Year: 2013

Through Cameron’s Camera

James Polchin considers the work of 19th-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron:

Compared to the standards of photographic portraits of her time Cameron’s famous men dish_cameron look utterly frail. … We encounter the faces of Victorian England’s great men as if they were butchers or the shop owners, unmasked by whatever grandness the camera was meant to bestow. It is a different kind of realism that feels more akin to the late 20th century than of middle of the 19th.

If her famous men were caught in their ordinary humanness, her women take on the utterly mythic, a poised and sensitive beauty. In “Sappho,” for example, the woman’s profile is acutely detailed against the dark background, the light washing along her forehead and nose. Her jewel necklace and embroidered dress glimmer with less precision. The work recalls that of early Renaissance paintings. Or more accurately, it conjures the Pre-Raphaelite aestheticism of the era that Cameron knew quiet well. Sappho here is believed to be a housemaid at Freshwater, transformed into something more ethereal, the image of a Greek poet. In many of these female portraits, Cameron turns the margins into the ideal, and the ideal into the human.

(Image of Julia Jackson by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1867, via Wikimedia Commons)

Fact-Checking Fiction

Unlike NdGT, Isaac Butler believes there’s no need for checking the facts:

In real life, people don’t talk the way they do in movies or television or (especially) books. Real locations aren’t styled, lit, or shot the way they are on screen. The basic conceits of point of view in literature actually make no sense and are in no way “realistic.” Realism isn’t verisimilitude. It’s a set of stylistic conventions that evolve over time, are socially agreed upon, and are hotly contested. The presence of these conventions is not a sign of quality. Departure from them is not a sign of quality’s absence.

The Realism Canard is the most depressing trend in criticism I have ever encountered. I would rather read thousands of posts of dismissive snark about my favorite books than read one more blog post about something that happened in a work of fiction wasn’t realistic or factually accurate to our world as we know it. … [W]e’re talking here not only about the complete misreading of what something is (fiction vs. nonfiction), but the holding of something to a standard it isn’t trying to attain and often isn’t interested in (absolute verisimilitude). We’re talking about the reduction of truth to accuracy.

Alyssa Rosenberg concurs, adding:

Given the power of mass-market fiction, I think it’s reasonable to note if a show, or a movie, or a book presents something as a fact that is untrue, and that its creators must know to be untrue. But the motivation for those sorts of untruths – as with the motivation for all the untruths that make up fiction – is often actually more revealing than the substance of the deception itself.

Somali Pirates On The Silver Screen, Ctd

Security contractors have made life “a lot harder” for pirates since the 2009 hijacking:

Instead of relying solely on water cannons and evasive maneuvers, companies have taken to hiring private armed escorts of former Marines and Navy SEALs. … Despite worries that having gun-toting contractors onboard may cause confrontations to escalate, they seem to have worked as a deterrent. Since 2011, the number of pirate attacks around Somalia has plummeted, from 237 that year to just 10 so far this year, according to the International Maritime Bureau. And the number of vessels held by pirates has dropped from 47 in 2010 to only 1 today. …

Part of this has to do with better international coordination between the navies of NATO, Russia, China, and the EU, which have worked to eradicate the large motherships that provide pirate skiffs with fuel and supplies. It also has to do with more stringent enforcement of anti-piracy laws. Somali pirates have been prosecuted from Tanzania to the United States, and more than 1,100 have been jailed. But there’s no denying that private security has been a big help.

The Best Of The Dish Today

Congress Convenes On Columbus Day As Government Shutdown Continues

There were some signs that Senators McConnell and Reid were inching toward an agreement to avert economic catastrophe tonight. Here’s the NYT summary of the alleged near-deal:

Negotiators talked into the evening as senators from both parties coalesced around a plan that would lift the debt limit through Feb. 7, pass a resolution to finance the government through Jan. 15 and conclude formal discussions on a long-term tax and spending plan no later than Dec. 13, according to one Senate aide briefed on the plan.

That’s a very small window of relief until the next debt ceiling raise and an even smaller window for some kind of Grand Bargain breakthrough. But it’s better than default; and largely a defeat for the ugly forces that rallied yesterday outside the White House, accusing cops of being “brownshirts” for doing their jobs. Speaking of those protestors, we examined what exactly constitutes being an asshole; debunked the notion that gerry-mandering alone is the cause of polarization; and appreciated the anguish of Dave Chappelle’s tip-toeing through the minefields of comedy and race.

The most popular post of the day was my description of the horrifying, racist nullification rhetoric at the Tea Party rally yesterday: “This Is Where We Are.” The second was my take on Sarah Palin’s apparent invocation of the right to armed rebellion – except she probably wasn’t. She’d have to know who John Locke is first.

See you on AC360 Later at 10 pm every night this week, and, of course, in the morning.

(Photo: A sign blocks a hallway at the Capitol Building on October 14, 2013 in Washington, DC. As Democratic and Republican leaders negotiate an end to the shutdown and a way to raise the debt limit, the White House postponed a planned Monday afternoon meeting with Boehner and other Congressional leaders. The government shutdown is currently in its 14th day. By Andrew Burton/Getty Images.)

Rap’s Reggae Roots

After a summer of rap artists sampling reggae, Wayne Marshall chronicles the way New York’s ragamuffin counterculture actually birthed hip-hop:

Growing in number since the late 60s, a wave of new immigrants from Jamaica, including ruthless footsoldiers of Kingston’s infamous gang coalitions, eventually reshaped New York’s party culture, organized crime, and the very meanings of Jamaicanness—not to mention the sound of New York. Although reggae offered a template for hip-hop, the sounds of Jamaica were slow to appear in rap recordings. The Fat Boys professed their love of “Hardcore Reggae” in 1984 and Yellowman accompanied Run DMC on an awkward outing called “Roots, Rap, Reggae” in ‘85, but the real turning point was registered—and amplified—by Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded in early 1987.

BDP refashioned the sound of hip-hop by delivering patois-laced lyrics about the ravages of the crack age over choppy, distorted, and stark backing tracks beckoning from the bleeding edge of audio culture. And while KRS-One’s street-level realism takes inevitable cues from precursors like Grandmaster Flash’s 1982 smash “The Message,” the narrator of tracks like “P Is Free” and “9mm Goes Bang” is a rather different character, less a wary observer or potential victim and more an eager participant, a ready reaper of Reagan-era spoils. Criminal Minded signaled a strong tonal shift in hip-hop’s representation of urban malaise and its effects on community relationships, and the album’s first-person “badman” perspective was deeply informed and inflected by dancehall reggae’s images of black, modern gangsters.

The Ethics Of Mathematicians

Amid controversy about the NSA’s surveillance program, Edward Frenkel urges his fellow mathematicians to consider the political uses – and abuses – of their work:

I think it’s very similar to the dilemma that physicists faced when they realized the power of the nuclear bomb. We are talking about a group of physicists who were just trying to understand the structure of the universe, the structure of matter, and inadvertently discovered this incredible power. I would not tell any scientist to stop his or her research because it might have some possible evil applications. But once you discover that it does have these applications, I think it’s also your responsibility to do whatever you can to prevent the discovery from being used for evil purposes. … Mathematical power is not the power of a bomb. You cannot see its effect as immediately as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But a formula can be just as powerful in terms of controlling our lives. It can alter the course of history.

Ann Finkbeiner says notably few mathematicians have spoken out against NSA surveillance:

NSA-supported mathematicians and computer scientists have remained mostly quiet, to the growing frustration of others in similar fields. “Most have never met a funding source they do not like,” says Phillip Rogaway, a computer scientist at the University of California, Davis, who has sworn not to accept NSA funding and is critical of other researchers’ silence. “And most of us have little sense of social responsibility.”

Mathematicians and the NSA are certainly interdependent. The agency declares that it is the United States’ largest maths employer, and Samuel Rankin, director of the Washington DC office of the American Mathematical Society, estimates that the agency hires 30 to 40 mathematicians every year. The NSA routinely holds job fairs on university campuses, and academic researchers can work at the agency on sabbaticals. In 2013, the agency’s mathematical sciences program offered more than $3.3 million in research grants.

Face Of The Day

Extravagant Hair Styles Take To The Catwalk At The Alternative Hair Show

Models are styled by the Dmitry Vinokurov team before performing at the ENIGMA Alternative hair Show in the Royal Albert Hall on October 13, 2013 in London, England. The Alternative Hair Show is one of the world’s most prestigious hairdressing events, bringing together international teams of hair artists to showcase groundbreaking hair styling. The show was launched 30 years ago by acclaimed hair designer Tony Rizzo to raise money for Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research following the death of his son Valentino and to date over 9 million GBP has been raised. By Oli Scarff/Getty Images.

Pushing Poverty Out Of Our Thoughts

Vikram Bath charges that most people in the developed world – including himself – simply “disbelieve” in the reality of poverty:

If you actually believed that you could save a human life for $2,500, how would you act from now on? Let’s make it a bit more explicit: Some sort of deity who is able to demonstrate his powers to your satisfaction tells you that from now on, every time you fail to find an opportunity to save to spend $2,500 on mosquito nets, you will find the corpse in your bedroom closet of the person you failed to save. The body will vanish at the end of the day without inconvenience or legal issues. You would nevertheless endeavor to avoid finding corpses in your closet.

If that were to happen, your creativity in finding $2,500 would become unbounded. You’d scrap most expenses, trade in your collection of crap, negotiate a higher salary, and get a second or third or fourth job until you stopped finding corpses. You would start companies in your time off. You would structure your whole life around your knowledge of poverty.

Previous Dish on philanthropy and moral obligations here.

“America’s Black Friend”

A reminder of what happened to Dave Chappelle:

One of the reasons Chappelle abandoned his sketch comedy series at its peak of popularity was that he grew uncomfortable with the response to his racially charged humor from white audiences. During the taping of an ill-fated sketch in which he donned blackface as a “black-pixie” who prodded black people to perform as stereotypes, Chappelle noticed that one white male audience member seemed to find it a little too funny. “When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I gotta take fucking time out after this. Because my head almost exploded.”

In a study of Chappelle, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah explores how comedy can reveal truths about race:

[Chappelle’s Show co-creator Neal] Brennan brings up an idea first posited by the psychologist Beverly Tatum about the ways we tend to segregate ourselves as we get older and grow apart from our friends of different races.

Neal tells me, “It’s like when black kids sit at the lunch table with only black kids, and the white kids sit with white kids. I think it is just like, ‘Well, they look like family.’ It is just some animal shit. It is safety.” When I read Tatum’s book, she says something that sticks with me: that so often the difficultly in discussing race is about working around the divide of that which we do not know.

As I listen to Brennan talk, I think about how he is right, that comedy is different. Comedians live for the joke and the joke alone. White writers have long written jokes for black comics with great success (my favorites being Ed. Weinberger for Bill Cosby and Louis C.K. for Chris Rock), but at the same time none of this goodwill can negate the possibility that Chappelle experienced what his mother had written about twenty years before: the desire to “learn to know himself again.” And that for all the post–civil rights progress we have made, it is possible that you could be best friends with someone of a different race without being able to enter worlds and spaces that they can, or in the way that they do.

Previous Dish on the clarifying power of comedy here and here.