Celebrity Contract

Looking at the Tiger Woods scandal from the vantage point of the ordinary citizen, one of the most curious aspects is the way in which a string of women came forward to declare that they had had sex with him. There clearly had been an implicit understanding between Woods and each woman, a bond or even contract that they would not go public with their relationship. So the interesting question is why did they do so and how did that sequence unfold? The string of "admissions" suggests a breakdown in the social code that protects celebrities generally.

There are any number of Hollywood actors and actresses with wholesome reputations who have for decades managed to preserve that impression despite behavior no different than Woods'. Usually the clean image of a celebrity is disturbed by the arrival of the police, as happened with Woods. But why did the local incident become a drawn out spectacle?

Why was there no long drawn out list of women after Hugh Grant got arrested? Surely his backseat tryst with Divine Brown could not have been the first time that he had stepped out on Elizabeth Hurley, yet there was no cluster of women all ready to confess that they too had slept with Hugh Grant. The same code of silence governed Eddie Murphy's reputation after he had been stopped by the police with a prostitute. Having had sex with a star used to mean not talking about it.

The silent agreement breaks down when the normal rules are not followed, such as when Mel Gibson makes anti-Semitic slurs, but if he had been merely slurring his speech nothing would have come of it beyond a DUI.

How many actors, sport stars, musicians have not been busted for drugs? When a celebrity gets arrested for possible drug consumption, it usually involves driving, but there almost never any investigation beyond that one interface with the public. No search warrant to look through the house. No wiretaps on all the other people who were at the party. None of the many possible steps the police could take to find out who was doing what with whom. And beyond the police's discretion, a vast code of silence prevents less known people from stating publically that they slept with, got high with, or did whatever with some famous person.

So what happened in Tiger Woods' case? Why did that code break down? Partially, because Tiger Woods did not provide a Hugh Grant apology the next day on a talk show. He did not cut the scandal off quickly as David Letterman did for himself and has done for other stars. But even beyond Woods' supposed mishandling of his own publicity, there is the striking way in which all those women felt that they had more to gain by telling their stories than by not. This shows something about the further democratization of fame, Andy's fifteen minutes and all, but really there is more, and as a total outsider to the circuit one can only guess what shifted in the discreet arrangement between stars and ordinary people.

Black Power

Toward the end of "Along the Watchtower"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU1uwBNSCF0

Jimi raises his fist in the Black Power sign, an archaic, almost scary, gesture now, but a clear effort back then to mobilize.

We ought not forget the moves that mattered when they did.

Robin Gladiator

The Guardian teases about Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe making what they suggest is a remake of Gladiator. All true, but on the other hand one could, given the rush to cash in on any thing that makes a buck, admire their restraint in waiting this long: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/23/robin-hood-russell-crowe-trailer-review

Many times I have used the opening scene of Gladiator when teaching Tacitus. They are a compelling nine minutes which turn the students' attention to the text at hand.

Nutcracking

So this morning WPSU advertised that it was going to play Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite later in the day. Anyone who listens to classical music has heard this piece in the last weeks.
At what audience is the advertisement aimed? At those listeners who have not heard the Nutcracker all year and now finally get there opportunity? Are there people who regularly listen to NPR news and yet lack the Nutcracker?

Or is the radio station advertising the obvious? Something akin to a classic rock station advertising that they are going to play Springsteen's "Santa Claus is coming to town." We know they will. We drive around town with the expectation that at some point the Boss will ask Clarence whether he has been good this year. Christmas music just happens, maybe it is a guilty pleasure, maybe it is a mind-numbing torture—both perhaps, but what shocks is that WPSU has no better idea of what to advertise other than the obvious, The Nutcracker at Christmas—yes, anything else.

Is there no other Classical Christmas music? Haven't composers for centuries written music for this most sacred Christian holiday? Why not turn to something we have not all heard for the billionth time? Sure throw in the Nutcracker once or twice—the gods of mass marketing must be respected--but please try a little harder to find some interesting Christmas music.

Yes, I am grinching about the local radio station, but this kind of mediocrity is hardly confined to the WPSU. It is part of broader tendency to think that stating the obvious is good enough, that you don't need to try harder to be smart.

Tiger Woods' Lynching

We all understand the desire to get back at someone for their betrayal. Still the photoshopped images of a beatup Tiger Woods standing next to his wife as she smiles with a golf club in her hand have more the look of a lynching. Instead this time it is the white woman who attacks the black man herself. No mob of white men to "defend" her required, though there does seem to be a pack of grumbling guys gathering.

We all so strongly identify with celebrities that it is easy to take sides in their marital disputes, especially if we can make a parallel between our own deceptions as fans and what we imagine Elin Nordegren must feel. In the midst of all this projection and imagining, there is room enough for nasty violence to creep in the public representation of the marital scandal. Sure, everyone sides with the betrayed wife, Tiger Woods is up there with Prince Charles, yet I can't remember any talk of taking a stick to the Prince of Wales. I do remember there being jokes about Frank Sinatra arranging for Woody Allen to get whacked back in the Mia Farrow scandal. Still the pictures of Tiger Woods with a black eye, scars and his teeth knocked out suggest much more than a spectator's involvement in a celebrity sex scandal. They have a far more sinister connotation.

Professor Morrissey

The British pop media have been debating the incident in which Morrissey walked off the stage during a concert, because someone in the crowd had tossed a beer bottle on stage, hitting him on the head. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/nov/09/morrissey-walks-offstage The question was whether Morrissey was justified in refusing to continue the concert, thereby denying a crowd their 30-40 pounds worth of pleasure.

It is not too hard to imagine why Morrissey walked off the stage: he did not really want to be there in the first place. Twenty-five years after his youthful stardom, it must be no fun slogging around small venues in the north of England when you have become accustomed to Los Angeles. But the bills must be paid, and discs sold, so even aging dandies need to mount a well-lit platform to woo and wow the masses.

Professors can be a little like petulant rock stars, too, without the high pay, stimulants and groupies, of course. They, too, can grow tired of their audiences, they, too, can wish for anything but to teach the same course over and over again. Tom Jones may have enough work class grit in him to belt out "She's a lady" for decades on end, but lots of high strung professors get really sick and tired of teaching "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," or subject-noun agreement in both English and French. I bet even chemists run through the definition of a mole with the speed of Dylan revisiting an old tune.

But not all of aged stars, and professors, feel so. The key is never to blame the students—or the audience in Morrissey's case. It is a weary old saying but alas it is so: They are there to learn, as well as be entertained. That they can't properly form the passive voice should not be held against them. It is incumbent on professors to explain. And if they only know the lyrics to "Girlfriend in a Coma" and nothing else, then, sadly, Morrissey needs to show them once again how the song goes.

Instead of walking out on the crowd, you can turn your ire against the system that obliges you to teach the same courses over and over again. You can blame the university press that did not accept your manuscript last year. You can blame your spouse for not wanting to take that job in Oregon. Whatever you like, just don't blame the audience, even if they give you a hung-over explanation for why they did not turn the paper in on time. Beer bottles get tossed around on campus, perhaps not directly at professors, but some of it splashes out in the class room,--in the form of lethargy, lateness and all around ignorance. And in the end, professors have options old rock stars lack.

Plenty of old professors are pleased to have an audience. They may have no connection to the undergraduate life, but they are glad that folks are still showing up to hear them run through their greatest hits. Once they realize that the house in the Hamptons is not a natural born privilege, they don't mind singing "Luka" one more time-- with feeling.

Even though a make-up concert is the planning, http://www.nme.com/news/morrissey/48330 my analogy can only go so far: professors almost never leave a class halfway through their own lecture and Morrissey was always a bit of a whiner (unlike us academics).

Zaha Hadid

Went to the Zaha Hadid's Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Always wanted to walk around one of her buildings, never made it to the fire station. And what an amazing treat this visit was!

There is all sorts of architectural theory that describes the connection between space and cinema, but this building does not leave the connection to chance; it is designed to bring the out the experience of walking through space as watching a move. Motion forward is like time unreeling on the screen. When you walk through the museum, you pass through galleries as if you were the camera capturing images.

The long staircases hold you in a steady line as you move up from one floor to the next. They are narrow and long, so that one wonders what would happen if the building were crowded. As it turned out, I was alone in the concrete cavern the morning I visited. A bright Sunday with no one else around; game day the young man at the entrance said. Indeed there were streams of orange glad couples heading toward the stadium, and no one turned into Zaha Hadid's museum.

So much the better

The place was spooky, like a fun house ride made at great expense with sophistication beyond anything the Jersey shore has to offer. But that is the thing about deconstruction in architecture—call it that for lack of more clever word. You keep comparing it to the set of Dr. Caligari. I almost felt I should have been dragging some damsel in distress over my shoulder as climbed up the stairs.

The curators certainly understood the fun house fright. The first floor showed the bubble gum tongue of Marilyn Minter, a huge tongue on a video licking a glass surface covered in bright sugar crystals. Between tongue, teeth, lips and bubble bursts, you had nothing on your mind but the bright-colored pleasures of the mouth.

Then the next two floors went pitch-black cinematic with dark, dark rooms at the end of the long stairs with Anri Sala videos splattering the reflected spot light off a cymbal. A huge wall of Keith Moon fantasy cymbal with drums set up around the place to hammer out there own beat untouched by human hands.

The drumbeat echoed through the cement rooms, a feeling familiar from walking around 3AM lofts full of bands. Made me think of Danceteria in the 80s but here every line of the room reinforced the disorientation. Remember it was Sunday morning 11:30, and yet the exhibition space made it feel like an all night disorientation, one in which you were remarkably lucid despite the drum banging out around eerie videos projected onto the walls. Incoherence very carefully crafted.

And through each stage you walked along a narrow path, as if you were in a fun house cart running along a track. Your every step anticipated by the design. Look here at the opening that makes three dimensions seem flat, Turn your head to see the vertiginous depth next to the staircase . Right away you realize how the corners of the open space are meant to confuse your sense of up and down, horizonal and vertical. Your perceptions are tampered with. We can easily compared the place to a Borromini church or Piranesi drawing but that does a huge disservice to the way the building grips your body whole like it were King Kong and you Fay Rey. There is no piety left to preserve here, no sense of symmetry to recover after it has been manipulated. You dance with the building, only with skill and experience can you stay ahead of its diva angles. For it never wants to overwhelm you, but it does expect a lot of turns, like a partner who knows the song far better than you, but who kindly grants the illusion that you are making the decision to spin and step.