“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.
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.
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.
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