Dear Barack Obama: Where’s my job? December 7, 2008

So this is appropriate… President-elect Obama’s speechwriters can party hard and that’s fine. But please explain to me how someone so inarticulate that they have to grope a cardboard cutout of Senator Clinton instead of scathingly critique her– and so misogynistic that this is how they treat women in politics– is head of speechwriting for the whole freaking White House?

Mr. Obama, give me a break. If you’re going to give this silver-platter job to some twenty-something screwup… I’ve got your screwup right here. See, I thought I wasn’t bestest and brightest enough to make the cut for the Obama dream team… but seeing staffers such as Favreau makes me realize I, too, have a chance! If this kid is qualified, I’ve no doubt that my intellectual prowess and communications skills are up to snuff. I have… what’s that… word… hope!

I’ll tell you this much: Closeted skeletons or past e-mail indiscretions aside, I’d definitely disable my Facebook upon acceptance of the job– and I can promise you I’d find better criticisms of political rivals than pointing out that they have breasts. Oh yes, yes I can.

So give that speechwriting gig to me instead, President-elect Obama. I may not have the Heineken-drinking skills or cardboard-breast-groping talents of Jon Favreau, but I promise you I could do the job at least as well as that guy.

Art, like pornography: you know it when you see it? April 17, 2008

I’m all for pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable in art. Especially when it offends, but doesn’t necessarily hurt, anyone, I have few qualms about contentious installations. Andres Serrano’s crucifix of Jesus submerged in urine (Piss Christ), for example, doesn’t fit my definition of “master works”; nevertheless, if a gallery wants post it and some collector wants to buy it, be my guest. But for my taste, what follows is completely over the line.

Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas Habacuc decided it would be acceptable– further, artistic– to take a stray dog from the streets, give it the ironic name “Natividad,” and string it to a wire in the corner of a gallery– in fact, the gallery space within Costa Rica’s National Center for Culture. His artistic decision, for this presentation, was to deprive the dog of food and water, causing the diseased animal to slowly starve to death under the eyes of gallery patrons. Let me take the sugar-coating off that for you: this dude tied a dog to a wall so people could watch it die.

And they did.

Yes, a few people stopped to protest. But the vast majority continued through the exhibit, obliviously or uncomfortably ignoring the incredible suffering before their eyes. In my sentimental view, there is a special level of wrongness in mistreating an animal; beyond the fundamental wrong in abusing any living thing, there’s the extra layer that the animal cannot rationalize why, or even that, it is being tortured. It’s an especially sick form of abuse.

Habacuc claims that the dog would have died without his intervention, and further says the purpose of the exhibit was to highlight human suffering (indeed, the point of all art?). Some gallery patrons justified this torture for its artistic message. And some critics enjoyed it so much that Habacuc has been invited to re-create the exhibit in Honduras.

Obviously, I don’t consider this exhibit to be anything more than a sick trick aimed at shock factor. The knee-jerk reaction of disgust, compounded by some high-minded ideals about artistic expression and the historic persecution of visionary artists, are my best guesses as to what mindset led others to label this exhibit art. But the exhibit does bring two distinct topics worth probing: How do we define art, and mob mentality, or what will we walk right past?

Much great art depicts or deals with suffering. As a society, we don’t shrink away from images of emaciated children, abused animals, or neglected neighborhoods. We find these images instructive and emotion-inducing, and they serve to teach us about the recognition of suffering. There are moments, however, when artists take this pursuit so far that their actions cease to be art. I can only hope that Habacuc is misguided and genuinely believes his work is a visionary example of suffering, because otherwise he is a flat-out psychopath and abuser of animals. To passively allow that dog to continue suffering in the streets, to photograph its suffering without intervention, or to allow myriad stray animals to remain wild are all deemed generally socially acceptable behaviors. Confining the dog and consciously deciding to allow it to suffer is something different. Let me be clear about this: Because a work generates outrage and demands self-reflection does not deem something art, or else genocide and FGM would be considered art.

Further, those who chose to walk past the exhibit without attempting to free the animal (and worse, those who wish to re-create the exhibit) display an interesting example of mob mentality. In a big enough group, something that assaults the conscience of the individual becomes “someone else’s problem.” A classic example: You’re more likely to assist a person who has tripped on a deserted sidewalk and dropped a sheaf of papers than you are to assist a Metro passenger who’s spilled their briefcase at the height of pedestrian rush hour. I’d like to think I’d be overcome by emotion if I saw such an exhibit, that I would immediately begin working to free the dog or that I’d ask a curator if the dog had only been given the appearance of suffering. But I can’t promise how I would react; after all, hundreds saw the exhibit and the dog still died.

Finally, consider the Joshua Bell example. He’s a lauded violinist (responsible for the soundtrack to The Red Violin) who gave a concert in a DC Metro station, for free. On a Stradivarius. As an experiment. The question: Who will acknowledge this musician, and why? The result: Less than 50 people out of a thousand paid him the time of day. I suspect that the passengers who hurried by, not making eye contact, were experiencing a bit of desensitization mixed with some of that same mob mentality. Just as something beautiful doesn’t always register, so something awful doesn’t always register with a single face in the crowd.

But forcing people to acknowledge everyday horror can be done by something other than killing a dog for show. When it comes to defining trash disguised as art, I’ll appropriate the words of Justice Potter Stewart on pornography: “I know it when I see it.” And that’s all I see in this exhibit.

Update: In another bizarre twist, a Yale art student claims to have performed repeated abortions on herself in order to “inspire some sort of discourse.” If you’re going to do this, at least make damn sure you have an articulate statement on the purpose… Well, at least she’ll probably never be able to reproduce.

TV, we need to talk about this: They’re creepy at 3 a.m. October 31, 2007

Why is it that ads for the “Girls Gone Wild” video series begin with a warning about their suitability for young eyes, but horror movie trailers can spring on you the half-eaten face of a screaming zombie child? And why are they always on Comedy Central? The network is called Comedy Central. It’s not working out.
The situation is this: I’m not a big television watcher, but there are few balms as soothing after a cacophonous night in a bar. When I come home, I want to watch a little sketch comedy, maybe catch the 1 a.m. Daily Show before bed. What I do not want– specifically due to my workday– is to see an advertisement for the new cinematic delight P2.

Now, P2 is a typical designation for the second deck of a parking garage, if you didn’t know. This particular thriller stars a woman, who has parked her car in the second level of a garage, facing all kinds of horrors on deck P2. Horrors including, but not limited to, a creep with a giant knife lurking in her trunk. As a woman who works in a restaurant, parks frequently in a garage, and walks to the car alone, my exposure to this trailer ought to be limited.

So I’m lounging, with my middle-night snack, trying to unwind, and this commercial comes on. It is terrifying. Even if I look away, I can’t fumble past the plate on my lap fast enough to grope for the remote and change the channel. The sound is there. This chick is getting hacked to pieces thanks to her choice of car storage. It’s thirty seconds of sheer horror and it sticks with me all night.

Not only do I have a vivid imagination and too much time on my hands, my job offers zip-zero in the way of intellectual stimulation. That means, when I see these freaky commercials, it’s nightmare time.

According to the FCC, “obscene” broadcasts are always prohibited, while profanity and indecency are permitted to air between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. I’m not trying to go all Tipper Gore here, but this is ridiculous. Where does the line of obscenity start with horror movie ads? Is it when you see images as explicit as those Nazi torture videos from high school history class? Those were pretty sickening. When the History Channel airs those, they play a disclaimer beforehand…. and that channel’s there for history. Unless I hear a valid reason why Comedy Central needs to play horrific ads, I’m against it. I need mindless entertainment, not mindless bloodshed… get it right! Geez.

After a mini-hiatus… September 10, 2007

Sorry I’ve been away so long; I was wrapped up in a string of back-to-back shifts and every spare second I had in those days was spent devouring Lolita. I’ve heard so much about the novel and was ambivalent about it given the subject matter. Pedophilia being the central fixation of the narrator, I thought I’d have a tough time reading what’s also been called the greatest love story of our century. And it’s true– No one I’ve ever read loves like Humbert Humbert.

‘Pornographic’ and ‘obscene’ are too narrow of terms to properly express the sensuality in HH’s chronicling of his obsession with Lolita. The quality of Nabokov’s writing– really, the voice of HH narrating– is striking on each page. I can’t choose a demonstrative quote because each line is so lyrical, and some are revolting and tender at the same time. The heartbreak of what HH puts that little girl through is tempered by the skilled expression of a passion so consuming that you can’t help feeling on HH’s side. His justification, his depiction of Lolita as a woman-child with a seductive air, will make you forget for a moment that his love is twelve or thirteen and, for a moment, you will cheer their affair.

Lolita is more than a softcore work. The novel contains almost no true ’sex scenes’ that compare to HH’s fantasies and daydreams. The sensuality of his imagination drives his passion to simply sit near Lolita, a fixation that’s easy to confuse with what the sexually normal experience as nurturing affection. But HH’s obsession, viewed through his own narcissistic lens, comes through on the page as the love of a lifetime. And Nabokov’s genius is to actually make us see things through HH’s eyes. Remembering that you are in fact not a pedophile, just a pedophile’s voyeur, feels uncomfortable when you realize HH’s perception of events doesn’t justify the reality of his actions.

There is something else in Lolita that’s uncomfortably familiar to me, not so far removed from my own girlhood. I imagine each nymphet, as HH has called them, charms her Odysseus differently. Not every girl holds the same appeal for every man. But in the passage where Lolita frolics in the pool, putting on a show of her pubescent form, on the precipice of wielding her own sexuality without fully understanding its nuances, I see a very real experience. Through the lens of adulthood, I see memories of first wearing makeup, skin still youthfully perfect, or showing off a pre-womanly figure while still sporting girl-thin arms and small feet, and I recall several men who I’d venture to say felt attracted. I remember the brazenness of men driving over bridges and shouting to impossibly young girls swimming, men ogling girls strutting the shopping mall in cheap heels and skirts bought when we were three inches shorter, and Lolita suddenly has less of an air of dark perversion and one more of worldly truth. Still unacceptable, still the ugliness of men being attracted to children, but also a portrayal of reality.

There’s more. Nabokov’s writing has served to inspire me to a degree, one I’m holding out on so it doesn’t affect me too much. When writing, I have a hard time reading masters without their work influencing my voice. All of it makes me want to detail the profane and the perverse in my own works of fiction as expertly as I detail the positive or the insane-yet-lovely. The beauty with which Nabokov handles something so dark makes me believe it is possible to handle the nastiest matter. Then again, Nabokov has at his command a lexicon I don’t believe I could amass (especially in a second language!). Without being verbose, he owns all the perfect terms on his pages. His command of language is stunning.

I’ve been marinating on Lolita for a week now. It’s time to come back to writing. Also, after a few days I picked up my original intent, Reading Lolita in Tehran. It promises to be a fascinating memoir, but the author’s attempts at lyricizing her daily life turn me off when compared to my memory of Lolita’s prose.

Tomorrow’s my birthday. I have coming some notes on love, the Baltimore mayoral elections (crackheads vs. candidates with no money), and the next book I’m reading. Much love.