The show was “good enough.”  Their stage set was hokey with a big Buffalo Springfield logo hoisted over the backdrop, together with large cut-outs of the eponymous tractors that gave the band its name.  It also was cluttered with pointless artifacts, e.g. a cigar store wooden Indian.  It definitely was not like Lady GaGa’s recent HBO special.

The rhythm section was pedestrian with some session musician dutifully whacking his drums and a bass player thumping out root and fundamental notes.  Neither were particularly dextrous and they were mixed way too loud.  Bass in particular can sound loose and flabby if it is not compressed between the guitar and the amp.  It overwhelmed the rest of the band and the low end of the mix pretty much was undifferentiated noise.  It literally was unendurable on some of the louder numbers, which dissolved into a sea of sonic sludge.  I’m surprised the band could put up with it on stage.

The big drawing card of course was the interplay between Steven Stills, Richie Furay and Neil Young.  Messrs. Furay and Young were fully engaged.  Stills on the other hand was strangely distant and detached from the other two.  At many points during the show he did not appear to be playing his instrument.  He stood apart from the other band members.  Once he tripped over a front stage monitor.  His vocals on his songs, e.g. “For What It’s Worth,” were ragged, and once he forgot the words.

While it is a specialized point, I also must note my disapproval of his choice of guitars.  He played, variously, a Stratocaster; a Flying V; and a White Falcon.  The first two were inappropriate.  The thin, single-coil output of the Strat particularly was obnoxious and did not blend well with the other instruments.  It even looks funny in the context of the other players.  Guitarists in bands like the Buffalo Springfield should play electric archtop guitars made by Gibson, Gretsch, Guild; or, for acoustic numbers, Martin.  They’re the only ones that work with the material; please save the Strat for Hendrix.

Even when playing a White Falcon, the guitar with which he most is associated, Stills looked uncomfortable.  He continuously was fiddling with the controls in a manner that suggested he did not know which pickup to use.  The ones he ended up selecting were too dark, relegating the legendary White Falcon, with its wonderful Filtertrons, to the low- frequency muddle of the house mix.  The notes he ended up playing were slow and uninspired, showing no particular dexterity.

Young, on the other hand, was the band’s driver.  His playing was first-rate.  Amazing to report, his singing was well intonated.  Furay’s performance too was excellent (although on some of the louder numbers there was no point in him continuing to strum his acoustic guitar).  He sings lead on several of the band’s best-known songs and his voice was wistful, achingly beautiful.  There were several transcendent moments when all three singers harmonized perfectly, the mix was in balance, the instruments well-blended.  These were the highlights of the performance.

It’s hard to discern exactly why the band reunited for this tour.  Stills and Young are rich as Croesus and do not need the money.  Furay’s circumstances most likely are less optimal, and on margin he probably will be the most-benefitted member of the group.  Although bands like Buffalo Springfield have a catalog of well-recognized songs, their royalties from selling records (downloads) probably are miniscule and bogged down with commissions payable to former managers, recoupment issues and other financial commitments.  Publishing should be more lucrative, but even then it depends on the extent of radio (internet) airplay, record (download) sales (which, as noted, are miniscule) and use in television or movies.  In this latter category, I cannot recall any recent featured uses of Buffalo Springfield songs.

It’s also probable that Young simply felt like reuniting the band and playing again; he was the instigator of the band’s recent comprehensive box set, and this is a fitting coda to that initiative.

In conclusion, we have been privileged to see recent reunions of the Doors (most of them, except for Krieger); Love (when Arthur Lee still was alive); and now, Buffalo Springfield.  The only band left of consequence would be the Byrds.  McGuinn, Hillman and Crosby still are alive, and it would be wonderful if they could find a way to bury the hatchet for a few shows.  Given their still-gurgling-right-below-the-surface animosity, though, this seems unlikely!

First, the movie is mis-titled. One of Herzog’s main points is the continuity of existence and dream-like memories that persist over time. The inhabitants of the valley where the cave was found, Herzog argues, are not that much different from you and I. In particular, they share a need to express themselves, to think symbolically, and (in the case of certain talented individuals) to act creatively. This is a universal theme – one of identity, not difference, to borrow a phrase from Heidegger. The dreams have not been forgotten, rather, they have been remembered. The movie should be called “Cave of Remembered Dreams,” or some such.

Second, the movie feels disjointed. It comprises segments of interviews with scientists; a history of Herzog’s expedition into the cave; pictures of the cave art; and a chilling allegory at the end of the movie about nuclear waste and albino crocodiles. Herzog jumbles these all up. It would have made for better continuity had he arranged them into discrete segments. The best pictures of the cave art come at the end. These should have come at the beginning, possibly with a coda or a reprise. This would tend to draw one in more to the underlying theme of the film, and expose the amazing art for what it is, thereby attracting the viewer’s attention. As it is, one is introduced to the cave art in a haphazard fashion, using jerky camera technique, which Herzog even admits was filmed using amateur equipment and is deficient. I am not objecting to the interviews with the scientists and other personnel charged with safeguarding the cave, or demonstrating various techniques such as primitive spear throwing and how to play musical instruments made out of bones. They comprise an important part of the overall story. It’s just that it would have been better to assemble these into separate informational segments, somewhere in the middle of the film.

Third, the 3D effect is dispensable, except towards the end of the film when Herzog finally focuses on the paintings themselves, and the stalactites and stalagmites surrounding them. Then, they blend and meld astonishingly into the rocky contours of the interior of the cave. Before then, all you really see are talking heads in the foreground with dusty cave walls in the background, which made me dizzy. Herzog also could have made better use of 3D. For example, I expected some kind of effect where the paintings lift off the walls of the cave and literally become alive, or somehow become animated. Given the current state of 3D technology, this would not have been hard to achieve.

Finally, a word about caves and the astonishing art this one contains. There is something interesting about humanity’s relationship with caves. Pharaohs were buried in caves (albeit man-made ones) in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves around Qumran in Palestine. Caves are enclosures, places of isolation and containment. It is surprising that, given his philosophical musings, Herzog did not mention this primordial, archetypal (ala Jung) aspect.

Aside from its great antiquity, one of the most interesting aspects of the art is how contemporary it is. Art from ancient peoples sometimes is criticized for its lack of perspective and dimensionality, or at least it is juxtaposed against Renaissance-era art that employs perspective and dimensionality with greater facility. It is “flat” and opaque. It is alleged that, because of this, it does not draw one into the work. The work is an object to be regarded, most likely at a distance; it does not absorb one, or in effect become an extension of the viewer. Commentators sometimes observe that “primitive” people were incapable of thinking in terms of spatial metaphors.

This simply isn’t so. The Chauvet paintings reach across the years and are compelling. Even without the contours of the cave walls, they are layered and show differential-phase movement, in the manner of an impressionist painting. Herzog briefly makes the connection between this attribute and more modern painters, such as Picasso, but could have dwelt on it further.

Who is a racist?

Distilled to its essentials, Sue’s basic argument is that every white male is a racist because they are beneficiaries of a pervasive, embedded, institutionalized culture of privilege, dominance and power. I think the latter half of this proposition basically is true. However, Sue makes a fallacious inference when he concludes, on this basis, that every person to whom this ascriptive predicate can be attributed is a racist. Here are some of the reasons why I think Sue is wrong.

Collective intentionality. Sue commits what has come to be known as an “ecological fallacy” – that is, he extrapolates group behavior to particular individuals.¹ The formal structure of his argument is to identify what he would characterize as an institutional fact, such as racism. He then attempts to connect it with people, whom he believes are complicit in perpetuating it. There is a difference, however, between “we intend” and “I intend.” In order for the latter to conflate to the former, there has to be collective effort, and each agent must recognize the others are contributing to it. Each makes a contribution on the assumption the others make a counterpart contribution. This is not, however, what typically happens. I do what I am doing, because that’s what I personally believe in doing. Even if I might suppose others are cooperating with me, that’s not the reason why I do it.

To take an example, let’s imagine I’m a rain dancer of Hopi American Indian descent. I do the rain dance because I believe it will bring rain. A latent function of a group of people doing the rain dance is that it improves social cohesion.² This isn’t, however, why I do the rain dance. I do it because I believe it is causally efficacious, and will bring rain.

The Berkeley philosopher John Searle puts it this way:

“The content of my intention-in-action can only make reference to things I can cause (or at least believe I can cause). In order to engage in collective behavior I have to believe (or assume or presuppose) that others are cooperating with me. And their cooperation will consist in their having intentions-in-action that specify the same goal as I have but need not specify the same means to the goal. I have to believe they are cooperating, but except for unusual cases, it is not part of the content of my own intention-in-action to cause their cooperation.”

Searle, 2010, p. 53. Searle goes on to say it isn’t even necessary for an agent to know what the other’s contribution is. One knows one’s own intention, “but for complex acts of large groups no one knows what everybody else is doing” (Searle, 2010, p. 54). The only intentionality that can exist “is in the heads of individuals. There is no collective intentionality beyond what is in the head of each member of the collective” (Searle, 2010, p. 55).

“Racism,” then, is significantly different than “being a racist.” Racism is a social or cultural condition. Being a racist is a personal belief. Sue misses this distinction.

Natural kinds. Another problem with Sue’s analysis is he disregards that different racial populations present with issues unique to their respective race. If not “caused” by race, they are extremely closely correlated with it. An example is public health. Persons who are Ashkenazi Jews are at increased risk for a variety of medical conditions such as Tay-Sachs disease, Ashkenazi Jewish genetic diseases (2010). 10.4% percent of persons of Hispanic/Latino origin over the age of 20 have diagnosed diabetes, with resulting risk for cardiovascular disease, Hispanics/Latinos and Diabetes (2010). Persons who are African-Americans are at increased risk for coronary heart disease, diabetes and sickle cell anemia (1 in 12 persons who are African Americans carry the sickle cell trait), Genetic disease profile: Sickle cell anemia (2010). Yet it would be a misnomer to characterize a doctor making a diagnosis of one of these maladies in a patient of a given race as a “racist.” They are based on inherited genetic factors, not behavioral dispositions.³ Sociologists such as Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama (1991, 2003) have gone so far as to devise elaborate cultural theories about “group” versus “individual” identity, solely on the basis of race. Sue cannot account for these cases.

Salience. Sue assumes that, from a phenomenological standpoint, race is what makes the first and foremost impact on people’s perceptions of one another. Even a moment’s reflection, though, will demonstrate this is not so. The first thing one thinks of when one encounters a person who is noticeably handicapped is, “that person has a disability,” regardless of his or her race. The first thing one thinks of when one encounters someone who is acting erratically and inappropriately is, “that person may be mentally unbalanced,” regardless of his or her race.

Other examples of this sort are not hard to devise. Many countries, such as Britain and India, predominantly are class-driven. In Britain, one can discern another’s social class simply by the way they speak. Race often is not the most salient characteristic or basis upon which people evaluate others, or divide them into groups. One might be prejudiced against people who are visibly handicapped, or prejudiced against people who have apparent mental disabilities, or prejudiced against people of a different class. As despicable as this is, it is a different problem than being a racist. Sue overlooks this basic point about human nature.

Separatism, anti-integrationism. Sue also fails to consider that many racial groups now prefer to self-identify or self-segregate on the basis of race. Yet, we do not think of them as racists. In recent U.S. history, for persons of African-American descent, this originated with organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, which eschewed the more inclusionary message of counterparts such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Sales, 2010).

Three related issues are inter-ethnic racism, intra-ethnic violence and “Christian privilege.”  Victor in the film “The Color of Fear” asserted (to the effect that) there is no good explanation for inter-ethnic racism, except in the context of white privilege. In light of the ethnic separatist movement, I would have to say this is incorrect. A more likely explanation for inter-ethnic racism is that, once they self-segregate, people who are members of a particular racial group tend to feel discriminated against, if only because of their increased internal cohesion and solidarity (Allen, 2004).

Victor also would have a hard time explaining black-on-black or Hispanic-on-Hispanic violence (Clarke, 1996), or the culture of nihilism expressed by younger members of long-established gangs such as the MS-13 (Hagedorn, 2008). How is this caused by white privilege? I suspect Victor would adopt an external locus of control and blame it on institutionalized racism. The true fact of the matter, in my opinion, is that it is no different in principle than white-on-white violence. It should be analyzed in terms of violence and the factors predisposing people to it, not in terms of race.

The idea of “Christian privilege” also is problematic because, like racial communities, members of different religious groups tend to self-congregate. Then, they tend define out-groups as spiritually deficient, because they do not accept their theological beliefs. Many persons of the Jewish faith, for example, believe they are “God’s chosen people,” which at least can be construed to mean that anybody else is “not chosen.” Christian fundamentalists believe theirs is the only possible interpretation of scripture. As a next step, religious communities often suppose they are under an affirmative obligation to convert people who do not share their own theological principles. If one believes one’s God is the only one there is, then it follows that everybody else should (or even must) believe in it, too. For example, many persons who are evangelical Christians believe they are under an affirmative duty to proselytize. Due in part to forced conversions, Islam became the dominant religion of the Middle East within only a few years following the death of Muhammad in 632 CE.⁴

It is difficult to discern Christian privilege within this matrix of inter-cultural and cross-cultural currents. Judaism is an interesting case illustration. Because of factors such as the initial Diaspora and religious proscriptions, historically many communities comprised of persons of the Jewish faith were autonomous and self-sufficient. In the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, most likely in response to pressures of modernism, persons of the Jewish faith were more prone to secularize and assimilate. For example, a study in 1990 showed that only 33.2% of persons in the U.S. identifying themselves as Jewish ever belonged to a synagogue; only 10% attended synagogue weekly; only 14.2% agreed the Bible is the actual word of God; only 11.6% kept kosher; only 18.9% usually lit candles on Friday night; and 30.6% sometimes had a Christmas tree. 16.4% had embraced irreligiousness, and 19.4% actually had converted to Christianity. Some 20 years later, however, Orthodox Judaism once again is prevalent.⁵

Status functions. Sue also misunderstands the dynamic of background facts and status functions. In order for there to be institutionalized racism, there must be a system supporting its collective recognition and acceptance. While of course it still exists in many cultural sub-groups⁶, this no longer is as prevalent as it once was (and certainly is less prevalent among Sue’s intended audience, who would not even consider reading his book unless they were at least modestly enlightened on these issues. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the civil rights movement now have culminated with the election of a president of the United States who, though clearly biracial, (at least) looks more black than white (Walters, 2007). Clarence Thomas, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, is an African American (albeit probably one of the most conservative justices in its history). And, Sonia Sotomayor, the newest justice, is a self-described “wise Latina woman.”⁷ In 1948, in the case of Perez v. Sharp (32 Cal. 2d 711), the California Supreme Court abolished prohibitions on inter-racial marriage; the U.S. Supreme Court followed in 1967, in the case of Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1). In August 2010, the U.S. District Court declared California’s recently enacted Proposition 8, prohibiting same-sex marriage, was unconstitutional (McKinley & Schwartz, 2010); this ruling presently is on appeal (McKinley, 2010). These developments would not have been possible until recently.

Particularly considering the current economic crisis, categories such as “black” and “white” no longer make as much sense as ones like “rich” and “poor”⁸. Two recent examples of this: the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Washington Post columnist and MSNBC commentator Eugene Robinson recently declared there is no such thing anymore as “black America” (Robinson, 2010). And, the noted feminist writer Susan Faludi recently wrote there is no such thing any more as the “feminist movement” (Faludi, 2010). The reason why is that older “racial” and “gender” divisions have disintegrated as other, more salient categories have taken their place. Maybe even the idea of the “middle class” now is a myth. It an amorphous designation to begin with, dissolving under economic pressure and political polarization (Foster, 2010).

In conclusion, Sue’s basic theory is that because of who one is, they can’t not be a racist, or at least not be predisposed to being one. For the reasons I have set forth, however, I believe this is incorrect. Sue simply lumps everybody into the same category – arguably, evidence of his own subtly racial biases.

Power

Spike Lee has been quoted as stating: “Racism = Power”⁹. I think he is right when he says that racism is, or is equivalent to, or has something to do with, the exercise of power. It is a mistake, though, to equate all forms of the exercise of power as racism; or, even to assume that racism is the most apparent way in which power is exercised. Rather, it is a subset of the many ways in which power accrues to institutions and the ways in which people become victimized by its use.

“Power” means you can make somebody do something you want for them to do, even if they don’t want to do it. If one does what one wants to do anyway, then power is not exercised. Exercising power is someone’s intentional act. It is different from influence, which is getting people to want something they otherwise wouldn’t want. It is different from getting people to perceive some options as more desirable then others, or preventing them from seeing available options, which if presented to them, might have affected the outcome. It also is different than leadership, which is the ability to inspire trust and confidence (Searle, 2010).

We live in a social environment where power is exercised by the government, the military, the penal system, large corporations, and similar others. The reason why they have power is because of background cultural practices, resulting in norms of behavior, the rise of institutions regulating it, and other categories of social facts. These in turn carry “deontic powers” such as rights, duties, obligations, requirements, permissions, authorizations, entitlements, etc., all of which present desire-independent reasons for acting one way instead of another. Sanctions are imposed when one violates the expectations they create (Searle, 2010).

The French philosopher Michel Foucault characterized this as “biopower” (Foucault, 1998). As a result of living in a social network, humans regress to the mean and are “normalized” to expect to be administrated, herded, marketed to, and generally told what to do. The invisible structures of power promote lassitude and conformity. Technology, particularly recent phenomena such as “social networking,” facilitates this compliance. Modern media, in its rapacious search for celebrity and relentless descent to the lowest common denominator of consumer preference, exacerbates these trends. It alters people’s personal expectations of what counts as meaningful, reinforces cultural stereotypes, and creates a kind of “learned dependence” upon the status quo. The real problem is not “racism.”  The equation is more complex; it really is about “powerism.”

Interim Conclusion

For these reasons (among others), my current perspective is that one has to look beyond issues of race to get to the true meaning of multi-culturalism. Categories like “race,” or even the salience of “being handicapped” or “appearing to be mentally disabled,” aren’t the relevant metric. One even must look beyond culture, to the realm of powerful institutions, the media, and social pressure to conform. To have deconstructed race or culture, or go “beyond” it, doesn’t mean one ignores it, or doesn’t think about it. One need not deny one is a member of a group, or that one is a beneficiary of whatever advantages have accrued as a result. Rather, one not only becomes aware of it, but also does what one can to influence the course of dialog (which is not an exercise of power, as per above), to enable others to reach the same outcome.

This leaves one with the question, “whose responsibility is it to instigate change?” Here’s how I think this can be addressed, at least provisionally. Whenever somebody has what we call a “right,” it means that person can act against somebody else’s interests. The person whose interests are being acted against has a correlative “duty” to acquiesce, whether or not they want to do so.¹⁰ The existence of this duty presents a desire-independent reason for action, in the form of compliance (Searle, 2010). To take a simple example, and while there is a narrow set of constitutional exceptions, I have a right to free speech. This means others have a duty not to impinge on it.

A universal human right “to be free from racism” does not fit easily into this schema, because there is no counterpart universal human duty “not to be a racist.” In saying this, it is not my intention for anybody to get excited ideologically. Rather, it is an issue with all human rights in general. It “might be nice” if people weren’t racists, and a tolerant society should aspire to a set of conditions where everybody can be judged on their own merits, regardless of race (or any other factor, for that matter, other than their own unique personhood). From an axiological standpoint, it is hard to make an argument that racism is valuable in and of itself, or that it benefits humanity. Except for a few, it has no direct social utility.

In the United States, at least, there are specific negative obligations associated with particular classifications of persons, such as not to interfere with housing rights, employment rights, not to commit hate crimes, and not to discriminate on a variety of other bases. These are extremely important, and we as a society should be grateful they are in place as minimal standards of performance. I fully support programs of affirmative action to redress imbalances arising out of previous misapplications of this equation.

That being so, the formal logic of these “negative rights” is different from that of “positive rights,” even those positive rights (such as the “right to live in peace”) which really are negative rights in logical structure (such as “the right to live in peace,” which really means “free from interference by others,” or “the right to attempt to obtain a positive right,” which really means “you have no right to interfere with me from trying to do so”) (Searle, 2010).¹¹

This still leaves one in a quandary, though, as to whose responsibility it is to instigate change. Each of us has a moral duty to further this objective, to the fullest extent possible, within the practical confines of one’s everyday life. The existence of this duty may not be strictly derivable from principles of deontic logic. However, it is part of the highest ideals of being human to be free from “isms,” like racism. People are not amenable to being classified, nor should they be discriminated against, on the basis of race or any other condition, other than whom they are as unique individuals. As expressed by Lon Fuller (1964), there is a morality of aspiration that transcends a morality of duty.¹²

Footnotes

(1) This term originated with Robinson (1950).

(2) The social anthropologists who originally developed the concept of “latent functions” held religion primarily is a cultural phenomenon resulting in, among other consequences, improved social cohesion and utility, in an economic sense; on margin, its usefulness outweighs its costs (Durkheim, 1912/2008; Weber, 1905/2002). In contrast, phenomenological theories hold religion primarily is a set of beliefs people devise in order to explain the world and natural processes such as life and death (Frazer, 1890/2009). It is a search for meaning (or, an attempt to elude meaninglessness) by interpreting, or entering into a relationship with, the transcendental, i.e., that which is not immediately perceivable by the senses (Eliade, 1957/1987). As such, it primarily is experiential (Otto, 1923/1958).

(3) And thus fundamentally are unlike cases of “profiling,” for example, assuming that all gay men have AIDS, or that all Muslims are terrorists. Some 72% of births to people of African-American descent occur outside of marriage, as opposed to some 29% of births among people who are of Caucasian descent (Landale, Schoen & Daniels, 2010). There is a large school “achievement gap” between students of African-American and Mexican-American background between counterpart students of Caucasian background (Skelton, 2010, Dec. 6). This does not mean women of African-American descent are genetically more prone to be single mothers, or that students of African-American or Mexican-American descent are stupider than students of Caucasian descent. Many other factors, such as SES and cultural expectations, are in play. From the standpoint of pop culture, the problem of profiling is highlighted by TV shows such as “Criminal Minds,” which is about a (hopefully, fictitious) FBI “behavioral analysis” unit.

(4) Exploring this dynamic in detail, see Stark (2003) and Armstrong (2010).

(5) Lawson (2010). In the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, for example, menorahs and other symbols associated with the Jewish faith are prominently on display in many public places, even as Christmas trees proliferate amidst shopping centers such as The Grove, a few blocks away. Christmas trees have nothing to do with Christianity, but rather are economic devices designed to drive holiday (including Hanukkah) sales. Would public displays of crosses on, say, the streets of Pacific Palisades, or Islamic symbols in Beverly Hills, be cause for consternation?

(6) The most flagrant recent example might be the “Tea Party” movement. The ostensible alienation of its members, and their concerns over the “otherness” of government, most likely are a disguised form of racism, or at least racial phobia (Fraser, 2010). Recent statements by Fox News commentators such as Glenn Beck have been condemned as (and they are) blatantly racist (Hitchens, 2011, Jan.).

(7) Does this mean that all men are stupid, or perhaps just Latino men? Or, possibly, women who aren’t Latinas?

(8) Unquestionably there is a high correlation between SES and race; my point simply is that it is a form of category error to conflate the two.

(9) I have been unable to find a good cite for this quote. It certainly is implicit in much of his work such as the seminal film, “Do the right thing”.

(10) This idea dates back to the British jurist John Austin (1832/1995).

(11) What happens in the absence of a right, that later is recognized?  Consider, for example, the institution of slavery (abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862), or a woman’s right to vote (not recognized until 1920). Did the disenfranchised “have” the right all along, or did it only then start to exist?  Arguably these simply are two different ways to report the same set of facts. They have immense practical significance, however. Consider: “This has been our territory for 300 years, and you’re occupying it” versus “This hasn’t been our territory, since our claims to it haven’t been recognized for 300 years” (Searle, 2010). Wars have been fought over this distinction. Under the institution of slavery, slaves had no rights because they were not thought of as human beings. Many people formerly thought slavery was a perfectly acceptable institution, and still do; consider, for example, the enslavement of teenagers to work as prostitutes, common in most large U.S. cities. While this point certainly can be argued in both directions, my intuition is that if somebody can override a right, then the right probably doesn’t exist, until that activity is stopped.

(12) The question of “where do these moral imperatives come from” is beyond the scope of this essay.

References

Allen, R. (2004). Whiteness and critical pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 121 – 136. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2004.00056.x

Armstrong, K. (2010). The battle for God. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Ashkenazi Jewish genetic diseases (2010). Retrieved from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Health/genetics.html

Austin, J. (1832/1995). W. Rumble (Ed.). The province of jurisprudence defined. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Clarke, J. (1996). Black-on-black violence. Society, 33(5), 46 – 50. doi:10.1007/BF02693114

Do the right thing (1989). Universal Studios.

Durkheim, E. (1912/2008). The elementary forms of religious life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Eliade, M. (1957/1987). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace.

Faludi, S. (2010, Oct.). American Electra – Feminism’s ritual matricide. Harper’s Magazine (pp. 29 – 42).

Foster, J. (2010). Polarization and the decline of the middle class. Journal of Economic Inequality, 8(2), 247 – 273. doi:10.1007/s10888-009-9122-7

Foucault, M. (1998). The history of sexuality, volume 1: The will to knowledge. London, UK: Penguin.

Fraser, S. (2010). The rearview mirror: History’s mad hatters: The strange career of tea party populism. New Labor Forum, 19(3), 75 – 81. doi:10.1353/nlf.2010.0064

Frazer, J. (1890/2009). The golden bough: A study in magic and religion. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Fuller, L. (1964). The Morality of Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Genetic disease profile: Sickle cell anemia (2010). Retrieved from http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/posters/chromosome/sca.shtml

Hagedorn, J. (2008). A world of gangs: armed young men and gangsta culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Hispanics/Latinos and Diabetes (2010). Retrieved from http://www.ndep.nih.gov/media/FS_HispLatino_Eng.pdf?redirect=true

Hitchens, C. (2011, Jan.). Tea’d off. Vanity Fair, 605, 36.

Landale, N., Schoen, R. & Daniels, K. (2010). Early family formation among white, black, and Mexican-American women. Journal of Family Issues, 31(4), 445 – 474. doi: 10.1177/0192513X093422847

Lawson, E. (2010). American Jewish identity politics. Journal of Jewish Identities, 3(1), 79 – 81. doi: 10.1353/jji.0.0068

Los Angeles Now (2010). Retrieved from http://www.losangelesfilm.org/film/index.html

Markus, H. & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224- 253. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.224

Markus, H. & Kitayama, S. (2003). Culture, self, and the reality of the social. Psychological Inquiry, 14, 277 – 283. doi: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1403&4_17

McKinley, J. (2010, Dec. 5). Same sex initiative reaches next hurdle. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06prop8.html?_r=1&ref=us

McKinley, J. & Schwartz, J. (2010, Aug. 4). Court rejects same-sex marriage ban in California. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/us/05prop.html?_r=1

Otto, R. (1923/1958). The idea of the holy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Robinson, E. (2010). Disintegration: The splintering of black America. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Robinson, W. (1950). Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review, 15, 351 – 357.

Sales, W. (2010). The legacy of Malcolm X. In Terrill, R. (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X (pp. 171 – 184). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Searle, J. (2010). Making the social world – The structure of human civilization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Skelton, G. (2010, Dec. 6). An A in overcoming odds. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap-20101206,0,4748196.column

Stark, R. (2003). One true God – Historical consequences of monotheism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sue, D. (2003). Are you a racist?  In Overcoming our racism – The journey to liberation (pp. 3 – 21). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

The color of fear (1994).  Stir-Fry Productions.

Walters, R. (2007). Barack Obama and the politics of blackness. Journal of Black Studies, 38(1), 7 – 29. doi:10.1177/0021934707305214

Weber, M. (1905/2002). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York, NY: Penguin.

I found the museum to be an intriguing and educational experience. It opened with an exhibit of African masks, which were astonishingly artistic. There was a photograph exhibit about Allensworth, a town founded by black pioneers in 1908, which I never had heard of (strangely, all of the photographers appeared to be white). Here is a picture of Allensworth:

There also was an exhibition of work by the artist John T. Scott. I was familiar with some of his work, but not intimately so. His most striking pieces were giant woodcuts made on plywood panels, which he then used as masters to ink prints. Some of his other pieces, though, were nondescript – derivative of other 20^th century quasi-modernistic art. Here is a picture of Scott:

An exhibit about African-American roller skating teams didn’t do too much for me (all of us were, so to speak, rolling their eyes). However I was profoundly affected by the museum’s “Gallery of Discovery,” reflecting the travails and existence of Africans in America, starting with the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 1450s until the 1800s. The exhibit’s description of the Middle Passage particularly was harrowing. From an artistic standpoint, the most effective part of the exhibit was a “gallery of heads” representing the unknown millions who did not survive the journey. Their anguished faces were mute testament to the devastation their predecessors had endured. There is no way to estimate the exact numbers of Africans who perished along the way. It has been estimated that as few as 6 million and as many as 25 million Africans were taken out of Africa over the four hundred years that the institution of slavery existed. Somewhere between 15% – 30% died on the journey. Interestingly, the exhibit estimated that only around 450 thousand of those slaves were imported to what is now the United States; the rest went to destinations in the Caribbean and South and Central America.

After the trip to the museum we all went out for dinner at M&M Soul Food in Leimert Park. We had a raucously good time. I am not a culinary expert, however the food was great! In summary, a good time was had by all.

Cale’s biggest problem is the expectations of his fans. I saw the Velvet Underground on several occasions, most notably in 1968 at the auditorium of San Diego City College, when both Cale and Nico still were in the group. For many, everything he’s done since is derivative of that era. This must annoy him tremendously By consensus his best work was the trio of early-1970s records he did for Warner Bros., possibly extending into the material he then did for Island Records. Although hit-and-miss, some of his later work is strong; one of my personal favorites is the 1979 record “Sabotage/Live,” which I saw him perform at the Catamaran Hotel in San Diego (of all places). Cale never was a rock-and-roller. I think it fairer to characterize his work as “art rock,” or even “cabaret rock.” I have met him on several occasions, typically when he was between record deals and looking for an advance for a record that would be prestigious, but difficult to recoup.

Cale’s singing was vigorous and well-intonated. I was impressed by his musicianship. He didn’t just stand there and sing, he actively played keyboards, and guitar on several numbers, though with less success. I wish he would have played electric viola at least once. Cale both leads and carries the band. The orchestral arrangements, which he undoubtedly collaborated in writing, were excellent. Having said that, the house mix was mushy and lacked dynamic modulation, so it wasn’t clear exactly what the orchestra was doing for much of the time. The brass was way too loud; there was no differentiation among the strings; Neal Stulberg, the conductor, persisted in engaging in distracting body contortions throughout. Cale would have been much better served by a smaller force of, say, a string quartet. That not only would have opened up the sound, but also created the opportunity for more interactive, experimental arrangements.

While he played “Paris 1919” all the way through, the simple fact of the matter is that only half of the songs on the album are any good. Those that are very good, such as “The Endless Plain of Fortune,” were spell-binding. After an intermission, he returned to play a second set of additional material. Mostly this comprised unidentifiable songs from his vast oeuvre. One exception was “Heartbreak Hotel,” where Cale displayed great facility for manipulating vocoder and loop technology in real time, and triggering beats and samples. I also was impressed by his version of Nico’s song “The Fairest of the Seasons.” The audience was 50% original fans and 50% attendees half their age, who have picked up on the Cale art-school vibe. The program somewhat breathlessly advised, “Laurel resting isn’t in the picture for the super-fit squash fanatic whose energy levels are those of a man half his age.” Well, despite that, both Lauren and I had an enjoyable evening, and I congratulate Cale on his success.

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is part of the cultural zeitgeist. As a recurrent meme it is precursor to the current wave of vampire movies and TV shows such as “True Blood, “Vampire Diaries” and “Twilight.” The semiotics of “Buffy” somehow became a closet industry with academicians writing theses on what it’s all about. But I want to consider Ms. Gellar as an actress on her own terms and within the framework of her own ambitions.

I started off by watching all of the Buffy episodes. OK, some of them. She has what I would characterize as a repertoire of stock looks, which she deploys broadly depending on the situation. There are six of them:

(1) concentration or determination, as when slaying vampires;

(2) mild disgust or contempt;

(3) she mopes around for much of the time, achieving a zombie-like catanoia;

(4) a mirthful pout;

(5) consternation – not concernful, but more like being surprised by someting; and

(6) my favorite, which is apprehension, disorientation, confusion, or even shock. She freezes like a deer caught in the headlights of life.

There are two Buffy scenes I like the best. (1) One of the season finales in which she dispatches Adam the robot. Borrowing an effect from The Matrix, she stops a bullet in her hand and it turns into a dove. (2) In another season finale, she sacrifices herself in lieu of her sister Michelle Trachtenberg by diving off a platform, looking radiantly confident (a variation of look 1), her long blonde hair fluttering behind her.

I then decided to watch four of the movies she’s been in.  These are: (1) The Grudge; (2) Suburban Girl; (3) The Air I Breathe; and (4) The Return.

The Grudge is unwatchable. Its plot is a lot of Japanese kabuki figures popping up from various nooks and crannies in an ostensibly haunted house. This is meant to be scary but instead the whole affair is cartoonish. This becomes particularly evident if one turns off the sound and views it at 2x speed, which always is a good litmus test. Although Grudge features plenty of look 6, the pleasure this affords is outweighed by the stupid plot, hackneyed characters, poor direction and flat monochromatic look.

Suburban Girl is a romantic comedy with Alec Baldwin. I am familiar with this genre having made a movie called Dawg with Elizabeth Hurley and Denis Leary. It’s not clear to me why the movie is called Suburban Girl seeing as how Buffy (er, I mean, Ms. Geller) is a book editor living in downtown Manhattan. The movie is cute but totally formulaic but she is well-cast in the role and displays plenty of look 2 and look 4.

More challenging is The Air I Breathe, which is four stories linked together in the manner of Bunuel. This is a movie that requires itself to be taken seriously and that makes an aesthetic statement. Ms. Geller portrays a washed-up pop singer whose management contract is sold to a mobster (played by Andy Garcia). I made a movie with similar look and feel called The Man From Elysian Fields, so I’m well aware of what this movie was trying to accomplish and how it tries to get there. Elysian Fields in fact also starred Mr. Garcia. Ms. Geller is in look 2 and look 3 most of the time. There is a last-minute plot twist at the end where she succeeds to a satchel of cash originally stolen by the character in the first vignette, enabling her to start a new life. As she walks down an airport concourse we see a slight but welcome flash of look 1.

Her most challenging role by far is The Return.  Here she is on a journey of self-discovery, reconstructing a car accident she was in when she was a young girl. She took on the spirit of another woman who died and started experiencing life as if she was her. Filmed predominantly in rural, out-back settings, the movie has a gritty feel to it. Ms. Gellar is required to stretch out of her more familiar postures and actually do some serious acting. She portrays an emotionally disturbed cutter, a role requiring some psychological nuance and finesse. By and large she achieves this objective and I would recommend this as the best movie in her oeuvre. With plenty of look 6, plus some look 1 in particularly intense scenes.

Some of the rooms have ingenious and lethal traps in them. These progressively dispatch two of the characters (Alderson and Rennes). One of the characters named Quentin (who is a police officer) commandeers the position of group leader. He goes progressively crazy and eventually kills three of the other characters, Holloway, Worth and Leaven. He then gets squashed in-between the movement of cubes. This leaves one person left, Kazan, who in the end appears to escape.

Here are some of the ways it is possible to interpret this macabre tale.

1. It is a commentary on the bleakness of modern technology. Nobody knows who built the cube (not even Worth, who, it is revealed, is an engineer that participated in its design). Nobody knows its purpose. Nobody knows how it came to be inhabited with the protagonists, though their talents are eerily complimentary. The cube itself is huge, impassive and seems to operate automatically.

2. It is a commentary on man’s inhumanity against man and the stupidity of authority figures. Quentin is not a good leader. Rather than inspiring the group he berates and threatens them. He is easily frustrated. He wants to abandon Kazan. He ends up killing three of his fellow denizens.

3. It is a commentary on the futility of inductive reasoning. Rennes initially believes he has figured out a way to avoid rooms that are booby-trapped by throwing in a pair of shoes and seeing if a trap is activated. This method proves to be unsuccessful and he dies from being sprayed with acid.

4. It is a commentary on human ingenuity in the face of danger. Leaven turns out to be a student who is smart about prime numbers and geometry. The crawl spaces between each cube have three three-digit numbers on the entry ledge. She observes that if each of these numbers is prime then the next cube is booby-trapped. Later Quentin almost gets caught by a trap in a room she thought she had cleared. So much for that theory. She then hypothesizes that instead of being primes the numbers are prime powers so they need to factor them before entering the adjacent cube. This is a brute-force arithmetical task beyond Leaven’s abilities to do easily. At this point it is revealed that Kazan is an autistic savant with an ability to quickly factor primes, which enables them to push forward.  Leaven also (correctly) hypothesizes the numbers are Cartesian coordinates that can be used to calculate the position of rooms within the cube. The numbers represent each room’s location; how many times it moves; and where it ends up in the grid.

5. It is a commentary on the futility of purposeful human endeavor. Towards the end of the film, following arduous progress, the group ends up back in the same cube where they started. It would have been more efficacious for them simply to stay there, attempt to figure out its movements, and then escape. The only person eventually to escape is Kazan, the autistic savant.

In conclusion I mildly recommend this movie. It is not as good as say “Stalker” but then again it has more modest ambitions.

Our quest was not linked to these abstract considerations. Rather, we craved its gritty texture, the mélange of mysterious ingredients, and its overall deliciousness. Actually, if the truth be known, I also am partial to chicken fried steak and pot pies.

1. Lamplighter, 5043 Van Nuys Blvd, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, (818) 788-5110. I have driven by it hundreds of times, and it’s alleged to be a local institution. Ambience: low. For some reason, we were seated in the bar, even though the restaurant was empty. Two “big screen” TVs blasted a football game (which did become mildly engrossing after awhile – one of the teams was UCLA). Seating was the classic curved booth with faux red-leather cover. The service was desultory. As for the meatloaf itself, it was about ¼” thick, and had been fried, not baked. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but it sure wasn’t meatloaf. It was accompanied by a classic baked potato and tired supermarket-mix lettuce. Won’t be revisiting.

2. Hamburger Hamlet, 4419 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, (818) 784-1183. It was crowded when we got there, and we were seated in the bar. I ordered a margarita, which has got to be one of the worst I’ve ever tasted – mainly comprising that horrible green sludge. Our waiter, clearly an out-of-work actor, was snooty and slow – not a good combination. The meatloaf was edible, but not memorable. We experienced the dreaded “LA slowdown,” when it came time to get the check. You would think that restaurants like Hamburger Hamlet thrive on quick turnover. The curious behavior of slow check presentation is evidence to contradict this hypothesis. Unanticipated plus: the parking lot attendant was one of the most gregarious I’ve ever seen, he performed his duties with aplomb.

3. Solley’s, 4578 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, (818) 905-5774. Solleys is part of Jerry’s Famous Deli, a local chain situated modestly above Denny’s, but definitely below places like Red Lobster and Olive Garden (as unappetizing as they are). Ours was habituated only by “regulars,” who were greeted cordially, as others (including us) were ignored. We were surrounded by diners who persisted in discussing intimate details of their personal lives, in exhausting detail. This type of pleasant interaction between friends, should be encouraged. The conversants, however, should not broadcast it across the room. I can tell you all about how Muffy’s doing at school. Our waitress was bored and listless. The meatloaf was good, though far from exceptional. It also was way over-priced.

4. Marie Callender’s, 14743 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, (818) 788-3983. We used to go to another branch of this chain for spinach salad, which was excellent. That was about a quarter of a century ago, and I’m sure it’s undergone a half dozen ownership changes, since then. Its décor is post-fern bar, with wood paneling and country-style oak furniture. The service was friendly and efficient. The meatloaf was tasty. Best part, though, was we got a whole pie afterwards (to take home) for $5.99. I’m partial to key lime, so this is what we ordered. As it transpires, this is what the man behind the counter referred to as a “designer pie.” I’m not sure what the criteria are for differentiating a designer pie from, say, a regular pie (though it was more costly). Being round, circular, and in a tin, it did not show evidence of any special design. It was, however, amazing, and we feasted on it for several days. I don’t see how they make money on pies for $5.99 (including tin). The cost doesn’t lie so much with the ingredients, but rather, rent, personnel, insurance, etc. The counter clerk (who may have been an assistant manager) sold the pie to us uncomplainingly. He did, however, declaim this would be the last designer pie sold, at the sale price. I suppose they’d have to alter quite a few signs and advertisements to accomplish this policy change. Either that, or stop selling key lime pie, which would be a shame.

5. Marmalade, 4910 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, (818) 905-8872. A slightly more upscale version of Marie Callender’s, though with similar décor. We formerly patronized a branch in Calabasas, which now strikes me as having been slightly fancier. I’ll never forget how once we ate there, with our children. The server promised us hot, freshly baked dinner rolls, which arrived promptly. They were hot, OK, but the freshly-baked part was contradicted by the large bags of them, stacked on a shelf in the back of the kitchen. Anyway, this iteration was acceptable, though not stellar. Service was indifferent, but the meatloaf was good. Some kind of a manager-type sat across from us, obsequiously imprecating a former server, to return to her position. Either that, or he was trying to seduce her. She did not appear to relish either prospect.

6. BONUS REVIEW – Valentino’s, 3115 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405, (310) 829-4313. This is a very fancy, beautiful, and costly restaurant, and owner Piero Selvaggio rightly should be proud of himself. The food was superb, and the service impeccable. We brought a bottle of champagne somebody had given us, which cost about the same price as the corkage fee ($30), so I guess that was a wash. Right next to us, an extremely rude couple talked (in an incomprehensible foreign language, not that it matters), in the loudest possible voices. Evidently they were friends with Mr. Selvaggio. Their child sprawled across three chairs, playing Nintendo, with the volume turned way up. They were oblivious, and Mr. Selvaggio pretended not to notice. As we left, JG gave the valet a $10 bill, and told him to keep the change. He held it up to the light, suspiciously, as if he thought it was counterfeit. I suspect there will be no more trips to Valentino’s.

The history of Pink Floyd can be divided into three parts. First, the twee Syd Barrett phase, which is delightful in its naïve, pop psychedelia. Second, the serious, extra-psychedelic, experimental music phase. Third, “Dark Side of the Moon,” and thereafter.

I definitely enjoy the first one+ records with Syd, God Bless Him. While I used to enjoy “Dark Side of the Moon” and its progeny, I now have come to think of them as somewhat lumbering and ponderous – in a way, crushed under their own, majestic weight. The middle phase is the one I like best. In this, I would include “More,” “Atom Heart Mother,” and “Obscured by Clouds.” However, the paradigm is “Meddle,” and in particular the song “Echoes,” which is at the core of “Live at Pompeii.” “Echoes” is without a doubt the best Pink Floyd song, ever.

“Live at Pompeii” actually was a movie, filmed in 1972 at (guess where) the amphitheater at Pompeii. In addition to performances of key numbers from the Pink Floyd oeuvre, it has a lengthy version of “Echoes.” The band previously had released “Ummagumma,” which has some of the same material, though from a sonic standpoint it is poorly recorded. The songs also evolved over time. Throughout “Live at Pompeii,” the band’s musical dexterity and boundary-stretching experimentalism are astonishing.

I do not believe in theories of music that require one to hypothesize imaginary objects or project oneself into imaginary worlds, such as those espoused by Peter Kivy, see, e.g., Sound Sentiment (1989); New Essays on Musical Understanding (2001); An Introduction to the Philosophy of Music (2002); and Music, Language and Cognition (2007). With all due respect to Prof. Kivy, his hypotheses emanate from misguided, faux-Cartesian notions about an opposition between “mind” and “world.”

Recent theorists such as Robert Jourdain, Music, the Brain and Ecstasy (1997); Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music; and Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia (2007) modestly intrigue me. Essentially, they adopt a “cognitive science” approach. They believe, in principle, it’s possible to localize musical emotion to specific sites in the brain. This notion is inherently dubious, however, because no amount of localization to specific brain sites ever will account for the intensity of musical emotion, which depends on a variety of non-quantifiable personal and cultural factors.

Finally, I wholly disbelieve a book like that by Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise (2007), who fulsomely attempts to describe a range of emotions specifically attributable to various musical works. He can think whatever he wants. His speculative conjectures about what “he” “feels” or what the composer “intended,” however, can’t possibly be generalized. In many instances, for me, the emotions or feelings conjured by many of the works he cites, are completely opposed to his.

Having thus disclosed my biases and proclivities, there are few works as evocative for me as “Echoes.” The reprise, right before they segue into the final verse, makes me want to laugh, and cry.

Shortly after it came out, I took my camera and went to Torrey Pines Beach, near Del Mar, California. The sun was setting. Every 10 steps or so, I took a picture, looking down the beach. At the large rock at the end of the beach, I turned and faced the sun, just as it was setting, taking a dozen or so more.

These all were “colored slides.” For those of you unaware of this medium, in our era of jpeg’s, tiff’s and mp3’s, “colored slides” are thin strips of 35mm celluloid. One of their main annoyances is that, when you project them, there’s an “interval” or “dark spot” as one unloads from, and the other loads into, the projector. You can solve this pesky problem with something called a “dissolve,” which fades or “laps” one slide into the other. I had two (actually, four) Kodak Ectographic projectors, with dissolves. So, by fading one slide into the other, I was able to create an illusion of movement down the beach. I timed this so it exactly matched the length of the recorded version of “Echoes.” And, in 1971 or thereabouts, this was the height of psychedelia. We later used this same technique, only projecting from the rear, in a band I was in, which made for an entertaining backdrop. Images of clouds, nebula, stained-class windows, burned-out buildings, ruined cathedrals, etc.

Although I paid hundreds of dollars for them in the early 1970s, Ectographic slide projectors now can be had cheaply on eBay. Before I sold mine, or gave them away, or threw them out, I projected some slides. It was surprising, and disheartening, to see how dim they were. A company I was associated with had an incredibly luminescent Sony projector. Among other things, you could project, lap and dissolve whatever images you could rustle up from your computer, including amazing blob-like constructions, courtesy of iTunes. The intensity of these images was so strong that it put the ole’ Ectographics to shame.

The slides were faded, but not my memory – which had caught me in its languorous embrace. It’s my intention to scan the slides, at some point. Since the dyes will have changed, they’ll need to be color-balanced in Photo Shop. Hopefully, I will be able to attempt to replicate this magical effect from so long ago. Even then, it will be but a wistful Echo.

When I explained all of this to a colleague of mine, he told me of a program he had acquired, which enabled one to strip off or “capture” the audio, from a DVD. I said, “let’s experiment with ‘Live at Pompeii.’” Courtesy of the usual ultra-fast service from NetFlix, it arrived two days later. After an hour or two, the entire audio track from the DVD had been converted to CD-quality audio-only.

From there, it was a simple matter to snap it into Logic. The first thing we did was edit out all of the band’s annoying chatter about how much they’re in love with themselves, their equipment, rock music, etc. Next, we ditched all of the rehearsal material for “Dark Side of the Moon,” which is of little interest. We retained a few interesting guitar solos from David Gilmour, and synth foolery from Roger Waters.

Having isolated this material, we cross-faded all of it and thereby constructed the greatest Pink Floyd album that never was – “Live at Pompeii.” Unfortunately, not available for commercial release or even private duplication, apart from the private experiments set forth here.

The Pink Floyd

Across the Universe – actually we saw it earlier this fall during the one week it was in theaters. Which is too bad, because it was a spectacle. The reason why you go to see a movie is to see something you wouldn’t see in ordinary life. This meets that objective. All of the set pieces are imaginative reworkings of songs from the Beatles canon. Some of them are downright bizarre, in a good way, presenting an exfoliated vision that enhances ones appreciation of the original songs. Some of the “plot” material between musical interludes was contrived and stilted, though no worse than any movie of the period. While the singing generally was good, the sound mix was terrible – flat and one dimensional. Which is too bad for a movie that’s based on songs.

Another irony is that the soundtrack album wasn’t released until weeks after the movie itself had come and gone. Which is a marketing disaster, because (if records are/formerly were released on Tuesdays and movies are/formerly were released on Fridays), the basic rule of thumb is that you want the soundtrack album to be in stores on the Tuesday before the Friday on which the movie is released. That way people can leave the theater saying “wow, what great singing,” and go out and buy the album. This kind of poor synchrony is one of many reasons why both the movie and record businesses are failing.

I’m Not There – another movie of the sort that ought to be encouraged on principle, even though it too was flawed. Mainly because it could have used a good edit to cut its running time down by about a half hour. The conceit of having different actors play Dylan at various phases of his career was well executed. It was disorienting, though, to have them keep popping up out of chronological sequence. What I would have done, had I made the movie, would be to have one character hand off to the next during a transitional scene. This would have given it more propulsion.

A couple of the Dylans were expendable – one of them looked as though he filmed his bit in the space of an afternoon, just staring into the camera and mumbling. The Richard Gere Dylan went on too long, and while his performance may be full of allusions to various what not, most of it was entirely dispensable.

In retrospect, Dylan made about two great albums worth of material – a montage of songs from Bringing It All Back Home through Nashville Skyline – and that’s it as far as I am concerned. I was inspired by the movie to play Blonde on Blonde, which I used to revere, although I haven’t listened to it for years. While two or three songs hold up, most of it’s really grating. I got off the bus right after Nashville Skyline, and I certainly wasn’t motivated by the movie to get back on.

Kate Blanchett was quite fetching as amphetamine Dylan. She was over-acting, though, and her parts also went on too long. She basically was doing the same thing, a one-note Dylan impersonation, which was fine in the beginning, but showed no subsequent depth or modulation.  Because of its duration, I started to notice flaws in her impression, that is, ways in which she failed to emulate the actual Dylan of the period, which certainly was her objective (as opposed to Richard Gere, for instance, who was enacting a more impressionistic take).  This became more and more irritating the longer she was on screen.  I say this not to detract from her remarkable accomplishment, but rather simply to observe that this probably wouldn’t have been noticeable, much less annoying, had her performance been edited to a reasonable length.

Sweeney Todd – has the same gothic creepiness as Sleepy Hollow. As critics have observed, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter turn out to be good singers, and Alan Rickman, who plays Judge Turpin, was amazing. The exception was the young lad and the judge’s ward, both of whom would have trouble succeeding in a junior high school drama class production. The woman who played the young ward was physically unappealing (unlike, e.g., the love interest in Across the Universe, who was attractive, although she too couldn’t sing or act, to speak of).  Sacha Baron Cohen was terrific during his five minutes on screen. If he ever gets tired of being Ali G, or Borat, or whomever, he should stay with this character for a while.

While some people (such as my mother-in-law) thought it was “too bloody,” the scenes of people getting their throats cut mainly were cartoonish. The movie’s biggest problem is that it was boring – musicals are supposed to have some song-and-dance numbers, massed choruses, and the like. This, however, mainly was arias and duets.    Unfortunately the print we saw (on opening weekend) already had fire-burns in it. The cinema chain at the Sherman Oaks Galleria makes a big point of how wonderful it is, if I was Tim Burton I’d be outraged that viewing conditions had deteriorated so rapidly.

There Will Be Blood – incredibly acted by Daniel Day Lewis and whomever it was who played Eli Sunday. While this movie may be about many different things, for me it was about the indomitable force of nature. As emphasized by the futility of trying to harness its resources, and the sudden and unforeseeable violence that entails. Together with the force and violence of human passion, which also can’t be harnessed. Both of them just whoosh up on you, and there’s nothing you can do about it; no amount of planning or foresight will evade its inexorable progress towards resolution.

Oil and fundamentalist religion in 1930s-era California are a wonderful miscegenation. The movie is evocative and redolent of everything from San Simeon to Day of the Locusts to the short-lived (but excellent) HBO series Carnivale. Jonny Greenwood’s score is amazing, creating a lot of tension and momentum. It reminded me of, or seemed to have been inspired by, George Crumb’s “Black Angels.”

In the closing scene – where Mr. Lewis just has bludgeoned Eli Sunday to death with the bowling pin – he says something like, “I’m finished.”  It occurred to me later, he didn’t mean he was “finished” in the sense that now he was ruined, because he had committed murder, or at least what looked like it.  Rather, he was “finished,” in the sense that he had concluded his life’s work – confronting the twin demons of nature and the mind.

As we entered the theater, the nice ticket-taking-person advised us it was one of the best movies he’d seen, and that if it didn’t win a bunch of awards, it’d be a shame. I think he was right!