Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Leon Trotsky's ideas today
A series of discussions from the North London branch of Workers’ Liberty, open to all.
All meetings held on Tuesdays from 7:30pm at the Red Rose Club, 129 Seven Sisters Road, N7. Nearest tube is Finsbury Park.
Week 3 (26th February): The Soviet Union after the Revolution: The New Course.
“The struggle against the bureaucratism of the state apparatus is an exceptionally important but prolonged task, one that runs more or less parallel to our other fundamental tasks: economic reconstruction and the elevation of the cultural level of the masses. The most important historical instrument for the accomplishment of all these tasks is the party. Naturally, not even the party can tear itself away from the social and cultural conditions of the country. But as the voluntary organization of the vanguard, of the best, the most active and the most conscious elements of the working class, it is able to preserve itself much better than can the state apparatus from the tendencies of bureaucratism. For that, it must see the danger clearly and combat it without let up.”
Reading: The New Course (1923) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/index.htm. Short Reading: Chapter 1: the question of party generations.
Week 4 (4th March): Trotsky on Art and Literature.
“Before the proletariat will have passed out of the stage of cultural apprenticeship, it will have ceased to be a proletariat. Let us also not forget that the upper layer of the bourgeoisie passed its cultural apprenticeship under the roof of feudal society; that while still within the womb of feudal society it surpassed the old ruling estates culturally and became the instigator of culture before it came into power. It is different with the proletariat in general and with the Russian proletariat in particular. The proletariat is forced to take power before it has appropriated the fundamental elements of bourgeois culture; it is forced to overthrow bourgeois society by revolutionary violence for the very reason that society does not allow it access to culture. The working-class strives to transform the state apparatus into a powerful pump for quenching the cultural thirst of the masses. This is a task of immeasurable historic importance. But, if one is not to use words lightly, it is not as yet a creation of a special proletarian culture.”
Reading: Literature and Revolution (1924) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/index.htm. Short reading: Chapter 6: Proletarian culture and proletarian art.
Week 5 (11th March): Stalinism and the defeat of the workers.
Trotsky argues that Stalinism was not the logical product of Bolshevism, but represented a bureaucratic counter-revolution against the Russian working class - separated from Bolshevism by "a river of blood"
Reading: The Revolution Betrayed (1936) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm. Short reading: chapter 11: Whither the Soviet Union?
Week 6 (18th March): The Struggle against Fascism
In the 1930s, as the Kremlin-backed German Communist Party ignored the Nazi threat, claiming that fascists were no worse than Social Democrats, Trotsky highlighted the danger fascism posed to all democratic and workers’ organisations and made the case for working-class forces to form a united front against the Nazis.
Reading: The Struggle against Fascism in Germany (or the Bookmarks collection: Racism, Stalinism and the United Front) (1930-1934). Alternatively all of Trotsky’s writings on Germany of this period are collected at http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/index.htm
Short Reading: The United Front for Defense: A Letter to a Social Democratic Worker (1933)
Week 7 (25th March): The Fourth International and the Transitional Programme.
Leon Trotsky’s “transitional programme” was a method by which to relate immediate struggles in the here and now to the ultimate goal of revolution, by posing demands which implicitly raised questions about power in society and the rule of capitalism.
Reading: The Transitional Programme (the Pathfinder edition with associated articles and transcripts of discussions is particularly useful). http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm. Short reading: the programme itself, the first seven sections up to and including “‘Business secrets’ and workers’ control of industry”
All meetings will also include a section on organisation + political work. Ring David on 07828 844695 for further details or email davidthetrot@googlemail.com.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
He's not there
I finally went to see I'm Not There...
I must admit, I’m no Dylanologist, so I was not particularly upset by director Todd Haynes’ decision to merge Suze Rotolo and Sara Lownds into one character, nor the fact that I’m Not There is far from a biography of Dylan. However, while the film has an excellent score (unsurprisingly, there are lots of Bob Dylan tracks) and features some memorable performances from the six actors representing the singer-songwriter’s different personas, it feels like a simple homage rather than offering any particular insight.
Central to the appeal of I’m Not There is its jigsaw-like composition. The film is not presented as a biopic, and it is not chronological – instead Haynes splices together fragments featuring “Dylans” from different eras, none of them called “Bob Dylan”.
There is Marcus Carl Franklin, who sparkles as a wandering 11 year-old African-American Woody Guthrie devotee. Christian Bale plays two roles – an early ’60s folk-guitar star Jack Rollins and then a washed-out evangelical preacher in the late ‘70s. Heath Ledger is a late ’60s actor increasingly alienated from his wife (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg), misogynistic and self-obsessed. Cate Blanchett, like Bale performing an ‘impression’ of Bob Dylan, has the leading part in I’m Not There as ‘Jude’ the confused Dylan who ‘betrayed’ folk music and his own ‘principles’ in favour of playing electric guitar. The other two actors – Ben Whishaw as poet Arthur Rimbaud and Richard Gere as a disguised near-hermitical Billy the Kid – put in unremarkable performances, with Gere’s part particularly incoherent and rambling.
The contradictions of Dylan’s political-activist side, and similarly his ‘turn’ to electric, are of some prominence in the film, mainly in Blanchett’s performance. Haynes shows fans disgruntled by Dylan’s behaviour, yet the star is himself puzzled by accusations of hypocrisy. A BBC reporter repeatedly tries to get Blanchett’s ‘Jude’ to admit that he has changed, but ‘Jude’ doesn’t see why his critics are so bothered, why they don’t ask such searching questions of their own political sincerity, or why they won’t appreciate his music for what it is. ‘Jude’ does not take this bad press seriously and, looking up to a statue of Jesus Christ being crucified, he shouts "Do your early stuff, man!" He says that the lyrics don’t change anything anyway.
Although some protest songs can be moving, there is a lot to be said for Haynes’ sceptical attitude to the critics of Dylan’s “turn”. The standard left critique of Dylan for “selling out” or “betrayal” is crude and concedes a lot of ground to the Stalinist notion of “good art” as that which is on-message, rather than what is strong aesthetically. Given that Dylan’s politics were at most a general concern for the oppressed and anti-war sentiment, and he was never an activist, what precisely was there for him to “betray”? Even political people should not just judge culture as if it were a political instrument.
However, apart from Marcus Carl Franklin’s scenes, which are mostly early in the film, and Blanchett’s cultured impression of Dylan, much of the film is soggy and inconsequential. Several performances show Dylan as aloof, and he often appears pretentious rather than pensive, but the film is wary of taking its subject head on and largely aims at veneration. This kid-gloves attitude to the aging legend appears to echo the widespread acclamation for Dylan’s pisspoor 2006 album Modern Times, despite its homages to such artists as Bing Crosby and Memphis Minnie.
I had eagerly anticipated going to see I’m Not There, but to be truthful it left me a little cold. Yes, Cate Blanchett’s impression of Dylan is eye-catching, but the film has very little new to say about Dylan, and its 2 hour 15 minute running time seemed excessive when so much of the film has no direction.
I must admit, I’m no Dylanologist, so I was not particularly upset by director Todd Haynes’ decision to merge Suze Rotolo and Sara Lownds into one character, nor the fact that I’m Not There is far from a biography of Dylan. However, while the film has an excellent score (unsurprisingly, there are lots of Bob Dylan tracks) and features some memorable performances from the six actors representing the singer-songwriter’s different personas, it feels like a simple homage rather than offering any particular insight.
Central to the appeal of I’m Not There is its jigsaw-like composition. The film is not presented as a biopic, and it is not chronological – instead Haynes splices together fragments featuring “Dylans” from different eras, none of them called “Bob Dylan”.
There is Marcus Carl Franklin, who sparkles as a wandering 11 year-old African-American Woody Guthrie devotee. Christian Bale plays two roles – an early ’60s folk-guitar star Jack Rollins and then a washed-out evangelical preacher in the late ‘70s. Heath Ledger is a late ’60s actor increasingly alienated from his wife (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg), misogynistic and self-obsessed. Cate Blanchett, like Bale performing an ‘impression’ of Bob Dylan, has the leading part in I’m Not There as ‘Jude’ the confused Dylan who ‘betrayed’ folk music and his own ‘principles’ in favour of playing electric guitar. The other two actors – Ben Whishaw as poet Arthur Rimbaud and Richard Gere as a disguised near-hermitical Billy the Kid – put in unremarkable performances, with Gere’s part particularly incoherent and rambling.
The contradictions of Dylan’s political-activist side, and similarly his ‘turn’ to electric, are of some prominence in the film, mainly in Blanchett’s performance. Haynes shows fans disgruntled by Dylan’s behaviour, yet the star is himself puzzled by accusations of hypocrisy. A BBC reporter repeatedly tries to get Blanchett’s ‘Jude’ to admit that he has changed, but ‘Jude’ doesn’t see why his critics are so bothered, why they don’t ask such searching questions of their own political sincerity, or why they won’t appreciate his music for what it is. ‘Jude’ does not take this bad press seriously and, looking up to a statue of Jesus Christ being crucified, he shouts "Do your early stuff, man!" He says that the lyrics don’t change anything anyway.
Although some protest songs can be moving, there is a lot to be said for Haynes’ sceptical attitude to the critics of Dylan’s “turn”. The standard left critique of Dylan for “selling out” or “betrayal” is crude and concedes a lot of ground to the Stalinist notion of “good art” as that which is on-message, rather than what is strong aesthetically. Given that Dylan’s politics were at most a general concern for the oppressed and anti-war sentiment, and he was never an activist, what precisely was there for him to “betray”? Even political people should not just judge culture as if it were a political instrument.
However, apart from Marcus Carl Franklin’s scenes, which are mostly early in the film, and Blanchett’s cultured impression of Dylan, much of the film is soggy and inconsequential. Several performances show Dylan as aloof, and he often appears pretentious rather than pensive, but the film is wary of taking its subject head on and largely aims at veneration. This kid-gloves attitude to the aging legend appears to echo the widespread acclamation for Dylan’s pisspoor 2006 album Modern Times, despite its homages to such artists as Bing Crosby and Memphis Minnie.
I had eagerly anticipated going to see I’m Not There, but to be truthful it left me a little cold. Yes, Cate Blanchett’s impression of Dylan is eye-catching, but the film has very little new to say about Dylan, and its 2 hour 15 minute running time seemed excessive when so much of the film has no direction.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
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