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NYCartist on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

NYCartist — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:05:23 +0000

Yes, Letat's comment is satire and really good. I could stretch it to absurd by reminding folks of the advert "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's" (rye bread). (Lenny Bruce was my favorite "comedian".)

Tony Curzon Price on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

Tony Curzon Price — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:20:18 +0000

it has to be recognised that there is nothing like a pair of Levi's for a spot of bricolage

tony

tia66m on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

tia66m — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:30:36 +0000

hahaha. This is the funniest series of comments ever!!!

Canny: Nadejda Letat was clearly being facetious in response to willment1973's comment, who may or may not have been trying to be funny too.

Poor Claude L-S. Even in death, the infamous 501s continue to haunt him.

canny on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

canny — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:05:23 +0000

Nadejda Letat: I think that you are merging Claude Lévi-Strauss the
French anthropologist with Levi Strauss (1829 –1902), the American
German-Jewish immigrant who founded Levi Strauss & Co, the first
company to manufacture blue jeans.

JFox on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

JFox — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:41:16 +0000

I am not an anthroplogist and can't offer anything to the debate on Lévi-Strauss's contribution to the discipline. However, his wonderful "Tristes Tropiques" strikes me as a masterpiece - beautifully written, enlightening, and full of fascinating insights into common elements of our shared humanity. It is among the very few books to which I return repeatedly and with gratitude.

Diana Raluca on "A world split apart"

Diana Raluca — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:38:38 +0000

@Francesco I really enjoy your poems. I love reading poetry and I'm in love with books. I have a couple of poems myself but I am to shy to let anyone read them, and I'm afraid it will not sound as good when translated to English.
Bless,
Diana @ True Compass: A Memoir

Kokakevano on "A murderous muse: Idi Amin and the Last King of Scotland"

Kokakevano — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:18:10 +0000

I watched this film last night and I feel let down that it did not stick to true fact. There was more truth's waiting to be told that the film could have carried as fact. Kevan

Not logged in on "Lifewriting: Herta Müller’s journey "

Not logged in — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:44:42 +0000

this is a fine piece indeed, and i have no problem with ms. mueller's winning the prize. here are some links to her work in translation available on line:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/books/excerpt-nadirs.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/books/excerpt-the-passport.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=EID4smWDEIgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=&f=false

http://trueslant.com/lauranathan/2009/10/06/picking-the-2009-nobel-prize-in-literature-winner/

http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/200910a.htm#ok4

Here a link to the work of the person whose work deserves the prize more than anyone:

http://handke-nobel.scriptmania.com/

Homeabroad on "Antichrist: the visual theology of Lars Von Trier"

Homeabroad — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:59:04 +0000

Excellent review, I just wanted to add this: after seeing the film, what came into my mind was a line from a book on Gestalt therapy - the idea that men are not 'allowed' by society to cry; they can only express this impulse in the form of violence. And women, vice-versa (this thought was prompted when the woman in the film says "A crying woman is a scheming woman").
I was wondering if the woman in the film, unstable and confused as she was, had made some sort of connection between the repressed violence that she felt within her (and which expressed itself in the form of minor torture - putting her son's shoes on the wrong way round) and the evil of women that she was reading about. And that madness and 'evil' is finally unleashed when the husband shows her the photo of her son with his shoes on wrong.
That's the beauty of this film, it works on so many levels.

Not logged in on "Antichrist: the visual theology of Lars Von Trier"

Not logged in — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:51:19 +0000

Brilliant review. I made mine before reading this one and you hit every point I thought was central to understand Von Trier’s ideas. The whole movie is totally anty-misoginist, without being feminist. Antichrist is a philosophical master peace and an open door to think about , nature, culture and males domination over females. If you liked this movie please read Françoise Héritier's book " Masculin, Féminin. La pensée de la différence".

Dava on "“The Atlas of Religion,” Joanne O'Brien & Martin Palmer"

Dava — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:31:54 +0000

Cancid - I have given this matter a great deal of consideration over the years & find it impossible to come to any other conclusion that Religions are nothing more than sentimental 'indulgements' - the mind is made that way. Using common sense, it should be recognised as such. Please don't fantasize. I cannot say any more than what is included in http://www.absurdbelief.info

Frederic Christie on "Rocky’s American dreams"

Frederic Christie — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:09:04 +0000

If the first movie represents a white racial America's "true" values, then the third and fourth movies' friendship between Apollo and Rocky represents the bridging of the gap between the counter-culture/black America and normative white America.

If we further recognize that the third movie makes LA into a place that burns weakness and brings strength back to Rocky, then we see a proletarian alliance between black and white poor America. Consider that it is Apollo who brings back Rocky's "eye of the tiger': A black man teaching a white man how to REALLY be tough.

Rocky IV can also be viewed simplistically as a demonization of the Soviets and pure Americanism, but the appeal that Rocky makes at the end for peace and the identification of the oppressed between Rocky and the ordinary Russian people is far more complex.

Rocky Balboa, if anything, flips the script you identify. The fact that Rocky LOSES and gives Mason Dixon, or symbolically a new America and/or black America, a crash course in willpower and courage indicates that there is a torch passing: 30s/50s courage and survival to the new era. Black America has had plenty of the same.

Lawrence Efana on "Banksy in Bristol"

Lawrence Efana — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:30:03 +0000

Once again you see beauty of literature - the magnificence of the language of arts! Tina Beatie outstandingly puts it to play. The style reminds me of those that the GCE: British examination officials, used to frame for colonial secondary/post-secondary students either as "Comprehension" or "Precis" english test papers. Those were the days but they are still worth recalling even in this context!

Here it applies to complex ways to analogise, talk and write about politics, using art symbols. You must be a 'reductionist' to battle 'your' way like Banksy - the arts exhibitionist] and the interpreter in question have done: attempt to capture/question the absurdities of human conditions, with open eyes to see or admire its success and abject failures. A man 'shopliting', that is, stealing] a quarter-litre of milk, from a shop arested and humiliated by the shop's security guards. Tina Beatie seems to be asking: what about the white colar criminals? Where are our societal norms - who frames or protects them? How are they framed - who is privileged and who is not? How, Why or where?

She is a "conscious" societal critique, using language of arts: one that wouldn't underestimate defiance, but would be witty and courageous in defense of liberties, should "authoritarian regimes seek to control or diminish the spaces of democracy and freedom". One thing: human world is colourful. It presents observers with sensations similar to those the arts exhibitions remind of. Those sensations also carry deep melancholies - senses of miseries commanding at the same time laughters, defined to parallel pleasure. Why do people go to see arts and exhibitions - when they know feelings of the kind have to do with emotions resting somewhat on symbolic proximities and memories: imaginative and real - a blend?

Can art gallaries help us comprehend human world fully? This by implication is one of Tina Beatie's questions hence the rationality of her question: "if there is an all-powerful creator, why does he draw so much suffering?" The road is a dusty one, demonstrated by constructed answer: "... that question is as elusive as the artist, but suggests that, if we value the subversive truthfulness of these images, then we must also be willing to confront the misery which the hypocricy of some of our accepted norms and values allows us to gloss over".

This paper is not only important for ongoing reform arguments in Britain but morally central in the alternating active and dormant global "New world economic, social and political order" arguments or debates. Both earlier commentators appreciate the paper in too concrete a sense on the theme of donations, party politics hence whether or not a friend of liberty. Authoritarianism in politics can and should not appeal, but what about the circumstantial nature to which citizens are open, induced to understand so be ready to work it back into a balance? An extraordinary gallary exhibition provides the time to learn if the symbols speak well as they tend to do here. Democracy condones not the police state yet lessons and experiences free none, but when citizens mobilize and become sensitive/responsible hence actively participative - all goes perhaps well then!

That the exhibition is interpreted "as a message for and from another possible world", is perhaps the greatest dimension of all the meanings to construct and give to this article. In it, we see 'change' articulated implicitly with indignation for good morals, peace and progress preferably or hopefully for all!

russwilliams_uk on "Antichrist: the visual theology of Lars Von Trier"

russwilliams_uk — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:11:54 +0000

...my review is here:
http://www.urbanlandfill.co.uk/2009/08/film-antichrist-dir-lars-von-trier.html

dazimon on "Entropa: art of politics, heart of a nation "

dazimon — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:33:11 +0000

RE: "The Good Soldier Svejk"

Make sure you get the new English translation of The Good Soldier Svejk available at http://zenny.com.

More information about the Svejk phenomenon at http://SvejkCentral.

Also, Svejk is on FaceBook now: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Good-Soldier-Svejk/133349009873?ref=nf