The Mousetrap

What may have cinched it for many viewers of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, was the matter of the marriage counseling. Blasey Ford recounted that during a session back in 2012, she and her husband were dealing with a remodelling of her house. Blasey Ford  expressed a desire for a second front door--something which had apparently seemed unnecessary to her husband.The door was an issue between the two of them. Anyone who has been in marriage counseling will recognize the topography, in which seemingly trivial matters take on emblematic significance. It was this that apparently ignited the discussion of the assault which lay at the heart of the testimony. Apres Coup is a psychoanalytic which refers to the latent response to an earlier traumatic incident, and what was so convincing in the Blasey Ford testimony was the way it traced a process by which a present day emotion finds its explanation in the past. If Blasey Ford had communicated something more blatant and dead-on it might have been equally believable, but the detail of the way in which the past insinuated itself into her present life was what was so compelling. Memory is a tricky thing and it's like the trail markings in the wilderness. Whatever one's sympathies or propensity to think that Blasey Ford and/or Kavanaugh are confabulating, truth is a complex matter. However, sometimes signposts like the one Blasey Ford described can provide the anchor from which "the truth" can emerge.

Conspiracy Theory

Amanda Carpenter a commentator on CNN’s "Reliable Sources" pointed to “deep state,” “rigged elections” and “fake news” as the three obsessions of what another commentator Brendan Nyhan called “the conspiracy theorist in chief.” Apart from their pithiness these catchphrases comprise a profile in paranoia and what’s interesting is the power of the emotion. You don’t have to be paranoid to believe someone is following you goes the old saw, but you’re offered a whole palette of responses, one of which is to engage an otherwise innocent bystander in your fear, or not. If you’ve ever been the recipient of an angry glance or an uncalled for bit of physical or mental pushback, you realize how disconcerting it can be to be accused of something for which you’re innocent. Indeed paranoia is one of the great excuses for aggression. Tyrants frequently justify their excursions into countries they’d like to annex by claiming they’ve been attacked. On a individual level imperialistic personalities, give credence to their domineering behavior by blaming others, painting themselves as victims who are merely defending themselves. In the film Conspiracy Theory (1997) Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson) suffers from what seems like massive paranoia, but he turns out to be right. The world is against him. Interestingly one part of his brainwashing compels him to buy copies of The Catcher in the Rye. Would that whoever is pushing the president’s buttons had implanted such a kindly obsession!

Pornosophy: Gossip Porn

A recent "The Sweet Spot" column in the Style section of The Times ("I Found My Girlfriend's Sex Tape Online. Should I tell Her?' 9/11/18) registers a confusing situation. A contributor relates that her girlfriend has warned that if she ever seeks to look for a porn video in which she’s appeared, it’s curtains for the relationship. “She was aware of being filmed but did not consent to its being released online,” relates the writer. By accident, the letter writer discovers her girlfriend’s video and learns that it’s been seen 15 million times. She’s writing in since she wants to spare her girlfriend from opprobrium at a time when the girlfriend's career is taking off. First of all, why write to The New York Times when you’re trying to keep a secret? Isn’t this something that would better be confided to a therapist? And why is The Times colluding so obviously in the letter writer’s self-undoing? Steve Almond who’s one of the editors of the column writes, “I understand why you’re worried about your girlfriend unraveling. But the person unraveling at the moment is you. You’ve become obsessed with images of her degradation, and an understandable desire to expunge them from the internet. Just as important, though, is how you can banish these invasive thoughts from your mind.” Anyone who has watched pornography will realize that Almond brings up an interesting conundrum in pointing to the indelible tattoo that pornography leaves on consciousness. You might wipe clean a hard drive, but it’s often well nigh impossible to erase highly stimulating images from the mind. So what to do? And will the woman who appeared in the video be convinced that her lover wants to bring the subject up for purely eleemosynary reasons if she ever finds out what's transpired? Furthermore, are the answers to these questions pornography themselves or mere gossip? 

L'Atalante

Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934) currently in revival at Film Forum is cinema’s ultimate love story in the same way that Un Chien Andalou (1929) is the archetype for filmic surrealism. And the two have something common. Both convey iconic dreams. In the case of L’Atalante the dream of a lost love, a floating image in water, is followed by a great deal of tossing and turning which may have created a romantic convention in and of itself. Above all the movie is an idyll and a fable. It begins with three shots: the eponymous barge, a church and ominous clouds. An ensuing shot of newlyweds is counterpoised by the premonition created when a bouquet is carelessly tossed overboard. It’s all very childlike, something between Le Petit Prince and one of those precious high school French texts filled with illustrations of the Luxembourg Gardens and pictures of your prototypic "garçon" and "fille." Phrases from your grammaire like “de bon heure” and “tu t’ennui?” pop out emblematically throughout the film. Boris Kaufman the younger brother of Dziga Vertov was on the camera. The music was provided by Maurice Jaubert and Michel Simon (who plays Le pere Jules) of Boudu Saved From Drowning fame are all part of the package. L'Atalante even exudes some Bovarysme  when Juliette (Dita Parlo) is momentarily mesmerized by a Felliniesque performer and lights off to Paris. Many of the takes, amongst them one incredibly touching scene of Jean (Jean Daste) futilely running towards a vanishing point on the horizon of the sea, in search of his lost love, are paintings come to life. 

Publish and Perish?

Is publishing an article by someone who has been accused of wrong doing now an offense worthy of banishment? And by the way banishment and exile are the two major sentences handed down when you run afoul of the #MeToo movement. Ian Buruma the editor of The New York Review of Books is no longer in his position  as a result of running a piece by a Canadian Broadcaster named Jian Ghomeshi ("New York Review of Books Editor Is Out Amid Uproar Over #Me Too Essay,"NYT, 9/19/18). Apparently, Mr. Buruma also created controversy due to "an interview that many interpreted as showing a lack of interest in the accusations against Mr. Ghomeshi," according to The Times. The Times story goes on to describe how the Ghomeshi piece ("Reflections ffrom a Hashtag," TNYRB, 10/11/18) has come out in the light of a 7000 word essay by John Hockenbery the former NPR radio host in Harper's called “Exile” and a controversial stand-up appearance by the Louis C.K. which was “applauded by the crowd and denounced by many others.” But this brings up another issue. Is sexism, if that is what we are talking about, a crime, or rather a crime of the heart?And is it sexism to question to the level of vilification that someone accused of being sexist (or even fully abusive) is receiving? And how are such transgressions to be dealt with? Even screenwriters during the McCarthy era seemed to have had it easier than those who dare to protest the opprobrium which some talented people have recently faced. The Hollywood Ten at least enjoyed the pleasure of occupying a moral high ground. Now it’s the so-called good guys who are doing the persecution and sending anyone who would even dare to defend them (or differentiate one case from another) to the Gulag.  

No More Peanut Galleries

The Peanut Gallery c. 1949

Remember chronic fatigue syndrome? It's a well documented condition but there was a time when everyone seemed to be suffering from it. You don't hear about it as much these days. And then there was the whole repressed memory fiasco culminating in the McMartin preschool case. No one had apparently ever heard of the seduction theory or the fact that Freud famously repudiated it. Of course there are people who suffer from fatigue that is the result of everything from depression to mononucleosis. And there are people who have suffered all manner of childhood sexual abuse and suggesting it hasn't happened can be as much a form of indoctrination as suggesting it has. But there are times when the epidemic of suggestion appears to be both viral and epidemic. It turns out to be a myth ulcers were caused by stress. Saying that symptoms contain an element of fantasy is not the equivalent of Holocaust denial. Lately, there are many airlines who will not serve peanuts or even allow them on the plane, in the event that someone has an allergy that will produce an anaphylactic reaction. No one is disputing the reality of the symptoms or the need for people who suffer from such conditions to carry epipens. But why has this suddenly burst on the scene as a point of alarm? Baby Boomers will remember a TV show called Howdy Doody with its famous “peanut gallery”—a venue that would be off limits to kids today. One theory has it that the phobia about peanuts is such that it creates a situation where adults who haven’t been exposed to peanuts as children will develop reactions. Bipolar is the psychiatric disorder du jour and people leap on the diagnosis, possibly because it provides a label that explains symptoms and potentially offers a cure—by way of medication. In fact, the human mind is a complex thing and the proud declaration of bipolarity, while it may confer membership in a support group comprised of other suffers, may be more useful for providing a DSM code for insurers than anything else. There’s probably a new and insidious threat on the horizon, some undreamt of ailment, that will enrich the pharmaceutical industry while providing patients an explanation for their misery. People sometimes cheer themselves on for having found membership in a minority whose suffering and victimhood is attributable to a cause, without sometimes examining the dubiety of the evidence.

Are You Depressed or Merely Crying "Wolf?"

One of the definitions of depression is “a sunken or hollow place on a surface.” In meteorological terms, a depression is a low pressure area. In economic terms, a depression is a sustained or severe downturn in jobs, markets and other indicators of growth. You thus have a tropical depression which can lead to bad weather or a depression similar to what happened in the wake of the stock market crash of l929. Psychological depression is, of course, the elephant in the room. Numerous writers have attempted to describe their depressions. Familial, existential and physiological factors are often brought to bear in discussing these conditions, but it’s rare that sufferers from depression use geological, meteorological or economic metaphors to describe their states. One can’t help but feel wistful about a time, say in the world of a 50’s sitcom like The Life of Riley, when if someone said they were depressed they might be told to “cheer up.” Today, an expression of depression elicits those meaningful looks that can kill. In addition so many people complain of being depressed (bipolarity and suicidal ideation have almost become badges of honor in certain quarters) that it’s hard to determine who’s really depressed and who’s just crying “wolf.”