Talibanning Ourselves - Weekly Column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Talibanning Ourselves

Our North American Taliban are again attempting to destroy history.

Last week Mexico City’s Angel of Independence (https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/9-fascinating-facts-about-mexico-citys-angel-of-independence/) was grotesquely vandalized by the usual protestors with the usual spray paint in scrawling the usual obscenities. The pretext for the desecration was gender-based violence. The irony of a sacred cultural marker celebrating freedom for all being defaced by a mob is an irony.

The peace-loving protestors also assaulted television reporters covering the demonstration, beating one unconscious. While protesting violence.

The monument dates from 1910 and celebrates Mexico’s independence from Spain. From a large base a pillar rises to a statue of Father Hidalgo, whose Grito de Dolores (http://www.sonsofdewittcolony.org/adp/archives/documents/hidalgo.html) on 16 September 1810 commenced the revolution against colonial rule. At the very top of the monument is a winged Nike (the Greek goddess of victory, and if she were real she’d probably fry everyone for mispronouncing her name) holding a crown of laurels, symbolizing martyrdom and victory.

One of the images is of an Irishman, William Lambert, Guiellen de Lampart, who is said to be one of the several inspirations for Zorro because of his participation in the early struggles for independence. The Spanish government had some hard feelings about this and executed him by burning in 1659.

Within the base are buried heroes of the revolution, including Father Hidalgo, Guadalupe Victoria (the first president), Leona Vicario, and her husband Andrés.

The Angel of Independence is a visual history lesson featuring images of heroes of Mexico, a child leading a lion, and, among many other statues and devices, four women at the four points of the base, symbolizing Law, War, Justice, and Peace. The Angel is a big deal (as in BIG DEAL), and before her and around her families take quinceañera pictures, footer fans celebrate victories, protestors protest, speeches are made, and independence is celebrated.

The Angel of Independence represents the noblest aspirations of humanity, and anyone who would deface her represents nothing more than a temper tantrum.

The destruction of culture, the suppression of free speech, and the attempted erasure of history are features of Nazism, Communism, and Taliban-ism, and are unworthy of anyone with any claim to love the Platonic ideals of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

If we disagree with a writer’s book we write our own book countering it.

If we dislike a statue’s implied message we place a different statue with a different message in the same park.

If we disagree with a speaker we listen and then against his thesis propose a reasoned antithesis.

If we don’t like a newspaper’s views we subscribe to another newspaper.

If a television program promotes content we want to spare our children then we switch channels or, better, turn the darned thing off and turn the kidlets to the bookshelves in the living room.

The recent ugly rise of burning, banning, censoring, and silencing of art, music, literature, and political discourse, always in the name of a purported higher cause, is not what any nation’s constitution is about.

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Art as Obedience - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Art as Obedience

Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca, known to all as Anthony Quinn, was born in 1915 in Chihuahua, Mexico. During his long career this accomplished artist, writer, and actor played many characters of many national and ethnic backgrounds in the cinema and on stage, including: a Cheyenne (The Plainsman, 1936), an English king (Becket, 1961), a Hawaiian (Waikiki Wedding, 1937), a Portuguese (The World in His Arms, 1952), a Filipino (Back to Bataan, 1945, an Italian (La Strada, 1954 and The Secret of Santa Vittoria, 1969), a Greek (The Guns of Navarone, 1961, and The Greek Tycoon, 1978), a Frenchman (Lust for Life, 1956 and The Lost Command, 1966), an Inuit (The Savage Innocents, 1956), an Arab (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962), a Mongol (Marco the Magnificent, 1965), a Ukrainian (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968), a Jew (Jesus of Nazareth, 1977), an Afghan (Caravans, 1978), a Spaniard (Camino de Santiago, 1999, and The Last Train from Madrid, 1937), a Berber (Lion of the Desert, 1980), a Cuban (The Old Man and the Sea, 1990), and many others.

Mr. Quinn is said to have joked that he was never asked to play a Mexican on the screen or stage, though in fact there were a few of those roles, too.

To catch a late-night movie with Anthony Quinn is to be reminded of the greatness of this mostly self-educated man, tough, strong, smart, and professional, so unlike the knee-pantsied upspeakers of our time.

No one ever demanded that Mr. Quinn be forbidden to play Mayor Bombolini in The Secret of Santa Vittoria or a generic Anglo in Last Train from Gun Hill because he was born in Mexico and so could not be authentic in playing roles outside his DNA.

One wonders what sort of acting roles Mr. Quinn might now be forbidden to play in our increasingly DNA-obsessed era.

Two weeks ago the drama department of Kent State University was given the Article 58 (cf. The Gulag Archipelago) treatment because the casting of their proposed production of West Side Story was not DNA-correct.

Actors of Puerto Rican descent claimed that their story was being told by persons of unauthorized DNA

The reader may remember the gritty, mean-streets reality of the original play in which a Polish gang and a Puerto Rican gang combat each other at first through savage dance-offs. If that’s not authentic, then what is?

The play ends with the death of Tony / Romeo, though Maria / Juliet remains alive to give the “All are punished” speech at the end.

West Side Story is the plot from Romeo and Juliet, and thus a cultural appropriation from an English play. And that’s the point – Shakespeare’s plot is a gift to the world to be adapted and appreciated by all, not an ossified cultural artifact clutched jealously by a clique of Englishmen named Emma and Neville and Olivia and Trevor, still annoyed about the upstart Normans.

A tragedy of our time is that artistic endeavors in this nation, including theatre and cinema, are now subject to bullying, fear, and obedience to political and racial dictates. The theatre faculty at Kent State groveled their surrender to racist bullying instead of defying it.

The producers of drama in this nation once believed in artistic freedom and so scorned the racial and political policies of Goebbels’ UFA Studios, Stalin’s Mosfilm, and Mussolini’s Cinecitta; now they have themselves adopted those oppressive and DNA-ist approaches, sacrificing art to the obscenity of propaganda.

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