Julian Assange Is President Obama's Pussy Riot

“There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.”
--Julian Assange, Sunday, August 19, 2012

Two days after three members of the Russian feminist collective known as Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in jail for hooliganism, Wikileaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange appeared on the steps of the Ecuadorian embassy in London to make a speech drawing attention to the United States and Britain’s political persecution of him. While following these events in the news, it occurred to me that Julian Assange is in some ways President Obama’s Pussy Riot.

Of course, the main difference between the situations is that we have good reason to believe that the persecution of Pussy Riot is the result of personal vindictiveness on the part of Russian president Vladimir Putin, or at least of the corrupt system of his making, whereas the persecution of Julian Assange is one of vast governmental tradition of long standing and has little to do with the whims or personal malice of President Obama or Prime Minister David Cameron.

The two persecutions, however, are similar in that of government cracking down on individuals who have embarrassed it by bringing before the public what the government would prefer remain unsaid. Pussy Riot, by shouting anti-Putin messages in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow drew attention to the church’s collusion with a political leader. Julian Assange, through documents released by Wikileaks, has made the dirty deeds and dishonesty of Washington available for anyone with a computer to see.

It seems that my blogs often come around to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and again I am reminded of something I heard him say in a YouTube video in which he appeared on stage with Assange. We all know that our governments are involved in shady schemes and lying about it. Nobody doubts this. But when someone presents that in an undeniable manner, it’s a scandal. Our governments, as well as many who know their governments are guilty, would prefer that the crimes stay covered up, albeit openly.

What a joke that soon after Assange’s speech, the White House issues a warning to us not to allow Assange to divert us from the charges of sexual assault against him. I cannot speak to these charges against Assange--they should be addressed--but is there anyone who seriously doubts he would not be the center of an international brouhaha if it were not for the political implications of his journalism?

At the end of his speech, Assange raised three problems that need addressed: the ongoing incarceration without trial of Army Private Bradley Manning, the sentencing of the Bahrain Human Rights Centre president Nabeel Rajab for a Tweet, and the sentencing of Pussy Riot for their performance. To these, we should add the political persecution of Julian Assange. We must not allow the government to silence voices of truth.

Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House and the Fall of Being

At the bookstore the other night, my wife picked up a children's book by Virginia Lee Burton titled The Little House. Later that night, while my son bounced around me and did everything but pay attention, I read it aloud to him and found it to be a work of surprising depth.

The Little House is about a little house in the country. She lives a happy life watching the seasons come and go, the heavenly bodies pass overhead, and the people go about simple, quaint lives. But over time, the Little House is swallowed by a city. Massive buildings rise all around, cars and trains pollute the air with fumes and noise, and the people are busy and stressed. The Little House falls into disrepair and is no longer happy. At the end, however, the Little House gets a new owner, who moves her back into the country where she is happy once more.

For children, the book no doubt has a happy ending, but I found it to be a sad one. The whole premise of the book is that cities swallow and destroy the countryside. The Little House is sure to once more find herself swallowed by an urban jungle. "Progress" is a one-way affair. She may not be able to run next time, or may have no place to run to.

I was surprised recently upon reading a description of the Luddites of 19th-Century England to find that I understood why they broke into factories and smashed the equipment. They were seeing their jobs taken away, and jobs mean food, housing, education, health and self-esteem. Their entire way of life, with its pleasures, was being taken away. The best they could hope for in the years to come was to become a cog in the machine, performing some miniscule task in the division of labor that anyone else could perform just as well.

The Little House, however, hit me most instinctively on a different, broader level, a level that goes beyond the bad effects of urbanization and increasing dominance of technology. I felt as if it represented how change over time results in the loss of something dreadfully important, the passing of a Golden Age, whether that Golden Age is a past time in one’s own life (summers as a child, hanging with friends in high school, dating in college, etc.) or a historical period before one was born (the Roaring Twenties, La Belle Époque--to take examples from Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris). We each carry around the idea that there once was a time when life was, so it seems to us now, so much simpler, happier or meaningful. So much richer.

The city--in the broader sense of a total Fall in the quality of being--comes for all of us, just as it will my son. After finishing the book, I wished, not for the first time, that I could somehow spare him all the indignities time has in store for him. I will have to console myself that there are joys as well, and like the Little House at the end of the book, one sometimes finds a respite.

Once again she was lived in and taken care of.
The stars twinkled above her. . . .
A new moon was coming up. . . .
It was Spring . . . .
and all was quiet and peaceful in the country.
--The Little House

Forgotten Calls for Equality for All

I stumbled across a gem from Dover Publications the other day that is a collection of revolutionary writings from such diverse thinkers as Thomas Jefferson, Lenin, Gandhi and Mao. Reading these primary texts on revolution, I was struck by the concern they all express for equality--a concern that has largely disappeared from American discourse.

We might expect such concern from the orators of the French Revolution, which began the process of raising the Third Estate (the commons) to a modern representative legislature and which ended with the beheading of the Bourbon dynasty, and they deliver. Point 10 of the “Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf” declares that “The end of the French Revolution is to destroy inequality, and to reestablish general prosperity.” 

The preface to the "Analysis" identifies Francois Noel Babeuf as one of the founders of French socialism. His manifesto was accepted by his group the Society of Equals, but he was one of many to be executed by the government later.

Leave it to the anarchists, however, to go even further. Pierre-Sylvain Marechal’s “Manifesto of the Equals” was so radical in its call for equality that, according to the same preface, even Babeuf’s Society of Equals would not endorse it:

“Let there be no difference now between human beings but in age and sex! Since all have the same needs and the same faculties, let there be for all one education and one standard of life! They are content with one sun and the same air for all, why should not the same portion and quality of food suffice for each? . . . Open your eyes and hearts to the fullness of joy. Recognize and proclaim with us THE REPUBLIC OF EQUALS.”

Another anarchist included in the collection goes so far as to blame God for inequality-- and for Mikhail Bakunin, God and State often go hand in hand, to Man’s detriment:

“For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave; now, if he is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him . . . if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.” (from God and State)

Even Lenin, a figure much feared in the popular politics of the West, displays a moving concern with equality, and is ready with specific measures. One such measure in “The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution” is equal wages for all--bureaucratic officials and the average worker alike. 

In “Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People,” Lenin and the Provisional Government declare that the fundamental aim of the Republic of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies is “to abolish all exploitation of man by man, to completely eliminate the division of society into classes.”

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which describes his experience fighting with the communist P.O.U.M. in the Spanish Civil War: “Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all.” 

Homage to Catalonia contains alluring descriptions of the egalitarian society that actually existed in the early months of the revolution:

“Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. . . ‘Smart’ clothes were an abnormality, nobody cringed or took tips, waiters and flower-women and bootblacks looked you in the eye and called you ‘comrade.’”

Yet in America today--a nation generally believed by its citizens to be founded on equality--passionate calls for equality are largely absent from the narrow left-right spectrum embodied by Democrats and Republicans. The far left is reduced to making grand pleas for equality that it knows the media, politicians, big business and the populace will ignore.

In mainstream debate, you may hear about equality with regard to specific civil rights issues--equality before the law, say for gays and lesbians in marriage; equality between the sexes, say in executive pay; equality between races, say when a public figure makes a gaff touching upon race; and so on ad infinitum--and you may even hear about economic inequality and the need to help those in need through charity and welfare, but calls are lacking for positive preventive action, for significant reform of the system, to establish equality across the board.

As a culture, I think we don’t even want equality anymore. We have accepted the capitalist assertions that the playing field is level and that people rise or fall according to their merits, even though we all know that the system plays favorites and the rise to success is often inversely proportional to competence.

Besides, we like our hierarchies. They're flattering. We can always point to someone beneath us to whom we are superior, while believing that we deserve and may indeed someday attain a higher spot in the order of things.

We certainly want to avoid the mistakes of the past in creating a new social reality, but I am coming to agree with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek's assertion, in In Defense of Lost Causes, that there are parts of revolutions past that are worth reviving. The crises of capitalism are many, and in addressing them, we should remember to call for, to insist on, greater equality for all.

The Limiting of the Libido in Post-Production Code Hollywood

About a year ago, just after I started this blog, I posted a note on Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s book In Defense of Lost Causes (blog). Soon after, I put the book aside unfinished and embarked on a series of books in philosophy and revolutionary history to help give me the background knowledge I needed for understanding Zizek’s book. Now I have returned to it and have been inspired with another note.

One characteristic of Zizek’s thought is how quickly he turns to analysis of movies to illustrate his points. In the section titled “Stalinism Revisited,” when discussing censorship and artistic expression, he takes an example from Casablanca, which I reviewed for this blog.

Ilsa (played by Ingrid Bergman) goes to visit Rick (Humphrey Bogart). She knows that he hates her for abandoning their romance years before but begs him to give her papers of transit so that at least her husband Victor Laszlo, an important member of the resistance against the Nazis, may escape the city. When Rick refuses to budge, Ilsa breaks down in tears and reveals that she still loves him. They embrace. Fadeout to airport tower. Fade back to Rick, who says, “And then?” Then Ilsa explains why she left him.

Zizek says that this scene is striking because of what he calls “inherent transgression.” The film breaks its own rules, so to speak. It tells us clearly that during the fadeout to the tower, Rick and Ilsa definitely did it. All the signs are there: they embrace before the fadeout, we all know what such fadeouts mean, Bogart is smoking a cigarette afterwards, etc. The film also sends very clear signals that they did not do it: the conversation picks up right where it left off, both characters are fully clothed, Bogey still sounds hostile, etc. This allows the film to satisfy the Motion Picture Production Code of the 1940s and at the same time tell us a story that encourages our imagination to insert screwing.

The prudishness of the Production Code and the movie-makers’ skirting of it may strike us as quaint and amusing today, when so many movies contain overtly sexual content, but it occurred to me that our movies are in some ways actually more restrained.

Movies today can show more than they used to, but the current ratings system and cultural mores result in movies that are surprisingly tame for all that they proclaim themselves to be sexy. Tasteful montages of unidentifiable swathes of skin moving slowly are the norm for sex scenes, but since they are showing the act, usually missionary, little is left to the imagination. The libido must enjoy its movies in the narrow space between what isn’t allowed and what is explicitly shown. The old movies, in showing little, were able to suggest much.

One of Zizek’s claims is that despite the horrible repression of the Stalinist years, they also “saved what we understand as the humanity of man,” because rather than insist on the total destruction of dissidence, dissidence was often allowed as long as it was internalized. You could hate Stalinism as much as you wanted, you just couldn’t say so.

In the same way, we might say that the Production Code, despite the restrictions it must have put on artists, kept sexy infinitely alive by keeping some things secret. We will never know exactly what Rick and Ilsa did that night in Casablanca, but it can be as hot as we want.

Coriolanus Versus Hamlet Redux

When the film version of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes, came out last year, an old controversy rose to the surface. In 1920, T.S. Eliot declared, much to his contemporaries’ disbelief, that Coriolanus and Anthony and Cleopatra, as opposed to Hamlet, constituted the Bard’s greatest work.

Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s lesser known works, is about Caius Martius, a Roman general whose acts of valor in suppressing the Volscians win him a consulship and the new name Coriolanus. His impolitic manners inflame the tribunes and the people to immediately withhold the title from him. In exile, he joins his old Volscian foe Aufidius and sets about conquering Rome, his former home. Victorious in  battle once more, his fortunes change yet again, leading to the bloody end we expect from a Shakespearean tragedy.

In “Hamlet and His Problems,” Eliot lists what he believes are Hamlet’s shortcomings, proclaiming the drama an “artistic failure.” He starts with “superfluous and inconsistent scenes,” says “the versification is variable,” and then moves on to his biggest criticism:

“The intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or exceeding its object, is something which every person of sensibility has known; it is doubtless a study to pathologists. It often occurs in adolescence . . . The Hamlet of [Franco-Uruguayan poet] Laforgue is an adolescent; the Hamlet of Shakespeare is not, he has not that explanation and excuse. We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him.”

Upon the release of Coriolanus last year, Slovenian philosopher and irrepressible movie buff Slavoj Zizek took Eliot’s side in the argument. In "Sing of the New Invasion," Zizek says that while interpretations of Coriolanus have tended to favor right-wing militarism, Fiennes breaks the play out of this box by making the titular character a left-wing radical. I would agree that this extra space for Coriolanus helps, but perhaps it is too little to stand against Hamlet.

Coriolanus has plenty of virtues. It is a fast-paced, action-packed drama that cries out for Hollywood treatment, yet it is also character-driven, raising it a notch above most of what we can expect from cinema today. Every reversal of Caius Martius’s fate is the result of an action unfolding from within his twisted psyche. His mother Volumnia raised a raging soldier with a whimpering little boy inside. Despite the manipulators around him, Caius Martius’s fate is one he largely chooses.

Yet the play, while powerful at times, never soars. It remains firmly fixed to politicians and soldiers, none of whom are particularly sympathetic. Even Volumnia is just another unlikable power-player. The dramatis personae of Coriolanus, while sometimes powerful, present a narrow array of ambitions. Like the politicians and generals of our own day, they are not very likable, so it should come as no surprise if Coriolanus often fails to move its viewers.

Hamlet, on the other hand, never fails to move. The drama tears off in all directions, covering a myriad of human experiences--thirst for revenge, lost love, existential angst--and presenting a staggering array of spectacles--ghostly apparitions, plays within plays, and even a mother-son bedroom scene. Hamlet himself is such a bewildering patchwork of qualities that critics can never pin him down. His play moves us because it contains great space within which the viewer may move, and its loose ends merely serve to heighten the sense that the dramatic action is open rather than closed.

The debate over Coriolanus and Hamlet reminds me of aging rockers. When fans criticize their newer work, the rockers usually defend themselves by saying that time has made them more proficient in their instruments and more skilled in song-writing--all of which is probably true, but the older albums are often still better, because of the untamed inspiration fueling them. Perhaps--and this is mere speculation--Shakespeare’s craft had waxed in the years between Hamlet and Coriolanus while his Hamlet-like frenzy waned.

Yet I hesitate to take the side of consensus in this obscure controversy, for Coriolanus is indeed strong, and Fiennes’s film adaptation shows it off. It seems a bit silly, anyway, to seriously ask which of Shakespeare’s plays is the greatest, much less to argue over it, when they are all so good. In the end, I can only say that Coriolanus and Hamlet are each the better in their own ways, and we might very well expect that in other ways, other plays would prove the victor--Romeo and Juliet in romantic passion, for example, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream in imaginative creativity.