GRAPHIC NOVELS: SOPHISTICATED COMICS

The world is constantly changing, no surprise there. Few things remain constant. Everything, politics, business, banking, technology, even sex and marriage, are no longer that which they once were, those concepts that we tenuously cling to as “truths to be self-evident … [and our] unalienable rights”. Works of fiction, please note the avoidance of the word “novel”, are not immune. Today there’s a new kid on the block, “The Graphic Novel.”

In the Darwinian scheme of things man first communicated with grunts and sounds which evolved into words. The words of rudimentary ideas were depicted by pictures etched on cavern walls, the first recorded form of communication, followed by picture alphabets, then real alphabets and then books. In the history of the written word, pictures, non verbal images, from hieroglyphics to illustrated medieval manuscripts [“Belle Heures”, commissioned by the Duc de Berry, circa 1408/9] to glossy coffee table books [“Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001] coexisted and supported ideas expressed by mere letters. They certainly added another dimension.

Click to read more ...

RATKO MLADIC: THIS WEEK'S MONSTER DU JOUR

Last Wednesday in a bland Hague courtroom furnished with cheap high school cafeteria furniture and a gray industrial carpet the war crimes trial of Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of Srbenica”, started almost seventeen years after the fact.

Gone was his florid face, the verbal bluster and cocky demeanor. Here was a stooped hollow cheeked husk of a man in too large a suit sitting in the dock. The only colors in the proceedings were the judge’s blood red crimson robes, the lawyers’ funereal black ones in stark contrast with the United Nations’ washed out blue and white logo of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Today's Monster of the Week faces justice. There will be others, tomorrow, next week and next year. These monsters-to-be will be Libyan, Somali, Egyptian, Israeli or even American, depending how events unfold and how the world media perceives the truth. It is easy to demonize a person, accuse him of war crimes for acts of insane violence, and condemn him but never the roots, the causes of the conflicts that precipitated them.  

Click to read more ...

WAR LORD DOWN

Charles Taylor, Liberia’s former President was convicted last week by a special United Nations tribunal established to try crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone’s bloody civil war. Taylor was the first Head of State indicted since World War II. While acquitted of command responsibility he was found guilty of aiding and abetting in death and blood diamonds. Taylor was just another war lord, coming hard on the heels of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, a war lord that I once met.

Liberia was America’s abolitionists’ effort to create a home for freed black slaves. In fact it was the first African sub Saharan country, having declared independence in 1847. Since its inception it was corruptly but peacefully ruled by a small number of Libero-Americans, with a nod and a wink of support from Washington.  

My introduction to Liberia came when a faulty Pratt & Whitney engine forced a landing in Roberts Field, the country’s only airport. In 1976 Monrovia, the capital was a picture perfect African city. The luxurious Intercontinental Hotel sat high on a hill; just below it was the Free Mason Lodge, an imposing white marble Temple. Broad Street, chaotic with traffic, ran from the harbor past the Temple up that hill.  The “Cash Madams” in their colorful dresses and head gear tended stalls in the open air markets selling anything and everything. Kids and dogs were under foot, boom boxes played deafening afro rhythms. It was a nice, colorful kind of place.

Click to read more ...

THE EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLAR MISUNDERSTANDING

Updated on Sunday, April 29, 2012 by Deyan Brashich

The movie Risky Business has the 1983 price for sex soaring to $300 and Lana the hooker graduating to “escort” status. Joel, the hero, gets taken for a ride when Lana’s pimp Guido burglarizes his home holding the furniture at ransom in retaliation to Joel competing in the sex business. The ransom is paid, the furniture returned, Lana will keep on seeing Joel who is on his way to a Princeton education, misunderstanding resolved. “Time a ya life, huh kid?”  

Now in real life things are different. David Chaney, a dumb Secret Service agent, picks up Dania, an escort, not a prostitute, in La Perla, the notorious strip club/casino in Cartagena, Columbia. The negotiated price for sex is now $800, reasonable enough considering inflation. The morning after David offers $30 for the lady’s services. Mind you this is in 2012 when gas is at $4.28 and not 1951 when it was $0.19 a gallon. You wonder at the minimum IQ required for Secret Service agents entrusted in protecting the life of the President of the United States.

A compromise was reached at $225 for sexual favors, but that was only the beginning. The early morning [it seems that the Caribe Hotel, the scene of the tryst, has a standing policy of 6:30 am wake up calls for visiting prostitutes] confrontation and hallway commotion embroils eleven more Secret Service agents and ten additional US military personnel similarly ill engaged, all this in the age of the internet and instant messaging.

Click to read more ...

MODERN ART IS SUBJECT TO UNITED NATIONS LAW

Constantin Brancusi was the shining star in the constellation of Twentieth Century sculpture. There were others, Henry Moore, Auguste Rodin, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Matisse, Ferdinand Botero, but he was truly unique. He was the first to make a bold departure from the earlier greats, Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini and yes, from the works of Auguste Rodin. By doing so he made his work an integral part of Romania’s cultural heritage.

Declaring any work of art or for that matter any artifact part of a nation’s cultural heritage is fraught with danger and unforeseen consequences. In 1970 a well-meaning United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] adopted the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Romania signed and ratified the Convention in 1993 as did France in 1997. It is the definition of “cultural property” that gives one pause:

Click to read more ...