Leviticus and the American Creed

It is easy for Europeans to think that Americans are just like them. Rarely do they travel into the red-state heartland and speak to the God-fearing dopes who live there. A friend of mine from Kentucky told me that just prior to the election the letters page of his daily newspaper was full of people quoting back and forth Leviticus (the third book of the Holy Bible) in support of George Bush's reelection. I doubt that many Europeans read Leviticus. They should. It reveals just how loony and pernicious Christianity is. Take a look, for instance, at Book 15. God is clearly nothing more than a repository of ignorant tribal folklore. Consider for instance God's teachings on ejaculation and menstruation:

And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.

15:17

And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.

15:18

The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.

15:19

And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.

15:20

And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.

It is depressing to think that my fellow Americans consult this sort of nonsense for spiritual and political guidance.

Russell Muirhead--Just Work

It's a little out of my field of expertise--the aesthetics and philosophy of war--but I feel compelled to recommend an excellent new book: Russell Muirhead's, Just Work. I came across the book because of an interesting on line interview. Muirhead's book, a work of political philosophy, takes up the question of whether work is anything more than a job, a means of paying the rent. Most of the middle classes today like to view their work as a means of self-realization. At any middle class dinner party, it would be extraordinarily rude not to ask someone: "what do you do?" Muirhead's book--which draws upon Mill, Smith, MacIntyre, and Weber-- makes a compelling case for the claim that work ideally ought to form a central component of human flourishing. He suggests that we structure our economy and society to make this a feasible goal. I don't agree with his argument. It's too damned protestant for my taste. But it's certainly thought-provoking. The book, which is already flying off the shelves in the US, will likely make a huge splash amongst political theorists and sociologists.

The Moral and Aesthetic Failings of British and Spanish Football

Discussion at departmental tea today finally turned away from Iraq and the lamentable state of American politics. We had a new topic to sink our teeth into: last night's football game (a topic, I see, that Chris Bertram and his commentators have broached over at Crooked Timber). Over the last few months, I've become something of an expert on soccer in general and English and Spanish soccer in particular. I'm still dismayed that the Greeks, an alarmingly retrograde and pedestrian team, won the European Cup. It was a great pity that the Czechs. clearly the best of the bunch, did not win. I wrote at the time that the English media were laboring under the delusion that England are a quality team who are on the verge of greatness. Portugal played them off the park. The same happened last night in Madrid. The gaping gulf in talent that separated the Spanish and English players was astonishing. The English team were an aesthetic disgrace. Added to the physical ugliness of the players (Rooney and the unfortunately named Butt are merely the ugliest of a repellent group), was the ugliness of their play. Beckham yet again demonstrated his limitations as a midfield player. Man U. are well shot of him.

In any case, I was holding forth on this topic to my new colleagues. Fred, the loyal and patriotic little Englander--and "Reader in Peace Studies," a title that always makes me laugh-- made a half-hearted stab at defending the team. He holds the truly bizarre view that whatever Gary Neville's failings as a footballer, he's not bad looking!!!! (Have you seen the conk on the guy?) In the course of the debate, Geoffrey--the departmental expert on nuclear proliferation--added the sage comment: "Better England's aesthetic failings than Spain's moral failings." Everyone agreed and we all went back to discussing Fallujah.

The Alliance of the Greedy and the Godly

My earlier prediction of a narrow victory for Bush has made me the toast of the departmental tea room. My British colleagues, all democrats, allowed their hopes to lead them astray. British knowledge of American politics and society is, I've noticed, remarkably limited. Brits don't seem to understand that one-third of Americans are evangelical Christians. (Only 13 per cent of Americans, for instance, accept evolution.) The republican party under Bush is an unholy alliance of the greedy and the godly against beleaguered racial and intellectual minorities. If democrats are going to get anywhere in the future, they have two options:

(i) drive a wedge between the greedy and the godly via some form of economic populism. This strategy is, however, undesirable--at least if you care about the global least well-off--because it would require democrats to embrace protectionism.

(ii) go after the evangelicals. Since evangelical christianity is such palpable nonsense, democrats should highlight the absurd contradictions in the evangelical worldview. This strategy calls for democrats to stand outside churches and engage these God fearing dopes in a rational argument. I very much doubt that this brand of Christianity--or any other, for that matter-- could withstand the critical light of reason.

In Defense of Calixto Bieito

Some people otherwise (so he informs me) politically on the left do not like Calixto Bieito. Consider the following from Bush supporter Oliver Kamm's remarkably misjudged review in the Times:

THIS MONTH the English National Opera begins a revival of one of the stupidest productions of modern times. It is Mozart’s Don Giovanni as interpreted by the Catalan director Calixto Bieito. When it was first staged at the Coliseum, in 2001, it generated copious news coverage on account of its depictions of drugtaking and oral sex. The ENO followed it a few months later with a Bieito version of Verdi's Masked Ball that opened with a scene of 14 men defacating. Bieito has since directed a Hamlet who rapes Ophelia in the nunnery, and a Macbeth that includes necrophilia and, inevitably, more oral sex.

Scatological, violent and sexually obsessive theatre is nothing new. The squalor and ugliness of the plays of Jean Genet are an obvious precedent. Rarely, however, can these characteristics have been deployed with such remorseless irrelevance and by a director of greater technical incompetence. Of the initial staging of Don Giovanni, the critic Michael Billington — who, on this evidence, will believe anything — marvelled that “however controversial Bieito’s version may prove, no one can deny that it’s based on close attention to the music and a clear-sighted view of character”. So close, indeed, that when the disguised Don Giovanni disperses by subterfuge his potential assailants, he does so by singing Meta di voi qua vanado (”Half of you go over there”) with nobody on the stage apart from himself. Perhaps it is Bieito’s way of conveying the Don’s anomie; it is impossible to tell.

It is not my purpose to advise Times readers to avoid this production, though I should sooner poke my eyes out and sell my children into slavery than sit through it again. I draw attention merely to the reasoning that the ENO deploys in its stated justification for reviving Bieito's work: “We cannot dispute that opera is interpreted as boring, 19th-century and out of date. Controversy happens in other art forms, why not the opera? It should be given a platform. Film and theatre reflect what is happening in the 21st century. It is violent, it is controversial, but it’s modern and will appeal to first-time attenders.”

The unmistakable defensiveness might be taken for cynicism, for however critically reviled, Bieito’s productions sell. Sex usually does. Yet the populist clichés of relevance and accessibility are ingrained in British public life. A year after new Labour came to office, John Tusa, the managing director of the Barbican, wrote in this newspaper: “I’m worried about the Prime Minister because he is signalling that Oasis is as important to Britain as opera; that chat shows are as important as novels; that soap operas are more valuable than live theatre . . .” What Mr Tusa omitted to mention, and perhaps could not believe, was that philistinism in political office has its counterpart among his fellow promoters of the arts.

In 2002, not long after the two Bieito spectaculars and a Marriage of Figaro that with pleasing symmetry was literally as well as metaphorically a load of rubbish (it was set on a scrapheap), the ENO’s artistic director, Nicholas Payne, resigned. Ructions ensued. Senior figures in the performing arts wrote a huffy letter to this newspaper proclaiming him a martyr for the cause of transforming opera from a “middle-class trophy art form”.

The strategy appears to be that audiences whose interest in being seen exceeds their desire for spiritual enrichment will be deterred if arts professionals vandalise the message in retaliation for the shooting of the messenger. What patronising nonsense. The arts are enjoyed predominantly by the middle class, but that does not make the arts middle-class. Social reformers from William Morris to Arnold Wesker have brought the arts to workers and trade unionists without belittling their audience in the manner of an “appeal to first-time attenders”.

There is nothing illegitimate in modern stagings of classic works. Opera-goers who complain that directors ignore the composer’s intentions commit the “intentional fallacy”: we do not know the composer’s intentions when we listen to music, or the author’s intentions when we read a novel, other than through the work itself. Even if we have an account of the artist’s own interpretation, it remains only an interpretation; an artist is no more a definitive interpreter of his work than he is a definitive judge of its quality.

What is wrong with so many modern productions is not that they are radical interpretations, but that they are not interpretations at all: they are accounts of the director’s own psychological states. In the case of Calixto Bieito, you know that whatever opera or play he is staging, it will come down sooner rather than later to sadomasochism and lavatories.

While I haven't yet seen the Don Giovanni production--I hope to when I get back to London next month--I recently went to see his production of Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail at Berlin's Komische Oper. This production involved most of the principals performing bollock naked. It included scenes of rape, violence, and lots of on stage rumpy-pumpy. The opera also does considerable violence to the Libretto. In many ways, the opera--which is set in a brothel run by a sadist--is very different from the opera that Mozart conceived. There is, for instance, very little left of the Turkish motifs that inform the plot-line and music. But so what? The Guardian's Michael Billington is right. What's wrong with "sadomasochism and lavatories?" The singing and acting were wonderful. The production--which owed a lot, I thought, to the influence of Almodovar's movies--was colorfully staged, imaginative, and provocative. Furthermore, it made you laugh, which opera rarely now does. I'm quite sure Mozart--a delightfully irreverent and vulgar man--would have enjoyed it. At the end of the performance, a royal battle ensued between those who applauded rapturously and those who booed vociferously. In the bar afterwards, a German threw a glass of Riesling at me so incensed was he on over-hearing my defense of Bieito. I responded (full disclosure) by trying to throttle him, knee him in the groin, and stuff his program down his throat. We had to be separated by two elderly security guards. All great fun.