Covers

July 13, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

In the arts, when one work resembles another, it’s not always clear whether the similarity is coincidence, influence, homage, or just a plain ripoff.

This book cover for Lolita appears in a BuzzFeed piece on books that are “harmless. Until a friend or loved one tells you that one of them is their favorite.”  A FB friend of mine thought the cover was brilliant.  And it is.

But I couldn’t help thinking of that other meaning of “cover” – the one in music, as in  “Madonna’s cover of Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way.’” The Lolita cover reminded me of a black-and-white photo by Ralph Gibson, a photographer known for his minimalist style as well has his nude and erotic photography.

I’m fairly sure that the Gibson photo predates the Lolita cover by decades.  I have no idea whether the book designer had ever seen the Gibson photo.  But even if he or she actually had seen it, and even if the Lolita cover was deliberate imitation, there’s no way for the designer to credit Gibson.  Works of art do not include footnoted references.

(The problem of imitation/influence/plagiarism in the arts was the topic of one of the first posts on this blog.  That one (here) was about magicians.  This one and this one were about fiction.)

Spoiling the Party

July 10, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

The World Meteorological Association included this graph in its report on Global Warming.  Using decades shows the general trend more clearly than would a graph showing year-to-year variation.*

Needless to say, those who scoff at the idea of climate change added their discordant notes at sites like WaPo’s Wonkblog, which is where I found this graph.

Dan Savage – not a climate scientist – in a recent podcast talks of listening to a “This American Life” episode where state climatologists in conservative states say they are afraid to even use words like warming or climate change because the local ranchers and farmers, who just do not want to hear that idea, might force them out of their jobs. It’s happened. This reaction reminds Savage of the AIDS denial by some gays thirty years ago. 

Standing around gay bars in Chicago, in New York, in 1983, 1984 and listening to gay men who were in complete denial about the fact that AIDS was a sexually transmited infection.  They refused to believe it.

The people whose lives are the most likely to be ravaged are the loudest voices in the chorus of denial. 

Of course, the farmers and ranchers are not alone. Big Energy has also worked hard to push the idea that nothing’s happening.  AIDS denial and climate-change denial are examples of “motivated reasoning,” and the motivation in both cases is the same: if the science is correct, we’ll have to stop partying. 

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* The lack of a 0-point on the Y-axis suggests that this is a sort of “gee whiz” graph, rigged to make small differences appear large.  But with global temperatures a change of one degree Celsius is a big deal. 

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

July 9, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

In 2010, the Pittsburgh Pirates won 57 games and lost 105. That .352 was the worst in major league baseball.  As we speak, they are at .602.  But for last night’s 1-0 loss to Oakland, they would be tied with St. Louis for the best record in baseball. 

What caused the turnaround?  Socialism and planning. 

The socialism part is revenue-sharing. Teams that make a lot of money must put some their profits into a pool for the less wealthy teams.  From each according to his ability to pay and all that.  The idea is that small-market teams can use the money for larger salaries to attract better players.

The NFL’s version of revenue-sharing shares a great deal of the wealth, which is why a “dynasty” in football rarely lasts more than a couple of years.  It’s also the reason that a huge media market, Los Angeles, has not had an NFL team for nearly two decades. 

In baseball, revenue sharing is less extensive, hence the long-term domination of big-market, wealthy teams like the Yankees.  Still, some of the TV money gets distributed to the poorer teams. But according to leaked documents in 2010, it looked as if the owners of some small-market teams (notably two Florida teams, the Rays and the Marlins) were paying the money to themselves, not to their players.

The Pirates too came under suspicion since they kept to their tight-fisted payroll.  But in fact, the Pirates were using the money for development – scouting young players, signing them, and giving them a couple of years in the minor leagues. 

The result is a first-rate pitching staff (their closer, Jason Grilli, may be the next Mariano Rivera), and some pretty good hitting.  All this on a payroll that’s less than one-third of what the Yankees are paying for their currently fourth-place General Hospital team. 

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Big hat tip to Alan Barra at The Atlantic.  My Pittsburgh connections, who blame owner Robert Nutting for the Pirates’ dismal record these past few years, claim that Barra’s article is “the Nutting PR machine at work” and that we should wait to see what changes the Pirates (and the Cards and Reds) make to their roster in the second half of the season.

Pleasure - Danger or Distinction?

July 7, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

This 1960s poster (“L’Art de Boire” by Martin) in a neighborhood French restaurant reminded me again of the different ways of thinking about pleasure. 

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

In puritanical cultures, pleasure is a temptation to be resisted. In both the religious version, where pleasure leads to sin, and the secular version, pleasure is dangerous because it means excess and a loss of control. What is sin, after all, but too much of a good thing? The puritan approach to pleasure assumes that even one taste can crack the rigid structure of control.  If you don’t have total control, you have total lack of control. 

The hard-boiled detective story provides a classic example.  Any sex in these stories is always dangerous, usually with temptress trying to seduce the private eye away from his pursuit of justice, or worse, luring him into the hands of the bad guys, who beat him up, threaten him, or try to kill him.  Alcohol too sabotages the hero’s self-control, and he often winds up drinking too much since he’s drinking for all the wrong reasons. 

American comedies, too, may revolve around a similar theme of pleasure as an occasion for guilt and repentance (my earlier post on guilty pleasures in Judd Apatow films is here).  These films are not too far from the lite beer commercials, where pretty girls and alcohol, like the temptations of Circe, turn men into oafish creatures of swine-like mentality.*  The main difference from the noir take on this is that the audience is supposed to view this loss of control with good-natured affection.

The French, as illustrated in the poster, have a different message about pleasure. It is to be sought, not avoided. But it is not something you get just by letting your guard down or jettisoning your inhibitions. You must learn pleasure. You don’t just drink. You mindfully follow a sequence of steps – sniff the cork, note the color, inhale the aroma, taste the wine – each designed to maximize pleasure from the senses. Drinking is not an abandonment to desire, it is an art. The goal is not satiation but, as the last frame of the poster says, appreciation.

Of course, that idea of pleasure goes against the egalitarian American grain, for it implies that some pleasures are of a higher order than others, requiring greater sophistication, discernment, and distinction. 

The 1987 movie “Babette’s Feast,” set in a Danish coastal town in the 1870s,  is entirely about the contrast of these two views of pleasure. Babette, fleeing the bloody aftermath of the Paris Commune, arrives in town and finds work as a housekeeper for two elderly sisters who are members of an austere Christian sect.

The dinner of the title is the film’s climax – a sensuous multi-course meal of the finest French dishes and wines that Babette prepares for the dour sisters and others.

Hesitantly and with suspicion, they eat and drink and finally come to experience what they had been so leery of and had deliberately lived without. Nor, as the sherry and champagne and burgundy and brandy are drunk, do they fall into drunkenness or debauchery, just pleasure. 

The entire film is available on YouTube.  It’s worth watching.

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* In a TV show of some years ago, perhaps on “My So-Called Life,” a high school class is discussing the Circe episode in The Odyssey.  “Turning men into pigs,” says one girl dismissively, “Some magic.”