Frida!

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Left: Frida Kahlo;  Right: Salma Hayek as Frida

My daughter gifted my wife and me with a big 32" TV, and we have been watching a lot of movies.  We tend to fight about what movies to watch; I tend to watch movies without a lot of violence, whereas she watches movies that are widely considered to be of high quality, even if the movie contains parts that are frightening or disgusting.  What does that tell you?

Anyway, I happened to pick up a recent DVD of the Frida movie of 2002, starring Salma Hayek and Afred Molina, arguably two of the most talented actors of the times.  (I'm not giving you a link; you can buy the movie, rent it at Netflix or Amazon, or go to a theater to see it if it is shown near you.)

This (perhaps surprisingly) is the first movie that I have seen with Salma Hayek in it, and I was amazed.  In my estimation, she was Frida; either their personalities matched well, or ... what can I say.  When I see Charlton Heston as Michaelangelo, I am totally persuaded.  Perhaps Salma Hayek was convincing because she is Mexican--indeed Frida Kahlo was half Hungarian Jewish by birth, which could explain some of the wonderful passion and creativity that flowed from her (children of mixed ethnicity are often very creative, for cultural or genetic reasons; who can tell?).

To know the historical person Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, one has to have met her, or at least, read her writings, and contemporary accounts of her friends and acquaintances.  In the movie, we see her through the eyes of the director, primarily (Julie Taymor), and Salma Hayek herself.  Having only seen the movie, my remarks are about the character portrayed there.

Frida Kahlo (the name Kahlo is possibly a Mexicanization of a German-Jewish name such as Kähler) in the movie comes across as a person suffering chronic pain, but whose warmth and vitality is largely irrepressible.  Through careful choice of material, Julie Taymor and her writing team (see the credits on the IMDB website) have tried to depict the major forces that shaped the personality and the motivations of this remarkable woman.  But more amazingly wonderfully, the design of the movie steals from the work of both Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; the choice of colors, the rich clay-reds, the vibrant blues, the dull browns, greens and greys that work so beautifully in the backgrounds of murals are used skillfully, to immerse one in a sort of Frida-Diego-ness that is satisfying.  One is transported to that time and place (Mexico in the early years of the 2oth century), and this sort of experience always leaves its mark on me.

Frida was an important figure in Western Culture of the 20th century.  She was, naturally, interested in gender issues, even if gender issues were not her central preoccupation.  The women's movement of the last quarter of the 20th century fastened on figures such as Frida, as an example of (possibly unintentional) victimization.  However, feminism and women's homosexuality were inextricably related in the 90's, and feminists whose concerns did not extend to gay rights were embarrassed by Frida's ambiguous sexual orientation.  At the time the movie was made, most people were far less threatened by bisexuality in general.  We had successfully disconnected pedophilia from homosexuality, and in the light of the 21st century, some of Frida's escapades seem far less weird.  The problem, indeed, is to reconstruct their weirdness in context.

The person who emerges is warm, ultimately patient, loyal, motherly, affectionate, and surprisingly outward-focused, for one who suffered lifelong pain.  Salma Hayek could not help but portray Frida as an essentially lovable person, even if when the subject was alive, she may have been more palatable at a distance than up close in person.

[Added later: the movie I saw was in English, and in the present-day idiom.  Not knowing what is come down to us of Frida's style of speech, I cannot comment on how apt the choice of voice for Frida is, in the movie.  But she speaks a fluent "Hey guys," sort of idiom, which seems appropriate for a person who frequented bars and hung out with the boys, and the bohemians of the time.  Is it more important that we should be true to the facts, or that we should be given a representation of a person that we can understand?  Perhaps the memory of an historical person who was difficult to understand is not well served by a biographical film that makes that person accessible--and I can imagine even that observation being far from axiomatic.  But in the case of Frida, I doubt that she was difficult to understand.  Perhaps it was some of the ways in which she was transparent that were difficult to tolerate by her contemporaries, but there is little doubt that she was greatly loved in her lifetime.]

In addition to the brilliant performances of Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, we have a host of the best and brightest in the acting world contributing beautifully understated performances to support them: I recognize Geoffrey Rush, Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas, Valeria Golino, Lila Downs, Mia Maestro, and even Didi Conn.  (Please forgive me if I fail to identify some names with which I'm not personally familiar.)

In keeping with the art world of Frida Kahlo, the movie has surreal elements that underscore the artistic settings.  The stinging analyses of contemporary socialists and Marxists are nevertheless affectionate and plausible.  (It is startling to realize how modern American intellectualism has most of the Marxism purged from it; how is this possible?  Philosophy has taken on some of the dogmatic aspects of Theology, I'm afraid.)  Again and again one is startled into remarking how various sights and visions Frida sees and has find their way into her paintings.  The movie may fall short for those who knew Frida personally, but to me, it is a work of art.

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The State of The Union

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I'm writing on Thursday; last Tuesday was the State of the Union address by Barack Obama.

Anyone elected president of any nation, including this one, could do many things.  (I use the masculine personal pronoun, though obviously the president in question may be either gender.)

01.  He could set a high moral tone, as an example to his people.
02.  He could initiate legislation for the good of all.
03.  He could set in place regulations that favor those in a narrow sector of the population in which he has support.
04.  He could conduct foreign policy that serves the narrow interests of his own nation, or a sector within his nation.
05.  He could conduct foreign policy to maximize the chances of peace among nations, and minimize the likelihood of war.
06.  He could indulge in belligerent and bellicose rhetoric, to inflame the hotheads among his constituents.
07.  He could indulge in aggressive campaigns to redistribute wealth among his people.
08.  He could encourage structures and regulations that give the illusion of superior education of the nation's youth, while creating scapegoats of teachers who have incurred the dissatisfaction of their students, deservingly or undeservingly.
09.  He could ensure that the members of the privileged classes continue to enjoy the privileges they have.
10.  He could ensure that those in greatest need have the aid they require to offset the disadvantages of their circumstances.
11.  He could discourage the poor and indigent from bettering their conditions by giving them handouts.
12.  He could write off the poor and indigent if they make clear that they have no intention of meeting society halfway, and helping to help themselves.
13.  He can cooperate with his political opponents to the extent that they are willing, to solve problems in which they have a common interest.
14.  He can depict his political opponents in the worst possible light, as being uninterested in compromise for the greater good.
These last two are the most difficult:
15.  Given the fact that many societies do not have the machinery to provide employment to all their citizens as a matter of course (“Full Employment”), a president can work within the structures he inherits to prevent massive loss of employment due to economic catastrophes.
16.  He could seek ways of avoiding economic catastrophes in the future, by regulating the mechanisms of business investment.

I list these here, without any judgment as to whether Barack Obama has or has not done any of these things.  And we must weigh which of these actions we would support, and which of the Republican Candidates are likely to do them; and similarly with actions we would oppose.

Watching and listening to President Obama addressing the Joint Chambers of Congress in the State of the Union address, (affectionately called the SOTU,) it was hard to avoid noticing that the tone of the speech was infinitely more gracious and “presidential” than any of the Republican candidates could equal.  Reagan, in 1980, was the last great Republican who was concerned with setting a positive tone, and who looked “Presidential”, and more importantly, used a rhetoric that we would not be ashamed of.

Furthermore, (speaking of the SOTU,) I was struck with the fact that, while the Republican candidates, in their several debates, treated their audience as if they were ignorant hicks, incapable of verifying facts and understanding sophisticated reasoning, President Obama may have been challenging, even aggressive, but did not speak down to his audience.  If I were a Republican, I might have resented the reproachful tone of some of his remarks.  But I would not have felt patronized.

The Republican rhetoric that has begun to fly about appears to be aimed at ignorant, bigoted high-school dropouts.  It is all jingoism, racism and chauvinism; mere posturing to attract an audience that has been encouraged to feel threatened by society and the economy.  The Republicans are addressing themselves to a constituency that is on the defensive, their backs to the wall.  And why?  Because they have been persuaded that the various forces that have caused them trouble (the economy, the housing bust, the unemployment, the expensive wars being fought, the decline in the quality of goods) were not caused by the very folk who steer the Republican Machine, but by some bogeymen who are Democrats in disguise.  In fact, they have been persuaded to view things that will help them as things that will hurt them.

The Republican leadership has managed to persuade some of the poorest white Americans that Food Stamps helps mostly African Americans, despite the incontrovertible fact that many white folks enjoy the benefit of food stamps.  I myself, in my poorer days, was glad to avail my family of the few food stamps for which we were eligible, by virtue of qualifying for the WIC program, which is intended to assist young children and pregnant women to head off possible medical problems that could arise later, due to poor nutrition.  The WIC program deserves the highest possible praise for its effectiveness and its fiscal efficiency in terms of bang for buck.

In the first few years of the life of our little baby, we took her to the Well-Baby Clinic, which ensured that she received inoculations on time, and which monitored her health in various ways.  There was a good balance of racial and ethnic types at the clinic, and one could not accuse any minority of taking a disproportionate amount of services from that clinic.  And the constant chant of fiscal conservatives is that we cannot afford to continue to provide these services.  They insist that it is more important to allow the top-earning 1% of the population to pay less than 15% in Federal Taxes than to provide these sorts of services.  (See the interview of Elizabeth Warren by Jon Stewart for more information about these sorts of issues.)

Gingrich interviewed by a Cuban TV host.

In addition, some candidates have been heard pandering to right-wing extremists who wish to escalate aggression towards communist states such as Cuba.

In short, the Republican candidates speak as though they seek the votes of ultra-conservative, ultra-warlike, independently wealthy people who are indignant about the high taxes that they pay, but are upset about the unemployment situation.  Why would independently wealthy people be upset about unemployment?  Perhaps they deplore unemployment from a purely altruistic point of view.  Quite cynically, is this possible?  Independently wealthy folk are more likely to be employers than employed.  The worse the unemployment, the cheaper is the cost of labor.  Wealthy business owners ought to love that!

No; the fact of the matter is that somehow the GOP has persuaded folks who are poor and only marginally employed that it is a good thing for millionaires to pay low taxes.  They think this will translate into low taxes for everybody.

Finally, it is becoming clear that the power of lobbyists is out of control, and the lobbying reform has not changed matters at all.  Banks and Insurance companies can afford powerful lobbyists (some of whom are actually former members of Congress).  And the caliber of people we elect to Congress is such that they cannot resist the force of the lobbyists.  In many cases, it is well known, lobbyists actually write the legislation.

In an atmosphere of extremism and manic hostility, Barack Obama projected a refreshingly calm, confident, reasonable image.  One is amazed that the chosen ones of the GOP have forgotten how to do this.  What has happened?  Obama has taken ownership of the centrist position that the more enlightened conservatives were accustomed to adopting, leaving them with nothing to distinguish themselves from him.  As a result, they have assumed ultra-conservative postures that are steadily alienating moderate Republicans and Independents.  Liberals (and ultra-Liberals) within the Democratic Party must weigh the relative value of keeping to their Republican hostile rhetoric, versus making the centrist positions of Obama a comfortable home for disenchanted Republicans.  However, we must bear in mind that centrist Republicans are the first to bail out when a Democrat president inches even slightly to the left, or even the perceived left, such as proposing Health Care Reform.  Read Glenn Greenwald's post about this peculiar development for a better explanation.

It is so difficult to deal with an electorate that absorbs hype more readily than logic!  But this is the brave new world we live in.

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