Vik Muniz and Marat, revisited

In my October 26, 2010 posting on Viz Muniz and Jean-Paul Marat, I concluded on an idealistic note that “Ashes to ashes, sewer to junkyard, l’ami du peuple would have been proud.” Returning to the topic now in preparation for next week’s exciting conference on The French Revolution in Global Popular Culture, I am starting to see things a bit differently.
Although Ellie Bronson argued in a 2011 article in Art Critical that Santos was “fittingly styled after David’s ‘The Death of Marat,’ I now wonder: what is “fitting” about Muniz’s reappropriation?
The more that I learn about Sebastião dos Santos (known as Tiaõ) and the more that I study Vik Muniz’s project, the less sense this connection makes.
Unlike Jean-Paul Marat, Tiaõ dos Santos received a minimal education. He began working as a garbage picker (more precisely, as a picker of recyclables) in the Jardim Gramacho landfill at age 11. The stunning successes he has attained as founder and organizer of the ACAMJG, the union that has embraced the needs of the Jardim Gramacho workers, are the result of his formidable intellect and drive to make something of his life. It is interesting that the primary influence he mentions is The Prince, by Machiavelli, which he found in the trash. “I learned so much from that book,” he says.
(Marat, on the contrary, was born into what appears a comfortable family situation in Neuchâtel; both he and his brother were sent to school and his brother eventually attained a prestigious post as professor of the Lycée impérial of Tsarkoïe Selois–now known as Pushkin, a city nearby Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Marat pursued studies in medicine, traveled widely in Britain where he attained a certain success as a writer and scientist, and for a time had a flourishing practice among wealthy Parisians.)
In Wasteland, we learn that Santos is a good father, caring, warm-hearted and tender. We see Santos walking hand-in-hand with his young daughter, and sitting cozily next to her on a couch, where he stokes her dreams of going to school to become a psychologist. He is also a good son: we see him telephoning his mother in tears of joy after the London auction where he portrait was first sold.
(In his later life, Marat was apparently estranged from his family. It is uncertain if he married. He had no children. These facts have long been used against him, and have helped forge the portrait of the cold-hearted terrorist that prevails today.)
The final credits of Wasteland reveal the fundamental disconnect between these two men: the portrait of Santos as Marat is juxtaposed against a text mentioning that “a lot of people now believe in Tiaõ and look to him as a leader; some dream that one day he could become president.”
Although Marat achieved a powerful following among certain groups in Parisian society during the mid-1790s, and was elected deputy to the Convention government in 1792, he was not a gifted statesman, to put it mildly. He was a writer of corrosive prose and a divisive figure. Some claim he mounted one of the bloodiest errors in revolutionary history (the September massacres of 1792). His fame was not due to his humanitarianism, but rather to his inflammatory newspaper and prowess at self-fashioning himself as the truth-speaking “man of the people.” His assassination at the hand of a royalist was almost too good to be true: it launched a hack writer into martyrdom by realizing what he had long been telling readers of L’Ami du peuple.

By now, Santos has likely learned that Marat was more than just “an intellectual” (the only adjective used by Muniz to describe him in the film). I wonder if he still appreciates the connection? And I wonder if Muniz regrets yoking his friend to this villain of international disrepute?

The Raw and the Cooked, Or Why Politics Matters in ‘Babette’s Feast’

Despite its popularity as a “food film” and icon of the Slow Food movement, one must admit that Babette’s Feast (directed by Axel Gabriel, 1986) disappoints. In its saccharine treatment of the relations between Babette and her employers, Gabriel’s film fails to honor the spirit of Isak Dinesen’s original, published in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1950 and subsequently reprinted in Dinesen’s final collection, Anecdotes of Destiny (1958). Why does this matter? Because in softening the edges of Babette’s character, the film ignores her political force and transformative potential—a force all the more urgent for the 2010s, when women from Sana’a to Seattle have been mobilizing for political change with astonishing energy and hope. “Babette” deserves better.

I believe Babette’s story is more interesting as a parable of specifically French politics than as a “food film,” and that it is indebted to two icons of French womanhood whose identities are deeply invested in food, fire, and revolution. In Dinesen’s heroine we can hear distant echoes of both the poissarde–the fishmonger or market woman of the French Revolution—and the pétroleuse or fire-starter of the Commune. “Babette’s Feast” allows the lineage from the poissarde to the pétroleuse to come into focus because its heroine is not only a cook she is also a former pétroleuse. And even if the politics of her past were muted by the film-maker in 1986, the relationship between food, fire and revolution is too potent a mix to ignore today.

The film’s shortcoming is unsurprising when one realizes how apolitical most interpretations of Isak Dinesen’s work and her heroine have been. In order to bring this lost subtext back into light, I am developing a short work that follows three moves: first, a quick glance at two moments in French political history will reveal the cultural work done by the poissarde and the pétroleuse in the revolutionary eras of 1789-94 and 1871. Second, textual analysis of culinary allusions and narrative asides in “Babette’s Feast” will demonstrate how Dinesen’s heroine incarnates both the pride of a culinary genius and the pétroleuse’s menace to society. Finally, a comparison of the story’s finale will show how the book’s heroine—unlike her avatar on the screen—transforms radicalism into a different kind of rigor, a more life-giving and artistic ambition than film-goers can see. In her portrayal of an appealing working–class woman who is both an unrepentant revolutionary and an authentic artist, Dinesen’s tale reveals a stronger affirmation of human potential than has yet been realized.

Any film-makers out there? Time for a remake, a truly revolutionary rendition of “Babette’s Feast.” Stay tuned for the fiery details…

Running on Hope

“Running on Empty” (1988) is a must-see for anyone pondering what it means to be political. Director Sydney Lumet treads a fine line in this story of antiwar activists who, despite their fugitive status because of an inadvertent crime committed in a napalm lab in 1971, remain committed to leading lives that matter. Although the film shows them uprooting their two adolescent boys from school and friends, and focuses on the story of the 18-year old son in particular to convey a message about the difficulty of letting go, this family unit is also strong, intact, and joyful. The parents are devoted to their children at the same time as they are devoted to the cause of democratic political activism. With each new move, the father in particular tries to keep on empowering the people he touches with a message of political activism. A poignant scene towards the end shows him forced to leave his small restaurant, wistful about the relationship established with his employees and the efforts he’d made to ensure that they earned a living wage in decent work conditions. In the scene featured here, the mother meets with her father after a long absence, admits how hard her life has been, and asks him for help. Running on empty? I think they’re also running on hope. As the emotionally tortured father (Judd Hirsch) reminds the guilt-stricken mother (Christine Lahti), “we are trying to make a difference.” Clearly, it’s hard to balance family and political action, and this couple takes the challenge to extremes. But it is rare to find an honest representation of that challenge in our popular culture. Kudos to Lumet for this brave portrait of radical activists who suffer the consequences of walking the talk.

Louis XVI, the pitiful king

All but forgotten today, Van Dyke’s 1938 film “Marie-Antoinette” starring Norma Shearer and Robert Morley bears a second look for those students of the French Revolution who seek another perspective on Louis XVI, one closer to the image favored by his contemporaries. The clip featured here, showing the first encounter of Louis (then Dauphin) and the archduchess Marie-Antoinette, includes many of the themes that would dominate early 19th-century accounts of the king’s demise. In these few minutes, one already espies those elements which would cause his undoing: the scandalous intrigues involving his brother le Comte d’Artois and especially the conspiracies launched by his duplicitous cousin (and would-be heir to the throne), le Duc d’Orléans. Louis comes across here much as he does in period fiction, such as Mme Guénard, Irma (1799-1800); Regnault-Warin, Le Cimetière de la Madeleine (1800-01); and Roussel, Le Château des Tuileries (1802): he is a bashful, awkward presence in public, and painfully aware of that shortcoming. What saves him in this film, as in the novels noted above, is his role as tender-hearted father to his children-people, and his decency towards the voluble queen. We are not claiming that this film is closer to reality than other modern remakes by Sofia Coppola or Ettore Scola, merely that Van Dyke’s sympathetic portrayal of Louis XVI echoes with greater accuracy some of the most widely-read French fictions of the late 1790s-early 1800s.
P.S. Did we mention that Louis’s speech is an absolute howler? Robert Morley was never more hilarious, or more perfectly cast, than in this succulent role of the pitiful king.

Marie-Antoinette the Cake-eater, in perpetuity

Poor Marie-Antoinette. Will those wretched words never go away? Apparently not, if our popular culture is any indication. Check out the now famous, deliciously indulgent clip from Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, and the New York Times Crossword puzzle of 7/14/09.

The wizardry of Oz: French echoes in an American classic?

Have you ever noticed:

– The Cowardly Lion played by Bert Lahr in the 1939 MGM film, The Wizard of Oz, bears a striking resemblance to Louis XIV, king of France from 1654 to 1715…

(Note the arched eyebrows, the hair parted in the middle, Louis’s bouncy coiffure–whose profile is mirrored in the Lion’s perky ears and little red bow– their serious  jowls, and the magisterial gaze.  Moreover, Lahr’s solo, “If I Were King of the Forest,”  spoofs the pretensions of kingship with hilarious effect. )

– General Jinjur’s Army of Revolt, from L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) bears a strong resemblance to 18th- and 19th-century imagery of the “Amazons” of October 1789 and other agents of unauthorized female politicking…

(Note the comely women warriors and the bemused expressions on their erstwhile enemies in these illustrations, and especially their pointed weapons–knitting needles in General Jinjur’s army, pikes in revolutionary Paris.  A textual comparison reveals more similarities; consider The Marvelous Land of Oz, pp. 83-95; and Pierre Roussel’s lampoon of women’s political clubbing in Le Château des Tuileries [1802], 2:36-38.)

Did the Oz team (author L. Frank Baum, illustrator John R. Neill, and comedian Bert Lahr) borrow from French history in their search for the marvelous?  Is the Cowardly Lion skewering Louis XIV’s pretensions with his “woofs” and “growls” to the chipmunks under his command?  Read the lyrics and judge for yourself!