J. Edgar

Final Review
J. Edgar (2011)

John Edgar Hoover served as the director of the FBI (its first) and its previous incarnations for nearly 50 years.  Clyde Tolson served as deputy director during 40 years of Hoover’s tenure.  Clint Eastwood’s new film, J. Edgar, discusses the professional and personal relationship of these two men. 

J. Edgar Hoover is a name everyone in America knows (hopefully) before high school.  He is the figure most associated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which existed as we know it today since 1935.  The average American may not know the details of his reign, but his name still resonates dubiously in the ear.  And, of course, he is also known for being a cross-dresser.

J. Edgar depicts Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) as a homosexual, which he was.  He and long-time FBI deputy director Clyde Tolson (played by Armie Hammer) had a romantic relationship until Hoover’s death in 1975, at which time Tolson inherited Hoover’s estate.  The film also highlights the close relationship J. Edgar (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) had with his controlling mother, Anna Marie (played by Dame Judi Dench).  Screenwriter and LGBT rights activist Dustin Lance Black (Milk) portrays Hoover as a high-ranking Norman Bates, the creepy cross-dresser from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  (The actor who played Bates to great acclaim, Anthony Perkins, shared J. Edgar’s shyness around women and closeted homosexuality.) 

During this time he strengthened the Bureau, and his reign of it, through corrupt efforts.  Hoover maintained his position through blackmail.  He kept secret files with valuable information about countless government officials and public entities.  We will never know the contents of these files, as they were destroyed by his loyal, long-serving secretary, Helen Gandy (played by Naomi Watts), when he died.  All we know is this: what he had in those files was strong enough to make him untouchable by six presidents (eight if you count the eleven years he spent as director of “The Bureau’s” previous incarnations) and for nearly 50 years. 

And now for the worst of it.  Although Hoover was a homosexual, he would threaten to divulge the homosexuality of others, thereby ending their careers.  He assisted Senator Joseph McCarthy and attorney Roy Cohn (another closeted homosexual) with their persecution of suspected homosexuals and Communists during the 1950s.  All under the guise of protecting America. 

But the movie does not simply lambaste, nor does it lampoon.  Much like Tony Kushner did with Roy Cohn in Angels in America, and John Logan did with Howard Hughes in The Aviator, Black attempts to pull a man so beyond our grasp down into the palm of our hands.  J. Edgar tells the story of a complete human being – a product of nature, nurture, the times in which he lived, and the self he endeavored to create.          

“I would rather have a dead son then a daffodil for a son.”

Black blames Hoover’s un-accepting mother for his choice to remain in the closet, and for his treatment of homosexuals in America.  A key moment in the film describes this with piercing clarity.  “Daffodil,” explains his mother when she senses Hoover is about to come out to her, was a feminine neighbor boy who killed himself over being gay.  This experience helped to further cement J. Edgar’s unhappiness, and keep him steadfast in the closet until his death. 

DiCaprio plays the role stunningly well.  At times, we forget he is the actor many of us have known since we were old enough to know film.  We see a man struggling with stature and expectations.  We see a man torn between two worlds.  Armie Hammer is captivating both as a love interest, and as a balancing force in Hoover’s life and career.  Judi Dench gives an understated, underplayed performance that boils.

This movie is not only of a time, but, also, for our time.  The term “terrorists” is used in the film to more superficially relate the terrorist attacks of the early 20^th century to the terrorist attacks of the early 21^st.  Hoover’s justification for evasive methods to stop terrorism (also Communism) in his time is the same rhetoric we hear from conservative republicans today.  The right will agree with that perspective.  But then there is the homosexuality issue.  We see a mother’s refusal to accept her gay son, and the chilling way in which she does it, and (hopefully) we are sickened by this.  This is for the left.  The brilliance of this movie is one side can examine the other without feeling that uncontrollable urge to walk out of the theatre.

The screenplay is another grand achievement for Black, who can write a character in the closet as well as out.  He can also write on both sides of the aisle, which is an asset in a time when one side flatly refuses to listen to the other.   

Dookie by Green Day

Skateboarding was born of surfboarding.  In 1962, Val Surf opened its first location at 4810 Whitsett Avenue in “The Valley” and, with skate wheels from Chicago Roller Skate Company, began making and selling skateboards.  Intended for surfing practice during unfavorable wave conditions, those who rode them were said to be “sidewalk surfing.” 

In 1964, the musical duo Jan and Dean performed their song “Sidewalk Surfing” on American Bandstand.  During their spot, Dean even did a little sidewalk surfing for the audience.  (The year before, the band recorded the popular “Surf City,” written by then-“Beach Boy” Brian Wilson.)  Demand for skateboards soared, and, the following year, Surfer Publications published the first national skateboarding magazine, Skateboarder.

Skateboarding experienced a significant decline in popularity by 1980, and persevering sidewalk surfers morphed into deviant bad asses.  Basically.  They embraced hardcore punk music and built their own ramps.  

Around this time, pop punk (“skate punk”) music – a fusion of hardcore and pop – was developing.  The bad ass do-it-yourself skate culture connected with the high-energy do-it-yourself pop punk scene by the early 1990s.      

And then Green Day signed up with a major label (for which they were labeled “sellouts” by the boys of 924 Gilman Street), and released Dookie in 1994.  The success of the album (heightened by the band’s Woodstock ’94 and Lollapalooza performances) pushed Green Day, pop punk and skateboarding into the mainstream.  “Longview,” the album’s first single, incorporated old-school surf rock and new-school skate rock guitar riffs (written by bassist Mike Dirnt while “frying on acid so hard”) and chant-like drum cadences (executed by Tré Cool), resulting in a pop punk anthem about channel-surfing, being bored, unmotivated and frequently high.  (And masturbation.  That was the kicker.)

After separating musically for decades, surfboarding and skateboarding had come together to redefine popular music.  (And, of course, made Billie Joe Armstrong a name to know.)  “Welcome to Paradise” (originally released on Kerplunk; re-recorded for Dookie), “Basket Case,” “When I Come Around” and “She” were also released as singles.  Armstrong boldly addressed his bisexuality in “Coming Clean,” and “Burnout” (much like “Longview”) “articulated the popular rage” of Generation X.  

In 1995, the New York Times described the album’s tone as passionately apathetic.  I can do no better than that. 

Amadeus

Since Mozart’s death in 1791 (at age 35), people have argued over the cause of his demise.  Was Mozart murdered, or did he simply succumb to illness?  200 years of speculation, emerging evidence and advances in forensic science have not put the matter to rest.  

The most theatrical (but unlikely) explanation accuses Mozart’s colleague Antonio Salieri – a man whose jealously equaled his admiration - as the murderer.  In 1830, Alexander Pushkin wrote a short dramatic poem based on this rumor titled Mozart and Salieri.  (Chicago Dramatists Theatre mounted Vladimir Nabokov’s translation of the poem in 2004 under the direction of Zeljko Djukic.)  Pushkin’s work inspired the 1897 Rimsky-Korsakov opera by that name and Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus, which Shaffer adapted for film in 1984.

Under the direction of Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), the production team of Amadeus created a timeless film to exhibit the timeless music of W. A. Mozart.  With choreography and opera staging by Twyla Tharp, costume design by Theodor Pistek, and production design by Patrizia Von Brandstein, the film achieves an undeniable visual excellence.

     

Casting directors Mary Goldberg and Maggie Cartier cleverly chose Tom Hulce, who had recently appeared in the frat house farce National Lampoon’s Animal House, as the young, vulgar Mozart.  F. Murray Abraham (All the President’s Men, Scarface) played the serious, vengeful Salieri.  Both actors created their roles to great acclaim.  Other better-known-now cast members include Jeffrey Jones as Emperor Joseph II (Ferris Bueller's Day Off), Christine Ebersole as Katerina Cavalieri (Grey Gardens) and Cynthia Nixon as Lorl (Sex and the City).

The music of Amadeus was supervised by illustrious conductor Sir Neville Marriner, and performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.  The film features a mess of Mozart’s symphonies, concertos and operas, including The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute (with the “Queen of the Night aria” sung by June Anderson) and his unfinished Requiem.

Amadeus is not only a triumph of the 1980s (as evidenced by its eight Oscar wins), but of all 20^th century film (as evidenced by its AFI ranking).  Salieri has survived two centuries aside the legendary life and music of Mozart.  Perhaps this biopic, nearing its 30^th anniversary, will do the same.       

myfavoritekirby.com

The Abouting [sic] of Kent

myfavoritekirby.com offers readers a daily dose of awesome raunchy often-punny boy humor fittingly presented within a grammatically sloppy webcomic website.  Critics and editors, like mothers entering a messy dorm room, may feel the uncontrollable urge to sic, Strunk and White its content before and while presenting it to decent, adult society.  Do not do that.  Touch nothing.  These boys like it this way.  And it works.   

“This project began as a challenge for me to draw a different picture every day for an entire year, and it gradually transformed into this website,” states co-creator Kent Kirby.  Kent, a University of Michigan student from Alma, MI, was inspired by friend Kevin Budnik, who had made a resolution to do just that for his own purposes.  (Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks endeavored similarly in 2002-2003, and the result was the short play collection “365 Days/365 Plays.”)  Determined to achieve his goal, Kent began daily production of his crude Microsoft Paint pictures with captions that, along with prose and videos, would become website content before the year was out.

Since its January 2011 launch, myfavoritekirby has established a presence on Facebook (myfavoritekirbycom), Tumblr (myfavoritekirby) and YouTube (myfavoritekirbyvids).  Fans (referred to as “peons”) can purchase myfavoritekirby t-shirts (available through t-shirtdesignworld.com) and submit Kent Kirby-drawn picture requests to productsofpop@gmail.com. 

The Staff of Kent

Kent Kirby does not run the quickly-expanding myfavoritekirby empire alone.  The website staff is comprised primarily of college students from both the University of Michigan and Columbia College Chicago, although most staffers grew up with Kent in Alma.  T.J. Piccolo, a playwriting major at Columbia College Chicago, serves as Personnel Coordinator.  Marketing issues, as well as the hilariously insensitive “Dear Travis” segment, are handled by Travis Mitchell, formerly of Columbia College Chicago (now at Lansing Community College).  “Cinematography” is the duty of Mike Klaric from Columbia College Chicago.  Many other friends from either side of Lake Michigan (and some from locales unknown) contribute regularly to the website, including students from Central Michigan University, Saginaw Valley State University and Anderson University.

The Book of Yanni

Yanni, the overly-sensationalized Grammy-nominated New Age composer and musician, is an obsessively popular subject on myfavoritekirby.  The 57-year-old Greek-born/American Midwest-raised performer rose to international fame with his wildly successful 1994 music video Yanni Live at the Acropolis.  Since then, the moustached multi-platinum artist has performed his “contemporary instrumental” music at various world landmarks before millions of cultish spectators (and televised to hundreds of millions).  His compositions are also widely used at various sporting events (including every Olympic Games since 1988).

Not since Marlene Dietrich (who was allowed by the Israeli government to sing in German during her tour of Israel after WWII) have nations been more willing to break tradition for a performer.  Aside from the Acropolis and, most recently, the Burj Khalifa (formerly Burj Dubai), Yanni has been allowed to perform at restricted venues such as the Taj Mahal and China’s Forbidden City (both in 1997).  In October, China gave Yanni permission to adopt a panda, an honor not usually extended to individual people, but, rather, to nations.  (NOTE: Michael Jackson was never invited to adopt a panda.)  According to Reuters, “[China’s] decision was made from the inspiration and harmony that derives from his music.” 

myfavoritekirby plays on Yanni’s hysterically overblown (perhaps biblical?) superstardom with The Book of Yanni.  The website also credits Yanni as a staff writer, humorously describing him as “the New Age superstar of our parents’ (40-year-old women’s) generation.”  Presented as a collection of bible verses, The Book of Yanni recalls fictitious events in His life and wisdom imparted unto His flock.  The first in this series was posted in March: 

Yanni 21:42 Healing The Blind

and Yanni put his hand upon the blind woman, and she was able to see. Yanni spoke to the audience of his concert, who saw the miracle with their very own eyes, and said unto them:

“what is the big deal? paninis all around!“

and then Yanni made a panini and did not share with anyone.

The News of Kent

According to the website, myfavoritekirby has been reviewed favorably by Time Magazine and unfavorably by Pitchfork in March and October respectively.  Time raves about the site’s May Video Game Month, calling it “a boner-inducing landmark,” and Kent’s punny drawing, “Boo-bees” (which he admits was T.J.’s idea).  Pitchfork pretentiously dismisses The Book of Yanni as over-emphasized “Mediterranean folklore” and describes myfavoritekirby as “a website that presumably exists only to provide retailers with ironic and ‘random’ images to print on novelty t-shirts…How droll.”  The hostile review ultimately questions whether the “inconsistent,” “absurdly mundane” site is “low-brow Dadaism or poorly implemented baroque.”

Attempts to locate these reviews outside the site (as you may have already figured out) will prove unsuccessful.  They do not exist.  And neither does the myfavoritekirby Wikipedia page shown on the site, which quotes a line from the Pitchfork review (“reading myfavoritekirby will make you sterile”) that does not appear in the review at all.         

In October, the site began a new series featuring a different aspiring artist every week called Project Consistency: “8 weeks of segments, sketches, writings, drawings, collaboration, masturbation, and anything but procrastination every sunday through wednesday.”  Submissions can be sent to productsofpop@gmail.com.   

The goal of myfavoritekirby is to create a cult following similar to what is enjoyed by Yanni, which T.J. shamelessly admits.  Maybe get a panda or two.  They seek to develop a brand born of those messy rooms where boys do as boys do, surrounded by piles of coke cans, video games and images of “Boo-bees.”  And, with the help of Yanni, Orson Welles, Kentfoot and Amoeba, they are well on their way to doing just that.  

Man Up, Thumbs Down

Will Keen’s grandfather fought in WWII.  Will Keen’s father fought in Vietnam.  Will Keen plays Call of Duty on Playstation 3.  

Is he a “real man?”

According to creator/writer Christopher Moynihan, the fate of the American man looks bleak.  Set in suburban Columbus, Ohio, Moynihan’s new ABC sitcom, Man Up!, tells the story of three 30-something friends attempting to preserve their manhood and man-kind from those who seek to destroy it.

Will’s son, Nathan (played by Jake Johnson), is turning 13.  Although Nathan is infatuated with his father’s “Old Mohaska” (slang for gun, in this case knife), he exhibits a mildly feminine burst of glee when the girl he likes confirms her invite to his party.  The boy is declared “a work in progress,” and the father, driven by conceived father-son expectations, is more resolute than ever to give his son a gift to guide the boy’s proper transition into manhood. (Later on, those same expectations convince him to fight a mob of disgruntled groomsmen).  His wife, Theresa (played by Teri Polo) has bought their son a violent video game, but Will is determined to find a truly manly gift.  Predictably, the son is given “Old Mohaska,” and accidentally cuts himself with it before Will is finished explaining to his protesting wife that his father gave him the knife when he was Nathan’s age.

The plot of this pilot episode would have been instantly recognizable had it premiered two months later while its inspiration undoubtedly aired simultaneously on a competing network.  The 1983 film, A Christmas Story, based on the 1960s short stories and anecdotes of Chicago-native Jean Shepherd, deals with coming-of-age gifting in a similar way – with a similar result.  Ralphie Parker, a nine-year-old boy in 1930s/1940s Hammond, Indiana, wants a Red Ryder BB Gun, but adults tell him “You’ll shoot your eye out.”  His father does buy him the Mohaska, and explains to his protesting wife that his father gave him a gun when he was Ralphie’s age.  Ralphie takes the gun to the backyard and, on the first shot, nearly shoots his eye out.          

Masculinity is becoming harder to define in our society.  Gender and gender roles are being questioned, and traditional images of manhood are becoming scarce.  Comparing the suburban man of today to the one of yesterday may convince those who care about that sort of thing that men are becoming an “over-evolved generation of panty-waists.”  Will, as his father before him, and his father’s father before him, decides a real man should have a real gun (or, in this case, a real knife), instead of a video game.  Man Up! suggests that this is why men are not men anymore.  Men don’t participate in real violence.  Men don’t use real weapons, and are unable to use even the weapons that have been passed down to them.  Today, most men experience violence solely through games played on a screen or an ice rink or a chalk-lined field.  Their weapons are hockey sticks and remote controls, and their tactics are learned not from war, but from Playstation 3 and Monday Night Football. 

The sitcom identifies another cause of the fall of masculinity: women.  Women are the obstacle to manliness, and yet women accuse men of not being real men.  Women will not let men have any fun.  (“Theresa will kill me” if I do that.)  Women drive men, in this case Craig Griffith (played by Christopher Moynihan), to interrupt weddings in the style of The Graduate singing “Brown Eyed Girl.”  (“I need closure.”  “You need to close your vagina.”)  Women use their power over men for evil, as does Brenda Hayden (played by Amanda Detmer) when she decides to bring her new “soap-operatic, sensitive-yet-sexy” boyfriend, Grant (played by Henry Simmons), to the birthday party to enrage her ex-husband, Kenny Hayden (played by Dan Fogler).  Men cannot be men because women have them by the balls.       

These three amigos attempt to protect and project their masculinity, but, despite their best efforts, they always end up looking like a bunch of queers.

Ha.

Although Moynihan’s writing bares resemblance to thoughtful examinations of the state of modern-day masculinity, such as Howard Korder’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize-nominated coming-of-age play, Boys’ Life, one cannot ignore the message that lies beneath Man Up!’s guise of gender satire: Will Keen needs to teach his son how to be a man so other boys don’t think he is gay.  And how fortunate that this point can be made (over and over and over again) by using the same gimmick employed by Saturday Night Live and countless sitcoms to get laughs – straight people acting like gay people.  What could be funnier than that, right?

Man Up! is centered around immature men and women reacting to unmanly behavior.  Because the show is a satire on masculinity, it is able to make fun of gays exactly as shows of this nature always have, but from a slightly elevated plane.  That matter aside, the characters have no depth, the writing is preachy and the jokes - all of them - are not funny.  

High-Rise Meets High Art

"I call architecture frozen music” proclaimed the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe nearly two hundred years ago.  It seems appropriate to evoke this over-worn quote to describe architect Jeanne Gang’s award winning modernist high-rise Aqua, the exterior of which appears to hold frozen lakes and rivers within its surface.

Goethe, himself a writer, artist and scientist, could appreciate when two professions with major differences merged to create something extraordinary.  Aqua is a stunning example of the coupling of architecture, an industry riddled with compliance, and art, an industry that thrives on defiance.  Chicago architecture critic Blair Kamin, a glowing supporter of Aqua, addresses this merger in his 2009 review: “The balconies elevate an otherwise-ordinary concrete-framed structure to the level of art.”

The wavy hand-formed concrete outdoor terraces wrap entirely, yet also interruptedly, around on each floor creating the overall appearance of an enormous dinosaur rib cage lowered and fitted onto a simple rectangular glass building.  The dull white of the bones contrasts with the shimmering blue of the ice that lies between the skeletal interruptions. 

Another of Aqua’s aesthetic achievements is its ability to transform.  The Aqua you see from Millennium Park will be different from the Aqua you see from directly underneath the tower.  Or during the bright of day as opposed to the dark of night.  (The best viewing experience would be close up during the day.)  Within Aqua’s newly-opened Radisson Blu Hotel is an example of this effect.  If you walk past the front desk, through the lobby, past the bar, you find a “secret art gallery” (hallway).  There on the wall is a 3D painting of an art gallery by British artist Patrick Hughes.  As you slowly walk past it, the accordion-like wood composition changes as parts of the work are obscured by others.  Due to this effect, Aqua can appear to be a composition of bone-formed hills with valleys of frozen ice, or one entirely formed by frozen waves.

According to publicity materials, the “waves” are inspired by the Great Lakes.  It could be argued, however, that main influence originated from the south Atlantic.  Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (still alive at 103) used a similar technique with his apartment buildings in Belo Horizonte and Sao Paulo, Brazil, during the 1950s.  Paulo Niemeyer Apartments, built in Belo Horizonte between 1954 and 1960, bares the strongest resemblance to Aqua – minus the wavy quality of Gang’s terraces.  Despite this blatant similarity, Blair Kamin’s review of Aqua makes no mention of Niemeyer.  He does, however, aptly reference Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City complex (completed 1964).

For those unfamiliar with the work of Niemeyer, the waves of Aqua may bring to mind more animated comparisons.  During the Toccata and Fugue section of Disney’s 1940 animated film Fantasia (the brief “wave scene”), one may find what rolls toward the screen resembles quite closely what rolls across the glass façade of 225 North Columbus Drive.

Purple, White, Red and Rothko

Do not trust

your first glance.

This has nothing whatever

to do with France.

Mark Rothko’s untitled 1953 painting, dubbed “Purple, White, and Red” since its first exhibition in Venice in June of 1970 (four months after the artist’s suicide), was fully acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1984, but even the avid museum-goer may never have seen it.  In response to the renewed interest in Rothko stemming from the success of John Logan’s 2010 Tony Award-winning play Red, and the recent Goodman Theatre production of the play, the Art Institute has, after many years out of sight, re-displayed the work directly across from the Rothko even the one-time tourist may have seen there – his untitled “orange” work acquired by the Art Institute in 1954.    

Those fortunate enough to see Red, which closed yesterday, may remember Rothko’s monologue regarding the Caravaggio painting, The Conversion on the Way to Damascus (1601).  Rothko explains that the painting was commissioned specifically for a poorly-lit corner in Cerasi Chapel at the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome (where it has remained to this today).  Caravaggio decided that if his painting could not be illuminated properly (a major concern of Rothko’s throughout his career, and highlighted in Red), he would illuminate the painting from within.  This was achieved through dramatic chiaroscuro (a shift from light to dark), and, although its invention is credited to Leonard da Vinci, it became known as Tenebrism (or “Caravaggesque tenebrism,” as Caravaggio became known for, and synonymous with, the technique.)

Rothko certainly applied this Baroque-honed technique to his abstract expressionist “Purple, White, and Red” (possibly the very painting to which the title character rushes in his moment of inspiration sparked by the monologue).  But unlike Caravaggio, whose intention was to create a realistic encounter with God by thrusting a bright light upon his work, Rothko used the technique to create a realistic, metaphysical “doorway into purely spiritual realms” by simulating light radiating from the work.    

But the meaty magic of this Rothko is not confined to its triumph of chiaroscuro.  (Unfortunately, due to an over-abundance of gallery lighting, the viewer cannot fully appreciate the work’s self-luminescence.  Rothko would not be pleased.)  At first glance, the painting looks like a modern variation of the French flag.  It is not.  The three-dimensional, puffy, misshapen, weather-worn bricks stick out several inches from the canvas as they hover, fighting dispassionately to free themselves from the force that holds them in position, separated by clouded and misty voids.      

The viewer may be so astounded by the theatrical “Purple, White, and Red” that he or she may not remember to turn around and pay tribute to “Orange.”  Let’s hope the Art Institute does not see the closing of Red as sufficient cause to lift this work from its nail, but, instead, gives a gentle nudge to the dimming mechanism.    

Figure with Not Enough Meat

The Fat

In 1946, figurative painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992), a descendant of Sir Francis Bacon, the champion of the scientific method, began painting variations of Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c. 1650) – his “Screaming Popes” series.  One of the surviving works in this sequence, and perhaps the most famous of them, Figure with Meat (1954), was purchased by the Art Institute in 1956.    

The catalog essay provided by the Art Institute explains that this “grotesque, almost nightmarish” painting expresses “the ethos of the postwar era” by using hanging meat, inspired by Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef (1657), to present the pope as both “a depraved butcher” and/or “a victim.”  This “existential view of damnation” has found its way into popular culture, placing it forever into that category of works artists simply must know.    

The Fork

According to Clive Bell’s influential work on criticism Art (1913), we must now toss all the aforementioned information aside.  Bell was a champion of formalist criticism, which proclaims, as he describes in his landmark book, that “to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions.”  If a work of art is “good,” it should illicit “aesthetic emotion” (an emotional experience) - on its own.  Its context – its history, what it represents, etc. – is irrelevant.  Once the fat is yanked away, what will be left for consumption?

The Meat

Removing Figure with Meat from its context, and ignoring the blanket of praise thrust upon the work, one is left with a painting that is, at best, lack-luster and confusing.  The work fails to achieve the terror and revulsion that other works in this series, particularly the terrifying Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (owned by the Des Moines Art Center), do at a glance.  The screaming pope of this work more resembles a smeared image of the cranky, middle-aged, blind, wheelchair-bound Hamm of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Endgame (1957).  The painting is covered by glass (as Bacon intended), which distracts the viewer with the sight of his or her own shadowy image.  

The Meal

The aesthetic experience of Figure with Meat leaves one famished, and has the fright factor of a wall hanging in a poorly-devised, ineffective haunted house.  Although speaking of art criticisms today, a line from James Elkins’s book What Happened to Art Criticism? sums up this baffling work of Francis Bacon best: “There just isn’t enough meat in [it] to make a meal.”    

Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery

by Jason Buhrmester (Three Rivers Press, 2009)

This nostalgic heist novel, set in Baltimore and New York City, invents a clever solution to the infamous unsolved robbery of Led Zeppelin in 1973.  The facts are these: Led Zeppelin was staying at the Drake Hotel in New York City during their Madison Square Garden tour dates.  On the last of those dates, more than $200,000 was stolen from the band’s safe deposit box at the hotel.  The money was never found, and the hotel was sued for damages.  Aside from the names of Led Zeppelin band members and staff, everything else is the result of Buhrmester’s imagination.         

"I want to rob Led Zeppelin.”

Patrick, a 20-year-old Baltimore native, returns home from New York City to assemble the old gang for one last job.  He returns on the day one of the guys, Alex, is to be released from jail after serving eight months for breaking and entering.  The rest of the group consists of Frenchy, the manager of a record store and rock ‘n’ roll impersonator, and Keith, a car stereo installer and thief.  The four friends worked for Tony Mancini, a “three hundred pound caveman” whose various business endeavors were designed to steal from wealthy customers.  They were thieves.  They are still thieves.  And Patrick has a plan for a heist that none of them will be able to resist (even if it was Patrick last idea that got Alex locked up).  With the help of Alex’s Uncle Danny, a master and novice criminal at once, the gang will navigate a violent and strangely-religious world in an attempt to pull off the greatest heist in rock ‘n’ roll history.     

The characters are criminals, and, although the gang members are concerned for one another’s safety, they live in a criminal’s world.  It is a dangerous, violent, manipulative world in which people ask how you are and where you are going so they can rob you or keep a mental record of how to destroy you later, should they have to.   

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

Among the typical (but not tepid) twists and turns of a heist novel plot is an effortlessly evolving critique on the nature of theft in our world.  On the very first page, we learn that Patrick would “sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night to make a lunch just so I could pocket my lunch money.”  The lunch money became Black Sabbath records.  This high school scam was probably put aside when he realized he could steal the food and the records.  And the car stereo.  And whatever else he wanted sitting unguarded in the places in which people kept their nice things.  If you ask him to watch your purse, it will be returned to you minus any cash.  You will find it in your heart to forgive him.

The last mention of theft is an accusation mentioned throughout the book: Led Zeppelin stole many of their songs from other bands.  “Someday somebody’s going to clean these British boys out for what they’ve done.”  Frenchy, who earns money on the side covering and copying rock ‘n’ roll icons insists, “Everyone borrows, man.  That’s just music.”  In Patrick’s world, the lesser feel justified in stealing from the greater, and vice versa.  In the world of rock ‘n’ roll, the greater feel justified in stealing from the lesser, and vice versa.  Perhaps, all bullshit aside, this is the great cycle of our own hypocritical world – we all steal from each other.

If you steal a song from someone and do better with it than they did, is it yours?  How about someone’s guitar?  Is there a difference?  Did Jason Buhrmester steal this book about theft?  In the acknowledgements the author thanks his brother for “creating so many of the ridiculous situations in this dumb little book” and a long list of people “whose lunatic behavior may have found its way into these pages somehow.”  In this way, Buhrmester acknowledges the thieving nature of a writer’s process.

As you read this book, the plot will twist and turn along with your grasp on what is right and wrong.  Either road should be an engaging one for any day tripper.  The book will also have you tugging on the character's t-shirts to get the f@#k out of there.    

Real Steel at Navy Pier IMAX Theatre

Surrogate.

The Navy Pier IMAX boasts the largest screen in Chicago at 60 x 80 ft., but even a screen that size cannot make a film bigger (or better) than it is.  Ultimately, the film is merely a second-rate surrogate for the real steal behind it.    

Based on “Steel,” a 1956 short story by Richard Matheson, Real Steel is the story of a robot boxing trainer/agent/operator named Charlie Kenton (played by Hugh Jackman) who is suddenly forced to deal with his son, Max Kenton (played by Dakota Goyo), following the death of the boy’s mother.  Together, they train a robot how to fight and dance. 

Charlie has a tragic flaw – he is too cocky.  “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before the fall.”  His son’s haughtiness is a magnified version, but so is his business sense.  In the hands of a child, the two are as much a blessing as they are hazards to humility (and, later, humanity).  The more compelling film may be the sequel in which Max Kenton has either gone the way of Clarence Darrow or P.T. Barnum.

The world of Real Steel, about ten years in the future, is one in which people live via surrogate.  Seldom is there a battle, figurative or literal, one fights mano-a-mano (hand-to-hand).  Perhaps this is our fate.  We already live a great deal through surrogates.  Laws are made by a representative government.  Virtual reality in its many forms continues to grow as a popular source of entertainment.  Speaking itself has been replaced by, oddly enough, man-a-mano communication in the form texts and internet messaging.  Man also uses surrogates to regain the self he was given.  Stephen Hawking uses an electronic voice synthesizer to communicate.  Runners with prosthetic legs run marathons.    

But can technological surrogacy be harmful?  The film seems to feel that living through surrogates isn’t such a bad thing.  The robots dish out and take the punches, and the humans hold the controls and cheer.  You can even tell your father you love him, and vise versa, by coming to the theatre and letting the movie do it for you. 

The danger of surrogates lies in that very distance they create between people – the ones that conceive the task and initiate action.  For instance, if you want to call one of your 14-year-old classmates a faggot and tell him to kill himself, you don’t need to be the kind of person who can say it to his face.  You can send him a message online.  Not that I advocate doing that.  I don’t.  If you want to do that, you should go fuck yourself.      

And after you’ve fucked yourself, ask why you are considering a technological surrogate to go further than you yourself are able to go.  Charlie Kenton explains to his son that a transition from human to robot boxers was necessary because boxing fans demanded more and more violence until it was no longer possible for human boxers to satisfy them.  (Feel free to wander down this road, but I must return to the review…)

One compelling issue in the film is the robot’s awareness.  We know the robot “is” Charlie and Max, but is it alive?  We have evidence to believe this, but this reality isn’t given its due.  It’s an aside.  It’s something you can ponder when the film is dragging and does nothing more than confuse people down the path. 

But the film is not without merit.  (It “coulda been a contender…”)  One must recognize the attempt to create a movie about robot boxing with a depth uncharacteristic of the genre.  Had it not structured itself so closely to the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film Paper Moon, the performance of Dakota Goyo (playing Max Kenton) would not appear flat next to the award-winning performance of then-10-year-old Tatum O’Neal. 

Perhaps the film will prove a beneficial surrogate to boys and their fathers, who, while watching the film together, or apart, will have unspoken moments of understanding neither could communicate at home.  Or it will just be awkward.  

Ha-Why, Oh, Ha-Why, Can’t We Move On From This

Fifty years ago, a woman appeared on a stage in New York City and gave a drug-induced performance of nostalgic tunes, some of which were of a questionable nature.

The woman was Judy Garland, and the venue was Carnegie Hall.  The album was the highlight of it's time, but now its contents sound like something you would hear coming out of certain kinds of bars.  It should be stamped "irrelevant" and placed in the back of a very deep, locked drawer.     

If you pumped me full of red ones and blue ones, I could probably give a performance of “Swanee” that would knock your socks off.

At times, the album conquers up images of America’s racist past.  Garland passionately performs “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” “Swanee” and “After You’ve Gone” with the descending glissandos characteristic of minstrel songs.  All three songs were recorded by Al Jolson, the most popular minstrel star of his time, who would perform them in black-face.  It is through these “Old South”-glorifying ballads that we see the true roots and spine of Judy Garland.  She was a minstrel.  In fact, she once sang a song that announced it with pride:

“For oh so many years I’ve been a minstrel girl,

singing for my supper in the throng.

And in that time my world has been a minstrel world,

and the history of my life is in my songs.”

Minstrel shows became popular decades before the Civil War, and, with the help of Judy Garland, the beloved menstrual minstrel, the music has endured to the present day. 

Judy at Carnegie Hall

July 10^th marked the 50^th anniversary of the release of Judy at Carnegie Hall, the recording of Judy Garland’s landmark performance at that venue.  The album notes describe Judy’s performance on that evening of April 23, 1961 as “probably the greatest evening in show business history,” a claim that is seldom disputed to this day.  Garland celebrated 50 years of American music that night, performing songs by, among others, Harold Arlen, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, Alan Jay Lerner and Fredrick Loewe, Irving Berlin, and Johnny Mercer. 

Judy Garland became a household name in 1939 when she starred as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the film in which she introduced Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow.”  Garland would go on to great personal and professional triumphs and failures (all of which have been documented and debated ad nauseam in both credible and non-credible forums). 

The performance and recordings are a matter of continued interest.  Vanity Fair published a detailed account of the evening, as well as the days preceding it, in May.  Rufus Wainwright recreated the concert in 2007.  A documentary film, which recalls the historic event through the eyes of those who were there, is in production, and due to be released in 2012.

From the overture to the final (fourth) encore, the album is a master class in communicating songs - not just the music and lyrics, but also the story - to an audience.  Every instant is Garland at her very best – complete with the signature Garland vibrato.  The final verse of the "Almost Like Being in Love" and "This Can’t Be Love" medley is a punctuation contest between Garland and the orchestra.  The collective, relentless pulse, with just the right amount of cymbal, intensifies into an inescapable awe.  "Do it Again" is a masterpiece of phrasing.  Her rendition of “The Man that Got Away," a Garland signature, is complicated and raw.  Garland alternates between moments that tremble with despair then melt away, and explosive, cathartic moments that shake one's foundation.  

By the time we reach “Over the Rainbow,” we have already been through quite a bit.  Her rendition is filled with longing and sadness, and we are reminded: we have lost a great, irreplaceable legend.  The album continues to inspire generations of musicians, and is widely know as the gold-standard for live performance.    

Garland ended the historic concert with a soaring rendition of Fred Fisher’s Prohibition Era “Chicago,” highlighting the great sites of our wonderful, windy town:   

"On State Street, that great street,

I just wanna stay, I just wanna stay.

They do things they don’t do on Broadway.”