Satire and the Fight Against Intellectualism

I read an article today in the Los Angeles Times (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/07/obama-muslim.html) about the current cover of The New Yorker, which is apparently stirring up quite the controversy in America right now. The article included an image of the cover: an over-the-top satirical cartoon by Barry Blitt entitled “The Politics of Fear.” The cartoon shows Obama dressed in a vaguely Muslim looking dashiki and headdress (a nod to the pictures of Obama in traditional Kenyan costume, and to the misinterpretation of this costume as militant Muslim) and Michelle Obama dressed as a militant Blaxploitation character—fatigues, ‘fro, and firearm equipped. The pair are standing in what appears to be a mock-up of the Oval Office, except for the fact that there is a portrait of Osama bin Laden hanging above a fireplace containing a burning American flag. To add to the clichéd effect, Barack and Michelle are “fist-bumping,” which is of course playing into every white person’s stereotypical belief that all black people have a secret handshake of sorts, which white people themselves are excluded from. All in all, I found the image itself so over-the-top, and so rich with details perfectly encapsulating the ridiculous caricature of Obama in online smear campaigns, that I laughed out loud. However, it surprised me to read that Obama’s campaign does not share in the humor, and that their official position is one of offense (although Obama himself is wisely refraining from comment).
At first, I was completely shocked that the Obama campaign would take offense to something so obviously satirical and explicitly ridiculing the Obama-detractors who claim he is militant, Muslim, anti-Patriotic, and “too Black.” However, George pointed out to me that I have to keep in mind two things:
1.) Not every person who sees the cover will pay attention to the context, and without a caption making the satire explicit, the image is prone to exploitation by those it attempts to satirize.
And, perhaps more interestingly, 2.) Obama’s campaign is faced with the incredible task of making sure that Obama does not appear “too intellectual.” By taking a position against The New Yorker, Obama’s campaign avoids being characterized as pandering to the intellectuals who are the perceived readers and audience of the magazine.
The first point is the more obvious problem with the cartoon, and has sparked abounding discussion on the Internet about context and interpretation of political cartoons. A tricky balancing act, to be sure. However, the second point George made—about intellectualism—was far more thought-provoking for me. Ever since Obama’s unfortunate comments in San Francisco about embittered lower classes (unfortunate not in their content, but in their context and delivery), the Obama campaign has had to fight an uphill battle to ensure that Obama does not succumb to the conservative death knell for all liberals—that they are too intelligent and intellectual, and therefore, de facto, too far removed from the concerns of the Average American. As a Critical Theorist and Feminist, I agree that all politics and politicians should be firmly grounded in practice and real change. However, I find it terribly disconcerting that this practical requirement for politicians has somehow evolved into an absolute disdain for intelligence in the current political climate. Obama’s campaign was forced, in a way, to distance itself from The New Yorker’s satire, for fear that even acknowledging the joke would make them seem too smart. What?! Shouldn’t we expect our leaders to be intelligent, thoughtful, and discerning? Aren’t these qualities preconditions for leading in a democratic society? Yes, we want our politicians to listen and respond to the concerns of average Americans, but why does that preclude intelligence? I find it condescending and insulting that “the average American” is characterized as so uneducated as to be anti-education. I was the first member of my family to receive a secondary education, but my parents and grandparents are far from blissful ignorance or disdain for intelligence. Further, most of the pundits who make these claims about “over-intellectualism” and Ivory Towers, are themselves highly educated people from prosperous families: so why do they understand the “average American” any better than Obama or any other educated person? Personally, I think it is a clever ploy to pit Americans against themselves—if people are told that intellect and critical thinking are anti-political and defeat the best interests of the “heartland,” than they, too, will avoid employing their own critical thinking skills (which, although honed by education, are not dependent upon a secondary degree). Without critical thinking, the American voter must resort to accepting punditry at face-value. So, the pundits themselves are the ones who benefit the most from anti-intellectualism. This perspective, however, is much more uplifting than simply thinking that all Americans are idiots, and therefore just don’t want an educated or intelligent leader. In the interest of optimism, I wax cynical.

Die Sonne scheint immer wieder

May was one of the most beautiful months I have ever experienced. Even though the winter here in Berlin was depressingly dark and wet and cold, early summer here makes any other bad weather more than worth it. The sun rises at 4:30 in the morning, doesn't set until 10 at night, and the entire day long it shines so brightly and warmly that everyone on the street cannot help but smile. During the winter, everyone on the street was always so serious and self-contained, I thought it was a cultural difference, but now I see it is more a difference of weather...as soon as the sun came out, everyone opened up and lightened up. Visibly. It was amazing to see so many people unfurling like so many spring flowers.
Besides the noticeable improvement of public mood, the weather has also elevated George's and my energy levels. We have seen so many interesting things in the past few weeks! Just this weekend, we went to the top of the Funkturm (the radio tower which is modeled after the Eiffel Tower), we finally saw the Beatte Uhse Museum, and we watched the first games of the Europa Meisterschaft at a Cafe in Savignyplatz. (For any soccer fans out there, the game between Croatia and Austria was so exciting to watch; I have never seen two teams play that hard for that long.) We also went out to dinner at a restaurant called the Unsichtbar. It is this culinary experience where you dine in total darkness, and eat food from a menu written in riddles. The waitstaff are all physically blind, and so more than equipped to serve in the dark. As guests we were totally dependent on our waitress to get to our table, to exit the restaurant, to find out where our plates and silverware were. But what fantastic food! And without sight, you really try to focus on the individual flavors in your food.
The only downside to this gorgeous weather is that it makes work impossible to do. It's the middle of the semester here, and both George and I have major projects coming up, but I definitely don't want to do any academic work except for maybe reading in the sun!

Future-Thinking

Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, died today and his obituaries are all over the news. I am one of those news-readers in the age of electronic media who follows the links to “other stories you may be interested in” or “for a deeper look”—I’m always a sucker for recommendations.

Following one of those links about Clarke I discovered that not only was he a well-respected science fiction writer and hobby-astronomer, he was also an avid reader of a philosopher named Olaf Stapledon, someone I had never heard of before. Partially out of curiousity and partially from embarrassment of my ignorance, I decided to search cyberspace for information about Olaf Stapledon. Apparently, Stapledon was himself a science-fiction writer as well as a philosopher. According to several websources he is credited with developing philosophical notions of “transhumanism” and “posthumanism” before the words themselves existed. Eventually I found a website which maintains online full-text versions of his out-of-print or difficult to find writings. So I started reading. One article from 1949 entitled “Personality and Liberty” struck me as especially prescient. In this article, Stapledon attempts to explain an ethical method for balancing personal liberty with community interests—as a contemporary Critical Theorist and Feminist myself, I find this goal particularly endearing and important.

Initially, I was struck by text that seemed a direct indictment of the current political practices in America (and elsewhere). Anyone who knows me personally knows that I feel very strongly about—what I perceive to be—glaringly unethical behavior in the handling of the Iraq War and related American domestic policy. Stapledon writes:
“Finally, there are some liberties which, because they flagrantly violate the most sacred moral principles current in the particular society, must not be allowed at all. Of this kind, freedom to murder, torture and rape are well established examples. In our own age mankind is beginning to feel that the class of absolutely forbidden liberties should include freedom to use private money power to exploit the labour of others. A final point may be added. For a government to indulge in such practices as judicial murder and torture and gross perversion of the truth, even in a cause regarded as supremely good, is always bad, even if only for the reason that any advantage that might be gained by such practices is outweighed by the damage done to the moral custom of the society.”
This direct and unabashed criticism of torture as a social practice corresponds well with my own appraisal of torture’s ethical value and, for that matter, actual efficacy. As a Neo-Marxist I am also critical of current global economic policies manipulating labor forces both in the developing world and domestically. I am impressed that Stapledon recognized the social and governmental responsibility of economic power before the era of globalization.

But self-righteous philosophical affirmation of my own critical attitudes only reinforces the doom and gloom. Upon closer reading, the most remarkable thing I found in Stapledon’s essay was an overarching value and defense of love and hope as foundational concepts for a free society. Stapledon writes:
“In contrast, the true view of the good society is that it neither merely individualistic not merely gregarious, nor merely a mixture of the two. No society can be satisfactory unless it is held together not solely by these primitive impulses but also by the conscious will of its members for community. And this will for community is impossible save to those who have had some experience of the microcosmic society of personal lovers. Thus in the good society genuine personal love must be a widespread experience. And also the conscious recognition of the spirit as the supreme value must sufficiently common to exercise an influence on the whole society. Needless to say, no actual society approximates to the ideal save in a very low degree; but in some actual societies the motive of genuine community is not a wholly negligible factor.”
I believe that the real lesson of this essay isn’t the indictment of current global practices, but Stapledon’s measured hope and estimation of love’s role in society. To my mind, future-thinking—whether in science-fiction, philosophy, or day-to-day life—must contain this glimmer of hope and possibility to be effective.

Updates

So one of my friends recently did something similar on her blog, and I am stealing the idea:

Music I have been listening to lately:
Tel Aviv—The Shape of Fiction
Radiohead—In Rainbows
Elliott Smith—Figure 8
Blonde Redhead—23
LCD Soundsystem—The Sound of Silver
Wilco—Sky Blue Sky

Books I have read this month:
Man Walks Into a Room by Nicole Krauss
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill (For the 2nd time)
Political Descartes by Antonio Negri
Another Cosmopolitanism by Seyla Benhabib
The Future of Human Nature by Jürgen Habermas (For the 3rd time)
Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr (Also for the 3rd time)


Places I have been going to:
The bowling alley I found in my neighborhood recently
The coffee shop/laudromat called Waschbar in Potsdam
The Netto (the discount grocery store) for cheap wine


Thoughts:
Benjamin
Genetic Enhancement and ethics
Argh…writer’s block
Dreams
Love
Age
Translation

Dreams

I have been having truly disturbing dreams lately. Full of violence and brutal sexuality and disconcerting images of my past and present interwoven in bizarre and unsettling ways. Most of the time I cannot remember much of the "narrative" of my dreams. I am only aware of the aftertaste of the distress when I wake up. For about three months now, I really haven't had very many good dreams.

George gave me a book for my birthday. Man Walks into a Room by Nicole Krauss. I asked for this book because I vaguely remembered some of her stories in The New Yorker and because she is married to Jonathan Safran Foer, one of my favorite novelists of all time. I hadn't been able to put the book down all day, until I was inspired by a passage to revisit my recent distress with dreams and dreaming.

The book is truly beautiful, not only in its story (a man who loses all memory except for memory of his childhood), but also in its prose. Krauss was trained as a poet and it is easy to see the poetry in her narrative, where a simple sentence evokes complex feelings and memories in the reader. A few passages have made my eyes misty, not only out of empathy for the characters, but also because of the evocative writing that brings to mind some of my own most treasured memories.

However, the most affecting passage so far has been a passage about dreams and memory, or more properly, forgetfulness:
"You told us about an angel in the Talmud or something, the Angel of Forgetfulness, whose job it is to make sure that when souls change bodies they first pass through the sea of forgetfulness. How sometimes the Angel of Forgetfulness himself forgets, and then fragments of another life stay with us, and sometimes those are our dreams."

Upon reading this passage, I immediately thought of the painting "Angelus Novus" by Paul Klee. Benjamin (my thoughts seem to keep returning to him), did an interpretive essay on Klee's painting, claiming that the angel was the angel of the progress of history. He claimed that the angel's eyes were looking back onto a past history, onto all of the sad and devastating events of history.

The synthesis of Benjamin's interpretation of the Angelus Novus and Krauss's narrative depiction of the Angel of Forgetfulness has created in my mind an entirely new way to evaluate my distressing dreams. Perhaps my distressing dreams are not indicative of any present unhappiness. Perhaps they are not even, as Freudians would likely assess, indicative of my own unconscious and subconscious childhood unhappiness. Perhaps these dreams are instead my way of interpreting and filtering the elements of a collective history, a history full of violent change and revolution. This history, of my past life, or of the past life of humanity, is rightfully distressing. Human history is so wracked with violence and volatility, that perhaps the only way to get through it properly is to work it over in your dreams. Perhaps the best way to progress as a human being is to experience the worst of life in your dreams and pursue the best of life in your wakefulness.

Girls always make passes at spies who wear glasses...

I have never been in love with a city before. But I am falling in love with Berlin. I had girlish fascinations with Paris…in my dreams the city of love and lights was a recurring fantasy. And my college lovers played into that fantasy—they brought me gifts from Paris, using my infatuation with the city to spark sexual attraction. But just as those human love affairs eventually fizzled, so too did my crush on Paris. (I still admire the city, enjoy visiting it, and find it absolutely beautiful. Not to mention my great admiration for Parisian history and philosophy.)
Berlin, on the other hand, has worked slowly to captivate me. It is a mysterious place; a capital that is “poor but sexy” (I have to agree with the mayor on that one). It has the culture of Paris, the cosmopolitan feel of London, and the art scene of New York—and a surprise around every corner. With so much going on, it would be easy to feel swallowed up in the city, but Berlin has retained a unique ability to preserve its neighborhood-feel. Charlottenburg—where I live—is quiet, domestic, and has a beautiful palace with an enormous garden. With a 15 minute train ride I can reach Prenzlauerberg, a community filled with youth, creativity, and the best brunch cafes in the world! Kreuzberg has a large Turkish population, with street markets and tasty food. Friedrichshain is full of pubs, clubs, and concerts…and there are so many other unique neighborhoods.
There is an air of mystery enshrouding the city; the rebuilding of Berlin has led to it's artistic and cosmopolitan growth, but it will forever retain the secrets of the political intrigue situated in Berlin for the greater part of the last 70 years. The current inhabitants--students, artists, tourists, survivors, entrepreneurs, and now me--also seem to simultaneously carry airs of mystery and creativity with them.
It’s really a tragedy that Walter Benjamin never saw the 21st century arrive to Berlin. His philosophical homage to Paris in the Arcades Project recounts the beauty, mystery and intellectualism of Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. Paris’ artistic and commercial promise held an important place in Benjamin’s unique theories of fetishism and critical theory. However today Benjamin’s Heimatstadt, Berlin, has become the center of contemporary growth, architecture, and art. It is populated by both the fetishists of capitalism and it’s critics. More than 50 years after Benjamin’s Flucht and subsequent murder, the Germans have rewritten their history in the city of Reflections. Now Berlin is the city of steel and glass.

Feurwerk

Berlin touts itself as having the biggest New Year's Eve party in the world. London and New York also make claims to the title of Grand Fete, so I am not sure if Berlin's is truly the biggest, but it is definitely quite the party. George and I went to the Brandenburg Gate, the central location for the party, and we found ourselves trapped in a mass of people stuck between Tiergarten and the Gate. At first we thought that it was going to be a long and uncomfortable night stuck in the middle of a million people, but it ended up being quite pleasant and festive. Aside from the occasional pushy drunk person, or anxious tourist, all the other partygoers were in such good moods and enjoying themselves so much that the close quarters were pretty communal. And the fireworks at midnight were spectacular! They lasted at least a quarter of an hour and went right above the statues atop the gate--it was truly beautiful and exciting.

Since we knew that the public transportation would be completely packed as the night wore on, we decided to head home as quickly as possible after the fireworks display. We walked as fast as our little legs could carry us to the S-Bahn station...and during this walk we made a strange realization. In Berlin, it is legal to shoot off personal fireworks for a few hours on New Years, so just about everyone in the city sets off their own fireworks displays. Every side street and alleyway was full of people with bottle rockets and sparklers, and the roads were already littered with paper from the spent fireworks by 12:15. (One of our friends warned us that this paper litter would cover Berlin for three weeks after the holiday--the street sweepers just can't get it all fast enough.) All of these mini-explosions filled the air with a smoky haze and the popping and cracking sounds from thousands of fireworks. As we were rushing through the throngs and rockets, George and I began to feel as though there was a bizarre irony in the Berliners' celebrations. All these fireworks had the effect of making Berlin seem like a movie-set war zone, the cracking and popping sounded a bit like live ammunition and the smoky haze made everything appear as though the city were burning.

From the little I've read on the subject, I know that the firebombing of Berlin is still a relatively new topic for discussion in the philosophical, political, and journalistic circles of Germany. Only recently has there been any real address of the atrocities that affected the German citizens themselves during the Second World War (Sebald's work is especially interesting here). The irony to me was that this barrage of fireworks (more than I have ever seen anywhere!) appeared as though it were a subversion of collective history--as though the Germans, through their unbelievable display, were turning the atrocities of war into a communal celebration. I am not so bold as to claim that this sort of Freudian act was done consciously, or that the Germans are reliving their history with every fireworks display. I merely found it remarkable how like a war-zone the celebration became, and how, given my own limited understanding of the experience of war, the fireworks made me feel simultaneously nervous and celebratory.