African-Americans in the Lincoln movie

Recently I saw the movie Lincoln, which I particularly liked for its unromantic view of 19th century life. People, sans blow-dried hair, inhabited dimly lit, dusty interiors. The realistic, if not heroic, picture of Lincoln as a backroom politician as well as an inspiring orator created a balanced view. The tumult in the Congress provided a welcome antidote to some current commentary that we have somehow "lost" the civil politics of yesteryear. The moviegoer was reminded of the horror of war.

However, there seemed to be a false note in the depiction of blacks. They were prominently displayed in top hats and dress coats at Lincoln's second inaugural. Yet in the picture above of that event, all distinguishable faces are white. 

 

Likewise blacks were depicted in formal dress in Congressional galleries, which seems unlikely, although photography rarely depicted the dimly-lit 19th century interiors.

 

 

Soldiers of both races often fought in makeshift uniforms. The movie showed complete uniforms of the kind worn in photographic studios. The picture at right probably presents a more realistic view of black troops.

 

 Even in current usage, minority servers in households and institutions are addressed by their first names while those served are often addressed as Mr. or Mrs. It seemed false to me that the Lincolns were depicted addressing black household servants with titles, rather than their first names.

Does it dishonor everybody to provide a realistic depiction of 19th century whites, while sugar-coating the depiction of blacks?

Art as Religion

It has become common place to observe that art has replaced religion among educated secular people. Philanthropists and civil governments enable architects to erect landmark buildings that impress as churches once did. Visiting, appreciating and collecting art are regarded as superior, almost moral activities. Art is an important element of my own life and yet I often find myself irritated when a religious aura surrounds it. I ask myself why.

It is wonderful that art provides aesthetic pleasure, emotional significance and mental stimulation to people. An impulse toward aesthetics seems to be a basic human trait as is an impulse toward religion. In most cultures, the two combine. In our culture we have separated them.

 However, art advocates sometimes claim the right to denigrate others' beliefs as religions have done historically and still do in some cases. I think the claim to moral superiority if an object is labeled "art" is the source of my irritation.

 Art that denigrates religious symbols brings the conflict into focus. An example some years ago was an image of the Virgin Mary daubed with elephant dung that was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and incensed then mayor Rudy Giuliani. I came across an interesting commentary on this issue in the Jewish World Review reminding readers that denigrating others' religious symbols is bigotry and asking how they would react if a Star of David had been treated similarly. In effect, the author was asking whether anti-Christianity is more acceptable than antisemitism.

The other aspect of the controversy was that taxpayers, undoubtedly including some whose religious symbols were being denigrated, paid to support the exhibit. Is this an argument against public support of the arts, in which case the issue only would have been one of free expression? Or is it an argument against public support of art that consciously denigrates a segment of the culture?

Is this conflict something that adheres to the visual arts? Literature and music also provide aesthetic pleasure, emotional significance and mental stimulation, but does novel reading attain the moral status attached to visual art? It might be argued that classical music and opera do attain that status.

Dear readers, how do you feel about these issues?

Rooms of the Past

The theme of a trip to New York the past two days became Rooms of the Past. Each says something about the lives they contained and their relationships to the larger world of the times. At the Jewish Museum, there is a virtual 3D recreation of a 1938 Berlin apartment. It speaks of a comfortable family life in a small space, by present standards, just before that life disappeared. Hitler lurks off stage.

Also at the Jewish Museum, there is a virtual video re-creation of the Cone sisters' apartment in Baltimore, similar to the videos museums sometimes offer of ancient cultures. The sisters were early collectors of Picasso and Matisse, among other artists. Their rooms speak of refined wealthy luxury and modern artistic taste, supported by their brothers' textile interests in North Carolina, where the industry moved to escape Northern union organization. The southern textile workers lurk offstage.

At the Morgan library, J.P. Morgan's pristinely preserved study consciously copies the power of Renaissance palaces in architecture and art patronage. Like the Medicis, he controlled the financial world of his time, acting as a central banker in the 1907 financial crisis from that study, while the best Renaissance portraits looked on from the walls. The rest of the country at the time looms, not lurks, offstage.

At the Players Club on Grammercy Park, Edwin Booth's living room and bedroom are preserved in  poor condition within the now elegant club founded by his infamous brother John Wilkes Booth, who lurks offstage.

We stayed next door at the National Arts Club, home of Samuel J. Tilden, a wealthy railroad lawyer who became a reformist governor of New York and the 1876 Democratic presidential candidate, losing  by one vote in the electoral college.  The vote reflected the post Civil War Reconstruction turmoil because three Southern states sent duplicate delegations to the college, one black and one white. The house displays the Victorian-era opulance of a wealthy man. The still-persistent issues of race and politcal corruption lurk offstage.

Grammercy Park itself - then and now a locked, gated garden - offers an outdoor room that was a sanctuary from the hoi polloi of the city, who lurked on the other side of the tall iron fence. As residents of the Arts Club, we strolled the paths.

Around the corner from the Arts club and down Irving Street, we ate at Pete's Tavern, where O'Henry drank and scribbled in the same era. The tenement dwellers of his stories lurk offstage.

What stories do our rooms tell? Who lurks or looms offstage?

More than we can possibly know

I was intrigued yesterday by an article about philosophy courses available free on line. The article cited openculture.com (the title a subject in itself perhaps). The site is rife with ads for things you can buy, but there is a plethora of courses that can be played through iTunes (downloads available free at iTunes.com) an hour's lecture at a time. Under each category (free language lessons, free textbooks, free movies, etc.), you have to scroll down beyond the paid ads and find free options. I examined a Yale finance course , a French movie and an introduction to electrical engineering. Anybody with a computer can theoretically acquire a college education.

I am not likely to pursue electrical engineering or, to tell the truth, heavy philosophy courses. I may listen to some of the finance lectures, given that my economics education is dated while the financial world continues to churn.  I am drawn as well to some history, art, literature and language courses.

Most of all, I am impressed with the range of possibilities. Ah, but there is no free lunch, as economists are fond of saying. Without the structure of an institution, do we have the discipline to concentrate and absorb all these possibilities?

Further, how much do we need to know? Want to know? In a world of more food than we can possibly eat, how do we plan our meals?

Are we what we read?

Recently, I have encountered three commentaries that  expressed views on how our reading, particularly fiction, becomes part of us and changes us. Michael Dirda, writing in his blog in The Washington Post, says he doesn't feel he's actually read a book until he writes about it. "Composing a review or an essay seems the final stage of reading, a way or summarizing my experience of the novel, biography or work of history." His reading leads to creative writing. He muses that others may join book clubs for this reason.

Second, an article that reached me via Zite.com, an aggregating site that creates a cyber magazine based on the user's expressed and revealed tastes, described a study by Keith Oakley and Raymond Mar at the University of Toronto. The study demonstrated personality changes from reading a Chekhov story. Mar describes their central assumption, "When people are reading literary fiction, they're creating in their mind a simulation of experience...." They applied a personality tests to students before and after they read either a Chekhov story or a summary of basic plot points. Reading the story had a small effect on personality (after all, it was only one story), and the plot points did not. However, the changes varied among individuals. The question is how much effect does habitual reading of literature have on our personalities?

Finally, at Chautaugua Institution in July, I attended a lecture in the literary program in which a novelist asserted that fiction builds the capacity for empathy by immersing the reader in others' experiences. Fiction is valuable because it does this he feels. I agree and would add that history is also valuable for this reason.

Dirda worries that reading groups could also become pressure groups, not a worry I share. But recently I decided not to read Daniel Silva's thrillers anymore because the most recent one contained excessive gratuitous violence in my opinion. Could habitual reading of violent fiction have a negative personality effect?

Should we begin to think of changes in ourselves as part of the experience of reading?

Odes to Boredom: Because it's August?

This past week, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal ran articles extolling the virtues of boredom. In the Times, Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, revisits a lifetime of boredom, including interminable corporate meetings, before Dilbert. Adams lauds his good fortune to have been bored so often, "I've noticed that my best ideas bubble up when the outside world fails in its primary job of freightening, wounding or entertaining me."

He fears for contemporary society because  iPads, iPods and iPhones mean that we can always avoid boredom. Lack of innovation and creativity will follow with dire consequences for society and the economy.

In the Journal, Peter Toohey, a professor of Greek and Roman studies and the author of "Boredom: A Lively History," explains that boredom has a long history. He cites a third century Roman plaque erected by citizens who honored a consul of Campania because he had saved them from "endless boredom." Better not to dwell too much on how he entertained them. (iDevices may have their uses.) For us, Toohey finds boredom useful as a warning that life is not being properly lived and thus needs to be changed before the dire consequences, possibly violence or illness, ensue. As such, he also finds boredom to be a spur to creativity.

Ah, so be thankful for suffocating weather, vacationing friends,  August suspension of meetings, interminable repeats of the same story on TV news and  panels of experts repeating that same news.  If all else fails, watch the grass turn brown until your creative juices stir. But beware of  iDevices!

The writer and the reader seek escape in suspense, character and plot

Joanna Kavenna wrote a long article about John Banville in the  New Yorker a few weeks ago.  Banville is a serious novelist, winner of the Booker Prize for The Sea, who also writes mysteries. He is quoted as saying that one day he sat down and wrote 1500 words of a mystery in place of his usual 200 words for his literary novels.  And he has continued to write mysteries. Kavenna describes his literary novels as prose poetry, without too much concern for character and plot. I bogged down in Banville's latest such novel, The Untouchable, and turned to his latest mystery, A Death in Summer. He wrote it under the name Benjamin Black.

So, readers, what does it mean if both writer and reader feel the need to escape serious literature?