Play Dumb

This is a follow-up to my blog entry of December 6, 2009, “Essence of Cow.”

New research, reported by Miller-McCune [available at http://www.miller-mccune.com/carousel/for-contemporary-art-context-is-counterproductive-9220/],has discovered that “presenting contextual information alongside a work of modern art may be counterproductive in terms of eliciting enjoyment or appreciation.”

This finding supports my contentions in the “Essence of Cow” blog.

The Miller-McCone article sums up the research as follows:

So it appears context does matter — when it is provided via visual imagery rather than words.

In other words, shut up and let the artwork speak for itself—if it can.

Sink or Swim

The Silliest Question Ever Asked

***

In François Truffaut’s film La sirène du Mississipi [sic], known as Mississippi Mermaid in English, (adapted from the novel Waltz Into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich), Jean-Paul Belmondo waits expectantly on dockside for the arrival of the woman he has asked to marry him; they have never met, having found each other through a lonely-hearts advertisement. The woman in the picture he has received from her, a brunette, does not disembark the ship. Rather disheartened, Belmondo returns to his car, where suddenly Catherine Deneuve appears, claiming to be Julie Roussel, his fiancée. The picture Belmondo has is not of her, she says, because she used a photo of a friend of hers. Then Deneuve utters the all-time silliest question (rendered here in English): “You’re not disappointed?”

Bert Lahr Was Right!

SERGIUS. I am no longer a soldier. Soldiering, my dear madam, is
the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong,
and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak. That is the
whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a
disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal
terms.

Arms and the Man is one of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pleasant” plays, one of a set of plays that, according to Shaw, deal “less with the crimes of society, and more with its romantic follies.” In the case of Arms, the romantic folly is the glorification of warfare. There is the romantic vision of a cavalry charge:

CATHERINE (with surging enthusiasm). You can't guess how
splendid it is. A cavalry charge--think of that! He [Sergius] defied our
Russian commanders--acted without orders--led a charge on his
own responsibility--headed it himself--was the first man to
sweep through their guns. Can't you see it, Raina; our gallant
splendid Bulgarians with their swords and eyes flashing,
thundering down like an avalanche and scattering the wretched
Servian dandies like chaff.

And then there is the reality:

MAN [Bluntschli]. You never saw a cavalry charge, did you?

RAINA. How could I?

MAN. Ah, perhaps not--of course. Well, it's a funny sight. It's
like slinging a handful of peas against a window pane: first one
comes; then two or three close behind him; and then all the rest
in a lump.

RAINA (her eyes dilating as she raises her clasped hands
ecstatically). Yes, first One!--the bravest of the brave!

MAN (prosaically). Hm! you should see the poor devil pulling at
his horse.

RAINA. Why should he pull at his horse?

MAN (impatient of so stupid a question). It's running away with
him, of course: do you suppose the fellow wants to get there
before the others and be killed?

Bluntschli, the Swiss professional soldier who has seen it all, is contrasted with Sergius, the romantic amateur who carried out the cavalry charge “like an operatic tenor.” But Sergius does change during the course of the play, and, under the influence of Bluntschli, has learned the truth about soldiering quoted at the top of the page.

***

“Soldiering . . . is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong.”

This statement is not just true about soldiering. Muggers are cowards; using force to wrest pocketbooks from little old ladies is the act of a coward. Indeed, I believe we can categorize all weapons-carrying criminals as cowards. Schoolyard bullies are cowards (the riposte “pick on someone your own size!” points us to that fact). And what are gun-*or knife-toting hoods except bullies writ large.

***

And what then are lions and tigers and other such predatory beasts? When a lion jumps a wildebeest or a zebra (and always the weakest of the herd), it is engaged in the act of a coward, attacking mercilessly an animal that it overmatches. Would it attack that zebra if the latter had fiercer claws and sharper teeth? No. Lions are cowards—so why then do we celebrate the “lion-hearted”?

***

*I’ll leave the Freudian aspects of this to others.

“Which of you shall we say doth love us most?”

“Which of you shall we say doth love us most?”

With these words King Lear, determined to shed himself of the cares of state and to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, settles back to bask in the fulsomeness of praise. His two eldest daughters, Goneril and Regan, do not disappoint him. “Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter,” Goneril begins.

“Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e'er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.”

Regan, an excellent poker player, sees her sister:

“Sir, I am made
Of the self-same metal that my sister is,
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love.”

And then raises her:

“Only she comes too short: that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys,
Which the most precious square of sense possesses;
And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear highness' love.”

These hyperbolic phrases come from the mouths of two daughters who will prove to be among the cruelest of Shakespeare’s characters. After Lear has turned over all his kingdom to them, they will bar the castle door against him, forcing their father to spend the night battling a raging storm.*

Lear then turns to his youngest daughter, Cordelia, and asks her: “[W]hat can you say to draw/A third [part of the kingdom] more opulent than your sisters? Speak.”

Cordelia’s answer is “Nothing.”

***

We will come back to King Lear, but let’s move on to Hamlet for a little bit.

In Act V, Hamlet has returned to Denmark, unbeknownst to all but his faithful friend Horatio. In the graveyard they spy an approaching funeral party and hide themselves. It is the interment of Ophelia, but before the burial can be completed, Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, leaps into the open grave, embraces his sister’s coffin and exclaims:

“Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.”

Hamlet reveals himself, then leaps into the grave and grapples with Laertes, until they are pulled apart. But what exactly is it that impels the Prince to come out of hiding and make his return known to all the court?

Hamlet:

“What is he whose grief
Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers? . . .
Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'It mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.”

The important words, I think, are the verbs “prate,” mouth,” and “rant.” Hamlet, who has proclaimed, “I loved Ophelia,” is offended by the hyperbolic prating, mouthing, and ranting of Laertes. And so he mocks Laertes: “forty thousand brothers/Could not with all their quantity of love,/Make up my sum.”

The hyperbolic, then, is always suspect: it can be the resort of insincere and hypocritical persons to cover up their real feelings; or if expressed by one with true feelings, it will undermine those very feelings. As Hamlet well knows, true feelings must be matched by proportionate words and deeds.

***

Back to Cordelia, who will remain faithful to her father until her death.

After refusing to match her sisters’ hyperbole, Cordelia is finally impelled to enlarge upon her answer of “Nothing”:

“Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less. . . .
Good my lord.
You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I
Return those duties back as are right fit
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.”

The true daughter’s proportionate response reminds us of the Commandment:

HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER.

_______________________________________

*Cordelia later remarks about her sisters’ cruelty:

“Mine enemy's dog,/Though he had bit me, should have stood that night/Against my fire.”

(Adaptation of a speech not given)

CLUCK

The Hut on Fowl’s Legs: Baba-Yaga

For the visual accompaniment I used printed
fabrics used by Southern African witch doctors,
known as sangomas, who practice a
form of traditional healing. They perform a
holistic and symbolic form of healing,
embedded in the beliefs of their culture that
ancestors in the afterlife guide and protect
the living. Sangomas are called to heal, and
through them ancestors from the spirit
world can give instruction and advice to heal
illness, social disharmony, and spiritual
difficulties. In many cases a ritual sacrifice of
an animal is performed, usually a chicken.
...
The visual component essentializes the
meaning of Baba Yaga in a formalistic
sense, thus beginning to touch on aspects
of the spiritual world and its meaning in
contemporary society.

***

Thus Robin Rhode, “Visual Artist,” explaining his video accompaniment of pianist Leif Ove Andsnes’s playing of one section of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The collaboration between the two men is part of “Pictures Reframed,” which had its debut at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, November 13, 2009.

One critic who was on hand that night suggests the following alternative (perhaps deeper?) reading of the video accompaniment:


The first sight we see is a chicken running across a barnyard. A chicken—clearly a representation of the Big Questions of life: “Which came first—the chicken or the egg?” and “Why did the chicken cross the road?” This chicken, skipping along, is carefree—but suddenly it is replaced by a two-dimensional fowl, bordered by a circle, on a red field that turns out to be a cloth. No longer at large, the hemmed-in chicken is a prisoner—but is it of red state Soviet Union or red state Mississippi? Before that question can be resolved, however, the chicken reappears on a new cloth, this one black; the chicken is now either surrounded by deepest night or pirates. But again before the issue can be resolved, the black cloth is gone and the chicken, still ringed by a circle, is now on a field of white. Surely, this connotes the frigid purity of a bird that will never reproduce, or maybe it is just lying frozen in a virgin field of snow. Either way, the video has taken us on the full journey from birth to death. Cluck.


(Another critic offered a reading of the video based on Col. Sanders—but that is too frivolous a suggestion to be given serious critical attention.)

Is Foul Use "Fair Use"?

If you quote too much of me, I’ll sue the pants off you!
Well, not me really, because I’d be most flattered, but other people might sue you for violating their copyright. You are allowed “fair use” of copyrighted material, but how much use (and what manner of use) is “fair use”?

I was drawn into consideration of one aspect of the “fair use” issue by an article in Slate by Tim Wu, Professor of Law at Columbia University. (The article, which gives a useful overview of the issue, is at http://www.slate.com/id/2233152/.) I e-mailed Prof. Wu that “I was interested in the fact that (according to the article) courts or legislatures have determined that ‘Parody (but not satire)’ is protected by the fair use doctrine.” I wondered “what the legal definitions of parody and satire might be that would lead to different treatment of the two in the courts.” My wondering was based, I wrote, on the fact that “parody is one device used by satirists (indeed, I think the case can be made that all parody--no matter how friendly--is satirical--no matter how mild),”

Prof. Wu was gracious enough to quickly respond to my e-mail, and we exchanged several more, during which exchange, Prof. Wu asked me to expand my views and I attempted to oblige. This blog is drawn from my responses.

***

Satire is a purposeful art; it attempts to unmask folly that is posing as wisdom, or evil posing as good. Since false appearance is accepted as truth, satire must do something out of the ordinary to jar and upset the audience's vision of things. And will use many different artistic devices to do so.

David Worcester in his book The Art of Satire divides satire into three types: invective; burlesque; and irony. Burlesque (not the strippers, alas) Worcester categorizes as the satiric mode that is based on imitation (parody and travesty, for example, are two of the forms of burlesque satire).

Parody is usually an attack on style (and because the style is the man, therefore on the man himself, who is a prisoner of his stylistic tics). A favorite parody of the 1950's was the rendering of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in Eisenhowerese (available at http://powellhistory.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/if-eisenhower-had-given-the-gettysburg-address/). The incongruity of the loftiness of the content and its rendering through flat, stumbling banalities was glorious satire of Eisenhower's speechifying. Satire also uses incongruity to render its target’s content ridiculous. A recent example which attacked the content rather than the style was the rendering of Sarah Palin's actual words as poetic speech (available at http://www.slate.com/id/2201342/). The satire attacked her words by demonstrating how they could not live up to the lofty presentation.

***

Below I have copied some excerpts from the Supreme Court's decision in the case of CAMPBELL, AKA SKYYWALKER, ET AL. v. ACUFF-ROSE MUSIC, INC. (in which the Court ruled that a rap parody of "Pretty Woman" was “fair use”) and annotated in italics certain points:

a) The germ of parody lies in the definition of the Greek parodeia, quoted in Judge Nelson's Court of Appeals dissent, as "a song sung alongside another." 972 F. 2d, at 1440, quoting 7 Encyclopedia Britannica 768 (15th ed. 1975) [something always to be careful about--words are human constructs and like human beings don't always dwell where they were born]. Modern dictionaries accordingly describe a parody as a "literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule," [this definition does take note of parody of style] or as a "composition in prose or verse in which the characteristic turns of thought and phrase in an author or class of authors are imitated in such a way as to make them appear ridiculous" [these "characteristic turns of thought and phrase" are the verbal tics that deserve to be ridiculed]. For the purposes of copyright law, the nub of the definitions, and the heart of any parodist's claim to quote from existing material [but really the quoting can be of content or style!], is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works [the “commenting”—truly a weak word-- renders the original ridiculous, if the parody is any good].

b) Parody needs to mimic an original to make its point [it always must be kept in mind that parodic mimicking distorts, which makes it satirical], and so has some claim to use the creation of its victim's (or collective victims') imagination, whereas satire can stand on its own two feet [this truly makes no sense and is totally unexplained; is this relying on the belief that satire is always ironic in nature, and not also burlesque at times?] and so requires justification for the very act of borrowing.

c) [The Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U. S. C. § 107] has no hint of an evidentiary preference for parodists over their victims, and no workable presumption for parody could take account of the fact that parody often shades into satire when society is lampooned through its creative artifacts [this seems to indicate the belief that parody is specific, while satire is general, but satire can be general or specific], or that a work may contain both parodic and nonparodic elements [goes without saying].

d) Satire has been defined as a work "in which prevalent follies or vices are assailed with ridicule" [close to my definition, which is more descriptive] 14 Oxford English Dictionary, supra, at 500, or are "attacked through irony, derision, or wit [pretty weak definition]" American Heritage Dictionary, supra, at 1604 [perhaps the Court, relying on these definitions, doesn't see the specific trees because of the general woods].

***

Let's make some distinctions here: if I do my party routine of imitating Bogart, Cagney, etc. (trying to be as accurate as possible), I'm not parodying but mimicking--for there is no attempt to deride those I'm imitating. If I start to exaggerate the mannerisms of speech, gesture, etc., then I'm moving into the realm of parody. Think of caricature, which is analogous to parody, in that the features of the subject can be twisted and distorted (noses lengthened or shortened, chins extended forwards or receded and so on) to make the hidden essence of a person (his wolfishness, her cattiness) evident to the viewer. Too bad the Court, while seeing that parody and satire both deal with the ridiculous, did not understand their relationship. Parody IS satire—and satire, by its nature, is criticism. The Court acknowledges that Section 107, provides that "the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . for purposes such as criticism [or] comment . . . is not an infringement . . .." (Also, “Parody, like other comment and criticism, may claim fair use.”)

But perhaps the real problem with the Court (in which it is only following a certain obtuse conventional idea) is in believing that satire is concerned with making only bitingly-negative (even vicious) attacks on society (what I have termed "the general").* This is reflected, I think, in the Court's statement that "society is lampooned" by satire. Thus, the Court has removed the specific (mild or harsh) attacks on a person's inadequacy of style, language, dramatic range, etc. from their rightful places in the universe of satirical means and modes.

***

Here are two excerpts from Pope's "The Rape of the Lock":

My Lord, why what the Devil?
Z___ds! damn the Lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, Pox!
Give her the hair!
----------------------------------------------------------
Mean while declining from the Noon of Day,
The Sun obliquely shoots his burning Ray;
The hungry Judges soon the Sentence sign,
And Wretches hang that Jury-men may Dine . . .

----------------------------------------------------------
In the first extract Pope is satirizing (by parody) the bumbling, clichéd mutterings of witless courtiers; in the second he fashions a satirical attack on the operation of the justice system. Both are satire, one is parodic. As Pope wrote elsewhere: "Fools rush into my head, and so I write." As the fools rushed into his head, Pope used many literary devices in his satirical works to expose those fools (whether attacked specifically or generally), including, of course, parody. And sometimes the satire was biting, but sometimes the satire was mild. I don't think the fact that the heat of satire can, like pepper sauce, run from mild to five-alarm is widely appreciated. Or that while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, parody can be a sincerely-determined effort to reveal the true foolishness or viciousness behind the front of personal style.

*There are historically two streams of satire coming down from the Latin poets, the Juvenalian and the Horatian. The Juvenalian mode is basically straightforward denunciation of the evils and follies of the times; the Horatian follows the rule of Horace, who spoke of "Telling the truth smiling"--that is, sugarcoating the bitter pill (ala Mary Poppins: "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down"). It seems that too often (like with the Supreme Court) only the Juvenalian mode is recognized as satire, while the nicer (at least on the surface) Horatian mode is considered humor (or something else) but not satire.

De mortuis . . .

. . . nihil nisi bonum Usually rendered in English as “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” a literal translation would read, “Of the dead, nothing unless good.” Seemingly, we are not only admonished to hold back from revealing the dark side of the deceased, but also to avoid mentioning even the neutral or possibly ambiguous aspects of his character or actions. The Latin precept, again if taken literally, seems absolute; there is no time limit specified after which we may speak the whole truth of the dead. Never, it would appear, could we come to “bury Caesar, not to praise him” (as Mark Antony speciously claimed he was going to do). Not even centuries after his death. But none of us buys that I suspect.

***

“The great irrelevancy” The recent death of a noted newspaper columnist evoked the above description in a dismissive evaluation in The Guardian (UK). His writing was “more skippable than the full-page ads for luxury apartments.” He was a person who “ignored facts to the point of ignoring human welfare, let alone national welfare.” And an example of his style (“sarcastic and at the same time weirdly cosy,”) was derided as “clotted, so compressed, you can't pull out the argument or even decipher the tone.” So much for De mortuis. But what actually spurred me to write this blog were comments by readers such as this one: “What a sad, bitter column - totally lacking in dignity and grace. Couldn't you wait a week?” The comment recognizes, as we all do implicitly, that the Latin precept is faulty, because the dead should not be forever exempt from the ill-speaking of critics. But that reader (and probably most other people) supports a sort of temporal cordon sanitaire, during which the De mortuis admonition holds sway. Here he suggests a week, but surely no-one in 1945 would sanction such a time lag during which praise for Autobahn-building and pet-dog head-patting was all that was allowed.

***

So, if you believe there should be a time lag, there needs to be a way to determine how much time should be allowed to elapse before leveling criticism (especially if you believe the lag should be linked to the deceased's degree of badness). Cue the graph: er, sorry, it seems that the site won’t support my beautiful hand-made graph. Well, you can compose your own: The Y-axis is a ranking of bad-doers (from “Devil Incarnate” at the top going down in steps from “Ogre,” “Baddie,” and “Meanie” to zero badness). The X-axis is the time lag before one can speak ill of the dead person and can be divided into any time periods you wish. So now, if you believe in the appropriateness of a time lag before criticism of the dead is allowed, you are all set. All well and good. But for full disclosure’s sake, I must record that my instant, totally-adult response upon reading of the noted columnist’s demise was: “He sucked!”