I've thought up the perfect description for how my eyes feel after staring at the computer screen for too long. They begin to feel like teeth feel when you wake up in the morning and (for whatever reason) you never brushed them the night before. There is that thin, unpleasant furry yet slimy sensation when your tongue runs along them. That is how my eyes feel now because I have speant the past few hours looking for intriguing blogs written by complete strangers to follow. I found surprisingly few. Maybe I am not looking well enough, but I found so many blogs that were little more than "watch this video of ...[include link to YouTube] hahaha. Or pseudo-poetry accompanied by stylistic/artistic photos of really thin models looking "pensive" (to quote the fabulously facile joke at Joey's expense in 10 Things I Hate About You. Dont you dare judge me for referring to this movie. It's wickedly cool: partly because the geek gets the girl without undergoing a geek-to-cool transformation. I mean geeks are cool already). Even the many SA politics blogs begin to annoy me. They all sound like Mail and Guardian articles. I love the Mail and Guardian articles...in the Mail and Guardian. Surely blogs should experiment with different styles?
Anyway, enough whining. The point is that I eventually did find a cool blog by Mridu Khullar Relph: an independent journalist from India. As I am a technological retard, I can't actually figure out how to follow her page, but I'm going to add it to my favourites and see how that works. I digress, the point is that she has a regular blog called "What I'm reading" that lists a whole host of things she is reading without the pressure of having to produce a formal book review on the particular book.
So, in the spirit of Mridu Khullar Relph,
What I'm Reading (or rather, what I've read this month so far):
The Devil's Chimney - Anne Landsman
I wanted to like this book. It is written by a South African woman, set in South Africa and is about South African women. It is a "magic-realist" text and is set in the Karroo, one of the most mysterious and eerie South African landscapes.
But I didn't like it. Anne Landsman lives in New York (since 1981). I only read this after I had put down the novel and had felt profoundly dissatisfied. Some of my dissatisfaction suddenly made sense because I felt like it was written like a white trauma-experienced-by-women-by-numbers text, not an intricate engagement with the subtlties of South African interactions, something which has to be experienced on the ground.
There were great moments and the effort to focus the text through a poor white, alcoholic woman with a rich imagination unschooled by academies was startlingly orginal. I started losing faith when it became more and more depressing (I don't mind difficult and depressing: I love J.M. Coetzee and Sello K. Duiker) but then ended with a unconvincingly happily: alcoholic woman embraces alcoholic abusive husband after forty (?) years of non-conversation after the (deeply movingly rendered) loss of their child. Because all the years of masculinity-issues abuse and dangerous drug abuse will suddenly cease because of a hug. Then there are some mystical black folk thrown in who have (equally mystical) relations to the San. Fail.
Thirteen Cents - K. Sello Duiker
This book - by contrast - was unremittingly disturbingly brilliant. It is the tale of a street kid in Cape Town who discovers just how soulless the city can be. The so-called liberal "gay capital" of South Africa is shown to be a misnomer: how gay-friendly is it when this kid makes a lot of his money having sex with in-the-closet, married businessmen who have no problem having sex with a thirteen-year-old? All his efforts at improving himself are betrayed by adults he should be able to trust and friends who constantly betray themselves because of crippling addictions.
One of the gang bosses enforced on him tells him his mother never loved him and that he (the gang leader) is the only one who ever did. Azure - the name of the protagonist - loves Cape Town: the "mother city" of South Africa. The novel shows that Mother Cape Town sure doesn't love Azure and other black people like him.
The Power Book - Jeanette Winterson
I love love this author. Really, words escape me and I am reduced to the gibbering idotish "I love love". I will just quote her and you can see for yourself how revolutionary (I mean that word in its best possible sense) she is. Hopefully, reading these quotes will direct you to her website full of insightful articles and prose.
"The heart. Carbon based primitive in a silicone world" (40).
"That's the size of [love], the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable" (51).
"Did I write this story, or was it you, writing through me the way the sun sparks the fire through a piece of glass?" (209).
And finally, the favourite that I have placed at the top of this blog:
"The world is a mirror of the mind's abundance" (223).
Reading is a large part of what makes my mind abundant enough to see riches in the world. I can only hope that with time and reflection, it will only increase.
Showing posts with label Mail and Guardian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mail and Guardian. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, September 13, 2010
Agora (or get ready for the Epic-ly long blog)
Shaun de Waal is my favourite film critic. His acerbic wit and insightful commentary is clearly well-informed by incredible knowledge of many different film genres and movements, as well as the history that they portray. As a young film enthusiast, I eagerly awaited Barry Ronge's "Screenplay" and his film critiques in the Sunday Times, and then when my tastes became a little more sophisticated, I stopped reading them as I found them inaccurate, maudlin or plain silly. I have seen him endorse films over-enthusiastically that were really only a little above average, and decided that he is clearly one of those critics who is being paid by someone to write what they want people to read about films.
Not so Shaun de Waal. I have come to trust that when he says a film is good (which is very seldom) I know I have to go to see it. His criticisms are also educative because they often include extra tit-bits of history not included in historical films, or damning criticism regarding the frequent homophobic portrayals of gay people or gay issues. At the core of his critiques, however, there is always a nuanced interaction with the film itself.
Which is why I was a little disappointed by his critique of "Agora". "Agora" is an historical film set during the fall of the Roman empire when Christianity had been legalised and they were setting out to convert all the remaining pagans. Rachel Weisz plays the central character with great sensitivity and skill: Hypatia, a pagan Greek philosopher, astronomer and mathematician who is brutally murdered by the Christian mob (by brutally I mean stoned to death and then attached to a carriage and dragged around the square to show the people) for refusing to convert and disobeying the alleged words (and by alleged I mean that some Christian scholars argue that the letters to Timothy were not written by Paul at all) of the first epistle from Paul to Timothy 2: 9-15. This forbids women from adorning themselves in prayer and from teaching or "hav[ing] authority over a man" (NIV).
This verse is very much in keeping with the bloody and unequal historical time. Hypatia is the only female philosopher among the pagans and is only allowed to be so because her father was also a famous and learned philosopher. She has students who respect her enormously but she is not allowed any say in what happens to them and the men have to argue on her behalf. She also (along with the other pagans) own slaves whom they control absolutely. An important (fictionalised) early scene is when Hypatia's father lines up his slaves and demands to know which one of them owns a cross he has found and is therefore a Christian, saying he will whip them for it. A man slave lies and says he is Christian and takes the punishment for a fellow slave. This is an incredibly Christ-like act. Ironically, after he has converted and left Hypatia (whom he loves: another well-acted and scripted plotline) to become a free man, he becomes the one who inflicts pain on others. When Hypatia's time comes to die, he euthanises her before she is stoned rather than offering to take her place. Tragically true to form for many Christians, becoming a Christian drives out all his higher Christian instincts of love and self-sacrifice for the greater good.
I digress, but the point I am trying to make is that it is a film that handles complex moral issues and vividly portrays some of the shameful things that people do to each other because they deny other people's humanity. These shameful things also happen because people insist on being unquestioning or compromising in their search for truth.
The film also fails for me on several levels. The camera keeps zooming out to focus on the galaxy and the stars, which - in the beginning - is quite beautiful, but eventually becomes a tired cinematic trick to fill in the awkward gaps in between the narrative. This is quite frequent, as the narrative has to keep jumping years or decades, which is always done by zooming out with a few lines of text to keep the audience informed. This is a clumsy way of tying the narrative together.
The narrative itself is a kind of timeline of Hypatia's life related to growing Christian violence, and as such, is more a strung-together sequence of events than a well-structured plot.
Also, Hypatia's main concern is about whether the universe is heliocentric (sun-centred) or geocentric (earth-centred). She also spends much of the film trying to figure out how (if the earth revolves around the sun) the earth can move closer or further away from the sun if the earth moves around the sun in a circle. I felt more than a little sceptical at the thought of that level of philosophising taking place at that time. de Waal's critiques of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood making long speeches about democracy in the Middle Ages come to mind, and yet de Waal failed to comment on this kind of inaccuracy in "Agora".
I do see however, that by making Hypatia an advocate of the Heliocentric model and the Christians advocates of the geocentric model (this is clumsily done in the film), Hypatia can be indirectly compared to Galileo. He too was an advocate of the heliocentric model, and was put under house arrest for the rest of his life after being tried by the Spanish inquisition. Of course Galileo was placed under house arrest in the home of the wealthiest man in the province, but that's another story.
As Galileo is one of the heroes of the anti-Christian cause, "Agora" is clearly - for the most part - vehemently anti-Christian. I was reminded of the TED talk of Richard Dawkins in which he appealed to atheists to be out and proud. It seems the atheists have claimed Hypatia as a pre-atheist hero, and this film is one of many to come that celebrates atheism and denounces religion. It is for this reason that I imagine de Waal was so excited he over-looked "Agora"'s weaknesses.
It seems that whenever atheists see something that is pro-atheist they get so excited that their critical faculties fly away momentarily. In this they are scarily like many Christians who may feel compelled to endorse ridiculous films because they are Christian. "Agora" is better than many of those ("Faith Like Potatoes" is particularly dire) but it was not as good as de Waal made it out to be. One should get angry at the brutality and wilful ignorance of the Christians in the film, but one should not stop thinking or being critical because of it. de Waal got caught up in his own anti-Christian rhetoric, and that was when he lost both his focus for the article (the film itself which became of secondary importance) and his usual uncanny accuracy in determining the quality of a film.
"Agora" is about a violent clash between people with different beliefs. If atheists and Christians and all the people who believe in other things that I have not even got around to mentioning in this blog do not start respecting each other's beliefs and individual freedoms, I can only see more violence. It is no use saying - like Dawkins - that if everyone stops believing, there will be peace, or like the abusive and controlling Christians in the film that if everyone believes the same thing then it will be heaven on earth. Both of these are impossible situations, and the sooner people's primary priority becomes the well-being of others no matter what their beliefs (as long as, of course, those beliefs are not harmful in their turn), the less the situation in "Agora" will be repeated. Discarding one's critical faculties when being faced with these issues - even in so small a thing as a film critique - is a step in the direction of wilful ignorance for a cause, which is never a step towards a higher awareness.
Not so Shaun de Waal. I have come to trust that when he says a film is good (which is very seldom) I know I have to go to see it. His criticisms are also educative because they often include extra tit-bits of history not included in historical films, or damning criticism regarding the frequent homophobic portrayals of gay people or gay issues. At the core of his critiques, however, there is always a nuanced interaction with the film itself.
Which is why I was a little disappointed by his critique of "Agora". "Agora" is an historical film set during the fall of the Roman empire when Christianity had been legalised and they were setting out to convert all the remaining pagans. Rachel Weisz plays the central character with great sensitivity and skill: Hypatia, a pagan Greek philosopher, astronomer and mathematician who is brutally murdered by the Christian mob (by brutally I mean stoned to death and then attached to a carriage and dragged around the square to show the people) for refusing to convert and disobeying the alleged words (and by alleged I mean that some Christian scholars argue that the letters to Timothy were not written by Paul at all) of the first epistle from Paul to Timothy 2: 9-15. This forbids women from adorning themselves in prayer and from teaching or "hav[ing] authority over a man" (NIV).
This verse is very much in keeping with the bloody and unequal historical time. Hypatia is the only female philosopher among the pagans and is only allowed to be so because her father was also a famous and learned philosopher. She has students who respect her enormously but she is not allowed any say in what happens to them and the men have to argue on her behalf. She also (along with the other pagans) own slaves whom they control absolutely. An important (fictionalised) early scene is when Hypatia's father lines up his slaves and demands to know which one of them owns a cross he has found and is therefore a Christian, saying he will whip them for it. A man slave lies and says he is Christian and takes the punishment for a fellow slave. This is an incredibly Christ-like act. Ironically, after he has converted and left Hypatia (whom he loves: another well-acted and scripted plotline) to become a free man, he becomes the one who inflicts pain on others. When Hypatia's time comes to die, he euthanises her before she is stoned rather than offering to take her place. Tragically true to form for many Christians, becoming a Christian drives out all his higher Christian instincts of love and self-sacrifice for the greater good.
I digress, but the point I am trying to make is that it is a film that handles complex moral issues and vividly portrays some of the shameful things that people do to each other because they deny other people's humanity. These shameful things also happen because people insist on being unquestioning or compromising in their search for truth.
The film also fails for me on several levels. The camera keeps zooming out to focus on the galaxy and the stars, which - in the beginning - is quite beautiful, but eventually becomes a tired cinematic trick to fill in the awkward gaps in between the narrative. This is quite frequent, as the narrative has to keep jumping years or decades, which is always done by zooming out with a few lines of text to keep the audience informed. This is a clumsy way of tying the narrative together.
The narrative itself is a kind of timeline of Hypatia's life related to growing Christian violence, and as such, is more a strung-together sequence of events than a well-structured plot.
Also, Hypatia's main concern is about whether the universe is heliocentric (sun-centred) or geocentric (earth-centred). She also spends much of the film trying to figure out how (if the earth revolves around the sun) the earth can move closer or further away from the sun if the earth moves around the sun in a circle. I felt more than a little sceptical at the thought of that level of philosophising taking place at that time. de Waal's critiques of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood making long speeches about democracy in the Middle Ages come to mind, and yet de Waal failed to comment on this kind of inaccuracy in "Agora".
I do see however, that by making Hypatia an advocate of the Heliocentric model and the Christians advocates of the geocentric model (this is clumsily done in the film), Hypatia can be indirectly compared to Galileo. He too was an advocate of the heliocentric model, and was put under house arrest for the rest of his life after being tried by the Spanish inquisition. Of course Galileo was placed under house arrest in the home of the wealthiest man in the province, but that's another story.
As Galileo is one of the heroes of the anti-Christian cause, "Agora" is clearly - for the most part - vehemently anti-Christian. I was reminded of the TED talk of Richard Dawkins in which he appealed to atheists to be out and proud. It seems the atheists have claimed Hypatia as a pre-atheist hero, and this film is one of many to come that celebrates atheism and denounces religion. It is for this reason that I imagine de Waal was so excited he over-looked "Agora"'s weaknesses.
It seems that whenever atheists see something that is pro-atheist they get so excited that their critical faculties fly away momentarily. In this they are scarily like many Christians who may feel compelled to endorse ridiculous films because they are Christian. "Agora" is better than many of those ("Faith Like Potatoes" is particularly dire) but it was not as good as de Waal made it out to be. One should get angry at the brutality and wilful ignorance of the Christians in the film, but one should not stop thinking or being critical because of it. de Waal got caught up in his own anti-Christian rhetoric, and that was when he lost both his focus for the article (the film itself which became of secondary importance) and his usual uncanny accuracy in determining the quality of a film.
"Agora" is about a violent clash between people with different beliefs. If atheists and Christians and all the people who believe in other things that I have not even got around to mentioning in this blog do not start respecting each other's beliefs and individual freedoms, I can only see more violence. It is no use saying - like Dawkins - that if everyone stops believing, there will be peace, or like the abusive and controlling Christians in the film that if everyone believes the same thing then it will be heaven on earth. Both of these are impossible situations, and the sooner people's primary priority becomes the well-being of others no matter what their beliefs (as long as, of course, those beliefs are not harmful in their turn), the less the situation in "Agora" will be repeated. Discarding one's critical faculties when being faced with these issues - even in so small a thing as a film critique - is a step in the direction of wilful ignorance for a cause, which is never a step towards a higher awareness.
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