Flag on this play: Take down South Carolina’s Confederate battle standard

June 23, 2015

History is not merely written by winners. It’s dictated by them. That’s true at Wimbledon. And it’s especially true in war.

The controversy over a Confederate battle flag flying over the South Carolina State House that has erupted anew in the wake of the Charleston mass murders is yet another example of our failure to understand this. The South lost the Civil War. And the losers do not get to display the trophies of war. If they did, the Nazi flag would be flying over Germany today. How long do you think the former Allies would tolerate that? ...

Classical nudes: The not-so-obscure objects of our desire

June 21, 2015

This has been a big year for the classical nude. But then again, when is it not?

From the moment the Renaissance uncovered Roman copies of sculptures of ancient Greek gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, the nude has defined our highest aspirations for the body, from the art of Donatello and Michelangelo to the neoclassical works of turn-of-the-19th century Paris to the highly formal, erotically charged photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, just to name a few.

“Not only is it the longest lasting, most influential visual form for representing the human body up to the present day, but it has also become so powerfully naturalized as merely ‘the nude’ that we have often lost the ability to see it as a specific historical type, with a particular history, geography and canon,” curator Jonathan David Katz wrote in the catalog for “Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer History,” at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in Manhattan last fall. ...

Charleston and the literature of rejection

June 19, 2015

Well, one thing’s certain: Dylann Storm Roof – really? That’s a name? – is no Rachel Dolezal.

One couldn’t do enough to embrace black culture. The other couldn’t do enough to destroy it, allegedly gunning down nine people at Bible study Wednesday night in Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, uttering the particularly lunatic thought, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” ...

Soccer – international sport, American problem

May 30, 2015

I certainly hope NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has gotten out his Crane’s stationery to send a thank-you note to FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

As the NFL’s season of deflated footballs and inflated fists fumbles into the post-season, along comes a corruption and bribery scandal in soccer that makes the NFL look like “The Sound of Music.” Football officials must be wiping their brows and going “Whew!”

Usually when there are billions of dollars at stake and charges ranging from vote-selling to slave labor – brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, no less – the person who heads the organization under siege steps down. But no, no. Blatter – Is that a great name, or what? – was just reelected president of the soccer governing body, vowing to make the organization stronger.

And we can just imagine how he’s going to do that. Human rights abuses? Slave labor? Whoo-whoo, World Cup for you, Qatar. To paraphrase the New York Lottery commercial, all it takes is a (few million) dollars and a dream.

The nation that has decided to take on FIFA, with help from Switzerland (home of FIFA and tired of its image as bank vault to the corrupt), is of two minds about the situation.

On the one hand, the only thing America likes more than a scandal is a scandal set in a five-star hotel. (It was at the Baur au Lac on Lake Zurich that several officials were roused in the early morning hours May 27 and arrested. Ooh, Is it like “The Grand Budapest Hotel?” I love that movie.) ...

Tom Brady and Alex Rodriguez: Statistics and probability

May 9, 2015

Is it merely coincidental that Gisele Bündchen skipped The Metropolitan Museum of Art gala precisely at the moment when hubby Tom Brady was about to be raked over the coals for his role in Deflategate?

What is it that they said in the Deflategate report? It’s “more probable than not” that it was a coincidence. Still, she and he have been staples on the gala’s red carpet for years. Let’s just say it was convenient that she had to attend that Chanel Cruise Seoul event half a world away.

Gala empress Anna Wintour filled in the football slot with Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers – who is not in trouble for overinflating his balls, to the chagrin of some – and his girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, whose J. Mendel gown overwhelmed with its sleeves. (The gala’s fashion proved that less really is more. The more straightforward the gown, as in Gong Li’s black lace and marsala velvet evocation of the gala’s Chinese theme, the more stunning it was.) ...

The transgendered nature of art

April 30, 2015

Bruce Jenner’s transition to womanhood and the profile of transgendered model Andreja Pejić in May Vogue have got me thinking about the transgendered nature of art.

Consider Thomas Hardy – whose “Far From the Madding Crowd” has been made into a new film starring Carey Mulligan, the sensual Matthias Schoenaerts and the estimable Michael Sheen. For him to create some of fiction’s greatest romantic heroines, and heroes, he had to understand a woman’s mind and heart as well as that of a man. For George Balanchine to create some of ballet’s finest works, he had to know a woman’s body as intimately as a man’s.

Art has also long been preoccupied with hermaphroditism – the condition of having the physical attributes of both sexes. In ancient Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus – son of Hermes, the messenger god, and Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty – was a beautiful youth beloved by the water nymph Salmacis, who embraced him against his will in her pool and prayed that the two would become one. ...

Nature teams with nurture in ‘The Professor in the Cage’

April 26, 2015

“The Professor in the Cage,” Jonathan Gottschall’s provocative new book, locates itself at the gridlocked intersection of biology and culture.

The subtitle “Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch” suggests another question, Why are women the nicer sex? and its corollary, Are they really?

The answers are fascinating and complex, though perhaps not as complex as his book makes them out to be.

Part of “The Professor in the Cage” is about how Gottschall, an out-of-shape, disenchanted academic, got involved in the brutal world of mixed martial arts (MMA). His personal story is less interesting, however, than his personal observations. He hits the mark, for instance, when he says that MMA is like gay porn – all those rippling, sweaty physiques grappling with one another in clutches that are at once amusing and arousing. It’s the reason I love wrestling. And I suspect – as the nude wrestling scene in “Women in Love” suggests – it gives men a license to touch one another in a way that conforms to traditional heterosexual society, as do all sports.

But why must male athletic competition be so violent – or at least carry the threat of violence? And why do we secretly – or not so secretly – find it thrilling? ...