By Igal Bursztyn, December 13th, 2011 
This is the second part of a two-part post on new developments in Israeli and Palestinian film. Part 1 provided the historical and aesthetic background. Today, the new developments are considered. -Jeff
One of the first attempts to undermine and transcend Israeli cinema’s tendentious rhetorics and contents was Avanti Popolo (Rafi Bukai, 1986). It takes place in Sinai during the 1967 Six Days War. Two Egyptian soldiers (acted by Palestinian actors Salim Daw and Suhel Haddad) lost in the desert without water, discover two bottles of whiskey in a UN abandoned jeep, which they drink to survive. Khaled is an aspiring actor in Cairo fringe theater. He would love to act Hamlet but instead has been given the part of Shylock, the Jew, in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” As the two wander, thirsty and drunk in the desert, they run into an Israeli patrol. Their captors refuse to share a can of water with them. Khaled stuns them as he desperately quotes Shakespeare tinged with an Arab accent “I am a Jew! Has a Jew not eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food…”
An article by the Palestinian poet and critic Anton Shammas has brought to my attention that
“the two allegedly Egyptian soldiers lost in the desert talk behave like typical Palestinians. They represent the Palestinian to the Israeli cognition through the back door, through a brilliant, humane, humoristic and most of all clever cinematic distraction. Bukai, maybe intuitively, felt that the only way in which the Palestinian could touch Israeli conscience and raise his interest would be through a softened, retouched image of the ‘Egyptian’, who has existed significantly in this awareness since the days of the Bible.” (Shammas Anton, ‘He Confused the Parts’ in Bukai Rafi, Avanti Popolo, Kinneret Publishing House, 1990. Hebrew)
What strikes me about Avanti Popolo, is its yearning for a disinterested and universal “promesse du Bonheur” according to Stendhal’s famous definition of beauty, for Shakespeare, capable of transcending Israeli/Arab differences and conflicts. Avanti Popolo was followed . . .
Read more: Promesse de Bonheur in Nowhere: Fantasies of Art & Beauty in Israeli and Palestinian Films, Part 2
By Igal Bursztyn, December 12th, 2011 
This is the first of a two-part post on developments in Israeli and Palestinian films: Today a reflection on the historical and aesthetic background, tomorrow on new developments. -Jeff
“The promise of happiness” bequeathed by art and beauty (Stendhal) does not seem to have much political or social relevance in the grim perspective of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict today. For most Palestinians, happiness probably depends on getting rid of the Israeli occupation, if not of the Israelis themselves, For most Israelis, happiness may consist of being relieved of Arab threats, if not of the Arabs. Artifacts of both cultures, especially their respective cinemas, tended to reflect this irrelevance till the late 20th Century.
Recent developments in Israeli and Palestinian film share a new, unexpected theme: an outspoken yearning for high-art and beauty. In Atash (Thirst) by Tawfiq Abu Wa’el, an Arab village girl, oppressed and almost raped by her father, obsessively reads classical poetry. In Rafi Bukai’s Avanti Popolo, an Egyptian soldier captured by Israelis in the 6 Day War Sinai quotes Shylock’s monologue to save his life. In Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention, a beautifully stylized fashion-model causes a military checkpoint watch-tower to collapse. In Yoav Shamir’s documentary, Checkpoint, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians in a routine search are accompanied by a beautiful Italian opera tune coming from a radio-transistor. These (and many more) works juxtapose art and beauty with bleak, everyday reality, creating an unanticipated, almost utopian vision in which art and beauty transcend reality, thus becoming critical (and self-critical) comments on their respective Israeli and Palestinian societies. They “help sketch new configurations of what can be seen, what can be said and what can be thought and, consequently, a new landscape of the possible” (Jacques Rancière).
*****
In 1899, Shaul Tshernichovski published “Facing the Statue of Apollo,” one of the most influential poems in modern Hebrew literature:
Youth-God, sublime and free, the acme of beauty…
I came to you – do you recognize me?
I am a Jew, your eternal adversary…
I bow to life and courage and beauty…
The outspoken idolatry of the poem . . .
Read more: Promesse de Bonheur in Nowhere: Fantasies of Art & Beauty in Israeli and Palestinian Films, Part 1
By Gary Alan Fine, December 8th, 2011 
I am reliably informed that Deliberately Considered is not the first website that Republican operatives turn to, and I have little interest in stalking these worthies, at least without a Newt Gingrich-level consulting contract. However, I do follow the Republican nomination demolition derby with skeptical amusement, awaiting the Santorum boomlet and wondering if, by some Mormon miracle, Jon Huntsman might be the last man standing. More likely is that Republicans will find themselves with a set of fatally-damaged goods.
What has been most notable about the current Republican contenders is who has chosen not to run. These are politicians who have avoided the injurious process that constitutes what we term the American democratic process. Significant figures such as Mike Huckabee, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, John Thune, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Jim DeMint, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush (!) – and, for comic relief, Sarah and The Donald – have all determined that they should watch this unreality show from afar. While one – even a Republican one – might not embrace all of these possibilities, several compare favorably to the current field.
Some commentators, such as Howard Megdal of Salon.com, speculate that Republicans can save themselves from themselves if none of the announced candidate were to win, and for Republicans to retreat to the once common outcome of a brokered convention in which through negotiation wise men anointed a candidate. Will we see a convention of the sort that through a night of cigar smoke gave birth to Warren Gamaliel Harding on the tenth ballot? Or the one that selected Woodrow Wilson on the 46th ballot? With the Republican commitment to proportional awarding of delegates, if the current candidates remain in the race, it is likely that no candidate will gain a majority of delegates, and the decision will be made at their late August convention in Tampa, Florida with delegates eventually released from their commitments. The gift that Republicans can hope for late summer is a collection of losers.
The question is not who would have the . . .
Read more: Brokered Democracy
By Andrew Arato, December 7th, 2011 
(In the memory of Vladimir Ilyich, who in spite of everything was a great political man.)
The Occupation of Wall Street has already done important things. It has put the very important issue of inequality on the collective American agenda. It has experimented with forms of direct democracy and in ways of seriously influencing the political system outside the official channels. It has the potential of becoming not only the forerunner, but also a key component of a new American movement for more democracy and more justice. But, as all movements, it must confront its own worst tendencies to realize its genuine potential.
By tendencies I mean strategies rather than people or individuals or groups. Such a negative strategy is symbolized by the slogan that appeared just before the taking of a part of the New School: “occupy everything.” I regard it as a childhood ailment not to denigrate any participants or to represent their age (they were adults!), but to indicate problems of an early, developmental phase that can still be overcome.
“Occupy everything” is a slogan and a program incompatible with a non-violent movement aiming to raise moral as well as political consciousness. The idea of “seizing public or quasi-public spaces to make broad claims about the overall (mis)direction of our society” cannot be justified as a general right in the name of which the law is violated to transform or improve it. It is incompatible with productively addressing “the public at large.” Finally, and most clearly “occupy everything” is deeply contradictory with the creative slogan “we are the 99%.”
“Occupation” as against “sit-in” is a military metaphor. Occupation easily calls to mind the occupation of Iraq, and of the West Bank of the Jordan River. Sit-in means that we enter and stay in the space of an institution, non-violently, space where we have some kind of right to be and exercise civil disobedience, accepting to pay a price when arrested. For example, African Americans who sat in had a right to . . .
Read more: The Occupation of the New School as a Childhood Ailment of the OWS
By Nancy Fraser, December 6th, 2011 
As I agreed to publish the faculty letter concerning Occupy New School, authored by Andrew Arato, I asked Nancy Fraser for permission to publish her dissenting note, which also circulated among the faculty. Unfortunately, there was an email mix up, and she didn’t get back to me. Yesterday, we finally were in contact. She asked me to publish it as I received it, which I gladly do here. -Jeff
Dear all, I hate to be a party pooper, but I must tell you that I will not sign this letter. While I agree that the administration handled the situation very well, I belong to the group, described as a “small minority,” that believes that a building occupation need not be justified by demands addressed explicitly to its owners. In fact, that idea runs directly counter to the premise of the occupy movement, as I understand it, which involves seizing public or quasi-public spaces to make broad claims about the overall (mis)direction of our society. Hence, the occupiers of Zucotti Park were not addressing demands to its owners, but were seeking to speak to the public at large. I see no principled reason why a movement should not occupy a university building to make such a statement or initiate such a discussion. The students who did so in this case may have misjudged the situation, overestimating their support and failing to communicate clearly what they were doing and why. But if so, those were tactical errors in executing what might have been a promising strategy. The letter that many of you have chosen to sign does not even contemplate such possibilities. It seems to me to be written from the standpoint of those who govern, whereas I prefer to consider this matter from the standpoint of those who protest injustice, a group our society already marginalizes–politically, intellectually, and spatially.
Best to all, Nancy Fraser
To comment on this post, click on the title.
By Vince Carducci, December 5th, 2011 ![Book cover of Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law [Paperback] © 2011 Duke University Press Books](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Cutting-Across-Media-96x150.jpg)
In his recent book Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, British-born writer Simon Reynolds laments what he believes is the lack of creative originality in contemporary popular music. He compares what he perceives as the debilitated state of today’s sounds to the toxic instruments of financial piracy that nearly collapsed the global economy: “music,” he writes, “has been depleted by derivativeness and indebtedness.”
And yet one might note the irony that Reynolds himself initially emerged as a champion of English punk, a musical form that leapfrogged back over the stylistic excesses of glam, disco, and arena rock to mine the lode of romantic primitivism that fueled skiffle and the thrashier proponents of beat, in particular groups like Them, the Kinks, and the Yardbirds. What’s more, the subsequent style Reynolds lionized, rave, is even more obviously built upon a preexisting foundation, pilfering tracks from a variety of sources, which are sampled, looped, and mashed-up into collages of sound.
That this is pretty much the way that popular music, and indeed much of art, both high and low, has long been made is obvious to Kembrew McLeod and Rudolf Kuenzli, who have put together the collection of essays, Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law (Duke University, 2011). As befits its subject, the book brings together a broad range of contributors, from highfalutin academics to cutting-edge (no pun intended) street-level remixers, who reflect on a plethora of creative practices in all manner of media and genres.
An idea underlying the book is that the process of exchanging, altering, and assimilating information is and always has been central to humankind’s conscious being in the world. Natural scientist Richard Dawkins terms the basic unit of information exchange the meme, which is to culture what the gene is . . .
Read more: Cutting Up: Art in the Age of Electronic Reproduction
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 1st, 2011 
Growing out of the broader Occupy Wall Street movement in New York, a bit uptown, at the New School, there was another occupation. It began on OWS Global Day of Action, November 17th. About one hundred broke away from a march from Union Square to Foley Square. The march was a part of a city-wide student strike in solidarity with OWS Global Day of Action. The breakaway group occupied a student study floor on 90 Fifth Avenue. The headlines of The New York Times about the action captured how many of us at the New School understood it: “Once Again, Protesters Occupy the New School.” I was quite skeptical about this action. I didn’t understand why The New School was a target. But initially, I didn’t simply oppose. I thought that there was a real possibility that New School President David Van Zandt’s accommodating approach to our occupation might open up space for creative activity.
Unfortunately, things didn’t develop that way. As time progressed, the aggression that the tactic of occupation of university space is, defined the action more and more, while the opening in public life that OWS has provided took a backseat. Once again, for me, Hannah Arendt’s insight that in politics the means define the ends was confirmed. The object of my concern is most readily perceivable by the photos of the graffiti on the occupied space accompanying this post. The damage to The New School facilities is disturbing, but I find the content of some of the slogans even more serious. In addition, there were reports of some students having worries about their safety in the occupied space as events progressed. Instead of the space being open and inviting, some rather perceived and experienced it as hostile, disinviting and dominated, due to the some of the occupiers’ tactics and politics. There were also the very reasonable concerns of many students about losing access to the space for their studies.
It is . . .
Read more: Occupy New School?
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