Ali on War, War on Ali

In an indignant and defiant defense of his draft orders refusal, Muhammad Ali comments "I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Congs," and his refusal - and justification for the refusal - continues to chill me, even today, when we feel that it is now all the more risky to put forth one's political views or to name ourselves as public owners of such views for fear of their consequences.

Ali's act shows us what it means to stand on principle, while his selfless, risky act shows us that it is not only the politicians who need and should be political.

In so few words, Ali says much about the content of his disapproval for a body politic that instrumentally utilizes and deploys its citizens in pursuit of removed, questionably justifiable geopolitical projects and political machinations for which we may neither personal involvement nor care.

Being a boxer, a fighter, he is paid to face off against those with whom he often has little actual dispute. But in this case, he desires to take off his gloves and does so to show his unwillingness to perpetuate unjust, unfair processes that coerce individuals into obedient and 'justified' violent acts in order to preserve a polity (or any system or organization, really) that polices them at every turn.

For this reason, politicians, in fact, should hardly be the only to justifiably dispute the regrettable decisions that a state, and its legislators make. It takes little more than an understanding that there is no personal dispute here, on Ali's part (not to mention the moral prescriptions of his religious obligations), that the issue is fabricated or constructed in one way or another. There is also the more than likely explanation that their work is the product of parochial interests who exercise political will, a power dynamic that persists even today.3

He hints also at his own pacifist leanings, implying that any kind of force would need heavy justification, and in his case, nobody has provided sufficient reason for feeling as much, just legal obligations and coercive force. Just as importantly, Ali appears to lament our own ability to make these decisions for ourselves, as our country reserves the right to decide what a legitimate enough cause is for us to perish in its wake

"No," he succinctly elaborates "I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end."

He acknowledges the profound importance of making a stand where he can, wherever that might be, and, given his own image-capital - the fact that he is very well-known - he is able to wield a kind of persuasive, personal-brand-logo-infused power that another making the statement might lack.

Ali's is a reading of the state, and the ability of the individual, however defined, to oppose it (but to do so nonviolently) when their respective priorities are incompatible and when the state charges its citizens with violent, deplorable, condemnable acts and utilizes its own powers of coercion to advance these interests, often even at the cost and to the disadvantage of its own people.

Ali is a model for us all, to do what we can with what we have at the right time in order to stand on what ideals we hold dear, for we are as much our principles as we are anything else. Forsaking those for some other ends, then, is a way of forsaking ourselves.

Granted, we must accomplish this strategically, and this is our particular challenge, something that few others have felt like us before. Knowing when and for what to expend our personal capital in the service of our ideals is essential, as expending our capital means thrusting ourselves into the public sphere where we may be scrutinized, but also means subjecting ourselves to possible examination and policing by enforcement bodies that hold sway over our futures in some way or another.

In this way, Ali shows us that we both have an obligation to our community to disclose ourselves and our beliefs, not to mention a dear fidelity to them. This is not to say that we should do so fundamentally, but by bringing them to the public realm, we effectively do the opposite: we are subjecting them to scrutiny and welcoming the discourse that might come with conversing with others on the matters.

I am the Greatest that ever was?

I really tire of this "greatest novelist" or greatest anything talk: it is neither accurate - in that no such standard could ever really be created, because creating a standard for greatness would have to be created by someone greater (most likely) - and because it has all the worst effects:

it appears to make us feel that we need all aspire to such things, exactly the realization of the failed dream of productive, constructive competition that capitalism's logic continues to furnish.

Moreover, it fails to acknowledge that any kind of greatness is the outcome of no eternal, objective judgment but largely suffused with irrefutable political alliances. That is, what becomes known and great is that which is acceptable within prevailing standards and political persuasions of the day: the result of that which is considered worth recognition based on the existent distribution of the sensible (what is shown and what is kept invisible).

It is again the logic of capitalism rearing its deceitfully distant head, convincing us of the need to become something we may not be, possibly losing ourselves and our aspirations in the process of being teased by the temptations of 'Greatness.'

On Poverty

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/22/264850945/almost-no-poor-nations-by-2035-thats-what-bill-gates-says

Can we merely assume that time and economic projection will obliterate poverty altogether?

Should we instead talk about poverty as persistent and recurrent social equality produced by particular relations of capital?

Why are some nations labelled 'poor,' and what are the effects of this rhetorical assignation?

How is Gate's advancing a particular view of the global economy in this seemingly inert declamation of poverty?

Knowing Luigi: Art Critique Submission

Knowing Luigi

Fausto Podavini, in his 2013 photo series entitled “Mirella,” explores the personal and social dimensions involved less with the 'combat of' and more with the 'living about' Alzheimer’s. In this way, Podavini examines the everydayness of this particular form of dementia, and bestows it an unmistakably familiar and palpable visage, couched in scenes of birthdays and lazy in-the-bed afternoons to which we can all relate. But as he invites us in - as they did - he also strikes us with questions about what it means for society to cope with dementia, and what it means for those with dementia to cope in society.

To teach the rest of us what it is like, Mirella - the namesake - and Luigi, Podavini’s muses, welcome us kindly and warmly into their most intimate moments, where Podavini captures some of their most private interactions and displays them publicly.

The representative photo depicted here is the second of twenty-five. At first glance, we see a familiar scene, a restroom, but then we quickly realize we are voyeurs of a steamy, post-shower embrace. Notably, the moment is set in the restroom, one of the most private places, a place of reflection, nakedness and rejuvenation. That Luigi and Mirella share the space together speaks to their deep bond and to Luigi’s increasing precarity. Blank space dominates the photo as well. Ordinary objects speak to the routines of daily ablutions, and to the humdrum of Alzheimer care.

It is tempting to observe that a woman and a man are the subjects of the scene. But if we continue scanning, we realize that it is actually just their entwined and mirrored likenesses that draw our attention, their mutual, reflected appearances which captivate us. On the left, the larger of the two images beckons our probing gaze first: we see the two figures enmeshed, in a way, but in a particular kind of way. The woman is clearly assisting the man. He is, as we soon realize, very much dependent on him, framing her gestures as all the more endearing.

Fixing this moment are ostensible furnishings of vanity - the mirrors - but here they instead stand witness to something paradoxically inspiring: a profound and selfless act of care. Mirella, the woman doesn’t even feign a glance into the mirror to admire herself (as we see in the second and smaller of the mirrors); instead, she focuses on Luigi, aiding him in his attempts to wash. But the mirrors serve another purpose as well, beyond her revealing kindness: they provoke us to question “who are we and what do we become when we have Alzheimer’s or other conditions of dementia?” And: “Do we become mere reflections of ourselves, and how do our relationships to those around us change when in the wake of the developing, enveloping [so-called] ‘disorder’?”

It’s hard to say whether Podavini answered these questions, but he nevertheless labored enough to try. To capture the ordinary, chilling, sad, and happy moments of Luigi and Mirella’s final six years together, Podavini lived closely with the couple for nearly four, following a series of stints with a number of other NGOs and different organizations to extend a shrinking tradition of Social Reportage photography.

But this series is more than artistic and personal accomplishment: it calls attention to the increasing cost and challenge society faces in caretaking for loved ones with Alzheimer’s, and provokes critical questions about its persistence. Moreover, Podavini’s work is additionally groundbreaking for how he de-medicalizes the life of the Alzheimer’s patient and the language used to describe it: he inspires us to see ourselves there with Luigi and Mirella, to think of ourselves as part of a human community with which we must brave these troubled waters, as much as with love and kindness as with any medicine or policy recommendation.

Hopefully, as Podavini may have intended, his series has the partial effect of generalizing these queries and habits to the point that we all become more involved in a national - even international - conversation on the matter, in addition to becoming more interested in the lives of those around us and how we might work together to engender human kindness on a global scale.


My original blog post submission to the Art Writing Comp by Find Your Art School, a great resource for finding top advertising photography schools near you!

If it wasn't lost then, it's a Lost Ark now

Previously, I hadn't thought much on this concluding scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first in the Indiana Jone trilogy, but upon a second watch, this depiction of the final resting place of a mysterious, powerful and nearly-mythical object that comes under government purview is little more than a commentary on what and how bureaucracies in particular and bureaucracy theoretically render hidden and nameless, obscured by nondescript packaging and placed alongside so many similar objects, processes, documents, people and applications that receive similar inattention.

Official denial of these operations is what further obfuscates them, although, in this case, we are, it should be well noted, referring to an ostensibly unreal object, corroborated only by various biblical verses.

But there is nevertheless much to be read from this scene about bureaucracy, or how it is popularly declaimed and characterized. Seen as little more than a cavernous space of indiscriminate action, classification and storage, it may well be inferred that few items leave the literal space, the figurative implication being that bureaucracy consumes in its complicated, obfuscatory procedures, taxonomies, euphemisms, and institutional practices.

Hannah Arendt would delight to watch such a scene (and just may have, if not for all of the man-handling that Indiana Jones and his accomplices and antagonists are so often for their repugnant liberalities).

What is even more funny to think about is that the Ark is probably more lost now, under blankets of institutional obscurity than it ever was in a purported remote desert location, secured and protected by lost knowledge and separated objects. Removing it from such a resting place may be all but near impossible.

It's Not About Who "Cared Enough to Ask;" It's About The Fact You Did

I'm so tired of hearing this cliched, unthought observation percolating around legitimate publishing institutions:

"Even the most ardent academic must concede that there’s something darkly funny about devoting years of one’s life to a thesis question so abstruse that no one else had ever cared enough to ask it—and then answering it at such great length that few will ever care to read it."

'Abstruse' thesis topics (and their realization) should worry little about their popularity. Writing is about exploring and realizing ideas, personal experiences and intuitions, connecting and combing them, following them to wherever they may lead. Writing is a deeply personal process that has social dimensions and implications, and the introspection involved can often have profound effects once we've followed the trail long enough.

But if we all just read this line, like so many that resemble it, we might be persuaded otherwise, because our individual actions 'should' be guided by a sense of immediate social validation that, if lacking, should correct us to return to the realm of what is considered 'useful' and 'relevant' by others for whom we might feel little obligation or regard. This, too, is what the market teaches erroneously teaches us as well.

Instead, we should be faithful to ourselves and explore our individual difference, which we then bring to the shared dining place of our social world.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/31/lolmythesis_tumblr_college_students_summarize_their_thesis_in_one_sentence.html

The Secret Life (of Walter Mitty)?

Read this (but only after watching the movie); this isn't a review but a reflection:

Daydream-like thoughts of B. Stiller's recent adaptation of the Secret Life of Walter still visit me at unexpected moments of the day. While thinking about my previous trip to New York, I recall my excitement at seeing a familiar train station in one of the first scenes on film.

But I also appreciate the candor of the film, its unpretentious mundaneness and the way it displays for all to see the reality of the dreams and hopes and disappointments of our lives. Notably, the film also reflects the shame involved in being unseen or that which compels us to maintain our invisibility, and how we try to engage with and challenge it in minute and grand ways in our daily lives.

The film also makes palatable forms of human relations that have emerged relatively recently and still carry the sting of opprobrium that follow what was previously 'unseen' and felt to be irremediably deviant. Which is not to say that deviance is merely a function of common practice but is to say that the growing popularity of an object or practice can challenge the taboos it has long felt.

Walter Mitty, by trade, is a 'negative asset manager,' and so it is his lot in life to live in the shadows of others who curry recognition and take responsibility for the work of so many unseen, unfelt, unheard. Typically leaving his office only to interact with superiors and deliver anticipated media, he otherwise resides and labors in a dungeon-like archive of photographic negatives with his squeamish but resolute and dependable partner Fernando. In some ways, he is a modern Quixote, imaging himself caught up in grand stories made from the stuff of normal life.

But we only find him as his occupation - along with those of many others - finds jeopardy at the whims of bearded strangers who appear on the corporate Life scene to rearrange, downsize and 'transition.' Specializing in corporate transformations that involve moving companies from dated formats to new ones (in this context and ours, we're speaking of an analog or print being updated to a digital or online one), these antagonists poke and prod the longtime employees and treat them with far less than what they deserve for their sustained and enduring commitment to the project of making Life happen.

But the experience of these employees under the overseership of the Bearded Ones is far from uncommon, and their immediate presence on film only covers up the reality that they are intervening because the governing boards charged them to, which remains peculiar throughout the film, for it clearly takes little radical stance against the onerous and capricious decision-making involved in organizations that remain governed by a few.

This organizational and occupational transition operates as an appropriate background for his own personal realizations (and revisitations of memories) that he had for so long repressed or expended great effort to ignore. Life has hired others to implement global alterations to its format, while he too feels compelled to alter the format of his life, perhaps even with the stresses involved in the Life transition, but as he implies later, he actually harbors little spite for the Bearded Ones and their charge; he just bitingly challenges them to avoid being such "dicks," suggesting he doesn't take issue with their work but how they carry it out.

In this way, again, Mitty remains reserved and hesitant, even subservient but always mindful of what is most important to him and unwilling to expend too much of himself needlessly pillorying the inevitably bleak or discouraging circumstances in which he seems to regularly find himself.

Walter Mitty's own hesitation, disembodied as it is, stands as yet another antagonistic element in the film, germinated so early in his own development. His own hesitation, as the film suggests, derives from real conditions, however; in his late adolescence following high school, he toiled and planned to realize his ambition to travel Europe, displaying his early interest in adventure and the world, having been so close to doing so (having purchased all of the necessary objects).

But often we lack the favorable conditions for realizing our aspirations, whatever they may be, and Mitty offers us consolation for this decision, comfort that the world does not end even if we must delay and suppress our desires for some time. As his father passed, he concluded the irresponsibility of leaving a family that had no means to support itself, nor savings nor luck. Instead, he worked these ambitions into oblivion, supporting his sister and mother, maintaining his familial commitments and obligations while stomaching the fatefully certain consequences that he would not be leaving their side for a very long time (something he may not have appreciated at the time).

Eventually, he is inspired to act but not until he finds another who gives him reason to do so, but I dispute that this series of events has little to do with impressing a girl, which is the tried explanation that might describe it. Instead, their relationship helps him realize something about himself, that he must do for himself, as with so many human realizations: we are social animals who best know ourselves around others. And so, in doing so, this narrative turn actually frames the female as very much a part of this human community that endorses and proliferates personal realization, not just passive, supportive bystanders, but real individuals who act and mutually-produce our shared world.

Cheryl's presence and words motivate him, and although this movie does remain admittedly male-centered for who so many of the main characters are (and noticeably white, save extremely minor characters, for that matter), distinguishing between 'acting-to-impress' and 'acting-as-inspired-and-motivated-by' wholly changes the relationship of the male to the female (assuming loosely bounded identities here). The feminine is no longer an object to eventually be obtained by the impressor but another agent and actor in the world, like Mitty, like the Bearded Ones, like Sean.

The movie is nevertheless obsessed with what it literally and figuratively means to be unseen and unheard and who is considered worthy of depiction and reproduction and visibility and audibility. It does suggest some tentative conclusions: that relative few, talented, established and renown people might use their connections and social positions to continue to orchestrate the coordinates of what Ranciere called the "Distribution of the Sensible," which really, to me, seems like a modified Ideology, meaning that they still influence and control, in large part, what is seen, thought, heard and comprehended, consciously or no.

This bare fact is best illustrated through two crucial characters and by contrast in one. Sean O'Connell, for example, monopolizes the attention and photo-space in the print edition of the Life magazine. His artistic decisions virtually determine what is or is not included, based, it is implied, on a long-standing relationship between the publication and his contributions. Seniority, then, can be decisive for what is considered worthy of illumination, publication, foregrounding and distribution.  But not always.

The main Bearded one, the manager handling the transition (known ignobly as 'Ted'), displays an irrefutable influence over the structure of the organization in which so many people labor but does so with little demonstrable 'seniority;' instead, he derives his authority from decisions by the board to undergo the transition, induced and motivated by a changing market climate, with new institutional and technical requirements for competitiveness. He is a foil to Sean, in this way, but his position feel relatively unearned and undeserved, and he spares little time in establishing himself as an object of contempt, hatred and fear by many.

While the reviews frame him differently, emphasizing his own authoritative qualities and existence as a 'publishing executive,' this isn't what he is called in their film, and so reviews like this one unjustifiably downplay the narrative potential and impact of his performance as a 'transition manager.' While he is certainly qualified, based on his appointment, and tasked with an important charge, he nevertheless carries out these duties with capricious condescension, treating employees like discardable cogs. But this, too, the review failed to note, because it's not about whether the character is believeable but about whether people can sympathize with Mitty in his trials to appease him, and many can, I think.

While we're on the topic, this review is additionally frustrating for how the reviewer seeks to drawn on his experience traveling in Iceland to debunk filmic narrative elements and take pot shots at the film. In doing so, this review discloses his privileged position (removed from the audience again) and his inability to fixate on necessary elements rather than those that are inessential to focusing on the crucial or key aspects of the film as it relates its audience and some sense of how its musing on the prevailing social and aesthetic relations in our world.

Really, we cannot finally decide the matter without a fuller and more personal engagement, as evaluations and judgments are tied up with interpretation as much observations and other invocations, but many of the reviews I've read have obsessed over details or aspects peripheral to the central interest in the lives of those who are unseen, unheard, unthought and unarticulated. Although there always remain some group that has yet to experience this kind of iteration, movies such as this inspire others that contemplate the significance of desiring that sense of being heard, though, and seen, while consoling those along the way with stories, images and words that shine light towards new avenues for negotiating everyday situations and finding ways to better cope with existent conditions and relations.

But, as Sean O'Connell's subtly remarks on the ephemeral nature of beautiful objects left uncaptured, this film is about all of the "Ghost Cats," those who will not be seen because not thought deserving of center stage. In reality, however, we are all Ghost Cats, and we deserve that kind of treatment and consideration.