Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

Not only because they have actual laws about protecting their independent bookstores, but because when the Minister of Culture admits she hasn't read a book in two years, people are fucking outraged.

Writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, who is on the jury for France’s prestigious Goncourt literature prize, told France Inter radio that Pellerin’s lack of knowledge was “shameful”.

“It’s very sad,” he said. “It is a culture minister's political duty to delve into literature. It is not possible that she hasn’t read a single Modiano novel. It is lamentable, but then we live in an era when culture is not taken seriously at all.” ...

“If you can be a culture minister without reading books, what we are reduced to [culturally] are technicalities and budgets,” he wrote. “Nothing will uplift us, the soul is an illusion and all the great works are reduced to less than the minutes of a cabinet meeting.”

I'm trying to imagine an American equivalent, but all I've got is our intermittent arguments about the "appropriateness" of adults reading YA. Pfft.

Just got back from seeing Monuments Men and still processing my feels. I haven't read the book but have read articles on the topic over the years, so I'd really need to check to see how much of the film was given the "Hollywood narrative" over the facts. The question asked in the film frequently, "Is art worth lives" is a great one, and of course the film answers "Obviously." I start here because when I worked with rare books my boss told me on the first day that my life and those of my coworkers was worth more than the materials we worked with, and to be mindful of that if it ever came to it. It didn't, but it is the question you have to ask yourself: What is life balanced with history?

To be fair, Clooney does his damnedest to try to show the value of art in wartime. It's a WW2 movie, based on real events, so we know how things come out from 1943-45. (Note: It is a WW2 film, but a fairly clean one. When the characters arrive on Normandy Beach after the invasion the sand is rather spotless. I am given to understand that, historically speaking, that wasn't the case. But I guess they needed that PG-13 rating.) Glancing references are made to the Holocaust with the expectation that the audience knows enough to fill in what the characters don't know. For instance, a minor character is a German-born Jewish American soldier who mentions that growing up he wasn't allowed into a museum to see Rembrandt's self-portrait. He later mentions that his grandfather was sent to Dachau, and Clooney's character comfortingly says, "Hopefully you'll see him again soon." Which of course--yeah. Dramatic irony, this is not the best way to use it? Later Damon's character finds a portrait that he takes back to the empty apartment where it had belonged; Cate Blanchett tells him, "You know they are not coming back? They are all gone," and he replies, "My job is to return art. This is where I can start." This is a bittersweet scene, and one of the more perfect ones of the film.

The seven Monuments Men aren't traditional soldiers in the narrative; they are all art curators, professors, and architects who signed on to the job to save art but were kept out of the war because of age and health. There is a brief training scene for some of them for humorous purposes which--I felt uncomfortable about. And a couple of the characters do very stupid--if human--things that get them into trouble later on, but it was like, "Have you NO common sense at all?!" I'd be curious to see if this was part of the real story or just the adaptation.

All the principals were great of course, though they under-used Cate Blanchette I think. John Goodman's character was very hammy. Bill Murray had some really great moments, esp serious ones. Seeing Matt Damon with gray in his hair makes me inexplicably sad, though; I guess he's just always going to be the beautiful boy from Dogma to me.

I wish they had taken a little more trouble at the end to tie the film in with contemporary efforts. All they needed was a few sentences at the end, come on. Instead we have a series of archival photos of the real men with the real art to close the narrative, as it to say, "Good job, team." The Monuments Men were a specific group in WW2, yes, but--look at the work of the modern curators in Iraq to save their historical artifacts and art from American soldiers, look at the Arab Spring in Egypt where citizens were camped out to protect their museums. Saving art and culture isn't an American occupation, it is a world occupation that continues today.

Just in time for Christmas! Spiegal Online discusses Unicef's photo of the year, which, in case you haven't seen it yet, is the wedding portrait of a forty year old Afghani man and his eleven year old bride.

Our eyes behold an abomination. Our eyes have learned to see the world from the perspective of a slowly acquired sense for humanity. And although more and more voices tell us that we -- the former colonialists and imperialists -- have lost the right to judge other cultures, we know just as well as this girl that this marriage is wrong..

I think cultural relativism is an interesting subject. I'm one of those people who has what I call Captain Kirk morality: I'm accepting of other people until I see their actions hurting others, in which case I'm ready to photon torpedo some asses.

In fairness, I don't think I've ever had a conversation where relativism wasn't easily rebutted. All one generally has to do is bring up FGM or black tire executions.

Introducing Le Book.

Makes me remember all those times I had to explain Word and Email to people...At least I didn't have to explain "the book."