Leah Libresco's Blog, page 9
August 28, 2020
Bad Art Warps Our Vision
At First Things, I take a crack at explaining why smutty art is bad in the way airbrushing and CGI Yoda are bad.
It’s the same reason we should object to airbrushed skin and photoshopped waists. It’s the same reason we should object to sending barely pubescent girls or anorexic teens down the catwalks to model clothes ostensibly being sold to adult women. False images distort our vision, and they feed misogyny. Fashion designers openly admit that their collections presume that “the ideal body shape [is] a female on the brink of hospitalization from starvation.” Why should we give them the benefit of the doubt that their destructive vision is merely thoughtlessness rather than an active war on women?
These works are marked by a sense of unreality—they take important things lightly. They treat human relationships and loves in an uncanny way.
August 17, 2020
Tiny Book Club: My new newsletter
I’ve started a newsletter on Substack, called Tiny Book Club.
Every month, I pick a good essay or article, invite in a special guest for a dialogue, and then host a discussion with all of the subscribers. It’s a book club for readings much much shorter than a book.
We kicked off in August with John Ahern’s essay “Contrapuntal Order” from First Things. The special guest is Micah Hendler, the founder of the YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus, and my conversation with him drops tomorrow.
You can sign up here to receive our full conversation tomorrow, but here’s a preview for now:
Micah: The piece that instantly came to my mind upon finishing the article is a mashup I arranged for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, an Israeli-Palestinian music and dialogue project which I founded and artistically direct. The piece is a mashup of two different songs from different musical traditions in different languages that share similar themes—birds, singing, and freedom.
One song is by Marcel Khalife, “Asfour Tal Min Al-Shubbak,” an iconic protest song in Arabic that tells the story of a bird who escapes from a cage and flies to the house next door, coming in through the window and asking for shelter. The chorus itself is a dialogue between the bird and “Nunu,” the young child who ultimately brings the bird back to health, freedom, and song. This song was suggested to me by one of my singers, Sofia, who thought it would be a good fit for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus. She was right.
As I was learning the song, another song came to mind—a round written by Linda Hirschhorn, a Jewish composer from the Bay Area, who set a translation of some of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry to music absolutely brilliantly: “I have a million nightingales on the branches of my heart, singing freedom.” The thematic resonance was stunning, and the intersections of identities involved in the different origins of the songs to arrive at the same point just made things more fascinating. So I began to see whether these songs could actually work together, musically, and how they could comment on, amplify, and enrich one another in the process. The result is the Jerusalem Youth Chorus arrangement of which I am most proud.
There’s lots I could say to guide you through the arrangement—different musical elements, textual elements, etc.—but for now, I’ll just say, take a listen! And enjoy the gorgeous ‘oud accompaniment by my Arabic music teacher in Damascus, who literally recorded that oud track in one take in between bombing raids near his home, where he still lives, in Damascus. Talk about birds, song, and freedom.
Leah: Thank you so much for sharing that song (and pointing me to your chorus’s spotify album, which I’ve been listening to). I’m glad you unpacked both songs for me a little, so I wouldn’t lose the resonances.
There’s something very fruitfully unsettling about finding an image you love being admired in a similar way by your enemy. In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis talks about friendship as a love that’s ignited by discovering a shared love. When he contrasts eros and philia, he says that lovers of the former type face inward, looking at each other. Friends look outward, at their shared object. So there must be a little grain of friendship sprouting, even amid enmity when we discover a shared love.
We have more to say, including on songs from Sondheim to Moana, and you can read the whole thing tomorrow if you sign up here.
August 14, 2020
Keeping Vaclav Benda’s Door Open
At Mere Orthodoxy, I laid out my problems with some of Rod Dreher’s recent writing on race and soft totalitarianism, drawing on his own Live Not By Lies for an alternate model of witness.
The most serious danger Woke Capital poses isn’t to the people forced to adopt nonsensical cant or take implicit bias tests that have no proven relationship to real racial bias. The real danger is that these corporations and spokespeople redirect activist energy to stupid causes while letting real injustices persist.
Think of the realtors who pledge to eliminate “master bedroom” from their listings when the real problem is that realtors are still refusing to show houses to Black, Asian, and Hispanic customers. (Kudos to Newsday for carrying out a three-year investigation to substantiate what many Long Island homebuyers had suspected).
The faddish and foolish solutions proffered in lieu of real reform mirror the way that minority communities are simultaneously both over- and under-policed. Minority communities don’t get the help they deserve and are instead offered something worse than neglect. There is a double injustice, as when the wrong person is sent to jail for a crime. There is an injustice to the person falsely condemned, as well as an injustice to the whole community, who have been denied justice for the original offence.
Where should Christians be in this struggle? As the prophet Amos tells us, we must “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream,” (Amos 5:24). We aren’t called to carp on the sidelines about tactics, but to involve ourselves directly. If we have fraternal corrections to offer, they can only come after we’ve lived as a brother to our neighbor.
Read the whole thing at Mere Orthodoxy. And for more on this topic, you can also read my essay “Fear and the Benedict Option” at First Things.
July 11, 2020
Will the Real Mrs. America Please Stand Up
I reviewed Hulu/FX’s Mrs. America for The American Interest. The show turns on one question: Who gets to claim the mantle of a women’s movement?
In episode four, Schlafly and Friedan square off in a debate. Both women relish the fight—Friedan more obviously, exclaiming “God, I’d like to burn you at the stake,” just as she did in real life. But their attacks on each other reveal a potential for common ground that neither admits to. Both activists acknowledge the limits of law to protect women if the broader norms of the culture are misogynist.
Friedan makes her case by taking on Schlafly’s ideal of the homemaker who would rather keep her special privileges than have equal rights. Schlafly likes to hold up the example of a mother, who is supported by her husband and whose work in the home is treasured and protected. But, as Friedan points out, a widowed woman enjoys no such privilege. And, as the viewers have seen, Schlafly’s mother is one such woman. Neither private charity nor government support came through to support her or her children. The homemaker’s privileges are precarious, ERA or no.
Schlafly fires back, by arguing that the ERA isn’t really important as a matter of law to the Women’s Libbers. It’s more of a cri de coeur, a way to push back against a world that’s hurt them. But, Schlafly says, the law won’t stop your husband from leaving you or a man from being a pig. In the show, it’s clear this is a personal jibe at the divorced Friedan.
In the debate, both sides are focused on using the law to make a claim about who women are. But both of their campaigns are incomplete without a corresponding moral or cultural revival. The push to fix culture through law has only grown more intense in our present day. Congress is gridlocked, and many representatives seem to relish being freed of direct responsibility to legislate. Their authority is devolved onto administrative agencies, the courts, and the increasingly imperial presidency. To get anything done, activists have to look for a constitutional angle to justify taking the fight to the courts.
June 27, 2020
Vulnerability and Visibility with the ASP
The American Solidarity Party invited me to be one of the featured speakers at their 2020 convention, and I spoke on vulnerability and visibility (in a speech that was an extension of my piece, “Locating Our Invisible Wounds” at Comment).
One way I went beyond the original article was weaving in Lewis Hyde’s discussion of usury in his book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. You can see the full passage I quoted at the link above, and here’s what I made of it in the speech.
It’s that image that has stuck with me “no individual can make a private living by standing in the stream where surplus wealth flows toward need.” Hyde is talking about a world that takes the dignity of need as seriously as the law of gravity. As water flows downhill, so, too, excess wealth, by its very nature, flows towards need.
But if we look at what we’ve built, we live in a world of dams, of stagnant ponds, of dry riverbeds at what used to be a delta. That natural flow has been diverted and the people who are in need have been hidden. We’ve all been complicit in their concealment, lest the fact of their need spur us to bring the dams down.
After my talk, I took questions during a live Q&A, which you can check out below (and had more questions about Bayesian statistics than most political conventions).
June 25, 2020
Recommending Playborhood
Philanthropy Daily is collecting reading suggestions for coronatide. I was obviously tempted to suggest The Ghost Map or Microbe Hunters, both of which I love. But I decided to go with something more focused on how we can gather again.
We’re still a long way from being able to gather, but, even after a vaccine, many streets will be empty and quiet. It won’t be the virus quashing rambunctious play, but lousy urban or suburban design. Mike Lanza’s Playborhood is a handbook for making your home and your street a “third place,” somewhere that invites serendipitous encounters and unfettered exploration. He’s like a benevolent version of the witch from Hansel and Gretel, with a house studded with climbing fixtures, rather than gumdrops. Lanza’s plans will get you in trouble with your HOA, and may result in some scars and stories. But, he argues, avoiding all risks is the biggest danger of all. Use this time to start building and getting ready to take the right risks.
You can check out my recommendation, and everyone else’s, at Philanthropy Daily.
June 4, 2020
Locating Our Invisible Wounds
At Comment I wrote about how the coronavirus links us in a solidarity of suffering. But we’ll have to work to retain that solidarity with the more everyday kinds of suffering when the pandemic passes.
This piece was published in partnership with the Breaking Ground project, which asks how we can use this time of disruption do better than the pre-pandemic status quo.
It is a hard teaching to love our enemies, to overcome hatred with meekness. But, at present, we also struggle to see the face of God in our neighbour not because we are tempted to hate our neighbour, but because we have rarely glimpsed our neighbour’s face. We have sought each other out in the present moment of extremis.
In the grip of the virus, our collective suffering is unchosen, forced on us. In the days and months to come, we have a responsibility to retain the present sense of compassion, which means “to suffer with.” As stores eventually reopen, and parks fill again, we have to remember and seek out the people whose need was particularly acute in the pandemic, but for whom “normal” is still a slow-moving disaster.
Careers and Coronavirus
Yale offers a series of ongoing fireside chats, where students and recent graduates can hear other graduates’ advice about their given field. I joined in recently for a panel that wasn’t focused on any particular career path, but rather on how to approach careers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Obviously, I have no special expertise on this topic. (Few people do!). But I tried to bring a grounded perspective, focused on how—in times of disaster and in ordinary times—we can put eternal things at the center of our lives.
May 30, 2020
All the Screen’s a Stage
When the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA had to close its playhouse due to the pandemic, I audited their online classes as a reporter for The American Interest.
During a discussion of alliteration, one smaller girl, attending the class with her big sister, stumbles on Bottom’s tongue-twister of a line, “I trust to take of truest Thisbe sight.” She throws herself into the cushions of her couch in frustration and embarrassment. Wallace is undaunted, having her try again and telling everyone, “If you’re worried you’ll mispronounce a word, please go ahead and mispronounce it with gusto.”
A reader’s error can be fruitful, prompting the group to pause and ask what kind of choice a knotty passage opens for an actor. Should Bottom, an over-the-top actor, overenunciate his lines in Midsummer’s play-within-a-play? Would the rude mechanicals that make up his troupe also get tripped up by the line? Could he be cheating with a crib sheet attached to the actor playing Wall?
March 26, 2020
Discernment in Plague-Times
I wrote at First Things on Kristen Lavransdatter as a primer for living a life of Christian service and witness in a pandemic. It was intended, among other things, as a rejoinder to the idea that sheltering in place was cowardice.
Someday when our children ask us “What did you do during the coronavirus pandemic?,” it won’t seem exciting to tell them, “I moved my book club to videochat.” It’s more exciting to imagine that the sacrifices asked of us will be dramatic and romantic.
But it’s no surprise to Christians that we should value the invisible economy of grace over more worldly signs of effort and accomplishment. We are a people who believe that cloistered sisters, praying privately, have a powerful effect on the world. We are a people who believe that prayer, fasting, and humiliation are as much a part of our response to a pandemic as work on antivirals.
Each of us does the work God has prepared for us. And at present, a number of people who are used to power and dramatic, visible forms of activity are being called unexpectedly to the cloister of the home. Nearly all of us are being called to the kind of patient, steady work (caring for children, bringing groceries to the elderly) that is rarely counted in visible measures like GDP.
