Check out this op-ed by David Carr in the NY Times. Not sure that I can agree 100% with his thesis, but it's a provocative piece.
One corrective I'll point out immediately is that Carr sites Matthew Brady as one of the pioneers of war journalism, but neglects to point out that Brady came along after the battle was over and took photos of the fallen, often having his aides move the bodies to create more dramatic poses.
Check out this insightful article exploring Time's theater columnist, Christopher Isherwood's, "certain impatience" with "Journey's End," a critically well-received play now on Broadway written by a WW I survivor about British solidiers waiting for a German attack.
From the article:
[As to why "Journey's End" is flopping with audiences]:
"A potential conclusion: War in the newspapers isn’t necessarily good for war on movie screens and stages. The conflict in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is so much with us these days that maybe audiences have no inclination to engage with stories from old battlefields.
"Can you blame them? We absorb images and information about the current strife every time we turn on the television, listen to the radio or pick up a newspaper. Obviously not much of the news is good. As the steady drumbeat of grim statistics rolls on — the rising death tolls, the roiling sectarian violence — Americans can perhaps be forgiven for failing to warm to entertainment that underscores what journalism is making brutally plain every day: War is a cruel and destructive enterprise that maims or destroys the lives of people on all sides, even when fought for a noble cause.
"Perhaps right now audiences don’t need to — or can’t bear to — revisit testimony from the past, however artfully and honestly it is presented, to experience the range of emotions that an encounter with the ugly realities of war elicits. Compassion for human suffering, dismay at man’s brutality, understanding of both the moral beauty of courage in the face of danger and its often painful inefficacy: We can cycle through these again every time we read or see detailed accounts of the everyday human costs of the conflict — in life, in prosperity, in dignity and happiness. Art can evoke little more pity and terror, to use those old Aristotelian words, than the immediate news of the waste going on in the world today, intimately taken account of in the best journalism.
"If the freakish success of the recent movie “300” is any indication, a lot of Americans are hungry for narratives that offer escape from the uncompromised truths of the world as it is today. This luridly silly epic offers refuge from the increasingly unavoidable idea that war is always an ethically complex enterprise that can be as demoralizing — and dehumanizing — for the apparent victors as it is for the subjugated. War as a cartoon battle between good guys and monsters more easily satisfies a taste for vicarious excitement after all."
**
So, I'm with all of this, especially the success of "300," which I haven't seen, but a friend of mine whose judgment I trust says she just laughed her ass off the entire movie because it was just so over-the-top, melodramatically masculine.
What I'm disappointed with in Isherwood's article is his comparison of previous wars to the current:
"...Several years into a confusing war with complicated foes and several years after the Sept. 11 attacks, we may have finally reached a point where the old forms of war fiction are no longer capable of giving us the solace and understanding we look for from this kind of material. Stories of noble sacrifice amid the comparatively uncomplicated moral climate of the two world wars seem so remote that emotional indulgence in them seems too much like escapism, a turning away from the truths that we need to keep our eyes sharply focused on."
Indeed, the reason our current "foes" are our foes is very "complicated," as is the reason why we're in Iraq in the first place (Afghanistan isn't so hard to understand, intially, since that's where Osama was shacking up). BUT to say that the first two world wars, from our historical perch, were waged in a "comparatively uncomplicated moral climate" is, if not historically farsighted, at least hubristic--to use another of Aristotle's dramatic terms.
What's wrong about it? Well, there was tremendous reticence to enter WWI. In fact, war was seen by many in the U.S. as barbaric, irrational, something of the past. The U.S. involvement in WWII was delayed, in part, by fears of getting involved in another war like the first. And it should be pointed out that in neither war was the "moral climate"--an unfortunate, inexact, yet smart-seeming po-mo phrase that has made its way into our lexicon as shorthand for the shifting attitudes of the people, that is subtly disapproving of "moral" as an ethical category--"uncomplicated" for untold numbers of conscientious objectors who went to jail for refusing to fight, or the many women involved in the pacifist movement.
Also, to say that the current war is more "confusing and "complicated" is to surrender to the post-modern tendency to see all contemporary situations as irreducible to any one set of analytical tools or cultural perspective. Indeed, it is important to try to understand the impulses that lead many young people of the Islamic faith to become suicide bombers. In fact, art is trying to pick up that slack with a rash of books dramatizing the lives of such people (Delillo's "Falling Man" dramatizes the last moments in the cockpit of one of the planes that hit the WTC on 9/11). But of what use is such fine rhetorical gesturing, concentrated cultural analysis or artistic exploration if we (and I mean everyone), at the end the day, can't agree, or just plain refuse to pass judgement, on whether or not violence is a workable solution to conflict?
If we really want truly complicated drama, we need to start looking more closely at those who refuse to fight under any circumstances, who would turn the other cheek, not just as a thought-experiment but as an ethic to live by, no matter the consequences. My guess is that such drama would strike audiences as tragic, but in that contemporary sense of the word, wasteful.
So I was told not to expect very many students for my reading, it being the end of the semester and all, but when the reading began the room--capacity 36--was filled, standing room only. The final count was over 70. Thanks so much for the great questions and for buying books, which helped defray the cost of gas ($3.75) from South Bend to Chicago (90 miles).
I'll be reading from my book and answering questions this Wednesday at 7 pm in room 312 of the DePaul University Student Center. Click on the title of this post for more info. Hope to see some of you there.
I'm drawing attention to this article in the New York Times ( "Matters of Faith Find a New Prominence on Campus" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/education/02spirituality.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin) because it is typical of the coverage religion is getting these days.
Here are some highlights in which nothing much at all is actually said and when somthing is it's vague:
“All I hear from everybody is yes, there is growing interest in religion and spirituality and an openness on college campuses,” said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. “Everybody who is talking about it says something seems to be going on.”
**
"David D. Burhans, who retired after 33 years as chaplain at the University of Richmond, said many students “are really exploring, they are really interested in trying things out, in attending one another’s services.”
**
Here's my favorite, which closes the article:
"Among the new clubs is one created last year to encourage students to hold wide-ranging dialogues about spirituality and faith. Meeting over lunch on Thursdays in the chapel’s basement, the students talk about what happens when you die or the nature of Catholic spirituality.....
"The discussion was off and running, with one student saying one needed only to believe in “something outside yourself” and another saying that “sometimes ‘Thank you’ can be a prayer...”
"...Afterward, several students talked about what attracted them to the sessions, besides the sandwiches, chips and fruit. Gabe Conant, a junior, said he wanted to contemplate personal questions about his own faith. He described them this way: “What are these things I was raised in and do I want to keep them?”
Look, I'm pleased as punch that folks are asking these difficult questions, but this article reads like something from the Onion--"Something's going on, but no one knows what it is, really." I mean the tone the article takes is, "Holy shit, what's going on here--this is weird--college students asking deep existential questions!!"
I have an idea, why don't you actually interview some of the students instead of just getting talking-head pull-quotes from chaplains, sociology and religion professors? And why no interview with an actual theologian?
But maybe the most clear sign that, as I argue in my book, the mainstream press is not at all equipped to cover matters of religion is this moment:
"The Rev. Lloyd Steffen, the chaplain at Lehigh University, is among those who think the war in Iraq has contributed to the interest in religion among students. “I suspect a lot of that has to do with uncertainty over the war,” Mr. Steffen said."
Notice the way his view is characterized "among those who think," as though it is widely known that there are all these other people expressing this opinion. Similarly, the caption of the accompanying photo [a group of Colgate students sitting in a circle, heads bowed in prayer] reads: "One of a growing number of religious student groups at Colgate." Here, the phrase "growing number" is used to gesture, imprecisely, toward an increase in an unknown number of religious groups. For all we know, this is the only one, but surely more are expected given this nation-wide epidemic of faith. And this is to say nothing of the ambiguous "uncertainty" in the Iraq War that had "a lot" to do with an interest in religion among students.
So what's the point of such an article? What is its newsworthiness on a scale of 1-10? I give it a 3, but it could have been much much higher had the writer focused on the students and why they're asking these meaningful questions.
The Huffington Post (click on the title of this post to go there) is reporting on a sneak preview of the new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, which focuses on the abuse and murder of two detainees at the U.S. military-run Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. I write about Bagram in my book, so it's gratifying to hear that someone has continued to press for more information on the incidents that took place there, which are too often overshadowed by the Abu Ghraib scandal.
I got this email this morning from Peter Manseau ed. of Killing the Buddha (www.killingthebuddha.com):
Hi Dave --
I just spotted this and thought you'd get a kick out of it: a Home
section feature by Sally Quinn, wife of former Post editor Ben
Bradlee, about how to decorate. There's an interactive image of her
library, and sure enough A Good War is Hard to Find is there on the
coffee table:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/homeandgarden/features/2007/house-home-040507/gallery.html?hpid=artslot
I could spot that cover a mile away!
Hope this finds you well,
Peter
Check out the site "Pie and Coffee: Activism, Religion Hospitality" at www.pieandcoffee.org for a week-long discussion of "A Good War is Hard to Find." Pie and Coffee is run, according to the site, by "Catholic Wokers, personalists and Adam Villani."
For those of you not familiar with the Catholic Worker Movement, check out Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Worker_Movement) and www.catholicworker.org
Thanks to Pie and Coffee for hosting the discussion.
After many months of teasing and leading us on, the New York Times Book Review has seen fit to publish a review of my book, A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America." (Click on the title of this post to read the review. Also, make sure to check out the link to the first two chapters of my book.) We kept hearing that there was "still a good chance" and that the editors "were waiting for it to be assigned a 'run date'" Frankly, I abandoned hope a couple months back when the Book Review ran a "War" issue, but now here it is, and on April Fool's Day, no less.
Christopher Sorrentino, author of the novels "Sound on Sound" and "Trance" (a finalist for the National Book Award) wrote the review. I'm reading "Trance" right now, and I have to say that the man can write--not that he needs my validation--just for the record.
The review is also accompanied by a very smart graphic (see above image) by Lenny Naar. Good work, Lenny.
Here's a taste of the review:
In the manner of Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others” and Roland Barthes’s “Camera Lucida,” the book is quiet, offbeat, at times intensely personal. Griffith claims that “the Abu Ghraib photos are the very picture of the American soul in conflict with itself,” that the reaction to them “calls attention not to a difference but a similarity in belief between author and audience.” He sees an enormous gap between the viewing of disturbing images and contemplation of the ways in which we are implicated in the acts they portray. It’s a valid observation, as we continue to fight a war whose strategic rationale, in part, is surely to allow us to continue to pay less for a gallon of gasoline than we do for a bag of Chips Ahoy.
Thanks to Soft Skull and Richard Nash and my agent Andrew Blauner for whatever voodoo spells they cast to make this happen.
Click on the post title for a look at an article by former Army Sgt. Sam Provance an intelligence analyst at Abu Ghraib stationed there when the notorious abuses occured. He describes the "surreal" upper-crust, dog-and-pony show screening of Rory Kennedy's documentary, "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" in Washington D.C. Provance was the only soldier present, besides former Gen. Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of 17 military prisons in Iraq. Also in attendance were Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R) who lead a Q and A/discussion following the film. What went down is worth reading about...
This is the movie poster for a new film that is causing a furor in Hollywood. Imagine this on a huge billboard.
This, from an article in the LA Times:
Shanise Laurent and her friends left Palms Middle School one afternoon last week and stopped for a soda at Jack in the Box.
Shanise, a seventh-grader, didn't need me to point out the billboard across the street. She said she had noticed it the day before.
"What a graphic, nasty billboard," said the 13-year-old.
Her sister Rachel, 11, was in agreement, as were their friends.
"There's kids who walk around here," said Taylor Shaw, 13, who didn't think kids should be subjected to such images on their way home from school.
"I think it's scary," said Cameron Olivas, 12.
Across the busy intersection of Overland and Venice was one of 30 billboards in the Los Angeles area promoting the May 18 release of the film "Captivity." The ad consisted of four panels:
Abduction, in which a terrified young blond woman has either a gloved or black hand over her face, as if she's being kidnapped.
Confinement, in which she's behind a chain-link fence and appears to be poking a bloody thumb through the fence.
Torture, in which she is flat on her back, her face in a white cast, with red tubes that resemble jumper cables running into her nostrils.
And Termination, in which her head dangles over the edge of a table, the murder complete.
Hooray for Hollywood.
Check out this review in the New York Times Book Review of Susan Sontag's At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches (FSG).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/books/review/Mishra.t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin
I have yet to pick this up, but I plan on it. Her 2004 essay in the New York Times Magazine on the Abu Ghraib prison photos, "Regarding the Torture of Others," was one of the reasons why I began writing my book, A Good War is Hard to Find.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/03/04/afghan.photos.ap/index.html
Ben Freeman at Fairleigh Dickinson U's The Literary Review has written a flattering review of Good War in their Winter issue. Click on the title of this post for a look.
Here's an excerpt:
Encountering Griffith’s nonfiction debut, a collage of images interwoven into eight essays of thoughtful criticism, we learn to see the Abu Ghraib photos as imaginative pathways. We find ourselves standing behind a nude Iraqi in a Christ pose, fearing with him a guard with a weapon raised. We are naked, clutching inward in fear and holdout modesty. And in a sheer 180-degree shift, we are the photographers, we know our own fear, our power. As the author writes, “We meet ourselves coming and going.”
Thanks, Ben.
An op-ed from the NYT by Lynn Chu and John Yoo:
...The fact is, Congress has every power to end the war — if it really wanted to. It has the power of the purse. Its British forebears in Parliament micromanaged the monarchy quite a bit, for instance by making money (the “sinews of war”) contingent on attacking one country and making peace with another. And there is more direct precedent: In 1973, Congress affirmatively acted to cut off funds for Vietnam. It also cut off money for the Nicaraguan contras with the Boland Amendment in 1982.
Not only could Congress cut off money, it could require scheduled troop withdrawals, shrink or eliminate units, or freeze weapons supplies. It could even repeal or amend the authorization to use force it passed in 2002.
A pullout, however, would have no chance of success, because its supporters are likely to lack the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto. But to stop President Bush’s proposed troop surge, Congress doesn’t have to do anything. It can just sit back and fail to enact the periodic supplemental spending measures required to keep the war going. Congress has wielded considerable power by just threatening such measures, as with President James K. Polk in the Mexican-American War and President Ronald Reagan in Lebanon after the 1983 barracks bombing.
The Constitution doesn’t pick winners. It leaves it to the three branches to use their unique powers to struggle for supremacy. James Madison, the leading intellectual force behind the Constitution, rebutted Patrick Henry’s firebrand attack on executive war powers during the Virginia ratifying convention by reminding him that Congress could control any renegade president by stopping the flow of money.
But with power comes responsibility. The truth is that this Congress is not sure what to do in Iraq. Its hesitation reflects America’s uncertainty and divisions. Antiwar bluster is high at the moment, echoing popular frustration and grim news from Baghdad.
Click on the title of this post for a flattering article about Brett Yasko, Pittsburgh-based graphic design guru. He designed my book and won an award from the AIGA for it. For a closer look at the design and a statement by Brett on the design, go here: http://designarchives.aiga.org/?s1=2|s2=1|eid=1209
An excerpt:
“It’s crucial to think about everyone out there,” the lanky, soft-spoken Yasko says, “and hope my designs have an effect on them. I’m touched when they do.
“I always wanted to make things,” [Yasko] adds. “Design is good for that. Design is where I’ve fallen.”
Fallen is far too passive for so rich a graphic portfolio, so powerful a vision in two dimensions – especially given the raves Yasko’s getting all over town. All over the world, in fact. With clients in New York, Virginia, and Barcelona, Yasko has placed his graphics in the Whitney Museum’s permanent collection, the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Denver archives, Partisan Project’s poster archives in LA and so on. As a fave of New York’s Princeton Architectural Press, he’s designed three books.
Books? In this e-age? “I feel great when I finish a book,” Yakso says. “It goes on a shelf. It has a permanence. I love books.”
Click on the title of this post to read my most recent publication in the Utne Reader.
Click on the title of this post to read the South Bend Tribune's coverage.
Also, check out an interesting story on "scrapping" in South Bend: http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070204/News01/702040358
