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Friday, June 27, 2008

Back in the Netherlands

Weer terug in Nederland, waar de culturele winter op volle sterkte is. Grenzen stellen, normen herijken, zoeken naar gemeenschappelijke waarden, etc. Daarin passen de toestanden over embryoselectie (waar ligt de grens) en over de fraude door uitkeringsgerechtigden (normovertreding!). "Maar liefst 25 miljoen per jaar wordt er gefraudeerd", roept een staatssecretaris die zich als krachtig leider wil neerzetten, "en dat kan niet, van ons aller belastinggeld". Opvallend vind ik altijd dat politici zich drukker maken om teveel betaald geld dan om te weinig binnengekregen geld: de top-10 van de Quote-500 fraudeert per man per jaar 25 miljoen, vermoed ik. Maar het gaat blijkbaar om het nog eens herijken van de norm. En daar is niks op tegen. Vandaag in de krant nog een interessant voorbeeld van het verschuiven van de tijdsgeest. Gedurende de jaren negentig werd geexperimenteerd met 'intieme therapie' voor tbs'ers. Volkskrant haalt Jos Poelman aan, de directeur van de Pompekliniek: "Het experiment waarbij een lichaamsgerichte trainster zedendeliquenten aanraakte en door hen aangeraakt werd, hoorde helemaal thuis bij de jaren negentig. Het was de tijd dat er nog prostituees in de gevangenis kwamen. We hebben nu een veel bekrompener idee over seks en delinquenten. In die tijd waren we nog een ruimdenkend volk." Inderdaad, tijdens het experiment (1995-1998), dat door alle instanties gesteund werd, zaten we in een zomerperiode. En nu in de winter. Waarin er dus door een tbs'er, die toen heel tevreden was, een klacht ingediend wordt: er was sprake van seksueel misbruik, vindt hij nu. Nieuwe tijden, oude normen.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Knies goes glamour

Started on a chapter about winter 1983-1988 yesterday, and was writing about the changing character of heroes in popular culture during different timeframes. In cultural summer, everyone can be a hero, if he rises up to the occasion. Mostly movies therefore portray antiheroes or heroes that don't take themselves too seriously. But that changes in winter. The winter hero is strong, never ironic and is not at all like you or your neighbour. The cultural winter hero has been predestined, and always stuck out from the crowd, And writing about the changing face of heroes (just look at the James Bonds through the years and you see how culture moves in seasons!), I suddenly saw an article about GLAMOUR in one of the magazines I brought with me. Interesting.. In Dutch, however:

De eerste bekende betekenis van 'glamour', volgens Stephen Gundle, die een boek schreef over de geschiedenis van het woord, volgt uit een gedicht van Walter Scott, uit 1805: ‘een betovering die waardoor alles beter en aanlokkelijker lijkt dan het in werkelijkheid is’. De beschrijving geeft de behoefte aan glamour in de jaren tachtig goed weer. Mensen voelen de behoefte aan sprookjes, aan een volmaakte wereld waar het aan niets ontbreekt, om de culturele onzekerheid van alledag te overstemmen: “de wereld van de glamour is die van luxe, goud, diamanten, snelle auto’s, stijlvolle, sexy mensen, het theatrale gebaar. Glamour is nooit subtiel, bescheiden of onopvallend chic, het is een explosie van publiciteitsgericht vuurwerk, bedoeld om ontzag, verwondering en afgunst in te boezemen. Glamoureuze mensen hebben] allemaal één of meer van de volgende eigenschappen: uiterlijke schoonheid, grote materiële rijkdom, een leven dat tot de verbeelding sprak, buitenstaanderschap, een voorliefde voor het theatrale, het visuele, een ongewoon, bijzonder aura.” (Hollands Diep, juni 2008, 44).

Glamour is een zeer culturele-winterse behoefte, blijkt maar weer. En inderdaad zijn de sterren van de jaren tachtig ofwel glamoureus (Dynasty!) ofwel zo anders dat ze buiten iedere categorie vallen (Michael Jackson), die zijn eigen imago vanaf het begin bewust als 'bizar' aanstuurt (dat woord moeten journalisten die hem interviewen verplicht gebruiken, minimaal drie keer per tekst). De jaren tachtig zitten vol met pop-culturele helden, van Keith Haring tot de Terminator, van Rambo tot Reagan. Allemaal omdat we in winterse tijden behoefte hebben aan een sterke leider, iemand die ons gewoon zegt wat te doen en ons red uit de verwarring. Dát nu begrijpen Balkenende en Bos maar moeizaam in de huidige culturele winter. Helaas doen wat populisten aan de rechterkant dat beter. Niet alleen in Nederland, kijk ook maar naar Italië. Dan maar hopen dat ons huidige kabinet in ieder geval doormoddert tot aan een nieuwe lente.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

memento mori or carpe diem?

Have been writing on the chapter about one of my favorite timeframes, the period between 1977 and 1983. Perhaps because I lived through it so consciously, I enjoy reading and writing about it. It was quite a job getting the turbulent happenings during the period, from Punk to Disco, from squatter to Yup into a coherent piece of text. But 26 pages further, I think I can just about oversee this autumn timefame. Like most autumns, it starts when people in the summer timeframe begin to take so much personal space that everybody stands on eachother toes: conflict! Frustration! Polarisation! In the end, polarisation takes two distinct paths: Memento Mori (endings, pessimism and nihilism) versus Carpe Diem (hedonism, dance like there's no tomorrow, opportunism). It's interesting to see that punk and disco each occupy one side of this coin, and so do Yuppies and Squatters (very big in the eighties in Holland). Punk and squatters stepped out of society, disco and yup milked it for what it was worth. Both, however, did not invest, perhaps for the right.. Ofcourse, in the end, both gave way to the simpleness of the winter timeframe, starting around 1983. Must say, in those days, my brain was Memento Mori, but my feet felt like Carpe Diem. I have always been a little dualistic. I can still remember dancing in the Fizz in Amsterdam in 1982, where all Dead Can Dance and Cure (two depri-groups) fans danced around, all in black, hair painted black and combed into an explosion, white faces, black clothes with long sleeves, and their hands clasping those sleeves for security. They danced around like wounded ravens, with their faces always on the floor, never looking up. I loved the music, but I never felt like a complete fit. For one thing, I kept looking up and around. Well, I was wearing red, yellow and blue anyway, in those days. Hey, they were polarized years and I did my bit!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

the culture of countries and the eighties

This was my Eighties week. Shame the library closed at five this Friday and doesn’t open on Saturday. I was really into it. But I had a very interesting meeting with a ‘friend of a friend’ who lives here instead, this morning over coffee. Learnt more about life in America and we had a lot of fun discussing the cultural differences she encounters, being Dutch, in the American workplace. Want to know more? Book my presentation “Welcome to Holland” or visit www.Geerthofstede.nl. It has information in English. Or visit Wikipedia.

But about the eighties. The decade of opportunity, wealth and simple answers to difficult questions. Reagan won two elections with his patriottism and populism. Critics might rail against his simplicities, his evoking of nostalgia for a national past supposedly simpler and more pleasant, for presenting illusions that easy solutions to complicated problems existed. Americans in the eighties felt otherwise. They were in the mood for the resurrection of old myths. In the simple optimism of Ronald Reagan, they found what they were seeking. “The era of self-doubt is over,” Reagan had said in his inaugural address, and the nation cheered. Not in decades, perhaps not in the century, had acquisition and flaunting of wealth been celebrated so publicly by so many. The art of self-promotion was elevated into a new category. The most succesful exemplar of the form was the one who gave the age its most deserved name. It was the decade of the Art of the Deal, and no one received more attention as the premier deal maker of the times than Donald Trump.
And next to the unbelievable but very real Trump, we had J.R. Never had television presented such a diabolically greedy man as J.R. Ewing. He was a heartless monster driven by his libido and his lust for money. Never had viewers seen such a procession of wealth and possessions and desirable women. J.R. was the American dream gone haywire, but it turned out an American dream millions wished to experience. “Dallas” and its prime-time imitators were not the only avenue to escape problems by entering a fictional world where, as historian Ruth Rosen put it, a yearning “for perfect love in a mythic community” could be fulfilled. By decade’s end the daytime TV soap opera audience had risen to about eighty million each week. And of course we had the Reagan’s real life soap, the whole decade.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

winter brands

The library is great here in Berkeley. Been diving into the eighties. Much on Reagan; will later compare his populism during the autumn and winter timeframes dominating the 80s with Dutch populism during the autumn and winter timeframes that dominate culture again since 1999. On the lighter side of life the 80s were also the years of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Both born in de Bronx from Jewish immigrants, Klein in 1942, Lauren in 1939. Klein used the beginning of the 80s to turn men’s underwear from functional boxer shorts to sexy briefs with his name adorning the elastic, and made a perfume into a national Obsession. Klein’s advertising campaigns, oozing sexuality, pushed the boundaries of what was considered proper, evoking discussion and therefore an competitive edge during the hedonistic and opportunistic autumn part of the eighties. Photographer Bruce Weber turned the buff Olympic pole vaulter Tom Hintinaus into one of the decade’s most popular pinups - for women and men. Klein himself became a caricature of eighties hedonism. He did everything and everyone, separated from his first wife, got himself a younger new one, all of which didn’t keep him out of Studio 54 and the pants of men.
Ralph Lauren (who’s best kept secret was his birth name, Ralphie Lifshitz), invented the name Polo for his line of wide colorful ties in 1967: “A little cachet,” he would recall. “Glamorous, international, and playboyish. Very suave characters went to polo matches.” In 1972 he adornes his shirts with the poloplayer. Halfway through the 1980s Ralph Lauren appealed to a public returning to traditional values and anxious about their status. And as with Calvin Klein, lavish advertising campaigns and Bruce Weber photographs swept him upward, although Lauren ads evoked elegant British country houses rather than sleazy San Francisco bathhouses (hey, it was a winter timeframe by then!)
Only a few months after opening his grand flag store on Madison Avenue in NY in 1986, Lauren makes the cover of Time: “Selling that sporty look, Polo’s Ralph Lauren”. That’s how important brands were in the eighties. The cover, starring Lauren looking like he just stepped out of a tennis court, is only subtly spoiled by a small heading in the corner: “Chernobyl - A Startling Report”. The world may be on fire, there are always a brand to safe us. (And to honor winter, I have bought a Ralph Lauren jacket, just the thing for a middle aged man)