Popular culture

A Nihilist at the Opera

The eroticism of this photograph of Finnish soprano Karita Mattila in the title role of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Puccini's Tosca, one of the most beloved of Italian operas, gives you some idea of what it's like when one of today's hip nihilists takes over a traditional art form. This production was booed by Met fans on its opening night in September and after seeing it in a movie theater last night, I understood why. The sets are dark, sterile and chilling. The characters depart from the text and the whole thing is perversely sexual. It sneers at the famous romance of Tosca with pornographic embellishments. In Act I, Cavadorossi, the painter played here by Marcelo Álvarez, works on a towering canvas of Mary Magdalene that sits on scaffolding and dominates the church scene. In contrast to the previous production's historically faithful rendering of the sanctuary of an ornate Roman cathedral, the interior here resembles a bleak Soho warehouse, perhaps awaiting a few abstract paintings for decor. One of Mary Magdalene's breasts is fully bared. As the painter and his lover Tosca perform their sumptuous arias, an enormous looming nipple is visible in the background. Tosca, who takes a knife at one point to the canvas, seems mentally unhinged and sexually coarse (for a moment, she grips her lover between her legs). There is another blatant swipe at Christianity when the evil Scarpia takes a statue of the Virgin Mary in his hands and lewdly embraces it. Three whores are featured in Act II, characters who never appear in the libretto. One has…

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October 28, 2009
Home Decorating

Why Modern Design is Anti-Woman and Anti-Family

 
                                           Interior Design Magazine/ Photo by Eric Laignel.
 

Natalie writes in response to the previous post on interior design:  

 

I was interested in your thoughts on current interior design trends and the rise in minimalism. First, minimalism is a very masculine style, and one could say that the more androgynous the feminine ideal becomes (the ideal female figure and personality becoming increasingly boyish) the more our homes reflect the change. Also, like extreme thinness, minimalism is a class-based aspiration, the more people have the less they want to show, any kind of opulence is seen as bad taste. Why is this so? Perhaps there is a strong bias against femininity in design circles: a bias against the opulence of the traditional female form and against the female home. [Laura: That had never occurred to me! Fascinating.]

Secondly, I think there is a link between increased consumerism over the past decade and the rise of minimalism. There is a strange dissonance between the “patriotism” of buying more stuff and our minimalistic homes – we buy and then we chuck it out to make room and space. I also think it is important to note that the rise of minimalism coincided with the rise in esoteric spirituality in the West – many disciples of minimalism believe themselves to be cleansing their spirits in some unfathomable way. [Again, this is an excellent observation.]

Thirdly, minimalism is not a style conducive to successful family life, no matter how it has been sold to us. It is not comfortable; it requires extreme effort to maintain; you cannot close doors on mess if your house is on an open plan; and most importantly it is not child-friendly. [Amen!] It is a style which celebrates the rise of the consuming individual, an individualistic style and not one which can function at a family level. We have lost the sense that our homes are places of comfort, hospitality and nurture; they are simply reflections of individual taste and our monetary worth, homes are assets. 

However, it is my belief that minimalism is on the wane, particularly in Europe. The UK has seen the rise of the new domestic style, and a concurrent rise of many articles on “high flying” women choosing the domestic sphere over commerce. However, the new domestic style is very much sold to us a kind of vintage make-believe, a style which plunders a more domestic past for its inspiration, and as someone interested in design (it’s in my blood – a family business) I find this to be a little cowardly, and too tongue in cheek to be taken seriously. [Yes, this trend toward retro-chic is unserious and cynical.]  The only way forward is to bravely ignore trends and follow William Morris’ advice and buy only things which we consider to be either beautiful or useful.

Laura writes:

Thank you, Natalie!                                                                              

William Morris wallpaper

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October 28, 2009
Home Decorating

The Principle of Non-Decoration

 

  Photo by Eric Laignel.
 
Modern design and fashion are characterized by a love of uniformity, monotone colors, and visual barrenness. In clothes, this means grays and browns for women with few embellishments or frills. In interior design, this translates into an absence of pattern, vibrancy, texture and warmth. It’s egalitarian chic and deliberately plays down luxury. Only the trained eye can see the expense.
  
Kidist Paulos Asrat, of the blog Camera Lucida, recently traveled to the New York Design Center’s trade showrooms in Manhattan and commented on this phenomenon. Designers, she notes, are more caught up in self-expression than the creation of  beautiful and liveable homes. She writes:
 
 “So, if artist/designers don’t really care about their public and the real world, and they are much more interested in experimentation and self-expression, what happens to the products? As I’ve discovered, they suffer a great deal.”
  
In the following exchange, Kidist, an artist and textile designer, shares more of her thoughts on the subject.
 

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October 27, 2009
Home Decorating

The Tactics of the Anti-Woman Woman

  It is a standard rhetorical device of feminists to always and unfailingly make token nods to the domestic woman, as if to say, "I'm not against domesticity. I only want women to have the freedom to choose." This is a lie. They do not want freedom, but the transformation of female nature. A perfect example of this is Joanne Lipman's recent editorial in the New York Times. Lipman, former deputy managing muckety-muck at the Wall Street Journal, expresses outrage that women's progress has stalled because women overall are not making as much money as men; boasts at length of her career triumphs; and states that the authentic woman is one who demands a raise or a promotion. She argues that women "need to take risks" and, in what is suppposedly an essay on the general position of women in society, only mentions motherhood or marriage when bragging about her ability to fit them in around a high-powered schedule. There is not a single positive reference to them. But, Lipman then remembers the obligatory gesture. She remembers that she must not appear to be saying what she is in fact saying: that the highest goods a woman can achieve are power and money for herself. And, so she makes the standard acknowledgement. She says, "Women define success differently; for some it may be a career, for others the ability to stay home with children." When feminists say they want "balance" for women or they want the freedom for all to define themselves as they choose, they are…

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October 27, 2009
Women and Divorce

Women and Divorce

 

There are two kinds of women in this world: women who divorce and those who stand by and passively watch. The first kind of women wreck the lives of their children and husbands. The second kind say, “We cannot judge.”

I am sorry to be grim. I have witnessed many divorces. Sometimes I feel as if my family lives amid the rubble of a ruined village. As I walk through this town, I see the place where the post office used to stand and the old bank and that church with the white steeple. All gone. They were decent structures. Each could have lasted for many years. With a few exceptions, they were destroyed by women, capricious women for whom divorce is the most romantic project of their lives.

It’s not true that men are the principal losers. So many women ruin their own happiness and the happiness of  invisible communities formed by couples.  I cannot help but come to this inescapable conclusion: Women cannot handle freedom.

For more reflections on why women divorce, see my recent post, The Unfaithful Wife.

                                                                              Edmund Dulac - Ariel, A Midsummer Night's Dream                                                                                (more…)

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October 26, 2009
Childhood

Disorder Claims the Nation’s Children

 

You’ve heard of ADD, ADHD, OCD and the like, and you’ve perhaps seen the children lined up at school infirmaries for their chemical supplements. Now, word is just in from The Onion of a new psycho-neurological condition afflicting the nation’s youth. This should have been discovered ages ago. Millions have gone untreated.

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October 26, 2009
Nature

The Fugitive Leaf

                             The band of deciduous forest which extends roughly from the Blue Ridge Mountains to northern Quebec is unusual in the world for its autumnal color. The only other extensive swathe of forest that rivals it stretches across parts of East Asia. Deciduous trees elsewhere do not exhibit the spectacular mixture of reds and yellows. In Europe and midwestern United States, trees typically turn only yellow. The reason for this geographic difference remains a mystery to scientists, though there are intriguing theories. The appearance of yellow leaves is understood. With the diminished light of fall, the green chlorophyll in leaves departs, allowing existing yellow pigment to appear.  Red autum leaves are the consequence of a different process. With the drop in chlorophyll, anthocyanin, a red pigment, is produced in the leaf. This is a relatively new discovery and has led to several theories about why trees use energy to create red pigment when they are shedding their leaves. According to an hypothesis published recently in the journal New Phytologist and discussed in this ScienceDaily article,  the different climatic conditions during ice ages 35 million years ago are responsible. The bands of forest in North America and Asia developed red pigments to ward off insects that were unable to survive the harsher conditions in Europe and other parts of the world where deciduous trees also evolved. A recent headline in a Vermont newspaper said, They Came, They Peeped, They Left.  As the "leaf peepers" who crowd New England's backroads know, these trees are beautiful in panorama. But the greatest effect is from inside,…

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October 26, 2009
Childhood / Parenthood

The Egalitarian Family and Spoiled Children

 

Paul Velde writes:

In your piece on men and housework, you remark apropos of another subject altogether, “The average woman wants control over her domestic realm and she doesn’t like the way men… manage the children.” Perhaps the operative word here is “average,” but nonetheless could you find time to expand on this point? In my experience the male-female conflict over children is the cause of much tension in marriages, and, when the results become manifest in terms of spoiled, ill-behaved, ungrateful offspring, profound grief.

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October 24, 2009
American politics / Feminism

Can Liberty Survive Feminism?

 

Lawrence Auster writes here:

It appears to be the case that if a society gives equal political rights to women, then over time there will inevitably be an expectation of equal political outcomes for women. How is this dynamic to be forestalled? By stating up front, by establishing it as a fundamental principle of the society, that the sexes are different, that women naturally have different social functions from men, and that the exercise of political power, including the franchise, is not for women. Only the stoutest bulwarks against women’s procedural equality can stop the ultimate devolution of society into gender socialism and the spiritual death and loss of freedom it brings. If liberty is limited, then liberty can be maintained.

But if I’m wrong,–if it’s not possible to contain liberty and equality within strict bounds where they do not ultimate turn into socialism–then the American experiment in government is a failure, its principle are void, and we must start over again on an entirely new basis.

I don’t believe that to be true. I devoutly hope that it is not true. But I’m saying that it might be true. 

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October 23, 2009
Female sexuality / The Unfaithful Wife / Uncategorized

More on the Unfaithful Wife

cranach66 

A female reader writes about the previous post The Unfaithful Wife:

That was a thought-provoking article. Maybe I’m taking it the wrong way, but it seems like you’re being much harder on women than men. Men have been having and getting away with having affairs for millenniums. And a lot of women have sucked it up and dealt with it, often for the sake of their children. I’m certainly not condoning affairs or divorce but it’s nothing that men haven’t done. Men have discarded their wives, potential wives and children for decades on the altars of sex and excitement.

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October 23, 2009
Uncategorized

Dust Until You Drop

 

bigstockphoto_Iron_1538859[1]

I am running myself ragged, dear reader, trying to keep up with the latest lies in our preeminent newspapers. According to this story in the Wall Street Journal, men will have more sex with their wives if they (the men) do more housework. Is this the ultimate form of feminist blackmail, or what? 

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October 23, 2009
Feminism

The Despised Stewardess

 

 

 

Stewardesses are representative of all that was evil in our past. Just look at ’em. Forget the smiles, the waves, the trim beauty. They are desperately unhappy, the aeronautical equivalent of sex slaves.

In her latest encomium to feminism, which was discussed here, Gail Collins singles out stewardesses, and the employment standards of their bosses, for special censure. Before feminist progress, stewardesses had to be pretty, well-groomed, young and unmarried. Now they can be fat, married men, and that’s amazing.

But what really irks is not the discriminatory rules that insisted they be young and beautiful. Stewardesses were often unambitious women looking for husbands and travel before they settled down to marriage and family. They didn’t want to be president of the airline or even a lowly director of marketing. They wanted to pass the time well before real adulthood began. Feminists despise the lowly stewardess. She lacked ambition. She smiled too much. She could have gotten high marks at any charm school. Husbands and babies adore smiles. And that’s just the problem. Down with stewardesses forever! They are a relic of human happiness, a reminder of lost joy.

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October 23, 2009
Female sexuality / The Unfaithful Wife

The Unfaithful Wife

If any good has come from feminism it is a dawning appreciation of female sexual desire and its potential to destroy. The monogamous instincts of women have been vastly exaggerated in the popular imagination, even by Darwinian realists who pride themselves on their clear-eyed appraisals of human nature. Sexual liberation has revealed the full extent of feminine waywardness and disloyalty.

At least two-thirds of divorces in this country are initiated by women. Women are more eager than men to get married; once married they are more eager to get out of marriage. In many of these divorces, women act as if their husbands have disappointed or offended them when the truth is these women desire another man or the possibility of new romance. Economic power for women and divorce laws that guarantee maternal custody or joint custody have unmasked the truth about female sex drives: Women are not innately faithful nor do all women naturally put the interests of their children above their own. They express their sexual restlessness in entirely different ways than men and in often confusing forms.

For centuries, women have consoled themselves when their husbands were unfaithful with the thought that men are naturally promiscuous. This commonly reinforced idea has allowed a woman to feel that a husband’s adulteries are not necessarily a reflection upon her. The same is not true with feminine betrayal. Women are viewed as naturally monogamous and so their infidelities cause more despair and may lead women themselves to give more weight to passing infatuations.

When I was 14 years old, my family lived across the street from a handsome couple and their five children. I used to babysit for them, sitting up late at night in their living room listening to the clock tick. I remember seeing Mr. Minder one spring night mowing his lawn. I was struck by something strange in his expression. It was one of complete detachment, as if the mower was pulling him on a leash.

Two days later, my father woke me early in the morning. “Get up, get up,” he said. “Something terrible has happened.” Mr. Minder was dead. He had gone the night before into his garage, sealed the doors and turned on the car. It was a devastating event. He was a kind and gentle man. I cannot help but think that he was a victim of his own innocence. For when he learned that his wife was having an affair with a neighbor, he was overcome by hopelessness. He was entirely unprepared for such a thing.

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October 22, 2009
Uncategorized

Memories of Casual Neglect

 

Karen I. writes in response to the previous post about the “amazing” progress women have made since the 1960s:

 

Born in 1971, I was a member of one of the first generations of children whose mothers routinely left their children to outside care so they could go to work full time. My father had a good, not great, job but one a family could live on and my mother chose to work so they could have more material possessions. When I was small, I used to forget where I was supposed to go after school because caregivers included my grandparents, my mother sometimes, a neighbor, my mother’s workplace (where I would sit quietly for two hours and wait for her to take us home), or an after-school program. My mother sometimes used all these options in one school week, so there was no consistency. Every caregiver, including my mother and grandmother, acted like we were a burden and I remember my poor grandmother lying down in the middle of the day, exhausted from long days of caring (for no pay at all) for the small children of her three successful working daughters’ children.

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October 22, 2009
Feminism

Society Collapses and Feminists Rush to Take Credit

 
 
 
Since the 1960s, women have made enormous strides. It’s amazing. They have unhappier marriages, more divorce, about half as many children if they’re college-educated, less free time, fatter children, dumber children, more psychologically disturbed children, lonelier lives, messier homes, and husbands who often earn less money than they do. Is this what Gail Collins means by amazing in her latest encomium to feminist progress, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present?

I don’t know anyone clinically sane who thinks life in America is actually better today, when nearly one fourth of college-educated women don’t have children at all, than it was in the 1960s. By every gauge of social welfare, things are dramatically worse. The percentage of babies born to unwed mothers has increased sevenfold. The proportion of children living in single-parent households has tripled. The divorce rate has doubled. More than a million new children every year are affected by parental divorce. The number of children who live apart from the biological fathers has doubled, increasing fom 17 percent to 34 percent.

Children who grow up in single-parent households or with divorced parents have significantly worse outcomes in life in every area. In fact, they have negative outcomes at two to three times the rate of children from two-parent married households.  But, even though at least half of these children are females, Collins actually thinks things have gotten better. According to this reviewer, things were “positively medieval” for women back in the 1960s. So medieval that women were barred from jury duty in some states so they could see to their domestic duties. Oh happy, happy day!

Collins must narrow her gaze on the few seize-the-day female careerists in her midst, women who are perfectly happy to not see or raise their children, if they indeed have any, and to divorce their husbands. She basks in ludicrous examples of female oppression. Reviewer Francine Prose states:

The early pages of Ms. Collins’s book are peppered with accounts of incidents so outrageous they almost seem like jokes. A draft of a Congressional bill to insure equal pay for women was discovered to have been filed “under B — for ‘broads.’ ” At a pregraduation party at Barnard, one woman remembers, students who were engaged to be married were handed corsages, while their classmates without engagement rings were presented with lemons.

Imagine that. Corsages for women. If that’s medieval, this must be the Stone Age.

 

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October 21, 2009
Uncategorized

If Homosexuality is Genetically Determined, Is it Good?

 

Rose responds to the post How to Disown Your Parents, in which I stated, “If desire cannot be trained or modified [in homosexuals], the same is true for heterosexuals and for pedophiles:” 

Friedman does not appreciate the traditional corollaries that accompany his biological determinism. Certainly if men can be born with inherently feminine natures and women with inherently masculine ones, it must follow that women can have inherently feminine natures and men inherently masculine ones. But that would be sexist. This is rather like the leftist contradiction that a male transsexual’s desire to wear a frilly dress and ribbons is congenital and instinctive and to be tolerated (or celebrated) for that reason but a woman’s desire to do the same is merely an arbitrary social construction. Friedman’s essentialism stands in stark contrast to the Foucauldian theories recently condemned at View from the Right. Gay activists and sympathizers tend to bounce back and forth between the two positions depending on which is useful to them at the moment.

Laura’s point about pedophilia is a good one and it is for this reason actually that I think conservatives should on principle refuse to argue about whether homosexuality is genetic. Successfully reformed pedophiles are rare but whether a desire is inborn or not has nothing to do with the moral status of its expression.

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October 20, 2009
Uncategorized

One Conscientious Objector

  Keith Bardwell, the Louisiana justice of the peace who made national news for refusing to marry an interracial couple, continues to be disarmingly honest in his statements about the incident. His candor and lack of racial animosity have probably made a few people think twice and the story has briefly reopened an ancient theme that is now rarely discussed in public. "It's kind of hard to apologize for something that you really and truly feel down in your heart you haven't done wrong," Bardwell told a radio reporter over the weekend.  He refused to officiate at a ceremony involving a black man and a white woman. He said he does not approve of interracial marriage because of its effect on children. "I've had countless numbers of people that was born in that situation, and that they claim that the blacks or the whites didn't accept the children," Bardwell told CBS. "And I didn't want to put the children in that position."   .

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October 20, 2009
Uncategorized

How to Disown Your Parents

  If parents reject an adult child for embracing homosexuality, they are guilty of scientific ignorance and should be disowned for their hostility to truth, according to Dr. Richard Friedman, professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. In a column  about "toxic" parents in yesterday's New York Times, Friedman described a patient who was harshly criticized by his family for his homosexuality. Friedman met with the man and his parents to bring about a reconciliation. He wrote: The session did not go well. The parents insisted that his “lifestyle” was a grave sin, incompatible with their deeply held religious beliefs. When I tried to explain that the scientific consensus was that he had no more choice about his sexual orientation than the color of his eyes, they were unmoved. They simply could not accept him as he was. I was stunned by their implacable hostility and convinced that they were a psychological menace to my patient. As such, I had to do something I have never contemplated before in treatment. At the next session I suggested that for his psychological well-being he might consider, at least for now, forgoing a relationship with his parents. Friedman is one of a vast army of psychology professionals who spout this pseudo-scientific bigotry. The major professional organizations, such as the American Psychological Association, virtually command orthodoxy on the subject, untroubled by the fact that homosexuals were capable of essentially changing the color of their eyes in less tolerant times. If a person has no…

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October 20, 2009