The Conspirator

I found Robert Redford's The Conspirator to be enjoyable, interesting, intelligent and thoughtful. Set in 1865 near the end of the American Civil War (after Appomattox but the war's still ongoing), it revolves around the plot to assassinate US President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson, and its aftermath, specifically the military tribunal judging Mary Surratt, who is charged as co-conspirator. The period detail is fascinating, yet the story is also of dynamic contemporary pertinence in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The Conspirator is shot in what appears to be natural lighting and combines the dramatic possibilities inscribed in the contained (almost claustrophobic) interiors of nineteenth century buildings with an inherently dramatic true story.  

The major players are strong, as one would hope -- including Scotsman James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland, 2006); Dallas-born Robin Wright (The Secret Lives of Pippa Lee, 2009); Kevin Kline (The Big Chill, 1983); Englishman Tom Wilkinson (The Full Monty, 1996); Danny Huston (who played Geoffrey "Fieger Time" Fieger in You Don't Know Jack, 2010); Evan Rachel Wood (The Wrestler, 2008); and Alexis Bledel (The Kate Logan Affair, 2010/11).

In addition, secondary characters flesh the movie out remarkably well. Stephen Root (Office Space, 1999; No Country for Old Men, 2007; Cedar Rapids, 2010/11) is a hoot as a witness for the prosecution: wild-eyed and feral, with a tinge of the comic. Colm Meaney (Miles O'Brien in latter day Star Trek series; The Snapper, 1993) is superb as General David Hunter,the gruff commanding head of the military tribunal. Finally, Jonathan Groff effectively exudes weirdness as another witness for the prosecution. There are others, too.

I caught a matinee showing of The Conspirator at the swanky 7th Street Movie Tavern in Fort Worth for $7. The 3:30 show was well-attended, packed or nearly so with people of all ages and types but mostly adults, mercifully.

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Strangers and Familiars

Before moving on, I wanted to deposit some examples of what goes on between the covers of Catherine Belsey's Posstructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (2002). Here are some excerpts and added notes.

On Mythologies (Roland Barthes, 1957, 1972): “Our own values are so anti-intellectual that, by the repeated rejection of new ideas, especially new political ideas, in the name of common sense, ‘laziness is promoted to the rank of rigour.’” p. 26

On Michel Foucault (text): “There is by definition no power without the possibility of resistance.” p. 54.

This reminds me of decades ago reading a Foucault line that loosely translates as: “Power has no essence; it is merely situational.” Example: suppose you are under the thumb of a horrible manager at this moment; this circumstance/situation can change or be changed. Tomorrow or next year, he or she may be gone, or you may be gone, and the brutal thumbing will vanish. Or, you can thumb your nose at this person right now! You can quit and move on here and now (the take this job and shove it response). On the other hand, if you are in a concentration camp, debilitated in some way or under torture, your options may be dramatically more limited and primal.

On Jacques Lacan (text): “Lacan calls what is lost the real. The real is not reality, which is what culture tells us about. On the contrary, the real is that organic being outside signification, which we can’t know, because it has no signifiers in the world of names . . . The real, repressed because it has no way of making itself recognized in our consciousness, returns to disturb and disrupt . . . [T]he lost real makes its effects felt in dreams, slips of the tongue, puns, jokes, or symptoms marked on the body, illnesses or disabilities that seem to have no physiological cause.” p. 58.

On Strangers to Ourselves (Julia Kristeva, 1991): “Why do we [i.e. so many people] fear foreigners, people from other cultures, asylum seekers? Well, for one thing, they demonstrate that there are alternate ways to be, that our own ways are not inevitable, and therefore not necessarily ‘natural.’ Disparaging the others seems to make some people feel better. Besides, the encounter with foreigners calls into question the ‘we’ that is so easily taken for granted.” (p. 63)

Paraphrasing Jean-François Lyotard: “What we need if things are to get better . . . is not consensus, but dissension. The commitment to consensus promotes a bland centrism, appoints the compromise candidate no one really wants, satisfies nobody, and leaves things much as they are. Conversely, intellectual difference, inventiveness, lateral thinking, heterogeneity all promote modifications of the existing rules and conventions. Dissension challenges the status quo.” (p. 96)

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Catherine Belsey: Poststructuralism

Part of an excellent series published by Oxford University Press, Catherine Belsey's Poststucturalism: A Very Short Introduction (2002) provides a succinct grazing among the grasses of poststructuralism.

The philosophical ideas and theories Belsey discusses would probably seem less intimidating to more people if read or experienced through the scrim of science fiction, fantasy, mystery or poetry.

For example:

X. Our thoughts, beliefs and statements may not be our own.

Y. This is because the above (X.) are mediated through culture, including language, symbols and signs -- all things or processes we've learned about and absorbed since becoming conscious, having evolved or changed from infancy through adulthood, to wherever we're at now.

Z. We often feel (at) a loss because and after we have become acculturated, as if there is something we are missing. Is it lost innocence, simplicity, the womb, Eden, another identity?

Many of these ideas suffuse story-telling in books, journals, movies blogs, and more, sometimes subtly and sometimes directly.

I'll pull some small excerpts together for a sampling in a near-future post.

That said, stuff discussed includes: voice(s), ideas, texts and signs. Also grand narrative, deconstruction, differance, signifier-signified, culture, ideology, semiotics, structure, Other, trace and bourgeoisie.

Belsey also nibbles at or gingerly touches upon Humpty Dumpty, language, power, control, resistance, freedom, meaning, and more.

Included in the book are box pop-ups with extra little takes on:

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Julia Kristeva (b.1941)
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Louis Althusser (1918-1990)
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004))
Slavoj Žižek (1949)
Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998)

This works -- as does, I suspect, the entire Very Short Introduction series -- as a primer, a refresher and an introduction to the topic at hand.

Today's Rune: Warrior.

The Rhetoric

During the lunch break at a legal resources workshop at Texas Wesleyan Law School last Friday, I walked across the futuristic Water Gardens -- where parts of Logan's Run (1976) and The Lathe of Heaven (1979/80) were filmed -- to the Fort Worth Hilton, formerly the Hotel Texas. Inside the lobby area are exhibits of JFK's presidential visit on November 21st-22nd, 1963. Picked up a pamphlet describing plans for a new JFK Tribute to be situated across from the main entrance in General [William] Worth Square. This tribute will presumably be unveiled in advance of the 50th anniversary of his assassination over in then less hospitable Dallas.

One of JFK's greatest strengths as a president was his soaring rhetoric, in evidence on the morning of November 22, 1963, when he spoke both to a large standing crowd gathered outside and a seated breakfast crowd inside. JFK's remarks in Fort Worth can now be heard via YouTube; some of the related banter is eerie and truly sad in light of what happened later in the day. The JFK Tribute "will be a place for both contemplation and education."

Today's Rune: Posessions.  

The Bombardment

As Tennessee-born, Yale-educated historian Bell Irvin Wiley would (and did) put it, the Confederacy lost the American Civil War at the bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, commencing on this day 150 years ago. However, it took four years, emancipation of American slaves and more than 600,000 American deaths to play out.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Czar/Tsar Alexander II's Крестьянская реформа 1861 года / Emancipation Manifesto of 1861 began freeing privately-held serfs there, a pragmatic resolution giving freedom and some (mostly collective) land to large numbers of peasants; government-held serfs were emancipated within the next five years.

An earlier bombardment: artillery assault on Vera Cruz (Veracruz) Mexico by United States forces in March, 1847. The US officer corps planning and directing this particular bombardment included Pierre Gustave Toutant "G.T." Beauregard -- the very man who commanded Confederate forces against Fort Sumter and its US garrison fourteen years later.

Images: Library of Congress. Note: Bell Irvin Wiley wrote several ground-breaking social histories of the American Civil War era. Some of his key works: Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (1938); The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (1943); The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (1952); Confederate Women: Beyond the Petticoat (1975).

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

The Cosmonaut / «Космонавт»

Fifty years ago, April 12, 1961, cosmonaut (space traveller) Yuri Gagarin did what only "muttniks" had done: gone up into space and into orbit around Earth, if just for, relatively, a moment. A salute to him and all the cosmonauts, astronauts, spationautes, taikonauts and their ground crews. 

The Soviet Sputnik and Vostok space programs spurred US policymakers into action; hence JFK's "ten years to the Moon" -- which turned out to be doable by 1969.

Now, Russians and Americans work together in space matters, perhaps not in perfect harmony, but at least with a more cooperative spirit. 

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviets sent up dozens of muttniks, including Belka and Stelka (compare the name games with JFK's Fiddle and Faddle), Laika, Senzhinka, Pchelka, Mushka, Damka, Krasavka, Chernushka and Zvezdochka. The Americans preferred to send chimps up. I once met a retired chimp astronaut at a special open air zoo, come to think of it.

Today's Rune: Inititation.  

The Archaeologist: A Brief Glimpse

Virtual interview with Linda F. Stine, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, conducted on April 1, 2011. Linda also happens to be one of my siblings . . . 

EC: How has technology changed the way archaeology is conducted?

LFS: We now use geophysical remote sensing techniques to search for potential below ground ruins and find patterns in the ground. Sometimes we do this from the air, using planes and photographs or satellites. Some folks even use Google Earth images to seek out large buried fortifications and towns. This saves us time. We don't have to dig so many excavation units or shovel tests.

EC: How did you become interested in doing archaeology?

LFS: I always liked digging things up. I enjoyed trying to figure out what old things were used for when visiting historic living history museums (eg., wool carders, spindles).

EC: Any favorite places, or places you'd like to do fieldwork?

LFS: Place with soil that is easy to dig, holds its walls and shows features well. Hmmm. Actually, anywhere that is a beautiful place that has interesting people, an intriguing history and prehistory. I am really interested in immigration and what happens when members of different cultures end up having to adjust to each other.

EC: Anything else you might want to discuss here?

LFS: I wish more people would be aware of the importance of combining conservation and stewardship of the natural environment and the cultural environment. That would include sounds as I heard someone from South Carolina give a great paper imagining what life on a historic site might have sounded like. Music, work sounds, animals, trees, water . . .

EC: anything that's astonished you in the way of new discoveries since you began this?

LFS: Look up epigenetics and you will be astonished.

More to come, no doubt. I did look up epigenetics and I am astonished!

Today's Rune: Fertility.