Fraught with emotion, turmoil and global complexity: the nexus of the "homeland" concept with two overlapping, conflicting realities, Israel and Palestine.
The Google Ngram above (created by simply plugging in the terms "Israel" and "Palestine") very clearly indicates that the nation-concept of Israel became, in the corpus of American English texts digitized by Google, the more widely used one, starting in or around 1948, the year Israel became first recognized as a modern nation state, and the concept of Palestine became phantomized.
In British English texts, there's a little more lag time. Why? Probably because, until 1948, the British Mandate for Palestine was the externally accepted narrative, then displaced by Israel-Palestine. Even so, by 1950, Israel overtakes Palestine in textual discussions.
The British Empire's direct influence in the region peaked from near the end of the First World War (1914-1918) until around sometime in the 1950s. British economic and political interests remain, though, at the beginning of the 21st century.
The proposed partition of Israel-Palestine in 1947 looks like a mess even at a rearview glance. As of 2011, Humpty Dumpty has yet to be pieced together again, but a globally recognized State of Palestine is in the pipeline.
Motherland and Russia, Fatherland and Germany, Homeland and the United States of America? Where did these concepts come from? And why have they changed over time?
A cursory look at a Google Ngram (for English language books only) seems to reveal these trends:
Homeland emerges as the preferred concept during the Great Depression. It continued to gain currency well before the symbolic (and real) attacks of ten years ago.
Fatherlandpeaks during the cataclysm we conceptualize as WWII/The Second World War, particularly around the time of the ferocious German-Soviet war, then drains away over time.
Motherland remains fairly steady, but never rises above third place overall.
What is a homeland, anyway? You've probably seen this joker-subversive poster . . .
Man with a Movie Camera / Человек с киноаппаратом by Dziga Vertov (aka David Kaufman), Elizaveta Svilova (editor), and Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (cinematographer), Part 2.
Picking up from the last post, much of the rest of this silent black and white film proceeds at a dizzying pace, with quieter interludes. On display are various social activities ranging from marriage and divorce to birth and death and funeral cememonies.
Velocity. Various sports, Motorcycles, racing, high jumping, swimming at a beach, sunbathing, manufacturing, processing, walking, napping on benches. Checkers, chess.
A short-haired woman puts on a bra, or brassière. Remember, this is a 1929 release, and the style was still fairly new. This activity happens earlier in the film.
Here's a cool Soviet avant-garde silent movie released in 1929: Man with a Movie Camera / Человек с киноаппаратом by Dziga Vertov (aka David Kaufman), Elizaveta Svilova (editor), and Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (cinematographer).
Just about everything we've ever seen in cinema is here as far as angles, shots and imaginative use of motion pictures, or at least everything possible without the aid of computerized special effects. Worth seeing for the technical effort alone, it also provides a frenetic look at modern life. There's very little in it we wouldn't recognize in life, even now in the 21st century. In fact, I saw horses just the other day. Certainly airplanes (albeit less sleek than today's), trams, trains, factories, roadways, sidewalks, park benches, buildings, fashion styles and accoutrements, sewing machines, typewriters, telephones, coal miners, smoking chimney stacks, motorcycles, carts, buses, cars, construction sites, municipal water, cameras, hats, luggage, telephone poles, baskets, scarves, shutters, trees, water fountains, glasses, elevators and lots of movement.
Katharine Greider's The Archaeology of Home: An Epic Set on a Thousand Square Feet of the Lower East Side (2011) is going to serve as a writing prompt. In her book, she researches the history of an address, a house, its inhabitants and changes through and over time. Her writing is driven by two things that I strongly advocate: curiosity and contemplation. Why not add, as she also does, research, gathering facts, attempting interpretations and seeking universals while we're at it?
Now, dear reader, take your living space. Is it newer, older, in between? Where is it situated? How is it situated? What remains from before your time? Is there stuff you carried in with you, old family artifacts and treasures? How about the exterior, yard, interior furnishings, street facings, street names, walkways, trees, brickworks, stones, coal bins, basement, attic, breezeway, outbuildings, anything at all?
Go back in time with this abode space. Ten years. A hundred years. A thousand years. A million years. A billion years. That should provide plenty of variables to work with. Now, go to town with it. Whatya got?
Seeing them back to back, one can see how Amir Bar-Lev's The Tillman Story (2010) parallels Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon (2011) and vice versa: documentary format, three brothers, divorced parents, fame; but instead of being raised Pentecostalists like the Followills, the Tillmans are freethinkers; and instead of forming a rock band like the Followills, two of the Tillman brothers (Pat and Kevin) become US Army Rangers, and one of them is killed by his own men.
The Tillman Story is a compelling documentary (with subtle narration by Josh Brolin) about the Tillman family, but it also provides insight into soldiering in Iraq and Afghanistan, and specifically a clear focus on the "friendly fire" death of Pat Tillman in 2004, its subsequent coverup, and distorted reshaping as a propaganda tool.
Kings of Leon -- for those not yet in the know, a major American recording and touring band that first made it big in Europe -- made news in Texas recently when they cancelled a show-in-progress, ostensibly on account of the excessive heat. My curiosity about this got me to check out Stephen C. Mitchell's documentary, Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon (2011).
Cutting to the quick, it's really good. Why? Because it goes to their roots, the greater family, swirling around a sprawling family reunion in Oklahoma. The three Followill brothers (Caleb, Nathan and Jared) were raised as Pentecostalists, and a primal Christianity permeates the entire milieu. Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues -- all of it. Their parents have been divorced since before Kings of Leon formed as a band; in fact, it seems as if the divorce itself created the space in which they could form it with their cousin Matthew Followill, in Nashville, Tennessee. Mitchell gets at things from the perspectives of both parents. The father was a preacher, the mother feared hell and damnation. "We were taught that television was the one-eyed Devil," she notes. "Rock and Roll was Devil music." She seems still to think so, and so does her ex-husband. But the latter had other demons to fight, like alcohol. Out of this came the band, driven and driving. It's a remarkable story.
Bottom line: Talihina Sky is an impressive freestyle documentary with no overarching narration. It's like total immersion in another culture, another town, another family system, and it took me a little while to get my bearings. Well worth the effort.
