EthicalDative

The Eye in Love

Posted on December 30, 2019 by JMN

Adèle Haenel as Héloïse, right, and Noémie Merlant as Marianne in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” a film directed by Céline Sciamma. Credit…Neon.

This review treats several films about gay female love. The reviewer is a film maker. Noteworthy for me is her emphasis on the ocular dimension of romantic attraction. The use of “one’s self” instead of “oneself” for the reflexive pronoun is distinctive.

[The] initial deception is conveyed through the intent, searching looks Marianne casts toward Héloïse and the curious, wary glances Héloïse returns to her… To flirt as a queer person is to immerse one’s self in the act of looking and being looked at… The woman who is being looked at must look back at the woman looking at her for any real connection to take place. And the look she gives has to be one that communicates not only pleasure in being looked at, but pleasure in what she sees… The light in their eyes during stolen moments alone together… “Rafiki” captures the electric stares and ensuing relationship between a young couple… The couples in each of these films are forced by circumstance to engage in romance covertly, yet what comes through in the performances is the pleasure of being — truly — seen.

Also of note in a head-scratching way is the treatment of “Rafiki” by the authorities:

… The Kenya Film Classification Board banned the film because of its “clear intent to promote lesbianism in Kenya contrary to the law” — in May, the nation’s high court upheld laws criminalizing gay sex — though the ban was temporarily lifted last year so that it would be eligible for an Academy Award.

(Ren Jender, “‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ Understands Queer Desire,” NYTimes, 12-9-2019)

Posted in Commentary | Tagged film, language, screen | Leave a comment

Gallimaufry

Posted on December 29, 2019 by JMN

Confused Jumble Ahead

Inauthentical Inadvertency
Twitter and Facebook took down numerous accounts internationally for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Twitter disclosed that “email addresses and phone numbers uploaded by users to meet its security requirements may have been ‘inadvertently’ used for advertising purposes.”

Trumpical Subjunctivity
“We might wish, at times, that Mr. Trump were a little less juvenile, or insensitive, or hypersensitive; but we might also wish that every president achieves [bolding added] perfection.” [Wishes are subjunctive. Write achieve.]

Sayable Nameness
Ta-Nehisi Coates is pronounced tah-nuh-HAH-see kotes.
Ntozake Shange is pronounced intoo-ZAH-kee SHAN-gay.

Parenthetical Divinity
A suit filed by a former Miami TV reporter alleges age discrimination. The reporter says that when she complained to the HR director she was told: “’We must rely on the man upstairs’ (God) for help.”

Visionary Wonkery
… Wonkery, a vision of competence and expertise… in which there are assumed to be “correct answers” to policy dilemmas that a disinterested observer could acknowledge and the right technocrat achieve.

Blokey Naughtiness
[Lunch at Sweetings, London] It’s quite City, quite blokey… The food was better than I thought it was going to be… The haddock and egg was perfect. A nice bit of frozen peas on the side – I love frozen peas. Then we had sticky toffee pudding and custard, and then Welsh rarebit with a bit of poire William… It was one of those early midweek, naughty lunches, when you’re in high spirits right from the off.

SOURCES
Davey Alba, “Twitter Suspends Account of Former Advisor to Crown Prince,” NYTimes, 9-20-19.
Reuters, “Twitter Stock Plunges After Earnings Are Worse Than Expected,” NYTimes, 10-24-19.
Robert J. Shiller, “How Lying and Mistrust Could Hurt the American Economy,” NYTimes, 11-8-19.
Philip Terzian, “Trump’s Rhetoric Has Its Precedents,” 12-9-19.
Meg James, “‘Mocked’ by her bosses, award-winning CBS TV reporter was fired. Then she sued,” Los Angeles Times, 12-8-19.
Ross Douthat, “Exhausted With the Experts,” NYTimes, 12-7-19.
Killian Fox, Holly O’Neill, and Molly Tait-Hyland, “‘Utterly delicious’: top chefs on the best thing they ate in 2019,” theguardian.com, 12-8-19.

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged language | Leave a comment

The Macaroni Line

Posted on December 26, 2019 by JMN

Carter Johnston for The New York Times.

This article is about how a small Texas town near me survived losing its Walmart store. I like it for its local history and photographs. Edna is “a community of about 5,700 people surrounded by rice fields, ranches and grassland.” It’s 28 miles from Victoria north on Highway 59.

A downtown theater glows with rainbow lights, and the tower on top of the building spells out the city’s name high above a ticket booth covered in cobwebs. The theater has not shown movies regularly for years, though its new owner has told residents that he plans to start screenings soon.

“It was like getting hit by a bomb,” Joe Hermes, a former mayor of Edna, said of learning Walmart was leaving. Credit…Carter Johnston for The New York Times.

The town was founded in 1882 and named after the daughter of an Italian count, who came to Texas to build a railroad stretching from Mexico to New York. Two nearby towns are named after the count’s other daughters, Inez and Louise.

Edna is roughly 100 miles from Houston. Credit…Carter Johnston for The New York Times.

The count imported hundreds of Italian laborers and fed them, according to a history of Jackson County, largely with macaroni. The railroad was nicknamed the Macaroni line. But the count left the railroad after laying only about 90 miles of track.

Landing at the Jackson County Airport in Edna. Credit…Carter Johnston for The New York Times.

Sales tax revenue has dipped only slightly since Walmart left. Credit…Carter Johnston for The New York Times.

(Michael Corkery, “The Town That Lost Its Walmart,” NYTimes, 12-24-19)

Posted in Commentary | Tagged Edna, miscellaneous, Texas | Leave a comment

Horseback Love

Posted on December 25, 2019 by JMN

austen

… The queen’s addresses tend to be broad, anodyne and even a little opaque.

“The problem with Yorkie [the Duke of York] is he can be very arrogant and petulant. I think that’s down to insecurity.” [Former palace official]

Two lines of admiration converge in these disparate quotes.

The fan of opacity can’t help but keep an ear to the palace, whose relentless scentlessness trumps unstinting reek belched elsewhere.

The queen is to say [in her Christmas message] that “small steps taken in faith and in hope can overcome long-held differences and deep-seated divisions… The path, of course, is not always smooth, and may at times this year have felt quite bumpy….”

The queen termed 1992 “annus horribilis”; 2018 was “busy”; 2019 ends “bumpy.”

The rhetoric of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, moreover, is physical as well as verbal. Her Majesty saddled up just recently to support her insecure youngest [the Duke of York].

On Friday, the Queen was spotted horse riding with Prince Andrew in the grounds of Windsor in what one royal expert said was an apparent show of support to her second son.“He’s been through the ringer… It’s probably giving a message that whatever he’s done, he’s still my son, he’s still a member of the royal family.” [Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine]

Few nonagenarians can sit a horse. Fewer still are queens.

SOURCES
Lliana Magra, “Queen’s Christmas Message Acknowledges a ‘Bumpy’ Year for U.K.,” NYTimes, 12-24-19.
Stephen Bates, “Prince Andrew’s fall from grace brings uncertain times for the monarchy,” theguardian.com, 11-22-19.

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged language, maonarchy, rhetoric | Leave a comment

Degas: Opéra Superfan

Posted on December 23, 2019 by JMN

“Degas at the Opéra,” in Paris now and Washington in March, reveals the leering intensity rather than the sentimentality in Degas’s ballet and opera pictures. Credit…The National Gallery of Art.

This painter who “didn’t like women,” in van Gogh’s estimation, found at the Opéra [de Paris] an arena of desire and depredation that he could translate into pure form — beautiful and stifling, modern and cold. This is the truth about superfans: they smother what they love.

Jason Farago writes about the louche milieu that spawned images of dancers that are now “schmaltzy stalwarts of dorm-room posters.”

In the year 1885 alone, Degas went 55 times to the still-new Palais Garnier. He saw one opera… at least 37 times… In late 19th-century Paris, opera was a social spectacle that made it an ideal subject for a painter of modern life… Degas went as often as he could afford it… He trained his eye on both the stage and the audience…

Marie van Goethem, the model for Degas’s “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen,” was an example of the shaky social status of 19th-century dancers. Credit…RMN-Grand Palais; Musée d’Orsay; René-Gabriel Ojeda.

Belgian-born Marie van Goethem was the model for Degas’s statue “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.”

Instead of capturing her mid-plié, Degas chose to sculpt her standing in the awkward fourth position, feet perpendicular to the torso and pointing in opposite directions. He gave her a sharp jaw and a forehead like a ski slope. To her body he affixed a real tutu, and real human hair… “Why is she so ugly?” wrote the critic for Le Temps…

Degas’s dancers appear more often like possessions than fellow artists. They are working girls, bent over, tying their slippers, slumped in the corner. Credit…National Gallery of Art.

… In Degas’s… superficially sunnier pastels, the dancers… are working girls, bent over, tying their slippers, slumped in the corner — rarely elegant, and always being watched… Degas was an intense misogynist, and the formal innovations of his art went together with an avaricious [?] focus on control… “I have perhaps,” he once confessed, “too often considered woman as an animal.”

(Jason Farago, “Degas: A Superfan at the Opera, Where Art Tips Into Obsession,” NYTimes, 11-15-19)

Posted in Commentary | Tagged art, Degas, painting, sculpture | Leave a comment

Transatlantic Harmonies

Posted on December 22, 2019 by JMN

diversity

There are parallels between Conservative “manifesto promises” outlined in this article and actions pursued by American Republicans.

… Redrawing constituency boundaries and legislating for voter ID checks, widely understood as locking in Conservative electoral advantage.
… Sweeping review of the Constitution, including the powers of the Supreme Court.
… “Update” of the Human Rights Act.
… Criminalization of Roma and Travellers… along with powers to confiscate their property.
… More draconian sentencing and ever harsher borders.

As Britain has learned before… Conservatives do not squander their majorities. Now they have a big one, and five full years to use it.

(James Butler, “Boris Johnson Will Change Britain Forever,” NYTimes, 12-13-19)

The author is a British journalist. “Forever” is a long time, though it may seem so to many.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged America, Britain | Leave a comment

Benjamin Creme

Posted on December 19, 2019 by JMN

The Los Angeles Police Department recently recovered more than 1,300 pieces of Benjamin Creme’s stolen artwork. Credit…Michael Flaum, via Associated Press.

This article introduced me to Scottish artist Benjamin Creme.

Mr. Creme, who died in 2016 at 93, was born in Scotland and started painting at age 13. At 16 he dropped out of school to focus on his art… Inspired by modernism, Mr. Creme was known for his abstract expressionist work, employing vibrant colors and geometric shapes.

His biography and work can be seen here.

(Jaclyn Peiser, “Stolen Without a Trace, Artwork Turns Up 7 Years Later in Los Angeles,” NYTimes, 11-7-19)

Posted in Commentary | Tagged art, Scottish art | Leave a comment

Tenangos

Posted on December 19, 2019 by JMN

Shopping for the brightly colored thread used in the style of embroidery done in villages around Tenango de Doria, a town in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. Credit…Celia Talbot Tobin for The New York Times.

The tenangos, as the embroidered pieces are called, have evolved into richly detailed works reaching a worldwide market.

Tenango embroidery is made by the indigenous Otomí community in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, whose main town is Tenango de Doria. The people call themselves hñähñu, and speak Otomí, an indigenous tonal language, along with Spanish.

Textiles in the distinctive style of embroidery done in San Nicolás, Mexico. Credit…Celia Talbot Tobin for The New York Times.

The vivid tenango embroidery designs are inspired by local vegetation and wildlife, and perhaps by nearby cave paintings and shamanistic healing ceremonies.

International brands such as Nestlé, Benetton, and Carolina Herrera have used tenango designs, sometimes without crediting their sources.

(Elisabeth Malkin, “This Mexican Village’s Designs Are Admired (and Appropriated) Globally,” NYTimes, 11-13-19)

Posted in Commentary | Tagged art, embroidery, Mexico, Otomi, tenangos | Leave a comment

Kingsize Inference

Posted on December 15, 2019 by JMN

exclamation-mark

… Parties that either oppose Brexit or want to rethink Britain’s departure won 52 percent of the total votes cast, while the Conservatives and other pro-Brexit parties won only 46 percent.

“Boris is part of the establishment,” [Thomas Wright, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution] said, “and Brexit is largely a Conservative establishment project.”

“This election means that getting Brexit done is now the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people…” [Boris Johnson in his victory speech].

(Mark Landler, “Brexit Is Going to Get Done. But on Whose Terms?” NYTimes, 12-13-19)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged language, rhetoric | Leave a comment

“Morally Murky World” Redux

Posted on December 12, 2019 by JMN

John le Carré at his home in London, 2019. Credit…Charlotte Hadden for The New York Times.

This morally murky world of spying is where le Carré continues to make his literary mark.

John le Carré’s 25th novel, “Agent Running in the Field,” was published on October 22, 2019. It came two years after the 88-year-old author’s last novel, “A Legacy of Spies.”

In the late 1950s le Carré taught foreign languages at Eton, Britain’s most elite all-boys’ boarding school. It gave him insight into a culture that has provided Britain with a production line of Old Etonian politicians, including [Boris] Johnson. “I’ve taught a dozen Johnsons,” le Carré says. “Eton does something extraordinary. It doesn’t teach you to govern. It teaches you to win. That’s what it’s about.”

Floreat Etona: “May Eton Flourish” (School motto).

… “[Brexit] began in the big landed houses of England,” he says. “That’s where the Brexit fantasy, the nostalgia for the suspicion of your German and your Frenchman and those chaps who weren’t much use in the war, that’s where that was born.”

(Tobias Grey, “Tinker, Tailor, Writer, Spy,” NYTimes, 10-12-19)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged Brexit, Eton, fiction, John Le Carré, literature | 1 Comment