Verfremdungseffekt Support Group

Brecht (photo: Jorg Kolbe, German Federal Archives)

Have you ever experienced a hatred of happy people who seem smug and self-satisfied? And conversely have you found yourself drawn to the sufferer who's more willing to pour out his or her sorrow and open their heart to you? The human condition is indeed a sad state of affairs to the extent that those who are perfectly content and don’t need others are condemned to an isolation they themselves may be impervious to. Not to sell the idea of mourning, but those who have experienced loss or have been deprived of something that was once a great source of satisfaction (either

because of addiction or merely scarcity) are more prone to seek out fellow sufferers. They're a little like refugees who have been exiled from their homes and need each other to a survive in a way that landed hegemons rarely experience. The bonds between those who are estranged from the world they’re in tend to be stronger than than the ones between free agents who are able to move insouciantly through life, without a care in the world.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Was Fred Rogers as loving and accepting of his own feelings and faults as he told children to be? In fact, can anyone be? It’s a question that lurks beneath the surface of Morgan Neville’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? To take a negative view of human potential is to ascribe to nihilism, but what was the reality of the kindly Fred Rogers who said things like “you don’t have to be anything sensational for people to love you,” “what is essential in life is invisible to the eye,” “silence is one of the greatest gifts we have”? Rogers swam a mile every day at the Pittsburgh Athletic club and his weight always came out to be 143 pounds. With the one standing for “I,” the four, “love” and the three, "you,” it's a neat little package and for all Won’t You Be My Neighbor's? charm, you might wonder if things don’t fit together a bit too tidily. Using Rogers' own epistemology of acceptance and self-love, one would be hard put to get by the board of the metaphoric gated community he lived in. Still certain images leave an indelible impression, amongst them the trolley that continually leaves and comes back. What better nostrum for separation anxiety and what better iteration of Winnicott’s famed transitional object than Roger’s familiar sock puppet? (Luminaries in the field of child development like Benjamin Spock, Berry Brazelton and Erik Erikson all are cited in the movie). Then there's the scene of the congressional hearing where Rogers totally melts the thick-skinned Senator John Pastore, thereby securing the $20 million subsidy that was so necessary to public television’s future. Rogers was an ordained minister and the movie portrays him as the unassuming side of the superhero. Though he had to possess a certain degree of drive to produce a project of such magnitude and appeal, he was a televangelist for a good cause--kindness. “I want there to be peace in the neighborhood,” is one of the movie's many mantras. “It’s been a hard time for everyone.”Apparently Rogers found relief on the set of his own show. Will You Be My Neighbor? is the legacy of an era when peace and love were still considered viable philosophical positions.

Venice Journal: Arrivederci!

El Toro and Kingda Ka at Six Flags (photo: Paulm27)

Venice is the Six Flags of Renaissance art. The only problem is that there are no stomach churning rides. Beside the crowds modernity has eluded the below sea level city which sports a form of public transportation, the Vaporetto, which moves at a snail’s pace. It’s a tautology to say Venice is beautiful, but beauty can be elusive amidst the throngs of tourists. Imagine yourself packed into a crowded New York subway at rush hour in which the cars were decorated with Tintorettos instead of graffiti. Of course any person who has an investment in their image as a cultivated person is going to choose choose Venice over Six Flags in say Jackson, New Jersey just as they will take Bouilly over Popeyes. But it may be important to remember that it was human activities like Six Flags that were the basis of much great art. Take for instance Jacques Feyder’s Carnival in Flanders which is a painting come to life. What you're getting on a visit to Venice is a hand-me-down, many artists' representations of their idea of fun. However, are such vicarious pleasures truly enjoyable amidst a background of bored restauranteurs, lousy food and injustice collecting Americans who are ever eager to exercise their First Amendment rights by crying “fire!” in a crowded movie theater? If you want to have a good time, can Venice and just ride El Toro, the rollercoaster at Six Flags.

Lombardy Journal: Mantua or Mantova?

Mantegna self-portrait in the Camera degli Sposi (watercolor by Hallie Cohen)

Your tour leader or cheerleader will take you to the Ducal palace and describe a collection that was once the most famous in the world. But the Gonzagas, who ruled Mantova, liked wine, women and song and the art had to be sold to Charles I in 1637 to make ends meet. Which is one instance which underscores the English connection that gives Italian cities like Mantova anglicized names. Power was the name of the game. The Gonzagas ruled for 400 years (1328-1707). Every stone of Mantua breathes the Gonzaga name and when you learn about the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, you begin to understand that the great dynasty was a little like Robert Moses, imposing its will over the Benedictines who collected their tolls with an earlier structure whose Gothic bell tower remains amidst the baroque work of Leon Battista Alberti. When pilgrims visited the Basilica which houses a famous religious relic (and also the chapel in which Mantegna is buried) they now paid the Gonzagas. The confluence of baroque, medieval and gothic styles is what Dickens saw from the window of the apartment he lived in when he visited Mantua in 1844 and which now houses a restaurant called Tiratappi. The beauty of Mantua is highly touted, but it’s actually deeply strange. On a recent evening at the heart of the tourist season, albeit in the middle of a heatwave, the place was a deserted backwater with half-empty restaurants where no writer was going to be hanging his hat.

Emilia-Romagna Journal: Teatro all'antica

Teatro all'Antica (photograph by Hallie Cohen)

The first stand-alone purpose-built theater since antiquity, the Teatro all’antica, still remains in the hamlet of Sabbioneta. It was designed by the Italian architect Scamozzi and commissioned by Duke Vespasiano 1 Gonzaga. The façade sports the inscription “Roma Quanta Fuit Ipse Ruina Docal.” The expression might elude you. "Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” is probably more applicable. Even back in the 16^thcentury people were using culture to create a kind of credibility. And plainly the Duke was looking to enhance the stature of his small duchy. Real estate developers know that when artists move into a backwater, home and apartment prices go up. Sabbioneta is still the sleepy little town that it probably once was back in 1588, though it still has a synagogue remaining from a time before the Second World War when there were thriving Jewish communities all over Italy. But what would the local fare have been? Perhaps commedia dell’arte, the masked comedy based on stock characters like Pulcinella, Pantalone and Arlecchino would have fit the bill. However, the Teatro all’antica was not like the Globe which would come into existence only a few years later. While the Elizabethan stage produced a kind of tabloid journalism written by a fellow named Shakespeare playing to the appetites of the masses, the Teatro all’Antica was a small theater with burnished  wood benches which plainly catered to the elite.

Emiglia-Romagna Journal: Cutting the Cheese

photograph of Ciaolatte storage room by Hallie Cohen

Parmigiano Reggiano is a cheese that’s produced in only one area of Italy. Anything that's not from that heart shaped region between Parma and Reggiano, separated by the Po River from Lombardy, is not the real McCoy. If you take the tour of the Ciaolatte factory in Borghetto, you'll learn that there are three ingredients to a recipe that produces deceptively rocky crystals that easily crumble in your hands. Rennet, which is the intestine of a baby calf, provides the enzyme that creates the inner life of the cheese which takes about 3 years of aging before it’s ripe enough to be eaten. Cows have to be milked twice a day and so the cheese is produced 365 days a year with the milk from the night before, a form of skim milk or whey, which lies in trays, rolling into copper cisterns which are then filled with fresh milk, rennet and salt. Each cistern produces two wheels of cheese. The cheese eventually is housed on shelves in a huge refrigerated warehouse where it has to meet strict regional inspection standards before it's sent out into the world. A short while back one of the cheese warehouses had been broken into, but the cheese was recovered when the getaway vehicle broke down. That’s about as complicated as the life of a Parmigiano Reggiano cheese wheel gets.

Emilia-Romagna Journal: Castello di Tabiano

prosciutto at Gallo d"Oro (photograph by Hallie Cohen)

Emilia-Romagna has the best prosciutto in the world and one of the best restaurants of the region is Angiol d' Or in Parma. Try the zucchini flowers, the incomparable spaghetti carbonara served with a yolk of an egg that’s still intact when it's brought to your plate and then finish up with a crispy leg of pork. After that you might want to wander across the square of the Duomo with its pillared Moorish architecture to the famed Teatro Farnese, if only to take a peek inside its wooded interior. Journeying into the countryside, perhaps making your way toward the Po Valley and Mantua you might stop at Castello di Tabiano, a dazzling romantic resort on a mountain top which overlooks Parma and Fidenza and has a storied history of its own. Originally built as a fortress by the Pallavicinos in the 12^thcentury, it was turned into a castle in 1877 by the Corazza family. The story gets more complicated from a culinary point of view since one of the Corazzas married the daughter of Carlo Gatti, aka the "Ice King." Ice and ice cream require salt and the nearby Salsomaggiore was famous for its salt baths (the word salary incidentally comes from salt, if that's any help). Parmesan cheese and wine became two of the major products made at the Tabiano castle and the smell of the cheese still permeates the basement area even though a new generation of Corazzas has devoted their energies to tourism.