I have been following the UVA lacrosse death case in the media for the last few days. Not because it involves two photogenic people, not because I am happy for the opportunity to engage in the kind of class-warfare discourse that the media love to propagate (it sells, after all). Not because I am somehow more concerned when rich white people get hurt than when other folks get hurt. Not because I am scared by the realization that this sort of thing can happen "even" at a place like UVA. Not because I take an almost sadistic, voyeuristic pleasure in hearing endless recountings of just how gruesome the last moments of this lacrosse player's life seem to have been.
I'm interested largely because I am an alum of Mr. Jefferson's university and feel my part in the collective mourning that has come upon our community.
UVA has a long and storied tradition of student self-governance, with an honor code that could almost be the envy of a place like BYU. I still remember getting the honor video in the mail the summer before my first year and watching in awe as I saw recounted the almost mythical (albeit very true) story of the now-famous anonymous student who taped his coins to a vending machine when it gave him a free drink or something like that. And since nothing at UVA ever gets done without the approval of its patron saint, there were even quotes in the video from Mr. Jefferson himself about the propriety of taping money to vending machines (if I'm remembering that correctly).
My point is that with this honor code in place, merely glancing at someone else's ultimately inconsequential quiz during a discussion section could get you expelled from the University. While the community of trust and honor thus created may seem reminiscent of neo-medievalist chivalric codes better suited to the antebellum Southern environment in which the University was founded than to a twenty-first- century leader in higher education, I like the honor code and have no hesitation in confessing myself to be a proud defender of it.
So in a community where storied accounts of coins taped to a vending machine prevail and students are expelled for even the smallest acts of dishonesty, what on earth is a person with no less than three run-ins with the law (including a drunken, threatening, and ultimately tasered and arrested encounter with a police officer in Rockbridge County) still doing occupying seats in the "academical village"? The lacrosse player charged with the murder of his ex-girlfriend never should have been a student at UVA in the first place. He violated the honor code long ago and should have been sent on his way packing.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Jean-Francois Cope in the NYT Today
Jean-Francois Cope is the mayor of Meaux (pronounced "Moe"), a city ingrained perpetually in my memory for both its excellent cheese and its police officers' disdain for innocently proselyting missionaries. During the Renaissance, Meaux was also known as the locus of freedom for a circle of reformation-minded theologians and thinkers, an ironic connection considering not only my own theological experiences there, but also considering Cope's strongly-worded op-ed in the New York Times yesterday calling for a public ban on the wearing of the burqa in France and throughout Europe.
(See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/opinion/05cope.html?hp)
I never did like that Cope fellow. Perhaps it was his strong defense of the banning of the headscarf in French public schools a few years ago that first turned me off to him. His views, unfortunately, have become increasingly mainstream in the European Union: with the ban on minarets in Switzerland, the recently passed measure in the lower house of Belgium's legislature banning the burqa (and France likely to follow suit soon) and President Nicolas Sarkozy declaring publicly that the burqa is "not welcome" in France, religious freedom has taken some notable hits in the EU of late.
In his piece, Cope argues that the burqa must be banned because it poses a security risk.
There are approximately 1900 women who wear the burqa in France today, and I would challenge anyone to show what security threat, exactly, these women pose. Sure, some burqa-clad women robbed a post office in a shady suburb of Paris last fall and made off with 4500 Euros- wearing disguises and coverings is not uncommon in armed robbery cases. So why is no one calling for a ski mask ban then? A ban on wearing costumes in public? A ban on Halloween (an increasingly popular celebration in France, thanks to the thorough coca-colonisation of the American corporate empire)? Why is this called the ban on the burqa by the very proponents of the ban itself? If safety is the real concern, why not ban other disguises and face coverings in public as well then? That security concerns should be so closely linked to Muslims, in particular, seems troubling.
Cope wonders, "How can you establish a relationship with a person who, by hiding a smile or a glance — those universal signs of our common humanity — refuses to exist in the eyes of others?" It seems the problem has more to do with Cope's inability to allow such a person to exist than with the person's supposed refusal to exist. The reference to the difficulty of establishing a relationship with a person who wears a burqa probably says more about Cope's inability to embrace the Other than it does about any individual's purported refusal to exist.
Freedom of religion and of personal expression are also "universal signs of our common humanity," and to deny these is to deny the humanity of those whose religious expressions may be different from ours.
Cope goes on to note that many Muslim scholars contend that the Qur'an does not call for the wearing of the burqa. I'm no scholar here, but it does seem to me that the requirement that women wear the burqa is considered by most Muslim scholars to be outside the mainstream of Islamic thought. Nevertheless, it is not the place of the French government to interpret the Qur'an for individual women, or to dictate what the "true" meaning of its passages are. This is simply a violation of the separation of church and state, a principle that the secularist Cope ostensibly stands for. It's simple: no law in France should make its case by having recourse to an interpretation of the Qur'an.
Cope also states that "a few extremists" oppose the ban on the burqa, as though most U.S. citizens, Amnesty International, and many others aren't already clearly opposed to this fundamentally un-democratic legislation.
This op-ed from the Washington Post a few days ago had it right:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002131.html
France must not take the drastic steps that the Belgian parliament is currently taking; it must resist the xenophobic fear-mongering of the UMP party and stand for fundamental freedoms of religion and speech.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
How I Know Napoleon Dynamite is an LDS Movie
I just recently watched "Napoleon Dynamite" with my family. It is a film so inane, vacuous, and downright offensive in its vapidity that I vowed long ago never to watch it again. Yet there it was at the yard sale last summer, staring at my then-six-year-old son who, transfixed, was somehow unable to resist the siren call of "fifty cents." He promptly purchased the monstrosity and proudly displayed it to me when he got home.
Watching this film again and ignoring, this time, the multitude of wanting elements liberated me from the chains of my own prejudice and helped me to look at this non-tour de force in a new light. What if I counted the LDS elements in the film? There are many:
1) No swearing. No violation of the seventh commandment. Chaste. And not in the "this film has no sex in it even though sex permeates the entire production" kind of way that the Twilight series is "chaste."
2) Speaking of chastity, there is a Jane Austen-like scene where Napoleon's and Deb's hands inadvertently touch each other. It is the only hint of chemistry throughout the film and is charmingly innocent, in a Jane Austen sort of way. And let's not ignore the Jane Austen-Mormon link. Mormon women like Jane Austen. They make you watch it with them. There was even a Mormon version of "Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Tale," which made youth road shows look like they were stacked with talent. And Jane Austen's work was done at the same time that Wilford Woodruff did the work for the Founding Fathers and "other eminent men and women."
3) Creative dating. This one is not so much Mormon as it is Jello Belt Mormon specifically. Pedro has to bake Summer a whole cake to ask her to the dance? Napoleon has to draw Trish a picture before he can ask her to the dance? That is intense. I remember a program on the Faith and Values channel back in high school that was done by some LDS folks that was targeted at high school kids. One episode talked about how you could have fun in a group date by going to the local public library and having a scavenger hunt to find the smallest book, fattest book, oldest book, etc. I remember trying to envision what it would be like if I actually asked a girl to go do that with me. My social standing was frail enough without "creative dating" making it worse.
4) And speaking of social standing, Summer Wheatley, who is supposed to be the coolest girl in school, works a part-time job at DI. I have great respect for people who work while in school and believe it is a good thing, and something that taught me good values and so forth. But cool kids in my school definitely didn't work, especially at a thrift store. Except maybe in the summer, but not during the school year. I think the Mormon work ethic still allows for coolness in this case, however.
5) The dance. Everyone was dancing like at a church dance. No hands at the waist stuff. Only gentlemanly clasped hands, with one hand awkwardly placed around the girl's back. No booty shaking. Good distances between partners. Clean music.
6) A veritable profusion of self-employed people. Uncle Rico and Kip sell tupperware-type stuff as part of their own business. Rex opens a Rex Kwon Do studio to make some money. Deb sells trinkets and takes glamour shots to pay for college. I think I read somewhere that Utah has the highest number of women who are self-employed. There's a wiff of Jello Belt culture in all this self-employment.
7) Sign Language. The Happy Hands club sings in sign language. The only places in my life where sign language has been prominent are in Primary and the MTC. There's a Mormon-sign language link that is strong.
8) References to Boy Scouts. Nuff said.
9) Hospitality for the Lamanite. The (vice?)principal is a bit mean and condescending to Pedro when he first arrives at the school, but it is Napoleon who is kind to Pedro. We also are brought to feel sympathy when Pedro gets in trouble for making a pinata of Summer Wheatley and having people beat it with a stick. He says that it was simply something that people do back in Mexico and that he didn't mean anything by it. The script clearly creates sympathy for Pedro, who wins the school election at the end. Similar hospitality can be found in the Twilight series, The Other Side of Heaven, Baptists at our Barbecue, The RM, Johnny Lingo, and others.
10) Jokes about soul mates. Kip is absurd when he talks about his "soul mate" Lawfanduh, and Uncle Rico, also an absurd character, likewise dreams about his "soul mate." The context for both of these mentions of a "soul mate" makes clear that the notion is to be mocked. As Presidet Kimball said, "Soul mates are fiction and an illusion."
11) Napoleon wears a Ricks College t-shirt.
12) Trish's mom makes her go to the dance with Napoleon because it's the right thing to do. This is so like what a Mormon mom would do.
13)Deb really stands up for herself. She lets Napoleon have it, telling him he is a very shallow friend. This kind of self-confidence and letting the guy have it is something I've seen over and over again in Mormon girls.
14) In the brief sequel at the end, the person performing the marriage ceremony tells a much watered-down version of a story I've heard in church and in General Conference.
So there you have it. MTV picked up a bona fide Mormon cinematic masterpiece (not) and probably didn't even realize it!
Watching this film again and ignoring, this time, the multitude of wanting elements liberated me from the chains of my own prejudice and helped me to look at this non-tour de force in a new light. What if I counted the LDS elements in the film? There are many:
1) No swearing. No violation of the seventh commandment. Chaste. And not in the "this film has no sex in it even though sex permeates the entire production" kind of way that the Twilight series is "chaste."
2) Speaking of chastity, there is a Jane Austen-like scene where Napoleon's and Deb's hands inadvertently touch each other. It is the only hint of chemistry throughout the film and is charmingly innocent, in a Jane Austen sort of way. And let's not ignore the Jane Austen-Mormon link. Mormon women like Jane Austen. They make you watch it with them. There was even a Mormon version of "Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Tale," which made youth road shows look like they were stacked with talent. And Jane Austen's work was done at the same time that Wilford Woodruff did the work for the Founding Fathers and "other eminent men and women."
3) Creative dating. This one is not so much Mormon as it is Jello Belt Mormon specifically. Pedro has to bake Summer a whole cake to ask her to the dance? Napoleon has to draw Trish a picture before he can ask her to the dance? That is intense. I remember a program on the Faith and Values channel back in high school that was done by some LDS folks that was targeted at high school kids. One episode talked about how you could have fun in a group date by going to the local public library and having a scavenger hunt to find the smallest book, fattest book, oldest book, etc. I remember trying to envision what it would be like if I actually asked a girl to go do that with me. My social standing was frail enough without "creative dating" making it worse.
4) And speaking of social standing, Summer Wheatley, who is supposed to be the coolest girl in school, works a part-time job at DI. I have great respect for people who work while in school and believe it is a good thing, and something that taught me good values and so forth. But cool kids in my school definitely didn't work, especially at a thrift store. Except maybe in the summer, but not during the school year. I think the Mormon work ethic still allows for coolness in this case, however.
5) The dance. Everyone was dancing like at a church dance. No hands at the waist stuff. Only gentlemanly clasped hands, with one hand awkwardly placed around the girl's back. No booty shaking. Good distances between partners. Clean music.
6) A veritable profusion of self-employed people. Uncle Rico and Kip sell tupperware-type stuff as part of their own business. Rex opens a Rex Kwon Do studio to make some money. Deb sells trinkets and takes glamour shots to pay for college. I think I read somewhere that Utah has the highest number of women who are self-employed. There's a wiff of Jello Belt culture in all this self-employment.
7) Sign Language. The Happy Hands club sings in sign language. The only places in my life where sign language has been prominent are in Primary and the MTC. There's a Mormon-sign language link that is strong.
8) References to Boy Scouts. Nuff said.
9) Hospitality for the Lamanite. The (vice?)principal is a bit mean and condescending to Pedro when he first arrives at the school, but it is Napoleon who is kind to Pedro. We also are brought to feel sympathy when Pedro gets in trouble for making a pinata of Summer Wheatley and having people beat it with a stick. He says that it was simply something that people do back in Mexico and that he didn't mean anything by it. The script clearly creates sympathy for Pedro, who wins the school election at the end. Similar hospitality can be found in the Twilight series, The Other Side of Heaven, Baptists at our Barbecue, The RM, Johnny Lingo, and others.
10) Jokes about soul mates. Kip is absurd when he talks about his "soul mate" Lawfanduh, and Uncle Rico, also an absurd character, likewise dreams about his "soul mate." The context for both of these mentions of a "soul mate" makes clear that the notion is to be mocked. As Presidet Kimball said, "Soul mates are fiction and an illusion."
11) Napoleon wears a Ricks College t-shirt.
12) Trish's mom makes her go to the dance with Napoleon because it's the right thing to do. This is so like what a Mormon mom would do.
13)Deb really stands up for herself. She lets Napoleon have it, telling him he is a very shallow friend. This kind of self-confidence and letting the guy have it is something I've seen over and over again in Mormon girls.
14) In the brief sequel at the end, the person performing the marriage ceremony tells a much watered-down version of a story I've heard in church and in General Conference.
So there you have it. MTV picked up a bona fide Mormon cinematic masterpiece (not) and probably didn't even realize it!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
On the Accuracy of Language
The august body of French language gatekeepers known as the Academie Francaise has always seemed a bit silly to me. I mean, they were founded by the notorious Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, so that's already a shadowy beginning. They didn't have any women in the rank files of their forty "immortels" (as they are called in all non-humility) for about three hundred years, and just got their first Maghrebite four years ago (hurray for Assia Djebar!). Their goal is to maintain the purity of the French language by publishing a dictionary that delineates which words are or are not acceptable as French. Le Computer? Heavens, no- l'ordinateur. Le software? No again- le logiciel. And so on. And besides, thanks to my father's brainwashing, I don't believe in prescriptive linguistics anyway. Language is a living thing, it evolves according to the changes in the realities it tries to represent. You can't really prescribe language use for people or impose linguistic parameters on them since language itself comes from the people, is not artificial, and can only be measured or recorded, not prescribed. And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the leftist linguists who decry language prescription on the basis that such prescription only becomes a tool for certain groups to distinguish themselves from others, often to the disadvantage or detriment of the poor, the outcast, the downtrodden.
We certainly don't need a similar body for the English language, and though I am a fan of the OED, it doesn't perform nearly the same role as the Academie Francaise-- serving, as it does, more as a record of language as it is used rather than a prescription for how language OUGHT to be used.
Reading Tocqueville has caused me to reconsider some of my animus against the immortals of the French Academy, however. He points out that democratic societies(and the United States in particular) inherently do not achieve the level of precision in their language that other societies (particularly aristocratic societies- at least in 1835 when he was writing- like France) reach:
"An author begins by slightly bending the original meaning of a known expression, and, having altered it in this way, he does his best to adapt it to his subject. Another author comes along and bends the meaning in another direction. A third takes it down yet another path, and since there is no common arbiter, no permanent tribunal that can fix the meaning of the word once and for all, the situation remains fluid. As a result, it seems as if writers almost never stick to a single thought but always aim at a group of ideas, leaving it to the reader to judge which one has been hit.
"This is an unfortunate consequence of democracy. I would rather see the French tongue bristle with Chinese, Tartar, or Huron words than allow the meaning of words to become uncertain." (Goldhammer ed., p. 550).
It seems that Americans have an almost horseshoe-like quality in their expressions of language. Often, we do not aim for precision in our speech, but rather for approximation. With the meanings of words only approximate and not fixed or regulated by a "tribunal" as in France, everyone is free to imbue words with their own personal or individualized meanings. While this may please the deconstructionists among us, it would cause disaster, and in fact, it already has begun to do so. I am sickened, for example, to hear talk of people buying or selling a "home." You can't do that! You can only sell a "house," a thing made out of earthly materials-- walls, linoleum, stone, siding. A "home" can neither be sold nor bought; it is something that money simply cannot buy. When realtors promise you a "home," they are lying and corrupting our language at the same time, as well as guilty of profanation and simony for promising to sell that which is sacred.
The lack of linguistic regulation in our country and the resultant approximation in language use may help to explain the (post-)adolescent affinity for the word "like," as in "I was, like, going to the store today, and I like saw these apples, and like they weren't expensive, so I like bought them." (Post-)Adolescents can't seem to commit themselves to stating that they simply went to the store, saw some inexpensive apples, and then bought them. They live in uncertainties and often experience only approximations. This is why I try to emphasize precision in language in my students' papers, because approximate thinking won't do in a world and a life full of complex challenges requiring clarity and discernment.
Sports slogans, trade jingles, and soundbites only make things worse. I once had a student tell me that the message of a certain film was that "through education, you can achieve your destiny." I told her I didn't really know what that means. Did she believe in destiny? If you believe in destiny, then why can you only achieve it through education? I thought destiny was destiny, and not something to be achieved. It turns out that she meant that through education, people can reach their greatest potential (still only an approximate and cliche-ridden phrase, but a step upward nevertheless). And yet our very own universities, in their glossy brochures, commit such egregious crimes against the English language all the time when they promise students that their institution will help them precisely to "achieve their destiny" and other such absurd Jedi-talk.
Corporate interests, or at least our collective lack of resistance against them, have also contributed their fair share of the corruption of our language. My grandmother once asked me to go get her her "Skin So Soft," since her skin was dry and she needed some lotion. I wished she had simply asked me to get her her lotion, because to include (false) advertising in the very name of an object is a rank perversion of language. I want to eat chicken, not "I Feel Like Chicken Tonight," have sugar cereal, not Lucky Charms (think about it- eating lucky charms actually sounds kind of gross), and drink orange drink, not Sunny Delight. I give people tissues, not Kleenexes. And the corporate perversion of our language has gone so far that I sometimes find myself standing completely mystified at the Ben and Jerry's counter, wondering what the heck Chunky Monkey is doing on the menu (sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie) and why I can't just have a scoop of banana ice cream. I was once drinking a Mountain Dew in Germany, and my friends had no idea what it was, and wanted to know what the German translation for it was. When I explained it to them, they thought it was weird that a drink (especially one produced in a chemical laboratory) would be named after the moisture found in the grass on a mountain in the morning.
George Steiner commented on the corruption inherent in the German language during and after the fall of the Third Reich. So did Henry James, during Word War I, anticipating Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. James writes
One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as to enure one's thoughts. The war has used up words: they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through an increase in limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk.
George Orwell likewise criticized the perversion of language in 1984- isn't that where he used the neologism "superdoubleplusungood"? I have oftened wondered what the Nephites meant exactly when they said that the Mulekites' language had become "corrupted," but the above reflections, I think, may bring me to a nearer understanding of just what was going on.
Maybe the Academie Francaise isn't such a ridiculous institution after all.
We certainly don't need a similar body for the English language, and though I am a fan of the OED, it doesn't perform nearly the same role as the Academie Francaise-- serving, as it does, more as a record of language as it is used rather than a prescription for how language OUGHT to be used.
Reading Tocqueville has caused me to reconsider some of my animus against the immortals of the French Academy, however. He points out that democratic societies(and the United States in particular) inherently do not achieve the level of precision in their language that other societies (particularly aristocratic societies- at least in 1835 when he was writing- like France) reach:
"An author begins by slightly bending the original meaning of a known expression, and, having altered it in this way, he does his best to adapt it to his subject. Another author comes along and bends the meaning in another direction. A third takes it down yet another path, and since there is no common arbiter, no permanent tribunal that can fix the meaning of the word once and for all, the situation remains fluid. As a result, it seems as if writers almost never stick to a single thought but always aim at a group of ideas, leaving it to the reader to judge which one has been hit.
"This is an unfortunate consequence of democracy. I would rather see the French tongue bristle with Chinese, Tartar, or Huron words than allow the meaning of words to become uncertain." (Goldhammer ed., p. 550).
It seems that Americans have an almost horseshoe-like quality in their expressions of language. Often, we do not aim for precision in our speech, but rather for approximation. With the meanings of words only approximate and not fixed or regulated by a "tribunal" as in France, everyone is free to imbue words with their own personal or individualized meanings. While this may please the deconstructionists among us, it would cause disaster, and in fact, it already has begun to do so. I am sickened, for example, to hear talk of people buying or selling a "home." You can't do that! You can only sell a "house," a thing made out of earthly materials-- walls, linoleum, stone, siding. A "home" can neither be sold nor bought; it is something that money simply cannot buy. When realtors promise you a "home," they are lying and corrupting our language at the same time, as well as guilty of profanation and simony for promising to sell that which is sacred.
The lack of linguistic regulation in our country and the resultant approximation in language use may help to explain the (post-)adolescent affinity for the word "like," as in "I was, like, going to the store today, and I like saw these apples, and like they weren't expensive, so I like bought them." (Post-)Adolescents can't seem to commit themselves to stating that they simply went to the store, saw some inexpensive apples, and then bought them. They live in uncertainties and often experience only approximations. This is why I try to emphasize precision in language in my students' papers, because approximate thinking won't do in a world and a life full of complex challenges requiring clarity and discernment.
Sports slogans, trade jingles, and soundbites only make things worse. I once had a student tell me that the message of a certain film was that "through education, you can achieve your destiny." I told her I didn't really know what that means. Did she believe in destiny? If you believe in destiny, then why can you only achieve it through education? I thought destiny was destiny, and not something to be achieved. It turns out that she meant that through education, people can reach their greatest potential (still only an approximate and cliche-ridden phrase, but a step upward nevertheless). And yet our very own universities, in their glossy brochures, commit such egregious crimes against the English language all the time when they promise students that their institution will help them precisely to "achieve their destiny" and other such absurd Jedi-talk.
Corporate interests, or at least our collective lack of resistance against them, have also contributed their fair share of the corruption of our language. My grandmother once asked me to go get her her "Skin So Soft," since her skin was dry and she needed some lotion. I wished she had simply asked me to get her her lotion, because to include (false) advertising in the very name of an object is a rank perversion of language. I want to eat chicken, not "I Feel Like Chicken Tonight," have sugar cereal, not Lucky Charms (think about it- eating lucky charms actually sounds kind of gross), and drink orange drink, not Sunny Delight. I give people tissues, not Kleenexes. And the corporate perversion of our language has gone so far that I sometimes find myself standing completely mystified at the Ben and Jerry's counter, wondering what the heck Chunky Monkey is doing on the menu (sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie) and why I can't just have a scoop of banana ice cream. I was once drinking a Mountain Dew in Germany, and my friends had no idea what it was, and wanted to know what the German translation for it was. When I explained it to them, they thought it was weird that a drink (especially one produced in a chemical laboratory) would be named after the moisture found in the grass on a mountain in the morning.
George Steiner commented on the corruption inherent in the German language during and after the fall of the Third Reich. So did Henry James, during Word War I, anticipating Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. James writes
One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as to enure one's thoughts. The war has used up words: they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through an increase in limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk.
George Orwell likewise criticized the perversion of language in 1984- isn't that where he used the neologism "superdoubleplusungood"? I have oftened wondered what the Nephites meant exactly when they said that the Mulekites' language had become "corrupted," but the above reflections, I think, may bring me to a nearer understanding of just what was going on.
Maybe the Academie Francaise isn't such a ridiculous institution after all.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Confession and the Surveillance Society
It seems that confessions are replacing baseball as our national past-time. Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevy, John Edwards, Mark Sanford and far too many others are clogging up the airwaves with their heartfelt, public confessions, loyal wives at their sides, promising penitence and reform. I have never understood the "loyal wife" role in such cases, though I do sympathize strongly with notions like repentance and forgiveness, some of the first lessons of marriage, after all. But at least Jenny Sanford had the good sense to be out of town with the kids while her husband went on and on about his "soul mate" in Argentina before a live national audience.
Part of what troubles me about these confessions is that there is a sense that a good, public confession will settle everything and that afterwards everyone can go back to business as usual, as though the act of confession itself, particularly when performed publically, serves as an automatic expiatory balm that sets everything in order again. And given our heavily Protestant culture, we do not really understand what private confession is, causing me to wonder aloud with John Proctor in Arthur Miller's excellent play, The Crucible, "Is there no penitence but it be public?"
Certainly, Puritans and Protestants have long turned to their private journals for their confessions, filling in a space for penitence left empty by the absence of the confession booth. But today, in an age where the sacred divide between public and private is collapsing, where the written word can be quickly disseminated to thousands, and where blogs are often performing, particularly among young people, many of the functions of the now almost anachronistic "private diary," it appears indeed that there is hardly ANY form of communication anymore but it be public. So out come the Ted Haggarts, the Kobe Bryants, the David Patersons, and so on.
Of course, it is precisely the loss of this distinction between the public and the private sphere that leads to such a confessional society. When technology allows us to gaze into the lives of others-- think reality shows (with their appropriately-titled "confessional" scenes), blogs, the social networking sites such as the mystical one our esteemed Secretary of State once referred to as "MyFace" and my mother regularly calls "Spacebook," YouTube moments that derail presidential aspirations ("Macaca," Mr. Allen? - "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose," Mr. Romney?) and invite access to the most intimate of strangers, not to mention wiretapping, patriotic library snooping, and ever-present surveillance cameras, whether I'm buying groceries or visiting the restroom at the public library (yes, they even have cameras in there...)-- confession becomes a necessity, since there is a sense that everyone is already watching, so we may as well come clean, and thereby claim our subjecthood by rejecting the inevitable objectification of ourselves that such a surveillance society surely brings.
Little wonder, then, that Arthur Miller's Puritan Salem would require such public confessions, "nailed to the church," for here was also a society under constant surveillance, not from the technologies available to us today, but from the close scrutiny and watchful eye of neighbors under which everyone in the community lived. And little wonder that my students, accustomed to constant connection (albeit artificial) with others, and to the ensuing surveillance by others into their private lives that such a connection ensures, all too often confess transgressions and intimacies related to their personal lives in the writing assignments that they hand in to me, something which embarrasses me but seems natural to many of them. After all, if my Facebook site, my blog posts, my YouTube clips and my loud, public cell-phone conversations have already revealed these things, why keep them from my professor?
Because a confessional society is a surveillance society, and a surveillance society is a confessional society.
Part of what troubles me about these confessions is that there is a sense that a good, public confession will settle everything and that afterwards everyone can go back to business as usual, as though the act of confession itself, particularly when performed publically, serves as an automatic expiatory balm that sets everything in order again. And given our heavily Protestant culture, we do not really understand what private confession is, causing me to wonder aloud with John Proctor in Arthur Miller's excellent play, The Crucible, "Is there no penitence but it be public?"
Certainly, Puritans and Protestants have long turned to their private journals for their confessions, filling in a space for penitence left empty by the absence of the confession booth. But today, in an age where the sacred divide between public and private is collapsing, where the written word can be quickly disseminated to thousands, and where blogs are often performing, particularly among young people, many of the functions of the now almost anachronistic "private diary," it appears indeed that there is hardly ANY form of communication anymore but it be public. So out come the Ted Haggarts, the Kobe Bryants, the David Patersons, and so on.
Of course, it is precisely the loss of this distinction between the public and the private sphere that leads to such a confessional society. When technology allows us to gaze into the lives of others-- think reality shows (with their appropriately-titled "confessional" scenes), blogs, the social networking sites such as the mystical one our esteemed Secretary of State once referred to as "MyFace" and my mother regularly calls "Spacebook," YouTube moments that derail presidential aspirations ("Macaca," Mr. Allen? - "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose," Mr. Romney?) and invite access to the most intimate of strangers, not to mention wiretapping, patriotic library snooping, and ever-present surveillance cameras, whether I'm buying groceries or visiting the restroom at the public library (yes, they even have cameras in there...)-- confession becomes a necessity, since there is a sense that everyone is already watching, so we may as well come clean, and thereby claim our subjecthood by rejecting the inevitable objectification of ourselves that such a surveillance society surely brings.
Little wonder, then, that Arthur Miller's Puritan Salem would require such public confessions, "nailed to the church," for here was also a society under constant surveillance, not from the technologies available to us today, but from the close scrutiny and watchful eye of neighbors under which everyone in the community lived. And little wonder that my students, accustomed to constant connection (albeit artificial) with others, and to the ensuing surveillance by others into their private lives that such a connection ensures, all too often confess transgressions and intimacies related to their personal lives in the writing assignments that they hand in to me, something which embarrasses me but seems natural to many of them. After all, if my Facebook site, my blog posts, my YouTube clips and my loud, public cell-phone conversations have already revealed these things, why keep them from my professor?
Because a confessional society is a surveillance society, and a surveillance society is a confessional society.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Five Guys
It was my singular privilege to eat with my family at Five Guys Burgers and Fries in Nags Head, NC, last night. This is the East Coast burger chain to which President Obama has recently given great visibility by gracing with his presence one of its Northern Virginia venues. They boast the burger the Washington Post calls the best in the world, or something like that. It's a greasy place, but there is no want of peanuts or refills on soda. I'm glad they call it soda, too, since our last two years in Iowa have forced me to denominate only "soft drinks," since I refuse to say "pop," and saying "soda" sometimes brands me as an outsider in the Midwest, and I like to keep incognito.
The ease with which I could order "soda" instantly gave me a wonderful, homey feel, but it was a remarkable experience I had while filling my own soda at Five Guys that really gave me a feeling of being at home, of being comfortably situated in my own Bourdieusian habitus. Five Guys always has a sign inside that lets you know where your french fries came from that day. It's usually a place in Idaho, in my experience, though probably not limited to that fine state. As I was pouring my drink, my soda, I overheard a family noting that today's potatoes had come from none other place than Rexburg, Idaho. "Rexburg, Idaho? How random is that? Did they just throw a dart on a map and decide to get their potatoes from there? What's in Rexburg, Idaho?" they said. And suddenly finding myself in a place where Rexburg, Idaho, is not where you met and fell in love and got your education and got married and had your first child and used to be on the rodeo team but a random place you've never heard of, I confidently poured my soda in my cup and knew I was home.
(Note: I can probably count on my thumbs the number of people reading this blog, and I think they have both spent some time in their lives in Idaho, so I may have just lost whatever meager readership I once had, but hey, just sayin...)
The ease with which I could order "soda" instantly gave me a wonderful, homey feel, but it was a remarkable experience I had while filling my own soda at Five Guys that really gave me a feeling of being at home, of being comfortably situated in my own Bourdieusian habitus. Five Guys always has a sign inside that lets you know where your french fries came from that day. It's usually a place in Idaho, in my experience, though probably not limited to that fine state. As I was pouring my drink, my soda, I overheard a family noting that today's potatoes had come from none other place than Rexburg, Idaho. "Rexburg, Idaho? How random is that? Did they just throw a dart on a map and decide to get their potatoes from there? What's in Rexburg, Idaho?" they said. And suddenly finding myself in a place where Rexburg, Idaho, is not where you met and fell in love and got your education and got married and had your first child and used to be on the rodeo team but a random place you've never heard of, I confidently poured my soda in my cup and knew I was home.
(Note: I can probably count on my thumbs the number of people reading this blog, and I think they have both spent some time in their lives in Idaho, so I may have just lost whatever meager readership I once had, but hey, just sayin...)
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Henry Higgins and Women
When I was a senior in high school, I got to play Henry Higgins in our school's production of "My Fair Lady," one of the few occasions in my life where my stuffy white-boy persona actually came in handy. The many years of my childhood spent watching Britain's Sky Channel (yes, while everybody in the U.S. watched Spiderman and the Transformers on Saturday mornings at home, I was subjected to DJ Kat and Yummy Mouse, and Kitty Curls comm... er... advertisements) helped me to develop an ear for various British accents, particularly the sort of South Kensington thing required for the Henry Higgins role. Since many of my classmates knew few other accents than south Baltimorese (which to this day rivals Tennessee-Appalachian as one of the more grating sounds on my ears) it was my privilege to spend five months memorizing and rehearsing some of the greatest lines in the English language, most of which, of course, came from George Bernard Shaw's wonderful play, Pygmalion.
It was also my privilege to learn that fame and status can compensate for what may be lacking in other departments when it comes to receiving attention from the opposite sex, particularly the adolescent sort. Where I was a nice but nerdy guy with horse sweaters and an awkward hook shot before, I was now a star, and to my great surprise, I started receiving attention from girls for no other reason than my status as the main character in a musical. This was shallow and I knew it, but I liked the attention anyway. I, too, was of the adolescent sort. (Note to Lindsay- actually I'm lying about all of this. The truth is that I can't actually remember anything about my life before I met you...).
When I got to college, I went to the sort of school where football players weren't quite as cool as the a capella singers. For the first two weeks of my college existence, I walked around with little attention from the fairer sex. But when word got out that I was now a bona fide member of the Academical Village People, everything changed. Suddenly, I found myself invited to all kinds of parties that I never could have gone to on my own merits, and I was even developing my own groupies who followed us around on our gigs and faithfully came to our concerts with signs and things. (That's actually weird, now that I think about it, but again, remember the adolescent thing). On one incomprehensible occasion, I was talking to Miss Teen USA (a fellow first-year) and she was actually more nervous around me than I was around her. (Those of you who know me and know what I look like will share in my astonishment- again, it just shows what a difference status, even if only localized, can make, especially for the adolescent crowd). Now, there is no need to exaggerate my new success with the ladies, but I did actually notice a change, and it had to do with little more than my new status (as an a capella guy, of all things!).
I felt like Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (since we're talking about musicals), who wondered whether "Audrey, lovely Audrey" would still love him without his plant. I wondered if Peter-sans-AVP-status would still get the same attention, and discovered after my mission (when I quit AVP over the new Sunday rehearsals) that the answer was the same one that all men who have ever enjoyed the slightest display of status in their lives come to discover upon losing it: a resounding NO.
I think it is this status phenomenon that merited me a surprising "hotness" chilli pepper from one of my (obviously visually impaired) students this semester. Status (he knows SO MUCH and he's SUCH A GREAT TEACHER!) still can go a long way.
Anyway, before this post digresses more than Melville's Billy Bud, playing Henry Higgins in high school meant I got to sing-song the classic misogynist tune, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" If women told me after the show that they were really upset with my character when I sang that song, I felt like I had done my duty as an actor. I think the whole purpose of that song is basically to annoy women.
And yet...
Deep down, aren't there many women who secretly believe this? Isn't success in our male-centric world defined largely in masculine terms? In significant ways, I think, we have not come very far in the last six hundred and fifty years. The great Italian poet Boccaccio wrote in his book ON FAMOUS WOMEN in 1362:
"If we grant that men deserve praise whenever they perform great deeds with the strength bestowed upon them, how much more should women be extolled— almost all of whom are endowed by nature with soft, frail bodies and sluggish minds— when they take on a manly spirit, show remarkable intelligence and bravery, and dare to execute deeds that would be extremely difficult even for men?"
Boccaccio's misogynist contention is that women's acts and deeds should be defined in "manly" terms, that is, by the degree to which women's acts or deeds provide evidence of a "manly spirit." Proto-feminists like the French Christine de Pizan spent their lifetimes countering these ridiculous claims, but even over six centuries later, I think we still define success, virtue, greatness, and so forth in largely male-centric terms. My wife, for example, is convinced that Jane Austen has been underrated as a writer precisely because she writes about women's perspectives in a way that men cannot readily understand. I used to think this was unfair, but I'm starting to come around to her thinking. Jane Austen captures very keenly and insightfully the longings, ambiguities, and viewpoints of certain rural, middle-class Englishwomen during a particular point in history. Her insights are every bit as brilliant as many of the canonical male writers', but because they concern women, they do not get as much credit.
But why would a woman want to be like a man, anyway? I like these lines from Eliza R. Snow, where she says that some who would improve women's status "are so radical in their extreme theories that they would set her in antagonism to man, assume for her a separate and opposing existence; and to show how entirely independent she should be would make her adopt the more reprehensible phases of character which men present, and which should be shunned or improved by them instead of being copied by women."
In response to Henry Higgins's question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man," an authority no less than President James E. Faust has responded, "What a terrible mistake that would be."
And so say I.
It was also my privilege to learn that fame and status can compensate for what may be lacking in other departments when it comes to receiving attention from the opposite sex, particularly the adolescent sort. Where I was a nice but nerdy guy with horse sweaters and an awkward hook shot before, I was now a star, and to my great surprise, I started receiving attention from girls for no other reason than my status as the main character in a musical. This was shallow and I knew it, but I liked the attention anyway. I, too, was of the adolescent sort. (Note to Lindsay- actually I'm lying about all of this. The truth is that I can't actually remember anything about my life before I met you...).
When I got to college, I went to the sort of school where football players weren't quite as cool as the a capella singers. For the first two weeks of my college existence, I walked around with little attention from the fairer sex. But when word got out that I was now a bona fide member of the Academical Village People, everything changed. Suddenly, I found myself invited to all kinds of parties that I never could have gone to on my own merits, and I was even developing my own groupies who followed us around on our gigs and faithfully came to our concerts with signs and things. (That's actually weird, now that I think about it, but again, remember the adolescent thing). On one incomprehensible occasion, I was talking to Miss Teen USA (a fellow first-year) and she was actually more nervous around me than I was around her. (Those of you who know me and know what I look like will share in my astonishment- again, it just shows what a difference status, even if only localized, can make, especially for the adolescent crowd). Now, there is no need to exaggerate my new success with the ladies, but I did actually notice a change, and it had to do with little more than my new status (as an a capella guy, of all things!).
I felt like Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (since we're talking about musicals), who wondered whether "Audrey, lovely Audrey" would still love him without his plant. I wondered if Peter-sans-AVP-status would still get the same attention, and discovered after my mission (when I quit AVP over the new Sunday rehearsals) that the answer was the same one that all men who have ever enjoyed the slightest display of status in their lives come to discover upon losing it: a resounding NO.
I think it is this status phenomenon that merited me a surprising "hotness" chilli pepper from one of my (obviously visually impaired) students this semester. Status (he knows SO MUCH and he's SUCH A GREAT TEACHER!) still can go a long way.
Anyway, before this post digresses more than Melville's Billy Bud, playing Henry Higgins in high school meant I got to sing-song the classic misogynist tune, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" If women told me after the show that they were really upset with my character when I sang that song, I felt like I had done my duty as an actor. I think the whole purpose of that song is basically to annoy women.
And yet...
Deep down, aren't there many women who secretly believe this? Isn't success in our male-centric world defined largely in masculine terms? In significant ways, I think, we have not come very far in the last six hundred and fifty years. The great Italian poet Boccaccio wrote in his book ON FAMOUS WOMEN in 1362:
"If we grant that men deserve praise whenever they perform great deeds with the strength bestowed upon them, how much more should women be extolled— almost all of whom are endowed by nature with soft, frail bodies and sluggish minds— when they take on a manly spirit, show remarkable intelligence and bravery, and dare to execute deeds that would be extremely difficult even for men?"
Boccaccio's misogynist contention is that women's acts and deeds should be defined in "manly" terms, that is, by the degree to which women's acts or deeds provide evidence of a "manly spirit." Proto-feminists like the French Christine de Pizan spent their lifetimes countering these ridiculous claims, but even over six centuries later, I think we still define success, virtue, greatness, and so forth in largely male-centric terms. My wife, for example, is convinced that Jane Austen has been underrated as a writer precisely because she writes about women's perspectives in a way that men cannot readily understand. I used to think this was unfair, but I'm starting to come around to her thinking. Jane Austen captures very keenly and insightfully the longings, ambiguities, and viewpoints of certain rural, middle-class Englishwomen during a particular point in history. Her insights are every bit as brilliant as many of the canonical male writers', but because they concern women, they do not get as much credit.
But why would a woman want to be like a man, anyway? I like these lines from Eliza R. Snow, where she says that some who would improve women's status "are so radical in their extreme theories that they would set her in antagonism to man, assume for her a separate and opposing existence; and to show how entirely independent she should be would make her adopt the more reprehensible phases of character which men present, and which should be shunned or improved by them instead of being copied by women."
In response to Henry Higgins's question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man," an authority no less than President James E. Faust has responded, "What a terrible mistake that would be."
And so say I.
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