Showing posts with label drawings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drawings. Show all posts

Monday, May 2, 2011

Eating misery

Do you believe that animals should be protected from abuse?

If you answer yes, then you should not be eating meat, according to Bruce Friedrich, an animal-rights activist who participated in a debate last Monday night at MIT titled "Is Eating Meat Ethical?"

Friedrich, who is PETA's vice president for policy and government affairs, painted a grim view of farm animals' lives. Just consider what happens to chickens:
  • The tips of their sensitive beaks are cut off, without the benefit of painkillers.

  • Some chickens are crammed into cages so small, they are never able to extend their wings.

  • Because modern farming techniques promote unnatural growth, chickens' upper bodies grow to sizes so large that they cripple under their own weight.
  • When being transported to slaughterhouses, chickens are tossed callously into crates like bags of trash, and many die on the journey.

  • At slaughter time, chickens are slammed into metal shackles, hung upside down by their delicate legs, and spun on a gruesome carousel so that their throats may be slit, often while they are still conscious.
"Alice Walker calls eating chicken eating misery, because that's what their lives are — unmitigated misery," said Friedrich, referring to the acclaimed author and animal-rights champion.

"If you wouldn't personally split animals' throats open, don't pay other people to do it for you."

Rainforest crimes
Friedrich and his debate opponent, MIT sophomore Shireen Rudina, spoke before a few hundred people at the Maclaurin Buildings, the university's signature domed building on the Charles River.

The event began with Friedrich presenting his primary argument, which was essentially that people who claim to care about the environment and animal welfare have an ethical obligation to abstain from eating meat.

The environmental argument is not insignificant. In essence, eating meat is inefficient — Friedrich cited statistics about how the production of one calorie of meat requires far more land, water and fossil fuels than does one calorie of vegetables or vegan food. This is partly because the number of calories that an animal consumes so that it can grow up and be slaughtered is far greater than the number of calories a person can gain by eating the animal.

"It takes 20 calories into a chicken to get one calorie back out in the form of that animal's flesh," Friedrich said. "How many people here would walk to your refrigerator, take out 19 plates of pasta, dump them in the trash, and eat one plate of pasta? Nobody. Of course not. It would be unethical. And yet that's the relationship we enter into every time we choose to eat meat."

To illustrate this point, Friedrich spoke about damage that has been inflicted on the Amazon rainforest by a conglomerate that provides animal feed to Kentucky Fried Chicken. He showed a photo of a gigantic banner unfurled across the rainforest, bearing a less-than-complimentary message about the conscience-free fast-food giant.

"As you can see, it says 'KFC — Amazon criminal,' because the rainforest is being chopped down to grow soy to feed to farm animals," Friedrich said. "If we ate the soy directly, we wouldn't have to be chopping down the rainforest. Of the 220 million metric tons of soy that were grown in 2008, 98 percent of it was fed to chickens and pigs and other farm animals.

"If we care about the environment, the only ethical diet is a vegetarian one."

The ethics of eating someone else
Is it really comfortable to think about eating someone else? Someone like you?

Showing a slide of his cat, Gracie, Friedrich asked, "If you were on a desert island and you could eat Gracie or you could eat a peanut butter sandwich, who would eat Gracie?"

Friedrich won a few laughs when he joked that at some of these college talks, people jokingly yell "Gracie!" But then he got serious again.

"No, of course not, because we recognize that Gracie is someone, not something," he said. "She is an individual, and yet what animal behaviorists tell us is that pigs and chickens do better on cognition tests than dogs or cats. They are also interesting individuals. There are an array of capacities, cognitive capacities, that chickens and pigs have that dogs and cats don't have."

Still, Friedrich said that the issue is not just the intelligence of animals, nor their physical similarities to humans.

"It's not just that these species are made of flesh and blood and bone, just like we are," Friedrich said. "It is also, as Darwin said, that other animals, like humans, they manifestly feel pleasure and pain. They feel happiness. They feel misery. Or as Richard Dawkins puts it, these are our evolutionary cousins. All of the emotions that we have, all of the psychological capacities that we have, they have. They may not have them to the degree that we gave them, but they have them. Evolution worked on them like it worked on us.

"If we are eating meat, we are eating someone, and it's someone who is more like us than is unlike us."

If that isn't sobering enough, Friedrich also reminded listeners of the brutality that farm animals suffer throughout their lives.

"Unfortunately," he said, "it's not just that you are eating a corpse, it's not just that you are eating someone, but it's that you are eating someone who was gratuitously abused for you."

Animals not smart enough for consideration?
Rudina, however, said that Friedrich had it all wrong.

Arguing on behalf of the MIT debate team, Rudina seemed to suggest that Friedrich didn't understand what is meant by "ethics," and she specifically rejected the idea that the environment or animal welfare can be considered ethical imperatives.

"Bruce doesn't provide you a clear ethical framework for what is ethical or not ethical," she said. "Rather, Bruce says, 'these things are probably good things; that means they're ethical.' That is not at all what 'ethics' means."

Further, if environmental concerns and living efficiently were ethical considerations, she said, then people could be considered unethical for driving a car, or for having too many pairs of shoes when in fact they only need one, or for spending $40,000 on tuition at MIT.

Rather, Rudina defined an unethical action as one that harms a being who has moral consideration — a designation, she said, that does not include animals. She also noted that the "only secular way" to define ethics is as a set of agreements amongst people regarding how to behave toward one another, and that it is simply not possible to have an interspecies code of conduct.

Rudina added that she didn't especially like the abusive practices against chickens that Friedrich revealed when he played an excerpt of a video called "Meet Your Meat." Still, she said that a person who eats meat is not responsible for abuse the animal might have suffered en route to the dining-room table, especially if the meat-eater thinks the meat might have come from a humane food producer.

"I don't think that what he showed you should happen, but I don't think it is an ethical dilemma. I don't think animals owe us anything, and I don't think we don't owe animals anything," she said. It's nice if animals can be treated well, but "we don't owe animals any kind of ethical considerations or rights in the same way that we owe human beings."

One reason for this, she said, is that, animal thinking is unequal to human thought, focused as it is on survival and satisfying "lower-order" needs: "Humans have rationality and cognitive capacity that animals do not," she said. "We have aspirations. We have the ability to sit in this room and talk about things like ethics. We have this greater consciousness, which I don't think animals have at all. In order to give a being moral consideration, they have to be able to consider morality themselves or be able to make ethical judgments."

Referring to the fact that animal testing can help produce life-saving medicine, Rudina added that even if one cares about animal interests, human interests are always more important.

"You have to weigh their considerations against human considerations," she said.

A small good versus a big bad
Not having studied ethics any time recently, I actually found Rudina's presentation interesting. One thing I realized is that, all these years after taking Intro to Philosophy, I no longer have a sophisticated understanding of the term "ethics" — certainly I couldn't claim to know the definition that "most philosophers" agree with, as Rudina did. Still, I feel strongly that harming animals is morally wrong, and nothing in her argument persuaded me otherwise.

Friedrich wasn't persuaded either — and he insisted in a rebuttal that meat-eating is indeed unethical.

He began by taking issue with Rudina's comments about animal intelligence, and her suggestion that animals practice exclusively lower-order thinking.

"The first thing to say to that is that it's categorically untrue," Friedrich said. "There aren't many animal behaviorists who believe that that's true. We now know that, to quote Discovery magazine, chickens do not just live in the present but can anticipate the future and demonstrate self-control, something previously attributed only to humans and other primates. The Telegraph tells us that pigs have proven that they are at least as clever as chimpanzees at deceiving others of their own species, and making decisions on the basis of who is and is not present. And it just goes on and on.

"But the second thing to say about that is, so what? Even if they didn't have higher-order thinking, they would still be made of the same stuff that we are. They would still have the same physiological response to pain that we have. And we would all still owe them a duty of mercy and compassion."

Friedrich added that the human interest in being able to eat meat is a relatively trivial one.

"Even if you are going to grant her paradigm that you have to weigh animal and human interests and that human interests come first," he said, "I would contend — strenuously — that the 15 minutes of pleasure or less that you're going to get from that taste of animal flesh does not outweigh your ethical obligation to not cause animals to suffer needlessly. The good of eating meat I don't think comes anywhere near the bad of eating meat."

As for Rudina's assertion that the person who orders meat isn't responsible for what happened to the animal, Friedrich said that this makes as much sense as saying the person who takes out a hit is not responsible for the murder. He added that there are no humane for-profit farms.

"Every single farm in this country that is commercial, all of those farms are doing things to animals would warrant felony cruelty-to-animals charges were dogs and cats similarly abused," he said.

"Make no mistake about it. If you eat meat, you are saying 'Yes, this is OK with me.' You are paying for these abusive practices. Things like castrating pigs without pain relief. Imagine doing that to a dog or a cat — you'd go to jail. Yet even the so-called most humane farms in the country castrate all of their male pigs without pain relief. They castrate the male cows without pain relief. They chop the beaks off of the chickens without pain relief, which causes chronic pain and kills some of the animals.

"How many people here would want to spend an afternoon slicing chickens' throats open on a humane farm? You know, most people don't want to watch it, we don't to think about it, we don't want to do it — so where is the ethical integrity in paying other people to abuse animals in these ways so we don't have to?"

Related to this point, someone in the audience pointed out that bears, like humans, are omnivores. He asked Friedrich, "Should we find bears as ethically responsible as us, and if not what's the difference?"

Friedrich responded that this particular question is one he fields rather frequently. He noted that "other versions of the question are, 'We're part of the circle of life,' and 'Animals eat one another — why shouldn't we eat them?'"

"My argument is that we have a capacity to make ethical choices," in a way that animals don't, Friedrich said. "Animals may procreate by rape, but we don't generally say, 'Well, animals do it, why shouldn't we?' Animals will fight territorial battles to the death. We don't say, 'Well you know, I like your car and I'm bigger than you are. ...' "

When people laughed, Friedrich said: "We laugh, but this is what ethics boils down to in a lot of cases. And I think we should be asking hard ethical questions about how many pairs of shoes we wear. I think we should be asking what our MIT education is going toward and how much money we're putting into it and what are we going to do with it to try to make the world a kinder place. These are precisely the sorts of hard questions that we should be asking, but I don't think the vegetarian question is an especially hard case. Causing animals to suffer unnecessarily is wrong."

Don't live an unexamined life
I grew up eating meat, and I did it until fairly recently, so I liked the part of the event when Friedrich spoke about his own pre-vegetarian years.

Friedrich said that in the '80s, as a high-school athlete in Norman, Oklahoma, he thought that Dairy Queen blizzards and Big Macs were food groups.

"The first time someone told me he didn't eat meat, I thought there was something medically wrong with him," Friedrich said. "He said I haven't eaten meat in years. I looked at him like he hadn't breathed oxygen in years. It was just something I wasn't examining in my life. I wasn't thinking about where meat comes from and, once I started thinking about it, I adopted a vegan diet."

Quoting Socrates' maxim that the "unexamined life is not worth living," Friedrich suggested that people have a responsibility to think about the things that they do, including eating, and all of their moral consequences. In explaining this, Friedrich, who before joining PETA ran a homeless shelter and soup kitchen, spoke at length about compassion.

Interestingly, one of Rudina's recurring responses to this was that compassion has nothing to do with ethics. Parts of what she said seemed fair, but other parts struck me as dead wrong, most notably her very strange identification of compassion as a religious quality.

"It would be nice if we were compassionate, right? That may be a religious value," she said. "I don't think it is an ethical, secular value, which we are trying to talk about in this debate."

Rudina also suggested that the real reason for animal-cruelty laws is to protect human interests: "I think there are two reasons" for these laws, she said. "I think first, because watching animals getting beaten up or whatever makes people feel unhappy. It's kind of a selfish reason actually. Second, animal cruelty often translates into human violence, and I think that's something we actually do value."

As an atheist who happens to be compassionate, I was mystified by the suggestion that compassion is a religious trait. As for animal-cruelty laws, Rudina could be correct that these laws are an extension of human societies trying to protect their own comfort levels. If that is case, though, clearly more people should become uncomfortable about what happen on farms and in slaughterhouses. Maybe then we would have better laws — ones that prevent the horrors that take place every day in the name of steak, bacon, and Chicken McNuggets. (And if you think the word "horror" is too strong, I dare you to watch this video of bloody slaughterhouse footage narrated by Paul McCartney.)

Friedrich might have played into Rudina's hands a bit when he mentioned the title of a book that he finds compelling — "Christianity and the Rights of Animals." Still, I believed him when he said that the author's central message is for people of "any religion or no religion."

The book, he said, challenges people to consider the morality of how they eat.

"What the author argues is that, every time we sit down to eat, we make a decision about who we are in the world," Friedrich said. "Do we want to choose mercy, or do we want to choose misery? Do we want to choose compassion, or do we want to choose cruelty? Do we want to cause someone to suffer and die? Or do we want to make a vegan choice that does not cause someone that kind of suffering? ... I think it's clear that the ethical choice is against the meat industry."

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Partially finished drawings and other works in progress

It has been several months since I updated this blog, so I thought I should post something explaining why.

I have been busy with the following:
  • Going to Grand Cayman and trying to organize my photos from the trip. (I went to Cayman instead of following through with my planned trip to St. Lucia -- a hurricane wrecked that idea.)
  • Planning another trip to St. Lucia, which hopefully will really happen this time!
  • Writing an essay and completing a series of portraits for use in the Jonestown Report, a newsletter published by the Jonestown Institute, which is part of San Diego State University.
  • Working on a couple of drawings, including one that I started in December and have been tending to quite consistently since then. Even though it's only about 3 by 5 inches, it's taking longer than anything else I have done in recent memory.
  • Trying to plan a trip to South America for late this year or next year.
  • Doing the Christmas thing and visiting my family in the Midwest.
  • Buying a new laptop — I got a good deal at the Dell outlet store, and finally I can Skype.
  • Catching up on old episodes of "Will and Grace."
  • Wondering why Peter didn't know Fauxlivia was a fake.
  • Sampling new cocktails. I decided the Ward 8 looks pretty, but I'm just not a whiskey drinker.
  • Trying to learn C#.
  • Attempting to come up with witty retorts to people who say I never update this blog!

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Overheard: 'I breathe fire'

Occasionally when walking through the city, I like to eavesdrop on strangers. I'm really not that nosy, I just like to get a feel for the flavor of different neighborhoods and different people. For a while now, I've wanted to do sketches inspired by these comments — and finally I've gotten started.

Here's how my inaugural "overheard" sketch was inspired: Last Wednesday night, I was walking to Brownstone to meet co-workers for drinks. I was running a little late, but I still paused when I heard a guy on the phone saying, "God knows, I have days like that, where I just breathe fire all over everybody in every direction."

I loved this guy's imagery, so I scribbled down the comment on a receipt, and later I penned my interpretation.

I considered adding some color to this one, but I couldn't decide, so I just decided to post it as is. At some point, I may take another pass at it with my Prismacolors.

Friday, July 2, 2010

'Life, Interrupted'

A few days before the Star Trek convention that I recently attended, I decided I should sketch something for Joel Gretsch to sign. A few weeks ago, I started watching "The 4400," so I sketched the scene at the end of an episode called "Life, Interrupted," which features a fateful encounter between Gretsch's and Karina Lombard's characters.

The drawing was only half-finished when I had Gretsch sign it, but he seemed to like where it was going. He also mentioned that this episode is his favorite of "The 4400."

At that time, I had sketched (in ink) only the torsos of the two characters. Later I decided that, for consistency with some other drawings that I will display alongside this one, the figures should extend all the way to the border of the paper. It was tricky trying to make that happen when the tops of the figures were already committed to ink, but I went ahead with it (that's the finished version above). When I was done, I was a little uncomfortable with the proportions on his character, and I sort of wished that I had stayed focused just on their torsos (like the cropped version below). I also think that in the cropped version, it's more clear that he is a few paces behind her. However, in the full finished version I do like the way the belt on her trenchcoat came out.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Touchups

I recently revisited the drawings I described in another recent post. I decided my first panel needed to be a bit darker, in order to match the second panel better. So I did some additional shading of the background.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Countdown to Tulsa

At the end of the month, I am meeting my brother and my nephews so that we can all go to a Star Trek convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I have been informed that it's a good idea to bring something for the stars to sign, so I have been working on a comic-book style representation of one of my favorite episodes of "Star Trek: Voyager."

This is only one of several items I wanted to do in time for the convention. Sadly, not only is this the only one I have started, but I'm not even close to finishing it. I just have these two panels done. Red alert!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The girl in the ruffled shirt

Recently I became interested in learning more about Jonestown. Rather randomly, at the same time, I was trying to get better at drawing people. So in retrospect it seems only natural that I should have begun a series of portraits of Jonestown victims.

My first was of Deanna Wilkinson, a Peoples Temple member who sang for the rest of the group on the evening of Nov. 17, 1978, the eve of the mass murder-suicides. When I watched the NBC footage of that evening, her vibrant performance really stood out, and I knew right away that I wanted to draw her.

On a second watching of that same footage, I noticed a girl with a brilliant smile. She's shown clapping during Rep. Leo Ryan's remarks. She looks young and perhaps a bit lost — maybe not sure why she's there. She wears a ruffled shirt, and her hair is an enormous bun on the nape of her neck. As with the singer, I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to draw her.

After doing a bit of research, I think that I may have figured out who she was — I am pretty sure she is Judy Houston, a girl who was raised in the church, along with her sister Patricia.
Judy was the second daughter of Bob and Phyllis Houston, both members of Peoples Temple. After Judy's father died, the church sent Judy and Patricia to Jonestown. They entered the settlement in August 1977.

According to the web site Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, Judy lived in Cottage 17, while her sister lived in Cottage 20. Judy's mother stayed behind in California.

Meanwhile, Judy's grandparents and her stepmother, former church member Joyce Shaw Houston, became part of a coalition that raised questions about the church. According to the book "Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People," Judy's grandparents' concern caught the interest of Congressman Leo Ryan — and was one of the factors that prompted his visit to Guyana. Judy's grandmother, Nadyne, and her aunt, Carol Houston Boyd, traveled with the congressman's party to the region, though of the two only Carol was able to enter Jonestown and visit with Judy.

Judy was 14 when she died. According to "Raven," she wanted to be a veterinarian.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

I love prawns

On Thursday night, I came home intending to start work on a birthday card for a friend, but I watched TV instead. On Friday, I had the same intentions, but went to my gym instead, then spent some time convincing myself there is nothing wrong with giving people store-bought cards.

My friend's birthday party was today, and I woke up this morning with the deep desire to go ahead and make the card. Given that I was also intent on squeezing in a workout, and given that I take forever to make cards, it felt like quite the rush job, but I think it probably came out OK.

The recipient of the card is someone who loves movies, and the party had a movie theme. One of his favorite movies last year (and mine) was "District 9." We actually saw it together. So it seemed a good subject for a card, which I ended up making in three 3.5-inch panels.

The first panel was a sketch of Christopher Johnson, the alien who is persecuted in the film. He was probably my favorite character from any movie I saw last year.

The second panel depicts Wikus, the bureaucrat who persecutes Christopher and other aliens — or prawns — before coming to his senses and fighting for them. Wikus has a lot of scenes where he looks bewildered and frantic, so I took a stab at one of those. I did this part last, when I was really running late, so I'm afraid Wikus got an especially hasty treatment.

On the third panel, I wrote a caption that wished my friend a better year than Wikus and Christoper Johnson. I connected the panels by making slim rectangular hole punches along the left edges and stringing them together with a light-green satin ribbon.

I guess the card came out well enough given the small amount of time I had. It's just a little frustrating because if I'd started a few days ago, I could have done a better job. It would have been nice to watch the movie again and get inspired, as well as to remind myself more of what the prawns look like. Sadly, this card is also not as elaborate and probably not as good as the card I gave this same friend last year. I hate having a precedent to live up to!

My friend hadn't yet opened the card when I left the party, but he did give away a few small door prizes, and mine was a keychain with a "District 9" prawn on it. I actually really love it! If he is half as happy with the card as I am with the keychain, then everything is good.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Before Six, there was Seven

The first few times I saw "Star Trek: Voyager," one of my impressions was that the beautiful Jeri Ryan was the weak link in the show. My complaints were that she seemed like the token "babe," she looks nothing like a Borg drone, and, while I am no expert on acting, I thought there was something overly stilted in her delivery. I also found it annoying that she pronounces the word "futile" in the American way, so that it rhymes more or less with "poodle" and doesn't sound very threatening.

I've now watched the series in its entirety, and my opinion has changed. I still don't like the way she says
"futile," but Seven is a really interesting character, and Ryan, while probably not the best actress on the show, does a fine and sometimes quite inspired job portraying the rescued drone. This is one of a few pleasant surprises I had while watching the last couple of seasons of "Voyager."

I began watching "Voyager" about two years ago — I never watched it when it was current — and in general it was a great surprise. I liked it almost as well as "The Next Generation," and perhaps would have even liked it better if the latter didn't score so many points for nostalgia. I enjoyed "Voyager" for its premise (of a ship lost in distant space, impossibly far away, trying to get home), for its darkness, and most of all for its characters. Of these, Seven is a standout.

The first time I wrote about "Voyager" on this blog, I had just reached the halfway point of the series, and Seven had just debuted, more or less replacing Kes, the "other" blonde female crew member. Kes (Jennifer Lien) was an Okampan — an alien — but personalitywise she was just as human as anyone else on the show. In fact, she served as a foil to several of the "less" human crew members, especially the Doctor, a hologram, and Tuvok, the Vulcan. Kes was sweet, she spoke in a soothing voice, and she shared a warm rapport with the maternal Captain Janeway.

By contrast, Seven is technically human but, because of her years in the Collective, unsure of what that means. She observes people with a fresh, logical eye, making observations that are sometimes biting and often hilarious. To some in the crew, Seven is an object of fascination and uneasiness. To others, she is a protégé, sometimes an unwilling one. She too has a close relationship with Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), but if Kes was the good daughter, Seven is the difficult, rebellious one, which, let's face it, makes for more interesting developments.

Some of my favorite Seven episodes are
"Someone to Watch Over Me," where the Doctor (Robert Picardo) tries to teach her to go out on a date, and "Child's Play," where she has to say goodbye to one of the children Voyager rescued from the Borg. In both shows, she is weirdly stiff, and yet you can relate to her quite a lot, which is the beauty of the character.

The show, which started out as an ensemble, actually comes to focus on Seven a bit. In some respects this is a downside — I would have liked to have seen more of other good characters, especially Tuvok (Tim Russ) and B'Elanna (Roxann Dawson). In the series' second half, B'Elanna's role is basically reduced to being one half of a rather annoying couple with Tom Paris (Robert Duncan MacNeill), though I did really like the episode where they got engaged ("Drive"), and I thought she was brilliant in the episode where she argues that her unborn baby's Klingon characteristics should be genetically modified before its birth ("Lineage").

The show scores wins other areas as well. For example, I was glad to see that in its second half, the series continues with its attention to visuals — space always looks beautiful from Voyager. On this show, a spatial anomaly isn't just an explanation for a plot twist, it's also something cool to look at. Perhaps this is because "Voyager" was produced in the age of the Hubble.

This respect for imagery carries over into the design of some of the alien worlds that Voyager visits. I especially liked the richly imagined city that was featured in the two-parter "Workforce." In this episode, Janeway, Seven, and others have their memories erased and are made to work in a vast factory, where the walkways look like wrenches.

Sadly, as often happens with long-running TV shows, some of the characters become inconsistent. This is especially true of Janeway. In most episodes, she's as perfect as Jean-Luc Picard, yet the latter half of the series has her occasionally veering off to Planet Inexplicable. In one episode, she recklessly endangers Voyager in order to pursue a rogue Starfleet captain ("Equinox"), and in another she ignores her duties as captain because of her own melancholy ("Night"). A season five episode has her cavalierly describe the Doctor, whose rights as an individual she previously had protected, to a system as insignificant as a replicator ("Latent Image"). In most of these cases, the seeds of Janeway's flaws are realistic, but the show's writers take them so far that they stop being believeable. In some ways, it's refreshing to see a Star Trek show feature a captain who is imperfect, but the approach should have been more measured. It's also slightly annoying that the franchise chose the first female captain to be the first with leadership flaws.

For me, the absolute worst episode in the series has nothing to do with character — it's just really bad. In "Threshold," Tom Paris evolves into a weird being that the Doctor pronounces a highly evolved form that humans will reach in the future (apparently he can either see the future or doesn't know that future evolution occurs based on yet-to-be-determined environmental factors). Janeway herself later evolves to this form, then both she and Tom roll back to a primative step on the evolutionary ladder, becoming lizardlike creatures who mate and have lizard babies before being restored to their properly evolved present-day selves, without the misplacement of a single hair in Janeway's auburn bob.

On the other end of the spectrum, one of my favorite episodes is "The Void," in which Voyager is sucked into a starless pocket of space, where there are no resources of any kind, and no exit — just other captive ships that troll about looking for people to prey upon. Like many of the best episodes, it's both creative and dark, and rather like another series I enjoyed — the reboot of "Battlestar Galactica." That program owes a bit to "Voyager," I think, both thematically and in some of its details, such as the use of hot pseudo-human characters with numbers for names. As I watched these last few "Voyager" installments, I found myself wondering more than once, could there really have been a Six without Seven?

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Searching for the Promised Land

Their hope was fragile but compelling.

The mother and daughter weren't sure what lay ahead. As their plane prepared for its final descent, the daughter looked out the window and reflected on earlier journeys she had heard of. Decades before, her mother and grandmother had fled Nazi Germany, traveling separately and ultimately meeting two very different fates, one tragic. As the daughter pondered this, she hoped that this current journey, this quest for a new life, would be different. She hoped that their choice to travel together would bring good fortune.

But it didn't. Their move to Jonestown, Guyana, ended in fear, pain, and death.

This is part of Deborah Layton's narrative in "Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple." The book describes Layton's seven years as a member of Jim Jones's church.

I decided to read "Seductive Poison" after watching a documentary about Jonestown. The documentary was great, but afterward I still wanted to learn more. What made people join the group and stick with it? What kinds of lives did they live? Would I have joined?

Different survivors would undoubtedly answer such questions in different ways. Layton addresses them in a way I found quite satisfying — but the book deals with more than just Peoples Temple. For one thing, it's a mother-daughter story far more insightful than any I've come across in fiction. If that's not your thing, "Seductive Poison" is also a suspense tale that I imagine would hook any reader, regardless of whether they're particularly interested in Jonestown. A comment from Amy Tan on the back of my paperback copy indicates that she read it in one night. If I didn't have a job, I probably would have, too. Instead I read it in a couple of nights, staying up well past my bedtime each evening and paying the price next morning, when I groggily explained to co-workers that I was reading a book that was a bit too good.

The story begins with Deborah's privileged but troubled childhood, focusing in part on her mother, Lisa, a non-practicing Jew who initially kept their ethnicity secret from Deborah. Likewise, many years passed before Deborah learned of Lisa's mother's suicide in the wake of her escape from Nazi Germany.

Deborah met Jim Jones when she was 17 and joined his church the following year. I probably can't adequately summarize all the reasons she was drawn to it, but it seemed like a mix of things: she was feeling adrift in life, he made her feel special, and once she joined, participation in the group was something she succeeded at. The church became a place where she could accept responsibility and do good works.

Of course, the Temple community was tightly controlled by Jones and reflected his sometimes sadistic and paranoid tendencies. As time passed and Deborah witnessed events that troubled her, she pushed her doubts down. At one point she writes, "My inner voice screamed something at me, but I could not hear it."

Deborah eventually became a high-ranking member of Peoples Temple, and her interactions with Jones are fascinating to read about. She offers a detailed glimpse into the upper workings of the group.

After Lisa also joined the church and the two traveled to Jonestown, Deborah became disillusioned. Instead of finding the Promised Land she'd been told to expect, she found a totalitarian encampment, hidden deep in an inaccessible jungle, where she and her mother had no rights and no reasonable prospects for leaving. Upon their arrival, their passports were confiscated, as was Lisa's pain medication, a treatment for her cancer (it later turned up in Jones's personal stash). Deborah was forced to work long hours in fields, and their lives were so austere, reading about it made me extremely grateful for my ability to make coffee and take hot showers whenever I want. Moreover, like other residents of Jonestown, they were continuously warned that mercenary forces were coming to kill them, and threatened in ways both overt and subtle, all of them chilling.

The story of Deborah's escape is riveting. I won't say more about it except that it reads like a top-notch thriller, complete with one interlude so surreal, it's almost Lynchian, though this story is more disturbing than anything David Lynch has yet dreamt up.

I was really impresssed with Layton's writing, which is spare, eloquent, and effective. Given that the book is only 300 pages long, she clearly pared down her many years of memories into just those necessary to tell the best possible story. Everything she writes feels real and compelling.

Consider her brief reflections on U.S. values. For me, after living through eight years of George W. Bush, I'm not especially taken by patriotic overtures — in the Bush-Cheney era, so many statements of American patriotism seemed manipulative and false. But Deborah Layton's are the real thing:

"Mud splattered my arms and face while I gazed out at the scenery, my prison, and I thought about all the times I'd hoped for my escape. I thought about that evening when I had sat on this same truck. ... jerking and bouncing after a long day in the field, promising myself that if I ever got another chance, if I ever again looked at a sunset from the United States of America, I would always cherish the gift of freedom."

It's worth noting that not all residents of Jonestown share Layton's dismal memories of the place. Some people were happy there. (One example is Laura Johnston Kohl, whose moving account is published on the web site Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple.) If you do additional reading about Jonestown, you'll find that some writers seek to reconcile these differences using a "who was right?" approach. But if you consider that 1,000 people lived there, at varying periods, in varying proximity to the force of Jim Jones's overwhelming presence, it seems believeable that different people had very different experiences, that both types of memories are true and right.

Layton's story is one of my favorites because she tells it so well, and because I can empathize with so much of what she must have felt. The fact that her initial accounts of Jonestown helped spur Congressman Leo Ryan's ill-fated visit to the encampment makes the story historically significant as well, and doubly sad.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

The utopian laundromat

This morning as I was getting ready to go out, I noticed the beeping of the washing machine downstairs. The washer is shared by me and by the married couple who live below me. I shouldn't complain about having to share a washer with just one other apartment, but I still groaned to myself, because usually when I hear that sound it means the washer will be occupied for the rest of the day. And suddenly I remembered a dream I had last night. A dream inspired by a general desire for more convenient laundering for everyone.

I dreamed that I was over at MIT for some reason, at night, when I noticed a neon sign peeking out from behind another building. The sign said "Utopian Laundromat."

I went toward it, abandoning whatever chore had brought me to the school. I was curious. What is a utopian laundromat? It sounds like an oxymoron.

The laundromat was near the student union. It comprised a series of private rooms organized around a large central courtyard. Each room was quite spacious and included a desk, a well-stocked bookcase, a computer, an HDTV, a sofa, a bed, a private bath, and other amenities, including the defining appliances: a washer and dryer. Every room had a glass wall overlooking the courtyard, so I could see most of the occupants. They were studying, socializing, and doing other tasks while their clothes washed and tumbled dry.

I didn't really feel like talking to anyone, but I had to find out more. After I questioned him, a student passing by told me that any of these rooms could be reserved, by an individual or by a small group, for as long a period as was needed.

Later on, I visited one of the rooms and found out more. A student doing his laundry said there were only 10 rooms, but that usually you could get a reservation with no problem — you just had to set it up a couple of weeks in advance. He said that the longest he'd made a reservation for was eight hours. He wasn't sure if you could reserve for a period of days, but it sounded like it was possible.

I concluded that this truly was the most utopian style of laundry facility out there, if you can't do it at home.

I think I dreamt this because I've been reading a lot about Jonestown lately, and the word "utopia" comes up frequently in that context.

Also, a book I read recently mentioned the Jonestown laundry facility, referring to it as the "laundromat," which immediately jumped out at me as a mild copyediting error. The word "Laundromat" is trademarked, and — at least when I was a copy editor — using the term in the generic sense is considered a mistake, one that my dream apparently was guilty of as well.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The oatmeal of my dreams

In my dream, I was at the home of an acquaintance who was making oatmeal. He was combining all sorts of weird ingredients, but the stranger the combinations, the more delicious the concoction became, or so it seemed.

My acquaintance, John, stirred the oatmeal in a big bowl with a wooden spoon. The oatmeal looked light and smooth and creamy, more like a cool chocolate mousse than a hot cereal. John's house was a bit chaotic, with kids running around, the phone ringing, and guests coming and going, but he put the dish together with the grace and confidence of Kim Yu-Na channeling James Bond.

By the time John was finished, I knew I had to have his recipe and I said as much. As he rattled off ingredients and procedures, I tried to write everything down. But each time I went back to check my notes, I realized that I had missed not just a few but many important points, and no amount of checking and rewriting seemed to correct the errors. I began to have the sinking feeling that I was not going to be able to record the recipe, but I also refused to give up.

As my alarm intruded, I began realizing the recipe was just a dream. Yet for several minutes I still believed that, even though it wasn't real, and dubious as some of the ingredients were, the recipe should be tried — that it might be transcendent. As sleep slipped away, I struggled to remember the ingredients.

Today I can recall only two: barbecue sauce and Greek whipped cream. Or not quite enough to make the magic happen.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Rest in peace, Temple members

Years ago I learned that an acquaintance of mine had been involved with burying the victims of the Jonestown tragedy. My acquaintance, whom I'll call Sam, told me that his family's funeral home had publicized a toll-free phone number for friends and relatives to call if they wanted to identify any of the bodies. I can still remember Sam telling me that no one had ever called, that many victims had ended up in a mass grave. Sam, who is black, seemed to think that society in general didn't care about these people because most of them were either black, poor, or both.

I took this story with a grain of salt, thinking that surely there were many people who grieved for the Jonestown victims. Still, the idea that no one ever called that number has always bothered me, as has the idea that the victims were simply dismissed by the world. It made me wonder who they were and what they went through. At the time, I tried reading a book on Jonestown, but the one I chose was too disturbing for me then, so I set the topic aside for a long time.

Recently, I was flipping channels and caught the last 20 minutes of a documentary on the Jonestown. Later I rented a different documentary, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, and after watching it, I read Seductive Poison, a memoir by former Jonestown resident Deborah Layton. Both were excellent. I'm going to devote this post to the documentary, and a future post to the book.

Passionate idealism
If you've never heard of Jonestown, here are the basics: Jonestown was named for the Rev. Jim Jones, who was the leader of a church — or cult — called Peoples Temple. Espousing the causes of racial integration, social justice, and community, Jones led a congregation of 900 people from San Francisco to the wilds of Guyana, on the northern coast of South America, where they said they would build a utopian society, which came to be called Jonestown.

But before too long, questions arose about how people were treated in Jonestown and whether they were truly free to leave. In November 1978, a congressman from California went to visit, along with several journalists — and violence erupted. As Congressman Leo Ryan was trying to leave Guyana with several church members who had pled for his help, Temple gunmen launched an attack that killed Ryan and four others. Later that day, Jones, who had become increasingly paranoid, told his disciples they were in grave danger and ordered them to drink cyanide-laced punch. Those who resisted were forced to drink or injected with cyanide, while armed Temple members kept people from fleeing. A total of 913 people died.

That's a lot of ground to cover in 90 minutes, but that is what this film attempts to do. Actually, it attempts to do even more. The movie, which was directed by Stanley Nelson and released in 2006, begins with Jones's impoverished Indiana childhood, describes the creation of the Temple, its growth in California, and its end in Guyana. Forgoing the use of voiceovers and interviewer questions, the filmmaker relies soley on comments from well-chosen sources — including many former Temple members — and historical footage.

What I liked about the film was the very real face it puts on the group. Especially compelling are former members who describe the ideals that brought them into the fold, mainly Jones's causes of racial integration and equality.

"I was impressed by how it was such an interracial group, and people were really happy," says Bryan Kravitz in the film. He explains that he first saw Jones speak during a Temple visit to Philadelphia. "I heard Jim Jones talking about equality among the races. ... The good works that they were doing. Things that I wanted to get involved with but didn't even know where to make an entrée. And all of a sudden, the answer was there."

Some of those who went to Jonestown speak of the joy they felt in being able to live simply and self-
sufficiently, producing all their own food and essentially being shareholders in a community that they built themselves. As part of the Jonestown footage, the film shows photographs of people tending crops, kids playing basketball, and mothers holding children.

"It was just an exciting time," said former Temple member Laura Johnston Kohl. "Everything was new and unique and just fun, you know? We just had fun with it as it grew. I just loved that we created what we ate, that we did all these jobs."

But there was a dark side. Many people, members from varying stages in the Temple's 20+-year life, speak of discovering Jones's deceit, his sadistic tendencies, and his gestapo-style intimidation of those who might want to defect from the group. These troublesome facts about Jones seemed to become increasingly evident over the years, apparently reaching fever pitch in Guyana.

For many, however, the problems were secondary to the central mission of the group. Many in the film speak of how and why they came to accept the abuses. "It's like a child in a dysfunctional family," said former member Jordan Vilchez. "On a certain level, it's normal."

Added former member Hue Fortson Jr.: "We felt like we had gotten involved and gotten in so deep that there was actually no way out."

'She died in my arms'
The film captures — in chilling detail — the strange events of Nov. 17 and Nov. 18, 1978.

The sequence begins with video footage of Ryan and his party's first visit to Jonestown, where residents initially put Ryan's mind at ease. Many of the Jonestown residents seem to be in good spirits, and a singer entertains the multiracial group. As a member of Ryan's party says in the film, "It was a vibrant community. I would never have imagined that 24 hours later those people would be dead."

The first warning sign was when a frightened Temple member tried to pass a note to a member of Ryan's party asking for safe passage out of the community. That person was one of those who eventually reached safety, though Ryan, three journalists, and one defector were not as lucky. They were shot to death while trying to board a small plane out of the area. An NBC cameraman, who died in the gunfire, filmed some of the events before he was killed, and the footage is featured in the movie.

Perhaps even more disturbing is audio that the filmmakers secured, apparently from tapes recovered from the site, of Jones informing his congregation that Ryan was dead and that all of Peoples Temple would be blamed and punished — tortured even — unless they escaped in an act of "revolutionary suicide."

"It's nothing to death, it's just stepping into another plane. Don't be this way," Jones calmly intones. And later: "Quickly quickly quickly quickly quickly. Where is the vat? The vat, the vat, bring it here so the adults can begin."

It is one of the more haunting pieces of audio I've ever heard. I suggest not watching this right before you go to bed.

Of the entire film, some the most heartbreaking moments are the accounts of members who escaped from the scene of the murder-suicides. Two members watched their wives die; one also watched his baby die. You can almost feel the claustrophia of the jungle and the madness of Jones as they describe their loved ones' last moments.

"I saw my wife with our son in her arms and poison being injected into his mouth," former member Tim Carter says in the film. "My son was dead and he was frothing at the mouth. You know, cyanide makes people froth at the mouth. My wife died in my arms. And my dead baby son was in her arms. And I held her and said, 'I love you, I love you,' because that was all I could say. It was like — she died in my arms."

Later in the film he says, "They were just fucking slaughtered. ... It was just senseless waste and death."

Stanley Clayton relays how his wife saw her mother, grandmother, and siblings die. Then she followed Jones's directive willingly.

"She went up to that Kool-Aid, to that death barrel, and she just didn't hesitate," Clayton said. "She took it and drunk and told me to hold her. ... She died in my arms. Once I laid her down — she told me she wanted to lay with her grandmother — I at that point knew that I didn't have any reason to be here anymore." Clayton then cleverly tricked armed Temple guards and escaped into the jungle.

If I have a complaint about the film, it's that I think it glossed over certain details. Perhaps this is a necessity when boiling down a complex topic to a 90-minute presentation, but after doing a little reading on the topic, I think it would have been useful to identify the time frame that each member was in Jonestown, and whether any were "inside" members close to Jones, as opposed to being further way and perhaps insulated from his more frightening behavior.

I also thought that a letter found at Jonestown, and read at the end of the film, was edited in such a way as to make it seem more ambiguous than it really was. Perhaps this wasn't intentional, but from the presentation in the film, I thought the letter-writer was resistant to the suicide order. After finding the full transcript online, I no longer think so. Either way, the letter is incredibly moving and sad; I just don't think it was edited well for the film.

But these are mainly nitpicks. In general, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple offers a fascinating introduction to its topic.

Memorial
After watching this film, my thoughts turned back to Sam and his recollections. I've since learned that a memorial wall is being erected at the site of a mass grave of several hundred Jonestown victims in California.

My own memorial is below. In my drawing, I chose to make all the headstones the same size to indicate that the people had something in common, but the individual inscriptions were inspired by remembrances I found on a web site called Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. This site, which is part of San Diego State University, includes a list of all those who died, with tools that let friends and relatives leave memorial comments about any of the victims.

If you're curious about this tragedy, I hope you'll either rent Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, which is available from Netflix, or go to the SDSU site and look at some of the testimonials about the victims. I think that the greatest honor we can do the Jonestown victims is to remember them, and recognize that each one represents a unique and incalculable loss.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

A day at the shore

I became aware of the movie "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" not because of its reviews or Oprah Winfrey sponsorship, but because of its inexplicably long name, which really stands out when you're browsing Fandango.com.

After learning that the movie has quite a high fresh rating, I decided to check it out. I knew virtually nothing about it except that, according to one Rotten Tomatoes snippet, it offers a grim but uplifting portrait of a poor black girl.

Two hours later: Wow. What a movie. Directed by Lee Daniels, it's at times terrifying, often disturbing, and ultimately, pretty reassuring. If you can stomach upsetting pictures of domestic violence, I highly recommend it.

Set in Harlem, the story follows Claireece (Gabourey Sidibe), or Precious, an obese, dark-skinned 16-year-old who looks in the mirror and imagines that she's a slim white girl. She lives in poverty with a chain-smoking mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), who occasionally emerges from a TV-watching lethargy to beat Precious, berate her, and throw things at her. As the movie opens, we learn that Precious is pregnant with her second child by her own father, who has repeatedly raped her. This fact seems to incite particular violence in Mary, who sees Precious as a conniving other woman. Precious is suspended from school, but a concerned administrator persuades her to enroll in an alternative school.

This alternative school is where Precious finds solid ground. Here, she meets Blu Rain (Paula Patton), a beautiful English teacher who exudes serenity and, among other things, teaches Precious to read (starting with an idyllic-sounding story, "A Day at the Shore"). The other girls in the class are not 100% welcoming at first, but they evolve into a family of sorts. As the story progresses, other comforting faces show up in the form of a nurse's aide (Lenny Kravitz), a tough but kind social worker (an unrecognizable, very good Mariah Carey), and the school's secretary (Sherri Shepherd).

At times the movie's happy scenes seem a bit pat, but overall the film succeeds, largely because of its strong performances and its uncompromising portrayal of the place that Precious comes from. "Precious" features scenes as scary as any I've seen on film — the movie is truly not for the faint of heart. But you have to respect a story that's willing to go in some of the places this one does. For me, a lot of credit goes to screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher and to Sidibe. Sidibe plays Precious with a gravel-voiced, unlikely strength, one infused with occasional lines of ragged poetry ("The other day I cried," she says in a voice over. "I felt stupid. But you know what? Fuck that day. That's why God or whoever makes new days.")

After watching the film, I learned a little more about the book and was slightly disappointed to learn that it wasn't penned by a "Precious" figure. I say this because there is a scene in the film, a slightly heavy-handed one, where Miss Rain vigorously urges Precious to write about her problems. I wondered whether such instruction led a real-life troubled student to create this story. Rather, the author, Sapphire, apparently was a teacher — more of a Blu Rain — who knew girls like Precious.

Whatever the source of the story, it is one that stays with you. It was heavily on my mind for some time after I watched it, especially that afternoon. When I came out of the theater, I walked for a while, then ducked out of the cold into the Finagle-A-Bagel outside Copley Square. It was only 5 p.m. but already dark outside. Perched at an upstairs window, I had a nice view of the Hancock tower and everything in its wake: the lights of the square, freshly decorated for the holidays, the crowded sidewalks, and the headlights inching along Boylston Street.

Gazing at this scene, I found myself wondering about the mood of the whole city just at that moment. I wondered: if right now I knew the mind of every single person in Boston, how much happiness would I see? How many people would be in perfect comfort, perhaps looking forward to a privileged evening — an early holiday party, or a date with an adoring partner? How many would be scared? How many disheartened? How many drifting along numbly? I guess it's not unusual to wonder things like that, but "Precious" especially made my mind move in that direction. I pass so many people in the city about whom I'll never know anything. How many nurse anguish like that of Precious? How many will find their way out? At the risk of sounding cheesy, I hope that this movie helps, by reminding people to treat others with compassion.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Tom, get us out of here

Several years ago, a friend gave me a blank book that I never got around to using, probably because it's too small for writing comfortably in for long periods of time. But fortunately it was within grabbing distance a few months ago while I was watching an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" that featured a line of dialogue so astonishingly cheesy, I had to record it right away. And so a tradition was born.

This book is now filled with only the most superlative dialogue from "Voyager" — the most melodramatic, the most pseudo-scientific, and, yes, the most actually eloquent.

I just finished watching the last season of "Voyager" and, in preparation for writing a review of the whole series to follow up on an earlier review I did, I am now going to list my favorite of these quotations.

My exercise started with "Demon" — a show from the fourth season, just a bit past the halfway mark of the series — so it won't include any gems you might have noticed from earlier episodes.

As a sidenote, you can tell from my list which characters ultimately became the focus of the series. Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) notwithstanding, the pseudo-humans were really highlighted, mainly Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), the part-cybernetic woman rescued from the Borg, and the Doctor (Robert Picardo), the hologram created in the image of a human. Vulcan Tuvok (Tim Russ), my favorite character, also had some good dialogue.

Here are the quotations:

"I'm having trouble with the nature of individuality." — Seven, to Janeway (from "Latent Image").

"Proposing the same flawed strategy over and over again will not make it more effective, Ensign." — Tuvok, to Harry Kim (from "Extreme Risk").

"With all of these new personalities floating around, it's a shame we can't find one for you." — The Doctor, to Tuvok (from "Infinite Regress").

"Remember the temporal prime directive. ... Try to avoid time travel." — Lieutenant Ducane, to Janeway (from "Relativity").

"Oh, the almighty temporal prime directive. Take my advice, it's less of a headache if you just ignore it." — Admiral Janeway, to her younger self (from "Endgame").

"I ended up stranded in the late 20th century. Have you ever been to that time frame? ... I don't recommend it." — Colonel Braxton, to Seven (from "Relativity").

"Dating is a poor means of interaction." — Seven, to the Doctor (from "Someone to Watch Over Me").

"Fortunately, I was able to create a chroniton-infused serum that brought you back into temporal alignment." — The Doctor, to Chakotay (from "Shattered").

"Like most time paradoxes, it's implausible, but not necessarily illogical." — Tuvok (from "Relativity").

"A soldier and a philosopher. Your intelligence file doesn't do you justice." — Janeway, to Chakotay (from "Shattered").

"I told Lieutenant Torres that your saxophone playing reminded me of a wounded targ. I should have put it more delicately!" — The Doctor to Harry Kim (from "Renaissance Man").

"I am familiar with human banter. Yours is crude and predictable." — Seven to Maxwell Burke (from "Equinox").

"Do you have any idea how inappropriate it is to follow your therapist on vacation?" — Deanna Troi, to Reg Barclay (from "Inside Man").

"It looks like a simple case of space sickness. ... It happens to everyone." — The Doctor, to Janeway (from "Relativity").

"Perhaps there is something to be said for assimilation after all." — Seven, on the merits of small talk and other human courtship rituals (from "Someone to Watch Over Me").

"You are an imposter. Admiral Janeway visits on Sunday. Today is Thursday. Logic dictates that you are not who you claim to be." — Tuvok, to Admiral Janeway (from "Endgame").

"As the Ferengi say, a good lie is easier to believe than the truth." — Janeway (from "Shattered").

"When you take me from the Borg, you're going to tell me that part of being human is learning to trust. Trust me, now." — Seven, to Janeway (from "Relativity").

"Did he ever stop being a doctor? ... I can't stop being a weapon." — The intelligent bomb, speaking through the Doctor's holomatrix, to Harry Kim (from "Warhead").

"My courage is insufficient." — Seven (from "Infinite Regress").

"Do what all good pragmatists do ... compromise." — The Borg Queen, to Admiral Janeway (from "Endgame").

"If you don't like the way I do things, I can leave you on the nearest habitable planet." — Janeway, to a Hirogen aboard Voyager (from "Flesh and Blood").

"Tom, get us out of here." — Janeway, to helmsman Tom Paris, in too many episodes to list!

"Computer, delete audience." — Tom Paris, referring to the other people in a holographic movie theater (from "Repression").

"Fun will now commence." — Seven, to a group of children she is teaching (from "Ashes to Ashes").

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Practical feast

I recently joined a blog called Monday Artday, where the host issues a one-word challenge each week, and the participants draw an interpretation of it. This week's challenge is "feast," and my entry is below.


For the purpose of preparing for this drawing, I took my camera to the office every day this week so I could get snapshots of people eating at their desks — but it never worked out. I kept thinking I should at least take a snapshot of the back of my computer (at home I only have a laptop), but I didn't even do that!

So this was done without a model of the sort of pose I wanted, which is why she's just sort of sitting there. I kind of wanted her to be interacting more with the can of Coke or the lo mein, but I'm not good enough at drawing hands to wing it with something like that. So instead she's staring at her monitor like a really good worker. That is supposed to be a fortune cookie in her hand, at least.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The strip of light under the door

In Mary Gaitskill's most recent novel, the main character spends a lot of time reflecting on people she's known — both the nurturing and the toxic. Sometimes they are one and the same.

"Her tears splash scalding hot on her daughter's face," the story goes. "Even though they are tears cried for love, they do not bring healing; they burn and make the pain worse. My mother's tears scalded me and I hated her for it."

As you can probably surmise, this novel, called "Veronica," is a dark one. Of course, if you know anything about Gaitskill, you know that's to be expected. While I was reading it, I had mixed reactions — at times I thought the novel was overly dour — but by the end it had won me over with its odd mix of painful reflection and calm acceptance. I also enjoyed Gaitskill's incisive prose throughout.

If you're not a reader but recognize Gaitskill's name, that's probably because she wrote the short story that inspired the movie "Secretary," with James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal. (This is a bit ironic because, while a lot of people rave about that film, in my view it offers a Hollywood-ized, too-happy interpretation of Gaitskill's vision.)

Though it's been out a few years, I first heard about "Veronica" this spring, when I learned that Gaitskill was coming to the Brookline Booksmith for a signing. At the time, I hadn't read any of her work for quite a while, so I was curious.

While gearing up for the signing, I learned that she had also just published a new collection of stories. As part of this, I came across an excerpt from the collection, and though it's well-written, it was a little too violent for me. One of Gaitskill's strengths is her ability to see and describe cruelty, but this excerpt made me wonder if she's started taking it too far. I suppose that might mean I'm a lightweight (I admit that I'm also afraid to read "Blood Meridian"), but that was my reaction.

So, I went to the signing and bypassed the stories in favor of the novel, which I only just finished reading. While I don't think that the novel is perfect, it's an interesting, powerful read.

The story focuses on Alison, a 40-something former model whose life, by many measures, is something of a wreck.

As the novel opens, Alison is going about a typical day. She lives alone, works as a cleaning lady, and has chronic health problems that cause her worry and pain. She finds herself reflecting on the past, particularly her modeling career and its immediate aftermath, during which she befriended an older woman named Veronica — an unfashionable, slightly ridiculous individual suffering from complications brought on by AIDS. In many ways, Alison saw in Veronica, correctly, her future self.

In some regards, this tale is about coming to terms with the inevitable loss of possibilities that we all experience as time passes. Alison seems to acknowledge the vapidness of her modeling life even as she recalls the happiness it brought: the euphoria of being glamorous, of being admired, and, most important, of knowing the world was open to her.

Though the novel is slow and contemplative — most of the action takes place in the past, and we know in advance how the main plot points will be resolved — it has a payoff in Alison's realizations, what she learns from her reflections. Key among these is her appreciation for the possibilities that do still exist, and her ability to see that her pain is not unique.

The novel mostly works, but I had a few complaints about it.

First, I thought the novel had too many characters, some of whom have only barely suggested personas. For example, in one scene, Alison visits a friend who has several little girls. The girls are completely interchangeable as characters, yet throughout the lengthy scene, Gaitskill keeps mentioning one or the other by name, and it's confusing trying to figure out which girl is being referenced and whether she's supposed to be distinguishable from the others. I'm not sure what prompts this writing habit, but I found it frustrating and distracting.

My other complaint is one that I softened on somewhat by the end of the book. However, around the halfway point, I felt that the tone of the novel was simply too dreary. As the book's narrator, Alison seems to find humor in nothing. Gaitskill's view does tend to be dark, and that's OK — I like it, even — but the monotone telling of the story, for me, detracted from its credibility, at least during that first half.

This point is a bit ironic given some of Gaitskill's own comments at the signing I attended. At the event, someone asked her about Nabokov, and she mentioned that part of Nabokov's greatness is his ability to see both the tragedy and comedy in life, and in some cases even to capture both in a single passage. As I read the first half of "Veronica," I sorely wished that Gaitskill were able to see more comedy.

On this point, though, "Veronica" redeems itself somewhat. In the novel's second half, Alison does begin to see, if not humor, at least peace and beauty, often in the mundane. Consider this passage from a scene where the older Alison is riding a city bus:

"The bus stops at a light. ... We are all quiet in the warmth and the sound of the humming motor. I look outside and see a little budding tree, its slim black body shiny with rain. Joyous and intelligent, like a fresh girl, the earth all new to its slender, seeking roots. ... This moment could come to me on my deathbed. ... If it does, I will love it so much that I will take it into death with me."

Ultimately, it's this tranquil vision that brings Alison a measure of peace and makes the novel work.

At least, that is part of what makes the novel work — the other is Gaitskill's spare, graceful prose. She somehow manages to say so much with so little. A character in a movie is "oblivious as a custard." Of a boyfriend, we know all we need to when Alison says, "His friends were horrible, but I wanted to please them." Likewise when Alison remembers a friend's home: "She lived in a tiny shotgun apartment filled with dirty dishes, cat boxes, and open jars of clawed-at cold cream."

Another passage I particularly liked concerns Alison's reflections on a singer her father favors. Her observations blend the dark with the light — just as the novel, at its best points, does.

"Starvation was in her voice all along. That was the poignancy of it. A sweet voice locked in a dark place, but focused entirely on the tiny strip of light coming in under the door."

Copyright 2009-2010 by Sasha Sark. Please don't reuse without permission.
"West African Dark Blue Cloth" image is displayed courtesy of the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery at St. Lawrence University.