ξενιτεια

My Kingdom for A Court Fool

From a recent New York Times editorial by Nicholas Kristof:

"All these figures in Shakespeare suffer from hubris, and that's what W. is suffering from," says Kenneth Albers, a veteran Shakespearean actor who is playing Lear in Ashland.

Indeed, the only person who seems to provide Shakespeare's kings with sound advice is the court fool, who cannot be punished for saying unpalatable truths because jesting is his job. I urge Mr. Bush to appoint a White House fool.

I emphatically concur. Unfortunately, 'tis hard to tell these days between the Emperor and the Fool....

Don't Mess with the Buddha: Ong Bak

To honor the Buddha on the day of his arrival, a couple of friends and I went to see the Thai martial arts flick Ong Bak. It was filmed in Thai, subtitled in Korean. I understood naught of the language save the insults of various Westerners on their path to defeat.

Even so, the plot was simple enough and the action sufficiently graceful that no aural comprehension was required. The intrigue was the classic epic of idealistic peasant meets the immorality of the city, and because he's a kick-ass, he then purges the city of its sins. He does this with honor and restraint, as all heroes should.

This is not to say that the plot was humdrum. Rather than being some silly international conspiracy, we've-got-to-save-the-world-and-get-the-girl story, Ong Bak begins with a simple, devious theft of a village Buddhahead. Later we find that there is a whole ring of Buddha statue stealing hoodlums. The plot, then, is really rooted in Thailand, and its social commentary is traditionalist. Don't sell your heritage to get drugs, the moral runs.

But it's not the plot or commentary that makes the film good - it's the violence. Such beautiful, fluid, gritty violence. The star, Tony Jaa, is masterfully in command of his body; he seems to dance as much as fight. He hits hard, of course, but with a finesse and speed that is a pleasure to watch. And, in fact, the editors saw fit to let you watch each cool blow two or three more times from various angles. This film is unapologetically about fighting.

So unashamed, as a matter of fact, that you don't mind when the director adds random hoops of barbwire for Jaa to jump through or other such props placed for blatant dramatic effect. It's cool. And that's all this viewer requires. After watching zillions of Jackie Chan flicks with marketplace mayhem, Jaa's work is remarkably creative and acrobatic. I don't know what his particular style of fighting is, but if you don't make the cut, a few years of their training will set you as an acrobat for life.

The color palette, too, sets this film apart. Grainy, with lots of grays, browns, oranges, and a sort of dun shade. It has the subtle effect of calming the film, keeping it from being too flashy and pristine like so many contemporary kung fu movies. Not to say it isn't well made. The cinematographer had a eye for interesting angles; the lighting is a soft glow, not harsh, flashy, warehouse fluorescent. The editor was a little choppy with some of the transitions; he could have used some fading.

Ong Bak is strongly religious, but a satisfactorily unevangelistic way. So much of martial arts cinema cheapens Eastern religion by watering it down to rote mysticism or cheesy aphorisms. Hollywood Buddhists don't help much either. In this film, however, Buddhism is portrayed as a peasant religion; the villagers’ grief is tangible. Yes, there is a drought, and yes, the drought clears up at the end; but there are no gigantic electric storms when the head is returned. What we are left with most is simple piety. The people were distraught at their loss; one of the most moving scenes is when they pool their savings to help Jaa in his quest to rescue their Buddha. Jaa is clearly fortified by the Buddha, but in quiet ways - he prays in a temple, to no obvious effect; he looks into his pupil-less eyes when he needs strength. No hamfistedness here. It shows what can happen when you mix devotion with martial prowess. The evil are destroyed, and all becomes right in the world.

Sex, Bulls, and Cinema

The LA Times published an interesting article on Asian American male sexuality:

Asian American men lack the success Asian American women have had in interracial relationships. It's a sensitive fact complicated by the belief by many in the community that society objectifies Asian females as hyper-sexual Suzy Wongs. The 2000 Census shows that Asian American women are more than twice as likely to be involved in an interracial marriage than their male counterparts.

Let me flip the focus on to Asian women for a moment. "Hyper-sexual" is clearly the Occidental stereotype of Asian women, similar to the stereo type of African men. I'm no expert on questions of gender and race, but I still have my two cents. Koreans fluxuate wildly, in fitting with their hyper-evolving (by which I mean changing, not necessarily bettering) culture, on sexual mores and racial stereotypes. (I've also known some very atypical Koreans - English teachers who ran away from home, a student who eloped, priests who studied in Greece and Boston, missionaries in Kenya, one of whom had married a Japanese....yeah, a very weird sample.) I get a conflicting impression of Korean female sexuality. On one hand, the Confusian Ethic seems so engrained that it seems no one ever has sex. (Oh, but they do, they do.) I work with a handful of Korean women, and they're fairly conservative. When one of them got married there was a bit of an uproar. The only one with consistant boyfriend repeated turns down his proposals and doesn't seem to see him much. (She, however, is the strange one of the litter - she's comfortable enough to have him spend the night with her, but checks with everyone in the house multiple times to make sure it's okay. But that's another topic.) All of them dress quite modestly. Yet, when I cracked a mild innuendo to the newlywed teacher, she suddenly gave me a rather more detailed run down of her honeymoon's events than I cared to know. So I'm not sure what counts as modesty.

It's that modesty, though, that is at the center of the issue. Watching the Western women at the Lantern festival, I was struck by just how brash they seemed to be. The Korean women were certainly a delight in comparison. This demure attitude is what's also frustrating; I don't think I'm alone among Western men to appreciate opinion, wit, and combative tension in a woman. Korea women have it in them, I'm sure - I've seen it in their little girls - but it seems to be socialized out of them. (It's not just the language barrier, I know women who's English is perfectly suited to the task.)

But this trait is a problem when Western men observe Asian men. Knowing our place isn't something we're good at in the West, especially in that den of rebellion, America. Meekness is perhaps too strong a word to describe the attitude, but it's what certainly lacking in white people. A race of hubris, we are. This is one reason why I like Korea so much - men here know their place and are largely honorable enough to keep at it; but they are no less fitted with spine. One of the outstanding comments someone made to me about why he hates the Japanese is that they're so subservient.

The problem for all this with Asian men is silly gay stereotypes:

A recent uproar on Yu's site erupted when Details magazine published a pictorial in its April issue titled "Asian or Gay?" Yu quickly rallied his readers by saying, "It seriously pulls out every offensive, stereotypical Asian pop culture reference imaginable, objectifying and exoticizing Asian men into a sexual stereotype."

When I went to boarding school in Kenya, there were several Koreans in attendence. Sure, one or two were teased about being gay, but their sexual potency was never in question. By virtue of either their looks or smooth social skills, they pretty much had the pick of the female half of the class. There was the typical locked-in-the-dorm-and-the-power's-gone-out sexual horseplay that happens when teenage boys are stacked together, but if anything it was the white boys cowering from Asian virility. And remember, to most Western men, the horror of homosexuality has more to do with servile submissiveness rather than taste in anatomy.

What's disturbing in this story is one person's supposed solution:

Ultimately, Hamamoto said he wants to show the world that Asians are sexually complex and that assumptions about nerdiness are unjust. He plans to launch a porn company that he believes would empower Asian Americans. Criticism that he has cheapened his cause by using pornography does not bother him, he said. The risqué endeavor is also a scholarly exercise, which includes the "Masters of the Pillow" documentary on the making of "Skin on Skin." The film, with commentary from Asian American filmmakers, academicians and playwrights, was shown at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival in March and the Visual Communications Filmfest in Los Angeles on May 1.

I can't think of anything worse. It's been a while since I perused Asian porn, but I seem to recall that plenty of Asian men present. Are the Japanese really going to import white boys just for porn? Besides, porn is mostly about the women anyway. I can't imagine the average porn viewer dryly noting to himself the race of the various disembodied members on his screen. To sexualize someone is to personalize him, not objectify him by reducing him to an assemblage of organs.

Enough with the sex. On to bulls. One of the coolest things I've ever spectated at was a bullfight in southern France. It seems the Koreans have some version of this vernerable sport. It sounds, however, more like bull-baiting to me:

The bullring resembles a gladiatorial circle with a corral fence around the perimeter. A judging platform overlooks the scene and the bulls enter the sandy ring with their handlers. The bulls square off and the primal combat is a combination of moves. They speed toward each other and smash heads like two mountain rams vying for superiority. Horns lock together and their necks shiver with the strain. They butt heads and you can hear the sickening smack of bone hitting bone. The bulls grind into each other in a pushing match while thrashing their horns. The instinct to catch the opponent off balance is evident and they hook upward into the neck for leverage or twist around and slam into each other's flanks.

It becomes a test of their massive strength and endurance. The bulls lather with sweat and their nostrils flare for oxygen. Sometimes they pause and snort, stare each other down for a moment, and then flash into another attack. Other times they simply stop with a weird complacent look, as if they were in a peaceful pasture far away from the crowds. A moment later, sand flies from the hooves and the handlers stick near to the side of their bull, prodding him forward while careful of getting trampled. The match is called when it is judged that one bull loses his heart to fight and turns away. Some matches last less than five minutes, while others last the 30-minute maximum and a draw is called.

Nonetheless, the prospect of seeing two enormous steaks clobber each other is enticing. I need to find out how I can see one of these things, if it not be too late..

Saying My Opinions Better Than I Can

I've never been a big Vonnegut fan, but he is certainly amusing. Somehow the man hasn't died yet; in fact, he's still writing amusing rants:

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.

...

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

...

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

Media America and the Image

I'm too lazy to make too much of a critique right now, but I read an interesting piece on GetReligion yesterday. It was prompted by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post noting that the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal didn't take wing until some photos came along. Terry Mattingly ties this to what he calls "Media America" and its need for image:

The bottom line is that mere words on a printed page were not enough to cause action. No, Media America needed pictures. Americans needed something that directly tapped into emotions and caused a hyper-news meltdown. Nothing is real until we feel that it is real. Facts just won't cut it.

I'm far from disagreeing. But the last two statements are disingenuous in their suggestion about the need for emotion and confirmation of the facts to prompt action. Images in general, and especially in our photographic era, are the paramount evidence of truth. To see is to believe. A writer's eloquent self-defense notwithstanding, images move people much much more than the naked word of a page. It's because vision is an immediate, primary sense, tied directly to cognition, emotions, and ultimately survival. Reading and writing, the visual word as it were, is a secondary sense, a compound of linguistic inclination with visual ability. Simply put, writing is learned, whereas one need only the education common to all social societies to understand what you see.

(Parenthetical caveat: I've lived with people who could not process image - show them a photograph and they only understood color, not picture. Here though, I'm treating image as something much more basic - the sense of sight and its manipulation for communication, which is not the same as transferance. A photo is visual, communicative, and transferable through time and space; a mime or a play, for instance, is visual and communicative, but remains fixed in a particular time and place.)

The "facts just won't cut it" because until they're confirmed they aren't taken to be facts. This is called science or evidence or reasonable doubt. For the public or even the journalists to approach simple written reports with a request for visual substantiation is merely being human, rather than a programatic machine. We can fault reporters for failing to follow up on some of the early reports, but what they lacked was a reliable witness. "Blessed are those who have not seen and believe" - yes, and they believe because they're told by someone believable. And frankly, until the public learns just how easy it is to fake photographs, a picture will be a much more trustworthy witness than the written word.

Mattingly goes on to mention the sexual enjeu of the mess:

And let me add that finding a powerful sexual hook didn't hurt this story either. As we all know, this is what makes for major news play -- even on the God beat. Sex and pictures. I cannot tell you how many journalists have told me (especially television journalists) that one of the main reasons they have trouble selling religion stories to their bosses is that the art is not strong enough. You know, all of those people standing around in robes and gray suits. Ugh. You need something that sizzles.

Frankly, I see this as a symptom of comtemporary focus on fundamentalist Protestantism and Islam, two of the least visually appealing religions out there. You want picutres? Who has seen photos from that most religiously saturated subcontinent, India? Try a consecration in the Vatican, the destruction of rather colorful churches in Kosovo, a garish Buddhist temple. Even Islam isn't all that bland - check out the self-flagellating Shia, the whirling Sufis, the bright blood of goats slaughtered for Tabaski. Funny, too, how if gray suits are so boring, Congress gets plenty of coverage.

Religion and sex is a whole 'nother issue I won't bother with in this already rather overwrought piece. Let me end with this - Mattingly is Orthodox, and a damn fine commentator. When he goes to church he should notice that, unlike our Protestant cousins, we don't just read the Word. We surround it with image after image. Orthodoxy, like most religions with historic roots, has a richly visual tradition - precisely because it is for humanity, who are the people of the image; a people who need image.

Trophy Academic Says Some Stuff

A revolt against colonial rule is not the same as a war. Vietnam was a war. Although the American presence grew gradually, it reached a peak of nearly half a million troops by the end of the 1960's; altogether 3.4 million service personnel served in the Southeast Asian theater. By comparison, there are just 134,000 American troops in Iraq today — almost as many men as the British had in Iraq in 1920. Then as now, the enemy consisted of undisciplined militias. There were no regular army forces helping them the way the North Vietnamese supported the Vietcong.

What lessons can Americans learn from the revolt of 1920? The first is that this crisis was almost inevitable. The anti-British revolt began in May, six months after a referendum — in practice, a round of consultation with tribal leaders — on the country's future and just after the announcement that Iraq would become a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship rather than continue under colonial rule. In other words, neither consultation with Iraqis nor the promise of internationalization sufficed to avert an uprising — a fact that should give pause to those, like Senator John Kerry, who push for a handover to the United Nations.

Then as now, the insurrection had religious origins and leaders, but it soon transcended the country's ancient ethnic and sectarian divisions. The first anti-British demonstrations were in the mosques of Baghdad. But the violence quickly spread to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, where British rule was denounced by Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi — perhaps the historical counterpart of today's Shiite firebrand, Moktada al-Sadr. The revolt stretched as far north as the Kurdish city of Kirkuk and as far south as Samawah, where British forces were trapped (and where Japanese troops, facing a hostage crisis, were holed up last week).

"The Last Iraqi Insurgency", By Niall Ferguson, April 18, 2004

This reminds me of another article I read before the war. Lots of people are talking about the British in 1920's Iraq these days, but few are noticing how well the Limeys have handled Basra. No Falluja's there.

All the Vietnam talk is frustrating. Other places, after all, are far worse. Although Grozny is thousands of kilometers from Kosovo, they are both front lines of the same war. I'm not much of a commentator, but I'll impose two remarks:

First, we Americans keep forgetting to check our history before we start bombing places. The rest of the world follows us, but they follow us not for silly idealistic reasons of peacemongering but to further their own history-driven agendas. Whether the US of A should intervene here and there is not a question that really interests me. But emperors should be aware that smaller nations manipulate them the same as children dupe parents or teachers. Many a war has been blown out of proportion when one dinky state got an empire to ally with it against another dinky state.

The situation I'm thinking of in particular is the Balkans, where we are essentially having the same ol' war all over again and will until either Muslims or Christians are wiped out. We keep forgetting that there's really a Crusade going down.

And that leads to my second comment. In two of the most shocking areas of Christian-Muslim conflict, it is the Orthodox Church that represents the Christian side. Other than Charles Martel and the siege of Vienna the West has largely been free of Islamic violence on its own territory. The East was steadily subdued; then eventually cast off some of the Muslim yoke. The Orthodox have been familiar to defensive wars against Islam for 1400 years. The West has had no such history of preparation, and has replaced religious reasons for conflict with economic ones.

Point being: it's mainly in Orthodox countries where there is an overtly religious war rather than merely a cultural conflict. It's not just the Muslims who are getting martyrs out of this either.

If secular societies would just bow to reality and call the Cult of Tolerance a religion, then we could have a good solid religious conflict. As it is, the secularism in its European incarnation doesn't seem to be all that successful in that most ancient method of victory - outbreeding the competition:

A youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonize -- the term is not too strong -- a senescent Europe.

This prospect is all the more significant when considered alongside the decline of European Christianity. In the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Denmark today, fewer than 1 in 10 people now attend church once a month or more. Some 52 percent of Norwegians and 55 percent of Swedes say that God did not matter to them at all. While the social and sexual freedoms that matter to such societies are antithetical to Muslim fundamentalism, their religious tolerance leaves these societies weak in the face of fanaticism.

What the consequences of these changes will be is very difficult to say. A creeping Islamicization of a decadent Christendom is one conceivable result: while the old Europeans get even older and their religious faith weaker, the Muslim colonies within their cities get larger and more overt in their religious observance. A backlash against immigration by the economically Neanderthal right is another: aging electorates turn to demagogues who offer sealed borders without explaining who exactly is going to pay for the pensions and health care. Nor can we rule out the possibility of a happy fusion between rapidly secularized second-generation Muslims and their post-Christian neighbors. Indeed, we may conceivably end up with all three: Situation 1 in France, Situation 2 in Austria and Situation 3 in Britain.

"Eurabia?" by Niall Ferguson, April 4, 2004

Frankly, I find this funny. End of civilization by the Pill? 'Tis quite risible. Besides, Ferguson missed the other colonizers. How's that for a European future - Sino-Muslim conflict à la Malaysia or western China.

In closing I should note that I don't normally comment on politics; I'm not nearly educated enough. My iignorant interest in history coupled with my overwrought training in philosophical counterfactuals made these articles quite amusing. That's all.