Dismembership

In the current climate do you frequently wish that this or that demagogue were dead? Why won’t Putin simply topple over, like a bust of Stalin tumbling from its pedestal during Glasnost? Why can’t some spy infiltrate the kitchen at the Kremlin and give him some of his own medicine, ie the Novichok that felled Navalny? Wishing dismemberment, "extreme rendition"(waterboarding) or “termination with extreme prejudice” (the CIA name for assassination) is fast becoming the lingua franca of political discourse. “Off with their heads,” says Captain Hook. Remember the mythology about Lavoisier wagging his tongue after being guillotined? In South Africa and later Tunisia there were Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that set out to deal with the legacy of brutal regimes in  remarkably humane and enlightened ways. However, now dreams of vengeance supplant attempts to look at murder and genocide as a form of psychosis. “Macbeth hath murdered sleep.” The Russians have hired mercenaries, alumnae of the Syrian repression to bolster their flagging armies. Each human rights transgression rachets up the rage. Napalm, agent orange, germ warfare, mustard gas, drones, heat seeking missiles, tactical nuclear weapons--the imagination is more inventive in devising brutal means of annihilation than in conjuring forgiveness. 

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye

Property

Temporary Elgin Room at British Museum by Archibald Archer (1819)

Who owns what is a sticky question. It comes up in reference to intellectual property, in specific, art. Rothko sells a painting for $2000 in his lifetime and the proceeds of a later sale amounting to millions totally elude the creator or his heirs. Imagine if Shakespeare's estate had renewed their copyrights? This gets even more complicated in the case of indigenous work. Will the English finally return the Elgin Marbles to Greece? Talk about decolonization, will the Vatican deacquisition its Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum, a collection of indigenous art? Ultimately no one owns anything. Those who think they're buying a “co-op” are delusional. They're really long-term renters since someone else will own it some day—by definition. Politics+property=war. The equation defines modernity, with civil wars in Yemen and Bosnia deriving not only from culture but provenance. Who was there first? You might have to go back to the Big Bang and before that an ether or vacuum, to answer that question.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to China Girl" by David Bowie

Athens or Rome?

Will the Old or New Testament prevail when the Republicans take over the house? Will the ethos or culture of capital hill be an eye for an eye or turn the other cheek? In "Culture and Anarchy," Mathew Arnold differentiated between the Hellenic and Hebraic, "spontaneity of consciousness" versus "strictness of conscience." Athens and Rome the seats of the pagan or classical versus Christian culture will also infuse the debate. But in chess terms are the current tight margins of victory a recipe for endgame or stalemate? Of course, the Babylonian captivity in which the papacy was moved to Avignon, the age of Augustus and then Constantine all come into play. Not to mention the Napoleonic Code in which you’re guilty until proven innocent. The pressure cooker doesn’t just explode overnight. “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake” say Stephen Daedalus. Though it sometimes seems like the End of History a la Francis Fukuyama or Ideology (Daniel Bell), even the most cohesive of social contracts is comprised of competing agendas. One can only hope that a divisive society in which opposing sides adhere to Manicheans vision of good and evil like the one that exists in the United States today will at least be tempered by the synthesis of Hegelian dialectic.

 read "Lincoln" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Changes" by David Bowie

The Lost Age of Hype

Sam Cohn

Are you familiar with the personality type who’s always running for office? They live in a world hyperbole in which everything is a superlative. You never really know truth from afflatus. During the age of Leiber and Stoller, the Brill Building on Broadway was loaded with “producers” who would pipe forth. Even Phil Spector, who later was convicted of murder, might have exhibited this kind of bravado at the start, but how to separate the wheat from the chaff. One of the selling points of a commercial product, particularly a creative one, is that it’s the best and that behind its humble creator is a million dollar deal. Back in the 70s when Howard Cosell regularly sported his toupee on Sixth Avenue, everything was show biz. The CBS Building at 51 west 52^nd Street, still known as Black Rock today, was full of sirens both from passing police cars and fire engines and also the kind Odysseus faced. There was something comforting about the age of hype where everything was ICM or CAA and a legendary agent named Sam Cohn purportedly chewed up contracts. Then you felt free to refer to Mario Puzo as your "dear friend" even if you only met him once at book release party on the Upper West Side. Now artists and inventors live in an age of “disenchantment” to use the word Max Weber coined for the triumph of the material over the transcendent. TV shows are the product of focus groups and movies are dreamt up by committees who envisage the marketing campaign before they even have a finished piece of work .

read "The Cosmists" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

CNNese

“All happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The famous Tolstoy quote might be applied to CNN newscasters. They’re all alike, except for John King whose words tumble out of his mouth like bullets from a Gatling gun--and Michael Smerconish who inhabits the 9AM Saturday slot and feigns humanity. If you’re a CNN viewer you’re definitely unhappy. Though you may share the anti-MAGA sentiment, you don’t like the Orwellian Newspeak in which most information is conveyed. The root of Esperanto is hope, but that of Newspeak is well simply... the need to put an accent on literally every prefix or suffix. The suffix accenting is suffocating. CNNs reporting on inflation may be stultifying, Siennese aka CNNease is a little like Jack Torrance’s “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Back in the days of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings there was at least the feeling your anchor was alive and kicking. The local CBS ll’o’clock news does provide a respite in the form of the weatherman Lonnie Quinn, whose favorite line is, “back to you Kristine and Maurice.” Say no more. Does Berlitz teach a course for aspiring newscasters? What if everyone talked this way? It’s a little like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where all the pods have hollow eyes and intone the same monotonous dirge. Imagine coming home for dinner one night to find your partner turned into Wolf Blitzer, John Berman or Kate Bolduan or those party animals in the 6AM slot, Poppy Harlow, Don Lemon and Kaitlan Collins?

read "The Campus Un-American Activities Committee" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and watch the trailer for Erotomania

Mad Men (and Women)

Abrams Main Battle Tank at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune

Have you seen the TV ads for Bentcarrot.com, the site that touts Xiaflex, the only known medication for Peyronie’s disease? You may have noted that those who take the drug are also urged to exercise their penises. Explanation will be found on the insert. Then there’s Cyndi Lauper touting Cosentyx for psoriasis. Is this what happens to “Girls Who Just Want to Have Fun?” Ice-T has of course made a career out of his advertisements for Car Shield which are now set in the Barbershop of Ice Cube fame. But what about getting Annie Lennox of “Walking on Breaking Glass” fame to do commercials for the windows division of Anderson replacement?  Did you serve at Camp Lejeune from l953-87? Are you a victim of Mesotelioma? You may be eligible for the proceeds from a $35 billion dollar trust. Only you're unlikely to receive any money after your ambulance chaser gets paid.

read "Adulthood and Armageddon" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox

The Novelist's Film

In Hong Sang-soo’s The Novelist’s Film, now playing at the Bunin, a famous novelist, Jun-hee (Lye Hye-young), visits another writer, the proprietor of a bookstore/teashop who declares “I don’t write anymore. I doubt if I will do it again” They are joined by another woman who has given up acting to study sign language with which she renders, “The day is still bright, but soon it grows dark." In another encounter the novelist describes herself as lacking in "charisma," employing the word in its English form. The fungibility of languages is an early subplot that foreshadows the promiscuous bartering of lives (a child peering into a shop window is a proto-voyeur). Jun-hee meets a director she hasn’t seen in years. Neither have read or seen each other’s most recent book or movie and vie for attention. All of the characters long for something they don't have and all attempt to get it in awkward encounters--in particular, the one between the novelist and a famous actress Gil-soo (Kim Min-hee) with whom she collaborates on the "novelist's film." There's a web of minutiae which make up what's essentially a palette of creative forms. With the exception of one scene, The Novelist's Film is shot in black and white. The movie is comprised almost entirely of slow pans in and out; the claustrophobic settings mirroring the isolation of these dreamers. The scale of The Novelist's Film is much smaller than either Ryusuke Hameguchi's Drive My Car or Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, two recent offerings from major Korean directors, but one can't help remarking on the self-reflexivity and concern with artistic process that characterizes the work of all three directors. The current renaissance of Korean cinema is  reminiscent of the great era of Japanese directors like Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa.

and read "Drive My Car" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

and also read "Parasite" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope