Michael Ferguson

Renoir

Directed by Gilles Bourdos

 

 

This is an outstanding dramatization of the French painter Pierre-August Renoir (1841-1919) (Michel Bouquet) in his later years.  (In French with subtitles.)  It takes place in 1915 during the First World War.  At the time Renoir lived on a farm in Cagnes near the Mediterranean coast above Nice.  He seems to have had an entourage of women around him who took care of the household and attended to him.  The film never explained exactly who they were or what their relationships were to him.  Some of them seem to have been former models.  His wife of 25 years, Aline, died prior to the time of the film, which would have been recently.  He had three sons with Aline, two of whom figure prominently in the film, Jean (Vincent Rottiers), the older, and Claude (Thomas Doret), the younger.

The film begins with the arrival of Andree Heuschling (Christa Theret), a.k.a. Catherine Hessling, who becomes his last model and the future wife of his son, Jean.  Born in 1900, she would have been fifteen at the time of this film, although in the film she appears to be somewhat older, probably in her early 20s.   Renoir’s son, Claude, whom she encounters at the outset, in actuality was only a year younger, although in the film he appears to be at least ten years her junior.

Theret is gorgeous and she spends a good part of her time in this film naked or nearly so, which is a huge plus.  Her naked body helps a great deal to maintain interest in this somewhat slow moving domestic film.  There isn’t a lot of action in this film.  It is domestic drama, but it is interesting and has substance.  The characters are intriguing and their circumstance dealing with the aging patriarch against the backdrop of the horrendous First World War give the film a strong engagement.

The center of gravity of the film is not really Renoir, who mostly sits and paints throughout the film, and sometimes talks — and what he has to say is always interesting — but rather, the romance that develops between the older son, Jean, and Andree.   I’ll let you watch the film to see how that goes, but it is very well done and both characters are strong and captivating, particularly Andree.

What I want to talk about are some of the comments Renoir made on painting and art.  Renoir’s paintings, particularly in his later years, are warm, colorful, and his subject matter tends to be benign:  domestic scenes, landscapes, portraits, and nude women.  His colors are strong, but tend to be pastel, softening contrast and shapes.  He didn’t use black very much.  He felt that viewing a painting should be an enjoyable encounter, reflecting positive, uplifting themes.  It wasn’t that he was unfamiliar with the darker side of life, but he did not wish to portray it.  And this is the point.  A painting, or a work of art more generally, reflects the inner reality, and especially the values, of the artist who created it.  The choice of subject matter and the way it is portrayed say a lot about who the artist is as a person and what he finds most important and valuable in life.  It takes considerable time, sustained attention, and skill to create a work of art.  What you choose as a subject matter upon which to spend that time, attention, and skill is not arbitrary.  An artist chooses to depict what he feels is interesting and important to share with others.  When you view a work of art, you are immersing yourself in the mindset and world view of another person.  You are allowing your attention to be guided by the interest and outlook of another person.  He may be a good person or a bad person.   His outlook may be positive and constructive, or negative, hostile, and biased.  But it is highly personal, individualized, and idiosyncratic.  This is the reason why art and artists often run afoul of prevailing morays and attitudes of their societies.  If they make political statements, they may get into trouble with the authorities.

Art, at least in our western tradition of individual creators, is a forum that lifts up the inner world of particular persons for public view.  In contrast to say, commercial art, which does not do this, or does it to a greatly circumscribed extent.  The operating values in commercial art are to sell a product, promote a name, or create an image associated with a brand or company.  The artist who is commissioned to do such work has limited, if any, choice over the subject matter or how it is to be portrayed.  The artist becomes something of a technician, executing work with a predefined object.  If he is skilled and imaginative, he may have some influence over the final depiction, but the work does not come from his own initiative, his inner need to share of himself.  He is doing the work in the service of an agenda that has been brought to him by someone else.  In the Middle Ages, when life and art was dominated by the church, religious themes were the norm in art.  Individual artists found ways to express themselves within that context, but radical departures from this prevailing mindset were not tolerated and simply had no venue.  The names of artists who created artworks in ancient times were not recorded.  The individual was not important and the individual’s perspective was not to be emphasized in the public forum of art.  Art’s role was to reflect the values of society as a whole, or at least the dominant class within it.

Modern art that you see in museums and galleries today, celebrates highly individualized, idiosyncratic perspectives.  If you contrast the paintings of women by Renoir, and say, Picasso, you see very different attitudes toward women and how they are portrayed.  Renoir saw women as beautiful and sensual, somewhat idealized, perhaps, but women are exalted in his paintings.  They are set in congenial circumstances in warm, vibrant colors.  You see their faces with expressions reflecting the mood and personality of the woman.  Picasso’s women, by contrast, are distorted, grotesque, their faces blank, cold, expressionless.  There is nothing beautiful or inviting about them.  Many of them are frankly hideous.  Certainly there is no idealization.  Neither is more “real” than the other.  The point is that artists depict the world, not as it is, but as they need to see it.  These needs are largely unconscious and are shaped by early experiences going back to the beginnings of their lives.  What you see in art is an interpretation, not “reality”.  When you look at a work of art, you are seeing a selective view of the world the way the artist needs to see it and chooses to share it.  So it is very personal.  Art is a way of connecting with other people on the level of the inner self through selective symbolic communication.  It is inherently limited, but on the other hand, it exposes one to aspects of another person not readily available, and can thus expand one’s awareness of the external world, the inner world of another, and awaken unexplored aspects of oneself.

The film is not so preoccupied with this philosophical topic of the nature of art — which might be a relief to you.  It emphasizes, rather, the romance between the young lovers, which is intriguing and spirited.  It is well crafted and well acted.  Not an action packed film.  You have to wear your thinking cap for this one, if you have one.  It does offer a convincing picture of Renoir in his later years, and particularly the inspiration he derived from attractive young women.  Renoir seems to have used his wealth to isolate himself from the world in an idyllic landscape surrounded by beautiful, attentive women.  (I would do the same thing, if I had the money.)  This was a cause for some tension between himself and his older son, Jean, who had been a soldier at the front.  Wounded in battle, he felt the pull of responsibility to his comrades and the nation, choosing to reenlist and go back to the war, against the strong opposition of Andree and his father.  Renoir senior sat out the war painting naked girls.  His warm, sensual, inviting paintings didn’t seem to sit so well with Jean, who had seen action at the front, which gave him a very different perspective on life from what his father portrayed.  Renoir painted until the very end of his life in 1919.  He was still painting on the day he died.  The film is an excellent introduction to his life and work.

Program 7 — San Francisco Ballet Performance

April 13, 2013

 

 

There were three separate ballets on Program 7.  The first was called Criss-Cross, choreographed by Helgi Thomasson.  This is a celebration of beauty and grace, superbly performed by the San Francisco Ballet dancers.  It is lively and energetic.  The first section is done against the music of Domenico Scarlatti, arranged by Charles Avison, and the latter part is done to the music of Arnold Schoenberg, taking off on George Frederic Handel.  You don’t have to think too much for this one.  It is visually interesting and the mood is upbeat.  The highlight for me were the two male-female duets.  The first was beautifully romantic and elegantly performed.  The second one in the latter half of the performance was more somber, almost languid.  The choreographer seemed to be listening to the music when he composed this.  The dance was well suited to the musical score, which is something I like to see.  It is a solid, enjoyable, well-executed performance that does not challenge too much.

The second ballet was Francesca da Rimini, choreographed by Yuri Possokhov.  This was my favorite of the three.  The set, lighting, special effects, costumes and choreography are interesting and imaginative.  The dancing fits well with the music, which gives a feeling of solidity and stability.  This one is supposed to have a minimal story line, although this staging is not concerned over much with telling a story.  It is actually dominated by a duet which is done to powerful effect.  It contrasts with the duets in the previous ballet in that this duet is much less romantic.  It is sensual, even lurid.  One does not get any sense of an illicit affair in this performance, which is the original story line.  Supposedly Francesca falls in love with Paolo, the younger brother of her husband, Gianciotto, who is supposed to be ugly and crippled.  The tall, robust dancer who plays Gianciotto, Vito Mazzeo, doesn’t exactly fit that description.  He does discover the lovers and murders them, true to the original script, but then Possokhov gives it a twist, which I think is a great improvement.  Instead of the adulterous couple being consigned to Hell, as in Dante’s Inferno, Gianciotto, the jealous murderer is dragged off to Hell.  I like Possokhov’s conception better and congratulate him on his modification of the story.

The Symphony in Three Movements by Igor Stravinsky rounds out the program.  It is choreographed by George Balanchine.  It is imaginatively done, with lots of visual activity and interesting configurations that blend and morph in interesting ways.  This is one where the dance does not well reflect the mood and temper of the underlying music.  There is a lot of distress in this music, but the choreography seems oblivious to it.  The choreographer seemed to have his own agenda and he wasn’t going to let the music get in the way of it.   The dancing is generally more positive and energetic than the music.  This one is interesting to watch.  It has complexity and many different elements that work together smoothly.  It is well thought out from the point of view of the choreography, but it was clearly not conceived from the music as the starting point.  I had the sense that the dancers like doing this one.  I could feel a vigor and enthusiasm from them that seemed inspired by the work itself.  This seems to be one they would choose to do themselves.

Generally an enjoyable, stimulating performance with lots of visual interest, imaginative staging, good positive energy and first rate dancing by the San Francisco Ballet dancers.

Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams

Directed by Dave Stewart and Stevie Nicks

This is a self-indulgent infomercial for Stevie Nicks recent CD, In Your Dreams.  If I had known what it was going to be, I wouldn’t have gone.  Ninety percent of it is Stevie Nicks.  Most of the other ten percent is people telling how much they love Stevie Nicks, thanking her for everything she has done, and rhapsodizing about how great she is.  She is a great song writer and a great singer.  That still works.  The music in this is good.  There should have been more music and less talk.  You do learn a lot about her character.  However, I didn’t like a lot of what I saw.  I think she is a very needy woman in the depths of her heart with an insatiable need for attention and adulation.  She has to be the center of attention at all times and completely dominates everyone around her.  She is very self absorbed and preoccupied with herself.  I found her oppressive after a while.  This kind of extreme neediness taxes me beyond my limits.  I don’t think I could stand being around her for very long.  But I would go see her in a concert.  Her voice still has that sultry, smoky, mesmerizing power that it always did, and her songs are still thoughtful and poignant.  The people who filled the theater where I saw this film applauded enthusiastically.  They seemed to be exactly the kind of adoring fans she needs.  Parts of the film mimic those video pieces for MTV, where an imaginative, theatrical video depicts the song being featured.  But the film also casts some light on her sources of inspiration and the creative process in writing a song and putting a recording together.  For example, Cheaper than Free started from a remark of Reese Witherspoon offering to let her use a condo she owns.  Dave Stewart is her guitarist and lead partner in the songwriting.  Mick Fleetwood appears and plays drums on a number of the songs.  Lindsay Buckingham also participates on a few of the numbers — but says little or nothing.  The recording took place in her Southern California home.  It presents each of the songs on In Your Dreams, informatively and sympathetically.  I would rather have seen a documentary about her life and career, preferably not directed by her.  If you are a dedicated fan of Stevie Nicks, you’ll probably enjoy this, but I would suggest instead just skipping this film and buying the CD.

 

 

 

Emperor

Directed by Peter Webber

This is two films in one.  The main story is a narrative about the aftermath of the Japanese surrender to the Americans at the end of World War II and General Douglas MacArthur’s deliberations over what to do with Japanese Emperor Hirohito.  The issue was whether he should he be tried and executed as one of the architects of the war, or allowed to continue as titular ruler of Japan?  The film is misnamed.  It is not about the Emperor.  The Emperor is only a minor figure in the film.  It is about General Bonner Fellers on MacArthur’s staff, who is charged by MacArthur with investigating Hirohito’s guilt in war crimes.  His report will provide a justification for a decision that MacArthur had already made to allow Hirohito to continue on as Emperor of Japan.  The secondary story is a love story between Fellers and a Japanese woman Fellers met in the United States, who is related to a senior officer in the Japanese military.  The love story is much more interesting and better presented than the political narrative.  The girl is gorgeous (Eriko Hatsune) and she plays the role perfectly.  I think if this film had been recast to present the love story as the center weight of the film with the political drama as a backdrop, it might have worked better.

I am not steeped in the history of this period or in the biographies of any of the individuals portrayed.  So I am taking the film at face value.  I won’t make any judgment about whether the portrayals and the facts and the interpretations are historically accurate.  I will say that I did not find the performance of Tommy Lee Jones as Douglas MacArthur convincing at all.  In general, none of the portrayals of the American military officers came across as genuine.  On the other hand, the Japanese actors who played the roles of the Japanese officials were very effective.

The film attempts to teach some lessons on the nature of Japanese culture or the essence of the Japanese soul.  These discussions between Japanese and American officials take place mostly in the context of the military investigation into the role of Hirohito during the war.  This also has a superficial quality about it that I found myself resisting.  What actually taught more about the Japanese mentality and the culture was the romance.  It did it through the action and characterizations rather than through analytical discussion.

The film also tries to raise the issue of responsibility for the war and the nature of war crimes by comparing the war time behavior of the Japanese military and the American.  Again, this is a lightweight treatment that is completely unimpressive.  The romance (and Eriko Hatsune) is the best part of this film.

The film is engaging and tells an interesting story — actually two interesting stories that are intertwined.  The things it tries hardest to do probably don’t succeed all that well.  The subplot that simply told itself and didn’t think too much worked a lot better.

FBI Moneypak Computer Virus

 

Last week I had a computer virus that locked down my computer and rendered it unusable for five days. I don’t really understand what happened, but I will recount my experience. My computer skills and sophistication are only middling to moderate. Undoubtedly, many of you will understand this much better than I do.

I don’t really know how I got this virus. I haven’t been able to figure it out. The way it got started, I think, is that perhaps a month ago upon startup of the computer, the scanner software would open and the scanner would start to scan, even though there was nothing on the scanner to scan and I hadn’t been using the scanner recently. I am using Windows 7 operating system, by the way. So every time I started the computer up I would have to manually close about four windows related to the scanner. This process began spontaneously for no obvious reason that I can discern. It was a nuisance and a week ago on a Saturday morning I got up and decided to see if I could fix this.

If you click the Start button, you get the command line, and you type msconfig and a window opens with a menu. If you click the Startup tab there is a list of programs that open when you start the computer with check boxes. You can uncheck the ones you don’t want to open when the computer starts up. So I did this, unchecking the scanner software and a number of others. When I restarted the computer, however, the scanner software still started up, as it had been doing, even though it was unchecked in msconfig. So I thought, OK, I’ll uninstall the scanner software. So I did that uninstalling the scanner software in Control Panel. Then I restarted the computer, and some parts of the scanner software still started up, although not all of it, even though it had been uninstalled from the computer. So I said, OK, I’m going to completely uninstall the scanner, the driver, anything having to do with the scanner, uninstall. So I did that and when I restarted the computer, Windows loaded and was immediately superceded by a black screen with FBI and Justice Department logos on it and a message that I had been illegally downloading copyrighted material, looking at child pornography, and various other offenses, and my computer would be locked down until I clicked on the button indicated and paid a fine. If I didn’t do this within 72 hours, the FBI would prosecute me for a host of felonies, or something to that effect. There was a green button labeled ‘Greendot,’ that I was asked to click on it for the instructions on how to make this payment. I did not click on it. Don’t be intimidated. This is not from the FBI or the government. This is heavy handed extortion by criminals. However, you cannot get out of this screen by any means. It completely takes over the computer and immobilizes it. You can’t even shut the computer down. I had to shut it down and turn it back on with the power button. Every time I turned the computer on Windows loaded, but then this threatening screen took over. There was nothing that could be done. The computer was completely locked up.

Fortunately, I also have an Android tablet, which I never use, and regard as a waste of money, but it does have a working internet connection, and I was able to research the problem with it.  So maybe I should hold it in slightly higher esteem. I found that there are a number of different versions of this virus and the one I had was called ‘FBI Moneypak Greendot.’ The most common way people defeated the FBI Moneypak virus was by starting the computer in Safe Mode. In Safe Mode you can operate the computer, connect to the internet, download an antivirus program called “Malwarebytes,” and run it and remove the virus. To get into Safe Mode, you press the ‘Delete’ key when the computer first starts up, before Windows starts to load. It’s good to keep hitting it. You get a black screen with white lettering inviting you to choose how you want Windows to load. Choose Safe Mode with Internet Connection. I did this and Windows loaded, but immediately the black FBI screen took over and shut everything down. So Safe Mode did not work. The Greendot version of this virus disables Safe Mode. Now what?

I got a friend to make a Windows 7 startup disc for me. You can download to a CD the minimal files necessary to operate the computer and boot the computer from the CD. I did this and it worked. I could boot the computer from the CD and get a command prompt. However, I was not able to run anything from the command prompt. I could see into the computer, the file directories were there, but I wasn’t able to do anything. I tried ‘regedit’ to edit the registry — a risky move, for someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. I was able to find the files in the WinLogon section which were attributed to the virus and deleted them, but when I restarted the computer, the virus was still present and the computer was still completely locked down. Deleting the files in the registry that were said to operate the virus did not have any effect. I went back into Regedit and looked again. The two files I had deleted were back just as they had been before. They seem to have self repaired. So I realized that there was more to this virus that those two files. I decided I would not be able to get rid of it by manually deleting it. I tried to run an antivirus software program from a CD, but that didn’t work either. I thought I was stuck.

Then the same friend who made the CD for me told me about a Windows Recovery Manager that is built into the computer, which I did not know about. You access it by pressing F11 upon startup, just as pressing ‘Delete’ gave you the Safe Mode options. Pressing F11 gets you a Recovery Manager screen with three options on it: Microsoft System Repair Tool, Microsoft Startup Recovery Tool, and System Restore. I tried the Microsoft System Repair Tool and restarted the computer, but it did not work. The virus was still stubbornly in charge. I tried again with the Microsoft Startup Recovery Tool. This worked. After running the Startup Recovery Tool, Windows loaded normally and everything was fine. Like magic, after five days, the problem had been solved. So easy, if you know exactly what to do. That’s why I am posting this. It might save you five days of distress.

I immediately ran Malwarebytes with a full scan of the computer. It took about an hour and a half and it located one Trojan file on the computer. I had it deleted and there was a link that said ‘show location of the file.’ I clicked this and the internet browser opened and it went to Yahoo.com. What do you make of that? I reinstalled the scanner and its related software. The computer has worked normally since, except that the scanner software started to open spontaneously again after a day or so. I immediately ran Malwarebytes again, but it did not find any suspicious files. However, after running a full scan with Malwarebytes, the scanner stopped opening upon Startup, and the computer has run perfectly since.

I’m still puzzled about how I acquired this malware and what its relationship is to the scanner. I remember some time ago having a brief power failure in my apartment with the computer on. So the computer did not shut down properly at that time. Could that have had something to do with it? I really don’t know. Those are the facts. I have no explanations.

Harvest of Empire

Directed by Peter Getzels & Eduardo López

 

This is an informative, well-presented story of the Latino migration to the United States throughout the twentieth century and continuing into the present. It makes clear the relationship between the Latin migration to the United States and the economic and political policies of the United States government, examining numerous specific cases in great detail: Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Each case is somewhat different, but the basic pattern is consistent: the United States destabilizes popular governments, engineers coups, promotes civil wars, and supports repressive dictatorial regimes that promote the economic interests of large U.S. corporations who exploit the citizenry of these countries, extract their resources, pervert the local economy, and corrupt the government and the judicial system. The citizenry then flee poverty, repression, war, hopelessness, and despair, and where do they come? The United States. People do not leave their homes, their cultures, their languages, and their national identity easily. They do so reluctantly and often at great risk. In a great many cases they are not coming to seek work or to make money, but to flee terror and genocide. The United States trains, arms, and supports the repressive governments that brutalize the civilian population and create the intolerable conditions that promote large scale migration. This film documents this pattern with many vivid examples. It is based on the book Harvest of Empire, by Juan Gonzalez, who is featured as a commentator throughout the film. Anyone who is Latino should see it. Anyone who isn’t Latino should also see it, because it might help to discredit some of the paranoid nonsense being promoted in politics and the media — which is also portrayed in the film — about securing the borders with fences and drones and armed patrols and criminalizing undocumented immigrants and deporting them by the thousands and millions, which is not feasible and not in our interest in any case. It is a powerful and important story that will have lasting implications for the future of our nation. There are about 51 million Latin immigrants in the United States right now, with about two thirds of them from Mexico. According to the Pew Research Center, by 2050 the Latino population in the United States will triple in size and make up 29% of the population compared to 14% in 2005. Nearly one in five Americans will be an immigrant in 2050, compared to one in eight in 2005. It is a major long term demographic and cultural shift underway in the United States: an inadvertent, unforeseen consequence of short-sighted, misguided economic and political policies carried out by our government over many years. This film provides a clearheaded, historically informed, constructive look at the issue that is interesting and rich in examples of the many varied impacts it has on individual human lives.

Nijinsky

Hamburg Ballet Performance at the San Francisco Ballet

February 19, 2013

 

 

This is a huge, sprawling production done with imaginative, elaborate staging and lighting and superb technical skill from the dancers.  It is inspired by the troubled life of Vaslav Nijinsky the famous Russian/Polish ballet dancer from the early 20th century.  It is not an easy ballet to follow or immediately grasp.  Some aspects of the ballet seem to refer to events and relationships in Nijinsky’s life and some aspects seem to represent states of his inner life or fantasies, and some seem to be blends of the two.  There are ambiguities that seem to working on several different levels at the same time.  I came to the performance completely unprepared.  I didn’t know anything about Nijinsky except that he was a famous dancer and I didn’t know anything about the events of his life.  The result was I found the performance rather confusing and obscure.

When I attend a theatrical performance, I am always most interested in the concept of the piece, it’s psychological import and meaning, it’s cultural and historical significance.  I think about who wrote this and why.  What were they trying to get across.

In this performance those aspects are not easy to grasp.  Unless you are an expert on the history of ballet and know a lot about the life of Nijinsky, you are not likely to get all the references and allusions in this performance.  I went with a friend who happens to hold a doctoral degree in musicology and she did not get it either, although she got a lot more of it than I did.  She at least knew who he was and his significance, and was able to make connections to some of the other ballets he had been in and she knew a most of the music that was used.  But she did not know the biographical details of Nijinsky’s life and was thus unable to understand much of what was going on.

I was able to discern that it was a kind of retrospective, that many of the sequences represented the contents of the lead dancer’s mind, reminiscences of things that had happened in the past.  There was at least one and probably multiple triangles involving two men and a woman.  I’m not sure if it was the same woman in all of them.  There was a wedding, that was clear, but the character of the marriage was not clear.  The second act seemed to be a descent into psychosis with references to the war (World War 1) and many deaths.  The second act had a surreal quality that was less accessible to being grasped intellectually, but in my eyes it had a more powerful emotional and psychological impact.

This ballet should be very popular among experts on the ballet.  The general public will have a harder time with it unless a special effort is made to prepare in advance.  I studied for several months before attending the Ring of the Nibelung cycle in 2011, and that preparation paid off.   However, I don’t really want to have to do that with every performance, but this is one of that sort where significant early preparation would make a big difference.  Art should be challenging and it should push us beyond our natural boundaries of understanding and perception.  My feeling, in this case, is that the authors did not think enough about who the audience was going to be and the impact that it would have on a naive viewer, which is what most of them are going to be, at least in the United States.  Since this is a large scale production aimed at an audience made up of people who are mostly not experts on ballet and certainly not steeped in the details of Vaslav Nijinsky’s life, it could have been done in a way that would have made it more immediately accessible.  This production might have worked well as an opera.  It does seem to lend itself to that kind of grand conceptual enactment.  The verbal aspect available in opera would have helped a lot in terms of making it intelligible to a viewer not steeped in the life of Nijinsky.

Having said all of that, I still like this.  I liked that it was a big concept, that they were trying to do something with substance and powerful emotional significance, as opposed to gentle entertainment.  This was a performance with real import, although the character of it was not immediately evident.  It had narrative elements, it had subjective explorations of the inner life, it had allusions to historical events that were of relevant to the story line as well as the psychological development of the characters.  It was imaginatively staged, flawlessly executed, and superbly performed.  It is the kind of performance I like to attend.  I came to it unprepared, which was my own fault.  But even unprepared this ballet wins the audience over on the strength of its imaginative conception and first rate execution.

SF Ballet Performance, Program 1

February 2, 2013

 

There were three ballets on this performance program. The first was Suite en Blanc Composed by Eduoard Lalo, and choreographed by Serge Lifar. This is a very conservative, traditional ballet. Light on substance, but strong on aesthetics and technique. If you like pretty pictures and dainty, picturesque movements of agility and grace, then you’ll love this. Superbly performed by the SF Ballet dancers. This is visually pleasant to watch, but basically light entertainment. Nothing challenging or particularly interesting to my taste.

In the Night was the second ballet. Choreographed by Jerome Robbins, it uses four Chopin Nocturnes as a back drop to four male-female duos. Despite the fact that the four Nocturnes vary somewhat in character, the four dances were all very similar. It struck me that the dancing did not fit with the music. These Nocturnes are introspective pieces. They are narcissistic rather than romantic. The choreographer treats them as love songs with a happy ending. I don’t think so. I think the choreographer misunderstood the Chopin Nocturnes. The second one against Op. 55 No. 1 was particularly offensive in this respect. This opening section of this Nocturne is tender and delicate, but the middle section is rather distressed and contentious, in high contrast to the sweet calm of the framing segments. None of this was reflected in the dance. The dance was rather bland and had a sameness throughout. The final one, the famous E-flat Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, is a dreamlike reverie, a lullaby almost. It is reflective and somewhat nostalgic. But the dancing didn’t come anywhere near that kind of feeling. It’s weird watching a dance performance where the dancing seems to have nothing to do with the music that is backing it. I think this one needs to be rethought.

The final segment, the World Premier of Borderlands, by composers Joel Cadbury and Paul Stoney, and Wayne McGregor as choreographer, scenic and costume designer, and Lucy Carter as lighting designer, was by far the most interesting of the three pieces. The style was very different from the first two selections. This was hyperactive, with frantic, discrete movements emphasized by strobe lights that seemed to reflect a temperament, and perhaps a lifestyle, of the modern era that is atomized, choppy, jerky, and abrupt. The soundtrack — it wasn’t exactly music — is too loud. It’s rather assaultive. Perhaps that is the object to blast the audience with harsh sounds and oppress them into a kind of unpleasant resistance. It fits with the anxious, staccato, discontinuous movements, but it draws attention away from the dancers, overwhelming the audience with obnoxious sound. Differentiation between the genders is much reduced. Distinct genders are still discernible but very much blended. Identity of gender becomes indistinct. However, the sexes are very much interactive, touching, embracing, well engaged with one another. The middle section cast in orange light is a man apparently trying to invigorate a woman who keeps falling away from him in a kind of lethargy. She doesn’t seem to have the will to keep up with him and remain connected with his interest. But in the succeeding segments she casts off the deadness within herself and becomes a much more alive and responsive partner, and they become a more involved couple with smoother, more fluid movements. The ballet ends on a positive note with the couple dancing with energy, and mutual engagement. It was by far the most interesting of the three selections of the evening, and all were superbly presented by the San Francisco Ballet dancers at their usual top level of performance.

The Great American Symphony Orchestra

by Anthony J. Cirone.  Galesville, MD:  Meredith Music Publications.  2011.

 

The Great American Symphony Orchestra is an informative, well-written overview of how a symphony orchestra operates.  It is a primer, an outline, a guidebook, not an in depth exploration or analysis.  It is not Ball Four, or The Paper Lion.  I attend San Francisco Symphony performances frequently, and over the years have developed a number of questions about just how does all of this come about and what keeps it going.  Cirone answered many of my questions, especially about the organizational structure of the symphony.  What you see on the stage is only the visible tip or a rather large enterprise.  In his Appendix B he lists the many departments that support and administer the orchestra.  He says the ratio of support staff to orchestra members is one-to-one, but it seems to me like it must be more than that.  There are many people behind the scenes that make a symphony orchestra possible.

Cirone was percussionist with the San Francisco Symphony from 1965 to 2001.  During this long tenure he served under Music Directors Seiji Ozawa, Edo DeWaart, Herbert Blomstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas and noted guest conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Eugene Ormandy, Kurt Mazur, Rafael Kubelik, and James Levine.  He has vast knowledge of the symphony and its personalities. I wish he would share more of what he knows.  What you get in this book is the public tour.  The Symphony as it would like to have itself presented.

Throughout the book he stresses the dedication demanded of the musicians to reach the high level or performance required of orchestra musicians.  It is an arduous process to create a symphony orchestra musician that begins early in life and continues throughout.  He describes in detail the training that musicians must undergo, the audition process for admission to the Symphony, which is very interesting, the rehearsals in preparation for a concert, the process of moving a symphony orchestra on a tour, the expenses of a symphony orchestra and its sources of funding.  There is a very nice chapter on Arthur Fiedler and his tenure presiding over the San Francisco Pops.  I was very interested in the role of the conductor and how the conductor shapes the character of the orchestra.  I would like to have heard more about the relations between the musicians within the symphony.  These are people who spend a lot of time together and are a rather close knit group that continues over years.  These very intimate relationships which he talks about only in generalities.  He is very discreet about the family business.  One point that he obliquely touches on, but does so repeatedly, is that developing extraordinary musical skill stunts young people in other areas of their development.

Professional musicians practice constantly; in fact, they become slaves to their instruments.  Even as young children, these artists-to-be spent years developing technique and preparing etudes for lessons — time that often replaced social activities. (p. 25)

Students who excel as music majors at the undergraduate level and want to pursue graduate-level studies in this field love to perform and have no other strong interest. (p. 39)

Although members of a family have hobbies, this is not always the case with symphony artists, many of whom have no interests outside of music. . . To  excel in any one area takes a great amount of energy and when family obligations are added into the mix, little time is left for anything else in a busy musician’s schedule. (p. 18)

This theme of the personal and social cost of producing high caliber musicians recurs throughout the book although he does not develop it in detail or illustrate it with specific anecdotes.  But I have the sense that there is some regret or ambivalence about his life as an orchestra musician when he weighs what he has missed in terms of his personal life against the notable achievements of a symphony musician.

Professional musicians spend an inordinate amount of time practicing in order to maintain technique and learn new music.  Besides juggling a major orchestra schedule, many players perform in chamber music ensembles or hold teaching positions in universities and conservatories; others compose, conduct, and participate in a variety of music-related activities.  These never-ending endeavors leave little time to master the personal life skills so necessary for enduring friendships and close relationships. (p. 197)

This de-emphasis of the personal is also reflected in how the book is written. The book is detailed and engagingly written.  He includes anecdotes from his personal experience that add interest and color to the narrative, but his anecdotes are generally not revealing of himself.  This is not a personal perspective on a life in the symphony.  It is not about his personal point of view on the symphony, it is written almost in a journalistic style that concentrates on the facts and the processes, while at the same time keeping the reporter’s subjectivity in the background.  I think it is in keeping with the mentality of a player in a symphony orchestra.  Symphony musicians are team players par excellence.  Individualism is discouraged.  The symphony musician must suppress his own idiosyncratic interpretations of the music to create a unified whole in the context of the group.  The individual musicians are submerged into this well-integrated totality.  He wrote the book as a member of the symphony, who executed his part flawlessly, carefully observant of the smallest details, but very discreet in his choice of what to report, and otherwise kept his mouth shut.

The other point that impressed me is the conservatism of this music and the players who perform it.  The demands of the profession foster a very conservative, structured lifestyle and personality.  There is great reverence for the printed score.  Punctuality is vital.  Interdependence is understood and taken for granted.  People who are unable to subject themselves to the regimen necessary to achieve the high level of technical proficiency and maintain it over years are weeded out of a symphony orchestra.  They will never even get close to one.  People without the even temperedness and tolerance necessary to be in close quarters with the same 100+ people for much of the time including traveling for months on end together cannot be in a symphony orchestra.

This book helped me understand why I have never been able to warm up to symphony music.  Although I often attend symphonic concerts, it is not to hear the Symphony.  I am far more interested in the soloists, usually pianists or violinists.  I like seeing that single figure standing out apart from the mass with his sound soaring out above the rest with spectacular strength and power, dominating the attention of the listeners.  In recent years my tastes have broadened somewhat, having become more interested in the different instruments and intrigued by the myriad ways a symphony orchestra can be used to create communicative sound, but I’ve never been much of a team player, unless I am the captain.  When I studied piano, I studied the solo repertoire, and I never liked to accompany people.  It is perhaps a limitation in my character, but it is reflected in the kind of music I like.  The Symphony interests me, but I do not feel passionate about it.

This book gave me a greater understanding of the organizational structure of a symphony orchestra, some of its inner workings, and especially the wholehearted dedication demanded of its players and the high cost it exacts on their personal lives.  I would like to see something that would fill out this picture more in terms of a personal perspective, an introspective look at an orchestra and its musicians.  But this book is a good, solid introduction for anyone who attends the Symphony.

The Sex Abuse Industry and the American Police State

 

The Science of Sex Abuse. By Rachel Aviv.  The New Yorker, January 14, 2013.  pp. 36-45.

 

The case reported by Rachel Aviv in the January 14, 2013 issue of The New Yorker documents the growth of the American Police State over the last thirty years to the point where it is now intruding into the inner space of our private thoughts, desires, fantasies, and emotional longings, making our imaginings and sentiments an arena of criminality and prosecution.  It is the expression of a trend that has always been present in American society, especially since the passage of the Comstock Act in 1867, a draconian law which banned all forms of sexual material from the U.S. mail, not only erotica of every kind, but also informational material about birth control and other topics relating to sexuality.  These oppressive restraints were partially rolled back by a series of court decisions in the 1950s and 60s, but since 1982 there has been an increasingly brutal persecution of “child pornography” and sexual activities involving children that has reached a delusional fever.  Rachel Aviv presents one example of how distorted and perverse this has become, but there are many thousands of equally grotesque cases.

She details the story of a man she calls ‘John’ and his twelve year saga in the criminal justice system.  In 1998 he was a 31 year old soldier stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.  He had served in Desert Storm and Bosnia and graduated from Penn State with a degree in history.  He downloaded some child pornography on an internet site “after watching a television special about how Internet child porn had become epidemic.  He hadn’t realized that it existed.”  (This illustrates how the media hype and hysteria over child pornography is actually fomenting interest in people who would otherwise have little inclination toward it.)  He went to a chat room on a child pornography site and chatted with an FBI agent posing as a girl.  She offered him her fourteen year old sister and they set up a meeting. He told her he was looking for a relationship more than sex and wanted someone who “could accept me as I am.”  When he arrived at the park where they arranged to meet, he was arrested.  He pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and using the internet to persuade a minor to have sex and was sentenced to 53 months in federal prison– for looking at pictures and wantingto have sex with a young girl — not actually doing it.  Aviv reports that the current average sentence is 119 months, nearly 10 years, for simply possessing child pornography.  Aviv tells us that in the past fifteen years sentences for possession of child pornography have increased more than 500 percent.

After the passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006, the government extended the confinement of child pornography offenders practically indefinitely through a contrivance called “civil commitment,” a procedure usually applied (and abused) to confine people with severe mental illness.  Most of Aviv’s excellent article details the nightmarish outcome of this ill-contrived legislation and the needless destruction of a person’s life, not for anything he has actually done, but simply for what he likes to look at and think about.

The more I studied this matter the more alarmed I became.  What is going on is extremely appalling and sinister.  It has created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among parents and teachers, dividing children from their caregivers with very heavy handed threats and interventions from outside agencies.  Some teachers and child care workers are actually leaving their professions because of it.  (Levine, 2002, pp. 180-83) Families are being broken up on the most trivial grounds without due process, without judicial review.  The so-called treatment programs or rehabilitation plans that people are coerced to participate in are sadistic and cruel.  The “rehabilitation” is being farmed out to private companies who have a financial incentive to keep people in the program as long as possible, and they are the ones who judge the inmate’s progress. Aviv reports:

In Minnesota, which has one of the largest commitment programs, six hundred and seventy inmates work on correcting distorted thoughts about sex (at a cost of a hundred and twenty thousand dollars per person annually), but in eighteen years only one man has been discharged from the program.  (p. 41)

This is why I call it the “Sex Abuse Industry.”  Huge amounts of public money are being squandered to private, self-serving companies, who have no clue what they are doing, for sadistic “treatment” programs of indefinite duration that amount to torture.  They have no oversight and are set up to run parallel to the criminal justice system.  They are continuous with the practices at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Americans do not realize how fast we are moving toward a Stasi-like police state.  The avenue of its growth is this persecution of pedophilia, precisely because it is so commonplace, so broadly defined to be applicable in almost any situation involving a child, and most of it occurs within families or close communities.  It could indeed appear on your doorstep or on your street.

Aviv calls the article “The Science of Sex Abuse.”  I think she intends this ironically.  There is nothing of science in any of this.  This is the documentation of a legal system run amok pursuing imaginary demons of our own creation.  It is a craziness that is becoming increasingly grotesque and out of control. It is really necessary to curb this madness and I am glad she has put this forward in such an effective, well organized, well thought out discussion.

It all comes down to the idea that sex is this great monster and children need to be protected from it at all costs.  Any untimely exposure will damage the fragile little darlings beyond repair.  I’m going to try to approach this in a way that will do some good.

Ford and Beach (1951) categorized 191 societies around the world according to the restrictions they impose on the access of sexual activity to children.  They placed the United States among the most restrictive, with restrictive societies being decidedly in the minority.  Despite considerable relaxation since the time of their writing in 1951, this highly restrictive, ultraconservative mindset is still institutionalized in our legal system as well as in educational and social institutions. However, the vast majority of human societies, and I believe this can be projected back to prehistoric time, have allowed and encouraged their children to engage in sexual activity from a very early age (Chapter 10).  If this were harmful to the physiological, emotional, and mental health of these children then it would be evident and observable.  But no such evidence exists.  In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the restrictions we place on access to sexual activity in our children is doing them very great harm, and the policing efforts that are being marshaled to punish and prevent sexual activity in children is causing incalculable harm to many thousands of families and individuals. Levine (2002) has extensive documentation of this.  We are a very unhealthy society emotionally and psychologically as evidenced by our drug use, obesity, violence, divorce rate, incarceration rate, drop-out rates, homelessness, and there is a relationship between these social ills and the oppressive restrictions on our sexual culture, and in particular on the sexual development of children.  Preventing children from early access to sexual experience stunts their emotional and social development, and we pay a heavy price for it as a society.

Judith Levine(2002) has done an excellent study on all aspects of this issue making the case that the imagined harm of sex and its application in law and governing institutions is doing untold damage to children and families all across America.

The trauma of youngsters sex, with anyone, often comes not from the sex itself but from adults going bananas over it.  As for “sexual behavior problems” the trauma inflicted by the “cure” may be far worse than the “disease” itself. (p. 60)

Every lawmaker, judge, prosecutor, police officer, social worker, counselor, and school principal should read her excellent work.

 

We have to start from the beginning to understand a child’s psychological development and the role that sex plays in that development.  In describing the development of the human sense of self from earliest infancy Jeffrey Seinfeld (1991) suggests that

biological needs engender a sense of lack that becomes the empty core. The physiological state of emptiness resulting from hunger is translated into a psychic state of emptiness that becomes the core of psychic structure.  The empty core is felt as a lack disrupting the sense of boundedness or wholeness.  The empty core is not a static space.  It is the hunger for objects internal and external.  It is a state of insufficiency and activity through suction and pulsion. The empty core is the dynamic that generates activity in self and object components.  It is the transcription of biological need into psychic desire.  It is the libidinal desire for the object. The erotogenic zones serve as signifiers of the empty core.  It is the driving force of human personality and of self and object relations.  The experience of emptiness also generates ego interests, ambitions, and ideals. (p. 9-10)

Let me try to make this a little more accessible.  In the earliest phase of human development the psychic experience of the infant is generated by physiological needs:  hunger, elimination, warmth, cold, tactile sensations creating comfort or discomfort, sounds that are soothing or disturbing.  The response of the mother (or lack thereof) to these basic physiological urges creates a sense of self and other. The infant develops an awareness of the mother as the external source of comfort and nurturing and satisfaction of these basic biological needs.  A conceptual distinction between internal and external becomes established and forms the core of the infant’s sense of self.  I disagree with Seinfeld that the “psychic state of emptiness becomes the core of psychic structure.”  This is seeing the glass half empty.  It is a negative, pessimistic view of human development. The other side of emptiness is fulfillment.  When the infant’s needs are responded to timely and appropriately, the infant establishes an expectation that the empty longings can be alleviated and that his efforts (crying, physical movement, gesture) can bring a satisfying response. This lays the foundation for a self that is self-confident, positive, and optimistic, with favorable expectations of human relations — as opposed to the schizoid development, based on an expectation of disappointment, that is the subject of Seinfeld’s book.

Daniel Stern (1985) modified psychoanalytic conceptions of human development prevailing at the time of his writing arguing that the self begins to form very early.

The infant’s first order of business, in creating an interpersonal world, is to form the sense of a core self and core others. The evidence also supports the notion that this task is largely accomplished during the period between two and seven months.  Further, it suggests that the capacity to have merger or fusion-like experiences as described in psychoanalysis is secondary to and dependent upon an already existing sense of self and other.  The newly suggested timetable pushes the emergence of the self earlier in time dramatically and reverses the sequencing of developmental tasks.  First comes the formation of self and other, and only then is the sense of merger-like experiences possible.  (p. 70)

Stern does not take this up, but his conclusions seem to imply that the “empty core” which Seinfeld takes as an inevitable outcome of the infant’s biological needs, is actually a particular construction of the self that is forged in response to external nurturing environment in which the infant finds itself.  The schizoid outcome [isolated, disengaged, shut-out, unconnected, apathetic, and emotionally withdrawn, (p. 3)] is not the only possibility for human development, although I think it can be argued that it is prevalent in American society today.  It is what fuels the drug culture, alcohol abuse, pathological ambition, workaholism, political and social apathy, the obsession with guns and security, much of the disturbance in relations between the sexes, the high divorce rate, much of the violence against women, and the current hysterical persecution of pedophiles.  These are all related phenomena.  What ties them together is a profound sense of disconnectedness Americans feel from society and from each other.  We withdraw into our own private worlds.  We shun deep involvement with other people.  We substitute things for human relations.  We see the world as dangerous and full of enemies.  We externalize our enemies and comfort our inner emptiness with drugs and entertainment.  The superficiality that many Europeans and foreigners notice about American society is a further manifestation of this fundamental psychological structure that gets set up very early in life.  What I want to get to is: what does it have to do with sex?

We know, and it has been long documented, that sexual feeling and experience go back to birth. Human beings are born sexual and are hard wired for erotic feeling from the very beginning.

According to Kinsey’s (1948) data

Orgasm has been observed in boys of every age from 5 months to adolescence. Orgasm is in our records for a female babe of 4 months.  The orgasm in an infant or other young male is, except for the lack of an ejaculation, a striking duplicate of orgasm in an older adult. (p. 177)

In preadolescent and early adolescent boys, erection and orgasm are easily induced.  They are more easily induced than in older males.  Erection may occur immediately after birth and, as many observant mothers (and few scientists) know, it is practically a daily matter for all small boys, from earliest infancy and up in age.  Slight physical stimulation of the genitalia, general body tensions, and generalized emotional situations bring immediate erection, even when there is no specifically sexual stimulation involved. (p. 164)

Originally the pre-adolescent boy erects indiscriminately to the whole array of emotional situations, whether they be sexual or non-sexual in nature. By his late teens the male has been so conditioned that he rarely responds to anything except a direct physical stimulation of the genitalia, or to psychic situations that are specifically sexual.  (p. 165)

 

I’m only going to talk about boys here.  Girls are different, and in my eyes, more complicated, but the argument would proceed along the same line.  This physiological readiness to respond sexually to a whole range of stimuli means that human children are prepared from birth to respond erotically to all manner of situations.  The idea that sexual stimulation of children is “premature” or “damaging” is utterly ludicrous in the face of such overwhelming experience.  As I mentioned earlier, the survey Ford and Beach (1951) made of societies around the world found the vast majority to be permissive and encouraging of early sexual experience in their children.  Sexual response is part of the daily experience of young children, and in most times and places that response has been accepted and welcomed as a natural part of daily life.  But it follows a learning curve.  It is shaped by experience and events.  What kind of experience and events?  The same kind of experience that shapes everything in a child’s development: his or her interaction with the adult environment.

Sex is relatedness. Sex is connection.  Erotic desire engages one with the self of another.  One’s inner world of emotion and arousal makes contact and merges with the inner experience of another.  This is what we call intimacy.  It is inherently ambivalent and conflicted.  But it enriches our experience of one another as human beings; it promotes our emotional growth and maturity; it creates emotional bonds between people; and it is pleasurable.  It is opposed to schizoid detachment and withdrawal.  The schizoid self, having been traumatized and weakened by repeated conditions of disappointment and deprivation, withdraws from emotional involvement with others, renounces or avoids as much as possible the desires and sentiments that bring people into close contact.  Sexual feelings and experiences tend to be minimized, marginalized, devalued, and avoided.  Our laws, and perhaps also our economic system, promote this peculiar form of psychological detachment and isolation.  It has taken a long time to establish such prevalence in our society.  The detachment, loneliness, isolation, superficiality, antagonism and addictive obsessions that characterize American culture are the result of more than a century of government and mass media intrusion into the sphere of personal relations and sexual conduct.  It is this sustained attack on our private, personal desires that has played a large role in creating our present culture of social, emotional, and sexual disengagement.

There will always be deficiencies in family circumstances and personal failings in mothers and fathers that can lead to a schizoid outcome.  But the social milieu that isolates the family and prevents people from reaching out to one another sexually and emotionally effectively closes off alternative routes of compensation or supplementation for the limitations in family relationships.  This tends to fix the schizoid pattern and allows it to gel into a permanent aspect of character, or existential position, let us say.  Seinfeld, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, Kohut and others of psychoanalytic approach look at the problem narrowly in terms of the internal dynamics of the family. They fail to see the social context in which that family has been created and how social factors define the emotional struggles within the family, stresses they impose upon personal relationships, and how they limit alternative solutions to individuals within that family.

Imagining children as delicate, fragile beings who are damaged beyond repair by sexual stimulation represents the projection by adults of their own anxiety and fragility. Children are actually much more resilient and emotionally capable than many adults imagine and are much more damaged by the efforts of adults to protect them from things they enjoy and are inclined to explore.   Protecting children from sex and disrupting their families and relationships by punishing a sexual relationship involving a child causes much more permanent harm than the sexual relationship ever could.  There are many examples of this and Rachel Aviv has carefully documented one. Judith Levine (2002) offers many others.

 

There are three crucial legal pillars upholding this whole institutional structure.  The most fundamental is New York v. Ferber 458 U.S. 747 (1982), a 1982 Supreme Court decision, authored by Byron White, which gives the government broad powers to prohibit “child pornography.”  The decision’s reasoning is the following:

(a) The States are entitled to greater leeway in the regulation of pornographic depictions of children for the following reasons: (1) the legislative judgment that the use of children as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological, emotional, and mental health of the child, easily passes muster under the First Amendment; (2) the standard of Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, for determining what is legally obscene is not a satisfactory solution to the child pornography problem; (3) the advertising and selling of child pornography provide an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation; (4) the value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd exhibitions is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis; and (5) recognizing and classifying child pornography as a category of material outside the First Amendment’s protection is not incompatible with this Court’s decisions dealing with what speech is unprotected. When a definable class of material, such as that covered by [458 U.S. 747, 748] the New York statute, bears so heavily and pervasively on the welfare of children engaged in its production, the balance of competing interests is clearly struck, and it is permissible to consider these materials as without the First Amendment’s protection. Pp. 756-764.

The crux of it are the first and the fourth points that children as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological, emotional, and mental health of the child, and that the value of permitting depictions of children engaged in lewd exhibitions is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis.  To deal with the fourth point first, it is not up to the state to decide what depictions are valuable and which ones are not.  The First Amendment does not stipulate that speech has to meet some threshold of value in order to be protected.  For the state to appoint itself the arbiter of what kinds of materials are valuable and worthy of protection is totally contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment.  But the more pertinent point is whether depicting children engaged in “lewd conduct” or sexual activity harms their physiological, emotional, and mental health.  There is no evidence that this is true and plenty of evidence that it is false.

When you think about it in the context of human evolution and the way human societies have lived for millennia, the idea that sex harms children is so ridiculous it is hard to believe that anyone but the most conservative, bigoted ascetic could take it seriously.  Yet, America has been taken prisoner by this notion and is willing to set aside its most basic liberties and civil protections to shield itself from this delusional demon.  If sex is a worthy, positive, life-enhancing human activity, then children should certainly be groomed for it and encouraged to engage in it.  Why wouldn’t we want our children to participate in something that is a rich and satisfying part of our own lives?  It would seem perfectly straightforward.  On the other hand, if sex were a part of life that was an inevitable source of disappointment, pain, tragedy, and turmoil for which we had inordinate fear, then we would naturally teach our children to be afraid and avoid something so threatening and perilous.  American society has adopted the schizoid position that emotional closeness and sexual intensity is of the utmost peril and attempted to create a whole society built around that anxious, fragile structure.  America now has more single people than married.  That is the first time in history that that has ever happened in a society.  One quarter of all Americans live alone.  (New York Times, January 16, 2007; Associated Press, May 28, 2011, reporting on U.S. Census figures)  We are becoming increasingly separated and estranged from one another.  Persecution of sexual relationships in many forms is a large part of the reason for it.

The idea that the state has an interest in protecting children from “sexual exploitation” is a baseless notion.  ‘Sexual exploitation’ is a vacuous concept.  It is so broad and nonspecific that it becomes meaningless. Exploitation in the negative sense means taking something from someone or making use of the resources or abilities of someone without returning adequate compensation.  In the case of sexual relationships, which are so complex, and layered with so many tributary aspects, this defies specificity and definition.  “Commercial exploitation,” or “financial exploitation” make sense because they can be quantified and made very specific. Where sex is related to commercial gain, this is a perfectly intelligible notion.  But in that case the exploitation would refer to the commercial or monetary aspects of the relationship rather than to sex itself.  For an abstraction like “sexual exploitation” to be meaningful, sexuality itself must be exploitative.  Any sexual conduct or interaction on its face must be ipso facto exploitative.  And, in fact, that is exactly how the laws have been drawn. This concept means that there is something wrong with sex itself and that for children to be involved with it in any way is inherently exploitative.  It is clearly untenable and an outright falsehood.  This nonsense idea is the basis for the entire edifice of the sex abuse industry.  Once this concept is exposed for the fraud that it is and becomes purged from legal understanding, the sex abuse industry can begin to be dismantled.

A much more ominous Supreme Court decision, and one that is operative in the case reported by Rachel Aviv, is the 1997 ruling in Kansas v. Hendricks521 U.S. 346 (1996) that upheld by a 5-4 margin Kansas’ Sexually Violent Predator Act.  This law “establishes procedures for the civil commitment of persons who, due to a ‘mental abnormality’ or a ‘personality disorder,’ are likely to engage in ‘predatory acts of sexual violence.'”  If you look at the cases cited in support of this decision, it is astonishing how poorly reasoned the decision is and how irrelevant the supporting cases are to the decision.  The first case cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, (1905), deals with a challenge to a Massachusetts law compelling vaccination for smallpox.  It imposed a fine for noncompliance.  This is far removed from the issue of preventive incarceration in Kansas v. Hendricks.  Kansas v. Hendricks goes on,

This Court has consistently upheld involuntary commitment statutes that detain people who are unable to control their behavior and thereby pose a danger to the public health and safety, provided the confinement takes place pursuant to proper procedures and evidentiary standards. Foucha v.Louisiana, 504 U. S. 71, 80.

But Foucha v. Louisiana – 504 U.S. 71 (1992) was a reversal by the Supreme Court that contradicts the claim it is being cited to support.

Held: The judgment is reversed. 563 So. 2d 1138, reversed.

JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I and II, concluding that the Louisiana statute violates the Due Process Clause because it allows an insanity acquittee to be committed to a mental institution until he is able to demonstrate that he is not dangerous to himself and others, even though he does not suffer from any mental illness. Although Jones, supra, acknowledged that an insanity acquittee could be committed, the Court also held that, as a matter of due process, he is entitled to release when he has recovered his sanity or is no longer dangerous, id., at 368, i. e., he may be held as long as he is both mentally ill and dangerous, but no longer. Here, since the State does not contend that Foucha was mentally ill at the time of the trial court’s hearing, the basis for holding him in a psychiatric facility as an insanity acquittee has disappeared, and the State is no longer entitled to hold him on that basis.

 

What Kansas v. Hendricks does is create a legal construction whereby a person’s right to due process is completely subverted and voided. A person can be held potentially indefinitely on the basis of a determination that he has a “mental abnormality” or a “personality disorder,” and is judged to pose a danger to himself or others.  There are no constraints on the definition of “mental abnormality” or “personality disorder.”  No process is established for making this determination, and no review process is required.  It further declares that this confinement is “not punitive.”

Although the commitment scheme here involves an affirmative restraint, such restraint of the dangerously mentally ill has been historically regarded as a legitimate nonpunitive objective. Cf. United States v. Salerno, 481 U. S. 739, 747.

Again the case citation to support the reasoning is disingenuous.  Salernoapplied to individuals who were already under arrest awaiting trial for violent crimes.  There were procedures established where the defendant was able to present evidence and argue his side.  The detention was limited by the right to a speedy trial and the defendant had to be held separately from convicts.  Salerno showed great respect and consideration for the basic rights and civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution.  Salernowas careful and limited in its scope.  In contrast, Hendricks is careless, vague, poorly thought out, poorly reasoned, and I would say, contemptuous of basic constitutional rights.  This decision is a subversion of the Constitution and is a real threat, not only to pedophiles, but now anyone the government doesn’t like or disagrees with can be deemed “mentally abnormal” and a threat, and thus held indefinitely without charge and without judicial review. This decision places no limitations on what the government can do in terms of preventive detention.  It is an extremely dangerous move in the direction of authoritarian government and people need to be aware of its potential.

 

The third legal pillar of the sex abuse industry is the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.  This is a particularly vicious law that institutes what amounts to lifetime punishment for sex offenders and attempts to make them social pariahs.  It is paranoia run amok.  It established the National Sex Offender Registry with three tiers of severity. The least severe mandates 15 years on the list, the second tier mandates 25 years, and the most severe requires lifetime registration.  No other group of convicts is treated this way.  It intensifies and extends punishment for offenses that are already crimes under the law.  It places much more severe sanctions on child pornography.  It expands the use of “civil commitment,” that is, holding people without criminal charges on the basis of their alleged “threat” to the community.

The Act also instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to create a national registry of persons who have been found to have abused or neglected a child. The information will be gathered from state databases of child abuse or neglect. It will be made available to state child-protective-services and law-enforcement agencies “for purposes of carrying out their responsibilities under the law to protect children from abuse and neglect.” The national database will allow states to track the past history of parents and guardians who are suspected of abusing their children. When child-abusing parents come to the attention of authorities (for example, when teachers begin to ask about bruises), these parents often will move to a different jurisdiction. A national database will give the state to which these parents move the ability to know the parents’ history. It will let a child-protective-services worker know, for example, whether he should prioritize investigation of a particular case because the parent has been found

to have committed substantiated cases of abuse in the past in other states. Such a database also will allow a state that is evaluating a prospective foster parent or adoptive parent to learn about past incidents of child abuse that the person has committed in other states.

This registry does not even require a criminal conviction.  It completely ignores due process.  The government wants to take over the role of raising children and managing families.  But it is a very cold, punitive, sadistic parent. You can see that a whole army of people has to be employed to carry out this surveillance, tracking, and intrusive intervention.  Huge expensive bureaucracies need to be created and maintained.  If families were able to care properly for their own children, all of this wouldn’t be needed.  This act does nothing to address the problems confronting families that create the stresses and tensions that lead to abuse and violence.  This act has absolutely no insight or understanding of the problems in which it is intervening. It is an example of utterly irresponsible legislation crafted by shortsighted, self-interested legislators to respond to magnified fears and manufactured crises.  This law needs to be repealed in its entirety.

One important development that might affect this is a pending revision of the definition of “mental disorder” in the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — V, to be published by the American Psychiatric Association in May of 2013.  The proposed revision to the concept of “mental disorder” is as follows (Stein, 2010):

A. A behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual

B. The consequences of which are clinically significant distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning)

C. Must not be merely an expectable response to common stressors and losses (for example, the loss of a loved one) or a culturally sanctioned response to a particular event (for example, trance states in religious rituals)

D. That reflects an underlying psychobiological dysfunction

E. That is not primarily a result of social deviance or conflicts with society

 

E is a very crucial point. If this is adopted it would seem to rule out many deviant sexual behaviors, including pedophilia, from being snagged under the umbrella of “mental disorder.”  In the example Rachel Aviv presents, John is not in distress or impaired in his functioning.  Whether there is an “underlying psychobiological dysfunction” could be debated, but there would be no conclusive evidence for it in his case.  The problem for most people with unconventional sexual preferences like pedophilia, is social deviance and societal conflict.  But this is not sufficient to qualify it as a “mental disorder” under the new proposed definition.  So John could not be diagnosed with a “mental disorder,” under this proposed conception.  This could make a huge difference in how laws that make use of “civil commitment” to hold people without criminal charges can be applied.

There is beginning to be some pushback against this exorbitant retaliatory vengeance as mandated in the Adam Walsh Act.  Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and at least one Pennsylvania state legislator are suing the NCAA on behalf of Penn State against the excessive punitive actions by the NCAA against Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky case.  I don’t think the governor would do this without broader public support, and I suspect he must be aware of widespread, but unpublicized, dissent from the way the whole case was disposed of.

This might be the beginning of a counterattack against the “industrial” aspect of child sex abuse.  A lot of people are making lucrative careers from it, but the money is coming out of someone else’s pocket.  Once it dawns on people that they are shelling out enormous sums of money for things that shouldn’t even be crimes, they might begin to push back.  The money trail may be the first line of resistance.

The elements in society opposed to this mindless and extreme persecution of pedophilia are disorganized at this point and do not have the ideological muscle to fight back, but it is beginning to coalesce.  This piece by Rachel Aviv documents how extreme and irrational the government can be in pursuing these demonic phantoms.  A man who has never actually committed a crime or harmed anyone can be held in prison indefinitely because he has been deemed a threat on the basis of the type of erotic pictures he likes to look at or what he likes to think about.  This is a threat to everyone, because it implies that anyone who is deemed a threat by a bureaucrat or medical professional can be detained indefinitely without recourse or review.  It undermines the integrity of the justice system and the very legitimacy of the government.  If the administration of justice and the meting out of punishment is arbitrary and capricious and based not on actions that one has initiated, but stems rather from entrapment by law enforcement officers and surmises by unaccountable bureaucrats within the system, then it is not a system of justice anymore; it is a police state.  The United States has been moving ominously in this direction over at least the last twelve years.  The executive branch has been showing decreasing respect for the law, due process, and the civil rights of citizens.  It is been most heavy handed in the enforcement of sanctions against pedophilia and child pornography, and this case highlighted by Rachel Aviv brings the extreme nature of this to the fore.

The paucity of resistance up to now has a number of reasons.  The main reason, I think, is because sexual activities between minors and adults occur overwhelmingly between family members, caregivers, and people close to the child.  Most of these incidents and relationships are not only not harmful, but actually beneficial, and are kept private and never come to public attention.  There are plenty of people around who know that sex does not harm children, but they are intimidated, and the law does not permit them to speak publicly about their experience.  There is no incentive to contradict this prevailing mindset, and every reason not to. There is, however, a lot of money to be made if you can pass yourself off as a victim of child sexual abuse.  Great financial incentives have been built into perpetuating this mythology that sex harms children.  Many people’s jobs and livelihoods are built around it.  You stand to receive considerable financial gain if you come forward with a lawsuit.  Entire bureaucracies have been erected to promote and enforce this misunderstanding. Rachel Aviv has documented this very powerfully.

This power structure can be eroded when people begin to ask, “just what is the harm, anyway?” Many people blame their personal miseries on sex, but his does not mean it is a universal experience.  At one time people thought masturbation caused all sorts of maladies from blindness to insanity.

By the nineteenth century the campaign against masturbation reached an unbelievable frenzy.  Doctors and parents sometimes appeared before the child armed with knives and scissors, threatening to cut off the child’s genitals; circumcision, clitoridectomy, and infibulation were sometimes used as punishment; and all sorts of restraint devices, including plastic casts and cages with spikes, were prescribed. Graphs assembled by one scholar showed ‘a peak in surgical intervention in 1850-79, and in restraint devices in 1880-1904.’  By 1925, these methods had almost completely died out, after two centuries of brutal and totally unnecessary assault on children’s genitals. [Lloyd De Mause, quoted in Heins (2002) p. 272, 52N]

Within my own lifetime I can recall people seeing all manner of threat in homosexuality.  Now we have numerous gay representatives in Congress and the first openly gay Senator.   Many thought that the military would be compromised if openly gay soldiers were allowed to serve.  That prohibition was lifted and nothing untoward has happened.  Many mindless fears dissipate once they are challenged and defeated.  Pedophilia is the latest object of this mindless hyperbolic hatred.  We need to keep in mind that pedophilia means “loves children.”  Pedophiles are everywhere and many pedophiles occupy prominent positions in society. They are productive citizens; they have important jobs, families, and responsibilities.  Society cannot afford to be crucifying all of these people and locking them up in jail.

What has been missing so far is a philosophical critique of the very idea that sex harms children and that any exposure of a child to sexual activity constitutes abuse.  This is beginning to be formulated and Rachel Aviv has provided an excellent illustration of the need for such reform. I am ever optimistic that we can bring this creeping menace to a halt and allow American society to begin to heal from its long history of self-inflicted deprivation in the emotional and sexual lives of its people.

Notes

 

Ford, Clellan S.; Beach, Frank A. (1951)  Patterns of Sexual Behavior.  New York:  Harper Torchbooks.

Foucha v. Louisiana  504 U.S. 71 (1992)

Heins, Marjorie (2002) Not In Front of the Children:  ‘Indecency,’ Censorship and the Innocence of Youth.  New York:  Hill and Wang/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kansas v. Hendricks 521 U.S. 346 (1996)

Kinsey, Alfred C.; Pomeroy, Wardell B.; Martin, Clyde E. (1948)  Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia & London:  W.B. Saunders.

Levine, Judith (2002)  Harmful to Minors:  The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex.  Minneapolis & London:  University of Minnesota Press.

New York v. Ferber  458 U.S., 747, (1982)

Seinfeld, Jeffrey (1991) The Empty Core:  An Object Relations Approach to Psychotherapy of the Schizoid Patient. Northvale, NJ, & London: Jason Aronson.

Stein, Dan J., et. al. (2010) What is a Mental/Psychiatric Disorder? From DSM-IV to DSM-V.  Psychological Medicine. 2010 November; 40(11): 1759–1765.

Stern, Daniel N. (1985) The Interpersonal World of the Infant.  New York:  Basic Books.