Entertainment - Citizen Culture

The Magazine for the Young Intellectual | www.CitizenCulture.com | Number Three
EXCLUSIVES:
Provocative Fiction by
Playboy
Playmate
Divini Rae
Original Art
All Sorts of
Entertainment
and Writing by
Talented
American
Convicts
A Fitting Eulogy
to the Immortal
Ray Charles
Bill Clinton’s
Post-Presidential
Fisticuffs
$3.00 U.S. $4.00 CAN.
Plus:
The Golden Age of
Rock
&
Roll
—Captured in Pictures
Inside
Hare Krishna
The BIG Question
on the Fence:
Where Do Hollywood and
Washington Fuse?
the contents
Citizen Culture
Number 3
34
50
65
f e a t u r e s
6
ANECDOTE
Do-It-Your-Lonesome-Self
by Jen Miller
40
FAMILY PORTRAIT
8
12
18
28
34
38
Grandma & Company,
A Day in the Life
by Albert Adato
ART AROUND THE WORLD
Patchwork Journey
by Veronika Ruff
44
50
CCM INVESTIGATES
Hare Krishna Comes of Age
by Michael Kress
65
INSIDE ENTERTAINMENT
Vicarious
by Donald Dewey
HIDDEN GEMS
The Liberation of Bobby West
The Talents of Garen Zakarian
by John Bowers
FICTION
The Golden Cage: A Cautionary Tale
by Divini Rae Sorenson
EULOGY
Effortless Genius:
Ray Charles in Ronald Reagan’s World
by Nick A. Zaino
FAR BEYOND FILM
84
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL WAY
THE GLOBAL CITIZENRY
I Brake for Environmentalists
(And You Should, Too)
by Monette Bebow-Reinhard
From Online to Onboard
by Marguerete Hemphill
82
LARGER THAN LIFE
The Oh-So-Stressful New York Life
of Boxin’ Billy Clinton
by Lakshmi Kumar
HMM ... (STRANGE BUT TRUE)
96
Hedy Lamarr: Vamp, Actor, Unlikely Inventor
by Christopher Mari
Tough Love
by Jennifer Chu
INSIDE LOOKING OUT—THEATRE
The Current Question:
To Demolish or Not to Demolish?
by Steve Newman
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the contents
p h o t o e s s a y s ,
i n t e r v i e w s ,
a n d r e v i e w s
56
87
90
99
PORTFOLIO
Through the Eye of a Fan
Photos and Reflections by Henry Diltz
FAST-RISING FISH
15 Minutes with Dwayne Perkins
Interview by Evan Sanders
To Build a House
Interview by Joelle Asaro Berman
PEANUT GALLERY CRITICS—MUSIC
Pete Belasco: A Deeper Look
by Evan Sanders
PEANUT GALLERY CRITICS—VIDEO
State: The Little Film that Could
100 Garden
by Amanda J. Feuerman
100
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
TV (Just in Time for Sweeps)
104 Must-Miss
by David Gianatasio
c o l u m n s
24
THIS AMERICAN LIFE
54
SEXY TASTES
Farseeing
by Peter Rutenberg
72-Hour Party People
by Jen Karetnick
F
68 Oby Ben Barron
N THE
90
2
Citizen Culture
ENCE:
THE RIGHT
71
ON THE FENCE:THE LEFT
74
THE FENCE: READER RESPONSE
78
THE FENCE: READER RESPONSE
by Ari Paul
by Giselle Frommer
by Krissy Gasbarre
PRISM
of a Dear,
80 Memories
Microprocessing Friend
by Sasha Haines-Stiles
contributors
Albert Adato
New Rochelle, NY
Albert started writing fiction less than ten years ago. Just recently, a story of was been accepted by
Pindeldyboz. Albert has also been published in various academic journals. While he used to teach and
write sociology, he is now a social worker with the Jewish Child Care Association.
Ben Barron
Davis, CA
Ben Barron comes to Citizen Culture Magazine freshly graduated from UC Berkeley. He has served as news
editor of two college publications, The Daily Californian and The California Patriot, receiving national
recognition for his work. He has since written features and news reports for The Hayward Daily Review,
The Oakland Tribune, and The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles.
Monette Bebow-Reinhard
Abrams, WI
A history grad student whose passion has always been energy efficient vehicles, Monette now drives a
Honda Civic Hybrid, purchased while researching the 1990s promotion of the SUV. She has a published
ebook and has written for Conscious Choice, Sagewoman, New Writer, and more.
Jennifer Chu
Somerville, MA
Jennifer Chu is a producer for Living on Earth, National Public Radio’s environment show, and a graduate
of the Boston University Science Journalism graduate program.
Donald Dewey
Jamaica, NY
Donald Dewey is a novelist, playwright, and biographer who has published 23 books of fiction and non-fiction, several of which have been translated into various languages. His most recent books are The Tenth
Man and The Black Prince of Baseball, both published in the spring of 2004. He has also served as the editorial director of two magazines that have won ASME awards.
Henry Diltz
Los Angeles, CA
Henry Diltz is a renowned photographer whose work has appeared on the covers of Life, Rolling Stone,
Cashbox, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. Also a musician, he was a founding member of the
Modern Folk Quartet. Henry continues to shoot for album covers for musicians around the world.
Giselle Frommer
Maclean, VA
Giselle Frommer has contributed research and articles for Cultural Survival Quarterly, Yes! Magazine, the
Queens Botanical Garden, The New York Community Trust, the Centre for Developing Area Studies
(www.cdas.mcgill.ca) and The Centre for Society, Technology and Development (Montréal).
Krissy Gasbarre
New York, NY
Krissy recently completed her MA in Public Communications & Media Studies at Fordham University. She
works in children’s publishing and writes for other magazines such as New York Moves. Originally from
central Pennsylvania, Krissy lives and works in New York City.
David Gianatasio
Brookline, MA
David’s work has recently appeared in the print or online editions of McSweeney’s, the Boston Globe, Quick
Fiction, Pindeldyboz, Opium Magazine and many others.
Sasha Haines-Stiles
New York, NY
Sasha Haines-Stiles is newly returned to the U.S. from England, where she received her Master’s degree
from Oxford in Twentieth Century Literature. She lives and writes in New York City.
Marguerete Hemphill
New York, NY
By way of Oregon, Boston and L.A., Marguerete Hemphill currently resides in New York City, where she
finds constant inspiration in the streets, tunnels, buildings, parks and people there.
Jen Karetnick
Miami Shores, FL
Poet and freelance writer Jen Karetnick lives in Miami Shores, Florida. She is the features editor for The
Wine News and a columnist for Rescue magazine and The Drexel Online Journal. Other work is forthcoming in North American Review, Blue Unicorn, Ocean Drive, and Women’s Health & Fitness.
Lakshmi Kumar
New York, NY
Lakshmi is a freelance writer working in New York City. She am currently employed at Film Forum, a nonprofit filmhouse, and at the magazine Art AsiaPacific.
Christopher Mari
Astoria, NY
Christopher Mari was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is the editor of Space Exploration, a book
detailing the major space program initiatives at the turn of the century. He has recently completed work on
a novel and has begun work on his next.
Jen Miller
Haddonfield, NJ
Jen Miller is the editor of SJ Magazine, a lifestyle publication about Southern New Jersey. She holds a
masters degree in English Literature from Rutgers University-Camden, and her work has appeared in The
Philadelphia Inquirer, Transitions Abroad, Student Leader Magazine, and on mediabistro.com.
Steve Newman
Stratford-upon-Avon,
England
Steve Newman is a playwright, director, and freelance writer, living and working in Shakespeare’s
Stratford. Apart from writing an ongoing “drama-documentary” about Ernest Hemingway for the ezine,
Keep It Coming, Steve is also writing a history of Stratford’s theatres.
Ari Paul
Chicago, IL
Ari Paul has also written for Clamor, Creative Loafing, The Next American City, the Ann Arbor News, and
Pulp Syndicate.
Veronika Ruff
New York, NY
Veronika Ruff is a freelance writer who has contributed to Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, ELLEgirl, and
New York Magazine. Previously living and working in Shizuoka, Japan, she is now working towards a
Master’s degree in international affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Peter Rutenberg
Los Angeles, CA
Peter Rutenberg is a conductor, composer, record producer and raconteur who has written about music,
entertainment, travel, food, and less savory subjects, for radio and print, for over 25 years. He is founding
director of Los Angeles Chamber Singers & Cappella and co-owner of the classical record label RCM.
Divini Rae Sorenson
Los Angeles, CA
Divini Rae Sorenson lived in Alaska until she graduated from high school in 1995 at the top of her class, and
left for college on an academic scholarship. In 1999 she moved to Sydney, Australia, where she became a
recognized model, actress, and writer/publisher. In November of 2003 she was featured in Playboy
Magazine as the “Playmate of the Month,” and has interviewed hundreds of models, actresses and
Playmates as research for her upcoming book on love and sex. She now resides in Los Angeles.
Nick A. Zaino III
Boston, MA
Nick A. Zaino III is a freelance writer covering the arts in Boston, Massachusetts. He writes the weekly
Comedy Notes column for the Boston Globe, and his work has appeared in Paste Magazine, Playboy, the
Boston Phoenix, and other local and national publications.
Addendum to Contributors’ Bios Page (issue #2):
Kevin Nealon
Los Angeles, CA
Although he holds a marketing degree from Sacred Heart University, Kevin Nealon is best known for having appeared the greatest number of consecutive years as a player (and sketch writer) on Saturday Night
Live. He is often seen supporting such actors as Adam Sandler in feature films, and he tours renowned
comedy clubs throughout the year to perform stand-up.
C i t i z me ang a zCi nue l t u r e
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the HUMAN/intelligence Creative Group, Inc.
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a note from the E-in-C
w
hen a start-up publication with a mission statement reaches its three-month
anniversary, it’s time to recline and
reflect. We ran a fun first issue—
Diversions was its theme—followed by a substantially weightier second edition—Conflict in its Broadest
Sense. In it we aimed to demonstrate that the
responsibility derived from freedom of the press and
the creativity inherent in literary journalism should,
ideally, temper one another. With this third publication we’ve found our footing and expanded the
swath, including over one hundred pages of content
ranging from the pathetically romantic (sailors seeking online dates, pg. 40) to the steadfastly political
(the Fence section, beginning pg. 66), to the scandalous (pg. 50), the nostalgic (pg. 56), and the
sweetly sentimental (pages 6, 8, and 65). Like we said:
All Sorts of Entertainment.
But something’s bothering me, and that is the
misconception that in our fine country, and in our
fine world, “entertainment” implies any semblance
of homogeneity. As I sat down to write this note, I
realized that entertainment’s inherent individuality
is its essence: the common thread that binds the somany types of entertainment—film, theatre, opera,
and dance; music; wining and dining; arts, crafts,
and photography; poetry, comedy, and tragedy—is
that they are “entertaining,” whatever that means.
Entertainment defies definition, as do we each and all. And so my eyebrows raised when I picked up an August copy of Vanity
Fair and came upon, long past its deadline, a contest to have published an original article that “explain[s] the character of the
American people to the rest of the world.” By the time you read this, our country will have elected itself a new president, likely amid
a hail of protests, insults, and late-night-television jokes—none of which is so virulent, I hope, as to incite civil war. TV sweeps will
be in swing, holiday plans and New Year’s resolutions will be lined up, and unless you’re like my family, there will be Thanksgiving
leftovers still packed away in the fridge.
Yet there seems to be little in the way of a concrete “American character”—such a fantasy is too simplistic to be possible, at least
these days. We have American values—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; also the Bill of Rights, with the exception (perhaps)
of the Second Amendment. We have American trends, for better and worse—Michael Jackson, jazz, the bellbottom, and the iPod.
And we have that notoriously effective American work ethic.
Still, our collective character changes, just like that which entertains. Sometimes war is a positive necessity. Sometimes it’s not.
And sometimes it was but isn’t as much anymore. The perspectival possibilities certainly outnumber the voters in this country, and
so we try and try again, patriotically supporting the systems that have done us fairly well for the past two centuries. For perhaps to
err is human, to forgive is divine (no matter what one’s faith). But—with a bow to long-ago President Calvin Coolidge—only that we
persevere in solidarity is distinctly and characteristically American.
Happy holidays and New Year, in advance.
Admiringly yours,
Jonathon Scott Feit,
Editor-in-Chief
on behalf of Citizen Culture Magazine
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anecdote
6
Citizen Culture
anecdote
D
I Y
Do-It-YourLONESOME-SELF
Sweet, lonely, romantic dreams. On sale in bulk.
~by Jen Miller
Haddonfield, NJ
s
ingle people shouldn’t go to Ikea alone.
This is something I didn’t know. Otherwise, I
wouldn’t have ventured into the store’s aisles shortly
after moving into my first out-of-home home—not a
college dorm, nor a spare room over my parents’ garage, but a
bona fide place for me to eat, sleep, and be merry without the
worry that a resident assistant or bleary-eyed parent would
lecture me on the imprudence of loud music and alcohol on a
Tuesday night. Of course, this meant that I didn’t have much
furniture and, now shouldering the extra expenses of food and
rent, I also didn’t have much money. Off to Ikea.
In case you live under a rock (or in Florida), Ikea is a
Swedish home furnishings company. If I were translating the
store’s motto, it would say: “Hip, semi-cheap pieces of furniture that will get you through your first few rentals. Much
assembly acquired.”
There is one part of the Ikea culture, however, that I
missed, that I didn’t pick up on during my previous visits with
parents or friends. Ikea is prime shopping space for newly
cohabitating couples. Whether they are just living together or
bonded through the holy vows of matrimony, couples in their
twenties and thirties litter the Ikea isles. They consult. They
bicker. They hold hands. They kiss. They sigh over cribs, the
future sparkling in their interlocked gazes. Their love is new
and under-funded. For couples, Ikea shopping means they
can make it for at least ten years, until they can ditch all of it
for a house and Pottery Barn.
Many of those who shop alone are attached, too: glued to
cell phones, muttering, “Oh, you’d like this,” or, “This would
look great in our new living room. Do you have the dimensions?” Even when the partner is unable to be physically pres-
ent (or unwilling, and I don’t blame them based on the demonic pace some of these women set while attached to their cellular devices, scribbling notes in their Palm Pilots), their coupledom is omnipresent, reminding singles like me of what we are
truly lacking. And all I thought I needed was something to
hold my shoes so I could store them under my bed.
The only possibility of a single male was in the lighting
section where three gents bickered about lamps but gave the
general appearance of circling with no purpose. Was it me
they were wandering toward? I parked my cart and walked
around, pretending that I actually had a desire for tract lighting. Of course, when I passed one said man, all I managed to
do was gaze at the ground and awkwardly shuffle off. I don’t
know if they were paying attention, but at least they were
funny. They obviously weren’t faithful viewers of Trading
Spaces because they had no idea what they were looking for.
They went home empty-handed, and I left feeling a little hollower inside.
Only when I got home and hunkered down to put the
shoeboxes together did I realize why Ikea is a couples’ store.
You can’t put the damn things together alone. Ikea prides
itself on being Do-It-Yourself and simple, but it’s DIY for two,
not one. It took me two hours to put together four slats of
wood and one piece of particle board. It was only after it was
all together, and I was sweating in heart and mind, that I discovered that the box was too big to fit under my bed.
When I returned the boxes, I brought my mom with me, and
I have never returned to Ikea alone since. A radio report recently said that Ikea is a hot spot to meet singles, but this sociophobe disagrees. And I’m not about to retest their theory—at
least not without a friend or mom in tow.
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family portrait
Grandma & Company,
A Day in the Life
~by Albert Adato
New Rochelle, NY
a
t first I’d feel a little depressed about this place. After
all, it’s the last stop. Then I got to know its residents,
and the way it has a life of its own. I got to know them,
and they me, such as they could. Their faces and ways
became familiar, their characteristics individual and rich.
Mary usually sits in the same place in the main hallway; as
we walk by she engages us in a brief exchange of pleasantries,
each time the same word for word. Ida, clutching her walker,
stops me and asks, “Young man, where should I go?” each time
like it’s the first. And each time Louie sings in Betty’s vicinity,
she tells him to shut up. But it’s to no avail. Each time, each
time. Rose, before she died, would tell me what a good son I
am. By about the fourth time I quit correcting her, that I’m
Anna’s grandson. But oh, how Rose would bless me, as if she
had the power to make it stick. I’d almost let myself believe it.
Fanny, Stella, and Louise bonded; they clung together for much
of the day. When one was missing the other two would anxiously inquire every few minutes, “Where could she be?” But
Fanny is now gone, and Stella, who is more intact than Louise,
must remind her of that when she asks, “Where could she be?”
And Stanley, who after ninety years hasn’t quite learned to distinguish the world from his indulgent mother, whines and complains about most anything he can. I may try doing a film on
8
Citizen Culture
this place, on Mary, Louie, Betty, Stella, Stanley ... while they’re
still around.
I let Grandma lead the way to her room, to get a sweater
before going out for a walk. She has no idea where her room is;
yet she knows to walk to the elevator, press three, turn right
when she gets off and head right for it. What her mind doesn’t
know, her body still does.
We just exited the building onto Myrtle Avenue when it
began to rain. We retreated back in and sit in the main lounge
by a window looking out to the street now spotted by the light
rain.
“It’s raining,” she observes, as though for the first time.
We sat quietly for a while, each of us in our thoughts. Her face,
rumpled and wrinkled as it was, refused to betray her dementia.
And still too, occasionally, that sly smile that said more than
words would, as if she was tacitly sharing something only we
knew. She had the countenance a historical document—if only
I could read it.
I retrieved the day’s New York Times from my black canvas
bag. She used to read it religiously, daily, and now she hardly
even listened to the news on radio or TV. “What’s the use,” she
once said, “I can’t remember what I read or heard five minutes
ago ... maybe ten on a good day.” Like the whereabouts of her
room, which only her body knew, she couldn’t freely recall the
president’s name, though she’d been left with but a vague
impression that he was young and a Democrat.
“You know Clinton is not very popular these days,” I said,
pointing to his picture on the front page.
“Clinton?” in that still-strong voice that denied her debility.
“Yes, the president,” making sure she knew.
“He doesn’t look very happy.” It was a chest-up close-up of
him in front of a microphone, his lips tightly pressed together
showing how dead serious he was about something. The caption read, “With elections a month off, the president went on
the attack yesterday.”
“The congressional elections are next month and the
Republicans might take over the congress, both the house and
the senate ... for the first time in forty years.”
“Clinton, he’s a Democrat,” she affirms, either by deduction or
from some vague memory or both. She was always very logical,
scrupulous in securing basic points before proceeding with others. So far that has remained intact within the limits of her
memory.
“But you think the Republican are going to win?”
“The congressional races, it looks like. The presidential
election isn’t for another couple of years.”
“I know, I know,” she snaps. “I haven’t lost my mind altogether, you know!”
What else has she lost? How much of who she is, or was?
Is she still that dedicated socialist who taught high school history and a lot more about the labor movement than her students
would have learned otherwise? She kept the faith, against all
odds, while seeing her lefty friends of long ago lapse in the face
of post-war prosperity. “If there is nothing left but an ember,”
she once said, “I’ll blow on it.”
“Howya doin’ Harry,” I greet him as he rolls up to us.
“How’s the hip?” He incurred a hairline fracture a few weeks
ago.
“It’s being very inconsiderate of me and taking its own
good time, like I’m going to live forever.” His Yiddish accent
comes in three modalities: funny, complaining, or the usual—
both at once. “Anna, I thought the fish for lunch was pretty
good.” He reminds her of things like that when he can.
“It’s nice of you to try to remind me, Harry.” She knows
him only when she sees him. And maybe not his name if I
hadn’t just mentioned it. But still she seems to know him as a
friend.
They might have known each other in the late thirties. One
day in June the three of us were sitting outside in the patio. He
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family portrait
had come to the home only recently, soon after his wife died.
Since he seemed in pretty good shape, physically and mentally,
I wondered why he’d give up his own place to live here.
“Loneliness.”
“What about your sons, relatives, friends, the community,”
I asked.
“One son is in California and the other in Manhattan has
his own life. The friends and relatives who matter are either
dead or they moved to Florida. And as for the so called community, bingo is not for me.”
“So what do you like,” Grandma asked.
“Well, the two things I liked most are sex and intelligent
conversation. One of them I can still do,” with a glint in his
eyes. They usually look amused; an inherent trait. I once tried
to imagine how they must have looked when his wife died ...
sort of creepy.
“How did you come to know your wife?” Grandma asked, a
smile left over from the laugh. She was having one of her better
days.
“We met at a demonstration in support of the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade which went to Spain to fight Franco. It was on
Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, where the Italian consulate
was.” His words seemed to come from the faraway look in his
hazel eyes. “It was winter and very cold, and thousands still
came and filled up the whole avenue, for two or three blocks,
maybe more. And we shouted, ‘Lift, lift, lift the embargo on
Loyalist Spain,’” smiling indulgently over his precious reminiscence.
“Grandma, I remember you telling me that you helped
organize those demonstrations.” She can still come up with
those old memories, with a little prompting.
“I used to read the minutes at the meetings. They called
me the minute ma’am.”
Harry chuckled and retorted, “The meetings in some building on Union Square?”
“I think so.”
They fell silent looking at one another, each trying to
decode the other’s timeworn face for what it might have been
like over a half century ago. Neither came up with anything.
Nevertheless, we occasionally speculate about that and try to
spring free a pivotal memory or two.
Harry leans over to take a closer look at the Times I placed
on the coffee table and remarks, “So now we’re going to get a
Republican congress.”
“I’m afraid the country is moving further and further to the
right,” I reply.
He shifts his weight in the wheel chair as if my comment
reminded him, like a wake up call, of his discomfort sitting too
long in the same position. “Well, maybe labor has to suffer
more before it realizes what’s good for it. What do you think,
Anna?”
“I don’t think I can anymore ... think anything about that.”
I feel sorry for Harry, like you would for a well-meaning
unrequited lover. How he’d love to have with her those once
upon a time conversations about ideas for which they had
shared the same passion. While he still can, she can’t. And as
to that passion they once shared, I think he still has it in him.
But what can be left of that in her?
We talk some more as the rain stops, with some sun seeping through the clouds. I propose going for a walk, inviting
Harry to come along. He declines: “I
like going for walks the old fashion way.
Invite me when I’m able.”
As we leave the building I get the
urge to go somewhere more interesting.
I scan the possibilities, and we decide on
Soho. I score a space on Prince St., a
squeeze even for my Civic, and we do the
galleries, turning streets almost aimlessly. She’s still sturdy enough for that.
After an hour, maybe less, it was time to
recoup.
“How about the coffeehouse you
once took me to,” I suggest. “You know,
the one where you used to get together
with friends in the old days.” It was
nearby in the Village, an old haunt of
hers in those long gone days when they
were filled and fired with the idea of
making a far far better world.
I had only a vague idea of where it
was and Grandma said she couldn’t
remember at all. I called on her memory a little more, but she insisted, “I just
can’t remember. It may not even exist
anymore, for all I know.”
“Well,” I offer, “let’s see just the
same,” and we proceed to walk in that
direction. And as we get closer, she
leads the way.
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IT AIN’T FUNNY
&
IT AIN’T TRUE
Exploiting Tourette Syndrome for Laughs
You see it on television and film, hear it on radio, read it in the press.
A character spouts a stream of obscenities or behaves outrageously—and
then it is falsely explained away as a “case of Tourette’s.”
The entertainment industry has done—and can do—better than this.
The fact is that obscene language and bizarre movements are not
common symptoms of TS. Of all the youngsters and adults with this
misunderstood neurological disorder, a very small percentage are prone to
utter profanities. The others experience varying degrees of involuntary
physical and/or vocal tics—some quite mild.
So what’s the harm? These distortions foster painful discrimination against
anyone with TS looking for a job, applying to a school, or trying to make
friends.
We at the Tourette Syndrome Association are always available to help.
TOURETTE SYNDROME ASSOCIATION, INC.
42-40 Bell Boulevard • Bayside • New York 11361 • (718) 224-2999 • (888) 4-TOURET
http://tsa-usa.org
art around the world
patchwork journey
patchwork journey
~by Veronika Ruff
New York, NY
j
apanese friends and colleagues think he’s crazy. They’re
not quite sure what an artist wants with their decrepit
hand-me-downs and worn-thin dust rags.
But
Brooklyn-based textile artist Stephen Szczepanek has
turned his affinity for antique Japanese cloth into a
recycling program like no other. Using traditional Asian methods and materials, Szczepanek creates modern and original art
for the home.
Szczepanek’s bright white studio in a converted Greenpoint
factory is a far cry from the thatched-roof farmhouses of rural
pre-industrial Japan, but the work going on inside remains
remarkably similar. Using bits of antique Japanese cloth that he
and “sources” collect throughout Japan, Szczepanek sews boro
12
Citizen Culture
(a type of unarranged patchwork) creations using stitching
methods he learned by reading history books, studying with
Asian textile experts, and deconstructing ancient kimono.
Looking at the artist’s work now and the antique pieces that
inspire him, it’s difficult to miss the elements of beauty in the
countless shades of indigo, delicately patterned designs, and
immaculately stitched layers. But the antique items he uses—
dust rags, fishermen’s overcoats, sake brewing bags, futon covers, and simple country kimono—were never intended to be
beautiful.
“We call it ‘patchwork’ now, but it wasn’t at all self-conscious then,” Szczepanek explained. “It was a practical way to
patch holes, add warmth, and reuse precious materials. These
art around the world
cloths symbolized poverty and the deplorable conditions of the
Japanese countryside. They weren’t aesthetic.”
Szczepanek, however, immediately recognized the inherent
beauty in these practical textiles, and based on the growing
interest in his products, others are starting to see it, too.
Preservation societies in Japan are keeping some folk art
(mingei) traditions alive today, but many of the practices and
materials Szczepanek employs were made nearly extinct by the
wide availability of cotton and the adoption of industrial weaving methods in modern Japan.
For centuries, Japan was an isolated island nation. And
although it didn’t open widely for formal trade until 1854, products, practices, and belief systems
infiltrated Japan primarily via
Asian visitors who migrated from
the Indian subcontinent, through
Southern China, and down the
Korean Peninsula. Chief among
these “imports” were Buddhism
and cotton, which would change
the faith and face of Japan forever.
The Japanese had always
found India’s cloth “exotic,”
according to Szczepanek. Lady
Murasaki made reference to an
Indian visitor who had a precious
cotton plant in her Heian Period
(794-1192 A.D.) classic, The Tale
of Genji. India made and traded
textiles as early as 700 B.C.,
according to Szczepanek, who
rattles off facts about the history
of Asian textiles like a veritable
Encyclopedia. “Indians figured
out how to color cloth with fixed,
mordant dyes … The entire
process was well understood
there very early. Indians were,
and are, brilliant—the technical
mastery they used in weaving
could be considered our first digital medium, it’s basically a grid
and pixels,” he said.
By the Edo Period (16031868) Japan had begun some cotton cultivation and the wealthier
samurai and merchant classes were able to purchase luxury
items like silks and cottons. Feudal lords wore expensive clothes
to publicly exhibit their wealth and power, while the majority of
the Japanese population—the rural poor—never had clothing
choices to make. In the self-sufficient countryside, where diets
and economies were based wholly on rice, female peasants wove
clothing out of natural forest bast fibers like nettle, wisteria, and
paper mulberry. They cultivated others like hemp and ramie to
make thread. Though neither comfortable nor warm, bast (asa)
was tough enough to survive the hard labor. But most rural
Japanese did not yet know what they were missing in cotton.
Although they could not yet afford it (or government edicts
barred them from buying it), demand for cotton increased when
the peasants saw sailors on the shipping lines wearing cotton
suits. Soon, a vibrant trade in second-hand cotton began. By
1697, in fact, used cotton was second only to rice in traded items
at the Niigata port, according to Riches from Rags, a catalog
from the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum by ShinIchiro Yoshida and Dai Williams.
Since the scraps of used cotton cloth did not allow the peasants to create sailor suits, however, they combined them with
asa and their own sewing or weaving techniques: sakiori, boro,
and shashiko.
In sakiori, cottons are shredded into strips and woven with
bast fibers (saku means “to tear,” oru means “to weave”).
Sakiori is almost as tough as pure asa, and it is much warmer,
more comfortable, and easier to
make.
Boro (which literally means
“rag” in Japanese) is the collective term for patched and mended Japanese textiles. Pieces of
second-hand cotton were layered
and added to asa, all bound with
a running stitch called sashiko.
The effect? An unorganized
patchwork quilt with some sections of scrappy brown rags and
others of beautifully patterned
kimono. The multiple layers in
boro/sashiko made it especially
popular in chilly northern Japan.
When the bundles of second-hand cotton reached rural
ports, there were different grades
of cotton available. The highest
quality (and most expensive) was
for boro/sashiko, the lowest for
sakiori. Though it could be left
white or dyed shades of red, yellow, and brown with natural
products, most cotton was dyed
in shades of blue, using indigo.
Indigo, another Indian
import, was popular in rural
Japan because it was cheap. “It’s
essentially a weed, and you don’t
need fancy techniques or mordant for lasting results,”
Szczepanek said. Farmers grew
indigo leaves and brought them
to the village dyer. When cotton is soaked in a vat of indigo, the
cloth turns green. As soon as it hits the air, it oxidizes into a
shade of blue. The more dips, the darker the shade. Indigo even
spawned the term, “blue-collar,” according to Szczepanek,
because utilitarian workers’ clothes were always dyed in long
lasting indigo.
Though elaborate indigo traditions and products are treasured today, the use of indigo gained popularity because of its
practicality for the lower classes. The authors of Riches from
Rags call it, “an aesthetic of poverty.”
“Cotton brought Japan this added beauty and added
warmth, but it’s nothing compared to the downs and fabrics we
have today, which is partly why these techniques and fabrics
have come out of favor. They’re now impractical,” Szczepanek
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art around the world
said. “Another reason, though, is that Japan’s textile traditions
were completely born from poverty.”
When Szczepanek first started collecting antique cottons,
asa, sakiori, zookin (dust rags, the last stage of Japanese textile
recycling) and boro for his art he asked Japanese friends and
colleagues (in Japan) to send him any samples they could find.
“Most Japanese are inveterate menders and savers. I knew
there were piles of this stuff in houses all over the place, but my
Japanese friends just didn’t get it,” he explained. They would
send him newer textiles with one small patch of older cotton, for
example. “To them, it’s embarrassing, it shows that their ancestors were poor. There is a lot of shame associated with this
material.”
Exasperated by this phenomenon and his lack of ability to
communicate in Japanese, Szczepanek contacted American
expatriates living permanently in Japan. His small core group of
top-secret “sources” scours temple markets and antique stores
on the “Nara-Kyoto-Osaka junket” for textiles to send to New
York (they receive a commission if a piece using their finds
sells). Szczepanek said that he likes to keep their identities quiet
because of the growing interest in and demand for traditional
textiles.
Once he gathers enough antique material (an ongoing
process), Szczepanek begins his own artistic processes. To make
one of his original pieces—most of which become large wall
hangings, rugs, bed covers, or pieces of art mounted on canvas—
he begins by deconstructing kimono, overcoats, futon covers,
and other acquisitions. Next, following his instincts and eye, he
combines pieces with other scraps from different eras and stories. Using a traditional sashiko stitch, he reconnects the pieces
by hand (“with respect for the fabric”) in a new, modern design.
All of this takes at least a week of “full, crazy” days.
Although Szczepanek said that he thrives on these new
packed, creative days, he’s still getting used to them. He began
constructing and selling his art relatively recently, but his interests in art and Asia, and his burgeoning expertise in Asian textiles have been brewing for years.
Szczepanek has been taken with Asia “forever.” “If you
knew me as a kid, what I’m doing now would make perfect
sense,” he said.
With two painting degrees under his belt (from Tyler School
of Art in Philadelphia and Indiana University), Szczepanek
moved to New York in 1985 and undertook a variety of jobs,
including mixing colors at Andy Warhol’s studios. Eventually he
would become a personal curator for Steven Ross, the deceased
CEO of Time Warner, and his wife Cynthia Ross Holst.
Holst, whose collection ranges from early twentieth-century European decorative arts to pre-Columbian textiles to postwar American paintings by Willem DeKooning and Jackson
Pollock—“It’s like a museum,” Szczepanek quipped—also has a
passion for Asian art, particularly that of China and Japan, and
Szczepanek frequently traveled with her to Asia to view private
collections.
During his ten-year stint working with Holst,
Szczepanek’s biggest project was assisting her in opening the
Ross School, a private school in East Hampton, New York, dedicated to teaching children around themes of global cultural
history. “The job gave me a sense of living in the world, and
added to my appreciation for Asian aesthetics. Courtney and I
were a perfect fit, we were interested on the same visceral
level,” he said. “The job also gave me an external framework
14 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
art around the world
for my own internal thinking.”
By the late ’90s, however, Szczepanek was ready to establish a new external framework. He had become increasingly
interested in Asian textiles during personal travels to India in
the mid-’90s and work-related travels to Japan with Holst.
“I became fascinated first by Indian textiles because since
India is so vast, each teeny neighborhood has its own weaving
tradition, laden with meanings expressed by specific colors and
symbols. It’s symbolism embedded in cloth,” he said.
Soon, he moved on to Japanese textiles. “Who isn’t interested in Japan if you’re interested in design? It goes without
saying,” he explained. Szczepanek noticed that in Japan’s cloth,
he could see traces of Indian tradition. “It’s all there,” he said.
Basically, Szczepanek followed the same trail as cotton and
Buddhism—taking his interest in India’s textiles through China
to Japan, where he made traditions his own. “I became more
and more fascinated by the beauty and language of textiles and
what it says about the culture,” he said. “And textile is surface
design, so it’s not all that different from painting, which is what
I had a background in.”
When Szczepanek started making his own boro designs, he
felt like the new kid on the block, he said. “I had the passion and
the interest in it, and an understanding of Asian art and
Western painting, but not much else,” he said.
He was relieved when Amy Katoh—an American who has
lived most of her life in Japan and is now an expert on Japanese
country living and indigo traditions—visited his studios after
reading about him in a British interiors magazine. “She made
me feel validated, like I was on to something,” he said. Since
then, she has become a strong supporter of his art, even carrying some of his products in her Tokyo boutique, Blue and
White.
Katoh’s support was just the beginning. Since then,
Szczepanek’s “buzz” has been getting louder. His client list now
includes designers Donna Karan and Calvin Klein, private art
dealer Christina Grajales, and antique furniture dealer Lou
Marotta. Elite stores such as Donna Karan New York, Forty
Five Ten in Dallas, and the New York branch of the Japanese
department store, Takashimaya, have all carried his work.
Through his own textile artisan company, ‘Sri, named in
honor of the Hindu goddess of abundance, Szczepanek gets
numerous one-of-a-kind custom orders (his favorite) and also
sells some of the rare antique pieces he collects, though he finds
that he can’t part with a lot of it. When he “restores” antique
textiles, it’s impossible to tell where he’s been.
“I patch the weak spaces, but I always leave a key in the
back—a slit where you can see down to all the original layers. So
while I do work my design sense into it, there’s still a cohesiveness,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t even tell what I did!”
One of his most treasured pieces is a tiny, mostly asa
kimono, most likely from northern Japan. It looks so fragile it
seems it will crumble in his hands at any second. “It’s a blueprint to a life, the life of a woman who worked hard. She
wouldn’t have worn an obi, probably tied it with a rope,” he
said. It’s definitely one of his oldest pieces, probably from the
Edo Period. Szczepanek plans to use it someday, “but not quite
yet,” he revealed with a guilty smile.
Szczepanek also showed off a boro futon cover made with
cotton scraps from the Meiji (1868-1912) and Edo Periods.
Because of its asa hemp stitches, he is quite sure that its maker
had just enough money for the cotton cloth, but couldn’t afford
CC 15
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art around the world
the stitching as well. “It’s just beautiful—layers over time,” he
said.
In addition to his larger boro works and antique pieces,
Szczepanek keeps busy by expanding ‘Sri’s offerings, including
its home collection, which features boro/sashiko-styled pillows,
tabletop accessories made from asa and antique sakebukuro
(sake brewing bags), rugs, custom window panels, and some
clothing.
He recently started a new line with a Japanese weaver born
in Arimatsu, the epicenter of shibori. Hiroko Takeda is a “technically very competent, but out there” designer who is weaving
cashmere sakiori for ‘Sri. And Szczepanek is developing a consumer line, for which everything will still be hand-made, just
“slightly more mass-produced for stores.”
Lest he grew bored, Szczepanek recently began investigating a nearly lost, relatively unknown Korean textile art called
pojagi. “I’ve never been to Korea, but I saw these traditional
utilitarian cloths, and was immediately struck by them. They
are so appealing to the modern eye—very Frank Lloyd Wright,”
he explained.
Because a museum in Seoul has collected most of them,
pojagi—very delicately sewn wrapping cloths, usually adorned
16 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
with an abstract geometric design—from the nineteenth century or earlier are very difficult to find today. If one does hit the
market, it costs between thirty and forty thousand dollars,
according to Szczepanek.
“I like introducing pojagi to interior designers and architects because they’ve never seen it before and they’re always in
awe of its beauty and modern lines,” he said. “Korea is an
unsung hero of Asia, for design and otherwise. Japan owes so
much to Korea’s design history—Koreans know it, Japanese
know it, but globally, people don’t know about it … Korea was
just left behind.”
Szczepanek is visibly excited about the reaction he’s gotten
from clients and fellow artists. “I’m lucky. People have been
really interested in what I’m doing,” he said. It’s no surprise
really—his passion for these rare, nearly forgotten Asian textiles
is unavoidably contagious, his sensitive academic approach to
the traditions of international cultures admirable.
“A lot of this goes back to my role as a curator—teaching,
sharing things. Helping people realize what this culture is, what
these traditions are,” he said. “As a Western designer, I’m very
influenced by the traditions of other cultures. I just reinfuse
and reteach those traditions.”
ccm investigates
Hare Krishna Comes of Age
~by Michael Kress
Cambridge, MA
s
uper Bowl Sunday, and Boston is fixated on its
Patriots. But here, in Boston’s chic Back Bay, I’m
with just about the only people not thinking of football. Here, as most pre-game parties are starting, a
horn sounds, and a familiar chant is repeated over and over:
“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna ... ”
If you thought the Hare Krishnas faded away with bell bottoms and disco, the scene at 72 Commonwealth Avenue in
Boston tells a different story. This former boarding house
serves as the local temple of the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)—the group more commonly
known simply as the Hare Krishnas.
While their mantra may bring many back to a bygone Free
Love era, a look at the worshippers this Sunday makes clear
these are vastly different Hare Krishnas than those who were
once ubiquitous in American cities. Thirty years ago, this room
would have been packed with devotees looking every bit the
stereotype: white, young, and wearing colorful robes, the men
sporting heads shaven except for one tuft at the crown of their
scalp.
This is 2004, though, and these are the faces of Krishna in
the twenty-first century.
In 2004, the robed monks are still here, but fewer in number. They’re worshipping alongside people dressed in jeans or
other casual clothes. Maybe half the faces are white, and the
rest belong to Indian immigrants and their American-born children. They are students, pharmacists, stay-at-home moms. If
they weren’t here, chanting in praise of a Hindu deity whose
likeness graces the ornate altar, they would be at any of the
Super Bowl parties going on right now (and to which many worshippers are heading afterward).
“It’s entirely possible these days that a Hare Krishna could
be living next door to you and you wouldn’t know it,” says
Middlebury College professor Burke Rochford, who has studied
ISKCON since the 1970s. “They’re just now part of the culture
in ways that the average person couldn’t have imagined some
twenty or twenty-five years ago ... Now we’re looking at what I
just think of as an American religious community.”
Today’s Hare Krishnas live as part of—not apart from—
mainstream American society. The overwhelming majority
make their homes outside the temple, work in secular professions, get married, have children—and cope with all the accompanying anxieties, like paying rent, finding excellent schools for
their children, and being good citizens.
18 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
For support, they look to their religious community, putting ISKCON in a role it is not accustomed to playing. “We’re
addressing the needs of their kids for Sunday School and parking lots and playgrounds,” says Anuttama Dasa, an ISKCON
leader and spokesman.
He speaks enthusiastically about committees, training programs, and systems—just the kind of institutionalization that
early converts to ISKCON were fleeing in the mainstream.
“Twenty-year-olds who are single can live pretty simply,”
Anuttama says. “You don’t need playgrounds if your whole
community is twenty-year-olds. You may not need marriage
counseling. You may not need to deal with a lot of the different
kinds of social issues that churches and synagogues all over the
country deal with.”
It was has not been an easy transition, but without it,
ISKCON could easily have faded away into irrelevance like
so many spiritual fads. That it’s still here is a testament to
the dedication of its members. But its history—which
includes a devastating sexual abuse scandal not unlike
what’s happened in the Catholic Church—also provides a
cautionary tale about the dangers of unbridled spiritual exuberance and what it takes to “make it” as a religion in
America. Four decades after its founding, ISKCON is today
caught in limbo, hopeful for a bright future while facing
immense challenges.
*
It was on another Super Bowl Sunday, this one in 1992,
that Paul Swinford first stepped into a Hare Krishna temple.
Fourteen years later, now known as Premananda Dasa, he is
pastor of the Boston community.
After college, Swinford worked in grassroots politics before
joining the corporate world to pay off debts. He developed an
interest in spirituality and was intrigued by the personal relationship with God promised by the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu
scripture central to ISKCON. After that first Sunday service, he
started attending regularly and worshipping at home.
He then took a step that is increasingly rare, quitting his
job to move into the temple. There, he eschewed bookselling—
the occupation of most temple residents back then—and
instead assumed a variety of administrative roles: treasurer,
secretary, congregational director.
At forty, Premananda is again adapting to a major transi-
ccm investigates
tion. After living in the temple for ten years, he got married last
year and moved to New Hampshire, where his wife, also a Hare
Krishna, works for a financial services company. He continues
to volunteer full-time for the temple. Among other adjustments, Premananda has joined America’s commuter class,
driving ninety minutes to the place he called home for a decade.
Like ISKCON, the Boston community is at a pivotal
moment in its history.
The temple is undergoing a major management reorganization, and with only sixteen devotees living in-house, leadership will be key. Premananda speaks about “cultivating congregational leadership” and “systematizing” management. A committee will articulate a long-term vision for the temple, and a
“theological director” will be named.
“Will we be a community that continues to struggle with
just a few devotees taking responsibility and some degree of a
revolving door, people coming and going?” Premananda, wearing Western rather than devotional clothes for the first time
since we met, asks during a conversation in his temple office.
“Or will we go where the primary source of our stability and
strength is—the congregation—and inspire members of the
congregation to take more leadership roles, more responsibility
roles?”
Boston’s Hare Krishnas range in commitment from occasional attendance to near-constant presence. Young couples
and their toddlers represent hope for the future, while devotees
in their fifties and sixties constitute a solid foundation.
“When ISKCON started, it was a missionary organization,
and most of the emphasis was placed on expanding the mission,” Premananda says. “Right now our primary emphasis is
more liturgical and pastoral.”
Throughout ISKCON, similar transformations are taking
place. Temple presidents attend management courses, counselors offer premarital classes, and lay leaders worry about college acceptances among day-school students. Congregations
participate in interfaith activities— they run social service programs and build parking lots and playgrounds.
“Our duty is to make sure we create communities and an
institution that care for the variety of people’s needs,”
Anuttama says.
Premananda dreams of someday opening a seminary in
Boston and establishing a rural community to supplement the
urban temple. But first there’s the business of smoothing out
everyday management operations and strengthening the commitment of existing congregants.
Before leaving his office, I comment on a bookcase prominently displaying a surprising title: Nori Muster’s Betrayal of
the Spirit, a bitter memoir of the author’s involvement in
ISKCON during its reckless youth. The name alone made me
assume that people like Premananda would treat the book derisively, but he accepts Muster’s rebuke.
“It’s something that helps to remind me I have a position of
responsibility in the temple,” Premananda says. “If we don’t
learn from the past, I’m afraid we’ll repeat it.”
*
When an elderly monk arrived in New York by ship in
September 1965, no one would have predicted that he would
establish the first major orthodox Hindu presence in the West—
for Westerners.
The story of the man known as A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada is lore among Hare Krishnas. Inspired by his guru
to spread Krishna Consciousness in the West, Prabhupada left
India at age sixty-nine, began to gather disciples by chanting in
New York’s Tompkins Square Park, and launched the
International Society for Krishna Consciousness in July 1966.
With public chanting and proselytizing in places like airports,
ISKCON grew rapidly, attracting disaffected youth and the
occasional cultural icon (former Beatle George Harrison among
them).
Four decades later, the movement maintains fifty temples
in the United States and nearly four hundred worldwide. It
claims one hundred thousand domestic adherents in the U.S.
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ccm investigates
and one million abroad (though scholars estimate the numbers
are likely much smaller).
Prabhupada brought with him a monotheistic Hinduism
known as Gaudiya Vaishnava, which is based on the teachings
of the fifteenth-century Bengali monk Caitanya. Caitanya
preached devotion through simple living and the repetitive
chanting of the Lord’s name, giving birth to the mantra that
defines ISKCON in the Western mind. Living “Krishna conscious” starts with refraining from four activities: gambling,
intoxication, eating meat, and illicit sex, which means sex outside of marriage and for purposes other than procreation within marriage. In America, Prabhupada adapted the tradition in
some ways—most notably by initiating women into the priesthood, which had not been done in India.
Prabhupada’s early disciples took to it with such zeal that
being a serious Hare Krishna came to mean the total commitment to monasticism. Book distribution and proselytizing
became their primary focuses. The monks severed ties with
their former lives, denounced the outside world, and through
missionary work, encouraged—often even pressured—new
recruits to do the same.
From the beginning, ISKCON faced hostility, as Americans
took one look at the youth, robed and shaven, and cried “cult.”
Ironically, it was partly ISKCON’s fidelity to tradition that
made Americans uncomfortable. While other Eastern transplants—Transcendental Meditation, for instance—didn’t
demand major lifestyle changes, Prabhupada’s followers fully
embraced Indian religion and culture.
“Dancing in the streets with okra robes on your men,
women in saris with the red dot on their forehead, and reciting
in Bengali old Krishna stories that originate from the sixteenthcentury is absolutely deemed to be cultic,” says Larry Shinn,
president of Berea College and author of Dark Lord: Cult
Images and the Hare Krishnas in America (1987). “But the
‘strange’ behavior is really Indian and Hindu. It’s not some
aberrant human being who’s developed this system in the last
ten or fifteen years.”
20 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
Despite the success of those heady early days, ISKCON’s
problems germinated. Living chaste and temperate lives
under a guru’s authority was difficult for these refugees from
an anything goes counterculture; many never abandoned the
sex or drugs they’d vowed to live without. Some refused to initiate women, rallied against female sexuality, and were even
abusive to women and children.
“I don’t think Prabhupada was expecting the movement to
explode the way it did, and it did. So you had one elderly swami
and the next thing, you had tens of thousands of disciples.
Who’s going to manage all those people?” says Edwin Bryant, a
professor of religion at Rutgers University and co-editor of The
Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a
Religious Transplant. “Kids that were one minute smoking pot
and living hedonistic lifestyles, the next minute they were
shaved up and they were temple presidents.”
Prabhupada “left the planet”—a Hare Krishna euphemism
for death—in 1977, as the movement was still expanding.
Instead of appointing a successor, he left ISKCON in the hands
of a coterie of gurus known as the Governing Body Commission
(GBC).
Leadership struggles and misbehavior throughout the
1980s led to ISKCON’s first major exodus of devotees. That was
also when devotees began moving out of the temples en masse
for marriage and jobs, and because ISKCON’s financial problems made supporting large numbers of monks unfeasible.
*
Valuing the nuclear family may not seem revolutionary,
but to many of Hare Krishna’s earliest devotees, children were
little more than a distraction. “Dump the load and hit the
road,” went a saying about pregnant women in ISKCON.
Take Ananda Tiller. Born in 1975 to Hare Krishna parents,
Tiller was enrolled in the Dallas gurukula (boarding school)
when she was four. Her father was the community’s head
priest, but he had little interaction with Tiller and her brother.
ccm investigates
Their mother was off proselytizing and made only occasional
visits.
At the gurukulas, students encountered a rigorous curriculum of religious instruction, and Tiller says she learned to write
her name in Sanskrit before English. Teachers—entirely
untrained professionally—contested the evils of the outside
world, with which children had few encounters.
Tiller recalls vividly hearing the sound of her brother
screaming from the adjacent boys’ ashram one night. “It
sounded like he was being tortured,” she says. She didn’t fare
any better, enduring physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. “As
a child, my body, mind, soul—everything—was given to this
God and given to these people, and they took it all, even my sixyear-old body,” she says.
In 1986, Tiller and her brother switched to public school,
where she was terrified. “We really never left that city block
when we were in Dallas, and all we knew was that the outside
world were these devilish meat eaters that were going to poison
our minds,” she says.
Tiller’s teen years were filled with drugs, sex, and suicide
attempts. Other gurukula alumni are homeless and some kill
themselves. Today, Tiller is a mother and has been striving to
recover from the trauma.
Part of moving on was joining a four hundred million dollar lawsuit brought against ISKCON by nearly one hundred former gurukula students. At first unsure about joining, Tiller visited the Dallas temple in 2001 for the first time in fifteen years.
“These memories just started flooding me,” she says. “I became
very bitter and wanted to see some changes.”
Krishna leaders say those changes have happened already.
By the time the suit was filed, ISKCON had been reeling from
the scandal for a decade, since the first whispers about abuse in
the gurukulas began circulating in the early 1990s. In 1996, a
group of alumni made a presentation to the GBC describing
their experiences, and around that time, ISKCON closed the
last of its North American gurukulas.
ISKCON established two organizations in response to the
revelations. Children of Krishna offers support and financial
compensation to victims; it has distributed about two hundred
fifty thousand dollars. The Child Protection Office has three
purposes—investigation and adjudication of abuse allegations;
grants to victims; and establishing awareness and protection
programs in temples and schools.
The editor of an official ISKCON publication asked
Rochford to write a no-holds-barred article documenting the
abuse. It was published in 1999, and ISKCON’s revelation of
the horrors that took place in its schools became international
news. The lawsuit was filed soon afterward. Saying they have
nowhere near the four hundred million dollars demanded by
the suit—a claim scholars have confirmed—several of the temples named in the suit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This allows them to negotiate a settlement while ensuring
the temples retain enough funds to stay open. As part of the
process, ISKCON invited any abused gurukula alumni to submit a claim. About four hundred additional claimants came
forward. The settlement process could be completed by the end
of this year.
ISKCON officials insist they are working not just to salvage
temples but to do right by the victims. “As individual devotees,
and as parents, and as elders, and as an institution, we bear a
tremendous moral responsibility to help these kids,” Anuttama
says.
Critics, though, say the changes don’t run deep enough.
“There are some really wonderful, smart, liberal people who
were always jumping up and down saying that something had
to be done,” says Maria Ekstrand, a longtime Hare Krishna and
a vocal ISKCON critic. “But the only reason the rest of them listened was out of fear of what would happen if they didn’t.”
Modeled after Indian boarding schools, the gurukulas
were supposed to create a new generation of committed
Krishnas, but the schools failed their children in a tragic way.
“They were going to be the future leaders,” Bryant says.
“Instead, the vast, vast, vast majority all left.”
Today, the movement has abandoned gurukulas in favor
of a Western model—Sunday schools and day schools. Change,
of course, never comes easy, and conservatives continue to
resist reform. A couple of independently-run gurukulas, not
officially ISKCON-affiliated, continue to operate, and some
gurus are said to still pressure proselytes to sever ties and move
into the temple. But for the vast majority, family and home
have replaced mission and temple as the center of Hare Krishna
life.
Many observers credit ISKCON for dealing proactively
with the tragedy once it was revealed. But the attorney spearheading the lawsuit, a veteran of such suits, says the abuse
described by gurukula alumni is the worst he has encountered—including beyond that of the Catholic Church. It will
take years for ISKCON to fully move past the tragedy, just as it
will take a lifetime for the victims to feel whole again.
*
“Child Protection Office Closing!” The article, written by
the head of the office, appears on a Hare Krishna web site in
early February, and blames “tens of thousands of dollars in
unfulfilled pledges” for the demise of the six-year-old office.
I asked Anuttama about it. He says he has funds saved for
the office and is aggressively fundraising to keep it open. “I will
die before that office closes,” he insists.
Though a false alarm this time, the office’s budget has
indeed shrunk yearly. Nevertheless, it has investigated about
three hundred alleged abusers, and adjudicated about one hundred cases. Punishments include banishment from leadership
positions, restitution, and written apologies. Lately, the office
has run several healing seminars for abuse victims and developed prevention programs.
Many see the process as inherently flawed.
“The GBC is trying to police itself, which never really works
in an organization,” Ekstrand says. “If you are accused of doing
these horrible things, I think the only thing to do is open up and
allow professional outsiders to investigate what happened, let
them make decisions based on their investigation, and let those
decisions stand.”
She says the Child Protection Office’s decisions aren’t
always followed, and the office is not empowered to mete out
severe punishments, such as perpetual banishment from teaching positions. If an abuser truly repents, Ekstrand says, “You
should probably go and wash dishes and clean toilets and show
that you’re really humble and you regret things.”
To most Hare Krishnas, the abuse tragedy is not an everyday presence. Hare Krishnas that I encountered expressed varied reactions to the scandals. Some say that many religions
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ccm investigates
have to deal with abuse, so ISKCON isn’t unique. Others relegate it to the past, and trust that ISKCON has eradicated it. Still
others consign themselves to the knowledge that the perpetrators were acting against Krishna’s teachings and won’t be
allowed to do so again.
A fourth reaction was best summed up in the words of
Mangala-Arotick Dasi, a twenty-eight-year-old convert who
lives with her husband near the Boston temple. “I feel responsible. Just by aligning myself with this society, and with this
group, I’ve voluntarily taken on that experience, that identity,
and that responsibility.”
*
Worship over, it’s time to feast. The vegetarian meal is
prasadam, itself an offering to Krishna. As the congregation
fans out to eat and socialize, I sit with Nimai Nitai, who, at fiftytwo years old, is something of something of an elder statesman
at the Boston temple. Outside of this community, Nitai is
Nicolas Carballeira, a doctor of naturopathy who teaches at
Tufts Medical School and works at a health center. A Hare
Krishna since 1977, he is retiring this summer to move into the
temple, where he will offer counsel and train young devotees.
As his prasadam gets cold, he tells me how he left ISKCON
in the mid-1990s and returned five years later.
“I had some gurus who fell down and left the movement,”
he says, “and I didn’t feel that ISKCON was doing its job of
making sure that spirituality was the first and foremost thing.”
Leaving did not mean abandoning Krishna, as Nitai joined
an India-based Hindu sect whose founder came from the same
spiritual lineage as Prabhupada. But he returned to ISKCON in
2001 after realizing the difficulty of practicing without a community. He found it a vastly changed ISKCON. “Now that the
movement is poor—surviving, but poor—those who have
remained have remained because they truly believe, they truly
practice, and they truly care,” he says.
Nitai dreams of creating a fully American ISKCON, one
22 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
that doesn’t look to India for names, clothing, food, and liturgy.
“If we are to have a future—and I believe we are—then we have
to adopt forms that are more constant with Western styles,” he
says.
Listening to him muse about the future, it is easy to forget
the challenges threatening ISKCON.
As Nitai’s story shows, ISKCON and Krishna
Consciousness are no longer synonymous. Dissenting groups
siphon off ISKCON members, while many other individuals
worship privately, without temple affiliation. “The tradition
has taken root here,” Ekstrand says, “but the more time that
goes by, it seems that ISKCON does not have a monopoly anymore.”
Additionally, a major demographics problem looms.
Though there are dedicated young people in Boston, new converts are rare and missionary activity is no longer a priority.
The children of early converts have mostly fled the movement,
scarred by their gurukula experiences.
One source of vitality for ISKCON has been Indian immigrants, without whom many temples would be in serious trouble. In some places, ISKCON offers the only Hindu worship,
but even given options, many choose ISKCON. The movement,
though, remains almost entirely run by white converts, and in
many temples, the two groups scarcely mix.
“We may have, in time, the very curious possibility of having a largely East Indian congregation with white-faced
Westerners preaching and serving on the altar in Hindu temples to a congregation of Indian people,” Rochford says.
And then there are financial qualms. Bookselling, once
the movement’s economic backbone, no longer provides substantial income. Communities rely on donations, and,
Rochford says, “they’re struggling in most every instance to get
by.”
But that’s true only in North America. Abroad, ISKCON is
thriving—especially in India, where this Hindu movement
founded for Westerners is surprisingly popular. Bryant suggests that for Indians eager to modernize, ISKCON offers a
ccm investigates
bridge between past and present, as a traditional religion
imported from the coveted West.
But when it comes to child abuse awareness in India,
Anuttama says, “They’re where we were twenty years ago,”
meaning they are in denial. At least one American who oversaw an American gurukula rife with abuse is rumored to be
teaching in India.
Still, the movement’s stunning new Indian temples
attract VIPs and pilgrims alike, while in America, ISKCON
labors just to keep its existing temples open. “The future is
going to be one of continual change, but I think it’s going to be
one where a movement that’s already struggling, financially
and otherwise, is likely to continue to struggle,” Rochford
says.
The struggle is not just for resources—the soul of ISKCON
is at stake. Battles rage on many fronts—the role of women;
denominational authority versus local autonomy; the limits of
dissent; the abuse and attempts to eradicate it.
It would seem that the liberals are winning. More women
than ever serve as leaders. Web sites feature vociferous
debate on everything from theology to the lawsuit, and child
abuse prevention is a clear priority to most ISKCON leaders.
“But at the same time,” Ekstrand warns, “there is a very strong
fundamentalist contingent, and they are going to be fighting
all of this tooth and nail.”
For their part, ISKCON leaders are finding that doing the
things an American religion does is not easy. For an American
religion to reach the proper balance between institutionalization and expressive spirituality is a major challenge, says
Anuttama, who, like many Hare Krishnas, joined ISKCON to
escape organized religion.
“How do you address those broader needs of parking lots
and playgrounds and marriage counseling but not lose the
essential spirituality that inspires religious people?” he asks.
However, he offers a vague but optimistic answer centering on
ISKCON’s values. “People become overwhelmed with wanting
to possess more and own more and lust for power and economic exploitation. If we stay true to our principles, then we
will be okay.”
Schisms. Lagging attendance. Debates over women’s
issues and the limits of religious authority. Struggles to maintain spiritual focus amid pressing material needs. Sounds
eerily like an American religion. If the Hare Krishnas figure it
out, maybe they can inform the rest of us.
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THIS
AMERICAN LIFE
FARSEEING
~by Peter Rutenberg
Los Angeles, CA
Disclaimer: Nothing in this medium should be taken to
reflect “real life” as we know it. It’s Another World. I’m not
referring to the soap, of course, but wagging a disconsolate
finger in the general direction of myopic American television.
Rest assured that it is a tireless finger.
i
n the 1950s, the TV world was black and white in
every respect. Lucy was “expecting” and millions
laughed along with the Ricardos’ and Mertzes’
antics just trying to get to the hospital. The Lone
Ranger showed up in the nick of time and left before the thankyous got maudlin. Our Miss Brooks was the world’s wisestcracking authority on teenagers, Oedipal bachelors, and her
tea-potted tempest of a principal. Walter Cronkite read the
news and that’s the way it was. We trusted them. They never
disappointed us.
Who do we trust, now that Johnny Carson has retired to
Malibu? ABC has outsized mouse ears. NBC is becoming
Universally blah with its maybe-see tv. And CBS would Rather
not divulge its sources. Fox is one innoculation away from an
STD. Fox News is so ingrown with neocon invective, you can’t
tell where the corporate hair up its ass ends and the pus-filled
follicle that sprung it begins. The WB is so-so. CNN appears to
24 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
have awoken at last from the long winter of its governmentembedded discontent. MTV has amnesia. PBS remains
provocative when it isn’t hoovering our pockets for pledges.
Only the premium cable channels seem to have retained the
backbone of their creativity. But then, HBO is only too happy to
remind us that the one thing it isn’t is television.
I suppose I should explain the title. In German, television
is pronounced Fernsehen (lit. “far-seeing”). What you “see” is,
obviously, coming from “far” away. What’s more, you don’t
“watch” it, you “look” at it. A lot of German technical words are
like that—literal translations of their Greek and Latin cognates.
We Americans, on the contrary, are expected to watch our televisions. Otherwise, they might get away from us, unguarded,
unloved, and unwilling to be merely observed with the aforementioned Teutonic aloofness.
It’s a cultural difference of minor but telling import.
Although they try hard to pretend otherwise, we forget just how
THIS
AMERICAN LIFE
far removed in place and time these shows are from our daily
arcs. We can lose our perspective and be easily swept away by
the vicarious fantasies they offer, drifting into a hypnotic state,
insidiously abetted by the unseen, but incessant, effects of the
mechanism’s frame lines. Well, my little couch potatoes, they
don’t call it “horizontal hold” for nothing.
Friends spoofed this other-worldly aspect of television
when they all imagined “what if we had different lives.” Joey
had become a superstar on Days of Our Lives and Rachel, having married her philandering dentist after all, was a refugee
from suburbia who couldn’t see that Joey was anything different from the character he played. The “avid fan” syndrome had
completely severed her link to real life. Every TV set should
have a giant Las Vegas-style neon sign on the front that flashes,
“Yeah, like that will ever happen to you!”
It won’t surprise you to learn, then, that I approached the
onslaught of the new fall line-up with the paralyzed alarm of a
desert rodent on its dark, one-way trip to the noisy end of the
rattlesnake. But that’s the way the networks like you—numb
and with a fixed gaze.
Peter Sellers’ character in the 1979 film Being There “liked
to watch.” Intellectual characters figured him for an astute
observer of the human condition. Friskier types pegged him a
voyeur. But we all knew he meant “television.” These days you
have to be both frisky and astute just to hold your own with
most television programs. Here’s the long and short of it, for a
select few.
Freshest Attitude: Blue Collar TV
Jeff Foxworthy and company bring hilarity in kaleidoscopic array with perfectly-honed hayseed humor. There’s something for everybody, especially those of us who remember when
formulaic TV was just a jagged glimmer in some network
wonk’s eye, when the thrill of pushing the envelope (early
Saturday Night Live, Laugh-In, and That Was The Week That
Was before them) was not met with protests from hell’s-furyoppositionists who would “rather direct” than turn off the tube.
In one sketch, Foxworthy’s paean to the plight of the pater
familias on holiday sets an exemplary tone: “Dads rarely have a
good time on vacation,” he snickers, introducing a yarn whose
protagonist is a sleep-deprived human cash machine with a driver’s license, spewing dollars faster than an AK-47, eventually
becoming the snarling antagonist in a delirious dither for which
the only antidote is—God help him—another vacation.
Rating: Looks like deep-fried catfish with home fries. Tastes
like Saumon en croûte avec Pommes Anna.
*
It turns out that Superboy can fly, and without a cape yet. Who
knew?
*
Been There, Don’t Go There: LAX
Heather Locklear is proof that cats not only have nine lives,
but each one is slicker than the last. Is this the last? Pit her
against Blair Underwood, a pretty, sly dog himself, and let the
caterwauling and territory marking begin. The debut episode
was marred by variable audio levels and an audacious misappropriation of that catchy but overused Ford commercial jazz
riff. The plot sank quicker than this sentence into the clutches
of kitschy cliché-dom, with a bomb scare, a loose dog, a loose
terrorist-or-is-he, a loose security chief who at last is loosed
from his job for being a little loose with security, and, for the
coup de grace, Operation “Chinese Orphan Exodus.”
The second episode proffered more vapid story lines
(bemoaning the inconvenience of the wetlands preserve at the
end of the runways, “bumping” an entire little league team on
their way to the championship game, et cetera, ad nauseam).
The lone ray of hope shone through the sidelight characterization of the drunken cop, Harry Engels (sympathetically played
by Frank John Hughes), who somehow managed to make his
collar, despite filling his big-gulp soda cup with mini-bottles of
vodka and barely concealing his staggering and blurred vision.
The question that kept creeping into my mind was, “What
LAX did they model their set after?” The interior is spacious
and quiet—a veritable oasis of relaxed travel convenience—
when, in reality, the LAX I know and have come to detest is
loud, disorganized, crowded, and populated with security
goons whose sole job seems to be the harassment of clientele at
every step from the curb to the gate. L.A.’s Mayor Hahn’s illconceived plan to “upgrade” the actual airport (as in, from a D
to an F!) is the only worse thing imaginable for LAX.
Rating: NIX.
*
One Tree Hill. One wee nil.
*
Unsinkable Texas Soccer Mom: Reba
I have to admit I’ve had a crush on Reba McEntire ever
since she exploded onto the country music scene with great
songs, style, and a litany of awards beginning in the mid-1980s.
She was the genuine article, never more so than when confronted with the tragic loss of her band in a plane crash. Out of that
intense grief sprang a resilience of spirit that amazes to this
day. The series theme song wails her steadfast proclamation
that she is, indeed, “a survivor.” She knocked ’em dead on
Broadway in Annie Get Your Gun and took Hollywood by storm
with the just-right combination of emotions and believable (if
slightly shallow) stable of characters that populate her hit
Friday night TV series. Reba is about a divorced mother of
three, redefining her shattered world with equal parts grace
and humor. Among the well-cast cast is supporting actor Steve
Howey in the role of Van—the ebullient doofus of a live-in sonin-law, who, like any good clown, finds a way to make you think
amid the laughter. The scripts do the same, as a matter of policy, with lines like, “We may be from a broken home, but at least
it’s still intact.” First you laugh, then you get it.
Rating: Reba rocks.
*
Homer Simpson’s fourth-wall-smashing MasterCard commercial? Priceless! Almost makes me want to go deeper in debt.
*
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THIS
AMERICAN LIFE
The Sorrowful and the Driven: Everwood
Usually, shows about doctors focus on their patients’ problems. In Everwood’s case, it’s about the doctors’ and their families’ problems, and rarely medical ones at that. Patients do play
minor roles, but their presence is merely a mechanism for the
delivery of not-so-subtle public service messages about birth
control, the threat of AIDS, and the dangers of obesity. It’s
patently artificial, but in a land where medical services and the
average citizen’s understanding of them are less and less a
given, the show provides a necessary source of basic information to a wider audience. Kudos on that score. Of course, with
death being both the single act from which Everwood’s storylines spring, as well as the looming consequence of every serious condition it treats, there is a genuine melancholy that hovers like a fog in the rarified air of this mountain town.
Everwood is a town of emotional “icebergs” whose tips jut
above the horizon just often enough to remind us of their portent. It is populated with people who have real problems, make
bad choices, and pay dear consequences. In this reflecting pool,
we can—if we choose—see our own character flaws and, perhaps, understand what hard work it takes to overcome them.
Rich dramatic textures, intelligent scripts, and rotating breakout bands featured on the soundtrack all add up to a durable
and, ultimately, hopeful saga, elucidating the imperfect but not
really ordinary people who are constantly challenged by the
choices free will affords.
Rating: “Rocky” mountain highs.
*
What I Like About You. Can’t think of anything. OK, just
one: the girl-on-girl pudding fight, about which star Amanda
Bynes’ new British rocker-boyfriend exclaims, “God Bless
America!”
*
Joey. Phooey.
*
So how is it that the advent of “color” television some 40
years ago was able to take a relatively pristine medium (never
mind the early game show scandals!) and, with a few notable
exceptions, turn it to a vast, gray wasteland?
At a minimum there are two continuums to scan. One is
the “concentration-of-creative-talent” factor. When there were
three networks that controlled the national airwaves, each
major market had at most seven stations—the affiliates and
four independents—and minor markets had fewer. All of the
talent was concentrated in very small producing pools. The only
training was on the job. The top brass understood the art form.
At present, the population has grown considerably and so has
the talent pool, but not necessarily commensurately, and certainly not in an orderly fashion. Now there are hundreds of
schools that teach media arts in one form or another. The
explosion of cable over the last twenty years brought with it a
thrust toward low-budget programming, as well as a thirst for
26 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
personnel. Like Gold Rush boomtowns, not everyone strikes it
rich. Not everyone can, for neither opportunity nor training can
guarantee a successful or even passable product. It might get
you a Pontiac and a large tax bill, but that’s another story. And
forget great art. For that, you need talent, craft, and inspiration,
and even then, “The Muse must find you worthy,” as they say.
The other continuum is the compulsive-gambler-risk factor. You’ve seen him at the racetrack or the craps table ... agitated, sweating, fearful, all his chips on the old lucky number. This
is his last chance. In television, this is the basis of what I call the
formula-fortune dichotomy. The reasoning goes, if I hire the
same people, do the same thing, and throw enough money at
what worked in the past, I’ll have a hit. (If you’re Dick Wolf,
with his Law and Order dynasty, maybe. Yet not all aspects of
his formulae are formulaic, and therein lies his success!)
These types underestimate the true value of fresh inspiration; they’ve never encountered The Muse, it would seem; and
they don’t appear to understand how so-called reliable elements can all too easily yield unreliable results. Great chefs will
tell you of their greatest failures, all the right ingredients
notwithstanding. Artists are, by definition, the only ones who
create something from nothing; in other words, who have the
requisite talent, skills, and inspiration, in proper balance, to
conjure The Muse and deliver something the world has never
seen before. They are the only ones who should be trusted to do
so. Network executives aren’t really able to replay a previously
successful formula any more than gamblers are able to predict,
with certainty, the outcome of a game of chance. Still, no great
work of art ever arose without taking that chance. Nevertheless,
with so much at stake, the network execs can’t take them.
Neither can they afford to wait for chemistry to develop. There
are, it seems, only instant hits and instant failures. In acts of
ultimate cowardice, they eschew the courage of what should be
their convictions, if they had any.
So now, in the main, we have a surfeit of cable channels,
with their large pool of trained workers and narrower division
of subject matter, all in direct competition with the old network
model. We have premium services such as HBO and Showtime
that, for the simple reason of being commercial-free, can and
do take chances. We have other forms of at-home entertainment—computers and game boxes with joysticks, not to mention state-of-the-art home theater systems and surround-sound
super-audio. The networks are losing audience and desperately
trying to reclaim their relevance. Advertisers are understandably looking to cut their investments. The system is rotting
from the inside out.
What's missing? In a word: vision. In another: perspective.
In a last: corporate cojones. What's taken their place? Micromanaging and fretting over minutiae: art-free business management has supplanted creative leadership and risk-taking.
Research and Development, and the endless stream of focus
groups who provide their fodder, are focused too tightly and
narrowly: “Here's the product. Do you like it? What would
make you like it more? Oh, please, please, like it!” It's not the
product that needs to be tweaked. The entire system is out of
kilter. What we need is someone to take a crucial step back from
that distant other world. Someone to reinstill trust in the audience, trust that real art and commercial airwaves can and do
mix, for everyone's enlightenment, entertainment, and mutual
benefit. Someone with clear vision, vast perspective, and big
brass you-know-whats.
inside entertainment
VICARIOUS
VICARIOUS
VICARIOUS
VICARIOUS
VICARIOUS
~by Donald Dewey
Jamaica, NY
28 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
inside entertainment
i
used to wonder about people who faithfully watched
Cheers on NBC every week. Not because the show
wasn’t a cut above the normal network sitcom fare,
but because the program engaged viewers who,
instead of indulging fantasies and mythologizing on real saloon
stools once a week, sat on their doldrums on their couches
watching others do just that. While I could understand the
appeal to AA members and those pathetic souls without money
for even one beer, Such a circular lifestyle does not a giant step
toward socialization make. What would be next, a weekly
movie about people watching weekly movies?
A few years before Sam Malone opened the Cheers bar for
business, the Canadian sketch comedy program Second City
Television (often affectionately shortened to SCTV) insinuated
that television was a singular reality for TV viewers. Rare has
been the comedy skit since, whether on Saturday Night Live or
elsewhere, that didn’t lampoon targets who are not only in the
public eye, , but who got there vis-à-vis television. Grotesque
family stereotype spring up from the context of the sitcom families we encounter; barbs are aimed at Italian tenors or
Colombian coffee growers during mock television newscasts;
the so-familiar caricatures of talk shows and infomercials seek
to separate us from our money in the name of trimmer waistlines, feel-good best-sellers, and Florida real estate. Wit, it
seems, has become increasingly consigned to operate at halfstrength, with the assumption that its only window on “real”
society is television.
Asked once what he thought of the television version of his
film M*A*S*H, director Robert Altman once complained that
what he had approached (in the motion picture) as flamboyant
human defenses against the horrors of an undeclared war, had
become on the small screen an implicit weekly acceptance of
death in Korea and the “U.N. police action.” According to
Altman, the ironic politics of the television cast were rendered
moot by the nation’s comfort level as it gathered weekly for an
appointment with silly tales of triage in the tents. At the time I
found Archie Bunker more endearing.
They didn’t have that kind of problem in Greece 2400
years ago. There were inside jokes back then too, like when
Aristophanes got on his bandwagon about Euripides (The
Frogs) or Socrates (The Clouds); writing has always involved
institutional as well as personal narcissism. But when I camped
out at the amphitheater to see the latest Euripides production,
I knew he was going to give me my best glimpse of life among
the divinities and the royals, that through him I was going to
realize my fleeting aspirations to be a god, a king, or, if all else
failed, a boob of a palace guard captain who was just following
orders when slaughtering the wrong children at the wrong time.
A final cry of agony, a last check to make sure the deus ex
machina didn’t have another entrance in mind, and I was
myself again, shuffling on down the steps to go home. I didn’t
want to be those people—just get away from myself for awhile
and to get a taste of how they lived (and died in torment!), given
their “clear” socio-political superiority.
Two-thousand years later, in England, if I wasn’t entitled to
a daily meal at the king’s or prince’s or thane’s table, at I could at
least get a whiff of their belches at the Globe Theatre. I could
plot with schemers, identify with pretenders, applaud with
carousers. Their battles were my battles not because they
ordered me into them, but because, for a couple of hours in the
cheap seats, they didn’t have to order me into them; I went willingly, as I never would have if the wars I was watching were real.
Their anguish was my pleasure. Not to be was to be. And clearly all the world was not a stage, for they were up there while I was
back here. And yet, I was the vehicle by which they achieved
their nobility, and happy for it. I was a commoner, the rabble,
because it weas the only “part” left—the actors had to be allowed
to play their roles by my becoming the audience they needed.
Their portrayals saved me the trouble of constructing fantasies.
I first noticed a substantial change in what was expected of
me as an audience-member with the marketing of so-called
“movie” stars, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century.
Unlike the stars of theater, vaudeville, and opera, celluloid
showstoppers meshed with realistic decors, and so failed to
remind me that they were out of their daily contexts. I was
asked—and agreed—to accept them and their surroundings as a
real life in which merely to act. When the characters on film
rolled open the door of a train they were about to rob, I felt my
arm muscles twinge. When the robbers jumped into a waiting
automobile and flipped the ignition, I sensed the apprehension
that the engine might not turn over. When they fell into a love
seat in a passionate kiss, I’ll confess that I gave way to passing
thoughts of what should have been happening at that moment
in my own chair.
As realistic as movies are, they fates are sealed, my expected commitment to them-a particular, immutable mood-is
spelled out from beginning to end before they have even yet
begun. They might influence me, but I cannot influence them.
What can make one feel more negligible? Neither a sandbag or
a coughing attack or a demented audience member can change
the outcome of what I had paid to see, and so I become more
obligated to the movie star than I ever could be to a stage star,
for without submission to the medium, I have no access to the
story. Films assume my passivity; only the pictures move.
CC 29
M
“Once we choose hope,
everything is possible.”
—Christopher Reeve
The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (CRPF) is committed to funding research that
develops treatments and cures for paralysis caused by spinal cord injury and other central nervous
system disorders.The Foundation also vigorously works to improve the quality of life for people
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w w w. C h r i s t o p h e r R e e v e . o r g
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LIFE
of the
PARTY
Interview with DJ Tom E. Boy of SIRIUS Satellite Radio,
Channel 62, the Remix Channel.
l
et’s get started ... what got you wrapped up in
the DJ/music scene?
I started when I was thirteen. My older brother had DJ equipment, and luckily wasn’t any good. When he would go out I
would sneak into his room and play with whatever records I
could get my hands on. One day he just passed it all to me,
when he realized how bad he was. At fifteen I started to play
small spots at various clubs throughout New York, and from
there it just snowballed.
Since you have been in the game for a while, what are
some changes that you have seen in the nightlife arena
and music in general?
It’s weird how some of the most legendary nightclubs just vanish, turn into college dorms or goon hiatus for several years.
Palladium for example, a Mecca for all New York City clubgoers, now houses NYU students (to think Mary-Kate and
Ashley could be sleeping right above where I used to DJ ... crazy
stuff). These one-time NYC nightlife landmarks are gone.
Limelight however has been completely reinvented and is better than ever. Now it’s called AVALON, and it still has the same
gothic, church-like charm, except it has all the amenities of
2004. It’s a truly great space. It’s not just the places that have
changed either; it’s the music as well. I have seen complete
360s. Ten years ago, dance, tribal, techno ... that was it. Hiphop was maybe in a back room of the club, if at all. Now it is
predominantly hip-hop, a little bit of vocals, and reggae is
everywhere. My personal preference is a multi-room venue
with a good mix, really brings a good crowd too. Diversity is
one of the keys to trendy venue.
Speaking of trendy venues, here in New York, there
are so many hot, trendy places. What do you think
makes them so trendy? Is there a common factor or is
each just so unique?
Good music, the atmosphere, and staff make or a break a
place’s reputation. There are some phenomenal places, but
their bouncers are animals so the place is terrible, making people wait an hour outside to look crowded, only to step into an
empty club. That’s a place I would never go back to. Hand picking only the “beautiful people”? This is not Studio 54 ... sorry to
break it to you. People need to relax. Another thing is high
prices for watered down drinks. I’m not looking for a bargain,
by any means, but when I pay fifteen dollars for an ounce of
cranberry juice and five ounces of ice, with a splash of no-frills
vodka, that’s not a good sign. Nothing replaces a great staff,
outgoing, accommodating, and personable. Throw in a great
DJ and some nice designs, and you set the mood for a great spot
with a line because the place is packed, not pretentious!
Where is the line drawn between pretentious and
trendy?
I’d have to say attitude makes all the difference. If you think
you are the best, you better be able to back it up. I love the
exclusive places that go night after night with tons of people
outside, six people inside and then close. When someone’s
pride gets in the way, and they turn down a group of guys
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(rather than admit paying customers), they deserve to close. It’s
sad when some bouncer ruins a club’s reputation. Some people
are just pathetic I guess.
Does sex sell?
Absolutely. For instance, most nightspots have female bartenders because guys usually hang out around the bar and buy
the girls drinks. The hotter the bartender, the more the guy
pays, you can say it’s sex selling ... I say it’s supply and demand!
Speaking of trends, let’s get SIRIUS. Satellite radio:
where is it going and where has it been?
AVALON Nightclub, the former Limelight, is located
on 6th Avenue and West 20th Street in New York.
The Mecca of all nightspots, Avalon boasts a
different experience in each of its many rooms. The
main floor pounds heart thumping music into the
early morning, while the spider lounge is the most
exclusive corner of this venue with its members only
status. Being such a legendary location, it can
almost be a tourist spot, but don’t let its fame keep
you away. When you want to go to a nightclub, you
want to go to AVALON. For more information on
AVALON, contact Forrest Mallard at (646) 345-2010.
Satellite radio is doing really well. It’s now becoming standard
in cars. We even have Howard Stern coming on board in 2006.
There are so many options, and people are used to instant gratification. This is the age of online shopping. You can buy a car
and have it delivered to your door ... why should you not be able
to listen to top-quality, commercial-free music? I can drive
from New York to LA and listen to the same station, uninterrupted. You can’t beat that.
How did you get into SIRIUS? Did your brother pave
the way again?
Nah, my brother gave up music twenty years ago, and now he is
in films. Anyway, two close friends of mine and mentors, Harry
Towers and Glenn Friscia, had been at SIRIUS for some time.
They asked me for a demo, and the rest is history. I got a call
one day from Geronimo saying, “Welcome aboard!” I’ve been
doing my mix show for channel 62 Remix ever since. The show
is really taking off, doing great in a lot of markets.
Nice segue ... that leads right to my next question. How
is the show doing? What’s your big market?
I have been lucky. My show has attracted a diverse crowd. It’s
made of deep house, tribal, trance, classic house, disco, etc. I
play whatever sounds good. I have a reputation for being a
House DJ, but I play whatever gets the crowd going. That’s what
makes a versatile DJ. I play for the crowd, not myself.
What are your favorite types of tracks to play?
Well, since a little self promotion never hurts, I throw in a lot of
my own remixes. I like to get creative, and the remixes go over
well. I really take pride in my work, I stand behind my product,
and I think it really shows.
Viscaya lounge is located at 191 7th Avenue
between 21st and 22nd streets in New York City.
Viscaya features a sexy and stylish atmosphere in all
three rooms. This is hands-down the most attractive
nightspot in NYC. If you go to Viscaya, be sure to try
The Blue Sky and The Viscaya at the twenty-foot
long main bar! When ambience and style are what
you seek, look no further ... Viscaya is the place to
be and be seen! For more information on Viscaya,
contact Darlene Pergola at (212) 675-5980.
Last question: how can somebody break into the DJ
world?
It’s not easy. Lots of hours, countless hours. And you have to
give up going out on weekends, sort of. You are at the party, and
you have to love music to be a DJ, nobody in this business
should just show up for work. If you are having a bad time, so is
everyone else. There is a place you can go to get a headstart on
everybody else; check out the NY DJ School. I teach some classes there, and it’s a great introduction to the DJ world. The URL
is www.NYDJSchool.com!
larger than life
The Oh-So-Stressful New York Life of
BOXIN’
BILLY CLINTON
~by Lakshmi Kumar
New York, NY
“y
ou’re an embarrassment to our country!”
Slowly turning around, Bill Clinton smoothly
retorted, “I hope we have more judgmental people like you in America, people who prefer fiction to fact.” Looking around at the small crowd
gathering with mouths open and eyes wide, I saw the same
thought running through all our heads: Damn.
Then before anyone can applaud the former president’s
sarcasm, the debate begins. And here I was, just happy to have
shaken William Jefferson Clinton’s hand, when suddenly I
became a frontline witness to a forty-five-minute debate
between an everyday Republican and the most famous
Democrat of the last twenty years. The best part: no lights,
camera, action. Just me, the president, an angry conservative,
some Secret Service men, and a few dozen speechless stragglers
in New York’s Central Park.
The stranger, pushing a stroller with a blond toddler
inside, repeats, “You were an embarrassment to the office of
Commander-in-Chief.”
Clinton, finishing off yet another of the many autographs
he signed that evening, shakes his head, and with that characteristic you-don’t-know-what-you’ve-gotten-yourself-into-bychallenging-me smirk says, “Oh really? I think I did a helluva
job, but I guess that’s just me.” Pause. “And a few million
American people.” Laughter erupts along with a few random
34 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
cheers. “Why is it you don’t like me? Wasn’t the country better
off after I left than before I arrived? The facts speak for themselves.” A nod of approval flutters through the growing crowd.
“I don’t like you because you’re a liar.” The man, let’s call him
the Clinton-castrator (alliteration to match the Bush-bashing
that’s taken off with such force), has triggered something in the
former president. Clinton’s suddenly angry.
“Liar?” With a passionate pointing of his finger, it’s now
Clinton who’s in attack mode. He starts with, “I never lied,” and
ends with, “If you’re so worried about lying, how come you
don’t hate Ken Starr, his cronies, and all the Republicans who
lied about Whitewater, Vincent Foster, and everything else?”
Leaning in with that familiar narrowing of his eyes, like he’s
finally honed in on his target, Clinton asks, “And what about
your current president? I’ll admit I misled the people about my
personal life. And I have even apologized for it, but I never misled the people about policy and I certainly never misled the people about going to war.”
“You’re immoral.”
All heads turn, eager for Clinton’s comeback. “Then your
definition of morality is very different from mine.” After some
tussling on economics, foreign policy, tax cuts, education, and
terrorism—the same arguments we’ve heard before—Clinton
surprisingly brings up Bob Dole’s name. “Right after I got elected for my second term, I smoked a cigar with Bob Dole and
larger than life
asked him, ‘Bob, you’ve been in politics much longer than I
have and longer than most other people in politics right now.
Do you think politics has become more dishonest, the corrupt
mess the newspapers and people say it is?’”
Eyebrows raised, eyes to everyone, Clinton gave us Dole’s
answer: “‘Are you kidding? It’s become more honest, fairer.
People can’t hide things as easily anymore.’” Not the anecdote
expected from a formerly impeached president who somehow
still managed to leave office with an approval rating higher than
Reagan’s.
“You see, it’s the
nostalgia,”
Clinton
goes on, “it’s the nostalgia we have for the
past, as if our politicians were perfect
then. But he’s right.
People forget history.”
Under his breath, he
mentions FDR and his
lack of support for an
anti-lynching act. At
this point most people
are shuffling and whispering, maybe because
they’re shocked by the
reference to Bob Dole,
or maybe because they
don’t want to pay
attention to something
that might involve a
shift of what they’ve
always thought, something that might be relevant or, even worse,
true. Roosevelt not
the perfect president? What? Clinton
respects Bob Dole?
That’s not a political
ploy?
A moment later,
maybe in reaction to
the crowd’s unapologetic disinterest in a
piece of What Clinton
Really Thinks, Political
Bill returns on-message and slick as ice,
proving that, contrary
to popular belief, politicians do tend to give their followers what
they want. The Bill Clinton who knows the uncomfortable intricacies of history, the guy who’s actually open to the opinions of
his governmental colleagues—a group that, to the Democrats’
dismay, includes some old, conservative Republicans—
retreated. I guess it holds true that people tend to have their
best moments when nobody’s paying attention.
After listening to all the insults and judgments made by the
Clinton-castrator, Bill Clinton coolly ended their debate by saying, “Well, I hope your children turn out to be as perfect as you
are, sir.” The crowd applauded and he began taking more ques-
tions. I’ve mentioned that people tend to have their best
moments when nobody’s paying attention, right? Well, I must
have been having the best moment of my life: besides being
ignored by the people around me (including my friend, who
yelled into the phone, “Listen to who’s talking right in front of
me!” and then held up his phone so his mother could hear), I
was also being ignored the forty-second president of the United
States.
But then, the moment came! I got to ask him a question.
Small shouts burst
from my mouth while
he ignored me. But
finally, probably having noticed my desperation, he pointed
to me. This is it, I
can’t screw this up.
Deep breath and,
“What do you think
about the computerized voting booths
sweeping the country,
especially after all the
controversy
surrounding Florida’s
votes?”
After the
bipartisan brouhaha
over the 2000 election scandal and its
lost or stolen votes
(depending on one’s
point of view and
political affiliation),
Bill Clinton gave me a
completely unexpected answer.
He began: “Well,
people shouldn’t fear
technology.” (Right
then I wanted to
interrupt him and
make it clear that it
wasn’t the technology
I feared but rather the
people directing that
technology.
But I
decided not to interrupt. He was a president of the United
States after all.)
Clinton continued on, explaining that in a county of multiple
tongues, like America, a system that allows voters to choose
their language would greatly improve the electoral system. He
pointed out that Americans tend to forget that a computerized
voting system was used in Northern California in the last presidential election and that it actually increased voter turnout.
People could choose the language they wanted to use to vote,
which particularly helped increase the state’s Hispanic turnout.
And in India’s recent election, when 550 million people voted
using computerized voting booths, the winner was an utter surprise. Instead of the popular VJP party, the Congress Party
CC 35
M
larger than life
won, but nobody questioned the results. With a paper printout
of their vote given to each person at the moment they cast their
votes and another paper printout kept for records at all the voting centers, Indians had full faith that their votes were counted.
“What we need here in the U.S.,” Clinton says, “is a uniform
voting act that makes sure there is a paper trail that allows
Americans to be sure that their vote was counted.”
How did I feel about his answer? I missed having a president who surprises me, not with bad grammar, but with a
genuine intelligence.
As the informal question-and-answer session wound
down with a Secret Service agent cordoning Clinton off—
“Folks, we’re sorry but the president has to go”—he walked
away still signing autographs, shaking hands, and graciously
taking cards handed to him. The slowdown of events didn’t
match how we felt: warm, excited, out of breath; ready to campaign, legislate, change the world.
When the thrill wore off, the two of us were back to being
twenty-somethings, calling all our friends to tell them about
the crazy thing that just happened to us. Not legislating, not
necessarily changing the world, but wondering how Bill
Clinton got us energized and optimistic about American politics again.
It wasn’t just the adrenaline of coming face-to-face with
fame, but of hearing the truth when you’re used to fiction. It
was the unexpected face-to-face with the untelevised honesty
of politics and what politics essentially is: social interaction on
36 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
a grand scale.
There’s no denying that Clinton’s comments were most
exciting when he seemed to forget his audience (when he forgot
people were paying attention): his rare bouts of edgy sarcasm,
his frustration with an opponent who wasn’t listening, and his
unashamed admittance of certain conservative ideas that liberal Democrats would not find kosher.
Like watching Hillary pull up in her own black SUV, looking pretty pissed after having to wait for her attention-loving
husband for over an hour, these were the moments that aren’t
broadcast, that don’t have commentators, that are left to personal phone calls and next-day storytelling sessions. These are
the moments that allow a president to become human. And a
human president, as Bill Clinton and all his dirty laundry
showed us, is not a bad, or even unpopular, thing. It can actually make people more excited about politics and remind us all
what it’s essentially about: the need for government, the need
for leaders, for people guiding people to figure out the best way
to share resources. It’s also about the tragic lessons we learn in
an era governed by overarching media: that how you say it is as
important as what you say; that politics is as much performance as it is policy; that the private self is always part of the
public man. Bill Clinton may not break a sweat in a three-piece
suit defending himself in hot and humid Central Park, but even
he needs to go for a stroll in the park once in awhile. That politics can’t be ignored. It will eventually come and stand right in
front of you.
Did you know that 2 out of 3 people with diabetes
die from heart disease or stroke?
Ask about the link between diabetes and heart disease and learn how
the ABCs of diabetes can help you lower your risk:
A: Lower your A1C, a test that measures average
blood sugar over the past 3 months, to less than 7
B: Keep your Blood pressure below 130/80
C: Get your “bad” Cholesterol (LDL) below 100
Call 1-800-DIABETES (1-800-342-2383) or visit www.diabetes.org/MakeTheLink
An educational partnership of the
the global citizenry
I Brake for Environmentalists
(and you should, too)
~by Monette Bebow-Reinhard
Abrams, WI
e
nvironmentalists have a hard life. They’re hated for
telling us that we don’t have the right to drive what
we want. They call Hummers evil. They complain
because people drive all-terrain SUVs on city pavement instead of that for which they were initially
designed—those occasions when we’re caught in a flash flood
on a dirt road or behind a ten-foot wall of snow in below-thirtydegree weather.
Maybe it’s time we give them a brake—I mean, break.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but maybe the only people who really
need SUVs are those who live in such rural areas that the snowplow forgets about them, or who work or live where the roads
are still dirt, or where roads don’t exist at all. The rest of us
should live responsibly in the city where we work, play, and go
out to eat. But the movement today is to live farther and farther
from the city, and many people buy SUVs thinking that they’re
going to get stranded. They view driving vehicles like insurance—buy the big wheels “just in case.” I know a fellow who
bought his AFTER the gas went up to two dollars a gallon—
because he feels “he deserves it.”
And maybe he does. But that “just in case” that people
worry about? The odds of one of those major disasters happening to any SUV driver are less—that’s right, less—than the odds
of dying from cancer due to polluted water, air, and soil. Check
the obituaries if you don’t believe me. Wait—they don’t usually
tell us what people die of, do they? They should. “Inhaling SUV
fumes” would probably be right up there.
But we all know cancer is a common reality in today’s
world, more than getting stuck in a muddy dirt road with a dead
cell phone. On the news awhile back I saw an SUV driver
stranded in a flood—he couldn’t get out! Now here’s a common
fact—only people who know how to swim take chances in the
water and drown. Only people with SUVs drive into a major
blizzard and freeze to death.
What environmentalists are trying to do—and maybe this
is what makes them unpopular—is to help preserve air, water,
soil, and natural resources for all of us. The environmentalist—
isn’t there a shorter label we can give them?—are like “communists” (not the shorter label I was searching for) because they
are interested in the good of ALL people and not in individual
desires. Individual desires—what you want, what I want—are
not their concern. That’s what makes them unpopular. The
Cold War is over and the big “C” capitalists have won! Where
do these “Es” come from? What communist assembly line is
still in operation?
The reason they’re so unpopular is that the E forgets that
we are an Individualistic—with a capital I—society. We don’t
care about the common good of all. One of the Republican cries
is that the Democrats are trying to get rid of the “free market
society” on which capitalism is based because they talk about
health care for all. Only the rich deserve good health, I guess.
Let’s go back to the SUV to demonstrate the difference
between the E and the I, and how communist consumerism
works. An E will drive a hybrid, a car that’s now available and
the global citizenry
can get 50-60 m.p.g. (I know a 2003 Honda Civic hybrid that is
hovering at 58 m.p.g. ) An I doesn’t care about gas mileage and
buys whatever’s cool and reflects status. If that’s a Hummer
that doesn’t get even 10 m.p.g., so what?
Arnold
Schwarzenegger is cool, and he owned five of them, at least
before gas went up over two dollars a gallon.
Now you’ve got an E and an I, each driving 500 miles in a
weekend. E uses 10 gallons of gas and doesn’t even need to fill
up once in those 500 miles. I uses 50 gallons of gas and,
depending on the size of his tank, fills up at least once.
Now if you have a limited gas supply in the world—let’s
imagine that right now all that’s left is 500,000 gallons—the ‘I’
will use up that supply in 10,000 of those 500-mile trips; the E,
however, will be able to go 500 miles for a total of 50,000 times.
Here comes the real kicker. The I is using the E’s oil supply. That’s right. No matter how well E conserves, he won’t
benefit by getting to drive all those miles because I is sucking it
up. So communist capitalism means that we recognize that
there are resources that some conserve while others waste. It’s
kind of like tossing garbage out the window—we all get the
view, but some of us figure there’s always more where that
comes from.
The logic of sharing equally applies to air, water, soil, and
other natural resources. The Es will try to conserve resources
for all of us, but when it’s gone, it’s gone for all of us. Little good
it does us to have half a river of clean water. Or clean air in half
the city. While it is true that Es help reduce the wasted oil supplies caused by the way the Is drive, they can only help for so
long. And when the oil supply is gone, it’s gone for everybody.
Can Es still have a better view of the Smoky Mountains now
that pollution has snaked its way through the hills?
One way we could equalize the playing field at the gas
pump is by having two gas prices—one for those who get over
30 m.p.g. and one for people who get under 30 m.p.g. That way
people who guzzle more would pay more. Imagine a credit card
that’s encoded with the kind of vehicle you drive, and using it
was the only way you could get gas.
People should pay more for status as opposed to those
making efforts to save communal resources for everyone’s use.
That’s just common sense. It’s the same principle as the rich
paying more than the poor. Wait—that’s not working too well
right now either, is it? If Bill O’Reilly had his way, the rich
could check a box on their form that would make their tax payments more equal with the rest of us—but the problem with
that is, where would their additional tax income go? To gain
more control of the Middle East so that we can have more oil
reserves so that the Is can keep guzzling, probably.
Ponder this: The U.S. is the last developed country on
Earth paying high gas prices. Japan pays $4.25 per gallon,
India pays $3.18 per gallon, and London pays $5.23 per gallon.
You might want to live in Venezuela where gas is going for $.14
a gallon. You might also want to dig for oil in some of the U.S.
national park areas, but that is only a solution after we learn to
conserve, not while we’re guzzling.
Now that gas prices are stabilized at an all-time U.S. high,
we hear numerous complaints about this hit on our pocketbook. But the only way to encourage conservation of this dwindling resource is to keep those prices high. We’ll adjust, as
Americans. We’ll have to. Britain adjusted, and we’re smarter
than they are. We whipped them in the Revolutionary War,
after all.
Here’s another disturbing fact: problems in the Middle
East began after the fall of the Ottoman Turk empire during
World War I. This was shortly after the automobile began its
slow economic grip on the American (and world) lifestyle.
Since then, the Middle East has been in a near constant state of
turmoil, and why? If we could explain it in one word, yes, it
would be oil. Greece had been at war with the Ottomans since
the 1800s, but the Ottomans weren’t conquered until WWI.
Maybe if it were allowed to work out its own problems without
inference for oil, the country could be stabilized by now.
Those folks in the Middle East have every right to control
their resources, but no one wants to let them. Peace can come
if resources are shared. We love our vehicles, but we can love
them even more when we reduce the number of stops needed at
the service station, when less of our paycheck goes to fuel our
obsession. With a new attitude in the gas economy category we
technology-loving Americans could even encourage the development of hybrid converters for our treasured SUVs, those cars
we love and have to have and will probably have to give up, at
least if environmentalists get their way.
But would cleaner air and water really be so bad?
So the next time you see an environmentalist, give him a
handshake or a pat on the back. They have a hard life, trying to
save the Earth for all of us. Someday, maybe a year a two away,
with the proper encouragement, the Es will find a way to make
clean living a status symbol, to feed the Is in all of us.
hmm ... (strange but true)
From Online
to Onboard
Sailors take to the Internet
to Find a First Mate
~by Marguerete Hemphill
New York, NY
g
ordon Gregg, 42, a self-proclaimed dreamer, a hopeless romantic, wants a medium-weight woman, not
blubbery, with curves. Ideally she should be supportive, positive, adventurous, humorous, brave, quiet,
patient. One more important thing she needs: A passport from a country that enables fairly free travel.
Steve Roberts, 52, a tall, longhaired, athletic man seeks an
adventurous geek, and doesn’t see himself with someone who
likes to shop. And she can’t be significantly younger because he’s
been with younger women, and they tend to use him as a stepping-stone. In the same boat is Keith MacKenzie, 41. He asks:
“Single female sailing fanatic: where are you?” He wants a
woman to join him in a tropical paradise, where they would
snorkel, walk pristine beaches and sail through amazing islands.
Yet one major factor prevents Gregg, Roberts and MacKenzie
from finding their ideals. They’re sailors.
Single women are few and far between in the sailing community, making it hard for single-handers to find a cruising companion. So they’ve taken to the Internet to fulfill their dreams.
They post ads, luring potential mates to read what they have to
offer, hoping some woman will find sailing and them attractive.
These single sailors want it all: their boat and a woman on it.
According to a ComScore Media Metrix report, nearly 27
million people visit online singles sites every month. Online dating provides a much larger pool for singles to choose from. And,
it takes the humiliation and awkwardness out of face-to-face
rejections.
Sailing sites add an extra filter: the women looking at them
40 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
know an interest in sailing is a prerequisite. Most sailing sites
have bulletin boards where captains advertise for crewmembers
to help on offshore voyages. While these websites are not datingoriented or intended as a forum for the sailing singles scene, this
is where captains looking for companions put their postings,
hoping the right woman will reply.
Steve W., 68, can’t meet women on land. “I don’t hang out
in bars,” he says. “When I get on shore, I’m shy. No lines. The
Internet’s probably the easiest place and you keep them at email’s distance until you have a good feeling about them.” His ad
on 7knots.com reads: “I am still looking for an adventuresome
lady to join me on a cruise of a lifetime. She should be fit, trim,
energetic and eager to see the world from the deck of a well
equipped sailboat.” A few women have responded, but so far, no
one’s fit the bill.
Most captains have few, if any, responses to their ads. If
they should be so lucky as to get a reply, then the process generally goes as follows: e-mail back and forth for a few weeks; meet
in person (preferably at the boat); go for sails near the shore to
get a sense of each other. Chris Duvall, 53, has an ad on
7knots.com. He says if he met a suitable woman online then he
would fly her to the boat and take her on a cruise close to land.
“She would think it was primarily to assess her sailing skills,”
Duvall says. “I would be evaluating her character. Seamanship
can be taught-character flaws cannot be corrected.”
While most of the men don’t care if a woman knows port
from starboard, a woman must meet their criteria, however
strict or loose they may be. Duvall, who has not had success
hmm ... (strange but true)
since he posted the ad a year and a half ago, says he couldn’t find
someone acceptable. “They were dreamers who somehow
expected to be aboard a private cruise ship, sailing blithely from
one Tiki bar to the next,” he says. “Don’t misunderstand-I like
Tiki bars, there just isn’t one at every anchorage.” He also had a
problem with “escapists having one last rush at life” and women
who didn’t understand the concept of a cruising adventure-it’s
hard work maintaining and sailing a boat around the world.
But a few have found the ideal woman to sail the world with
them and fill a void. Bill Robinson, 57, enjoyed sailing by himself
after his divorce, but it got old. “As soon as I arrived somewhere,
I missed not having someone around,” he says. “It was also a bit
awkward socially being a single man in a predominantly paired
society.” Instead of waiting for fate to deliver an ideal woman to
his dock, he took matters into his own fingertips and wrote four
simple, straightforward words: “Female Cruising Companion
Wanted.”
Robinson says he received a number of responses from all
over the world from women ages 24 to 62. He replied to all these
women with further details of himself, his yacht and his plans.
Only twenty-five percent of the original group responded, but he
found a winner in the bunch. Marlyse Bdmer, a fit fifty-oneyear-old divorcé from Switzerland, answered Robinson’s ad on
7knots.com because she had a “good feeling” about him when
she read the posting. She knew nothing about sailing but
thought the adventure sounded appealing. The two e-mailed for
three months and Bdmer was lured by his promise that “life with
him will never be boring, but adventurous and thrilling,” she
says. She then did her homework: researched his yacht, the
marina it was in, and Thailand, where Robinson was sailing.
Bdmer gave up her apartment and job in Switzerland and flew to
meet Robinson in Thailand.
Her first impressions matched her expectations. “It was as
if I met an old friend again,” she says. “I share with him some of
the most important things in life, like a positive approach to life,
the same philosophy, adventurous spirit, love of nature, and we
are compatible in things like food, music, and sex.” The two plan
to sail to the Maldives, Chagos, Madagascar and across the
Atlantic to Brazil “and so on,” Bdmer says.
Why does Robinson think he was successful with his online
posting when so many others aren’t? “It may be just blind luck,”
he says, “but I believe that the amount of effort put in by Marlyse
is the major factor.”
Keith MacKenzie also says it’s the women who are responsible for his luck with online dating. But he’s still single-handing.
He claims that he was unsuccessful in finding a cruising com-
IVY LEAGUE OVERACHIEVERS
by Elizabeth Milkes Jerome
CC 41
M
hmm ... (strange but true)
panion because there are not enough risk takers in the world.
“Most people just want to sit on the couch and watch life go by
instead of getting into it,” he explains. (His ad reads: “If you are
single, adventurous, fit, fun, happy, like to sail at double digits,
have a passion for sailing and living aboard full time, please email Keith, or if you have a friend that you might know that
would love to “sail away” and live the dream full time, please
pass this on to them. Thank you for your time.”)
So where are the seaworthy women? Spooked by what happened to Ginger and Mary Ann? Probably not. Jon Bickel, a
sailor out of Maryland, says the most widely accepted theory is
that women like to nest and men tend to roam. Regardless of the
reason, the bottom line is there aren’t many females wandering
the docks or responding to online ads.
Hayden Orme, a beautiful twenty-one-year-old singleton,
has sailed for more than a decade. She would be a great catch for
a single sailor, but she wouldn’t go for it. “I’m sorry, but that’s
not the way I’m going to meet someone,” she says. She looks for
crew positions online and has a posting, which garners many
unwanted responses from sailing singles. The photos of single
men that flood her inbox turn her off of the sailing singles scene.
Gina McMurray, 36, also receives an abundance of mail from
single sailors. “[The emails] are like what you would see on the
online dating sites-what they are seeking, etc.,” she says. “They
usually offer pictures and web site links. I reply out of politeness
that I am uninterested.”
Perhaps the added pressure of being thrown into a man’s
living space turns some women off of online ads. It’s rare to hear
a story of someone who met on Yahoo! Singles and moved in
together after just a few weeks of e-mailing. The dating scene at
sea seems to progress a relationship to a higher level than land
dating.
Glen Newcomer, Steve Roberts, Steve W., Keith MacKenzie
and Chris Duvall are all up front about their expectations as to
how the relationship should progress, though they have varying
degrees of expectations regarding companionship and sex.
Newcomer plays the gentleman: he tells women that sex is not
expected and offers potential mates their own room and head
(bathroom) onboard. Steve Roberts wants an “all encompassing” relationship-he does not want sex without a meaningful
bond. He feels like it’s hard for a single sailor to come across as
genuine when the reputation of the carousing sailor infiltrates
people’s minds. “I feel like I’m competing with a lot of lonely,
horny, single guys just trying to get a woman,” he says. And
Steve W., 68, says sex just isn’t a high priority for him anymore.
For MacKenzie, “making love comes naturally in a relationship
[at sea], just as it would on land.”
Duvall is on the same wavelength, but instead of a relationship progression that leads to sex, he sees it as a natural occurrence between two people confined to a small space, even if it’s
not at a “relationship” level. He asks, “What are we to do? Run
ashore at every desire and try to get laid?”
Aside from sharing a relationship and a sailing adventure,
many single sailors want the woman to help work and contribute
financially to the voyage. But a lot of the women who respond
don’t want to make it a working vacation. Steve W. says women
lose interest after he asks them to come to the boat and help with
repairs and preparations, and others expect a free ride with no
financial contribution. Jack Quinn, 69, expects a woman to
share expenses. “One woman balked at that,” he says. “I
promptly responded there was a name for a man keeping a
42 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
woman-and that was that.”
Each online posting varies in what it asks potential mates to
have or contribute. Julian Roe, 50, says someone who can type
is a big plus because he’s writing his autobiography. For Jim
Phillips, 57, a woman who can dance is a bonus. John Button
wants a cook: “Experience with galley would be helpful.
Captain’s culinary skills are questionable.”
Dianne Siebrasse is a rarity on the posting boards-a female
captain looking for a male companion. Siebrasse, a forty-sevenyear-old from Minnesota, has a posting on 7knots.com that is
quite specific as to who she’s looking for: someone fun, adventurous, and romantic. And he should have a farming background. “I’m pretty picky on who I’m going to take on,”
Siebrasse says. “I haven’t met anyone who meets my criteria.”
She needs someone who will be able to “handle a strong
woman,” contribute financially, and work hard. She’d also do a
background check on potential mates. “I do that on my
employees, so there’s no reason I wouldn’t do it on somebody
else,” she says.
Whether it’s guys looking for gals, or vice versa, some sailors
don’t like the crew boards used as a dating site. Gina McMurray,
who has a crewing ad on 7knots.com, says she’s bothered by the
relationship postings. “Crew websites are for crew, not for
romance,” she says. John North, a twenty-five-year sailing veteran, agrees. “The world’s full of people and there should be no
reason guys are writing these sad luck stories,” he says. “I would
never do that because I have too much confidence in myself.”
One sailor went on LatsandAtts.com (the site for the magazine Latitudes and Attitudes) and posted the following note: “All
this griping about finding a mate and a cruising partner. All of
you who have a nice sailboat should think of the fact that the
world (especially the tropics) is full of half-naked babes who
would love to go for a few days’ sail about the islands. Who the
heck wants to wake up everyday with the same old story lying
next to you?? All that a woman is going to bring to the table is a
claim against half of the value of that boat when she decides to
advertise for a new captain.” The posting prompted seventy-five
sailors to reply in agreement or disgust.
Since then, LatsandAtts.com has a new sailing singles
board. It operates the same as the site’s “regular” crewing board,
but now the singles have a forum to discuss meeting each other
that doesn’t taint the “serious” crew and captains’ message
forum. But some of the postings make it hard to tell how seriously people take the board. The following posting is from “Gulf
Mermaid”:
Over forty, frumpy female seeks husband. I’m fat,
tired, and need to spend hours putting on makeup to
camouflage my age. I always dress up, can’t carry
on an intelligent conversation, and hate sex. I expect
everyone to wait on me and I can’t support myself.
The last time I exercised was typing this post. Hate
sailing or anything outdoors. Love soaps. I have several children who need a father. Any takers???
A couple dozen people have posted responses, all with a
similar sarcastic tone.
If Gulf Mermaid can get responses, hopefully the same will
happen for Gregg, Roberts, MacKenzie, Duvall, Steve W., and all
the other single sailors looking for their first mate online.
U NIVERSITY
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An Intimate, Dynamic 3-Year Program that approaches the
craft through its critical roots in playwriting and investigates other genres
of dramatic writing — exploring all means of communication with today’s
audiences through the media of stage, film and television. Offered in
association with the USC School of Cinema-Television.
Faculty:
Dr. Velina Hasu Houston, Director
Oliver Mayer
Paula Cizmar
visit us on the web at http://theatre.usc.edu
TESTING GROUND
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The New School will challenge you to think
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We offer graduate and undergraduate
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hidden gems
BIOGRAPHIES AND
ORIGINAL ART BY AND ABOUT
A TRIO OF INMATES AT A
FEDERAL PENITENTIARY.
The
Liberation
of Bobby West
~by John Bowers
Lompoc, CA
44 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
i
nside America’s prisons, the atmosphere is unstable,
violent, celibate, and impoverished. Still, many inmates
ignore their physical world and express themselves
through art. Some prison artists imbed cigarette-ash
inks into human flesh, others use pencils and pens to create surreal portraits, while fewer still possess the talent to paint white
canvas into beautiful modern impressions. In an environment
where time stands still, thousands of artists hone their craft with
no expectation of payment, satisfied only with the knowledge that
these incredible pieces were borne by them alone.
Artist Bobby West’s coffee-colored hands gently revisit and
redefine African culture through his passionate renditions.
Bobby has been locked behind concrete walls for the past twentythree years transforming canvas into some of the most brilliant,
original, African-American reflections composed today. Bobby’s
inspiration comes from a lonely, desperate childhood. Born in
Oakland, California, in 1952 (his father having died during the
seventh month of the pregnancy), he attended elementary school
and recalls, “The teachers used to scold me because my schoolwork lacked attention. I would just sit all day by the window and
draw.” Attending high school at the California School of Art at
Berkeley, he studied for two years under the watchful eyes of his
hidden gems
mentor, John Allen, “learning the master’s styles of art.” When
Bobby turned seventeen, tragedy again touched his young life; his
thirty-six-year-old mother died from lung cancer. Devastated
and alone, he embarked on a path so many like him had taken:
crime. In 1981, he was sentenced to forty-five years in federal
prison for bank robbery. While incarcerated, he admits not taking his artistic ability too seriously “until I gave my life to the
Lord; then my eyes opened to the gifts He blessed me with.”
Bobby employs many disciplines in his work. While traveling throughout institutions, he polished his skills and perfected
every art form that was permitted there. He paints with acrylics,
oils, and watercolors, and draws with pencils, ink, pens, and
chalk. His work is distinct. He has mastered an autonomous
“line-style” incomparable to any other artist. A painting titled
Before Birth, arguably one of his finest achievements, has been
said to have a “Picasso influence,” bringing a proud grin to its creator’s face.
Presently, Bobby’s reverent mood and themes of Biblical
serenity move the artist to pour his affections across fabric, selflessly giving an intimate view of his private world of pain,
remorse, life, healing, and forgiveness. The cold concrete holds
his feet and a steel bunk cradles his aging body. As with so many
others, artwork is the liberation of Bobby West.
CC 45
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hidden gems
The
Talents of
Garen Zakarian
46 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
g
aren “Zak” Zakarian was born in 1964 in Yerevan,
Armenia, U.S.S.R. He admits his passion to create
comes from a society that fosters and encourages its citizens to study fine arts and music. The door was always
open for him to express himself on canvas, in symphonies, and in other media.
“I’ve been painting all my life,” Zak drawls in a heavy Armenia
accent, “but in prison, it’s a diversion, a way of concentrating and
staying away from the chaos. It takes me out of here; painting
soothes me.”
Zak achieved his education in the USSR, receiving a B.S. and
an M.S. in Structural Engineering. He is married and has two children. “Because I am here, accused of doing something wrong,
doesn’t automatically make me a scumbag. I still have a life, a shell
of a life from which I came, and after ten years in custody, I only
have those vague recollections to inspire me to continue my works.
When I paint, it is for myself, to relax me, to remember, to relive a
past of happiness … painting is a private emotion I enjoy feeling.”
A devout Armenian Apostolic (Eastern Orthodox), Zak recalls
once being thrown into solitary confinement and only supplied
with a two-inch pencil. He perched himself on the steel bed and
stretched into a corner of the cell and began drawing clouds, and
altar, Mother Mary, and angels. The pencil wore to a stub and he
acquired another, incorporating four tubes of white toothpaste for
highlighting against his dingy, cigarette-tarred beige “canvas.”
hidden gems
The result, he exclaims, was perfect. A few weeks later, the
inmates were moved to different cells and he left behind the
wonderful image for the next man to appreciate. The following
day, he awoke to horrific screams echoing down the corridor.
Apparently, a Satanist had drawn the lot to occupy Zak’s old
cell, and was averse to the Fresco painted across its walls and
ceiling. “You can’t tell me God’s without a sense of humor!” he
laughs, pointing to the sky.
In a way, prison has furthered Zak’s development as an
artist. “I was a painter and artist long before I came to
American prison. Because I am here, that will not change. This
provides me the time that I did not have before … when I was
trying to support my family.” While incarcerated, Zak has
twelve finished pieces ranging in size from 18 x 24 to 24 x 36
inches.
Still, the system has serious drawbacks. “The materials are
very limited here. We are not allowed oils, only acrylics. The
size of the canvas is restricted as is the time allowed to be spent
in the hobby shop. When acquiring materials, there is a four- to
five-month wait to receive them and the B.O.P. (Bureau of
Prisons) adds an additional twenty-five or thrity percent to
every order, making artwork very expensive. I am not complaining—nor should anyone, at all! The B.O.P. will then have
an excuse to remove this positive program as well. So, I carry
the proper prison attitude, I work with whatever is available.”
Zak is an artist in several areas: he is a musician, playing
the violin and classical piano until electronic instruments were
banned and violins were deemed too expensive for inmates to
possess. Now he writes screenplays. He teaches a screenwriting course, and his students groan after he grades their work,
knowing he has meticulously corrected every mistake.
Zak began writing screenplays when an old-timer encouraged him to drop his nearly-completed novel because it was
“ten times easier to sell a script than a book.” Zak says this is
“bullshit.” He’s written seven screenplays with little or no
response from Hollywood. His favorite work, entitled The
Gardener, a story about a prisoner whose artwork is stolen,
forged, and sold for thousands while he is incarcerated. After
release, the prisoner discovers the theft and triumphs over the
wrongs that have befallen him. He has yet to finish and heavily
promote it, living by Mark Twain’s quote, “I’m not a good
writer, I’m a good re-writer.”
Zak’s ultimate goal is to earn enough money to reopen his
criminal case. He feels confident that eventually his artwork
will sell, and in the interim, he will continue to perfect his
crafts.
CC 47
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hidden gems
48 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
hidden gems
CC 49
M
The
GOLDEN
CAGE
a cautionary tale
~by Divini Rae Sorenson
Los Angeles, CA
fiction
Date: Thurs, 06 May 2023 03:17:01 -0800(PST)
From: “anika” <[email protected]>
Subject: You’ll never believe this
To: “mommamia” [email protected]
Mom,
Guess what?! My manager just called me and said that Toys
for Boys Magazine is interested in shooting a pictorial of me. I
know you shot for them back in the day but you’ve never talked
much about it—should I do it? I’ll call you tonight after I get
home from class.
Love,
Anika
Date: Thurs, 06 May 202304:18:03 -0900(PST)
From: “mommamia” <[email protected]>
Subject: My Toys for Boys experience
To: “anika” [email protected]
Dear Ani,
You are a beautiful girl, so I’m not surprised they want to
photograph you for the magazine. I will talk to you about it more
tonight, but first read this. As you know, I tend to express myself
best in writing.
I will describe my experience with Toys for Boys without
mincing words. It may sound fantastical; you may feel somewhat incredulous, but it’s the truth. Everyone that has posed for
Toys for Boys Magazine has her own experience, her own
unique story. This is mine.
I was twenty-two years old when my modeling agent called
me. “Toys for Boys Magazine has noticed you,” she said, “and
found out that I represent you. They want you to shoot a Toy of
the Moment nude pictorial that takes four weeks to shoot. The
pay is thirty-five thousand dollars and they will fly you to the
Palace where you will stay in the guesthouse while shooting. Are
you interested?” I said I’d get back to her.
When nude pictures of Hollywood starlet Tabitha Taylor
were published in the first issue of Toys for Boys, the magazine
became instantly popular. Over the years, posing for the prestigious men’s magazine became a trendy career move for ambitious models and actresses. It was Toys for Boys’ journalistic
quality, however, that had always impressed me. I fantasized
about one day having my own writing published in it. I thought
that perhaps posing would be my “in” with the company—that in
time, if I gave 100% to promoting the magazine, and proved
through written submissions that my talents far exceeded “taking pretty pictures,” perhaps they might consider creating a column for me. I knew the magazine had a positive reputation and
that the pictorials were tasteful. I also felt they were offering me
fair compensation for a month-long modeling shoot.
*
I was picked up at the airport by a staff member of Toys for
Boys in a black stretch limousine and taken to the renowned
Palace of Charles Lester, owner and creator of Toys for Boys
Magazine, whom everyone just called “Charlie.” I was looking
forward to the experience, having thoroughly researched the
52 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
company. After watching the documentaries and reading a great
variety of news articles, opinion pieces, and exposés, I
approached the coming weeks with a generally positive outlook.
In the documentaries the Palace always looked grandiose,
the parties held there fabulous. Charlie came across as kind and
witty, so I was convinced that everyone and everything would be
lovely. Charlie was, and still is, known as the quintessential
bachelor, with a constant stream of ten or more girlfriends living
with him in the Palace at any one time. Yet I never judged his
lifestyle. He and the women around him all seemed to be consenting adults living as a fun, harmonious, wildly unconventional family.
I was young and still very naïve.
I’ll never forget pulling up to the imposing wrought iron
gates of the Palace that groaned in agony as they parted on our
approach, and joking to the solemn driver: “It looks like I’m
going to be kept in a cage for a few weeks.” Ignoring my remark,
he helped me out of the limo and showed me to the guesthouse
where Toys stay while shooting their pictorials. He told me I
would be sharing a room with another Toy.
With a small knock I hesitantly entered the room to find a
petite, cinnamon-haired girl lying in a ball, crying, on the bed
furthest from the door. Maura didn’t look any older than twelve.
The room was dark, smelled of stale cigarettes, and was
filled with inexplicably intense sorrow. Upon hearing me enter,
Maura uncurled from her fetal position and looked up. Silently
she got up from the bed, went into the bathroom, and shut the
door.
*
No Toys staying at Charles Lester’s Palace were allowed to
leave the property without first getting his permission. Once
approved to leave the grounds, a Palace security guard would be
with the girl every moment, monitoring her activities for the
report he was to give Charlie later. No Toys (including Charlie’s
girlfriends) were allowed to stay away past 8 P.M. “as a safety precaution.” It didn’t take long to grasp that this regulation and
many others were actually rooted in Charlie’s controlling, jealous
egomania. Charlie felt that all females on his property were actually his, and he wanted “his girls” around as much as possible,
but especially after dark. If any among the Palace’s male staff
were seen conversing with one of Charlie’s girlfriends, the Toys,
or any female guests for longer than five minutes, their employment would be immediately terminated. Oftentimes, late at
night or early in the morning, Charlie would use his master key
to unlock the door to a girl’s room and check her bed to ascertain
that she was really there. I found it very hard to sleep.
Charlie’s girlfriends complained that though financially
cared for, they were miserable. They talked about how Charlie
made them engage in orgies with him twice a week. Because he
was sexually dysfunctional, despite a spate of pharmaceutical
remedies, most of the “required sex” nights wound up consisting
of girlfriends performing sexual acts on each other and on
Charlie according to his own personal, kinky predilections.
Hence, his girlfriends didn’t call him “the Asshole” for nothing.
Charlie expected Toys to join in the dreaded orgy nights.
Although he wouldn’t force Toys to participate, he insisted they
“observe” because he liked to watch people watching. Most of
Charlie’s girlfriends admitted to hating Charlie but resigned
themselves to having chosen their lifestyle—they were being
“taken care of.” I remember asking one of Charlie’s girlfriends,
*
fiction
The room was dark, smelled of
stale cigarettes, and was filled with
inexplicably intense sorrow.
“If you’re so miserable why don’t you just leave?” She responded, “Where would I go and what would I do? Besides, if I stay
maybe Charlie will let me shoot a Toy pictorial and then I can get
rich and famous.”
*
A few days into my stay Maura told me the reason she had
been crying when I arrived. She explained how a few nights
before, Pinky, Charlie’s most devious girlfriend, had insisted that
she should come up to the bedroom “to watch.” Maura was
handed a drink, then awoke much later lying naked and groggy
in Charlie’s bedroom closet. The next day Maura asked if she
could go home but was denied. She was told that because she
had signed the contract she must stay at the Palace and finish her
shoot, or else she would owe Toys for Boys thousands of dollars
in lost revenue. She told me she felt completely helpless, alone,
and at fault for having agreed to pose for the magazine in the first
place.
A few of Charlie’s girlfriends confirmed to Maura that she
had indeed been drugged and molested the previous night. I
decided that no matter what happened I wouldn’t abandon
Maura; there was no one else to take care of her, to make sure she
didn’t get hurt again.
Darling Anika, so many young girls are truly clueless of what
they are getting themselves into when they sign the contract to
become Toys. I certainly was: at the Toys for Boys photo studio
I was given less than a minute to scan the contract before being
told, “Sign it now so we can start shooting. We can’t get behind
schedule.” I signed, trustingly, without realizing that I had sold
myself into a glamourized indentured servitude.
I spent a few months diligently working the promotional circuit as per my contract, but when I tried to talk to Charlie about
writing for his magazine I was laughed-at and dismissed.
Then came the day that I received a call from one of Toys for
Boys’ studio employees, telling me I had won the annual Toy for
a Moment Longer award. Winning the award came with the
prospect of enough money to put a large deposit down on a
house, so of course I was delighted, but I was instructed, understandably, not to reveal my selection to anyone. After two days of
shooting the Toy for a Moment Longer pictorial I received yet
another call telling me that the pictorial I had begun shooting
would now be called a “test shoot.” I would no longer be considered the “official” winner until Charlie had finalized his decision.
It was a test indeed—of the moral sort.
“You’ve shot the pictorial for the annual Toy for a Moment
Longer award, now there’s just one other thing,” the studio
employee said. “As you know, Charlie doesn’t insist that a Toy of
the Moment be intimate with him. However, if a girl wants to
win the annual award she will need to be intimate with Charlie.
I’m not advocating that or anything; it’s entirely up to you how
much you want the title and the money.”
I felt a deep sadness envelop me. “If that’s what it’s all about, I
don’t want it. Thanks for the advice,” I said and hung up the phone.
*
Toys are paid to promote the myth and legends of Charles
Lester and his company. I’ve never met any employee of Toys for
Boys who was willing to go public with the truth about the company’s seedy internal goings-on in the face of Charlie’s wrath and
a subsequent lawsuit. Besides, his audiences adore Charlie’s
myths—who wants to be the one to pull back the rug, expose the
dirt, and taint the fantasy? Men around the world idolize, emulate, even admit wanting to be Charlie Lester. How ironic that he
is the loneliest individual I have ever encountered, living a façade
of a life that has been created for show, in which no one truly
loves him and he truly loves no one. He sold his soul to the devil
well over half a century ago, and has been described by colleagues, friends, and employees as intelligent, quick-witted,
manipulative, cold, heartless, mercurial, soulless, insecure,
insincere, narcissistic, controlling, lonely, and misogynistic. All
the descriptions are accurate.
But you, dear daughter, are strong, talented, and intelligent.
I wish I could protect you from all the evils and deceptions in this
world. Still, every woman who has made the conscious decision
to pose for Toys for Boys Magazine has done so of her own
accord. They weren’t forced. But no one should ever jump blindly into a cesspool, and at the very least it is my duty as your mother to caution you as strongly as I can. You know I find nothing
distasteful about pin-up pictures. If shooting a pin-up pictorial is
something you’d like to do, then you have my full support, as
always. But go, please, to a company where no one will deceive,
disrespect, drug, or abuse you, so that you might come away
from the experience with a positive, proud impression.
I keep a poem in an old scrapbook that I wrote while staying
in the Palace guesthouse, nearly two decades ago:
The city of crying angels
and I cry too
It is so bright outside
and so dark inside
My tears are drowning me
and I’m growing afraid
I’m in a golden cage
and I want out
When I finished my photo shoot and finally left the Palace
grounds with $35,000 and none of the innocence with which I
had arrived, I had a little falcon tattooed on my back, a small
emblem to forever declare: No one owns or controls me; I am
free—free as a bird.
Love you always,
Mom
CC 53
M
SEXY
TASTES
72 Hour
Par ty
People
i
f hurricanes are the price you pay for living in subtropical paradise, then hurricane parties are the
compensation—if, that is, you know how to throw
(or scout out) a proper one.
During the recent and dangerously dreary onslaught of
Frances, the pokiest of squalls to ever approach Florida’s east
coast, we Miamians learned some valuable lessons in gastronomic storm management. None of which, however, involved
thinking up precious and ridiculously redundant names for
dishes such as a chef-acquaintance’s reinvented Cobb salad,
a.k.a. “hurricane rollup salad,” comprising outer band
clouds”of sliced turkey and prosciutto with an eye of Brie
cheese set atop an ocean of baby greens with cherry tomato
islands, cucumber rafts, blue cheese seas, bacon driftwood and
sliced egg life rafts for $10.95. We leave recipes like that to the,
er, professionals.
No, we realized instead that imbibing is actually the most
important activity for surviving speeding coconuts and cracking avocado tree limbs. As such, you simply can’t have too
much alcohol to hand. Go ahead and overestimate how much
you’ll need; it’s not as if the vodka is going to spoil when the
electricity goes out. And while you don’t have to surf the
Internet and then scour the supermarket shelves for the ingredients for authentic New Orleans-style hurricanes, don’t forget
the mixers. Our last-minute run to Walgreen’s yielded only
cranberry juice, which can get cloying after a while. But we did
have the added benefit of knowing we were relatively immune
to urinary tract infections during the course of the storm.
We were also educated on how to attend to various other
habits via an idiot who drove off the road during the height of
Frances’ gastropod-inspired landfall, got trapped in a watery
ditch for several hours, and had to be rescued by emergency
personnel. Afterwards, he hung around in the wind and rain
giving interviews to newscasters. His mission? He was on his
way to replenish his supply of cigarettes. Moral of the story:
This is Darwinism at its finest. With a sense of survival like
that, you might as well actively court carcinoma. Smoke up, my
friend.
Admittedly, stockpiling essentials can be somewhat tricky.
But exercising common sense helps: If you’re late to the store
54 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
~by Jen Karetnick
Miami Shores, FL
and the Pall Malls have become as scarce as batteries and flashlights, pay for a packet of Nicoret gum instead. If your heroin
dealer’s phone has already gone dead, head to the methadone
clinic.
Food-wise, the culinary rule of thumb for hurricanes is
don’t bother with perishables. Instead load up on canned and
dry products, with the understanding that after the Frigidaire
motor moans to a halt, you’ll be spending the first twenty-four
hours eating the defrosted Wagyu beef (known colloquially but
incorrectly as Kobe beef) you were saving for a special occasion.
Indeed it doesn’t hurt to augment such treats with other gourmet goods. They act as a buffer for boredom much the same
way the metal shutters shield window glass. Thus the almonds
I brought back from Spain, a gift from Grupo Osborne in Jerez
de la Fonterra where I was tasting the family’s rare Sherry, were
almost immediately consumed. I had put them aside to celebrate my husband’s one-year mark of surviving testicular cancer. But I guess the themed fete I had planned—”Almond Joy’s
got nuts, Jon don’t”—can rage on with pecan pie instead.
Frances fooled us, though. First predicted to make conditions dangerous at about noon on Friday, she forced us into our
blinkered bunkers by sheer nervous anticipation alone. Then
she slowed to five miles per hour at times, a speed of travel I can
run faster than. We finally felt the brunt of the hurricane gusts
Saturday, late evening. By that time, we’d been partying for
about thirty-six hours, twelve more than those twenty-fourhour folks who think they’re all that. We’d consumed every egg,
drop of milk, and speck of butter in the house. We were running low on Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc, the Publix wine-of-theweek of which we’d bought nearly a case. And we still had the
second half of the storm to get through, as well as several small
children to entertain.
Indeed our party numbers had unexpectedly grown. My
family had planned to ride out Frances at the house of our codependent neighbors, simply because we spend almost every
weekend together anyway, so that the kids can torture each
other while the adults drink wine, cook communally, and play
such various complicated card games as “Strip Go Fish.” We
vacation with each other for the same decadent reasons. It was
more of a stretch to imagine living without our drinking bud-
SEXY
dies for a few days than it was to dwell on cooping up together.
Their newly renovated house is appealing for other reasons, such as the high-impact hurricane windows they had
installed. Windows, as opposed to the permanent dusk that
plywood and shutters supply, tend to prevent the acute onset of
Seasonal Affective Disorder (the reason why many of us migrated from more dreary climes in the first place). Not to mention
that you can watch the storm bands plow through the yard
without actually leaving the building—a plus for subtropically
seasoned adults, though a minus for children frightened by
power lines whipping in the wind like infuriated snakes being
held by the tail. The kitchen also has a gas stove, as opposed to
the electric ones the rest of us in Miami Shores possess, which
is a boon when the current proves as increasingly fickle as the
wind speeds. And there are retreats enough for various childless folk to retire to when the chaos became unbearable, and
nooks aplenty for those of a mind to hook up—a sure thing
when so much alcohol and enforced intimacy abounds. Right,
Sean?
All this to say that a successful hurricane party employs the
same philosophy as the positioning of a promising restaurant:
prime location, eye-candy casting, good eats, and a talented
bartender or two. Additional friends, relatives and neighbors,
including an Indian-born plastic surgeon who had already lost
electricity and had to dispense both a chicken vindaloo and an
open bottle of Botox before they went bad, abided by the same
credo. By the time a fellow journalist found his way to the
house, drawn presumably by the noise as well as the promise of
a bloody Mary and basmati rice, we had three pots of food on
the stove, eleven adults and five children in the living room on
a Twister mat, and eight needle marks—and no more frown
lines—in our foreheads.
Naturally our party, under the heading “Misery Loves
TASTES
Company,” made the front page of the region’s daily paper the
following day, prompting my local friend Dindy to e-mail me
with “the Herald tells me you are fine,” and Jon’s mate Erhan to
Blackberry him from California: “Glad to hear you’re living
large in your neighbor’s phat crib while the rest of your state is
cowering in a living nightmare.” A sentiment that reminded us,
of course, to be grateful that Frances was not the kind of storm
that those of us who lived through 1992’s Hurricane Andrew or
the more recent Charlie truly feared. I should also note that it’s
only possible to enjoy a hurricane party if you’ve taken every
precaution to protect both family and property, as we did.
As it turned out, Frances’ more violent nature missed
much of Miami-Dade County altogether. So she proved hardly
an impediment when, seventy-two hours into the storm, the
entire augmented household—our minds stir-crazy by captivity, foreheads steeled by muscle-paralyzing poison and appetites
whetted by wind and vindaloo—headed south for a huge familystyle brunch at Imlee, a well-heeled Indian bistro.
But even as Frances was behind us, Hurricane Ivan, followed by Jeanne, loomed in our near future. Good thing we’d
left the storm shutters up and restocked the Belvedere. Ivan the
Terrible skirted us, but Jeanne forced us into an identical situation. Well, almost identical—this time we went with a traditional, all-American turkey dinner and discussed the possibility
of liposuction as we watched the trees and roof tiles of our lessfortunate neighbors to the north getting sucked up by the wind
like so many fat cells. And in the end, we started bickering over
stuffing and gravy. Even seventy-two-hour party people who
have the benefits of confirmed roofs over our heads and the
miracle of electricity during killer storms can get enough of
each other. All blitheness aside, this hurricane season has been
giving the folks of Florida one hell of a reason to get drunk—and
consequences that are far worse than a mere hangover.
Through the
EYE
of a
FAN
photos and
reflections by
Henry Diltz
portfolio
Right: Their first single had just hit and Capitol
Records hired me to photograph their
appearance at Tower Records in West
Hollywood. As a musician, I always feel at
home standing on stage where exciting
music is happening. I was ten feet away
from Thom Yorke of Radiohead when I took
this picture.
Below: Too often in today’s imagecontrolling concerts, photographers are
given only the space of one song to do their
job. Nirvana, at the Forum, was that way for
me. Every shot on the roll looked quite
ordinary with the exception of this one
frame, which magically appeared. It alone
looked like how the music sounded.
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portfolio
58 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
portfolio
Left: Mama Cass was a laughing, loving earth mother who was always
putting people together. She introduced Nash to Crosby and Stills,
knowing what would happen. She met a very shy Eric Clapton on a TV
show and brought him home to meet her friends at a picnic in her
backyard with Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, and Micky Dolenz. Eric was
fascinated with the guitar tunings Joni and David were using as they sang
together out under the trees.
Above: This day was a total time warp back to the Old West. The Eagles
always thought that rock n’ roll musicians probably would have been
gunfighters had they lived back then. They recorded an album called
Desperado to reflect that feeling.
CC 59
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N
O
S
H
I
OTEL
R
R
O
GALLERY
M
portfolio
™
F INE ART MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHY
THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF HENRY DILTZ
©Henry Diltz
124 PRINCE STREET NEW YORK, NY 10012 212.941.8770
WWW.MORRISONHOTEL.US
Stephen Stills had bought these
jackets for himself and his
bandmates. They tried them out on
a trip to the snow in Big Bear where I
photographed the inside of their first
album cover. They were the furs of
predators. Wolf for Crosby and
Nash and wolverine for Stephen.
portfolio
Above: It was early Monday morning, and I had been up all night on the edge of the
stage. A lot of the crowd had already left before Jimi Hendrix let loose with his famous
Star Spangled Banner. It was the high point of Woodstock for me.
Opposite right: A fifty-dollar cab ride from Las Vegas puts you out in the beautiful Red
Rocks desert area. What better place to capture the spirit of Joni Mitchell. When we
returned to the city, I realized I was finally embarrassed and had to borrow the fare
from Joni.
Right: We arrived at dawn in a limo from LA. By 8 A.M. Cass’s makeup was melting in the
Palm Springs desert heat. We spent the day by a motel pool, went back at dusk and
took this picture for a billboard on the Sunset Strip.
62 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
portfolio
CC 63
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portfolio
Ringo has a dry Liverpool sense of humor that’s great fun to
be around. It happens fast, like the instant he ripped this
tape off an instrument case and stuck it on his forehead.
One frame and it was gone.
64 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
Effortless GENIUS
RAY CHARLES
in
RONALD
REAGAN’S
World
~by Nick A. Zaino III
Boston, MA
eulogy
*
And if Charles wasn't always front and center
while I was exploring music, he was always in the
mix somewhere. It seemed almost anywhere I
went musically, Charles had already been there.
w
hen Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles died the
same week, it was easy to predict who would have
the spotlight. Reagan has gotten credit for ending
the hostage crisis in Iran, defeating the Soviet
empire, and generally making America feel all warm and fuzzy
again. As Reagan was paraded around the country, I felt sad for
a guy whose politics I abhor and whose turn as president was
more overhyped than the Kobe/Shaq feud, but whom I think
would have made an outstanding drinking buddy.
Mostly, though, I was offended on behalf of Ray Charles. I
really had no right to be. I never knew Charles personally or
even interviewed him. But in my mind, Charles was every bit
the American legend that Reagan was. Reagan was the one who
went to West Berlin to say, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this
wall.” But Charles was the one who traveled the country for
decades singing, “See the girl with the diamond ring? She
knows how to shake that thing.” To me, there is no comparison
as to which one carries more weight. The Berlin Wall was on its
way down anyway. But people need motivation to shake, and
Charles supplied a lifetime of that.
I first discovered Ray Charles in my basement in a musty
old box of records my parents had bought at an auction. I had
been playing drums for a couple of years and was just starting
to bang around on an old Strat copy a neighbor had lent me. I
didn’t know how to play guitar, but I could muster a confident
racket. Good enough for rock and roll, I thought. The album
was Spotlight on Ray Charles and the George Brown
Orchestra, Vol II, and none of the tunes were Charles standards, exactly. I recognized names like Sentimental Blues and
Blues Before Sunrise as more history than music. Jug of Joel
and Flip Flooie Flip were completely off of my small town white
boy radar. But I took that record out of the box, Charles staring
out from a faded golden background, and put it on an old player. It was probably half music, half pops and surface noise, but
it made sense.
I wasn’t suddenly imbued with a Robert Johnson-like talent to play the blues, and I didn’t become a Ray Charles fanatic. But what I gained from trying to twist my guitar around
that record was an awareness of soul. That was sorely lacking
in the prog rock and bad eighties metal I learned to love (and in
some cases, still do). And it was certainly lacking in the headlines.
The Reagan era was when I became politically, and musically, aware. I was thirteen or fourteen years old, trying to
comprehend a new disease called AIDS, the final days of the
66 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
Cold War, and racism in South Africa (which is also when I
became aware of Little Steven and his bandana). I was also trying to wrap my head around the emergence of hip-hop, and trying to figure out why Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson
seemed to care more about feeding people than the president.
And if Charles wasn’t always front and center while I was
exploring music, he was always in the mix somewhere. When I
was discovering comedy, he was in the reruns of Saturday
Night Live I treasured as a kid, John Belushi sitting at a piano
and singing What’d I Say?. Before I had even found that
record, he was singing with Willie Nelson, another early idol of
mine, the two of them subtly breaking down barriers between
country and soul before I could learn they existed. When I
came back to country music after going through classic rock,
indie rock, folk, punk, and everything else I was exposed to in
college, I found Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and
Western Music. It seemed almost anywhere I went musically,
Charles had already been there.
Every time I cared to look, there was fun, passion, and
soul. And when I wasn’t looking directly, I was looking through
someone else Charles was influencing. Charles was a comforting thread weaved into a cultural tapestry that is often shrill,
depressing, and lacking in soul. What he had to offer was completely obvious and omnipresent. As Reagan gave way to Bush,
Bush to Clinton, and Clinton back to Bush, Charles was never
really a political voice, certainly not a voice of opposition. But
he was a source of strength. Strength that the same society that
could produce the vicious political infighting between
Republicans and Democrats could also produce Ray Charles
(and Willie Nelson and John Belushi).
Charles is getting his share of tributes now, including this
one, and his parade will wind through reviews of Genius Loves
Company, his final album, and Ray, the much hyped biopic
starring Jamie Foxx. It’s fitting that the last album is a collection of duets with everyone from Nelson to Norah Jones, Van
Morrison, Johnny Mathis, and Natalie Cole. It’s easy to see the
respect these artist have for Charles, and his talent as a singer
and musician is clear. He blends best with artists like Jones,
James Taylor, and B.B. King who give honest, direct performances. But when Elton John goes over the top on his own Sorry
Seems the Hardest Word, Charles really stands out. He manages as much power just breathing into the microphone as
John does belting his guts out. Which just goes to show, put
Charles next to anybody, anybody at all, and he will stand out
without trying. Effortless genius.
ON
THE FENCE: MEDIA AND POLITICS
From the
Right
~by Ben Barron
Davis, CA
Liberals lost the
battle of the mind,
so they have taken
their policies to
the battleground
of the heart.
68 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
w
hat do modern liberals, in modern America,
believe? Better question: why do liberals support John Kerry?
The most obvious answer is the latest trend
to hit the country’s cosmopolitan streets: unfettered loathing of
George W. Bush and all things conservative, often accompanied by an open embrace of the word “hate.” Is it really
Fahrenheit 9/11, a film that offers no constructive political
viewpoint, which goads people by the droves to supporting
Kerry? I know few liberals—or voters in general—who can
name a single Kerry platform, and yet Kerry has somehow
amassed an enormous war chest of nearly $200 million at the
time of this writing.
Surely, liberals have some positive vision for America, girded by a philosophy of government, by which they have come to
the decision to cast their vote for John Kerry. (Right?) Look
just about anywhere in the media and you’re bound to run into
the Republican-hating craze. Go to the political section of your
local bookstore and try to find one modern book that sets out a
rational argument for liberal platforms. You’ll have to wade
through such eloquent works as Lies and the Lying Liars Who
Tell Them, The Lies of George W. Bush and The I Hate George
ON
THE FENCE: MEDIA AND POLITICS
Bush Reader, all written by or featuring the most prominent
liberal voices of our day.
Jonathan Chait, senior editor of the liberal magazine The
New Republic, has embraced explicit hatred for George Bush
and has deemed it appropriate for liberals to be open with
theirs. Even Nicholas Kristof, a liberal columnist for the New
York Times, has bemoaned the Left’s hatred of President Bush
as well as their incessant accusations that he is a liar.
Admittedly, I have listened to little of the liberal radio station Air America, but everything I have heard thus far has
amounted to a hate fest of George Bush. Well, not always;
sometimes they add John Ashcroft to the mix to spice things
up.
It took weeks for Dan Rather to come clean that he had
used fraudulent evidence to smear our president in a
September 60 Minutes report. Would he have brought the
same lack of journalistic integrity to a story on Swiftboat
Veterans for Truth? And just last month, the political director
of ABC News ordered his reporters to hold President Bush more
accountable than John Kerry in reporting alleged lies and distortions, according to a memo leaked to The Drudge Report.
The Public Editor of the New York Times has written columns
openly admitting the pro-Kerry running rampant throughout
the paper’s sections.
Is this really what the left in America has come to? I’m not
asking, nor am I accusing. I’m searching. I desperately want to
believe that there is more to a sizable chunk of our voting populace than a seething tide of anger. Where is the gravity and
rationality, where is the fine-tuned worldview needed to shape
national and foreign policy or at the very least debate it in a
constructive manner? I fear it’s gone the way of Michael Moore.
The vilification of a sitting president is not a new trend. As
many liberals will tell you to justify their hatred, it all started
with the feral conservative loathing for Bill Clinton. That
hatred, they’ll let you know, led to the “witch hunt” by conservative special investigator Ken Starr, leading ultimately to
Clinton’s impeachment. And, to be fair, a number of conservative books have been written that deride the former president
and his wife.
But there’s a crucial contraposition begging to be highlighted: throughout the impeachment ordeal, conservatives
continued to promote their policy ideas and to contribute to a
positive debate in this country. Even as Ken Starr and Henry
Hyde pushed for Clinton’s impeachment, conservative publications and think tanks continued to churn out the slew of articles
and ideas that have made the conservative movement such a
revolutionary force in the last generation. Shock at stained
dresses and alternative uses of cigars was grounded by continued discussions of welfare reform, limited government, and the
rise of neoconservative foreign policy, to name a few hot topics.
Behind these views were not just minds of startling intelligence working with institutions such as the Heritage
Foundation or publications like The Weekly Standard, but a
concerted effort to form a holistic, rational conservative philosophy. The benefits of supply-side economics and family values
became the trademark of the Republican resurgence under
Newt Gingrich. It is no coincidence that just as conservatism
began growing in popularity, Bill Clinton became one of the
most conservative Democrat presidents in history, pushing
through landmark welfare reforms, fighting a war in the
Balkans without United Nations support, and famously quip-
ping that abortion should be legal but also rare.
The
Republicans were not just a Clinton-bashing party. They
became the party of ideas—and their ideas were winning.
*
Perhaps our best strategy to search for the underpinnings
of modern liberalism is to work from the top-down. Sift
through liberal platforms until we hit the roots of their views
and are able to see if anything truly substantial lies behind the
trend of empty Bush-hatred.
On the social front, liberals favor maintaining the legalization of abortions (although many are uncomfortable with
them), legalizing gay marriage and enforcing affirmative action
in public institutions. On the economic front, they support
using tax money to support government programs, most of
which assist the poor and elderly; they often support raising
taxes in order to create or fund those programs; and they support market regulations to ensure, e.g., fairness in hiring and
rent.
But liberals today make no attempt to offer a rational basis
for supporting these platforms. That is to say, there is no overarching political philosophy (like supply-side economics) nor is
there a core set of values (like family values) underlining these
policies.
What view justifies liberal social policies? Some point to a
rejection of enforced morality as we find in the prohibition of
abortion. But that is exactly what affirmative action amounts to
the imposition of de facto quotas on public institutions so as to
impose a just (read: moral) distribution of employment. Rent
control is the imposition of fair (read: moral) rents on the housing market. (I certainly don’t believe that liberals support
these policies because they hope to erode or alter our conception of family values.)
Decades ago, these types of policies were justified by the
social iniquities they mended. Women and blacks had been
discriminated-against, and the Civil Rights and Women’s
Liberation movements were the Left-leaning forces that fought
back. Now, those injustices (with the possible exception of gay
marriage) have been eliminated, though the “Liberation Now!”
mentality and anger at the perceived bigotry of rich white men
remains. Liberals call on us to have compassion for the social
plight of blacks, whose social iniquities are due to white discrimination past and present. White America should feel guilty
for the position we have put them in.
Liberal justification for social policies thus seems to be
emotive rather than rational. Liberals point to injustices in
society in order to elicit compassion and guilt. But there are no
positive moral or intellectual values put forth to justify those
policies. Conservatives uphold the sanctity of the nuclear family and, indeed, studies across the board show families with two
married parents tend to avoid poverty and tend to raise children who avoid drugs and crime. The same cannot be said of
liberal social platforms, which seem to only address transitory
social ills—indeed, social ills that haven’t been widespread for
decades.
*
CC 69
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ON
THE FENCE: MEDIA AND POLITICS
The issue of liberal economic policies becomes stickier: a
generation ago liberals staunchly held to a cogent viewpoint in
justifying government programs and welfare handouts—
Keynesian economics. Franklin Roosevelt made deficit spending fashionable by creating a slew of government programs to
assuage the impact of the Great Depression. But those programs weren’t pushed forward under the bulwark of liberalism
until the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, whose Great Society
expanded the government by leaps and bounds. Declaring “allout war on poverty and unemployment,” Johnson initiated
such mainstays as Medicare and Medicaid. Punishments were
softened in the name of rehabilitation. The National
Endowments for the Arts and Humanities were established.
Feverish with excitement, 1960s liberals saw their moment
to reshape the American government following decades of
Republican control. They had long admired Europe and
yearned for big-government socialism, thinking of government
intervention as the cure for all social ills.
And what was the result of this experiment in unadulterated liberalism?
Failure.
The 1970s were beset with “stagflation,” despite
Keynesians’ promises that their policies could keep the economy under control. Crime skyrocketed, and the black arrest rate
grew by more than 130 percent by the end of the decade. In the
words of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, American
political reporters for The Economist, “[The liberal elite] had no
solution for the breakup of the family—other than with more
generous welfare payments. They had no solution to the problem of rising crime—other than more cash for rehabilitation
and social science studies.”
it on the latter issue, to my dismay). Senator Hillary Clinton
shocked much of the country when she called for a repeal of the
tax cuts, going so far as to utter a socialist mantra: “We’re going
to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
What schools of thought are these policy shapers utilizing
in putting forth these ideas? Keynesian philosophy as a political force died years ago, so emotional forces compel liberals to
frame social policies at work, again with no rational underpinnings.
Conservative commentator Michael Medved has repeatedly claimed that what separates liberals and conservatives at
their roots is that conservatives are spiritualistic in nature
whereas liberals are materialistic. While there are certainly
merits to this argument, the real difference between them in the
modern era is that liberals fashion issues based on emotion,
whereas conservatives use cold logic to come up with what can
at first seem like unappetizing solutions for social and economic ills. Not give money to the poor? In the short run, welfare
may assuage their needs, but in the long run, you end up with
8,000 homeless in San Francisco. You exacerbate the problem.
Government isn’t the solution.
Liberals lost the battle of the mind, so they have taken their
policies to the battleground of the heart. Their guns are antiquated—a fact about which their soldiers are clueless. But
instead of stopping to reconsider their options, they fight on.
And America continues veering to the Right as a result.
*
Buy yourself a ticket to San Francisco. There you’ll see the
product of years of anti-homeless programs amounting to costs
of more than $200 million in recent years. Among the usual
slate of liberal policies, San Francisco’s homeless population
actually receives a monthly stipend. Yet the city’s homeless
population ranks among the highest of any city in the country,
with an estimated 8,000 to 16,000 homeless out of 800,000
city residents. The condition is similar is any liberal bastion—
Santa Monica, California; Portland, Oregon; Berkeley,
California.
The failure of liberalism came shortly after the rise of a new
group of conservative intellectuals known as the Chicago
School. Led by Milton Friedman and Austrian economist F.A.
Hayek, the Chicago School rebuffed New Deal policies and put
forth the first modern supply-side philosophy. At a time when
the tax rate hit as high as seventy percent (following the Carter
administration) and the government controls put the country
in a malaise it hadn’t seen since the Great Depression, the idea
of rolling back the government didn’t seem so bad.
Now, for some inexplicable, astounding reason, Democrat
after Democrat continues to push for rapid expansion of government, tax hikes included. Every one of the 2004 Democratic
presidential contenders declared their intention to repeal part
of Bush’s tax cut. Each of them, including John Kerry, fought
tooth and nail to put forward the most progressive universal
health care plan and senior drug plan (until Bush beat them to
70 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
If you would like to submit a new idea for a
themed column, or simply would like to see
a CCM column cover a specific topic,
send an e-mail to
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ON
THE FENCE: MEDIA AND POLITICS
From the
Left
~by Ari Paul
Chicago, IL
“y
Must there be a
correlation between power
and political trends? Can
we just ignore the fact that
the average American,
who does not bother to
vote even once every four
years, nevertheless goes
out to the movies five
times in a single year?
ou know nothing of my work,” Marshall
McLuhan, playing himself, told an uppity
Columbia professor in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall,
“You mean my whole fallacy is wrong.” Allen
used the role of the late media critic to vent his
own personal frustrations, but McLuhan’s cameo appearance
symbolized how his own theories, popular in the sixties and seventies, were greatly misunderstood by his fans and his contemporaries in the field.
Radical then and passé now, McLuhan’s “the medium is
the message” philosophy holds that contemporary media have a
profound effect on the structure of human relations. It is time
to bring back McLuhan’s insight in order to understand how
film—one of the most popular modern forms of expression—has
affected the American social and political existence, and likewise democracy writ large.
But first, what are the American trends that any one medium can define? Not simply Hollywood, but specifically the producers of the blockbuster fantasy films of the last ten years have
contributed to the making of a culture relatively uninterested in
the real and in politics, and thus have created a divide between
the policy making apparatus and the common citizenry.
But do fantasy films deserve distinction as a medium that
credibly transmits messages beyond entertainment? The Oscar
winners of the last few decades represent films—corporate and
independent, domestic and foreign—that deal with issues such
as the Holocaust, mental illness, and war. Yet only two of the
ten highest grossing films (ever)—Titanic and The Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King—received coronations at the
Academy Award ceremonies in their respective years. The
blockbusters have been about outer space (Star Wars, E.T.),
extinct animals coming to life (Jurassic Park), fantasy worlds
(The Lord of the Rings), and mythical super heroes (SpiderMan, both parts). But do they really have significant influence
society’s workings or values?
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ON
THE FENCE: MEDIA AND POLITICS
*
The popularity of fantasy films cannot be understated.
Americans pay in the hundreds of millions for the top movies.
The highest grossing film, Titanic, brought in over $1.8 billion,
which equates to .02 percent of America’s Gross National
Product for 1997, the year the film was released. The money
spent by studios to produce movies at such a scale, and by consumers to see them dwarfs by comparison the expenditures
seen in the other mass media industries. The motion picture
industry, therefore, is one of the two largest drivers (the other
being the computer industry) of the economy of the state of
California, an economy that trumps that of most nations.
To suggest merely that they have a profound influence on
impressionable youths would deflect such films’ intensity.
While films in the past could boast of a devoted, playful fan following, today’s successful fantasy dramas breed their own subcultures. Lined up outside theaters showing The Lord of the
Rings and Star Wars are are countless Aragorns and
Skywalkers, dress and persona both adopted. Books, movies,
and role-playing games encourage and progress the proliferation and sophistication of such subcultures with pre-planned
hierarchical social structure. Thus, in addition to the economic
power of the film industry, fantasy film fan bases tend to more
closely resemble the constituency of a religious faction or
modern day nation-state than of a for-profit enterprise.
Fantasy films—let alone the entire realm of major motion
pictures—have transcended the status of mere entertainment.
They may soon cross the economic boundary separating luxuries and necessities. According to the U.S. Census and the
National Association of Theater Owners, there is approximately one movie screen for every eight-thousand American citizens. Not counting DVD players and computers that are
increasingly equipped to download pirated (and legal) films off
the Internet. Hollywood is a ubiquitous focal point of the
American existence.
*
Must there be a correlation between power and political
trends? Can we just ignore the fact that the average American,
who does not bother to vote even once every four years, nevertheless goes out to the movies five times in a single year?
Hollywood’s sensationalism has exacerbated America’s
short attention span and lack of interest in the daily news.
Worse is that Hollywood is purging: fantasy spectacles feed
popular hunger for distraction from reality, from economy,
from politics. The process over time numbs the population to
the ordeals of real life.
And, contrary to tradition, Hollywood has largely decided
to shy away from political controversy.
Elizabeth Guider wriote in Variety that “the parent companies of the media are becoming increasingly reluctant to go out
on a limb about anything controversial.” The trend is not the
result of any conspiracy by Hollywood executives to squeeze
dissent from discourse. Rather, Hollywood producers fear
hurting or offending their corporate allies would in turn pummel their bottom line, even if they personally see no problem
with controversy.
Many in Hollywood have felt the brunt of the new
72 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
Hollywood blacklisting. Ed Gernon, the executive producer of
Hitler: The Rise of Evil, was fired when he told the press that he
thought the miniseries was important because the political climate of post-September 11th America was similar to the climate
under which the Nazis thrived. Even Michael Moore’s
Fahrenheit 9/11, risked not being distributed, as Disney feared
the piece’s scathing indictment of President Bush was too controversial, even though it was quick to distribute Kill Bill:
Volume 2, a gruesome and violent film, at the same time.
The double standard between Quentin Tarantino’s work of
gratuitous violence and Moore’s piece of cinematic journalism can
be explained. Fantasy film successes prove that we pine for the
imaginary. Even disturbing depictions of violence, contextualized in a movie with no basis in reality, are easily absorbed. But
a movie that showcases Iraqi babies being killed by American
tax dollars and demonstrates that President Bush has significant ties to the Saudi terrorist-harboring regime is something
the public is simply not used-to. In Fahrenheit 9/11 a woman
cries when she recalls learning of her son’s death in Iraq. While
the image is tame compared to what one usually sees on the silver screen, because it is real, it is far more harrowing.
While an aversion to turning off corporate partners forces
Hollywood to be conciliatory, the military, one of the most
provocative sectors of government, has realized that tapping
into Hollywood’s popularity is an ideal vehicle for advancing its
own interests. Before movie previews, one used to be able to
see a “Dungeons and Dragons”-like advertisement for the
Marines, obviously tapping into the vein of infatuation with
film; the Army developed a video game to act as a vehicle for
recruitment.
The collaboration between Hollywood and the military is
nothing new. But the collaboration is crippling Hollywood’s
voice while furthering the expansionist impulses of our current
State. War movies are popular, and therefore profitable. If a
producer wants to cash in such a film, he or she must coordinate with the military to gain access to the necessary equipment. Hollywood journalist David Robb wrote for the
American Movie Channel: “For the military, providing production assistance to filmmakers is mostly about getting its message out [to] millions of potential recruits. An official Army
publication, called A Producer’s Guide to U.S. Army
Cooperation with the Entertainment Industry, states that film
productions that seek the Army’s assistance ‘should help
Armed Forces recruiting and retention programs.’”
Not only must a script be approved by the military for a
producer to win its assistance, but the military also actively
exploits the partnership. Major David Georgi in an memo concerning the film Clear and Present Danger, wrote that the
script was “revised to reflect Department of Defense concerns
regarding military command and control, recognition of
Colombian sovereignty and an improved depiction of the presidency,” and that “military depictions have become more of a
‘commercial’ for [the military].” Hollywood has acted like an
overgrown public relations firm for the Department of Defense
and has held helped sugarcoat America’s involvement in
Colombia.
How ironic that Hollywood, once a hotbed of radicalism, is
now the vanguard of the American political establishment, protecting the discourse from outright criticism of the state! That
cinema, cornerstone of the so-called liberal media, is chiefly
responsible for the dilution of dissent. Could an industry so
ON
THE FENCE: MEDIA AND POLITICS
saturated with Democrats really align itself with the state’s militarist interests?
Depoliticized content streams from Hollywood to a massive portion of the American public, to the detriment of democracy. But Hollywood’s growing tendency to add muscle to its
fantasy films and pieces may come to wield severe consequences for those that do participate in electoral action.
“Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery,”
McLuhan laments. “The politician will be only too happy to
abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much
more powerful than he could ever be.” Former governor of
California Jerry Brown, commenting on the recall of Governor
Gray Davis in 2003, told reporters that we no longer elect policy makers; rather, we elect the spokespeople of policy.
The emptiness of most American media, coupled with the
ubiquity of visual media, (especially film), leaves the public little option but to participate in and respond to a political discourse that is more akin to entertainment, a discourse that is
more concerned with style than content. The electorate has
become more concerned with politician’s image than with his
or her ideas. For example, during the 2004 campaign season
the candidates’ coverage often dwelled on immaterial issues
such as their demeanors, upbringings, personal financial
assets, and Vietnam records, as opposed to their respective
stances on health care, job creation, or any other issue that has
significant impact on the daily affairs of the average American.
John Kerry and John Edwards won electoral points by making
comical appearances on popular television shows like The
Daily Show and Late Night with David Letterman, while the
Bush campaign gained ground by launching fictitious hate
pieces on prime time airwaves that spread vicious lies about
John Kerry’s heroic Vietnam War record. The scuttlebutt surrounding the debates revolved around each candidate’s confi-
dence and delivery, while the validity of their ideas fell by the
discourse’s wayside.
As McLuhan suggsted, political leaders are being elected
based upon their image, rather than a dialectic of competing
ideals that gives rise to creative solutions. We see an electoral
war between competing public relations firms who represent
the moderately conservative (the Democrats) and the very
conservative (the Republicans), where the arena of political
discourse has been reduced to the level of beauty pageants,
professional sports, and advertising campaigns. Policy these
days is actually drawn out by the teams behind politicians. For
example, when most Americans favored the image of George
W. Bush in 2000, they were actually electing people like Karl
Rove, who sits behind Bush’s regular-old-guy image, to run the
country.
Does Hollywood have a responsibility to be political, let
alone oppositional to the State? Hollywood is a free enterprise,
and cannot be “forced” to do anything. But right now social
conditions are inducing a capitulatation to the desires of the
State and its corporate cohort. Right now, Hollywood is keeping Americans fully distracted from the real. Considering its
god-like influence on the public, perhaps Hollywood has a
moral responsibility to keep the public more interested in contemporary issues for the sake of a healthy democracy—it is busy
churning out distracting fantasy films, it is being opportunistic
and irresponsible.
But all hope is not lost. There was a backlash; Moore’s film
was released. Some actors’ anti-war beliefs have caused turmoil
in their careers as of late, and they have found no reason to fear
a McCarthyist witch hunt. Still, the consequences of the current
fantasy film craze are undeniable; trouble arises when their
messages, which have so much power to affect the American
political climate, run contrary to the ideal of democracy.
Agree? Disagree?
Or stuck on the Fence?
We want your
impassioned responses!
Send an E-mail to
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THE
FENCE: READER RESPONSE
the message versus
the medium
~by Giselle Frommer
Maclean, VA
The current political
administration has
added such weight to
the political pendulum
that it has dragged all
other systems in
America off their
natural course.
74 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
t
he new student enrolled in my father’s course on custom western bootmaking in Oregon was a surprise.
The twenty-two-year-old Columbia University
chemistry student-slash-aspiring viticulturalist was
hardly the “typical” student lured by my father’s
leather craft and romance with the Old West. Yet, I wondered if
he could be one of that newest prototype of American idealists
who falls somewhere between the critical optimism of progressive politics and the materialist strategies of the power elite.
Such an idealist would be educated with a social and environmental consciousness yet, finding him or herself in debt from
the skyrocketing costs of higher ed, would embrace pioneering
and technologically savvy entrepreneurial strategies, a sort of
walking the talk. The possibility brewed in my mind further, as
I coupled feminism, now having been declared “passe” by my
European girlfriends, with the growing trend of young women
entrepreneurs conjuring (rather than protesting) global fashion
through textile and home economics revivals, e.g., knitting
books and circles or taking Mila Jovovich scissors to render
already petite t-shirts and bikinis, more revealing. I questioned
whom the real agents of change or trends can be in a social system dominated by politics and, furthermore, politics shaped
only by individuals age thirty-five and above.
In Systems Theory, the “edge” of a trend can be neither
individually grasped, nor created. Yet it can be signaled when
THE
FENCE: READER RESPONSE
the predictable trajectory of an evolving system becomes oversaturated to such a point that deviation from the norm is necessary; in other words, when one sees that so many of one’s fellows are beginning to act predictably, some change is already
afoot. The current political administration has added such
weight to the political pendulum that it has dragged all other
systems in America off their natural course. In this zero-sum
game of cats-in-the-cradle, where the pull of the one system
limits the opportunity and movement of others, whichever generation defines the political system is the generation at the
edge, or Generation Edge. Those skirting political enfranchisement are, as a matter of course, Generation Next. And as little
concern is given to domestic social issues, the younger cousins
of Generation Next are having their destiny cast for them: to
enter their world as Generation Debt. But the trend wasn’t
always this way, and perhaps by the time the twenty-two-yearold graduates from a wine-making school at Cornell or in
France, he’ll inherit a bit brighter future.
*
Two decades ago, amid the economic booms of the ’80s
and ’90s, everyone educated—from anthropologists to tourists
to immigrants, to State department ex-pats, as well as entrepreneurial cosmopolitanauts—was the intrepid curious, engaged
in border crossings, both literal and metaphysical. The
momentum of such crossings fed the ravenous tastes of an
urban-cosmopolitan Americana as much as blue grass, country
fairs, and cowboy boots remained the staple of Americana in
the countryside. The manifestation of this travel left a trail of
manifold diverse, faddish, and colorful forms that brightened
American cities with an appearance rivaling carnivalesque.
And the lure of new Lychee martinis, Capoeira schools, green
tea frappucinos, hentai anime, Kabbalah bracelets, Malagasy
rain sticks, Hatha yoga, and the poetry of Pablo Neruda pulled
many Americans far from Puritan, blue-collar roots and into
the realms of the exotic, both vis-à-vis their own position to the
foreign and the foreigners to themselves.
The momentum of this postmodern embrace of “elsewhere” was part of the previous swing on the political pendulum formed by Generation Next. Capturing the imagination of
Generation Debt, Generation Next worked for the “special
interest” political issues pertaining to people undocumented,
untitled, voiceless, or unconnected. From Mexican migrant
farm workers and maquilladora workers, to Burmese girls sold
into prostitution, to the San Bushmen in Africa seeking to
reclaim their land, to a continuation of affirmative action policies, much of this political swing was caused by the subsequent
consciousness of sovereign nations, communities, and territories which had been affected by forced (and uninvited) imperialistic and traditional political systems of U.S. global expansionism. And what could be a more appropriate response to the
wealth and cultural riches accumulating in the U.S. due to globalization than a reciprocal penetration of the U.S. by outsiders,
a pattern now evident in the cultural fusion growing in an outer
borough of America’s primary site of cosmopolitan capitalism,
New York City.
Nestled in a borough outside of New York City’s
Manhattan, “neighborhood New York” is the most ethnically
diverse county in North America. Like a scene from Tim
Robbins’s new sci-fi film Code 46, where the characters speak
in a cosmopolitan English interspersed with Mandarin, Arabic,
Spanish and French idioms, Queens is new cultural bricolage, a
fusion of innovations and increasingly polyvocal text clamoring
to create new frontiers in America’s composition. The transcultural generations inhabiting this outer limit of America have
been filtering influence and tastes into the urban and simulated
American landscape even as its residents flood daily onto the 7train to meet the treadmill of New York City. A jaunt through
the communities of Queens reveals its diversity and dynamic.
Andean music flows into the reeds of the soulful pan flute
on Roosevelt Avenue in Corona amid hot South American
arepa (corn patty filled with cheese) or Mexican tamales. In
Jackson Heights, 39th Avenue mingles the brilliant rose, lime,
and violet of the South Asian women’s shalor kameez with
mango, pistachio, and coconut kulfi (Indian ice cream) stands.
The corner of 69th and Woodside confronts five possible Irish
Pubs to obtain either a pint o’ Guinness or a Scotch-Whiskey.
Jamaica Avenue flashes its bright yellow, green, red, and black
colors signifying both land and struggle in the flags of West
Indian, Caribbean and African nationalities. Main Street flushes with auspicious Hanzi characters declaring “yi kuai kuai”
(one dollar) prices for consistently fresh and varied selection of
Asian and tropical produce. Steinway Street in Astoria lures the
locals, along with the Manhattanite adventurous, to Middle
Eastern shisha (an Arabic style pipe) parlors where the
molasses-fermented tobacco smoke wafts luxuriantly from the
mouths of customers as well as the hot coals firing the pipe.
And Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill greets its residents from
French-Guyana and Surinam with Chutney-Soca music, a Kali
temple, or a taste of Trinidad at the savory roti shops.
Amidst all of this heterogeneity is the reproduction and
celebration of customs and the home, including Ramadan; the
works of national poets such as Bengali Rabindrath Tagore;
cheeses from countries who didn’t support America in the War
on Terror; the offerings of incense and ginseng-rice wine to
Korean ancestors; and various recipes of “mama’s kitchen.”
The proliferation of culture in Queens is not just the layering of second, third, fourth and fifth generations into a “Little
Bombay.” It descends from the American-born transcultural
who are increasingly intercoursing with America’s homegrown
trends through their own cultural industries and attitudes.
This is evident in the fact that American-based artists now have
easier access to resources enabling ethnic fusion: hear now the
beats of the Punjabi-Bangra music mixed in with the lyrical
productions of New York heavies, Jay-Z and Missy Elliott, or,
see the symbolic and material culture of the Jewish Kaballah
derived by Madonna to add profundity and status to her work
and to retain her “edge.” At the same time, older generations of
musicians must war to defend their own “edge” and legacy as
creators of Americana. Hence, Metallica’s legal battles to gain
intellectual property rights over their music being distributed
through Internet-based music file-swapping programs. Such
battles over both profit and cultural status in America augur to
have a chilling effect on all artistic and cultural creation. Yet,
the threats posed by intellectual property rights regimes remain
secondary to the current rigidity subtly imposed by the current
political administration.
*
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THE
FENCE: READER RESPONSE
Generation Debt, our children, could inherit one field that
is not yet dominated by any partisan group: information technologies. Indeed, America’s increasing kinship with digitized,
biosynthetic, and cellular technologies is a systemic trend without a conscious trajectory other than pure evolution.
Innovations to particular markets drive those markets’ “hive
mentality,” yet “innovation” is still only deemed worthy of intellectual property rights when it is proven to meet the criterion of
commercial applicability. Commercial applicability in turn
drives the huge marketing campaigns attached to new technologies that would “speak for themselves” if they were actually valuable. But most technologies are not sold at their “true”
value, rather at a speculative value created by stock markets.
We are even further into the “simulacrum hyper-reality” that
French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard first began writing
about in 1970s. Furthermore, Marshall McLuhan’s fear (“the
medium is the message”) approaches reality as our information
and communication technologies “massage” information to
such oversaturation that the communications we receive are
barely decipherable anymore. Despite the efforts made by critical media journals, such as Adbusters and Wired, to sift the
chaff from the quality technology and innovation, the “hottest”
media still drives the edge of consumption. According to Wired
magazine editor Kevin Kelly, free-access computer programs
like Google, Yahoo, Shareaza, Adobe Acrobat Reader, or even
Linux software provide the “hive” a primary advantage. Some
techies agree even to the extent of saying, “if it’s not free, you’re
doing it wrong.”
While the Internet began as a government-funded military
project to access information, today it innervates every facet of
our lives. I had to just ask myself: if the World Wide Web was
once specialized military technology that became pedestrian,
what will happen if new technologies in biochemical warfare
and nuclear technologies become pedestrian? Of course, that is
assuming that some major corporate conglomerate does not get
their hands on it first, like a Boeing-Halliburton-Bristol MyersSquibb, and sell its new product off piece by piece to us and the
non-industrial countries.
Spun with righteous tone, corporate infiltration of our
value systems is not unlikely under the current administration:
consider a recent report in the International Herald Tribute,
which tells of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s coupling
with the Pope’s moral authority in an attempt to gain acceptance for U.S. genetically modified organisms in non-industrial
countries. Europeans and Americans waged war against these
same GMOs, which were unsuitable to enter the market unlabeled. One wonders: if the Pontiff and the USDA dare to
ground their endorsement of GMOs in a moral maxim to feed
the hungry, then does the destruction of a McDonald’s epitomize an “American definition” of terrorism?
by Malcolm Jarrett
76 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
THE PREZ by Marc Prey and Bill Pope
THE
FENCE: READER RESPONSE
t
Lights…
Camera…
ELECTION!
~by Krissy Gasbarre
New York, NY
78 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
he last weekend of this past September, the distributor of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 added over
600 theaters to its list of those showing the film, a
highly unusual step for a film entering its fourth
month of wide release. But theater owners knew:
tickets were still selling, and audiences were still gathering. Some
of the money was guaranteed to come from the crowds who would
hear Moore speak during his Rock the Vote-esque tour of over
sixty cities (many of them college towns), which kicked off that
same weekend. But even minus the tour, buzz was still churning
from the film’s June release.
Why? What compelled moviegoers to spend ten dollars on a
ticket when they could have learned the film’s facts and figures
from a debate on the news or a quick surf on the Web? There is a
tightening relationship between Hollywood and politics that’s
influencing citizens, according to Paul Levinson, Ph.D., Chair of
the Department of Communication and Media Studies at
Fordham University in New York City. “The public pays attention
to what celebrities do and say, because we feel like we know them,
and even aspire to be like them.” Levinson says. Politicians tap
into the phenomenon by palling around with celebrities who in
turn score a free minute in the spotlight at election time.
Democracy is commercial. That is, citizens play the dual
roles of voter and consumer. We only vote once every few years,
though, while we consume constantly—food, material goods,
information, and most of all, entertainment. Americans scarf
down media as gladly as they do McDonald’s, and the media know
it, so they keep feeding us more of what we’ buy. And so the media
are the vehicle for a message.
Anybody who wants a product seen, who wants to be heard,
has to climb to the top buzz branch of the highest tree (i.e., to buy
some advertising space or get publicity placement in a popular
publication or production) to get people talking. It’s the nature of
the beast: the loudest voice persuades the largest number of people to perform—hopefully as desired. The loudest voice in turn
comes from the fellow with the most money to spend on his yell.
And who’s got the most money of all? Who works hardest to convey an image to persuade large audiences to think, feel, and act a
certain way?
Politicians and celebrities.
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FENCE: READER RESPONSE
Imagine their impact when they build when they team up to
communicate the same message; imagine what happens when
they’re carbon-copied.
*
Celebrities of all kinds endorse the Presidential candidates:
Jon Bon Jovi, Ben Affleck, and Robert DeNiro have Kerry’s back;
Dennis Miller and Kelsey Grammer support Bush. Such allegiance grabs non-voters’ attention through sensationalism.
Perhaps the most profound case of a pop culture-politics link
comes when a certain celebrity’s fans vote as they do because of an
endorsement, especially if the fan was previously indifferent to
the politics in-play. If a celebrity bashes a candidate’s policy or
reputation, chances are good that he or she will engage, and perhaps persuade, an audience by virtue of the aura of celebrity.
At the heart of every newscast, late night joke, and headline in
black-and-white is the salable conflict that is inherent to politics.
Every media “update”—how Kerry really felt about Vietnam, what
Bush really had to say about homosexual marriage—is a quick
sentence about war and peace that has the potential to turn the
head of every human being. There’s an issue on the table that
affects each of us, be it war, employment, health care for seniors,
women’s rights, education. But without any direct effect it
remains little more than a story fraught with controversy and
alleged contradictions.
Communication and media scholars have termed this the
“hypodermic syringe” model of communication to the public.
The theory is that the media “inject” their audiences with stories,
statistics, and other types of information that are passively
received and believed until such time as they become personally
relevant I may sit in front of the TV and watch a story on the news
about the latest John Kerry (or Britney Spears) rumor, without
evaluating the story critically until I have a reason to do so. Inject
Americans with an idea, proponents of this theory say, and watch
them buy it. Levinson holds that everyone can be susceptible to
this: Our entire population can be victimized by propaganda.
Young and old [people] are equally influenced by different parts
of the popular culture.”
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M
PRISM
memories of a dear,
microprocessing
friend
~by Sasha Haines-Stiles
New York, NY
t
he air is cold, even indoors, but there’s no fireplace in my New York apartment. Instead of
reaching my arms out to a ginger blaze, as I did
when I was younger, I lay my palms on the grey of
my laptop. It’s as though this is what the fleshy
region under my thumbs has evolved to do. The machine
vibrates like a living creature. Warmth rises from the keyboard
like body heat.
My connection to this machine is so natural and intimate
that I can’t remember not having it in my life. There seems to
be something counterintuitively primal, even biological, about
this package of plastic and wires. Its interface must be the way
my mind works now, in window after window; whatever I pull
to the front hovers tenuously.
Sometimes I regard it as a confidant: like a therapist the
screen blinks back, its cursor a pursed lip, a raised eyebrow.
Indeed, it seems human, somehow: folded in on itself, the thing
is inscrutable, but by pressing a single button I can bring it to
life, eliciting a rainbow of color, a symphony of sounds. I have
never understood its insides, those unseeable, unknowable
guts. I prefer to contemplate the screen and not the twisted
unsightly cords trailing out its rear.
It has its weather, its blue moods. A hum crescendos to a
roar and the rising heat begins to burn my fingertips. The cursor freezes up and suddenly the screen is plastic, dead. The
Internet is suddenly divorced from me, my wireless card’s
green light gone dark, like a closed eye.
Even when my heart skids against my breath for a
moment, I know which keys to strike in tandem, how long to
press and with what pressure. I have learned as much over the
course of our relationship. For better or worse, I am in the
habit of making repair operations by myself, without the aid of
a manual or an outsourced, disembodied voice. I feel my way
through, alternately coaxing and cursing. I tend to my computer the way I tend to family members or friends, with cavalier
faith in resiliency—yet also carefully and with fear of irreversible damage.
Somewhere between touch-typing and music downloads,
the computer has grown from equipment to extension of ourselves. Of course, our communion with technological objects is
evident everywhere, from cell phones pressed to cheeks to earphones molded against skulls. But when it comes to computers, unity isn’t just aesthetic or ergonomic or even practical.
Rather, it is often the result of sliding down the rabbit hole and
landing on the other side of the screen.
80 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
When I moved to another country last year, I reincarnated
my friends and family back home as e-mail addresses and
screen names. To be honest, I didn’t mind having to be sparing
with long-distance phone calls. I’ve always found writing more
comfortable than speaking face-to-face, and I liked the forced
lag and ambiguousness of instant messaging.
Even better was the casual e-mail traded back and forth
between two continents: bantering with spell-check and the
opportunity to revise was a simple luxury. Like foie gras or
800-count bed sheets, it was addictive.
What with emoticons and e-mail lingo, I was tapping out a
new and different language. It’s been well-evidenced since the
advent of Internet dating that facelessness makes it easier to
say difficult things. I discovered the tongue my interface gave
me.
Used to rerunning live conversations in my head, I cultivated the compulsive habit of rereading typed talks. I analyzed
dialogue, right down to word choice and mis-punctuation. I
began to feel a bit obsessive and sighed with relief whenever
friends sent portions of their correspondence for me to scrutinize. I was no less neurotic when it came to outgoing mail,
which I scanned for typos and revised lovingly.
Then there was the ability to control a conversation, to
steer it wherever I wanted it to go. Does the sin of omission
exist in cyberspace? I found avoiding the issue to be as simple
as neglecting to be comprehensive in one’s reply. On screen
there are no sullen silences or pregnant pauses; there is, however, a multitude of infallible, invisible excuses.
E-mail and instant messaging have long towed the line
between entertainment and practical medium, and pragmatism
has its diversionary aspect. I realized, of course, that my fondness for Internet banter across an ocean had less to do with
staying in touch cheaply than with being able to manipulate my
image at will via my computer. It wasn’t just that it was easier
to type than speak from one country to another; it was also a
way of positioning myself flatteringly on the horizon, foreign
and finer in the distance.
Coming home, then, has been a strange but welcome
return to physical presence. E-mails have faces again, and fonts
have voices and full-throated laughs. This is the way things are
beyond the browser, bodied and unscripted and in real time.
Technology, I now remember, is not a requisite interlocutor.
My laptop is still my coconspirator and medium, but like a
fire I dampen it down every now and then. There are, after all,
other ways to get warm.
far beyond film
Hedy Lamarr:
Vamp,
Actor,
Unlikely Inventor
~by Christopher Mari
Astoria, NY
h
edy Lamarr was gorgeous in a way too few
Hollywood starlets are today—sophisticated,
alluring, sensual, mysterious, and best of all—foreign. Louis B. Mayer dubbed her “the most
beautiful woman in the world.”. European men
flocked to see her in Extase, in which she
appeared nude, and Columbia University undergraduates once
voted her their Desert Island Dream Girl. Lamarr couldn’t
care less about all the fuss over her sleepy-eyed, come-hither
looks. “Any girl can be glamorous,” she once remarked. “All
you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”
But Hedy Lamarr was far from stupid, which only added to
her über-hotness. If you’re reading this on a wireless device or
you’ve just finished a call on your cell phone, you have Lamarr
to thank for it.
*
She was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler on November 9,
1913 in Vienna, Austria. As the daughter of a wealthy banker,
she was educated by private tutors and studied in exclusive
schools in Vienna. As a teenager she became fascinated with
film and decided to quit school to pursue a career as an actress.
At 16 she began studying with Max Reinhardt who, while watching her read her lines one day in 1931, proclaimed her to be “the
most beautiful girl in Europe.” (Mayer might not have originated the catchphrase but he knew how to build on a good
thing.) That same year she began appearing in German and
82 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
Czech movies, the most famous of which was the 1933 film
Extase.
Extase—the story of a young woman who falls in love with
a soldier while married to a much older man—was well received
in Europe, particularly with men who crowded theaters to see
Kiesler in its notorious skinny-dipping and lovemaking scenes.
It was denounced by Pope Pius XI and banned in the United
States, but Mussolini issued a permit so it could be seen at the
Venice Film Festival. As the film grew in popularity, Kiesler
married the first of her six husbands, the Austrian munitions
builder and Nazi sympathizer Fritz Mandl, who became so
obsessed with the film that he tried to buy up all the prints. It
wasn’t so much that his wife appeared nude that iked him, but
the expression on her face during the lovemaking scenes.
(Legend has it that the look was achieved by the director sticking pins into her backside.) Despite the fortune Mandl spent
trying to get every copy of the film, he failed: even Mussolini
refused to sell his copy.
Mandl’s obsession with his wife was all consuming: he
almost never allowed her out of their house alone and made
sure that the servants kept an eye on her. “I was sort of his
slave,” Kiesler once claimed. Because she was always by her
husband’s side, Kiesler had to endure endless business dinners
with Mandl’s fascist clients, which proved fortunately to be a
powerful educational experience. Anyone knowledgeable
about weapons design in 1930s Europe called upon Mandl, and
as a result Kiesler received the equivalent of a degree in military
technology. She hated her husband’s fascist clients (she called
far beyond film
Hitler “posturing” and Mussolini “pompous”) and thought
Mandl fairly dull himself, so one night she decided to make her
escape by drugging her maid’s coffee, crawling out her bathroom window and high-tailing it to London.
There Kiesler found some stage acting work—it was there
that the second M in MGM, Louis B. Mayer, discovered her.
The prudish Mayer had seen her in Extase as well, and thought
she could be a success in “more wholesome” American movies,
so he offered her a $500 dollar a week contract with his studio
and brought her back to the United States as the proclaimed
successor to Greta Garbo. In addition to the contract and the
press buildup, Mayer suggested a name change to Lamarr, in
tribute to the late silent film star Barbara La Marr, whom he
admired.
Kiesler , now Lamarr, immigrated to America on the ocean
liner Normandie in 1937 where she was met by eager members
of the press who knew of her through Extase, which had arrived
three years earlier. Her debut in American cinema came the
next year, alongside Charles Boyer in Algiers. Though her
command of the English language was sketchy at best, she
became wildly popular as a femme fatale—men wanted to be
with her and women wanted to be like her, even copying her
parted-down-the-middle hairstyle.
Lamarr never became as respected as Garbo, who was
lauded for her looks as well as acting ability; still thespian and
sex appeal landed her roles with some of the most famous male
stars of the period, including Robert Taylor in Lady of the
Tropics, Spencer Tracy in I Take This Woman and Tortilla Flat,
Clark Gable in Comrade X, and James Stewart in The Ziegfield
Girl and Come Live with Me. Critics of the era found her acting ability limited at best, but none ever doubted her ability to
light up a scene. In a 1939 review of Lady of the Tropics,
Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times, “Now that she
has inadvisedly been given an opportunity to act, it is necessary
to report that she is essentially one of those museum pieces, like
the Mona Lisa, who were more beautiful in repose.”
*
One wonders what those critics might have thought about
Lamarr if they had been invited to a Hollywood dinner party in
1940, where she met avant garde composer George Antheil.
The war in Europe had just started and the conversation
between Lamarr and Antheil naturally gravitated towards how
difficult it would be for the Allies to stop Hitler’s war machine.
From her memorable dinners at castle Mandl, Lamarr knew
enough about Nazi weapons to be concerned, particularly about
their attempts at jamming radio controlled torpedoes by finding the right frequency to either knock them off course or detonate them prematurely. She suggested to Antheil that the
Allies might need a countermeasure device which would prevent jamming by broadcasting the torpedo’s control signal over
a series of fast changing frequencies. The signal could then be
picked up by a receiver inside the torpedo, which would automatically match the transmitter’s frequency and thereby prevent jamming.
Antheil, intrigued by the idea, suggested a collaboration.
Lamarr agreed by scrawling her phone number in lipstick
across his car’s windshield. Though a composer, Antheil had
the technical know-how that Lamarr lacked to build such a
device: he had once scored a composition for 16 player pianos,
four xylophones, four bass drums, two airplane propellers and
a siren; in order to keep the player pianos in time, he used
identical strips of punched tape to synchronize them. He realized that such an approach might work to synchronize the radio
controller and the receiver in the torpedo. He discussed the
idea with Lamarr and the pair developed a system that used two
roles of paper with identical patterns of random holes, one roll
being placed inside the radio transmitter, the other in the torpedo. They used 88 frequencies, matching the number of keys
on the piano.
To their thinking, this was the key to winning
the war: radio controllers making split second hops in their torpedoes’ frequencies, confounding all Axis jamming efforts.
Lamarr and Antheil received their patent for a “Secret
Communications System” in August 1942 and immediately sent
their idea to the National Inventors Council, a wartime
Commerce Department division established to draw ideas from
the public. They offered their invention to the U.S. military
free of charge but government officials had no interest in it—
they had misread the paperwork for the patent! In their patent
application, Lamarr and Antheil described how the rolls of
paper were similar to ones found in a player piano. Antheil
later recalled: “The brass hats in Washington who examined
our invention could only focus on two words: player piano. I
heard them all say: ‘My God, how are we going to fit a player
piano in a torpedo?’”
Lamarr was told that she could better serve her adopted
country by selling war bonds. She agreed and sold seven million dollars’ worth in a day by giving out kisses at $50,000 a
smooch. The invention collected dust in government vaults
for years but was independently developed by engineers at
Sylvania in the late 1950s. Their method, using electronic controls instead of rolls of punched paper, became the cornerstone
of secure American military communications. During the
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the United States used this idea,
today known as frequency hopping, to protect communications
from potential Soviet eavesdroppers. As satellite communications expanded in subsequent decades, frequency hopping
moved into the commercial arena, giving users of cellular
phones, pagers and other wireless devices the ability to share a
single radio frequency in ever –more-limited airspace.
As for Lamarr, she continued to make films through the
1940s and ’50s, two of her most notable coming in the postwar
period, The Strange Woman—which many critics considered
her best performance—and Samson and Delilah, a Cecil B.
DeMille classic in which she gave Victor Mature the most
famous haircut in history. After retiring from acting in 1957,
Lamarr was mainly in the news for brushes with the law. She
was arrested on shoplifting charges in 1965, published a revealing autobiography called Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a
Woman, and then sued her ghostwriters for misrepresentation.
She later hauled Mel Brooks into court for his portrayal of
Harvey Korman as “Hedley Lamarr” in his film Blazing
Saddles. In 1997 she and Antheil (who died decades earlier)
were finally acknowledged for their contributions to modern
telecommunications by the Electric Frontier Foundation, an
influential lobby. Lamarr’s only public comment on the
award: “It’s about time.”
Hedy Lamarr died in South Florida in January 2000 at the
age of 86, where she was living off a Screen Actors Guild pension. She left behind a wealth of classic films and a world which
still hasn’t quite worked out the kinks of cell phone etiquette.
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the entrepreneurial way
o
Tough
Love
Four Inventors in Lexington,
Massachusetts Identify the
Secret to Inventing: Cut all
Emotional Ties, and Move On
~by Jennifer Chu
Somerville, MA
84 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
ne by one, inventors have started to take their seats: the
monthly meeting of the Inventor’s Association of New
England is called to order. One mutters to another,
“I’ve got a prototype, you know.” Another tightly
clutches his four-year labor of love—a decidedly unfinished-looking scooter. For your knees. As newcomers stand to introduce
themselves and their inventions, the gentleman sitting next to me
apologizes to the assembled, “This is a little more publicity than
I’m used to, so I must beg off.”
But beg off he must not if he wants to get anywhere in the
world of invention. At least, that’s what four inventors in
Lexington, Massachusetts, would say. To the anxious man with
the scooter they would advise a looser grip and a business plan to
accompany his premature prototype. They would say all this and
more, but they don’t have the time. They’re busy inventing.
Together, Richard Pavelle, Sol Aisenberg, Ze’ev Hed, and
George Freedman form the six-year-old innovation powerhouse
called Invent Resources. Long ago they left behind their frustrations as basement inventors and relinquished dreams of perfecting the invention of a lifetime. Today, their ideas are in constant
demand. Their secret is simple: divorce yourself from your invention and start advertising.
It’s half past ten, and I’m late to my first I.R. meeting. My
hands are full, and my brain is floundering from lack of caffeine.
(It’s the wrong morning to pass on the latte.) I’ve just walked into
a room teeming with the energy of four rapidly firing minds. The
four inventors are seated around a large oval table, and at present,
each faces me.
When I sit down I situate myself in a place least likely to disrupt the creative balance. The partner with his elbows propped on
the table, hands clasped together, speaks first. Physicist Sol
Aisenberg, the check that keeps the balance of power in place, is
the skeptic of the group. During the meeting, his pose seldom
changes. To date, he holds eighteen patents and, on the side, critiques the works of novice inventors.
“My approach is to look at the applications from the point of
view of potential attack, and help make the patent bulletproof,”
Aisenberg says about the forays of invention.
After greeting me, he inquires about my college major. For
most people, I have to say it twice—once for hearing, a second
time for comprehension.
“Brain and cognitive sciences,” I reply.
An exclamation erupts from the opposite end of the table.
The bearded inventor with a hawk’s nose leans forward. He is
Ze’ev Hed, the firecracker of the group. To be sure, his motto is
ironic: “I am too stupid to know it cannot be done.” Among his
thirty-six patents is a catheter originally designed for the heart,
which will soon be fashioned into a cooling system for freshlyopened bottles of wine.
After hearing my answer—once—Hed launches into a spirited
monologue about the latest work on the origin of nerve firings.
His words come in dizzying bursts of guttural, German-accented
English, and his colleagues interject questions whenever he pauses to breathe. Then Aisenberg picks up the cognitive string, mentioning some work that he’s involved in with dyslexia.
“There are many types of dyslexia, but the type that is related
to differential color sensitivity is what I’m working on,” said the
physicist. Aisenberg is collaborating with other physicists and
neuroscientists to determine whether different colors and wavelengths may actually influence the way people read.
“Do you know what portion of the dyslexic population is
the entrepreneurial way
influenced?” asks George Freedman, leaning back in his chair,
bushy brows furrowed. Freedman, an MIT-trained engineer, is
the paternal figure of the group. He is also the author of the
book In Pursuit of Innovation, and in his free time, advises
other inventors on how to sell their products.
“Everyone thinks it’s a wonderful thing to be an expert,”
said Freedman. “Actually, to be an expert in some ways is a bad
thing, because that means you narrowly channel down your
expertise.”
Aisenberg jumps in, followed closely by Hed. “If you go to
a carpenter with a problem, he’ll use a hammer,” said
it’s knowing when to let go. A discussion among the three elders about avoiding such obstinate attachment goes something
like this:
Aisenberg. “If you go to a surgeon, he’ll use a knife. They use
the tools they have. We have a multitude of tools.”
“The one characteristic of the people in this group is that
we get bored easily,” said Hed. “And as a result, we never
become an expert in a single field and know everything that is
possible on a single iota. You can characterize us as people who
know an iota about almost everything. And that’s a big advantage.” Consider these inventors jacks-of-all trades.
As the three volley off each other, the fourth member of the
group sits back, feet crossed on the table, listening intently.
Richard Pavelle is founder and president of this motley crew;
aside from a brief introduction, he has yet to contribute to the
deluge of ideas launching across the table. He is a mathematician and computer scientist, and is deemed the most “unflappable” of the group. Impressively, he’s also the youngest.
Among his most cherished patents are the credit card calculator
and the concept for the expanded sweet spot of a golf club.
Though these inventions warrant a certain degree of pride
and joy, the philosophy of Invent Resources is to surrender any
unhealthy, Pygmalion attachment to your product. If anything,
invention. And we finally cut the umbilical cord of loving our
inventions. And we say, if nobody wants you, we are not going
to love you either. Tough luck.
Hed: Often you find that an inventor, he has a beautiful invention, it’s his only invention, and he’s dedicated his own life to
get this invention to market.
Freedman: And he dies penniless.
Hed: And he dies penniless, because he was married to that one
Aisenberg: Or we’ll wait until somebody loves you.
Hed: Exactly, or we wait until somebody loves you. Because
otherwise, it’s a sure way to go broke.
Aisenberg: You go crazy.
As it so happens, case studies prove them right. Charles
Miller, retired president of the Inventor’s Association of New
England, sees inventors emerge gingerly from their basements,
inventions clasped stubbornly to their chests, only to find out
that what they’ve worked on for two years is already on the
shelf. But if the product is yet to be invented, it is very likely the
inventor will sink another ten thousand dollars to market their
work.
“Working in a vacuum, you spend all this time and all this
CC 85
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the entrepreneurial way
money going down blind alleys because you don’t know not to
go down those blind alleys,” said Miller.
This was just what his colleague Robert Hausselein tried to
get across recently at a meeting of twenty-five independent
inventors assembled in an MIT classroom. Hausselein was
once a chemical engineer at Polaroid. “I too get enamored with
what I’m working on,” he told the group. “It really is a disease.”
Now retired, Hausselein is tinkering with a way to make coffee—without the coffeemaker. He’s also running a support
group for ambitious up-and-comers, a group he’s named The
Inventors Clinic.
These hopefuls meet monthly at Hausselein’s home, where
every member, upon entry, is expected to sign a confidentiality
agreement. The format goes like this: each inventor is given fifteen minutes to pitch their product. Afterwards, the others
jump in to offer advice, suggestions, caveats, and in some cases,
flat rejections. In the case of rejections, the hapless inventor
would hopefully have just spent merely three weeks rather than
three to four years working on a fruitless project. But Charles
Miller has seen too many long-term investments go south. Part
of the problem, he suggests, is the lack of secrecy among the
coterie of innovators and marketers.
“Inventors face the same problems today as they did twenty, fifty years ago,” said Miller. “You have to keep things
secret.” Otherwise, without a patent, an inventor could watch
his life’s invention snatched up and marketed by a faster, savvier entrepreneur.”
“We are the most paranoid people in the world,” said
Michael Garjian, an inventor who turned his plexiglass neon
technology into first a fledgling, then a flourishing, and finally,
and perhaps expectedly, failing business. But for Garjian, experience bred wisdom. He is now in a successful partnership with
an international company and certainly not without some
degree of paranoia. Everywhere he goes, Garjian carries a carefully crafted black book—it’s a special Inventor’s Notebook.
This allusive Notebook , according to Garjian, is a musthave for all serious inventors; it will serve as insurance, a crucial piece of evidence in a court of law, if such an unfortunate
occasion should warrant. “There are those who say you should
keep it in a safe deposit box,” said Garjian. The Notebook
would contain all past receipts, transactions, correspondences
and related material having to do with the invention. This is
true whether it is a letter to the vice president of marketing, or
a receipt from the local hardware store for additional wiring.
This way, if someone should steal your idea, you will have
enough evidence, at the very least, to get a hefty settlement, and
at most, well-deserved royalties.
Secrecy is both the rule and the roadblock for inventors;
they hesitate to share their ideas with others and are suspicious
of anyone who expresses too great an interest in the product.
But their paranoia is understandable: according to the United
Inventors Association, only about two to three percent of all
inventions are ever marketed successfully.
In terms of these numbers, explains Miller, “most inventors, particularly new inventors, are unwilling to try to examine
their ideas critically in this vacuum.” And they’re unwilling and
unable to defend themselves against severe criticism because
they don’t know how to criticize their own brainchild.
The veterans at Invent Resources, however, don’t have
these problems. They not only brainstorm about what can
work, but also about what can’t work. In fact, they’ve honed
86 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
their abilities so well that they are able to tailor their skills to a
customer’s needs. “We say we have these technologies,” said
Richard Pavelle. “If you don’t like what we have, give us your
wish list.”
Often, Invent Resources is able to invent on demand; at
this stage, I.R. is in the enviable position of being the pursued,
rather than the pursuer. Companies come to them, either on
their own, or through I.R.’s marketing agents, who are hired to
campaign for the gang of four to line up prospective clients.
(Some of the company’s current contracts include a toaster that
will do the job in thirty seconds, a ten-second hand dryer for the
home, and a new type of sunscreen. The details about the latter
invention, however, a commission for Victoria’s Secret, are
carefully kept under wraps.)
Conversely, when I.R. must play the pursuer, Invent
Resources is not always successful. Not at first. Sometimes
manufacturers are so used to a product’s limitations that they
cannot see any reason to stretch or improve them. Such was the
case with the first company they approached for the speedy
toaster. In the face of rejection, the group took back their idea
and knocked on a different door, this time with success.
“I’ve found the best prospect is the second company in the
industry,” said Sol Aisenberg.” It has more to gain. A leading
company doesn’t want to change things. They don’t want to
rock the boat.”
Another piece of advice I.R. offers to would-be inventors:
invent for the market. One problem with many products is that
their inventions are functional but not practical. “Sometimes
you are not even solving an existing problem,” said Hed. “From
a marketing point of view that’s not very good, that’s what we
call, ‘Solutions looking for problems.’”
But there may be a problem with aiming too much for the
market. To Pavelle, the array of massagers, remote controls,
bric-a-brac and other gadgets designed for stores like Sharper
Image and Brookstone are less products of invention and more
the result of “tweaking,” or making minor improvements to an
existing product.
But what’s the difference between “tweaking,” as Pavelle
calls it, and true invention, and where does one draw the line?
To varying degrees, most inventions today are just improvements on past designs. And that may not be so bad, mentions
Freedman: “You can make a lot of money on tweaking, After
you do it, you say, ‘Why the hell didn’t they do that fifty years
ago?’ It’s just your open mind that makes new combinations.”
There is also what Hed terms “generic” inventions that are
not so much combinations of existing technologies, but an
entirely new technology, yielding multiple applications.
Among their favorites is the laser. Its applications in CDs, fiber
optics, and medical technology did not come about until thirty
years after its invention. At the time of its conception, reminisces Hed, “it was a curiosity of physics.” And as we know,
today, laser technology is bankable.
In the end, the success of any inventor may depend on just
letting go, the lamentable coup de grace for basement inventors.
“We are always reaching for the Holy Grail,” said Garjian.
“Sometimes it’s better to stop inventing, sell what you have, and
use that to finance your Holy Grail.”
fast-rising fish
15minutes with ...
Dwayne Perkins
A Brooklyn, New York native, the cool and contained Dwayne Perkins has experienced much more of the
stand-up comedy circuit than the tri-state area has to offer. He began developing his act in Boston,
Massachusetts, where, despite being from Yankee territory, he was able to build a substantial fan base. Dwayne
has since relocated to Los Angeles to fill slots on the bills of some of today’s most prominent comedians. He also
enjoyed a stint on primetime television in Arsenio Hall’s revival of Star Search, starred in his own thirty-minute
special on Comedy Central Presents, performed at the Montreal Comedy Festival, and appeared in several
national commercials. Dwayne recently released his first CD, She Ate My Haircut, and is touring the country with
Rolling Stone’s hot comic Dane Cook. Dwayne took some time out of his dinner hour to chat with Evan Sanders
about his approach, his performance goals, and the audiences of America’s major cities.
What’s your outlook on your
career right now?
I don’t know where I should be! But I
know that I’m blessed to be at this level.
A lot of comics would want to be in my
shoes ... being out in LA, having my own
half-hour special on Comedy Central,
doing the Montreal Comedy Festival.
The comedy is falling into place, and
I’m hoping to have the writing and the
acting follow.
Well, you might not know where you
“should” be, but how are you different now from when you started?
I’m drastically different. I think I’ve
always been the guy that I am now, but it
takes a while to be able to convey the
message, you know? Even still, I’m not
there yet. There are ideas in my head
that I might have trouble bringing to the
stage the way I envisioned bringing
them. But I’m leaps and bounds ahead
of where I was, both as a writer and a
performer; I’m more comfortable and
command more attention. And I think
more clearly.
What still stands in your way?
The types of rooms you play, mixed
with what works for you ... that can lead
you to do just one type of thing. My natural self is way more animated than I
am on stage. Which I don’t mind. You
know, I’ll act out some things, but I
think in my normal life, I burn more
calories than I do on stage. It’s important not to look unnatural. I don’t want
to be over the top. For some jokes, I
might do characters or voices, but once
you do too much of that at a time, people seem to lose track of you. I remember a bit that Richard Pryor did where
he had about six characters, and the
audience followed the whole thing.
That’s still a feat for me.
Has anything happened to you
that made you step back and think
of yourself as a celebrity?
It hasn’t quite hit me yet. I’ve been
opening for Dane Cook, and it is cool
when people who are there to see him
come up to me and say they’ve seen my
Comedy Central special and that they
can’t believe that I’m just the opening
act! And it’s still weird to me when
other comics come up to me to say, “You
inspire me,” because I still consider
myself young in the game.
What’s it like traveling with Dane?
I didn’t expect you to say that your
natural self is so much more animated, because your comedic
approach is with a kind of sincere
intelligence. Are you happy with
the way you come across, or do
you want to show more of your
true side?
I do want to show my animated self, but
I have fans who tell me, “You’re great—
don’t change a thing! Of course, I don’t
want to only listen to those fans, and I
have learned how to show more of that
side than I used to. But it’s more silliness than anything else. There are parts
of my personality that I haven’t really
tapped into yet.
Oh, it’s great. It’s the typical comic
lifestyle—not a lot of sleep. Not that
we’re partying hard, but we do the
shows, meet people afterwards, go out
to eat, and by the time the night winds
down, it’s almost time to get up and do
it again. And Dane is pretty tireless. I
thought I had a lot of energy, but Dane
has bounds and bounds. I definitely
want to take a page out of that book.
How important to you is your
online presence?
It’s as big as you make it, and it can be
tremendous. My web site has always
been a place for people to reach me, a
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fast-rising fish
point to “come back” to after the show.
I’m still playing around with it to use its
full potential. Dane, as with everything
else, has taken his site to the max.
Do you have a method to keeping
your material fresh? How do you
know that what you’re doing is
actually funny, and that your
older jokes stay funny?
Well, you just keep writing. And as long
as it’s fun for you to do, it will be fun for
an audience. As far as the old jokes go,
it just depends on whether it’s something the fans want to hear again! Most
jokes work on the element of surprise.
But when you’ve got a joke that people
are expecting to hear again, it transcends being a joke. You can make it
work in different layers.
You’re from New York, you’ve lived
in Boston, and now you’re in LA.
Do you have to change your method
depending on where you are?
The scenes are different, but you have to
get to a point where you don’t really
think about it. In LA, you’re probably
playing more coffee shops, and your
material will reflect that. But it might
not really be on a conscious level. New
York shows are fast-paced, and in
Boston, they just want you to tell jokes.
They’re not as pretentious there.
So they’re not as critical?
No, they’re still critical—they want you
to be funny. But, you know, it’s a city,
but it’s also a town, and there’s less
angst. In New York and LA, there’s
angst. In some ways, it’s like Boston is
repressed sexually or something, so
they just want to laugh. It doesn’t make
them simple, at all—they do like smart
comedy, don’t get me wrong. It’s just
that they don’t fancy themselves to be
“hipper” than they are. It’s a great place
to start.
It sounds like you’re glad you started there. What’s in store for you?
I’m trying to do it all. I’m getting back
into my acting studies, which I haven’t
done in a while. I’ve also been writing,
which will hopefully lead to my own
movies. It’s not that I have a fallback
plan, but in this business, people will
naturally look at you as a writer. So I
want to come to the table with ideas,
and be a triple-threat in this business.
You do a bit about the girl who has
that one male friend whom she
“likes a lot ... a whole lot ... but ‘not
that way’ (finger quotes).” I suppose you’ve been that male friend?
It does come from very personal experience. That’s why it resonates with people. I don’t know how much I can elaborate, though ... (chuckles). That joke was
my first “great” joke among “good” jokes.
Other comics come up to me and tell me,
“Wow, I wish I thought of that!” That’s
the greatest compliment.
Do those jokes set the bar for you?
At first, they did. But now, I don’t look
at it that way, because it can cause you
to sort of edit yourself, prevent you
from getting at something that may not
seem brilliant but might have something to it. So, I’ve taken a step back. I
want to be a smart comic, but I don’t
want people to focus on that. Richard
Pryor is a genius, but people don’t think
of Richard Pryor as “smart.” They think
of him as “funny.”
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to build a
HOUSE
How four twentysomethings went from a
Project Greenlight entry
to a film production LLC
in one year
interview by
joelle asaro berman
photos by
gail rush
s
fast-rising fish
Santiago Tapia went to film school to become what every film school student aspires to be: a feature filmmaker.
Shortly before graduation, he placed as a runner-up in the 2002 Project Greenlight Sam Adams Commercial contest. His
commercial premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and within a few months, Tapia stuck the dream of a two-hour feature film on the back-burner while he and his partners, Shaun R. Daniels, Amy Kroeplin, and Ariel Martinez finessed their
five-minute film skills. They soon formed Adam’s House Productions, named for Tapia’s college dorm where his first short
film was taped.
Adam’s House Productions is a creative group, ad agency, and production company all in one. Their forte is special
effects. Their mission is to produce the funniest commercials you have ever seen. But they are not stopping there.
Today the members of Adam’s House Productions sit in a tiny basement room of Curve of the Earth studios, where
they will toss around ideas for a new music video that they will be producing for one of the label’s artists. The video will
most likely air on MTV, MTV2’s Headbangers’ Ball, and various websites. That’s a long way from filming on camcorders in
college dorms.
If Adam’s House Productions knows anything, it’s how to build a film production company from the ground up, and
how to pull out all the stops along the way.
How did you meet and get your start?
Santiago: I graduated Harvard with a Biology degree, and decided to go to film school instead of medical school. When I got to film
school, I was sitting at this desk talking to people who were helping to produce my film, and Ariel was eavesdropping. Once he knew
that I was casting for this film, he was in my face, asking, “Oh, do you need this kind of guy?” And here’s Ariel, this huge, built guy,
and I’m looking for this gay aerobics instructor. Once I tell him this, he does a quick impression. And that was the start of things.
Shaun: I originally went to school to be a radio DJ, but the idea of getting coffee for people for five years just to get a job really didn’t
appeal to me. I had always had an interest in movies and commercials—I just had so many ideas. So at this party, I meet Santiago
and he starts talking to me, and going off about all of these crazy ideas. It was synergy. I showed up to see him the first day of his next
project and we just started shooting. It happened just like that.
Santiago: Amy was there first; she helped me with one of my earlier films, and she was so great as an art director and a producer, that
anytime I started doing a project, she would come help me.
Amy: While it was great having just two of us in the beginning, which made it easier to make decisions, it’s definitely better now with
four voices. You can do more in terms of creativity.
How is it working with three guys?
Amy: I definitely feel like the babysitter of the group sometimes, but these guys are great. They’re hilarious. I tend to be the manager, making sure things get done.
Santiago: We are a team. We’re not only a
production company—we’re also an ad agency. We
do all of the creative aspects. We write the
campaign, all the storyboarding, everything.
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fast-rising fish
Tell me about the contest.
Santiago: Well, it was the Project
Greenlight Sam Adams commercial contest. It was a chance to take young filmmakers and help them to become professional TV commercial directors. There
were over 7,600 entries. The winner
would get $100,000 to shoot a commercial that would air nationally, and would
premiere on the Conan O’Brien show.
So you wanted to direct commercials?
No! The reason why I did the contest was
because my brother was so upset that I
missed the first Project Greenlight contest
Santiago: Let’s put it this way: it was a
zany commercial. Sam Adams had never
had commercials before, so Jim Koch, the
founder of Sam Adams, was giving young
filmmakers a chance to make his commercials. We eventually made it to the
top three, and they flew us to the West
Coast to meet with Jim Koch and the
famous film director Chris Moore to talk
everything out. They couldn’t decide on a
winner who would show their film at
Sundance, so they took all three finalists
to Sundance where we had a big final
showdown of all the commercials.
Did you ever expect it to go that far?
Santiago: No! I just did it so that my
Santiago really enjoys it. It’s scary—he
enjoys working 17-hour days and pacing
around like a madman, and wearing the
same clothes days in a row. This is a sign
of quality to him.
Ariel: He’ll forget the very basic things
that he has to get done in life.
Shaun: If you could forget to breathe, then
Santiago would die.
Did the contest seal your fate as
commercial producers?
Santiago: I ended up talking to Jim Koch,
and he said that our commercial was better than any ad agency he had ever
worked with. And then we spoke with
Amy: I definitely feel like the babysitter of the
group sometimes, but these guys are
great. They’re hilarious. I tend to be the
manager, making sure things get done.
a year before. He left me a message saying, “Dude, if you don’t do this contest, I
will disown you.” So at the last minute, I
grabbed Amy, we went to some dive bar,
and brainstormed about twenty ideas.
The deadline was midnight, so I ran home
and just sent them all in. I actually had to
do some research online about how to
script commercials, because I had only
done short films. So we made it to the
final rounds, and into the top twenty, and
then we shot the commercial. It was all
last minute.
Ariel: What was most memorable for
about that shoot was working with animals. I’m not one that usually works with
horses, but it was an experience.
Can you elaborate?
Ariel: No way. (laughs)
92 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
brother wouldn’t get pissed off at me.
Ariel: Santiago can be real modest about
things. But he is one of the most workaholic directors on the planet. And you
can tell when he’s working. When he’s
got that Bigfoot beard going on, and he
hasn’t bathed for about four days, and
you can smell him. You can just smell
him. It’s nasty. But you know he’s doing
his business.
Shaun: We had once been working for 17
hours straight, and he started getting
stomach pains. So I asked him and he
said, “I don’t think I ate today.” He didn’t
even realize it, because we were editing
for hours at a time, and sleeping at the
office so that we could get this project
done. Sometimes with editing, you get
into a groove and you just keep going and
going. It’s a very long process but I think
Chris Moore, and he said, “You guys really know how to direct.” So that’s really
how we got our start here.
You guys are big on humor.
Santiago: Absolutely.
Ariel: But I don’t think it’s funny that I
broke my foot doing one of our spots.
(He’s referring to his role as an irate coach
yelling during halftime for a spot with the
NBA/NFL/NCAA pro mascot company
Mascot Camp). It still hurts! I have this
big bunion like thing coming out the back
of my foot. I have to wear orthotics now.
Santiago: I just like to do take after take
after take to get it right.
Ariel: But that wasn’t right. It was right
for the film, but it wasn’t right. Here he
fast-rising fish
is, “Oh, do you mind doing that for me again? Sacrifice your
body, even break your body. And can you do it one more time?”
What exactly was he having you do?
Santiago is, “Okay that’s good. Now let’s do it one more time.”
And after the next take, it’s “One more time.” But in the end,
you’re never going to end up with some half-assed, college-filmmaker, sloppy thing. There’s a huge gap between the work of
someone who is a perfectionist, and someone who isn’t.
Ariel: I had to go ballistic.
What happened after Project Greenlight?
Santiago: He had to totally attack this chalkboard. Kick it,
punch it—and he decided to kick it.
Ariel: And my shoe flew off before my foot hit.
Shaun: The only thing separating him from the concrete floor
was this tiny one-inch thick mat. But he loves doing that stuff.
Santiago: We ended up doing project for Pepsi. It didn’t air, but
if you want to get a foot in the door, and you don’t have anything as far as previous projects, you try to create something
just so they can see it. Ron Lawner, the Chairman and Chief
Creative Officer of Arnold Worldwide, saw that spot, and he
sent us to work on a project for a Chanel fashion show fundraiser that I can’t believe we didn’t end up blowing.
How do you operate as a company?
What did you have to do for the project?
Santiago: We are a team. We’re not only a production company—we’re also an ad agency. We do all of the creative aspects.
We write the campaign, all the storyboarding, everything.
Another thing about us is that we are really into the whole digital age. We do 3-D storyboards, and we give our clients something that looks like it cost $500,000 dollars.
Ariel: We’re young, we’re hungry, and we have fun. If you were
trying to build a house, would you hire a bunch of contractors to
come in to take care of each separate aspect, or would you just
get one to come in and do everything? That’s exactly what we
do—we build a house with one company.
That’s quite a switch from a Biology major en route to
medical school.
Ariel: You know, I really love Santiago, but the idea of him
being a doctor horrifies me. He would have been a perfectionist, but undoubtedly, he would have forgotten some stuff and
got sidetracked, and then he would have been sued and would
probably be living out on the streets.
Shaun: He’s a huge perfectionist, so I could just see the surgery
being really precise. The most commonly heard phrase out of
Santiago: The project ended up being for the Esplanade
Association, These two women had basically helped clean up
the Esplanade Park here in Boston, and they were being given
awards at this fashion show. So we were doing a spot on them.
We had to meet at the offices of Arnold worldwide. Ariel gets
there first, and Shaun and I are stuck in a car. I don’t even know
why we all just didn’t go together.
Ariel: Well, do the vice-president and president travel together?
Hell no. We adopt that same level of security at Adam’s House.
So I get this phone call from Santiago and Shaun, saying “Hey,
uh, we’re not going to be there on time, so can you just talk?”
Shaun: It’s the opening day at Fenway Park, and it’s raining.
We’re stuck on Commonwealth Avenue, because there are
Boston University students trying to commit suicide by crossing the street to get to the T. So Santiago looks at me with this
dead serious look and says, “Just ditch your car.” We’re close to
thirty minutes late. And so I see something that looks like a
parking spot, so we parked and didn’t even pay the meter. We
end up in the conference room finally, and there’s Ariel and all
of these people, laughing—business as usual. So we do our song
and dance and charm the hell out of them.
Ariel: We’re young, we’re hungry, and we have fun.
If you were trying to build a house, would you hire
a bunch of contractors to come in to take care of
each separate aspect, or would you just get one to
come in and do everything? That’s exactly what we
do—we build a house with one company.
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fast-rising fish
Ariel: The piece included a lot of special effects, and we’re special about special effects.
Santiago: The money that we were given was simply for the production—we weren’t getting paid for it. Shaun and I pitched
this special effects extravaganza with people being in color
against a black and white background, and fast motion and
slow motion, and helicopter shots, and then we got this budget
that was miniscule.
Ariel: They didn’t think we could do all the special effects that
we described, but we did. We’re young, and we’re out of college, but we know how to do this.
Name your best special effect.
Ariel: We use the actual process to create a light saber that
George Lucas used in his film.
Santiago: Anything that a major special effects company can
do, we can do as well.
Shaun: You can either go to LA, or you can come to us. It’s a
very involved process; you have to know what you want, and
then you have to figure out how you are going to do it. But we
nailed every effect.
That brings us to the present. What are you currently
working on?
Santiago: We’re doing commercials for United Way, Gold’s
Gym, and Euro Design. We’re also doing music videos for Most
Precious Blood, as well as some other music videos that are just
being solidified.
Shaun: We don’t want to sell ourselves short by saying that
we’re just going to do commercials. We’re here in this studio to
do a music video. Ariel knew a guy who worked here—and he
always has a story about how he knows someone, whether it’s
because he saved their life, or that he got kicked out of their
store—he always has a story. So that’s how we ended up here,
and this record label is a very diverse one.
Ariel: The important thing for us is to encourage and remind
people that they don’t have to spend a lot of money on advertising. A lot of people out there get burned when it comes to market budgets.
What are your ultimate film fantasies?
Ariel: What I really want to do is create commercials for New
Balance. I like them because they don’t make a big deal about
being endorsed by athletes.
Amy: A full-length feature. But I also want to stay true to the
little people, maybe some public service announcements. I
have a public health background, so a lot of it comes from that.
Shaun: A video for the Pixies.
Santiago: Full-length feature film. Academy Awards.
The little boy’s dream.
Santiago: You bet.
Ariel: Originally, Santiago here, being the artist and filmmaker
that he is, wanted to make films. So I told him that we’re going
to make a company, and we’re going to make commercials. And
he said, “No man, I make films!” But look what happened:
we’re making commercials. They’re fun, exciting, and they give
each of us an opportunity to practice our craft. We’re all artists.
And yes, they are commercials, but to us, they are all minimovies. We treat it as a mini-movie. It’s a 30-second film that
we make for our clients. And when someone watches that
fast-rising fish
Shaun: It’s gotten to the point where people only
watch the Super Bowl to see the commercials. It’s
odd, because it’s not even like you are selling a
product anymore—you’re just having fun and making a movie about it, and getting people to laugh.
movie, I want them to think about that movie and that product
even when they aren’t in front of the television. That’s our goal.
even like you are selling a product anymore—you’re just having
fun and making a movie about it, and getting people to laugh.
Shaun: It’s gotten to the point where people only watch the
Super Bowl to see the commercials. It’s odd, because it’s not
Santiago: We treat every commercial like it’s our chance to do a
Super Bowl spot. And that’s what we do.
i n s i d e l o o k i n g o u t —t h e a t r e
The Current Question:
To
a
Demolish
or
Not to
Demolish
?
~by Steve Newman
Stratford-upon-Avon, England
96 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
drian Noble was the first to suggest that Elizabeth
Scott’s world famous art-deco theatre in Stratfordupon-Avon be torn down and replaced with a glass,
post-modernist construct by the Dutch Architect
Erick van Egeraat. He threw that particular monkey wrench of
an idea into the works just before he resigned as Artistic Director
of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) last year.
Until very late in August, the question was still being asked,
in Stratford-upon-Avon and among the London based theatrical
cognoscenti, all of whom seem to want replace Scott’s building
with a supermarket. And also by several national newspapers,
especially the Daily Telegraph, who have voted for demolition,
not only of the theatre, but also some of the tackier bits of the
town too. Yet beyond this group there hasn’t really been a serious national debate on the subject, which is not surprising considering that other important subjects—football (soccer), Tony
Blair’s holidays, and the dreadful summer weather—get in the
way. Which, I guess, goes to show just how important theatre is
in the country of Shakespeare’s birth.
Adrian Noble is a very quiet man, with enormous talent for
directing, but alas, little sense of timing or skill in man-management and public relations. He got it all very badly wrong when he
took a long sabbatical from the RSC in 2003 to get the now hugely successful musical, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, up and running
in the West End of London, for which he was soundly criticized.
But even taking that into consideration—and the fact that Noble
only handed in his resignation at the RSC when Chitty was a success—he could not (to quote Rupert Christiansen of the Daily
Telegraph) “rate a niche in the pantheon of monster dictatordirectors?”
You might have thought differently if had been one of those
RSC employees made redundant by him at virtually the same
time as he outlined the need to raise a staggering £100m to fund
the development of a new theatre. It was triple-bad timing inasmuch as the RSC was also accumulating huge financial deficits
month on month, and producing shows, some of which only
attracted 60% ticket sales. The cries of “ Bring back Sir Peter
Hall!” could be clearly heard.
It was a public relations nightmare that raised more than the
odd eyebrow amongst many Stratford residents, who immediately complained, yet again, about the high level of local taxation,
the lack of good waste collection services, run down schools, an
inadequate local hospital, too few policemen on the beat, and a
road system permanently blocked by traffic that is quickly turning Stratford into one of the most polluted towns in the UK.
These residents argued—as all residents of small communities do
—that such a huge sum of money would be better spent even
i n s i d e l o o k i n g o u t —t h e a t r e
though the money was coming from the National Lottery and
private investors, and not from local taxation—on improving
those poor services, while the RSC took care of itself, which of
course is precisely what they were doing, although it didn’t
sound like, at least not to the non theatregoing “commoners” of
Stratford, who make up a sizeable portion of the 30,000 who
live in the town.
What Noble hadn’t done was properly consult those “ordinary” people of Stratford—he may have thought he had by
arranging a couple of meetings in the Civic Hall, but small town
Britain, unlike small town America, no longer gathers together
in civic, and town halls, to discuss things anymore, and preferrs
to be “consulted” these days by way of the media. Having been
so consulted they stuck to their entrenched convictions and
complained even more bitterly.
Noble informed the elected good and great of Stratford,
who were evenly split over his plans, with many wishing to simply retain what they had because it brought some 3.5 million
visitors into Stratford each year—and Scott’s building has
become an icon of its period and of Stratford. The rest of the
country’s elected officials backed Noble’s plans because they
saw it bringing in even more visitors, and even more money.
This second group, the majority, won the day, and were then
backed-up by a vociferous minority of young RSC actors—most
of whom have now returned to the world of TV soaps from
whence they came—and a few older, and better known actors
(with the notable exception of Dame Judy Dench, who was
strongly against the proposed demolition) all of whom criticized the old building as being outdated, unsafe, and no longer
conducive to good creative work, forgetting of course the
decades of good creative work carried out there since 1932, and
for nearly fifty years before that in the old Memorial Theatre.
Having acted there myself, I can confirm that things backstage are cramped, with dressing-rooms that are totally inadequate, too few, and too far away from the stage. Wardrobe facilities spill onto every corridor, and landing, which are also
crammed with actors going through their lines, practicing
sword fights, or their singing and dancing—which has become
something of an RSC trademark these days—all mixed in with
the noise of the intercom system relaying the action from both
stages, plus urgent pleas, and messages from panicking stage
managers. With big productions the chaos back stage is often
such that the actors have to be chaperoned to ensure they don’t
mistake the stage of The Swan for that of the main house. But
that has been the stuff of theatre for centuries, and is something
that helps get the adrenalin flowing.
The audiences see and hear nothing of this of course, and
like me, as a paying theatre-goer, take no delight in the wholly
inadequate front of house facilities that require you to jostle—
quite violently at times—with hundreds of others to order a
glass of wine for the interval, only to know that you’ll have to
jostle again in the interval to find it. Then, having discovered
your wine you find that it’s undrinkable. It is at times like these
that I find myself leaning toward the arguments for demolition:
that theatre is more than preserving a building for its own sake,
etc, etc. But I have to say that those thoughts soon disappear
when I find myself, on a beautiful summers evening, drinking
the undrinkable on the balcony of the world’s most famous theatre, with the Avon sparkling below, and Holy Trinity Church
just visible through the trees.
I’ll confess that I rather like the Scott building-in fact, considering that my grandfather helped build the place, I have
something of a propriatorial attitude toward it—and I feel to
knock it down would be like suggesting that the Empire State
Building—finished the same year as Scott’s theatre—should
also be demolished because the air-conditioning system was
less than perfect.
What we should be concentrating on in Stratford is the
quality of the work being created at the two theatres, and not
the future of the building. But sadly the question of the building is now more important than the work being done there. In
fact there is some very bad work being done there under the
new artistic directorship of Michael Boyd, a man who, unlike
Peter Hall for instance, will always go unrecognised in the narrow, traffic congested streets of Stratford. The future of the
building has also become something of a smoke screen for
Boyd: the man is now quite invisible.
Then, in late August this year, the aforementioned Danish
architect—who had spent five years working on, one assumes,
designs for a new theatre—suddenly resigned from the project,
saying he needed to move aside and make room for a younger
architect to take over the project which, in his words required
“unrestricted rethinking”, which means he still wants to knock
it down. This decision has of course given Boyd, and his associates, a handy exit from a dilemma they should have had the
courage to face earlier, even if that did mean demolition. They
can now back peddle on Noble’s original plans, and try and
please everyone. Can’t hear the violins anymore.
As of early September this year demolition of the Scott
building now seems to be off the agenda—at least for the time
being—with the RSC’s new executive director, Vikki Heywood,
stating in a recent interview with the very loyal local newspaper, the Stratford Herald, that “…there would be extensive
redevelopment of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which will
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i n s i d e l o o k i n g o u t —t h e a t r e
involve major structural alterations to the auditorium, achieving the best possible building within the framework of the
building we have.” She then went on to say that a new architect
would be appointed in 2005, but couldn’t possibly make any
comment when asked if that new architect might be Sir Jeremy
Dixon, the man behind the refurbishment of the Royal Opera
House in Covent Garden, which went drastically over budget,
and took twice as long as the estimate to finish. If he is appointed there could still be fun ahead beside the River Avon, and you
can bet your house on it that it will cost more than £100m!
In comparison, the theatre originally cost a total of
£192,000 to build. Unfortunately,even before its official opening by The Prince of Wales on April 23rd 1932, it had already
lost out to it’s new rival, the cinema. As a consequence, the new
Memorial Theatre, and its productions of that dark decade
became increasingly academic and inward looking.
Only during the Second World War, and with the influx of
thousands of American and Canadian service men and women,
did Scott’s building, and the productions inside, come alive.
Between 1942 and 1945 Stratford was surrounded by
American and Canadian Army and Air Force bases. Naturally
the Memorial Theatre became a centre of attraction. Those
young Americans and Canadians descended on the theatre in
droves—the takings between 1942 and 1944 rose by almost
200%—and they were not the quiet, reserved, middle-class
British audiences the place had been used to either. These were
well-educated young men and women about to put their lives at
risk, and they were both loudly critical or volubly praising, but
never silent. Their presence made the building hum and gave a
charge to even the most cynical of old actors and directors. By
breaking down the elitist barriers, those young men and women
changed the place forever.
It would take a perceptive leader to pick up on those war
time vibrations and make Scott’s theatre wholly inclusive, and
the dramatic work created there was some of the best, and most
important ever achieved, anywhere.
That leader was Peter Frederick Hall, the son of Grace and
Reginald Hall, who was born on the 22nd November 1930, at
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. When I was lucky enough to be a
part of Sir Peter Hall’s RSC production of Julius Caesar a few
years ago, his passion—and sometimes his anger—were still
very evident. And there were still people backstage—and one or
two on stage—who’d worked for him in back the 1960s, who
still referred to him affectionately as “The Boss!”
Hall’s first visit to the Memorial Theatre was in 1946,
when, aged 16, he cycled from his Suffolk home to Stratford, to
see Peter Brook’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Twelve
years later, in 1958, the first British director of Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot was back in Stratford directing Twelfth
98 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
Night, starring a very young Geraldine McEwan. In 1959 the
wunderkind of British theatre was back yet again, this time
directing, Sir Laurance Olivier as Coriolanus, Charles Laughton
as King Lear, and Bottom, and a member of Frank Benson’s
original company from 1913, Dame Edith Evans, as Volumnia.
That 1959 season also included Paul Robeson’s mighty
Othello, with Sam Wannamaker as Iago, and Mary Ure as
Desdemona. By the following year Hall had taken over from
Glen Byam Shaw as Artistic Director, and had gathered a
nucleus of new actors about him—all destined to become
stars—that included Ian Holm, Vanessa Redgrave, Albert
Finney, Mary Ure, Roy Dotrice, Julian Glover, Patrick Wymark,
Diana Rigg, Edward Woodward, Peter O’Toole, and Paul
Scofield.
In many ways Peter Hall helped create the image we have
of the 1960s: that of the rebellious young man and woman—
most notably in the 1960 Stratford production of The Taming
of the Shrew where Peter O’Toole played a very cocky, gumchewing Petruchio, who made you feel he’d probably just left
his motorcycle parked outside. It was an image that would later
transfer itself to the cinema screen in such films as Billy Liar,
Lawrence of Arabia (O’Toole again) and Georgie Girl. And by
focusing his—and our—attention on that rebelliousness Hall
was able—with such associates as Peter Brook and John Barton
—to force new life and energy back into Shakespeare, and the
Memorial Theatre. In fact cinema and theatre at last began to
feed off each other, and to the benefit of both.
Peter Hall took control of the entire theatre—and with the
unswerving support of Sir Fordham (Fordie) Flower—Hall was
able to create his dream of a national Shakespearean Company,
the RSC, and what later became The Royal Shakespeare
Theatre.
But sadly, when Hall left the RSC in 1968, he left a void that
neither Terry Hands, or Adrian Noble, could ever hope to fill—
even with the creation of The Other Place (now sadly closed),
and The Swan Theatre.
Peter Hall’s departure from Stratford also coincided with
the demise of Flower’s Brewery, and of Sir Fordham Flower—
who died in the summer of 1966—another man who made
Stratford’s great theatre possible.
Michael Boyd is no Peter Hall. His creative talents do not
match those of either Terry Hands or Adrian Noble, and the
productions currently running in no way match the brilliance of
their posters. The RSC at Stratford must find another Hall, as
difficult as that might be. Kenneth Branagh would be an ideal
choice for instance. Or they could just recruit Kevin Spacey—an
American!—who is now performing splendidly job at The Old
Vic theatre in London.
p e a n u t g a l l e r y c r i t i c s —m u s i c
Pete Belasco:
A Deeper Look
~by Evan Sanders
Boston, MA
Pete Belasco may not reflect the typical “soulstar” image,
but his music certainly does. His recently released second
album, Deeper (Compendia Records), displays a unique mix of
R&B, soul, and smooth jazz, which, according to JAZZIZ magazine, promises to “seduce you into a bed not made since Marvin
Gaye’s Let’s Get It On.” His soft tenor range follows the
groundwork set by Marvin, Prince, and the Isley Brothers—all
unlikely comparisons for a white guy.
The title track effectively assimilates his influences and
abilities, supported by a hip-hop drum beat, R&B vocal harmonies and rhythms, and seamless tenor sax performance. On
Too Close, a Sade-like groove provides further integration of his
jazz background. This jazz momentum flows into Crazy, a saxophone feature sans vocals. His vocal and sax styles and articulations are strikingly similar, which is a testament to his consistency throughout the album. And, of course, no soul album
would be complete without at least one song about a love of his
own. Rather than singing to his wife, though, he instead dedicates one song to each of his two daughters, Nia and Zoe.
Deeper lacks an upbeat, pop-inspired tune to guarantee
the spot on the charts that it deserves, but it undoubtedly contains the makings of a true musician. Belasco’s trained ear is
evident, and the album is a bold move in the right direction.
p e a n u t g a l l e r y c r i t i c s —v i d e o
Garden State:
The Little Film
That Could
~by Amanda J. Feuerman
Los Angeles, CA
v
ery few people will remember David Schwimmer in
the dreadful romantic comedy The Pallbearer. Even
fewer that will recall Matt LeBlanc cracking jokes
alongside a chimpanzee in Ed or Matthew Perry
cracking jokes alongside Chris Farley in Almost Heroes. But all
is not lost for those alumni of Must-See TV trying relentlessly to
break into the movie biz.
Zach Braff, of Scrubs fame, wrote, directed, and starred in
Garden State, the breakout summer hit of 2004, as Andrew
“Large” Largeman, who has at long last shrugged off a decadelong Lithium induced coma. He returns home, after a prolonged estrangement from his family, for the funeral of his
paraplegic mother.
Miraculously and fortunately, Large encounters Samantha
(Natalie Portman), and the two become inseparable for the
week he is home. He rekindles his friendship with former high
school buddy Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), a local gravedigger and
druggie with the high hope of scoring big someday by selling his
Gulf War trading card collection. Then there is rigid, seemingly unfeeling Gideon Largeman, played perfectly by Ian Holm.
100 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
Garden State reaches everyone who has ever asked,
“Where am I going?” or “What the hell am I doing with my
life?” We meet Large flat on his back in his barely furnished
apartment, in a Lithium-induced haze. We bond with him over
his mind-numbing server job at a Vietnamese restaurant. And
then we travel with him on his quest to the Garden State.
Samantha is certifiable. She lies, has a hamster graveyard
in her backyard, carries a helmet in her backpack at all times
(because she is epileptic, a fact she fibbingly denied), and
Largeman is infatuated with her. The complex role is a new
realm for Portman; it’s refreshing to see her in such a grown-up
dimension after seeing her in juvenile or emotionally blank
roles, as in The Professional and Star Wars.
Peter Sarsgaard finds in Mark the opportunity to portray a
man of questionable morals and ethics as a grave robbing
gravedigger. Sarsgaard imbues his character with intelligent
comic relief and somehow manages to inspire Large with hope,
either by way of a drug trip or a journey across New Jersey.
Mark redeems himself time and time again, despite obvious
sflaws, through loyalty, humor, philosophy, and sheer persist-
p e a n u t g a l l e r y c r i t i c s —v i d e o
ence. The audience constantly cheers for him, as he is Braff’s
most genuine and steadfast character.
At first Ian Holm is difficult to fathom as old Gideon
Largeman, considering his recent and famous run as Bilbo
Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. But Largeman is an excellent
iceman, empty of empathy for his son, eager to keep him doped
up on Lithium, as he has since reached puberty. Still, throughout the film the elder Largeman makes a handful of feeble
attempts to talk with his son—enough so that by the film’s end,
he commands the empathy due to one who really is trying to do
what he believes is best for his son, even if he is mistaken. In a
sly twist using a cold character, the audience finds itself rooting
for a compassionate father-son moment. Instead of the expected blowout, viewers are treated to
happy resolution.
If rocking back and forth across
the fine line between desperation and
optimism doesn’t suit your characterdevelopment tastes, rest assured that
Samantha is Large’s polar opposite.
Vibrant and eccentric, she dives headfirst into life and awakens him to the
possibilities that await him outside his
physically barren Los Angeles apartment, his emotionally barren family
situation, and his failing acting career.
Mark, in turn, bridges the gap between
their two personalities. Laid back, with
goals he knows he’ll accomplish eventually, he’s got a con here and con there
to help fund the interim. He seems to
have his own supporting cast, including the fabulous but underutilized Jean
Smart, who plays Mark’s mother; a
drug supplier hysterically portrayed by
Method Man; and a motley crew of
friends.
Andrew Largeman is Everyman on a bad, bad day; Samantha
is Everywoman at her best. Mark just doesn’t feel like it.
Garden State moves its audience without being cheesy.
Despite a tolerably contrived ending, the film burst of epiphanies; it would be tragic to end such a film on a low note, and
Braff does not. The audience that sits waiting for a stolidly dramatic film will be pleasantly surprised by its intelligent humor.
Which is appropriate, because in a way this film is all about
pleasant surprises mixed in with the mundane. The script is
nothing short of brilliant, a successful first attempt for Braff,
the film student, turned waiter, turned critically acclaimed
actor-writer-director.
CC 101
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photo & art credits
P.6: COURTESY OF IKEA; P.9:
JESSICA MAZURKIEWICZ; PP.12-16; LYN HUGHES; PP.18-23: COURTESY OF MICHAEL KRESS; P.24: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM;
COLIN GRIMM; PP.35-36: JESSICA MAZURKIEWICZ; P.38: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; PP.50-51: TIMOTHY PATRICK/CCM; P.55: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM;
P .65: A NTHONY B RENNAN ; P .67: D AVID B LANK , COURTESY OF S OLTERS & D IGNEY PR; P .79: COURTESY OF L IONS G ATE F ILMS ; P .81:
ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; P.85: BRENNAN ADAMS; PP.87-89: COURTESY OF DWAYNE PERKINS; P.99: COURTESY OF COMPENDIA MUSIC; PP.100-101: COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX; P.104: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM.
P.28:
corrections from issue 2
ON PAGES 20-22, PHOTOS SHOULD BE CREDITED TO THE SAN DIEGO DRAG KINGS CLUB. ON THE TABLE OF CONTENTS AS WELL AS ON PAGE 8, THE
AUTHOR’S NAME WAS MISSPELLED. THE CORRECT SPELLING IS “LORI A. BASIEWICZ.” ON PAGES 78-85, THE PHOTOS SHOULD BE CREDITED AS
FOLLOWS: PP.79-80, 83, 85: DANIELLE GRIEPP; PP.81-82, MAX BORENSTEIN.
on a lighter note
“Must-Miss” TV
(just in time for sweeps)
The networks have now launched
their new lineups. Just a few
didn’t quite make the cut.
~by David Gianatasio
Brookline, MA
WHO WANTS TO BURY A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE?
Contestants cover rich people up to their necks in sand and toss
rings at their heads. Possibly too upscale for Fox, but the WB,
citing “the bikini factor,” is in talks to sign Angelina Jolie as
host.
Lord Marion: I want you, here and now!
Marion Lord: But we’re in the middle of a fox hunt.
Lord Marion: You’re the fox I’ve hunted for so long.
Marion Lord: And you’re hung like a noble steed ...
Lord Marion: Look out for that tree ... Yeee-ouch! Ah well
... there’s always Lady Chatterly.
WORF’S PLACE
Yet another Star Trek spinoff. Resigning from Starfleet in a fit
of pique, that zany Klingon opens a neighborhood bar in
Queens, refusing to serve imported beer because it goes
against his code of honor.
I LOVE LUCY, THE TWILIGHT ZONE,
THE HONEYMOONERS, JACK BENNY,
BURNS & ALLEN
The timeless originals, lovingly colorized by Ted
Turner, with dubbed GenX
dialogue by the former
writing staff of Mystery
Science Theater 3000.
WHEN WILD
ANIMALS ATTACK
WITH FIREARMS
The creatures’ inability to
properly operate handguns
with their paws, pads, and
claws yields many humorous scenes of carnage. In
the pilot, a depressed gibbon threatens to take the
camera crew hostage, but
ends up shooting off its big
toe instead.
THE PIMPIN’ GUY
Socially conscious animated entry set in a Watts
whorehouse. Described by
one Fox executive as “Just
like The Simpsons, if
Homer sold Marge for sex
in each episode.” Russell
Crowe provides the voice
of Bumpy.
SURVIVE THIS!
Ten ordinary people must watch television non-stop,
without breaking for food or sleep, until only one remains.
The grand prize: a free lobotomy and a lifetime job in
series development, keeping every American idle.
RAZING THIS OLD HOUSE
The Breakers blown to bits! Monticello demolished! Edison’s
laboratory lovingly reconstructed, then plowed under by bulldozers! This is PBS at its best.
MARION MANOR
Merchant Ivory targets the twenty-something crowd with a
lavish historical spectacle set on a Victorian country estate.
Freddie Prinze, Jr. plays the randy Lord Marion. Sarah
Michelle Gellar stars as the racy Marion Lord.
104 C i t i z e n C u l t u r e
THE MEL GIBSON
SHOW
Eschewing guests, sidekicks or even a studio
band, the actor discusses
his religious convictions,
looks, “talent,” box office
appeal, social and political
concerns and general
superiority to the rest of
us.
Russell Crowe,
Richard Gere, Tom Hanks
and the late Sir Lawrence
Olivier are signed to fill in
when Mel has conflicting
commitments.
WHO
WANTS
TO
HAVE SEX WITH A
MILLIONAIRE FOR
SOME OF HIS MONEY,
ON AIR, WHILE AMERICA WATCHES
AND TAPES THE SHOW?
(ALT. TITLE: THE ALL-NEW COSBY SHOW)
May violate prostitution statutes if funds actually change
hands, so likely headed for UPN or some struggling cable outfit
willing to take a risk. Bill Clinton has signed to host.
FOXY KLINGON BOXING
Has-been celebs duke it out in a mud pit. Worf devours both
winners and losers.
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