Artist Notes

The Decline of Summer Festivals: How the Nuclear Family, Globalisation of Food Production, and International Trade and Travel has changed our relationship with Nature

2024-09-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

Bonfire Night, St. John's Eve by Jack Butler Yeats (Ireland)

Traditional summer festivals have always revolved around the solstice and bonfires on the feast of St. John (24 June) in many countries. Maypole dancing was also an important aspect of some rural and agricultural summer events, and other summer festivals like Ferragosto (15 August), involved celebrating the early fruits of the harvest and resting after months of hard work. The summer solstice was seen as the height of the powers of the sun which has been observed since the Neolithic era as many ancient monuments throughout Eurasia and the Americas aligned with sunrise or sunset at this time. In the ancient Roman world, the traditional date of the summer solstice was 24 June, and "Marcus Terentius Varro wrote in the 1st century BCE that Romans saw this as the middle of summer."

Saint John's Fire with festivities in front of a Christian calvary shrine in Brittany, 1893

Ferragosto (Feriae Augusti ('Festivals [Holidays] of the Emperor Augustus') were celebrated in Roman times on August 1st "with horse racing, parties and lavish floral decorations. Inspired by the pagan festival for Conso [Consus], the Roman god of land and fertility." The pagan Italian deity, Consus, who was a partner of the goddess of abundance, Ops is believed to have come from condere (“to store away”), and so was probably the god of grain storage. The holiday of the Emperor Augustus was celebrated during the month of August with events based around the harvest and the end of agricultural work, and involved the rural community who were able to take a break from the back-breaking work of the previous weeks. In the 7th century, the Catholic Church in Italy adopted the holiday but changed the date of celebration from August 1st to August 15, to coincide with the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary so as "to impose a Christian ideology onto the pre-existing celebration".

Therefore, historically the midsummer festivities ranged from mid June to mid August as the strength of the sun went into decline and the fruits of the harvest were beginning to come in.

However, compared to the other seasonal festivals, such as Christmas, Easter, and Hallowen, which have a very strong presence in the media and in the shops, but not the summer festivals. Why is this? Except for commercial music and arts festivals, there are no major commercialised products associated with the historical summer agricultural and fertility rites. For example, Christmas's rebirth is associated with Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and the giving of presents. Easter's new life festival is celebrated with dyed eggs, chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies. Halloween's reminders of death and the departed are celebrated with 'trick or treating', pumpkins, and bonfires.

In all these cases the combination of commercialisation and tradition has seen reciprocal relationships as one feeds off the other. The globalised media and cinema indulge in the myths of each season creating updated versions of their traditions that result in new economic and cultural products, for example, the growing of pumpkins in Ireland to replace the original turnip lanterns that the Irish brought to the USA, or new movies based on new twists on the myths of Christmas. These aspects keep nature-based pagan festivals alive in the mind of the public throughout most of the year.

Not so with summer. In general there seems to be no particular object or tradition to exploit or commercialise, or at least not yet. There are various possible reasons.

The Feast of Saint John by Jules Breton (1875).

In the last 100 years or so we have seen a societal change from the community to the nuclear family. The general increase in wealth since the 1960s has resulted in mass international travel for summer holidays and tourism. The overall result of these changes in family, lifestyle, and the growth of non-agricultural occupations has seen people becoming more and more disconnected from the land and the agricultural traditions associated with farming and harvests. This was combined with the monopolisation and globalisation of agricultural production, and the international trade of agricultural goods.

Despite all of this, there are midsummer traditions that are persisting, although with a much lower profile than the other seasonal festivities.

What were the summer pagan traditions? Probably the strongest of the summer traditions is the bonfires of the feast of St. John. In the 13th century CE, a Christian monk of Lilleshall Abbey in England, wrote:

"In the worship of St John, men waken at even, and maken three manner of fires: one is clean bones and no wood, and is called a bonfire; another is of clean wood and no bones, and is called a wakefire, for men sitteth and wake by it; the third is made of bones and wood, and is called St John's Fire."

In Ireland, St John's Eve bonfires are still lit on hilltops in various parts of the country. According to Marion McGarry:

"Since the distant past, bonfires lit by humans at midsummer greeted the sun at the height of its powers in the sky. The accompanying ritual celebrations were primal, restorative, linked with fertility and growth. Midsummer and the time around St John's Day have been traditionally celebrated throughout Europe."

Midsummer festival bonfire (Mäntsälä, Finland)

The bonfires were associated with purification and luck. Every aspect of the fire was important and taken into account: the flames, the smoke, the hot embers, and even the ash:

"Jumping through the bonfire was a common custom. A farmer might do this to ensure a bigger yield for his crops or livestock, while engaged couples would jump together as a sort of pre-wedding purification ritual. Single people jumped through in the hope it would bring them a future spouse. Finally, the fire was raked over and any cattle not yet at the summer pasture were driven through the smouldering smoke and ashes to ensure good luck. The remaining ash was scattered over crops or could be mixed into building materials to encourage good luck in a building. The ash was considered curative too, and some mixed it with water and drank as medicine. Embers were brought into the house as protective talismans."

It was reported that John Millington Synge (playwright) and his friend, Jack B. Yeats (artist and illustrator) attended a St. John's Eve celebration on a visit to County Mayo, Ireland, in 1905. At first, "they had been saddened by the depressed state of the area, but then Synge is quoted as saying: "...the impression one gets of the whole life is not a gloomy one. Last night was St. John's Eve, and bonfires - a relic of Druidical rites - were lighted all over the country, the largest of all being in the town square of Belmullet, where a crowd of small boys shrieked and cheered and threw up firebrands for hours together." Yeats remembered a little girl in the crowd, in an ecstasy of pleasure and dread, clutching Synge by the hand and standing close in his shadow until the fiery games were over."

Bonfires were lit to honor the sun and to protect against evil spirits which were believed to roam freely when the sun was turning southward again. They were "both a celebration of and devotion to the natural world."

Maypoles were erected either in May or at midsummer as part of European festivals and usually involved dancing around the maypole by members of the community. It is not known exactly what the symbolism of dancing around the maypole is but most theories revolve around pagan ideas, e.g., Germanic reverence for sacred trees or as an ornament to bring good luck to the community. In England:

"the dance is performed by pairs of boys and girls (or men and women) who stand alternately around the base of the pole, each holding the end of a ribbon. They weave in and around each other, boys going one way and girls going the other and the ribbons are woven together around the pole until they meet at the base."

Dance around the Maypole by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 16th century

When the church authorities could not co-opt pagan festivals like Ferragosto they banned them. For example, Kupala Night is one of the major folk holidays of the Eastern Slavs that coincides with the Christian feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist and involved activities "such as gathering herbs and flowers and decorating people, animals, and houses with them; entering water, bathing, or dousing with water and sending garlands on water; lighting fires, dancing, singing, and jumping over fire; and hunting witches and scaring them away".

In medieval Russia, these rituals and games were considered demonic and the hegumen [head] Pamphil of the Yelizarov Convent (1505) wrote to the Pskov governor and authorities describing them thus in the Epistle of Pamphilus of Yelizarov Monastery:

"For when the feast day of the Nativity of Forerunner itself arrives, then on this holy night nearly the entire city runs riot and in the villages they are possessed by drums and flutes and by the strings of the guitars and by every type of unsuitable satanic music, with the clapping of hands and dances, and with the women and the maidens and with the movements of the heads and with the terrible cry from their mouths: all of those songs are devilish and obscene, and curving their backs and leaping and jumping up and down with their legs; and right there do men and youths suffer great temptation, right there do they leer lasciviously in the face of the insolence of the women and the maidens, and there even occurs depravation for married women and perversion for the maidens."

Couple jumping over a bonfire in Pyrohiv, Ukraine on Kupala Night.

In another commentary from Stoglav (chapter 92, a collection of decisions of the Stoglav Synod of 1551) it was written:

"And furthermore many of the children of Orthodox Christians, out of simple ignorance, engage in Hellenic devilish practices, a variety of games and clapping of hands in the cities and in the villages against the festivities of the Nativity of the Great John Prodome; and on the night of that same feast day and for the whole day until night-time, men and women and children in the houses and spread throughout the streets make a ruckus in the water with all types of games and much revelry and with satanic singing and dancing and gusli [ancient Russian instrument plucked in the style of a zither] and in many other unseemly manners and ways, and even in a state of drunkenness."

However, the importance of festive holidays lies in their value for reconnecting with family, friends and community. Michele L. Brennan examines the psychological aspects of traditional celebrations:

"Holiday traditions are essentially ritualistic behaviors that nurture us and our relationships. They are primal parts of us, which have survived since the dawn of man. Traditional celebrations of holidays has been around as long as recorded history. Holiday traditions are an important part to building a strong bond between family, and our community. They give us a sense of belonging and a way to express what is important to us. They connect us to our history and help us celebrate generations of family. Children crave the comfort and security that comes with traditions and predictability. This takes away the anxiety of the unknown and unpredictable."

Maypole dance during Victoria Day in Quebec, Canada, 24 May 1934

The seasonal festivals were based on the very real fear and anxiety of human survival, focussing on the means of sustenance: agricultural production. The vagaries of weather patterns meant that there was never any guarantee that fruits and crops would survive until successful harvesting.

While much of this anxiety was quelled by changes in the agricultural production methods of the twentieth century. However, now, in the twenty-first century, there is an ever growing recognition that modern agricultural systems are untenable, and that a new emphasis on alternative and sustainable food growing practices is essential:

"Increasingly, food growers around the world are recognizing that modern agricultural systems are unsustainable. Practices such as monocultures and excessive tilling degrade the soil and encourage pests and diseases. The artificial fertilizers and pesticides that farmers use to address these problems pollute the soil and water and harm the many organisms upon which successful agriculture depends, from pollinating bees and butterflies to the farm workers who plant, tend and harvest our crops. As the soil deteriorates, it is able to hold less water, causing farmers to strain already depleted water reservoirs."

However, this in contrast with technocratic elites who have a very different perspective on the future of food, as Colin Todhunter writes:

"It involves a shift towards a ‘one world agriculture’ under the control of agritech and the data giants, which is to be based on genetically engineered seeds, laboratory created products that resemble food, ‘precision’ and ‘data-driven’ agriculture and farming without farmers, with the entire agrifood chain, from field (or lab) to retail, being governed by monopolistic e-commerce platforms determined by artificial intelligence systems and algorithms."

While science and education has contributed to the changes in beliefs associated with ancient traditions revolving around purification and fertility, the psychological aspects of traditional holidays remain important. Furthermore, the growing awareness of the importance of good organic food is gradually competing with the monopolistic trends of globalist agritech.

The observance of traditional festivals, with their emphasis on nature and the annual cycle of seasonal changes focus attention on the here-and-now, on living according to our means and resources, and is a far cry from the teleological ideologies of patriarchal religion. The Christian church diverted people's attention away from a practical, scientific cosmology towards their own heroes and saints who provided individualistic examples of concern for one's own destiny after death and 'judgement' in the far future, as being more important than our present relationship with nature.

Over the centuries this process formed a gradual alienation of people away from nature itself, helped along now by the constant monopolisation of land, and the growth of agritech giants.

Dancing around the midsummer pole, Årsnäs in Sweden, 1969.

Instead of respecting the land, farmers use intensive farming to maximize yields, using more and more fertilizer and pesticides, depleting the nutrients of the soil and causing desertification to spread. When I was growing up, local annual horticultural festivals and competitions emphasised diversity, production over consumption, and quality food produced locally. Traditional festivals, with their focus on sun cycles and the seasons, complemented and structured our relationship with nature, as well as work and rest, life and death.

It is necessary to re-focus our attention back on this life, on how we plan to organise our basic sustenance into the future, and in a sustainable way, before others turn nature into a desert, a dust bowl of gigantic proportions, in their constant, remorseless drive to convert the earth into profit.

Becoming the Backdrop: The Oppression of Native Americans in Hollywood cinema, and 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

2024-08-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

Killers of the Flower Moon is a recent epic movie set in the 1920s examining a series of murders of members of the Osage Nation, who became wealthy when oil was found on their tribal land. The film is set in Oklahoma (Choctaw language phrase: okla, 'people', and humma, 'red') and depicts the story of a local political boss who was contriving to steal the Osage wealth. The film is long, with a running time of 206 minutes, and shows an ensemble cast of well-known actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, and Brendan Fraser.

It did well, grossing $157 million worldwide as well as receiving critical acclaim, with praise for Scorsese's direction, the screenplay, production values, editing, cinematography, musical score, and cast performances, especially DiCaprio, Gladstone, and De Niro. It was also nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture; seven Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, and with Gladstone winning Best Actress; nine British Academy Film Awards; and three SAG Awards, with Gladstone winning Best Actress."

The story revolves around Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) who comes to live with his brother and uncle William King Hale on Hale's reservation ranch after World War I. Hale is a reserve deputy sheriff and cattle rancher who poses as a friend of the Osage while at the same time secretly organising the killing of the Osage through multiple different means such as shooting, poisoning, and even blowing up a house. Ernest Burkhart marries Mollie Kyle, an Osage whose family owns oil headrights.

Lily Gladstone's portrayal of Mollie Burkhart garnered critical acclaim, earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress

Mollie decides to go to Washington and asks President Calvin Coolidge for help in solving the murders. Bureau of Investigation (the eventual FBI) Agent Thomas Bruce White Sr. and his assistants are sent to Oklahoma to find out who is behind the murders. White finds out the truth and persuades Ernest to confess his involvement and testify against his uncle Hale. Hale and Ernest are sentenced to life imprisonment but both were paroled after years of incarceration, despite Osage protests to the parole board.

Killers of the Flower Moon has themes which differ from traditional Westerns in that the 'cowboys' are focused on oil production and resent the community that owns the rights to oilfields. It is also different in that law and order is controlled not by the local sheriff [who is corrupt in this case] but by the federal state who sends in its agents to find out what is going on. This twentieth century concept of the developing power of the state taking over from the nineteenth century local power of the sheriff is only the start. The newly developed FBI launches into containing local criminality with all the power and forces of the federal state. The FBI went on to be involved in the capture and deaths of numerous infamous mobsters of the day, including John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly.

The Osage case is also depicted in the 1959 American crime drama film, The FBI Story, showing how the FBI developed from a detective agency to an enforcement agency with the statutory authority to carry guns and make arrests:

The FBI was compelled to investigate after one of the [Osage] murders was committed on federal government land. The FBI forensics laboratory ties the doctored wills and life insurance policies of the murder victims to a local banker, Dwight McCutcheon, with the typewriter that he used.

Native Americans and Hollywood cinema

In Killers of the Flower Moon Martin Scorsese had originally intended that Leonardo DiCaprio would play the FBI agent who solves the crimes. However screenwriter Eric Roth began to fear the story underplayed the experience of the Osage people and repeated tired tropes. "We didn't want to go much further with this Great White Hope saving Native Americans," says Roth. This fear of stereotyping led to Scorsese meeting with members of the Osage community in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, including Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear, the principal chief of the Osage Nation.

Hollywood has had a long history of depicting Native Americans in cinema. The Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond covers a century of the portrayal of North American Natives in his documentary Reel Injun:

Reel Injun explores the various stereotypes about Natives in film, from the noble savage to the drunken Indian. It profiles such figures as Iron Eyes Cody, an Italian American who reinvented himself as a Native American on screen. The film also explores Hollywood's practice of using Italian Americans and American Jews to portray Indians in the movies and reveals how some Native American actors made jokes in their native tongue on screen when the director thought they were simply speaking gibberish.

Reel Injun film poster

Scorsese was obviously aware that to be taken seriously today he would have to involve the Osage Nation in the making of this film. This story involved an extraordinary situation for Native Americans anywhere in North America, as the Osage directly benefited from the natural resources of their territory.

"I was anxious," Scorsese says. "I knew that if I could not gain their trust, then there's no sense in making the film. As a European American, a Sicilian American, I may have natural limitations, and I hoped that they would forgive that. But they had to know it was coming from the right place and not a surface revisionism, which is simplistic. I wanted something really, really complex that deals with humanity." [...] "One of the people in the room said, 'You have to be very careful. You're putting words in the mouths of people that ... These are real people to us. They're part of our families.' "

The depiction of the Native Americans from the early cinematic beginnings emphasised violence, vacillating from violence to be admired to violence to be feared, depending on the ideological needs of each decade in the twentieth century. When America was under internal or external threat then the violence of the 'Injun' was to be feared. When America needed a strong identity, a powerful role model of the fearless warrior, then the Native American was to be admired. In either case the violence provides catharsis for the colonising power. Even though it is the Native Americans that are being depicted, their needs are secondary.

Many white actors played Native American roles and had no concern for Native American opinions about their roles. "White people playing native roles? I love it, 'cos it's funny!" says Cheyenne/Arapaho filmmaker, Chris Eyre, in Reel Injun. Native Americans were played by Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, Burt Reynolds, Elvis Presley, Boris Karloff, Anthony Quinn, Chuck Connors, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sylvester Stallone, Pierce Brosnan, Johnny Depp and others.

In Smoke Signals, a 1998 coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Chris Eyre, there is an awareness of the Romanticist portrayal of the Native American as a hero for white audiences. Similarly, white heroes were seen as belonging to the colonial cultural mindset. In Smoke Signals, Thomas Builds-the-Fire argues: "Nobody can help us. No Superman. No Batman. No Wonder Woman. Not even Charles Bronson, man." (Reel Injun)

Smoke Signals film poster

Killers of the Flower Moon tells a Native American story and is even populated with Osage actors - yet it is still a white man's story, paid for and dominated by, white actors. While it is difficult for any group to tell their story, especially in an expensive medium like cinema, it is even more difficult to imagine the dominant group/oppressor telling your story. Can we expect the British to make radical films about Irish uprisings against British rule? Can we expect the Israelis to make films about the Palestinian struggle against settler land grabs?

This is not to say it is impossible, or to object to others telling the stories. Two of the best movies made about recent Irish history were made by British directors: The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) by Ken Loach and Hunger (2008) by Steve McQueen, covering the Irish War of Independence and the 1980s Hunger Strikes respectively. However, ultimately the victims are the best to tell their own stories, for nuance and perspective on the oppressor. This is arguably because the oppressor ultimately always makes the story about themselves, trying to deal with their past shame - assuming, of course, that their narrative is sympathetic to the victims and not the oppressors.

The missing analysis of structural oppression

However, the feeling of being a helpless bystander persists. As Jesse Wente, a Ojibway film critic, remarks about Dances with Wolves (1990), one of the most successful films about the American West:

The natives were fleshed out as characters, allowed to be seen as more complete people. They weren't just warriors; they weren't just peaceful. There was a very sensitive and sympathetic approach. It doesn't erase the fact that at it's core the film is not a native movie. It is still a movie made from the outside of us and it's about us and is meant to be sympathetic towards us. But, it isn't us. It's a story about a white guy. And, Indians are the T and A, but it gets promoted as being about native people or Indians, but it's not, really. We're just backdrop. (Reel Injun)

What is missing is an analysis of structural oppression that exists in economic, legal and social forms in society and the ways in which people experience oppressive conditions in their daily lives. That oppression is defined as structures of domination and oppression that gives other groups the power to determine one's actions. Thus,

Individuals experience oppressive conditions because they are part of a group that is defined on the basis of shared characteristics such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, age, ability, etc. These major social groups have specific attributes, stereotypes and norms associated with them.

In 'Five Faces of Oppression', Iris Young discusses five types of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Under the heading of Exploitation, Young discusses the question of the ownership of the means of production and the necessity for labour power. If you are the owner you gain from the profit generated from the production. In the case of the Osage they gained royalties from oil licensing not from oil extraction which required ownership of the equipment to do so. Therefore they received a small portion of the profits accrued.

In terms of Marginalization, Native Americans on reservations are marginalized by high unemployment rates and limited opportunities to develop marketable skills.

Under the heading of Powerlessness, different types of jobs confer levels of status on their employees. When we combine status with class, "most people of color have to prove their social respectability –– it is not assumed or automatically granted."

Under Cultural Imperialism "cultural dominance refers to the way that one group's experiences, cultural expressions and history are defined as superior to all other groups' experiences and histories." In this narrative of the 'helpless' Osage community the dominant view of justice is to find out who is doing the killing, which in turn, justifies the 'universalist' idea that one is living in a community that 'cares'.

The last heading, Violence, covers two types of structural violence: state-sanctioned racial segregation backed up by violence, and the range of violent tactics used against the Osage that is based on knowledge power controlled by elites, for example, new medicines and explosives.

In this way we can see how institutions and those with power work together with individual attitudes rooted in white privilege, patriarchy, and capitalism to keep the working class poor, while at the same time, allow the wealthy to maintain and increase their capital accumulation.

The people's own social and cultural movements towards freedom

These issues will never be resolved within a system and ideology that only discusses distributive issues and never discusses such basic fundamentals as the ownership and control of the means of production. This is where the transition in thinking from capitalist ideology to socialist ideology becomes essential.

In the meantime, films like Killers of the Flower Moon are a step in the right direction in that the involvement of groups on the margins in major cinematic productions encourages confidence and desire to see more. The possibility of a cinema that not only looks at marginalised histories but also writes into the narrative a demonstration of the structural aspects of oppression is always potentially on the horizon, especially as the means of production in cinema become cheaper to obtain and use, and more accessible to ordinary people.

As Killers of the Flower Moon depicts a Native American story and uses Native American actors, it could and should inspire Native Americans to make their own independent films that include a structural analysis. I don't think we can ever expect Hollywood to make such films, as the American neocon and militarised state is so embedded in the Hollywood system. In the end, a new cinema will have to arise from the people's own social and cultural movements towards freedom, filling a vacuum created by the contrast between Hollywood fantasy and stark social realities.

Although in the Native American, Irish, and Palestinian stories, failures were more common than successes, the depiction of struggle is always profound no matter what era the story is set in. The difficulties, the hardships, the bravery, the resistance is always inspiring.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer.

Authoritarian Ireland and the Secular Apocalypse

2024-07-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

Book Review of Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Prophet Song: The Secular Apocalypse

In his book, How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, Thomas Cahill shows how the Irish monks maintained European culture during the dark ages when Rome was sacked by Visigoths and its empire collapsed. In the subsequent chaos and illiteracy, symbolism took over from analysis. Cahill writes:

"The intellectual disciplines of distinction, definition, and dialectic that had once been the glory of men like Augustine were unobtainable by readers of the Dark Ages, whose apprehension of the world was simple and immediate, framed by myth and magic. A man no longer subordinated one thought to another with mathematical precision; instead, he apprehended similarities and balances, types and paradigms, parallels and symbols. It was a world not of thoughts, but images. Even the "Romans" at Whitby presented their point of view in the new way. They did not argue, for genuine intellectual disputation was beyond them. They held up pictures for the mind - one set of bones versus another." (p204)

One thousand years later as the symbolism of the Dark ages and medievalism waned, a new movement arose to replace it: Romanticism. In the Romanticist outlook, passion and intuition determined our understanding of the world combined with themes of isolation and loneliness, and a delight in horror and threat. Beauty became about strong emotional responses and not about form. The Romanticists rejected Enlightenment Era artists who, like the Irish monks, were interested in ideas and thoughts, and who used them to depict and critique social relations.

The Romanticist delight in isolation, loneliness, horror, and threat has become the dominating force in most of modern culture. The rise of Social Realism (art that depicts and critiques social relations) thus far, has been local and brief, yet glorious.

Dockers (1934) by Maurice MacGonigal

Unfortunately, Romanticism is a movement that is not only dominant in the production of culture but is also favoured by the institutions of commendation. One such institution is the Booker Prize for literature, and a good example is the 2023 winner, Prophet Song, a dystopian novel by the Irish author Paul Lynch:

"The novel depicts the struggles of the Stack family, including Eilish Stack, a mother of four who is trying to save her family as the Republic of Ireland slips into totalitarianism. The narrative is told unconventionally, with no paragraph breaks."

As we always love to reference James Joyce here in Ireland, we could argue that this paragraphless state of Prophet Song is influenced by the Molly Bloom soliloquy at the end of Ulysses, which was radical for its time in having no punctuation. (Indeed, Eilish Stack's daughter is called Molly).

Furthermore the style of Prophet Song, in general, is similar to Molly Bloom's stream of consciousness in that we get, merged together, Eilish's thoughts, worries and utterances.

Throughout the novel we also get, in a staccato rhythm, brief descriptions of the coercive actions of the state as it faces the growing opposition of a resistance movement that strengthens and spreads countrywide.

Communicating With Prisoners (1924) by Jack Butler Yeats (1871–1957)

From the off, the dark terror commences with knocking at her door which reveals two men 'almost faceless in the dark'(p1). The increasingly fascisitic Irish state is shown through the imprisonment of her trades' union husband (p29), an Emergency Powers Act (p53), government controls on judiciary (p58), national service (p73), unmarked cars pulling up silently (p76), foreign media internet blackout (p175), and the government closing the schools (p183).

The rebels, on the other hand, are really not that much different. And this is the crux of the issue. There has always been a large gap between the Romantic heroes and working class heroes. In Romanticism the 'resistance' or 'rebels' are often 'rejected by society' with various combinations of introspection, wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation, and isolation.

And even though "the worm is turning" (p147), and the armed insurrection growing (p130) the violence is abstracted into terrorism (p160), and Eilish "is overcome by loathing, seeing not men but shadows parading the day born from darkness, seeing how they have made an end of death by meeting it with death" (p202). The two opposing forces meld into one in the confusion as Eilish encounters "one checkpoint after another" with "different faces speaking the same commands" (p283). Her escape from the mystical terror across the border into the unknown dark countryside to the sea could have come directly from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's (1749–1832) The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). Goethe wrote: “From the forbidding mountain range across the barren plain untrodden by the foot of man, to the end of the unknown seas, the spirit of the Eternal Creator can be felt rejoicing over every grain of dust”, emphasising the fearful, the mysterious and the unsure.

We live in stark, dark times, surrounded by media that is saturated with the Romanticist gloop of horror, terror, fantasy, science fiction, romantic egoism, etc., that threatens to slow society down and trap us into infinite and endless imagination to the detriment of any progressive forms of social consciousness and societal change.

Yet in the language of the Prophet Song there are many connotations of Ireland's centuries long struggle against British Imperialism and colonialism: Ireland's War of Independence, the war against the might of the British Empire in the description of the military men on horses (p190), state forces moving in on college green (the scene of rebellions going back to the 19th century) (p94), cycling before the curfew, crossing the border (p112), the harp emblem (p123), a stage set up at the old parliament (now the Bank of Ireland HQ) against emergency powers and calling "for all political prisoners to be released" (p87). However, Prophet Song is not about a popular rising continuing on from Ireland's tradition of radical opposition to authoritarian state forces.

The Apocalypse tradition: Karl Bryullov, The Last Day of Pompeii, 1833, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

It is in the Romanticist tradition of a powerful figure (the Prophet) who cries for the lack of love and compassion in the world and, in the apocalyptic tradition, calls for people to change their ways to avoid the wrath of God and the end of the world. The secular version, the postmodernist 'End of History' thesis leaves no hope for those who do not benefit from neoliberalism. The Romanticist escape to Utopia, the remote, the exotic, and the unknown, is in stark contrast with the real lives of past leaders and activists of collectivist and communitarian movements who suffered, struggled, and died for real social change.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Spring Traditions and Celebrations: The Past, The Present and the Future of Farming.

2024-04-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Introduction

Eleanor Parker writes in her book, Winters in the World, that "in Anglo-Saxon poetry winter is often imagined as a season when the earth and human beings are imprisoned, kept captive by the 'fetters of the frost'. Naturally enough, then, spring is associated with images of liberation and freedom once those fetters are released." (p. 93) Even the title of the book, Winters in the World, described one's age, e.g. I have 30 winters in the world, a recognition of the harshness of the winters which one had survived.

Historically, the transition from winter to spring was symbolised by many traditions that reflected the end of difficult times and the coming of the new season of growth and rebirth. These traditions ranged from the celebration of vegetation deities through fertility rites, and the public rituals associated with Carnival/Fat Tuesday (February/March), Lent (February/March), Easter (fires/eggs/hares) (March/ April) and Rogation Days (April). Many rituals were taken over by the Christian church and given new meanings which themselves are now being secularised.

However, since the development of industrial farming in the early twentieth century, the connection between local farming and spring rituals associated with the land have declined and taken on a commercialised aspect separated from nature. We can see this with Carnival and Easter, while Lent fasting is not practised so much anymore.

This is not to say that the ending of the underlying reasons for carnival and the fasting of Lent, i.e. the finishing up of winter stocks and the privation until new crops grew, is such a bad thing, but our dependence on the current global system of industrial farming is worrying at a time when climate change is affecting food production around the world.

This change is also partly due to unsustainable agricultural methods that are negatively affecting our ability to farm in the future, for example, the spread of desertification, whereby fertile areas become arid due to the overexploitation of soil.

Furthermore, supermarkets packed to the gills with produce from all over the world deflects our attention from looming disasters. In Ireland we know the difference between famine (widespread scarcity of food) and hunger (in Irish Gaelic, An Gorta Mór, the great hunger) ... 'when a country is full of food and exporting it'.

Moreover, governmental measures to deal with land issues may be too little too late, or ineffective, as new laws are simply ignored by vested interests.

The Past

Vegetation Deities and Fertility Rites
From earliest times our relationship with nature had an element of awe and respect that resulted in the belief in vegetation deities "whose disappearance and reappearance, or life, death and rebirth, embodies the growth cycle of plants." Many vegetation deities were also considered fertility deities, that is, "a god or goddess associated with fertility, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and crops."

In Mesopotamian culture (dating back to the mid-4th millennium BCE) religion "involved the worship of forces of nature as providers of sustenance" and which later became personified as a range of gods with different functions. Natural phenomena in nature were seen to be directed by nature spirits, thus:

"A nature deity can be in charge of nature, a place, a biotope, the biosphere, the cosmos, or the universe. Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can be found in pantheism, panentheism, deism, polytheism, animism, Taoism, totemism, Hinduism, shamanism, some theism and paganism".

In some cases the gods die and later return to life, particularly in religions of the ancient Near East. These dying-and-rising, death-rebirth, or resurrection deities are associated with the seasons as allegories of the death of nature and the rebirth of nature during spring, for example, Osiris, the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion, and Persephone in Greece, the goddess of spring and nature whose return from the underworld each spring is a symbol of her immortality.

Persephone, Queen of the underworld, Goddess of spring, the dead, the underworld, grain, and nature
Statue of syncretic Persephone-Isis with a sistrum. Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete

Similarly, many later Roman gods and goddesses were the subjects of fertility rites and celebrations. The festival of Liberalia was held on the 17th March to celebrate the spring growth. Liber was one of the original Roman gods. A favourite of the plebeians, he was the god of fertility and wine. His festival, the Liberalia, was an occasion to mark the return of life:

"The celebration was meant to honor Liber Pater, an ancient god of fertility and wine (like Bacchus, the Roman version of the Greek god Dionysus). Liber Pater was also a vegetation god, responsible for protecting seed. Again like Dionysus, he had female priestesses, but Liber's were older women known as Sacerdos Liberi. Wearing wreaths of ivy, they made special cakes, or libia, of oil and honey which passing devotees would have them sacrifice on their behalf. Over time this feast evolved and included the goddess Libera, and the feast divided so that Liber governed the male seed and Libera the female."

The Present

Carnival / Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) (February / March)
Of all the ancient festivals that survived into current times Carnival is probably the most prominent. Winter spirits have been forced out to make way for the new season since antiquity. Carnival symbolised this transition from winter to summer and darkness to light. The carnival was a feast whereby ordinary people feasted on the last of the winter stocks before they rotted. This in turn created the obligatory restraint and fasting until new produce was available. The Christian festival consists of Quinquagesima or Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). Therefore:

"Carnival typically involves public celebrations, including events such as parades, public street parties and other entertainments, combining some elements of a circus. Elaborate costumes and masks allow people to set aside their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Participants often indulge in excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods that will be forgone during upcoming Lent."

Carnival in Rome, c. 1650

The phrase 'Shrove Tuesday' comes from 'shrive' to be absolved of one's sins and therefore shriven before the start of Lent. It is also the last day of the Christian liturgical season which in French is known as Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) the last night of eating well before the ritual fasting beginning on the next day, Ash Wednesday.

Lent (February / March)
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts around six weeks. In this Christian religious observance, (according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke) Jesus Christ spent 40 days fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan. The word Lent comes from the lengthening days of spring and is considered a period of grief which ends with the celebrations of Easter.

Lent observers, including a confraternity of penitents, carrying out a street procession during Holy Week, in Granada, Nicaragua. The violet color is often associated with penance and detachment. Similar Christian penitential practice is seen in other Christian countries, sometimes associated with fasting.

Easter (March / April)
Easter is derived from pagan customs that celebrated the victory of Spring over Winter. They lit fires that helped to accelerate the end of Winter and spread the ashes over the fields to help fertilise the soil in fertility rites. Easter bonfires "have been a tradition in Germany since the 11 century. The Christians adopted the pagan custom and reinterpreted it. The fire was now seen as the light of Jesus, reminding people of the life and resurrection of Christ." The Christian festival commemorates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead after his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary c. 30 AD. Easter is also called Pascha (Aramaic, Greek, Latin) or Resurrection Sunday.

Other cultural traditions associated with Easter include Easter parades, communal dancing (Eastern Europe), the Easter Bunny and egg hunting. It is likely that the eggs and the prodigious reproduction of rabbits and hares led to their depiction as symbols of fertility.

Rogation Days (April)
Rogation Days follow some weeks after Easter when processions are formed to to pray or beseech (Latin 'rogare') God for protection from from natural disasters such as hailstorms, floods, and droughts and to ask to ask for blessings on the fields. Rogation processions started at a very early date in order to counteract the Roman Robigalia processions that the pagans made in honor of their gods:

"The Robigalia was a festival in ancient Roman religion held April 25, named for the god Robigus. Its main ritual was a dog sacrifice to protect grain fields from disease. Games (ludi) in the form of "major and minor" races were held. The Robigalia was one of several agricultural festivals in April to celebrate and vitalize the growing season, but the darker sacrificial elements of these occasions are also fraught with anxiety about crop failure and the dependence on divine favor to avert it."

Blessing the Fields on Rogation Sunday at Hever, Kent in 1967

As can be seen in these regular prayers, blessings, and processions throughout the Spring season, the anxiety of the people regarding their crops shows a deep understanding of the vagaries of nature and an awareness of their lives dependence on the health of their cultivation work.

The Future

Industrial Farming
By the early twentieth century agriculture started to change due to new developments that brought in the era of industrial farming. Previously a wide variety of foods were produced by many small farms. However, that was all about to change as modern science was applied to various aspects of farming:

"In 1909, a scientific breakthrough by German chemist Fritz Haber—the "father of chemical warfare"—enabled the large-scale production of fertilizer (and explosives), igniting the industrialization of farming. Synthetic fertilizers, along with the development of chemical pesticides, allowed farmers to increase their crop yields (and their profits). Farmers began specializing in fewer crops, namely corn and soy, grown to feed farmed animals. Chickens became the first factory farmed animal when a farmer decided to try to raise ten times as many birds in a chicken house that was only built for 50. Other farmers followed suit."

Thus followed the new era of industrial farming. The effect of mass production led to the use of antibiotics, selective breeding to increase the size of farm animals, and the mechanisation of slaughter houses.

These developments led to the collapse of the many small farmers who could not compete with farming on an industrial scale. For example, now in the USA "small independent and family-run farms use only 8% of all agricultural land. In just under a century, and especially since the 1960s, agriculture has become dominated by large-scale multinational corporations. Driven by profit, these food giants rely on practices that, by design, exploit and abuse animals, destroy natural habitats, and generate pollution".

The harvest of seed corn in Iowa

In more recent decades industrialisation has led to more innovations in "agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade."

This type of intensive farming has a low fallow ratio, and a high level of agrochemicals and water, producing higher crop yields per unit land area. Most of the meat, dairy products, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced by such farms.

Costs to the Environment
Despite the current massive production of food globally, industrialized farming has costs that do not augur well for the future. It has been noted that intensive farming pollutes air and water (through the release of manure, chemicals, antibiotics, and growth hormones), destroys wildlife, facilitates the spread of viruses from animals to humans, fosters antimicrobial resistance, and is linked to epidemics of obesity and chronic disease, through the production of a wide variety of inexpensive, calorie-dense and widely available foods.

Regenerative Agriculture
The increasing awareness of the types of problems that intensive farming could be leading us to in the future is turning some farmers back to more traditional methods of farming. Regenerative agriculture focuses on "topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil." Regenerative agriculture also includes different philosophies of farming such as permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, restoration ecology, crop rotation, and uses "no-till" and/or "reduced till" practices often described as sustainable farming.

Nature Restoration and Practice
The negative aspects of industrial farming have come to the notice of governmental bodies such as the EU parliament which has adopted a law to restore habitats and degraded ecosystems in all member states. It notes that "over 80% of European habitats are in poor shape" and "sets a target for the EU to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030 and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050."

However, resistance to positive changes and procrastination deal serious blows to good intentions. The recent referral of Ireland to the EU Court of Justice for failing to halt the continued cutting of peat in areas designated to conserve raised bogs and blanket bogs is a good example. The infringement is one of the longest running infringement cases in Europe, having begun in 2010.

Conclusion
Our long running relationship with nature has benefited from science in the form of the production of plentiful food on a global scale. Yet our deep respect for nature in the past was partly due to our lack of understanding of the processes of biology which led to much anxiety and fear of starvation. All of the polytheistic and monotheistic debates over the influence of gods and goddesses or God have been replaced by scientific processes, but no less anxiety about the future of farming. Farming has always been reliant on predictability as plants are very sensitive to sudden climatic changes such as drought or frost, which can destroy a crop overnight (unseasonal frost) or slowly (extreme drought). Such incidences of crop failures are sporadic if examined on a global scale, but if these incidences multiply rapidly then we will see food price rises and their disastrous social consequences. A new respect for nature is called for that echoes down the centuries when those that did not heed the warnings witnessed the collapse of civilisations.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

Power Ballads: Don't catch you slippin' up!

2024-02-20T15:09:00.000-08:00

Of all art forms the ballad has the benefit of expediency. From event, to composition, to broadcast: no art form can compete with the efficacy and proliferation of a good song. The reach and emotional impact of a ballad, "a form of verse, often a narrative set to music" allows for any event affecting individuals or groups, to rapidly become popularised and understood globally. While historically ballads tended to be sentimental, their descendant, the protest song, sits alongside modern ballads with ease.

While both the ballad and the protest song can have as their basis socio/political narratives, their differences are more in the formal qualities of tempo. Ballads still tend to be slower than protest songs, but conveying in emotion what they lose in excitement.

While the ballad may satisfy with its unhurried melody and storytelling, the protest song has an immediacy of lyric and beat that gives vocal power to mass events like concerts and demonstrations.

History of the ballad

Ballads have a long history in European culture.They started out as the "medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally 'dance songs'. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America." In the nineteenth century they were associated with sentimentality which led to the word ballad "being used for slow love songs from the 1950s onwards."

In Ireland ballads have been a very important part of the nationalist struggle against British colonialism since the seventeenth century. They reached the zenith of their popularity in the 1960s with the Dubliners, and the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Ballad folk groups are still in demand today in Europe and the USA.

Billie Holiday, 'Strange Fruit' (1939)

Ballads tend to have a slower tempo that allow the audience to experience the nuances of the lyrics. An early and powerful example of this is 'Strange Fruit', a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan) and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. A ballad and a protest song, 'Strange Fruit' "protests the lynching of Black Americans with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the Southern United States at the turn of the 20th century and the great majority of victims were black." 'Strange Fruit' has been described as call for freedom and is seen as an important initiator of the civil rights movement. The lyrics are full of horror and bitter irony:

"Southern trees
Bearing strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
And blood at the roots
Black bodies
Swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hangin'
From the poplar trees
Pastoral scene
Of the gallant south"

Woodie Guthrie, 'Dust Bowl Ballads' (1940)

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912–1967) was an American singer-songwriter and composer who was one of the most important figures in American folk music. His songs focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. As a young man he migrated to California to look for work and his experiences of the conditions faced by working class people led him to produce Dust Bowl Ballads is an album of songs grouped around the theme of the Dust Bowl storms that destroyed crops and intensified the economic impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s. 'Dust Bowl Ballads' is thought to be one of the earliest concept albums.

The songs lyrics tell of the storms and their apocalyptic affect on the local farmers:

"On the 14th day of April of 1935
There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky
You could see that dust storm comin', the cloud looked deathlike black
And through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track

From Oklahoma City to the Arizona line
Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy Rio Grande
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down
We thought it was our judgement, we thought it was our doom

[...]

The storm took place at sundown, it lasted through the night
When we looked out next morning, we saw a terrible sight
We saw outside our window where wheat fields they had grown
Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown"

Pete Seeger, 'We Shall Overcome' (1967)

Peter Seeger (1919–2014) was a popular American folk singer who was regularly heard on the radio in the 1940s, and in the early 1950s he had a string of hit records as a member of The Weavers some of whom were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger became "a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes."

'We Shall Overcome' is believed to have originated as a gospel song known as 'I'll Overcome Some Day'. In 1959, the song began to be associated with the civil rights movement as a protest song, with Seeger's version focusing on nonviolent civil rights activism. It became popular all over the world in many types of protest activities.

The song is a very understated (both musically and lyrically) declaration of protest and unity in the face of oppression:

"We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day"

Special A.K.A., 'Free Nelson Mandela' (1984)

In contrast, the lively anti-apartheid song 'Free Nelson Mandela' written by British musician Jerry Dammers, and performed by the band the Special A.K.A. was a hugely popular song in 1984 that led to the global awareness of the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela by the apartheid South African government:

"Free Nelson Mandela
Twenty-one years in captivity
Shoes too small to fit his feet
His body abused but his mind is still free
Are you so blind that you cannot see?
I said free Nelson Mandela"

Rage Against The Machine, 'Sleep Now in the Fire' (1999)

Rage Against the Machine was an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, "the group consisted of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello, and drummer Brad Wilk."

The video for 'Sleep Now in the Fire' turned a protest song into an actual protest when the band played on Wall Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange:

"The music video for the song, which was directed by Michael Moore with cinematography by Welles Hackett, features the band playing in front of the New York Stock Exchange, intercut with scenes from a satire of the popular television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? which is named Who Wants To Be Filthy Fucking Rich. [...] The video starts by saying that on January 24, 2000, the NYSE announced record profits and layoffs, and on the next day New York mayor Rudy Giuliani decreed that Rage Against the Machine "shall not play on Wall Street". The shoot for the music video on January 26, 2000 caused the doors of the New York Stock Exchange to be closed."

The lyrics are spartan, yet cover many topics: bible-belt conservatism, the corrupting aspects of wealth, and its connection with right-wing politics. The second verse gives a potted history of the USA: 'I am the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria' (Columbus' three ships), 'The noose and the rapist, the fields overseer' (the slave system), The agents of orange (the Vietnam war), The priests of Hiroshima' (Oppenheimer's fascination with mysticism). Any shorter and these lines could almost be described as a haiku embedded within the song. The third verse deals with the future: 'For it's the end of history, It's caged and frozen still, There is no other pill to take, So swallow the one That makes you ill' referencing Francis Fukuyama's argument "that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and political struggle and become the final form of human government", caged because there is no alternative, and will continue this way (of making us 'ill') without any viable socio/political alternative vision:

"The world is my expense
The cost of my desire
Jesus blessed me with its future
And I protect it with fire
So raise your fists and march around
Dont dare take what you need
I'll jail and bury those committed
And smother the rest in greed
Crawl with me into tomorrow
Or i'll drag you to your grave
I'm deep inside your children
They'll betray you in my name

Hey!
Hey!
Sleep now in the fire

The lie is my expense
The scope with my desire
The party blessed me with its future
And i protect it with fire
I am the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria
The noose and the rapist, the fields overseer
The agents of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of my desire
Sleep now in the fire

For it's the end of history
It's caged and frozen still
There is no other pill to take
So swallow the one
That makes you ill
The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria
The noose and the rapist, the fields' overseer
The agents of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of my desire
Sleep now in the fire."

Bill Callahan, 'America!' (2011)

In Bill Callahan's (born 1966) song and video 'America!' he contrasts the symbols and perception of America globally with its darker past. He mentions legendary American songwriters and performers Mickey Newbury, Kris Kristofferson, George Jones and Johnny Cash and their past roles in the army, showing the deep connection between culture and the military in the USA. Callahan lists countries where the USA has been: Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iran, and ends with Native America, turning its colonialism and imperialism back on itself. There is also an oblique reference to the system of haves and have-nots (Others lucky suckle teat) ending with the slight change 'Ain’t enough to eat' emphasizing the growing poverty in the richest country on earth:

"America!
You are so grand and golden
Oh I wish I was deep in America tonight

America!
America!
I watch David Letterman in Australia
America!
You are so grand and golden
I wish I was on the next flight
To America!

Captain Kristofferson!
Buck Sergeant Newbury!
Leatherneck Jones!
Sergeant Cash!
What an Army!
What an Air Force!
What a Marines!
America!
[Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iran, Native America]
Well, everyone's allowed a past
They don't care to mention

Well, it's hard to rouse a hog in Delta
And it can get tense around the Bible Belt
Others lucky suckle teat
Others lucky suckle teat

America!"

Childish Gambino, 'This Is America' (2018)

In his video, 'This Is America', Childish Gambino (Donald Glover, born 1983) shocked his viewers, who were not used to seeing the cinematic realism of gun violence in a music video. Gambino focuses more on the present than the past, while using cars from the 1990s probably as a symbol of poverty. The violence and drugs scene behind pleasure-seeking party-goers is emphasised with an execution at the start and followed up by a mass murder of a gospel choir. His demeanor constantly changes very suddenly, from dancing one moment, to exhorting his clients another, then cold-blooded killing, yet despite it all, running for his life in the end as his life style catches up with him:

"We just wanna party
Party just for you
We just want the money
Money just for you
I know you wanna party
Party just for me
Girl, you got me dancin' (yeah, girl, you got me dancin')
Dance and shake the frame
We just wanna party (yeah)
Party just for you (yeah)
We just want the money (yeah)
Money just for you (you)
I know you wanna party (yeah)
Party just for me (yeah)
Girl, you got me dancin' (yeah, girl, you got me dancin')
Dance and shake the frame (you)

This is America
Don't catch you slippin' up
Don't catch you slippin' up
Look what I'm whippin' up
This is America (woo)
Don't catch you slippin' up
Don't catch you slippin' up
Look what I'm whippin' up"

Bob Dylan, 'Murder Most Foul' (2020)

In 2020, Bob Dylan (born 1941) released this seventeen-minute track, "Murder Most Foul", on his YouTube channel, based on the assassination of President Kennedy. It is a long, slow ballad that intertwines culture and politics, contrasting the optimism of the one with the stark brutality of the other. It is the poetry of America re-examing its past at its best, the detail and condemnation in its lyrics reflecting a political undercurrent that refuses to accept modern myths, a murder 'most foul':

"It was a dark day in Dallas, November '63
A day that will live on in infamy
President Kennedy was a-ridin' high
Good day to be livin' and a good day to die
Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb
He said, "Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am?"
"Of course we do, we know who you are!"
Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car
Shot down like a dog in broad daylight
Was a matter of timing and the timing was right
You got unpaid debts, we've come to collect
We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect
We'll mock you and shock you and we'll put it in your face
We've already got someone here to take your place
The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone's eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done
Wolfman, oh Wolfman, oh Wolfman, howl
Rub-a-dub-dub, it's a murder most foul

[...]

Don't worry, Mr. President, help's on the way
Your brothers are comin', there'll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What's this about hell?
Tell them, "We're waiting, keep coming," we'll get them as well
Love Field is where his plane touched down
But it never did get back up off the ground
Was a hard act to follow, second to none
They killed him on the altar of the rising sun
Play "Misty" for me and "That Old Devil Moon"
Play "Anything Goes" and "Memphis in June"
Play "Lonely at the Top" and "Lonely Are the Brave"
Play it for Houdini spinning around in his grave
Play Jelly Roll Morton, play "Lucille"
Play "Deep in a Dream", and play "Driving Wheel"
Play "Moonlight Sonata" in F-sharp
And "A Key to the Highway" for the king of the harp
Play "Marching Through Georgia" and "Dumbarton's Drums"
Play darkness and death will come when it comes
Play "Love Me or Leave Me" by the great Bud Powell
Play "The Blood-Stained Banner", play "Murder Most Foul""

Hope for the future ...

These songs show us that, despite the music industry's continuing avalanche of industrial pop, composers and bands are still able to produce music that as an art form can combine melody and criticism, that can look behind facades and describe the reality they see which we hear only as background noise. It shows the way to other art forms that take so much time and energy and money to get up and running, that a fight for more radical content is possible and necessary.

Sacred Tree or Paradise Tree? The Christmas Tree and Nature

2024-01-29T11:52:00.000-08:00

A red bauble on a Christmas tree
(a symbol of apples?)

The ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews used evergreen wreaths, garlands, and trees to symbolise their respect for nature and their belief in eternal life. The pagan Europeans worshipped trees and had the custom of decorating their houses and barns with evergreens, or erecting a Yule tree during midwinter holidays. However, the modern Christmas tree can be shown to have roots in Christian traditions too.

The term ‘pagan’ originated in a contemptuous, disdainful, and disparaging attitude towards people who had a respect for nature, the source of their sustenance: “Paganism (from classical Latin pāgānus "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry".”

As people gradually converted to Christianity, December 25 became the date for celebrating Christmas. Christianity’s “most significant holidays were Epiphany on January 6, which commemorated the arrival of the Magi after Jesus’ birth, and Easter, which celebrated Jesus’ resurrection.” For the first three centuries of Christianity’s existence, “Jesus Christ’s birth wasn’t celebrated at all” and “the first official mention of December 25 as a holiday honouring Jesus’ birthday appears in an early Roman calendar from AD 336.” It is also believed that December 25 became the date for Christ's birth “to coincide with existing pagan festivals honouring Saturn (the Roman god of agriculture) and Mithra (the Persian god of light). That way, it became easier to convince Rome’s pagan subjects to accept Christianity as the empire’s official religion.”

During the Middle Ages, the church used mystery plays to dramatize biblical stories for largely illiterate people to illustrate the stories of the bible “from creation to damnation to redemption”. [1] Thus, we find evidence of a connection between the Christmas tree and the Tree of Life in the Paradise plays as well as pagan sacred trees.

In western Germany, the story of Adam and Eve was acted out using a prop of a paradise tree, a fir tree decorated with apples to represent the Garden of Eden:

“The Germans set up a paradise tree in their homes on December 24, the religious feast day of Adam and Eve. They hung wafers on it (symbolizing the eucharistic host, the Christian sign of redemption); in a later tradition the wafers were replaced by cookies of various shapes. Candles, symbolic of Christ as the light of the world, were often added. In the same room was the “Christmas pyramid,” a triangular construction of wood that had shelves to hold Christmas figurines and was decorated with evergreens, candles, and a star. By the 16th century the Christmas pyramid and the paradise tree had merged, becoming the Christmas tree.”

Full-page miniature of Adam, Eve and the Serpent, [f. 7r] (1445)
(The New York Public Library Digital Collections)

The medieval Church “declared December 24 the feast day of Adam and Eve. Around the twelfth century this date became the traditional one for the performance of the paradise play.”

The story of Adam and Eve begins with their disobedience, but the play cycle ends with the promise of the coming Saviour.

Over time the tree of paradise began to transcend the religious context of the miracle plays and moved towards a role in the Christmas celebrations of the guilds. [2]

For example:

“The first evidence of decorated trees associated with Christmas Day are trees in guildhalls decorated with sweets to be enjoyed by the apprentices and children. In Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia), in 1441, 1442, 1510, and 1514, the Brotherhood of Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their guild houses in Reval (now Tallinn) and Riga.”

“Possibly the earliest existing picture of a Christmas tree being paraded through the

streets with a bishop figure to represent St Nicholas, 1521 (Germanisches National Museum)”.

(The Medieval Christmas by Sophie Jackson (2005) p68)

Early records show “that fir trees decorated with apples were first known in Strasbourg in 1605. The first use of candles on such trees is recorded by a Silesian duchess in 1611.” Furthermore, the earliest known dated representation of a Christmas tree is 1576, seen on a keystone sculpture of a private home in Turckheim, Alsace (then part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, today France).

Keystone sculpture at Turckheim, Alsace (MPK)

The paradise tree represented two important trees of the Garden of Eden: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. It is likely that “because most other trees were barren and lifeless during December, the actors chose to hang the apples from an evergreen tree rather than from an apple tree.”

The mystery plays of Oberufer

A good example of this old tradition is the mystery plays of Oberufer. The Austrian linguist and literary critic Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900) “discovered a Medieval cycle of Danube Swabian mystery plays in Oberufer, a village since engulfed by the Bratislava's borough of Főrév (German: Rosenheim, today's Ružinov). Schröer collected manuscripts, made meticulous textual comparisons, and published his findings in the book Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn ("The German Nativity Plays of Hungary") in 1857/1858.”

The plates giving an impression of costume designs, based on Rudolf Steiner's (who studied under Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900)) directions, were painted by the Editor's father, Eugen Witta, who saw the plays produced by Rudolf Steiner many times while working as a young architect on the first Goetheanum.

Before the actual performance the whole theatrical company went in procession through the village. They were headed by the ‘Tree-singer’, who carried in his hand the small ‘Paradise Tree’—a kind of symbol of the Tree of Life. The story of the tree and its fruit is mentioned in the text of the play:

But see, but see a tree stands here

Which precious fruit doth bear,

That God has made his firm decree

It shall not eaten be.

Yea, rind and flesh and stone

They shall leave well alone.

This tree is very life,

Therefore God will not have

That man shall eat thereof.

Actors portraying Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise
(Eve: Ye must delve and I shall spin - our bodily sustenance for to win.)

Performed by the Players of St Peter in the Church of St Clement Eastcheap,
London, England in 2004 November.

The Paradise Tree: Egyptian origins?

Gary Greenberg has compared many stories of the bible with earlier Egyptian myths to try and understand where the ideas contained in the Old Testament originated. He explains:

“In the Garden of Eden God planted two trees, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and The Tree of Life. Eating from the former gave one moral knowledge; eating from the latter conferred eternal life. He also placed man in that garden to tend to the plants but told him he may not eat from the Tree of Knowledge (and therefore become morally knowledgeable). About eating from the Tree of Life, God said nothing: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen 2:17). […] Adam and Eve did not die when they ate from the tree. Indeed, God feared that they would next eat from The Tree of Life and gain immortality.” [3]

Greenberg notes the similarity of these ideas with Egyptian texts and traditions, specifically the writings from Egyptian Coffin Text 80 concerning Shu and Tefnut:

“The most significant portions of Egyptian Coffin Text 80 concern the children of Atum, the Heliopolitan Creator. Atum’s two children are Shu and Tefnut, and in this text Shu is identified as the principle of life and Tefnut is identified as the principle of moral order, a concept that the Egyptians refer to as Ma’at. These are the two principles associated with the two special trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not only does the Egyptian text identify these same two principles as offspring of the Creator deity, the text goes on to say that Atum (whom the biblical editors had confused with Adam) is instructed to eat of his daughter, who signifies the principle of moral order. “It is of your daughter Order that you shall eat. (Coffin Text 80, line 63). This presents us with a strange correlation. Both Egyptian myth and Genesis tell us that the chief deity created two fundamental principles, Life and Moral Order. In the Egyptian myth, Atum is told to eat of moral order but in Genesis, Adam is forbidden to eat of moral order.” [4]

In another description we can see the similarities between the Egyptian and biblical stories:

“Atum-Ra looked upon the nothingness and recognized his aloneness, and so he mated with his own shadow to give birth to two children, Shu (god of air, whom Atum-Ra spat out) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture, whom Atum-Ra vomited out). Shu gave to the early world the principles of life while Tefnut contributed the principles of order. Leaving their father on the ben-ben [the mound that arose from the primordial waters Nu upon which the creator deity Atum settled], they set out to establish the world. In time, Atum-Ra became concerned because his children were gone so long, and so he removed his eye and sent it in search of them. While his eye was gone, Atum-Ra sat alone on the hill in the midst of chaos and contemplated eternity. Shu and Tefnut returned with the eye of Atum-Ra (later associated with the Udjat eye, the Eye of Ra, or the All-Seeing Eye) and their father, grateful for their safe return, shed tears of joy. These tears, dropping onto the dark, fertile earth of the ben-ben, gave birth to men and women.”

However, Greenberg points out the differences between the two stories:

“Despite the close parallels between the two descriptions there is one glaring conflict. In the Egyptian text Nun (the personification of the Great Flood) urged Atum (the Heliopolitan Creator) to eat of his daughter Tefnut, giving him access to knowledge of moral order. In Genesis, God forbade Adam to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, denying him access moral knowledge.” [5]

Why was Adam denied access to moral knowledge? Greenberg writes:

“God feared that he would obtain eternal life if he ate from the Tree of Life and it became necessary to expel him from the Garden. […] The Egyptians believed that if you lived a life of moral order, the god Osiris, who ruled over the afterlife, would award you eternal life. That was the philosophical link between these two fundamental principles of Life and Moral Order, and that is why Egyptians depicted them as the children of the Creator. In effect, knowledge of moral behaviour was a step towards immortality and godhead. That is precisely the issue framed in Genesis. When Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God declared that if Adam also ate from the Tree of Life he would become like God himself. But Hebrews were monotheists. The idea that humans could become god-like flew in the face of the basic theological concept of biblical religion, that there was and could be only one god. Humans can't become god-like.” [6]

Friedrich Nietzsche also discussed this problem of man-becoming-god in The Anti Christ but connects the Tree of Knowledge with modern science:
“God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining — he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “animal” himself. — So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end — and also many other things! Woman was the second mistake of God. — “Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”—every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science.... It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge. — What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike — it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!”

This idea of the denial of access to the monotheistic heaven can be seen in the New Testament of the Bible whereby, according to John 3:13, it is stated: "No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man" and John 1:18: "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known." The dead must wait until the last day, according to John 11:24: "“Yes,” Martha said, “he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day”", when they will hear His call, according to John 5:28: "Don’t be so surprised! Indeed, the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son".

Adam and Eve and the Serpent—Expulsion from Paradise,
ca. 1480-1500 (Anonymous)

Greenberg describes the fundamental differences between Hebrew monotheism and Egyptian polytheism:

“The Hebrew story is actually a sophisticated attack on the Egyptian doctrine of moral order leading to eternal life. It begins by transforming Life and Moral Order from deities into trees, eliminating the cannibalistic imagery suggested by Atum eating of his daughter. Then, Adam was specifically forbidden to eat the fruit of Moral Order. Next, Adam was told that not only wouldn't he achieve eternal life if he ate of Moral Order but that he would actually die if he did eat it. Finally, Adam was expelled from the Garden before he could eat from the Tree of Life and live for eternity. […] When God told Adam that he would surely die the very day he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the threat should be understood to mean that humans should not try to become like a deity. God didn't mean that Adam would literally drop dead the day he ate the forbidden fruit; he meant that the day Adam violated the commandment he would lose access to eternal life. […] Once he violated the commandment, he lost access to the Tree of Life and could no longer eat the fruit that prevented death.” [7]

The difference between the lord/slave relationship of monotheism and the nature-based ideology of polytheistic paganism is that the subject is denied an eternal place with the master in the former but is welcomed as an equal in the latter. This is because the subject is an integral part of nature in paganism:

“In the shamanic world, not only every tree, but every being was and is holy - because they are all imbued with the wonderful power of life, the great mystery of universal Being. “Yes, we believe that, even below heaven, the forests have their gods also, the sylvan creatures and fauns and different kinds of goddesses” (Pliny the Elder II, 3). [8]

The gradual change over from egalitarian pagan societies to the lord/slave relationship of monotheism has been theorised and associated with the coming of the Kurgan peoples across Europe from c. 4000 to 1000 BC is believed to have been a tumultuous and disastrous time for the peoples of Old Europe. The Old European culture is believed to have centred around a nature-based ideology that was gradually replaced by an anti-nature, patriarchal, warrior society.

In their book The Creation of Inequality, Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus note that:

"Our early ancestors lived in small groups and worked actively to preserve social equality. As they created larger societies, however, inequality rose, and by 2500 BCE truly egalitarian societies were on the wane."

According to Deborah Rogers in her article, Inequality: Why egalitarian societies died out:

"For 5000 years, humans have grown accustomed to living in societies dominated by the privileged few. But it wasn’t always this way. For tens of thousands of years, egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies were widespread. And as a large body of anthropological research shows, long before we organised ourselves into hierarchies of wealth, social status and power, these groups rigorously enforced norms that prevented any individual or group from acquiring more status, authority or resources than others. [...] Keeping the playing field level was a matter of survival. These small-scale, nomadic foraging groups didn’t stock up much surplus food, and given the high-risk nature of hunting – the fact that on any given day or week you may come back empty-handed – sharing and cooperation were required to ensure everyone got enough to eat. Anyone who made a bid for higher status or attempted to take more than their share would be ridiculed or ostracised for their audacity. Suppressing our primate ancestors’ dominance hierarchies by enforcing these egalitarian norms was a central adaptation of human evolution, argues social anthropologist Christopher Boehm. It enhanced cooperation and lowered risk as small, isolated bands of humans spread into new habitats and regions across the world, and was likely crucial to our survival and success."

James DeMeo takes a more radical approach to inequality in his book, Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence in the Deserts of the Old World. He believes that climatic changes caused drought, desertification and famine in North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia (collectively Saharasia) and this trauma caused the development of patriarchal, authoritarian and violent characteristics in roving groups that headed north and enslaved the more stable societies they encountered there.

Over the centuries paganism gradually gave way to monotheistic religions, while never dying out completely. Nature-based traditions and ideas were co-opted and changed but their meanings were never completely lost.

For example, it is important to note “that the “serpent in the tree” motif associated with the Adam and Eve story comes directly from Egyptian art. The Egyptians believed that Re, the sun God that circled the earth every day, had a nightly fight with the serpent Aphophis and each night defeated him. Several Egyptian paintings show a scene in which Re, appearing in the form of “Mau, the Great Cat of Heliopolis,” sits before a tree while the serpent Apophis coils about the tree, paralleling the image of rivalry between Adam and the serpent in the tree of the Garden of Eden.” [9]

The sun god Ra, in the form of Great Cat, slays the snake Apophis.
(Image credit: Eisnel - Public Domain)

Thus, we have moved from the biblical story of Adam and Eve back to the earlier paganism (the connection with Nature) of the Egyptians. While there is much evidence that one of the sources of the origin of the Christmas tree is in the ancient pagan worship of trees and evergreen boughs, there is also a lot of evidence that another source of the Christmas tree is in the medieval mystery plays where the Paradise tree was a necessary prop for the biblical story of Adam and Eve. If we look back even further to Egyptian mythology, we can see parallels between the biblical stories of creation and the Egyptian myths that also illustrate fundamental philosophical and spiritual differences between monotheist and polytheist ideology, i.e. the differences between the ‘enslaved’ (with their Lord/Master who can reward or punish) and the people who work with and respect the cycles of nature (persons outside the bounds of the Christian community, ethnic religions, Indigenous peoples, etc.).

Indeed, Tuck and Yang (2012:6) propose a criterion (for the term Indigenous) based on accounts of origin: "Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to be in a particular place - indeed how we/they came to be a place. Our/their relationships to land comprise our/their epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies". The imposition of Christianity became the imposition of coloniser narratives of origin, which ultimately reflected their slave status and their exclusion from their own native concepts of heaven and the afterlife.

By the 1970s, the term Indigenous was used as a way of “linking the experiences, issues, and struggles of groups of colonized people across international borders”, thus politicising their resistance to the dominant colonising narratives that historically spread while using Christianity as a form of social control on a global scale.

Thus, whether the Christmas tree arises out of the pagan worship of trees or the nature-based polytheism of Egyptian lore about Life and Knowledge (as the Paradise Tree), the Christmas tree still plays an important and special part in our lives today, demonstrating that our relationship with nature goes back millennia. We can choose to be exiled from nature or become involved in the cycles of nature in ways that end our current destructive practices.

Notes:

[1] Inventing the Christmas Tree by Bernd Brunner (2012) p 15

[2] Inventing the Christmas Tree by Bernd Brunner (2012) p 16

[3] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p48

[4] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p49

[5] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51

[6] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51/52

[7] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51/52

[8] Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Ratsch and Claudia Muller- Ebeling (2003) p24

[9] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p49/50

Art and Struggle: Olive Trees as Symbols of Palestinian Culture, Food, and Heritage

2023-11-23T08:07:00.000-08:00

Painting by Sliman Mansour

"I hugged the olive tree. It was precious to me, so I hugged it. I felt like I was hugging my child. I'd raised the tree like my child. They attacked around 500 trees filled with olives. Each tree could have filled two sacks of olives. They destroyed my olive tree, but I grew them back. I tended them and they came back even better than before. Settlers will never be able to take my land. This is our land not theirs. We will keep resisting until the world ends."
Mahfodah Shtayyeh (2005 video)

November 26 will be World Olive Tree Day according to the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference (2019). The olive tree has symbolised peace and harmony for millennia.

World Olive Tree Day was proclaimed at the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference in 2019 and takes place on 26 November every year. The olive tree, specifically the olive branch, holds an important place in the minds of men and women. Since ancient times, it has symbolized peace, wisdom and harmony and as such is important not just to the countries where these noble trees grow, but to people and communities around the world.

Think ‘holding out an olive branch’, an idiom that comes from Genesis 8:11 where we read “And the dove came into him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.”

@aljazeeraenglish "I hugged the olive tree... I'd raised the tree like my child." Mahfodah Shtayyeh . On November 27, 2005, a #Palestinian woman was photographed hugging an olive tree after it was attacked by #Israeli settlers. . The photograph became an iconic image symbolising the daily struggle of many Palestinian farmers in the occupied #WestBank. . Over 800,000 olive trees on #Palestinian ♬ Ambient-style emotional piano - MoppySound

However, in Palestine where the people have been cultivating olives for thousands of years, the olive tree has itself become a subject of destructive battles as settlers cut down or burn the olive groves. Al-Walaja, for example, is a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, four kilometres northwest of Bethlehem and is the site of Al-Badawi, an ancient olive tree “claimed to be approximately 5,000-year-old and therefore the second oldest olive tree in the world after "The Sisters" olive trees in Bchaaleh, Northern Lebanon.”

It is estimated that about 700,000 Israeli settlers are living illegally in the occupied West Bank and extremist elements are becoming more violent. In October this year (2023) a Palestinian farmer harvesting olives “was shot dead by settlers in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus. ‘We are now during the olive harvest season – people have not been able to reach 60 percent of olive trees in the Nablus area because of settler attacks,’ according to Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official monitoring settler activity.”

Olive Tree by the late Ismael Shammout

Traditionally, harvest time would bring families and neighbours together, helping each other in a process called “al Ouna”. The importance to these communities for unity and an income has led to the trees being depicted in the arts, and in particular the visual arts. Many paintings show farmers and families gathering the olives or show the ancient trees as symbols of their struggle and resilience.

Olive Harvest by Maher Naji.

The close connection between the farmers and their trees was famously illustrated in the photo of Mahfodah from the village of Salem hugging what is left of one of her olive trees. This photo has since been the source of many posters and paintings illustrating the political conflicts that the people have been forced to endure.

Salem (2005)

Life for the artists has not been easy either. They have focused on themes such as nationalism, identity, and land. As a result, their art can be political and the artists “sometimes suffer from the confiscation of artwork, refusal to license artists’ organizations, surveillance, and arrests.”

Olive picking (1988) by Sliman Mansour

According to Sliman Mansour, a Palestinian painter based in Jerusalem, the olive tree “represents the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, who are able to live under difficult circumstances”, and like the “way that the trees can survive and have deep roots in their land so, too, do the Palestinian people.”

Painting by Salam Kanaan

Sometimes the paintings and posters incorporate other symbols of Palestinian identity like the City of Jerusalem (al-Quds), plants like Jaffa oranges, watermelon and corn, religious symbols, or the Palestinian flag.

Other traditional Palestinian arts like embroidery have used the olive tree in different ways. For example, the Palestinian History Tapestry “uses the embroidery skills of Palestinian women to illustrate aspects of the land and peoples of Palestine – from Neolithic times to the present. In the past, Palestinian embroiderers have mainly used cross stitch (tatreez) and geometric designs to decorate dresses and other items.”

Olive harvest [59 x 110 cm]. Design: Hamada Atallah [Al Quds] Al Quds, Palestine
Embroidery: Dowlat Abu Shaweesh [Ne’ane], Ramallah, Palestine

The symbolism in art can take on even harsher characteristics like Sliman Mansour’s painting of an olive tree wrapped in barbed wire (Quiet morning). The subject, a woman in a beautifully embroidered dress, is contrasted with the denial of access to the olive tree and therefore access to her birthright (the past) and an income (the future).

Quiet morning (2009) by Sliman Mansour

The olive trees have provided a steady source of income from their fruit and the “silky, golden oil derived from it”. Moreover, it is believed that “between 80,000 and 100,000 families in the Palestinian territories rely on olives and their oil as primary or secondary sources of income. The industry accounts for about 70 percent of local fruit production and contributes about 14 percent to the local economy.”

Poster by Abu Manu (1985)

However, the idea of recovery and renewal is also a common theme as the resilient olive tree with its deep roots is shown to be able to recover its vigour despite being chopped down. This has provided inspiration for the farmers and artists alike. The struggle for nature has always been intertwined with the struggle for life, and respect for the olive tree has always been reciprocated with abundance over the millennia.

The Afterlife: A Trick or a Treat? Halloween Celebrations Past and Present

2023-10-31T12:14:00.006-07:00

Snap-Apple Night, painted by Daniel Maclise in 1833, shows people feasting and playing divination games on Halloween in Ireland. It was inspired by a Halloween party he attended in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832.

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” – Stephen King

Halloween is creeping up on us again replete with all its ghostly traditions celebrated all over the world.

Also known as All Saints’ Eve, it is the time in the liturgical year or Christian year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. It is followed by All Saints’ Day, also known as All Hallows’ Day on the 1 November, and All Souls’ Day, a day of prayer and remembrance for the faithful departed, observed by certain Christian denominations on 2 November.

However, it is also believed that Halloween is rooted in the ancient pagan Gaelic festival of Samhain which marks the change of seasons and the approach of winter. Samhain begins at sunset on October 31 and continues until sunset on November 1, marking the end of harvest and the start of winter. This Celtic pagan holiday followed the great cycle of life as part of their year-round celebrations of nature along with Imbolc (February 1), Beltane (May 1) and Lughnasadh (August 1).

During Samhain people would:

“bring their cattle back from the summer pastures and slaughter livestock in preparation for the upcoming winter. They would also light ritual bonfires for protection and cleansing as they wished to mimic the sun and hold back the darkness. It was also a time when people believed that spirits or fairies (the Aos Sí ) were more likely to pass into our world. […] Dead and departed relatives played a central role in the tradition, as the connection between the living and dead was believed to be stronger at Samhain, and there was a chance to communicate. Souls of the deceased were thought to return to their homes. Feasts were held and places were set at tables as a way to welcome them home. Food and drink was offered to the unpredictable spirits and fairies to ensure continued health and good fortune.”

Dancing around the bonfire. The Graphic | 7 January 1893

The Celts believed in an afterlife called the Otherworld which was similar to this life but “without all the negative elements like disease, pain, and sorrow.”

Therefore, the Celts had little to fear from death when their soul left their body, or as the Celts believed, their head.

As Christianity spread in pagan communities, the church leaders attempted to incorporate Samhain into the Christian calendar. The Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic lands by A.D. 43 and combined two Roman festivals, Feralia and Pomona with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. Feralia was similar to Samhain as the Romans commemorated the passing of their dead, while Pomona, whose symbol was the apple, was the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, and may be the origin of the apple games of Halloween.

Some centuries later the church moved again to supplant the pagan traditions with Christian ones:

“On May 13, A.D. 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In A.D. 1000, the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead.”

While on the surface the changes from the Celtic Otherworld to the Christian concepts of Heaven, Purgatory and Hell may not seem very radical yet when one looks further into the different beliefs about the afterlife a very different story emerges.

The Otherworld

The Celtic Otherworld is “more usually described as a paradisal fairyland than a scary place” and sometimes described as an island to the west in the Ocean and “even shown on some maps of Ireland during the medieval era.” It has been called, or places in the Otherworld have been called, “Tír nAill (“the other land”), Tír Tairngire (“land of promise/promised land”), Tír na nÓg (“land of the young/land of youth”), Tír fo Thuinn (“land under the wave”), Tír na mBeo (“land of the living”), Mag Mell (“plain of delight”), Mag Findargat (“the white-silver plain”), Mag Argatnél (“the silver-cloud plain”), Mag Ildathach (“the multicoloured plain”), Mag Cíuin (“the gentle plain”), and Emain Ablach (possibly “isle of apples”).”

As can be seen from the names given to the places of the Otherworld there are two important, salient points. One is the positive, almost welcoming aspect of the descriptions implied, and secondly their close relationship with nature and places in the real world. The Otherworld is described “either as a parallel world that exists alongside our own, or as a heavenly land beyond the sea or under the earth,” and could be entered through “ancient burial mounds or caves, or by going under water or across the western sea.”

We may then ask who could enter the Otherworld in the afterlife?

“Although there are no surviving texts from the continent which comment on this, on the basis of comparisons with comparable societies and burial practices we can guess that both the gods and the ancestral dead were believed to inhabit the Otherworld. The earliest literary texts in Irish reflect exactly this idea.”

These deductions about the afterlife then reflect the nature-based ideology of pagan religion which is focused on the cycles of nature, and also the fact that we ourselves are part of that nature, thus both the ancestral dead and the gods inhabited the Otherworld. It seems that the dead entered the Otherworld fairly quickly and could even return to visit the living when the darkness started to take over from the light at Samhain. Even the living could visit the Otherworld but these visits would have their own drawbacks, for example, Oisín discovers that what had only seemed a short stay in Tír na nÓg had been hundreds of years in the real world.

Ghosts walk the night in Brittany by F. De Haenen | The Graphic | 5 November 1910

Christian Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory

The differences between nature-based paganism and the Master and Martyr ethics of Christianity mean that entry to heaven is not guaranteed and may even be delayed for a long time in purgatory. For example:

“Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, resulting in the approval of some and the penalizing of most. […] Belief in the Last Judgment (often linked with the general judgment) is held firmly in Catholicism. Immediately upon death each person undergoes the particular judgment, and depending upon one’s behavior on earth, goes to heaven, purgatory, or hell. Those in purgatory will always reach heaven, but those in hell will be there eternally.”

Hell is often depicted with fire and torture of the guilty. Thus, Christianity brings a strong element of fear into perceptions of the afterlife. The people whose behaviour needs to be controlled are frightened into being good and given long promises about eventual eternal bliss at the end of time.

The patriarchal element of Christianity and its desire to control and direct the remnants of pagan religion gave rise to other important aspects of Halloween. The dark symbolism of witches on broomsticks with black cats are an essential element of the Halloween imagery. By late medieval/early modern Europe, fears about witchcraft rose to fever pitch and sometimes led to large-scale witch-hunts. The Church saw these women (whose knowledge of nature was transformed into healing homoeopathic treatments) as a threat to their authority and demonised them before their own communities.

The witches “occasionally functioned as midwives, assisting the delivery and birth of babies, aiding the mother with different plant-based medicines to help with the pain of childbirth. […] The word Witch comes from the word for ‘wise one’ that was ‘Wicca’, and who were once considered wise soon became something to be feared and avoided.”

“Halloween Days”, article from American newspaper, The Sunday Oregonian, 1916

Like many traditional festivals Halloween has different historical sources, pagan and Christian, that have come together to form the holiday as we know it today.

Jack-o’-lantern

Jack-o’-lantern represents the soul caught between heaven and hell who can know no rest and must wander on the earth forever. It is believed to originate in an old Irish folk tale from the mid-18th century which tells of Stingy Jack, “a lazy yet shrewd blacksmith who uses a cross to trap Satan.”

A plaster cast of a traditional Irish Jack-o’-Lantern in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland. Rutabaga or turnip were often used.

Jack tricks Satan who lets him go only after he agrees to never take his soul. When the blacksmith dies he is considered too sinful to enter heaven. He could not enter hell either and asks Satan how he will be able to see his way in the dark. Satan’s response was to toss him “a burning coal, to light his way. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which were his favorite food), put the coal inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place.”

The Irish emigrants to the United States are believed to have switched the turnip for a pumpkin as it was more accessible and easier to carve. Ironically, in Ireland now, pumpkins are grown and sold to make modern Jack-o’-lanterns.

Modern carving of a Cornish Jack-o’-Lantern made from a turnip.

Door to Door Traditions

Another American tradition, trick-or-treating, has also taken root in Ireland in recent decades. As a child growing up in the United States, I also went trick-or-treating in Boston. However, after our move to Dublin, our trick-or-treating questions at Halloween were met with bewilderment as Irish people were used to a simple request for ‘anything for the Halloween party’.

The tradition of going door to door on Halloween may come from the belief that supernatural beings, or the souls of the dead, roamed the earth at this time and needed to be appeased. In Europe, from the 12th century, special ‘soul cakes’ would be baked and shared. People would pray for the poor souls of the dead (in purgatory) in return for soul cakes. In Ireland and Scotland “mumming and guising (going door-to-door in disguise and performing in exchange for food) was taken up as another variation on these ancient customs. Pranks were thought to be a way of confounding evil spirits. Pranks at Samhain date as far back as 1736 in Scotland and Ireland, and this led to Samhain being dubbed ‘Mischief Night.’”

Antrobus Soul Cakers at the end of a performance in a village hall in or near Antrobus, Cheshire, England in the mid 1970s. The Soul Cakers are a traditional group of mummers, who perform around All Soul’s Day (October 31st, Hallowe’en) each year. The characters are (left to right) Beelzebub, Doctor, Black Prince, Letter-In, Dairy Doubt, King George, Driver, Old Lady, and Dick, the Wild Horse in the foreground.

It has also been suggested that trick-or-treating “evolved from a tradition whereby people impersonated the spirits, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf.” It was thought that they “personify the old spirits of the winter, who demanded reward in exchange for good fortune”. Impersonating these spirits or souls was believed to protect oneself from them.

Thus, while Halloween may have become highly commercialised in recent years it is still an important custom that brings people and families together in their communities. It still marks an important part of the annual cycles of nature as the bountifulness of harvestime is contrasted with the bareness of winter. It prepares us psychologically for the dark days ahead. In the past Halloween allowed people to celebrate the completion of the work of life (the production of food) to having the time to contemplate the absence of their forebears: the people who gave them life, nurtured them, and taught them the skills of survival. It is a time to make the young generation aware of their parents’ temporary existence too, in a fun way.

Halloween is a time for confronting our basic fears about death and darkness. It is a time to remember the ancestral spirits of past generations who have ‘passed’ (a word that has become more popular than ‘died’ in recent years) through the thin veil between life and death. And, most importantly, a time to rethink our relationship with nature.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Captain Rock: The Symbol of a Risen People. Paintings and the History of Irish Resistance

2023-10-31T12:06:00.013-07:00

“My unlucky countrymen have always had a taste for justice, a taste as inconvenient to them, situated as they always have been, as a fancy for horse-racing would be to a Venetian.” —Thomas Moore (1779–1852) – Memoirs of Captain Rock: The Celebrated Irish Chieftain, with Some Account of His Ancestors (1824)

Featured image: Ralph Chaplin – Cartoon published in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) journal Solidarity on June 30, 1917.

The raised or clenched fist is a symbol of unity and solidarity that became associated with trade unionism and the labour movement going back to the 1910s in Europe and the USA. Soon after, it was taken up as a symbol of political unity by socialist, communist and various other revolutionary social movements. The clenched fist is ever more powerful than the individual fingers and in art it has been used as a metaphor for strength in unity of the peoples’ movements.

The painting, Le Soulèvement (The Uprising) by Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) of the French Revolution of 1848 includes a possible early example of a “political clenched fist,” according to curator Francesca Seravalle. She writes:

“A raised fist appeared for the first time as a political sign in a painting in 1848 by Daumier representing a woman during the Third French Revolution, until that time fists were just expressions of human nature.”

Le Soulèvement (The Uprising) by Honoré Daumier

However, another painting, The Installation of Captain Rock (1834), by the Irish artist Daniel Maclise (1806–1870) in the National Gallery of Ireland, depicts the protagonist with a raised, clenched fist as a political sign fourteen years earlier than Daumier’s revolutionary painting, surely demonstrating that the depth of oppression of colonialism in Ireland had already produced self-conscious radical political groups.

Captain Rock was a fictitious figure that was associated with the militant agrarian organisations in Ireland known as “the ‘Whiteboys’, the ‘Ribbonmen’, and the followers of ‘Captain Steel’ or ‘Captain Right'”.

The Installation of Captain Rock (1834) by Daniel Maclise (1806–1870)

These agrarian groups “issued warnings of violent reprisals against landlords and their agents who tried to arbitrarily put up rents, collectors of tithes for the Anglican Church of Ireland, government magistrates who tried to evict tenants, and informers who fingered out Rockites to the authorities,” and involved many incidents of murder, arson, beatings and mutilation of cattle.

The source of the unrest was the hunger and death suffered by Irish families while their landlords shipped harvests and cattle to the English markets. Peter Berresford Ellis writes:

“This was the cause of the agrarian unrest among the rural population. Indeed, in 1822 a major artificial famine was about to occur. We have William Cobbett’s horrendous picture of people starving in the midst of plenty in that year. In June, 1822, in Cork alone, 122,000 were on the verge of starvation and existing on charity. How many people died is hard to say. A minimum figure of 100,000 has been proposed. Most likely around 250,000. At the same time, landowners were able to ship 7 million pounds (weight) of grain and countless herds of cattle, sheep and swine to the markets in England.”

Captain Rock’s Banditti – Swearing in a new member.

Insurrections occurred in 1822 that involved many thousands of ‘Rockites’ that had armed themselves with pikes and confronted British garrisons. According to Berresford Ellis:

“Colonel James Barry, commanding the garrison at Millstreet, reported that upwards of 5,000 ‘rebels’ had surrounded the town and many houses of loyalists between Inchigeelagh and Macroom were destroyed. The local Millstreet magistrate, E McCarty, added: ‘The people are all risen with what arms they possess and crown all the heights close to the town …’ Cork City and Tralee were cut off for two days before troops fought their way through.”

Aisha (2022): Despair and Desperation in Ireland’s Detention Centres

‘Captain Rock’ had already made it into Irish literary history in the fictitious book, Memoirs of Captain Rock: The Celebrated Irish Chieftain, with Some Account of His Ancestors (1824) written by the Irish writer, poet, and lyricist Thomas Moore (1779–1852). In these ‘memoirs’ Captain Rock is depicted in a folkloric way, a character who brushes off lightly the dangers of his profession, as he states:

“Discord is, indeed, our natural element ; like that storm-loving animal, the seal, we are comfortable only in a tempest; and the object of the following historical and biographical sketch is to show how kindly the English government has at all times consulted our taste in this particular ministering to our love of riot through every successive reign, from the invasion of Henry II. down to the present day, so as to leave scarcely an interval during the whole six hundred years in which the Captain Rock for the time might not exclaim

“Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?”
or, as it has been translated by one of my family : —
Through Leinster, Ulster, Connaught, Munster, Rock ‘s the boy to make the fun stir!”

Similar comparisons can be made with the contemporary Kenyan author, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who combines social realism of contemporary society with mythical elements as a way of illustrating his radical themes, for example in Devil on the Cross (1980), Jacinta Wariinga, is invited to a Devil’s Feast by a mysterious figure called Munti that turns out to be a business meeting for the Organization for Modern Theft and Robbery.

Image: Devil on the Cross (1980) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

The high educational level of ‘Captain Rock’ is attributed to his associations with the teachers of the Irish ‘hedge schools’, which were small informal secret and illegal schools set up in the eighteenth and nineteenth century to provide primary education to children of ‘non-conforming’ Catholic and Presbyterian faiths.

According to Maeve Casserly, “the hedge schoolmaster played a pivotal role, as both an educator and prominent member in agrarian society, in encouraging the militant political and social sentiments” and that “in an age which promoted the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and emphasised ‘useful learning’ that subjects like Greek, Latin and Hebrew, which formed an intrinsic part of the hedge school curriculum, were wastefully taught instead of necessary vocation skills.” To direct attention away from their militant leadership roles, the hedge schoolmasters used poor grammar and mis-spelled words. She notes that “William Carleton was of a similar opinion that many of the letters, oaths and catechisms of the Rockite insurrectionists, were the work of village schoolmasters.”

Thus, the very public ‘Installation of Captain Rock’ in Maclise’s painting points to the symbolism of the patriotic movement rather than its reality. The clenched fist represents not only the unity of the gathered crowd but also the passing of responsibility for radical social and political change from the deceased elder leader to the vigorous, radical youth.

A depiction of a 19th century hedge school.

In the painting Maclise depicts the scene as a joyous occasion within a hall where many groups of ordinary people are busy getting on with life, yet plotting revolution. To the left a group is making a pact signified by their collective hand grasp, while behind them in a dark alcove appears to be a hedge school master surrounded by listeners and readers. To the right of the hall there is much merriment as a man and a woman dance wildly. Our eyes are drawn around a distracting group of young lovers as we suddenly realise that a gun is being pointed right at us by a young man in front who is just about to shoot (signified by a girl putting her hands to her ears), demonstrating that youthful ‘fun’ should never be underestimated and can suddenly turn deadly serious.

The background to Maclise’s painting looks more like a group of people digging their way down to the hall where the secret ceremony is taking place. This signifies the working class aspect of the dangers of mining work (often carried out by children in the nineteenth century), as well as the necessity for literal and metaphorical underground bunkers to hide from the often overwhelming force of the oppressor.

Overall, the people in the painting are portrayed as active, animated, excited, and fearless.

Image: 1857 lithograph of Daniel Maclise by Charles Baugniet

Maclise excelled in paintings of large groups of people engaged in various activities grouped around a theme. Maclise had an ongoing interest in the ideology, history, and traditions of ordinary people as can be seen in the subject matter of some of his paintings, for example, Snap-Apple Night (1833) [Hallowe’en traditions], Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall (1838) [containing many figures of various ranks and degrees and depicts aspects of the declining traditional Christmas festivities of his time, see my article A Poem for Christmas: Christmas Revels (1838)], The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (1854) [depiction of the Norman conquest of Ireland and the death of Gaelic Ireland].

Maclise’s positive portrayal of people is in contrast with the often melancholy depictions of oppressed people around the world, an unfortunate side effect of Social Realism which tried to show the treatment of the poor in all its brutality. However, depictions of the moment of uprising also sows the seeds of hope for a better future, while at the same time providing a fair warning to all elites to beware of the retaliation of a community which has nothing left to lose.

Warriors and Domestics: Plotting a New Course in Cinema

2023-08-21T10:05:00.021-07:00

Che (2008 film) directed
by Steven Soderbergh.

"Just a short time ago it would have seemed like a Quixotic adventure in the colonised, neocolonised, or even the imperialist nations themselves to make any attempt to create films of decolonisation that turned their back on or actively opposed the System."

Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino
- ‘Towards a Third Cinema’

From the short black and white films of the Lumiére brothers to the technically superb blockbusters of today, cinema has been analysed from every kind of social and political perspective. Yet, it is still a relatively young art, and its technical and narrative forms have made it a rich source of discussion and speculation, and one has the feeling that we are still only grappling with a crude understanding of its complexity.

'The director gets first cut' is a well-known statement that shows the business interest of the investors in making a profit or, at the very least, getting their money back. The ever-growing costs involved in making films have been an influential factor in their form and content.

There is no doubt that the realism of the reflected world in cinema fundamentally, consciously or unconsciously, reflects the structures of society itself. This is not always obvious, and commentary can be added to explain what is not instantly apparent from what is, after all, a visual medium, unlike in literature for example, where underlying societal hierarchies and structures can be explained as part of the narrative.

Films opposed to the status quo

From a political perspective, the conservative forces that determine what films get made, publicised, and exhibited, also make it difficult to produce cinema that is opposed to the general status quo. Yet such films do get made from time to time. Even though we can see that films generally reflect the dominant order of society, there are also narratives that go beyond the conservative order to try and change it or, in some cases, even advocate overthrowing it.

The norm in visual art for centuries has been the representation of people who accept the hierarchies in society. In general, over the years the forms change but the content remains the same, right up to today's modern cinema. Attempts made to create a new type of radical narrative in cinema history have produced some memorable works, but they have not managed to compete with the commercial, popular, 'bread and circuses', action-based, globalised contemporary cinema.

The different 'movements' for change in cinema have tried to show the problem of class interests and who benefits from 'the System'. The more radical films highlight problems of neo-colonialism and imperialism, and their aims range from exposing how elites operate and manipulate people, to producing 'revolutionary cinema' that seeks to inspire more profound change in society. For example, the social realist films of Frank Capra during the 1930s and 1940s, Italian neo-realism in the 1940s and 1950s, the Third cinema of the 1960s and 1970s were all attempts to go beyond the commercialisation of cinema and turn it into a force for social change.

Films and class consciousness

Why does cinema provide mass catharsis yet effect no real change in the multi-faceted problems of society? What kinds of films make us conscious of our socio-economic predicament? I will look at these questions about cinema from the perspective of class interests and elite manipulation of culture to maintain the status quo.

Linear action: 'serving the Man'

Christ as Martyr and Master
Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, c. 1430–1440
by Jan van Eyck (1390–1441)

To refer back to the human predicament of slavery (in its different forms) I am using the same metaphor from my previous articles [see Origins of Violence and Resistance Culture] based on Jan van Eyck's (c. 1390 – 1441) painting, Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych (c. 1430–1440) where we see Christ as 'Martyr' and 'Master':

In Christianity the rulers had a religion that assured their objectives. The warring adventurism of the new rulers needed soldiers for their campaigns and slaves to produce their food and mine their metals for their armaments and wealth. Thus, Christ was portrayed as Martyr and Master. In his own crucifixion as Martyr he provided a brave example to the soldiers, and as Master he would reward or punish the slaves according to how well they had behaved.

The 'warriors' and the 'domestics' are watched over by the 'lord' (the all-seeing eye). This basic scenario is common to much of cinema narratives from early cinema to today's blockbusters. The 'warrior' is the active protagonist upon which the narrative is focused, while the domestics in general facilitate or impede the progress of the 'warrior' protagonist. The important point in this scenario is that the protagonist is ultimately working for the 'man', e.g., criminal gangs, mafia dons, the bourgeois government, the deep state, secret services etc. - to defend the state, not to overthrow it.

His/her role has become more complex over time, and he/she is used to maintain or expand the dominant position of the 'lord', or the all-seeing eye that surveys and controls the action. The ultimate holders of power are not necessarily present or seen but operate in the background controlling the action. The action contained within the film contains the range of sight of the 'all-seeing eye' but is presumed to 'see' before and after the film narrative. The action of the 'warrior' is linear because it does not change or threaten the position of the 'lord'.

(1) Linear action
(Illustration by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

Early cinema

An early example of such a structure is the Bataille de boules de neige (Snow Fight) recorded by the Lumiére brothers in 1896. It is believed that the people throwing the snowballs at each other were from the local factory. A cyclist comes upon the scene, cycles into the centre of the group and is knocked off his bicycle by the snowball throwers and his hat falls on the ground. He gets up, grabs his bike, and cycles off without his hat. This short scene has all the elements of a movie: documentary (people throwing snowballs) combined with a narrative/story (cyclist cycles into scene and leaves), combined with drama/action (cyclist falls off his bicycle, loses his hat).

Thus, in this scenario the cyclist is the 'warrior' and the people throwing the snowballs from the local factory are the 'domestics'. There is the interplay of the two worlds of the 'warrior' and the 'domestics' as the cyclist protagonist enters and leaves again in this short 'story' (he arrives / he falls off / he leaves). The 'lord' is not included in the film (except as the all-seeing eye of the camera itself).

Bataille de boules de neige (Snow Fight) (1896)
short silent film produced by the Lumiére brothers.

(See video here)

Italian Neo-Realism

The same type of action is played out in the later Italian Neo-Realist film, The Bicycle Thieves (1948). The protagonist meets with his wife telling her he needs to get a bicycle to secure his new job offer. He marches on ahead of her, only stopping when his wife (who is carrying two buckets of water) needs help to walk down a small incline, and then marches off forcefully again. As the 'warrior', he engages with the 'domestic' only when his help/action is needed but he is mainly concerned with his problem of securing a bike so he can secure a wage and an income for his family. The drudgery of her 'domestic' role is in sharp contrast to the 'action' of his linear 'warrior' role.

Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette) (1948)

Italian neorealist drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica.

If a 'domestic' ever becomes active, he/she switches over to become a 'warrior' protagonist. Over time the 'warriors' expanded to include different ethnicities and sexualities. The 'warriors' are often alienated from the 'domestics' as they are often shown in cinema as a loner, undomesticated, and/or a whisky drinking hero.

Fundamentally, the 'warrior' is active for himself or for the needs of the elites but is never threatening to the system itself. This basic format can be seen repeatedly in films from early cowboy movies, James Bond, Mission Impossible (Ethan Hunt), Jack Reacher, The Matrix (Neo), John Wick, etc.

Dialectical Action: 'sticking it to the Man'

However, there are films where the 'warrior' narrative changes from a linear type of thinking to a dialectical consciousness whereby he/she slowly becomes aware of his/her entrapment, oppression, or enslavement. This awareness gradually develops until eventually the protagonist confronts the 'lord' and throws off his/her oppression. The power of the 'all-seeing eye' breaks down and the protagonist escapes or changes the world, while at the same time breaking the hold of the vanquished overlord.

(2) Dialectical Action
(Illustration by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

The film The Truman Show (1998) depicts such a journey on a personal and philosophical level. As Truman Burbank becomes gradually aware of the limitations of his artificial world, the prospect of freedom is too powerful, and he decides to go through his dome door and leave the monitored world forever. He is given the opportunity to talk directly to the 'all-seeing eye', his 'lord', Christof (the show's creator and executive producer) but ultimately, he rejects Christof's pleas to return to the 'familiar' world of total control. While this is not a political film, the dialectics of growing consciousness are well illustrated, in that returning to his previous unconscious state is an impossibility.

Over the years popular cinema has produced films of varying degrees of opposition to the boss, the lord, or the 'the System', for example, Salt of the Earth (1954), Spartacus (1960), The Battle of Algiers (1966), Che (2008), The White Tiger (2021), etc. and wherein there is a profound change in the consciousness of the protagonist/s.

Salt of the Earth (1954)

In Salt of the Earth (1954), the story of a mining community where the unionized workers go on strike, the miners wives take the place of their husbands on the picket line due to an injunction on the union. The wives face opposition from their menfolk who take conservative positions on the role of women in society. The ensuing arguments with their husbands and actions taken against them by the state create the dialectics in the narrative that result in a stronger community where the women's role is finally accepted. Ultimately the power of the company and the anti-union laws of the state are broken when the company admits defeat and plans to negotiate.

Spartacus (1960)

The film narrative is based on the rebellious slave Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), "who had done only manual labour since childhood; his life changes when he is purchased and trained as a gladiator. Spartacus gradually comes to not only hate his own servitude but to despise the institution of slavery, and to see it as an offence against human dignity. A chance opportunity to escape leads to a massive slave revolt, one which threatened the significant power of Rome."

The Battle of Algiers (1966)

In this film about the Algerian war of the French colonists against the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algiers, the narrative ranges from the growing consciousness of an individual like Ali La Pointe, who goes from being an informal gambler to FLN leader, to the growing politicization of the whole Arab community itself in their struggle against French colonialism which is eventually defeated.

Che (2008)

The dialectical process of transformation is clear in the change of Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Benicio del Toro) from intellectual and doctor to a Latin America revolutionary. Che joined forces with Cuban exile Fidel Castro (Demián Bichir) and starts a revolution that eventually brings an end to the Batista regime in Cuba.

The White Tiger (2021)

The writer of the original novel (The White Tiger, p254, 2008) Aravind Adiga, noted in the novel that:

I won't be saying anything new if I say that the history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side: and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles (the peeing in the potted plants, the kicking of the pet dogs, etc.) but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years.

Balram's escape from slavery, his resistance to and eventual murder of his master, leads him to go to another city in India and set up his own taxi business but with a conscious workforce, not another set of workers with a slave mentality. He believes that he is a White Tiger, a symbol of freedom, because he escaped slavery and ultimately encourages his own employees to do the same.

Poster for the film Spartacus (1960)
directed by Stanley Kubrick.

First, Second and Third Cinema

The idea of using cinema to promote social change has been around for a long time. The social realism in the films of Frank Capra, or the cinema of the Italian Neo-Realists tend to represent the reality of poverty, but not necessarily the kind of social consciousness needed to question the hierarchy. In other words, they reflect the system but do not change it.

The Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino (members of the Grupo Cine Liberación) reflected on these types of problems when they wrote their manifesto 'Hacia un tercer cine' ('Toward a Third Cinema') in the late 1960s:

Solanas and Getino's manifesto considers 'First Cinema' to be the Hollywood production model that idealizes bourgeois values to a passive audience through escapist spectacle and individual characters. 'Second Cinema' is the European art film, which rejects Hollywood conventions but is centred on the individual expression of the auteur director. Third Cinema is meant to be non-commercialized, challenging Hollywood's model. Third Cinema rejects the view of cinema as a vehicle for personal expression, seeing the director instead as part of a collective; it appeals to the masses by presenting the truth and inspiring revolutionary activism.

The aim of Third Cinema was to go straight for the jugular, and to try and unite 'Third World' peoples experiencing oppression by depicting subjects in such a way as to inspire critical thinking and a revolutionary attitude. Both form and content were affected by Third Cinema principles, by emphasizing the drama of everyday life over dramatic narratives, and by using amateur styles and not relying on expensive action set pieces.
Examples are:

Vidas Secas (A poor peasant family from the Northeast region of Brazil flees drought and famine. Brazil, 1963),

La Hora de Los Hornos (The Hour of Furnaces captures many of struggles and issues of the Argentinians, as well as the role of mass communication in either silencing or activating populations. Argentina, 1968),

Memorias del Subdesarrollo(Sergio, a wealthy bourgeois aspiring writer, decides to stay in Cuba even though his wife and friends flee to Miami. Sergio looks back over the changes in Cuba, from the Cuban Revolution to the missile crisis, the effect of living in what he calls an underdeveloped country, and his relations with his girlfriends Elena and Hanna. Cuba, 1968),

Antonio das Mortes (A group of impoverished peasant mystics (beatos) gathered around Dona Santa (Rosa Maria Penna), a female spiritual figure, join in veneration of Saint George with an obscure figure named Coirana (Lorival Pariz). Coirana claims to have restarted the cangaço and seeks to take the revenge of Lampião and other cangaceiro martyrs, presenting the tale of Saint George and the Dragon in a contemporary class conflict context. Brazil, 1969),

Blood of the Condor (An indigenous Bolivian community receiving medical care from the Peace Corps-like American agency Cuerpo del Progreso ("Progress Corps") which is secretly sterilising local women. Bolivia, 1969),

Mandabi (Ibrahima faces numerous difficulties trying to obtain a money order. Not having an ID, Ibrahima must go through several levels of Senegalese bureaucracy to try to get one, only to fail after spending money he does not have. The film explores themes of neocolonialism, religion, corruption, and relationships in Senegalese society. Senegal, 1969),

México, la revolución congelada (An Argentine documentary film, which details the history and progress of the Mexican Revolution (1911-1917). Argentina, 1971).

As these films are written to be polemical and didactic (thought and revolution-provoking) the process of conscientization is a fundamental theme and important part of the narrative structure.

Cover of La Hora de Los Hornos (Argentina, 1968)

directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas.

However, if the aim is to depict a growing socio-political consciousness, resulting in radical or revolutionary change or even an attempt at such change, then the films of First and Second Cinema can be just as effective as the films of Third cinema. The heroic, dramatic style of Hollywood in Spartacus (1960) made for a popular, successful film. The difficulty lies with the conservative, elite control of an expensive medium, coupled with elite control of conservative content.

Second Cinema is often described as European art cinema, which in the case of socio-political content is perceived to blunt any political message. Yet, the 'art' effects used in Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) were perceived to add to its sense of historical authenticity:

^{Pontecorvo
and cinematographer Marcello Gatti filmed [The Battle of Algiers] in
black and white and experimented with various techniques to give the
film the look of newsreel and documentary film. The effect was so
convincing that American releases carried a notice that "not one foot"
of newsreel was used.}

The Battle of Algiers (1966) Italian-Algerian war film
co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo.

U.S. theatrical release poster.

That authenticity added to its negative reception and temporary banning in France, yet acclaim among academics and continued popularity to this day.

A new force for radical change?

The negative side of Second Cinema comes down to what Solanas and Getino described as its inability to go beyond being merely the 'progressive' wing of Establishment cinema. They write:

The most daring attempts of those film-makers who strove to conquer the fortress of official cinema ended, as Jean-Luc Godard eloquently put it, with the filmmakers themselves 'trapped inside the fortress.'

Thus, the strictures of Second Cinema were believed to have led to the concept of a militant new Third cinema that would develop new styles, forms and means of production and distribution that would break down the fortress walls. One could argue that the auteurs of Third Cinema had a Gramscian idea of a counter-hegemonic culture: if bourgeois values represented natural or normal values for society, then the working-class needed to develop a culture of its own. While Lenin would have argued that "culture was ancillary to political objectives", Gramsci saw "culture as fundamental to the attainment of power" and "that cultural hegemony be achieved first."

There is no doubt that the expense and control of distribution in the past led to the frustration of radical filmmakers and their desire to overcome these difficulties with various alternative models of filmmaking and distribution. However, times have changed and the rise of cheaper digital cameras, editing software, and the internet itself as a means of distribution have changed the accessibility of filmmaking and film viewing. Films can be made now using phones and viewed using phones. Life experience in the 'system' can be turned into art by almost anyone now. The question is: will such contemporary cinema simply supply more reflections of the status quo, or will it rise above the media cacophony and become a new cinematic force for radical change?

Life Lessons on the ‘Res’: War Pony (2022) A movie review

2023-07-13T08:34:00.003-07:00

War pony is an extraordinary new film based around two young Lakota boys living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The film shows the difficulties faced by Native Americans surrounded by poverty and drugs and their attempts to rise above the many social problems of their families.

Bill is a guy in his twenties with two children by two different mothers. One of them is in prison while the other is cynical of his attempts to try and make his, and by extension, her life better. He finds a poodle in his garden and subsequently decides to buy the dog so that he can make money from its puppies. Later he stops his car on the road to assist a breakdown. It turns out to be a white turkey farmer with one of many native girls he has been having affairs with. After helping the turkey farmer, Bill asks for a job and is soon shown around the facilities.

His boss has a Halloween fancy dress party which is attended by a white guy dressed up in native American costume and war paint. This transfixes Bill as he stares at the representation of his own culture, seemingly disturbed by it and yet attracted to its meaning at the same time, like a memory deep in his subconsciousness that is soon recalled before the end of the film. Another symbol from his past heritage, a buffalo, appears and disappears somewhat mysteriously throughout the film. The language issue is also marked as a significant part of his alienation from his own native culture and when he says to his relatives and friends: “I dont speak Lakota”.

In the meantime Matho, who is a 12-year-old boy who hangs out with his smoking and drinking friends, gets involved in selling some of his fathers drugs which ultimately has dire consequences for his father. He is kicked out of his father’s house and ends up moving from relatives to staying with drug-pushers as he tries to seek some basic stability in his life.

In one scene, Matho falls asleep with a figurine that is holding a tiny American flag, a scene symbolic of Matho’s desire to be part of the American Dream yet the size of the flag signifying the practical realities of the poverty and desperation in his young life and his growing distance from the benefits of American society.

Bill’s life is also affected by a growing distance from general society as his money-making scheme to breed poodles backfires when his white boss shoots the dog for worrying his flock of turkeys. Furthermore, he is sacked and his boss refuses to pay him for work done.

At this low point for Bill, he decides to get his revenge on the turkey farmer. He gathers up his friends and organises a raid of the turkey farm in the middle of the night. They steal turkey products and live turkeys which are then redistributed among the local people the next day.

This makes for an extraordinary ‘tableau vivant’ (living picture) scene with turkeys wandering slowly around in the snow along with a buffalo with a ‘res’ (reservation) house and its inhabitants in the background. The peace and purity of the snow contrasts with the film’s hectic, hot life of the two main protagonists, and combined with the turkeys and the buffalo, it has a timeless feel. A symbolic projection of nature back to an earlier pre-colonial time? Or to a post-revolutionary future with redistribution of wealth combined with nature respected and free from centuries of colonial oppression?

That timelessness is reflected in the quote attributed to Crazy Horse: “Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.”

War Pony was directed and produced by Riley Keough and Gina Gammell with a screenplay by Keough, Gammell, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy. Keough met Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, while filming in South Dakota in 2015 and introduced them to Gina Gammell.

The film then took shape “through writing workshops, improvisation sessions, and meeting hundreds of locals in the community, to make the story authentic. The group began discussing an idea for a film revolving around two indigenous locals growing up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They began writing the script based upon Bob and Reddy’s life experiences and stories they had heard, ending up with too much material, and decided to split the story between two characters, and collaborated with local producer Willi White.”

While the style is realistic, even naturalistic in places, the close-up photography of many scenes gives the film an intimate feel. The mood is always hopeful despite the many difficulties and setbacks that both Bill and Matho face in their lives.

War Pony is a combination of two progressive aspects of culture (that I have written about before): resistance to slavery, and respect for nature. The raid on the turkey farm forms a type of symbolic resistance to capitalism and exploitation of nature as Bill engages in the ‘redistribution’ of the factory goods while at the same time letting the turkeys roam free.

Bill learns slowly that he is living in a system where the odds are stacked against him, but eventually takes an activist stance, not to get personal revenge, but to avenge his community for the expropriation of the practical and symbolic aspects of his people that left him and his friends constantly scrabbling around in the dirt to make a living. It is possible, too, that the ‘Red Indian’ costume and war paint from the party, triggered an ancient ‘memory’ in Bill of the dignity of his ancestors who fought desperate odds to try and retain their independence.

The Counter-Enlightenment: the origin of conservative politics?

2023-07-12T09:41:00.004-07:00

The Counter-Enlightenment is the name given to the oppositional forces that formed during the Enlightenment that fought against the philosophes' writings on democracy, republicanism and toleration. These forces were known as the anti-philosophes and sought to maintain the dominance of the monarchy and the church.

The philosophes (French for 'philosophers') were eighteenth century intellectuals who "applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues." Most importantly, they believed in progress and tolerance and in many different ways sought to highlight injustice and seek ways of changing society for the better.

The anti-philosophes rose up to defend 'throne and altar' and over time many of the ideals of the anti-philosophes were taken over by Romanticism in the nineteenth century, and the conservative politics of the twentieth century, for example, in Western culture, "depending on the particular nation, conservatives seek to promote a range of social institutions such as the nuclear family, organized religion, the military, property rights, and monarchy."

Caricature of the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back. "You should hope that this game will be over soon."

The origins of right-wing politics in Europe are often attributed to Edmund Burke (1729–1797), the Irish philosopher, who is seen as the philosophical father of modern conservatism. His book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a criticism of the French Revolution, which itself was partly fueled by the writings of the philosophes, thus setting up the dividing lines between the supporters of radical republicanism and revolution, in opposition to the supporters of the older monarchy and church of the ancien régime.

The idea of the Counter-Enlightenment is itself controversial as some academics argue that an organised force against the Enlightenment was non-existent, or at the very least, a complex debate. For example, Jeremy L. Caradonna ('There Was No Counter-Enlightenment') and Robert E. Norton ('The Myth of the Counter-Enlightenment') both look at contradictory aspects of the individuals called anti-philosophes. As has been noted the thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment "did not necessarily agree to a set of counter-doctrines but instead each challenged specific elements of Enlightenment thinking, such as the belief in progress, the rationality of all humans, liberal democracy, and the increasing secularisation of society."

It was Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), the Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas who popularised the term in his essay 'The Counter-Enlightenment'. Berlin was critical of the irrationalism of the early conservative figures from the 1700s such as Joseph de Maistre, Giambattista Vico, and J. G. Hamann. He also examined the German reaction to the French Enlightenment and Revolution as the main source of reaction to the Enlightenment in general and which eventually led to the Romanticist movement. Berlin noted that:

"Such influential writers such as Voltaire, d'Alembert and Condorcet believed that the development of the arts and sciences was the most powerful human weapon in attaining these ends [e.g. satisfaction of basic physical and biological needs, peace, happiness, justice etc] and the sharpest weapon in the fight against ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, oppression and barbarism, which crippled human effort and frustrated man's search for truth and self-direction." [1]

Writers like Darrin M. McMahon have looked at the early opponents of the Enlightenment in pre-Revolutionary France, while Graeme Garrard has shown in detail the conservative counter-Enlightenment ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a very different perspective on one of the heroes of the French Revolution.

In this essay I will look at the individuals and groups who took a stand against the philosophes through their movements, books, and journals in support of the church and monarchy.

Early opposition to the Enlightenment

Opposition to the philosophes of the Enlightenment did not start with the French Revolution. According to McMahon in his book Enemies of the Enlightenment:

"Only recently have scholars begun to acknowledge that conservative salons existed in the eighteenth century in which the philosophes' ideas were regarded with horror..." [2]

Many writers in France mocked the progressive ideas of the philosophes in "a host of satirical plays, libels, and novels published in the late 1750s, 1760s and early 1770s". [3] McMahon comments that: "It stands to reason that the reaction to the Enlightenment should also have occurred first in the place of its birth and been spearheaded by the very institution - the Catholic Church charged with maintaining the faith and morals of the realm". [4]

This can be seen, for example, in the Frontispiece to the physician Claude-Marie Giraud's Epistle from the Devil to M. Voltaire which chronicled Voltaire's 'traffic with Satan', and was republished over thirty times between 1760 and the outbreak of the Revolution.

"Frontispiece to the physician Claude-Marie Giraud's Epistle from the Devil to M. Voltaire. This brief work, chronicling Voltaire's traffic with Satan, was republished over thirty times between 1760 and the outbreak of the Revolution."
(Image: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.20)

The adverse reaction to the ideas of the philosophes was evident in the hundreds of books, pamphlets, sermons, essays, and poems written against them, as well as becoming the raison d'être of journals such as the Anée littéraire, the Journal historique et littéraire, and the Journal ecclésiastique. [5] McMahon writes about how the enemies of 'throne and altar' and their 'treasonous' activities were perceived by the anti-philosophes :

"The anti-philosophes saw the philosophes as 'enemies of the state', 'evil citizens', 'declared adversaries of throne and altar', and unpatriotic subjects guilty of human and divine treason. [...] Thus, the anti-philosophes frequently accused their opponents of spreading "republican" and "democratic" ideas. The philosophes, they claimed, preached the sovereignty of the people, advocated "perfect equality," and spoke endlessly of "social contracts." They lauded the political institutions of the United Kingdom, spreading a contagious "Anglomania" that held up Parliament and the limitations placed on the powers of the English crown as models to be emulated in France. And they talked ad nauseum of "liberty and equality," natural rights and the "rights of the people" without ever mentioning duties and obligations." [6]

They even appealed to the new dauphin [The distinctive title (originally Dauphin of Viennois) of the eldest son of the king of France, from 1349 till the revolution of 1830] to be wary of the new anti-religious attitude that was being spread by the philosophes: "From this anarchy of the physical and moral universe results, necessarily, the overthrow of thrones, the extinction of sovereigns, and the dissolution of all societies. Oh Kings! Oh Sovereigns! Will you be strong enough to stay on your thrones if this principle ever prevails?" [7]

"The 1757 frontispiece to the first volume of Jean Soret and Jean-Nicolas-Hubert Hayer's anti-philosophe journal, La Religion vengée, ou Réfutation des auteurs impies. True philosophy, in possession of the keys to the church, presents a copy of the work to the dauphin, Louis Ferdinand, who looks on approvingly as religion and wisdom trample false philosophy under foot. The latter bears a sign which reads in Latin, "He said that there is no God.""

(Image: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.22)

The power of the philosophes' ideas could be seen in their influence on the French Revolution of 1789 and in particular on the human civil rights document, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen de 1789) which was adopted on the 26 of August 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution.

Ultra-Royalist reaction

However, the Ultra-Royalist reaction, the nobility of high society who strongly supported Roman Catholicism as the state and only legal religion of France, as well as the Bourbon monarchy, initiated what became known as the Second White Terror, a counter-revolution against the French Revolution.

It provided an opportunity for the counter-Enlightenment conservatives to get their revenge on the revolutionaries, taking the form of militant struggle that resulted in bloody consequences. For example:

"the Ultra-Royalist assembly returned after the upheaval of the Hundred Days, this conservative revolution set out to cleanse France of the men and spirits of 1789. Throughout the country, exceptional courts and special jurisdictions tried and punished revolutionary criminals. In the civil service and royal administration as many as fifty thousand to eighty thousand former officials were stripped of their positions, and in the church, the army, and the universities, similar purges were encouraged, although on a smaller scale. In the provinces, particularly in the Midi, marauding gangs took matters into their own hands, hunting down revolutionary collaborators and settling old scores in a great bloodletting known as the White Terror." [8]

However, the Terror worried even the king himself as in 1816 Louis XVIII dissolved the chambre introuvable, to the great horror of the Catholic Right: "Louis feared its intransigent refusal to compromise with any vestige of the Revolution, its exaggerated religiosity, and its resolute efforts to exact retribution from the "criminals" who had sullied France." Thus the conservative pro-monarchy forces had become even more royalist than the king himself. [9]

The Chambre introuvable (French for "Unobtainable Chamber") was the first "Chamber of Deputies elected after the Second Bourbon Restoration in 1815. It was dominated by Ultra-royalists who completely refused to accept the results of the French Revolution."

The conservative ideas of the Ultras, for example, "the weight of history, the primacy of the social whole, the centrality of the family, the necessity of religion, and the dangers of tolerance" found their way into many right-wing and conservative ideologies of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [10]

Rousseau's turn against reason and science

Similarly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's conservative turn laid the groundwork for the future irrationalist Romanticist movement. Despite Rousseau's popularity as a philosopher of the French Revolution, Rousseau ultimately went against the rationalism and intellectualism of the eighteenth century and moved towards a philosophy based on emotion, imagination and religion.

"Flee, vile imposters, no longer sully this temple", the frontispiece to Pierre-Victor-Jean Berthre de Bourniseaux, Le Charlatanisme dans tous les âges dévoilé (Paris, 1807). Angels of the Lord banish the philosophes from the Temple of Truth. In the foreground, Voltaire, Rousseau, La Mettrie, Plato,and other philosophes flee in despair.
(Image: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) book cover).

According to Graham Garrard in Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment:

"Rousseau's "unequivocal preference was for the "happy ignorance" of Sparta over Athens, that "fatherland of the Sciences and the Arts" the philosophes so much admired. He regarded virtue as much more important than knowledge or cognitive ability; a good heart is worth inestimable more than the possession of knowledge or a cultivated intellect, he thought" and concludes that "relying on reason - as philosophers do - "far from delivering me from my useless doubts, would only cause those which tormented me to multiply and would resolve none of them. Therefore, I took another guide, and I said to myself, 'Let us consult the inner light'"." [11]

Rousseau's inward looking attitude and distrust of reason resulted in a very different kind of politics than the philosophes had imagined, as Garrard writes:

"Unlike the foundation of political society envisaged by Hobbes and Locke, [Rousseau] stresses the need for a legislator who relies principally on religion and myth rather than reason, self interest, or fear to "bind the citizens to the fatherland and to one another." [...] For Rousseau, religion substitutes for reason as the cement of society and the means of inducing respect for the laws. [...] Rousseau's legislator is a prophet and (perhaps) a poet, whose "magic" produces a nation, rather than a philosopher who appeals to reason." [12]

For Rousseau the spread of knowledge was to be controlled and funnelled into localist communities and beliefs, away from modern conceptions of the nation state:

"Rousseau was opposed to the popularization of knowledge, not to knowledge per se. In his final reply to critics of his first Discourse, he clarifies position by stressing this distinction between knowledge and its dissemination. "[I]t is good for there to be Philosophers, "he writes, "provided that the People doesn't get mixed up in being Philosophers"." [13]

Leo Strauss's sentiments exactly! Knowledge as a set of myths that would keep the masses happy but not the kind of universalist knowledge that might lead them to revolt:

"The key to Rousseau's patriotic program is what he referred to as a "truly national education." Unlike the "party of humanity," [the philosophes] he called for education to be put entirely in the service of particular national communities in order to prevent the corrosive spread of universal ideas and beliefs. He rejected the view put forth by the philosophes that the universal arts and sciences are an adequate basis for political community." [14]

"The Despair of the philosophes. Frontispiece to the 1817 edition of the prolific anti-philosophe Élie Harel's Voltaire: Particularités curieuses de sa vie et de sa mort, new ed. (Paris, 1817). Christ reigns supreme over a fallen medusa, who vomits up the Encyclopédie, Rousseau's Émile, Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique, and other key Enlightenment texts."
(Text: Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.161)

Moreover, Rousseau advocated the use of catharsis and 'bread and circuses' to maintain loyalty to the patriotic fatherland (and thereby stymieing any type of burgeoning class consciousness):

"Rousseau also advised would-be legislators to establish "exclusive and national" religious ceremonies; games which "[keep] the Citizen frequently assembled;" exercises that increase their national "pride and self esteem;" and spectacles which, by reminding citizens of their glorious past, "stirred their hearts, fired them with a lively spirit of emulation, and strongly attached them to the fatherland with which they were being kept constantly occupied"." [15]

Rousseau opens one of his most famous books, The Social Contract, with the words 'Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains' yet this was a far cry from Marx's 'You have nothing to lose but your chains', as Rousseau refers to rising up against a tyrant, not rising up against one's own slavery. Especially not the 'respectable rights' of 'masters over their servants':

"The Protestant, republican Rousseau bristled with indignation at the thought of his hardy, virtuous Genevans watching the cynical comedies of Moliere who, "for the sake of multiplying his jokes, shakes the whole order of society; how scandalously he overturns all the most sacred relations on which it is founded; how ridiculous he makes the respectable rights of fathers over their children, of husbands over their wives, of masters over their servants!"" [16]

Rousseau's move away from enlightened humanism to authoritarianism can be seen in his attitude towards the state whereby any "attempt to liberate a prisoner, even if unjustly arrested, amounts to rebellion, which the state has a right to punish." [17]

If we compare this to Voltaire's involvement in L'affair Calas we see a very different attitude, as Voltaire fought in defence of a Huguenot merchant who was broken on the wheel for a crime that he had not committed.

Furthermore, Rousseau believed that "The taste for letters, philosophy, and the fine arts softens bodies and souls. Work in the study renders men delicate, weakens their temperament, and the soul retains its vigour with difficulty when the body has lost its vigour. Study uses up the machine, consumes spirits, destroys strength, enervates courage. ... Study corrupts his morals, impairs his health, destroys his temperament, and often spoils his reason." [18]

The Enlightenment philosophes thought the opposite: "The less men reason, the more wicked they are," wrote the Baron d'Holbach. "Savages, princes, nobles and the dregs of the people, are commonly the worst of men, because they reason the least." [19]

The Counter-Enlightenment and Romanticist ideas today

The Enlightenment seems to get blamed for everything these days. In an article titled 'Enlightenment rationality is not enough: we need a new Romanticism', the author Jim Kozubek writes:

"From the use of GMO seeds and aquaculture to assert control over the food chain to military strategies for gene-engineering bioweapons, power is asserted through patents and financial control over basic aspects of life. The French philosopher Michel Foucault in The Will to Knowledge (1976) referred to such advancements as ‘techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations’."

Foucault does at least remark on a basic aspect of the problem: subjugation and control.

Kozubek comments that "science is exploited into dystopian realities – such fraught areas as neo-eugenics through gene engineering and unequal access to drugs and medical care" but notes that "The biggest tug-of-war is not between science and religious institutional power, but rather between the primal connection to nature and scientific institutional power."

Historically, the Enlightenment was a battle between the church and the new scientific approaches to knowledge in the 18th century. The philosophes wrote against the power of the church and the monarchies and developed progressive ideas about democracy and republicanism, torture and the death penalty, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

In the frontispiece to Voltaire's book on Newton's philosophy, Émilie du Châtelet appears as Voltaire's muse, reflecting Newton's heavenly insights down to Voltaire.

However, this universalising philosophy and writing against injustice of the Enlightenment philosophes is missing from modern analyses of Romanticism, that by the 19th century those battles had developed into the Romanticist 'primal connection to nature' versus capitalist technocracy. Yet, what the Romanticists and the technocrats did have in common was that neither questioned slavery: whether it be the slavery of feudalism (which the Romanticists liked to hark back to), or the wage slavery of modern capitalism (which the technocrats prefer to ignore).

In fact, the Romanticists and the technocrats helped each other in a reactionary symbiotic relationship that perpetuated the status quo: the Romanticists had always used technology (to indulge their fantasies, for example, train technology brought them to gaze in awe at the 'mystical' Alps), while the technocrats used Romanticism to create diversion and escapism for the masses (thereby avoiding mass uprisings and revolution). This can be seen in the almost wholly Romanticist culture of fantasy, terror, horror, superheroes etc that dominates global modern culture today in the era of global monopoly capitalism.

The Enlightenment and its opposing counter-Enlightenment, represented the main ideological battles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but as people became less and less religious over the ensuing century, Romanticism took over from the irrationalism of the church as the main counter-progressive force in society.

This can be seen also in the 'suspicion of reason' contained in the definitions of the post-Romanticist ideologies of Modernism and Postmodernism, and the outright return to Romanticism of Metamodernism. Once the bourgeois revolutions of 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' had been carried through, the universalist ideas of the philosophes were quietly dropped and the anti- (wage) slavery torch passed on to the revolutionary socialists.

It seems that the role of Romanticist movements (including Modernism, Postmodernism, and Metamodernism) is to react to any burgeoning progressive movement, to suck the life blood out of it and while not necessarily killing it, to at least leave it extremely weakened and non-threatening.

Meanwhile, any obvious lack of consistency in Romanticist movements merely points to, and demonstrates its reactive nature. For example, Romanticist neo-Gothic is full of decoration, yet Romanticist (Modernist) Minimalism, in the form of Bauhaus, for example, is completely devoid of decoration.

McMahons description of the anti-philosophes confirms that reactive view:

"If the philosophes assailed religion, then the anti-philosophes must protect it. If the philosophes attacked the king, then his authority must be upheld. If the philosophes vaunted the individual, then the social whole must be defended. If the philosophes corrupted the family, then its importance must be reaffirmed. And if the philosophes advocated change, then the anti-philosophes must prevent it". [20]

While the Right may not be able to get away with arguments for the re-establishment of monarchies these days, their ideology is still rooted in organized religion and the social teachings of the church, (combined with the military, and property rights).

The philosophes were progressive thinkers who struggled for radical changes against the injustices of their time. Their universalist writings on liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state are just as important in the world today as they have ever been, especially in an era of increasing globalised poverty where one billion people worldwide live in slums (and yet this figure is projected to grow to 2 billion by 2030) and which is exacerbated by rising inflation and the impacts of war. It is time now for new thinking that is not dominated by the selfish political and war agendas of the billionaire media machine.

Notes:

[1] Isaiah Berlin,'The Counter-Enlightenment', Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Pimlico, 1997) p.3

[2] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.24

[3] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.24

[4] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.9

[5] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.27

[6] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.41/42

[7] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.43

[8] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.156

[9] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.157
[10] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.200

[11] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.84

[12] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.59

[13] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.91

[14] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.62

[15] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.62

[16] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.64

[17] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.80

[18] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.88

[19] Graeme Garrard, Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes, (SUNY, 2003) p.88

[20] Darren McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2002) p.53

The Art of Deception: Learning to Speak One-Percent

2023-04-23T11:02:00.002-07:00

Title screen for the HBO series, Succession.

Review of Succession (contains spoilers)

by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

"In ancient Rome, at one point, they wanted to make all the slaves wear something so they could identify them. Like a cloak or whatever. But then they decided not to do it. And do you know why? Hmm? Because they realized if all the slaves dressed the same, they would see how many of them there were, and they'd rise up and kill their masters. But the point is, if-if we wanna survive, you and I, then... we need a hell of a lot of little folks running around shitting us data, you know, for the eyeballs, for the revenue, for the scale."
(Succession S03 E09)

Introduction

The popular series Succession is nearing its final episodes as the battle for control of a conglomerate heats up. The story centres around an ageing father and his children who are in a battle for succession. The series is well made with sharp dialogue that demonstrates the ruthless attitudes of the Roy family. The use of deception in their struggle for power is straight out of the Sun Tzu and Machiavelli playbooks of old. However, differences arise over who should have access to these playbooks when we examine the political ideas and philosophy of Leo Strauss who has a very different perspective on what the public should know and not know.

"Tom: Greg, this is not fucking Charles Dickens world, okay? You don't go around talking about principles. We're all trying to do the right thing, of course we are. But come on, man! Man the fuck up!"
(Succession S02 E02)

Succession
Succession is into its fourth and final season now and has proved to be a very successful series showing the life of a billionaire family in the USA. The family is headed up by Logan Roy ("king") who is aging but cannot decide which of his offspring he wants to take over his position in the company.

Brian Denis Cox in 2016 who plays Logan Roy

Three of Logan's children, Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan (Shiv), are employed by the company, Waystar RoyCo, a global media and entertainment conglomerate.

There is also Connor, Logan's oldest son; Marcia Roy, Logan's third and current wife; Tom Wambsgans, Shiv's husband and Waystar executive; and Greg Hirsch, Logan's grandnephew who is also employed by the company.

The family has an extraordinarily rich lifestyle with 'PJs' (Private Jets), helicopters and fast boats taking them to their meetings, offices and houses around the world. They have their every whim catered to and take it all for granted as they maneuver and jockey for position to be the next leader of the company.

Their emotional and physical distance from ordinary people and their own workers is shown by their callous attitudes and obnoxious language that is demonstrated repeatedly throughout the series. The other characters of this series Connor, Tom, and Greg, are shown to regularly vacillate from greed to obsequiousness as they also try to retain their powerful positions in the constantly changing battle scenarios of the corporate wars.

Thus, none of the main characters of Succession are sympathetic. The audience may briefly empathise with some of the personal aspects of their lives but then their egoistic behaviour and ruthless attitudes soon destroy what little pity and care they may have aroused in the viewers.

The Roy kids have learned every trick in the book on how to manipulate, deceive, and use divide and rule tactics from their merciless father.

The rich dialogue of Succession is full of the language of the one-percent. For example, Roman tries to impress his father in a meeting with a combination of the latest jargon and his familiarity with the methods of elite maneuvering for profit:

"Rom: I actually do have a pitch on this, Dad. Financialization. Float hot. I mean, keep news for political power, for market manipulation capability. But the rest, we play the markets with you and me up in a little pod above the city, fucking start ups and shitting on pension funds. Highly maneuverable, highly mobile.
Logan: And in terms of getting rid of Sandy and Stewy?
Rom: Oh, fuck 'em. Scare 'em off.
Logan: As in?
Rom: As in, you know...Scooby Doo it, Dad. You just dress up as ghosts in the theme park. Um, you know, we just use the lawyers, the PIs, the honey-trap hookers, all the unpleasant people at our disposal. Call in all the favors. Fucking President Raisin, all the Senate cock sucks who owe us. Fucking kill, kill, kill." (Succession S02 E01)

The professionals and unprofessionals that they have 'at their disposal' are due to the use of unlimited wealth to determine a positive outcome for their ambitions.

Apart from the obvious bully boy tactics, deception is a major element in their strategies to maintain and grow their influence and power.

For example in the case of Vaulter, a media website that is acquired by Waystar RoyCo, Kendall and Roman are tasked by their father to review Vaulter's performance. They use different types of deception to learn about the company. Roman 'slums' it and goes drinking with some of the staff:

"ROM: Speaking of hiding shit, I took a couple of their staffers out, I got them shitfaced, and apparently, they're looking to unionize, and fucking soon.
-Oh, yeah?
ROM: Pay transparency, bargaining rights. Just nasty, tangly shit. And it's not a body pit, whatever the fuck a body pit is. It's a fucking muesli pit, and doesn't fit with our core, you know... values. So now I'm thinking we just shutter the fucker."
(Succession S02 E02)

Ken pretends all is fine to Lawrence Yee, the founder of Vaulter, but then suddenly announces to the floor his real intentions:

"KEN: Yeah. You're... You're all fired. So, if you can leave your laptops where they are, and hand in your passes, security will be coming around now. I've been through everything you've shown me. Food and weed, those are the only two verticals driving revenue, so we're folding them in and, uh, yeah, you're all free to leave.
-This is a joke.
KEN: You have 15 minutes to gather your belongings and exit the building. Separation agreements will be handed around shortly. One week of severance per year served, with full non-disclosure. Post your little videos. You get three days.
-What the f...
KEN: Unused vacation days will not be reimbursed. Health benefits will be terminated at the end of the month. That's it. I'd like to thank you all for your hard work.
YEE: What the fuck is going on?
KEN: Yeah, sorry about the, uh, cloak and dagger. I just needed some time to untangle all your shit, find the profit centers, keep the union off our back. We're already fully operational on seven.
YEE: Why?
KEN: Because my dad told me to." (Succession S02 E02)

Suddenly the real side of Kendall is exposed as his familiarity with the language of corporate tricks and laws rolls off his tongue. The patriarchal, hierarchical aspect is interesting to note as he tells Yee he did it because his dad told him too.

Reporting his deed back to Logan, he discusses his deception of the Vaulter staff and dealing with press coverage:

"KEN: Okay, it's done. Vaulter's dead. Four-hundred and seventy-six off the payroll, full-timers, freelance... I, uh, negotiated an early break from the lease and hired an editor and five interns for the two remaining verticals, the rest will be user-generated, reviews, upload pics, all that stuff.
Also, I harvested a ton of ideas from the Vaulter staff before they left. IP and start-up ideas. Most of it's, you know, bullshit but... you never know.
Logan: We'll say you tried to keep it alive. Valiant efforts, et cetera.
KEN: I'm good. I'll wear it." (Succession S02 E02)

All in a day's work, with very little consideration of the disastrous effects that sudden unemployment could have on the Vaulter staff. The consolidation of profit and power is primary, and the ruthlessness of the process does not enter into the minds of Logan and Kendall.

Thus, we are shown how the one percent operate and any empathy with the characters is pointless. Some reviewers criticised the series because there were no sympathetic characters, missing the point that Succession is a kind of exposé of contemporary elite behaviour, similar in some ways to Machievelli's sixteenth century book, The Prince (1513).

"In his loafers made from the skin of... I don't know, what is that? Human rights activists?"
(Succession S02 E06)

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. He wrote The Prince (Il Principe) around 1513 as a political treatise on how to gain and retain power.

Portrait of Machiavelli (1469-1527) by Santi di Tito

Machiavelli's advocacy of fraud and deceit in the process of gaining power ensured his fame as a ruthless advisor to the elite classes. However, while many would see Machiavelli as a self-serving immoral opportunist, this may not have been the case. Erica Benner writes:

“Just a year before he finished the first draft of his “little book”, the Medici swept into Florence in a foreign-backed coup after spending years in exile. They were deeply suspicious of his loyalties, dismissed him from his posts, then had him imprisoned and tortured under suspicion of plotting against them.”

She notes that “Machiavelli’s writings speak in different voices at different times” and that “Francis Bacon [1561–1626)], Spinoza [1632–1677] and Rousseau [1712–1778] – had no doubt the book was a cunning exposé of princely snares, a self-defence manual for citizens. “The book of republicans,” Rousseau dubbed it.”

Machiaveli emphasized the importance of deception in the tactical toolbox of the power-hungry elites. He urges never to "attempt to win by force what can be won by deception” and that the "vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

But deception is only part of the strategy, it is also important that "people should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”

In Succession, the careful planning of the Roy boys is climaxed with a sudden coup de grace ensuring that the Vaulter staff are reeling and have no avenue left open for action.

"Logan: Will you sit out front today, Kerry? I need to know what the temperature is amongst the shit-munchers."
(Succession S03 E05)

Sun Tzu

Machiavelli updated elite strategies that had been around a long time. For example, writing in The Art of War, Sun Tzu declared that "All warfare is based on deception."

Qing-era representation of Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer who lived during the Eastern Zhou period of 771 to 256 BCE.

He is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, "an influential work of military strategy that has affected both Western and East Asian philosophy and military thinking. Sun Tzu is revered in Chinese and East Asian culture as a legendary historical and military figure."

While there has been much debate over the historicity of Sun Tzu, there is no doubt over the influence of The Art of War over the centuries on generals and theorists like, for example, the influence it had on Mao's writings about guerrilla warfare.

Sun Tzu's advice on deception is comprehensive: "Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."

Whoever Sun Tzu was, he was writing at a time when knowledge was pretty much the monopoly of the elites. Machiavelli, on the other hand, lived during a revolutionary time for knowledge dissemination. For example, "before the invention of printing, the number of manuscript books in Europe could be counted in thousands. By 1500, after only 50 years of printing, there were more than 9,000,000 books."

This was why the philosophers of the The Scientific Revolution (c16-c17) and the Age of Enlightenment/Reason (c17-c19) saw The Prince as 'a cunning exposé of princely snares, a self-defence manual for citizens'.

However, this exposé did not go down well with Leo Strauss, the most popular twentieth century philosopher of the new conservative elites.

"CONNOR: Oh, no, no, no, no. I can pull out the old megaphone anytime I want and I can say, "Hey! Guess what? I recall my father was a nasty, racist, neglectful individual. What was it that they used to say around here? No Blacks, no Jews, no women above the fourth floor."
(Succession S03 E04)

Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a German professor who emigrated from Germany to the United States where he wrote many books on philosophy, and taught classical political philosophy, mainly at the University of Chicago. His conservative ideas struck a chord with many public intellectuals, politicians and think tank professionals, some of whom were ex-students of his. His work has been the subject of much debate on his ideas and intentions.

For example, Shadia Drury, analyses his work and style of writing as intentionally obscure to ensure that his ideas on political power would only be understood by the few. In The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Drury writes that Strauss was "an atheist and moral nihilist who advocated the use of religion, morality, and family values as useful political tools by which to placate and manipulate the masses [and] believed that the best form of government is the absolute but covert rule of a 'wise' elite independent of the law". [1]

Photo of Leo Strauss (1899–1973)

To do this Strauss called for "a reconsideration of the "distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching". He argued "that serious writers write esoterically, that is, with multiple or layered meanings, often disguised within irony or paradox, obscure references, even deliberate self-contradiction." He believed that this protected the philosopher from "the retribution of the regime", but it could be argued that it was more likely to protect the philosopher from the retribution of the masses - as Drury sets out to show.

Drury notes that Strauss is critical of Machiavelli because "by abandoning the esoteric nature of philosophy, Machiavelli undermines philosophy itself" and turns "it into an object of mass consumption". [2]

This opened the way to the Enlightenment which Strauss is critical of because enlightenment leads people to think for themselves and this is not good for the powers-that-be. Drury writes:

"Machiavelli's dissemination of philosophy to the masses opens the way to the Enlightenment, nay, it is identical with the Enlightenment. Enlightenment is 'the project' of modernity par excellence: its goal is to fight against the Kingdom of Darkness. It believes falsely, that mass enlightenment is the solution to man's political dilemmas. Moreover,this modern project is conceived as a conscious and heroic effort on man's part to take control of his destiny and to master Fortuna. According to Strauss, Machiavelli replaces the biblical God with Fortuna, and the Christian idea of providence with the modern idea of not trusting to chance, and taking one's fate in one's own hands." [3]

Even though Strauss rejected revelation he did not want to undermine religion because "religion is necessary to maintain order by ensuring that citizens obey the laws". [4]

For Strauss religion and philosophy are two opposites with very different aims:

"[I]n Strauss's view religion and philosophy are opposites that cannot and should not be reconciled. The life of faith is the life of blind unquestioning surrender, whereas the life of philosophy is that of free enquiry. The faithful are steeped in delusions whereas the philosophers rejoice in the truth. Religion prohibits contemplation because it knows as soon as one reflects, one will recognize that religion is a fraud. However, if one reflects further, one will realise the necessity of such swindles and the wisdom of the prophets who create them for love of mankind. Realizing this, the philosophers must keep their atheistic truth hidden; they must live a dual life endorsing publicly what they know is a noble fiction. [...] [T]his dual life causes them no grief; on the contrary it fills their life with laughter, inside jokes, subtle winks and pregnant pauses." [5]

Thus, it seems that while Machiavelli wrote to reveal power, Strauss wrote to conceal power. Strauss criticises Machiavelli for making public the strategies of the elites, risking the enlightenment and possible revolt of the people.

Strauss liked to keep it simple. Adam Curtis shows in his documentary, The Power of Nightmares, that Strauss liked the TV series Gunsmoke because: "The hero has a white hat; he's faster on the draw than the bad man; the good guy wins. And it's not just that the good guy wins, but that values are clear. [...] Good and evil." [Professor Stanley Rosen, Pupil of Leo Strauss 1949]

Strauss also liked Perry Mason, the TV series about a lawyer: "The extremely cunning man who, as far as we can see, is very virtuous and uses his great intelligence and quickness of mind to rescue his clients from dangers, but who could be fooling us—because he's cleverer than we are. Is he really telling the truth? Maybe his client is guilty!" [Rosen]

Therefore the masses could be taught to unite "against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy", which in the USA, for example, under Reagan was the Soviet Union, while at the same time never really knowing if what they are being told is the full story.

Drury argues that Strauss teaches that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them".

The creation of myths that divert the anger of the masses away from their own elite perpetrators is balanced by positive myths that puff up the nation's pride in the very same elites. This is the rule of the wise, and revealing its inner workings was frowned upon by Strauss.

"ROM: Hail, my fellow toilerman. I have returned from real America, bearing the gift of sight.
SHIV: How was summer camp?
ROM: Hmm? What's that? Didn't catch that. I've been down in the salt mines so long with my fellow Johnny Lunchpails, I no longer speak One-Percent."
(Succession S02 E05)

Conclusion

Succession is one story about the real America. It shows the workings of a society at its highest levels. It is self conscious in that it has no illusions about the American Dream. Instead it shows a society that is brutalised by its own successes that are leading to a greater disparity between wealth and poverty. It shows the growing distance between the masses and the elites that has developed over the last few decades, the contradiction between the idea of the nation and its reality. The ideal nation promoted by the elites is being split apart by global agendas that are consuming more and more of the nations resources to the detriment of its citizens:

"SHIV LAUGHS: Okay, big picture... we're at the end of a long American century. Our company is a declining empire
- inside a declining empire.
- Amen, brother." (Succession S03 E02)

Nobody knows where this is all leading but one can be sure that the wise men are working on it in a race to stop the masses from becoming completely fed up and taking matters into their own hands.

The verdict on Succession? Machiavelli would probably have loved it; Strauss would most likely have hated it.

Notes:
[1] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. ix
[2] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 130
[3] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 131
[4] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 52
[5] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 60

Changing Society: Nature, Life, and Resistance in Culture Today

2023-03-25T12:33:00.007-07:00

Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022) and White Tiger (2021) (Spoiler alert)

Book cover of The White Tiger (2008)

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”
― Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, (Elective Affinities, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809)

What kind of culture do we want? What kind of culture do we need? Our culture reflects our fundamental ideologies and these ideologies are rooted in patriarchal religion and neoliberal politics in the main.

It's a culture that depicts the class system, war, and in general, people dealing with the system in its many different facets, through drama, adventure, comedy, terror, horror, etc.

The origins of our culture are thought to go back thousands of years when, for example, (in the ideas of James DeMeo) "climatic changes caused drought, desertification and famine in North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia (collectively Saharasia) and this trauma caused the development of patriarchal, authoritarian and violent characteristics" about six thousand years ago.

The coming of the Kurgan peoples across Europe from c. 4000 to 1000 BC is believed to have been a tumultuous and disastrous time for the peoples of Old Europe. The Old European culture is believed to have centred around nature-based pagan ideologies.

Some believe the rise of patriarchy was due to the sexual division of labour about 2 million years ago, while others believe it was due to the later development of agriculture and private property.

Christ as Martyr and Master
Jan van Eyck (before c. 1390 – 9 July 1441)
Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, c. 1430–1440.

However, these changes led to the growth of patriarchal religions that underpinned the ambitions of warring rulers, for example:

"In Christianity the rulers had a religion that assured their objectives. The warring adventurism of the new rulers needed soldiers for their campaigns and slaves to produce their food and mine their metals for their armaments and wealth. Thus, Christ was portrayed as Martyr and Master. In his own crucifixion as Martyr he provided a brave example to the soldiers, and as Master he would reward or punish the slaves according to how well they had behaved."

The privatisation of property, extractivism, the necessity for food-producing slaves and a warrior class sustained and further extended the aims of elites throughout feudalism and capitalism up to the wars of today, and who are now competing for power and resources on a global scale. The terminology has changed but the fundamentals have not.

The exploitation of nature continues unabated with the ongoing destruction of the Amazon and wildlife, the global and mass use and abuse of animals, transnational polluting industries, chemical-driven industrial crop land, and factory ship over-fishing emptying our seas. The wars have also gotten greater with two world wars in the twentieth century and a third one hanging over our heads constantly threatening our very existence. The elites are a smaller group of people now but control ever-growing global monopolies.

Thus, looking at culture in general from this perspective, there are two important aspects of modern culture: the destruction of nature combined with death (war) and a culture of slavery (escapism, diversion, etc.).

The antithesis of these two aspects are respect for nature and life, and resistance to slavery in all of its forms. While we are surrounded by the culture of war and escapism, it is not easy to find an oppositional culture.

Yet it does exist, and two good recent examples are the Korean TV series Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022) (pro-nature), and White Tiger (2021) (anti-slavery), a film based on an adaptation of Aravind Adiga's 2008 novel of the same name. These two fine dramas show us that alternatives to the current system and ideology can be produced.

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”
― William Drummond (Academical Questions, 1805)

Nature and life - Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022)

Extraordinary Attorney Woo is the story of Woo Young-woo, an autistic lawyer who is raised by her single father. She finds it difficult to get a job despite graduating with the highest distinction. However, she eventually gets a job in a top Seoul law firm, Hanbada, using her father's connections. Over time she learns to become an excellent lawyer and her colleagues grow to respect her. The series becomes a platform for progressive social, political, environmental and ethical issues fought out through the courts. Furthermore, the environmental theme is highlighted by her love of whales and dolphins especially when she "analogizes situations she faces in her professional and private life with the lives and characteristics of whales and dolphins [that] often surprises and confounds the people who surround her."

Promotional poster for Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022)
By Naver, Fair use.

These situations are often combined with beautiful, if surreal, photography of whales swimming past windows or combined with court scenes. Woo is also seen demonstrating with a colleague against the treatment of dolphins in a local aquarium.

However, Attorney Woo's fellow rookie colleague, Kwon Min-woo, approaches their supervising lawyer Jung Myung-seok, angry at her sometimes unorthodox behaviour which he feels she is getting away with because of her disability. Jung Myung-seok reacts in a slightly annoyed tone:

"Attorney Kwon, you must really like penalties. [...] When you experience a difference of opinion or a conflict at work, you need to talk with your colleagues and solve it. Giving rewards or punishment over who is right or wrong for every single thing, that's not like how I like to work."

Here Myung-seok advises that conflict in life must be resolved through discussion, not by 'giving rewards or penalties', moving away from the authoritarian methods of the master.

Attorney Woo naturally reacts to selfishness, corruption and discrimination but she gradually learns that the pursuit of truth is a difficult path to carve out. Apart from Woo being a symbol of logic and reasoning in the service of truth, her connection with nature is direct and not mediated by a negative, consumer-orientated culture.

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau (from his journals, 1847)

Resistance to slavery - White Tiger (2021)

White Tiger tells the story of Balram Halwai who relates the ups and downs of his life in a letter to Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. Balram was an intelligent young boy in an isolated village who aspires to work as a chauffeur for the son of the rich village landowner, Ashok, who has just returned from America with his American-Indian wife, Pinky. Ashok and Pinky go to Delhi to bribe politicians to reduce his family's taxes and Balram joins them as their driver. Although they have liberal ideas about their servants, as soon as things turn bad they treat him like any other wealthy, entitled masters. Balram is asked to drive Ashok with a huge sum of money for a bribe and then decides to escape his servitude by murdering Ashok and stealing the money to make a better life for himself. He then sets up a taxi company in a different city where he treats his drivers well and helps them when they get into the kind of troubles he experienced himself as a servant.

Promotional poster for White Tiger (2021)

Balram believes "that the Indian underclass is trapped in a perpetual state of servitude, like chickens in a chicken coop."

He states that "The greatest thing to come out of this country in its ten thousand year history: The Rooster Coop. They can see and smell the blood. They know they’re next. Yet they don’t rebel, they don’t try and get out of the coop." He asks why the workers are so honest in their relations with their masters. "Why? Because Indians are the world’s most honest and spiritual people? No. It’s because 99.9 percent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop. The trustworthiness of servants is so strong that you can put the key of emancipation in a man’s hand and he will throw it back at you with a curse." He describes the main problem of Indian society: "In the old days, when India was the richest nation on earth, there were one thousand castes and destinies. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies."

The writer of the original novel (The White Tiger, p254, 2008) Aravind Adiga, noted in the novel that:

"I won't be saying anything new if I say that the history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side: and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles (the peeing in the potted plants, the kicking of the pet dogs, etc.) but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years."

Balram's escape from slavery, his resistance to the master, comes with tragedy as his extended family is murdered by the village landlord. He believes that he is a White Tiger, a symbol of freedom, because he escaped slavery and ultimately encourages his own employees to do the same:
(monologue and description from the screenplay)

"Balram speaks directly to his Drivers as he gathers them and brings them outside to the front of his business.
BALRAM - Now, what happens in your typical Hindi film about murder? A poor man kills a rich man and then gets nightmares of the dead man pursuing him screaming: “Murderer! Shame!” It doesn’t happen like that. The real nightmare is the other kind - where you didn’t do it, that you didn’t kill your master, that you
lost your nerve, and that you’re still a servant to another man. But then you wake up, the sweating
stops, your heartbeat slows. The nightmare is over. You did do it. You killed your master.
Balram steps away from them and speaks directly into the camera:
BALRAM (TO CAMERA) - I have switched sides. I’ve made it. I’ve broken out of the coop.
He exits frame, leaving a wall of drivers, servants, perhaps new White Tigers, ready to strike, confronting the camera, confronting the audience..."

Balram takes chances and resists slavery. He may be wealthy now but he does not feel part of the wealthy class. He has broken out of the coop and 'switched sides', and he has no problem enlightening and even encouraging his drivers to do the same. In a way he plays the rich at their own game: using their tactics of murder and disloyalty to escape from their binds.

“Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.”
― Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Aphorisms, 1880/1893)

Of diets and glaciers

Given the current state of the political and financial crises of late capitalism. i.e., the possibility of an all-out global war and the worsening destruction of the environment (upon which our sustenance is based), the constant re-examination of our culture is of utmost importance. For many people the movement for change seems glacial and leads them to live out their lives on the cultural diet created mainly by producers whose primary motive is profit, not social and political change.

However, the illusion of peace and freedom created by this timeless culture is situated in real historical conditions that are constantly changing. Over time and with different forces underneath, even the slowest of glaciers can suddenly break apart and form cracks. The greatest aspiration of cultural producers today would be to show that happiness does not consist in diversion from worry but in confronting the sources of our current ills instead, and to remember what Leonard Cohen wrote, "Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in."

Every St Patrick's Day, Everywhere, All at Once: A Disaster for Ireland

2023-03-20T15:12:00.004-07:00

March 17 is traditionally St Patrick's Day, a day when 'Irishness' is celebrated all over the world. This date is traditionally held to be the date of the death of St Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the patron saint of Ireland. It is marked by parades through the main cities and towns of Ireland, and in recent years it has become popular as a festival around the world with famous buildings being lit up green and major rivers being dyed green.

However, in recent decades the symbolism of St Patrick's Day has changed dramatically and promotes negative stereotypes (e.g. leprechauns) of the Irish people to a world audience. This is not good for Ireland or the Irish people.

It must also be noted that St Patrick is seen as the patron saint of Ireland because he defeated pagan ideology in favour of Christianity. However, pagan ideology had a strong connection with nature and the cycles of nature that resulted in seasonal festivals such as Beltaine (1 May), Lughnasadh (1 August), Samhain (1 November) and Imbolc (1 February).

Patrick banishing the snakes

St Patrick

Not a lot is known about Saint Patrick except he is believed to have been a Romano-British Christian missionary who was kidnapped by Irish raiders and brought to Ireland as a slave. After six years as a shepherd he went home and became a priest. He then returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. He is famously believed to have driven the snakes out of Ireland despite the fact there is no record that Ireland ever had snakes.

It is more likely that the snakes refer to the pagans themselves:

"Scholars suggest the tale is allegorical. Serpents are symbols of evil in the Judeo-Christian tradition—the Bible, for example, portrays a snake as the hissing agent of Adam and Eve's fall from grace. The animals were also linked to heathen practices—so St. Patrick's dramatic act of snake eradication can be seen as a metaphor for his Christianizing influence."

It is believed that he died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick. It is also believed that the date is suspiciously close to Ostara, a pagan holiday:

"It wasn’t arbitrary that the day honoring Saint Patrick was placed on the 17th of March. The festival was designed to coincide, and, it was hoped, to replace the Pagan holiday known as Ostara; the second spring festival which occurs each year, which celebrates the rebirth of nature, the balance of the universe when the day and night are equal in length, and which takes place at the Spring Equinox (March 22nd this year). In other words, Saint Patrick’s Day is yet another Christian replacement for a much older, ancient Pagan holiday; although generally speaking Ostara was most prominently replaced by the Christian celebration of Easter (the eggs and the bunny come from Ostara traditions, and the name “Easter” comes from the Pagan goddess Eostre)."

St Patrick's Day Parade

As a child I remember being brought to the parade and seeing a very dignified parade of marching pipe bands and symbols of the Irish state and nation such as the Irish army. By the 1980s it had been reduced to low levels of commercialisation (such as multiple floats advertising a major security firm). Later, the influence of Macnas took over and a kind of Celtic primitivism became very influential.

St Patrick's Day, Downpatrick, March 2011

The commercialism of the St Patrick's Day Parade also resulted in Irish people dressing up as red-bearded and green-hatted leprechauns:

"Films, television cartoons and advertising have popularised a specific image of leprechauns which bears little resemblance to anything found in the cycles of Irish folklore. It has been argued that the popularised image of a leprechaun is little more than a series of stereotypes based on derogatory 19th-century caricatures."

Along with this negative stereotype came a change in terminology as St Patrick's day became known as Paddy's Day, a derogatory term for Irish people (Paddy). The festival has become an excuse for all-day drinking and riotous behaviour, feeding into the negative stereotypes of 'drunken paddys'.

St. Patrick Parade, Fifth Ave., New York 1909

In a way the St Patrick's Day parade of recent years does symbolise the Ireland of today just as the content of past parades represented the prevalent ideologies of their day too. The colorful, brash, internationalism of the parade now is similar to other major festivals around the world (such as Brazilian Carnival) and, similarly, has more of a feeling of public catharsis than a celebration of national identity.

The kind of drinking and self-mocking celebrated now on St Patrick's Day has more in common with the work of the Roman satirical poet, Juvenal (c. 100 CE), who wrote that "the People have abdicated our duties [and] now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses." Public palliatives for societal woes only temporarily cover up the real problems facing Irish people today as the housing, energy and financial crises deepen.

Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal. This is what is really needed now, the rebirth of the politics of social justice, and the renewal of our deep connection with nature and life - a movement away from the theology of death.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Dubai Superlatives: The Power of Excessive Wealt

2023-03-14T07:51:00.002-07:00

Questions From a Worker Who Reads (Bertolt Brecht 1935)

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?

Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai, UAE
(Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

Maybe the closest we can get to Elon Musk's vision of Mars is a visit to Dubai. Imagine an alien planet where you can only live in the base settlement with a breathable atmosphere: a comfortable place and a comfortable temperature.

In the hottest months of the year in Dubai, temperatures rise to 50 degrees so people move from air-conditioned apartments to air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned offices to air-conditioned shopping malls.

Of course, they are very nice cars, apartments, offices and shopping malls. Dubai deals in expensive property and large scales: the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa (829.8m, 2,722ft), the tallest hotel in the world under construction (Ciel), and the foundations laid for the tallest construction in the world - the Dubai Creek observation tower which will be 1.3km (1,300m, 4,300ft) high.

Workers gardening near Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE
(Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

This should keep Dubai on the superlative lists into the next decade. Here the hierarchies of height determine your wealth. For example, the entrance to the Burj Khalifa is a luxurious shopping mall which also contains a massive food hall for the workers, servers and shop workers. The more money you have to spend, the higher up the Burj Khalifa you can go. The extremes of wealth mean that it is likely that most of the people who work in the mall have never been up the lifts into the stratospheric heights of the tallest building in the world. While many eat in the cheap food mall at the base, only a few have tea and coffee in the lounge and outdoor observation deck on the 148th floor (named At the Top) which is so high that it is more like looking down on Dubai from a plane than from a building. This contrast is certainly symbolic of the incredible extremes of wealth that exist in Dubai.

Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them ?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph ?

History
I read a comment somewhere that if Dubai were described as a book then the front cover would be Cosmopolitan Magazine and the inside would be The Big Issue (homeless magazine). Starting life as a poor village in the desert beside the sea, Dubai has come on in leaps and bounds ever since. For example,"in 1822, a British naval surveyor noted that Dubai was at that time populated with a thousand people living in an oval-shaped town surrounded by a mud wall, scattered with goats and camels." By the 1930s Dubai was known for its pearl exports but "the pearl trade was damaged irreparably by the 1929 Great Depression and the innovation of cultured pearls. With the collapse of the pearling industry, Dubai fell into a deep depression and many residents lived in poverty or migrated to other parts of the Persian Gulf." However, oil was struck in 1966 and this all changed. While Dubai had already started a period of infrastructural development and expansion in the 1950s based on revenue from trading activities (such as the trade in gold), the discovery of oil offshore set the tone for a new rapid growth in building projects during the 1970s.

This growth was fueled by revenues from oil and gold but depended mainly on cheap labour from developing countries. The treatment of the many thousands of workers in Dubai has been the subject of many reports and documentaries, such as Human Rights Watch (living conditions described as being "less than humane") and the documentary, Slaves of Dubai (2009).

In an article titled "What is Modern Slavery in Dubai and How Does it Affect You?" it is stated:

"More than 88.5% of UAE residents are foreign workers, with South Asian migrants constituting 42.5% of the UAE’s workforce. [...] These migrants, usually illiterate and from impoverished, rural communities in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh [...] Eager to move to Dubai and begin earning money that they can send home to their families, they take out loans of up to $3000 from unscrupulous recruitment agencies to pay the exorbitant ‘visa fees’ (which is actually illegal – the recruitment agencies are supposed to cover these fees) and board flights to Dubai, excited for a new life in the glitzy Emirate. When they touch down in Dubai, however, it’s a different story. Driven to squalid shanty towns on the outskirts of Dubai, where 45 men share one outdoor bathroom and 10 or more people sleep in a room, their passports are confiscated and they are told that they will actually be working 14 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week, in the desert sun."

The cramped living conditions and low wages has led to high suicide rates too.

City Centre Deira, mall worker, Dubai, UAE
(Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

The International Institute for Global Strategic Analysis has reported that the kafala sponsorship system has played an important part in the exploitation of workers:

"Kafala is a system popular in Gulf countries that gives private citizens and companies responsibility and oversight over workers. The kafala sponsorship system is used to monitor migrant labourers, working primarily in the construction and domestic sectors in Gulf Cooperation Council member states. The kafala system involves withholding labourers’ passports to regulate their residency and employment, which gives employers near-total control over migrant workers’ salary, living conditions, nutrition, ability to work elsewhere, and even their ability to return home."

The treatment of citizens is very different to the situation for expatriate workers:

"It is estimated that in 2018, there were seven million workers in the UAE alone. Over 90 per cent of the private-sector labour force is comprised of expatriates while UAE nationals continue to be employed in stable and relatively well-paying jobs in the country’s vast public sector. Although citizens face restrictions on their human rights, the state offers them a wide range of social benefits, including generous housing benefits, access to free education and medical services, preferential treatment in the workforce and higher salaries."

It was also reported that "domestic workers are exposed to multiple forms of exploitation and violence, including sexual, physical and psychological abuse".

Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone ?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him ?

Tourism
The conditions for workers and the rapid building growth and expansion of Dubai is tied in with tourism as many projects are dependent on sales to foreign tourists and investors. However, many apartments are also sold off the plans, and then resold upon completion without the investor even visiting Dubai. Every shopping mall has selling points with sophisticated screens using 3D maps of Dubai and the properties for sale. The sales assistants are usually from Eastern Europe. There is no shortage of potential customers as Dubai has become one of the "world's leading tourism destinations" and tourism is now one of Dubai's main sources of revenue. The city "hosted 14.9 million overnight visitors in 2016" and "in 2018, Dubai was the fourth most-visited city in the world based on the number of international visitors."

Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep ?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it ?
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors ?
Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill ?

Workers districts
By far the most interesting areas of Dubai are the areas where the workers themselves live, work, and shop. Deira, for example, is a historic district where the population consists mainly of Pakistan and India natives. Deira has many markets: Murshid Souk, Spice Souk, Deira Covered Souk, and Gold Souk. There are leather shops, shoe shops, supermarkets, barbers, butchers, cafes and family restaurants with dining areas on the city pavements. Compared to the soulless atmosphere of the wealthier districts, Deira is full of life with friendly shop assistants and large groups of African, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers and their families enjoying the convivial atmosphere of the restaurants indoors and outdoors.

Deira, Creek, Dubai, UAE
(Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

So many reports.
So many questions.

The Future of Dubai
There is no doubt that Dubai is the creation of a particular set of circumstances economically, geographically and geopolitically. It has made good use of its central position in relation to Europe, Africa and Asia as a cosmopolitan meeting point for international trade and travel. Dubai has benefitted from the UAE's diplomatic moves to play down differences regionally:

"The UAE is revisiting its foreign policy goals with the aim of boosting its global trade partnerships and ensuring its security and political stability, by replacing robust military intervention and proxy politics with dialogue and diplomacy.[...] Differences between the UAE on the one hand and Iran, Turkey, and Qatar on the other remain strong. However, the UAE is beginning to realize that the lack of a healthy bilateral dialogue with regional powers will make progress towards de-escalation much harder. The country acknowledges, after a decade of regional conflict and proxy politics, that the divergent policies of regional players should not prevent diplomatic cooperation."

However in an era of rising temperatures and rising seas, it must be asked how much hotter can Dubai get, and how will this coastal city deal with erosion and flooding? The continued existence of Dubai is dependent on heavy power consumption to maintain air conditioning, trains and services for very large buildings, many more of which are being planned at the moment for future development.

Deira, Creek, Dubai, UAE
(Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

Even the locals have always had an uncomfortable feeling about the future of Dubai. Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum (ruler from 1958 till 1990) is believed to have said: "My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel".

One cannot help but feel that a major collapse of oil prices and/or the economies of the West will have a profound effect on the future of Dubai. As the quote (with as obscure an origin as Dubai itself) that 'the Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stones' has noted, new technologies will substantially decrease our reliance on fossil fuels in the future. All these potential changes do not augur well for the future of Dubai's dependence on trade in tourism, oil and gold. If Dubai is ultimately an unsustainable vanity project instigated by a tiny minority of the super rich, as some believe, then the city could be deserted (in more ways than one), and Dubai itself could become the largest open-air museum in the world.

Samira’s Dream (Ndoto Ya Samira) (2022): Living and Learning Against the Odds

2023-02-25T05:36:00.005-08:00

A Documentary Film Review

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

Samira is a young Zanzibari woman who had a big dream. To leave home, have a family and study for a career. In many countries this is done as a matter of course. However, in some places there are many struggles and difficulties, both social and financial, that must be faced.

In Samira’s Dream, we follow Samira over a period of seven years as she grows and develops without losing sight of her objectives. The length of time taken to make this documentary reminded me of the fictional film Boyhood which is made and takes place over a period of 12 years, an accomplishment whereby “we watch the actors getting older for real, which gives their characters a sense of authenticity.”

The same can be said for Samira’s Dream as we see the difficulties and real problems she faces over the years, where even being filmed exerted so much pressure at one point that she asks for it to be stopped. She was never sure that she could overcome all the problems she encountered along the way, and the sometimes tense atmosphere during the filming added to the authenticity. As the film’s director Nino Tropiano noted: “Werner Herzog said that filmmaking is not about aesthetics, it is about athletics. In other words, you have to work hard.”

Samira’s Dream (Ndoto Ya Samira) (2022) – Trailer

This is easy to forget in an age where everyone seems to be constantly taking selfies and filming themselves doing the most insignificant things. Having a documentary made about you would be many teenagers’ greatest fantasy and desire. Yet, in societies where liberal freedoms cannot be taken for granted, and your dreams are not easily accomplished (especially for women), there is no sure ending.

Samira gets knocked down, and she gets up again, and again. She works hard, gets help wherever she can, and has the support of a husband who (although anxious about the effect her high level of education might have on their marriage) still gives her wishes his blessing.

For Tropiano this long project was not like Michelangelo’s sculpture where a start had already been made on the block of marble he fashioned into David. The film took shape very gradually, as Tropiano explains:

“Here I am thinking where will I start? I called a friend of mine who had spent a few months in Zanzibar. Where is that!? A traditional Muslim society. That’s intriguing. One of her photos in particular, struck me. A group of young female students walking out of a madrassa in a very orderly manner. It was then I knew the subject matter for my film – female education. So, I needed to write down a synopsis of some sort. I imagined a young woman coming from a remote village, who dreams of moving to town to get a college education. By following her life, I would have a film.”

Even when Tropiano arrived there, he still did not have a subject for his documentary. A chance meeting with a friendly group of schoolgirls led to some general interviews and his choice of Samira for “her natural charisma, open-minded attitude, and cheerful approach”. Diplomacy then ensued as he had to gain the trust of the local people, the Shia Leader of the community, and the teachers in town. Over the next 7 years, a friendship built up which allowed for a constant revisiting and filming that made for a much deeper story than a single visit would have told. By keeping a low-key profile he was able to fly below state officialdom and keep costs down. Over the years Tropiano was able to gain the confidence of the people, demonstrated by the relaxed humour and friendly disposition of the protagonists while, at the same time, capturing the natural beauty of the landscape and the colourful clothes of the people in some beautiful photography.

Nino Tropiano came to Ireland in the mid-90s where he graduated from the National Film School in Dublin with a 50-minute film entitled My Daughter Does Madonna. He went on to direct and produce Mary’s Last Show, Class Reunion and a short film called The Fall. Later his documentary Chippers (2008) was awarded Best Documentary Memorie Migranti at Gualdo Tadino in 2010.

Chippers: The story of the Italian community in Ireland (link to full film)

Even though fish and chips is an English fast food tradition, by a strange quirk of fate it was mainly Italians who set up the fish and chip shops all over Ireland. Tropiano delves into the history of the Italian peasant farmers who sought work abroad and ended up selling English traditional food to the Irish. Irish efforts to mimic the business soon discovered that selling fish and chips was hard work with very long and unsociable hours.

Tropiano’s ability to be a fly-on-the-wall and let ordinary people tell their own story is very evident in Chippers and this style of filmmaking pays off handsomely in Samira’s Dream. With a minimal voiceover, much of the narrative is conveyed in Samira’s own words.

His own struggles to get funding, the difficulties of getting to Zanzibar and the problems of production and editing, could have led him to give up the project altogether. He notes:

“Each time I got turned down when I applied for funds, I faced an existential crisis, followed by an upsurge that fed in me the ability to see things in perspective. In hindsight, things went the way they were meant to.”

However, Tropiano is also aware of Western tropes, a trap whereby authors/filmmakers/artists make themselves the centre of their own work and lose sight of their original intention: “I faced many obstacles along the way and I suspect that in the hands of other filmmakers, Samira’s story would have come second with the focus shifted towards the struggling life of a filmmaker trying to tell a story in Africa. I resisted the temptation to put myself into the film, to narrate some thrilling backstories in fear they might divert from Samira’s quest into the unedifying and morally bankrupt African tale Western audiences generally look for and festivals tend to love and give awards to.”

This predicament faced by the artist is discussed by the writer James Joyce who discusses creativity (in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) in terms of the developing maturity of the the artist:

“The image, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of the artist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this in memory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into three forms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyrical form, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his image in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form, the form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others.”

Tropiano moves away from making his art about himself, or about his encounters with others. He takes himself out of the equation while guiding his project in such a way that it becomes a story that the real hero, Samira, can take centre place in, all the while providing inspiration for many women who aspire to achieve similar educational goals.

It is so easy in Western society to fulfill the role of the individualist, Romantic hero telling of his adventures far away from home in distant lands. Western cinema is full of heroes and superheroes, but to create something which turns an ordinary local into an extraordinary example and symbol is a real achievement in art.

Back in Zanzibar at a music and film festival, Samira’s Dream (Ndoto Ya Samira in Swahili) was to be screened. After two hours of dancing to live music Tropiano was called to the stage to speak:

“I prepared a little speech in Swahili and the crowd jeered at my blunders. Then magic happened. There were about six hundred people, and they sat, remaining glued to the screen till the end. That was my reward: I realised the film deserves to be promoted and be seen as it creates a true sense of awareness in Tanzania.”

Samira’s Dream is a story that takes us through the hardships and joys of life, over a timescale that is a rare experience in cinema and which demonstrates dedication to a craft and an idea which takes time to be perfected and achieved so well.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022): A Parable of Irrationalism

2023-01-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

Theatrical release poster

A movie review. There will be spoilers..

Pádraic Súilleabháin and Colm Doherty (the fiddle player) are old friends whose meetings are as regular as a clock - literally. They meet at 2 pm in the local pub for drinks every day as the bell tolls twice.

However, Colm is getting fed up and feels time is passing. He believes that he needs to start composing to leave something to posterity and decides to end his relationship with Pádraic. Being nice and good friends will all soon be completely forgotten about. He desires to get down to composing with his newly freed-up time instead of listening to Pádraic's 'dull' conversation every day.

Pádraic does not take the news well and is bewildered. Even Pádraic's sister Siobhán Súilleabháin is astonished. She confronts Colm who states baldly, 'He's dull, Siobhán', who replies,'but he's always been dull'.

Colm's decision triggers an alarming set of events that lead to Colm self-mutilating and a series of tit-for-tat actions between himself and Pádraic.

These odd events appear to fit in with the general oddness that abounds on the island as everyone they come into contact with seems to have their own anger issues.

However, the strange thing is that Colm and Pádraic are actually the only two people on the island who are behaving calmly and rationally. They are always civil to each other (except once when Pádraic was drunk). There is no fisticuffs or use of weapons. In general they are the calmest two people on the island. They have polite discussions about their views of each other until the very end of the film. You could even say that everyone else around them is going mad while they are swimming in a sea of tranquility in the centre of the narrative.

Maybe that's the whole idea. To take two people who are descending into madness and depict this decline from their point of view. How do all the people around Colm and Pádraic appear to them as their madness reaches new depths? While Colm and Pádraic see themselves as wanting what the other cannot give, and negotiating and discussing their problems in a calm way, the island inhabitants show more and more surreal forms of behaviour. It's the island that's going crazy, not them. We see the island folk the way Colm and Pádraic see them. Colm and Pádraic are the only sane people as everyone else becomes stranger and stranger.

Check out the actions of the dramatis personae:

Garda Peadar Kearney 'never says hello' or is extremely violent and punches Pádraic in the face. He looks forward to going to the Civil War executions with glee (for '6 bob and a free lunch') but can't figure out if 'Free Staters are shooting the IRA or the other way around'. He laughs when he hears Pádraic's donkey has died.

Jonjo (the barman) and Gerry (a customer) form a comedy double act repeating each other's sentences (not surprising considering they used to be a very popular comedy duo in real life called the D'Unbelievables) and never seem to be disturbed by the horrific goings-on.

The shopkeeper Mrs. O'Riordan is absolutely obsessed with gossip and reading people's letters while listing off all the people who had no news. Garda Peadar Kearney arrives in with horror stories of murders and Mrs. O'Riordan says to Pádraic 'That’s a lot of news. This man has no news. Don’t you not, No-Newsy?'.

During confession with Colm the priest orders him out of the confessional screaming, 'you will be pure fucked' repeating Colm's words back to him.

Dominic, the guard's son, is obsessed with the much older women around him, and Colm's fiddle students in the bar only seem slightly worried at Colm's horrific bloody stumps despite the illogic of a man with no fingers on one hand teaching them the fiddle.

In fact, only Siobhán, Pádraic's sister, and the old woman Mrs. McCormick seem to be aware of what is really going on.

When Siobhán confronts Pádraic about talking to Colm she warns him to leave Colm alone:

PADRAIC
Do you think?
SIOBHAN
Do I think?! Yes, I do think! He’s cut his
fecking finger off and thrown it at ya!
PADRAIC
Come on, it wasn’t at me.

Siobhan escapes the madness and leaves the island before things get worse. She later invites Pádraic to the mainland but he has no interest and now has his cow and donkey living in the house with him.

Mrs. McCormick is an almost ghostly presence on the island and forecasts that two people will die on Inisherin 'afore the month is out'. She is soon proved partly right when Dominic is found drowned.

Meanwhile Colm finishes composing his piece of music and tells Pádraic he is thinking of calling it The Banshees of Inisherin. He believes that there may be banshees but states: 'I just don't think they scream to portend death anymore, I think they just sit back amused and observe.'

Pádraic's donkey chokes to death on one of Colm's fingers and as revenge he tells Colm the day and the time he is going to burn down his house. Again Colm reacts calmly and the guard is not called.

The next day Pádraic burns down Colm's house and meets him on the beach in front of the burnt-out remains. The old woman, Mrs. McCormick, arrives at the house and sits in a chair outside watching Colm and Pádraic talk, from a distance. Colm's calm response is that he was thankful that the dog had been saved (by Pádraic), and that he thought it was fair revenge for the death of the donkey.

Even their last conversation is cordial, almost matter-of-fact, as Colm thanks Pádraic for minding his dog and Pádraic replies 'anytime' from a distance.

The film ends with Colm staring out to sea, lilting, while Mrs. McCormick watches on from the house.

Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Martin McDonagh at the

premiere of the film at the 66th BFI London Film Festival

Martin McDonagh's rhetorical device of getting into the minds of two people who are going mad but are not aware of it is fascinating in that we see the other islanders also from Colm and Pádraic's perspective. The islanders' crazy behaviour serves to divert our attention away from the horrors committed by Colm and Pádraic who always appear calm and rational no matter how gruesome things get, thus making Colm and Pádraic appear to be normal. It is a valuable lesson.

In real life, we are often presented with irrational proposals or events that are presented in a rational, calm, logical way by rational, calm protagonists; and where objectors are presented in caricatured ways as hippies, do-gooders, conspiracy theorists, liberals, commies etc., and we are persuaded that all is fine. Then, and it is often years later, after cover-ups have been exposed, documents brought in the public domain, or unwilling participants reveal the awkward truth, that we finally understand who were the rational actors and who was actually crazy. This game plan is played over and over again until we cannot distinguish between the rational and the irrational, which of course, is the most subtle part of the whole operation.

Aisha (2022): Despair and Desperation in Ireland's Detention Centres

2023-01-12T12:21:00.008-08:00

"When you're in survival mode, you numb yourself."
Clemantine Wamariya

Frank Berry is an Irish film director and screenwriter who doesn't shy away from exposing the harsh realities of contemporary life in Ireland. In his films, Berry has tackled difficult topics such as prisons, suicide and poverty. He doesn't indulge in middle-class condescension of working class people either. Those in power know they have power and use it to lord it over the weak and vulnerable. Berry's previous work includes films such as Ballymun Lullaby (2011), I Used to Live Here (2014), and Michael Inside [see my review here](2017).

His latest film is no exception. Aisha (2022) stars Letitia Wright as Aisha, a Nigerian refugee living in an Irish detention centre. Her life is constrained by the fact that her father and brothers were killed by gangsters and she needs to get her elderly mother over to stay with her before she too becomes a victim of the violence.

Actress Letitia Wright By Ron Raffety.
Red Carpet Hollywood, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The staff in the centre are not particularly friendly or sympathetic except for one new security guard, Conor (played by Josh O’Connor). They strike up a difficult friendship as Aisha's family problems weigh heavily on her emotional life. She works in a hairdressers which she enjoys while also learning a trade, yet this is taken from her too when she is transferred to a different detention centre in the countryside, further isolating her. The problem of state bureaucracy is examined through interview panels of experts who don't realise or care how serious her situation is.

Berry's approach to directing is understated. Throughout the film Aisha tries to keep calm but eventually explodes with anger when the situation becomes too much for her. The audience understands the difficulty of her position in Ireland but Aisha keeps much to herself, out of fear and possibly worry that revealing too much might make her position worse. It shows us that, in many cases, what emigrants are going through is something we cannot really comprehend in a country that has not had similar political and violent upheavals in nearly one hundred years.

Berry's social realist style is typical in that he depicts the most vulnerable people in society, while at the same time rooting the story in a realistic, contemporary situation that may be shocking for those who have no idea what life is like for the less fortunate that they coexist with. Gaining such awareness creates empathy and understanding, maybe not in everyone who sees the film but hopefully even the most cynical will have their biases disturbed. As Sartre wrote,'to reveal is to change.'

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArxJWsGNamg

Housing crisis
The context for Aisha is also important to note. The refugee issue in Ireland is hitting serious crisis proportions. The Irish government struggles to find accommodation for refugees in a national situation where house prices are very high, rents are very high, and homelessness is on the increase. According to Daft.ie (main site for buying/renting/selling property in Ireland) in August 2022: "Ireland's rental market has plumbed new depths as the number of homes available has dropped to an all-time low while the rate of inflation in prices climbed to its highest level in at least 15 years."

The rental market has been decreasing for various reasons: high taxes, constant changes in law (as the government tries to figure out how to solve the rent increases problem), and a "lack of any effective enforcement or regulation if a dispute between Tenant/Landlord arises."

Adding to all of these issues is the arrival of "more than 62,000 Ukrainian refugees" which the Irish government has been accommodating in hostels, hotels and other private accommodations, even in tents.

Journalists Ferghal Blaney and Eithne Dodd have written (as recently as 6 Jan 2023), that: "Despite government promises that tents would not be used to accommodate refugees anyone, nearly 90 people slept in a tent last night in county Clare. [...] Before Christmas, news that asylum seekers were being housed in tents caused outrage and promises were made that the move was purely temporary and would end on 12 December 2022."

In an interview with Roderic O'Gorman (a spokesperson for Minister for Equality): "The war in Ukraine combined with the high number of International Protection applicants continues to put real pressure on the government's ability to offer accommodation, and has resulted in the largest humanitarian effort in the State's history."

The upshot of these multivaried pressures on accommodation is the dramatic increase of homelessness in Ireland. The online Irish journal, thejournal.ie, (published on 8 January 2023) an article stating that:"Homelessness record broken again as 11,542 people in emergency accommodation in November. The CEO of Dublin Simon Community said that the figures convey “nothing short of a tragedy.” The number of people experiencing homelessness in Ireland has once again hit a record high with latest government figures showing that 11,542 people were living in emergency accommodation in November. It is the fifth consecutive month that the record number has been broken. A total of 5,423 single adults, 1,371 young people and 3,494 children were living in emergency accommodation between 21 and 27 November."

All this in a country with a relatively small population. The CSO (Central Office for Statistics) stated that: “Ireland’s population was estimated to be 5.10 million, increasing by 88,800 persons in the year to April 2022. This was the largest 12-month population increase since 2008 when the population increased by 109,200.”

In fact, Ireland is a big country with a small population, and one of the very few countries in the world that has fewer inhabitants now than in the nineteenth century when Ireland is estimated to have had over 8 million (in 1841).

Compare these figures for Ireland with those of the Netherlands, for example:

Ireland-
Population: 7,026,636 (2022) [combining Republic of Ireland: 5,123,536 (2022) and Northern Ireland: 1,903,100 (2021)],
Area: 84,421 km2 (32,595 sq mi),
Pop. density: 77.8/km2 (201.5/sq mi).

The Netherlands -
Population: 17,783,400 (2023 estimate),
Area Total: 41,850 km2 (16,160 sq mi),
Pop. density: 520/km2 (1,346.8/sq mi),

The Netherlands has more than twice the population of Ireland on half the total area. Thus, it can be seen that Ireland's immigrant problems are not due to any lack of space but decades of mismanagement of resources.

Aisha's story points up the stresses and anxiety that these bureaucratic issues pile onto the many immigrants whose sense of insecurity is already badly shaken.

These days the billionaire media makes political change difficult. Making art that not only looks at the plight of ordinary people, but also in a very expensive medium, cinema, is a victory over a dominant and very conservative cultural hegemony. Berry's films are shining stars in a galaxy of romanticist superhero, super-funded, short-lived supernovas. What we need are more artists - a new movement even - of artists willing to go against the dominant cultural hegemony and produce a new culture of progressive change, with an understanding of how neo-liberal politics and economics affects ordinary people. How we treat other people reflects how we would like to be treated, and the vagaries of the late capitalist global system mean that the situation can suddenly reverse when we least expect it.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

A Poem for Christmas: Christmas Revels (1838)

2022-12-19T08:42:00.001-08:00

Twelfth Night Revels in the Great Hall (1838) by Joseph Nash, Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, from 'Architecture of the Middle Ages'.

The Irish artist Daniel Maclise (1806–1870) was a well known artist of the nineteenth century and he painted many scenes featuring British and Irish history. His painting Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall (1838) was eventually purchased by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1872. This festive work contains many figures of various ranks and degrees and depicts aspects of the declining traditional Christmas festivities of his time.

Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall (1838)
(Source: Gerald Leonard)

Maclise also wrote a long poem about this painting titled Christmas Revels: An Epic Rhapsody in Twelve Duans which he published under the pseudonym, Alfred Croquis, Esq. It was published in Fraser’s Magazine for May in 1838.

Maclise's poetry was influenced by the British novelist, poet, playwright and historian, Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, published in 1808. Marmion is a historical romance in verse of 16th-century Britain, ending with the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Marmion has a section referring to Christmas festivities:

“The wassel round, in good brown bowls,
Garnish’d with ribbons, blithely trowls.
There the huge sirloin reek’d; hard by
Plum-porridge stood, and Christmas pie:
Nor fail’d old Scotland to produce,
At such high tide, her savoury goose.
Then came the merry maskers in,
And carols roar’d with blithesome din;
If unmelodious was the song,
It was a hearty note, and strong.
Who lists may in their mumming see
Traces of ancient mystery;
White shirts supplied the masquerade,
And smutted cheeks the visors made;
But, O! what maskers, richly dight,
Can boast of bosoms half so light!”

Maclise's Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall shows around one hundred figures covering many different traditions of Christmas. In his poem, Maclise describes most of the activities taking place in his painting as these excerpts demonstrate:

“Before him, ivied, wand in hand,
Misrule’s mock lordling takes his stand;
[…]
Drummers and pipers next appear,
And carollers in motley gear;
Stewards, butlers, cooks, bring up the rear.
Some sit apart from all the rest,
And these for merry masque are drest;
But now they play another part,
Distinct from any mumming art.
[…]
First, Father Christmas, ivy-crown’d,
With false beard white, and true paunch round,
Rules o’er the mighty wassail-bowl,
And brews a flood to stir the soul:
That bowl’s the source of all their pleasures,
That bowl supplies their lesser measures”

The Lord of Misrule stands in the centre of the painting holding his staff and leading the procession of musicians and carolers coming down the stairs with a boar's head on a platter. Father Christmas, ‘ivy crown’d’, sits in front of the wassail bowl and is surrounded by mummers (the Dragon and St George sit side by side) and local people. On the left side of the picture we see a group of people playing a parlour game called Hunt the Slipper. In the background on the dais (a part of the floor at the end of a medieval hall, raised a step above the rest of the room) the baron sits with members of the upper classes watching the proceedings.

While Charles Dickens famously drew attention to the idea of a family Christmas dinner (Christmas Revels was written in 1838, A Christmas Carol in 1843), Maclise seems to have been more interested in the former collective celebrations of Christmas.

Many earlier traditions of Christmas involved the whole community celebrating together, entertaining or being entertained: wassailing, mumming, carol singing, medieval plays, dancing, cards and games. The increasing urbanisation and industrialisation of society had distanced people from what was seen as countryside and peasant revels. Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol (1843) showed a 'civilised' Christmas based around the nuclear family, far from the collective celebration (and chaos) of countryside communities whose egalitarian traditions posed a symbolic threat to the individualistic status-quo of burgeoning bourgeois society.

Maclise had an ongoing interest in the ideology, history, and traditions of ordinary people as can be seen in the subject matter of some of his paintings, for example, Snap-Apple Night (1833) [Hallowe’en traditions], The Installation of Captain Rock (1834) [depiction of violent nationalist ‘Rockite’ movement], The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (1854) [depiction of the Norman conquest of Ireland and the death of Gaelic Ireland], and The Trial of William Wallace at Westminster (before 1870) [one of the leaders of the First War of Scottish Independence].

Many of the earlier Christmas communal/public traditions had their roots in pre-Christian nature-based pagan rituals. With the spread of Christianity, the church tried to incorporate pagan cults or feasts into the church, as Joseph F. Kelly writes, "at the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory I urged the Roman missionaries to Anglo-Saxon England to preserve as much of the local culture as possible while cleansing it of its pagan associations." [1]

Pre-Christian traditions

Wassail, for example, was made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, and used in an ancient Yuletide door-to-door drinking ritual or to drink to the health of the apple trees and scare away evil spirits. The expression “to make a toast” comes from the toasted bread often served on top of the wassail bowl. The toast was also hung from the branches of the apple trees.

A Christmas Eve 1842 issue of the Illustrated London News,
depicting Father Christmas in a wassail bowl.

Father Christmas is the traditional English name for the personification of Christmas. In pre-Victorian times "Father Christmas had been concerned essentially with adult feasting and games. He had no particular connection with children, nor with the giving of presents." Father Christmas had been around since at least the fifteenth century whereas the popular American Santa Claus arrived in England in the 1850s and soon "distinctions between Father Christmas and Santa Claus largely faded away in the early years of the 20th century."

Mummers acted in folk plays such as St George and the Dragon, the theme of which, death and revival, relates back to earlier ideas of resurrection and the spirit of vegetation, a "magical ritual intended to promote the fertility of vegetation", where the main narrative structure includes "a quarrel, a death, and a miraculous restoration to life." [2]

The boar's head was an ancient tradition introduced to Britain by the Vikings and the Romans. The boar was killed as a sacrifice to their god Frey/Freyr as swine was the sacred animal associated with him. [3] Frey was "associated with kingship, fertility, peace, and weather".

Saturnalia (1783) by Antoine-François Callet, showing
his interpretation of what the Saturnalia might have looked like

The Lord of Misrule, appointed to be in charge of Christmas partying at court, universities, and in the great houses of the nobility was similar to the mock king of the Roman feast of Saturnalia when social mores were turned upside down for the duration of the festivities (probably as a form of social catharsis). [4]

Holly and ivy are associated with the Roman Bacchhus cult whereby "holly was the female counterpart to the male ivy" and in wreaths were united as 'mythical parents that guaranteed renewed life in springtime. [5] Similarly, the evergreen fir tree was the "symbolic embodiment of the mythological world tree and wonderous, ever-fertile nature." [6]

Carols also had pre-Christian elements such as the Boar's Head Carol along with other carols featuring holly and ivy as their subject. [7]

The 12-day festival of Yule and the Yule log was historically observed by the Germanic peoples and connected to the Wild Hunt [a chase led by a mythological figure escorted by a ghostly or supernatural group of hunters engaged in pursuit, the hunters are generally the souls of the dead or ghostly dogs], the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht ("Mothers' Night").

Mistletoe was also important. Pagan cultures "regarded the white berries as symbols of male fertility, with the seeds resembling semen. The Celts, particularly, saw mistletoe as the semen of Taranis, while the Ancient Greeks referred to mistletoe as "oak sperm". [...] The Romans associated mistletoe with peace, love and understanding and hung it over doorways to protect the household."

The Great Hall in Barley Hall, York, restored to
replicate its appearance in around 1483

The Great Hall

All these traditions were exhibited in the local great hall when the tenants and locals were invited for the Christmas festivities. During the Middle Ages the great hall was a focal point as the "administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals with manorial tenants and great banquets."

The great hall had many functions:

"A typical great hall was a rectangular room between one and a half and three times as long as it was wide, and also higher than it was wide. It was entered through a screens passage at one end, and had windows on one of the long sides, often including a large bay window. There was often a minstrels' gallery above the screens passage. At the other end of the hall was the dais where the high table was situated. Even royal and noble residences had few living rooms until late in the Middle Ages, and a great hall was a multifunctional room. It was used for receiving guests and it was the place where the household would dine together, including the lord of the house, his gentleman attendants and at least some of the servants. The halls of late 17th, 18th and 19th-century country houses and palaces usually functioned almost entirely as impressive entrance points to the house, and for large scale entertaining, as at Christmas, for dancing, or when a touring company of actors performed."

The Abbot of Unreason (1837) by
George CRUIKSHANK (1792-1878) - Collection

By the late 16th century the great hall began to lose its function as a local administrative centre and was used more for "large scale entertaining" but "with the arrival of ballrooms and dedicated music rooms in the largest houses by the late 17th century, these functions too were lost."

The American writer, Washington Irving, like Maclise, seems to have also been influenced by English manorial customs:

"In his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, he inserted a dream sequence featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon, an invention which others dressed up as Santa Claus. In his five Christmas stories in The Sketch Book, Irving portrayed an idealized celebration of old-fashioned Christmas customs at a quaint English manor which depicted English Christmas festivities that he experienced while staying in England, which had largely been abandoned. He used text from The Vindication of Christmas (London 1652) of old English Christmas traditions, and the book contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas holiday in the United States."

While such gatherings were a source of the Romanticist regard for the feudal hierarchies of medieval times, they also contained the origins of much earlier communal peasant agricultural gatherings rooted in the cycles of nature's seasons and polytheistic worship of pagan deities and spirits. As the pantheistic traditions of the peasants went into decline, the stage was set for a new type of Christmas which was re-invented and emphasised family over community. As Paul Frodsham writes:

"Prior to the accession of Victoria in 1837, no-one in Britain had heard of Santa Claus, had sent or received a Christmas card, or had pulled a Christmas cracker; few ate Turkey for Christmas dinner, and hardly anyone outside the royal family had ever seen a Christmas tree. By the end of the Victorian era, in the early twentieth century, these were all accepted aspects of our 'traditional' Christmas, celebrated as a major festival throughout most of the western world." [8]

Judith Flanders comments that:

"Dickens took the changes to industrial society - office and factory work, urban poverty and want, food that was bought in shops, not grown in kitchen-gardens, cooked in laundry-coppers and commercial cookshops, not by servants in great halls - he took this new consumerist society, and through Scrooge's 'conversion', he turned it into a sacred duty. Following his lead - cooking the turkey, playing games, drinking toasts, or buying a toy for your child - became the quasi-religious observances of the new middle-class domesticity." [9]

Despite the strong connections between Maclise and Dickens (Maclise illustrated several of Dickens's Christmas books and other works), their artistic works show different emphases regarding Christmas and society, especially at a time when industrialisation was moving society away from largely agricultural cooperating communities to self-sufficient family groups. Today, the most similar events to the manorial gatherings of the past are wedding receptions in hotel dining rooms, with their large gatherings of people partaking in food, dance, entertainment and frolics.

St Albans Mummers production of
St George and the Dragon, Boxing Day 2015-7

The collective gatherings depicted in Maclise's painting were significant in that they show the life of the community and their respect for nature. Today we are surrounded by the cults and culture of death. Christmas is an important feast because it is about life and renewal. Unfortunately, our tendency is to exploit and destroy nature, and now we are gradually realising the serious repercussions of these acts. Maclise's poem shows us a very different way of celebrating Christmas.

The full text of Maclise's poem is republished below:

CHRISTMAS REVELS: AN EPIC RHAPSODY IN TWELVE DUANS.
BY ALFRED CROQUIS, ESQ. (Daniel Maclise)

After the painting: Merry Christmas in the Barons Hall by Daniel Maclise (Fraser's Magazine, Vol. 16, May 1838, p635 to 644)

HURRAH ! Hurrah!

I.
'Tis the Feast of Yule, and all are gay
For Christendom's brave holiday.
Room for old Christmas, crowned with holly:
No other days are half so jolly!
Room, room for Christmas, ivy-crown'd:
No merry days like his are found!
We cast our cares and maxims trite,
And wise remarks away to-night!

II.
Up to the fretted roof is sent
The mingled roar of merriment!
With blithesome laugh and joyous shout
Of comely maid or handsome lout,
That oaken roof full oft has rung
To laughing lilt from lusty lung,-
To boisterous mirth and honest glee
Reflected from its canopy;
But never lent its sheltering aid
To blither groups than here portray'd;
And never will its arch spread o'er
Such merry-making Christmas more.
The Baron with a courteous grace
Then sits him down, in pride of place;
And ready vassals near him stand,
And watch his eye for a command;
Towards gentle dames turn valiant knights,
Fierce from the brunt of fifty fights;
The haught eye quenched, the voice hushed low,
Quailing beneath a fairer foe, -
That voice the war-cry erst above,
Sunk in soft accents to his love.
Oh! not alone in youth's soft hour
Love can assert his mystic power,
But may in manhood's hour of noon
To soft strains his stern heart attune;
The ills of man's decline assuage,
And tinge the sunset of his age.
Circling the fire, a merry band
The slipper hunt from hand to hand;
A romping group of happy faces,
As bright with ribands as with graces.
That shriek of glee! that laugh — that shout —
Tell the hid slipper is found out,
But not yet gain'd; though yon page tries
To check its progress as it flies.
Ah, happy boyhood! merry page;
Of just the frolic-loving age,
Ere serious chase your life engage.
The oaken table's mighty length
Will soon require its utmost strength,-
For, heap'd upon its ample board,
Good cheer in mountains will be stored;
A numerous clan, — but first, and chief,
In place and space, bold Baron Beef.
A merry king, in festive prank,
His virtues felt, and gave his rank;
Sir Loin, as renown'd a name
As heralds' blazon'd parchments claim,
For virtues rare, and wide-spread ſame.
His vassal-meats are ranged around,
And pasties huge might there be found,
Where every dainty did abound;
The mighty chine, the savoury goose,
Capons, and turkeys crammed for use,
The lusty brawn, the venison haunch,
And all that wholesome was, and stanch:
Such famous sweetmeats, too, stood nigh, -
Plumb-porridge there, and eke mince-pie;
And now the boar's head is brought in,
'Mid song, and shout, and music's din,
By lusty serving man, in pride,
With form erect, and scarf o'er side;
Between the tusks a pippin's placed,
Rosemary wreaths around it traced,
Garlands of flowers the dish has graced;
With laurel his fierce head is crown'd,
And loud the applause that rings around.
Before him, ivied, wand in hand,
Misrule's mock lordling takes his stand;
The baron's spear lauds to the skies,
And eke the boar's vast strength and size.
With vauntings huge he well can tell
The time, the place, and how he fell;
How such a famous hound he tore, -
Describe his eye, his crest, his roar;
And, ending, swear such chase, such boar,
He ne'er shall see, nor saw before.
On either side a gay page stands,
Mustard and spice-box 'tween his hands;
And close behind might there be seen
The woodman in his garb of green;
Drummers and pipers next appear,
And carollers in motley gear;
Stewards, butlers, cooks, bring up the rear.
Some sit apart from all the rest,
And these for merry masque are drest;
But now they play another part,
Distinct from any mumming art.
Ah! we're not able for the task,
To conjure up “The Christmas Masque;”
Or, if we were, what needs it, when
Preserv'd in pages of “rare Ben,”
It shines on us in all its glory,
From the bright regions of his story —
A Poet's heaven; and now not fainter
Glows on the canvass of the Painter;
And, as our tints cannot be warmer,
We'll merely name you each performer.

III.
First, Father Christmas, ivy-crown'd,
With false beard white, and true paunch round,
Rules o'er the mighty wassail-bowl,
And brews a flood to stir the soul:
That bowl's the source of all their pleasures,
That bowl supplies their lesser measures;
And as he brews, loud rings the laughter, -
He tastes before, and likewise after;
For as he throws in each ingredient
To try th' effect is but expedient.
And see them still fresh bottles bringing,
While loud the hall with mirth is ringing.
Once more the mixture, then, he tries, —
His lips approve, judge by his eyes.
Spices and wine are in the bowl,
And o'er the surface apples roll;
With rosemary sprig he stirs the whole.
At Christmas time, whate'er betide,
The hobby-horse was ne'er denied;
And dull that festal day had been
Where his gay prancing was not seen,
The maddest sport upon the green.
Where'er he bounds among the crowd,
There is the laugh and scream most loud,
Resounding as he goes along
Amid the gay and shifting throng.
All day the village through to roam,
At eve he makes the hall his home;
And, tired of being such a ranger,
Behold him now at rack and manger,
Replenishing his faded prime
To grace the sports of supper-time.
And so the hobby's turned his tail,
And sits his half-man to regale
On mighty beef and humming-ale.
Enters the wonder of the night,
The Dragon, with St. George to fight;
Armed cap-à-pie, from head to tail,
Against St. George in scaly mail.
What face is from his jaws a peeper
But that of honest John the Reaper.
The village tailor only all knows,
But keeps the secret of his smallclothes.
John deems an extra cup no sin,
Well to sustain his man within,
And thus to fortify his heart
Up to the pitch of Dragon part;
A reason John thinks of besides,
He carries with him two insides.
But, oh beware, my worthy Reaper,
Wassail may turn you to a sleeper.
Wassail a Dragon's eyes will close,
And lull e'en him into repose;
Lifting too oft a foaming flagon
Is not decorous in a Dragon.
But now he sets him at the table,
To eat and drink while he is able, -
Folds up his tail, thrusts forth his head,
And asks of Saint George to be fed;
For mark how Christmas old feuds ends,
The Dragon and Saint George are friends.
Enters Saint George in all his pride,
And takes his seat by Dragon's side,
Completely armed in pasteboard bright,
A famous champion and a knight.
The maidens wond'ringly admire
The hero in his rich attire.
One ties a sash, one pins a shawl,
And one a scarf flings over all.
The merry rogue who acts the Saint,
With smutted beard and cheek of paint,
Repays these favours of the misses,
Beneath the misletoe, with kisses.
And well they know the laughing eyes
That peep beneath the helm's disguise.
He now forgets both helm and mail,
And Dragon's wings and scaly tail;
Both from the same full beaken quaff,
And shout and sing, and roar and laugh.
That Turk, by Christian knight to fall,
'Mid laughter and applause of all,
The creed forgets which Turk denies;
Unchristianlike, the bowls supplies:
Yet he's rehearsing but his part
Allotted of the drama's art,
And lifts the brimming cup on high,
His nerve's firm steadiness to try,
With practised hand and steady eye;
Judge by that cup, which sheds no drop
Till at his mouth the brimmer stop,
That the wide whirling of his sabre
Will be performed with little labour.
Others in tiring room are nigh —
Sir Loin, Saint Distaff, and Mince Pie,
Plum Porridge, Carol, Wassail, enter,
Straight to the board as their own centre;
Mumming and Misrule, Baby Cake,
Now altogether merry make;
And he who acted to his name
Did best perform his part of game:
They ate and drank, till they in fact did
Look quite the heroes they enacted.
Such are the persons of the masque;
And now proceed we with our task.
Rogues, gipsies, jugglers, have got in,
From simple souls their pence to win.
Mark, first they sit in lowly place,
Nor of their calling shew a trace;
But as the strong ale goes about,
And lulls suspicion, they come out;
Till, bolder grown, they may be found
Where jokes and laughter most abound,
Tricking and juggling all around.
See, one on table takes his stand,
And one beside on either hand —
Wonder on wonder quick succeeds;
And good folks, puzzled, praise the deeds.
The old, with ill-concealed shame,
Look on and wonder, while they blame;
The young devour with ardent gaze,
And looks half doubting — whole amaze —
And give youths' ever ready praise.

IV.
The brave old Hall was then to be seen
Prank'd out in garb of bright evergreen.
Over the hearth, and over the door,
Adown the wainscot from roof to the floor,
Along the cornice, and over the arch,
The triumph of holly and ivy doth march.
Suits of grim armour look bright and look gay —
Garlands of berries, like scarfs, o'er them lay;
And corslet and helm, shield, battle-axe, and blade,
Together in green robe of peace were arrayed.
High on the places where ladies may go,
Roof, door, and mantel-shelf, hangs mistletoe:
The maiden who stays 'neath this licensing bough,
To the gallant who claims it a kiss must allow.
Hail to the mistletoe’s magic, that spreads,
Like a glory, its circle above their young heads!
Hail to the bough that, like wizard's wand, weaves
A spell such as this from its mystical leaves —
Rains its sweet dew as from heaven above,
And hovers protecting o'er those who may love!

V.
The license much they seem to prize,
For many a pair the charm still tries.
Judge by the kissing that is there,
The mistletoe hangs every where.
An honest mirth flows all around,
Rasing distinctions to the ground.
No stateliness is to be seen,
Nor chilling distance intervene —
Good humour flows, and fills between.
The baron, see, nods to the squire;
The serf unto his lord sits nigher:
And hooded coif, and cap of pride,
Were oft seen seated side by side.
The village damsel might be seen,
In scarlet vest and kirtle green,
Blushing acceptance to the heir,
Who seeks a tenant's daughter fair,
Her dimpled hand as boon to crave,
In accents humble as a slave,
To join with him the festive dance,
And thus the day's delights enhance.
For Rank stooped from his airy height,
In honour of this single night;
State kept his robe for other places,
Nor of his grandeur shewed the traces;
And Ceremony's jewelled gear,
As deem'd too cumberous to wear,
Was changed for lightsome trappings gay,
Such as best serve a holiday.
Then, room for Christmas, crown'd with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.

VI.
1.
Room, room for Christmas, ivy crown'd!
No merry days like his are found.
All mirth, all games throughout the year,
At merry Christmas reappear.
To Christmas each a tribute pays,
Levies of merriment to raise.
More joyous each seems to have grown,
When Christmas takes them for her own.
Then, room for Christmas, crown'd with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.
2.
The proof of this truth is quite ample —
Take what succeeds for an example.
On New Year's eve, a tinge of sorrow,
Reverting to the past, may borrow.
The future of an untried year
Less food for hope may give than fear.
The past, or friends or foes removed -
The next year's fealty must be proved.
Then, room for Christmas, ivy crown'd
No merry days like his are found.
3.
A Twelfth Night's jollity, at best,
Is but a little Christmas drest
In smiles and trappings of the old,
But less in mirth a hundred fold:
It is from borrowed lustre light,
But dimmer by a good twelfth night;
Yet let none from that lustre take,
Hid in the bushel of Twelfth Cake.
But, room for Christmas, crown'd with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.
4.
Shrove Tuesday's grave guests but appear
To bid adieu to all good cheer;
And o'er that night a shade is cast,
That for a while its feast's the last,
For morrow brings the sacred fast.
So, room for Christmas, ivy crown'd!
No merry days like his are found.
5.
Then through the Holy Passion week,
If joy there be, 'tis joy so meek,
When you reflect on Christmas gladness,
It seems to be allied to sadness.
Could o'er the soul such wish be stealing,
A kiss, in point of fact or feeling,
Could then be but committed kneeling.
But, room for Christmas, crown'd with holly
No other days are half so jolly.

VII.
May-day was gamesome eke of yore,
But all his pranks are wellnigh o'er;
Or else th' observance's so degraded,
'Twere better far if all had faded.
Though earth is clad in vesture meet,
Fit to receive May's dancing feet;
Though April sheds her rainbow showers,
To give to May her brightest flowers —
Lends to the hedge a sweet perfume,
And gifts it with a precious bloom;
Falls the laburnum's showers of gold
To earth's, like Danae's lap of old,
When Jove omniscient took that form
Deem'd surest maiden's heart to warm,
And shelter gained in Danae's bower
By virtue of a golden shower;
Clusters the lilac's flowery cone,
Luxuriant piled for May alone,
That takes the sky's sweet violet hue,
And heaven so bathes with its own dew,
It seems as if in heaven it grew,
Without one taint of earthly soil
Its native purity to spoil.
Though still the fields expect their queen,
Bedecked in daisied garb of green;
And the glad streams have found a voice
To wake an anthem, and rejoice;
And the lark heavenward soars and sings,
O'er earth exulting as he wings;
And the wide landscape round looks gay,
In honour of her own sweet May:
Man seldom now his homage pays
In gaudy groups and gay arrays,
That cheer'd the May of other days.
No more the village Maypole high
Tapers into the clear blue sky;
By joyous youths 'twas reared erect,
By maids with flowers and ribands decked,
While both, uniting, gaily trace
The dance in circles round the base.
Wide as December is from May,
Or Christmas-night from young May-day,
The mirth with which each is supplied
— Though mirth 'tis still — is still as wide.
Christmas the hearth-stone clusters round;
May o'er the fields is to be found:
Yet something in our feelings tell,
If May we love, ’tis not so well —
They're centered in that place of pride,
Our hearty, homely, warm fireside.
Lo, room for Christmas, crowned with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.

VIII.
When the blithe year is in its spring,
And 'neath its influence the woods ring,
With notes of life, and joy, and love,
Springing from dell, and glade, and grove,
The earth wakes from its trance supine,
To honour sweet Saint Valentine;
And Nature, like a bride, rejoices
To greet her lover with glad voices,
Framing for him such roundelays
As she, in spring, can only raise.
Still, room for Christmas, ivy-crowned!
No merry days like his are found:
For there be other merry days,
Deserving well a separate praise.

IX.
And Michaelmas and Hallowe'en
Has each his merriment, I ween;
And many more than I can name
To joy and jollity lay claim,
Gladdening the heart as they appear,
Like stars to light us through the year;
Till breaks upon our view the light
That issues from the Christmas night.
The sky of life would be but dark,
If stars like these withheld their spark;
But, shining through this life-long night,
They give us glimpses of the light.
Blessings of peace and joy we call
On festive days, whene'er they fall;
But be more bounteously supplied,
Above the rest, to Christmas tide.
Then, room for Christmas, ivy-crowned!
No merry days like his are found:
Room, room for Christmas, crowned with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.

X.
But, well-a-day, those days are o'er!
Christmas may smile, but laughs no more
With all the lustiness of yore;
And faint the picture; vain to say,
The mirth that lighted up that day —
That light, which spread o'er home and heart,
Was of the Sun of Joy a part;
A gladsome beam, from heaven astray,
To cheer and bless us with its ray.
That light o'er lordly fane was spread,
And glistened through the cheerless shed —
Cheerless no more when hut and hall
Partakes the joy which pervades all.
For, like the sun, which lends his beam
To the vast sea and petty stream,
To objects bright new lustre brings,
And glorifies the meanest things.
Like that rare stone by sages told,
Which all it touched turned into gold,
So Christmas time made all hearts gay —
Made lord and slave alike that day;
And which the happiest — who can say?
Equality of joy to all,
In honour of high festival

XI.
Large were man's thoughts, for notions vast
Possessed his soul in days long past.
Huge was the table; vast the hall;
And free the bounty that gave all.
This gave the Yule-log to the fire,
And made the blaze burn brighter, higher;
The board with plenteous cheer supplied,
Nor to the guest aught wished denied.
In all wise-dwarfed, small is our praise,
For there were giants in those days;
Unlike to these, where, glories yet,
The Sun of Christmas had not set.
If snow-wreathed gable, roof, and wall,
Flower-wreaths decked window, hearth, and all;
If casements shook to winter wild,
The hearth with glow more ruddy smiled;
And eke our hearts with warmth were stored,
Chill winter's contrast to afford;
And treasured up those feelings gay
Which may illume the darkest day.
Young bright-winged Joy, with aspect fair,
His herald's flag waved every where,
And held a truce with hostile care.
Oh! that was not the olden time,
When the glad world was in its prime;
Then was its youth, and then its bloom:
Now it seems fitted for the tomb:
Its lustiness and vigour fled —
Its graces gone — its joys lie dead.
We're the true ancients. Habits fine
Serve but to glorify decline.
Our age is age, not youth imbued
With life, but eld's decrepitude.
If those were barbarous ages then,
Let us be barbarous again.

XII.
Then, room for old Christmas, with his crown of bright holly!
May his days all be glad, and his nights be kept jolly!
Laurel, holly, and joy, entwine in his crown,
For no king that e'er reigned merits half his renown.
For he smiles in due season, when our hearts want a cheer,
When all nature and man are both chilly and drear,
And illumes the decline and the dawn of each year.
Thus he's loved, as the nightingale's loved for his song,
When the village he cheers through the summer-night long,
By a soft serenade to his sweet-blushing rose,
As she peeps from her lattice, but feigns to repose:
For one love-song's more precious, while the moon shines so bright,
Than a hundred and one by the day's garish light.
Thus he's loved, as the robin is loved, when his lay
Is sung near the window the cold winter's day;
When, trusting to us, and forgetting his fears,
As the winter approaches our shelter he nears —
(Such reliance we love!), his small claim to allow.
He has ever been sacred — we worship him now.
Thus he's loved, as we love his own sweet evergreen,
Which rejoices our hearts when no flower is seen;
When bright holly, old ivy, themselves all alone,
Make of winter itself a spring-time of their own.
And the other gay festival days that appear,
Are the sunshiny summer-day things of the year.
But more grateful we feel for the sweet, precious light,
Which shines through our winter from bright Christmas night;
And winter is but the long night of the year,
Brightened up with the full light of good Christmas cheer.
And the full heart that speaks in the nightingale's tone,
Is not half so joyous or full as our own;
Nor the summer's long day of bright birds and gay flowers,
Half so gay or so bright as this night-time of ours:
For we turn from the bowers when the bird's song is loudest,
And regard not the flowers when the parterre is proudest.
They rejoice not for us. In the sunlight they smile,
And when his eyelids droop, then they slumber awhile.
No, for us they shine not; but, when summer is o'er,
The bird, and the flower, and the sun are no more.
Then the bird of the moon; and the rose we love best,
That a sentinel seems to watch over our rest;
And the robin we love, as he sings his sweet lay,
Near the window, to cheer us the cold winter's day;
And the flowers that love us, and to us are most dear,
Are the green things which help our old Christmas to cheer.

L'Envoy
Then, long life to King Christmas! his reign has been long
In our hearts and our homes, in our story and song.
Though his doubtful accession's enigma's not solved,
Obscure in the gloom of past ages involved,
Yet of one thing we're sure — it is no little while
Since “King Arthur kept Christmas in merry Carlisle.”
Through the long list of kings do his triumphs appear,
And their pageants and battles are not half so dear;
With a king oft for guest, and a prince for his slave,
He his honours received, and in like manner gave.
He created his peers, too, so generous and grand,
To equal them none might be found in the land,
With power complete o'er the great feast of Yule;
A noble and churchman, of the true good old school,
Yclept Un-reason's Abbot and Lord of Misrule.
Then, room for old Christmas, with his crown of bright holly!
May his days all be glad, and his nights be kept jolly!
Laurel, holly, and ivy, entwine in his crown,
For no king that e'er reigned merits half his renown!

Notes:

[1] The Origins of Christmas by Joseph F. Kelly (Liturgical Press, 2004) p60

[2] Christmas Customs and Traditions by Clement Miles (Dover Publications, 1976 [1912]) p300

[3] The Medieval Christmas by Sophie Jackson (Sutton Publishing, 2005) p25

[4] The Book of Christmas by Jane Struthers (Ebury Press, 2012) p26

[5] Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Inner Traditions, 2003) p95

[6] Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Inner Traditions, 2003) p24

[7] The Medieval Christmas by Sophie Jackson (Sutton Publishing, 2005) p53

[8] From Stonehenge to Santa Claus: The Evolution of Christmas by Paul Frodsham (The History Press, 2008) p158

[9] Christmas: A Biography by Judith Flanders (Picador, 2017) p128

Fascinating Folklore: The necessity for moving from extractivism to regeneration

2022-12-15T06:43:00.006-08:00

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.

Zeno

The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

Henry Miller

Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard.

Standing Bear

Introduction

The history of folklore as an area of study is relatively recent compared to its ancient origins. In the eighteenth century the role of Enlightenment science in changing attitudes towards the study of folklore soon showed benefits with an increased understanding of ourselves and our history of survival throughout the centuries. Soon, the influence of nationalist Romanticism paved the way for much research and support for folklore as an integral part of every country's cultural heritage in the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century folklore had moved from being the culture of 'backward peoples' to becoming a major tool in the hands of the state, leading to very different approaches to folklore in the Soviet Union and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Post World War 2 and the decline of nationalism, folklore and folk music have taken a back seat in the spread of globalised cosmopolitan commercialism.

However, the anxiety over the rapid pace of the destruction of nature (land, forests, wildlife, and seas) in the twenty-first century paves the way for a re-evaluation of folklore, not as an ancient tradition that was perceived to be replaced by science in the nineteenth century, but as a pro-nature ideology that was cleverly replaced by anti-nature industrialisation, thereby choking off its continuing relevance as an important part of our cultural and political struggle to end the ruination of the planet.

Taking place every winter in villages and cities in Romania’s eastern region of Moldova, the Dance of the Bear symbolizes the death and rebirth of time. Performed between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, this ancient ritual brings together the whole community, who gather to watch the performance. The Dance of the Bear sees men of all ages, and increasingly more women, dress in real bear skins and dance to the rhythm of pan flutes and drums, to ward off evil spirits and ring in the new year. Traditionally, the procession, which can include between six and 24 bears, would visit every household of the village.

History of folklore

Folklore is generally defined as the traditions common to a culture, subculture or group of people. It encompasses oral traditions such as tales and legends, material culture such as traditional building styles and customary lore such as the forms and rituals of Christmas, weddings, folk dances and initiation rites. Folklore is transmitted from place to another or one generation to the next and these traditions tend to be passed informally from one person to another through demonstration or verbal instruction.

In 1846, the British writer W. J. Thoms invented the word 'folklore' to replace 'popular antiquities' or 'popular literature'. The meaning of 'folk' at the time generally meant rural, poor and illiterate peasants. 'Lore' comes from Old English lār 'instruction', the knowledge and traditions of a particular group, frequently passed along by word of mouth.

The initial basis for the study of folklore derived from changing ideas about the peasantry who were seen to be losing their culture in the fast developing process of industrialisation. During the Enlightenment, the philosopher, Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), not only wrote about the importance of the nation and patriotism but he also gave the idea of the 'people' a new significance when he stated that "there is only one class in the state, the Volk, (not the rabble), and the king belongs to this class as well as the peasant". If the people were defined as significant (not backward and uncultured), then their culture and folk traditions were also significant and necessary for the process of nation building.

Thus, local traditions and rituals which were largely ignored previously were transformed into an area of culture and history that could be studied, and "from the 1860s there was a boom in the collection and discussion of folklore – the rise of social Darwinism, a growing population and increased urbanisation generated an upsurge in the idea of survivalism and a fear that these rural traditions might be lost." In England, the first female president of the Folklore Society, Charlotte Sophia Burne (1850–1923) defined folklore as:

‘the generic term under which the traditional Beliefs, Customs, Stories, Songs and Sayings current among backward peoples, or retained by the uncultured classes of more advanced peoples, are comprehended and included.’

As we can see from this quote, folklore was perceived as "relics of behaviour from the distant past" that has been passed down through the generations. The middle and upper classes, largely the beneficiaries of industrialisation, had a background of success and wealth that buttressed their view of the working class and peasantry as the 'uncultured classes'. In many countries the changes in society brought about by industrialisation created an anxiety about cultural loss:

"Encroaching modernity caused the Victorians to worry that old traditions were under threat and in need of preservation. A rising panic at the changes wrought by technology, industrialisation, and burgeoning capitalism collided with fears about the booming population and the move to city life, creating a nostalgia for the rural idyll. It was against this backdrop that an interest in recording folklore grew, alongside an anxiety that it was a way of life quickly passing."

Carved idol of Peko. Radaja Seto Museum Photo by Ivo Kruusamägi
Peko (Finnish spelling Pekko, Pekka, Pellon Pekko) is an ancient Estonian and Finnish god of crops, especially barley and brewing.

Enlightenment

The Enlightenment approach to folklore involved a "systematic, scientific study of behaviour – the folklore collected dispassionately for future analysis" and, moreover, the benefits of such study were quickly becoming apparent:

"Nobody now disputes that the superstitions, the customs, the tales, the songs, and even the proverbial sayings of a people may throw unexpected light upon its history; and from the investigation and comparison of such things as these, once deemed unworthy of notice, scientific men have begun to reconstruct the unrecorded past of humanity."

The new interest in mythology and folklore also became a tool in the hands of Enlightenment rationalists and skeptics who used it to undermine Christianity and the Church. As Robert D. Richardson noted:

"When Pierre Bayle scoffs at the story of Athena being born without the aid of a mother from the head of Jupiter, he does it in such a way as to emphasize the story's similarity to that of Christ's having been born without the aid of a mortal father. If we smile at the miracles in Greek mythology, how can we not smile at similar miracles in the Bible?" [1]

However, the study of folklore and mythology also revealed ancient and pre-Christian beliefs centered around a profound respect and worship of nature. In his book The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941) speculated that: "shared elements of religious belief and scientific thought, discussing fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying god, the scapegoat, and many other symbols and practices whose influences had extended into 20th-century culture." Frazer's thesis was that "old religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and periodic sacrifice of a sacred king." Frazer proposed that "mankind progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought."

Prajapati with similar iconographical features associated with Brahma, a sculpture from Tamil Nadu.
Prajapati's role varies within the Vedic texts such as being one who created heaven and earth, all of water and beings, the chief, the father of gods, the creator of devas and asuras, the cosmic egg and the Purusha (spirit).

Romantic nationalism

With the rise of Romantic nationalism during the nineteenth century, folklore took on a new significance as the 'soul' of the people. The nation state claimed its political legitimacy based on an organic unity of the people which in turn was based on elements such as "language, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and customs of the nation in its primal sense of those who were born within its culture." This unity from below was emphasised by nationalists in reaction to the dynastic or imperial hegemony of feudalism which claimed its authority from above, for example, the divine right of kings who were mandated by God to rule over the people.

Folklore was useful to nationalists from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, not only to counter the old ideology of monarchy but it also served to counter the future threat of socialist ideas. For nationalists, the rural-based folklore of the people could form the basis of a class-conciliatory popular ideology in opposition to the spreading socialist concepts of working class culture, class warfare and revolution among the radicals. The rise of the socialist movements, culminating in the creation of Soviet Russia in 1917 heralded both positive and negative views of folklore.

Xochiquetzal, from the Codex Rios, 16th century.
In Aztec mythology, Xochiquetzal was a goddess associated with fertility, beauty, and love, serving as a protector of young mothers and a patroness of pregnancy, childbirth, and the crafts. Worshipers wore animal and flower masks at a festival, held in her honor every eight years.

The Soviet Union

Folklore studies thrived in the Soviet Union in the 1920s as there was little state control and the government was more concerned with the new economy, trying to reverse decades of underdevelopment. However, by the late 1920s the Soviet government "repressed Folklore, believing that it supported the old tsarist system and a capitalist economy." Stories about feudal princes and princesses eventually came under criticism by the Soviet government:

"They saw it as a remnant of the backward Russian society that the Bolsheviks were working to surpass. To keep folklore studies in check and prevent inappropriate ideas from spreading amongst the masses, the government created the RAPP – the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. The RAPP specifically focused on censoring fairy tales and children's literature, believing that fantasies and “bourgeois nonsense” harmed the development of upstanding Soviet citizens. Faerie tales were removed from bookshelves and children were encouraged to read books focusing on nature and science."

A new way of seeing folklore was developed that put emphasis on "traditional legends and faerie tales [that] showed ideal, community-oriented characters, which exemplified the model Soviet citizen" in particular "tales that showed members of the working class outsmarting their cruel masters, again working to prove folklore's value to Soviet ideology and the nation's society at large."

Certain customs were changed (in terms of content) or adapted (in terms of form), for example, the Christmas tree. In Russia, the tradition of installing and decorating a Yolka (tr: spruce tree) for Christmas was very popular but fell into disfavor (as a tradition originating in Germany – Russia’s enemy during World War I) and was subsequently banned by the Synod in 1916. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Christmas celebrations and other religious holidays were prohibited under the Marxist-Leninist policy of state atheism in the Soviet Union. Although the Christmas tree was banned, people continued the tradition with New Year trees which eventually gained acceptance in 1935:

“The New Year tree was encouraged in the USSR after the famous letter by Pavel Postyshev, published in Pravda on 28 December 1935, in which he asked for trees to be installed in schools, children’s homes, Young Pioneer Palaces, children’s clubs, children’s theaters and cinemas.”

The Yolka tree remains an essential part of the Russian New Year traditions when Ded Moroz or 'Grandfather Frost' (with assistance from his granddaughter Snegurochka,'Snow Maiden'), like Santa Claus, brings presents for children to put under the tree or to distribute them directly to the children on New Year’s morning performances. Thus, native folklore and traditions in Russia and the Soviet Union were customised to suit the changing material conditions of society in a rational process of adaptation that contrasted sharply with the irrationalist over-importance given to them in Nazi Germany.

In Māori mythology, Rongo or Rongo-mā-Tāne (also Rongo-hīrea, Rongo-marae-roa,[1] and Rongo-marae-roa-a-Rangi[2]) is a major god (atua) of cultivated plants, especially kumara (spelled kūmara in Māori), a vital crop.

National socialism

The rise of the national socialists in Germany in the 1930s also shifted folklore in a new direction as the Nazis not only linked the concept of peasant folklore with that of national unity, but looked abroad for suitable models (the "strong and heroic" Nordic tradition), despite feeling 'guilty' about the 'foreign elements' in German folklore:

"After 1935, German folklore professors were under pressure to adapt their theories and findings to the National Socialist Weltanschauung [worldview]. This not only implied the obligation to join in the search for Nordic-Germanic symbols at the expense of other interests, but it also meant giving priority to those elements that might be of immediate ideological usefulness to the Party." [1]

According to the German anti-Nazi philosopher Ernst Bloch, "Hitler painted the ethnic heterogeneity of Germany as a major reason for the country's economic and political weakness, and he promised to restore a German realm based on a cleansed, and hence strong, German people."

Folklore, as part of the ideology of German national self-consciousness, became a way of reading and understanding history itself:

"The social and religious order of the Nordic-Germanic tribes, they claimed, was the order of the present and, certainly, the order of the future. In their effort to strengthen the German national self-consciousness, the Nazi ideologists emphasized not only an identification with the heroic age but also a deep contempt for the Roman civilization. In their view, the glorification of Rome and everything Roman had led to a serious weakening of Germany's folk unity. The "healthy" resources of Germany's own past had been sacrificed to the admiration of Rome." [3]

This Romanticist, irrationalist view of history (and 'folk unity') was part of the glorification of the peasant as the repository of the primary culture of traditional heritage. The peasant, previously seen as backward and uncultured, was now held up as the ideal model for society and culture as elites worried about the growth of the working class. The study of folklore was also reduced to a limited racial point of view to justify German 'superiority' that would underpin the German elite's desire to conquer Europe.

Overall we can see that in the twentieth century folklore and myth served multiple purposes in differing political ideologies of nationalism, national socialism, and socialism.

Susanoo subduing and making a pact with various spirits of disease (dated 1860, copy of original work by Katsushika Hokusai)
Susanoo (スサノオ; historical orthography: スサノヲ, 'Susanowo') is a kami in Japanese mythology. The younger brother of Amaterasu, goddess of the sun and mythical ancestress of the Japanese imperial line, he is a multifaceted deity with contradictory characteristics (both good and bad), being portrayed in various stories either as a wild, impetuous god associated with the sea and storms, as a heroic figure who killed a monstrous serpent, or as a local deity linked with the harvest and agriculture.

Folklore past, present, and future

In the past, our ideas about folklore were defined as traditional or modern by contrasting Enlightenment and Romanticist theories that revealed differing concepts of time. As Diarmuid Ó Giolláin writes:

"The traditional and the modern are usually understood to be in a negative relationship to one another, the one looking backwards, the other forwards, the one static, the other dynamic, the one repetitive and the other innovative. The notion of time in traditional societies is understood as being repetitive and circular; reflecting the rhythms of nature, with the events of the beginning of time constantly being reactualised through myth and ritual, while time in the historic religions and in modern societies is seen as linear and irreversible." [4]

The linear view is teleological, encompassing patriarchal religion and capitalism that only moves in one direction (towards the Day of Judgement), and with growth as its model, despite the fact that we live in a world of limited resources. In opposition to this view, there is the circular view of time in traditional societies which reflected the ever-changing seasons and respect for nature.

The idea of linear time is reflected in Frazer's view of folklore as being on a continuum "from magic through religion to science". However, this is a sleight of hand that misses the point that folklore has been an important part of pre-Christian, pagan, and pro-nature ideology that was not replaced by science, but instead by an anti-nature ideology that uses science to justify and legitimise its industrial-scale extractivism and exploitation of nature.

The difference between folklore and science was not an epistemological difference (tradition v science) but a consequence of capitalist exploitation that operates through the destruction of nature and then tried to legitimate itself by hiding in a cloak of modernity, while at the same time negating past pro-nature practices. There was no reason why the pro-nature continuum of folklore could not have been seen as one that continued to the present and on into the future, as people's connection with nature had not fundamentally changed (nature being, of course, the vital source of our sustenance).

Our unchanged relationship with nature can be seen in the continuation of practices associated with folklore, the culture of respect and reverence towards nature, such as Hallowe'en, Easter eggs and hares, Christmas trees, and bonfires (as a few Western examples), despite increasing commercialisation.

A similar argument was made that portrait painting was 'outmoded' by photography (a very different and mechanical process), yet portraiture has continued to today in full strength with national portrait galleries and portrait competitions. The importance of portraiture lies in its ability to evoke emotions beyond the literal interpretation of the subject, making the person who views a portrait feel something, which connects them to the artist's feelings, thoughts and desires.

The anti-nature continuum of the wilful exploitation of nature (such as the ongoing destruction of the Amazon and wildlife, the global and mass use and abuse of animals, transnational polluting industries, chemical-driven industrial crop land, and factory ship over-fishing that is emptying our seas) also continues to today in parallel with traditional pro-nature folklore customs and traditions.

Slovenia - Ptuj - Kurentovanje: celebration of coming spring - "Kurent"s urging winter to leave
Kurentovanje is Slovenia's most popular and ethnologically significant carnival event first organised in 1960 by Drago Hasl. This 11-day rite of spring and fertility highlight event is celebrated on Shrove Sunday in Ptuj, the oldest documented city in the region, and draws around 100,000 participants in total each year.

The conflict between industrialisation of nature and respect for nature is sharply highlighted by Yuval Noah Harari when he writes:

"The fate of industrially farmed animals is one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. Tens of billions of sentient beings, each with complex sensations and emotions, live and die on a production line. Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history."

The importance of folklore is not that it ties us in with our past, but that it connects us into an understanding of nature in a meaningful way. If there is a distance between people and nature, it is as a result of an unfortunate coincidence of certain groups and the location of fossil fuels globally, as Michael Cronin writes:

"It is often the poorest people on the planet speaking lesser-used languages in more remote parts of the world that find themselves at the frontline of the race to extract as much fossil fuel resources as possible from the earth. [...] Bram Buscher, a geographer, has coined the term 'liquid nature' to describe the way in which fields, forests and mountains lose their intrinsic, place-based meaning and become deracinated, abstract commodities in a global trading system." [5]

Cronin quotes Russ Rymer on the importance of local knowledge built up over generations:

"When small communities abandon their languages and switch to English or to Spanish, there is a massive disruption in the transfer of traditional knowledge across generations - about medicinal plants, food cultivation, irrigation techniques, navigation systems, and seasonal calendars." [6]

Cronin points to the importance of local knowledge contained in the Irish language (an ancient but threatened language), for example, which has "linguistic resources in abundance", [7] and is particularly important in the "shift from an ideology of extractivism [anti-nature] to an ideology of regeneration [pro-nature]". [8]

Yggdrasil (from Old Norse Yggdrasill [ˈyɡːˌdrɑselː]), in Norse cosmology, is an immense and central sacred tree. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds. Yggdrasil is an immense ash tree that is central to the cosmos and considered very holy. The gods go to Yggdrasil daily to assemble at their traditional governing assemblies, called things.

Folklore of sacred trees

The strong connection between people and nature has never gone away, and can be seen in past and present attitudes towards trees, for example. In a recent development in Co. Cork in southern Ireland a local Christmas tree grower now rents his Christmas trees. The grower gives the renter instructions on the care of the tree and it is returned to him in January, when it is re-potted and numbered. Why? Because many who rent the trees wish to have the same tree returned to them in the following year.

This emotional connection with trees has a long history on a global scale. Helen Keating gives nine examples of English tree lore: "Our lives have been so closely linked with trees since prehistoric times, they've been the subjects of legends, folklore and mythology." Zteve T Evans looks at examples of Irish tree folkore: "It is believed that the ancient Celtic people were animists who considered all objects to have consciousness of some kind. This included trees, and each species of tree had different properties which might be medicinal, spiritual or symbolic. [...] Some species of tree featured in stories from their myths, legends and folklore."

J. A. MacCulloch noted that:

"Pliny said of the Celts: “They esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows. But apart from this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves, and perform no sacred rite without using oak branches. [...] A people living in an oak region and subsisting in part on acorns might easily take the oak as a representative of the spirit of vegetation or growth. It was long-lived, its foliage was a protection, it supplied food, its wood was used as fuel, and it was thus clearly the friend of man. For these reasons, and because it was the most abiding and living thing men knew, it became the embodiment of the spirits of life and growth."

The global belief in tree deities demonstrates the ancient awareness of the value of trees for our existence and survival in folklore. We are becoming acutely aware of the importance of trees today with modern science giving us much knowledge of forests as carbon sinks, showing there is no conflict between science and folklore but, in fact, a major conflict between pro- and anti- nature ideologies, as the destruction of nature continues unabated. All over the world today the wealth of folklore is being developed and added to through collection and research. People everywhere participate in and learn about their country's folklore through their education systems as well as their family and community traditions. However, we need a major re-evaluation of folklore, not as an atavistic return to pagan primitivism, but as an important step in returning our societies back to the pro-nature philosophy and consciousness of our ancestors. Our survival as a species depends on it.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

Notes

[1] The Enlightenment View of Myth and Joel Barlow's "Vision of Columbus", by Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Early American Literature, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 34-44, University of North Carolina Press (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25070863) p.36

[2] 'Folklore as a Political Tool in Nazi Germany' by Christa Kamenetsky, p221 (The Journal of American Folklore, Jul. - Sep., 1972, Vol. 85, No. 337 (Jul. -
Sep., 1972), pp. 221-235 Published by: American Folklore Society)

[3] 'Folklore as a Political Tool in Nazi Germany' by Christa Kamenetsky, p227 (The Journal of American Folklore, Jul. - Sep., 1972, Vol. 85, No. 337 (Jul. -
Sep., 1972), pp. 221-235 Published by: American Folklore Society)

[4] ' Rethinking (Irish) Folklore in the Twenty-First Century' by Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, p39 (Béaloideas, 2013, Iml. 81 (2013), pp. 37-52, An Cumann Le Béaloideas Éireann/Folklore of Ireland Society)

[5] Irish and Ecology by Michael Cronin (Foras na Gaeilge, 2019) p13/14

[6] Irish and Ecology by Michael Cronin (Foras na Gaeilge, 2019) p20

[7] Irish and Ecology by Michael Cronin (Foras na Gaeilge, 2019) p39

[8] Irish and Ecology by Michael Cronin (Foras na Gaeilge, 2019) p32/33

Romantic Heroes: Ameliorating the Dark Side of Capitalism

2022-10-29T04:38:00.004-07:00

Edmund Burke MP. Portrait by Joshua Reynolds, c. 1769

Introduction

The rapid spread of the science-based Enlightenment (c1687-c1804) across Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a cause of much dismay to the reigning monarchies of the time. The source of their anxiety, the philosophes, were propagating a radical new range of ideas "centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, and constitutional government."

The conservative reaction to such ideas was to declare the power of nature and the primacy of god as the controlling force in the universe. This hierarchical relationship justified the chain of hierarchical order and authority on earth that "connected subjects to rulers and to god" thereby revalidating feudal society and monarchy. On an individual level, emotions and spirituality were asserted to be more important than science and reason.

This early reaction to the Enlightenment, i.e., the emphasis on capricious feeling or overwhelmed emotions ('the inflamed passions') as described in the works of the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797), and later in the Romanticist (c1790s-c1850) movement, turned culture into a burden on society. This is because, from the idea of the cathartic terror of nature, to the Byronic romantic hero, and on to the superheroes of today, Romanticism has diverted people away from real change and real working-class heroes.

The Romanticist escape to Utopia, the remote, the exotic, and the unknown, is in stark contrast with the real lives of past leaders of communitarian movements who suffered, struggled, and died for real social change. Now we live in stark, dark times, surrounded by media that is saturated with the Romanticist gloop of horror, terror, fantasy, science fiction, romantic egoism, etc., that threatens to slow society down and trap us into infinite and endless imagination to the detriment of any progressive forms of social consciousness and societal change.

Edmund Burke's sublime: "by the contagion of our passions"

Edmund Burke set out a new way of looking at nature not as a 'demonstration of order but an invitation of reverence'. For example, this reverence can be seen in the language used by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) in his book The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). Goethe wrote: 'From the forbidding mountain range across the barren plain untrodden by the foot of man, to the end of the unknown seas, the spirit of the Eternal Creator can be felt rejoicing over every grain of dust' [1] emphasising the fearful, the mysterious and the unsure.

This new emphasis on reverence for the Creator and fear of nature was a reaction to the Enlightenment desire to refocus society on man and an understanding of nature. In the writing of the Enlightenment philosophes, Nature was given meaning in relation to man, not abstracted into the anger of a revengeful god. For Diderot,

"a picture of high mountains, ancient forests and immense ruins evoked episodes of classical or religious history. The roar of an invisible torrent led him to speculate on human calamities. Everything in nature was referred to man in society: 'Man is born for society ... put a man in a forest and he will become ferocious.' For Rousseau, man only reached his highest insights when alone and humbled by the savage force of nature. Both were alike in their search for natural spontaneity, but what turned one towards society drove the other into solitude." [2]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) had also rejected the rationalism of the Enlightenment philosophes (the development of knowledge and the intellect), "in favor of a form of nonrational, spiritual "enlightenment" centered on the "holy and beneficent" inner voice of conscience engraved on our hearts by God." [3]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1766 portrait of Rousseau
wearing an Armenian papakha and costume, Allan Ramsay

Thus, Rousseau moved "away from the Enlightenment's reliance on empiricism, reason, and knowledge towards a stress on the active nature of the mind and the inner spiritual life of the individual''. By doing this, "he helped to launch what would eventually develop into a full-blown revolt against the rationalism and intellectualism of the eighteenth century in the name of religion, emotion, imagination, and the heart, themes central to the thought of the Romantic period that Rousseau helped to inspire." [4]

Burke developed the concept of the sublime (great, elevated, or lofty thought or language) in his book, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin Of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. He wrote:

“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.”

Burke changed the emphasis from description to drama, especially in his emphasis on passionate language to 'inflame the heart'. He writes:

“We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably might never have been struck out by the object described.” [5]

Thus, the power of rhetoric (using 'modes of speech' combined with 'strong and lively feeling', 'we catch a fire already kindled in another') takes over from reality itself: "The influence of most things on our passions is not so much from the things themselves, as from our opinions concerning them; and these again depend very much on the opinions of other men, conveyed for the most part by words only." [6]

In this way the passions of men can be inflamed by a strong use of imaginative rhetoric. As reason is secondary, the implications of such behaviour, such an idea, on a mass scale (passions creating a wildfire across nations) can later be seen in the wars of the twentieth century (nation set against nation in WWI, Hitler's strident speeches of WWII).

Also, to overemphasise the passions diminished the role of reason and rationalisation in individual acts. For example, as Diderot claimed, "it is wrong to attribute the crimes of men to their passions: it is their false judgements which are at fault. The passions always inspire us rightly, for they inspire us only with the desire for happiness. It is the mind that misleads us and makes us take false roads." [7]

Romantic heroes: "misery in his heart"

If we combine Burke's "ideas of pain, and danger," with Rousseau's "inner voice of conscience engraved on our hearts" we can see the beginnings of the construction of the Romantic hero in pursuit of his/her own passions, and who can be described thus:

"A romantic hero is an exceptional and often mysterious person, usually in exceptional circumstances. The collision of external events is transferred to the inner world of the hero, in whose soul there is a struggle of contradictions. As a result of this kind of reproduction, romanticism has extremely highlighted the value of the personality, inexhaustible in their inner depths, revealing its unique inner world."

The characteristics of the Romantic hero tend to emphasise someone who has been "rejected by society and has themselves at the center of their own existence", with various combinations of introspection, wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation, and isolation.

The Lord Byron FRS. Portrait by Thomas Phillips, c. 1813

The Byronic hero was popularised in Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818) with the passions emphasied as "misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection". A solitary figure and resigned to suffering which was reflected in the trials and tribulations of Byron's own life and death in Italy and Greece.

The Romantic hero can be seen as an individualist who suffers from psychological traumas associated with alienation from society and life itself.

Working class heroes: "complaints of the hungry proletariat"

As with the Romantic movement, the Romantic hero was a reaction to the new bourgeois social order as the ancien regime's control and rule through aristocracy and monarchy diminished. The rediscovered and popularised collectivist ideologies of republicanism, democracy and socialism took to the stage and soon gathered momentum.

As Otto Grotewohl noted in 1948: "Romanticism sought models in the dark mysticism of the Middle Ages and viewed with complete contempt not only democracy and revolution but also the emancipation of the people".

And although many of the romantics fled to the mountains or the sea to escape burgeoning capitalism, Pyotr Semyonovich Kogan wrote that "inevitably even in the work of such a poet as Hugo, the noise of the street and the complaints of the hungry proletariat burst in and drowned out the gloomy sounds of medieval organs and the tender songs of Oriental odalisques."

Kogan criticises the Romantic interest in melancholic music and the other-worldly exoticism of Orientalism. As the practical materialism (science-based) of the proletariat excluded Romanticism (irrationalism), the anti-social individualism of the Romantics was replaced with the collectivism of the working classes.

The many aspects of the working class condition e.g. hunger, loneliness, alienation, poverty, joblessness, depression or lacking in health care (some aspects actually glorified in the Romantic hero) are reversed in the common aim of working-class solidarity and activism. While the Romantic hero looked to the past, the working class looked to the future.

The characteristics of the working class hero (positive, conscious, rational, philanthropic) starkly contrasted with the idea of the highly individualistic, alienated Romantic hero (negative, anti-conscious, irrational, misanthropic).

The male and female working class heroes given to us by history are ordinary people who rose above their living and social conditions to create a better world for all, fighting for better wages and working conditions, birth control and health services for both workers and migrants. Some examples:

"Mother Jones (1837 – 1930) Mary ‘Mother’ Jones was a trade union activist who helped to organise strikes to campaign for better pay and conditions for workers. She was an organiser for “The Knights of Labor” and the American Mine Workers Union. She sought to enforce child labour laws. Referred to as ‘the most dangerous women in America’ she revelled in her cause to liberate the working class of America.

Mother Jones, American labor activist.

Margaret Sanger (1879 – 1966) Sanger was a member of the New York Socialist Party and supported striking workers in the early 1910s. She published her first articles on birth control in a socialist magazine. After the First World War, she concentrated on promoting birth control and allowed her socialist policies to elapse.

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Bevan was the son of a miner and left school at the age of 13 to work in the mines himself. He became active in local union politics and rose in the Labour Movement to become a key figure of the Party. After the 1945 election, he set up the new National Health Service, which offered universal health care.

Walter Reuther (1907 – 1970) Reuther was an influential trade union leader who took on the major car firms and gained recognition for unions. Under his leadership, UAW became a major force, gaining substantial concessions from car companies. For his campaign to win workers rights, he was beaten up by Ford’s men and subject to two assassination attempts.

Cesar Chavez (1927 – 1993) Chavez was the son of Latino-immigrants and started life working for very low wages as an agricultural labourer. He became an American labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association. Chavez sought to create better working conditions for migrant farm workers."

Modern romantics: From Ziggy Stardust to Harry Potter

There are many contemporary working-class heroes that we don't hear about as the mass media will inevitably exclude anyone that opposes the current global dominance of neo-liberal ideology. What is promoted in mass culture is the abstracted, alienated, other-worldly characters such as superheroes: bourgeois heroes, guilt-ridden for not carrying out the claims of universality of their class (liberté, égalité, fraternité), that can only try to ameliorate the down side of capitalism: the proliferation of criminality (Batman in Gotham City, Superman in Metropolis).

The Romantic heroes of today have not changed much from those of the nineteenth century. They still have the same aloof characteristics of difference, alienation, and disillusionment with the same desires:

"A longing for home and a longing for what is far off - these are the feelings by which the romantics are torn hither and thither; they miss the near-at-hand, suffer from their isolation from men, but, at the same time they avoid the other men and seek zealously for the remote, the exotic and the unknown. They suffer from their estrangement from the world, but they also accept and desire it. Thus Novalis defines romantic poetry as the "the art of appearing strange in an attractive way, the art of making a subject remote and yet familiar and pleasant," and he asserts that everything becomes romantic and poetic, "if one removes it in a distance," that everything can be romanticized, if one "gives a mysterious appearance to the ordinary, the dignity of the unknown to the familiar and an infinite significance to the finite."" [8]

David Bowie performing as Ziggy Stardust at Newcastle City Hall in 1972.

The 'art of appearing strange in an attractive way' has not diminished. From Ziggy Stardust to Harry Potter, our modern-day Romantic heroes are also superheroes, so wide is their fame and following. Their alienation is now represented in science fiction and magic, 'remote and yet familiar and pleasant', as far away as possible from any form of collectivist ideology and solidarity. As Hauser writes:

"The escape to Utopia and the fairy tale, to the unconscious and the fantastic, the uncanny and the mysterious, to childhood and nature, to dreams and madness, were all disguised and more or less sublimated forms of the same feeling, of the same yearning for irresponsibility and a life free from suffering and frustration - all attempts to escape into that chaos and anarchy against which the classicism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had fought at times with alarm and anger, at others with grace and wit, but always with the same determination." [9]

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The forces of reason and science - Classicism and the Enlightenment - opposed the attempted escapism of the day into 'chaos and anarchy'. While the determination of the philosophes to fight against darkness and irrationalism may have been a losing battle (with the eventual rise of Romanticism), it was not a completely lost battle as many of the reforms advocated by the philosophes are societal norms today, as the Enlightenment reshaped the ways people understood issues such as liberty, equality, and individual rights.

However, the role of the 'passions' (the heart over the head), the emphasis on emotion over reasoned thinking (which played such a huge role in the development of Romanticism) is still a worrying issue given the domination of Romanticism as the main ideology in the globalised culture of today. One could argue that the Romantic hero cannot exist without media attention, while the working-class hero must continue to organise deprived of it.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes
[1] The Enlightenment by Norman Hampson (Penguin, 1990) p206

[2] The Enlightenment by Norman Hampson (Penguin, 1990) p206

[3] Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment by Graeme Garrard (State Uni. of NY Press, 2003) p84

[4] Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment by Graeme Garrard (State Uni. of NY Press, 2003) p84

[5] The Enlightenment by Norman Hampson (Penguin, 1990) p204

[6] The Enlightenment by Norman Hampson (Penguin, 1990) p204

[7] The Enlightenment by Norman Hampson (Penguin, 1990) p192

[8] The Social History of Art, V3, by Arnold Hauser (Vintage, 1958) p174/5

[9] The Social History of Art, V3, by Arnold Hauser (Vintage, 1958) p174/5

The Radical Enlightenment: The Role of Science in the Battle Between Christianity and Pantheism

2022-10-05T07:03:00.000-07:00

The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666.

"Lest we forget, the birth of modern physics and cosmology was achieved by Galileo, Kepler and Newton breaking free not from the close confining prison of faith (all three were believing Christians, of one sort or another) but from the enormous burden of the millennial authority of Aristotelian science. The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not a revival of Hellenistic science but its final defeat."
(David Bentley Hart)

Introduction

We are all familiar with the Enlightenment (late 1600s to early 1800s), not least because we studied it in our history books in school. We also learned that before the Enlightenment - which brought about the gradual re-introduction of science into society - there were the medieval universities of philosophy, known as Scholasticism, that dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. What we don't hear much about is the transition between the two, how science came to dominate thinking, who was involved, and what was there before. The study of early science texts in the monastic schools contrasted with the superstitious and pantheistic thinking of ordinary people in the form of religious and political dissidents who also advocated early forms of communitarian ideology. The Scientific Revolution (1543-1687), carried out by people such as Nicolaus Copernicus(1473–1543), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), René Descartes (1596–1650), Isaac Newton(1642–1727), etc., changed the way people thought about nature and created a profound crisis for the church, and the scientists themselves who had to figure out the role of god in this new way thinking, as well as deal with the dissidents who saw in the new science the basis for a democratic and socialist organisation of society itself. The legacy of the Enlightenment today, then, is the two traditions of liberal christianity and science on the one hand, and materialist pantheism, republicanism and socialism on the other. Both sides incorporated science as part of their ideology, but used it for very different ends.

The only known image of Toland

"He was an assertor of Liberty
A lover of all sorts of Learning
A speaker of Truth
But no man’s follower, or dependant"
(John Toland's self-composed epitaph emphasised his lifelong devotion to freedom,
knowledge, and individualism; a distinctly humanist approach to living.)

Scholasticism

From earliest times monasticism employed scientific learning to further the life of the monks and their understanding of the bible. Science was important for time-keeping and seasonal rites. Astronomy was particularly important for Christmas and the calculation of Easter dates each year. With the emergence of medieval universities in the 12th century much emphasis was laid on the rediscovered Aristotle and other scientific Greek thinkers. The monks even used the dialectical method in their discussions, a Greek method for establishing the truth through reasoned argumentation.

Dialectics were later on to become an important part of Marxist analysis of history in place of the determinism of the bible, whereby different opposing forces produce a revolutionary change after a long period of evolution, as opposed to the fixed aspect of god's creation since the beginning of time, as described in the book of Genesis, for example. However, the dialectic was used in Scholasticism to reconcile Christian theology with scientific philosophy, not to further the ends of science itself.

In a way it could be argued that the church was endeavouring to combat the rising new interest in science as it posed a threat to the basics of church thinking and teaching. The rise of Aristotelian ideas and their interpretation by the medieval Andalusian philosopher Averroes generated controversies in Christendom that led to the Catholic Church taking steps to deal with their implications, with Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) laying down an an acceptable interpretation of Aristotle, and the condemnation of Averroist doctrines in 1270 and 1277.

Thirteen propositions were listed as false and heretical, some related to Averroes' doctrine of the soul and others directed against Aristotle's theory of God as a passive unmoved mover. For example, the propositions "That human acts are not ruled by the providence of God", "That the world is eternal", and "That there was never a first human" had obvious signs of influence from scientific investigation and threatened basic tenets of Christian theology.

Moreover, Averroes argued that "scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy." The motive of Scholasticism then was to bring reason to the support of faith by using argumentation to silence all doubt and questioning while, at the same time, maintaining that faith was more important than reason.

On a political level Thomas Aquinas' ideas reflected the hierarchical thinking of the church in that he considered "monarchy is the best form of government, because a monarch does not have to form compromises with other persons. Aquinas, however, held that monarchy in only a very specific sense was the best form of government - only when the king was virtuous is it the best form; otherwise if the monarch is vicious it is the worst kind." Yet, "unless an agreement of all persons involved can be reached, a tyrant must be tolerated, as otherwise the political situation could deteriorate into anarchy, which would be even worse than tyranny."

John Toland (1670–1722), the Irish rationalist philosopher, threw a spanner into the works when he suggested in his book, Christianity Not Mysterious (which was ordered to be burnt), that "the divine revelation of the Bible contains no true mysteries; rather, all the dogmas of the faith can be understood and demonstrated by properly trained reason from natural principles", i.e., Natural Law - the "system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society." In this case, the rules set by the Church.

From a political perspective Toland took a pantheistic approach to religion, the idea that god was 'immanent' or 'in' nature and not ruling over nature. Therefore, if nature had no need of hierarchy, then man had no need either. Toland believed that there was no need for hierarchy in the church or the state, "bishops and kings, in other words, were as bad as each other, and monarchy had no God-given sanction as a form of government."

Portrait of Newton at 46 by Godfrey Kneller, 1689

The Scientific Revolution

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
(Galileo Galilei)

By the early 18th century the new science and mechanical philosophy initiated by the Scientific Revolution had profoundly changed society as "developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature." An ideological battle developed between Christian philosophers like Leibniz who tried "to locate the origin of force in a vast spiritual universe, and ultimately therefore in God" [1] and the Newtonians who believed in a "divine presence operated as an immaterial "aether" that offered no resistance to bodies, but could move them through the force of gravitation", that is, an immanent or omnipresent god that was simply a part of nature.

Out of this influence of Newton there arose Enlightenment Deism, the idea that the universe is "a vast machine, created and set in motion by a creator being that continues to operate according to natural law without any divine intervention". Deism would allow the scientists to continue doing science without the fear of excommunication from the Church, worried about the implications of mechanical philosophy on God's role in the universe. Leibniz, critical of this theological sleight of hand, quipped: "God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."

Deism emphasized the concept of natural theology (that is, God's existence is revealed through nature). Therefore, "Enlightenment Deism consisted of two philosophical assertions: (1) reason, along with features of the natural world, is a valid source of religious knowledge, and (2) revelation is not a valid source of religious knowledge." In practice this meant the rejection of (1) all books (including the Bible) that claimed to contain divine revelation (2) the incomprehensible notion of the Trinity and other religious "mysteries", and (3) reports of miracles, prophecies, etc. Thus, as Margaret C. Jacob writes:

"The new mechanical philosophy banished spiritual agencies, inherent tendencies, and anima from the universe. In their place were put explanations based upon those natural properties capable of mathematical calculation. Nature had to be observed and experienced, and wherever possible given mathematical expression. The physical universe became a place with spatial dimensions within which bodies moved at measurable speeds. Bodies moved one another by impulse, that is, my pushing one another and to explanations of the natural world based upon impulse we commonly ascribe the term 'mechanical'." [2]

For Leibniz though, this was political, as he perceived the new naturalistic and materialistic explanations of the universe were being used by 'politically dangerous men' to "disestablish churches and weaken the power of kings and courts." [3]

The trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition.
Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de' Fiori, Rome.

Pantheism and Materialism

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
(Lollard priest John Ball)

Of course, Toland's pantheism, Aquinas's fear of anarchy, and Leibniz's dread of politically dangerous men were all rooted in an awareness of "popular heresy and social protest coming from the lower orders of society." [4] There were rumblings of dissent associated with radical groups steeped in centuries of paganism that had never been fully overcome by Christian theology. Pantheistic ideas could be found in animistic beliefs and tribal religions globally "as an expression of unity with the divine, specifically in beliefs that have no central polytheist or monotheist personas." The idea of a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god was not recognised. The 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) popularised pantheism in the West through his book Ethics along with the earlier Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), an Italian friar who evangelized about a transcendent and infinite God, but was eventually burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. As Jacob noted:

"The pantheistic materialism of seventeenth-century radicals owed its origin to the magical and naturalistic view of the universe which Christian churchmen and theologians had laboured for centuries to defeat. At the heart of this natural philosophy lay the notion that nature is a sufficient explanation or cause for the existence and workings of man and his physical environment. In other words, the separation of God from Creation, creature from creator, of matter from spirit, so basic to Christian orthodoxy and such a powerful justification for social hierarchy and even for absolute monarchy, crumbles in the face of animistic and naturalistic explanations. God does not create ex nihilo; nature simply is and all people (and their environment) are part of this greater All." [5]

Indeed, the earlier pagan religious practices had co-existed with Christianity, many of which the church had co-opted but the worship of saints (and Mary) almost seemed almost like the continuation of polytheism. As Christopher Scott Thompson writes:

"Paganism in this broader sense did not end with the Christian conversion, because it was never limited to “organized religion” in the first place. Regular people all over Europe continued to leave offerings for the fairies and the dead many centuries after the official conversion to Christianity. They didn’t think of themselves as “pagans” in any formal sense, but they still thought of the world around them as being filled with spirits and their daily spiritual practices reflected this worldview. They still believed in local fairy queens and fairy kings, entities that would have been understood as gods before the Christian conversion. They also retained a semi-polytheistic worldview in the veneration of saints, many of which were not recognized as saints officially by the church and a few of which were originally pre-Christian gods."

Furthermore, the radical peasants used elements of paganism and and communitarian ideas in the bible to underpin their struggle against oppression by kings, queens, landowners and the aristocracy:

"Peasants resisting feudalism sometimes turned to this tradition of magic and spirit worship for aid against their oppressors. For instance, Emma Wilby’s The Visions of Isobel Gowdie documents how folk beliefs about fairy kings and the malevolent dead were used by magic practitioners in 17th century Scotland to curse feudal landowners. [...] These practices existed alongside organized religion yet distinct from it, before the Christian conversion and after it. People cultivated relationships with the spirits of nature, the dead and other entities for help with their practical daily problems — including how to effectively resist oppression."

In England, for example, the radicals organised in groups such as the Diggers, Ranters, Levellers, Muggletonians, Familists and Quakers, some of whom believed that the "Scripture foretold of a democratic order where property would be redistributed" [6], for example, in Acts 2:

"42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need."

Woodcut from a Levellers document by William Everard

Materialism reflected the pagan, pantheistic worldview, as it "holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions" (The idea that man created god, in stark contrast to the idealist view that god created man). This materialism was eventually combined with the aforementioned dialectics to form the basis of Marxian philosophy and change radical group ideology from pantheistic communitarianism to atheistic socialism. Thus, the non-hierarchical aspect of pantheism found its natural home in radical communitarian thought which was rejected by conservative forces, as Jacob states:

"At every turn they rejected mechanistic explanations that hinged upon the power of matter unassisted by spiritual forces separate from the natural order. To their mind, scientific materialism, whether mechanistic or pantheistic in its inclination, justified atheism, social levelling, political disorder, in short the turning of 'the world upside down'." [7]

The desire to turn 'the world upside down' was exhibited most famously by the religious and political dissidents known as the Diggers. They put their ideas into practice when they took over some common land in Surrey:

"The Council of State received a letter in April 1649 reporting that several individuals had begun to plant vegetables in common land on St George's Hill, Weybridge near Cobham, Surrey at a time when harvests were bad and food prices high. Sanders reported that they had invited "all to come in and help them, and promise them meat, drink, and clothes." They intended to pull down all enclosures and cause the local populace to come and work with them. They claimed that their number would be several thousand within ten days. "It is feared they have some design in hand.""

Their leader, Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist. The radical nature of the Diggers' ideology is demonstrated in the difference between the Diggers and the Levellers, as, while the Levellers sought to "level the laws" (while maintaining the right to the ownership of real property), Winstanley sought "to level the ownership of real property itself, which is why he and his followers called themselves "True Levellers"."

Winstanley underpinned this radical ideology in combined passages from the bible and pantheist thinking in his writings:

"In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the Reason is this, Every single man, Male and Female, is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of man, teacheth him all things... And so selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him."

The Diggers were harassed on St George's Hill by organised gangs. They endured beatings and an arson attack on one of their communal houses. They were taken to court (but not allowed to speak in their own defence) and when they lost their case they had to leave the land or risk the army moving in and evicting them. Other Digger colonies were set up around different parts of England as their influence spread. Winstanley had to flee but continued to advocate the redistribution of land.

Conclusion

While ultimately the Digger movement failed, the Enlightenment developed out of the Scientific Revolution as the 17th century bequeathed two contradictory traditions to the future. On the one hand there was the predominant "moderate and liberal Christianity wedded to the new science and supportive of strong monarchy within a constitutional framework" while, on the other hand, a republican tradition "in conformity with a pantheistic and materialistic understanding of nature." [8] Two opposing traditions that are very much to the fore in politics today.

Notes:
[1] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.27
[2] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.2
[3] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.31
[4] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.3
[5] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.3/4
[6] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.43
[7] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.45
[8] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.36

Woodstock ’99: Feeling the Heat

2022-08-25T10:06:00.003-07:00

A poster of the miniseries Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.

The documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 was most decidedly a depiction of a catastrophe. Watching the concert progress (or regress) from excitement to disaster was a spine-chilling experience. Over time the problems depicted in the film got unbelievably worse. The concert’s collapse into complete chaos as the hyped-up concert-goers set much of the event equipment on fire looked more like a depiction of hell on the walls of a medieval church.

The concert, designed to emulate the 30th anniversary of the original 1969 concert, was held in the former Griffiss Air Force Base in upstate New York, USA, with many popular acts of the time such as DMX, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morissette, Kid Rock, Metallica, and Creed.

The festival was held from July 22-25, 1999, and the heat was estimated to be 38°C (100°F) with little shade and swathes of concrete and asphalt magnifying the hot conditions. Very little shade and not enough grass meant that some festival-goers were even forced to camp on the asphalt.

Bassist Tim Commerford (left) of Rage Against the Machine
burns the American flag onstage during “Killing in the Name” at Woodstock ’99.

While the first couple of days went fairly well the atmosphere declined after the Saturday night performance by Limp Bizkit. Fans who were already frustrated by the price gouging of water and food began to tear plywood off the walls and the audio tower. Thousands of candles, distributed during the day for a candlelight vigil, were used to start bonfires. By the time the last band had finished on stage the festival site looked post-apocalyptic with troopers and police moving the concert-goers away from the stage. The whole debacle had seen overflowing toilets, sexual assaults, ATMs and semi-tractor trailers looted and destroyed, three deaths and over 5,000 medical cases reported.

The bands were accused of inciting violence. Limp Bizkit’s vocalist Fred Durst shouted out during their performance: “We already let all the negative energy out. It’s time to reach down and bring that positive energy to this motherfucker. It’s time to let yourself go right now, ’cause there are no motherfuckin’ rules out there.” The crowd were already a hyped-up, heaving mass of jumping, crowd-surfing and moshing humanity moving to the music which soon turned to violence and destruction of the event site itself. In other words, this was mass catharsis on a grand scale, an iconic symbol of the power of one large event to symbolise the contemporary feelings of a frustrated generation freed from the ‘rules’.

Promotional poster designed by Arnold Skolnick.
Originally, the bird was perched on a flute.

Woodstock ’69

The original 1969 Woodstock similarly freed the audience-goers from the ‘rules’ of the time as the hippie generation smoked pot, took psychedelic drugs, and even lived in communes outside of the established system. What became known as the counterculture movement of the 1960s was formed in opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War and left “a lasting impact on philosophy, morality, music, art, alternative health and diet, lifestyle and fashion.”

However, this counterculture also contained more serious elements that threatened the status quo itself. Young people were getting involved in revolutionary anarchist and socialist movements. Many gravitated towards the New Left: “a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms.” Others became involved in the political forms of Marxism and Marxism–Leninism, such as the New Communist movement which “represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution.” According to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, the movement had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.

With opposition growing to the Vietnam war in 1968 and student demonstrations taking place in Poland [March 1968 protests] and in France [May 1968 campus uprisings] the New Left ideology began to filter into music and cinema.

In 1967 Jean-Luc Godard directed the film La Chinoise about a group of young Maoist activists in Paris, and in 1968 the Beatles released their song ‘Revolution’ which contained the lyrics, “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t gone make it with anyone anyhow”. The activism of the time was also reflected in the Rolling Stones single of 1968, ‘Street Fighting Man’.

Vietnam War protestors march at the Pentagon
in Washington, D.C. on October 21, 1967.

Turn on, tune in, drop out

By the time the Woodstock festival came around in 1969, the themes of love and peace were combined with Timothy Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out”, an evocation to look into oneself (with the use of psychedelic drugs) rather than to look outwards and change society.

The importance of Woodstock is its iconic value as a symbol of revolt for a generation, as Elvis Presley, for example, was seen in the 1950s. One event, one individual, or one band can become elevated to a symbolic level representing something radical and even revolutionary to the people who were there, (and the people who wish they had been there). This can also be seen in the Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 interviewees who said that despite the chaos, they would go again, and that it had been the event of their lives. The huge numbers of fans involved in each concert, from 200,000 to 400,000 people, give these events cultural legitimacy and something to aspire to despite the fact that on an ideological level they work against the possibility of real change. ‘Dropping out’ in ’69 or catharsis in ’99 may have been satisfying in their times but little has changed politically since then. Is it time now for a mass music festival celebrating identity politics as the new revolution in cultural thinking, and the ultimate in divide and rule politics?

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery. Against Romanticism looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Hollywood 1940s Pro-Soviet Movies: “Social Realism Cinema in America”

2022-08-24T11:12:00.001-07:00

There was a brief moment in time in the 1940s, when the USA was at one with Russia or as it was known then, the Soviet Union. During the Second World War, America entered into the war on the same side as the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and Hollywood was rallied to the cause of victory against fascism.

In this article I will look at the cinema produced in the United States supporting the Allies during WWII, in this case the Soviet Union. After the war the political climate changed and HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) blacklisted actors, directors and screenwriters involved in making such films despite the fact that throughout the 1930s many films were made in a style sympathetic to the American working class, the realist style known as social realism. Therefore, the pro-Soviet films were basically a shift in location and accent, but not any dramatic change in content. I will look at examples of these social realist films made in Hollywood in the 1930s, films that are a far cry from contemporary Hollywood output in their depictions of ordinary people’s everyday struggles for survival.

First Red Scare

Initially the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had ignited the first Red Scare in the United States. Massive strikes and race riots added to the fear of the spread of communism in America.

Films were made that depicted strikes and mail bombings as the work of Bolshevik activists, as external threats to a democratic nation, e.g. Virtuous Men (1919) [1], Dangerous Hours (1919) [2], and The Great Shadow (1920) [3]. The worldwide communist revolution failed to materialise, and the prosperity of the 1920s in the USA diminished criticism of the capitalist system. After the 1929 Great Crash, Hollywood made films which caricatured the Soviet Union, like Trouble in Paradise (1932) [4] and Ninotchka (1939) [5].

However, things soon changed with the onset of the Second World War. According to Andrei Cojoc:

“The United States’ attitude towards the Soviet Union shifted on 22nd of June 1941, when Hitler began sending his Panzers towards Moscow, and after December ’41 the alliance between the two opposite systems was a necessity. So, the American’s perceptions of the Soviet Union had to be shaped overnight so that FDR could receive popular support for entering the war on the Soviet Union’s side.”

The OWI (Office of War Information) was set up by executive order on 12th of June 1942 and put in charge of “advising Hollywood about the means to support the war effort”. A set of guidelines were formulated in a “Manual for the Motion Picture Industry” such as:

“In a comprehensive third chapter of the handbook, called “Who are our allies”, “Tinsel Town” is advised to learn more about their former enemy, the Soviet Union: We must €fight the unity lies about Russia (..), emphasize the might and heroism, the victory of the Russians. In a most surprising manner we find out that ‘we Americans reject communism, but we do not reject our Russian ally’ (United States, 1942).”

Pro-Soviet movies

Thereafter, nearly every major studio made pro-Soviet movies such as:

The North Star (1943) (Samuel Goldwin) [Watch online]. The film is about the resistance of Ukrainian villagers, through guerrilla tactics, against the German invaders of the Ukrainian SSR.

Song of Russia (1943) (MGM). American conductor John Meredith (Robert Taylor) and his manager, Hank Higgins (Robert Benchley), go to the Soviet Union shortly before the country is invaded by Germany. Meredith falls in love with beautiful Soviet pianist Nadya Stepanova (Susan Peters) while they travel throughout the country on a 40-city tour. Their bliss is destroyed by the German invasion.

Three Russian Girls (1943) (United Artists). The film depicts the life of a group of volunteer nurses for the Red Cross in 1941.

Mission to Moscow (1943) (Warner) [Watch online]. The film chronicles ambassador Davies’ impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States.

Days of Glory (1944) (RKO). Tells the story of a group of Soviet guerrillas fighting back during the 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia.

The Boy from Stalingrad (1943) (Columbia). Five Russian youngsters and an English boy form a guerilla band which harasses the Germans stationed in their village.

In my research I have found 11 American pro-Soviet films altogether. In addition to the above mentioned films there is also:

Counter Attack (1945) [Watch online]. Two Russians trapped in a collapsed building with seven enemy German soldiers during World War II.

The Battle of Russia (1943) [Watch online]. Documentary by Frank Capra
The film begins with an overview of previous failed attempts to conquer Russia.The vast natural resources of the Soviet Union are then described and show why the land is such a hot prize for conquerors. The film then covers the German conquests of the Balkans and ends with the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Stalingrad.

Miss V from Moscow (1942) [Watch online]
The Miss V of the title is Vera Marova, a Soviet spy sent to Paris to impersonate her lookalike, a German spy recently liquidated by the French Resistance.

Our Russian Front (1942). Documentary
Walter Huston narrates a World War II documentary intended to bolster United States support for the USSR’s war efforts. Created using front line footage taken by Russian battlefield cameramen, and archive footage of Averell Harriman, Joseph Stalin, and Semyon Timoshenko, the film was edited in the US.

Russian Rhapsody (1944) [Watch online] (Merrie Melodies cartoon)
Infuriated by his soldiers’ constant failure, Fuehrer Adolf Hitler announces his decision via a radio broadcast at a “New Odor” rally that he will personally fly a heavy bomber to attack the Russians. On the way to Moscow, Russian ‘gremlins from the Kremlin’ sneak onto the plane in flight and without Hitler’s being aware of what’s going on, begin to dismantle it.

A common theme of the narrative films is the depiction of Russians as similar to Americans. The villages could be villages in America with their independent cheerfulness and progress, and capped off with Russian accents and Russian names. The main theme is that, as Cojoc writes, “by diminishing differences between the two cultures, one can see that both are fighting for the same goals”, fighting for humanity’s sake with as little reference as possible to the communist government. Some of the films were particularly popular, with The North Star, for example, being nominated for six Oscars. They have been criticised as propaganda films which, of course, they were. All sides in the war made propaganda films. They were made to promote the Allies view of the war, and some were successful and popular.

Documentaries were made to explain why a country which was ridiculed and dismissed, was now an ally. The Battle of Russia (1943), the fifth film in Frank Capra’s Why We Fight documentary series, is the longest film of the series and has two parts. The series was originally made to explain to the US soldiers why they were involved in the war but was subsequently shown to the public as well. Capra’s style was to let the footage speak for itself and so he used a lot of found or captured enemy footage. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and even popular in the Soviet Union.

While it might seem extraordinary that Hollywood was making such films about the Russians in the early 1940s, the emphasis on working class values and solidarity was not new. During the 1930s, Hollywood had already been making pro-working class, social realist films. It didn’t take much effort to make films with a similar ideology but set in Russia with Russian accents.

However, considering the hullabaloo surrounding the red scare of the “McCarthyism” era [1950-1954], these examples of American social realism cinema are rare indeed, if we take note that it is estimated that Hollywood made around 9,838 films in the 1930s, and about 7,900 films in the 1940s.

Social Realism

Social Realism was a popular art movement between the two wars, especially as a reaction to the hardship ordinary people faced as a result of the Great Crash in 1929. It was a style that went back to the Realism of French artists, like Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet in the 19th-century. In the USA, social realism was well established by a group of artists called the Ashcan school during the late 19th and early 20th century. They were not impressed by Impressionism and wanted to make art that was more engaged with life. Their paintings were based on the working class and the realities of urban life. Subjects included: street kids, prostitutes, alcoholics, subways, crowded tenements, washing hung out to dry, theaters, and wrestlers.

Ashcan School, George Bellows, Cliff Dwellers, 1913, oil on canvas. Los Angeles County Museum of Art

After the Great Crash, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations between 1933 and 1939. In the arts, “the New Deal arts programs emphasized regionalism, social realism, class conflict, proletarian interpretations and audience participation. The unstoppable collective powers of the common man, contrasted to the failure of individualism, was a favorite theme.” Like the Ashcan painters, social realist films depicted true-to-life characters and locations, with common themes of: social injustice, racial injustice, economic hardship, and the working class as heroes.

Frank Capra made a series of such films in the 1930s and 1940s [6] which were very successful, such as:

Platinum Blonde (1931)
Stewart “Stew” Smith (Robert Williams), ace reporter for the Post, is assigned to get the story about the latest escapade of playboy Michael Schuyler. He marries the wealthy Anne Schuyler but then realises that he is no longer his own man.

American Madness (1932)
At the Union National Bank, the directors are concerned because they think that bank president Tom Dickson has loaned too much money to people who are bad risks during the Great Depression era, and they threaten to replace him.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
The film is about a newly appointed United States Senator who fights against a corrupt political system.

Meet John Doe (1941)
The film is about a “grassroots” political campaign created unwittingly by a newspaper columnist with the involvement of a hired homeless man and pursued by the paper’s wealthy owner.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
George Bailey, a man who has given up his personal dreams in order to help others in his community, and whose thoughts of suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody.

Other examples of social realist films of the time were:

The Sin of Nora Moran (1933)
Nora Moran, a young woman with a difficult and tragic past, is sentenced to die for a murder that she did not commit. She could easily reveal the truth and save her own life, if only it would not damage the lives, careers and reputations of those whom she loves.

Success at Any Price (1934)
Joe, an amoral capitalist and boyfriend of Sarah Griswold, gets a job as a clerk in a New York City advertising agency and starts to work his way to the top.

Riffraff (1936)
Fisherman Dutch Muller organizes a strike with his fellow thugs from the fishery, including the beautiful but tough Hattie Tuttle, against the owners of a tuna cannery.

The President’s Mystery (1936)
The film deals with a “problem Mr. Roosevelt submitted … whether it was possible for a man, weary of faithless friends and a wasted life, to convert a $5,000,000 estate into cash, disappear and start anew in some worth-while activity.”

The General Died at Dawn (1936)
Tells the story of a mercenary who meets a beautiful girl while trying to keep arms from getting to a vicious warlord in war-torn China.

Marked Woman (1937)
Tells the story of a woman who dares to stand up to one of the city’s most powerful gangsters.

Blockade (1938)
During the Spanish Civil War a farmer takes up arms to fight for the Republican side.

Dust Be My Destiny (1939)
Joe Bell (John Garfield) becomes embittered after he is jailed for 16 months for something he did not do. He grew up a homless man who is tried for murder and changes courts attitude to vagrant drifters.

The Man I Married (alternative title I Married a Nazi) (1940)
A successful, and yet naive American woman, art critic Carol Cabbott (Joan Bennett), is married to German Eric Hoffman (Francis Lederer) who turns out to be an active and enthusiastic Nazi.

We Who Are Young (1940)
Two young office workers working at the same large firm secretly marry and defy their employer’s policy against coworker fraternization. When the marriage is discovered, Margy (Turner) is fired. This causes the newlyweds to face serious financial struggles and Bill (Shelton) pursues desperate, perhaps even illegal, measures to make ends meet.

Tom, Dick and Harry (1941)
Janie (Ginger Rogers) is a telephone operator and a daydreamer. Her fondest wish is to land a rich husband. She gets engaged to three men from different socio-economic backgrounds and has to make a choice of which one to marry.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

By the late 1940s, things had changed dramatically and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), set up in 1938 by the United States House of Representatives, began to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens. In 1947, the committee:

“held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, “The Hollywood Ten” were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists – including directors, radio commentators, actors, and particularly screenwriters – were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alan Lomax, Paul Robeson, and Yip Harburg, left the U.S. or went underground to find work. Others like Dalton Trumbo wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues.”

Anticommunist tract from the 1950s, decrying the “REDS of Hollywood and Broadway”

Abraham Polonsky, screenwriter and director (Body and Soul (1947), Force of Evil (with Ira Wolfert) (1948) (also Director), I Can Get It for You Wholesale (with Vera Caspary) (1951), Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969) (also Director)), was blacklisted after June 1950. In an interview in Red Hollywood [7] he stated:

“There was no plot to put social content into pictures. The plot was intellectual. Social content is what pictures are about. You can’t make a picture about human life without social content, and social content meant, in fact, the social content of these people: how the world was divided up, how it worked economically, socially, morally, and so on. You gotta show the rich are shitty and the poor are beautiful, its important that you gotta show that anybody who works as being exploited: those are general professional ideas that are current among the least educated among the radicals. But there is the social content that comes from a general philosophical attitude towards the world, of society. That's what counts.”

In the overall scheme of things these films were a tiny percentage of the general Hollywood output of the time. Furthermore, their content tended to revolve around working class issues and struggles against social and economic injustice, that is, typical content of social realism, as opposed to the direct pro-socialist and revolutionary content of socialist realism.

The struggling movement of social realism in cinema met a similar fate to the Ashcan school of artists in the 1910s. The ‘advent of modernism in the United States spelled the end of the Ashcan school’s provocative reputation. With the Armory Show of 1913 and the opening of more galleries in the 1910s promoting the work of Cubists, Fauves, and Expressionists’, the radical social realism of the Ashcan school was swamped by Romanticism (in the form of Modernism) and another movement critical of the status quo was killed off.

Ultimately though, the social realist films of the 1930s and 1940s serve as examples of a cinema that treated humans with dignity and promoted solidarity in times of war and peace, which makes them as watchable today as in the times when they were created

Films about Hollywood on trial:

1/ The Hollywood Ten (1950) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taancRcLQ8o

2/ Holywood on Trial (1976) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074635/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

3/ Blacklist: Hollywood on Trial (1995) (AMC Documentary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4jlaJph-cI

4/ Red Hollywood (1996) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332344/

Notes

[1] Virtuous Men (1919). When Bob Stokes, a wealthy New York clubman, loses his fortune, he is jilted by his fiancée Marcia Fontaine. He then wanders to an upstate lumber camp where he impresses the owner, Henry Willard, with his leadership and fighting abilities. After Stokes quells a strike engineered by the previous foreman, Robert Brummon, who is really a Bolshevik agitator, to prevent shipments of lumber for government contracts, Brummon, seeking revenge, sets the forest on fire, but Stokes controls it. Willard then sends for Stokes to oversee his New York shipyards where a government “mystery ship” is under construction. After Stokes and Willard’s daughter Helen fall in love, Brummon gets Marcia to attempt to seduce Stokes. Marcia lures Stokes to her apartment, where Brummon plans to kill him, but he escapes when he learns that a time bomb is set to destroy the ship. Stokes finds the bomb just before it explodes and throws it into the water. The saboteurs are captured, and together, Stokes and Helen watch the ship launch. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010846/

[2] Dangerous Hours (1919) is an American silent drama film directed by Fred Niblo. Prints of the film survive in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. It premiered in February 1920. The film was based on a short story “A Prodigal in Utopia” published in the Saturday Evening Post. The film’s working title was Americanism (Versus Bolshevism), which was the title of a pamphlet published by Ole Hanson, the mayor of Seattle who claimed to have broken the Seattle General Strike in 1919. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_Hours

[3] The Great Shadow (1920) is an American silent drama film directed by Harley Knoles and starring Tyrone Power Sr., Donald Hall and Dorothy Bernard. Jim McDonald, the foreman of a shipbuilding plant and head of the labor union, strives to combat the anarchistic propaganda being put forth by Klimoff, the leader of a Bolshevik gang whose goal is to disrupt the country with strikes and anarchy. Despite McDonald’s efforts, a strike is called, resulting in chaos. McDonald’s child is knocked down by runaway horses abandoned by their striking driver, and dies. Mob scenes take place in America, as well as in Russia. Eventually, the unrest is quelled with an armistice called between Capital and Labor for a year, during which time wages are to be increased to reflect the cost of living, and leaders are to work out a common plan for their mutual advantage. The strikers now realize that they have been pawns of the Bolsheviks and call off the strike, agreeing to the plan. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt00 11247/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Shadow_(film)

[4] Trouble in Paradise (1932). High class European thief Gaston Monescu meets his soulmate Lily, a pickpocket masquerading as a countess. The two join forces and come under the employ of Mme. Colet, the beautiful owner of the Colet perfume company. Gaston works as Mme. Colet’s personal secretary under the alias Monsieur La Valle. Rumors start to fly as ‘M. La Valle’ steals Mme. Colet away from her other suitors. When the secret of his true identity catches up to him, Gaston is caught between the two beautiful women. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023622/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouble_in_Paradise_(1932_film)

[5] Ninotchka (1939) is an American romantic comedy film. One of the first American films which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray, in this instance comparing it with the free and sunny Parisian society of pre-war years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninotchka

[6] See also my article: Corrupt Elites: “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”: Individual and Collective Struggles in the Films of Frank Capra. https://www.globalresearch.ca/individual-collective-struggles-films-frank-capra/5713881

[7] See Abraham Polonosky 11:20 Red Hollywood: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332344/

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Currently working on a book entitled Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery. It looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).