Monthly Archives: May 2007

 
Political Prose

Cats on TV

The Cats of Mirikitani will be on New York's Channel 13 tonight at 10 p.m. (and perhaps other PBS stations as well). As I said in my review, it's definitely worth seeing.


The Cats of Mirikitani will be on New York's Channel 13 tonight at 10 p.m. (and perhaps other PBS stations as well). As I said in my review, it's definitely worth seeing.

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Blog

To love oneself


Reading the tale of Narcissus, the young man who fell in love with the image of himself, reminds us that human nature has perhaps not evolved as much as we would like to think. In the tale, Narcissus spurning his male suitors sends one over the deep end. The rejected young man, Ameinias, uses the sword given to him by Narcissus to commit suicide. His dying prayer is that one day Narcissus realizes the pain of unrequited love. Being a moral tale, the unfortunate Narcissus looks into a pool of water, becoming enchanted by his own reflection. Sadly for him, a second Narcissus fails to emerge from the pool, leaving Narcissus a victim of his own image.

The recent shootings at Virginia Tech bring the concept of narcissism to the forefront. Time's special report includes an essay supporting the idea that the serial killer's inability to focus on others and strong need to have the world revolve around himself plays a leading role in his evolution as a killer. While narcissism is a serious disorder that is estimated to affect .7 to 1% of the population, there exists the viewpoint that, at least in America, a healthy dose of self-love is not necessarily a bad thing. Child-development experts point out that young children who receive positive input about themselves, as well as opportunities to achieve mastery, learn to value themselves as well as their abilities. So why is it that as our youngsters mature, we fail them by promoting the outer instead of the inner beauty?

May's issue of Seventeen offers readers a chance to win a different pair of shoes each day. The graphic pops off the page, a calendar displaying an Imelda Marcus boutique of shoes. Not to be dismissed, the magazine also includes information on handbags, clothing, makeup, hair bands, jewelry, and perfume. Seventeen, of course, is geared to young women who, by virtue of their stage of development, are highly attuned to their physical appearance. Compare the smiling faces of the Virginia Tech victims, looking like a hallowed version of Hollywood Squares; it is easy to imagine that they, too, were concerned about the face that looked into the camera. Putting your best foot forward is simply the American way. Wanting success and the items that mark us as successful will generally not turn most into narcissists or serial killers. And yet…to the narcissist, other people are simply accessories, a bracelet, a dash of lipstick, a pair of shoes, just a little something to bring attention to the true draw, themselves.

In a society that is filled with opportunities to promote yourself, how do we encourage young people to reflect on the needs of others? Glancing through the headlines, it appears that there is a dearth of role models willing to put themselves second, let alone last. Headlines sell papers — the more outlandish the better — and our demand for the latest dirt will get us that and more. Filled with longing for that something just a bit better, are we blinded from the connection between television shows, magazines, advertisements, and songs that continually remind us that while we are special, just one more something can't hurt. People, things. Things, people. Linked by the common denominator of desire, do we accept responsibility for those who cross the line? As we contribute to the pool of materialism, whose faces are reflected? Cho Seung-Hui gunning down his classmates? Ted Bundy luring his victims? Another beautiful model peddling a pair of shoes? Surrounded by our desires, do we pull back to remember that denial can serve as a reminder that life is about more than ourselves? Things, people, people, things. To the serial killer, it's a world of one size fits all.        

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Blog

The last time I’ll ever say the words “Don Imus”


For two weeks now, I've been biting my tongue about former CBS host Don Imus and comments he made on a broadcast regarding the Rutgers women's basketball team. The phrase "nappy headed hos" has been thrown around far too much, and as a journalist, I'm the last one who wants to give him any more unnecessary publicity.

Now Imus, who also works with WFAN-AM/New York is reportedly suing the corporation for $120 million. In the draft of suits, allegedly Imus argues that the network expected his content to be both controversial and irreverent, and that his comments did not violate FCC rules.

I'm a journalist, and I love the First Amendment. Because of it, I'm able to say what I've got to say, publish articles that people take offense to, and blog on this and other websites. But people need to expect that when they say things that are deviant from society's norms, an audience will get riled up.

I'm a college student, and an editor at my campus newspaper, and because of a story I ran and a source I used, it is likely that someone will be sued. I knew it going in, and Imus knew that his commentary about the women of Rutgers would cause some backlash. Did he think that he would get fired? That's unlikely. But unfortunately in this society, words have recourse.

I'm from Kansas City and have been following the Imus controversy through the sports columns of Jason Whitlock. My boyfriend said that he has made some of the most profound commentary on race and has emerged into this arena level-headed and with a fresh perspective. I agree.

Like Whitlock, I think we need to really, really open our eyes. As a black woman, I'm not threatened by Imus and don't feel like less of a person.

The women of Rutgers are still good basketball players and likely still good people. One ignorant comment did not change their season or personalities. I feel like by talking about this issue so much, we've just worsened the actual comment and magnified it.

If we're going to target one guy for an inappropriate comment, we should be targeting all of rap and hip hop for comments made in a similar vein. I'm not pissed off about Imus; I am simply disinterested.

Don Imus — please just shut up. I can't take another second of you in the spotlight, really. So you're out of a job, but you just got hours and hours of free publicity in exchange for espousing racist and sexist views on air.

I can't help but wonder what would happen if Imus tried to create a media circus and nobody came. Imagine a courtroom not crowded with reporters and interested individuals. Imagine if his face wasn't on our televisions and his voice didn't echo on the radio constantly…Imagine if Imus went back to what he was before — an insignificant, meaningless shock jock. I'd be happier.

So would everyone else.

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Photo Essays

Haunted remains

10.jpgImages inside abandoned Catskills resorts.


13.jpg

I became interested in these old hotels and resorts last summer, when I visited the Catskills for the first time to attend the Catskills Institute conference on the history of the area. The institute’s co-founder and conference organizer, Brown University Sociology professor Phil Brown (who is also the author of Catskill Culture), took participants on a bus tour of the abandoned resorts, and we stopped for a time at the Bethel Sunshine Camp. Brown had secured permission for us all to look around (all of these spaces are “No Trespassing” zones). I was amazed by how much of the interior is intact. The kitchen pantry shelves still have neat stacks of plates, cups and saucers as if meals are still served there regularly. The camp’s theater looks ready to host a new production: its stage is bare and clean, and rows of empty seats await an audience. Yet in the girls’ bedrooms, peeling paint dangles from the ceiling in giant sheaves of cream or white or light blue and the rusted bed frames stand like skeletons on rotted, fragile wooden floors. In some of the rooms, objects remain, discarded or forgotten: a bouquet of now-shriveled roses, a red and white teddy bear, a track trophy. Here, as in all of the spaces, the few remaining objects make these spaces so eerie and so discomfiting — they disturb not because they are empty, but because so much was left behind.

When I went back to the Catskills this spring (which was actually more like winter — there were snow flurries in the air, and the temperatures hovered in the thirties), I returned alone to the Bethel Sunshine Camp and explored the Pines, La Minette and other abandoned resorts in the area. Near La Minette, a drive-in movie theatre stands empty, its parking lots covered with weeds, its blank screens clean, sheer white. In a La Minette bungalow, children’s number and letter magnets lie scattered on a rusted refrigerator, and on front lawn of the Pines, a pillow covered with shards of hay rests on a sea of dried, overgrown grass. Telephones, many with their receivers off the hook and upturned, sit on the floor of every room of the Pines as well as in the lobby, and in the office, overgrown with mold and moss. In these silent spaces, these remains disturbed me the most. It was as if each telephone was yearning to communicate with something and someone who was long gone and could never return. And in this way they stood like stark metaphors for lost communication and time’s rapid, constant fleeting. Here and elsewhere, the spaces haunt: stinging reminders of what we lose, what objects and experiences we choose to keep and which we leave behind.

 

[Click here to enter the visual essay.]

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Interviews

A society under constant stress

200705_Interact.jpgA conversation with Raphael Cohen-Almagor on the prospects for Israeli peace.


Raphael Cohen-Almagor is a is a world-renowned political scientist (D. Phil., Oxford) who published dozens of books and articles on education, free expression, media ethics, medical ethics, multiculturalism, Israeli democracy and political extremism. An organizer of the international “Gaza First” campaign, a campaign for the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and soldiers from Palestinian territories beginning with the Gaza Strip, he was the founder and director of the Center for Democratic Studies at the University of Haifa. At a peace education conference in Turkey, Cohen-Almagor discussed with ITF contributor Aditi Bhaduri his disenchantment with Israeli politics, the Middle East peace process, and what motivated him to establish the Center for Democratic Studies.

The interviewer: Aditi Bhaduri
The interviewee: Raphael Cohen–Almagor

You founded the Center for Democratic Studies at the University of Haifa. What inspired you to do that?

[T]he idea for the institute came up on November 5, 1995, the day after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. I was one of those who saw the writing on the wall — and I warned against political assasination. I was teaching then at the University of Haifa, at the Faculty of Law and Department of Communication. When Rabin was murdered, this was not a shock to the mind, but a shock to the heart. I started thinking, what could I do to help the decision-making process — as a scholar? Realizing that there is a large gap between Israel as a democracy and the public that does not understand what democracy is all about, I decided to establish a center designed for the study of democracy and its underlying values:liberty, tolerance, equality and justice. These values are clear to students in United States or in England. I ask students what … liberal democracy is, and they will give me a detailed answer in ten minutes. In Israel, however, the discussion may last an hour until a full answer is provided. The center serves as a meeting point for people from all walks of life: Christians, Muslims, Jews — those who are religious and those who are not. It is a platform for discussion; of pluralism, of tolerance, of mutual recognition. For the past four years since the founding of the center in , what I tried to do is promote awareness, in Israel and outside the country, of democratic virtues, to promote justice, pluralism, multiculturalism, freedom, peace. People at the center do this through seminars, conferences, education. My dream is that the Israel Ministry of Education will [embrace] democratic studies … and introduce these studies into the curriculum both at the primary schools as well as at high schools. Presently, there are no studies on democracy in Israel — and there should be.

What are the challenges to Israeli democracy?

Israel, being the only Jewish democracy in the world, suffers from intricate symbiosis: we would like to be Jewish and we would like to be democratic. But when you look at the values that underline these two concepts — Judaism and liberal democracy — they are difficult to be reconciled with each other because the first premise of liberalism is to put the individual at the center of attention:, everything stems from the individual and returns to him or her … you allow the individual maximum rights … to develop to his or her fullest potential so long as [he or she] does not harm others. [C]onsequently, the individual will contribute to the development of society. But in Judaism, the belief is that you owe your freedom to God, and you owe an explanation about your life to God. There is no autonomous freedom. Freedom is given to you to serve God and His aims. Now, the zealots within Judaism (this is just a fraction of Judaism) believe that we are all sailing in the same boat, and if there are secular people like me in that boat, who follow the maxim “live and let live,” we will make holes in the boat, and we all sink down to [the bottom of] the ocean. So, they cannot let me live by that maxim. Therefore, coercion is going to be used to make me toe that line.

Israel is a secular country. The religious people make [up] 20 to 25 percent of the population. Still, Israel is following Jewish law, Jewish values and norms are infiltrating every aspect of one’s life as an individual. In the most private issues of your life, religion interferes even though Israel is a secular state, and this creates a tension between Judaism, on one hand, and liberal democracy, on the other. That's a major problem that we have to address.

The other major problem is our relations with the Arabs — the Palestinians living inside Israel — which constitute about 20 percent of the population, about one million people. They don't believe in the raison d'etre of a Zionist state. They are in Israel because their forefathers were born there, they were born there, and for them Israel is actually Palestine. And this, of course, creates tension and problems.

And then we have Palestinians outside of Israel — some of them Hamas who don't recognize Israel, don't recognize Israel's right to exist, and believe that I should return to Bulgaria (that's where my family came from) or preferably I should drown in the sea. They don't recognize me, [which makes it nearly impossible for us to have a discussion.] … So as long as there is terrorism and as long as there is war between us and Palestinians, then this … creates a major challenge for Israeli democracy.

Israel is a society under stress, where security plays a considerable role in its daily life. In a liberal democracy, you have to invest in the people, in the individual worker, health, education, etc., and that's difficult to do so when security consumes 30 percent of your budget … there's not much left for other purposes.

Given the current international scenario, where religion is playing an increasingly larger role, do you think it will be easy for Israel to sever completely religion from state?

Israel is a secular country. There is a lack of separation of religion from state, but but I don’t think that is because of the rise of religion in world politics. Separation between state and religion is an Israeli decision in Israel’s interest, but you need a courageous leader to take that decision. Right now, because of narrow political interests, and the fact that all governments in Israel were coalition governments, most of them included a religious component, those in power were afraid to take a drastic step and and separate religion from state. This was the only consideration.

I believe that it’s better to separate religion from politics, but unfortunately the religious parties believe otherwise. … Anyway, we live in separate communities — we don’t eat together, we don’t live together, we don’t study together. So [why] does it bother them if I want to have a civil marriage? [B]y making this an issue, … I think it weakens them because all it does is create alienation. People don’t like to be coerced. True, the majority of Israelis don’t care so much about these issues, but a significant part of us does. The state is there to cater for the interest of 100 percent of the population, not just the 70 or 80 percent. There should be more freedom for people to lead their lives the way they want to.

So what do you think the solution is [for] the conflict over Israel and Palestine?

Unfortunately, peace is not something that you can do alone. It’s like dancing the tango alone — you need two to tango. From 1993 onwards, the Rabin government, the Barak government, and the Sharon government were willing to take significant steps to build an independent Palestinian state. What we got in return was terrorism. We did not get any reciprocal recognition of Israel, of our needs or interest[s], and a willingness to create a two-state solution from the Palestinians.

When this is the [situation], there is not much we can do. My hope is that the Palestinians realize that Israel is here to stay, that the two-state solution is the only way out of the impasse. Not one state called Palestine at the expense of Israel, but a two-state solution, meaning deserting what Hamas is upholding now, and instead going through reconciliation steps and accommodation of [each] other [so] we will have a partner to talk to. And then I am sure that the Israeli government will be willing to take the necessary steps to build upon trust between the two nations and build a Palestinian state. But we cannot do it alone, and we cannot subject ourselves to Qassem rockets. Would India allow daily rockets and missiles to fly from Pakistan and hit Kolkata, New Delhi, and other Indian cities daily? No, there will immediately be war.

You began a “Gaza First” campaign. Tell me about how it started and what it is.

In 2000, I began an international campaign for “Gaza First.” I nagged the government, wrote letters to all parties, to the prime minister, and also campaigned outside of Israel in every place I could.

The plan was adopted by Sharon in 2003 and implemented in 2005. I campaigned for Gaza first, meaning this was the first step towards reconciliation between the two sides, and then [we were supposed to give up] the West Bank, when, in return, we got Hamas and the Qassams, we [cannot] proceed further. Israel is a very small country … it’s only 40 kilometers between East and West and all the major cities, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, will be easily covered by Qassams from the West Bank. Therefore, no sane prime minister can do that because this is suicidal. Great opportunity is lost. The Palestinians have one of the most dovish government[s] in the country's history. Minister of Defense Amir Peretz has been working for peace all his life.

What do you think of Israel's recent war with Lebanon? How will that affect politics in Israel?

Again, almost from the beginning I said this was insane. Prime Minister Olmert made a mistake — the government went into war without realizing that it was opening war. I call it the “Hezbollah War.” This unnecessary war was a big blunder and Olmert is going to pay a big price for that. The Israeli public will not forgive him [for] this misconduct. Observing how the events unfolded, the Hezbollah did a nasty thing: they kidnapped two soldiers and killed eight. Now what’s the way to retaliate? First of all I think, take your time and ponder. [That] doesn’t mean you won’t have to do anything. But the retaliation came within 24 hours [with] the bombing of Southern Lebanon and … the capital city of an Arab state, Southern Beirut. Now, if Olmert knew that the Hezbollah [was] going to answer by non-stop rockets on the North of Israel, then he made a tragic mistake. And if he didn't know, then again he made a tragic mistake. If you are going to such a war, then you have to prepare the North for the barrage of rockets that might come in and out on a daily basis.

There is a growing movement in Israel calling for elections and calling for Olmert, Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to resign because of this costly mistake. Some 160 people were killed and hundreds were wounded. I believe that this public voice will gain momentum, and that ultimately Olmert will be forced to resign or to call upon elections.
[Chief of Staff Halutz had resigned since the time of the interview. A.B.]

And what is your prognosis?

Well, I am not a prophet, but we may envisage the following scenario: there will be three leading contenders fighting for elections. One is Olmert, head of Kadima, [the political party] founded by Sharon. Next is Bibi Netanyahu of Likud, and third is Labour. Within [the] Labour [party], I presume Peretz is going to face severe challenges. One of the leading contenders is Ami Ayalon, who was the admiral in charge of the navy. He is calculating his deeds in a sensitive and political way, and might be able to challenge Amir Peretz and to take over. So at the end of the day, we may have Ayalon, Olmert, and Netanyahu. At this stage, Bibi Netanyahu is leading in the polls, but the polls are not real elections. Anyway, we do not know yet when elections will take place. According to [the] official timetable, it should be within three-and-a-half years. I can't believe that this government will survive more than a year. It may collapse any day.

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Blog

History lessons


Years ago, former German chancellor Konrad Adenauer described history as “the sum total of the things that could have been avoided.” But must history always be something we regret, something we’d rather bury and forget?

Not necessarily, suggests writer Pearl Buck, who explained, “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.” In this issue of InTheFray, we attempt to do just that. Matthew Fishbane begins by exploring The culture of being, when a transnational adoptee returns to her native Colombia in search of clues to her identity, only to discover that reconciling her two selves — American and Colombian — is both harder and easier than she’d imagined.

Meanwhile, poet Rae Peter looks at the joys and limitations of one’s female heritage in Shapes that brush against you in the dark. And ITF Books Editor Nikki Bazar uncovers Something borrowed, something new in Jonathan Lethem’s novel You Don’t Love Me Yet, the novelist’s newest venture in cultural borrowing.

We then journey to Cuba, where Lita Wong learns to trust the locals during a walk to San Diego de los Banos Alone in the forest. And halfway around the world, Aditi Bhaduri chats with Raphael Cohen-Almagor, organizer of the “Gaza First” campaign, about living in A society under constant stress and the prospects for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Speaking of conflict, former ITF Commentary Editor Zachariah Mampilly recounts the first 20th century genocide — it is probably not the one you’re thinking of — and discovers how difficult The labeling of genocide can be when it comes to Western interests and that hazy line between “violent conflict” and so-called ethnic cleansing.

Thanks for partaking in this history lesson with us!

Coming next month: ITF gives up the skinny on the 21st century’s obsession with FAT.

Laura Nathan
Editor
Buffalo, New York

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Fiction & Poetry

Shapes that brush against you in the dark

A legacy of women.


Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
a legacy of women who hand-smocked
lawn gowns, embroidered in silk thread,
bottled rows of pineapple-cucumber chutney,
plum sauce, and rhubarb jam
with the seasons.

Looking through mother’s things
I find a tiny satin-covered shoe
saved from grandmother’s wedding cake,
and a lock of lover’s hair in a silver snuff-box
curled atop a blind man’s photograph.

Sifting her memories
cold scales of the fear fish scrape my leg:
that my dream will die, stillborn lips unkissed,
that I’ll fail to make a French knot, or daisy stitch,
just as I failed to birth a daughter,
that my passion pushes love away,
replete in its own shiny orb.

Guilt or innocence a state of mind,
my thumb is up to hitch a ride,
that stitch, or nine, dropped in time
down patchwork highways
inlaid with symbols raised to make me trip.

The needles of many women gleam,
complete each seam on which I step.
I tread upon grandmother’s hands —
how easily they take my weight,
willing me to find my path.
Though I can’t sew worth a lick,
maybe I can fish.

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Blog

Surrender monkeys


I don’t know, but like some spellbinder straight out of a Tolkien book, President Bush has worked his magic again.

Democrats were failing to muster the required votes in the House to override Bush’s veto of a war-spending bill last week, and given the sad state of anti-war assertiveness within Democratics on the Hill, it seems Bush’s desired no-strings-attached funding may not be beyond hope.

Despite polls vastly supporting the Democratic positions in the war-torn nation — polls like the April 26 Gallup questionnaire indicating 57 percent of Americans support setting a timetable for removing troops from Iraq, whereas only 39 percent supported Bush’s proposal to keep troops in as long as necessary to achieve victory — the Democratic leadership still appears weary to stake a stand against the administration policy of indefinite deployment.

As Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin told The New York Times, "There is virtually no one in our caucus who does not want to be associated with trying to get us out of this war. The only thing that is slowing some of them is the fear that somehow they will be accused of doing something that will put the troops at risk. The desire for political comfort is still overwhelming the best judgment even of some Democrats."

Translation: The Democrats are so afraid of making any politically exploitable misstep on Iraq or looking soft on national security that they are failing the American people and the troops.

Nothing “supports the troops,” to use the inane slogan the administration PR geniuses coined so effectively, more than getting them out of harm's way in an endless, goal-less conflict which has catastrophically increased instability in the region and continues to aid terrorist recruiters in finding new members.

I am with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. The Democrats should revoke the war powers granted to the president and send Bush a memo straight from the majority of Americans: The game is up. Add an end to this open-ended debacle and do what is truly best for the troops. Stop making their enlistments and tours of duty in Iraq longer.

The only thing Democrats would surrender by setting a withdrawal date from Iraq, after all, is another failed policy by what history will surely remember as one of our worst administrations.

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Commentary

The labeling of a genocide

Who “wins”?


The definition of genocide — “the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary — little informs us how to distinguish between a violent conflict and one that crosses into genocide.

Recognizing genocide is as much a political contest as it is a moral imperative. And in the court of international opinion, victims — and perpetrators — fiercely contest the labeling of a conflict as genocidal.

What was the first genocide of the 20th century?

If you said the Nazi Holocaust, you would be only semantically correct. The word “genocide” was not coined until 1943 when Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish legal scholar, combined the Greek prefix for family, tribe or race (genos) and the Latin suffix for massacre (cideo) to describe what was happening in Germany at the time. If you answered the 1915 Armenian genocide at the hands of the waning Ottoman Empire, from which Lemkin first developed his ideas on the genocide, you would be closer, but still not correct.

The first genocide of the 20th century took place in Africa. But unlike the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, where the victims and perpetrators are Africans, it was a German colonial occupying force that exterminated the Herero people in South West Africa (present day Namibia) between 1904 and 1907. The Germans laid siege to the Herero community, massacring close to 80 percent of the population and forcibly moving the rest to concentration camps.

Germany came late to the scramble for Africa and intended on making huge strides to transform their territories by relying on their significant industrial prowess to subdue both man and nature. Initially, Germany tried to legitimate their presence in the Herero homeland through legal means, but when a group of Herero rose up against what they perceived as an unfair German occupation, the response was swift and dramatic. After a crushing defeat in the Battle of Waterberg, the Herero were forced to leave their land and tens of thousands were slaughtered by the German army. “I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated, or, if this was not possible by tactical measures, have to be expelled from the country,” said General Lars Von Trotha, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s choice to lead the campaign.

It was in Africa that the Germans first began their use of concentration camps, a harbinger of what was to come within Germany 40 years later against undesirables like Jews, Gypsies (Roma) and homosexuals. Herero inmates were used as slave labor and experimented upon by German imperial scientists. In fact, Eugene Fischer, a young German geneticist who began his work on race-mixing in the Herero concentration camps, was a seminal influence on Adolf Hitler. Hitler eventually elevated Fischer to the top position at the University of Berlin where his star pupil was Josef Mengele, a leading architect of the German Holocaust.

In terms of the percentage of the population killed, the Herero genocide was more successful than the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the killings in Darfur. Less than 20 percent of the Herero population — or fewer than 20,000 — survived. There are a little more than100,000 Herero living primarily in Namibia today and in smaller communities in Angola and Botswana. That a vibrant and diverse Herero community exists at all represents a tremendous recovery.

Given the historical significance, why don’t people know about the Herero? The answer is related to several factors that tell us much about the politicized nature of labeling a conflict as genocidal. Lacking a significant diaspora in the West, the Herero have never been able to demand recognition from the international community in the way Armenians and Jews have attempted to ensure their history is never forgotten. In 2001, a private foundation representing the Hereros did sue the German government and corporations in American courts. However, the German government successfully argued that the1948 Genocide Convention could not be applied retroactively. A century after the genocide took place, Herero groups did receive an apology from the German government in 2004, but no direct compensation was ever provided to the community.

Somewhat perversely, the term genocide has become so politically loaded that it has little meaning as a descriptor of contemporary ethnic and racial conflicts. Instead, it more accurately reflects the political standing of the targeted group in the West. As such, the application of the term has become more akin to a linguistic sweepstakes whereby persecuted minorities are awarded with recognition if and only if they can “win” the term’s application to their situation.  The downside of all this is the term inhibits us from recognizing the relative frequency with which minority groups are persecuted. We have become primed to care only when a conflict emerges in the international consciousness as genocidal — rendering others just forgettable.

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Reviews

Something borrowed, something new

200705_lethem.jpgA close reading of Jonathan Lethem’s novel You Don’t Love Me Yet.


200705_lethem.jpgA few years ago, author Jonathan Lethem found himself well on his way to becoming the Philip Roth of Brooklyn with his two most well-acclaimed novels, Motherless Brooklyn (1999) and The Fortress of Solitude (2003) — both colorful and incisive accounts of his hometown borough — quickly propelling him into the somewhat reluctant role of a Brooklynite mouthpiece.

It was for this very reason that Lethem felt compelled to set his new novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, in the complex maelstrom that is Los Angeles. It’s a bold move, not only because of the notorious competition between New York and Los Angeles, but because Los Angeles is a difficult place to penetrate — even for those who live there.

“There’s that famous Joyce quote about ‘artists need silence, exile, and cunning,’” Lethem told me over the phone in late March, “and I guess I’d just been looking for that ‘exile’ part of things; working from the margins, doing preposterous things, disavowing one’s credentials.”

The novel — Lethem’s seventh — stars Lucinda Hoekke, a bass player stumbling into her thirties while living in Echo Park, an up-and-coming, yuppie-hipster Los Angeles neighborhood. Like many of the city’s residents, Lucinda works odd jobs as she tries to make it with her wannabe rock band. Her latest career move is answering phones at the Complaint Line, an anonymous help line conceived by her conceptual artist friend. Eight hours a day she fields complaints from callers responding to randomly placed stickers that read, “Complaints? Call 213-291-7778.” (The number really works: Try it.)

It’s there that Lucinda falls for a regular caller named Carlton Vogelsong — affectionately nicknamed “the Complainer” — who confides to Lucinda at length about his sexual escapades, but also about his feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction with life. The Complainer also happens to be a professional slogan writer and, indeed, his utterances beguile the wayward Lucinda, who makes note of them and passes them on to her band’s lead singer and songwriter. The Complainer’s words soon become the lyrics for some of the band’s best songs, calling the material’s ownership into question as the band starts to grow more popular. As the songs take on a life of their own, no one is quite sure just where they originated.

The plotline recalls Lethem’s essay “The Ecstasy of Influence,” which was published in the February 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The essay explores the phenomenon of cultural borrowing and appropriation, and the effects of intellectual property rights. “The demarcation between various possible uses is beautifully graded and hard to define,” wrote Lethem in that essay, “the more so as artifacts distill into and repercuss through the realm of culture into which they’ve been entered, the more so as they engage the receptive minds for whom they were presumably intended.”

Appropriation is essential to creative vitality, Lethem reminds his readers, and strict copyright laws are consequently detrimental to artistic innovation. The essay urges consideration of the world of art and culture as a sort of public commons, impervious to possession by a singular person. “Copyright is a ‘right’ in no absolute sense; it is a government-granted monopoly on the use of creative results,” writes Lethem. “Whether the monopolizing beneficiary is a living artist or some artist's heirs or some corporation’s shareholders, the loser is the community, including living artists who might make splendid use of a healthy public domain.”

In that spirit, Lethem has initiated a project through his website called Promiscuous Materials that offers up his stories and lyrics at no cost for other artists to use, rework, and reinterpret at will. Already, artists such as One Ring Zero and John Linnell from They Might Be Giants have recorded songs to Lethem’s lyrics, and some short films are in the works.

Lethem has also recently announced that he will option out the film rights to You Don’t Love Me Yet to a filmmaker of his choice in exchange for just 2 percent of the profits once that film is made. In addition, both he and the filmmaker will give up ancillary rights to their respective creations five years after the film’s debut. By offering this nontraditional option, Lethem hopes to spark a reexamination of the typical ways in which art is commodified. “I also realized that sometimes giving things away — things that are usually seen to have an important and intrinsic ‘value,’ like a film option æ already felt like a meaningful part of what I do,” he writes on his website. “I wanted to do more of it.”

Lethem is not the originator of the battle against the increasingly tight grip of copyright laws; he points to Open Source theory and the Free Culture Movement as influences, as well as longtime collage artists like the American experimental band Negativland. But as a successful mainstream author, Lethem is a uniquely compelling advocate. “Almost everyone you find clamoring for strengthening the public domain or for reexamining the regime of intellectual property control that’s so typical right now is not so much like me,” Lethem told me. “I think there’s a really kind of sad abdication of this conversation by more established artists. That’s why I felt that I had a role to play in this talk.”

Projects such as Promiscuous Materials and the You Don’t Love Me Yet film rights option are potent responses to the rampant propagation of intellectual property rights — more effective, probably, than the latent messages encoded in the plot of Lethem’s new novel. It would be easy to create parallels. For instance, in the book, when the Complainer learns that the band’s hit songs contain his lyrics, he burrows his way into becoming a member — “Do you want to destroy the band?” the drummer asks the Complainer when he claims credit for the songs. “How could I want to do that?” he responds. “I basically am the band.” But this unpopular addition results in the band’s demise. Thus, the Complainer’s aggressive move to assert creative ownership ultimately destroys the artistic product.

Yet Lethem is quick to downplay the connection. “Of course, it comes out of a similar instinct, but it’s not like the book was written as a heavy way of bearing down on any idea. It sort of glances off those thoughts. But the book is, I hope, a little too frisky to seem like it’s got a big and ponderous agenda like that.”

As advised, it’s best to read You Don’t Love Me Yet as a light and playful “sex and rock ‘n’ roll” novel rather than overestimate its relation to Lethem’s crusade against what he calls “usemonopoly.” Though some reviewers are dismayed by the novel’s slightness as compared to the wondrous complexities of Lethem’s more major works such as Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, it is not definitively disastrous for an author to maintain some equilibrium of tone and substance. As the Complainer says in the novel, “You can’t be deep without a surface.” Jonathan Lethem has sufficiently proved his depth as a writer; let us allow him his surface.

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Commentary

Alone in the forest

Discovering the kindness of strangers in Cuba.


A truck had dropped me off at a crossroads. But instead of driving away, the well-meaning driver was still trying to tell me something. Probably, “No cars are coming. You’re in the middle of nowhere. Are you crazy? What are you doing, little lady?”

I got the gist, even though I didn’t speak Spanish. I started walking, and as the distance between us grew, I could hear him yelling that maybe this was a bad idea, and he motioned for me to get back into the truck. He honked again.

But I kept on walking. No time for debate.

I passed a man wearing a suit and a felt hat, who was also headed for San Diego de los Banos, a town known for its thermal baths. He was just standing there, waiting in the middle of nowhere, as if it were a bus stop. But there was no bus stop. No car or another person in sight.

Perhaps he is still waiting there.

The man said that San Diego de los Banos was a long way off — 15 kilometers at least. But rather than join him, standing in the countryside, with the chance that a car may never show up, I decided that if I walked fast enough, perhaps I could still reach the town by nightfall.

It was now 3:30 p.m. The sky was overcast. About three more hours of sunlight left. Remembering the distance of bygone high school cross-country races, I calculated that 3.1 miles equaled five kilometers. If I can walk three miles per hour, surely I can reach town by dark, I thought. It is doable.

So I began walking. And I walked and walked.

And not a single car came by.

The road through the countryside rose and fell, and soon, the flatness of the land gave way to a forest of pines and cedars. Not far from here, Che Guevara had moved his headquarters into a cave during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was just me and this forest, and if I shouted, I’d spook myself.

Suddenly, two men emerged from nowhere, walking next to their bikes. Perhaps there was a house tucked away in the forest that I couldn’t see. I began to walk a little faster, but the two men were gaining on me.

Why are they walking next to their bikes? I asked myself.

My duffel was heavy, and I tried to pick up the pace, but they were getting closer.

I could totally be raped and robbed right now, I thought, clenching my teeth.

I stopped and let them overtake me. A teenager with his father on a bicycle ride, it appeared. They happened to be walking next to their bikes because the hill was on an incline.

“Hola,” they said, after I gamely raised my hand and said, “hi.” I knew I was safe after I asked them how far San Diego de los Banos was, and the man replied with a wave of his hand into the distance, “twelve kilometers. It’s far away.” I reassured him that I was hoping to flag a car that came this way. He nodded, and they soon passed me.

I walked a few more kilometers when I saw two other men approaching from behind — again walking with their bikes.

There is nobody around, so I am really at their mercy here, I began to think. Suppose I get killed in this forest. The Cuban police might take a week to identify my rotting body from my passport photo. My imagination was getting the better of me again; I began to wonder how much media coverage the story would get at home.

And then, the men were next to me. One of them offered to put my bag on his bike. I said no, that I can carry it myself. Now there is a ploy, I thought. Put the tourist’s bag on the bike and ride off.

It was not until the younger of the two men smiled sympathetically and said something about confianza that I softened. I said “si,” and put my duffel on his bike. I recognized the word from the French confiance, which means “trust.”

And so began our 12-kilometer ride to San Diego de los Banos, where the two men lived. The sun emerged, and the skies then revealed the depth of their blue heights, with wispy clouds soaring high above. When we would reach the summit of a hill, I would sit atop the horizontal bar of the bike, “sidesaddle,” in front of the younger man, and hold onto the inner handle bar while he, wearing my backpack, would steer us both downhill, with the older man following close behind.

We’d breeze past palm trees and lush vegetation, the young man applying the brakes generously and carefully avoiding the road’s potholes, until the hill petered out. Then the three of us would hop off the bikes and walk them up to the next summit, get back on, and ride downhill again.

A strange grunting noise seemed to follow us each time we stopped. And then came a long squeal.

Poking out of the slits of two sacks tied onto each bike were two snouts, each sniffing the air as if to figure out what was going on. We were biking with a couple of hogs.

“Musica,” joked the younger man as we navigated down yet another hill.

As we approached town, we passed people who looked up and stared. Sometimes, I heard laughs and “Chiiiiina.”

I am American, but I let people think I was from China during this trip to see Cuba on my own. “Chairman Mao!” some would offer generously in a eureka moment of finding common ground. “Lejos,” or “far,” people would say, in remarking how long my plane trip must have been from Asia.

I often got those comments while walking — or waiting for transport.

This is a country where you often have to stick your thumb out to get somewhere, especially when off the beaten track, because of a shortage of buses. No hitch aboard a tractor, truck, or even motorcycle sidecar prepared me, however, for the possibility of catching a ride aboard somebody’s bicycle.

When the younger man had first motioned for me to jump on his bike, I balked. How did he want me to sit, I wondered. Did he want me to straddle it?

“You’re from China,” he said, laughing. “You don’t know how?” He then stuck out his butt to demonstrate that the best way was to sit sideways.

I do know this. I would probably still be walking in the dark in that uninhabited forest, were it not for those two men. Not once did a car pass along the road that entire time.

We made it to town just before nightfall.

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