The Duty of Opposition

Nicholson Baker writes in "Human Smoke" of pacifism in WWII.  He quotes Christopher Isherwood, who -- along with Auden -- abandoned London during wartime.

"If I fear anything," he said, "I fear the atmosphere of the war, the power which it gives to all the things I hate -- the newspapers, the politicians, the puritans, the scoutmasters, the middle-aged merciless spinsters."  Isherwood shrank, he said, from the duty of opposition: "I am afraid I should be reduced to a chattering, enraged monkey, screaming back hate at their hate."  That's why he'd left.  It was January 20, 1940.

Lake of Fire

I engaged in an old-fashioned Internet argument today on somebody's blog comments page. Righteous indignation. Nothing quite like it.

On the other hand, even engaging with those who invariably believe only what they want to believe seems futile. Maybe that's why I've given up joining the chorus of idiots on the News-Gazette letters page. Why encourage them? (See Nicholas Kristoff's recent essay on anti-intellectualism in America. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/30kristof.html)

And then again, on the OTHER other hand, I watched the abortion documentary "Lake of Fire" this morning, one of the most astounding, even-handed, two-and-a-half hour movies this side of Frederick Wiseman. This is how dialog and debate were meant to be done. It is not a film always easy to watch. It is also impossible to turn away, it is so well-made and consistently enriching and challenging, even (or especially) for a subject that you would think was well-played out, with both sides firmly dug into their trenches. Lake of Fire could shake up what you think you believe.

Smart people -- from Nat Hentoff to Noam Chomsky -- speak intelligently and persuasively from many different points of view. The movie does not take sides. The Religious Right is fully and fairly represented. One of them argues as to why abortion doctors (and blasphemers and gay people) should be executed. Later he is convicted of the murder of a doctor and is given the death penalty. That's disturbing, too. When is killing justified?

Fundamentalists are likely to walk out during a female punk rock singer performing nearly naked, jamming a clothes hanger into her G-string. However, the all-male singing group of Promise Keepers, led by Randall Terry, is almost more disturbing. I don't know which performance has the higher ick factor.

Near the end of the film, the entire process of an abortion is shown. I'm not talking about medical procedure only, but the woman's decision making, her intake interview (extensive), the care she receives during the procedure, and her emotional state following the procedure. That section of the film in itself may make you think about abortion in a new way than you ever have before.

Ultimately, Lake of Fire does seem clearly to be on the side of tolerance, convincingly revealing that no one can state with certainty or ultimate authority how to resolve something that is almost never done thoughtlessly or recklessly. I think my favorite analysis came from Noam Chomsky, who posited a line of actions, from a woman washing her hands (thus destroying potentially useful skin cells) to the killing of a three-year old baby. Somewhere within that continuum of extremes, it would seem clear that the taking of life is wrong. But no one can say where that point is.

Lake of Fire made me confront my own attitudes. It's a rare movie that actually helps one clarify one's position and yet feel empathy for almost everyone involved (certain Bible-thumpers excepted). I came away thinking I could call myself pro-life AND pro-choice.

I just looked up Ebert's review. It deserves to be read. He says, "This is a brave, unflinching... documentary that makes such an effective case for both pro-choice and pro-life that it is impossible to determine which side the filmmaker stands on."

British director Tony Kaye spent 17 years on and off making this film. It has been his life's work.

Regarding travel with a mission

Rufus Jones, the Haverford professor, went to Germany with two other men; Robert Yarnall, a Quaker businessman, and George Walton, a principal of a Quaker boarding school.  They hoped to talk to someone in authority, perhaps Hitler, about the suffering of the Jews.  Before he left, Jones wrote some names and addresses in his notebook, and he wrote: "We need the note of adventure, of the heroic and costly, not the twittering of birds over a volcano." He was seventy-five years old.

From Nicholson Baker's remarkable new history book, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.

Travel

Some of my friends -- Dan, Wilmer, and Ken -- recently came back from a two-week fact-finding trip to Colombia.  They visited Bucaramanga, a town where I lived for a month on my third trip to the South American country, and I followed their exploits carefully (on Dan's blog at danschreiber.blogspot.com).

Someday, I expect to move and live permanently in Latin America. But travel itself has changed since the years when I backpacked and ventured into places not quite on the map.  

There's hardly anything left to discover.  I never wanted to be a tourist.  Even when my wife Lee and I explored Yugoslavia (back when there still was a Yugoslavia), we ate the omnipresent bean soup and spoke what Serbo-Croatian we could manage to figure out.  We went to Sarajevo, despite the warnings against it from the train agent.

"You don't want to go there," she told us.  "Go somewhere else."

No, I told her.  We do want to go there.

And we did.  And I'm glad we did.  I recently watched the movie "The Hunting Party" with Richard Gere and Terrence Howard and recognized sights and places and even the feelings associated with that country.  If we had stayed in the best hotels or used a travel agent or tour, we would have missed everything.

The last time I drove through Mexico, exploring for two weeks with my son Henry, we revisited some of the regional cities where I had lived while attending college there.  Everything had changed.  Xalapa, once a lush and rustic city of endless beauty and charm, had become a bustling metropolis.  Veracruz, once a port city with a wicked and wonderful night life, was pocked with highrise hotels and crowded parking places.  (Hurricanes still threatened; some things don't change.)  When we went to Teotihuacan, the Pyramid of the Sun, outside Mexico City, there were tour buses of Asian visitors and school groups battling to perch on the top. The magic of the place remained, but you had to concentrate to absorb it, to recognize it, to feel it under the rumble of others shooting videos and talking on cell phones. A Wal-Mart looms in the near distance.

Twenty years ago, I sought out and explored the Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Palenque.  I understand that now the place is inundated with tourists, the nearby water paradise of Aguas Azules trodden down with crowds.  Oaxaca has changed from the most indigenous and beautiful market culture to a refuge for American artists and tourists with expense accounts.

I had always wanted to visit Machu Picchu in Peru and had filed it away for a future exploration and meditation. Now I'm not sure I even want to go, it has become such a well-known tourist destination.

In Chuck Thompson's book "Smile When You Are Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer," he includes a chapter called "Why Latin America Isn't the World's Number One Tourist Destination and Probably Never Will Be."  (From his words to God's ears.)  He claims estadounidenses are afraid of Latin America.  Mostly when I hear someone tell me they "love Mexico," they've been to Cancun and took a tour bus to a nearby ruin before returning to their luxury hotel or cruise ship.  They know nothing about Mexico, but I'm not about to discourage them from keeping away from the interior, the heart of the place or the people.  

Dan had written in his blog his uneasiness about going to Colombia, the fear of kidnapping and stories of rebels in the jungles.  Someone commented on learning of his impending trip, "You're crazy."  Indeed, the U.S. State Department discourages travel to the country.

But Thompson indicates that "while middle-class Americans (tremble) through the territory of narco-terrorist blood feuds... (Colombia is) second only to the Himalayas for mountain dramas, the turbulent beauty of the Andes.. a backdrop of overwhelming grandeur."  He walked through the city streets at night and enjoyed coffee with strangers.

On my last visit to Colombia, I found it still possible to explore, to feel the adventure of being surrounded by a real Latin American culture without all the trappings of tourism. I went for weeks without seeing another American.  Certainly, Colombia might be able to use the income that a tourist industry would provide.  Maybe they'll find a way to end the violence in that country without succumbing to the devastation that tourism and the tourist mindset brings.  

It is still possible to travel.  But you have to work at it.  Some things money just can't buy.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore

I had read Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore a while back and found myself laughing and grimacing at his twisty, perverse look at family, violence, and politics.

It was with a little trepidation that I attended opening night, since often the actualization of a play fails to live up to a perfectionist's imagination.

At opening night at the Station, Rick Orr directed a handsome cast in this latest production and I'm pleased and relieved to say, it pretty much rocks.

The cast of eight is eminently watchable. Principle players Coy Wentworth and Gary Ambler -- as a duo attempting to disguise the death of a cat -- play off each other in ways that frequently caused me to emit unexpected spurts of laughter; the Irish insurgent duo Mathew Green and Colleen Klein gave off palpable sexual sparks, particularly when lavishing a lubricant of blood over one another.

The final scene's coup de theatre is extreme, combining the coldness of a blood bath with the fuzzy warmth of kittens. The audience did not know whether to moan or coo. Actually, they did both. Loudly. While laughing.

Even so, one can't mistake the political overtones. It's not just about Ireland. It's about a world where violence erupts over trifles, a world where we have learned to shrug off distant wars as just more television.

Oddly, seeing The Lieutenant of Inishmore may re-sensitize the viewer, rather than desensitize, to the violence all around us. But it's not a lecture. It's not spinach. You'll have a good time and then ask yourself, did I just have a good time watching that?