“The Kreutzer Sonata” and The Moonlight, part 1

A group of strangers meet in a Russian railway carriage. It is 1889 and the conversation turns to the decline of marriage. An old man states that this is all because of too much education: people have become too learned and there is no more fear. Women should fear their husbands, then there would be fewer divorces. A woman shakes her head:

“Oh, that, my little father, that is ended.”

“No, madam, that cannot end. As she, Eve, the woman, was taken from man’s ribs, so she will remain unto the end of the world,” said the old man, shaking his head so triumphantly and so severely that the clerk, deciding that the victory was on his side, burst into a loud laugh.

“Yes, you men think so,” replied the lady, without surrendering, and turning toward us. “You have given yourself liberty. As for woman, you wish to keep her in the seraglio. To you, everything is permissible. Is it not so?”

“Oh, man, –that’s another affair.”

Double standard? The old man says, No. He says that men, too, have received the Law, but that it is not so bad for them to break it as it is for women. Double standard, yes.

The old man gets off the train and the others continue chatting about marriage and the status of women, all except one passenger who keeps to himself and avoids eye contact with the others. Finally, he is drawn into the conversation and begins talking wildly about love, which he denounces. One of the other passengers mentions the Posdnicheff case, where a man murdered his wife. “I see that you have recognized me,” says the man who does not believe in love and reveals himself as Posdnicheff.

At the next stop all of the passengers leave the carriage except Posdnicheff and the narrator. “Love, marriage, family, — all lies, lies, lies,” says Posdnicheff and then he tells the narrator the story of how he came to murder his wife.

“The Kreutzer Sonata”, painting by Prinet, 1901, inspired by Tolstoy’s work but illustrating something that never happens in the story — except, perhaps, in one man’s fevered imagination. This painting was used in an advertisement for Tabu perfume and was well-known enough in the 1950s to be parodied in Mad.

Thus begins Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata”, a work disliked by pretty much everyone who has read it. But Tolstoy had serious purpose in writing the story and put a lot into it over the years. “The Kreutzer Sonata” incorporated much of his own thinking on sex, marriage, and the relations between the sexes. This is not to say that Posdnicheff is Tolstoy’s double — Tolstoy never murdered anyone — but his words often reflect Tolstoy’s opinions.

Posdnicheff tells the narrator that he comes from a wealthy family and that he did not marry until he was thirty. Before that time he lived, he says, a life of debauchery, having sex with prostitutes. Eventually, though, he is persuaded that he should marry and decides on a young woman from a family fallen on hard times. Before their wedding he shows his bride-to-be his diary, which describes his various sexual adventures, one of which he wants her to know about before she hears of it through gossip.

Now this last bit also happens in Anna Karenin, when Levin shows Kitty his diary. And, in fact, Tolstoy also showed his diary to Sophia before he married her, particularly because he wanted her to know about a liason with a woman that she knew. All three of these women — Sophia, Kitty, and Posdnicheff’s fiancée — were terribly embarrassed by this action, though Tolstoy would have it that they were horrified rather than mortified.

“The Kreutzer Sonata” by Joseph deCamp, about 1913.

Anyway, the Posdnicheff wedding proceeds. The marriage is not a success. The couple quarrel often and then make up and have sex. Then they quarrel again. Posdnicheff is convinced that they quarrel because, once their sexual desire is satisfied, that they are not interested in one another. They hate each other, says Posdnicheff, and their hate grows because neither is able to find a reason for this hatred. Of course, he is ascribing thoughts and feelings to his bride that she is unable to refute and, over the course of the story, the reader may come to see Posdnicheff as a very unreliable narrator. Certainly, by this point, most readers will find him unlikeable, cold and distant, though he believes himself a creature controlled by passion.

The marriage staggers on. There are children — at least five, maybe seven, possibly two died — and Posdnicheff names two of them, the boy that he uses as a weapon against his mother and the girl that she enlists as an ally against him. The couple fight and screw and propagate until a “rascally” doctor explains birth control to Mrs. Posdnicheff. Now she blossoms, becoming plumper and prettier. Of course, Posdnicheff hates this. When his wife becomes interested in performing music with a male violinist, he becomes jealous. They perform Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata for Piano and Violin, No.9 in A Major (Opus 47), a work that greatly disturbs Posdnicheff. His jealousy and hatred grows until he tells his wife that he wishes she were dead. She attempts suicide; they reconcile, briefly, then back to the old routine of quarrel/hate/screw; he suggests divorce, but only if she initiates it. Finally, in a fit of jealous rage, Posdnicheff stabs his wife, right through her corset, inflicting a wound that turns out to be fatal. The story ends by quoting Matthew 5:28, “…whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery…” and goes on to say that this includes a husband looking lustfully on his own wife.

A couple of notes are due here: Posdnicheff never actually discovers that his wife is unfaithful — there’s that unreliable narrator trick — and it is only when she is dying that Posdnicheff sees his wife as a human being, that is, a real individual person as opposed to a Wife, a Mother, a Woman; throughout his tale, he never once uses her name. Along the way in this story, we are treated to various rants: against contraception — which is a terrible evil; against pretty dresses and hairdos — traps to catch men; about love — which does not exist; about music — which is so disturbing that it should be controlled by the state; about the fact that all women care about is entrapping a husband; and the fact that women actually run the world by being totally in control of men all the time, even though they exercise this control from a condition of slavery. By now the reader’s brain is shouting the word “misogyny”.

Clandestine copy of “The Kreutzer Sonata” circulated in 1889. [British Library] The Library says that this is a hectograph rather than a mimeograph. That is, a special carbon paper proof was imprinted on a sheet of gelatin, then paper copies were pulled from the jello plate. Maybe fifty good copies could be made before the sheet became unusable. This was a method used up to half a century ago to print ‘zines.

“The Kreutzer Sonata” was circulated in a mimeographed form for a while. Tolstoy rightly thought that the Czarist government would block its publication but perhaps he did not forsee that an enterprising Berlin publisher would release versions in four different languages. After the English version was released, the United States Post Office made it illegal to send it through the mail. The US Attorney-General backed this action and President Roosevelt called Tolstoy a “sexual moral pervert”. Of course, Teddy might have been just getting back at a guy who disapproved of hunting. The case went to the courts after some newspaper vendors excitedly offered “Suppressed!” copies for sale. In the end, Philadelphia’s Justice Thayer struck down the ban. Tolstoy might hold some absurd ideas, he said, but the work was not an “obscene libel”. In the first place, it wasn’t obscene and, after all, the anti-sex ideals expressed in it were a commonplace in Christian thought.

G.K.Chesterton, who held a jaundiced view of Tolstoy’s “simplicity”, said:

The emotion to which Tolstoy has again and again given a really fine expression is an emotion of pity for the plain affairs of men. He pities the masses of men for the things they really endure — the tedium and the trivial cruelty. But it is just here, unfortunately, that his great mistake comes in; the mistake that renders practically useless the philosophy of Tolstoy… Tolstoy is not content with pitying humanity for its pains: such as poverty and prisons. He also pities humanity for its pleasures, such as music and patriotism. He weeps at the thought of hatred; but in “The Kreutzer Sonata” he weeps almost as much at the thought of love.

Isabel Hapgood, who had translated and championed Tolstoy’s work for Americans, refused to translate “The Kreutzer Sonata”. She said:

The whole book is a violent and roughly worded attack upon the evils of animal passion. In that sense, it is moral. Translation, even with copious excisions, is impossible, in my opinion, and also inadvisable. The men against whom it is directed will not mend their ways from the reading of it, even if they fully grasp the idea that unhappiness and mad jealousy and crime are the outcome of their ways, as Pozdnisheff is made to say in terms as plain as the language will admit of, and in terms much plainer than are usually employed in polite society.
On the other hand, the book can, I am sure, do no good to the people at whom it is not launched. It is decidedly a case where ignorance is bliss…

This bit of peck-sniffery makes me almost sympathize with Tolstoy. (I say, fuck “polite society”! And “Stay ignorant, blissful fools,” is elitist bullshit. [rant rant rave rave]) But there is an interesting bit in Hapgood’s essay:

Count Tolstoi one day praised the Shakers in this manner [i.e., for the same reason that Posdnicheff praised them, because they were committed to non-reproduction] before a table full of people. I was afraid to ask him his meaning, lest he should explain in detail, so I questioned his wife in private as to whether this new departure was not somewhat inconsistent with his previously advocated views on woman’s vocation.
She replied: “Probably it is inconsistent; but my husband changes his opinions every two years, you know.”

I like that she didn’t ask what he meant, “lest he should explain in detail” which says quite a bit about Count Tolstoy and his imperious verbosity. I also like the interchange with Sophia Tolstoy that confirms many men’s suspicions that all women are in league and constantly plotting together against the master sex.

Sophia and Leo. Photos from around the time of their wedding in 1862.

That brings up the question of the Tolstoy marriage. In brief: it was troubled. Leo was thirty-four, a little older than Posdnicheff when he married. Sophia was nineteen, about the same age (so far as I can tell) as Posdnicheff’s bride. The Tolstoys had thirteen children; nine survived infancy. They began arguing early on but Sophia was not shy with her opinions. She acted as Tolstoy’s editor and transcribed his manuscripts over all the years of their marriage. When she didn’t like a work — and she hated “The Kreutzer Sonata” — she let him know. When Leo leapt into appealing new systems of thought, she tried to restrain him. They certainly fought. Sometimes, like many battling couples, their fights were ridiculous to outsiders. But Leo’s lofty foolishness could be forgiven as idealism gone off the rails; Sophia’s actions appeared neurotic and mad.

Sophia spied on her own house through binoculars, sizing up the situation. She hated cats and banned them from the Tolstoy estate at Yasnaya Polyana; then, to counter the vermin problem, brought in snakes. The symbolism here, of Eve investing a would-be Paradise with swarms of serpents, cannot have been lost on either Tolstoy. And Sophia was a temptress, always trying to turn Leo away from a multitude of notions. Their daughter Aleksandra cited a letter:

“You are harassing and killing yourself,” [Sophia] wrote him on April 19, 1889, to Yasnaya Polyana. “I…have been thinking: he does not eat meat, nor smoke, he works beyond his strength, his brain is not nourished, hence the drowsiness and weakness. How stupid vegetarianism is….Kill life in yourself, kill all impulses of the flesh, all its needs — why not kill yourself altogether? After all you are committing yourself to *slow* death, what’s the difference?”

Yeah, dude, why not just kill yourself? Which is what Posdnicheff says to his wife and which she promptly attempts to do. And it was Sophia who actually attempted suicide, several times, so often that it seems to have become a ritual. Sophia’s diary also castigates Leo for his coldness which he interrupts only in fits of sexual desire. So the real life drama is close to the story. Well, except for one thing: it wasn’t sex that the Tolstoys fought about, mostly it was money.

Sophia and Leo, around 1905.

Tolstoy, in a bout of spiritual fervor, decided to leave his entire estate to some noble purpose or other. Sophia wanted the money to go to their children. This was the cause of the great combat between them at the end of their lives. Tolstoy was assisted by a number of fervent Tolstoyians. Some he employed as secretaries. One of these, Vladimir Chertkov, helped Leo determine how to distribute his fortune in his will and it was Chertkov that Sophia was most worried about; this was the guy she was looking for with binoculars. She had heard that there was a secret will signed by Tolstoy in 1909 and was determined to fight it. In 1910, Leo and Sophia quarrelled and he stalked out of the house, attended by an acolyte. He was persuaded not to try to walk to wherever it was he had chosen as a destination and instead took up refuge in a series of railway stations, headed somewhere else. Tolstoy succumbed to pneumonia in one of these stations and died at the age of 83. Sophia was not allowed to see him; she hovered nearby, in a railway car, talking about hiring a private detective to follow Leo and find the secret will. A decade later, everything became moot as the Bolshevik Revolution wiped out the Tolstoy property values.

Sophia, trying to get entry to the place where Leo is dying, 1910.

But there is still the question of how much Posdnicheff’s views reflect those of Leo Tolstoy. Well, Posdnicheff’s views on sexy clothing had already been stated by Tolstoy both in other works and in rants to his listeners. He was horrified by the sight of a naked shoulder. Or perhaps he was filled with lust, which is much the same thing, right? And, this was the fault of the shoulder-barer — at least to a egocentric like Tolstoy. Then there is the stuff about music: Posdnicheff says, “…a terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it does? They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully.” Tolstoy once told Rachmaninoff that he could not stand Beethoven, “Is such music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all. Beethoven is nonsense.” Stefan Zweig said that Tolstoy distrusted both women and music because they unleashed his passions. But let’s go directly to Tolstoy’s own defense of “The Kreutzer Sonata” in which he explains his thinking:

…it is necessary for the view in regard to carnal love to change. Men and women ought to be educated in their homes and by public opinion to look, before and after marriage, on infatuation and the carnal love connected with it, not as upon a poetical and exalted condition, such as it is now considered to be, but as upon an animal condition, degrading to man…

It is not good to use means preventive of childbirth, in the first place, because people are thus relieved of cares and labours in regard to children, who serve as a redemption of carnal love, and, in the second, because it comes very near to the act which is most repulsive to a human conscience, to murder. Nor is non- continence during pregnancy and nursing good, because it is destructive of the physical, and still more of the mental, powers of woman.

…the attainment of the aim of being united in wedlock or of being outside of wedlock with the object of love, however much extolled by poetry it may be, is unworthy of man, just as the aim of obtaining sweet and superabundant food, which presents itself to many as the highest good, is unworthy of man.

And so on. Tolstoy proceeds from principles which he says everyone agrees with — the value of chastity, for instance — and he cites the New Testament as a basis for his thinking — hence the quotation that ends “The Kreutzer Sonata”. Tolstoy thinks it is best not to have sex – procreation is not an issue for him, better not to breed — but he recognizes that complete celibacy is difficult if not impossible. So, try for the chaste ideal but if continence is the best you can manage, so be it. There are echoes here of Paul’s notion that it is better to marry than to burn. Marriage is an accomodation with sin. Although Tolstoy claims to believe in the equality of the sexes, his argument is based on unstated premises of female subservience. The old man in “The Kreutzer Sonata” who proclaims that obedience is a wife’s duty is saying something that Tolstoy accepts as obvious.

Still from a 2008 movie version of “The Kreutzer Sonata” that has the action in current times. That sound you hear is Leo Tolstoy doing cartwheels in his coffin.

Sophia Tolstoy took over responsibility for publishing her husband’s work in 1886 and performed this duty very well. She disliked the crowds that called at Yasnaya Polanya, thinking that many of the Tolstoy-worshippers were “lunatics” and the women “hysterics”. But mostly she regretted the loss of her husband as he took on the role of living saint. From Sophia’s journal, 1903:

I went to [my husband's] room this evening as he was getting ready for bed, and realised I never hear a single word of comfort or kindness from him nowadays.

What I predicted indeed has come true: my passionate husband has died, and since he was never a friend to me, how could he be one to me now? This life is not for me. There is nowhere for me to put my energy and passion for life; no contact with people, no art, no work – nothing but total loneliness all day.

That, I think, is the authentic voice of Posdnicheff’s wife. Posdnicheff himself says that he murdered his wife, not when he stuck a knife in her, but when he married her. Perhaps that’s what Tolstoy thought about Sophia. One last thing: as Tolstoy’s publisher, it was Sophia who demanded that the czar lift the ban on Russian publication of “The Kreutzer Sonata” in 1891. She was successful.

[Part 2 will discuss a riposte to Tolstoy also titled from a Beethoven sonata, Joyce Cary's The Moonlight.]

Notes:

The full text of “The Kreutzer Sonata” is here and in other places on the Net. I have kept Posdnicheff’s name as the anonymous translator has it, though you can find it spelled at least three other ways in the various pages I have linked.
Tolstoy’s Epilogue, his explanation of “The Kreutzer Sonata”, was published in English in 1904.

Besides her anti-Kreutzer essay linked above, Isabel Hapgood wrote a long account of visiting the Tolstoys in 1890. There she gives another version of the Shaker/celibacy business mentioned above.

This is a marvelous account of visiting Yasnaya Polnaya by Elif Batumen which has quite a bit to say about “The Kreutzer Sonata” and the Tolstoy marriage.

Many adaptations have been made of “The Kreutzer Sonata” for stage, screen, and television. None (that I have seen) are particularly good since they all follow the action of the narrative, so you get a drama about a neurotic, jealous wife-murderer with none of the surrounding rationale. You can see the same thing on many TV crime shows. But there is one movie of interest: The Last Station starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, and Paul Giametti as the scummy Chertkov, which looks at the final days of the Tolstoy marriage.

Celebrity Plonk

Looking for a hobby? Got a few millions to spend? Why not buy a vineyard and bottle your own wine. You might make a profit, even better, you might turn out something good. Now I’m not talking about just licensing your name to somebody so they can put your image on a jug of swill and triple the price. I’m talking celebrities who actually like wine and have a bit of taste and, maybe, some business acumen.

The worst kind of celebrity plonk. Malcolm Young doesn’t drink any more and Angus never did. Bon Scott of course… Still, I might try that Highway to Hell Cabernet someday.

Surprisingly few celebrity chefs dabble in wine production. Mario Batali works with his business partner, Joe Bastianich (son of celebrity chef Lidia), who is a recognized authority on Italian wines, but that’s about it. Perhaps the chefs are concerned that a poor vintage might cause people to doubt their culinary skills or the restaurants they own. Or maybe it’s because these chefs already have sweetheart deals with wineries. Possibly I should mention Martha Stewart here who has partnered with Gallo to lend her name to wines sold through K-Mart. Or possibly not. Oh, and maybe there’s Guy Fieri, if he survives the awful reviews of his restaurant.

One of the few wines in this post that I’ve actually tasted. It was very good. Thanks, Jason Priestly. [more on Black Hills]

There are plenty of actors who have taken up vinting — Lorraine Bracco, Kyle McLachlan, Jason Priestly, Emilio Estevez , Sam Neill, Gérard Depardieu, all own some or all of a vineyard and and a label. Raymond Burr bought a vineyard but died before its first vintages were ready — the label is still run by his partner, Robert Benevides. Fess Parker started the winery and resort that bears his name, which was featured in Sideways.

Sideways wine-tasting at Fess Parker’s place.

Some actors are concerned that their personae may affect the reception of their wine:

Originally the winery was called Smothers Brothers, but I changed the name to Remick Ridge because when people heard Smothers Brothers wine, they thought something like Milton Berle Fine Wine or Larry, Curly and Mo Vineyards,” Tom explains.

On the other hand, Francis Ford Coppola has turned his estate into a movie museum where you can suck down some Black Label Claret while you look at Godfather mementoes.

Drew Barrymore’s Pinot Grigio which is supposed to be pretty good.

Dan Aykroyd isn’t afraid to market his own products and put his name on the label. “They asked me if I’d like to have my own wines…how good is that?” Aykroyd got heavilly involved in the selling of Crystal Head vodka (distilled in Newfoundland) and was dismayed when the Liquor Control Board of Ontario refused to carry it because the bottle was too pretty or something. Aykroyd finally won that fight and his vodka is on sale beside the Pátron tequila that he imports into Canada and his own line of Niagara wines. Aykroyd also has a surprising factoid about wine and celebrities:

Every hockey player I know has an excellent nose and an excellent tongue. Kirk Muller, for instance, has excellent taste. Dave Ellett – he called his dog Caymus [after the famous Napa Valley cabernet] Dougie Gilmour loves to have the big, full red wines. Wendel Clark and John Erskine, too. I’ve had some good wine parties with those guys.

Wow! Wait’ll Don Cherry hears about hockey wine snobs! And I really, really want to try some Wendel Clark In-Your-Face red — but it has to be made from Saskatchewan grapes. Or saskatoons or something. Meanwhile, maybe I’ll sample some of The Great Ones’ No.99 wines, especially since it’s now legal to transport wine across the border into B.C.

Cellar of Valeri Bure’s family winery. Note the hockey stick in the eagle’s talons. Bure says he learned about wine in Montreal.

There are a whole lot of athletes that have gone into the wine business — Tom Seaver, Mike Weir, Mario Andretti, Charles Woodson (who is not allowed to promote his product so long as he is active in the NFL) — just to name check four major sports besides hockey. Peggy Fleming had a winery but it seems to have closed.  And let’s not forget David Beckham who gave his wife a vinyard for her birthday. (I so hope they produce a wine called Posh Spice.) Hmm, no basketball wine. Well, Larry Bird has put his name on a few bottles (“surprisingly good for a white”) but he’s not really involved so far as I can see.

But aside from a few rockers like Vince Neil, the best celebrity wines are produced by actors. Richard Gere has teamed with a major Italian producer to put out what I hear are outstanding wines. And, of course, there’s Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt who are the latest celebrities to buy Miraval, a French château that has seen more than its share of celebrities. Sting (yes, he makes wine, too) recorded there as did Pink Floyd, who recorded much of The Wall at a studio constructed in the basement by jazz pianist Jacques Loussier. In fact, a reportedly excellent rosé from Miraval was named Pink Floyd by Pitt. Pitt and Jolie are to be married at Miraval and then will market their co-produced wines as Jolie-Pitt. They should be very very good.

Beautiful Abandonment

These photos of abandoned places are all from Francesco Mugnai’s blog where they are linked back to an original source. Sometimes there is more information about the places, sometimes there isn’t.

So-called Tunnel of Love in Kleven, Ukraine. [photo: Oleg Gordienko]

Holey Trinity by rustyjaw

Abandoned hotel in Tequendama, Colombia.

Supermarket in Goražde, Bosnia. [photo: Andrew Moore]

Sunken yacht off Antarctica.

 

 

Upcoming Episodes of Law and Order

[ Important Note: I have been reliably informed by someone who watches more television than I do, that Law and Order is no longer being shown. In fact, it folded three years ago, which shows how out of it I am. I was fooled by the fact that every time I turn on the TV, there's an episode of Law and Order being shown. Turns out, they are all re-runs. Still, I think the premise for this post is valid. Just substitute CSI for Law and Order and it still works.]

At the end of each episode of Law and Order, a program that has run longer on TV than anything else except The Simpsons, there is a disclaimer that the show was complete fiction and not based on actual crimes in any way. Everyone knows that this is a lie. You read about a bizarre murder case and, a few months later, there it is with whoever is playing the lead roles this season tracking down, arresting, charging, discovering they haven’t enough evidence, going back and re-investgating, charging the right criminal this time, trying the person, and finally convicting them, or not. That’s the way it is in the Criminal Justice System. So here are three cases currently in the news that I expect to see on Law and Order. And possibly CSI. One of the CSIs or maybe all of them.

1 — The Murdered Gun Nut:

Keith Ratliff called himself a “gun nut”. He loved guns. He produced a YouTube series called FPSRussia that was all about guns including weapons that he had built himself. His body was found in his workshop on January 3. Ratliff had been shot in the head. The murder weapon was missing (or maybe not, the GBI has said they don’t know if one of the many guns in Ratliff’s workshop did it, but the wound was not self-inflicted). The police call it a homicide and have ruled out robbery as a motive — Ratliff’s workshop was full of expensive weapons.

Keith Ratliff at his desk.

The YouTube program, FPSRussia, was exceptionally popular — perhaps 11th overall amongst YouTubers. It featured Ratliff’s friend, Kyle Myers, who affected a Russian accent as he demonstrated the firepower of automatic 12 Gauge shotguns or a machine gun attached to a radio control helicopter. He blew things up and people loved it.

Kyle Myers in the process of assembling a suitcase sniper rifle.

So who and why? Well, there are theories:

1– Ratliff had both a level 10 and a level 11 firearms license, meaning that he could import all kinds of weaponry, including machine guns, and manufacture his own copies. So one theory has it that an arms deal went wrong;

2–Ratliff’s brother says that the killer had to be someone Ratliff knew or else he would have blown the intruder away. After all, he died surrounded by weapons;

3–Maybe it was a local resident who didn’t like him. Ratliff had only recently moved to Carnesville, leaving his wife and child in Kentucky, where they still live. Maybe there was some bit of difficulty with his new neighbors — Carnesville has only a little over 500 residents, maybe someone felt crowded. The sheriff says that he was called out to Ratliff’s place by neighbors at least once;

4– Maybe it was an anti-gun liberal that murdered Ratliff as part of a conspiracy to end Gun Rights in America. You think?

Of course, Law and Order doesn’t have to follow the actual facts of the case — it’s fiction, they say — so who knows what they will come up with. But considering the heightened debate about guns in the US, I suspect the Ratliff murder to spark an episode. One thing: I think the writers should change Ratliff’s buddy, the YouTube star, to a real Russian. I think Alexander Ovechkin would be perfect and it would help launch a new career for him, now that his hockey days are numbered.

2 — The Cannibal Cop:

In February 2012, Gilberto Valle, a New York City police officer, had a series of e-mails with a New Jersey mechanic named Michael Vanhise. The topic was one of kidnapping, rape, murder, and cannibalism. Vanhise wanted Valle to deliver a young woman to him so that they might both enjoy her body. Valle agreed, for a payment of $5000, payable on delivery, but warned Vanhise that she might be unconscious when delivered. He wouldn’t rape her, though, he wanted to be “professional”. Valle’s wife discovered the e-mail correspondence (which also included discussion of eating her) and turned it over to the police. Valle’s trial is due to begin February 25; Vanhise has only now been charged. (The defense says that this was a move to prevent him from testifying for Valle.)

Valle from his FaceBook page.

Both Valle and Vanhise are members of the Vore community which likes to talk about eating people. They met on line in a Vore discussion group and things proceeded from there. Vore folk, when questioned, say that it is all fantasy and that aren’t interested in pain or torture, just sex resulting in cannibalism. The idea that this was all a fantasy and play-acting is Valle’s defense.

Valle’s bail hearing. Bail was denied.

Valle’s public defender has shown pictures taken from Vore sources to prospective jurors. The pictures included a photo of a bound naked woman with an apple in her mouth and some graphic artistic renditions. Those who became too squicked out to continue were excused from jury duty.

Vore picture (the model has fantasies of being eaten) used by Valle’s defense to eliminate jurors.

Now, this defense of fantasy might play in New York, I don’t know. But, in Canada, there was the case a few years ago of a guy who had written some pedophilia fantasies on his computer (never published, IIRC) and was convicted of owning child pornography. And there is the case of Mike Diana, the Florida comics artist who was convicted of obscenity and forbidden from drawing. Now you may say that there is a difference here, that these two guys were convicted of pornography and obscenity charges only, but Diana’s prosecutor made a big point that Diana’s work might lead a person to become a serial killer. So: thought = deed.

Except that isn’t true in American jurisprudence, or at least it wasn’t true, before the Patriot Act. See, there is lots of grist for the Law and Order mill here — a lot of room (well, maybe five minutes after commercials and stuff) to discuss whether or not people should be convicted of fantasizing. It might be worth noting one on-line article defending Vore fantasy that exempted pedophilia from acceptability — it’s okay to fantasize about murdering and eating someone, but not okay to think about sex with children.

Anyway, the real Valle case will probably play out differently. Valle used his police credentials to obtain confidential info about a young woman that he stalked — that’s five years right there — and he was seen hanging about the places where two potential victims worked. And there are the e-mails and the offer of money and… However this works out on Law and Order, Valle is going to get locked up.

3 — The Rogue Policeman:

Back in 2008, Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner witnessed an incident where another officer kicked a suspect — a schizophrenic man — and reported her. The internal case was dismissed by the LAPD, but Dorner was not satisfied; he knew that there was a DVD of the incident that had been provided to a hearing. Dorner’s persistence got him fired in 2009 and he became a very bitter man. He accused the LAPD of racism and excessive use of force.

Christopher Dorner.

Everything was quiet until February 3 of this year when the bodies of Monica Quan and her fiancé were found in a parking garage. A long manifesto that Dorner posted on line contained the words: “I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own, i’m terminating yours”. It is believed that these words were aimed at Quan’s father who defended the police officer that Dorner accused of assault. Dorner’s description went out to California police officers and, a few days later, a patrol car was following a truck believed to be driven by Dorner, when the driver opened fire on the police car, wounding one officer. A second police car was shot up by Dorner shortly afterward and one man was killed, another is seriously wounded. After some misadventures, including an attempt to steal a boat, Dorner escaped into Big Bear Park. A huge task force is hunting him down as I write.

Police car shot up by Dorner.

In his manifesto, Dorner swore to confront police officers with “unconventional and asymmetrical warfare”. The authorities have taken this to heart.  Some police spokespersons have stated that this is a War on Police: “This is a vendetta against all Southern California law enforcement,” said one and another remarked: “Of course he knows what he’s doing; we trained him. He was also a member of the Armed Forces… It is extremely worrisome and scary.” Scary indeed! Officers pursuing Dorner have already shot up two vehicles containing innocent civilians, one is in serious condition. This is what asymmetrical warfare is all about: goad your enemy into over-zealous responses.

It is unlikely that Dorner will live through this ordeal — in his manifesto he says that his life ended when he was dismissed from the police force and that he does not expect to survive. But in the TV show, he has to live so that we can have the trial and legal manuverings. The defense will claim Diminished Responsiblity because of being unjustly fired (it will turn out that Dorner was telling the truth about the schizophrenic being kicked) or maybe because of service-induced PTSD and, say! when a vet accuses the police force of a culture of violence, well, he probably knows what he’s talking about. Of course, Law and Order always has a hard time dealing with issues of police violence, so this may be an episode that we don’t see.

Food for Thought: Fun with Bacon

Baconhenge with french toast stones. [ via Anticraft ]

 

Bacon bouquet. [via ThisIsWhyYou'reFat ]

Porkgasm: bacon wrapped sausage stuffed with sausages, etc. [via Porktopia ]

 

Bacon potrait of Kevin Bacon created by artist Jason Mecier. [via LaughingSquid ]

Bacon mug filled with cheddar cheese. [via ThisIsWhyYou'reFat ]

The Meatship, before and after cooking [via Supersized Meals ]

 

Bacon and chicken narwhal created by Christopher G. [via Incoherent Ramblings ]

 

Baconocopia filled with 20 hot italian sausages, 1 pound of scrapple, 4 pork chops, 1 black pudding sausage and 1 white pudding sausage, pepperoni and salami. [via ThisIsWhyYou'reFat]

Bacon van Gogh by Becky Stern with how-to-make-it instructions at Makezine .

Bacon Demon. One of several entries in a Neatorama contest.

Bacon Skyrim mask also from Neatorama

 

Bacon Mobius strip. [via Peeping Monster]

Good Movies: The Sunshine Makers (1935)

The Sunshine Makers is a seven-and-a-half minute animated feature produced by the famous Van Beuren Studios and distributed by RKO in 1935. You can watch it all on YouTube. I’m going to do a synopsis so you can watch first, read after, or vice-versa or whatever. I’m not telling you what to do. That’s one of the lessons here. More on that later.

The cartoon opens on a dwarf village at dawn. The smiling dwarves (and they are always smiling) rise and greet the sun. In fact, they hail the sun and sing: “Hail your majesty, Hail your majesty, Hail your majesty the Sun!” (I will not parse the facisto-monarchism here.)

So these are sun-worshippers? Not exactly. They never get naked and sun-bathe, for instance, (though that would have been a Real Classic Cartoon). These dwarves are sun-product manufacturers. They suck the sunlight out of the sky, bottle it, and then consume the resulting concoction. This, it seems, makes them happy and installs a permanent grin on their faces.

So, one of the sunshine delivery dwarves is going along his merry way singing: “Sunshine! Sunshine! How I like the dear old golden…” when Zing! a top-hatted creature shoots an arrow at him. The quick witted dwarf hurls a bottle of sunshine at the dark creature who runs away, trailing light from a sunny flesh wound to his coat.

Now we see a village of top-hatted, blue clad beings. They are singing: “We’re happy when we’re sad. We’re always feeling bad.” Right away we get the dichotomy here. Now you get to choose sides.

The guy who has been hit by light runs into the village where everyone runs from him in terror as he flashes sunlight from his coat. They lock themselves away and shun him. Finally, the lit-up guy sheds his stained/sunned coat and buries it to hide the sunlight. Then he sounds the tocsin! The Sad guys mobilize!

The Sad guys come running out of their houses. They load insecticide sprayers from a nasty dark swamp and charge out against the Happy dwarves. They spray bleak gases before them that darken the earth and shrivel plants.

But the Happy dwarves fight back! They launch sunshine artillery and drop sunlight bombs on their foe, smiling all the while. When the Sad guys are hit they revert to infancy, giggling and babbling — but they are now Happy!

Finally, the dwarf assault reaches the Sad guys’ village. Now they grab the Sad guys and dunk them in sunshine. (I will not parse the baptismal element here.)  ”I don’t want to be happy!” says one heroic Blue guy, “I want to be sad!” No way, say the dwarves, and they force-feed him sunshine which lights up his gloomy innards.

At the end of the cartoon, the Happy dwarves dance with the Blue, formerly Sad, guys who are now glowing with inner Sun. “The End. This entertainment brought to you by Borden’s” says the final credit. Borden’s? Yes, a dairy company commissioned this cartoon which shows sunlight being stored in milk bottles and delivered door-to-door like milk used to be (ask your grandmother).

The Sunshine Makers was made by Ted Eshbaugh, an animation pioneer and the guy who first put color in cartoons. Eshbaugh had his own company, based in New York, which was apparently hired by the Van Beuren organization, the executive producers of the cartoon, to handle the Borden’s contract — at least, that’s the way I piece it together.

Ted Eshbaugh, 1932, from a Modern Mechanix article.

Interpretations of this film differ even among people who like it. In the IMDB reviews I see someone cheering, “Yes! Because nobody wants to be sad.” This is a Happy person response. And there is a review that says, “This is all corporate brain-washing meant to get kids to drink milk!” That is a Sad person. Then there are folks who wonder just what was in those milk bottles. Ambien, perhaps? So, ’60s fans of this film might go “Sunshine, eh?” Nudge nudge, wink wink. And other folks might think of Soma in Huxley’s Brave New World or the Mood Organ in P.K.Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (no, not BladefuckingRunner, I’ll rant about that another day). In other words, does society have the right to demand correct emotional responses from its members, or is that a soul-crushing concept? Of course, right now, children as young as three years of age are being given drugs to make them more agreeable.

from Aaron Quinn’s The Sunshine Makers. Talk about your Prozac Nation!

There’s a cartoon homage by Aaron Quinn to Ted Eshbaugh’s work, also called The Sunshine Makers that inadvertantly (I think) makes this point with smiling robotic workers going to their shift in the Sunshine Factory, emblazoned with a big smiley face logo.

But, of course,  by saying “Let people be sad if they want”, I’ve put myself into the Sad camp. People are going to say things like, “I bet you think Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful is a big crock of steaming kitsch!” And I respond, “Well, it’s not as bad as Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried, but it comes out of the same crock, yes.” Sometimes being Happy is just Wrong. But, hey! Take whatever message you want from this marvelous cartoon.

Here’s a final word on Happy as what psychiatrists call Inappropriate Affect:

Click to make much much bigger. [ "Let's Be Happy" by Steve Stiles from Snarf #5, © Denis Kitchen, 1974]

Cephalophores

Today, via a wonderful Wikipedia entry, I learned about cephalophores, who had not entered my consciousness before. A cephalophore is a saint who is depicted as carrying his or her own head.

St.Denis relief on the Cathedral of Notre Dame

Generally, this is represents a holy person martyred by decapitation. After the execution, the de-capped body picks up the head which proceeds to speak or pray.

“Martyrdom of St. Denis” in the Pantheon

The most famous of cephalophores is St. Denis of Paris who walked six miles carrying his severed head which recited a sermon the entire time. It might be worth mentioning that Denis is the patron saint of both Paris and headache sufferers.

There are many cephalophores; France alone boasts one hundred and thirty-four. Perhaps the French prediliction for cephalophores reflects some Gallic racial memory of ancestral Celts who were notorious head-hunters.

Celtic door arch at Roquepertuse with niches for heads.

Severed heads that speak are a folk-lore motif catalogued by Stith Thompson. They appear in Greek myth and Aristotle was very concerned that his readers understand that this was not possible. No, he said, it cannot happen.

St. Solange. Her severed head called out Jesus’ name three times.

One speechless cephalophore was St.Valerie of Limoges. Apparently, Valerie and her mother converted to Christianity while Valerie’s fiancé was out of town. When he returned to find that the engagement had been broken off and that Valerie had given all her property to the Church (including her intended dowry, no doubt), he became very upset and dispatched a servant to kill her. The servant cut off her head, Valerie picked it up and ascended to Heaven in a ball of light, accompanied by singing angels.

St. Valerie’s martyrdom depicted on an enamelled reliquary from Limoges.

Gone to glory or not, Valerie left some earthly remains which were disinterred in 985 AD and distributed in numerous reliquaries which just happened to be a major Limoges product in medieval times.

Different styles of head carriage: Saints Gemolus, Aphrodise, Miliau, Denis again.

The Wikipedia article notes that the artist depicting a cephalophore is presented with a unique problem: where do you put the halo? But there is another artistic concern: how does the beheaded handle his detached cranium? Some hold it close to their chest, some thrust forward on outstretched palms, some carry it to one side, possibly tucked underneath an arm. Clutching it by the hair and dangling it from an outstretched arm is possible, but really makes the halo problem more difficult, I think.

St.Nicasius at Reims Cathedral [photo by Geert Schneider on flickr.com]

Then there is the statue of cephalphore Saint Nicasius at Rheims. He holds his head in an over/under two-handed grip, thrusting it slightly forward with a slight tilt of the noggin. His halo is behind his neck stump where two small beings, possibly other saints, hold a cloth on which are displayed their own heads, thus creating a superb display of cephalophoria.