Oppressors, Gays and the IOC

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

You would think, for most of the last hundred years, that the legislation and harsh anti-gay efforts of the police force would be like a heavy foot on the people’s back. You’d think it couldn’t get any worse, only better, but it has: Like how a certain African country instigated new anti-gay measures just last month, like how India has deleted some gay rights, like how Russia has put into law new oppression against homosexuals…

I’m starting to see some connections.

Meanwhile, as regards human rights and the IOC, (International Olympic Committee) people are naturally focused less on the last hundred years and more on the last decade—Women’s ski jump—and especially on this year’s Games in Russia—Gay rights. As you know, the former Soviets have made new laws against homosexuals. Unfortunately for the Russians, the athletes of the lands with ice and snow are the athletes most likely to know that human rights—when things seem otherwise quiet—are the canary in the coalmine. Human rights are the outer minefield defense—at the first boom, tyranny approaches.

Some people are wondering why the IOC has “thrown the athletes under the bus.” Ideally, the young Olympians should be able to focus solely on their sports, secure in the knowledge they can safely delegate speaking up for gay rights to the IOC. But no. The IOC has fumbled the catch—heck, they didn’t even reach for the ball. This leadership failure is especially unacceptable because, as I heard an athlete explain on the CBC, the Olympics are about encouraging citizenship.

I wouldn’t have connected the IOC to oppression, but—yes. For this sad conclusion, I have only two dots to connect. Firstly, I note that my favorite newspaper essay-columnist, Christie Blatchford, has a recent piece both tragic—because in the middle she names and charts the women who diverted their life paths away from ski jumping—and humorous: She names a prominent official, the one who said, in his opposition to women ski jumping, that ski jumping involved big jumps, “not appropriate from a medical point of view” and near the end Christie says he will be at the Games and she’s hoping he will be there to see all those uteruses safely jumping. She makes him look like a stupid idiot.

Secondly, it was George Orwell who opened my eyes by pointing out that those leaders who would benefit from a bad system must render themselves too stupid to notice. So maybe that explains it: Decade after decade the IOC keeps stupidly dragging their feet on even a simple reform like having former Olympians on the committee. (Update: According to Wiki-pedia, "These last 10 years, the composition has evolved… Member seats have been allocated specifically to athletes…") It’s easy to make a simple theory: They want no light to be shone on their actions. Or perhaps the answer is more complex; perhaps, like so much of human affairs, the IOC motivations are mixed, being both stupid and sinister.

By this more complex theory, the IOC is like the CCP—Chinese communist party. To illustrate: Last weekend I read an autobiography of a former believer, Kenneth Ore, called Song of the Azalea. (2005, Penguin Canada) Ore had been a secret Communist Party member for decades, first in China and then, during British rule, in Hong Kong. Devoted to the revolution, he had organized things, giving and receiving orders, while trusting the Party. At last he realized the system was bad, that honest Party members like him never made it past junior management. The middle and senior management were too corrupt to want honest idealists like him around… To me the dinosaurs of the IOC, who willfully disregarded the British Columbia Supreme Court ruling that the IOC was discriminating against women ski jumpers, would be the same saurians who wouldn’t want honest amateurs on their IOC committee. No, not while staying in their five star hotels on the Olympic dime.

I suppose, back when Russia was communist, Putin would have noticed similar dynamics. I am struck by how Ore, years after WWII, tried to drum up Chinese patriotism by encouraging hatred of Japanese wartime behavior. (Now I understand better certain news out of Asia) Obviously Putin has no Japanese servicemen to talk about, and I would hope Russia’s remaining Jews are no longer a suitable target, but…

Those poor idealists—Orwell knew their fate: In Nineteen Eighty-four Winston Smith notes with dread how a fellow party member is just too enthusiastic and innocent. Sure enough, the guy gets disappeared. Queerly, in the same year Orwell’s work came out in Britain, over in the USA Robert A. Heinlein came out with Revolt in 2100 (aka If This Goes On—) where, as in Orwell’s London, there are electronic eyes and ears in prominent places. Two young heroes join the underground, an organization evolved from the Masonic Lodges. The innocent narrator, John, has a slightly older worldly friend, Zeb. In one scene John asks why the pariahs still persist in their heresy, since after all, “We’ve told them often enough!” In a later scene Zeb shocks him by saying the lodge is inclusive, and mentioning some groups other than pariahs, and saying:

 BEGIN QUOTE

“…and we need all the help we can get.”

I thought it over. The idea was logical, though somehow vaguely distasteful. I decided to gulp it down quickly. “I suppose so. I imagine even the pariahs will be of some use to us, when it comes to the fighting, even if they aren’t eligible for membership.” (in the Lodge)

Zeb gave me a look I knew too well. “Oh for Pete’s sake, John! When are you going to give up wearing diapers?”

“Huh?”

“Shut up. Take sex away from people. Make it forbidden, evil, limit it to ritualistic breeding. Force it to back up into suppressed sadism. Then hand the people a scapegoat to hate. Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release. The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word ‘psychology’ was ever invented. It works, too. Look at yourself.”

“Look Zeb, I don’t have anything against the pariahs.”

“You had better not have. You’ll find a few dozen of them in the Grand Lodge here. And by the way, forget that word ‘pariah.’ It has, shall we say, a very high negative index.”

He shut up and so did I; again I needed time to get my thoughts straight… END QUOTE

Well, sports fans, what do you think?

http://www.canada.com/olympics/columns/sochi-2014-delay-in-getting-womens-ski-jumping-into-olympics-a-big-blow-to-athletes

Sean Crawford

During the Sochi Olympics

In the land of the free

2014

Footnotes:

~I have written on Olympic reform before:

Olympics and Feminism, archived in March 2013

Olympics and Boards, archived in February 2013

~There is a sad scene in Ore’s book where his older brother shows up at the door, ragged and footsore. He has just walked 900 miles home after discovering that the Red Army is just as corrupt as the government army they are fighting. (Historical note: The government army later joined the mass exodus to Taiwan, and later, although they offered, they were not allowed by General Douglas McArthur to join the UN forces in Korea: corrupt armies are not effective.)

Tragically, Ore encourages his brother to keep faith in the Party, saying surely it must have been only a few bad apples… Decades later? Ore has defected to the west, and his older brother has become very unhappy with sacrificing his own life path for the Party, too angry to speak on the telephone to his own brother.

Application: Like those young innocent brothers, I too thought, initially, “surely it is only coincidence or something” that the noble IOC, dedicated to enhancing citizenship and good character, haven’t supported rights for women and gays. Surely, I thought,  any day now they’ll step up to the plate. No. Never.

~On the CBC I heard someone in an “athlete committee” say the Canadian Olympic Committee has done nothing. I wonder why they haven’t dared to “speak truth to the power of the IOC?” I can’t know, but I do know money is not the sole motivator in life. The COC may have things other than money in common with the IOC.

  

~You aren’t granted human rights by coming to North America; you already have them, everywhere on earth, from the UN declaration of human rights back in 1948; rights can only be denied.

    

Learning About Art

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In the Bar

I remember sitting in the student bar with a friend and an art major. The friend said, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.”

The art student leaned forward to say heatedly, “And you like what you know!”

My friend was like me: a little baffled by art, a little feeling inferior, and with a chip on his shoulder. As for the artist’s reply, I am slowly coming to see that there are many realities out there, not just the world I perceive, and that art can make me uncomfortable when it shows me a world—or an art piece—different from what I know.

A very crude example, which barely hints at what I mean: A criminal may think all of us are criminals, a prostitute may think all marriage is prostitution, a pacifist may think we are all sheep—and I, not being among their little peer groups, would react with distress to any art that suggested their views. Please don’t show me a painting of a wholesome 1950’s housewife and mother, with lingerie peeping out, robbing a bank. If you do then I will escape into saying it’s a joke. As for the 1950’s—my favorite decade—there are movies made in our century, set in that decade, that simply wouldn’t work had they been created back then: The people would have found the shows to NOT be the sort of art they know they like.

Like my friend that day, I realized I too didn’t know much about art, and I felt I was missing out on something, like the feeling I get around playoff season. A year or more later, I remember going to an art gallery and seeing two abstract shiny bird sculptures by the same artist: One sculpture was big, and one small. I liked the smaller one best, and I was so pleased with myself when I checked price tags and found the smaller one had been valued more. That day I hovered near other groups of art browsers, listening to overhear if I could pick something up from their conversations.

In a Class

Eventually I got my act together: I took the plunge by registering for a night class in “history of art.” In a class of mainly interior design students, I caught the second (winter) semester, covering the time from the invention of modern art up to the present. I said, “Wow.” Previously, a few university students in various majors had told me that art history was their favorite class, but I had mostly thought this was because they hadn’t been ready to learn history back in high school. My mistake. It was the art they liked, not the fleeting references to what was going on in the world around the art.

I would recommend the class to anyone: At a basic level, I learned things designers and women know, such as how the eye (my teacher used a laser pen) travels about the “picture plain,” and how shapes and colors create tension. In theory, a classic painting holds together like a classic poem, so that if you moved even one shrub you would change everything. At another level, I learned some landmarks to navigate the field of art history; soon I acquired the same vocabulary as successful businessmen and their wives who could rattle off the names of dead artists. I started to realize why careful self-made millionaires would fork out for fine art. For me, it was like studying classic literature or music and suddenly thinking: “Hey, now I know what all the fuss is about! No wonder this stuff is classic!” I joined in with those of similar education, and more: I felt I was now among the ages, among lively peers long dead.

And while I appreciate photographic realism, I have come to appreciate the answer to the question: Is modern art a hoax? …No. And those huge price tags for the “crazy stuff” our public gallery forks out for? I am reminded of a former hockey goalie, Ken Dryden, when asked why NHL salaries are so high. He said he couldn’t defend it, but he could explain it: Market value.

I passed the course… and just recently I have realized something: I don’t even know yet how little I know, only that I have a long way to go to learn about appreciating art.

If we in this society don’t really know about art then maybe it’s partly because we don’t truly want to encounter new worlds and new ways of perceiving… and maybe it’s partly because it takes time. No instant gratification. You only get out what you put into it, of course, and many folks just won’t stop to smell the roses. My art history teacher would often just keep a slide up on the screen as she talked, and then point out how keeping it there had allowed us to increase our appreciation. Yes. As for being willing to see: As the detective said, many of us look and don’t notice. I found this out the day I had to write dialogue for a college assignment: I had been a book lover for years, yet I still didn’t know how to punctuate dialogue—I had to grab under my bed for a Louis L’amour western and then for the first time truly see.

In a Book

A lover of westerns, or a tourist from Europe, would love to be in the little “one four-way stop” town of Black Diamond on an early Saturday morning. There you can see ranchers, husbands and wives, wearing full cowboy regalia, with their horses in trailers outside, having their morning coffee. (That specific café has closed; I don’t know where they go now) I was in Black Diamond (coal) last weekend. The town is on the route to the Alaskan highway, and so there is enough traffic to support artsy stores. In Blue Rock Gallery I found a slim blue book that could change my life, if I let it. Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson.

It turns out Winterson will spend an afternoon at a gallery visiting one or two pieces. This is hard for me to imagine, just yet. As for art allowing us to see, she approaches the idea from many angles, making a case for “new seeing,” and, at the same time, a case for the idea that we of this society are just too unwilling to see. This view I can somewhat imagine, just from knowing myself, and it’s not a comforting thought. At least I’m willing to learn, someday.

The concept of taking enough time also applies to language arts. Of literature, Winterson writes,

“…Much of the delight everyone gets from radio adaptations of classics is a straightforward delight in pace. The actors read much more slowly than the eye passes, especially the eye habituated to scanning the daily papers and skipping through magazines. It is just not possible to read literature quickly. Neither poetry nor poetic fiction will respond to being rushed.

…Art, in its making and in its enjoying, demands long tracts of time. Books, like cats, do not wear watches.”

In my Life

I am slowly coming to grasp that, among my fellow Internet users, it is maybe the majority, and not the minority, who will skim instead of reading. Such a pity—do they even guess what they’re missing? If you skim, you’re dim. As former Microsoft manager Scott Berkun has pointed out, you never find a tweet to say, “I’ve found a literary short story on the web.” No, nor a painting. But you will find tweets for a photo of a dog wearing a hat. Or laugh-out-loud (LOL) cats.

Shortly before Christmas I drove south across the plains to the next city, Lethbridge, about two hours away. This was because Olivia, a young lady who works at my favorite art gallery, (the Stephen Lowe) had raved to me about an exhibit at the SAAG. (Southern Alberta Art Gallery) Well. When next I saw her I had to sheepishly admit I hadn’t liked it. “There wasn’t a single piece I would want to hang up in my home.” Olivia kindly took the trouble to explain the exhibit was intended for stuff you wouldn’t put in your home. Her private gallery sells pretty; the public exhibit was for offering new ways of seeing. Besides thanking her, all I could say was, “Oh.”

Today I feel fine not knowing what I will like some day. Olivia doesn’t judge me; it’s the journey that counts. And I’m excitedly looking forward to someday knowing, at last, how little I know.

Sean Crawford

In artistic cowboy country

February

2014

Footnotes:

~I liked the 2002 movie Far From Heaven, starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert and Viola Davis. Set in the 1950’s, it comes complete with 1950’s-style movie titles, sets and musical score, yet I know it could never have made a profit in the fifties. Critic Roger Ebert wrote “Because the film deliberately lacks irony, it has a dramatic impact; it plays like a powerful 1957 drama we’ve somehow never seen before.”

~ The students in the bar were the ones in my essay, Is it Art? Archived January 2013, as a follow-up to Groovy and Graffiti, in the same month.

~As for my belief in taking time instead of skimming, one of my more popular essays, going by hit count, is one where I give up on hurried folks who want their links on a silver platter, No Links is Good Links, archived July 2012—of course I won’t link to it, since my archives are accessible.

~Someday I want to read Winterson’s memoir/novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, after seeing part of the movie version at university.

~As for viewing different realities, some day I will re-read the satire Gravy Planet (aka The Space Merchants) about a planet controlled by business interests. Meanwhile, when Winterton wrote in the chapter/essay Imagination and Reality, that we live in a “money culture” I didn’t dismiss her reality as “too artsy” or “leftist.” No, because while the original Star Trek could feature a planet controlled by organized crime, A Piece of the Action, and allude to a planet controlled by women, (the episode where they had put in for repairs and now found all their computers given a female voice) the “show bible” made it clear, according to a screenwriter, that no planet was to be controlled by business.