Since then, it seems as though free speech reigns largely uncontested, and now anyone can read or write anything. We barely bat an eyelid if a book is released which contains formerly radical elements. Sympathetic paedophiles have long found their way into literary portrayal, so where else is there to go? Chris Morris’s mockumentary Four Lions portrayed sympathetic terrorists and this failed to cause a response. In the build-up to its release, there was discussion about the potential reactions to such a comedic portrayal of terrorists’ attempts to attack a London Marathon event, but the film itself has gone largely unnoticed. Do we now just accept any interpretation of “culture?” Is this the triumph of free speech? Or is it the waning of resistance and reaction, of affective response and activism?

In fact, literature does cause controversy. Protesting still goes on, but it is more insidious. Literature is ‘challenged’ regularly. Issues surrounding The Catcher in the Rye recurs again and again; a book that I (and many others) read as a teenager in school, and which certainly did no irrevocable harm. On the contrary, it opened the gates of literature and of a more complex way of understanding one’s place in the world and one’s values. For many people, however, these books do still provoke disgust and anger. The American Library Association (ALA) is an incredible source of information on these issues.

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/index.cfm

It tells us that even in 2009, books were challenged for having homosexual content, or issues from a religious viewpoint (for example in the Twilight series). There are places all over America where parents try to prevent Twilight being taught in schools. The ALA also provides information on the authors of colour who are challenged (a high proportion, as one, sadly, might expect). Apart from Banned Books Week, there seems to be no other publicity or activity about the challenges and bans that take place.

Freedom of speech is a complex issue, and one that often complicates left/right political distinctions. The title of Nat Hentoff’s book Free Speech for Me – But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other encapsulates this idea. In the case of Rushdie, it is hard to know where to stand. If one supports free speech, is one allowing the sort of Islamophobia that leads to racist attacks today? Or does the book help people to understand this complexity? This video, a debate on BBC’s weekly political panel show Question Time, just after Rushdie was knighted, helps us to consider such complexity.

One artist (filmmaker) who is still under fire is Werner Herzog. As I was reading about his new film – Cave of Forgotten Dreams – I was alerted to a video of him being shot at. His nonchalance suggests that this extremity of reaction is what artists should expect.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is released Spring 2011.

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Mitchell has applied this dual theoretical approach to contemporary media and its use of images. In the aforementioned work he discusses the ‘War on Terror’ as a “War of images in which the real-world stakes could not be higher” (2). He argues that 9/11 was an act of image terrorism. Without denying the “real-life” atrocities inflicted, Mitchell suggests that the wider (it is difficult to say ‘more important’) impact was upon the American (and Western) psyche. The war itself, as well as being literal and physical, is an “imaginary, metaphoric conception” (xii). The West responded with its counter-attack of imagery in the disturbingly named ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing of Baghdad, which began on 19th March 2003. I remember these images vividly, as I sat, five days before my 13th birthday, watching the evening news with my family. 9/11 itself is a more hazy memory, having occurred when I was a few years younger, but its impact on my own psyche is nonetheless still felt, and always will be. The image is still ingrained, despite the fact I didn’t fully understand its significance at the time and am still trying to comprehend it today. The shock and awe campaign, which I suspect killed very few identifiable “enemy Iraqis,” killing many civilians instead, functions more effectively (as its title suggests) in terms of imagery. Particularly memorable are the night-vision images, which enable mass human destruction to appear like a fireworks display, or a high-tech computer game. (This is all the more worrying considering recent reports about the use of video-games in military training.) Ironically, the technology which allows further vision into the darkness of night, in fact renders the “real-life” effect (death) all the more distant and aestheticized.

This second video is accompanied by a voice-over which makes the horrifying indulgence of these images explicit. For this man, the bombs are “motherfuckers;” he expresses the desire to insert “my ballistic in their asses.” He demands they “give me the footage,” leading to the culmination of the final explosion as the “the money-shot.” The sexual connotations are wholly explicit, comparing bombing footage to that of photography, the release of the bomb to the sexual ejaculatory release onto the object of desire. We might recall here the way this relationship between bombing and sexuality was satirically envisaged by Stanley Kubrick in his 1964 film Dr Strangelove:

The great irony of the “War of Images” is the paradoxical “real-life” effect. As Mitchell puts it, hereby explaining the ‘cloning’ aspect of his book, “the war on terror was having the effect of recruiting more jihadists and increasing the number of terrorist attacks” (xii). He cites political scientist Robert Pape who tells us further: “There were no suicide bombers in Iraq before the U.S. invasion and occupation, and suicide bombing in Israel-Palestine only began after decades of military occupation” (173). Despite this, the erotic and egoistic lure of images is what propelled the war onwards. Even the name ‘War on Terror’ is a part of the imaginary image-making tactic, so effective that few have of us have stopped to consider what it even means. For Mitchell, this name makes about as much sense as a “War on Nervousness” (xvii). The enemy (‘Terror’) is metaphoric and imaginary, but this has not prevented it being translated into material – or human – results: loss of life.

As I hope to have shown, an exploration of images, particularly in our media and image driven culture, is not merely aesthetic exploration. Mitchell wants to understand why the images of this war are what they are, what they signify, what desires they manifest, and hence, most importantly, what realities they produce. This is why I have considered them too and I urge you to be aware of them further as conflicts unfold and the war of images continues. I also urge you to see Mitchell speak at the Musee d’art contemporain (MACM) this coming Wednesday (March 9) at 6.30 p.m. The talk was inspired by the book I have been discussing and will be entitled “The Historical Uncanny: Phantoms, Doubles, and Repetition in the War on Terror.”

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To some extent, the Gothic relies upon antiquated values: aristocratic opulence, superstitious belief, and often xenophobia or even racism (Van Helsing’s fear of Dracula is at least partly based on the otherness of Eastern Europe). However, I think the real reason we find it hard to engage with the Gothic in contemporary life is because it relies on uncertainty. What lies behind the veil? Ann Radcliffe’s mammoth novel The Mysteries of Udolpho literalizes this metaphor – or perhaps is the source of it.  Around 500 of its 700 or so of pages rely upon the reader wondering, along with the protagonist Emily, what lies behind an eerie veil she once glimpsed in a castle. To read and enjoy the novel requires an extended period of waiting, obsessing and pursuing – we must replicate Emily’s experience. The experience depends upon the ability to pursue what will inevitably be an anti-climactic ending.

The problem with this kind of narrative, or aesthetic experience, is that we are not used to waiting for answers anymore. With the click of the mouse, they dangle accessibly in a web of revelation. Why wait in suspense, why hover in uncertainty, a potentially painful and frustrating ordeal, when we can relieve and extinguish the experience immediately? This attitude, however, overlooks the fact that in that liminal moment of mystery and suspense, other ideas reveal themselves and a new kind of experience arises. There is more to knowledge and understanding than a means to an end.

Art historian Lawrence Rinder discusses the “atmosphere of fear” in the work of Gothic artist Luc Tuymans. Such an atmosphere is “impalpable and omnipresent” and so the aesthetic experience extends beyond the space of the image. The mystery of the image amounts to a lot more than its constituent parts, a bit like the veil and the object behind it that Emily pursues in Udolpho.

The reason I am talking about the Gothic is not to analyze Radcliffe’s writing or Tuymans’s art, but because I have (re)discovered some eighties electro-gothic music. A former McGill student alerted me to a record label Minimal Wave and their eponymous compilation album, The Minimal Wave Tapes. Some tracks are more overtly Gothic than others, but I feel that this genre seems to encapsulate a sort of dark, yet playful, unknowability. The use of early synths (often cheap and cheap-sounding) created a new wave of experimental music. I am tempted to call it the technological Gothic or the Gothic of technology. This music – at once dance-able and technologically advanced (at least for the 80s) – is an appealing way to establish a place for the Gothic in contemporary life. The tracks provide no obvious “answer” – there is rarely a chorus which culminates in some kind of climax – but instead an eerie feeling of emptiness and the attempt to fill it with words and electric drum beats. Here, Das Kabinette’s track “The Cabinet” is accompanied by a wonderful scene from Wiene’s film, an apt fit as the lyrics recount the film’s narrative. It is quite an amazing combination of artistic products from 1919 and 1983.

One of my favourite tracks from the eighties Gothic resurgence is undoubtedly “Warm Leatherette” by The Normal. I would not immediately describe this track as Gothic, but its content and form are that of fear intermingled with desire. Its minimalist and imagistic lyrics describe the erotic experience of driving a car and crashing it. Influenced by JG Ballard’s novel Crash, the track captures an urban void, the terrifying yet addictive experience of driving on endlessly long roads, thrusting oneself violently close to death. As Ballard has claimed in interviews, if we really wanted to live, we wouldn’t drive – there is a suicidal element to turning the key. Trent Reznor (from Nine Inch Nails) and Peter Murphy (from Bauhaus) produced a version of the track which further suggests this type of contemporary experience as a Gothic one. “You can see your reflection in the luminescent dash.”

The renewed enthusiasm for Gothic inspiration is still continuing (Esben and the Witch, Zola Jesus), but I feel like there must be a more interesting direction than what these bands offer. Anyone have any suggestions?

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Jim Holyoak, a Concordia Fine Arts Masters student, is working on his thesis project. The show is entitled “Holocene” and his artist’s statement defines the term as “of, relating to, or denoting the present epoch. The Holocene is now. It quite literally means ‘completely recent.’ It began 12,000 years ago, and in geologic time it is scarcely worth mentioning – a blink.” It is, most importantly, an era that is characterized by “the impact of humans on the rest of the biosphere.”

For Holyoak and his artwork, the politics of the environment and mass extinction are vital aspects of human impact. “The thematics in this show are kind of heavy…Thinking about contemporary extinction is important to me.” Holyoak is using drawing as a medium to begin or continue a conversation about such ideas with the public. The scale of the work is huge, in keeping with the size of his ideas. He has covered a 115-foot long, 11-foot tall wall with paper and plans to draw over all of it. There are also five pillars dividing the canvas – he will seek to both get around them and use their protruding shape to add to the drawing’s individuality. The work is thus overtly site-specific, which is apt considering Holyoak’s aim to understand the development of life in certain environmental conditions.

With such a large task ahead, he plans to basically live inside the vitrine for a month. Since January 13, until February 11, he will be enclosed within it for at least nine hours a day. Usually more, he hopes. Holyoak’s artist statement explains his intention: “Thinking of myself as an amateur paleoecologist, and of the FOFA vitrine as a large terrarium, I will volunteer myself as a semi-captive specimen, and grow a paper forest. This indoor forest will be not only a timescape, but also a mindscape – a realm of fact and fantasy, inhabited by monsters and other animals, extinct and endangered, throughout the span of life on Earth.”

Holyoak’s concern is not only for the extinct creatures, but also for “everyone who will have to deal with the consequences of what happens now.” Whilst his statements express such political motivations, the exhibition itself is still welcoming and approachable. It is an act of discovery to walk up and down the drawing, searching for animal life, seeking connections, following what Holyoak is working on and trying to trace his thought process. As Holyoak said, “I’m not trying to be didactic. But I’m not shying away from the political aspect. I’m dead serious about it.”

It will be interesting to see, as the drawing grows, how Holyoak can convey the seriousness of his politics; there is a danger that the show lacks a tragic message required to provoke serious reflection or even action. To accommodate for the need to engage the audience, Holyoak has devised a unique postcard submission process: “What I’m hoping for most are postcards that depict real or make-believe places, or pictures of endangered, extinct, or imaginary beings. They could be descriptions of, or reflections on, your experience of wherever or however you are, or your perception of the state of the Earth. Subject matter could also be memories, daydreams, fantasies, or ideas.”

He has received a few already, which are also there for the viewer to look at and relate to the drawing; they are stuck onto the glass case of the vitrine. He is even open to receiving criticism: anything which can help him learn and can potentially change his ideas about the drawing. There is no strict plan; it is really a work in progress right up until the finissage (February 11). We, as the viewing, participating public, have the opportunity to alter the drawing and thus alter the construction of environmental history. As a result, Holyoak hopes, we may also have a chance to think about altering the environmental future.

—

“Holocene” shows at the Concordia Faculty of Fine Arts gallery, 1515 St Catherine O. until the finissage on February 11. Open Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Holyoak welcomes postcard submissions. Deliver by hand to FOFA, or by mail to Jim Holyoak, c/o Faculty of Fine Arts, 1455 Maisonneuve O., EV 1-7-715, Montreal, H3G 1M8.

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Last Monday I attended professor Jennifer Doyle’s (University of California at Riverside) excellent talk entitled Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art. She began by discussing controversies in contemporary art and recalled a recent example from the exhibit “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” at the National Gallery in Washington D.C.. Last December, the video piece “Fire in my Belly” by David Wojnarowicz was removed from the gallery due to the protests of a small Catholic contingent (Bill Donohue and the Catholic League). The news story had caught my attention at the time, but – foolishly – I had not followed up my awareness with an investigation of the artwork itself. I assumed that the work should not have been pulled and got on with things.

Many like-minded, but more influential, folk rallied behind Wojnarowicz. As Doyle persuasively argued, however, there is a tendency in liberal academic arts discourse to defend controversial or scandalous art, which in fact diminishes the political power of that work. No, Doyle protested, let’s not lose the vital radical praxis of these works. As she put it, “controversy comes from a real place,” and it is important that scandalous works offend. They offend because they are new and disturbing, they are difficult and emotional, and they challenge the established order. If we feel like art no longer kicks up a fuss as it did when Manet made his debut at the Salon des Refusés, it is because art’s defendants acquiesce to criticism rather hail the controversy of the works. Impressionism was a term of derision. Manet did not respond by claiming his art was in fact adhering to academic convention. He had thrown out these principles for a reason and stuck to his guns. We admire him for it.

If Wojnarowicz hates the Catholic Church and expresses that in his art then let’s make space for it (I’m not sure he actually does, but still, it is worth being able to consider). Of course, the irony is that I would probably never have watched this video unless it was banned. Thank you Catholic League! I have now seen the video; it is intriguing and perhaps shocking. All the better.

On another note, it occurred to me this week that the music video has been a somewhat wasted form. In essence, it is the combination of music and short video art. The amount of short filmmakers who make stunning 34 minute pieces who do not turn their skills to creating music videos must be huge. I was alerted to one example of a fine song and video working in conjunction and I hope to discover more.

If anyone has any favourite suggestions, please make me aware. If there is indeed a serious lack, then one of you budding filmmakers, please fill this void!

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Bilodeaux told The Daily over the phone that the event began with no such grand intentions. MEDIAFILM, a press agency providing synopses and ratings of new films for Montreal’s French magazines, newspapers, and TV guides, was trying to make some room as they moved offices. Collected from fifty years’ worth of business, they realized much of the material they had could be of interest to friends and colleagues. After calling around, they realized there was a “real demand’ for some of the products on offer. For die-hard collectors, some these items were dreams come true. For others, the sale was simply a way of finding cheap DVDs, vintage posters, projectors, and indeed almost anything related to film. In its second year, they drew in twice as many sellers and by the third year (2010), they had a widely popular event.

Bilodeaux cited this popularity as being partly due to the bazaar’s location. “It’s in the heart of the Plateau,” he was pleased to claim. As well as collectors and film industry people who seek out contacts, families come to pick up cheap children’s films, or posters for decoration. “In movies, we stand in line,” Bilodeaux pointed out. We don’t necessarily discuss and meet other movie fans, but at this event, communication between customers and between sellers is part of the fun. Bargaining is more than welcome and a key part of the relaxed atmosphere.

This year, Ciné-Bazar is pleased to “welcome several new exhibitors, including 24 images magazine, as well as distributors Les Films du 3 Mars and K-Films Amérique.” The key addition however, according to Bilodeaux, is “a Cinémania gallery [with] a hundred giant posters mounted on polymer panels, to be sold at low prices.” Not only a treat for consumers, these large and aesthetically-pleasing posters, most of which are rare, or at least rarely-seen, “make the Ciné-Bazar a kind of exhibit.”
After this year’s event, Bilodeaux is optimistic for the future. In chatting to him about ExpoZine, which took place last November, he was excited by the sudden idea of a potential collaboration. He envisions bringing these events together and drawing an even more diverse crowd. For now, Ciné-Bazar seems a more than ideal way to spend a good part of a cold Montreal weekend.

­­— Ed Dodson

—

Ciné-Bazar runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on February 5 at Saint-Stanislas-de-Kostka Church, 4816 Garnier.

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Jim Holyoak, a Concordia Fine Arts Masters student, is working on his thesis project. The show is entitled “Holocene” and his artist’s statement defines the term as “of, relating to, or denoting the present epoch. The Holocene is now. It quite literally means ‘completely recent.’ It began 12,000 years ago, and in geologic time it is scarcely worth mentioning – a blink.” It is, most importantly, an era that is characterized by “the impact of humans on the rest of the biosphere.”

For Holyoak and his artwork, the politics of the environment and mass extinction are vital aspects of human impact. “The thematics in this show are kind of heavy…Thinking about contemporary extinction is important to me.” Holyoak is using drawing as a medium to begin or continue a conversation about such ideas with the public. The scale of the work is huge, in keeping with the size of his ideas. He has covered a 115-foot long, 11-foot tall wall with paper and plans to draw over all of it. There are also five pillars dividing the canvas – he will seek to both get around them and use their protruding shape to add to the drawing’s individuality. The work is thus overtly site-specific, which is apt considering Holyoak’s aim to understand the development of life in certain environmental conditions.

With such a large task ahead, he plans to basically live inside the vitrine for a month. Since January 13, until February 11, he will be enclosed within it for at least nine hours a day. Usually more, he hopes. Holyoak’s artist statement explains his intention: “Thinking of myself as an amateur paleoecologist, and of the FOFA vitrine as a large terrarium, I will volunteer myself as a semi-captive specimen, and grow a paper forest. This indoor forest will be not only a timescape, but also a mindscape – a realm of fact and fantasy, inhabited by monsters and other animals, extinct and endangered, throughout the span of life on Earth.”

Holyoak’s concern is not only for the extinct creatures, but also for “everyone who will have to deal with the consequences of what happens now.” Whilst his statements express such political motivations, the exhibition itself is still welcoming and approachable. It is an act of discovery to walk up and down the drawing, searching for animal life, seeking connections, following what Holyoak is working on and trying to trace his thought process. As Holyoak said, “I’m not trying to be didactic. But I’m not shying away from the political aspect. I’m dead serious about it.”

It will be interesting to see, as the drawing grows, how Holyoak can convey the seriousness of his politics; there is a danger that the show lacks a tragic message required to provoke serious reflection or even action. To accommodate for the need to engage the audience, Holyoak has devised a unique postcard submission process: “What I’m hoping for most are postcards that depict real or make-believe places, or pictures of endangered, extinct, or imaginary beings. They could be descriptions of, or reflections on, your experience of wherever or however you are, or your perception of the state of the Earth. Subject matter could also be memories, daydreams, fantasies, or ideas.”

He has received a few already, which are also there for the viewer to look at and relate to the drawing; they are stuck onto the glass case of the vitrine. He is even open to receiving criticism: anything which can help him learn and can potentially change his ideas about the drawing. There is no strict plan; it is really a work in progress right up until the finissage (February 11). We, as the viewing, participating public, have the opportunity to alter the drawing and thus alter the construction of environmental history. As a result, Holyoak hopes, we may also have a chance to think about altering the environmental future.

The post To a glass box, with love appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Once settled in their seats, the audience is dropped into the midst of the Trojan War. The House of Atreus and its series of incestuous murders are the focus of the narrative: Agamemnon must decide whether to sacrifice his daughter to save his army. His wife Clytemnestra is torn between love of her returned husband and the desire to avenge her daughter’s murder. His son Orestes wishes to avenge his father’s death, yet craves the love of his murderous mother. All three moral conundrums could indeed constitute plays in themselves. The play rushes past extremely quickly, and occasionally it feels as if more time is needed to penetrate into the complexity of these issues. Theatre-goers are used to tragedy which allows us the space to puzzle over one such dilemma, often for hours on end – after all, Hamlet faces just one (albeit difficult) question.

Zidel has purposely not provided us, or his characters, with this breathing space. Everything occurs in the heat of the moment – this is an undeniably sensational play. It is a play for the television generation – for the generation with a short attention span and a desire for diversity. Time is not spent on soliloquies. Instead, the play is divided into lots of short, but intense, emotional experiences. From these situations the action suddenly turns to song and dance, sometimes to comedy. Nevertheless, some moments retain their emotional yearn. The first half climaxes in Clytemnestra’s strangulation of Agamemnon. Actor Jamie Munro’s devilish look turns sharply on her husband. She climbs upon him, throttling him in a sadistic and blatantly erotic act of vengeance.

The play opens, conventionally, with a prophecy. The Chorus tell us that Orestes will kill his own mother. Cleverly, the voices of prophecy return to haunt Orestes as he tussles with his decision. Adding a contemporary perspective, the haunting voices of the chorus – embodied by a dancing and seductive group of women – act as a psychological voice. Interpretable as either Orestes’ conscience or subconscious, they vocalize the violent and conflicting tensions ever-present in the psyche of Greek theatre’s tragic protagonists.

Zidel said he was keen to shift the emphasis from the theme of justice to that of psychological choice. For the Greeks, the three plays of The Oresteia exhibited the full force of justice. In its original version, they would end without a tragic conclusion; the court upholds the law and everyone is supposedly satisfied. In our age of persistent uncertainty and deconstruction, however, justice cannot be upheld so easily. Instead, in Players’ version, Orestes is tortured by the impossibility of choice, right to the tragic finale. In his rewriting, Zidel has added the imagery of water to the script, enabling the prophecy to take on a metaphysical dimension in lines such as, “a reflection in water is a choice.” This is not Narcissus staring straight into the lake, seeing only himself; instead, Orestes faces the flickering tide of images, as light plays upon the surface of water. He chooses the version of himself he wants to see; he must decide whether and how to follow the prophetic voices rattling through his mind.

Attempting to combine contemporary and ancient theatrical modes is evidently a difficult feat. Player’s production is by no means perfect – some of the dancing is ill-timed, and the singing veers out of harmony. But, I do not think student theatre’s purpose should be to provide pitch-perfect singing. Instead, this is a worthy “experiment,” as Zidel described it, and a fine example of what student theatre is able to achieve, in contrast with larger theatres, which could not take on the risk of such an audacious director.

—

The Oresteia is on at Player’s Theatre, 3rd floor of the Shatner building, from January 26 to 29, at 8 p.m.  Tickets available here

—

See previous coverage of The Oresteia here

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From beginning to end, the audience observes a 12-man jury trapped in a solitary room. We, like the jurors, cannot leave until a decision is made. The question: Is an unnamed young man to be found guilty or not guilty of murdering his father? Left to interpret, debate, and get suitably angry about the case, we follow the intricacies of colliding perspectives. One juror votes not guilty, opposing the others’ guilty verdicts. Thus unfolds the quest to unfold the truth and to consider the life-or-death implications of the term “considerable doubt.”

Of course, the play is dated, for Canadian citizens at least, by the impending form of punishment: the death penalty. However, not only is this obscene punitive device still in place just south of the border, but life imprisonment, whilst not death per se, amounts to as much in many cases.

This system has survived for a reason – there is certainly a use for this legalistic form, even whilst it is fraught with so much danger. Politically, ideologically, socially, we still regard the gathering of evidence, the debate of this evidence, and the presentation of it in the form of a unified judgment as the process of producing truth. The fundamental problem of the play is how far empirical evidence can be a satisfactory basis of our society’s system of truth, especially as an electric chair buzzes in the background. This is our method – intrinsically linked to social institutions, none more so than universities, of course – for understanding the enigmatic world sprawling uncertainly before us.

Whilst Rose’s script contains the play’s essential ideas, acting and production are vital to provoking personal reflection, through transforming linguistic profundity into dramatic tension. The arguments must be sincere and fearsome. Indeed, they are.

Matthew Banks does an excellent job as (arguably) the angriest man around the table. Visibly wrapped up in personal turmoil regarding his son’s violent tendencies, his judgment is emotionally marred. We can see this anguish in his disturbingly contorted face and stubborn, yet ultimately vulnerable, swagger. The persuasiveness of the protagonist is vital, of course, in attempting to convince his eleven fellow jurors. Played subtly by Rowan Spencer, he slowly works his way around the table, using eloquence, not arrogance, to articulate the logic of “considerable doubt”, constantly suggesting the significance of his perspective beyond the confines of this room, this case, this play. The old man, the first to be persuaded of potential innocence, is stunningly played by Gerard Westland. Complimented by effective make-up, he is transformed into the guise of a bodily weak, but intellectually precise, citizen, whose soft-spoken voice goes from being shouted down by the “loud-mouths” to becoming a beacon of liberty and much-needed rationale.

Music, lighting, and costuming are wisely kept minimal, so as to not distract from the intense drama. Everything looks authentic, especially the slick 50s haircuts which wonderfully emblematize respective characters. Anger equals wild bushy facial hair, just as smooth and neat cuts accompany the logicians on other side of the debate.

Not trying to emulate the film’s portrayal, but working directly from the script, Natalie Gershtein has done a good job of revitalizing this important drama. Unfortunately, one can never escape the limitations of a thoroughly unambiguous, moralistic play. There is a clear didactic message and no question as to where the play positions the audience; we are led to vote not guilty. Whilst this restricts the play from what may be deemed “high art,” drama of this kind is still much needed (and appreciated). From McGill’s lower field, to London’s Conservative Party headquarters, to the streets of Greece, in this so-called age of austerity social justice debates and protests are in constant circulation. This type of drama effectively contributes to an understanding of the wider (and perennial) significance of challenging power and seeking truth.

—

Twelve Angry Men is playing November 17 to 20, 8 p.m., on the third floor of Shatner, in Players’ Theatre. Tickets are $6 for students.

—

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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To allow this intimate association of thought and action, the play is divided up by the monologues – or “moments,” as LaBute calls them – of each of the four characters. The plot is organized around two relationships, both of which become strained by cultural norms of feminine beauty. We work our way through each character’s perspective on this issue, allowing us, momentarily at least, to sympathize with each character’s situation. They all express conflicting ideas on beauty: Steph (Alexandra Montagnese), a hairdresser, believes she lacks it, while Greg (Martin Law), her boyfriend, loves her for her personality, but upsets her by stating that she looks “regular.” Carly (Beatrice Hutcheson-Santos), on the other hand, is excessively attractive, but her lover Kent’s (Alex Gravenstein) jealous guardianship of her beauty drives them apart.

These “moments” of pure communication contrast drastically with the play’s narrative of miscommunication. The plot hinges on the inability to unify an interpretation of language. A compliment is translated into a critique and thus the semiotic system (upon which drama inherently relies) breaks down. With this focus on the intricacy of language, LaBute moves away from the more visceral representations of violence and misogyny seen in his other plays. These issues, however, continue to lurk beneath the surface.

David Armstrong, the play’s director, chose to have the other characters present while each gives their monologue. Their subjectivity cannot escape their social relations; they are watched by the people they discuss, as well as by the audience, all combining to form a sort of collective unconscious. The actors’ delivery is finely balanced between classical Shakespearean soliloquy and direct address – natural speech with enough poignant simplicity to be provocative. This stark separation from dramatic realism could be tricky, but it is handled well, partly due to live musical performance. Schulich Music student Danji Buck-Moore’s original score of jazz-influenced mood-pieces allow scene transitions to flow emotively, the audience left still considering the tone of the scene just passed and expectant of those to come.

The bareness of the plot puts unusual pressure on the actors’ ability to fully inhabit their roles. Class poses a problem here. As the actors try to become working-class, an awkward effort to locate an “authentic” working-class reality inevitably ensues. In a post-play question and answer session, the actors claimed to have taken workshops and, somewhat problematically, watched suitable television shows to overcome this problem. Hence, their performance is a representation of a representation, distanced and clearly impersonated. There is an awkwardness sometimes in their manners of speaking, and occasional instances of anti-intellectualism are unconvincingly portrayed. Gravenstein seems most natural in his role, delivering his lines aggressively, complimented by his physically burdened mannerisms. Unfortunately, Law, whose role is central to the play, does not seem to quite manage this, still remaining the awkward actor playing the awkward character, rather than just the awkward character himself. In a long play (two hours) this does cause a problem, but the play’s force endures.

The originality of LaBute’s script, Buck-Moore’s wonderful music, and the anticipated intensity of the monologues, result in a production that makes us question where (and what) the “beauty” in our lives really is.

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But that was then, and this is now. Warner has since worked on various other, yet interrelated ,topics, such as “The Portable Walt Whitman,” a figure around whom many of Warner’s interests coalesce. As well as an early beacon of sexual liberation, Whitman can be seen as a key secular figure. This intersection is the specific focus of the paper Warner presented on Friday: “Sex and Secularity.”

The paper, as Warner stated himself early on, is somewhat of a confused bag of ideas; it is not the unified thesis we are trained here at McGill to produce. It is a conversation starter, which, at its most basic, asks why there is “a uniform silence on the topic,” why no one has sought to write on and defend the sexual conduct of the secular as a separate question from their lack of belief. Sex is used by the religious, “now more than ever,” as “a defining frontier between their faith and the secular.” An example of sex being used as a beacon of misguided and immoral secularity, Warner suggests, is the Pope’s repeated claims that homosexuality is one of the great threats facing the world today.

The central point which arose in the discussion was that these kinds of claims are not in keeping with religious history. Fifty years ago, the Pope could not say things like this. The false narrative of religious anti-sexuality and secular pro-sexuality is the fiction on which these modern viewpoints are enforced. In fact, fluctuations in religious views regarding sexuality can be traced through history; in the Christian tradition it was the Reformation and Puritanism that changed previous, more liberal, attitudes towards sex, glimpsed, for example, in medieval literature.

The growth of a secular community, it seems, has led to fears of religious extinction and hence a panicked response. People are eager to prevent the “danger” of secular sexual immorality from spreading. This has gone so far that in America sex offenders have recently been deemed beyond the law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that if someone is convicted of sexual offence they can be imprisoned indefinitely, beyond the length of their legal sentence. How has it come to this, that sexual offence (at least alongside terrorism, suspects of which are still regrettably outside the law) is America’s biggest fear?
The problem, Warner and others have decided, is dramatization. The solution: de-dramatization. The idea is to suggest that the issue is far less important than it is made to be. Being gay is not an affirmation of identity; it is not an all-encompassing way of life which an individual asserts against everything else. It is merely an orientation. The fear is held by those who oppose it; they fear a threat not really present, but it is easy to convince people that it is. As a part of this solution, it is suggested that we must erase the binaries of religious and secular; sexually conservative and sexually transgressive. These orientations need not be so viciously grouped and we must acknowledge variance and points of similarity within them. There can be an ethical and secular sexuality; ethics here are not the domain of the religious only.

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