The Color Purple and Moral Complexity

I watched "The Color Purple" today for the first time in many years and was reminded of the film's moral complexity.

The novel by Alice Walker and the film generated a fair bit of criticism for portraying the black men in Celie's life as brutal patriarchs.  This is also a common trend among scholars--often white ones--who hesitate to explore hierarchies and exploitations within exploited communities.  On the one hand, this tendency to depict oppressed people as uniformly noble reflects a noble impulse to reverse old, racist stereotypes.  But it can also reflect a subtle form of racism, namely an assumption that oppressed people are not capable of agency and complexity.  People without sin, after all, are not really human or interesting.  Part of what makes "The Color Purple" so compelling is that Celie wrestles with multiple forms of oppression (racial, gendered, sexual, economic), as well as her own timidity.  And the film, like the book, shows that all manner of people--oppressors and oppressed--are capable of great transformations and sacrifices, that we can all love fiercely.

A final piece of irony is that the author of this remarkable story of redemption and determined commitment to family and kin became estranged from her own daughter, who accused her of neglecting her as a child and then being unable to accept her success as an adult.

Hence the marvelous story and the life of its gifted creator remind us that suffering and redemption are bound to startle us.

Mining in the 1860s

We recently toured a mine in Virginia City, Nevada--a place I've wanted to visit since watching "Bonanza" episodes as a kid.  Every Sunday night my parents visited the Fletchers, who had a TV (we did not), and I got to watch "Candid Camera," "Disneyworld," and "Bonanza." 

But I digress.  The mining site reminded me of how incredibly difficult it was for most people to make a living even in relatively prosperous places in the nineteenth century.  The miners often worked far underground and in very hot and dangerous conditions.  Much of the work consisted of pounding away with a sledehammer at the end of a long drill for many hours a day.  Most people across the world still have to work very hard to make relatively little.

In this regard, as in so many others, middle-class Americans are truly exceptional.  We have much more comfortable lives and don't have to work all that hard (compared to people of other times and places) to get them.  But this arrangement strikes us as so natural, so ordinary, that we seldom reflect on how peculiar and lucky we are.

The Colorado Shootings

The tragedy in Colorado presents us with an unsettling pair of developments: the horrible shooting itself and the peculiar way that we try to make sense of it.

It will take awhile to to understand the precise motives and mindset of the shooter--and how the killings intersect with issues such as gun control and our nation's more general culture of violence (as represented, ironically, in blockbuster films of the "Batman" genre).  What is quite clear--though not much talked about--is that such killings are quite rare, that individual gun accidents and shootings and--if we widen our lens to include the rest of world--death from starvation and easily avoidable illnesses kill infinitely more people than mass shootings do and, I think, deserve a much higher fraction of the nation's chronically short attention span.

Emily Meehan on Helping Africans

Have you ever wondered if your charity was doing more harm than good?  If you were "being played"?  If so, you'll identify with a thoughtful series of articles written by Emily Meehan for Slate two years ago.

While working as an aid worker in the Democratic Republic of Congo Meehan met a remarkably intelligent boy who seemed determined to overcome the many disadvantages thrown his way--and determined that Meehan would help him.  Despite her misgivings, Meehan gradually relented, paying for his school fees, a bicycle, and other items.  Then, right before she left and after she had just given him a large sum, he reported that the money had been stolen.  She recalls: "I realized that I didn't know anything.  I didn't know whether Aime was tricking me.  I didn't know why he would trick me.  I didn't know if anything I have told you about his life was true, and I didn't know if foreign aid works."

Yet Meehan mainitains a blog (African Heroes: Stories of Brave Badasses) in which she urges her readers to donate money to various Africans in need--often for school fees.

Meehan shows us how difficult and yet necessary it is to try to help those less privileged than ourselves.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/features/2010/the_humanitarians_dilemma/meet_aim.html

http://africanheroes.tumblr.com/

"Portland Timbers, We Adore You. . . ."

This past week-end Peter, his friend Zach, and I made the first of what we hope will be many "epic" roadtrips to watch the Portland Timbers play in Salt Lake City.  There was culture shock all the way around.  Unlike Portland's stadium, which is full of frenzied, chanting fans long before the game starts, Rio Tinto had a very sleepy, nonchalant feel to it.  None of the home-team fans save the public-address announcer--whose voice was magnified to levels I haven't heard since attending a Black Sabbath concert back in 1975--seemed all that excited as we neared the start.

But our brave little band of a few dozen Timbers fans surprised the locals by chanting and yelling fervently as soon as the torturous public-address system faded, including unflattering comments on Utah's weather, religious customs, and (most sacred of all to Portlanders) beer.  The profanities that the Timbers Army has (generally) removed from its chants while at home were back in full force.

Yet I have to say that something transcendent, even spiritual, happened after we fell behind 3-0 and thousands of the local fans were turned our way, taunting their tormenters.  None of us left, sat down, or shut up.  We sang loudly and proudly "Portland Timbers, We Adore You," with feeling.

The three of us were a bit concerned about retracing our steps to our parking slot, as I had managed to put our Portlandia Prius with its Oregon plates squarely in the middle of the centre of Salt Lake City's grizzled tailgaters who had been doing their best to get "liquored up" on 3.2 beer well before the game started.  But everyone was friendly and amiable.  "Thanks for coming," remarked one.  "You guys are amazing."  Of course he meant our fans, not the team, whose coach would be fired two days later.

There's something deeply satisfying about traveling three days to cheer with such devotion a team that doesn't even manage a shot on goal.

Men and Health

After limping around with a bruised knee for a week, with no relief in sight, I'm living out an aspect of masculinity that I've studied quite a bit, namely males' tendency to take risks.  We visit the doctor less often, are less apt to put sunscreen on, and get in far more accidents--on and off and road.  Scholars attribute this propensity to take risks (or, as my wife would put it, "be stupid") to the male urge to distinguish ourselves.  Raising half of the population to be willing to risk death in order to hunt and fight successfully made a lot of sense for  much of the history of humankind.  The men who survived could have more than one wife, and those who died (about one third of the group in many societies) served the interests of the group while alive by being daring hunters and warriors and could take a certain comfort, as their eyes closed for the last time, in knowing that people would be telling stories about them for generations to come.

Today, modern men of the western world seem to believe that taking risks sets us apart from women and gives us status among other males.  I also think that taking part in competitive sports that carry the risk of injury (I  hurt my knee playing soccer) makes us part of a brotherhood that is very strong and meaningful.  Scholars who study men in combat find that the main reason they risk their lives, when it comes right down to it, is to help their brothers.  I hear male professional athletes say the same thing when they retire, that what they'll most miss is that strong sense of belonging--and that they'd be willing to risk another concussion or two to keep playing another year or two. Still, a stationary bike and Zumba with my wife look pretty tempting right now. . . .

Spoiled Rotten?

Elizabeth Kolbert has a wonderful piece summarizing a spate of recent books on one of those developments that is both profound and largely overlooked: the fact that middle-class, American parents expect very little from our children.  Kolbert points out that parents in more traditional cultures rely on their children at a young age and that children seem to flourish with these sort of expectations.  I certainly noticed this in Ghanaian schools, where children deemed it a privilege to do whatever they could to make me comfortable and bragged about cleaning their school and helping their parents at home.

Kolbert has some hilarious stories about how children in American society, by way of contrast, demand that their parents wait on them--bring them silverware or tie their shoes, for example.  She suggests a couple of reasons for this dramatic shift.  First, middle-class parents want their children to focus on getting outstanding grades so that they can get into the best colleges.  Hence they shouldn't be distracted by petty chores such as weeding or doing the dishes.  Second, this embrace of the coddled, immature child reflects a larger embrace of immaturity and narcissism.  I'm sure there must be other, related causes.  But the fact that so many adults idealize childhood certainly helps to explain why we so many of us seem to believe that our own children should be free from any sort of inconvenience, let alone suffering.  But how will these children cope with the inevitable difficulties of life?

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert