Doha Tribeca Film Festival

The film festival came and went. For many of my friends and colleagues, it was a big deal, which I truly understand and respect. They teach film and film making, so they're happy that something like Tribeca would come here. I thought months ago that I should see a few of the flicks and perhaps run into Bob (that's Robert De Niro to the rest of you). But when it finally came, I couldn't find the enthusiasm to fight the traffic, ignore the pretense that often accompanies these things, and watch premiers of blockbusters and independents alike. In fact, I couldn't even reference the enthusiasm I thought I had when I first learned that Tribeca was coming.

Well, Malika Bilal, a fellow Chicagoan and Medill graduate who now works for Al-Jazeera English, wrote a fine piece on the festival and had some good meta-festival observations. Here's an excerpt of her reporting:

Dr Hamid Naficy, a professor of communications in the radio, television and film department at Northwestern University's Qatar campus, says the recent emergence of film festivals, museums and universities in the Gulf are all part of a wider push to develop a "post-petroleum culture".

"There's a desire to create – for those who have oil – a post-petroleum culture because they realize petrol is not permanent," Naficy says. "For those who don't have petrol, it's a desire to create a culture that is less crass … and [based] on a completely consumerist value system. That has to be remunerated by the introduction of deeper cultural values, so that's another reason for film festivals."

Naficy, a filmmaker who has also published several books on cinema in Iran and the Middle East, says the push for film festivals in the region also indicates a sense of rivalry between the Gulf cities. "It's a desire to become modern and to be in the forefront of culture and civilisation," Naficy says. "The problem is population. Small populations don't generally produce major film industries. You will have individual filmmakers. But whether [the Gulf] can become a mecca for filmmaking is not clear."

If you want to read the whole thing, you may go here.

Woodstock, Group Think, and Neil Young

Within 48 hours, “Woodstock” (the original) came up twice in conversations with two colleagues and friends, one here in Doha and one in Santa Barbara. They both were at Woodstock. I was alive when it happened but too young to do anything about it, and “getting high” still meant to me something that kites and clouds do. I make no secret about it, the music of that era moves me. The lyrics were raw (sometimes raunchy) and honest. They were bold and resistant to group think.
   
Neil Young (of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young) a couple of years ago was on the "Charlie Rose Show" and he mentioned his new found appreciation for religious experiences, including Islam's. I don’t remember his exact wording, but I remember feeling that he said it as a matter of fact and not as a self-conscious act of countering the expensive and persistent decolorizing of Islam by extremist right-wingers.

His song “Ohio” was in response to the Kent State disaster in May 1970, when the U.S. military opened fire on student protesters, killing four. Shortly thereafter, Neil wrote and sang this:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

We're finally on our own

This summer I hear the drumming

Four dead in Ohio

Gotta get down to it

Soldiers are gunning us down

Should have been done long ago.

What if you knew her


And found her dead on the ground


How can you run when you know?



Gotta get down to it


Soldiers are gunning us down


Should have been done long ago.

What if you knew her


And found her dead on the ground


How can you run when you know?



Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

We're finally on our own

This summer I hear the drumming,

Four dead in Ohio

.........

Here's a link to "Woodstock Memories" of a good friend and former teacher.

Snowball Prize and Changing Subjects

What does a person have to "do" to win a Nobel Prize? I didn't realize how many people knew the answer to that question, especially news blog authors and radio sycophants, left and right. The reactions ranged crazy: some with apoplexy and others with those oversize foam hands with the index finger raised on high, waving, "We're number one." A new media obsession begins. Can we live on earth for a couple of weeks without a loss of news composure? Folks I work with are very happy about Norway's decision. Maybe I should be too. I mean, the Pres. is from Chicago. So am I. He taught at University of Chicago. So did I way back when (a neuroanatomy lab). He's terrible at bowling. Me too. People think he's Muslim. Wow. People think I'm Muslim (correctly). He's tall, thin,and really good at basketball and dancing ....

But ... getting to my point: Are we mistranslating the Norwegian word for "distraction" into "prize"? Why is Obama getting so much time-wasting flack for "winning" (actually he was "awarded") the prize? Unlike the sham Olympic choice of Rio over Chicago and Obama's flight to Copenhagen, what did the man do other than have a pulse to get a long distance call from a country with a high suicide rate? What volition was involved on his part to have created so many critics and so much vitriol?

The powers that be in our land are so overwhelmed with partisan politics, it is beyond commentary. And they're rewarded with puerile news judgment and silly globs of space. Meanwhile, the problems that can use serious adult attention get worse and those who profit from them are all too pleased, along with the devil, with the distractions.

Frank Rich, of the NYT, to his credit, pounds the hawks who "now" clamor to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, which in real terms is infinitely more important to debate than the Nobel Prize. It is about the Afghan "war" that people should censure Obama, who should have included Afghanistan in his anti-war stance. Too bad he didn't. What a major lapse in judgment.

Violence in Chicago: What Does It Mean?

Violent deaths are a scourge in Chicago among school-age children, especially on the South Side, where I had once lived in my childhood (Walcott Avenue to be exact). It’s become a statistic to keep track of: the number of school-age children who are murdered, sometimes on school grounds, during a school year, which means the academic year is properly hyphenated. The punctuation gives bone to the unholy facts, but it also creates another set of suburban record-keeping to conjure with. In other words, it makes the reality more abstract, a bit easier to study as citizens.

This is an excerpt of what I've written on violence among school-age kids in Chicago, which has attracted national attention. It's published now in Religion Dispatches, in case you're interested. Many thanks.

Expanded Comment about Polanski and Burqa

I don't know if it's new and improved or simply longer, but I have a fuller comment about the Polanski flap and the burqa. It's an indictment of a widening culture of duplicity that knows no borders. If you're interested, you may go here to the Altmuslim site. Otherwise, thanks for dropping by just the same.

Gaga for Al-Jazeera

Two recent articles, one in The Atlantic Monthly and the other in The Walrus, have said some nice things about Al-Jazeera. That's not really new, nor are the bad things said about Al-Jazeera. But the "gaga" I refer to (what's the etymology of "gaga" anyway?) is about the notion that Al-Jazeera is making U.S. journalism appear overly parochial, if not silly.

Before he contradicts himself at the end of his Atlantic article "Why I love Al Jazeera," well-known journalist Robert Kaplan--who has covered the Middle East for about as long as Larry King has been alive (well almost)--has this to say:

The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it.... The fact that Doha, Qatar’s capital, is not the headquarters of a great power liberates Al Jazeera to focus equally on the four corners of the Earth rather than on just the flash points of any imperial or post-imperial interest. Outlets such as CNN and the BBC don’t cover foreign news so much as they cover the foreign extensions of Washington’s or London’s collective obsessions. And Al Jazeera, rather than spotlighting people who are loaded with credentials but often have little to say, has the knack of getting people on air who have interesting things to say, like the brilliant, no-name Russian analyst I heard explaining why both Russia and China need the current North Korean regime because it provides a buffer state against free and democratic South Korea.

Al Jazeera is also endearing because it exudes hustle. It constantly gets scoops. It has had gritty, hands-on coverage across the greater Middle East, from Gaza to Beirut to Iraq, that other channels haven’t matched.

In The Walrus, a well-known Canadian magazine, Deborah Campbell, in her article "The Most Hated Name in News," wonders out loud if Al-Jazeera English, now with Tony Burman, formerly of the CBC, at the helm, can cure "what ails North American journalism." It's actually a bold curiosity. She visits Al-Jazeera English (AJE) and observes

"a classic AJE story: a local reporter familiar with the language and culture investigates a place where few foreign correspondents venture to any depth, focusing on the plight of ordinary people and putting the story into context for a global audience. This kind of intrepid field reporting is how Burman made his mark as a producer for Canada’s public broadcaster in the ’80s and early ’90s, when he covered conflict in South America, civil war in Sudan, Mandela’s release from prison in South Africa, and the famine in Ethiopia. His crew famously broke that last story for North American viewers, in the process discovering three-year-old Birhan Woldu, who became the face of international relief efforts like Live Aid.

The author meanders up and down, left and right with AJE and Tony. Both of these articles are good to look at if you're interested in the news. Tomorrow, inshaAllah, I'll be visiting AJE and Tony Burman with our students. It should be interesting.

Polanski and the Burqa

Most of you may know that Swiss law enforcement authorities recently arrested Oscar-winning film director Roman Polanski for an outstanding U.S. arrest warrant. Apparently Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty more than 30 years ago for having illicit sex with a 13-year-old girl, which is considered rape. He was offered a plea agreement, according to press accounts, but the judge reportedly reneged after agreeing, and Polanski was looking at serious jail time. So the director, in good movie drama, fled the country and has lived in France since then and has been a frequent visitor to many European countries. According to a NYT op-ed piece by a Polanski friend, Polanski dined with three French presidents and has lived a life unmolested by French political and law enforcement officials for decades. According to a Slate "Explainer" article, France and the United States have an extradition agreement in which both countries must agree about extraditing fugitives. The Americans wanted Polanski, but the French dissented, hence the man's freedom in France.

Now I will make no judgments about this case. But here's what comes to mind: the French, including the nation's current president, have no problem granting freedom and privilege to a man who "drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl in the home of actor Jack Nicholson" (says Slate), yet the president of the country may declare, with little public dissent, that a woman who wears a burqa is not welcome in France because the burqa is a symbol of a woman's repression. So just to be clear, rape of a girl, then, has no negative symbolism? And if there is such symbolism, then its life expectancy is rather short and, in fact, rushed along nicely by a rapist's association with the arts and that whole aura that the creative types seem to have? Is this what we may infer from this French quandary? To recap: a child rapist is welcome in France to live, work, sign autographs, and dine at high levels, but a woman who dresses like the mother of Jesus (God bless mother and son) will be told that there's no room at the inn.

Ok, now back to important stuff. Gotta look up stuff about the value of eating raw foods, like carrots and almonds.

Interesting Readings

What better way to get back to posting--after a short summer (five weeks) back home in Chicagoland, back to Doha for year two of NU-Q, and a brief Jane Austen tour in England--than to offer links to interesting articles. Religion Dispatches (a daily stop for me) has had a flurry of good essays and reviews, like Haroon's Moghul's review of Zeitoun, a novel by Dave Eggers. Then Jocelyne Cesari writes about "Rarefied Islamophobia: When Americans Duplicate the European Cultural Talk." I recommend the site.

Eid mubarak to one and all. Thank you for visiting. I hope to be posting more regularly. Here are a few photos from a couple of our stops in the UK (my first trip there), the estates where they filmed the two versions Pride and Prejudice (aka "Pemberley")--my first and last foray into chick lit.

Repression and Literature

James Wood writes a review in The New Yorker of a novel of an Iranian novelist living in the United States. Wood opens his review with a savvy observation about the relationship between restriction and literary creativity:

Sometimes, the soft literary citizens of liberal democracy long for prohibition. Coming up with anything to write about can be difficult when you are allowed to write about anything.... Nothing constrains us. Perhaps we look enviously at those who have the misfortune to live in countries where literature is taken seriously enough to be censored, and writers venerated with imprisonment. What if writing were made a bit more exigent for us? What if we had less of everything? It might make our literary culture more “serious,” certainly more creatively ingenious. Instead of drowning in choice, we would have to be inventive around our thirst. Tyranny is the mother of metaphor, and all that.

I've read similar comments about the state of American literature: suburban, minivan ordinariness. I've heard it also said that in the Western hemisphere the most time-worthy novels come out of Latin America. I'm sure it's not so black and white, but I can see the reality alluded to in this quote above.

The Meaning of the Moonwalk

It's always interesting to see how swift and how far and wide the blow darts of media hype can fly. I first heard of the news of Michael Jackson's collapse on AlJazeera. It was breaking news in Doha and just about every other Arab city that carries the news network. In no time, after it was confirmed that he had died and after Jermaine Jackson made his moving statement, Muslim bloggers and notable figures alike have had something to say about the man, mainly because of his alleged, reported, suggested, rumored, or bona fide conversion to Islam. The Michael Jackson story is, of course, hardly hype alone. The man was big for many reasons that we're all familiar with. And I don't think it's because the cult of celebrity has become the national religion. Michael Jackson actually "said" something about modern life, whether he meant to convey it or not.

Artists, as they say, lose interpretative control over their art. Picasso's paintings, for example, tell of the disconnect and disjointedness of the modern human mind and the life of disproportion and of a severe crisis of emphasis. His depictions of human anatomy, those circus freaks, reveal a diaspora at the level of limbs and body bulges.

Look at Michael’s moonwalk, his most mimicked move. Unintentional or otherwise, it is the postmodern view of progress: the motions of walking forward while actually moving in reverse, a regression marketed as advancement, steps ahead.

It's been widely reported that Michael in recent years has turned his attention to review his spiritual condition. I hope it's true, and if so, I hope it bodes well for him, as his fans emulate his moves of old and as music promoters struggle to save their investments.