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justforbooks · 4 years

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Michel Piccoli obituary

Stalwart of French cinema whose prolific career included films with Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol

By Ronald Bergan

For more than half a century, there seemed to be one constant in French cinema – the actor Michel Piccoli. With his death at the age of 94 something vital has disappeared from the screen.

Never young looking – he was prematurely bald – Piccoli grew in maturity and power over the years, with directors such as Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Marco Ferreri and Claude Sautet seeking his services more than once. He also worked for directors of the stature of Alfred Hitchcock, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jacques Rivette, Costa-Gavras and Louis Malle.

Even when he was a big name, Piccoli was never too proud to play small supporting roles or even bit parts if he liked the screenplay. But whatever the size of the role, whether playing a goody or a baddie, Piccoli would bring to the character a gravitas (with a tinge of humour) and an ironic detachment, simultaneously revealing a real, recognisable human being beneath the surface.

Piccoli was born in Paris to a French mother and an Italian father, both of them musicians – his mother was a pianist; his father a violinist. At 19, he made his screen debut in a walk-on part in Sortilèges (1945), directed by Christian-Jaque.

After several roles in the cinema and theatre, he met Buñuel. “I wrote to this famous director asking him to come and see me in a play. Me, an obscure actor! It was the cheek of a young man. He came and we became friends.” Piccoli appeared in six of Buñuel’s films, usually cast as a silky, authoritarian figure.

His first performance for Buñuel was as a weak, compromised priest trekking through the Brazilian jungle in La Mort en Ce Jardin (Death in the Garden/Evil Eden, 1956). In Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), he was the idle and lecherous Monsieur Monteil, sexually obsessed with Jeanne Moreau as the maid Célestine.

Just as louche was his smooth bourgeois gentleman who persuades a respectable doctor’s wife (Catherine Deneuve) to spend her afternoons working in a high-class brothel with kinky clients in Belle de Jour (1967). Piccoli reprised the role charmingly almost 40 years later in Manoel de Oliveira’s Belle Toujours (2006).

He was discreetly charming as the Marquis de Sade in Buñuel’s La Voie Lactée (The Milky Way, 1969), subtly overbearing as the home secretary in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and sinister as a prefect of police in Buñuel’s penultimate film, Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty, 1974).

In the 1950s, apart from his one film with Buñuel and his appearance as María Félix’s jealous lover in Jean Renoir’s French Cancan, Piccoli was cast mainly in run-of-the mill “policiers”. During this period, Piccoli was part of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés set in Paris, which included the writers Boris Vian, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and the café singer Juliette Gréco, to whom he was married from 1966 to 1977. He was also an active member of the French Communist party.

The 60s was his most creatively exciting and varied decade. His first leading role (with Serge Reggiani and Jean-Paul Belmondo) was as an unscrupulous gangster in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos (The Finger Man, 1962).

This led to one of his best remembered parts, as Brigitte Bardot’s husband in Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt, 1963), in which he plays a screenwriter, willing to sell his wife to a producer (Jack Palance) in order to get his script filmed by Fritz Lang. In a homage to Dean Martin’s character in Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running, Piccoli wears a cowboy hat in the bath.

As memorable as this image was the name of the character he played in Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967). As Simon Dame, he is continually being greeted as Monsieur Dame (a joke that works only in French), and is rebuffed by Danielle Darrieux, who cannot bear the thought of being called Madame Dame.

It was in 1968 that Piccoli met Ferreri, who starred him in Dillinger È Morto (Dillinger Is Dead), a bleak study of alienation, in which a man’s life is laid bare. Piccoli is brilliant as an industrial designer who, while spending an evening at home, making himself a meal, watching TV and seducing the maid, decides to kill his wife and go to Tahiti.

It was the first of seven films the actor made for the Italian-born director, the most infamous being La Grande Bouffe (Blow Out, 1973), an excessive film about excess, where Piccoli as a TV personality, along with a pilot, a judge and a chef, all bored with life, literally eat themselves to death.

Piccoli’s few roles in English language films were less than challenging: they included his secret agent in Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969) and the suave card dealer in Malle’s Atlantic City (1981).

He was much happier in France, where his talents were not only respected but revered. His several films for Sautet showed him as a complex and flawed hero, starting with Les Choses de la Vie (The Things of Life, 1970), in which he played a man who, although having an affair, finds himself still attached to his estranged wife, his son and friends, and consequently unable to make the absolute commitment his lover requires.

In 1973, Piccoli formed a production company which kicked off with that year’s Themroc, directed by Claude Faraldo, in which he played a factory worker, living in a squalid flat with his mother and sister, pursuing an existence of repetitive routine and urban grind, before he rebels. What made this biting social satire particularly unusual was that language was abandoned completely, with the characters having to communicate in a series of formless noises, something Piccoli does particularly effectively.

Piccoli then returned to his speciality – the urbane bourgeois – in Chabrol’s blackly comic Les Noces Rouges (Blood Wedding, 1973), where he played a mayor’s deputy having an affair with his boss’s wife. In Godard’s Passion (1982), he was a factory owner whose wife is having an affair with a film director.

He gave three of his largest and most impressive performances in his late 60s and 70s. In Malle’s Milou en Mai (Milou in May, 1990), he is the ideal repository of all the director’s sympathies, the upholder of the best of traditional country values, unambitious, unacquisitive and a lover of nature, in contrast to his greedy middle-class family gathered for a funeral.

Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991) cast him magisterially as a famous artist trying to capture a new nude young model on canvas. In Oliveira’s Je Rentre à la Maison (I’m Going Home, 2001), Piccoli struck a personal and poignant note as an actor trying to deal with old age, and refusing to compromise his principles.

He shone in what amounted to almost a cameo as the courtly but bumbling elderly relative of the Duchess of Langeais (Jeanne Balibar) in Rivette’s Ne Touchez Pas la Hache (Don’t Touch the Axe, 2007), a version of Balzac’s novel on erotic obsession.

For the English language The Dust of Time (2008), Theo Angelopoulos’s last film, Piccoli joined such stalwarts of European art cinema as Bruno Ganz and Irène Jacob in a love triangle that covers the latter part of the 20th century. Despite some of the stilted dialogue, Piccoli bares the soul of a character whose sufferings include his internment and escape from a gulag.

He dominated every moment as a reserved and modest cardinal who panics when elected pontiff in Nanni Moretti’s semi-satire Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope, 2011). The first close-ups of him, when he realises he has been appointed the new pope, suggest, with subtle expressions, emotions ranging from surprise, humility, ambivalence, excitement and then horror.

In Vous N’avez Encore Rien Vu (You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, 2012), Alain Resnais’ intriguing, self-reflective examination of actors and acting, film and theatre, Piccoli, playing himself, is the doyen in a cast of leading French actors of the day.

He directed the features Alors Voilà (1997) and La Plage Noire (The Black Beach, 2001), the former winning the Critics’ prize at Venice, to add to the many prizes he had won as an actor. It was appropriate that when Agnès Varda filmed One Hundred and One Nights for the centenary of the cinema in 1995, she cast Piccoli as Monsieur Cinema.

He was married three times. His first two marriages, to Eléonore Hirt and to Gréco, ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, the screenwriter Ludivine Clerc, whom he married in 1978, and by his daughter, Anne-Cordélia, from his first marriage.

• Michel Piccoli, actor, born 27 December 1925; died 12 May 2020

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xtruss · 4 years

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An Epidemic Every 100 Years:

Plague of 1720, Cholera of 1820,

Spanish Flu of 1920, Coronavirus of 2020

– Is it Just a Coincidence?

There is a theory that every 100 years a pandemic erupts on the planet. It might be a coincidence, but the chronological accuracy is troubling.

In 1720 there was a plague, in 1820 – cholera, and in 1920 – Spanish flu…

Many researchers say that the current coronavirus epidemic resembles the events of previous centuries.

The logical question arises: what if these pandemics were artificially staged by some sinister force? Maybe a secret organization?

1720:

In 1720, there was the last large-scale bubonic plague pandemic, also called the great plague of Marseille. The catastrophic plague led to the death of 100,000 people. It is assumed that the bacteria are spread by flies infected with this bacteria.

1820:

The first cholera epidemic occurred on the centenary of the 1720 pandemic. It has affected Asian countries – the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. Interestingly, about 100,000 people were killed in this epidemic. The pandemic is said to have started with people who drank water from lakes contaminated with this bacteria.

1920:

The Spanish flu appeared 100 years ago, at a time when people were battling the H1N1 flu virus, which had undergone a genetic mutation, which made it much more dangerous than the normal virus. This virus infected 500 million people and killed more than 100 million people in the world, this pandemic was the deadliest in history.

2020:

It seems like history repeats itself every 100 years, is it just a coincidence?

Today, China faces a major pandemic and has spread to South Korea, Iran, Italy, and other countries. More than 77,000 have been infected, over 2,000 have died. But every day the situation gets worse.

The worst part is that air travel and modern technology are accelerating the spread of the virus worldwide. And how it will end, only God knows …

— The Real Healthy Thing

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norton-addiction · 7 years

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In reality, very few Russians are sinister mobsters who poison their foes with polonium or dangle them from skyscraper balconies. But western TV and cinema are very different from reality. In the 21st century, their on-screen representations rarely break out of that sinisterly psychotic stereotype. When are TV Russians going to be the good guys? Never is the Guide’s guess. There’s too much popular cultural investment in depicting them as evil mobsters, as the implacably butch Other to relatively mimsy westerners.

In the centenary year of the Russian revolution, the west is still bewitched by this threat – specifically the mob, which seems bent on exporting its criminal values over here. And the fact that Russia is currently led by an ex-KGB demagogue who burnishes his masculinity issues by hunting half-naked and, according to the news media, may or may not have had a role in hacking the US presidential election, doesn’t help either.

Arguably, Russians are the go-to stereotypes in popular culture right now because, in western nightmares, that stock character resonates with the image we have from the news of President Putin as an implacable hoodlum bent on subverting democratic values.

These kind of thoughts are preying on the minds of the makers of looming BBC drama series McMafia, starring James Norton, which is based on Misha Glenny’s book of the same name. In it, screenwriter Hossein Amini, along with writer-director James Watkins, has focused on a Russian criminal family whose new head is played by Norton.

Amini claims that what he has written avoids the otherwise ubiquitous Russian stereotypes. “The cliche is that they’re a bunch of goons in sharp suits,” Amini says. “What’s often missing from that is that they’re incredibly rich culturally; this is the land of Chekhov and Dostoevsky.”

And yet, as the Guide chats to Amini and Norton during a break in filming, the star of the show can’t quite resist telling me a story about how scary and tough Russians are. Recently, Norton underwent training in the Russian martial art of Systema for his new role. His trainer, David, explained the difference between English and Russian temperaments. Norton impersonates the Systema expert in his best sinister accent: “In England when you see fear you run. In Russia we see fear we shake him by the fucking hand.” Norton giggles amiably. But the point of the story is that even real-life Russians, sometimes, get a kick out of playing up to the hard-man image.

We’re enjoying the spring sunshine on the lawns of Munden House near Watford, which serves as a Russian mobster’s mansion for the eight-part drama series. Norton stars as Alex Godman, a young Russian-born British hedge-fund trader who’s sucked into the corrupting vortex of his family’s crime business. “It’s about someone who finds the Russian bear underneath the bowler hat,” explains James Watkins. What the director means is that beneath the genial suavity of British civilisation is the scary Russian psychopath, who’ll separate you from your windpipe if you look at him wrongly.

You’ll find Russian bears everywhere on TV and movies these days – and not just under the bowler hat. Many shows now seem to have a tough Russkie with mob connections, ideally played by a non-Russian actor, to up the narrative ante. In Orange Is the New Black, for instance, Galina “Red” Reznikov, played by Iowa-born Kate Mulgrew, rules her corner of Litchfield Penitentiary with an iron fist akin to Putin’s helmsmanship of the Kremlin. Plus, Mulgrew brings to the role the same gravitas she gave her character Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager.

How did Red (named after her distinctively coloured hair) come to be in the slammer? She punched the wife of the local Russian mob boss in the chest, rupturing the latter’s breast implant. As a result, Red and her husband Dmitri were obliged to pay the repair costs through tasks including storing five corpses of mob victims in their freezer – corpses that led to Red’s conviction for murder. Moral? Punching mob boss’s wives in their breast implants is never a good idea.

What’s also striking is how well this stereotype plays with viewers and critics, at least non-Russian ones. When the mob comes to town to get vengeance in the recent fourth season of Ray Donovan, for instance, one critic wrote: “I love this show’s cold war-esque portrayal of Russian culture/mobsters. They’re all criminal drug addicts!” Liev Schreiber’s eponymous La-La Land enforcer is badass, but not as badass as what one US critic was pleased to call “Dmitri and his entourage of evil”. Having duffed up Ray’s Israeli muscle Avi and taken him hostage, Dmitri (New Yorker Raymond J Barry) phones Ray to demand the return of his relative. Or, as he puts it, terrifyingly: “Mr Donovan, bring me my niece or I kill your Jew.”

And that’s the problem: 21st-century Russians rarely break out of the psychotic stereotype on western TV or cinema. Even in Arrow, the adaptation of the DC comic about billionaire playboy Oliver Queen who is also a secret hooded vigilante, we learn that our hero’s backstory includes post-shipwreck years as a captain of the Russian mob. That’s why our hero can speak the language and why, in a flashback in season five, we see Queen go toe-to-toe with Dolph Lundgren’s Russian government strongman Konstantin Kovar, who resembles Putin with bigger pecs. Lundgren, significantly, has made a successful career from playing Russian hardmen. In 1985, at the height of the Reagan-era cold war, he played Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, whom patriotic American Sylvester Stallone (in stars and stripes boxing shorts) was obliged to take down in a symbolic bout prefiguring by four years the fall of the Soviet Union. Then, Dolph was the symbolic patsy losing the old cold war for the Russians; in Arrow, more than three decades later, he’s the symbolic patsy losing the new one for them.

Dolph Lundgren, by the way, is not Russian, but Swedish.

Will McMafia buck or conform to the stereotypes? On the lawn of Munden House, James Norton tells the Guide that he hopes his performance will remind us that Russians are different to what is considered the norm on cinema and TV. He says that one reason he wanted to play Alex, the Anglo-Russian who’s both revolted and seduced by his family’s criminal past, was that he is so conflicted. While Alex is proud of his Russian roots (“He has a Dostoevsky book at his bedside and he goes to Systema classes a couple of times a week”) he also agonises over what being Russian means. Will Norton manage to bring such complexities to life, bucking the trend of stereotyping them as thugs? “I hope for Russians’ sakes it counters those cliches. There’s so much negative propaganda about Russia at the moment that we digest. Some of it’s true and some of it is certainly not.”

McMafia will air next year on BBC1

#mcmafia #article #james norton #dolph lundgren

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englishchinesetranslations · 3 years

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Six years ago, the Chinese president Xi Jinping made a state visit to Britain. It was an important moment for both nations — the launch of a new “Golden Era”— designed to show that any differences caused by David Cameron’s meeting with the Dalai Lamai in 2012 were forgotten. Behind the scenes, however, it was preceded by months of difficult negotiations as Downing Street tried to meet Beijing’s conflicting demands for a schedule that showed their President to be an ordinary man of the people, while also according him with the respect that befits the leader of a nation better than any other on earth.

Finally, when they unfurled the flags for Xi’s three-day trip, there was lunch for the Red Emperor with the Queen, a glitzy state banquet, two nights at Buckingham Palace and an address to Parliament. But there were also pictures of the President standing aboard a London bus, enjoying fish and chips over a pint with Dave and hanging out with football stars in Manchester — all designed to reinforce the narrative of an ordinary bloke who happened to be ruling one-sixth of the world’s population.

“He has a confident and bullish exterior — he sees himself very much as the big leader,” wrote Cameron in his biography. “But behind the scenes I found him reflective and thoughtful.” Yet there seems surprisingly little wider interest in this enigmatic character who changed the course of China and now seeks to reshape the world.

That state visit came at a time of greater optimism, when many people beyond the Tory leadership fell for the delusion that China might be nominally a Communist country but, propelled by capitalism and consumerism, was sliding inexorably down a path towards greater freedom. How different the world looks today — and not just due to the devastating pandemic that mysteriously emerged from the heart of China, made all the worse by the state cover-up.

SUGGESTED READING

China's plan for medical domination

BY STEVE BOGGAN

Xi has since made much of the seven long years he spent as a “son of yellow earth”, living from the age of 15 in a cave dwelling in a remote, impoverished village in Shaanxi region. “I felt lonely at first,” he admitted in his autobiography. He found it a shock to eat rough peasant food, sleep on flea-ridden blankets and perform hard rural labour. Dozens of others sent to this region died from disease or the tough conditions. Instead Xi developed extraordinary self-discipline: “The knife is sharpened on a stone, people are strengthened in adversity,” he said later.

His loathing of chaos was fuelled later by the collapse of the other major twentieth-century Communist empire. “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate?” he once asked. “In the end nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist.”

Yet during those formative years he also saw the danger of extremism, when children had free reign to kill and torture in the name of delivering utopia. Did this all leave him with the pragmatism needed to achieve his goals? A leaked US diplomatic cable, based on information from a friend, reported that Xi focused from an early age on reaching the top as an “exceptionally ambitious” character. Unlike many youths who “made up for lost time by having fun” after the Cultural Revolution, Xi “chose to survive by becoming redder than the red”, reading Karl Marx and laying foundations for a political career. He was seen as “cold and calculating”, deemed “boring” by women.

Now he wants to impose his will on the world, having navigated a path through the choppy waters of the Chinese Communist Party. Today, our challenge is not China, that huge land of epic history and extraordinary culture; it is President Xi and his vision of total control. His goal is clear: to make his country great again while usurping the global leadership of the United States — and he does not hide his aims.

In a speech to his party’s 2017 National Congress, Xi laid out “the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation”: to finish building a prosperous society by this year, centenary of the party’s birth; to assume global economic and military leadership by 2035; then to “resolve” the Taiwan issue by 2049, centenary of the People’s Republic, to conclude their rebirth as a “strong country”.

At the centre of his vision lies the Communist Party, firmly in control of everything in China, aided by skilled propaganda and use of technology to control his people in Orwellian style as they walk, talk, shop and work. Such is Xi’s sway that a smartphone app was developed which allowed users to compete over who could virtually applaud that party congress speech with the most enthusiasm — more than one billion claps were recorded in 24 hours. Two years later, the most downloaded app in the country was “Study the Great Nation”, which combined chat and games with quizzes about Xi’s ideology — a digital update on Mao’s Little Red Book designed to ensure compliance and diligence from citizens.

When Xi first met Putin in 2013, he told the Russian president: “We are similar in character.” There is truth in this statement, yet the Chinese leader is far more subtle and ambitious. Xi Jinping sees himself as a saviour of his creed and a man of destiny for his country, a ruthless character driven by fierce resolve inflamed by that suffering of his youth. He is the very embodiment of that Confucian saying: “To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”

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micaramel · 4 years

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Artist: Christina Ramberg

Including Works By: Alexandra Bircken, Rachal Bradley, Sara Deraedt, Gaylen Gerber, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Konrad Klapheck, Ghislaine Leung, Hans Christian Lotz, Senga Nengudi, Ana Pellicer, Richard Rezac, Diane Simpson, Terre Thaemlitz, Kathleen White

Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Exhibition Title: The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue

Date: September 14, 2019 – January 5, 2020

Curated By: Anna Gritz

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artists, the Estate of Christina Ramberg and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Press Release:

“Containing, restraining, reforming, hurting, compressing, binding, transforming a lumpy shape into a clean smooth line,” is how American artist Christina Ramberg (1946–1995, US) once described the drawings of corsets in her sketchbooks. Ramberg was one of the most intriguing painters to emerge within a generation of Chicago Imagists. She left behind a significant body of comic, formally elegant, erotically sinister paintings. Her cropped torsos, sharply delineated and bound in bizarre variations, explore the body in traction with its environment, shaped by corsets and hairstyles, as well as behavioral conventions. A selection of paintings and drawings by Ramberg form the core of the exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Shown alongside are works by further artists in order to expand the understanding of the type of framing devices that construct identity— physically, psychologically, and metaphorically.

The exhibition title The Making of Husbands stems from a BBC documentary that traced the making of John Cassavetes’ 1970 film Husbands, picking up on Cassavetes’ interest in the construction of semi improvised behavioral and gender performances and complicating these through the meta-level of the documentary, which attempts to record the supposed “natural” behavior behind the scenes on set. By doing so, however, it reveals the artificiality of stereotypical roles such as “the husband,” the complexities of “acting natural,” and the constructed nature of gender itself.

Artist and educator Christina Ramberg was a dynamic presence in the Chicago creative community from the 1960s up until her death in 1995. Through a plethora of small obsessive drawings, studies in sketchbooks, and a number of highly finished paintings in acrylic on Masonite, Ramberg observed the human body in various forms of modulation and metamorphosis. For her, this pictorial investigation doubled as an inquiry into larger questions concerning power dynamics, hierarchies, gender construction, desire, fetishism, and the increasing standardization thereof. From the early small-scale depictions of women in a state of undress to the later torso paintings, Ramberg’s surfaces and structural devices gradually merge with the body and become an androgynous prosthetic, a cyborg half-being.

Ramberg’s extraordinarily rich and eccentric personal reference collection of 35 mm photographic research slides (parts of which are reproduced in the exhibition catalogue) reveals a wide range of visual influences on her painting including printed advertisements, fashion layouts, medical illustrations, S/M bondage, hosiery, comic books, folklore and self-taught art, costume history, and quilting. The slides delineate a specific way of looking at the world, at the then contemporary everyday and at canonized visual culture alike. Equally, her collection of collages made from comic books expresses an interest in social conventions and how they are preprogrammed and perpetually re-inscribed through everyday visuals.

Ramberg’s investigation of the body as a kinetic site in reciprocity with its environment is further explored in the accompanying group exhibition. The artistic positions articulate a relation of interdependence between the body and everyday objects, built constructions and infrastructure. They expand our understanding of how governing principles are at work and how they leave imprints on personal expression and social interaction.

Marking the thresholds of the exhibition, Ghislaine Leung’s (born 1980, SE) new commission GATES makes spatial circulation and questions of accessibility apparent and relatable, while her work SHROOMS highlights what is often overlooked or deemed neutral within an institutional body. Similarly accentuating KW’s infrastructure, Gaylen Gerber’s (born 1955, US) Backdrop, fabricated from gray commercial photographic background paper and fitted to cover the gallery walls, draws attention to what is presented and how it is presented, both physically in the space and metaphorically by the institution. In close proximity Sara Deraedt’s (born 1984, BE) photographs span a covert dynamic between desire, household objects and bodies.

Kathleen White’s (1960–2014, US) video documentation of her performance The Spark Between L and D alludes to the complex position of women within the narrative of the AIDS crisis and its biased commemoration. The body as a site that is overly programmed through historical, social, and technological mechanisms is further articulated in the multi-media-based practice of Terre Thaemlitz (born 1968, US). Thaemlitz brings to the fore how the existence of humankind at all times has been grounded by all defining organizational structures.

The sexualized gaze of Konrad Klapheck (born 1935, DE) onto the objects that we produce, such as technical equipment, machines, and everyday tools epitomizes Ramberg’s call for a reassessment of our built environment and its effect on the body. Similarly interested in a surrealistic, excessive take on everyday objects surrounding us, between 1978 and 1986 Ana Pellicer (born 1946, MX) created a series of oversized copper jewelry pieces to fit the Statue of Liberty in New York City for its centenary.

A contemporary of Ramberg, Diane Simpson’s (born 1935, US) sculptures are abstractions of salient gendered garments that make the regulations and liberties that fashion and clothing leave to the body ever more apparent. Associated with a subsequent generation of Chicago artists, Richard Rezac’s (born 1952, US) objects are masterfully balanced structures of contrasting forms, substances, and functions that raise questions about structural and aesthetical integrity. Their inversion of an object’s qualities is akin to Ramberg’s formal transpositions.

Alexandra Bircken (born 1967, DE) explores in her sculptures the boundaries between inside and outside, fragility and protection, visibility and concealment. Bircken’s mechanical and industrial-looking shells become an interface where the body and the world come together, coalesce, and clash. In a similar negotiation between an inner and outer sphere, the painterly installation by Frieda Toranzo Jaeger (born 1988, MX) reconsiders the gendering of the car as an archetypically masculine machine. She repositions the interiors of contemporary, soundless, electric vehicles made by imperialistic manufacturers as intimate, female spaces, in order to question the autonomy of the individual body within a world increasingly characterized by automated control. Embodying this notion of automatization against the autonomy of the artwork, Hans-Christian Lotz’s (born 1980, DE) electric readymade sliding door suggests on the other hand a reading of aesthetic space as something intrinsically transmitted and mediated—it traces the viewer’s movement as they step in and out of its realm of attention.

While articulating yet another structural tension—that of technical devices taken apart, as well as nylon tights reminiscent of skin—A.C.Q. I by Senga Nengudi (born 1943, US) outlines the brinks of a potentially performative space, referring to Nengudi’s ongoing involvement with acts of embodiment and ritualistic environments as sites for political negotiation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a substantial publication that brings together newly commissioned writing on Ramberg by art historians and theorists including Anna Gritz, Larne Abse Gogarty, and Judith Russi Kirshner, alongside experimental fiction texts by Jen George and Dodie Bellamy.

Link: Christina Ramberg at KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/35jCGmG

#micaramel

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liberalcom-blog · 5 years

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Starfire Volume 2 No. 3

https://liber-al.com/?p=11430&wpwautoposter=1560874970 Starfire Publishing Ltd, London, 2009. Paperback, full colour cover, sewn binding, large format, 192 pages. Brand New/Fine. The first issue of Starfire appeared in 1986, and it has been an occasional Journal of the New Aeon ever since. Dedicated to Thelema, it brims over with articles and artwork of relevance to the Thelemic current. All previous issues are now out of print and difficult to obtain. This issue was when published the first new issue of Starfire for many years, and as ever is a scintillating collection of articles, short stories and artwork that is sure to delight and inform. Contents include: – The Magic of Folly by Richard Ward – some considerations of ‘The Fool’ card in the Tarot; – Sinister Shades in Yellow by Alistair Coombs – an essay on the work of novelist Sax Rohmer; – The Stone of Stars by Oliver St. John – a fascinating short story woven around a talismanic stone and the forces it calls down; – Tzaddi is not the Star by Caradoc Elmet – some considerations on the Tarot. – The Aphotic Oracle by Daniel Lett – Nightmare Sorcery by Richard Gavin – Maranatha: a Blessing or a Curse by Stephen Dziklewicz – The Altar by Peter Smith – again, a fascinating short story, this time focusing on the history of a lost grimoire. – A Very Personal Tantrum by Joe Claxton – an account of consequences from some specific ritual work – The issue also includes a supplement collecting several presentations from the April 2004 Thelema -Beyond Crowley Conference held in London to mark the Centenary of the transmission of The Book of the Law, including the following: – Looking Forward! by Kenneth Grant – The Letter Killeth by Michael Staley – A Hundred Years Hence by Martin Starr – Calling Mr. Crowley by Andrew Collins – The Evolution of Maat Magick by Margaret Ingalls

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twistedtummies2 · 2 years

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Christopher Lee: A Sinister Centenary - Number 2

Welcome to Christopher Lee: A Sinister Centenary! Over the course of May, I have been counting down My Top 31 Favorite Performances by my favorite actor, the late, great Sir Christopher Lee, in honor of his 100th Birthday. Although this fine actor left us a few years ago, his legacy endures, and this countdown is a tribute to said legacy! It's time for the penultimate entry of this special countdown. Today’s Subject, My 2nd Favorite Christopher Lee Performance: Lord Summerisle, from The Wicker Man.

SCREW THE NICOLAS CAGE REMAKE!!! Ahem…sorry, I…seem to be programmed to say that anytime I mention The Wicker Man-SCREW THE NICOLAS CAGE REMAKE!!! Ahem-hem…sorry again. From this point on, I’ll just call “Wicker Man” for safety’s sake. It helps if I don’t say “the.” :P ANYWAY…alongside “Jinnah,” Lee considered “Wicker Man” to be his single favorite and best film, and it’s hard to disagree there. This very strange, surreal, and EXTREMELY dark picture is a genre-blending, one-of-a-kind thriller. It’s part horror film, part twist-turning murder mystery, part musical…and all around HIGHLY disturbing, even nowadays. The story follows a police officer, Neil Howie, who attempts to solve the mystery of a small girl’s strange disappearance on the island colony of Summerisle. A faithful Christian, Howie is appalled to discover the island’s residents practice rituals resembling a form of Celtic Paganism. As the story goes on, he discovers a massive conspiracy…a conspiracy that ends in his EXTREMELY horrifying downfall. A central figure in the unfolding madness is Christopher Lee as the leader of the colony, and a descendant of the island’s founders, Lord Summerisle. Summerisle is a mysterious, strange figure, one who – even all the way up to the end – we’re never able to fully unravel. He is a walking enigma; in some ways a civilized gentleman, reasonable and rational, and really quite friendly. But the fervor with which he commits his crimes and practices the dark rituals of the story creates an air of deep unease. It’s also not entirely clear how truthfully Summerisle BELIEVES in the pagan trials, or even how true they are to any kind of spiritual following: is he a mad cultist, a charlatan leading a band of disillusioned followers, or something else entirely? Perhaps the most disturbing question is if Summerisle is actually RIGHT in what he does, since it's left unclear if all his wicked workings even have the desired effect in the end or not. Only the audience can truly decide for themselves what is true and what is false. This role, in essence, gives one EVERYTHING they could want out of a great Christopher Lee performance, giving the actor a chance to show nearly the full breadth of his range as a performer all in one shot: he gets to sing, and he gets to dance. He has scenes of manic, wild power, and scenes of subtlety and softness. He has scenes where he is terrifying and intimidating, and scenes where you almost forget to be scared at all. The ambiguities of the character only help to add to the power of the part. It’s easy to see why this was one of Lee’s personal favorite roles, and I actually very, VERY nearly gave Lord Summerisle the number one slot…but the more I thought about it and inspected the situation, the more I felt that wasn’t quite right. Lord Summerisle is phenomenal, but there’s one Lee performance I like more…but I mustn’t say more, or I shall spoil what’s coming next. On that note…tomorrow, we reach the end of the countdown. Who will be my number one favorite? You’ll have to stick around to find out! ;)

#christopher lee #sinister centenary #happy birthday christopher lee #top 31 christopher lee performances #may special #number 2 #best #favorites #list #countdown #the wicker man #lord summerisle

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tashi-ann · 5 years

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Witty Angels and the humour of religion

Kevin Smith

Dogma 1999

Beginning with a warning about the contents of the film in the hopes of not offending anyone didn’t work out too well.

Kevin Smith’s Dogma is extremely difficult to buy at least for any reputable retailer; and not available at all in an online digital copy.

In a general sense Kevin Smith’s films are very different to most you will ever see. They have realistic characters, in a manner of speaking, with large vocabularies and witty comments. His films are told through jokes, sarcasm and other forms of sometimes crude humour.

Although still with the usual drugs and sexual references of his films, Dogma changes the focus to religion.

The Characters in Dogma are realistic in the flawed kind of way, but they also include fallen angels, demons, the last scions, an apostle, prophets (also drug dealers), a muse, and the voice of god all being thrown into a holy crusade.

So not as realistic as other Kevin Smith films.

Dogma is not just a reflection on Catholicism but also of religion in pop culture, and as most films tackling these huge topics, there is much to talk about.

Hence, just the introduction up to the title will be looked at.

The opening sequence is spread over three scenes, only one is specifically distinct, the other two are woven together to set up the events of the film.

Opening with the beach and the soon to become John Doe doesn’t make much sense during the first viewing but does foreshadow the film, because of this it becomes essential.

This first opening scene also sets up the themes around the ‘evil’ characters, the ominous music and the sound of flies buzzing. The violence and grimace displayed by the three demon kids as they beat John Doe senseless provides the base line of violence to be portrayed through the film. Not bloody, but violence nonetheless.

The final camera angle from this scene is used to transition to the next.

A low angle shot, John Doe looking up at the three demon kids fades to a low angle shot of a church, thus bringing the next scene in.

A press conference, meaning characters within the film can introduce each other, themes and other aspects to the story without appearing odd.

The introduction of the Cardinal and his campaign Catholicism Wow begins to bring the layers of story into the film and also the almost insanity that is Dogma.

Catholicism Wow in a campaign to make religion relevant to a younger generation and a wider audience. Part if this is Buddy Christ, an animated looking statue of Jesus Christ, pointing with one had, thumbs up with the other and winking.

The transition between scenes from here gets a little less cut and dry, the intertwining of two seperate places, characters and other story elements into a cohesive semi-liner film.

Through the magic of TV we the audience go from a ‘live’ press conference to a TV in an airport in a completely different city.

Pan out and slightly down, now we have Loki (former angel of death) trying to convince a Nun that God isn’t real using Through the Looking Glass to make his point, one of the many pop culture references. Once that is taken care of, Bartleby (another fallen angel) is introduced.

In a matter of a minute the personalities of these two character are displayed, Loki and his cruelty, convincing the Nun that God isn’t real even though he as a former angel knew he was.

Bartleby and his desire to see good in people, sitting in an airport and watching people reuniting and being so happy to see each other.

Moving on, as the dialogue does in a quick manner; a solution to the two fallen angels problem is presented in the form of an article that someone sent to Bartleby.

As Loki begins to read the article out loud, we are suddenly watching the news again; the same reporter finishing the explanation and Loki’s sentence.

The Catholicism Wow campaign givens them a chance to get back into heaven by simply passing through the church archway on the date of it centenary.

This transitions back to Loki and Bartleby traveling through the airport discussing the previously provided information as they go. How church decrees are fallible, but because of dogma what is held true on earth will be held true in heaven.

In the background the Nun that Loki was talking to is getting very, very intoxicated. The background characters and other extras are used in humorous and almost comical ways to cement the main characters within that world. This can be done via interaction of in the case of the Nun reactions from interactions.

Continuing their walk through the airport the topic of mass murder is brought up, to as Loki put it ‘get back on Gods good side’. Bartleby isn’t so sure about this but is reassured by Loki, reminding him that even if God doesn’t like it after that pass through the archway they will have a morally clean slate anyway.

Loki’s desired target Mooby’s is in the background, two guys wearing the Mooby’s shirt, hat, as well as holding a Mooby’s mascots toy. This again is not very subtlety foreshadowing the events of the film.

This trip through the airport concludes at the elevator.

Still chatting between each other, the conversation ‘Last three days on Earth, well we cant get laid so lets do the next best thing’. The answer to this was murder, this caused an extra to spit out her coffee. Loki responded to this by saying ‘Oh, not you’. Once agin the background characters help these two insane characters fit into the world around them.

As the elevator doors close, the screen turns black and the films tittle is displayed.

This opening sequence may not be the entire introduction to the film and it’s main characters, but it does set up the films themes and events as well as humour.

The arrogance of the Cardinal, the events of the past that lead Loki and Bartleby to be stranded on earth. The current goals and personalities of Loki and Bartleby, the sinister foreshadowing of the demon kids, the level of violence, the type of humour and how religion will be viewed through the film. With many a witty comment, paying close attention to the dialogue is imperative.

The density of the film means that it is a great rewatch.

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jenmedsbookreviews · 6 years

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That’s got you wondering hasn’t it? Well … this is nowt to do with me going for a run. I’m not that daft. But I know someone who is. This weekend Mandie took part in the Spitfire 10k at RAF Cosford, which is an annual event designed to raise money for the RAF charity, specifically this year the RAF100 appeal. This is Mandie’s third year of completing the mammoth run around the RAF base so a massive well done to Mandie on completing the course and on getting her winners medal (and lovely associated t-shirt)

My contribution? Well, I went along to support her which was very nice of me as it meant getting up early on a Sunday morning. While she was doing all the running and such like, I went for a bit of a mooch around the museum. Shamefully, as it is no more than 10 miles from my house, I haven’t been here since my Dad was alive and he passed away in 1991 … Still, it was lovely to have a wander about and I will go back again for a proper visit very soon.

Funnily enough I saw a few planes. And some tanks. And missiles. As you do. Well at least you do at an RAF Museum anyway. Managed to pick up a nice ‘tubby pen’ and thermal mug to commemorate the centenary while I perused the shop too. Tidy.

I’m not completely against exercise. On Saturday morning Mandie and I did a nice lap of Attingham Deer Park, a short 3 miles stroll while the weather was nice. Because we made the opening of the park at 0800 we were blessed with seeing squirrels, rabbits, pheasants and lots of the lovely deer who make the park their home. Because I didn’t have my camera ready enough I only have gratuitous deer pics but you can imagine the other animals scampering about …

Because I haven’t quite lost the wanderlust (and because Mandie wants an excuse for time off work) we did another day out, this time to Powis Castle. Again, somewhere I haven’t been in years but it was fab and ended with a quick jaunt to Charlies where I managed to pick up some lovely Flamingo stationery. As you do.

And I managed some reading too. Go me huh? Book wise, I’ve been kind of good. Ish. Four from Netgalley but all for tours so necessity not indulgence. They were The Warning by Kat Croft; Tell Nobody by Patricia Gibney; Hush Hush by Mel Sherratt and one I can’t tell you about just yet, but it looks really good.

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Book book wise I’ve been very good. Only two. First up was the preorder of the second Amy Winter book from Caroline Mitchell (so new it doesn’t have a cover yet), The Secret Child, and I also bought myself a hard back copy of The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry.

Books I have read

The Way of All Flesh – Ambrose Parry

Edinburgh, 1847. City of Medicine, Money, Murder.

In Edinburgh’s Old Town young women are being found dead, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. Across the city in the New Town, medical student Will Raven is about to start his apprenticeship with the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson.

Simpson’s patients range from the richest to the poorest of this divided city. His house is like no other, full of visiting luminaries and daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia. It is here that Raven meets housemaid Sarah Fisher, who recognises trouble when she sees it and takes an immediate dislike to him. She has all of Raven’s intelligence but none of his privileges, in particular his medical education.

With each having their own motive to look deeper into these deaths, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld, where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to make it out alive.

Oh how I enjoyed this book. In it we meet newly qualified Doctor Will Raven who has somewhat of a questionable past and one which is coming back to haunt him right from the start. Full of mystery, murder and all things medical, and set in 1840’s Edinburgh, I simply flew through the reading of this book, loving the dynamic between Raven and housemaid Sarah, a young woman who was very much ahead of her time. I’ll be reviewing the book this week, but you can buy your own copy here. By the way, if you’d like to see Ambrose Parry in the flesh, aka husband and wife writing team Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman, they’ll be appearing at Bloody Scotland at the end of the month. You can find all event tickets (if there are any left as it is selling out left, right and centre) here.

…

The Night She Died – Jenny Blackhurst

On her own wedding night, beautiful and complicated Evie White leaps off a cliff to her death.

What drove her to commit this terrible act? It’s left to her best friend and her husband to unravel the sinister mystery.

Following a twisted trail of clues leading to Evie’s darkest secrets, they begin to realize they never knew the real Evie at all…

Ooh what a twisty thriller this is. Telling the story of very new wife Evie, who takes her own life, this story will shock and enthrall readers. Told through the eyes of Evie and her best friend Rebecca there are many secrets to uncover as we try to work out why Evie chose to end her life. The book is released on 6th September and I’m reviewing as part of the tour (I’ll also have an extract) but if you want to buy a copy for yourself you can find it here.

…

The Lion Tamer Who Lost – Louise Beech

Be careful what you wish for…

Long ago, Andrew made a childhood wish, and kept it in a silver box. When it finally comes true, he wishes he hadn’t…

Long ago, Ben made a promise and he had a dream: to travel to Africa to volunteer at a lion reserve. When he finally makes it, it isn’t for the reasons he imagined…

Ben and Andrew keep meeting in unexpected places, and the intense relationship that develops seems to be guided by fate. Or is it?

What if the very thing that draws them together is tainted by past secrets that threaten everything?

A dark, consuming drama that shifts from Zimbabwe to England, and then back into the past, The Lion Tamer Who Lost is also a devastatingly beautiful love story, with a tragic heart…

Gah. This book. Beautifully lyrical, tragically poetic in style and delivery, a story full of love and loss, this moved me to tears. Literally. Just ask my DPD driver who didn’t quite know what to do with himself when I answered the door in a full on red eyed, wet cheeked mess. I’ll be reviewing on the tour, assuming I can find any words, but you can buy a copy of the book here.

…

Ed’s Dead – Russel D McLean

Meet Jen. She works in a bookshop and likes the odd glass of Prosecco… oh, and she’s about to be branded The Most Dangerous Woman in Scotland.

Jen Carter is a failed writer with a rubbish boyfriend, Ed. That is, until she accidentally kills him one night. Now that Ed’s dead, she has to decide what to do with his body, his drugs and a big pile of cash. And, more pressingly, how to escape the hitman who’s been sent to recover Ed’s stash. Soon Jen’s on the run from criminals, corrupt police officers and the prying eyes of the media. Who can she trust? And how can she convince them that the trail of corpses left in her wake are just accidental deaths?

A modern noir that proves, once and for all, the female of the species really is more deadly than the male.

I don’t know why or how I’ve not read this before but I’m bloody glad I have now. Full of unbelievable unfortunate incidents, poor Jen’s life is turned upside down when she finally decides to give her long term loser boyfriend, Ed, the boot. You just … might not expect quite how much. This had me chuckling to myself and racing through the pages like the devil was at my heels. If you want to find out why, you can grab a copy of the book here.

…

The Proposal – S.E. Lynes

‘The first thing you should know, dear reader, is that I am dead…’

Teacher Pippa wants a second chance. Recently divorced and unhappy at work, she uproots her life to renovate a beautiful farmhouse in the countryside, determined to make a fresh start. But Pippa soon realises: your troubles are never far behind.

When Pippa meets blue-eyed Ryan Marks, he is funny, charming, and haunted by his past. He might just be the answer to all her problems. But how well does she really know him?

She knows the story of his life, the pain that stays with him, the warmth of his smile and the smell of his skin. She knows he can make her laugh over a glass of wine.

Pippa can tell truth from lies. She’d know if she were in danger. Wouldn’t she?

That’s a humdinger of an opening line don’t you think? Never let a stranger in your house, that is what I’ve learned from this book. (To be fair, I seldom let people I know in the house because I’m antisocial but that’s another story). Oh, yes, and be very wary of teachers turned romance authors … This is a psychological story of obsession, written in an intriguing style and littered with literary references that will make enlightened readers smile and now knowingly. I’ll be reviewing as part of the tour but for now you can order a copy of the book here.

…

Not too shabby that, five books. Anyone would think I had nothing better to do … Busy week on the blog. Recap below.

The Hangman’s Hold by Michael Wood

Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill

Fractured by Billy McLaughlin

Bye Baby Bunting by Tannis Laidlaw

Truth and Lies by Caroline Mitchell

The Not So Perfect Plan to Save Friendship House by Lilly Bartlett

Return to the Little Cottage On the Hill by Emma Davies

The Other Victim by Helen H Durrant

The week ahead is a little quieter. But then i’m going to be busy personally so perhaps not a bad thing. Three tours in the offing, The Body on the Shore by Nick Louth; Overkill by Vanda Symon; and After He Died by Michael J Malone.

Hope you have a lovely week all. I am in count down mode now as it is less than three weeks until Bloody Scotland. Cannot wait.

See you next week.

Jen

Rewind, recap: Weekly update w/e 02/09/18 That's got you wondering hasn't it? Well ... this is nowt to do with me going for a run.

#Rewind Recap #Weekly Round UP

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theschoolspirituality-blog · 6 years

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WHO HAS THE AUTHORITY TO TEACH SPIRITUALITY

CHALLENGE TO SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY

by Terrell, J. D.

There is no single matter which more urgently requires a clear perception by the Lord's people than the issue of spiritual authority. The range and immediacy of the challenges presented to the authority of biblical Christian faith are

Alarming.

The basis of that authority has already been spelled out in the opening month of our centenary year - the Inspired Word. For the believer in Christ whose desire is to follow Him, the heart and essence of everything is the Word incarnate, revealed by divine decree in the written word, and illuminated by the Lord the Spirit. Only a recorded revelation of God and by God, inerrant and all-authoritative, can meet and surmount the force and variety of the challenges presented to it in the world of the twentieth century. For this is ultimately where all the challenges to spiritual authority are targetted. The men "who turned the world upside down" did so with the great commission of Matthew 28:18-20 ringing in their ears - "all authority ... given unto Me ... go ye therefore and make disciples". Their conviction was unshakeable that their message was a divine revelation ~ph. 3:3-11; 1 Cor. 2:9-10); they were Spirit-taught and led (1 Cor. 2:13); they had the Word of God (1 Thes. 2:13); and that spelled TRUTH (2 Thes. 2:13).

We shall not attempt to reiterate further the fundamental principles on which the final authority of Scripture is securely based. Its application to the basis of Christian testimony has already been addressed in our May issue. Rather we shall turn briefly to identify the main areas of challenge which the twentieth century has seen develop apace in both subtlety and stridency.

The various challenges mounted against spiritual authority in the past century have changed more in emphasis than in essential nature. They always have been and always will be seen in one of two guises. The first is religious and the second secular. The first partakes of the adversary's earliest of all challenges, "Hath God said?"; the second either joins with the fool of the psalmist's lament and declares, "There is no God", or with equal arrogance, pronounces, "These be thy gods". The enemy of souls plays both cards with equal subtlety and malignity. The individual with some spiritual sensitivity will become the target of authority rejection in the religious sphere, while the carnal or naturally sceptical person falls easier prey to the secular distractions.

Challenges Religious

Consider the former kind of attack on spiritual authority. An earlier article in this series has referred to the inroads which liberal theology has made on sound doctrine in the century under review. It was influential about 100 years ago in the eclipse of a noble spiritual leader of one great Christian movement in Britain - Charles H. Spurgeon who grieved to his early death over the "Down-grade Controversy". Similar fatal departures from the fundamentals of the Faith took place in other countries, and this all coming from the poisoned spring of teachers who no longer owned full allegiance to an infallible Bible.

Remarkably enough, the Roman Catholic church, at least outwardly, showed greater and more consistent faithfulness to some Scripture-based truths which Protestant denominations began to question; such as the doctrines of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus, and His Deity. Yet at the same time the spiritually aware observer realized that the supreme challenge to the spiritual authority of inspired Scripture from that quarter remained unchanged, namely the equal ranking of church teaching and tradition with biblical authority. True, subtle shifts of emphasis have been made to these issues over the past

century. It was in 1870 that the first Vatican Council re-affirmed the historical papal claim to absolute authority and infallibility, when the Pope, speaking ex cathedra, defined doctrine regarding faith or morals. The second Vatican Council (1962-5) placed a gloss of ecumenical accommodation on much teaching which has historically offended those of the reformed Protestant faith. This was under the benign paternalism of Pope John 23rd. In more recent years the present Pope John Paul II dispelled any illusions of real doctrinal change.

The challenge to the supreme spiritual' authority of the Word incarnate and written remains undiluted. The middle of the twentieth century saw the Immaculate Conception dogma of the virgin Mary (1854) compounded by that of her bodily assumption into heaven (1950). So the challenge progressively grows into contempt for the exclusive right of Holy Scripture to speak the mind and truth of God. The onward march during the last few decades of the subtle entanglement of much professing Protestant "Christianity" with Rome, springs from its loss of confidence in the Word of God.

While all this has been going on, a sinister resurgence of interest in eastern religions has rushed in to fill a large vacuum in the lives of many people. Space forbids extended comment but readers will be very familiar with the outcropping of various sects of Buddhism and Hinduism in what some have perceptively called our "post-Christian world". Perhaps Islam poses the most serious threat of all as it spreads among the multi-cultural western societies. At the same time a bewildering range of multifarious groups and sects spuriously claiming allegiance to Scripture, have swept many countries. These include the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and many others, about which more will be said in a subsequent article.

All of this is alarmingly familiar and poses an immeasurable threat and challenge before each disciple of Christ who cherishes his or her historic faith founded on the "impregnable rock" of Holy Scripture. Are the Lord's people alive to what is happening? Are they sensitive to the urgent need for earnest and importunate prayer; that our inner convictions on spiritual authority be daily reinforced and our outward witness be uncompromising and alert in the face of such challenges?

Challenges Secular

No less real are the challenges to spiritual authority presented by the world of secular things. There is the convinced and committed young Marxist "without God and without hope" in this world or the next, yet attracting admiration for his courage and self-denial. There is also the rationalist who has elevated human reason and wisdom to a high plane of

self-sufficiency, discarding on the way all absolute moral and ethical values. Then we have the masses whose spiritual senses have been fatally dulled by "the things that are in the world", its insistent, day by day blandishments or affluence. Again there are the millions unable to think about any spiritual values - or anything else except survival for the next famine-stricken or war-torn twenty four hours. Which ever of these it may be, the minds of multitudes of our fellow-men worldwide are being blinded lest "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" should dawn upon them. From the heart of a God of infinite love comes the cry "Look unto Me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else" (Is. 45:22): but this is being intercepted by sounds and voices which reject the final authority of that gracious appeal.

May the people of God reflect on this solemn situation which has developed alarmingly over the century we are considering; and deepen their exercise before God that His infinite mercy will increasingly prevail within His sovereign purposes, till Jesus comes. It will do so as those who are His own, treasure, defend and promulgate "that form of teaching where unto ye were delivered" (Rom. 6:17) - by the sole and absolute authority of the living Christ and His apostles in the Word.

http://www.hayespress.org/article-jul-1988-challenge-to-spiritual-authority

Reflection:

In the older days spiritual authorities are like the messenger of God because not only did they have a strong faith towards God also had spoken to them for several times. Authorities from the past played also a perfect role in preserving culture and traditions, they were also the observant of rules according to what God commands them. That worked for a very long time, not until some so called religious authorities has been proven of not being pure.However, we must also admit that without these authorities, we might also be lost, we might find ourselves confused with our own religion. That’s why educators are vital in the way of the student’s journey in their spiritual lives.

The teachers should have a background about spiritual educations, preferably a theologians. Since students treat schools as their second home, they also treat their teachers as their parents.So the relationship that was built is a good foundation in strengthening the students spiritual beliefs.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: How Soviet Art and Design Promoted Communism After the Revolution

BRUSSELS — In 1931, the Russian Futurist poet Vasily Kamensky enlisted the help of Konstantin Bor Ramensky to illustrate the cover of his latest book, Youth of Mayakovsky. It was a complicated assignment fraught with comradeship and emotion: the book, published just one year after the suicide of Futurism’s de facto poet laureate Vladimir Mayakovsky, was to reflect on the life of the mammoth literary figure, who also happened to be Kamensky’s close friend. How to capture Mayakovsky in a mere five by seven inches?

The result is a slightly sinister lithographic portrait of the poet; it replicates his self-styled, all-knowing confidence, once the subject of so many black-and-white photographs, now forever immortalized in ink. His eyes glare, one overlaid with a square of red, mirroring the one in the background. Blocky numbers hover over his head: 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution (and the year he and Kamensky set up the Poet’s Cafe in Moscow) and Mayakovsky’s age, 25.

A slightly battered first edition of Youth of Mayakovsky is currently on display at the ADAM: Brussels Design Museum in the ‘Triumph of Typography’ section of The Paper Revolution: Soviet Graphic Design and Constructivism. On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, ADAM has teamed up with the Moscow Design Museum, the Konstantin Akinsha Collection, and the Rodchenko and Stepanova Archive to unite close to 100 original works on paper from a variety of artistic Soviet luminaries active during the 1920s and ’30s.

A. Rodchenko, “Books in All Fields of Knowladge, (Reconstruction of Varvara Rodchenko, 1963)” (image © the Rodchenko and Stepanova Archive)

It’s a small display, packed with images and texts, including two works that we are often only exposed to in reproduction: Aleksandr Rodchenko’s 1924 poster for Soviet publisher Gosizdat, which depicts Lilya Brik shouting text (a design later employed as cover art by Scottish indie band Franz Ferdinand in 2005); and Gustav Klutsis’s colorful Spartakiad postcards, which celebrate the 1928 games in rollicking photo collage.

Here, however, we get the real deal: the books have been read, the posters have been hung, and they show signs of wear and tear, speaking to the initial motivations of the post-revolution Constructivists: get the Soviet word out. When shown in their original forms, en masse, these pamphlets, posters, magazines, and books are all overtly political. Colors are representative of the Russian Civil War and ‘red’ beats ‘white’; images of Lenin are based upon the strictures of Orthodox iconography. It becomes clear that these artists were themselves cogs in the Soviet propaganda machine, a role that may have been forgotten 100 years later, in a contemporary climate where rock bands co-opt political imagery for their own ends (something that, 15 years ago, Hal Foster referred to as ‘fetishitic constructivism’).

Installation view of The Paper Revolution: Soviet Graphic Design and Constructivism at the ADAM: Brussels Design Museum (image © ADAM: Brussels Design Museum)

Simple, but effective, paper was one of the defining materials that helped the Constructivists gain their legs on the eve of the revolution. The movement was solidified in 1922 when Aleksei Gan wrote in its manifesto: “The end has come to pure and applied [art] … Everything must be technically and functionally directed.” Helped along by an obsession with mechanical reproduction, the printing press became a fetishized object that reflected the controlled manufacture of this new, everyday life.

G. Klutsis, “Lenin is standing on the border of Two Epochs in Development of Humankind” (image © Ne boltai ! Collection, Prague)

In The Paper Revolution, objects are loosely split up by subject matter rather than chronology, which helps demonstrate how certain overarching elements of production spanned nearly two decades. Typography, photomontage, and inventive uses of abstraction all play off each other, and works often cite two collaborators: the author of the work and the cover designer, or the poster printing company and the singular designer.

Some of the best known Soviet typographic projects by El Lissitzky and Rodchenko open the show, but it quickly becomes apparent that there were a lot of other designers in the scene who have been overshadowed. In the magazine section, photomontage covers of Women’s Magazine (1929), designed by Innokenty Zhukov portray strong, compassionate women. Yakov Guminer’s 1927 poster, entitled “1917,” borrowed photographic elements from Sergei Eisentein’s 1928 film October, perhaps as an advertisement for the film. As the walk around the exhibition comes to a close, a section dedicated to Anonymous Constructivism posters showcases the fact that art, once an elitist practice, could now be applied by every man and woman.

Perhaps the only downside to the exhibition is the glass that encases the books, most of which are extremely fragile. The detailed amount of information included only gives more rise to the impulse to flip through their pages, but such is the problem of an exhibition devoted to utilitarian design. At some point, perhaps, they might all be digitized — how’s that for mechanical reproduction?

Installation view of The Paper Revolution: Soviet Graphic Design and Constructivism at the ADAM: Brussels Design Museum (image © Moscow Design Museum)

The Paper Revolution: Soviet Graphic Design and Constructivism (1920s–1930s) continues at the ADAM: Brussels Design Museum (Place de Belgique, Belgieplein 1, 1020 Brussels) through October 8.

The post How Soviet Art and Design Promoted Communism After the Revolution appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: The vast majority of human beings are pretty intelligent. A tiny percentage are noticeably slower than others, and an even tinier percentage are considerably brighter than others, but the vast majority of us are about the same, intelligence-wise. So the reason that most people don’t understand how the world really works has very little to do with intelligence; it has everything to do with two well-established and powerful institutions: education, and the mainstream media. Public education has never even pretended to teach people how their world really works. Whilst it’s quite good at explaining some of the parts of the whole, it’s never put the pieces together. It’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, where you have a thousand pieces but no picture of what the finished puzzle should look like. You can study each of the individual pieces as much as you like, sometimes to a very great extent, but you have no idea what the finished picture looks like – nor even if the thousand pieces you have are all you need to have. Our education system routinely produces “well-educated” people – youngsters with impressive examination results at various levels of achievement. Some of these people become vastly specialised and expert in some particular part of the puzzle, but for their whole lives remain totally ignorant about the other pieces – and especially how they all fit together. The subject that education has always failed to address is the appalling cynicism of our own trusted leaders – like showing the finished picture in my jigsaw analogy. Whilst some of our leaders are also as ignorant of this fact as most of the population, a tiny percentage of them, the ones with the most power and influence, know perfectly well what they’re doing. Proof of this is difficult to come by – as secrecy is an essential part of keeping people ignorant – but every now and then a small but bright light is shone on the truth, revealing the knowing complicity of our trusted leaders, and their essential guards and lieutenants. The missed lessons of war Consider, for example, the words of Lloyd George, British Prime Minister during the grotesque First World War. Speaking in confidence to C.P. Scot, editor of the Manchester Guardian at the time: If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know. The correspondents don’t write and the censorship would not pass the truth. Lloyd George was discussing a dinner he’d attended the previous evening where Philip Gibbs, a Times journalist, had just returned from the front and had spoken about his experience. So here the conspiracy between trusted leaders and equally trusted news-providers to keep secret from the families of those shedding their blood the real horrors of war is openly admitted. “The correspondents don’t write and the censorship would not pass the truth.”1 This collusion between the mainstream media and our trusted leaders, especially in wartime, is quite well-documented. From WW1 and WW2 where at first newspapers and then filmed newsreels routinely churned out mass propaganda which consisted of a mix of carefully selected truths, omissions and outright lies, through the cynical horrors of the Korean War and the Vietnam War, through the egregious lies that supported western slaughter in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq to today’s cynical killing fields in Syria, the mainstream media and our great trusted politicians have never paused in their sinister deceptions and lies. This mountain of evidence of endless and deliberate state malfeasance is well-documented and easy to find. Yet somehow our educators miss it. Somehow generation after generation of young people are kept in the dark, and taught instead about the great so-called heroes of our past and the magnificent beneficent wisdom that guided like an invisible hand their every move. Somehow the dots are just never joined up. Somehow the picture of the finished puzzle can never be found. We have recently celebrated the centenary of the horrors of Passchendaele. We were treated to images on our TVs of the acres and acres of gravestones, the horrific Menin Gate, and our great trusted leaders looking very sad and solemn. What I never heard mentioned was that WW1 was sold at the time as being “the war to end all war”. Amongst the poems read out I didn’t hear Wilfred Owen’s superbly powerful “Dulce et decorum est”, possibly because of the words that immediately precede that famous line: “The Old Lie: dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori” (It’s sweet and proper to die for the homeland). And I never heard anyone ask these great trusted leaders why we’re still fighting wars today, why the millions of dead soldiers were lied to. This information is easily available, yet somehow our educators overlook those vital questions as they fill yet more young heads with heroic war stories. The overlooked lessons of history History is one of the most important subjects a young person needs to learn. Although most schools teach history, they teach a particular type of history. They teach about the greatness of a handful of kings and queens, emperors and presidents, generals and admirals. Sometimes they flit over, in a very broad sense, the billions of lives of ordinary people who had the good fortune to share their times with the dazzling heroes. Sometimes they even mention some of the suffering endured by the silent anonymous billions; but they seldom join the dots, make the connections between the obscene wealth of the glittering heroes of yesteryear and the desperate poverty of the struggling billions who provided their wealth. And they never join the even more important dots, and encourage debate about the fact that there is still obscene wealth today, and desperate poverty – and what could be done about that. Historian Michael Parenti explains the problem perfectly: To say that schools fail to produce an informed, critically minded, democratic citizenry is to overlook the fact that schools were never intended for that purpose. Their mission is to turn out loyal subjects who do not challenge the existing corporate-dominated social order. That the school has pretty much fulfilled its system-sustaining role is no accident. The educational system is both a purveyor of the dominant political culture and a product of it.2 School history lessons quietly indoctrinate young people into having a sense of awe and instinctive trust of their leaders. What it should teach is the exact opposite. It’s surely not through want of evidence – but they don’t; year after year new generations of children are newly brainwashed about meek obedience to their great trusted leaders. Two hundred years ago an anonymous contributor to the Mechanics Magazine observed that: Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers; for then education is but the breaking of the steer to the yoke.3 It’s not as though the vitally important lessons of history are difficult to find. There are many fine books available. From EP Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, for example, to Helen Hunt Jackson Century of Dishonour, from John Newsinger’s The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, from Engels to Galeano, Parenti to Curtis… the bibliography of the history that young people should be learning, – our history, real people’s history – is sizeable and compelling. Yet somehow it’s always overlooked in favour of the glittering kings and queens and dashing generals and admirals. This is no small matter. Teaching young people to respect and admire the supposedly great institutional leaders of history leads to creating an instinctive respect and admiration for the institutional leaders of today — perpetuating the endless cycle of oppression of the 99% by the super-rich and powerful 1%. The overlooked lessons of religion Nothing better illustrates the miseducation of young people than the teaching of religion, which is taught in most parts of the world, to varying degrees of fanaticism. Wherever religion is taught it’s taught as though it was some inviolable unquestionable truth. Yet there are a multitude of different religions, many of which are totally different from each other. But you cannot have explanations of something that are both true, and completely different. It’s an impossibility. Only one explanation could be right, or none of them are right, but certainly not all of them can be right. This is obvious to anyone. Yet instead of teaching religion as a quirky oddity about human history (like Egyptian, Inca or Norse mythology, for example, which were believed by their adherents every bit as passionately as today’s Christians or Hindus believe their beliefs), particular and specific religions are selected and taught in more or less total exclusion to any other. Depending on the degree of fanaticism of the school and its teachers, the clear evidence of reality is completely ignored and the religion taught as though it was as natural a law as gravity is. This would not particularly matter were it not for the fact that many, many wars may not have been fought, nor near so much innocent blood spilt, nor so much pointless destruction wreaked, if the warmongers had not been able to call on religion to justify the horrors they perpetrated. Key to understanding this situation is the concept of “faith”. Faith is supposed to replace logic and rationality. Religious adherents are expected to totally trust their teachers are telling them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If inconvenient questions arise around points of dogma, the questioner must accept and believe the teacher’s explanation, no matter how irrational, or face expulsion. In the secular west this seldom matters, but in some parts of the world in can ruin lives. At the heart of religion – any religion – lies an inescapable fact: the very existence of the god, or gods, or the existence of the heavens and hells, or paradises or nirvanas or whatever, upon which all religions are wholly constructed, cannot be proven. These mythical and fantastical beings and places cannot be proven to exist. Therefore the whole belief system is, at very best, doubtful. This is an inescapable fact. Yet most of our trusted educators do not teach it. They continue instead to teach dogma which, for thousands of years, has never yet been proved. Some, particularly in the secular west, might think this doesn’t matter, that people don’t really believe in religion any more. But that assumption is questionable. Take, for example, that in the US, supposedly the most advanced nation in the world, the teaching of Darwinian evolution is forbidden – because it contradicts a book whose truthful content is extremely limited. And take for another example one of the worst conflict zones in the world — Palestine. Here we have a situation where unbelievable suffering and misery has been perpetrated for over seventy years, because the most powerful of the groups involved believe their claim to ownership of the land was bestowed by god – an entirely mythical creation whose very existence cannot be proven. Yet this ridiculous claim continues to be believed by legions of young people, and is wholly supported by the most powerful military force on the planet. And in our largely secular western world, the most important events in most people’s everyday lives – births, deaths and marriages – we still see many people, many young people even, insisting on having some type of religious service. This shows beyond any reasonable doubt the fact that our trusted educators are still misleading people on the still-important subject of religion. The missed lessons of economics Few young people are taught economics at school, at any level; yet proper management of the economy is, after providing for national security, the single most important function of government. How, if nobody learns what proper management of the economy is, can people possibly hope to understand whether their government is doing their job properly? Where economics is taught, usually in schools reserved for the children of elite and upper middle class families, a particular type of economics is taught — known as capitalism. Yet economics is a bit like religion. There are at least two very distinct philosophies, socialism and capitalism, which are completely different from each other. In terms of truth ownership both are equally suspect; and both demand from their adherents a type of a blind loyalty, an acceptance that their view and theirs alone is right and true, and that anything else is heresy. Capitalism enjoys almost total global support not through any purely philosophical strengths over socialism, but because it largely tends to favour a tiny minority of super-rich people — who also control political power. Socialism, being a relatively new economic concept, has never had much of a chance to demonstrate its values, largely because capitalists, who have enjoyed absolute control of much of the planet for thousands of years, have never allowed their grip on economic power to be challenged for any length of time. Of course, there have been brave attempts to do so, going back to at least the English Civil War when the Diggers and Levellers tried to create fairer economies, but the capitalists soon overcame the upstarts — usually through extreme violence rather than proving philosophical superiority. Even the great powerhouses of the socialist experiment, USSR and Communist China, struggled to survive from the earliest moments of their birth. Once again, these struggles were not the result of philosophical inferiority to capitalism, but because the powerful capitalist nations did everything in their considerable powers to crush them at birth. Russia, devastated more than a.ny nation except Germany and Japan in WW2, received less compensation to rebuild itself than the other major powers – even though its losses and contribution to winning the war had been greater than any other country. Communist China too, received virtually no outside support in its civil war with capitalist Nationalist China, who were strongly supported from the beginning by both the US and the USSR. Later, during the so-called “cold war”, both the USSR and Communist China were ruthlessly victimised by the powerful capitalist nations, and any country that wished to have closer ties to the communists did so on the clear understanding that they risked the combined wrath of the far richer western world. Cuba and North Korea provide interesting lessons about the ruthlessness of capitalism. Both countries tried to establish socialist economies in the 1950s. They were immediately attacked by the US, the world’s leading exponent of capitalism, and to this day are still regarded by the world superpower as major threats to world peace — even though both are effectively impoverished third world countries as a result of more than half a century of vicious US-imposed trade sanctions. Both countries are held up to the world as examples of the failure of socialism — but the fact that they have hardly been able to trade with anyone for almost sixty and seventy years respectively is conveniently forgotten. How the US or the UK might look if they had been similarly restricted is overlooked, a question that’s almost never asked. Steve Keen, an Australian economist who has taught capitalism for many years is refreshingly honest about economics. His book Debunking Economics is a damning indictment of his own subject, and given that he’s been teaching at university level most of his working life suggests he might know what he’s talking about. The essential lesson that Keen points out is that the empirical evidence to support the principles of economics is too flimsy to withstand critical analysis. And whatever philosophical justification there may be is equally groundless. It turns out that economics, like religion, is wholly dependent on having faith that its principles and lessons are true: There is one striking fact about this whole literature [of economics], and that is that there is not one single empirical fact in it.4 [A] frequent refrain in this book [is] that neoclassical economics is far more a belief system than it is a science.5 The famous Canadian economist JK Galbraith, whose considerable works preceded Keen, appears to have been of similar mind. Here he writes about the attempt to provide credibility to economics by adorning it with mathematical symbolism: The increasingly technical formulations [of mathematics in economics] and the debate over their validity and precision provided employment for many of the thousands of economists now needed for economics instruction in universities and colleges around the world… Mathematical economics also gave to economics a professionally rewarding aspect of scientific certainty and precision, adding usefully to the prestige of academic economists in their university association with the other social sciences and the so-called hard sciences. One of the costs of these several services was, however, the removal of the subject several steps further from reality. Not all but a very large number of the mathematical exercises began (as they still do) with the words “We assume perfect competition.” In the real world perfect competition was by now leading an increasingly esoteric existence, if, indeed any existence at all, and mathematical theory was, in no slight measure, the highly sophisticated cover under which it managed to survive.6 And here he is quoting Thomas Balogh, an eminent Hungarian economist: The modern history of economic theory is a tale of evasions of reality.7 Trying to give economics respectability by making it look like a mathematical science was a trick that was not lost on one of the best-known economists of all time – JM Keynes: Too large a proportion of recent ‘mathematical’ economics are merely concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, and which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.8 Economics began life as an area of philosophy. It’s widely acknowledged parent, Adam Smith, was a professor of moral philosophy, not economics. But in its relatively short history that fact has already been disposed of. Here’s Balogh (whose book The Irrelevance of Conventional Economics preceded Keen’s similar thoughts by almost thirty years): One of the most remarkable features of the development of economic theory over the last hundred years, and especially since the Second World War, has been the insistent craving to purge it of all political, social and moral content.9 These then are some of the truly important lessons about economics which our trusted educators somehow manage to overlook. Our world polarises more and more into a place where hundreds of millions struggle every day to find enough to eat whilst tiny handfuls of people wallow in more personal wealth than entire countries have at their disposal. Many scratch their heads and wonder how the economists might justify this situation. They fail to see, because educators fail to teach it, that the economic system is deliberately engineered to work this way. Contrary to capitalist teaching, there are fine alternatives, such as socialism. Choosing capitalism is just that, a choice, not a necessity. JM Keynes knew it almost a century ago when he said: Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.10 The overlooked lessons of morality There are a multitude of components in our education system which together comprise the early stages of mass brainwashing. I have described a mere handful. Almost every subject taught in our schools could and should be analysed for how it contributes to the cause. From the mandatory requirement to attend school at all, and at specific times, to the “acceptable” standards of dress — sometimes imposed by the school, and sometimes imposed by peer-pressure. From usually trivial efforts at teaching the arts to the emphasis in the teaching of sports and games – of win-at-all-cost, rather than just having fun. Even the most important lesson of maths and the sciences is somehow overlooked for its wider implications – the discipline of using evidence-based facts to discover truth. Then there’s the two or three-tier education system that’s common in many countries – the process whereby small children are divided according to the social status of their parents. The children of the super-rich and powerful are usually segregated from the children of the middle classes, who are often segregated from the children of those struggling to survive on the streets or crumbling tenements. The children from privileged backgrounds are far more likely to attend universities, producing yet another illusory class distinction, as many people with university educations see themselves as brighter and more intelligent than those without college degrees. And many of those who don’t go to university see themselves as less bright, “stupid” even, when compared with college graduates. Thus are most children indoctrinated almost from birth into their “exceptionalism” – or lack of it: children who will grow up believing and accepting their lot in life that for the most part the fortunes or misfortunes of their parents have determined. Our entire education system needs to be scrapped and redesigned. The model we have, as Parenti correctly observed, never was intended to create an informed, critically-minded, democratic citizenry. It was intended to create masters and servants. It must be changed. Good alternative models, which can be built on, already exist. Take the inspirational Summerhill School in Suffolk, for example. At Summerhill children have been effectively running the place for a hundred years. Children decide for themselves what lessons to take, and what classes to attend – if they feel like attending any. Nearly all decisions at the school are decided democratically by the children at weekly whole-school meetings, which are effectively run by the children. Contrary to what many adults might think, the thing works perfectly, and well-balanced well-educated children graduate from there every year. Education can, and must, be done differently. Part Two The Substitute Brain So once the young steer has been broken to the yoke, all that remains is to keep him permanently yoked. In human society this service is provided by the mainstream media who, being almost entirely controlled by the super-rich and powerful, see to it that nothing seriously conflicts with the early conditioning provided by the education system. Comprising mainly newspapers, TV and radio news, but also the vitally important entertainment industry, the mainstream media delivers or maintains relentless 24 hour a day brainwashing. The genius of the model is that with very few exceptions the 99% are not even aware they’re being brainwashed. When you point this out, you’re generally viewed as a nutter and conspiracy theorist. Brainwashing is something only the bad guys do. Our great leaders would never stoop so low, especially against their own people. But the evidence of brainwashing by our own great trusted leaders is abundant and compelling. Numerous books on the subject are available, and there are several great websites (such as fair.org and medialens.org) that provide hard evidence of the ongoing problem on a daily basis. One of the earliest descriptions of modern day brainwashing by our own leaders was supplied by Arthur Ponsonby who, for a patrician member of the British aristocracy, was an unusually outspoken anti-war campaigner. His book Falsehood in Wartime, written almost a hundred years ago, cuts directly to the chase in its subtitle: Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War. It’s a collection of outrageous claims made mainly in British newspapers which were blatant lies whose purpose was to inflame the passions of a nation that had no appetite for war. The key requirement was, of course, that people trusted and believed what they read in the newspapers. British journalist Philip Knightley crafted a superb history of the institutionalised deceit of the mainstream media in his great book The First Casualty, taking its title from a quotation originally attributed to US senator Hiram Johnson who is alleged to have said in 1917, “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” Bearing in mind Johnson’s view, it’s interesting to ponder any connection to the words of Winston Churchill: In wartime truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.11 Given that our trusted leaders have created a world of Permanent War, have they also given themselves licence to permanently lie to us? There are other great books on the subject of modern media deceit. Chomsky and Herman’s classic, of course, Manufacturing Consent, for example, and Edwards and Cromwell’s excellent Guardians of Power. And the great journalist and filmmaker John Pilger has written and spoken many times of the subject. So the problem is not paucity of evidence, it’s the fact that evidence is kept permanently out of the mainstream. It’s one of the very clever devices used by the modern propagandist. Instead of censoring uncomfortable truths — the normal tactic of old despotic regimes — they’re simply marginalised, smeared and ridiculed. It’s a numbers game: it doesn’t really matter if a handful of cranks can see and understand the truth, so long as the vast majority do not. Props for the illusion There are several important methods used on a daily basis by mainstream news providers to deceive us. Two of the most important are half-truths, and headline manipulation. Although outright lies are often used too, and obviously should not be discounted, the frequency of their use is possibly not as great as the other methods. Someone once observed that “the truth, carefully crafted is the biggest lie of all”. Telling half a truth is possibly the most common method of crafting the truth, and it’s something at which the mainstream media have become very proficient – especially by the most highly regarded and respected institutions in the establishment media – such as the BBC, for example, or The Times and Guardian newspapers. If courtroom trials were conducted in a way that only the prosecution was allowed to present its case we would rightly conclude that justice is not being provided. If there was no mechanism to represent the case of the defendant, or to properly challenge the prosecution case, the trial would be ludicrous, a mockery, a kangaroo court. But this is effectively what our great respected mainstream media provide for us on a daily basis: the prosecution case with little or no input from the defence. Much of the prosecution case may be true, but it’s only half-true. Sometimes they will include some reference to the defence’s argument — to provide the illusion of “balance” — but only where it can be immediately discredited, smeared or refuted. This is the art of the half-truth, telling what may well be true, but carefully selecting only those bits of truth that provide a distorted version of the whole story. Many people would say they don’t believe what newspapers tell them, that they know that newspapers lie — especially the so-called “gutter press”. Yet these papers are the biggest-selling daily news providers in the country. Although many people say they never actually read the papers, that they only buy them for the sports pages, puzzles, comics or competitions, the fact remains that many of these people usually flick through the pages, glancing quickly at the pictures and headlines. Much of the knowledge they have of world affairs is obtained from absorbing information gleaned from the handful of sensational words in bold type at the head of an article — perhaps together with a carefully selected photograph. But if we take the time to read the whole article below the headline, we often find that not a single shred of evidence is provided to justify the claims of the headline. But most people don’t read the article. The only memory they have, absorbed almost subliminally, is the invariably exaggerated, or flat-out wrong claims of the headline. The photographs too, or the video clips that we watch on TV, provide powerful tools for truth-manipulation. Ostensibly providing visual confirmation of whatever the accompanying story is, pictures have long been misused to provide distorted “news”. Here’s Phillip Knightley, providing a fine example from a hundred and twenty years ago, used to brainwash British cinema-goers about the Boer War: An early newsreel film shown to British audiences depicts a Red Cross tent under fire from the Boers while brave British doctors, nurses and orderlies try to treat a wounded soldier. The film was a fake, shot with actors on Hampstead heath, a suburb of London.12 The use of photographic and film trickery since the Boer War never stopped, of course. Today many view the old newsreel footages from WW2 and smile at the naïveté of those who swallowed whole such blatant propaganda. Yet these same people unquestioningly accept the video clips from today’s battlefronts as being truthful, impartial and balanced — failing completely to join the dots from the newsreels of yesteryear with today’s coverage from trusted journalists “embedded” with “our” boys and girls on the front lines. And photographs allegedly depicting horrors perpetrated by whichever designated enemy in Ukraine, Syria or Iraq are frequently shown later to be horrors actually perpetrated by “moderate” rebels supported by “our” boys and girls. The always-excellent Media Lens, for example, provides abundant proof of this, such as this superb Alert: “Mass Media Siege: Comparing Coverage of Mosul and Aleppo” The Brain Substitute Having filled the eyes and ears of the 99% with the words and images that our trusted leaders want us to see and hear it only remains to properly explain and interpret that information. For that purpose our mainstream media can be relied upon to supply a seemingly endless quantity of “experts”, from university academics to ex-intelligence chiefs, from government diplomats to respected journalists, from bemedalled generals and admirals to MPs and knights of the realm; from erudite editorials in respectable newspapers to learned panel discussions on TV and radio. Any number of great trusted leaders and pillars of society can be provided on demand to instruct us on how to properly interpret the misinformation our trusted mainstream media is churning out 24/7. The case for the prosecution is always compelling, the case for the defence is all but totally eradicated. Smoke and Mirrors As though the collective efforts of the education system, religion, and the mainstream media are not quite enough to brainwash us thoroughly enough, there’s yet another device our controllers use — arguably to an even greater extent than all the others: the so-called entertainment industry. It was a trick that was well known as far back as the ancient Romans. Referred to by Juvenal, for example, as “bread and circuses”, it relates to the necessity of controlled distraction, suggesting that it’s next in importance even to providing food. So long as the 99% are kept from starving, the next most important thing is to ensure their attention is diverted away from thinking about the numerous difficulties of their daily lives. To this end a limitless quantity of managed entertainment is delivered. Although there are many fine books and films, songs and paintings, for example, that encourage deep reflection, somehow these are never the books and films, songs and paintings that are made and strongly promoted in Hollywood or the mainstream book and music publishers. It’s always the exact opposite, with the latest blockbuster film or video depicting the accepted propaganda model; or the popular music industry completely ignoring political and protest songs in favour of mind-numbing banality. It doesn’t matter what form the distraction takes, from sports to cinema, from reading pulp fiction to attending the opera. None of it really matters providing it achieves the main aim of stopping people from wondering how to make their lives better. Between working long and hard hours, raising families, and relaxing when possible with managed distractions, the average 99 percenter is hard-pressed to find time, or motivation, to see the world in any way differently to the way she is supposed to see it. The Steer Well and Truly Yoked So the education system keeps peddling the same old rubbish about great kings and queens, emperors and presidents, generals and admirals; and the priests keep peddling their mythical fantasies; and the mainstream media churn out “news” stories about today’s great leaders, seamlessly connected to yesteryear’s great leaders, together with their blockbuster movies, and musical pap distractions reinforcing the same old/same old. Is it really any wonder that the 99% understand the world exactly the way they’re supposed to understand it? * The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley, p. 109. * History as Mystery, Michael Parenti, p. 28. * The Challenge of Democracy – Britain 1832 – 1918, Hugh Cunningham, p. 2. * Debunking Economics, Steve Keen, p. 67. * Ibid, p. 101. * A History of Economics, JK Galbraith, p. 259. * Ibid, p. 189. * General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, JM Keynes, p. 298. * The Irrelevance of Conventional Economics, Thomas Balogh, p. 29. * Extreme Money, Satyajit Das, p. 128. * Bodyguard of Lies, Anthony Cave Brown, Preface. * The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley, p. 75. http://clubof.info/

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