What Luke is doing in France: February 2009

I am sad to report the indefinite closing of Paris IV and its history department. Much of the faculty and staff have abandoned their posts in protest of unfair compensation and a number of other complaints. The History center at Clignancourt remained open longer than the other Paris Universities, but finally closed its doors this past Tuesday.

Such events are not uncommon in the French University system, or any other nationally syndicated organization for that matter. Public transit workers strike, schoolteachers strike, immigrant 'sans-papiers' workers strike, and factory workers strike. I remember the 2008 Tour de France, when protesting auto-plant workers threatened to block the 100 plus cyclists and international race. Fortunately, the president of the race arrived on the scene and dispersed the strikers before they could sabotage the race, promising them on-air time to broadcast their grumbling.

I find such behavior selfish and ignorant, a great fault of the modern republic's political functioning. Most of the time, the strikes accomplish nothing, especially now with a self-absorbed president whose chief concern is his international reputation. France's stunted economic growth reflects this behavior appropriately, and in my opinion, we can soon expect the arrival of the economic crisis and it's devastating effects on a people ill-equipped for such an upset. Has the European Union really been a worthwhile venture for France, one it's influential founders? In the storm of the financial crisis, France has found itself thrown overboard, bound to weak nations unable to stay afloat. Would the French have a better chance of swimming to shore without the burden of the poorer EU nations?

I had better stop here before I lose my visa or get deported. We must try to look at these striking professors in a positive light. In a bureaucratic government such as theirs, striking is the individual's means of expressing their dissatisfaction with their current circumstances. Civil servants should not be subject to sudden changes in pay and work hours. However, when nearly one third of all jobs are considered as public administration offices, such changes are to be expected. Students and working classes dependent on public transit should not suffer the repercussions.

My study abroad program foresaw all of this and warned us to take every precaution enrolling in courses at our universities. Several American Universities in Paris have joined forces to create classes for international students in the event of a lockout from the French universities. I was enrolled in one course, a yearlong course in the French institutions of the Ancien Régime in the 18th century. My professor, a young man impassioned by his work and the foolishness and imprudence of the French monarchy, has openly discussed the strike with us. When he brought his pay sheets (rough translation) to class, it became clear that he is concerned less with the figures of his salary than with his research and instruction. Yesterday at 8 a.m. standing before the locked doors of the Clignancourt center, he proposed we do the lesson in the garden or a nearby café, but we were soon informed that this would violate the university's insurance (someone might have scalded themselves with a hot cup of tea!).

Several of my French friends' responses were surprising. The strike was a reason to go on vacation early (after just two classes in the 2009 semester). The strike has clearly added a new dimension to my frustrations with the French university system. I myself am no longer convinced by my cover as an 'international student'. I would take spy work if it were offered to me (are the NSA and CIA recruiting?), it would give me the chance to learn a thing or two! Maybe I should find a way to turn this joke into a reality.

All I can say is thank goodness for my internship at the Polaris art gallery! I'm interested in the work I do there, which engages my writing and language abilities. I have also sealed a few letters with the saliva off my tongue, which serves me well.

The clients and collectors are a real laugh! Some of them are nuts, just the battiest characters imaginable, while others are real thinkers and dreamers. The other day an interesting-looking fellow came into the gallery and began to work with other assistant. I made him an espresso. From what I observed, I deduced he was one of the artists. Some time later he came into the office I share with my boss, seating himself at a computer. We struck up a conversation - he wanted to talk about America's West, the raw North American countryside, a pleasant change from discussion of American cities. We exchanged thoughts and experiences; it was a rich conversation, his insights attesting to his artistic conviction in dreaming. He finished his business and departed.

I asked my boss which artist he was; we have two who share the same first name, and I assumed this fellow to be one them. He wasn't an artist, he was the computer guy. Draw your own conclusions.

Here's some music I've been listening to lately. Follow the links to download.

Fever Ray (the girl from The Knife) - When I Grow Up

~ visit the artist's website and watch the music video~

Peter Bjorn and John - Lay It Down

Rainbow Arabia - Holiday In the Congo

The Ronettes - Be My Baby

~ r.i.p. Estelle Bennett ~

Fred Hewett - The Prickle Holly-Bush

Jeremy Jay - Beautiful Rebel

Earlier this week I saw the film Mister Lonely with the Cinéma Club. Legendary German director Werner Herzog stole the show in his role as a missionary who was a healer, alcoholic, and pilot all at once. Here's the trailer.

The film succeeds in creating a cinematic experience much like a dream. The film is rooted in reality with opening panoramas in Paris at summer's end and two main characters posing as two of the 20th century's greatest stars, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. Soon after, references to places with names like, "The Highlands" and equally ambiguous dialogue effectively sever those roots, and the dream begins.

What follows is a departure to an artful fantasy land, a paradise for outcasts who share a passion for the impersonation of Western legends. My favorite was Abraham Lincoln. In this far-out setting, among these free spirited eccentrics, the main character's drama unfolds. The director proceeds by painting a happy picture of the commune, the home of which is a classic French château in a stunning natural setting, seemingly remote from society while simultaneously supporting a small population of townsfolk. The characters are wonderful, some of them causing my friends to double over with laughter. The commune is embarked on a theatrical venture, wishing to put on the best talent show of all time.

All is not happy at the commune, we soon learn. Beneath the costumes and makeup are a troupe of unhappy and confused individuals facing a heap of shortcomings and baggage. The commune's herd of black sheep, a fitting metaphor for such a group, come to a cataclysmic demise.

The foreseeable fall of the Marilyn Monroe character causes Michael to return to society, where he renounces the label of impersonator, and embarks on the uncertain odyssey of self discovery.

The film is clever yet lovably simple. It does not discourage us from dreaming and imagination, rather, it concedes to that life is a complex and grandiose puzzle eclipsing the individual. Many of us are helpless in the quest to find out who we are. In the eyes of the director, Harmony Korine, the human condition is the struggle to find a place in the world. To contest this fact is to deny the plight which is life.

Please pause and visit this link.

Even earlier this week I went to a special art exhibition at the Paris Treasury. American photographer David LaChapelle's works are super controversial and intentionally so. The friend who invited me introduced him to me as an artist fascinated with excess in all forms. His photographs are beautifully realized, many of them featuring prominent celebrities in compromising positions and poses. Superficiality plagues our society, and for an artist known to have associated with the likes of Warhol during one of America's most decadent eras, this is no epiphany.

LaChapelle, however, has reached the known limits of excess in his recent works displayed here in Paris. He has arrived at the finisterre of the two dimensional world of photography, blending all too familiar sources of greed, gluttony, and heresy. The large format works, incredible photographs realized in ornately decorated sets, are printed on shaped cardboard. These sick, cheaply printed works are absurd and disrespectful to the extent that they become beautiful. He facilitates this recognition with strong references to art history, religion, and images we see on the 8 o'clock news.

I grant that his photographs are beautiful, but my concern is that the young public will not recognize them as a warning. Many of his photographs reference the second coming or the apocalypse, but these powerful notions are misconstrued. The colors, celebrity subjects and props turn his works into comedies, making them sellable and negating any clever artistic device.

LaChapelle is no craftsman of subtlety; you'll see no gentleness in his works. Another insurmountable characteristic of his work is its commerciality, which comes as no surprise given his résumé.

Through his work and behavior as a budding celebrity, LaChapelle does not deserve the respect due to artists of the past century. He represents a new breed of well educated and even better connected artist-celebrities whose work is better suited for VH1 than any museum. The artist's canvas is representative of his own involvement in the excesses in stardom and false ideas of beauty in the 21st century, fatally hypocritical for an artist. He is too aware of it to ever escape from it.