Trends that have worn out their welcome...

How about a moratorium on these thingies!?!?!

The only two that have kinda' made me chuckle:

Galdós in 2012: Rick Santorum channeling his inner Doña Perfecta

What I really love about teaching at a smallish university is having the freedom to design classes the way I see fit.  I can experiment.  It’s the same level of autonomy that a typical college radio DJ enjoys… play some Screamadelica-era Primal Scream, Delroy Wilson, the Undertones, the Beach Boys, Sonic Youth, Django Reinhardt, Sandy Denny, los Mirlos, Giorgio Moroder, Rita Lee, A Tribe Called Quest, Girls Against Boys, Michel Polnareff, a track from a Sarah Records compilation and wrap up the set with a poetry reading by Richard Brautigan or something off John Coltrane’s Stellar Regions…At UW-Green Bay I don’t have to worry about straying into a colleague’s territory and risk incurring the wrath of the specialist in colonial theatre, Catalan vanguard poets or Puerto Rican code-switchers…

I did some college radio at Virginia Tech (WUVT) and later in Madagascar (above) with Radio Antsiva - 97.6 FM Antananarivo in 1997.

My “college radio” course is called Spanish 465 – Special Topics:

This variable content course will allow students to analyze seminal aspects pertaining to the language, history and cultures of Spain, Latin America and the Spanish-speaking communities in the United States.

This is the third time I have taught the course…the first two times I stayed within my interdisciplinary research comfort zone of representations of political violence in Latin American literature, film, music and visual art…this time around, however, I decided to offer my students a survey of Spanish history through the study of canonical works of literature, historical fiction best-sellers, commercial blockbusters and/or critically-acclaimed films and one of the most popular television series on TVE.

So over Thanksgiving break I began to conceptualize my new Spanish 465 course: La historia moderna de España a través del cine, la televisión y la literatura.

The last few weeks we’ve discussed the theme of las apariencias engañan in Lazarillo and analyzed its most recent filmic adaption; debated the praise of folly in Cervantes’ “El licenciado Vidriera”; evaluated the critical view of Spain’s Golden Age as portrayed in the Viggo Mortensen-starring film “Alatriste”; recited the Romantic poetry of Espronceda, Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro on Valentine’s Day; howled at the stereotypical Spanish attitudes ridiculed in Larra’s “Vuelva usted mañana”; took sides in the forum of debate provided by Galdós’ thesis-driven Realist novel Doña Perfecta and finally, imagined the dangers of harvesting percebes after reading Pardo Bazán’s “El pañuelo.”    

Galician percebes...a delicacy, it may cost 100 euros for a plate.

On deck for next week, we’ll read Unamuno, Teresa Claramunt, Lorca and watch bits of the Oscar-nominated “El abuelo” (an adaptation of a Galdós novel featuring the ubiquitous Fernando Fernán Gómez…“Is he, like, in every Spanish movie?” “Yes. And he was born in Peru.”)

Following Spring Break, we’ve got La sombra del viento (more than 10 million copies sold! The Spanish Da Vinci Code!); episodes of Cuéntame cómo pasó (but first I’ll have my students watch the pilot of “Wonder Years”…most of them haven’t heard of it…for them, Fred Savage is the MOLE in Austin Powers…); short stories by Rosa Montero; José Ángel Mañas’ Historias del Kronen and the last few classes each student will be assigned a short story from either the Inmenso Estrecho collections (Benavides, Pérez Zúñiga, Chirinos, Méndez Guédez, Iwasaki, Roncagliolo et al) or something from one of the “Nocilla” writers (Fernández Mallo, Cebrián or Chiappe).

We’ll see how it goes…

The challenge, of course, is trying to make some of the more classic readings relevant to twentysomethings.  As much as I’ve tried to keep “on task” and steer the conversation towards more Northrop Frye-friendly topics, this hasn't always happened.

With Cervantes, we spent some time talking about military recruiting (“Join the Army! See the World!”…and I couldn’t resist playing a short clip from Goldie Hawn’s “Private Benjamin”…).  

“He praised the soldier’s life, and gave him a vivid picture of the beauty of the city of Naples, the delights of Palermo, the prosperity of Milan, the banquets in Lombardy, and the splendid food in the inns. […]  He praised to the skies the soldier’s free life and the easy ways of Italy; but said nothing to him about the cold of sentry duty, the danger of attacks, the horror of battles, the hunger of sieges, the destruction of mines, and other things of this kind, which some consider to be extra burdens of a soldier’s life, when in fact they are the main part of it.”  (Cervantes’ “The Glass Graduate”- Exemplary Stories, p. 122 Penguin Classics)

I chose an abridged version of Galdós’ Doña Perfecta which emphasized the conflict between two opposing worldviews in late 19th century Spain: religious fanaticism versus the burgeoning secular philosophies (religion vs science, faith vs reason, tradition vs modernization etc.).  This being an election year in the US, I expected some of my students to relate the contrasting opinions in the novel with the national political debates playing out all over the media.

And then came Rick Santorum’s ill-advised comments about “Obama’s phony theology” …

Oh Ricky, Ricky, Ricky…really?  But thanks…you gave us tons to talk about!!

Let’s check out some of Santorum’s words, starting off with the basic idea that Obama holds “secular values that are antithetical to the basic principles of our country.”

Here are some other gems:

“I love it when the left and when the president say, ‘Don’t try to impose your values on us, you folks who hold your Bibles in your hand and cling to your guns.’ They have values too. Our values are based on religion, based on life. Their values are based on a religion of self.”

…[the left is] “taking faith and crushing it.”

…[Obama is] “systematically trying to crush the traditional Judeo-Christian values of America.”

…[…Obama’s agenda is] "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."

“the president has reached a new low in this country’s history of oppressing religious freedom that we have never seen before.”

“He [Obama] is now forcing people to do things that he believes that they have the right, that they should do. The Catholic church has a theology that says this is wrong, and he’s saying no I’ve got a different, I’ve got a different — you may want to call it a theology, you may want to call it secular values, whatever you want to call it, it’s a different moral values. And the president of the United States is exercising his values and trumping the values of the church.”

(Apparently, Santorum does not accuse Obama of being anti-religion…something worse…“a radical environmentalist” –that’s exactly what I gathered after viewing the ‘full’ clip courtesy of The Right Scoop…give me a break, please…).

And out of the mouth of Doña Perfecta as she excoriates Pepe Rey (her secularist nephew):

"You have insulted us, you great atheist! But we forgive you. I am well aware that my daughter and myself are two rustics who are incapable of soaring to the regions of mathematics where you dwell, but for all that it is possible that you may one day get down on your knees to us and beg us to teach you the Christian doctrine."

“Why do you pronounce the name of God when you do not believe in him?”

“God, in whom you do not believe, sees what you do not see—the intention. […] You are a mathematician.  You see what is before your eyes, and nothing more; brute matter and nothing more.  You see the effect, and not the cause.  He who does not believe in God does not see causes.  God is the supreme intention of the world.  He who does not know this must necessarily judge things, as you judge them—foolishly.  In the tempest, for instance, he sees only destruction; in the conflagration, ruin; in the drought, famine; in the earthquake, desolation; and yet, arrogant young man, in all those apparent calamities we are to seek the good intention—yes, señor, the intention, always good, of Him who can do nothing evil.”

"As I said, I will not reproach you for entertaining those ideas. And, besides, I have not the right to do so. If I should undertake to argue with you, you, with your wonderful talents, would confute me a thousand times over. No, I will not attempt anything of that kind. What I say is that these poor and humble inhabitants of Orbajosa are pious and good Christians, although they know nothing about German philosophy, and that, therefore, you ought not publicly to manifest your contempt for their beliefs."

(from Galdós' Doña Perfecta, translated by Mary J. Serrano)

Ok, maybe it's a stretch...but in my humble opinion, Rick Santorum has that siglo XIX, religious zealout discourse down pat!

This post is dedicated to Dr. Ayo and Dr. Coffey for helping to keep Galdós relevant.

The following album cover is dedicated to former Senator Rick Santorum.

All for now, I'm off to "indoctrinate" students...

 

Reason #56 Why I Would Be Horrible as a Record Exec...

...because I don't understand how/why these songs didn't explode....

USA 1 - ITALIA 0

“If you beat Italy on their own soil, it means a lot,” Klinsmann said, obviously pleased with his team’s most impressive performance since he took over as coach last July. “For our players this was big; it was a big step. I think they’ve done an awesome job.”        

Ceviche o muerte, venceremos (GF)

Check out Gustavo Faverón's recent post on the controversial remarks by Oswaldo Reynoso.

Ok, es oficial. En la sociedad peruana si un escritor como Iván Thays declara que la comida peruana le parece indigesta, lo que sigue es una catilinaria de ataques, agravios, insultos y desplantes. Pero si un escritor como Oswaldo Reynoso declara públicamente que Sendero Luminoso no fue un grupo terrorista, que sus acciones no fueron negativas para el país y que Abimael Guzmán es un humanista, al 99.99% de los peruanos le importa un reverendo pepino.

Ahora quiero que quienes se abalanzaron sobre el primero me expliquen por qué no les importa lo dicho por el segundo. ¿Cuáles son las posibles respuestas a esa pregunta? ¿Que el tema de la gastronomía es más relevante que el tema de la guerra, la violencia y la memoria? ¿Que el tema de la cocina peruana es más sensible y delicado que el del asesinato masivo, los juicios populares, las matanzas, las desapariciones? ¿Que lo primero fue un verdadero agravio contra la patria y lo segundo es solamente un comentario olvidable?

La comparación entre ambas reacciones (o la reacción en el primer caso y la falta de reacción en el segundo) no es arbitraria: creo que es un síntoma de algo que muchos venimos denunciando desde hace tiempo: los peruanos están perdiendo cada vez más radicalmente la brújula moral y un mínimo sentido de cuáles son sus prioridades como sociedad; están confundiendo lo trivial con lo medular, voluntariamente relegando discusiones centrales para reemplazarlas, literalmente, con sobremesas que son la nueva forma nacional de ejercer la negación y la autorrepresión; están viviendo en una burbuja. [...]

Hace sólo unos días defendí el derecho del escritor Rafael Inocente a conservar su trabajo en un organismo estatal a pesar de unas declaraciones suyas en las que describía a Abimael Guzmán como "un intelectual". Lo hice porque me pareció justo y a pesar de que Inocente no es --usemos el cliché-- santo de mi devoción. También defiendo el derecho de Reynoso a pensar lo que piensa, aunque sus ideas me parecen aborrecibles. Pero la gracia de la democracia bien entendida es, precisamente, que todas las ideas pueden ser expresadas porque todas pueden ser respondidas. ¿Por qué renunciar a la respuesta?

A Reynoso hay que responderle. Mi estúpida desviación académica e intelectualista, de seguro, es lo que me hace creer que esa respuesta es más necesaria que la respuesta a los ataques de Iván Thays contra la majestad del arroz con pato; muchísimos otros parecen implícitamente juzgar lo contrario. Cuando el Perú regrese a la violencia (y ojalá no ocurra), será tarde para que digamos "¿saben qué?, quizás debimos hablar de esto un poco más que sobre nuestro plato favorito".

Desgraciadamente, creo que una de las razones adicionales para la falta de contestaciones a las palabras de Reynoso es que son simplemente las declaraciones de un escritor, de un simple intelectual. Y allí es donde Thays y Reynoso sí son medidos, irónicamente, con el mismo rasero: el primero es un simple escritor que no tiene derecho a opinar contra la mayoría, y así se le hizo saber; el segundo es un simple escritor cuyas palabras son irrelevantes porque vienen de un intelectual. Casi dan ganas de que un cocinero defienda las acciones de Sendero Luminoso; quizás entonces le prestaríamos atención al hecho. Y así estamos.

http://www.gustavofaveron.blogspot.com/2012/02/ceviche-o-muerte-venceremos.html

Ear (& Eye) Candy

There have been some great album releases in the first two months of 2012.  My favorite things so far:

-      Miniature Tigers “Mia Pharaoh”

(Well, this comes out next week…but I’ve been listening to it nonstop on their website.)  http://www.miniaturetigers.com/

Melodic pop at its best…

Check out the video for “Female Doctor” – at first, you’ll think you’re listening to a sample of Van Halen’s “I’ll Wait” …sublime…

-      Ben Kweller  “Go Fly a Kite”

Kweller by numbers = hooks galore

-      Phenomenal Handclap Band “Form & Control”

Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow

-      Islands “A Sleep & A Forgetting”

A beautiful break-up album, file next to Beulah’s “Yoko”

-      Of Montreal “Paralytic Stalks”

You’re going to need headphones for these teenage symphonies to God

Santiago Roncagliolo in Green Bay! (canceled)

Roncagliolo will be on campus to discuss his latest novel:

El amante uruguayo. Una historia real

When: March 6, 2012 @ 2pm

Where: Christie Theatre, UW-Green Bay

(The talk will be in English and/or Spanglish.)

Here's a brief description of the novel (courtesy of Casa de América).

¿Robó el cadáver de Federico García Lorca su amante Enrique Amorim? ¿Se hizo pasar por Jean Paul Sartre para colarse en la reunión secreta entre Chaplin y Picasso? ¿Saboteó los esfuerzos de Pablo Neruda por ganar el premio Nobel?

El libro El amante uruguayo. Una historia real narra las vivencias de Enrique Amorim, un excéntrico millonario que mantuvo una misteriosa relación con Federico García Lorca. Además fue testigo y cómplice de algunas de las más increíbles historias con varios de los personajes más relevantes de principios del siglo XX.

Tras una monumental investigación por el Buenos Aires de los años treinta, la Guerra Civil Española y el París de la posguerra, Santiago Roncagliolo desvela la intimidad de los grandes genios del arte del siglo pasado, como Picasso, Sartre, Neruda o Chaplin, mostrándonos sus celos, rivalidades, amores y miserias como nadie lo había hecho hasta ahora.