Raising Cain!

Accepting limitations runs contrary to the American creed. And there are "No Inhibitions Allowed" signs everywhere in the modern all/inclusive resort Homo Ludens resides in. You may not want to be a member of a club… but you probably can’t being yourself to say no to this weeks offering at Club Hedonism. Addictive personalities ultimately have to accept the notion of abstinence and even dreamers end up selling their copy of The Fountainhead to The Strand. Who would you rather be Citizen Kane or Bishop Tutu?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Robert Wilson's Moby Dick at BAM

 

Christopher Nell, sublime boy, and Rosa Inskat, Ahab, (Krulwich NYT)

If you loved The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud, The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, Deafman Glance and even the late Robert Wilson's more recent production of The Three Penny Opera (whose majestic production by the Berliner Ensemble derived from its faithfulness to the original work), you may find the current production of Moby Dick, by Germany’s Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, disappointing. To begin with Moby Dick is its words. The greatness derives from language which is belittled and mocked, in the current outing with once grand characters turned into babbling cartoons. The other problem is that the last half is quite simply a rock opera. No doubt the songs by the British singer song writer, Anna Calvi, will make it to the hit parade say like Laurie Anderson's "O Superman!" Anderson BTW did a l999 production of Moby Dick at BAM. The audience was grooving, heads bobbing, and the production received standing ovations from the youthful crowd. Moby Dick had been turned into a rave, the kind of irritatingly percussive soundtrack that accompanied Sirat.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Inigo Jones

Inigo Jones (1573-1652)

Inigo Jones, the Vitruvian 17th century architect and set designer, responsible for Ben Jonson's masques--imagine a time when theater had the immediacy of movies and theaters like Shakespeare’s globe evinced their own raucous and sexy spectacle in the galleries. What a name for a stage! The Globe! Ever since humans first recognized their own faces as reflections, the desire and need to see themselves has exploded, Look at the famous Bayeux Tapestries down the road from Omaha Beach and look at how many hits Pornhub receives in a day. Over 114 million is the answer. War is just one of the arenas. Pharoah receiving the prophecy about the calves is another. Joseph btw was the first Jewish psychoanalyst. Let’s call it the interpersonal school! Speaking of analysis, "the rest is silence."

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Nudity

strip club in Anora

Nudity can be physical or emotional. In the latter one exposes oneself, the orifices and cavities which comprise the mind. The former is a taller order. You undress, perhaps finding yourself in one of those dreams where you find yourself standing in front of a crowd with nothing on. As irrational as it may sound, some people would rather admit to anything in lieu of finding themselves scrounging for a fig leaf. The shame attached to nudity is a mystery akin to that of consciousness itself. Words play the role of clothes when it comes to unveiling emotion, but most people are not afraid to let down their guard when they get excised enough, for example. Stripper is a noun most people take for granted. You think of gaudy Gentlemen’s clubs where dupes pay exorbitant fees to drink champagne in the V.I.P room, but why not apply it to those who tell the truth? Further, to be contradictory, is telling all a definition of truth.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Circulation Des Elites

Vilfredo Pareto

It's like overhearing your parents fighting behind their bedroom door. From the point of view of the average Joe, the elites are having a dust up. The sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto, coined the term, "circulation des elites." The White House correspondents are no less an elite than Joe Rogan. Certainly Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are their own elite along with Wolf Blitzer and his co-anchor, Pamela Brown. In comes a would be assassin guns a blazing. Will he become an urban legend, the Luigi Mangione of 2026? Will he be locked up in Fort Knox, a true Goldfinger, rather than one those maximum security for-profit federal penitentiaries filled with cypto-kleptocrats? This is not The Apprentice. It's Jerry Springer where you had to call security to break things up.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kant

Kant

Paradigm shift was the catchphrase of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The two words are innocuous, almost pallidly academic yet absolute in their assertion of relativity. But where does the "categorical imperative" figure in? The Kantian requisite differentiates between right and wrong. The present comical universe displays the consequences of “transactional analysis.” Decision making has no relationship to morality. The present state of "value free politics" perpetrated by the president illustrates the consequences of the attack on deontology.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Which Way Should the Male Gaze?

 

"Sunlight" by Joan Semmel (1978)

Is it wrong to look pruriently on Courbet's"L'Origine du monde" with its headless model in a wanton splayed legged pose? Joan Semmel is known for her nudes, currently on display, in her solo show, "In the Flesh," at The Jewish Museum. Does the artist defang the male gaze by virtue of her own agency? Is it an act of esthetic corruption to get turned on by "Sunlight," or another of Semmel's nudes where a female subject is pictured underneath her male lover with one hand grasping his balls and the fingers of her hand reaching tantalizingly towards his anus?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star