Category Archives: sacrifice

On Frozen (spoiler alert)

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The latest animated film from Disney is out, and it’s a doozy. Talk about turning tradition upside down, this movie takes the Disney princess paradigm and rips it apart. The cute young prince is a traitor, and it’s a working class fellow who shows what it takes to be a real man. The story is an old one, perhaps the oldest one, about two siblings who get into trouble and end up apart. This isn’t Cain and Able, but Elsa and Ana, close as young children, find themselves separated by more than space as adults. As it is with almost all Disney products, the dark cloud of loss hangs over the film when the girls’ parents are lost in a shipwreck, turning the young girls into orphans. The movie recounts the coming of age of both sisters–one will be queen, the other, trouble. The wild card in this magical kingdom is Elsa’s powers over cold, ice, and snow, and her inability to control those powers. The movie quickly settles into a permanent winter, Elsa has exiled herself from her kingdom, and Ana has set out to save her accompanied by a man who sells ice, a goofy reindeer, and an even goofier snowman–the court jester of the film. The film’s academy award winning song, “Let It Go,” is Elsa’s anthem of release, liberty, and freedom from the constraints of the male dominated patriarchy under which she has been living her entire life. It is her now absent father who has condemned her to a life of solitude, away from her sister, in which she must not use her powers, which are a metaphor for female agency–the ability of women to decide their own futures regardless of what the male members of the family might have to say. Elsa is strong, powerful, not a helpless Disney princess that needs saving by some handsome male character, albeit woodsman, prince or whatever. Elsa is eventually saved by Ana who makes a gesture of true love toward her sister. Elsa’s anthem, “Let It Go,” underscores her ability to recognize publically that she is a strong woman with the ability and desire to make her own decisions about her life and that the patriarchy can go take a long walk of a short pier. In the end, the typical Disney prince has been cast into exile, the castle doors are flung wide, and Elsa will just be herself now that she has nothing to hide. She will not be someone else’s idea of a perfect helpless female, and she doesn’t need any males around to reinforce either her authority or her identity. She rejects spurious myths about femininity, about how good girls act, and about female passivity in the face of male authority. She rejects tradition, embracing her new identity as an independent and happy person who can live on her own. The movie does not end with any weddings, although one wonders about Ana and her ice salesman boyfriend–she has been learning about love from a snowman who likes warm hugs.

On Frozen (spoiler alert)

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The latest animated film from Disney is out, and it’s a doozy. Talk about turning tradition upside down, this movie takes the Disney princess paradigm and rips it apart. The cute young prince is a traitor, and it’s a working class fellow who shows what it takes to be a real man. The story is an old one, perhaps the oldest one, about two siblings who get into trouble and end up apart. This isn’t Cain and Able, but Elsa and Ana, close as young children, find themselves separated by more than space as adults. As it is with almost all Disney products, the dark cloud of loss hangs over the film when the girls’ parents are lost in a shipwreck, turning the young girls into orphans. The movie recounts the coming of age of both sisters–one will be queen, the other, trouble. The wild card in this magical kingdom is Elsa’s powers over cold, ice, and snow, and her inability to control those powers. The movie quickly settles into a permanent winter, Elsa has exiled herself from her kingdom, and Ana has set out to save her accompanied by a man who sells ice, a goofy reindeer, and an even goofier snowman–the court jester of the film. The film’s academy award winning song, “Let It Go,” is Elsa’s anthem of release, liberty, and freedom from the constraints of the male dominated patriarchy under which she has been living her entire life. It is her now absent father who has condemned her to a life of solitude, away from her sister, in which she must not use her powers, which are a metaphor for female agency–the ability of women to decide their own futures regardless of what the male members of the family might have to say. Elsa is strong, powerful, not a helpless Disney princess that needs saving by some handsome male character, albeit woodsman, prince or whatever. Elsa is eventually saved by Ana who makes a gesture of true love toward her sister. Elsa’s anthem, “Let It Go,” underscores her ability to recognize publically that she is a strong woman with the ability and desire to make her own decisions about her life and that the patriarchy can go take a long walk of a short pier. In the end, the typical Disney prince has been cast into exile, the castle doors are flung wide, and Elsa will just be herself now that she has nothing to hide. She will not be someone else’s idea of a perfect helpless female, and she doesn’t need any males around to reinforce either her authority or her identity. She rejects spurious myths about femininity, about how good girls act, and about female passivity in the face of male authority. She rejects tradition, embracing her new identity as an independent and happy person who can live on her own. The movie does not end with any weddings, although one wonders about Ana and her ice salesman boyfriend–she has been learning about love from a snowman who likes warm hugs.

On translating

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Translating by definition is falsification and, ultimately, betrayal. Languages are not parallel so all translation is marked by what is lost, not by what is gained. All translators know this because it is their job to understand, interpret, and compromise as they switch a text or discourse from one language to another. There is no such thing as a literal translation, and all bilingual people understand this chasm between languages that cannot be bridged by translating. Translation is about changing a text is such a way that it might be understandable to people who don’t speak the original language. All translation is about loss. As I look at an English translation of Dante’s Inferno, I can only lament the loss of rhythm, sound, and rhyme. We get the “gist” of what Dante is saying about sin and shame, ego and pride, but his art as a poet is lost forever: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / ché la diritta via era smarrita. Translating and translation are about the translator turning a blind eye to the myriad and multiple meanings that cling to the original words and sacrificing the author’s creativity and originality so that the text might be accessible to others who fall outside the circle of the author’s language. Yet, translators prevail, get hired, and they do their jobs with little shame or humility. Translations are as ubiquitous as taxes and death. Could it be, all along, that translation is the world’s oldest profession? The problem, of course, is not translation, but the multiple languages the people of the world speak, that Tower of Babel from which we are doomed to inhabit forever. Yet, I am not in favor of making one language a required, dogmatic official language. The more common norm is for people to live in multilingual societies. Even today there are many areas of the world where people speak two, three, or even four languages according to the demands of the social situation. Being multilingual does not solve the problem of translation but it does eliminate the need for translation. If a person speaks Italian, reads Italian, then anything they experience in that language is self-explanatory even if the person’s first language might be German or French. Translation only occurs if the original language is a barrier to understanding the text, or conversation, or song. The only way to approach translation is to assume failure before you even start, and by assuming failure, the translator can only produce a new text which was inspired by the original. In a sense all texts are failed translations of other texts, and there exists no ur-text or Q manuscript which might have been original. Misreading, misunderstandings, ambiguity, mistakes, lacunae, accidents, double-entendre, obscurity, complexity, prejudice, bias, and misinterpretation all plague the translator who cannot avoid or evade his/her own human condition as imperfect translator. In the end, all translators must recognize their failure, ignore the imperfection of their work, and move forward to the next sentence with the understanding that failure is the best they can do. In a larger sense, this is the existential question of the human condition–translator as failure.

On translating

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Translating by definition is falsification and, ultimately, betrayal. Languages are not parallel so all translation is marked by what is lost, not by what is gained. All translators know this because it is their job to understand, interpret, and compromise as they switch a text or discourse from one language to another. There is no such thing as a literal translation, and all bilingual people understand this chasm between languages that cannot be bridged by translating. Translation is about changing a text is such a way that it might be understandable to people who don’t speak the original language. All translation is about loss. As I look at an English translation of Dante’s Inferno, I can only lament the loss of rhythm, sound, and rhyme. We get the “gist” of what Dante is saying about sin and shame, ego and pride, but his art as a poet is lost forever: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / ché la diritta via era smarrita. Translating and translation are about the translator turning a blind eye to the myriad and multiple meanings that cling to the original words and sacrificing the author’s creativity and originality so that the text might be accessible to others who fall outside the circle of the author’s language. Yet, translators prevail, get hired, and they do their jobs with little shame or humility. Translations are as ubiquitous as taxes and death. Could it be, all along, that translation is the world’s oldest profession? The problem, of course, is not translation, but the multiple languages the people of the world speak, that Tower of Babel from which we are doomed to inhabit forever. Yet, I am not in favor of making one language a required, dogmatic official language. The more common norm is for people to live in multilingual societies. Even today there are many areas of the world where people speak two, three, or even four languages according to the demands of the social situation. Being multilingual does not solve the problem of translation but it does eliminate the need for translation. If a person speaks Italian, reads Italian, then anything they experience in that language is self-explanatory even if the person’s first language might be German or French. Translation only occurs if the original language is a barrier to understanding the text, or conversation, or song. The only way to approach translation is to assume failure before you even start, and by assuming failure, the translator can only produce a new text which was inspired by the original. In a sense all texts are failed translations of other texts, and there exists no ur-text or Q manuscript which might have been original. Misreading, misunderstandings, ambiguity, mistakes, lacunae, accidents, double-entendre, obscurity, complexity, prejudice, bias, and misinterpretation all plague the translator who cannot avoid or evade his/her own human condition as imperfect translator. In the end, all translators must recognize their failure, ignore the imperfection of their work, and move forward to the next sentence with the understanding that failure is the best they can do. In a larger sense, this is the existential question of the human condition–translator as failure.

On firemen

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Being a fireman is a very strange job, and all of us non-firemen owe them a huge debt of gratitude every time they answer an alarm. Ever since men and women have lived in wooden structures there have been firemen, and history is checkered with the stories of horrendous fires that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of structures and tragically ended the lives of tens of thousands of people. Human beings fear uncontrolled fire, and they should. The fireman is a relatively modern invention of the late 18th century although loosely organized fire brigades have existed for centuries before that. Ben Franklin is often credited with organizing the first volunteer fire brigade in Philadelphia to fight this terrific scourge of colonial America, where most all of the homes were wooden structures of one kind or another, and open fires were used for both cooking and heating, making life in the colonies a dangerous proposition.To this day, houses burn down every day–lightening, bad wiring, dangerously stored chemicals, children playing with fire, unattended cooking fires, smoking in bed, malfunctioning furnace, bad hot water heater. Into the chaos steps the fireman, big coats, helmets, and boots, red trucks, hoses, and axes. To say that this job is dangerous is to underestimate, certainly, the real danger of an uncontrolled fire, and the collateral damage of collapsing structures,dangerous smoke and fumes, possible explosions and host of possible complications. Central Texas just lost ten firemen to an explosion in West,Texas. Firemen die every day in the line of duty, so one wonders what drives the soul of fireman to constantly put their life in danger on a regular basis.Of course, some people are fearless, and don’t give danger a second thought even though their lives may be on the line. Others are service oriented and want to help others through a sense of civic duty. Still others will do it as a job, although one wonders about how much money it takes to make a person risk their life for a paycheck. The fireman in American culture is iconic, and many a young boys have dreams of one day becoming a fireman. The job may seem romantic, heroic, mythic, maybe, but the reality is that people make mistakes,fires happen, and modern organized societies need fire-fighters, so young men,motivated by a series of factors, sign on as firemen. The job of fireman is,then, a paradox of danger and heroism. Perhaps it is this mix of the heroic and the tragic which creates this strange aura of romantic hero wearing a red helmet. I know firemen, and I appreciate their work, their rushing in where others fear to tread, their total lack of fear. Communities need public servants to help them deal with the chaos of disaster and the destruction of accidental fires. Literally, they might rescue us from our own mistakes and folly. As long as there are firemen, in spite of their (our) best efforts,tragedies will happen, and firemen will lose their lives, and the job of fireman will forever be an exotic mix of heroism, danger, and thrills lived out in smoke, fire, and water, soot and sweat. As long as firemen continue to save their communities, little boys will want to be firemen.

On firemen

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Being a fireman is a very strange job, and all of us non-firemen owe them a huge debt of gratitude every time they answer an alarm. Ever since men and women have lived in wooden structures there have been firemen, and history is checkered with the stories of horrendous fires that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of structures and tragically ended the lives of tens of thousands of people. Human beings fear uncontrolled fire, and they should. The fireman is a relatively modern invention of the late 18th century although loosely organized fire brigades have existed for centuries before that. Ben Franklin is often credited with organizing the first volunteer fire brigade in Philadelphia to fight this terrific scourge of colonial America, where most all of the homes were wooden structures of one kind or another, and open fires were used for both cooking and heating, making life in the colonies a dangerous proposition.To this day, houses burn down every day–lightening, bad wiring, dangerously stored chemicals, children playing with fire, unattended cooking fires, smoking in bed, malfunctioning furnace, bad hot water heater. Into the chaos steps the fireman, big coats, helmets, and boots, red trucks, hoses, and axes. To say that this job is dangerous is to underestimate, certainly, the real danger of an uncontrolled fire, and the collateral damage of collapsing structures,dangerous smoke and fumes, possible explosions and host of possible complications. Central Texas just lost ten firemen to an explosion in West,Texas. Firemen die every day in the line of duty, so one wonders what drives the soul of fireman to constantly put their life in danger on a regular basis.Of course, some people are fearless, and don’t give danger a second thought even though their lives may be on the line. Others are service oriented and want to help others through a sense of civic duty. Still others will do it as a job, although one wonders about how much money it takes to make a person risk their life for a paycheck. The fireman in American culture is iconic, and many a young boys have dreams of one day becoming a fireman. The job may seem romantic, heroic, mythic, maybe, but the reality is that people make mistakes,fires happen, and modern organized societies need fire-fighters, so young men,motivated by a series of factors, sign on as firemen. The job of fireman is,then, a paradox of danger and heroism. Perhaps it is this mix of the heroic and the tragic which creates this strange aura of romantic hero wearing a red helmet. I know firemen, and I appreciate their work, their rushing in where others fear to tread, their total lack of fear. Communities need public servants to help them deal with the chaos of disaster and the destruction of accidental fires. Literally, they might rescue us from our own mistakes and folly. As long as there are firemen, in spite of their (our) best efforts,tragedies will happen, and firemen will lose their lives, and the job of fireman will forever be an exotic mix of heroism, danger, and thrills lived out in smoke, fire, and water, soot and sweat. As long as firemen continue to save their communities, little boys will want to be firemen.

On Henry James’ "The Beast in the Jungle"

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I first read this longish short story over thirty years ago, and I was just as floored then by the ending as I was last night when I read it again for perhaps the twentieth time. The complexity of the author’s discourse, a labyrinth of syntactic juggling and back-tracking, embedded clauses, and hyperbolic double-talk, is daunting because he manages to talk about love and falling into it for the entire story without ever saying anything directly. The story revolves around the dynamics of a couple, May Bertram and John Marcher, who definitely are a couple, but they never marry, have children, or formalize in any serious way their informal relationship. Everyone who knows them understands that they are a couple. May considers them to be a couple, but Marcher just can’t seem to formalize the relationship even though he participates fully in the relationship as if they were married, but they aren’t married, and are not having sex, which their particular society would frown upon. On the other hand, Marcher is obsessed with some imaginary “great thing” to which he will be exposed and which will change his life significantly. He has shared this delusion/idea/tragedy with May, and she agrees to “watch” with him for the horrendous event. He dismisses the question of love almost outright, but he enlists the help of May to help him watch for this “great thing” he is to experience. They discuss the nature of this “great thing” but one gets the sensation that Marcher is only ever more clueless about what this great thing might be, and one also understands, as does Marcher at some point, that May Bertram knows exactly what the “great thing” will be. She knows, he doesn’t, awkward moment. Over the decades through which the relationship endures they grow to love each other to the exclusion of all others, but they each maintain a dwelling, so they are never in an economic situation which might force them into living together–getting married, that is. Marcher is an independent fool who cannot get past his own ego, cannot understand that he is a man like all others, cannot understand that he is much more common than he pretends to be. He believes himself to be “above average” or “special” but the entire story only proves that he is of the most common type of man who lives under the delusion that he is in some significant way special. May, on the other hand, is paralyzed by the fear that if she expresses her love for Marcher that he will disappear and never come back. For her, his companionship is enough, going to the opera, the theater, out to dinner, eating dinner at her home. Their intimacy is mental and occurs through their conversations about Marcher’s “great thing.” Since their intimacy is not centered on sex, their verbal intimacy, based solely on their conversations, their shared meals, their public companionship, serves to bring them together in a way that is much more emotionally based than physical. Since they go together so well, their natural interactions are taken for granted by Marcher and treasured by May. Only when she gets sick and things happen, does Marcher realize what their relationship has been about all along, and he has been an all-too-willing participant. Whether the story is a bitter ironic comedy or a stone-cold tragedy is for each reader to decide. In the end, the reader is the only witness to Marcher’s comic/tragic suffering. Ultimately, one must decide to live in each day, never take anyone or anything for granted, and take great joy in relationships no matter what form they might take.

On Henry James’ "The Beast in the Jungle"

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I first read this longish short story over thirty years ago, and I was just as floored then by the ending as I was last night when I read it again for perhaps the twentieth time. The complexity of the author’s discourse, a labyrinth of syntactic juggling and back-tracking, embedded clauses, and hyperbolic double-talk, is daunting because he manages to talk about love and falling into it for the entire story without ever saying anything directly. The story revolves around the dynamics of a couple, May Bertram and John Marcher, who definitely are a couple, but they never marry, have children, or formalize in any serious way their informal relationship. Everyone who knows them understands that they are a couple. May considers them to be a couple, but Marcher just can’t seem to formalize the relationship even though he participates fully in the relationship as if they were married, but they aren’t married, and are not having sex, which their particular society would frown upon. On the other hand, Marcher is obsessed with some imaginary “great thing” to which he will be exposed and which will change his life significantly. He has shared this delusion/idea/tragedy with May, and she agrees to “watch” with him for the horrendous event. He dismisses the question of love almost outright, but he enlists the help of May to help him watch for this “great thing” he is to experience. They discuss the nature of this “great thing” but one gets the sensation that Marcher is only ever more clueless about what this great thing might be, and one also understands, as does Marcher at some point, that May Bertram knows exactly what the “great thing” will be. She knows, he doesn’t, awkward moment. Over the decades through which the relationship endures they grow to love each other to the exclusion of all others, but they each maintain a dwelling, so they are never in an economic situation which might force them into living together–getting married, that is. Marcher is an independent fool who cannot get past his own ego, cannot understand that he is a man like all others, cannot understand that he is much more common than he pretends to be. He believes himself to be “above average” or “special” but the entire story only proves that he is of the most common type of man who lives under the delusion that he is in some significant way special. May, on the other hand, is paralyzed by the fear that if she expresses her love for Marcher that he will disappear and never come back. For her, his companionship is enough, going to the opera, the theater, out to dinner, eating dinner at her home. Their intimacy is mental and occurs through their conversations about Marcher’s “great thing.” Since their intimacy is not centered on sex, their verbal intimacy, based solely on their conversations, their shared meals, their public companionship, serves to bring them together in a way that is much more emotionally based than physical. Since they go together so well, their natural interactions are taken for granted by Marcher and treasured by May. Only when she gets sick and things happen, does Marcher realize what their relationship has been about all along, and he has been an all-too-willing participant. Whether the story is a bitter ironic comedy or a stone-cold tragedy is for each reader to decide. In the end, the reader is the only witness to Marcher’s comic/tragic suffering. Ultimately, one must decide to live in each day, never take anyone or anything for granted, and take great joy in relationships no matter what form they might take.

On terrorism

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Note: I wrote this note this summer, but I never published it because I thought it sounded preachy and self-serving, as if I were standing on some moral highground, but after today’s events, I don’t care. Here it is, without edits, written about the massacre in the Colorado movie theater this summer. I haven’t changed a word. On the heels of yet another mindless shooting overnight in Colorado, the nation reels with yet another list of dead and wounded. Is this the price we pay for living in a free society where we allow just about anybody to have access to a deadly arsenal of weapons? I understand why the framers put the second amendment into the constitution, but I’m also wondering if we have outgrown our need for that amendment. The monuments to the dead are beginning to pile up across the country. Twelve dead in Colorado, and the number may grow. Now we can add Aurora, Colorado to our list of national disgraces and tragedies. Having lived with terrorism my whole life, both in Spain and the United States, my soul is worn out. Tears no longer help. Any sense of revenge on the perpetrator is both useless and pointless. The dead are gone. Their personal struggles are all over, but those who remain–the parents, the siblings, the friends, the families and the community–are forever damaged by this massacre of innocents. Most killing is usual personal and limited to those people that the murderer has wanted to kill: an ex-wife, girlfriend, drug dealer, but no matter what the motive, it’s always personal and explainable. Yet terrorism is the senseless massacre of innocents. Though some cynics might argue that there are no innocents anywhere, I would argue to the contrary, and say this, people at school, in a movie theater, at work, in a market, on a plane are all innocents from the terrorist’s point of view. Now, there is a callus forming on the wounded part of my own soul. I feel insensed at what this idiot has done, but he has accomplished nothing other than expressing his anger with the world and getting himself a life-sentence in prison. And now everyone knows his name. He has ruined his life and the lives of countless others, but the very sad thing is that his actions are totally pointless in the grand scheme of things. Tomorrow the sun will come up, the list of insane terrorists will be one name longer, the list of the dead will be a little longer still, but in no time, most of the world will forget, just as we have forgotten Killeen, Littleton, Fort Hood, Virgina Tech. The list of mass killings on Wikipedia is actually rather extensive. The pain and tragedy of such an incident as Aurora, Colorado or a Waco, Texas is real and true, but in a true act of self-preservation, we bury the dead, say our good-byes, and move on–until the next time. I’m not in favor of changing any laws, but I do wonder how a society produces monsters of this type. Is it a blatant consumerism, a culture which obsesses on success and punishes mediocrity with banishment? Is it a sick culture which produces monsters that shoot and kill blindly, in the dark, with no sense of right or wrong, lead by stupidity and ignorance? There is no meaning in the killings in Colorado, in spite of what the killer might think. His illusions of granduer are no more than that, illusions.

On Skyfall

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Has anyone ever wondered where James Bond comes from? Ever since his earliest incarnations via Sean Connery, he has been a brooding, enigmatic, and dangerous character, already a man, never a child in spite of logic to the contrary. The 23rd Bond film is highly reminiscent of those earlier Bonds as producers, writers and directors strive to resurrect the fifty-year-old series. This Bond is not indestructible or infallible, and the opening series of shots, a high speed urban chase, end in disaster for the British Secrete Service, Bond sinking to the bottom of a river, apparently dead. As the movie progresses, the audience finds out that Bond is an orphan who has not yet dealt with a traumatic past which has left him vulnerable in a number of ways. The evildoer de jour is very evil, specializing in cyber attacks and dark personal vendettas, which make him dangerous and problematic because he is not driven by larger or universal ethical concerns for society at large. He’s a sociopath who is uninterested in larger geo-political concerns, driven only by the money he might extort from this or that victim. An ex-gent who has worked for M, the evildoer is a cinematic doppleganger of James Bond in the sense that they both have the same experience and training. The evil agent wants to kill M, the mother/father figure who, at some time in the past, gave him up to the other side. The entire movie then is about two things, vengeance and resurrection. The images of water in which James finds himself confronting death and life strongly clash with the images of dry death and decay with which the bad guy surrounds himself. Though one might question the mere existence of Bond, a violent assassin who is used outside the normal channels of law and order to eliminate, with deadly force and extreme prejudice if necessary, security problems that the Crown might have. This is a lingering question that haunts the film: are there problems which might invoke a state of exception? One would like to suggest that in a post-cold war world, that Bonds and others of his ilk would be superfluous. It would seem that, given the complexity of our digital/cyber world, other kinds of dangers may still lurk in the shadows that might require exceptional treatment. The movie humanizes Bond, showing what a remarkable subject he really is and that his special qualities, abilities, and strengths have less to do with physical prowess and more to do with mental toughness and mental agility, the ability to think six moves ahead of his opponent. The metaphorical chess match between the two combatants is of apocalyptic proportions, one combatant locked in his path of self-destruction and madness, the other blazing a trail out of the allegorical savage forest where he has been lost and pursued by old personal demons. The screenplay parses out these conflicts bit by bit, carefully peeling away layers of guilt, hate, betrayal, treason, sacrifice, cruelty, hypochrisy, nihilism, self-destruction, doubt, fear, and envy. One knight looks for his destruction, the other, his resurrection. The allegorical battle between good and evil plays out slowly, ambiguously, without clear answers as to who is good and who is bad. If the movie is about being reborn, it comes through small steps, small symbols, a classic car, and old country house, a hunting knife, thin ice, an old chapel, the wilderness. Though this is a classic Bond film, perhaps one of the best, and subtlety is not one of its great qualities, the 23rd Bond film gives viewers a lot to think about in terms of right and wrong, terrorism, vengeance, growing old, and, curiously, retirement. There is both the fresh air of innovation in this film and a wink at Bond tradition, shaken, not stirred.