on removing this sacred land from the Jews, and forcing on them new enemies who are probably far more ruthless than the Egyptians.
Modern Christians are in as much danger as modern Jews. Our liberal neighbors, with their feel-good, made-up Christianity are destroying our religion and our communities. Liberal church leaders support issues ranging from comprehensive immigration reform to same sex marriage. Atheists, who have nonetheless constructed their own religion, now have their prophets. In the April 2010 publication of Vanity Fair, atheist Christopher Hitchens performs an iconoclastic dismantling of the Biblical Ten Commandments and then gives us his own petty ten. Like the Old Testament’s Jews, we have to trust that God will free us from our current tribulations.
In fact, End Time preachers use the exodus as an allegory for our liberation. Our ultimate release is entry into God’s heavenly land. But the Passover and Easter stories are also our personal stories. The journey from bondage to freedom reflects our own mundane ordeals. And we experience death and resurrection with each sin and atonement. Celebrating these holidays each year gives us the hope that we too will inherit our particular Israel.
The liberal, politically correct television stations were right after all. The story of Moses, recounting a people’s freedom from slavery, and culminating with the abiding Ten Commandments, was an apt choice for these holidays. Would that our leaders understand and practice its significance. Not just as at religious celebrations, but throughout the year. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No I'm not on twitter. But my yahoo mail has a red Valentine's heart on the top corner, and it throbs!
I thought it was cute.
But all cuteness aside, a day of lighthearted celebration of love is a good thing. The problem is when people take it so seriously that it means everything (or nothing). Red hearts all over the place are a nice burst of color, in this dark depths of winter, and after the festivities of Christmas and New Year, it brings a holiday mood into February. Our next holiday is Easter, and that is as late as March or April.
I was recently watching You've Got Mail with Meg Ryan (as Kathleen Kelly) and Tom Hanks (as Joe Fox). Kathleen sends herself a dozen red roses for Valentine's. She says to Joe that she does it for the possibility of love.
That is how we should all live: for the possibility of love, for the possibility of goodness, for the possibility of beauty, for the possibility of summer.
So many possibility, it gives us quite a busy schedule!
Here is a simple menu:
- Plate of sweet potato fries - Glass of Cabernet Sauvignon Vista Point from California
Wine description from the menu:
Intense blackberry and currant, a smooth easy drinking wine for any occasion.
I don't know why the wine is described as "intense" but it is more flavorful than intense.
Here's one more site (pdf) with this brief description of the wine: "pleasant, semi-dry, smooth."
My evaluation is that the wine's fruity notes makes it a great match with the sweet potatoes.
Happy (belated) Valentine's to all!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway skis during the Alpine Men's Downhill. He finished fourth
Many of the Winter Olympics' events are frighteningly dangerous. I recently watched a replay of a female skateboard competition, where the Czech Republic contestant fell in a dramatic way. She came back to show she was O.K., although her helmet was cracked!
I feel sorry for these contestants. I think they are being pushed to the extreme. But what else is there but for more - more speed, more height, more aerial acrobatics, more danger. Perhaps it is time to stop these Olympic events (and other championships too). But that will never happen.
It is sad that I have to feel sorry for athletes, whose role (if I can call it that) is to show me their strength, not for me (or spectators) to detect any weakness. The Olympics, and the inhuman standards that have been set, have made these athletes into vulnerable creatures, instead of confident and bold humans. The joy of watching sports is lost once we suspect that the athletes aren't up to the standards.
So, do we lower these standards that we have set? I think it is too late for that. Either we have to re-invent the Olympics' sports, or we have to watch each competition with the dangers (of death, even) that are imminent. If we chose the latter, than we have truly become barbarians, sending our men into the lion's den to be devoured for our enjoyment.
So all we can do is watch with bated breath at these incredible feats of these mere humans. We want them to be god-like. We want more of everything, for them to prove their mettle. After all, humans have always aspired to, and admired, physical strength. But I don't think we've ever gone this far, pitching one human being with nature, with the mountains.
And we watch in horror as nature takes one of them and plays with him as a puppy does with a ball.
But, there is an option: NOT to watch. That is the one I have chosen, which is the only one I have control over. And of course, that means not listening to the news for the next couple of weeks, and to click past all postings that fill every webpage. We have to be inhumanly absent from the world around us, for two weeks, at least.
Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's filmographer, understood the god-like energy of man that can be displayed in the best of men. Her film Olympia, on the Berlin Summer Olympics accentuates the incredible feats of the athletes. She was a skier herself, and had already acted in several mountain films, and understood the majesty of nature, and the thrill of conquering it.
Her magnum opus is the film Triumph of the Will. It has been labeled as a "Nazi film" or a "propaganda film for Hitler," The initial shots of the film are of Hitler hovering above in an airplane, ready to land, god-like, on earth. But Triumph of the Will is bigger and more ambitious than a propaganda, or even a Nazi, film. Riefenstahl's artistic vision (and mission) was to show the glory of man, who can reach the skies. Yet she forgot, or ignored, Icarus, one mere man who tried to reach the heavens where only gods could reach.
Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) Icarus, plate VIII from the illustrated book, "Jazz" Date: 1947 Medium: Stencil Dimensions: 16 1/2 x 10 1/4 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
And the biggest irony of all, which she in her frenzied passion didn't see, was that Hitler is not even an Icarus, but a stringy, spindly, short, dark-haired man, who was ready to destroy the world for the Nordic Blonde Gods of Germany. His Icarus moment was short-lived, although devastating to Germany. His vision of heaven transformed quickly into a Götterdämmerung, leaving Europe shell-shocked for decades to come.
Here we are adulating athletes, and urging them to fly close to the sun. How close are we to Hitler's vision now?
An unidentified skier takes part in the first training session of the Val Gardena Men’s World Cup Downhill on December 16, 2009 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Director Steve McQueen with his wife Bianca Stigter and daughter Alex attend the Accenture Gala ahead of the premiere of "Twelve Years A Slave" during the 57th BFI London Film Festival at the Langham Hotel in London, England, in October 2013 [Image source]
In my previous post"The Obama Effect": "Depicting Slavery as a Horror Show" I wrote about the black director of the recently released film, 12 Years Running:
...what a disgusting human being this director is, and how pathetic people are to allow themselves to be manipulated by him not just in this film, but in other guilt-filled and exaggerated, and often false, depictions of the lives of blacks as slaves.
What is actually more shocking than the shock effects of this director is that he's married to a white woman! But he's not actually married to her, although they have a daughter and a son together. She is addressed as his "longtime partner" in various sources. She is referred to as a "cultural critic" and is apparently Dutch. Here is a referral to a Bianca Stigter, placing her in Amsterdam, with a photograph of a girl/boy that very closely resembles the photograph of the girl above. And according to a 2010 New York Timesarticle, McQueen left England for Holland in 1996. It makes sense that he settled down in super-liberal Holland, with a "partner" who is a "cultural critic" who probably advocates that all "culture" is good, and that honesty in art is the most important thing - i.e. that an artist should show all the sex, violence, horror, and demonism he thinks is necessary to get his artistic "message" across. And marriage is unecessary, in their world of "free" love
How does this "partner" reconcile her husband's hate for whites (that is what it boils down to) with his with his partnership with her, a white woman? What does their partnership consist of? How do they discuss his film projects?
Male Partner: I have this idea for a film. Female Partner: Oh, that's great! Male Partner: It is about slavery. Female: I'm sure you'll have a lot to say about that. Male: Well, it's about the evil whites who loved every minute of humiliating their slaves. Female: Oh, yes... Male: I'll add a lot of beautiful cinematography, to accentuate the evil. Female: OK. Mmmm. I'm sure you'll do a great job.
Stigter's cultural criticism includes works such as:
Gold from Straw: The Human Body as an Adventure which is a book about:
Gold from straw is a book about people are in straitjackets and about people who are burst out brilliantly, about people who adhere to standards, or people who paint. Everyone is born with a body, but virtually no one is satisfied. In this book, there are stories about women who want to be men, about robots who want to be human, pigs that talk and elephants who listen to music. [I constructed this English translation of the synopsis from various online translations]
And a book she co-wrote titled Fransje Killaars, where she does reach out to Third World, or at least to the non-white of the world, as she reviews the works fellow Dutch textile "artist" Fransje Killaars, who makes "installations" of textiles she reproduces based on Indian carpets and rugs.
Stigter was the one who gave the book12 years running to her husband, probably suggesting that it could be made into a film. She is the ideal, white wife (or partner, in this case) for this black man. She subjugates herself, and her race, in expiation for all those sins she has been told, and will continue to be told, she has performed in the name of her white superiority and inherent desire to harm blacks. It is an exorcism that she needs, and part of that involves endlessly seeing, reading and discussing this great sin. And her exorcist, to her great luck, is her "partner." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Some Comfort Gained From the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything Constructed: 1996 Artist: Damien Hirst Description: Multiple cows in a line head-to-tail, divided cross-sectionally into equal rectangular tanks of formaldehyde, equally-spaced, each containing about 3 feet (0.91 m) of the animals. Awards: Turner Prize, awarded in 1995 for Mother and Child Divided
I watched (more on that later) a movie this past week: 12 Years a Slave.
The story revolves around a freed slave, who gets kidnapped and sold back as a slave. It is a true story. This site meticulously separates the truth from the fiction.
But, this movie reviewer questions the truth behind the extreme, vicious, brutality in the film:
Brutality, violence and misery get confused with history in 12 Years a Slave, British director Steve McQueen’s adaptation of the 1853 American slave narrative by Solomon Northup, who claims that in 1841, away from his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., he was kidnapped and taken South where he was sold into hellish servitude and dehumanizing cruelty.
For McQueen, cruelty is the juicy-arty part; it continues the filmmaker’s interest in sado-masochistic display, highlighted in his previous features Hunger and Shame. Brutality is McQueen’s forte. As with his fine-arts background, McQueen’s films resemble museum installations: the stories are always abstracted into a series of shocking, unsettling events. With Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), McQueen chronicles the conscious sufferance of unrelenting physical and psychological pain...
Depicting slavery as a horror show, McQueen has made the most unpleasant American movie since William Friedkin’s1973 The Exorcist. That’s right, 12 Years a Slave belongs to the torture porn genre with Hostel, The Human Centipede and the Saw franchise but it is being sold (and mistaken) as part of the recent spate of movies that pretend “a conversation about race.” The only conversation this film inspires would contain howls of discomfort.
The astute writer then places this film in the context of the Obama presidency:
...12 Years a Slave appears at an opportune moment when film culture - five years into the Obama administration - indulges stories about Black victimization such as Precious, The Help, The Butler, Fruitvale Station and Blue Caprice. (What promoter Harvey Weinstein has called “The Obama Effect.”) This is not part of social or historical enlightenment - the too-knowing race-hustlers behind 12 Years a Slave, screenwriter John Ridley and historical advisor Henry Louis Gates, are not above profiting from the misfortunes of African-American history as part of their own career advancement.
I've written about the nihilistic, dreary, and ugly film Precioushere, and commented on The Butlerhere, comparing it to Precious.
And in an even better observation, the above writer describes 12 years a Slave as "an inhumane analysis" and compares it with:
...the cross-sectional cut-up of a horse in Damien Hirst’s infamous 1996 museum installation “Some Comfort Gained From the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything.”
While searching for McQueen's biography, I discovered that he is a black man, from Britain. He received the Turner Prize in 1999, a post-modern, nihilistic "art" prize (Damien Hirst received his in 1995 for Mother and Child Divided). McQueen's prize was for his video installations, one titled Drumroll, which consists of images generated:
...by rolling a metal oil drum through the streets of midtown Manhattan, with cameras mounted on the side and two ends.
...restaging of a Buster Keaton stunt in which a house collapses around McQueen, who is left unscathed because he is standing where there is a missing window.
Several elements combined to make this horror film, and for it to succeed in the box office, around Christmas, no less!
- Obama's anti-white, accusatory governorship - White guilt, which pushes people to sit masochistically through the film - Blacks, who bring slavery back, in a relentlessly unforgiving manner, despite the many reformations that have been made to improve their lives, post-slavery - Nihilistic art, and the various encouraging institutions like the Turner Prize and the Tate Gallery which award such artists with the highest accolades - And black artists like McQueen, of this Obama-Age, who, using the art education they received from white institutions (and which they couldn't have received in any other kind of institution), portray whites as evil in a relentless and vicious manner.
I shut my eyes through most of the film. I would have normally walked out, but I went to the movie with some other people. I could hear the grunts and moans of the audience as it was plied with one atrocious image after another. I closed my eyes when the black freed slave, who was later kidnapped, was caught, hanged and lynched.
I tried to find a shot of this scene, but it is available nowhere on the internet. It is too terrible to view, as the director and his many aides well knew. I was caught in those few seconds of horror. Perhaps it is a good thing that I saw it (I think I was meant to see it), in order to realize with anger what a disgusting human being this director is, and how pathetic people are to allow themselves to be manipulated by him not just in this film, but in other guilt-filled and exaggerated, and often false, depictions of the lives of blacks as slaves.
McQueen's other feature films are: - Hunger (2008), which this film reviewer describes as: British video artist-turned-director Steve McQueen imbued this vision of the 1981 IRA hunger strike with such a potent visceral sense...that watching it is truly a corporeal endurance test of stark immediacy...McQueen’s efforts carries a profoundly haunting, disturbing, and ultimately revealing insight into the politics of the body, told through a symphony of blood, shit, and urine. - Shame (2011), a film about sexual addiction (and possibly incest)
Horror shown through a relentless aesthetic lens, particularly showing human suffering and degradation, is to be McQueen's demonic vision.
I suspect more such horrors will be presented to us in the near future, in art, politics and other media by McQueen and his ilk. If we can brace ourselves now, we will be in a better position to fight back later on this "Obama Effect." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
