Families Triptych--Appreciation and Repudiation

A good number of years ago, I was coming home from somewhere or other and stopped off at a Tower Music (remember them?) store in Northern New Jersey. After doing my usual search-and-destroy explorations, I approached the check-out counter with my plunder. The young clerk proceeded to ring up the albums, then stopped when he got to the Helen Merrill one. “She’s a nice lady,” he said. I was momentarily nonplussed; who was this wet-behind-the-ears kid to make a statement like that? As if to answer my unspoken question he added, “My uncle arranges for her.” When he identified his relative, I told him that I knew of his uncle’s work with, among others, Tony Bennett. Then he told me who his father was—a jazz drummer—and I replied that I had albums with both men on them. At that point, the clerk’s face broke into the most radiant of smiles. He was proud of his people. And I felt good.(1)

*

Hans Frank was by all accounts an excellent pianist.(2) He was also the Nazi “governor-general of the occupied Polish territories,” for which role he was denounced as the “Butcher of Poland.” Captured after the defeat of Germany, he was placed on trial at Nuremberg in November of 1945, found guilty of war crimes, and executed by hanging on Oct. 16, 1946.

Niklas Frank, Hans Frank’s son, has succinctly summed up his father as “a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic.”(3) Niklas, who became a journalist, wrote what Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler, characterized as a “brilliantly vicious, utterly unforgiving portrait” of his father in a memoir called In the Shadow of the Reich, depicting him 

as a craven coward and weakling, but one not without a kind of animal cunning, an instinct for lying, insinuation, self-aggrandizement.(4)

*

One should not take Niklas Frank’s repudiation of his father as the norm amongst the offspring of notorious Nazis.(5) But even to those children who remained devoted to their fathers one cannot attribute the guilt of their parent. However, I have often wondered whether I was right to feel good that the Tower clerk glowed at my appreciation of the work of his uncle and father. Isn’t there something asymmetrical about how one deals with the descendants of good ancestors versus the descendants of bad ancestors. For the latter we allow the past to be erased; the former are allowed to own the past. 

Yes, it’s a failure of analogy. But much better it is that human factors outweigh false compare.

***

(1)  The uncle was Torrie Zito. He was married to Helen Merrill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrie_Zito

His father is Ron Zito.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/397947-Ronnie-Zito?page=3

(2)  His son wrote about him: “You could play Chopin so beautifully. You loved Beethoven. You were friends with Richard Strauss.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/16/nazi-war-criminal-nuremberg-prosecution-bach

(3)  https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/hans-frank-butcher-poland.html

(4)  Quoted in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Frank

(5)  https://nypost.com/2018/02/03/how-nazi-offspring-dealt-with-their-familys-hellish-histories/

Whose Music?

The other day, the New York Times published an obituary of the founder of the New Lost City Ramblers, a “New York-based string band at the forefront of the old-time music revival of the 1950s and ’60s.”(1) The trio “introduced a generation of young urbanites to the work of Depression-era rural performers” of the American South. While celebrating the music of the past, the trio also influenced contemporary performers such as Bob Dylan. 

Oh, the name of this musician (he was also a photographer and film maker) was John Cohen. A Jewish Yalie from Great Neck, Long Island. 

Was this Yiddish booster of Appalachian music slammed, shamed, and disdained for promoting and performing music that had originated in a culture far from his own? Was the dreaded accusation of cultural appropriation hurled at him? 

On the contrary. Cohen was recognized, in the words of folklorist Jon Pankake, as fulfilling “a visionary role befitting his artist’s training and talents.” He brought something valuable that was hidden away into the ken of the larger world.

Mr. Pankake continued: The Ramblers were about

something more than entertaining, . . . carving out some yet unknown place in history and inspiring many of its audience to become a new kind of musical community.

*

And then there is Mary Jane Leach.

Ms. Leach is a composer and a proponent of the music of a colleague of hers, Julius Eastman, a gay Black man who died in 1990. In an article in ARTnews,(2) Ms. Leach revealed what happened when she appeared to present “a lecture on him and his work at the OBEY Convention, a music and sound festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia.” 

[I]n a pre-planned group discussion following my talk, I soon realized that the subject wasn’t going to be Eastman and his music but instead an inquisition into me that would wind up marginalizing—again, as had happened to him so often in the past—the true subject at hand. What I hadn’t known was that there had been earlier discussions before the festival about whether it would be ethical for me, a white woman, to speak about a gay black man.

Worse was to come. A later concert of Ms. Leach’s music was cut short by the Convention’s organizers, who claimed  

they had received complaints about my lecture and were pulling my music from the program.
I was incredulous and asked them to reconsider, but they insisted that they had to provide a safe space for vulnerable communities and that the people who had objected to my lecture were adamant that it would be too traumatic for them to have to listen to my music.

Then to add insult to injury,

the festival posted a public apology for the whole situation on its website calling my work on Eastman an “example of colonial oppression” and my lecture—in which I addressed the issue of problematic language around Eastman directly—“an instance of anti-black racism.” 

In the ARTnews article, Ms. Leach details her interest in her former colleague’s music and how she became “by default” a specialist on Eastman’s work. She notes that she was basically the only source on Eastman and “when people found something, they could contact me and figure out what to do with what they had.”

Ms. Leach points out that the moderator of the post-lecture discussion was “the leader of an activist group of queer people of color.” Do he and his group, one must ask, have the right to hegemony over the work of artists like Eastman? Could one expect that they would make the effort of preserving and promoting the work of such artists? They certainly haven't done it in Eastman's case. When they attempt to wall off the rest of the world from a group of artists, do they do them justice? And aren’t they themselves walled off from the greater group outside? Who is the loser here?

*

John Cohen and the other two Ramblers could have left Appalachian music in the hills and hollers. But how much better the world became when they allowed us to love it too.

***

(1)  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/arts/music/john-cohen-dead.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage

(2)  http://www.artnews.com/2019/09/13/julius-eastman-incendiary-titles/

You're Not My Type

A recent flap in British theatrical circles flew in on the wings of an American import called Falsettos. The play, according to the Guardian, “follows a dysfunctional Jewish family as they come to terms with the Aids crisis.”(1) The problem, according to protestors in an open letter, is that the producers demonstrated

a startling lack of cultural sensitivity and at worst, overt appropriation and erasure of a culture and religion increasingly facing a crisis.
To the best of our knowledge, no one in the cast of the UK premiere is Jewish, and neither is the director or anyone on the team.

The letter, the Guardian reports, “used the term ‘Jewface’ to describe the casting of non-Jewish actors to play Jewish roles."

*

Now, Maureen Lipman, one of the most prominent of signatories of the protest letter, is an actress I respect. But I have to feel that the power of Ms. Lipman’s protest is somewhat vitiated by the fact that over her distinguished career she has played Enid Blyton, a character called Reverend Alicia, other characters with the surnames Shortstop, Higgins, Lucas, Dormer, Spencer, Richardson, Liddell, Whittle, Firebrace, Haddon, MacBride, McShane, and Riley—as well as the Princess of France. I would venture to suggest that one or two of those characters were shiksas.

Indeed, Jewish thespians have prospered by playing goyim. And the world hasn’t seen a protest by, say, Italians at the host of Jews appropriating their roles. A few:

Peter Falk—Columbo

Barry Newman—Petrocelli

James Caan—Sonny Corleone

Kirk Douglas—Frank Ginetta

Claire Bloom—Juliet

Tony Curtis—Sam Giancana

Leonard Marx—Chico Marx

and Edward G. Robinson, who almost cornered the market (Rico, Joe Ventura, “Big Jim” Riva, Mario Manetta, Vincent Canelli, Gino Monetti, Johnny Rocco, Little John Sarto, Remy Marco, Nick Donati and Tony Garotta).(2)

*

And no Vulcans, to my knowledge, have complained about Leonard Nimoy’s Spock.

*

It should be noted that the Jews have come late to the cultural appropriations party. There have been protests by Black, Chinese, Latin, Native American, disabled, gay, and other actors about persons of the “wrong” backgrounds playing minority characters. And just to show that there is nothing new under the sun, consider that in 1983 Egyptians went nuts when Louis Gossett, Jr., a Black American actor, played Anwar Sadat in a TV mini-series.

*

If I may be allowed my penchant for reductio ad absurdum, I would like to ask, when it comes to pass that characters must be played by actors who are the same stuff as the characters—who will play Hamlet’s Father?

***

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/aug/23/jewface-row-west-end-musical-falsettos-decried-for-cultural-appropriation

(2) Offset slightly by Italian actors playing Jews. Such as,

Tom Conti—Adam Morris (in “The Glittering Prizes”)

Robert DeNiro—Sam Rothstein (in “Casino”)

Anne Bancroft—Golda Meir.

Comrade Stalin Is Never Wrong

The other day I stumbled upon a wonderful short, short story by Robin Jones entitled “Where is Pyotr Zhukov?”(1) In the Soviet gulag, a sharp-thinking criminal takes on the identity of a recently-deceased fellow prisoner. As it turns out, the dead man was a violinist—“a fine violinist,” declared as such by Stalin himself.

Soon the presumed violinist is released from the prison camp and transported to Moscow to “serve Russia, and to play before the leader himself.” Only one problem, the fake Zhukov can’t play a note.

On opening night, Vanya dresses in elegant black and goes to the stage and waits in the wing.  Comrades! Welcome the dear leader’s most favoured violinist – the finest west of the Urals – Pyotr Zhukov!  

Caught in the spotlight, there is only one thing to do—take the bow and scrape it across the strings.

And so, he begins to slice and stab with the bow. He cuts at the violin as if it were a weak inmate protecting a ration. He scratches and rips until the violin screams into the stalls. He tortures the violin not into notes but into shrieks and fury.  

When he finally stops his frightening attack on the instrument, what can the horrified audience do?

[T]hey were told this man was favoured by Stalin. And Stalin is here in attendance. And Stalin is never wrong. So what can the audience do? No applause for Zhukov is no applause for Stalin.
And so they applaud. They weep and stand and applaud. And the murderer hears the applause as though it were for a true Pyotr Zhukov. And no one in the audience dares stop.  . . . [A] triumph of beauty is declared and the triumph is Stalin’s who recognised Zhukov as the finest west of the Urals. A new Soviet music is born and all are blessed that hear it.

I will leave you now to read the rest of the story.

*

After 85 years, it was time for an update of Frank Perkins and Mitchell Parish’s classic ballad “Stars Fell on Alabama.” 

“A Hurricane Will Fall on Alabama” doesn’t quite scan, but President Trump proclaimed it—and comrade leader is never wrong. And soon the presidential truth machine went to work to quash any dissent. 

President Trump, seeking to justify his claim of a hurricane threat to Alabama, pressed aides to intervene with a federal scientific agency, leading to a highly unusual public rebuke of the forecasters who contradicted him, according to people familiar with the events.
In response to the president’s request, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly correct the forecasters, who had insisted that Alabama was not actually at risk from Hurricane Dorian.(2)

And Ross hopped to it. calling

Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, at home around 3 a.m. Friday, Washington time, and instructed him to clear up the agency’s contradiction of the president.

Then Wilbur (I-Am-Vying-For-Chief-Grifter) Ross went even further, displaying an admirably-dictatorial fist:

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reportedly threatened to fire some of the nation’s weather officials if they refused to lie to the public about the projected path of Hurricane Dorian.(3)

It’s a rule of this administration that everyone must fall in line. After all, comrade leader is never wrong.

And the dissenters can consider themselves lucky. In another time and place, they’d be on a transport to the gulag.

***

(1)  https://dark-mountain.net/where-is-pyotr-zhukov/

(2)  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/us/politics/trump-alabama-noaa.html

(3)  https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/10/20857766/wilbur-ross-threat-fire-noaa-officials-trump-tweet-sharpiegate-scandal

Water, Water, Everywhere

One of the most horrid events of the late summer was the fire aboard the vessel Conception off the coast of Southern California. Thirty-four persons lost their lives. Investigations by the appropriate authorities are continuing, in an attempt to determine the cause of the fire. Possible ignition sources, according to Jennifer Homendy of the National Transportation Safety Board,

include the electrical system, photography equipment, batteries, cameras and phones that were plugged in and charging when the fire broke out.(1)

Investigators have determined that all crew members were asleep at the time of the blaze, despite a commitment to have someone awake.

“According to its certificate of inspection, the passenger vessel Conception was required to have a roving watch,” said Lisa Novak, a spokeswoman for the United States Coast Guard.(2)

As part of her investigation, Jennifer Homendy toured the Vision, a sister ship of the Conception. In order to examine the bunk room and emergency hatch, 

she had to climb a ladder in the back and maneuver over the top bunk. She then tried to crawl through the hatch."In order for me to really get at it I had to kind of twist around and push it out," she said. She also said she tried to find the hatch with the lights off, simulating an escape during the middle of the night, and couldn’t see anything.

In the course of her examination, she learned that 

[t]he only two ways to exit the bunk room each led to the same place -- the galley that was on fire. 

The need for a possible design change for safety’s sake is

now part of the investigation, and, ultimately, could lead to a change in federal regulations.

*

Yesterday it was announced that the Trump administration was revoking “an Obama-era regulation that shielded many U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution.”(3) Trump’s Anti-Enviromental Protection Agency is removing certain waterways from previously-established regulation.

Environmentalists contend many of those smaller, seemingly isolated waters are tributaries of the larger waterways and can have a significant effect on their quality. Denying them federal protection would leave millions of Americans with less safe drinking water and allow damage of wetlands that prevent flooding, filter pollutants and provide habitat for a multitude of fish, waterfowl and other wildlife, they said. "By repealing the Clean Water Rule, this administration is opening our iconic waterways to a flood of pollution," said Bart Johnsen-Harris of Environment America. "The EPA is abdicating its mission to protect our environment and our health.”

*

Let’s examine what we’ve got here. 

On the one hand, the National Transportation Safety Board may propose new regulations for boats that will—hopefully—prevent a recurrence of the Conception disaster.

On the other hand, the A-EPA will loosen water regulations, allowing more pollution, which will surely result in more disease and death for American citizens.

I guess it all means that in future when you see water, for your safety, jump onto a boat; just don’t drink it.

***

(1) https://www.yahoo.com/gma/conceptions-surviving-crew-members-describe-harrowing-escape-burning-225702526--abc-news-topstories.html

      (2) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/us/conception-boat-fire-crew-asleep.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage  

      (3) https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-revoke-water-protection-144829727.html