Thursday, December 29, 2011

My 2011 'list'

I love year-end "best of" lists -- most of us are too busy with everyday life to keep up with everything we would like to, and this is our one chance to catch up before the whole caravan moves on. Since we can't be a fanatic fanboy about everything we'd like, we have to accept we're all amateurs now. 

I'm at that point in life where I can't even keep up enough to offer a whole list of my favorite cultural production of the year. There are just a few things I want to rave about before the calendar flips...

MUSIC
I think it is amazing that a serious, unflinching examination of the English experience of the First World War would be the year's only album that matters. PJ Harvey's Let England Shake doesn't compromise much, in its allusions, its poetry, or its assessment of the vast dangerous gulf between the language of valor and patriotism and the blood and terror of war. By wisely looking through the lens of a distant trauma -- the trenches and fields of a war a hundred years ago -- it meditates on the deep social costs of what we can politely call "conflict" in a way I can't remember anything else in recent memory has.

I've never been great at writing about music, so I can only fumble around for the right words about it. Much of the haunting, relentlessness appears to have something to do with the autoharp, and her particular singing style of late -- that choking, high shriek I believe she debuted on White Chalk that some of her long-time fans find grating. Her choice of samples ranges from the cliched -- that bugle in "The Glorious Land" -- to the inspired -- a new generation of listeners has now met Niney the Observer thanks to "Written on the Forehead." But one thing that is consistent is the way she can still make your skin crawl, as in "All & Everyone," which with little sentiment or irony imagines what it was like to die at Gallipoli.

But what's more interesting is how this album fits in Harvey's catalog. It seems crazy to say it about sometime whose first album I remember hearing in high school, but this album puts her in that exclusive company of artists like Dylan and Lou Reed and -- for some reason the analogy always springs to my mind -- Neil Young. These are all artists who came to sudden, youthful fame in a particular genre -- folkie, art rock, country rock, and the riot grrl whatever -- but were so talented and brave and devoted to their craft and vision that they had to grow and evolve with each subsequent album. Through the years, they've managed the unique task of growing up to become interesting adults, and you reach a point where the brand is so strong you pay attention to whatever they come up with. I can't wait to see what Polly Jean creates next.

MOVIES
There was a moment maybe halfway through Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life when I realized just how well conditioned we are as viewers these days. We expect every scene in a film to be busy, to be working. But there was one moment in Malick's film when one of the brothers is sitting at a table painting. As is Malick's meditative style, we linger around for a few beats longer than we expect. The scene is meaningless out of context, it only "advances" the story in the context of the dozens of other scenes around it.

Why, I would like to know, are filmmakers so terrified of taking their time? Why do they insist on assuming we have no memory, no patience, no attention span?

Actually, don't answer that. I saw a preview of Jack and Jill before I saw Tree of Life at the Mammut shopping mall near Moskva Ter, which managed to make me shrink into my seat in shame, even in a dark room where no one could know I was American.

And of course, it isn't hard to find the reasons that a movie like Malick's is a tough sell. As I left the theater, I heard two young women speaking -- in English, oddly -- about the movie. One was complaining about how she couldn't figure out what this and that "signified." This inability to handle the idea of a sweeping, non-linear, subtle movie has become part of this film's lore already. There is the story about the theater posting that it wouldn't be giving refunds if you asked for one because you couldn't figure it out. The quotes from Sean Penn about how he couldn't figure out what he was doing there (frankly, neither did I, his performance was rather statuesque).

I wanted to patiently tell her not to pull a muscle trying to figure it out. A movie isn't a math problem, for crying out loud.

Sometimes, you have to just buy the ticket and take the ride. That's the charm of film -- you give your time and your attention and you get taken someplace. It requires a great degree of trust, and Malick more than earned it. A few others have for me too. Stanley Kubrick, for example, is the same way for me.

The easy knock on these filmmakers is that they are pretentious, and self-absorbed and obtuse. But really, that's just ambition. And there's a reason I dropped my 1,200 forints to watch this instead of Jack and Jill.

There's nothing wrong with understanding that film can be poetry and it can be prose. And hell, it can be painting, and it can be music.

BOOKS

I like books. Quite a lot. And I feel I should have something clever to say about the year in literature. But still after all these years, I continue to to be aware that there were hundreds of years of great literature before 2011. I'm still catching up.

So, to borrow James Wolcott's appropriate phrase, I haven't spent much time this year "preparing Joan Didion's reliquary [or] fawning over the latest literary genius farted aloft from the borough of Brooklyn."

Sunday, December 18, 2011

One more thing about 'Hitch'

I've been sufficiently creeped out by the fulsome celebration of all things "Hitch" that I'm compelled to write a little more. The turning point was reading Katie Roiphe, the hackiest of Slate's considerable stable of knee-jerk "contrarians" -- who regularly pulls off a trifecta of being wrong, thin-skinned, and boring -- describing how Hitchens offered personal encouragement in her career as a "provocateur."

Well, the man frequently suffered from terrible judgment, and I'm glad that my favorite writer younger than me, Alex Pareene at Salon, was there to settle the record. In particular, his refusal to excuse his hypocritical support for the war in Iraq:
"And so we had the world's self-appointed defender of Orwell's legacy happily joining an extended misinformation campaign designed to sell an incompetent right-wing government's war of choice. The man who carefully laid out the case for arresting Henry Kissinger for war crimes was now palling around with Paul fucking Wolfowitz."

The sting of this behavior is just how convincing his writing about Kissinger and that ilk is. I was shaken by his powerful reporting on the immorality of Agent Orange -- a toxin whose evil reaches across generations -- that I cannot understand how that writer and the Iraq War cheerleader are related (it's a little infuriating to say it now, but seriously, go read 'The Vietnam Syndrome' in VF). Strange, but I think that to be so right about one thing while at the same time being so wrong about another is a chronic condition of the 20th century.

There was a quote kicking around twitter in which Hitchens described how he always wrote to be read posthumously. That's an ambitious idea, and truly cuts both ways. Without the shambolic, chain-smoking, lovable curmudgeon we remember from the chat-show circuit, we only have his words. Many should be cherished for a good long time (see above), but I hope I don't live to see the day that his cheap, blood-thirsty, war-mongering is accepted as truth by reasonable people. 

If there is a fate worse than an eternity in hell, perhaps it has having your biggest mistakes laying in the sun without the opportunity to charm yourself into a state of grace where a mere man does not belong.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Hitchens

I'd long made it a habit to automatically read anything by Christopher Hitchens that came across my vision, and it has been an unpleasant feeling this past year of so to realize each time that this may be the last thing we'll have. It feels terrible that this long anticipated absence has finally arrived.

Others will say more precisely and more eloquently what they'll miss about his work. I'll miss the routine of engagement, the curiosity that comes trying to figure what he'd have about this or that. I can't think of any other writers who could make you applaud or hiss with such regularity. I'll never come around to his opinion about the Iraq War -- which I guess "ended" the same day he did (and don't read too many fawning eulogies without also reading John Cook's blisteringly honest breakdown of his biggest mistake). Also, I'll probably never think much more of Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie than I do now, but those times when you agreed with him... boy, you felt there were legions with you.

Bless him for never letting an idea alone, for proving that "received wisdom" is a wholly bad idea. His insistence on looking hard and critically at Mother Theresa, Henry Kissinger, the Clintons, Jimmy Carter (to name just my favorites) were great blows for truth and justice. I wish more people would be persuaded.

I think that his last great crusade, the "New Atheism" as it has been dubbed, is an important legacy. I was never wholly sold on it, mostly because I think protesting quite so much crosses the line into just being a jerk, but I'm incredibly glad he didn't shrink from the fight. This is a world in which born-again Christians continue to obnoxiously insist they are a persecuted minority, and I'm very grateful that he had the vision and courage to speak out on behalf of the real victims of oppression: the godless, and by extension those who wish to be free to explore their doubts.

If I was often impressed by the reasoning in his writing, I was often less fond of his style. They say he could churn out columns in 30 minutes, and it often showed. They often felt like hectoring emails. But great "writers" are a dime a dozen these days. His achievement was to keep the spirit of George Orwell alive for another generation. He proved that all wasn't lost to self-absorbed craftsmen and panicky careerists.

From his formative years in London in the 1970s right up to today, he wrote when the the sureties and pieties of the "short" 20th century were coming to a messy, confusing end. We have no idea what is being forged at the moment, but no doubt we'll need to be as curious, argumentative, and unintimidated as he was.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Loyalty Day

The "Loyalty Gate" in Sopron shows city dwellers pledging allegiance to Hungary.
It seems I share a birthday with a small national holiday here. Today is "Loyalty Day" (A Hűség Napja), which is celebrated in the western town of Sopron. It commemorates the plebiscite in 1921 in which the people of the city and several surrounding villages voted to become a part of Hungary, rather than Austria. About 65 percent voted to stay, and earned the city the nickname "Civitas Fidelissima" -- "the most loyal city." It's important because it marks the only time the hated Treaty of Trianon -- which dismembered historical Hungary -- was ever revised.

Monday, December 5, 2011

This is why I don't gamble

The great thing about being a pessimist is that if the awful thing actually happens, you can take comfort in at least being right, and if it doesn't, you're so glad who cares what you thought. Proving that Russia is never boring, my predictions were way off.

But... you can never be too cynical when thinking about Russia, so the headlines in the West about Putin taking a beating miss the point. Watching election coverage Sunday, the talking points emerged pretty quickly: the economy is horrible, of course the incumbents would take a beating! and doesn't this prove once and for all that democracy in Russia is transparent?

You don't have to look too hard to realize this is too simple. Look at the roster of opposition parties in the new Duma: all the same chuckleheads who were the "opposition" in the old Duma. I heard a very telling quote from a United Russia leader on Russia Today last night, talking about how there would be no permanent coalition partner, but that they would make "technical" coalitions on a case by case basis. This means they'll pair up with A Just Russia for legislation to quiet human rights scolding, with the Communists to quiet whining pensioners, and with LDPR when they need to serve up some red meat to shut up ultranationalists.

And the system itself remains badly screwed up. National party-list voting in a country the size of Russia is plainly ridiculous. Voters don't choose leaders to represent them -- they choose party hacks who are loyal to their party leaders, who are loyal to themselves. And the fact no one ever talks about the Federation Council, theoretically a part of the legislative branch, says it all. And voters won't get to say anything about again for five years.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

The possibilities of the 'Big Lie'

Sunday's Duma elections will likely come down to just a few percentage points. It is certain United Rusisa will maintain its legislative majority, and the only question is whether they'll keep the two-thirds needed to run everything in the old Soviet fashion, or will face the unlikely possibility of a minuscule speed bump. The remaining seats will go to a grab bag of quiescent "opposition" parties -- most likely the incumbents -- who will gladly go along to keep their seat at the table.

But in recent weeks there have been a stream of reports that the Kremlin is nervous about how the elections may go. Polls had shown support for United Russia is eroding, and a few high-profile incidents like Putin getting booed in public, and the twitter mockery of Dmitry Medvedev's ridiculous lame duck presidency, suggest a distinct undercurrent of discontent.

In today's Russia, the ruling elites -- the oligarchs and minigarchs and siloviki and grey cardinals and youth group organizers -- have achieved separation from the "people." They can now afford to take their vacations in Western Europe, send their kids to private school, park their cars wherever the hell they want, sleep in gated high-rise apartments, eat and party at elitny clubs, and shop in shiny, trashy malls. For this one percent, the 99 percent are those grey lumps your driver zooms past as you lounge behind the tinted windows of your German car.

The 99 percent is also a huge herd that exists to be milked. Through most of human history, you could get away with this con for generations. But it is harder now. General improvements, like widespread literacy, and specific ones, like social media, accelerate the cycle of envy and irritation.

You don't realize that "cows" have feelings too until it is way too late. And the the ruling elite in Russia seems to have made some telling misjudgments. It has felt for awhile like the tenor of discontent has been growing -- I've heard surprising yelps of discontent from people who had always been at least "okay" with the way things were going.

But a lot changed when Putin and Medvedev announced they would be switching places. One Saturday afternoon, the political direction of the country for the next 12 years was etched in stone. Of course, everyone knew that was a possible outcome -- in fact, it was always the most likely one. But the way the handover was botched was unusual. The "tandem" carried on like two 13 year olds pulling the old trick when you tie a string to a dollar bill and leave it on the sidewalk and yank it when an unsuspecting person stoopes to pick it up. This was the plan all along, they yucked. Har har. It's one thing to screw people, another to mock them while you do it. It was the kind of "misstep" that makes you wonder.