Direct More

Posted on May 16, 2012 | Leave a comment
Greetings, earthlings. I have just returned from a faraway land in which I was editing a book (Capitol Changing by Mary Walters, available this summer). Between that and my regular job, my desire to read/write was completely sated for about three months.


Though I won’t end with the answer, I’ll start with a question:

Can The Avengers, The Hunger Games, and other high-grossing movies be interpreted as significant indicators of the economic health of the U.S.?

If The Hunger Games can rake in $155M domestically its first weekend, and The Avengers can exceed that (at $200M) just a month later, I’m not convinced that the middle class is really hurting.

Okay, I just said that to be annoying. But it’s a path of inquiry I would still like to follow.

A friend and I once hypothesized that a lot of problems could be solved if just one summer blockbuster — like The Avengers — was produced and marketed with 100% of profits not being profits at all, but being used to underwrite the solution to some persistent social or environmental ill. Getting millions of people in the U.S. and millions more throughout the world to give $10 to the same cause at approximately the same time is a nearly impossible task, but getting them to give the same in exchange for a few hours in front of yet another screen requires no more persuasion than that which a few fights, explosions, and good-looking actors can provide.

This is probably the part where everyone who’s older and wiser than me starts snickering. A nonprofit blockbuster could never happen because profit is the only thing that motivates these people to make cool movies in the first place, right? And a lot of Hollywood guys and gals give to charity anyway. They shouldn’t be coerced into working for nothing . . .

No, they shouldn’t. But think how interesting it would be. The movie wouldn’t have to be anything related to the cause it was serving — e.g., if Avatar’s profits went toward protecting rain forests and indigenous cultures — rather, the aim would be to make as cool of a movie as possible (The Dark Knight Rises?) and unleash it on the world, which would be informed of its intent.

Here’s how it might play out: The actors, of their own free will, would agree to take a normal payment for their labor — say, $50 an hour, as opposed to the $50M Robert Downey, Jr., stands to make from The Avengers — and the writers, editors, film crew, and producers would take similarly modest sums. FOR ONE MOVIE.

Then, after a marketing campaign augmented by free social-media exposure (and free regular-media exposure…gotta make the parents look good!), some outrageous number of people would pay $8 a pop to see the film ($13 if it’s in 3-D). I know this would happen because an outrageous number of people went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Those who contributed their talents to the film would be paid as I just described, the theaters would get their cut, and then something really bad would have a chance to get better.

But.

One of the challenges with this idea is finding a cause that most people agree is worthy. There really aren’t many like that. But I think homelessness is a cause that most of us — excluding those with blind faith in “bootstraps” — could get behind. So I will use that as the hypothetical benefactor.

Every time I’m walking in downtown Chicago, five days a week, I see homeless people. It’s almost always the worst part of my day. I feel bad if I ignore them, and sad if I think about them. Giving them money makes me feel slightly better about myself for about a minute, and no better about the world. I wonder how many people are homeless because they really messed up, and how many are out there because they were born into a bad situation or are the recession’s collateral damage. I don’t know.

Just imagine, for a moment, that Inception, which cost $160M to make and grossed $832M worldwide, was produced, marketed, and consumed under this premise. That means $657M (minus a few million for peripheral costs that I don’t understand) would go toward constructing shelters and procuring modest food supplies for people who have neither. That seems so worthwhile.

And, consumers, you will still enjoy the same experience you always did. Actors, directors, Hollywood minions — you’ll still be taken care of, while taking care of something else. Not everyone has such a grand opportunity.

If this is possible, someone needs to do it. James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Tyler Perry, Wes Anderson, Joss Whedon, Gore Verbinski, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Moore, do it.

If it’s not possible, tell me why.

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Echo, Echo, Echo

Posted on February 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates. Devour old films, new films, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent.”

This passage is the work of Jim Jarmusch, the indie filmmaker who sometimes releases albums. But Jim Jarmusch is full of crap. Originality exists.

Some people pretend that it doesn’t. “There’s no such thing as an original thought” is a thought that has been repeated for decades, at least. But this adage is an alibi for unoriginality. It has authorized the evolution of pop culture into an unpalatable stew of leftovers. It has sanctioned the subversion of the internet into something new: a place where people go, in lieu of the physical world, to forge an identity, and to define themselves through other people’s work.

The internet provides simple formulas for self-definition. To display intelligence, quote it from somewhere else. To display beauty, post it from somewhere else. To stand for something, click “Like.” And then watch your friends Like the fact that you Like it.

Girl Talk.

How many members of my generation are going to write novels, considering how arduous the process is and the relatively low likelihood that they will be read? Why spend years writing when you can go online now and post something that will get immediate attention from people you actually know?

Maybe tattoos are popular for the same reason. They let people differentiate themselves by spending a hundred bucks and 20 minutes in a chair – only a step above a blog post, in terms of difficulty.

Here’s the M.O. of a slice of this generation: start a Twitter and a Tumblr and an OKCupid account, then spend hours online curating the shit out of them. Friends will like your stati, boys will ogle your self-portraits, strangers will retweet your one-liners if you’re lucky. But what is the end result? A collection of followers. Something resembling admiration. The dispersal of a recycled message through a network of people who most likely already think the same way.

The ease with which an idea can be spread online is awesome. Literally awesome. And it’s fine for people to use the internet to share those things that resonate with them. But let’s not pretend this kind of social networking is anything other than what it is: a spoonful of sugar straight to the ego.

Every time we share something instead of making something, we are recycling, reusing, reducing.

So don’t listen to Jarmusch. He only used words to justify his use of other people’s work (and win the admiration of people who want to do the same). I repeat: originality exists. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just afraid of being creatively destroyed.

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Posted in Politics, Youth

We Got Served

Posted on November 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve been wanting to write about Occupy Wall Street (OWS) for a long time. First I wanted to do enough research that I wouldn’t end up writing something totally ignorant. But so many factors got us to the point of nationwide protests that there’s no way I could understand all of it. Despite my best efforts, this post may still be ignorant, but I promise you it’s not based on false assumptions.

I must first express my supreme disappointment that the occupation of Wall Street was not some spontaneous assembly of outraged Americans, but a gathering spurred by the Estonian-Canadian Kalle Lasn, editor of the subversive bi-monthly Adbusters, using this image:

This is what I meant in my last post about the power of visual art. This image is impossible to ignore. This, and a tactical email sent to Adbusters subscribers on July 13, got 1,000 people to Wall Street on Sept. 17. No essay, no matter how well-reasoned, could do that.

After a few weeks of reading and watching, I think I know why OWS hasn’t come out with any official demands, despite politicians’ demands that they come up with some. One, obviously, is the movement’s philosophical opposition to vertical organization, which disqualifies anyone from speaking for everyone. But also, there simply isn’t a way to communicate the political situation in America that would carry more weight than the unadorned truth. The facts about who holds power in our country – in practice, not theory ­– and how they use it is so outrageous that attempts to write or speak about it almost always dilute the message in needless words.

Without further ado, here is my dilution.

When OWS began, my first thought was that much of the rage seemed misdirected. Wall Street, I thought, should not be held responsible for the crash; its members were operating rationally within a system set up legally by the government.

The sheer greed that brought down the economy is off-putting, sure, but greed is a normal sentiment and I can forgive it. I can’t, however, forgive the creation of a system that rewards the greed of bankers, of investment managers, of credit raters, and of the politicians themselves. That the people we elected to represent us, whom we were supposed to be able to trust, built such a self-serving system is an injustice that should have us all in the streets.

The people who allowed this system to take form should be the targets of our rage.

The New York occupation of Zuccotti Park lasted two months before Mayor Bloomberg shut it down, stating that the situation at the park had become “intolerable” with respect to sanitation and safety. In response to the protesters who invoked their constitutional rights to assemble and protest, Bloomberg said, “The First Amendment protects speech. It does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.”

So. What we have is a First Amendment that does NOT protect the use of makeshift shelters to take over a public space, but DOES protect the use of money to make a democracy into a plutocracy. (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, holla!)

Who acts within the law can be objectively determined. But who acts within the bounds of moral righteousness is a tougher topic to tackle. At UC-Davis last Friday, police were filmed pepper-spraying a group of students who were seated on the cement. I can imagine how it escalated: the students were protesting, the police told them to leave, the students sat down in further protest, the police warned them that if they didn’t leave that force would be used, and when the students didn’t move, the police used force.

Within a legal framework, the police were right and the protesters were wrong. But what about a moral one? When enough politicians are so hypocritical that they have discredited the entire representative-democratic system, and we aren’t allowed to physically demonstrate our dissatisfaction with the outcome, what is the next option? How can we legally achieve justice when these are our laws?

The movement may be called Occupy Wall Street, but it’s not all about Wall Street. The blame, like the risk, needs to be distributed much wider. Here are some entities that have proved themselves either worthless, incompetent, or corrupt:

Presidents: President Richard Nixon, for removing the gold standard; President Ronald Reagan, for glorifying deregulation and appointing people to carry out the deregulatory agenda; President Bill Clinton, for approving the Financial Services Modernization Act (which allows companies to become too big to fail) and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (which deregulated complex newfangled financial instruments); President Barack Obama, for not demanding criminal prosecution of the leaders of the firms that were committing obvious securities fraud, and for not making Elizabeth Warren head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Congress: for being so easily seduced by lobbyists; for acting as if what they owe to constituents is proportional to the amount of money they donate.

The Federal Reserve: for a lot of things, but particularly for unnecessarily giving AIG’s counterparties 100 cents on the dollar in the bailout of AIG. (Auto companies, mainly GM, were bailed out as well, but for much less than 100 percent of their debts, and with conditions about overhauling management and business practices.)

Many Americans: for borrowing too much money. No explanation needed.

Banks: Investment banks, for reasons I won’t get into but which you can learn all about from a number of sources, some of which I will list at the end of this. But also regular consumer banks, for allowing people to lie about their credit on loan applications just so they could get another application on the books.

Credit rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s, Fitch, Moody’s): Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still had AAA ratings within days of their takeover by the government; AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns were still rated AA within days of their collapse. These firms were literally out of cash long before then. But in the meantime, the credit rating agencies had taken away the very meaning of a AAA rating by issuing AAAs in excess (a 60% increase between 2000 and 2006); and by deliberately issuing fraudulent ratings, often in response to financial incentives. The ratings agencies took in profits as if they did something important and then, when confronted about their job performance, acted like they were dispensable. “[Credit ratings] do not speak to the market value of a security, the volatility of its price, or its suitability as an investment,” said Deven Sharma of Standard & Poor’s in a congressional hearing. So what did they give the world in exchange for all that money? Short-term profits for a few people, and long-term losses for the whole country. In short, socialized debt. Thanks, guys.

Securities & Exchange Commission: for not doing its job, which is to make sure that publicly traded companies act transparently.

A person goes to jail if he robs a bank. But he’s free and clear if he robs people in a way that can’t be easily explained, and is barely understood, and is done collectively, and is technically legal. He might even be allowed to resign with a 161-million-dollar severance package in tow. That happened. And that’s one of hundreds of small facts that, when taken together, make the protesters’ case for them. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that our government and body of law do not protect us like they used to. For some 30 years big businesses created Congresses to create legislation to create a country where money is power (just ask the CEOs and lobbyists) and power is money (just ask Congress). And the situation has grown intolerable. Just ask the 99 percent.

Learn more:
The Real AIG Scandal by Eliot Spitzer
Inside Job by Charles Ferguson
Goldman Sachs..100 Cents on the Dollar by Shahien Nasiripour
The Woman Who Knew Too Much by Suzanna Andrews
Moody’s Analyst Breaks Silence by Henry Blodget
The SEC’s Next Challenge: Fixing the Ratings Agencies by Barbara Kiviat
American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips
Congress: Trading stock on inside information? by Steve Kroft
Mortgage Mess CEOs Defend Pay by David Ellis
Bank Lobby Plans Attack on Occupy Movement by Ben Johnson

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Posted in Cities, Politics

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Reflections on Red

Posted on September 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

Red starts out as the most pretentious play I’ve ever seen. An aging Mark Rothko, his back to the audience, is seated on a wooden chair in his New York studio, smoking a cigarette, blasting Bach, and gazing upon his latest work: a black and red mural he was commissioned to paint for the Four Seasons restaurant.

John Logan’s one-act play, on stage at the Goodman Theatre until October 23, is a psychodramatic saga of Rothko’s struggle with two things: the public’s ill-informed interest in his work; and the realization that he and his contemporaries, having achieved conventional success, must inevitably make room for the next generation of painters.

The cast of Red consists solely of Edward Gero as Rothko and Patrick Andrews as his young fictional assistant, Ken. The first hour of the 100-minute play is a series of passionate lectures by Rothko to Ken, lectures composed of a few genuinely thought-provoking lines (“Where’s the arbitration that separates what I like from what I respect?” is the artist’s criticism of a public he sees as too easily pleased), but mostly failed attempts at pithiness (“There is tragedy in every brushstroke”) that paint Rothko as a depressed egomaniac who wants desperately to be quoted.

All is forgiven at the climax of Red, when Ken calls Rothko out for being so pretentious. Rothko is the purest of the purists; pop art, poised to define the next generation, is cheap, vulgar, and void of integrity. Ken presses Rothko: Why does art have to be so damn serious? Where’s the joy? The humility? Soup cans may not be spiritually elevating but, as Ken points out, “at least Warhol gets the joke.”

Rothko leaves. Ken lights a cigarette, puts on a Coltrane record, and faces the audience. Part of the challenge of writing is knowing when to stop, and this would’ve made a great final image: the young artist confronting the world, in contrast with the reclusive old Rothko collapsing inward.

Red is primarily a play about authenticity. It is set in 1958-59, not longer after Rothko’s paintings were touted as good investments by the editors of Fortune. (This distinction did not sit well with Rothko, who took it as confirmation that his rise to fame was not the result of artistic communion with the public, but attributable to the herd mentality that catapults so many to conventional success.) Rothko is uneasy about the burgeoning relationship between art and consumption, which he blames in part for his friend Pollock’s suicide: “The Oldsmobile killed him. Not because it crashed, but because it existed. Why the fuck did Jackson Pollock have an Oldsmobile convertible?”

At the play’s end, Rothko calls architect Philip Johnson to announce that he is giving up the commission in order to protect his murals from the eyes of an undeserving public. To display the murals at the Four Seasons would be totally inappropriate, like placing a crucifix in a bar.

Red, though not perfect, is definitely worth seeing. It’s an accessible mash-up of theatre and abstract painting that is bound to provoke anyone who cares about art in the broad sense. I say “broad” because my own definition is centered on writing: essays, fiction, poetry, scripts, lyrics, ad copy, homilies, love letters, journal entries, instruction manuals, fine print. I love writing because it’s hard to bullshit. Visual art honors the enigmatic; writing makes a fool of it.

But after seeing Red, I can say that visual art is superior to writing in at least one major way: it can be imposed on people. A statue, a building, a graffiti tag can stop you in your place, mentally if not physically. But reading is an undertaking, one that is necessarily consensual. Before you can persuade someone with writing, you must persuade them to read.

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Posted in Language, Politics

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Meanwhile, at the Back of the Bus

Posted on September 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Saturday night on the bus around 10:30 p.m., I had the misfortune of sitting near a rather belligerent man. He was around 30 years old and dressed in a nice button-up shirt, distressed jeans, and those weird leather shoes that turn up at the toes.

I was also sitting near another man, probably around 30 as well. He was playing one of the new Lil Wayne songs out of his phone. The sound wasn’t pleasant, but the bus was conducting its typical symphony of cell phone conversations, coughing, swearing, other muffled music, engine roars and obnoxious laughter anyway. No one boards a Chicago bus for the ambiance. I, for one, just wanted a safe and inexpensive ride home.

But the well-dressed guy (whom I’ll call Lance) had different expectations. He turned to the guy with the phone (whom I’ll call Chris), and this conversation ensued:

LANCE: Do you have headphones for that?
CHRIS: No.
LANCE: Then could you kindly turn it off?
CHRIS: Why?
LANCE: Because I asked you kindly.
(Chris ignores the request.)
LANCE: All right, man. This is why I’m where I’m at, and you’re where you’re at.
(Chris ignores the statement.)
LANCE: Can you at least play some good music? Do you even know what good music is, with your walnut brain?
(Chris ignores the request.)
LANCE: This is why I’m where I’m at, and you’re where you’re at. Just know that.
(Lance fingers his expensive-looking watch.)

At this point I expected things to escalate, but they didn’t. Lance got off the bus a few minutes later to transfer to the blue line, which I’m guessing he took to some club in the West Loop where he macked on some honeys dumb enough to think he was anything resembling a good man.

With Lance gone, I felt the urge to talk to Chris, to tell him what a tool that guy was and that I was sorry about what had transpired. A comment like that could ruin a person’s night, and if I had to choose what to listen to, I’d take Lil Wayne over an ignorant verbal assault any night. But I decided against it, grateful for the luxury to remain an innocent bystander. I regret not speaking up.

At this point you may or may not have inferred that Lance is white and Chris is black. The “walnut brain” comment was repulsive, obviously, but Lance’s insistence that “this is why I’m where I’m at and you’re where you’re at” was almost more than I could bear.

Because “this” – Chris’ penchant for imposing his music on other people – is not why he is “where he is.” Far from it. Lance’s assumption that he and Chris are in two different places is an incredibly racist inference because in immediate reality, which is all we can see, they’re in the same place: a god-damned bus.

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Posted in Cities, Language, Politics