Friday, February 19, 2010

Can You Handle the Truth?

After teaching this morning I took a moment to listen to Tiger Woods address the planet, not least because our course readings this term contemplate the timeless question of erotic desire. Woods's drama, in other words, is our drama, ancient and cruel.

Also, like the rest of the world, I'm a voyeur, and curious about other people's dirty laundry. (Yet another reason to salute the dignity of fiction: it ain't true; it ain't gossip.)

I must say that I found his speech fascinating. I loved its theatricality, its strategic (by which I mean intentional) futility, its enormous self-regard. I was delighted by the technological failure—exquisitely off-script—that forced us to watch its final minutes in profile, so that Wood's mother, and not Woods himself, became the center of the screen. And I was moved by his return to his mother's arms—the towering infant, back in the maternal sanctuary; and by her obvious love, which any son can imagine: limitless, permanent, unconditional.

But most of all, I realized watching him speak that I was witnessing an event that perfectly embodies the real ambition of middle-class American culture: to avoid the truth, at all cost.

No, I understate the case: the ambition of our culture is not merely to avoid the truth; it is to present the opposite of the truth as the truth.

That's what happened this morning.

I'll have more to say about this, perhaps (I hope!) in a long essay. I'll quickly note that my claim about the contemporary American culture's real goal applies to our current politics, our art (i.e., Avatar), our religions (which is really one religion, the religion of self-idolatry), and our heroes, like this morning's Tiger Woods.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

A Question for English 1B—and Anyone Else

Manhattan, written and directed by Woody Allen, is one of the great films in the history of American cinema. Its primary concern is the love affair between Isaac and Tracy, which runs into numerous obstacles, for a variety of reasons I won't bother to outline here, and appears, when we arrive at the scene below, doomed to fail.

The clip I've embedded is the famous scene near the end of the movie in which Isaac, confused by the emotional turmoil of his life, reclines on a couch and, speaking into a tape recorder, asks, "Why is life worth living?"

Consider the scene and his answer(s). Then I'd like you answer the same question, as if into your own microphone, in a comment below. Please model your response after Isaac's: Give your answer as a specific list, as he does, to what he correctly calls "a very good question."

Friday, February 5, 2010

The Sands of Time



World War II descends upon Ukraine.
"When one begins a picture one often discovers fine things. One ought to beware of these, destroy one's picture, recreate it many times. On each destruction of a beautiful find, the artist does not suppress it, to tell the truth; rather he transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. The issue is the result of rejected discoveries." — Pablo Picasso
Orson Welles said of Citizen Kane that the music was fifty percent responsible for the film's success. I'd put the figure north of fifty percent for this clip.