A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
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Two Historic Dutch Girls and Today’s World |
By David Corn January 9, 2024 |
Tourists posing for photos outside the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. |
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Name one person who died in the Holocaust.
My hunch is that most people would respond to that by recalling Anne Frank. But how many (who do not have a relative who perished in that horror) can identify another or a third? Out of 6 million victims. Has this one girl, for many of us, become the main connection to that horror?
This was what occurred to me last week when I passed by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam during a visit to the Netherlands. The street was crowded with tourists waiting to enter this famous building that holds what was once the hideaway for Anne and her family. A few doors down, visitors lined up for the associated museum, a modern structure boasting a sleek design with large glass windows. The action there was brisk.
I wondered if for many the Holocaust has been TL;DRed to the tale of this one person. Does that make an unimaginable nightmare real? Do we require a compact, easy-to-envision story—a girl hiding—to process such evil? I’m not criticizing anything here. Just pondering if storyfication is necessary to forge comprehension of—or identification with—malevolence so immense.
I’ve seen the camps, and it’s almost impossible to conceive of what occurred in these places. In these barracks? In these showers? In these crematoriums? On these grounds? So many people. So much death. Within such relatively small and unimpressive sites. I found it hard to picture such hell occurring in these countryside locations.
But when I first visited the Anne Frank House decades ago, the reality was visceral. Looking at the cobblestones, I experienced something of a waking dream. I heard the squeal of tires, as trucks carrying SS troops came to a stop, yards from the doorstep. Then I saw their jackboots hitting the sidewalk—tha-wump, tha-wump!—as they ran into the house and up the stairs. I shook myself free of this vision and gazed about: a lovely Dutch street beside a canal lined by picturesque apartments. That one moment from 1944 was all too believable.
On this recent trip, I saw that many more people were streaming from the museum to the front door of the house. (Attendance has risen over the years.) The mood on the street was almost festive, as groups of tourists politely waited their turns to pose next to the modest sign identifying this home. Many selfies were being taken.
I couldn’t help but think of many other innocent victims—including young girls who dream of becoming writers—in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere. We tend not to know their names. We hear of dozens, hundreds or thousands killed. It’s just a number. A mass of humans. It’s true that these days the government and media in some places, such as Israel and Ukraine, try to highlight individual stories of specific victims to garner public sympathy and support. A recent visitor to Israel told me that much of the television media she saw of the war focused on the hostages and the civilian victims of October 7—with little reporting on the ongoing bombing campaign in Gaza and the Palestinians being killed there. And in the United States, the general coverage recaps the death toll in a numbing manner. Another 65 killed. Or 115. Or 23. Or… How many inquisitive, hopeful teenage girls (or boys) were slaughtered on 10/7 or in the subsequent and continuing bombing of Gaza? Shouldn’t we care as much about them?
Do we need to know their stories? Can we? Are there now too many to absorb? The war-makers—be it Hamas, the Netanyahu administration, Vladimir Putin, or whoever—have an easier time wreaking death and destruction, if the body count remains just that, a count. Anne Frank’s one-person tale has become an encapsulation of a tremendous atrocity. Her gripping and tragic story does keep alive the painful history and lessons of the Holocaust—which are particularly valuable at a time when authoritarianism and fascism threaten liberal democracies throughout the world. But perhaps her narrative should also be a reminder that on a daily basis others just as precious—and with life stories as compelling—deserve our attention.
On to another famous young Dutch woman: the Girl with a Pearl Earring. While in the Netherlands, I jaunted to The Hague to see an old pal and visited the Mauritshuis, an art museum next to the Dutch legislature that holds an exceptional collection of works by 17th-century Dutch masters, including Rembrandt, Jan Steen, and Johannes Vermeer. The big draw there is Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Gawkers gather around his most famous painting and, of course, selfies are snapped.
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I happened to prefer another wonderful Vermeer across the room from “Girl,” a luminescent portrayal of his hometown, “View of Delft.” |
Mega-popular artworks like “Girl” transcend their content. She’s an It girl of the art world. But the folks who run Mauritshuis provide an appropriate historical context for the public’s encounter with this global celebrity. They prominently display a placard explaining that the grand and ornate building that's home to this art treasure was originally constructed as the residence for Count Johan Maurits, who in the mid-1600s ran the Dutch colony in Brazil for the Dutch West India Company. The Dutch had swiped this stretch of northeastern Brazil from the Portuguese to gain control of its sugarcane fields. In his role as governor of this territory, the museum notes, Maurits was a major slave trader. And the museum believes its visitors should be aware of this, as they gaze upon the Girl’s blue headband and that dangling pearl. Here’s how the museum puts it:
At the Mauritshuis, we previously considered Johan Maurits mainly from an art historical perspective. We focused on how he took artists and scientists with him to Brazil to study the country, its inhabitants and nature. But by exclusively looking at John Maurits through an art historical lens, we only see a limited part of his story. Because he also played an important role in the transatlantic slave trade—at least 24,000 enslaved Africans were transported to Brazil under his authority. He himself owned dozens of enslaved people and benefitted personally…from the trade in people. And that is a story we also need and want to tell.
As we art lovers peered at the gal with the come-hither look, it was good to have the full picture. We were standing in a salon within a glorious house that had been built upon the suffering of tens of thousands. Some right-wingers might gripe about injecting wokeness into an aesthetic experience and point to this as yet another politically correct distraction from the wonders of Western Civilization. But art should not be divorced from how it has come to be created, collected, and exhibited. Every masterpiece tells a story, and in many instances the tale goes far beyond what we see within the frame.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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The Watch, Read, and Listen List
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Leave the World Behind. Sam Esmail, the creator of the creepy series Mr. Robot, which starred Rami Malek as a creepy hacker who navigated a creepy demimonde of cyber-anarchy, has brought his trademark creepiness to the Brooklyn bourgeoisie in the new Netflix film Leave the World Behind. Based on the 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam and executive-produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions company, this movie is a masterclass in unease. Julia Roberts is an ultra–Type A ad exec named Amanda Sandford, who isn’t too fond of people. Ethan Hawke is her hubby Clay Sandford, an affable professor of media studies. They have two kids: quasi-bratty adolescent Archie and younger, no-one-ever-listens-to-what-I have-to-say daughter Rose, who is obsessed with the television show Friends. They live in NYC’s hip borough. With Amanda and Clay’s marriage—or the entire family—in some sort of unidentified funk, she wakes up one morning and, on a lark, books a family vacation at a Long Island shore town within an hour of the city. To start that very day. She rustles everyone out of the house, and off they head to a fancy house rental in this fictitious spot.
For the next two hours, Esmail creates a conveyor belt of creepiness that slowly but inexorably accelerates. First, at the local market, Amanda spots a bearded fellow buying a helluva lot of bottled water. Hmmm. Wonder what that’s about? Then the family’s outing at the beach is interrupted by an oil tanker running aground with no explanation. Next, the WiFi and television at their fancy rental goes out. (Rose, who is about to watch the Friends’ series finale, is quite disturbed.) Meanwhile, the deer in the area are acting weird. Gathering in groups and staring at the humans, as if they are in on it.
Something’s happening, but the Sandfords—and we—don’t know what it is. Then comes a knock at the door. George Scott (Mahershala Ali), the owner of the house, and his 20-something daughter Ruth (Myha’la) apologize for intruding, but it seems there’s a major blackout back in the city, and they figured it would be best to wait it out here, rather than confront what is sure to be a chaotic Big Apple. Can they spend the night in the basement apartment? Amanda is suspicious. Are these people really who they say they are? Inconveniently, George left his wallet in his overcoat at a gala event, so he has no ID. Ruth sees Amanda’s caution as racist. But to be fair, George, a financial consultant, does appear to know a little bit more about what’s occurring than he’s sharing.
Clay, who wants everyone to like him, welcomes George and Ruth to stay. And over the next days, without phone service, internet, cable TV, or any information about anything—the two families are forced to contend together with uncertainty, as more disruption and destruction (and weird animal behavior) transpires. Esmail sure sticks to one rule of drama: always be escalating. The danger keeps ratcheting up—though the source of or reason for the peril remains mysterious.
Warning: If you get too unsettled pondering a real-life apocalypse, you might want to skip this. Plus, the ending of Leave the World Behind falls short of satisfying. But if Alfred Hitchcock ever had gotten around to combining a thriller with a disaster flick, it might have looked like this. Ultimately, Esmail’s tale is not about family dysfunction or race but the larger matter of civilization. What might occur when the societal and technological bonds that hold us together fray or, worse, are torn apart? How much order do we really have in our lives? Taking a hard look at that can sure give you the creeps.
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Feats of imagination occur in all forms of art and entertainment. And that can include superhero fantasy fare. The latest Spider-Man movie, which recently hit streaming services, is an impressive and ingenious display of creativity. Watching this second in a series of animated Spider-Man installments, I felt like I was thrust into the panels of a graphic novel. The kaleidoscope of visuals—the ever-shifting perspectives, colors, and styles—was constantly stunning and engrossing. I found it hard to conceive that mere mortals had conjured up this cinematic sorcery.
And the story wasn’t bad. It’s another take on the ever-popular theme of the multiverse (which scored big at last year’s Oscars with Everything Everywhere All at Once.) To get the full picture, you must watch the opening chapter of this Spider-Man saga, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. But here’s the gist: in one of the infinite numbers of parallel universes, a young Black Puerto Rican teen named Miles Morales is bitten by a radioactive spider and after the current Spider-Man dies, he replaces him as the web-slinging superhero. In other words, this isn’t Peter Parker’s story. Race is flipped. Moreover, Miles discovers there are other dimensions with other Spider-Men, who come in a variety of forms, such as animé Spider-Man, robot Spider-Man, T-Rex Spider-Man, and others, including a punkish teen Spider-Woman named Gwen Stacy, who he, naturally, crushes on.
Inter-multiversal hijinks ensue, and they continue into the latest film, during which Miles confronts a dilemma. In every universe, there are “canon events” that cannot be changed without threatening the existence of…well, everything. And one of these is Spider-Man losing a parental figure. For Milo, that means his dad, a police officer. I’m not sure how this comes about, but Milo learns he might be able to prevent his father’s death. His desire to do so places him at odds with all those other Spider-Men, who, understandably, don’t want to see a multiverse meltdown. It’s a plot that has become familiar to superhero aficionados: Don’t mess with the quantum physics of Mother Nature.
If this is not your thing, fine. But I would encourage you to watch the opening minutes of the movie, which features a fight scene within the Guggenheim Museum. You’ll see what I’m talking about regarding the creativity at work here. Plus, there might be more inside-art world jokes in this sequence than in any other movie, animated or not. In fact, here it is: |
Read Recent Issues of Our Land |
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December 23, 2023: To disqualify or not disqualify Trump?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Michele Bachmann); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
December 19, 2023: A (cracked) Christmas playlist; the chances of Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley; the return of Brad Parscale; and more.
December 16, 2023: Donald Trump, rubber, and glue; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Brenden Dilley); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
December 12, 2023: Who controls AI?; Nyad is a Rocky for the olds; Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Dave Alvin explore the borderland; and more.
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December 5, 2023: Is a two-state solution still possible?: Less Than Zero is far from nothing; RIP, Shane MacGowan; and more.
December 2, 2023: It’s not too late for a Kissinger reckoning; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Linda Yaccarino); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. |
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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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