human gargoyles on catholic church

Porto Alegre Cathedral

I live two blocks away from the Porto Alegre cathedral, I see it every day walking my dog. It’s not an impressive building but locals are very proud of their cathedral.  It was built in 1920, so it’s a rather recent building for a Catholic church. I took these pictures Easter Sunday morning.  The façade is decorated with several gold inlaid mosaics and the building looks as one would expect such a building to look, and I’m used to seeing it there.  But you can’t build a Catholic church without gargoyles, especially not a cathedral, so you look for the gargoyles.

POA Cathedral gargoyle

Gargoyle on Catholic Church

You find them on the side of the church. Yes those are Indians, the gargoyles on the Porto Alegre cathedral are not the monstrous, nightmarish mythical creatures one usually sees on such edifices, they are people.  Native Brazilian, or as the church would have you see them, heathens looking menacing and holding fast to the edge of their rocky outcrop, ready to pounce on the god fearing innocent passerby. The Indian gargoyles are snarling, their faces painted ready to wage war on the good Catholic people of the city. That is how the church would have the local population see the native inhabitants of the land. 

 I expect the Catholic church to practice social exclusion of those who do not contribute to the church’s coffers, and it has historically excluded native populations in Latin America.  But this is the ultimate social exclusion of an entire population, carved in stone, and since there was/is no separation of church and state, this state sponsored prejudice.

Native population begging

The message is clear:  shun the native population, keep them out of your society, they are dangerous, menacing heathens who will attack you as soon as look at you.  The propaganda worked, today the native population is relegated to begging for alms at the door of that same cathedral on Easter morning.



And once again I’m the only one bothered by this. Everyone thinks the cathedral is beautiful. Tourists stop to photograph it every day, it’s one of the city’s pride and joys. There are no picket signs, protests or general outrage. Human gargoyles and an impoverished, subjugated native population is fine and normal for the church, the state and the population of Porto Alegre.

a bit of hypocrisy from the Catholic Church

 Oh, and by the way, in modern times the menacing human gargoyles weren’t enough to keep all the riff raff out of the house of god, so they installed an electric fence.  I mean, really, it’s the house of god after all, we can’t just let anybody in.

 

I hated Titanic, District 9 and Forest Gump, here's why.

And while I’m on the subject of movies (see previous post) here is a post that will discredit all my opinions on movies. Oh well.

I hated Titanic, and not just because I find Leonardo DiCaprio annoying. I also hated Forest Gump, though I have managed to forgive Tom Hanks for Joe Vs. the Volcano.  And I hated District 9 and Life is Beautiful. Why you ask?  I found them extremely offensive.

Fifteen hundred people died in the Titanic, they froze to death or drowned despairingly.  Those who survived watched family, friends and strangers sink to their deaths in a boat that was unsinkable.  As human tragedy goes, it was pretty tragic.  Watching 3 hours of a trite little love story that was far from original, all the while imagining the real life despair of the people in that ship was offensive to me. Those were real people and their very real suffering was minimized, banalized by focusing the story on fictional puppy love.  It wasn’t a stupid jeweled heart that sank to the bottom of the ocean, it was people. The point isn’t that the bearably believable DiCaprio character died for true love. The point is that 1500 people perished in that ship. Real people.

I hated Forest Gump for the same reason. Real people live with physical and mental handicaps daily. In real life they are shunned by society, locked in institutions, abandoned by their families and struggle to exist in a world that was not designed for them. They are not All American players, they don’t meet presidents, become war heroes and don’t buy Apple stock and become rich. Real people, real difficulties, real struggles, that is the reality.  Making light of that reality by inventing a character that overcomes all of his difficulties mostly by sheer luck diminishes the efforts of those who live with their handicaps. And that offends me.

District 9, boy, oh boy. The slums of South Africa are not populated by giant insect aliens.  The freedoms of giant insect aliens are not curtailed and denied on a daily basis. Giant insect aliens don’t live in abject hopeless poverty. Giant insect aliens are not subjugated by a society that sees them as inferior. Giant insect aliens are not beaten and tortured because of their status in society or the color of their skin. Once again, people are. Real, living and breathing people like you and me and it pisses me off that that movie should portray that level of injustice, that unbearable suffering as being endured by giant insect aliens. People! People exist under those conditions. Shit.

Well, you can imagine what I have to say about Life is Beautiful. I only watched it once, and I’m angry now just thinking about it. It’s a waste of celluloid, it’s contemptible and vile. A concentration camp prisoner keeping his son with him, sneaking him into dinner with German children, pretending it’s all a game. Yes I’m sure that happened every day in concentration camps. If only everyone had done that, the war would have been so much more pleasant for everyone.  Say, let’s do that in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, what fun!

You might be justified in saying that I missed the point of those movies. Perhaps I did. But similarly I would say that you missed the point I made about the same movies.  It bothers me when fiction purposefully imitates real life while at the same time disregards the people whose reality it is imitating. And it bothers me that I’m the only one bothered by that.  

Victor or Victoria: slapstick's last stand

A pie-in-the-face simply isn’t funny anymore. Nowadays slapstick has developed a reputation of being simplistic and lowbrow.  Classic gags died out with the silent pictures, we are now a sophisticated audience with sophisticated tastes. Keaton once said that a pie-in-the-face died out because you can’t fit it into a full feature and make it believable to an audience.  In real life we seldom have occasion to throw a pie in someone’s face and so it’s not believable.  I disagree.  It still has a place in full feature movies and it can be funny. The problem is that all the people who had enough talent to make a pie-in-the-face funny are no longer around. Slapstick is not simplistic, on the contrary it requires a great deal of talent, and as an audience when we look down on it from the height of our sophistication, we fail to realize we are the ones who are simplistic in our assessment.  Pulling off slapstick and making it believable to the audience is a feat of colossal proportions, almost impossible.

When Blake Edwards made Victor or Victoria the time of the pie-in-the-face had long since passed.  Raiders of the Lost Ark had come out and audiences wanted Spielberg and ET, slapstick had been dead for over three decades as had musicals, and Victor or Victoria was both. It made a splash when it came out, but it has been relegated to dusty shelves and now is remembered by few. It deserves better, if for no other reason, for Blake Edward’s courage and talent in resurrecting slapstick and musicals in the same movie while audiences clamored for car chases and explosions.

Victor or Victoria brings together unbelievable talents.  Blake Edwards, Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren. Blake Edwards managed to put a pie-in-the-face into a full feature movie because of his rare comedic talent.  The music is by Henry Mancini for crying out loud, it can’t get better than that. And Julie Andrews singing alone or with Robert Preston, well, it’s Julie Andrews, I don’t have to say more.

The last time a pie-in-the-face made me smile was in Victor or Victoria and all the slapstick in that movie - from a bottle breaking on a note sung by Julie Andrews, to a bar brawl, to Garner pretending to bribe a cop, punching him in the face instead and recovering the money before running off - blended seamlessly in a full feature film. It doesn’t take much, just phenomenal talent, the sort that is hard to find nowadays. I just love this movie, it’s a forgotten jewel. Go watch it.

sincerity and the inevitable hypocrisy behind it

Recipe for sincerity: take a measure of insincerity and distill it to achieve the desired concentration, use sparingly. Sincerity in its pure, undiluted form does not exist.

I’ve seldom been accused of being insincere, but have on occasion been reprimanded for excessive sincerity.  Though at the time of such admonition the phrasing used is not ‘excessive sincerity’ but rather ‘bluntness’. You see, sincerity is a good thing, and an accusation of having too much of a good quality comes across as a compliment, so ‘excessive sincerity’ is called ‘bluntness’. And rightly so. My boss once called me on the carpet for being cold and merely professional to a coworker and for wearing my opinion on my face. The man voted for Bush twice and bragged about it. I still contend that I was as nice as I could have been.  Sincerity is often not politically correct in the work place - you know, that same place where your honest opinion is requested, appreciated and respected. We admire sincerity as a virtue while at the same time we scorn those who are completely sincere. And so we live in a constant state of hypocrisy. I suppose it’s part of the human condition. 

As a child you could not walk up to a playmate during recess and say “you’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny”, though you might have been completely sincere in your statement. We learn from an early age that complete sincerity will most likely get you a negative result, or even detention. True story: my cousin in pre-school had the following exchange with a teacher:
Teacher: You don’t like me because I’m old.
Cousin: I don’t like you because you’re old, ugly and annoying.
He was completely sincere! Sincerity gets you a spot in family lore for being a brat, yet it is regarded as a virtue. As a general rule, when I’m asked for my opinion, I give it freely and sincerely, people who know me, know what to expect. But over the years I have found sincerity is not necessarily what people want. They want reaffirmation, validation of what their own opinion might be, and so my friends are few, but true.  Sincerity is not as useful as insincerity in making superficial friendships or winning approval.  It is not always well received in making a point or backing an argument, it is not what is expected of a person in an exchange, but it is virtuous.

Sincerity is in fact diluted to the desired concentration by everyone all of the time.  When I pick up a ringing telephone knowing full well that I don’t want to talk to anyone who might be on the other side of the wire, I’m being insincere even if only in my own head.  If I was to be completely sincere, if my sincerity were pure and undiluted, the phone would never be answered and that’s just not practical. Sincerity is a virtue that cannot be applied in its purest form.

When Bill O’Reilly is on TV spitting some sort of incoherent lunacy at his audience and I tell him to shut the fuck up and proceed to change the channel, he and I are at opposite ends of the same philosophical concept and yet we are both being completely sincere.  Sincerity has no right or wrong.  But sincerity on both sides of an argument of opposing ideals becomes explosive, perhaps even hateful. But it is a virtue.

There are sycophants out there, people who are insincere all of the time in an attempt to gain some sort of advantage or standing.  We’ve all seen them, people with limited principles who flatter and adulate in order to gain something, I’m not sure what. I’m not going to discuss these poor creatures, they are the exception. But consider a pedophile hearing the confession of a woman who “took the lord’s name in vain twice this week”, when he says “I absolve you my child” is he sincere? Could he ever be sincere? And yet he holds a position of authority in society, that same society that values sincerity.  How about politicians who promise lower taxes, education, jobs, justice and freedom.  Are they insincere? Are they simply lying? Is there a difference? And yet, as a society we elect them, we reelect them, and never again demand fulfillment of those promises. Are we then sincere in our actions? Once you lay down your principles and your actions fall outside the parameters defined society do you forfeit sincerity? Are all your actions and statements tinged by insincerity from that point? Is a strong conviction to principles and an impeachable character a requirement for sincerity to exist in any person? And is that the reason we consider sincerity virtue?  I’m obviously leading the reader to conclude that the answer is ‘yes’.  And if so, pure, undiluted sincerity cannot exist because people’s principles are never pure and undiluted. All of our characters are flawed in some way, or compromised at some point in our lives.

Sincerity in its pure, undiluted form does not exist, it does not exist in the privacy of our own minds and it certainly does not exist in society. When anyone attempts to distill it into its purest forms, he is shunned by the same society that expected sincerity from him. So we live in a state of perpetual, sincere hypocrisy.  But we seem to prefer it that way. My dog, is the only completely sincere creature I know. So next time someone calls me a bitch because of some blunt statement, I will simply reply “Thank you, I try”.

Brazilians can be very creative

Walking back from a restaurant the other day I came across these two characters at a major intersection. It always amazes me how creative Brazilians are. They are creative for good and evil.  Decades ago when I was a little girl living in Rio and crime there was still petty pocket picking and the occasional car theft, there was an outbreak of watch snatching.  People would stop at a traffic light with their arms resting on the driver’s window and a kid would run by, snatch the watch off their left wrist and run off.  So people started wearing their watches on the right wrist. Brazilians in their infinite creativity would then run by the driver’s window with a lit cigarette, burn the drivers’ left hand who instinctively reached over with his right hand to grab the cigarette.  As soon as he reached the kid would grab the watch off the right wrist and run away.  Brazilians always find the “jeitinho”, a way around whatever obstacle faces them. It’s amazing.  These two needed money, so they devised a little show timed to the traffic light.  Right before it turns green they solicit donations from the first couple rows of cars. Clever. This sort of traffic light show is rather common here, some are better than others. I liked these guys.

The flip side

Imagine, if you will, that you live in a free country and you have one sister.  One sunny day a foreigner arrives in your country and kills your sister.  She does so publicly; she kills your sister in front of witnesses.  Your sister had left you her most prized possession and upon her death this newly arrived foreigner simply steals it from you, and everyone watches as it happens. The foreigner gloats about killing your sister and vehemently refuses to return your inheritance to you.  Society at large sides with the foreigner and against you.  Your countrymen mock you and tell you that the foreigner is entitled to keep your stolen property and, furthermore, that she will not be prosecuted for killing your sister.

What would you do? Would you curse the foreigner and vow to recover your inheritance?  Would you try to bring justice to your sister? Would you take justice into your own hands?

Well that is exactly what the Wicked Witch of the West did, isn’t it?  The Wizard of Oz was on last night and it got me thinking that there are two sides to every story.  Never take things at face value, always look for the aspect that is not readily shown. Just because it is written on paper, or in the news, don’t assume it is irrefutable and true. Always look behind the curtain!

fun with idiomatic expressions

All things being equal Joe wanted the best of both worlds. He buckled down to fight tooth and nail to have his cake and eat it too.  The ball was in his court and he put his nose to the grindstone. There were those who said the whole thing was out of the question, but he would not dance to their tune. In the small hours, Joe often locked horns with his conscience and made mountains out of molehills, but there was no sense in beating a dead horse, it was water under the bridge, the die had been cast. Getting cold feet now would make the bottom fall out. He had spun a good yarn.   He never let the situation come to a head and always waited for the dust to settle before making hay while the sun shines.  He was on the right track to blazing a new trail and those who said he was biting off more than he could chew were just not seeing the forest for the trees. He would go the extra mile and never dial it back. At this stage of the game all he had to do was put his best foot forward and at the eleventh hour he would be holding all the aces. Time was on his side.

He was all ears when he heard through the grapevine that someone had been cooking the books, and it spread like wildfire before all hell broke loose.  He was running against the clock, this could blow up in his face. 

They put him on the spot, accused him of taking them for a ride and turned up the heat. He knew there was no paper trail, they couldn’t catch him red-handed.  But he had an escape goat, that fat cat born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who was now dead as a doornail in the middle of nowhere.  The fat cat was a bundle of nerves and broke down in tears before he bit the dust. But Joe was on the horns of a dilemma, he was faced with a catch 22 and had to rub him out. It was a no brainer that the fat cat would have spilled the beans, Joe had bet on the wrong horse for a partner.

Now, between a rock and a hard place, he had the oldest trick on the book up his sleeve.  He would pull a fast one and grease these guys’ palms so they say he’s on the level. It would be a tall story, and it would cost him a pretty penny, but you can’t make omelets without breaking some eggs. The jig was up and Joe couldn’t  keep his ill gotten gains. He wasn’t all brawn and no brain, he knew you can’t take two bites at the cherry and that the brass ring comes around only once, so he vowed to turn a new leaf.  After all -touch wood- it’s best not to push one’s luck and run while the going is good.