May 19, 2005
abuse of Koran at Guantanamo: true
For once, I'm going to be a stereotypical "blogger" and do a new-media-critiques-old-media thing. Specifically I wish to address the latest brouhaha about the Newsweek "Periscope" item reporting that U.S. jailkeepers in Guantanamo Bay have been desecrating (kicking across the floor, throwing into a toilet) the Koran as part of their interrogations.
Many folks in Islamic countries, it seems, still put a lot of stock in "old media," and the item caused riots which resulted in the deaths of 17 people.
Newsweek was called on the carpet by the Pentagon (and blamed for the violence the report engendered) and has now, in a fit of pusillanimity, retracted the story, following the lead of CBS when they were similarly attacked for reporting on George Bush's military service (or lack thereof) using what has turned out to be a forged document as the centerpiece of their report.
Tina Brown, in today's Washington Post (syndicated elsewhere, I assume) is right to say about this incident that "the conjunction of 21st-century Internet speed and 12th-century fanaticism has turned our world into a tinderbox." But neither she nor anyone else is saying that, in fact, Koran desecration in the U.S. Gulag is nothing new. It has been confirmed and reported on in Great Britain, after British citizens were released from the U.S. hospitality of Guantanamo.
The Center for Constitutional Rights has documented a number of cases of Koran abuse, and even more extensive religious humiliation of prisoners at Guantanamo. Their reports also show consistent stonewalling on the part of Pentagon and White House officials when faced with accusations of abuse.
Check it out for yourself at the CCR website:
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp
It would be lovely to see Newsweek retract their retraction but I'm not holding my breath.
implicit association test
Seeing the film Crash reminded me of an article I read in The Washington Post Magazine back in January. It was about a racial bias test called The Implicit Association Test, which anyone can take online (at the URL below). It measures our automatic associations, matching words, both positive and negative, with images of the faces of black and white folks.
I kept the article and just went to the website to take the test. The results showed that I have a "slight automatic preference for African American relative to White American," which did not surprise me that much. The results might be more surprising for other folks.
I do have to say that the whole process is pretty confusing and I question to what extent plain old muscle memory has to play in this study (being a drummer, I'm very aware of how muscle-memory works--I'd be a terrible drummer if I had to rely on brain memory and my short attention span!). But since this is a test coming out of Harvard, who can question it?
My questions aside, I don't think it would be a bad thing if everyone in the U.S. (particularly in Los Angeles!) took it and discussed the results. It might even be good if it were a requirement for candidates for political office.
Here's the URL so you can take the test:
Review of "Crash"
While I'm in review mode, I went to see the film Crash over the weekend. It's well-written and -directed by Paul Haggis, and features an all-star cast, including the always watchable and recent-Academy-Award-nominated Don Cheadle. All the acting is good. You can practically see the enjoyment of these actors acting in well-developed roles, and with the minimum of scene-chewing. Matt Dillon, as a "baddie," is good, as is Cheadle, the rapper Ludacris (twisted comic relief), and Michael Pena, as an electrician attempting to provide a safe and sane home for his young daughter (I will say the Thandie Newton is a little on the histrionic side and Sandra Bullock's one-note performance seems intended to show that she can be non-cute).
But this film should probably be reviewed more as a cultural statement than as an artistic one. The director has stated that his intention was to make viewers debate the questions the film raises which all have to deal with race relations in Los Angeles and, by extension, a multi-ethnic United States. In a more general sense, what the film depicts is the damage caused by racial stereotyping and ensuing miscommunication. These are indeed provocative questions, and well-worth debating. My boyfriend, who is black, and I (who am white, though you needn't make that assumption by reading this blog--indeed, Haggis would say DON'T make that assumption) definitely had some things to talk about.
One critique I would make is that LA is not necessarily as bad as depicted in the film. This is a town that yesterday voted in a Latino as mayor, so they must be making some progress in the world of race relations. There is always some good news, better news anyway than that racist shits can sometimes be heroic, and do-gooder whites can sometimes be stunningly nasty. There's always more to the story, and I think the makers of this film would agree with that sentiment.
And following one of my usual obsessions with film, the opening credits are well done in an abstract, impressionistic way, and the digital "paratext" (film website) is also interesting and worth a look:
Moby's "Hotel"
You wouldn't think someone who spends so much time in hotels (generally sterile places) would come out with a beautiful album called "Hotel," but this is indeed the case with Moby's latest.
This is a more streamlined album than his last couple efforts. I for one could have used a little more sampling, and more guest appearances (tho kudos must go to one of the "usual suspects" on albums, Laura Dawn, who sings along on a few songs). But he doesn't go overboard with the slow ambient songs, like on some of his earlier albums, and that's a good thing.
Moby does love songs very well, with some nice textures, bringing in some "bigger themes" as well ("Where You End"). Moby does philosophical pondering even better, with the minimum of navel-gazing ("Slipping Away").
But it's his dance-able electronica that has made me a fan of Moby, and there's plenty here to enjoy. I especially like the neo-disco "Very" and "I Like It," which is way more steamy and sexed-up than the typically cerebral and spiritual Moby usually is (I hope that means he's getting some good loving lately).
Moby also does exceedingly groovy anthems. The best one on this album is "Lift Me Up." It did, and does, do what the title suggests.
One cavil: I downloaded the songs from iTunes (my first time!) and I really miss the liner notes (for instance, I couldn't tell you who the female singer is on "Very" and "I Like It"--sure doesn't SOUND like Laura Dawn). Where can I find them? Can someone tell me? I like album art and if I can't all of it from iTunes then, I'm afraid, I shant be purchasing much music there.
Gates of Paradise 14
I've been living with this image for some time now. At first because I really liked it as a composition (though what it references is kind of creepy), and then when the unblogging days became weeks, I had to keep living with it (though some days I replaced it with other wallpapers on my computer).
The aforementioned reference is to Dante's Inferno, Canto XXXIII, which tells the story of Count Ugolino, who plotted with Archbishop Ruggieri to overthrow the government of Pisa but then was betrayed and imprisoned, along with two of his sons and two of his grandsons, in the "hunger tower." When they realized they were being starved, Ugolino's sons offered themselves to the count to eat. The count refused but two days after they had starved to death, he ate their flesh. It is not for this that Dante places him in Hell--rather for his treachery in attempting to overthrow the government. For his punishment, he spends eternity gnawing on Archbishop Ruggieri's head, another instance of Dante's brilliant enacting of "poetic justice."
Blake, long before his brilliant engravings of Dante later in life, uses this plate to make an anti-Catholic statement (which he also does in 1794's Europe: A Prophecy). His inscription makes this clear: "Does thy God, O Priest, take such vengeance as this?" It could equally be a statement about the French Revolutionaries beginning of the process (with the September massacres of 1793) of their political cannibalization and destruction.
I raise my usual point: this is hardly a fit subject for an emblem book, especially one, in its original incarnation, meant for children. It's enough to invoke nightmares, especially if the reader is a child who knows the story from Dante. But as a statement about the abuses of state-sponsored religion, directed to the eyes of adults, it makes more sense.
And I must also raise my OTHER usual question. Does it work as a computer wall-paper icon invoking spiritual reflection? For "recovering Catholics" with a social conscience maybe. Since I fit into that category, it worked for me. Though I can see how other folks (and many of Blake's readers) would be appalled.
All that to one side, I think this image is one of the more brilliantly executed images in the Gates of Paradise. Maybe because I'm a sucker for symmetry, but the central figure, surrounded by his progeny, staring out at the viewer with despairing eyes, is very affecting. I'm sure the triangular-trinity shape of the tableaux is no accident. It is also appropriately claustrophobic.
I do think, after a couple months, I'm ready to let this image go. But then does such an image ever let you go?
To access the Canto from Dante (and view another artist's rendition), follow this link.
Moby blog
If the musician Moby, while on tour, has time to make DAILY blog entries, I can surely muster the time/energy to blog ONCE A WEEK. So here I am again.
Moby's blog is pretty interesting, btw. I especially appreciate his entry for today (or is it yesterday in London? Isn't it always?), on Iraq. Check it out:
Now I'm going to play Moby's latest, "Hotel," so's I can review it at the end of my blogging session.
May 3, 2005
have you hugged your computer today?
And here's an excerpt from an interview in The Sun magazine (in PDF format) with Jason Lanier, a software engineer, computer scientist, and virtual reality pioneer, who decries what he calls "cybernetic totalism," that is, the uncritical use of computer technology and conflation of humans and "data."
Should computers be within our "circle of empathy"? Read on. (Though you should know that the interview gets cut off at a very interesting point. If you want to read the rest, I'll scan the rest of it and send it to you.)
the mental commons
Check out this article in Adbusters re: the fight to protect the "mental commons."
iPods are for lovers
I'm probably not the first (certainly not the last) person to use new media to mediate feelings of love and affection for that certain some one. In the Romantic era, they used mail (and the new speedy mail coach and national mail system) to mediate love, such as in the novels of Austen, and others. Now we use email, web sites, and digital music to do the same.
Here I'd like to mention music. I find myself, as I record music to my computer hard-drive, and then to my iPod, that there are certain songs I'd like to play for my boyfriend Wallace. I am, in fact (in my mind, at least), making a sound-track of our early romance. What kind of songs are on the sound-track?
"Love's Divine" by Seal
"Nothing Compares 2 U" by Sinead O'Connor
"Salve Regina" by Francois Poulenc
"Love's in Need of Love Today" by Stevie Wonder
"Tantos Desejos" by Suba
"Sanctus" by Maurice Durufle (from the Requiem)
"Iko-Iko" by Zap Mama
"We Are All Made of Stars" by Moby
"I Need You in My Life" by Undercover Agency
"Responsory: Spiritui sancto" by Hildegard of Bingen (by way of Anonymous Four)
A strange mix--pop music, world, classical--but one that reflects the eclectic taste of me and my boyfriend. What makes this moment different is that I can so easily transport my soundtrack with me. With my iPod, I can create a song list including the above and carry it around with me everywhere. I can keep the same song list on my desk top computer at home, on my lap-top, and on my iPod itself. I could even upload them here for me (and you) to listen to online.
I am in fact encoding this music with my romantic feelings, at the same time that I am encoding my romantic feelings with the music. That may seem a particularly un-romantic way of looking at it, if you ascribe to the idea that technology is un-romantic. But I guess that's my point here--media is not inherently un-romantic. It is something that can be used to mediate romance, in the way that Christian, in Cyrano de Bergerac, used Cyrano to mediate his feelings of love for Roxanne. There are probably plenty of tongue-tied lovers that use iPods in this way (not to mention email). Though maybe we need to change the metaphor in the digital age and say "finger-tied" instead of "tongue-tied."
And now I should let my lover read this and decide whether my whispering sweet nothings into his ear piece (through songs on my iPod) is as romantic as I think it is.
I'm back (for a moment)
OK, I didn't know the blog page goes blank if you don't put anything up in a given month. My many thousands of readers were staring at a blank, black screen for the past month and I didn't know it because not only was I not making blog entries, I was not reading my blog.
There is a reason I am 0-for-April. I am, dear readers, in love (awwwwww). My boyfriend Wallace and I have been spending a lot of time together and that has cut into my blogging (and everything else) time.
But I dislike blank screens as much as the next blogger, so I'm going to try a little harder to make some entries. So bear with me, people! I might not be able to get to it every week, let alone every day, in the coming months but I will throw digital tidbits up as often as I can.