an interdisciplinary journal
the culture issue
fall 2005
a·na·me·sa: Greek. adv. between, among, within
Fiction/Poetry Editor: Mayelly Moreno
Non-Fiction/Photography Editor: Rachel Shields
Administrative Editor: Marika Josephson
•Fiction Selection Committee: Shannon Barbour, Jonah Cardillo,
Laura Cave, Yael Korat, Karen Rosenthall, Nina Rothberg
•Non-Fiction Selection Committee: Alana Glaser, Kimberly Harris,
Laura Lane, William J. Levay, Stacy Redd
•Copy-Editing: Shannon Barbour, Jonah Cardillo, Laura Lane, Andrea
Laurencell, Karen Rosenthall, Gabriel Zinn
•Proofreading: Kelly Ferry, Susan Hodges, Stacy Redd
•Production: Yael Korat, Marika Josephson, Andrea Luarencell, Elek
Miller, Mayelly Moreno, Rachel Shields
•Cover Design: Yael Korat.
•Cover Photo: Detail of “Liberty” by Fernando Perez Villalon
Anamesa would like to extend special thanks to Robin Nagle, Dean
Catharine R. Stimpson, and George Yúdice for their continued support and
enthusiasm for this project. Thanks also to Maritza E. Colón and Aminata
Diop, Brian di Feo, and to the Studio for Digital Projects and Research for
use of their facilities.
Anamesa is a biannual publication funded by the following entities of New
York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Science: the Dean’s Office,
the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the John W. Draper
Master’s Program in the Humanities and Social Thought, and the Graduate
Student Council.
Correspondence: anamesa.journal@nyu.edu
Website: www.anamesa.org
Printer: Sterling-Pierce, East Rockaway, New York
Now accepting submissions for the Violence Issue, Spring 2006.
The views expressed are those of the individual authors and do not
necessarily refelct those of the Editors, the Editorial Board, or our
sponsors. Reproduction of material is allowed by permission only. All
writings and images remain the copyright of their authors.
Anamesa
blur boundaries, re-imagine links, explore the between
Fall 2005 | Volume 3 | Issue 2
The Culture Issue
2
Editors’ Note
3
The Color of Transcendence
by Amber Kelsey
74
Untitled
By Seema Srivastava
50
The Cultural Profit Gap: The Need
for Public Funding in the NonProfitable Arts
By Kevin Sheldon
39
Poinsettias
By Seema Srivastava
45
En el Bronx
By Delilah Martinez
15
Night Terrors
By Kate Lim
Essays
61
20
Is the Magic Gone?: Weber’s
“Disenchantment of the World”
and its Implications for Art in
Today’s World
By Kristina Karin Shull
Roots, Rock, Rebbe: Matisyahu
and the Cultural Version
By William J. Levay
Poetry
Photography
16
Four Photos
By Daniel Rosenberg
76
Bud Light
By William J. Levay
Memoir
41
Boogie Rican Pride
By Delilah Martinez
49
Liberty
By Fernando Perez Villalon
77
Correction
80
Contributors
Editors’ Note
The mission of Anamesa has been to blur boundaries and explore what
we find in between them. The work of one of our frequent contributors,
William J. Levay (featured on page 21), pursues the impact of cultural
sampling in hip-hop and reggae. As Levay explores in this issue, it is difficult to sample art without running into multitudinous ethical issues (not
solely from the standpoint of copyright protection—but from placing
cultural expectations onto other people’s cultural heritages.) However, as
Levay finds, it is sampling from the Afro-Caribbean tradition that allows
one Jewish Hasid reggae artist his most satisfying mode of expression.
The blurring of cultural boundaries is an issue that comes at a particularly relevant time. In France we have recently witnessed some of the
first loud clamorings for cultural recognition in African and Arab immigrants who have been silent, and muffled, and ever-present in Europe for
decades. We have also witnessed the violent extremes to which human
beings will go in order to preserve and disperse their cultural identities.
As New Yorkers, living with immigration is as natural to us as breathing. Especially when we can go to our local Chinese buffet and load our
plates with Japanese, American, and Italian food all in one sitting—or
count the number of languages spoken on a subway ride from the Bronx
to Coney Island. We have been immersed into an intimate understanding
of what it means to mix cultures and blur those once-upon-a-time-wewere-all-immigrants-here boundaries. But just because we can eat 99-
cent chow mein does not necessarily mean that we completely understand the heritage of China or the life of Asian-Americans. And so we
continue to push the boundaries of our knowledge of other cultures,
not just for what those cultures provide in tolerance and understanding, but for the mirror it provides us to look back upon ourselves.
Marika Josephson, Mayelly Moreno & Rachel Shields
2 Anamesa
The Color of Transcendence
By Amber Kelsey
In the two soft-edged and rounded rectangles of Mark
Rothko’s matured style there is an enveloping magic,
which conveys to receptive observers a sense of being in
the midst of greatness. It is the color of course.
—Duncan Phillips
Celebrating the death of civilization…[Rothko’s] open
rectangles suggest the rims of flame in containing fires,
or the entrance to tombs, like the doors to the dwellings of
the dead in Egyptian pyramids, behind which the sculptors
kept the kings ‘alive’ for eternity in the Ka. But unlike
the doors of the dead, which were meant to shut out the
living from the place of absolute might, even of patrician
death, these paintings—open sarcophagi—moodily dare,
and thus invite the spectator to enter their Orphic cycles.
Their color might be death and resurrection in classical,
not Christian mythology: the artist descending to Hades to
find the Eurydice of his vision. The door to the tomb opens
for the artist in search of his muse.
—Peter Selz
The “enveloping magic” Duncan Phillips appropriately uses to describe the experience of viewing a Mark Rothko painting suggests a
preternatural quality inherent in Rothko’s work. Indeed, Rothko himself often alluded to a life force embedded in his canvasses that extended beyond material boundaries. “My art is not abstract,” Rothko
said, “it lives and breathes.”1 Whether this breath resides in a sacred
realm, which Peter Selz seems to be suggesting in his above quote, or
in the exchange between the viewer and the painting, Rothko’s work
transcends both time and space. Color is the undeniable medium for
this transcendence. And, while Rothko’s canon of work ranged from
themes of myth and symbolism, to landscapes and human forms, it
is his classical paintings, his “colored fields,” that this essay seeks to
The Culture Issue 3
address. Moreover, it is the ritualistic qualities of his color-fields, the
metaphysics of Rothko that I mean to explore. Specifically, I intend
to show how Rothko’s use of scale, distance and color all lend to
the mysterious glow of his canvases and their subsequent effect on
the viewer. Furthermore, I will use Max Weber’s argument of the
“esthetic sphere” to support the redemptive nature and irrationality
of Rothko’s work yet dispute his assertion that art and religion are
competing spheres standing in dynamic tension with one another. In
order to do so, I will use the Rothko Chapel as an example of the integration these two spheres, a space which has effectively transcended
the boundaries of ethics and esthetic.
SCALE, DISTANCE AND COLOR
Mark Rothko was a leading pioneer within the movement of American Painters known as the Abstract Expressionists. His artistic career spanned four decades and evolved stylistically from a figurative repertoire to an abstract style “rooted in the active relationship
of the observer to the painting.”2 Rothko’s color formations, which
dominated the later years of his artistic career, are the paintings for
which he is best remembered. Coined “color-field painting,” this current in Abstract Expressionism aimed to uncover the emotional force
of “pure color.”3 Pure color, for the color-field artists, was thought
to “express invisible states of mind.”4 Rothko’s desire was to create
portals, through the use of color and canvas, into the vast recess of
the human psyche. Akin to altar-places, his canvasses are meant to
force the viewer into deep contemplation, to achieve what he termed
“spiritual communion.”5
To achieve such levels of communion, Rothko used large
4 Anamesa
canvases, sometimes exceeding 300 centimeters in height. The proportions of his paintings are intended to absorb the viewer so as to
transcend any spatial boundary. Rothko’s approach to scale was reflective of this attitude. Characterizing the relationship between picture and onlooker as a “consummate experience…a true marriage
of minds,” Rothko used this same philosophy in his approach, as
painter, to his canvasses.6 The large proportions of his paintings are
not intended as some grandiose statement. Rather, they were a way
of placing himself directly in the experience. To quote Rothko: “The
reason I paint them…is precisely because I want to be very intimate
and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your
experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with
a reducing glass. However, you paint the larger picture, you are in it.
It isn’t something you command!”7 Forty-five centimeters was considered by Rothko as the ideal viewing distance for his pieces. From
this vicinity, the viewer could “overstep the very limits of human
existence”8 and experience what Robert Rosenblum calls “a quasireligious state of awe.”9
The viewing distance recommended by Rothko has been examined within the context of its psychological effects by art critic and
painter Andrew Forge. Forge suggests that by standing close enough
to a sufficiently large painting, “the edges are grayed off to one’s
peripheral vision.”10 The painting then “takes on a presence in its surface that renders internal relationships irrelevant.”11 Both “color and
scale begin a dialogue,” which then opens the door into an “ internal
realm.”12 Gestalt psychologists have also studied the effects of “totalfield viewing,” claiming that the brightness of the surface is increased
“many hundred times over” at such a distance.13 Rothko was adamant
about presenting his works at a range that would enhance their perceived luminosity. He would often seat himself in front of one of his
The Culture Issue 5
works, subjecting it to his “habitual hypnotic stare,” and scrutinize
the effects so as to make sure it was a reflection of his intention.14
Like proportion and distance, Rothko used of color as an emotional device, an appeal to the “psyche of the sensitive viewer who
is free of conventional patterns of thought.”15 The year 1946 marked
a decisive shift in Rothko’s style. Experimenting with biometric
masses of color, Rothko’s “multiforms” became the bridge that led
to his classical abstract paintings. By 1949, these “amorphous color
spots” were reduced to monochromatic color blocks overlaid symmetrically onto the canvas.16 By separating the color blocks from the
edges of his paintings, Rothko created the impression of hazy fields
of color hovering in front of an obscure background.17 While Rothko
employed the whole of the color spectrum, he tended toward particular hues during each of his phases. Prior to the mid-1950’s Rothko
painted in bright shades of red, orange, and yellow. He later began
to employ more subdued colors like gray, maroon, blues, and black,
which some critics have attributed to his deteriorating emotional
state. Through the contrast of color, Rothko was able to strengthen
the effect of his pieces. Each hue was meant to elicit an emotive response, a premise about which he himself was adamant. Debunking
the myth that his concern was one of form and its relationship to
color, Rothko explained: “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a
lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures
shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.”18
THE ROTHKO CHAPEL
Whether speaking about “spiritual communion,” “contemplation,”
6 Anamesa
or “transcendence,” the metaphysics of Rothko’s lexicon implies a
religious quality to his work. It seems only fitting then, that he enthusiastically agree to a commission of large wall murals for a chapel at
St. Thomas Catholic University in Houston, Texas. The series consisted of 14 large-format paintings, in three triptychs, as well as five
individual works. Considering the project his “most important artistic
statement,” Rothko completely immersed himself in the construction
of the chapel, as well as his now-famous Chapel Murals.19
Rothko’s decision to do the chapel commission, to merge
the secular with the sacred, stands in direct contrast to Max Weber’s
notion that art and religion inhabit separate, autonomous spheres, oftentimes competing with one another. In From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology, Weber argues that “there is a tension between the ethic of
religious brotherliness and the spheres of esthetic and erotic life.”20
Esthetics, according to Weber, has become suspect by ethical religions on account of art’s ability to provide “a salvation from the routines of everyday life, and especially from the increasing pressures
of theoretical and practical rationalism.”21 Rothko’s art is indeed an
attempt to transgress the rational and offer a type of salvation for
his viewers. However, the construction of the Rothko Chapel defies
Weber’s assertion that art and religion are competing powers. Instead,
the space created by Rothko in the Houston Chapel was meant as a
channel for religious experience, an area where viewers could go to
experience states of “spiritual grandeur.”22
Rothko’s approach to the use of space (an effect that creates
an environment whereby the viewer can dialogue with the paintings
in a religious context) is further evidence of his ability to overcome
the “strong polarity” between ethical religion and the sphere of art.23
Contrary to Weber’s assertion that art, as viewed by religion, “becomes an ‘idolatry,’ a competing power, and a deceptive bedazzle-
The Culture Issue 7
ment,”24 the Houston Chapel was instead presented by Rothko as
the ideal setting to “meet, create and transform an audience one by
one.”25 To do so, he chose an octagonal structure, which would enable
the congregation to be encircled by his murals. Light, a critical element in the presentation of his pieces, was to be provided by a cupola
in the center of the chapel. A filtering effect, provided by reams of
light fabric, was meant to create a meditative stillness that enabled
the viewer to then commune with his pieces. Furthermore, Rothko’s
oversized murals were spaced in such a way that, similar to Stations
of the Cross, the observer could experience each piece as a sort of
emotional progression. The central mural, a monochrome triptych,
was flanked on either side by a pair of triptychs with four individual
paintings interspersed between the “altar-pieces”. A further individual mural was placed directly opposite the central triptych.26
In their essay, “Rothko’s Dark Paintings: Tragedy and Void,”
art historians Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty argue that Rothko’s decision to do the chapel murals demonstrated an “immense effort of will” at a time when “secular formalism” dominated critical
thinking and “post-Christian secularism devalued religious belief.”27
They continue by suggesting that the chapel series is Rothko’s “most
effective affirmation of his work as something beyond or outside art,
and an attack on art that resides comfortably within that category.”28
Novak and O’Doherty’s assertion of Rothko’s decision to place his
art within a religious context and thus defy the dominant current in
critical thought—that of art residing in a separate, secular sphere,
is rather interesting when explored in light of Weber’s conclusions.
While all three author’s suggest that art and religion inhabit separate
spheres (however Novak and O’Doherty admit to Rothko’s ability to
transcend these spheres), Weber argues that it is religion’s suspicion
of art, on account of art’s redemptive capabilities, that distances the
8 Anamesa
two. Novak and O’Doherty’s assertion is actually the reverse—art,
residing in a post-Christian secularist realm, devalues religion. And,
while the two essays were written with roughly eight-five years between them, thus addressing different social climates and audiences,
both are referring to what Weber terms as “a strong polarity” between
the two spheres.29 What makes the Rothko Chapel “a complete success” is that through the mergence of these two spheres, Rothko was
able to transcend the boundaries of the sacred and the secular.30 How
he achieved this, I would argue, rests beyond the mere physical intersection of these two spheres. Rather, it is the transcendent nature
of Rothko’s art, his ability to present his work as something beyond
the physical, that renders it successful. In fact, visitors to the chapel
often remarked on the sublime quality of his murals. Franz Meyer
felt as though he was “getting a direct glimpse of the Divine” when
confronted with Rothko’s murals.31 Dominique de Menil, patron of
the chapel, remarked during her dedication speech, “We are cluttered
with images and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the
Divine.”32
REDEMPTION THROUGH CLARITY
Rothko’s dedication to the transcendent nature of his art can be traced
back to his own philosophical beliefs. In their manifesto on aesthetic
beliefs, Rothko and fellow Modernist Adolph Gottlieb present five
basic premises that define their work. First and foremost is the idea
that “art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk.”33 They go on to assert
that this world is “of the imagination…and violently opposed to common sense.”34 Thus, in their rejection of common sense, Rothko and
The Culture Issue 9
Gottlieb support Weber’s analysis of art as an “inner-worldly, irrational salvation.”35 Furthermore, by presenting a manifesto reflective of
their belief systems, the artists affirm Weber’s notion of art becoming
a “cosmos of more and more independent values which exist in their
own right.”36 Hence, while Weber’s theory on “the esthetic sphere”—
primarily how it stands in direct tension with the religious sphere, is
disproved by the Rothko Chapel, his assertion of art as an “irrational
salvation” finds support in Rothko’s own philosophical beliefs.
A similar cohesion of ideas can be found in Rothko’s reverence
for instrumental music, considered by Weber the “purest” of all art
forms.37 Rothko often remarked on his desire to elevate painting to
the “level and poignancy of music and poetry.”38 Music, an everlasting passion for Rothko, was a means of universal communication.
Rothko applied this same sensibility to his paintings. This marriage
between music and painting can be traced back to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whom Rothko admired deeply. Nietzsche,
like Rothko, believed that music was the true dialect of emotion. In
The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche concludes:
Music alone allows us to understand the delight felt at the
annihilation of the individual. Each single instance of such
annihilation will clarify for us the abiding phenomenon
of Dionysiac art, which expresses the omnipotent will
behind individualization, external life continuing beyond
all appearance and in spite of destruction.39
Rothko’s worldview was largely shaped by Nietzsche’s philosophy of Dionysiac art, as expressed above, and the Apollonian will
of form. Tragedy, to the philosopher, was the synthesis of these two
poles. Rothko incorporated the visual annihilation of human form to
achieve the clarity that music, in Nietzsche’s sense, was able to expound. In his own writings, Rothko explains this transgression: “The
10 Anamesa
progression of a painter’s work, as it travels from point to point, will
be towards clarity.”40 Weber similarly describes the “explosion of
form” as a means of “absorption into the ‘All-oneness’ which lies
behind any kind of determination and form.”41 Thus, for both Weber
and Rothko, the annihilation of form is an attempt at transcendence.
Yet, for Weber, such aspirations are delegated to the “mystic experience,” the “most irrational form of religious behavior.”42 I would
argue that perhaps it is the “mystic experience,” in the Weber sense,
that best situates Rothko’s work in the sociologist’s theory of the “esthetic sphere.” And, while Rothko was able to present such “experiences” in a variety of contexts, both religious and secular, it was the
viewer’s response to his paintings that lent them their true power.
Rothko himself stated “a picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eye of the sensitive observer. It dies by the
same token.”43
ART AS EXPERIENCE
While Mark Rothko’s physical presence is no longer with us, the
“pulsing spiritual life” of his canvasses continues to awe and inspire.44 Rothko remarks that the “most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles.”45 I concur; Rothko’s ritualistic use of scale, distance, and most
importantly, color, were tantamount to the production of his “miracles.” Believing that art is “an anecdote of the spirit,” Rothko was
determined to use his work as a means of transcending the limits of
human experience.46 Thus, Max Weber’s assertion that “art provides
a salvation from the routines of everyday life,” can find much support
in Rothko’s personal ambitions and philosophical beliefs. Where the
The Culture Issue 11
artist departs from the sociologist is in his ability to merge the spheres
of art and religion within the context of the Rothko Chapel and thus
defy Weber’s argument that the two spheres are in “insoluble and
irreconcilable…opposition.”47 Finally, I would argue that it is in the
experience of the mystic, “the irrational of all religious behavior,” according to Weber, that Rothko is best understood. In fact he himself
admitted, “A painting is not about experience. It is an experience.”48
Notes
1
Rothko, as quoted in Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Mark Rothko: Pictures as
Drama (Bonn: Taschen, 2003), 50.
2
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 7.
3
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 10.
4
George Segal, Interview with Mark Rosenthal, Mark Rothko (Bryfogle 371-374), 372.
5
Rothko, as quoted in Jeffrey Weiss, “Rothko’s Unknown Space,”
in Mark Rothko. Ed. Tam Curry Bryfogle (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1998, 302-329), 307.
6
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 7.
7
Rothko, as quoted in Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, “Material and Immaterial Surface: The Paintings of Mark Rothko,” in Mark Rothko. Ed.
Tam Curry Bryfogle (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1998, 302-329), 284.
8
Baal-Teshuva, 46.
9
Rosenblum, quoted in Weiss, 305.
10
Forge as quoted in Gage, 262.
11
Forge as quoted in Gage, 262.
12
Forge as quoted in Gage, 262.
13
Forge as quoted in Gage, 262.
12 Anamesa
14
Novak, Barbara, and Brian O’Doherty. “Rothko’s Dark Paintings:
Tragedy and Void,” in Mark Rothko. Ed. Tam Curry Bryfogle (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998, 264-281), 268.
15
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 91.
16
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 45.
17
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 45.
18
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 57.
19
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 73.
20
Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Ed. and trans.
H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press,
1978), 341.
21
Weber, Essays in Sociology, 342.
22
Baal-Teshuva, 79.
23
Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, Ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1978), 607.
24
Weber, Essays in Sociology, 343.
25
Novak and O’Doherty, 272.
26
Baal-Teshuva, 73-74.
27
Novak and O’Doherty, 274.
28
Novak and O’Doherty, 274.
29
Weber, Economy, 607.
30
Novak and O’Doherty, 273.
31
Baal-Teshuva, 74.
32
Baal-Teshuva, 75.
33
Baal-Teshuva, 37.
34
Baal-Teshuva, 37.
35
Weber, Essays, 342.
36
Weber, Essays, 342.
37
Weber, Essays, 342.
The Culture Issue 13
38
Rothko, as quoted in Novak and O’Doherty, 266.
Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of
Morals. Trans. Francis Golffing (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1956),
101-102.
40
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 38.
41
Weber, Essays, 324.
42
Weber, Essays, 342.
43
Rothko, as quoted in Mancusi-Ungaro, 300.
44
Baal-Teshuva, 83.
45
Rothko, as quoted in Mancusi-Ungaro, 284.
46
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 39.
47
Weber, Economy, 609.
48
Rothko, as quoted in Baal-Teshuva, 57.
39
14 Anamesa
Night Terrors
by Kate Lim
I.
My grandmother was the first to go.
We are in Korea circa 1951, though I haven’t been born yet.
The village has been scraped clean by winter.
I am cocooned on her back in stiff, hand-washed cotton
as she calls out three words over and over
until they become a kind of talisman against the wind: squash,
cabbage, radishes…
But the wind is a scalpel.
It cuts me from her,
a pair of wings beating
without a body.
II.
My mother and I are in a Hokusai painting
by way of the Twilight Zone.
A one-lane bridge in the clouds, the air a dazzling pear green.
In the distance, a black oval blooms into shape.
A truck is heading right for us.
There is nowhere to go (you try reversing in dreams).
It’s blood or water.
I choose water, and together we drown.
III.
And for you, my love, a Greek death.
You burn like a pomegranate in my hand
As I devour your rubies.
The Culture Issue 15
Four Photos by Daniel Rosenberg
Preparing to Paint
Emek haTzlav, Jerusalem, 2005
16 Anamesa
Nursing at the Zoo
The Culture Issue 17
Looking Through
Mendelssohn’s Glasses
18 Anamesa
Interpreting the Pergamon
The Culture Issue 19
Roots, Rock, Rebbe: Matisyahu
and the Cultural Version
By William J. Levay
The most exciting thing happening in music today is
Matisyahu.
—Carson Daly
Matisyahu is reggae’s newest and most unorthodox
luminary.
—Blender
When I first heard about Matisyahu I was sitting on a secondhand
couch in my living room, surrounded by sections of the Sunday New
York Times. Black Uhuru’s 1979 roots reggae classic Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner was on the stereo. It was late March 2004, and I
was living in State College, Pennsylvania, in a townhouse about a
mile away from Penn State’s main campus. When my college friend
and housemate Trent came downstairs and heard the music, it reminded him of a flyer he had seen downtown.
“Hey, Bill,” he said. “There’s this Hasidic Jewish guy who sings
reggae playing the Crowbar this week.”
“Interesting,” I said, as the unorthodox mental image came into
focus. Trent walked over to the dining room table, where he opened
his messenger bag and pulled out a copy of the Daily Collegian, Penn
State’s student newspaper. He turned to the Arts section and pointed
to the article. The singer was called Matisyahu and his local concert
was sponsored by Penn State’s Chabad Jewish Student Organization;
20 Anamesa
though the writer highlighted the singer’s talent, he billed the upcoming performance as a primarily Jewish event. “We hope to attract
some Jewish students who wouldn’t necessarily come to a more religious event,” Rabbi Nosson Meretsky, director of Chabad at Penn
State, was quoted as saying.1 As a reggae fan I was curious about
his sound, but not being Jewish, nor in any way connected to Jewish
student life, I was not compelled to attend the show.
Months later I was living on Staten Island and studying at New
York University. On December 11, 2004, I came across an article
in the Saturday New York Times that featured a large color photograph of Matisyahu, in full beard, fedora, wire-rimmed glasses, black
suit, and tzitzit, crouching onstage in front of a drum kit, clutching
his mic like a rapper or a dancehall deejay. I immediately connected
this striking image with the singer I had heard about several months
earlier. The New York Times writer, unlike the author of the short
Collegian piece, contextualized the artist as part of a broader alternative Jewish music scene in New York, including rappers and DJs; but
Matisyahu, singing and rapping passionately about his faith, dressed
in traditional Chabad-Lubavitch garb, was the stand-out star in more
ways than one.2 Fusing down-tempo, pulsating, bass-heavy reggae
grooves, dancehall and hip-hop sing-rapping, beat-boxing, extended
jam band guitar solos, and Hasidic wordless vocal tunes, or niggun,
Matisyahu and his band have hit upon a sound that is attracting highprofile praise and establishing Matisyahu as “more than just a novelty,” as the Associated Press announced in a recent write-up.3
The Daily Collegian article was titled, “Uncommon Denominator: Matisyahu brings unorthodox sound.” A New York Post article
declared: “Reggae singer has unorthodox roots.” The Daily News:
“An unorthodox mix: rap and religion.” Since early 2004, journalists
have been riffing on the word “orthodox” and its antonym in their
The Culture Issue 21
pieces about Matisyahu. To talk about the Lubavitcher in such terms
is an obvious yet effective play on words, as it signals some widely
felt tension between what Matisyahu represents (to others) and what
he himself claims to be representing (representin’); but with so many
news articles weighing in, the device is bordering on cliché. With that
caveat, I will proceed cautiously with my own “orthodox” riff.
Orthodox is rooted in the Greek orthos, meaning straight or right,
and doxa, meaning opinion.4 Lowercase orthodox has come to mean
“conventional,” while Orthodox signifies a religious sect that adheres
to strict doctrine, one that is more “traditional” than most. An Orthodox Jew singing reggae and rapping at bars and clubs—but not on
Friday nights—is an unorthodox notion. When we begin to consider
how Matisyahu is engaging with concepts of diaspora—the Jewish
diaspora with which he identifies, the African diaspora from which
he borrows musically—the orthodox/unorthodox tension highlights
more subtle and interesting diasporic issues than the iconic, in-yourface kind evoked by the popular press. When Matthew Miller embraced the Chabad-Lubavitch lifestyle and became Matisyahu, he
chose a path that made him an exotic Other in the eyes of a majority of Americans—Orthodox yet unorthodox. American Hasidim,
more visibly than other Jews, hold on to everyday traditions, recreating with each generation a “changing same” identity— 21st-century
American yet 18th-century Eastern European. Lubavitchers, more so
than other Hasidim, engage in outreach programs and use the Internet
to spread their message (www.chabad.org)–again, Orthodox yet unorthodox. Thus, in this sense, Matisyahu’s campaign of outreach, not
to convert, but to bring Jewish spirituality to the dancehall through
live performance, the living room through MTV, or anywhere through
his fans’ iPods, is a novel version of an orthodox Lubavitch idea. The
hybrid, cultural-versioning character of Matisyahu’s music is particu-
22 Anamesa
larly normal within communities that identify with a diaspora. And
singing about Exodus and Zion over a reggae beat is rather orthodox
as well.
Cultural studies scholar Dick Hebdige writes about “versioning”
in Cut ’n’ Mix:
One of the most important words in reggae is “version.”
Sometimes a reggae record is released and literally
hundreds of different versions of the same rhythm or
melody will follow in its wake. Every time a version is
released, the original tune will be slightly modified. A
musician will play a different solo on a different instrument,
use a different tempo, key or chord sequence. A singer will
place the emphasis on different words or will add new
ones. A record producer will use a different arrangement.
An engineer will stretch the sounds into different shapes,
add sound effects, take out notes and chords or add new
ones, creating empty spaces by shuffling the sequence of
sounds into new patterns.5
Defined broadly, to do a version is to quote something in a creative way. Remembering, and repeating past cultural expressions in
new contexts is a creative, transformative process. “After all,” writes
literary critic James Snead,
people have by now had to make peace with the idea that
the world is not inexhaustible in its combinations, nor life
in its various guises…let us remember that, whenever we
encounter repetition in cultural forms, we are indeed not
viewing ‘the same thing’ but its transformation.6
Matisyahu is part of the “disjointed but publicly grouped series
of [Jewish] artists who express themselves using rap and hip-hop
conventions”—musicians that ethnomusicologist Judah Cohen describes as:
representative of the larger radical Jewish music scene
in that they are predominantly male, they are conversant
The Culture Issue 23
with musical genres commonly associated with blackness,
and they take pains to situate themselves on the margins
of Jewish expression under the claims that they are
challenging a complacent Jewish tradition.7
These artists, like many people who see themselves as part of a
diaspora, challenge and reinvent traditions by “versioning” old ones.
They move forward and innovate by remembering and transforming
past expressions through creative repetition and reinvention in the
present. Understanding how Matisyahu is versioning Jewish expression, how his unique cultural repertoire enables him to express his
faith in a new and increasingly popular way, will further elucidate
the orthodox/unorthodox tension Matisyahu evokes in the context of
diaspora.
Diaspora and the Cultural Version
On April 17, 2005, I saw Matisyahu and his band perform for a soldout crowd at Manhattan’s Irving Plaza. The four-piece—Matisyahu,
the only Hasidim in the band, at center stage; Aaron Dugan on guitar,
stage left; Josh Werner, the bassist, sporting a pork-pie hat at stage
right; and Jonah David, on drums behind the singer—played in front
of a large, golden, neo-hippie tapestry featuring a radiating Star of
David. By the third song of the set, Matisyahu had the largely Jewish,
mostly white audience bouncing in time with his infectious roots-reggae style grooves. As a coda to “Chop ‘em Down,” the first track on
Matisyahu’s 2004 debut release, Shake Off the Dust… Arise, the band
softly vamped on a syncopated rhythm common to modern dancehall
reggae, a 4/4 groove with accents on beats one, the end of two, and
four. After rapidly rhyming a version of the Exodus story, Matisyahu
24 Anamesa
spoke over the vamp: “See like this now, y’all. We happen to be in the
month of Nisan.” The crowd erupted in positive acknowledgment.
“And y’all knew this is the month of redemption; this is the month of
redemption, the month that when the Jews were in Egypt they were
redeemed from Israel. And this will be the month of our redemption
too, y’know.” Another explosion of shouts and applause followed as
the band broke the vamp and closed the song.
To anyone even somewhat familiar with the work of Bob
Marley and the Wailers, talk of exodus and redemption over steady,
driving, yet down-tempo bass and drum patterns and staccato guitar
upstrokes is nothing new. What is new (and Matisyahu is not the first
to do this) is an artist taking this music readily associated with the
spirituality and frustrations of impoverished black Jamaicans, and resounding it from a contemporary Orthodox-Jewish perspective, for a
Jewish audience, in a sense reconnecting the African-diasporic music
to its Jewish diasporic roots. This cross-diasporic borrowing is a result of complex historical circumstance that happened to converge in
Matisyahu’s cultural repertoire.
Matisyahu and his band perform at Irving Plaza in front of a
radiating Star of David. (William J. Levay)
The Culture Issue 25
Matisyahu was born Matthew Miller in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1979. He was raised in a non-Orthodox Jewish household
in White Plains, New York, where as a teen he embraced hip-hop and
reggae. Matisyahu told MTV News:
I used to listen to Bob Marley and Sizzla and Buju Banton.
I used to go everywhere listening to that music. I’d walk
around with headphones on, skateboard with headphones
on. That music made its mark…And then about four years
ago, I made a decision to become religious, because I was
always trying to find a path, and I figured, ‘Let me check
into my roots,’ and I found a way to access a place that I
was trying to get to for a while.8
“In a strange way, reggae music was the connection to my Judaism…As a teenager, growing up, trying to figure out who I was, I
kept seeing and hearing Jewish things on reggae records—like the
Star of David or the words ‘Zion’ and ‘Israel.”9 The paths, the routes
Matisyahu used to connect with his Jewish roots, were reggae and
Chassidus (Hasidic doctrine). As he explained to a New York Post
reporter, “The Rastas had a strong connection to the Old Testament,
and they incorporated that into their music…Now what I’m doing
is taking their music and incorporating it into religion.”10 More accurately, he is reincorporating reggae into religion, or incorporating
reggae into his religion.
Roots reggae was the dominant popular music in Jamaica from
the late 1960s through the 1970s. It is steeped in, and largely shaped
by, Rasta ideology. Rastafari is a messianic religion (Rasta expert
Leonard Barrett calls it a cult) which holds that Haile Selassie I (né
Ras Tafari), the late emperor of Ethiopia, was God (Jah) incarnate. In
the context of black nationalistic movements in the United States and
elsewhere, the Marcus Garvey-inspired Rasta refrain “Back to Africa” held popular appeal as black Jamaicans increasingly saw them-
26 Anamesa
selves as part of a greater African diaspora. Narratives of the slavery
experience, often couched in Biblical imagery, were forced into the
national discourse with great help from Jamaican musicians, producers, and sound system operators. In the early 1970s, this discourse
went international with the success of Bob Marley and the Wailers in
the U.S. and U.K. markets.
Wackie’s is a roots reggae record label. The Lion of Judah
and Star of David images are typical of Rasta-influenced
reggae. (© Wackies)
Marley’s version of reggae, and that of the scene from which he
sprang, was an articulation of diasporic remembering, a reinvention
of history that was simultaneously rooted in an imagined past and in
the very real present of “concrete jungles” and postcolonial institutionalized racism. Ultimately, it does not matter that the great black
exodus to the promised land of Ethiopia never occurred. The cultural
versioning that took place affected Jamaican political discourse, and
through international media structures, the roots reggae sound and vision was disseminated far and wide. This sound and vision included,
The Culture Issue 27
of course, the Old Testament stories, Psalms, and images, the apocalyptic predictions of Revelations, and the projection of spirituality
and strength that characterized the Rastafari movement.
Here we have the written history of the Jews, having been disseminated by colonialists and missionaries, being versioned by an
African diasporic group in Jamaica to subvert political authority. This
version gains popular currency and is disseminated by the descendants of the same capitalistic forces that enslaved Africans. Eventually a young man named Matthew Miller hears this version and decides
to re-version it, subverting traditional Jewish expression and gaining
pop cultural currency himself. While this sketch of cultural borrowing is rather crude, my point is that the process of versioning culture
is an orthodox aspect of diasporic cultures, and that certain historical
events facilitate cross-diasporic borrowing.
Anthropologist James Clifford writes that all diasporas
…begin with uprooting and loss. They are familiar with
exile, with the “outsider’s” exposed terror—of police,
lynch mob, and pogrom. At the same time, diaspora cultures
work to maintain community, selectively preserving and
recovering traditions, “customizing” and “versioning”
them in novel, hybrid, and often antagonistic situations.11
We can see this versioning in any number of diasporic cultures and expressions: in the traditional yet Internet-savvy ChabadLubavitch community; in Matisyahu’s Jewish reggae; in hip-hop’s
radical cutting and remixing of sound. Matisyahu understands the
creative remembering that enables identity formation. Recall his invocation of redemption in the month of Nisan during the Irving Plaza
performance, and note this verse from “Warrior”:
Like an ancient memory
Remember how it used to be
28 Anamesa
Close your eyes and breathe in
The scent of freedom
Ringing across the sea
Land of milk and honey
One day we’ll wake up from this dream
And stop sleeping…
Then we’ll see clearly.12
Matisyahu is recasting the stories and ideas he learned in yeshiva
in a vernacular hip-hop/reggae style that reads quickly and easily
with young modern Jews, his primary audience. Through his hybridization of Jewish and black expressions, Matisyahu is able to convey
his message of spirituality, to reach out to non-Orthodox Jews as do
his fellow Lubavitchers, in a new way.
In The Black Atlantic, cultural-studies scholar Paul Gilroy relates
cultural versioning with what LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) calls
the “changing same.” In his 1966 piece, “The Changing Same (R&B
and New Black Music),” Jones writes:
[Rhythm and Blues] is contemporary and has changed, as
jazz has remained the changing same. Fresh Life. R&B
has gone through evolution, as its singers have, gotten
“modern,” taken things from jazz, as jazz has taken things
from R&B. New R&B takes things from old blues, gospel,
white popular music, instrumentation, harmonies (just
as these musics have in turn borrowed) and made these
diverse elements its own.13
According to Gilroy’s version of the term, the changing same
also describes the cultures of the African diaspora in which “new traditions have been invented in the jaws of modern experience, and
new conceptions of modernity produced in the long shadow of our
enduring traditions—the African ones and the ones forged from the
slave experience that the black vernacular so powerfully and actively
remembers.”14 The cut ’n’ mix, versioning, changing-same character
The Culture Issue 29
of African-diasporic cultural expression is a reflection of a culture
whose history is non-linear and discontinuous, one whose members
actively re-signify the cultural elements they encounter, making those
elements their own.
As I mentioned above, the Hasidic community lives a highly visible changing sameness, retaining cultural forms that date to the start
of the Hasidic movement, in 18th-century Eastern Europe, and which
seem greatly distanced (in the view of outsiders) from newer cultural
elements like the use of cell phones or the Internet. Yet, like the African diasporic groups Gilroy is writing about, these Jewish diasporic
groups similarly incorporate the new by versioning the old. In fact,
Hasidism was founded by Jews discontented with both rabbinic Judaism, which had become increasingly academic, and radical Jewish
mysticism,15 and consequently adopted elements of each during its
development. And Matisyahu versions the teachings of Hasidism for
his audiences. On his most recent CD, Live at Stubb’s, Matisyahu
says:
See like this, you know. Chassidus explains that everything
in this world, everything in this life has a inner essence, a
inner soul, you know. And when it started out, before the
soul was reincarnated into this life, into this body and time
and place that we find ourselves, it was basking above
in the rays of godliness, y’know. And it comes into this
world for one reason, y’know. That it should transform
the darkness into light. It should take the darkness of this
world and make it light, yessuh.16
He’s stating a rather profound principle in a rather youthful way,
littered with “y’knows,” and with a streetwise, hip-hop inflection in
his voice. After this speech he launches into an improvised niggun,
and the audience shouts and applauds. Matisyahu’s music and his
message, while a current fascination of popular culture at large, with
30 Anamesa
a growing audience of Jews and non-Jews, does not appeal to some.
A look at some Matisyahu non-fans will further demonstrate the tensions he evokes.
Jewish Reggae?
“That’s not real reggae,” Ira Heaps told me, slightly shaking his head.
I knew what Ira was getting at. Matisyahu’s brand of reggae is an
American, rock- and hip-hop-inflected kind, adorned with extended
guitar solos (which isn’t surprising considering Matisyahu dropped
out of high school and followed the famous jam band Phish as they
toured the country) and able beat-boxing. Ira earns his living selling
“real” Jamaican reggae as the owner of Jammyland Music—”New
York’s Complete Source for Reggae”—a reggae record shop/recording studio/record label/production company located on East Third
Street in Manhattan.
We were at the NYC Ska Festival, at the back of a basement club
in the Meatpacking District where the merchandise tables were set
up—T-shirts and CDs were on display near the men’s room. Sitting
near Ira was Jeff Baker, aka King Django, a central figure in the New
York ska scene from its infancy in the 1980s through its peak at the
end of the 1990s. In 1998, Django released Roots and Culture, an expression of his Eastern European Jewish heritage through the musical
languages he knows best—ska and reggae. His vocals, in English and
Yiddish, float atop ska-klezmer fusions and down-tempo roots and
dub reggae grooves. It was, in Django’s view, just a side project until
trumpeter/composer Frank London encouraged him to get a band together and perform Roots and Culture live. Despite Django’s stature
in the New York ska/reggae scene, his work has never attracted the
The Culture Issue 31
attention of the popular media the way Matisyahu’s has. Perhaps this
tension was a motivation for Django’s comment to me that Matisyahu’s rise in popularity had something to do with financial backers
with “deep pockets.” Django felt that Lubavitchers and the wider
Jewish community were pushing for Matisyahu’s success because he
is a “nice Jewish boy who’s hip with the kids.”
Django’s album cover reclaims the Star of David and the
Lion of Judah. (©1998 Stubborn Records)
Coming from a Jew, and an artist who had produced his own
Jewish-reggae version at that, this struck me as rather unorthodox,
considering the Jewish stereotype that Django implied. My impression of Django’s comments was that, in his view, Matisyahu was a
novelty, not a serious reggae musician nor a serious Jewish musician,
and that by being heavily promoted and assisted by Jewish powersthat-be, he was lacking in do-it-yourself credibility which Django
holds in high esteem.
Django, then, had no problem with the idea of a Jew borrowing from African diasporic music—he did just that with Roots and
Culture, indeed with his whole career as a ska/reggae artist. Frank
London has expressed his philosophy that every musical style has
32 Anamesa
rules, and these rules can be identified and learned. In a piece titled
“An Insider’s View,” London writes that “one can study and assimilate the elements of any musical style, form, or tradition by ear. You
listen over and over to a Charlie Parker solo or a Peruvian flute player
and learn to replicate what you hear…No music [is] off-limits.”17
However, some people, sensitive to the political relationships that underscore cultural borrowing, express discomfort with or disdain for
certain kinds of cultural versioning. On the website of JDub Records,
the company that released Matisyahu’s debut CD, and “a non-profit
record and event production company striving to build community
through new and innovative Jewish music and cross cultural musical dialogue” (www.jdubrecords.org), “rinah” posted this message on
March 2, 2005:
Reggae and hip hop are by no means a historically or
culturally jewish art-form and by taking them on and
participating in them as if they were our own is racist. We
as jews wouldn’t take on gospel music or islamic praying
as it would be totally inappropriate religiously and racially,
so why should it be ok if some wealthy trustafarian from
the suburbs takes on the religious music of rastafarians,
showing a complete lack of respect for the resistance
movement that fought the colonial powers in Jamaica, and
the black nationalist movement that is politically linked to
the [music].
As a jew I know where my roots stand and while I can
show solidarity with resistance movements for justice
around the world, I find it quite disrespectful to reggae
in all its forms when the only reggae artists that white
people support are Bob Marley, John Brown’s Body, Matis
Yahu and other white artists participating in a Jamaican
resistance-art form. White people have been stealing from
people of color for years, whether it be labor, land, or
culture, it is all the same wrong.
Obviously, for some, Matisyahu’s version of reggae is not unorthodox nor subversive nor inauthentic, but downright disrespectful
The Culture Issue 33
to blacks and antithetical to the political philosophy sounded through
reggae. For the many fans at the Irving Plaza performance in April,
however, this borrowing posed no problem. They came in droves to
enjoy Matisyahu (and perhaps relieve tension) in a rather orthodox
way—by dancing.
Holding onto Identity
One of the most exciting moments of Matisyahu’s Irving Plaza performance happened during the last song before the encore, “King
Without a Crown.” The audience was receptive throughout the
show, but at this point the excitement was palpable. As Aaron Dugan
launched into a rock guitar solo, Jonah David laid into his crash cymbals, strobes pulsated, spotlights pivoted and spun, throwing beams
of light onto the crowd, and a young male Lubavitcher climbed onstage and started bouncing in time to the beat. At center stage he
faced Matisyahu, they joined hands and began jumping and turning
in a clockwise circle dance. The crowd screamed its approval. A Jewish teen wearing a yarmulke was crowd-surfed onto the stage. Unsure
of what to do next, he stood at the edge of the stage, looked to his
friends and shrugged questioningly. They waved him on, he turned
around and seamlessly joined the circle dance. In a friendly gesture,
Matisyahu, who was now only wearing a kippah, grabbed his fellow
Lubavitcher’s fedora and placed it on his own head. As a result of the
doffing, that fan’s yarmulke fell to the stage; while continuing to jump
in the circle he awkwardly bent down to grab it. Another young male
fan climbed onto the stage and joined the dance. The Lubavitcher fan
struggled to balance his kippah on his head while at the same time
holding hands in the circle dance. He kept up this struggle, jump-
34 Anamesa
ing out of time, grabbing hands, then dropping them again as he felt
his yarmulke fall, until the guitar solo ended and the fans exited the
stage so Matisyahu could close the set. He walked offstage, hand on
yarmulke on head.
As I replayed this scene from the video I shot, I sympathized
with the young man. He couldn’t leave his yarmulke on the stage
while he danced, nor could he stick it in his pocket and put it on after
the dance. That piece of cloth was part of the young man’s identity,
probably on a religious level, definitely on a more mundane, everyday level. It was unorthodox for this Orthodox Jew to be jumping up
and down to reggae music on the Irving Plaza stage. His response to
the fallen yarmulke was to grab it quickly and cover his head, even if
it interrupted the flow of the circle dance, even if audience members
like me felt slightly embarrassed for him. He was, from my point of
view, literally holding onto his identity in an unorthodox situation,
navigating new cultural terrain while maintaining a true north.
Similarly, Matisyahu holds onto his identity—that of a devout Jew, conversant in hip-hop and reggae, with good vocal chops—
in the unorthodox limelight of popular culture, and refuses to be “just
a novelty.” He is doing well so far. With a new album on Or Records, the label of Los Lonely Boys, a group that recently scored a
Billboard hit, a lot of publicity, including an Associated Press article,
appearances on Carson Daly’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s late night shows,
and VH1’s Best Week Ever, Matisyahu is poised to break into the
mainstream, certainly an unorthodox situation for an Orthodox Jew.
Another unorthodox situation: Matisyahu was one of the headliners
at last summer’s 8th Annual Reggae Carifest, along with dancehall
luminaries Buju Banton, Capleton, and Luciano. Matisyahu’s is the
only white face on the flyer. How was Matisyahu received by the
largely Afro-Caribbean and African American audience? According
The Culture Issue 35
to New York Times pop critic Kelefa Sanneh, Matisyahu “managed to
inspire a few cheers, but by the end of his set the crowd had grown
quiet.”18 Despite this lukewarm reception from the dancehall crowd,
many people are listening. Part of Matisyahu’s appeal, beyond the
initial unorthodox-novelty thrill, is the sincerity of his expressions;
his cultural versions stem from his identity, his unique cultural repertoire. To Matisyahu, his music is a natural result of his influences,
musical and religious.
Matisyahu (far left) was the only white headliner at
the 8th Annual Reggae Carifest. (©2004-2005 Reggae
Carifest)
The recent media buzz around Matisyahu is a result of the tension between what Matisyahu says he represents and what American
popular culture sees him as representing, that is, between a 25-yearold’s sincere Jewish spirituality set to a capable reggae beat, and an
36 Anamesa
exotic Other who’s actually a good singer—and, gee, he can beat-box
too! The orthodox/unorthodox tension that Matisyahu evokes—again,
what makes him an interesting pop culture phenomenon—is a tension
between the everyday cultural versioning that actually occurs among
people who identify with a diasporic community and the expectation
of a majority of Americans, and perhaps some in the wider Jewish
community, that Hasidim live an unchanging lifestyle. It is a tension
between those like London who feel that any music is fair game for
versioning, and those like “rinah” who understand sound, especially
reggae, to be inextricably linked to racial politics, and therefore offlimits to Jews or any whites. It is a tension between covering your
head or grabbing hands and joining in the dance. Cultural versioning enables people to resolve tensions between old cultural expressions and the new, but those versions, in turn, may find themselves
in tension with other expressions or situations. I think that young
Lubavitcher had the right idea: keep your head covered, but join in
the dance as best you can.
Notes
Paul Thompson, “Uncommon Denominator: Matisyahu Brings Unorthodox Sound,” Daily Collegian, 25 March 2004.
2
Diane Cardwell, “Yo! Or is it Oy? Cultures Blend in Dance Clubs,”
New York Times, 11 December 2004, B1.
3
Nekesa Mumbi Moody, “Hasidic Reggae Star Proving More Than
Just a Novelty,” Associated Press, 21 April 2005.
4
“Orthodox,” Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
5
Dick Hebdige, Cut’n’Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music
(London: Routledge, 1987), 12.
6
James A. Snead, “Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture,” Black
1
The Culture Issue 37
Literature and Literary Theory, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (New
York: Methuen, 1984), 59.
7
Judah Cohen, “Hebe-Hop, Radical Jewish Culture, and the Politics of Enfranchisement,” (Presented at SEM conference, 2004),
2.
8
James Montgomery, “Straight Outta West Chester? Meet Hasidic
Hip-Hopper Matisyahu,” MTV News, 31 March 2005, http://www.
vh1.com/artists/news/1499390/03312005/matisyahu.jhtml.
9
Matt Swayne, “Spiritually Sound,” Centre Daily Times, 26 March
2004.
10
Lisa Keys, “Hasid Trip: Reggae Singer Has Unorthodox Roots,”
New York Post, 7 May 2004, p. 56.
11
James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Routes: Travel and Translation
in the Late Twentieth Century, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997), 263.
12
Matisyahu, “Warrior,” Shake Off the Dust… Arise, (JDub Records, 2004).
13
LeRoi Jones, “The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music),” Black Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 203.
14
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 101.
15
“Hasidic Judaism,” Wikipedia, 2005, http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Hasidic_Judaism.
16
Matisyahu, Live at Stubb’s, (Or Records, 2005).
17
Frank London, “An Insider’s View: How We Traveled From
Obscurity to the Klezmer Establishment in Twenty Years,” American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, ed. Mark Slobin (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 206.
18
Kelefa Sanneh, “A Day of Roots, Dancehall and No-Shows,”
New York Times, 12 July 2005, E5.
38 Anamesa
Poinsettias
by Seema Srivastava
christmas hangs in the air
as my father struggles with the garage door
the boughs of his arm ornamented
with cardboard boxes full of produce
it is his weekly ritual
like offering incense to the gods
my father ponders the greens and citruses
and saves the flowers for last
my mother knows that at the farmer’s market
he will come up with some excuse
to buy more flowers to plant in
our dilapidated yard
he was up extra early this Saturday
since tomorrow is christmas
and the markets will be closed
there will be no growth tomorrow
it’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow, too
each year he jokes that the world
stops to celebrate his birth
and the markets close to honor him
in Agra, the town where my father was born
where tomorrow is today, christmas has already passed
with no one to care
no evergreens or boxes and ribbons
there, rickety wooden carts full of Indian fruit and vegetables
are run by oxen and men
The Culture Issue 39
and the clank of their bells
is not attached to the mythology of reindeer
my dad walks in holding an armload of poinsettias
looking like the mangled string of Christmas lights
that illuminates our neighbor’s windows
I know these flowers won’t get planted, but will die
soon after the holidays have past
and then next year they will reappear
like some small resurrection, in the arms of my father
almost as miraculous as his birth
40 Anamesa
Boogie Rican Pride
By Delilah Martinez
If you were a little Puerto Rican girl growing up in the Bronx in the
80’s, you were never really that special. At least not to the people
who you believed really mattered in TV land. Since everyone else
around me ate roast pork and arroz con gandules for everything from
weddings to funerals, I figured that everyone else in America did also.
The big screen reflected the enormous cultural divide within me.
My cousin Jr. from La Isla was no J.R .from Dallas and definitely
further away from the “cool” ideal that I attempted to embrace. I assumed I’d attend high school with the Brat Pack and receive milk and
cookies after school, but I was given malta and export soda crackers
instead. I regularly prayed for mami to disicipline me by sending me
to my room like the white kids on Growing Pains, rather than the
usual punishment of swallowing hot sauce and running from a flying
leather chancleta.
Eight was enough for the Bradford’s but for the Rivera’s down
the street it was just a start. (And how could the Bradfords afford
to have a show and still feed all those kids, anyway? I wondered.)
Sitcoms recreated themselves in my juvenile imagination to make up
for the lack of Nuyorican accents and mira-mira gestures that I sorely
missed on primetime. Our Facts of Life were different from those
who attended exclusive boarding schools; the projects bred exclusive
groups of Latinas with adolescent issues rarely discussed by Mrs.
Garrett. I imagined that if Mr. Drummond changed his name to Mr.
Rodriguez, he could’ve adopted my brown sister and we’d soon be
moving on down to the east side from the land of the lost Bronxites.
The Culture Issue 41
Everyday I would frantically click the dial on our television
with a foiled hanger hovering over my eyeball, and scan endless fuzzy
channels searching for familiar images. When the button landed on
the foreign U, I’d wander into a world left behind by mainland-bound
mestizos, and mulattos that bred Dominican Yorks and Nuyoricans in
colorful parades around me. Maybe one of those spanglish shows on
Telemundo could give me a clue to my identity. Maybe there was a
way to share the magic of my culture without really losing it. Maybe
then it would be cool to be Puerto Rican.
But roasting lechon with Budweiser in la comadre’s backyard
in Queens on weekends was the closest we would ever get to la isla
del encanto. As kids we begged to listen to 45’s of the likes of Sugar
Hill Gang, New Edition and U.T.F.O., but we were forced to endure
ridiculous versions of Top 40 in Spanish (which we all secretly loved
and happily downloaded onto our iPods as adults). It felt like the best
of both worlds to witness tipsy Boricuas smack down dominoes like
warriors as their Taina wives smacked their hips and danced together
to the beat of the congas. Although we were pained by the absence
of the latest by Michael Jackson on the record player, we anxiously
longed to get pleasure from the drunken aunts shaking maracas, singing Beat it in broken English, and trying to break dance all at the
same time.
The other little Boricuas in my class often chuckled with me
about the perrito on channel 47 brushing his animated teeth and announcing Muy Buenas Noches to all. There was an anxious secret
that I longed to share with curious buddies, when the Menudo Hour
would transform my English world and fade into bubblegum Spanish: I embraced prepubescent serenades and cheese ball ballads with
a foreign tongue and silently loved it. Once upon a time, it was a burden to replicate conjugations of Spanglish to a puzzled parent. Later,
42 Anamesa
pimply teen idols in glitter and cracked voices engulfed my senses
with a pleasurable pride. That was the epiphany of the bilingual passion in my blood.
I knew it wasn’t just my imagination that there were so many of
us and no one really knew who we were. We didn’t even know. Not
until, that is, the damas and caballeros of El Barrio and the Bronx
explored and represented the diversity of Nuyorico by unloading our
tropical dance beats onto the streets under the name of freestyle music. Urban cuentos de amor with a spin of synthesized power beats
brought visions of what our ancestors had already imagined. This was
a confident generation with a new mission, a new name and a new
struggle. Those faces that emerged from the same brick corners as
I did gave birth to newfound pride conceived by the first generation
X’ers.
Eventually the Latin explosion with Nuyoricans-turned-salseros,
branched into the mainstream and emerged with an ex-Menudo living la vida loca and former freestyle kings wooing audiences with
soulful Latin flavor. Crossover albums from artists who had already
impressed the masses with bilingual rhythms paved the way. Magically, being Rican became a coveted culture worldwide transporting
instant fame to a people that had waited a while on the cheese line for
their time to shine.
Soaring to heights unimaginable, a chica from my childhood
Bronx neighborhood peeked her booty into the mass media along
with an intense drive to overcome the boundaries that stereotyped
her roots. Jennifer Lopez seemed to blow up overnight, although her
talents had been brewing slowly like a pot of spicy habichuelas for
years. Her career soared after her highly acclaimed portrayal of deceased Tejano artist Selena Quintanilla Perez—catapulted forth by
her ability to channel and express her raw urban talent to the masses
The Culture Issue 43
like a chameleon in couture.
With Jennifer Lopez as a guide, Puerto Ricans who believed that
certain roles were strictly limited to blanquitos were beginning the
process spreading into mainstream society. Ms. Lopez had filtered
the unique versatility of the Puerto Rican people in the entertainment
industry as a result of translating their rich cultural, social and historical experiences. Her unorthodox approach to fame, which focused
on her “Boogie Rican pride” and street-credible style, gained mass
approval and broke the cultural barrier—without eliminating it completely. Downloaded from La Isla, by way of the ghetto and spit onto
the pages of the big screen, her urban image and cutthroat ambiance
managed to exemplify the glamour of the streets with an edge that
can only be created by a fly girl.
Staring out of a dim project window, my bosom swelled with
nurturing pride as I observed the influence of my people in the hearts
and lives of those who once recognized us only as maids and doormen in the movies. West Side Story was gradually becoming a world
wide story featuring upcoming Boricuas at a theater near you.
Once upon a time in our malta-soaked neighborhoods, it was
common to hear a thick Nuyorican accent and see gelled hairdos and
gold glimmer galore. Today the looks, styles and flavors that we introduced on the block are high fashion and urban couture. I always
knew it was cool to be Puerto Rican and proud. I was just waiting for
America to catch up.
44 Anamesa
En El Bronx
by Delilah Martinez
En el Bronx
La Bodega screams
Abierta 24 horas
El viejo screams
“Mira, no fiao for quarter waters!”
Playing numbers in the back
Selling loosies out the pack
Y Papi Chulo lights a Newport
sparking smoke halos
swimming from his menthol lips.
Over there
En el Bronx
The Projects are kingdoms
of Salsa queens
and clothesline dreams
Tight blue jeans transform
into pumping platforms
mini faldas
gold links
Crashing the pavement
with men’s eyes full of winks.
En el Bronx
el bochinche buzzes
The Culture Issue 45
from Carmen’s house por telefono
“My baby’s daddy can kiss my ass,
My new man is Wilfredo.”
“Wilfredo que?”
“Wilfredo Gobierno, Sr.”
En el Bronx
Amor sizzles in the park
After dark
Eight Ball brew
Me and my Boo
Spark an L
Fall into magical urban spells
En el Bronx
Tu sabes
Fort Apache, Bronx Bombers, Mecca of HipHop,
Beat Street, Boogie Down Bronx!
Phone numbers on Bambu
“Hey shorty what’s up with me and you.”
Carlitos and Junito at the corner clutch their dicks
Try to make a dollar out of hustling mad nicks
They missed
Got dissed
You know they’re fucking pissed
Shitty Cheater! Bang! Bang!
Niggas get dismissed.
46 Anamesa
En el Bronx
You hear it.
El tren jingling beats of crashing steel
Pulsating rhythms in our doorknockers
Waving banderas off fire escapes
Drowning echoes of un merenguito
from Maria’s siempre screaming at her man Tito.
Kids fingers in their ears
Screeching thunder when it stops
Peeping cada tipo and his culito when he bops.
The Cops, 5-0, Po-Po, La Jara
It’s getting harder surviving on the streets
making ends meet
when the only chavo in your pocket is a food stamp to eat
and
Rice and Beans might be good for your heart
but they taste better when they’re
arroz con habichuelas
from abuelas
con las belas
burning de Chango, Ellegua
Those who died, we keep the pride alive.
Porque el Bronx
holds secret dreams of
Papi Chulo and his own Bodega on the block
Carmen’s man buying her that new shiny rock
Carlitos and Junito cutting records instead of dope
and the hope for tomorrow
The Culture Issue 47
the hope from ayer
keeps us shining everywhere
anywhere
over there En el Bronx
48 Anamesa
Liberty
Fernando Perez Villalon
The Culture Issue 49
The Cultural Profit Gap: The
Need for Public Funding of NonProfitable Arts
By Kevin Sheldon
Theodor Adorno describes culture “as that which goes beyond the
system of self-preservation of the species,”1 a particularly apt definition that simultaneously displays culture’s biggest obstacle and belies
its necessity to society. Compared to such things as food, water, shelter, and reproduction, the accumulation of artistic expression2 is far
down the chain of needs, and yet has persistently remained an important facet of virtually all civilizations throughout history. Despite this
favored place in most societies, the arts have struggled for their very
survival; artists are rarely amongst the chosen members of society
and fight a constant battle between their need for artistic expression
and their need for personal welfare.
Not all cultural expression, however, is in desperate straits. The
film industry, for instance, enjoys enormous financial success. In fact,
in the United States since the late twentieth century, we can see a
fairly large divide in the arts between those that need outside funding and those that do not. To the former belong such realms as film,
popular music, and some theater. To the latter, painting, sculpting,
and photography. Any form of aesthetic sensibility must note the
equality of these various fields.3 There is a problem, then: some art
is financially well off, because it is capable of self-sustenance, while
some art is not.
From this arises one of the key questions we must ask ourselves
today: what art counts as “culture”? It almost seems in America today
50 Anamesa
that when one says “culture,” one is specifically referring to art that
makes little, if any, money. Even within a profitable art world, such as
cinema, the “cultured” cine-philes most appreciate independent and
foreign film–not Independence Day. If we want to maintain a broader
notion of culture as all that “goes beyond the system of self-preservation of the species,” at least as far as the arts are concerned, and if we
are to place value in artistic expression as a whole, this “profit gap”
needs to be closed.
The possible sources for this closure are three-fold: corporate sponsorship, individual patronage, and government intervention.
The first two are currently the most common, as the government has
intentionally decreased its role in funding since the 1980s. This is regrettable because private money only lessens the problem; it doesn’t
solve the issue. Only the government has the ability to create the
proper environment for artistic freedom.
The government must take its place as the foremost supporter of
the non-profitable arts if those arts are to be as secure as the profitable
ones–and if, in turn, those profitable ones are to be appreciated and
accepted as elements of our culture. In order for our society to be able
to have museums as well as cineplexes, and in order for individuals to have a choice between pop music and sculpture, art that cannot survive on its own income alone needs supplementation, which
only the state is able to provide. Artists “need sufficient political and
economic freedom”4 to make their art. The government exclusively
must provide these freedoms because of its unique position as both
lawmaker and monetary power.
We must first explain the profit gap by looking at the distinction between the profitable and non-profitable art worlds, and by understanding the situation in which the fine arts5 find themselves. We
can then analyze the system of governmental funding that ought to
The Culture Issue 51
replace the current situation. Finally, we will acknowledge some of
the concerns we may have about this new system and recognize problems that must be overcome.
Explaining the Profit Gap
It is clear that the debut of technological innovation circa the beginning of the twentieth century enabled the distribution of all media,
including artistic media, on an unprecedented scale. For the purposes
of this essay, the effect this has had on previously created art works
is irrelevant. What is relevant is art’s entrance, on a grand scale, to
the world of market capital. A new aesthetic developed in which “the
cultural commodities of the industry are governed…by the principle
of their realization of value.”6 Whatever effects this has on individual
pieces of art within a given art industry are also irrelevant to our discussion. The essential thing to note is that this very same value aesthetic is applied across industry lines. Easily mass-marketable fields,
such as film and music, become the recipients of corporate America’s
time and energy; their ensuing financial success is both expected and
obvious. An artifact like Michelangelo’s David, however, is far from
easily mass-marketed, perhaps because of the original’s uniqueness
and the fact that a three-inch plastic miniature is such a poor reproduction of the real thing. Hence the power of capitalism more or less
turns its back on sculpture. There are both good and bad things about
the power of capitalism, as any fringe artist will tell you, but the end
result in this nation is that in capitalism’s absence, art flounders. As
long as capitalist ideals are the guiding force of production in our
society, arts that do not fit into that mold are in a position of severe
financial disadvantage.
52 Anamesa
Becker, writing at a time before the Reagan Administration took
its noticeable step away from funding the arts, optimistically wrote,
“Some art activities, do not operate in a money economy. Instead, a
central government agency may allocate resources for art projects.”7
We see now that it is no easy thing for art activities to exist outside of
the money economy—money is too essential. The government can,
in fact, be the alternative by becoming the largest player in this artistic money economy. Currently, the arts in the national economy take
the form of “culture industries,” profit-minded corporations that have
successfully latched onto the forms of art most easily translated into
economic commodities. Their dominance needs to be offset by a federal government not controlled by profit motives, but by the desire to
provide an equitable foundation for all artistic interests.
The Need for Governmental Funding
The only viable system is one in which the government plays a large
role; it must be an independent font of resources available to artists
without strings or restrictions. The government is the only entity capable of such a position, as well as the strongest possible ally artists
could have, and we can see why by looking at its legal and economic
position.
Why the government? Well, as of right now, the major financial backers of “cultured” arts are individual patrons and, more often,
corporate sponsors. It is impossible to conceive of either half of this
current equation taking any action towards reform. The art makers
can’t afford to deny their only current source of funding, and the art
financiers are never going to voluntarily give up their manipulation
of their current capital (nor are they going to plunge the full force of
The Culture Issue 53
their resources into something that won’t give them a financial return
on the scale of a major motion picture).
In addition, as both the legal and economic giant in our society,
only the government can both alter the existing structures of art financing and provide the money needed to promote new structures.
This can be a godsend to the struggling artist who is currently a slave
to the market systems. “Government subsidy helps to free artists from
the pressures of the marketplace…. It gives the artist independence,
and, furthermore, some means to critically examine the marketplace,
and its social and ethical underpinnings.”8 Only an art free to do just
that can be considered liberated.
The government could, if it so chooses, be an excellent friend to
the arts. Not only is it the only possible non-biased source for funds,
but it could also be an excellent patron. Besides money, the government can mobilize resources and opportunities on a grander scale than
any other. It has the world of public education at its fingertips, as well
as international prestige and the surest mark of commendation for
an artist to receive. If the government recognizes something, people
notice. Observe, for example, the success of the National Medal of
the Arts started by Reagan,9 or the Kennedy Center Honors, lent extra
prestige by the annual attendance of the President. The government
even has the best real estate. “Governmental patrons…can display
work in important and accessible places.”10
If an art world gets its funding from a corporate sponsor, on the
other hand, the sponsor might choose where the money goes based on
future concerns—what outlets might guarantee more of that money in
the future—even if the decision-makers in question “knew better” as
to which art “deserved” it more. The artists need to be able to make
those decisions on their own, as only the artists themselves should
be held responsible to their art. To this end, the makeup of any gov-
54 Anamesa
ernmental authority given the task of distributing funding (such as
the National Endowment for the Arts) needs to be chiefly composed
of artists, gallery owners, art scholars, theoreticians, and whatever
figures society deems to be worthy of such a position based on their
personal knowledge and skills. Political and economic attributes
should especially not be a factor. This is already the way, ironically
enough, film committees function—with the jury panel at film festivals composed of respected and esteemed members of the artistic film
community. Even Adorno believed that such a system had a chance of
success: “Administration which wishes to do its part must renounce
itself; it needs the ignominous figure of the expert…people who have
a serious, objective and progressive understanding of [art].”11 These
experts, whoever the art world and society deem them to be, must be
left in charge of distributing funding to the recipients most deserving
based on a notion of art for art’s sake, not for the sake of political ambition, economic growth, public relations, or elitist cultural capital.
The government must accept its position one step removed, and allow
the art worlds to work out quality for themselves.
Problems and Concerns for a New System
One must, in the course of this discussion, necessarily address certain
concerns, namely: Why should the arts be funded in the first place
and what of the discrepancy between abhorring corporate funding
and idealizing the successful corporate art companies?
First, there is the ethical concern of public financing. Is it reasonable to say the government should take any action at all, no matter
how much the cultural world needs it? A number of possible justifications have been put forward by DiMaggio and Useem,12 one of
The Culture Issue 55
which is the most notable and most successful: the public demand
argument. This argument is simplistic and yet profound: The public coffers should be offered to art because the public (the monetary
source) wants it to view the art. DiMaggio and Useem noted that
an overwhelming two-thirds majority of Americans believe the state
should take some sort of action to support the arts when the arts need
it when they studied public opinion in 1978.13 Opinion has stayed
fairly consistent, as far as one can see. Polls taken recently across the
country still show support amongst the citizenry.14 This is far from a
unanimous appeal, but seeing how strictly divided the nation is on
so many other issues, art support arises as one of the few issues on
which a majority of people agree.
DiMaggio and Useem also note, however, that the arts generally
rank low on an individual’s list of issues that they think the government should address. This need not be too drastic a concern, however.
The arts may rank below the military, welfare, and general education,
but the arts also need far less funding than those other realms. It is
entirely plausible to envision a progressive system in which each of
these fields receives funding proportionately to the amount of public
concern and the arts still receive more than enough funding for their
survival.
It is also necessary to clarify an apparent contradiction in this position. If it is true that corporate money is so negative to the freedom,
quality, and democratization of the arts, why then take the position
that the non-profitable arts need to play “catch up” with the profitable
ones?
What we can see is that within these heavily profitable, gigantic
art worlds, the arts exist. True artistic expressions may be few and
far between, but they are given opportunities because of the surplus
of money available in these art worlds. This money, however, is push-
56 Anamesa
ing out all other forms of art from our cultural landscape, creating an
even bigger problem for painters, sculptors, and the like, many of
whom would probably love the chance to quibble about whether or
not a corporate logo appears next to their painting as opposed to wondering whether or not they were going to be able to eat next week.
So, humorously, profitable and popular entertainment is increasingly
becoming less and less considered a “respectable” part of our culture,
while becoming more and more the only part of that culture actually
able to exist.
This, once again, brings us to the fact that even the profitable
arts have something to gain from a more equitable artistic patronage system: they may regain their esteem. Without the overwhelming shadow of financial success the Profit Gap brings, drawing lines
and distinctions between the arts, society might begin to be able to
think of the different art forms as the same. That is, “culture” may
once again refer to all culture, not just that which is reserved for the
wealthy patrons of sculptors.
Conclusion
We have examined the need for governmental funding of those arts
which we have termed the “non-profitable.” Movies, music, television, and similar art forms make their own money. Outside funding
is not needed. Painting, sculpting, photography, and the like, on the
other hand, need assistance if they are to survive. Not only is the government the only body truly capable of doing so, but it is also the only
one we’d really want doing so, in the light of all the problems other
funding is likely to reveal.
It is not only lovers of the fine arts who should be fighting this
The Culture Issue 57
battle. Popular entertainment in the form of movies, rock music, and
television has for too long been marginalized in discussions of “high”
art, aesthetic merit, and “culture” (“culture” in the sense of symphony
orchestras). Yet, sociologically, they may even be more important in
the long run, and certainly have artistic value. Only by escaping from
the shadow that their commercial potential has thrown over their artistic legacy do they have a chance to be equally recognized with the
less financially successful facets of our culture.
The cynical among us won’t be holding our breath. We’ve been
discussing the way things should be, not the way they’re likely to
go anytime in the near future. It is highly unreasonable to think of a
smartly pro-arts government coming into power and jumping in to
save the day. Still, all is not lost. The mechanisms are in place; all
we require is enough concerted effort from lovers, appreciators, and
creators of art, and hopefully one day the government will take its
rightful place as the guardian of our collective cultural legacies.
Notes
1
Theodor Adorno, “Culture and Administration,” The Culture
Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture ed. J.M. Bernstein (London:
Routledge, 1991), 116
2
The accumulation of artistic expression is quite arguably not even the
only facet of a society that falls under the heading of “culture,” but it is
at least the one most commonly discussed in our modern context.
3
To put it another way, it is nearly impossible to make an argument
that explains the importance of art without including art which is
unfortunately unprofitable in the marketplace.
4
Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982), p.39
58 Anamesa
5
I use the term “fine arts” as a representative term for non-profitable
arts, since they make up a large, though by no means exclusive,
segment of the whole. I classify an art world such as major motion
pictures as profitable because it acquires more than enough money
on the market to remain viable. An art world like painting does not,
and requires outside capital to remain significant in society. All of
this, clearly, is generalization, as some painters may be able to be
self-sufficient, just as some movies lose money. Overall, though, the
distinction is apparent and worth noting.
6
Adorno, “Culture Industry Reconsidered,” Culture Industry, 99
7
Becker, Art Worlds, 3. For a further explanation of the Reagan-era
government actions, see Wu, Privatising Culture, Ch. 2-3
8
Richard Bolton, Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent
Controversies in the Arts (New York: New Press, 1992), 12
9
Chin-tao Wu, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since
the 1980s (London: Verso, 2002), 51-2
10
Wu, p.104-5
11
Adorno, “Culture and Administration,” 128
12
DiMaggio, Paul and Michael Useem, “Cultural Property and Public
Policy: Emerging Tensions in Government Support for the Arts,” Social
Research 45, no. 2 (1978): 367-379
13
DiMaggio, p.370
14
The 2002 Survey of Public Perception in the Arts, U.S. Census
and National Endowment for the Arts, reported that 76% of adults in
the nation say they make the arts part of their lives. A University of
Massachusetts poll said 90% of Massachusetts residents rank cultural
institutions as one of the most important to the quality of life in their
community. (Both as reported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council,
http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/issues/advocacy.html) In addition,
a statewide public opinion poll in California said 78% of respondents
The Culture Issue 59
would favor raising taxes slightly if that extra amount would go directly
to the arts (http://www.artsmendocino.org/html/articles004OpinionPoll.
htm).
60 Anamesa
Is the Magic Gone? Weber’s
“Disenchantment of the World”
and its Implications for Art in
Today’s World
By Kristina Karin Shull
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and
intellectualization, and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment
of the world.’ Precisely the ultimate and most sublime
values have retreated from public life either into the
transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness
of direct and personal human relations. —Max Weber
In the above quote, Max Weber describes the “disenchantment of the
world” as it results from the intersection of the Protestant Reformation and the scientific revolution in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber
explains that these paradigm shifts have inaugurated a more rational
understanding of events as people began to rely more on scientific
investigations as the way to truth. This ultimately resulted in a decline of the use and belief in magic, God, and myth and a rise of
secularization and bureaucracy. A Protestant work ethic facilitated
the rise of capitalist economic systems coinciding with this new paradigm of reason. What effect does this have on contemporary works of
art, if any? Are they, too, subject to this disenchantment, or can they
serve as an alternative, providing magic and ritual to its viewers? At
a glance, art may seem to provide an experience of magic or mystic
ritual. Upon closer review, however, the extent of this experience of
magic or mystical ritual is limited, as behind the façade of mysticism,
art is inescapably connected to one of the driving forces of disen-
The Culture Issue 61
chantment: capitalism.
According to Weber, God, magic, and myth are now replaced
with logic and knowledge. As Weber suggests, the retreat of magic in
this age has had an impact on art, as it has now become its own sphere
with its own set of values. Walter Benjamin also discusses this shift
in the nature of art in his essay, “The Work of Art and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” He notes that before the advent of science
and technology, art had a distinctive character stating that “the earliest works of art originated in the service of a ritual—first the magical,
then the religious kind.”1 Art’s connection to ritual, Benjamin asserts,
gave it what he calls an “aura,” or a certain authenticity given by its
particular creation in history and space. But new technologies such
as film and photography lend to mass reproduction of art and thereby
a demystification of the process of art’s creation. Benjamin writes:
“that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura
of the work of art.”2 Both Weber and Benjamin agree that the modern
age of science and intellectualism have greatly transformed the role
of art in society.
For Weber and Benjamin, the factor that solidifies the rise of
intellectualism at the intersection of the scientific revolution and the
Protestant Reformation is the emergence of capitalism. The theories
of Theodor Adorno reinforce both Weber and Benjamin on this point.
According to Adorno, the establishment of the capitalist free-market
system in modern society coincides with these events and is governed
by a reliance on rationalism and bureaucracy. Weber sees a direct relationship between cultural forms and economic forms, as he notes a
connection between art and economic interests.3 Benjamin elucidates
this notion, as he maintains that culture has become an industry in the
age of capitalism. He explains that art is no longer based on ritual and
is now a commodity in the age of mechanical reproduction. Benjamin
62 Anamesa
notes that “with the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products.”4
Theodor Adorno shares the notion of the relation between art and
economics in the modern age. He describes the rational system of art
as “products which are tailored for consumption by masses…manufactured more or less according to plan…The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms.”5
If art production is thus driven by the rationale of profit-motives, as
all three argue, then magic and ritual have fallen by the wayside. Is
there a chance that art may still offer ritual or magic as an alternative
to the current disenchantment of the world? Weber notes that with the
“development of intellectualism and rationalization…[art] provides a
salvation from the routines of everyday life.”6
This study will explore several mediums in which art seems to
provide magic: film, photography, dance, literature, and television.
It will also look at the ways art’s experience can be magical through
exhibits and museums. While art may seem to provide an experience
of ritual or magic, the following examples will show that the rational
and coinciding capitalistic conditions of Weber’s “disenchantment”
dominate them all.
First of all, both Benjamin and Adorno consider is the potential for magic in film. Viewers of films today arguably experience
magic in the wide range of technologies in special effects. With the
use of stunts and computer animations and manipulations, films can
depict scenarios beyond reality or human capability such as the fight
scenes in The Matrix movies or making Peter Pan fly. Also, the cult
of the elevated status of celebrities also gives films a magical feel.
Benjamin points out, however, that film is the medium most destructive to art’s aura in that the camera lens acts as barrier between actors
and audiences and takes away the actor’s persona. Benjamin writes,
The Culture Issue 63
the film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an
artificial build-up of the ‘personality’ outside the studio.
The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the
film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person
but the ‘spell of the personality,’ the phony spell of a
commodity.7
Despite the magic movies and movie stars seem to exude, behind it
all is a construction driven by the commodity market. The corporate
structure of the film industry serves to further the destruction of the
magic and ritual of filmmaking. Adorno points out this commercially-driven system as well, describing a
star system, borrowed from individualistic art and its
commercial exploitation. The more dehumanized its
methods of operation and content, the more diligently and
successfully the culture industry propagates supposedly
great personalities and operates with heart-throbs.8
The dehumanization Adorno mentions is suggestive of art’s shift
away from the ritual toward a reliance on capitalism that coincides
with disenchantment’s reliance on rational means. Though movies
may offer magical effects, Adorno dismisses this argument. He notes
the increasing tendency of movies to parallel reality due to the commodification of the film industry. He writes: “the culture industry has
become so successful that ‘art’ and ‘life’ are no longer wholly separable,”9 and “real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies.”10 Because many films cater to the masses, they strive to depict
reality in many ways by adhering to common norms, which Adorno
argues creates a sameness of art product. This can be seen most obviously in the commonality of plot lines among many films. Thus, the
nature of the culture industry of film, driven by capitalism, overshadows the magical experience movies may offer.
Martha Rosler also discusses the capitalist market’s mediating effect between artist and audience focusing on photography as an
64 Anamesa
art form. Parallel to Benjamin and Adorno’s arguments above on film,
Rosler similarly considers the phenomenon of stardom and spectacle
as an effort to infuse photography with a sense of magic. In considering the rise of electronic media and “stardom,” Rosler describes
the, “restructuring of culture in this period of advanced capitalism
into a more homogenous version of the ‘society of the spectacle.’”11
The entrance of photography into the realm of high art has called
for efforts to impose magic and mystery on its interpretation so that
photography might become some kind of spectacle and thus be effective as an art form. Rosler argues that this is to combat photography’s
prevailing utilitarian purpose. She predicts: “the firmer the hold photography gains in the art world, the more regular will be the attack
on photography’s truth-telling ability and on its instrumentality.”12
Rosler thus argues that in order for photography to be considered
art, the magical aspect of it needs to be enhanced and the utilitarian
aspect diminished.
Susan Sontag also considers the extent that photographs may
be regarded as truth. She, however, contrasts them with more conventional art:
artists ‘make’ drawings and paintings while photographers
‘take’ photographs. But the photographic image…cannot
be simply a transparency of something that happened. It is
always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to
frame, and to frame is to exclude.”13
But because photographs are ‘taken,’ and not created, they are used in
modern society for establishing truth, such as for court evidence and
in the news. Despite Sontag’s argument that photographs do not contain whole truths, they do have a utilitarian purpose, making their review more of a rational experience than a magical one. Rosler points
out the tenuous effort of the art world to give photographs a magical
The Culture Issue 65
significance. She writes, “[i]t requires quite a lot of audience training
to transform the relation between a viewer and a photograph to one
primarily of mysteriousness…This cultural disjunction, made possible by commodity fetishism…”14 Thus, like in film, the capitalist
market drives the effort to bring photography into the art world and
instill it with an artificial spectacular magic.
Another example of disenchantment’s capitalistic and bureaucratic hold on art under the guise of ritual is corporate sponsorship of art’s creation of myth and image-building. Amy Ninetto’s
article, “Culture Sells: Cezanne and Corporate Identity,” explores
the increasing occurrence of corporate sponsorships of art exhibits
and focuses on the Advanta Corporation’s endorsement of a Cezanne
exhibit in Philadelphia as a case study. The bringing together of corporation and museum is described as a new kind of mutually beneficial “partnership,” resulting in, “the combination of corporate money
with corporate labor and knowledge applied to the marketing of the
exhibition.”15 This clearly links the properties of disenchantment,
capitalism and rationalism with the art world. Ninetto also describes
how many aspects of the art show become profit-motivated, and critics call it hypercommercial and overcommodified. In addition to the
profit motive of selling products related to the exhibition, the corporation fulfills another purpose in sponsoring art: the development of
its corporate identity. Referring specifically to the case of Advanta’s
sponsorship of Cezanne, the corporation puts forth an image of the
artist in order to associate it with the image of the company, thus
enacting the ritual of myth. Ninetto describes it as the, “deployment
of Cezanne, imagined as the epitome of artistic genius, to sell credit
cards.”16 Advanta ensures that the exhibition presents only certain
key attributes of the artist, glorifying him as an innovator and vanguard in order to advertise and enhance Advanta’s corporate identity.
66 Anamesa
Advanta’s ulterior motive causes visitors to the exhibit to indulge in
this myth of identity. For the designs of the company, Ninetto explains, “corporate identity discourse posits the corporation, like the
nation, as a collective individual, with its own personality.”17 While
visitors experience this myth of identity as an elevated and magical
ideal, art is in reality acting as an agent for the profit motivations of
the corporation.
Correspondingly, Lauren Berlant argues how the commodification of culture, and how television in particular, contributes to
the creation of the myth of national identity. As Ninetto relates the
phenomenon of corporate identity to nationalistic campaigns aimed
at constructing identity, Berlant argues that the commodification of
culture in the 1920s to the 1950s, exemplified by the rise of Hollywood and popular literature, started a crucial construction of the
notion of the “national” in the United States. In “The Theory of Infantile Citizenship,” Berlant considers an episode of the television show,
The Simpsons, as well as television’s role in the centrality of mass
entertainment cultures in constructing a sense of national desire and
identification. Berlant writes, “television promotes the annihilation of
memory and, in particular, of historical knowledge and political selfunderstanding.”18 This brings about the question of whether national
identity, which Berlant argues is obtained through culture, is a constructed fantasy and a myth. Berlant asserts that television and mass
culture depict fictions that are taken for reality by the masses. In the
episode, Lisa writes a patriotic essay and wins a trip to Washington
D.C. Upon arrival she becomes disillusioned by its apparent corruptness. The corruptness, however, is swiftly dealt with by the system,
and Lisa resigns in the end stating, “the system works!”19 Berlant
points out Lisa’s loss of consciousness, similar to that which she argues is brought on by television and people’s reception of myths of
The Culture Issue 67
national identity. She writes, “when cinematic, literary, and televisual
texts fictively represent ‘Washington’ as ‘America,’ they thus both
theorize the conditions of political subjectivity in the United States
and reflect on the popular media’s ways of constructing political
knowledge.”20 Much like the sense of magic that is infused in film
and photography, the experiences of myth of corporate identity in
exhibitions and national identity in television are all driven by the
commodification of culture. Thus, the seemingly magical experience
of art and culture has a rational and calculated basis.
Another form of art that seems entirely ritualistic and magical at first is dance. Whether traditional, modern or pop, repetitive
motions and ancient origins give both dancer and audience a feeling
of ritual magic. The magic is dispelled, however, when considering
Howard Becker’s description of the modern “art world,” a term to,
“denote the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized
via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produces the kind of art works that art world is noted for.”21 From coordination of costumes, venue, performance and audience appreciation, many actors become involved in the production of any artwork.
Producing art requires time, money, a support system of individuals
and, as Becker notes, “to do all this supposes conditions of civic order
such that people engaged in making art can count on a certain stability, can feel that there are some rules to the game they are playing.”22
Such a civic order is reminiscent of Weber’s description of the rise of
bureaucracy and disenchantment akin to the advent of capitalism. Exacerbating the loss of magic in dance and other art forms are the conventions upon which an artist depends, which, as defined by Becker,
are generally accepted means of producing and understanding art. He
writes, “[c]onventions place strong constraints on the artist,” and they
“come in complexly interdependent systems.”23 Through consider-
68 Anamesa
ation of the complicated systems of convention and networks of an
art world, art’s magical experience is greatly limited and its reliance
on rationalism becomes apparent.
Even when the content of the artwork and its key selling point
is magical, such as in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, capitalist
systems still undermine a magical experience. Much of the appeal of
these best-selling books is their focus on magic, allowing the reader
to enter a world much different from our own. However, Alan Jacobs lends a perspective that shows Harry Potter’s world, in actuality,
is not significantly different from the reader’s. He points out, using
Weber’s phrase, that before the world became disenchanted, science
and magic both shared the similar characteristic of a means of controlling our natural environment. Jacobs writes that the “‘secondary
world,’ that Rowling creates is one in which magic simply works,
and works as reliably, in the hands of a trained wizard, as the technology that makes airplanes fly,” and then he notes, “[a]s Arthur C.
Clarke once wrote, ‘Any smoothly functioning technology gives the
appearance of magic.’”24 Regardless of the argument that magic is
just another form of science and technology, the magic of Harry Potter is still lost when considering the extent of its commodification in
a capitalist economy. Jacobs describes the books’ Amazon.com sales
as creating a “miniature trade war, as lawyers on both sides of the
pond tried to figure out which country a book is purchased in when
it’s ordered from a British company but on a computer in America.”25
Harry Potter’s links to corporate capitalism are also apparent on the
“official” Harry Potter/Warner Bros. website, as a disclaimer on the
bottom reads, “Harry Potter and all related characters and elements
are trademarks and copyrights of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.”
The increased bureaucratization and commodification of a capitalist
economy stands in perfect juxtaposition to the ritualized magic Harry
The Culture Issue 69
Potter is supposed to represent.
One last point of consideration is that the experience of entering a venue for art viewing can itself be related to a ritual experience. The J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles, the largest private
endowment for the arts in history, sits atop the city in the affluent
intersection of Bel Air and Brentwood. As visitors can only access
it by ascending 800 feet on an electro-magnetic tram, this experience of rising above the city is reminiscent of the ritual experience of
the masses paying homage to the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. The
Temple, also situated on top of a hill, played the role of patron to the
people and was a symbol of elite political and economic power. While
the Getty Center does not require political support or taxes from its
visitors like the Temple of Jerusalem did, its location above the city
creates a similar awe as the public ascends into its rich cultural experience. The ancient social structure of patronage is evoked here, and
has been described as follows, “[p]atrons are elite persons (male or
female) who can provide benefits to others on a personal basis, due to
a combination of superior power, influence, reputation, position, and
wealth.”26 The Getty Center, much like the Temple, enjoys this role of
cultural patron of the city. This strong connection to the ancient ritual
experience of visiting a temple lends to the argument that visiting an
art museum can provide some kind of ritual or magical experience. A
counter-argument of the Getty’s purpose in the city, however, breaks
down this notion. Mike Davis posits the argument that the increase of
lavish art institutions in Los Angeles is spurred by a desire to allure
international investment. He writes, “a wealthy institutional matrix
has coalesced—integrating elite university faculties, museums, the
arts press and foundations—single-mindedly directed toward the creation of a cultural monumentality to support the sale of the city to
overseas investors.”27 This interesting theory could be applied to the
70 Anamesa
aims of the Getty Center and why this privately funded art museum
with its elevated views of the city creates such a unique experience
for the visitor. Perhaps it is all a pop-culture advertisement for Los
Angeles? Despite the feeling of magic provided by art’s experience to
the viewer, underpinnings of capitalism still form a solid base behind
this front.
Whether art seems to provide its audience an experience of
ritual or magic through a development of spectacle, myth of identity,
or by its mere content or venue, overshadowing this magic is art’s
adherence to the logic of capitalism described by Max Weber as the
“disenchantment of the world.” Benjamin, Adorno, and Rosler have
shown that aspects of film and photography may seem magical in
their use of creating a “spectacle,” but in actuality it is commodity
fetishism that drives only an artificial creation of such magic. Ninetto
shows, similarly, that corporate sponsorship of art can lead the viewer
into an elevated sense of myth regarding the artist, and the corporation as a result of profit-motives. Berlant argues the same with regards
to television and myth-building of national identity. Even art forms
that seem clearly ritualistic, such as dance, lose their excitement upon
consideration of Becker’s description of complex art worlds directed
and constrained by conventions and social networks. When the appeal of a cultural product lies in its magical content, such as with
Harry Potter, this magical experience is still cheapened by commodification. And when going to an art museum itself is reminiscent of a
ritual experience, questions of profit motivations still haunt the back
of the mind. Many spaces where art can offer an escape from the
disenchantment of the world need yet to be explored, as the question
remains whether art can distance itself from the complex capitalist
system into which it is interwoven.
The Culture Issue 71
Notes
1
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books,1969),
223.
2
Benjamin, 221.
3
Max Weber, “The Tensions Between Ethical Religion and Art,” in
Guenther Roth and Claude Widdich, eds., Max Weber, Economy and
Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, p. 607-10),
609.
4
Benjamin, 225.
5
Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry (London: Routledge Classics, 1991), pp. 98-9.
6
Max Weber, “The Esthetic Sphere,” in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright
Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958, p.343-9), 342.
7
Benjamin, 231.
8
Benjamin, 101.
9
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Simon During, ed., The Cultural
Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1993, p.31-41), 29.
10
Adorno and Horkheimer, 34.
11
Martha Rosler, “Lookers, Buyers, Dealers and Makers: Thoughts
on Audience,” in Brian Wallis, ed., Art After Modernism, Rethinking
Representation (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art,
1984), 328.
12
Rosler, 332.
13
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar,
Straus, & Giroux, 2003), 46.
14
Rosler, 333.
15
Amy Ninetto, “Culture Sells: Cezanne and Corporate Identity,”
Cultural Anthropology, vol. 13(2), p.256-90, 261.
72 Anamesa
16
Ninetto, 261.
Ninetto, 269.
18
Lauren Berlant, “The Theory of Infantile Citizenship” in The Queen
of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship,
Series Q (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 25-54), 30.
19
Berlant, 28.
20
Berlant, 29.
21
Howard Becker, “Preface,” in Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982), x.
22
Becker, 5.
23
Becker, 32.
24
Alan Jacobs, “Harry Potter’s Magic,” in First Things, Journal of
Religion, Culture, and Public Life, January, 2000, 38.
25
Jacobs, 35.
26
K.C. Hanson and Douglas E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of
Jesus, Social Structures and Social Conflicts (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1998), pp. 70-1.
27
Mike Davis, City of Quartz (New York: Vintage Press, 1992), 22.
17
The Culture Issue 73
Untitled
by Seema Srivastava
tonight I know my father weeps in the privacy of his garden
and not even the bald-faced lies offered by the finely raked lines of fodder
dissuade him from doubting the promise of growth offered by native American seed
he imagines awakening tomorrow to callow cries undulating around an empty feeder
and lamenting the pillaged crop devoured by the appetites of those who do as expected
-always his precious Indian seeds first, plundered by the same curiosity that led him herehe’ll make them think twice next time, he promises himself, as he knots his tie by heart
but morning brings none of these tiny tragedies,
instead, like five o’clock shadow, the displaced vines have grown into small children
without his even realizing it
and it is only the surly blue beard of autumn who approaches steadily without notice to
summer’s end
my father pulls the hose down to the fence of the garden for one more shower
as the vines of asian gourd and bittermelon snake their necks up as a final adieu to an
Indian summer
and the empty feeder’s pole, to his surprise, is encrusted with the fierce inlay of hoards of
gilded wasps
buzzing kernels of golden maize
whose nest, perforated with small bubbles of baby stinging the clear surfaces of the
honey-combed egg, lays broken below
an inchoate litter released from maternal hope
their bleating wings reminding him of the weakening pulse of his own mother
yellow with fever as she lay dying on the makeshift cot
he carried across the strong rural shoulders of Indian village farmland
his mother, living the rest of her life on soiled cotton, and then into the pyre
instead of here, with him, in the furrow of his American dream
74 Anamesa
Power Packs
by Daniel Rosenberg
When I was ten perhaps finally I got my own
Six Million Dollar Man
action figure
You could look right through his head
See with his bionic eye
Which was orders of magnitude more satisfying
Than my sister’s Bionic Woman doll – priceless –
Whose super hearing you could only experience
Through clicks as her head swiveled on her neck
(nowonder she gotmigraines)
But the best part I think was peeling back his latex skin
Rolling up his right arm like a sleeve
So that his parts could be removed
And moments later slipped back into place The satisfaction gotten thereby And his illusion restored
Whole, ready once again
Humanly to perform acts
Beyond imagination
The Culture Issue 75
Bud Light
William J. Levay
76 Anamesa
A Message from the Anamesa
Editorial Board
It has come to our attention that a photograph published in the
last edition of Anamesa (The Democracy Issue, spring 2005) was plagiarized. Titled “The Good Doctor” and attributed to Daniel Butcher,
the photo, which depicts Hunter S. Thompson, was in fact taken by
Brian Brainerd. It was originally published in the Denver Post and
later reprinted in the New York Times.
After publication, co-editor Jonah Cardillo confronted
Butcher about his deceit via e-mail. The following is an excerpt from
Butcher’s reply:
1. As you know, I felt strongly that Hunter deserved
the recognition of a fitting tribute in our journal.
2. The few photos that I was able to take of/
with him are marred by insufficient light.
3. Because Anamesa is an academic, not-for-profit
journal, there are no copyright issues involved, as
such publications are protected under the fair use
clause of federal copyright law. It is an issue that I
feel strongly about: our federal government should
allow free sampling/appropriation of any and all
artistic products, provided that they are used toward
furthering artistic/aesthetic creation (as opposed to
serving commercial ends). This is part of the message
of (what I consider) my piece of conceptual/political
art, which could only have been carried off in the way
that it did in fact transpire. It has that subtly subversive
aspect to it that would have amused Hunter to no end.
4. I wanted to discuss the piece with you
The Culture Issue 77
beforehand, and came very close to doing so,
but I knew you would be compelled to share all
information with [co-editors] Dan and Pablo,
who were obviously quite hostile to any tribute
dedicated to Hunter’s memory (I really enjoy them
as people, though, I hope it goes without saying).
The piece is what it is. Whether or not you agree with
its message and my tactics for performing it (which
are inextricably intertwined), I hope you understand
the spirit in which it was carried out. I want the
Good Doctor to be remembered, and in a vital
way that continues to spark discourse, controversy,
and the iconoclasm for which Hunter was known.
Anamesa retracts the photo and refutes Butcher’s rationale,
which we believe is a misreading of copyright law that conflates legitimate appropriation with plagiarism. Butcher argues in favor of
borrowing artistic work in the way that hip-hop artists sample music.
He also appeals to the fair use clause (Title 17, Chapter 1, section
107), which states that copyrighted works may be used “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including
multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.” But
Butcher did not sample the Thompson photo in the way sanctioned
by copyright law nor in the hip-hop sense of pastiche. He added nothing to the piece. Rather, he merely affixed his name to someone else’s
photograph and submitted it unaltered as if it were his own, leaving
this “performance” unexplained until he was challenged.
Anamesa is a small journal with a small audience, but to
say that its size justifies ignoring copyright laws and flaunting basic
standards of intellectual integrity is an insult to its contributors and its
staff—people who have dedicated many unpaid hours and sleepless
nights to producing the journal. No one will argue, least of all us,
78 Anamesa
sense of pastiche. He added nothing to the piece. Rather, he
merely affixed his name to someone else’s photograph and submitted
it unaltered as if it were his own, leaving this “performance” unexplained until he was challenged.
Anamesa is a small journal with a small audience, but to say
that its size justifies ignoring copyright laws and flaunting basic standards of intellectual integrity is an insult to its contributors and its
staff—people who have dedicated many unpaid hours and sleepless
nights to producing the journal. No one will argue, least of all us,
that artists shouldn’t be allowed to appropriate, sample, collage, mix
media—hell, be interdisciplinary! But we unanimously draw the line
at misrepresenting someone else’s work as your own.
We do, however, agree with Butcher on one score: the importance of debate. This episode has sparked a long discussion among
the editors, not just about copyright law, but about the nature of art,
especially of the postmodern kind. We invite our readers to share
their thoughts on the matter: e-mail us at anamesa.journal@nyu.edu.
We will print your comments in the spring 2006 issue.
***
The Culture Issue 79
Contributors
Amber Kelsey is a graduate student at NYU.
William J. Levay is a second-year Draper student from
Staten Island, New York. He is delighted to appear in his
second issue of Anamesa. Billy will earn his M.A. in May
2006 upon the completion of his thesis which, like his
writing featured in Anamesa, concerns the musical remix
as a pop cultural form. He thanks his parents for their
loving support.
Kate Lim is an insomniac from Berkeley, California. Most
of her poems are written between 2 and 4 AM.
Delilah Martinez is a Bronx-born, writer and mentor,
Delilah Martinez is the founder/ program director of a nonprofit organization called W.I.S.E. Youth (Ways to Inspire
Self-Empowerment in Youth) which encourages selfawareness through the arts. Delilah Martinez is the single
mother of an autistic 7-year-old boy named Elijah and is
presently working on completing her first inspirational
novel called Spic and Span. She is currently pursuing a
Masters Degree in Bilingual School Guidance Counseling
at New York University. For more information on Delilah
Martinez, W.I.S.E. Youth and how to contact them log on
to http://wiseyouthbx.tripod.com
80 Anamesa
Daniel Rosenberg is a doctoral student in Hebrew and
Judaic Studies, a storyteller, and a not-very-itinerant rabbi.
Kevin Sheldon works as a copywriter for the City of New
York and also co-directs the New York University Speech
and Debate Team. He is a second year student in the Draper
Program studying U.S. Cultural Policy with a focus on
cinema. He has written on film for New York Newsday and
various websites and periodicals.
Kristina Karin Shull is a native Californian and a
UCLA graduate. She has lived twice in Ireland and her
current Master’s thesis work at NYU on Irish-American
involvement in Northern Ireland reflects her passion for
history, politics and human rights. When she is not in the
library she may be found traveling the globe chasing after
Bono, and/or a wealthy husband.
Seema Srivastava is completing her Ph.D. at the Institute
of Fine Arts, NYU in Modern European Art. She writes
about and teaches Art History.
Fernando Perez Villalon was born in Santiago, Chile, in
1975. He is currently a PhD student in the Comparative
Literature Department at NYU. He is one of the editors of
the literary review “Vertebra” and the online review www.
letrasenlinea.cl, and the author of the book of poems “voces
versos movimientos.
The Culture Issue 81
now accepting submissions for the VIOLENCE issue, spring 2006 - www.anamesa.org