Mother!

“You give, and you give, and you give.  And it’s never enough.” Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) in "Mother!"

Against my better judgment, I saw Darren Aronofsky’s horror film “Mother!”  Not only were reviews quite good, it starred Jennifer Lawrence, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Javier Bardem.  It was a symbolic nightmare about a woman realizing that her poet husband valued his career more than her. Critics found it similar to Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” (2010) and Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968).  While Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers praised “Mother!” as an “artist's cry from his own corrupt heart” and “a work of a visionary,” Kyle Smith of the stodgy National Review labeled it “torture porn” and said “it may be the most vile and contemptible motion picture ever released by one of the major Hollywood studios.”  Warned in advance of its content, needless to say, I didn’t take Toni with me. “Mother!” reminded me of a neo-noir film I recently saw on HBO, “Nocturnal Animals” (2016), starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal, where the nudity is intended to shock rather than titillate.

Jack Griffin’s mother in Ricard Russo’s “That Old Cape Magic” is a judgmental, snobbish English professor frustrated to be stuck at an Indiana state university in the “Mid-Fuckin’-West” rather than tenured at an Ivy League campus. Griffin has spent his entire adult life trying to distance himself from his mother and rid himself of her hangups; but as his relationship with wife Joy deteriorates, he worries that he might be more like her than he realizes. It’s a common fear among his (and my) generation – maybe every generation. One summer on the Cape, 12-year-old Griffin bonded with a boy whose mother seemed everything his own was not – warm, welcoming, nonjudgmental, even sexy, as evidenced by his embarrassing beach erections.

Hef and Playmates in 2013

On the NPR’s domestic hour of 1A’s “Friday News Roundup” the topics were the slow pace of disaster relief in Puerto Rico; the Republican switch, after failure to repeal Obamacare, to changing in the tax code to help big business; Russia’s use of Twitter and Facebook to attack Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election; and the death of Hugh Hefner, who, in the host’s words, “had much to say about sex and free speech.”  While Hefner took heat for portraying women as sex objects, he was a pioneer in challenging puritanical laws and championing civil rights.  I don’t recall ever buying a Playboy, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t look at other folks’ copies, especially the long, provocative interviews.  When guys said, half in jest, that they bought Playboy for literary content rather than the nudie pictures, they had a point (and not just in their pants).  At Bucknell, many fraternity dorm rooms (though not mine) were wallpapered with attention-grabbing Playmates-of-the-Month.  That was before full frontal and open beaver shots made a mockery of Playboy’s pretensions to highbrow entertainment combined with tasteful erotica.

A New Yorker article by Evan Osnos, who visited the “Hermit Kingdom,” asserts that Kim Jong Um’s refusal to abandon his country’s nuclear program can be traced to America’s complicity in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi after he agreed to dismantle Libya’s weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons program.  In the escalating battle of words between unstable world leaders, the North Korean employed the Old English word “dotard,” that refers to someone in his dotage who has experienced diminution of mental ability.  Perhaps because it sounds similar to retard, the word has caught on among Trump’s detractors, even more than “Drumpf,” his ancestors’ family name.  If I have to refer to him, I usually just say, Trump, without the first name or title of chief executive. Ray Smock wrote this about “Our Mad Hatter”:

Some of our presidents have been less than stellar, for sure. And "W" was a pretty dim bulb. Trump is in a class of his own as mentally disturbed, totally unqualified, totally uniformed about the world, and a criminal and a kleptocrat. We will discover that his criminality, rather than his mental state, will be what brings him down, just like it did with our other criminal president Richard Nixon. We are stronger than Trump and his minions, and he is not going to destroy us or this country. We will come out of this stronger. 

I bowled a 197 and “stayed clean,” meaning that I marked (strike or spare) in all ten frames.  In the one game the Engineers won, I had a 158 and Melvie came through big time with a 223. After two miserable games, new teammate Joe Piunti rolled a 148.  Opponent Tom Cox had a series in the 650s.  On the TV above the lanes was a replay of the Cubs clinching the NL Central against St. Louis.  In six days they’ll open the playoffs against the Senators.

Anne Balay commented on the death of her friend Jan R. “Sweat’ Gentry (above), whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Anne’s Miller home:

Jan died earlier this month. Anyone familiar with Steel Closets knows her. She is the one who made the Union change possible, and took me and the book to Vegas. I just can't believe she is gone. We drove together from Gary to North Fort Meyers in my car without a.c. and she never once complained. Thank you, Jan. Thank you.

Emily, Corey, Sam, and volunteer

Samuel A. Love posted:

Great autumn day painting the people of Gary's verses on the old Palace Theatre. Best part was being joined by Jazz, who was enjoying a walk on her day off, saw what we were up to, and wanted to join. Turns out she's interested in art school and is a Merrillville High grad! Another woman who was having a rough morning stopped to say that the words were very moving. Quite a few people were out and enjoyed the work. And thanks to sister from a different mister Emily Dykstra for the help!

Former IUN Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Mark McPhail asked for my reaction to an IU Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity report concerning his complaint about encountering a hostile work environment at IU Northwest due to his being African American.  One the one hand, I cannot speak about his claim of overt, racially-motivated discrimination against him. The report found scant tangible evidence of that, but the investigation seemed perfunctory at best.  On the other hand, McPhail seems to have been shabbily treated, not so much by his superiors but by troublesome subordinates, who, for various and sundry reasons, undermined his efforts to implement university policies.  For example, in a turf fight over reallocation of resources, McPhail protested the dismissal of a talented African-American director of UTEP (Urban Teacher Education Program), a vitally important initiative for providing high-quality teachers to the inner cities, due supposedly to low enrollment.  So far as I know, her superiors made no effort to secure a different role or classification for her.

The university’s report, in my opinion, contains numerous errors and misrepresentations:

1.    It asserts that McPhail opposed any sabbaticals not related to research on the city of Gary.  What, in fact, McPhail supported was prioritizing proposals having to do with Indiana, and in particular, Northwest Indiana.  I believe that this was in tune with recommendations by the Higher Education Commission, President Michael McRobbie, and Vice President for University Academic Affairs John Applegate.

2.    The report states that McPhail was basically granted the same authority as his predecessor David Malik.  In fact, Malik had been sent to IU Northwest by Bloomington after there had been a revolving door of administrators in that position for a decade.  He had almost absolute power over academic policies although he chose, for the most part, to work in tandem with the Chair of the Faculty Organization.  McPhail never had anywhere near that authority.

3.    The main policy clash seems to have been when a faculty member was denied tenure and McPhail opposed changing the person’s classification to clinical professor as a way of retaining him.  McPhail was familiar with the precedents of Jerry Pierce and Anne Balay, where a Founder’s Day Teaching Award winner and a nationally respected author (of “Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers”) were summarily dismissed despite efforts by their numerous supporters to find a way to retain their valuable contributions, including changing Pierce’s classification to lecturer or transferring Balay from English to Women’s Studies, recommendations made by the Faculty Board of Review that, shockingly, were ignored.  Reading McPhail’s complaint, it appears that some of the same network of “Old Boys” who spread false rumors about Pierce and Balay were doing the same thing regarding him.

4.    While this is a minor point, the report states erroneously that McPhail continued in his position of Vice Chancellor and remained on campus during his leave of absence.  In fact, Anna Rominger took over his duties and moved into his office.

Let me comment on something not mentioned in the report but in McPhail’s complaint: the gutting of IU Northwest’s Anthropology program.  A decade ago, under Bob Mucci, Anthropology was one of the most vital programs on campus, as evidenced by the myriad activities of the Anthropology Club.  Since Mucci’s retirement, it has been allowed to wither and virtually collapse, due to the failure to replace full-time faculty.  I believe that McPhail was correct to be concerned about this and to attempt to exert his leadership in order to remedy the situation.

Finally, I believe McPhail is particularly upset that his unhappy year at IU Northwest has hindered his career goal to obtain an administrative position where he could make good use of his considerable talents.  I would hope, even at this late date, that President Michael McRobbie or Vice President John Applegate might find some role for him to be of service to Indiana University in an advisory capacity.

On eBay Angie got me four hardback copies of the “The Devil’s Tickets: A Vengeful Wife, A Fatal Hand, and a New American Age” by Gary M. Pomerantz (2011) from Discover Books for under $16, including postage. I’ll give a copy to bridge partner Dee Van Bebber, another to fellow book club members Brian and Connie Barnes, and a third to the first person who agrees to attend my talk next May at Gino’s. Toni is presently reading our copy.