May 13

RIP: Lena Horne. On Point put on an excellent hour in tribute to the late singer and actress:

http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/05/remembering-lena-horne

Here are some other obituaries and tributes:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7122037.ece

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/arts/music/10horne.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2010/05/10/126675135/lena-horne?ft=1&f=104014555

The Playgoer has the best analysis I've seen of the Ramin Setoodeh/Kristin Chenoweth dust-up:

But when you read the original piece, the flaw in [Setoodeh's] argument is glaring: everything he says about [Sean] Hayes is clearly predetermined by his pop-culture knowledge of the actor's offstage life and public persona. 
 
http://playgoer.blogspot.com/2010/05/that-newsweek-gay-actors-controversy.html

I almost commented on this situation the other day, but figured that it was all over the news, and since Setoodeh's original column was stupid enough to deserve any attacks it received, and Chenoweth's spunky reply was obviously adequate to the task of take-down, there wasn't much more to say. Well, perhaps this: I love not only Chenoweth's argument and her way of putting it, but the fact that she has her co-stars' backs. We should all have friends like that. Don't mess with this women!

But The Playgoer adds a key point to the mix that I overlooked: This is all about the gossip culture. This is all about the era of Perez Hilton. And while the gossip mongers and superficialists can have at Heidi Montag, because that's the life she has chosen and she has nothing else to offer, I think the rest of us need to treat them with the disdain that Chenoweth focused on Satoodeh when they start trying to write the rules for the rest of the culture.

It is such a struggle, sometimes, not to get worked up every day about the inanity that surrounds us. It strikes me that this Satoodeh business was one of the better occasions for getting on the high horse, but I still kept off it for a few days. The other day, an interview with a man responsible for much of the worst "reality television" of the past decade hit cyberspace, with much eminently quotable material, and it was all I could do not to take the bait. At times like that, I remind myself of a nice observation by Lewis Hyde: "Irony has emergency value only. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage." Not wanting to live in that cage, or rattle its bars either, I force myself (sometimes!) to forgo the opportunity

If you are entirely unable to poke fun at celebrities, however, you might be a dolphin:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-reveals-dolphins-lack-capacity-to-mock-celeb,17422/

The blog Vertigo talks about the experience of reading Henry David Thoreau's incredible Journals, which, I ought to say, are very explicitly one of my models for PMD. Robert D. Richardson's account of Thoreau's intellectual life, Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, is a book that changed my life by setting a standard that, in my humble way, I could always reach toward although never reach. It is probably not surprising that an American Studies major would feel Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson to be two of his key inspirations!

http://sebald.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/the-view-from-midstream/  

(Hat tip to Conversational Reading.)

Arabic Literature (in English) offers a charming post, with equally charming photographs, on the literature of Morocco:

http://arablit.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-literature-of-morocco-and-an-excuse-to-post-some-lovely-photos/

The "Foreign Region DVD Reports" at The Auteurs (now inexplicably renamed MUBI, but don't get me started) often turn up exquisite-sounding films that you've only seen stray shadowy references to in film histories. As, for example, Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night, here assessed by Glenn Kenny:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/1788?from_theauteurs=1

I know that being let go from Premiere must have changed Kenny's life, but I would much rather see him write about films like this than the stuff he wrote about there.

The paintings of Kent Henricksen entice and intrigue with their multiplicity of references and appropriations:

In Henricksen's canvases, gods and thieves, ladies and marauders, angels and tricksters are brought together and transformed through the use of silkscreen, embroidery, and gold leaf. Characters drawn from such diverse sources as Albrecht Dürer woodcuts, historical newspaper illustrations, José Guadalupe Posada engravings, and Max Ernst collages are recast into new roles, telling new tales. These narratives often upend historical power dynamics, using Henricksen's layered imagery to visually question the traditional roles of the oppressor and the oppressed across cultures. As in Tibetan Thangka paintings, interwoven scenes orbit central figures, here inviting the viewer to create multiple connections and readings.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=37913

http://www.paulkasmingallery.com/exhibitions/2010-05-06_kent-henricksen/#

Among notables born on this date are travel writer and novelist Bruce Chatwin, novelists Daphne Du Maurier, Armistead Maupin, and Alphonse Daudet (France), science fiction novelist Roger Zelazny, poet Kathleen Jamie (Scotland), screenwriter/director Alan Ball, film director Herbert Ross, composer Arthur Sullivan, painter Georges Braque, jazz pianists Gil Evans and Red Garland, pop music genius Stevie Wonder, comedian Stephen Colbert, and actors Beatrice Arthur, Harvey Keitel, Samantha Morton, and Brian Geraghty. The title of Alan Ball's famous screenplay, American Beauty, refers, of course, to the roses that we see Annette Bening gardening in the opening scene (and that continue as a visual motif throughout the film). But there is considerably more to the reference than that; and I haven't seen this pointed out very often (it shows up in the film's Spanish Wikipedia entry, though). At the turn of the century, when the great journalist Ida Tarbell was investigating John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company, Rockefeller's son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., let loose a metaphor for which he was never forgiven in a speech at Brown University: “The American Beauty rose can be produced in its splendor and fragrance only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it.”

Of course, the theme of "success" is a large part of what American Beauty is about. It is scarcely a reach to see Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham as one of the "early buds" sacrificed to the "splendor and fragrance" of capitalism; while Bening's Carolyn Burnham never surrenders her devotion to the ideal ("See the way the handle on her pruning shears matches her gardening clogs? That's not an accident"), and is further schooled in it by master Realtor Buddy Kane (" In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times"). The variations that Ball works on this theme are lush. Although American Beauty has never been the most popular film with the cinematic intelligentsia, I think it's a stunning piece of work. I've got to assume that Ball knew about the Rockefeller connection, because if not, the serendipity involved beggars belief.