Critics Who Know Jack Page 5

  FATHER, IT’S TIME — IS IT PIAZZA OR PIZZA ITALYUN?

  You ever been Italian? Ever been part Italian or first or second or third generation Italian? Sicilian or Calabrese or Neapolitan? Venetians and Milanese (with apologies) don’t count in this. Sopranos fans do. Godfather fans as well. Still, historical and cultural figure do. Even talk of Fermi and Dante, Fellini and Madonna and Big Frank. And mostly sons and daughters, wives and grand kids that came with the migration over the course of the last half century. “Delissio” Time! “East Side Mario’s.” Capone. Scorsese. Coppola and Ferlinghetti. And if you didn’t know and if you don’t care to — Steven Segal! Steve Tyler! And — and — and even Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi!

  So this is the gig. You’re invited to perform on one of the city’s biggest stages and it’s all to celebrate “Festa della Repubblica” (Italy’s national holiday — June 2 — and 2010 marks the 150th. Coincidentally the start of the American Civil War). So there you are amidst the inheritors of the immigrant experience and you’re a singer and musician to boot! And you wrote a song that won a prestigious award and addressed the history of family and migration and the movement to another shore. And though the sociology seems to suggest your progenitors’ story is more relevant than your own — you get your story in there “. . . Father, it’s time. Time we should talk. By evening the moon disappears.” And it rings a bell for woppos (a bastardization of the Spanish guapo (good-looking) and wop (With Out Papers) and critics alike. But they decide to call the event “Piazza Italia” which means “Italian Square” but really hope it to mean “where people gather.” Though the word visually is strikingly similar to the word pizza, which everyone knows is round and can be as deep-dish as Al Capone liked it.

  You ever want to be Italian? Where the food means everyone is happy — having roll on roll of bun and laughter, prosciutto and lasagna — sing a pepperoni song and twilight to Sinatra and Tony Bennett? Pose with loads of siblings and extended family? This is what Pizza Italia wants. The question is — is this what Piazza Italia, and its proponents, inevitably desire as well? And what is it sons and daughters of those who travelled hard from agrarian shores want? The doctors, actors, writers, lawyers, politicians, etc.? “That’s not Italian, not even I-tal-yun!,” one says trying to muster up all the New Jersey wise-guy attitude he can get his vocal chords on, as he gnaws into some deep Chicago-style crust.

  What does it all mean? To call something Piazza Italia? What’s wrong or right with the signs (semiotics), the representation? A pizza is a pizza. An espresso an espresso. Italian nationalism it is not. You can’t pretend a north American busy downtown square is Piazza Navona in Rome. You can only pretend it is a North American downtown square and grasp hopelessly for the myth if you are so disposed. And your father might tell you: I used to sing for a bite to eat. Sing from town to town in my part of Italy. And you can’t argue with him that he did or didn’t. And you maybe think to yourself : I ain’t that hungry but I got to put the song out anyway. Regardless of the phantasmagoria of Garibaldi/Michelangelo and all the “oiliness” of the Medicis and Borgias, that somehow crosses the Atlantic in tuna and sardine tins and ends up on your deep-sixer Pi(a)zza.

  ROLAND BARTHES AND TODD GITLIN

  (The Interpretation of Meaning and Media)

  All of language is a constellation of SIGNS. All the MEDIUMS through which language and its signs are delivered ARE NOT LANGUAGE. If you disagree, or are a mailman who has just about had it with the dogs on his route — you can be first in line to declare your objections to this premise.

  What is interpretation but making the “subject at hand” your own? In Nicholas Roeg’s 1970s film Insignificance an archetypal Marilyn Monroe explains the Special Theory of Relativity to an archetypal Albert Einstein. She uses trains and balloons and flashlights while he is haplessly transfixed by her breasts and lips and nods his head in agreement and fascination. And though Roeg is saying beauty can be intelligent (something most of us do not want to believe), the actual Theory is no more clear than it was before the scene begins.

  Comforting however are the balloons. The little boy’s trains. The flashlight. Her quest for elusive earth-motherhood underneath the lipstick and billowing white dress. The whole scene seems to swell with the imminent possibility of explosion. Light! Balloons! Trains! Rockets! Breasts! The universe! Neon! Male meets Female! BOOM! No wonder between the secret of the atom to the celerity of Klieg lights we need sunglasses!

  • • •

  BARTHES. This most intriguing mid-twentieth century French semiotician and Marxist sits with his Gauloise-stained thumb and forefinger and considers the word apps. How to get around this abbreviation and return to the common sense full syllables of the word application? For the fourteen-millionth time he is brought to his Writing Degree Zero (the posit that a writer must just write without intent political, romantic, technically or otherwise for motivation) knees. Comment ce dit en français? asks this man who skinned the cat on the bourgeois pretensions of a Jules Verne and underlined the tenacity of Jean Arthur Rimbaud’s anti-Republicanism. “How do you say in French: Mon dieu! Quelle merde-de-cheval? Le mot en français c’est application! Not some half-sized word made to forfeit the completeness of language, as deficient as the English tongue is! THE MEDIUM IS NOT THE MESSAGE!” Which remains constant in his head through his two-thousandth smoke of the week and parenthetical conjecture.

  And what is the valued (in lay terms) significance of the word apps? Curiously it sounds like a type of snake (asp) if you say it fastenough, throw a little lisp in and you know your ophiology. Besides being a word that makes convenient the use of Apple computers and iPads, why do we need the abbreviation? Where is it that we need to go that shortens language like a 10-4 Call Back highway rig steaming through NASCAR country? Does it put us in touch with anything we haven’t experienced or had knowledge of? Or does it simply underline our vanity and ultra-commercial lemmingly-ness?

  Answer? It doesn’t seem to matter what we need as much as what we want, and language in flux is a great virtue. Yet when it leads to superficiality as in achromatic signage and pretentious cool-hip cliquishness, problems can develop in substance and cleverness as knowledge becomes isolated packs of syllables, and to some detriment, is imitated orally. Thus, the signage of app might be considered against the signage of E = MC2. Most people are learning what an app is. Many assume to know what Einstein was saying. The former is a sign of little existential value wherein the latter relates the core to our understanding of the physical universe within and beyond our planet. Yet perhaps a function of an app could be to point you to a detailed reading of The Special Theory of Relativity.

  The “danger” of course is that one reads the abbreviated version and ingests a generality re: the Theory and this can be related to any subject matter from Moby Dick to How to Play Chess Instructions. And further, what holds us back from abbreviating app even further to ap’? — a followed by a p with an apostrophe doesn’t seem to be taken yet in the English lexicon. Nor the computer-jargoned mindset? How does app win out? One might argue that it is a logical sequence to abbreviate the word.

  Question: Why didn’t it exist before it appeared? It certainly wasn’t a street urchin who came up with the term and then it ascended the social ladder. In fact, it began at the top of the economic chain — i.e. corporations — and has infiltrated downwards much like the first television sets which were originally only affordable by the wealthy and a system of want and have across all classes ensued. And beyond this class competitiveness is the corporate competitiveness that vies for our attention and often succeeds in getting our interest, and sometimes even our sympathy. Not unlike the way in which we become aficionados of a certain type of coffee. Or espresso machine. Or hockey stick. Or sports team.

  We follow the label and in turn are labelled. No? Look at your latest apple or tomato or t-shirt or subway steps. Stickers — logos everywhere and ne’er a chance to think! I heard of a elderly woman who trippe
d and broke her hip trying to negotiate the subway stairs but couldn’t find them clearly because an image of leaves and gigantic words changed the colour and tone of the steps. Visually removing the angular risers. Soon afterward, a lawyer filed suit on her behalf against the advertisers and the local transit company.

  • • •

  TODD GITLIN. There is information and then there is gossip. There is political disagreement and then there is rumour. We are all susceptible to this with at least five senses. In his fascinating exposé about identity politics and political correctness, The Twilight of Common Dreams, Gitlin, a professor of Media Studies at Columbia and Berkeley, writes of the fall of the 1960s and early ‘70s New Left. A later text (Media Unlimited) is dedicated to the study of media, in which he underscores the speed with which mass media has now situated itself as the heartbeat of contemporary western society. Gitlin studies the incremental increase in the ascension of images. From pre-historic cave drawings and the first European paintings to the imposition on rural, small-town culture by neon and the rapid transformation from electric (radio and TV and film) to the electronic (internet). He argues that the increase in external “signage,” particularly the speed, challenges the ability to not overcrowd the brain and allow the development and subtlety of critical thinking.

  From Gitlin we get a sense that the information highway is loaded with waste product that takes on meaning simply because it exists and diverts attention from the substance of communication. A question to pose here after Gitlin’s consideration is: If the medium is argued to be the message, as McLuhan said, what is the message in the medium? One message is attainment. Another is attainment of power. Another is flooding and saturation. Another yet is loss of individuality and identity or the fight and struggle for it. And further, the making of new or hidden identity. Yet all this can not be done without the utilization and recognition of signs — micro, as in the compaction of internet sites and information, and macro, as in massive billboards on the sides of buildings in almost all modern downtown cities.

  In studying the nature of political correctness, or what Gitlin calls “identity politics,” he speaks of the great divide that occurred for many in the New Left after years of focus and a determined common will to confront the established order that brought us the racism and Vietnam war in post 1950s America. He talks of how the New Left, disheartened by the rise of Reaganism, divided along colour and cultural lines. I.e.: A Chicano farmer and a draft dodger might have had a common interest in confronting laws and class oppression in an earlier decade but, as the decades advanced into the ‘80s and ‘90s, a self-centred interest took over most political and social groups. A “me first” as opposed to “we together” paradigm resulted.

  The effects of this phenomenon was that an activist culture became easy prey for the divide and conquer mentality of the New Right. And with this, signage was used. Reagan, fatherly and folksy, became the saviour of the traditions and wholesomeness of America. Everyone else was caught trying to get in, as if coming home late and promising to cut the hedges and trim the lawn. The common dreams and aspirations of correcting the wrongs of the previous social order that brought us greed, war and hatred fell wayward. With this, the spirit of the New Left was politically decimated.

  One of the most intriguing ‘signs’ in the ‘60s was Muhammad Ali, three-time heavyweight champion. African-American, a member of the Nation of Islam and a draft-dodger, Ali represented the epitome of all that resisted external order in an effort to stay true to his beliefs (identity). Even in his later years, like Einstein, Ali has taken it upon himself to be a spokesman for the down-trodden and continues his anti-war pacifist stance through the Afghan and Iraq wars.

  In cultural signage this is the polar opposite to the Sylvester Stallone characters of ‘80s movies, who is going to get all the reds and bad guys — as either a boxer or a mercenary. He is the wild west cowboy cleaning up the globe instead of the town. He is not James Dean trying to come to terms with loveless parents or Marlon Brando’s voyous kicking down the doors of Hollywood establish­ment or Paul Newman cutting off the heads of parking meters in drunken rebellion.

  From Gitlin and Barthes we get an insistence to find something in ourselves: conscience. A sign of responsible citizenry. And media (in all forms), though tilted in favour of the advertisers and commercializers of our society and culture, is experiencing a new signage — the environmentally conscious, anti-Starbuck’s youth gathering in parks and city squares. This gesture too is made of cultural signage. One that is claiming new ground and identity.

  INTERVIEWING THE CRITICS

  Critics, whatever vein (vain) they work in, seem to carry an authority of voice through their opinion and have been known to influence the course of an artist’s career. Enhance and deepen the richness of the work they criticize or analyze or destroy what they do not concur with. Inevitably this leads to a dicey relationship between artist and critic. And the question is asked here: Who is living off whom?

  Let’s begin by assuming a situation that might have been part of history. And if not a part of historical fact, let’s theorize a bit to expound upon the inter-relationship between critic and artist. So — i.e.: A caveman draws the sketch of an antelope he hunts so as to remember it and to possibly show to other members of his clan. Even if he is alone, he records it for a functionality. The function of recalling it. Can we assume that he has drawn this for any aesthetic purpose? That is, can aesthetic purpose be totally self-contained? That this caveman has done it for pleasure himself or for no higher purpose than merely the function of recording?

  At some point along his history, the said caveman runs into another caveman and finds he is doing the same thing. Drawing with blood a sketch of an antelope. The first caveman then invites the second caveman to his cave to see his sketch and they agree it is the same animal they have both drawn. Soon the news spreads and they decide to go hunting together. They fail at finding any prey but, as the sun goes down each night, they sit and look at the drawing, either in caveman number one’s or caveman number two’s cave. They agree now on three things: that they both drew the same animal, that they should hunt together and that they look at their drawings together.

  Later, in their hunt they hear rustling in a forest patch and the high whining sound of an animal. They run closer to the spot and see a third caveman lifting an antelope carcass onto his back and stumbling through the brush. Without fear, they run up to him. They communicate by signs and soon it is understood that they would like the third caveman to join them in either of their caves to see their drawing(s). Caveman number three, though he is carrying a heavy weight, agrees. Inside the cave, caveman number one wants caveman three to look at his drawing. Caveman three grunts and kinda laughs and jostles the weight on his shoulders but does not put it down.

  Behind him caveman two is watching all this and in a jilt of jealousy at the communication between caveman one and caveman three, punches caveman three in the back and, as caveman three whirls around, caveman two picks up some dried brush and pushes caveman one aside, violently attacking the wall sketch and rubbing away most of it. Though they have no language (in the modern sense) among them, they begin to fight and argue, both gruntingly and physically. Caveman three falls to the ground with the dead antel­ope weight on top of him. Caveman two now grunts in no uncertain terms that the wall painting is no good. That the antelope on the ground is really good. Caveman one gets upset that his drawing is ruined. Thus a certain type of primitive criticism is born.

  Fast forward to twenty-first century. An artist proposes to a national radio broadcaster an idea to interview critics from different fields of criticism — i.e.: music, theatre, dance, visual art, literature, multi-media et al. After all, what do we know about the critics around us? Where they trained? Who influenced them in their chosen fields? How they come to their decisions and authoritative voices? How did they acquire their platform to speak, offer opinion and influence?

  Here Comes A Sign. I
n the course of the meeting, the broad­caster’s representative, a little known poet, and now in charge of acquiring ideas for new programmes, turns her eyes down, scribbles (God knows what?) and let’s the artist go on with enthusiasm, re: the possibility of the idea coming to light. The Sign — The Eyes Going Down. The artist can see now that she has scribbled nothing on her pad but her time for soccer-mom-ing later that afternoon. Her cell-phone rings and the meeting is cut short.

  The Interview: The artist decides to hold a panel nonetheless with a music critic, a theatre critic, a dance critic and a film critic. Before the panel begins, they are all given envelopes with one image each and asked not to open them until a question is asked of them.

  Artist (to Film Critic): You’ve been writing — how long now? Can you tell us how you came to interpret the Godfather Part 2 scene where Fredo cries out: “I’m smaaht! I was looked over! I’m you’re older brother, Mikey!” as one of latent homosexuality?

  Film Critic : Actually, the semiotic variable is a continuum from his “gayness” in Dog Day Afternoon.

  Artist: Isn’t Dog Day . . . after Godfather Two?

  Film Critic : Oh my god! Yes! You’re right! Absolutely!! Right! Right on! Thank you!!

  Artist : Getting back to the “gayness” factor? What did you mean? That Fredo loves his brother in a sort of Greek-like manner?

  FC: You mean like Plato and Aristotle?

  Artist: Well not really. More like a variation on Oedipus?

  FC: Oh, oh!