While its been several months since the latest Mad Max movie came out, I was only just recently able to slip in a chance to see before it left the big screen.
I’m generally a fan of action movies, but I was particularly intrigued when early reviews praised Mad Max as a feminist dystopic. That’s not what I expected based on my recollections of post-apocalyptic barbarian men fighting each other from tricked out, dilapidated vehicles from earlier films.
By the time I started seeing reviews that, perhaps, the film wasn’t as feminist as some might hope (or fear), my interest was already too piqued to miss it.
Now, before I get into a feminist critique of the film, let me start with this: I enjoyed it. It was a fun movie. There were lots of explosions, and I like explosions. There were some decent fight sequences with good choreography. Nothing of the caliber of, say, the first Transporter movie or even of the new Daredevil tv series, but it was better than the CGI nonsense some films try to pass off as action these days.
It was as enjoyable as any other action movie I might go see in theaters.
But. Mad Max: Fury Road is not a feminist movie.
Put another way, if Mad Max meets our standards for feminism, our standards are terribly low.
It surely does a better job of representing women than most Hollywood films, but “better than completely sexist” is not my definition of feminism.
The film stars a woman – not the titular character, but arguably the main protagonist nonetheless – who is a tough, competent, fighter. She is even a better shot than the male protagonist; a trait which, I suppose, brought some men close to fainting.
But the idea that a woman can defend herself – and that she might even be tougher than men – should not be radical. We should expect strong women in all our movies.
And the fact that Furiousa is the only truly tough woman in the movie should give us pause.
Similarly, Mad Max passes the famous Bechdel test – indicating that the film includes at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.
It is great that Mad Max passes this test which is failed by Terminator Genisys, Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and many other movies.
But, again, women talking to each other is a pretty low bar. I expect more than that.
Perhaps what struck me most about Mad Max was the tenderness of the women. All the female characters – even bad ass Furiousa – had a certain softness to them. A warmth and a love.
The message of the movie seemed to be: the hardness of men destroyed the world; the softness of women can repair it.
There were some excellent scenes emphasizing the injustice of male dominance and boldly advocating for women’s sexual freedom, but the pervasiveness of stereotypes seemed to balance them out.
It wasn’t a terribly sexist movie, but it wasn’t feminist either.
At least no one tried running from dinosaurs in heels.
This is highlight #2 from our recent time in Italy. Lucignano is a small medieval town in Tuscany, notable for its street plan of concentric ellipses capping a steep hill. During the middle ages, it was contested by larger city-states, but it sometimes enjoyed a degree of independence or civic freedom. It certainly had its own town hall and, within that building, a Sala di Consiglio or council chamber.
At first, this room was decorated by one large fresco of the Madonna in Majesty. If I recall correctly, the inscription under her picture reminded Lucignano’s leaders to listen to both sides of every dispute. Then, between 1438 and 1475, the town’s councilors contribruted personal funds to cover the ceiling with frescoes of exemplary figures from history, each labeled with a name, and most accompanied by an instructive quotation. “Virgil the poet” is shown above.
Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier offers excellent background information on this decorative scheme.* It was not uncommon to depict heroes from the past (often known as “worthies”) in public spaces. And there was a very famous model of a council chamber decorated with frescoes about good (and bad) government in nearby Siena. But the Lucignano frescoes were unique in that the list of exemplary figures came from a specific source, Dante, who also provided many of the quotations painted on the ceiling.
Dante held an elaborate political theory that I will not attempt to summarize comprehensively here. But it seems to me that Lucignano’s civic elders borrowed the following elements of his thought for their council chamber:
People who thought in this way were liable to see themselves as appropriate heirs to the republican citizens of ancient Rome, capable of self-governance, obligated to sacrifice for the common good, and committed to the same law that had prevailed in Rome. This room is a vivid illustration of the idea that civic republicanism flourished in late-medieval Italy and came to the Atlantic world from there.
*Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, “Dante and the History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune. Part II: The Sala del Consiglio at Lucignano,” Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 11, No. 22 (1990), pp. 23-46.
The post civic republicanism in medieval Italy: the Lucignano council frescoes appeared first on Peter Levine.
We encourage you to mark you calendars and register for a useful webinar being offered next week by MetroQuest, an NCDD member organization. MetroQuest is hosting this online event titled “Going Viral: How Your Project Can Engage Thousands Online” on Wednesday, July 29th from 1 – 1:45pm EST.
This webinar will be a quick and easy way to learn more about how to engage a bigger online audience, and we know it could be helpful to many of our members.
Here’s how MetroQuest describes the event.
This free webinar will explore case studies of planning projects with various transportation agencies that successfully used online technology to increase the reach of their public involvement efforts. Critical success factors, key strategies and best practices will be shared and discussed. The presentation will be followed by an open Q&A session.
This webinar will include case studies from:
- Imagine 2040 – Hillsborough MPO with Jacobs Engineering
- Feeling Congested – City of Toronto with Swerhun & Dialog Partners
- The Region’s Plan – Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) with WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff
- MoveDC – District Department of Transportation (DDOT) with Kimley-Horn
- New Central Library – City of Calgary with Modus
We encourage you to learn more and register for the event by visiting www.metroquest.com/webinar-going-viral-how-your-project-can-engage-thousands-online.
Sometimes it takes anthropologists to ask the really deep questions and help us imagine another world. That became clear to me after listening to Dr. Harry Walker, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, give the prestigious Malinowski Memorial Lecture in late May.
Walker has long studied the people of Peruvian-Amazonia, with special attention to “the nature of the self and its relationship to interpersonal and political processes.” His provocative, thoughtful lecture, “Equality Without Equivalence: an anthropology of the common,” is a meditation on the deep clash between our modern, western ideas of liberal equality and private property, and the different modes of being and knowing that are nourished in commons.
The talk essentially juxtaposes Walker's conclusions about aboriginal commons against the context of representative government and market economics, helping to reveal the peculiar ideals of humanity embedded in the liberal polity. (Thanks, Miguel Vieira, for alerting me to Walker's podcast!)
A bit of background: Walker is the author of Under a Watchful Eye: Self, Power and Intimacy in Amazonia, which is described on the author’s website as an exploration of
the pervasive tension in Amazonian societies between a cultural prioritization of individual autonomy and uniqueness, and an equally strong sense that satisfaction and self-realization only come through relations with others. In seeking to understand the inherently shared or ‘accompanied’ nature of human experience, it brings together considerations of child care and socialization, relations with nonhumans, and concepts of power, in order to show how agency and a sense of self emerge through everyday practices involving the cultivation of intimate but asymmetrical relationships of nurturance and dependency.
Walker’s one-hour talk is too long and complex to summarize here, so I will focus on some of his concluding insights. He noted that a central theme of Amazonian commons is the idea of “living well” – to organize one’s life and productive efforts in such a way that it “imbues life with a sense of meaning, purpose and direction.” The point is to strive for “a state of happiness and tranquility,” especially with loved ones.
Some have suggested that we are at a point in American civic life where citizens have never been more divided by partisanship, more offended (and eager to offend), and more angry. Our elections and our leadership seem to be increasingly partisan, combative and aggressive. Others point out that in fact we are not as divided as we think overall; while the two major parties themselves have clear differences, the electorate itself actually agrees on a larger number of issues than they think. Indeed, can the politics of today be any worse than the Election of 1800?
One thing that the current climate HAS brought us, despite the fact that we actually have more in common than we think, is the idea that ‘compromise‘ is a dirty word. As Deborah Tannen points out, many of our early leaders, the ones we find in our textbooks and give nicknames to, the ones that we valorize and heroify, would not recognize this idea when it comes to issues concerning the survival and success of the United States. Henry Clay, I think, says it best (p. 382):
I go for compromise whenever it can be made. All legislation, all government, all society is formed on the principle of mutual politeness, comity, courtesy; upon these everything is based. I bow to you today because you bow to me. You are respectful to me because I am respectful to you. Compromises have their recommendation that if you concede anything you have something conceded to you in return. Let him who elevates himself humanity above its weaknesses, its infirmities, its wants, its necessities say if he pleases I will never compromise, but let no who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.
We must recognize, of course, that these many early compromises were intended to overcome America’s shameful, bloody original sin, but it does not negate the fact that compromise with your political opponents, your ideological foes, and even your theoretical allies may sometimes be necessary to make progress, no matter how incremental. As Unger (1998, p. 263) writes, when we pursue social and political change that can significantly impact who we are, how we live, and how we govern ourselves,
It is a mistake, for example, to oppose short-term and context-oriented proposals to the tentative exploration of long-term alternative futures, or moderation to radicalism, in programmatic thought. Any trajectory of cumulative structural change can be considered at points close to present social reality or distant from it. The direction matters more than the distance.
Any civic education that seeks to ensure an active and engaged citizenry, one willing to engage in deliberation rather than accusation, should work toward ensuring future citizens understand the importance that compromise MUST play in civic life. Here in Florida, we have fashioned our middle school civics course in such a way that students may develop that understanding. A number of civics benchmarks provide opportunities for a consideration of compromise in civic and political life. 7.C.1.8, for example, has students look at the arguments between Federalists and Anti-Federalists concerning the writing of the Constitution and the development of the Bill of Rights as a sort of ‘compromise’ document. 7.C.2.5 has these future citizens look at the Bill of Rights as a balance between liberty and security, between my rights and your rights. This itself is a form of compromise. 7.C.2.12, my favorite benchmark, has students “Develop a plan to resolve a state or local problem by researching public policy alternatives, identifying appropriate government agencies to address the issue, and determining a course of action.” A very C3 approach, don’t you think, especially as it has them researching and taking action? And in the process of researching and developing solutions…compromise would play a role. 7.C.2.13 goes well with 2.12 in having students consider alternative perspectives, another area where they must think about how those with disparate views might reach an accommodation. Even 7.3.C.4, which connects to a discussion of federalism, could invoke compromise. The concept of compromise, then, is almost baked into the benchmarks that we teach in Florida, though of course we must be sure that how we approach it aligns with the state item specifications and benchmark clarifications. Ultimately, we must realize that without compromise, we face some stark consequences. To borrow from Auden, ‘we must all love each other…’
Below are my keynote remarks yesterday at …
The video is here:
I departed from the prepared text a fair amount in order to address the audience of civic innovators who had gathered in Austin. By the time I spoke, I knew more about their projects. These are the prepared remarks:
A presidential election cycle is a great civic ritual. Even though only about 60% of adults vote—when we’re lucky—a national campaign still touches most Americans in one way or another. It challenges us to consider fundamental issues. And it connects us to our political heritage, for many of the greatest moments in our political history have been presidential elections.
As the 2016 cycle heats up, what should we expect from this great national civic experience? What do we have a right to expect from the election?
I would say …
The campaign must engage all Americans, without respect to wealth, social status, age, race, gender, disability, and political and religious opinions.
It must give all Americans equal weight and importance, honoring the fundamental principle of one person/one vote. It must make our leaders accountable to the people as equals.
The campaign must provoke a serious conversation about the most fundamental issues facing us as a country.
It must enlist our higher instincts. It is absolutely fine for citizens to retain their diverse political ideologies and their various and conflicting interests. But we must all be reminded of the more generous and idealistic aspects of our own views and interests—or what Lincoln called, after the fateful campaign of 1860, “the better angels of our nature.”
During a national political campaign, Americans must have respectful interactions with fellow citizens who hold different views from their own. The goal is not consensus but mutual understanding and an awareness that we are all legitimate participants in one great political debate.
Some of our interactions must be personal, in the sense that we get to know one another and can actually reply to each others’ ideas—whether online or face-to-face. In other words, it’s not enough to relate to politicians and other celebrities by following what they say. We must also relate to one another.
Citizens must see ways of acting on their political values that go beyond casting a ballot in November, important as that is. If, for instance, you are moved by the problem of climate change or concerned about moral decline, the campaign should inspire you to reduce carbon or to restore traditional values by working with neighbors and peers. The act of voting should be just one of the political efforts that you undertake as a result of the election.
Finally, a diverse set of new actors must see openings to enter political life, whether as campaign volunteers and staffers, independent activists, or reporters, artists, and bloggers. Presidential elections are entry points for new generations of activists and leaders.
I have described a national election in rather glowing terms, but we all know that the reality falls far short.
In fact, many of my friends and colleagues who do civic work at the local level and in nonprofit settings don’t want to have anything to do with national elections. An esteemed colleague who works mostly with adolescents in an urban context recently remarked, “I have never seen anything big that’s good.” I suspect that the programs she admires are ones where human beings voluntarily relate to each other as individuals. They know the other participants’ names and interests. They can act and see the consequences of their actions. The problems that arise in these settings are problems of relationships—individuals being selfish or prejudiced or antagonistic. And so the solutions involve improving the relationships by talking and listening.
In contrast, a national election is impersonal and detached. It’s about millions of people. It’s about casting a secret ballot for a person you will never meet. The consequences of your individual vote are tiny. And the election is not really voluntary because it will yield a new president and a new Congress who will govern us—whether we like it or not.
If you see politics as impersonal—as a matter of mass voting by secret ballot—then I would recommend that you pay some attention to the settings where fellow citizens do come together to talk and work voluntarily. That is the relational bedrock of American democracy, and it is in weak shape. We need more of it. You should help support dialogues and deliberations, community organizing efforts, civic education in schools, community service programs, civic journalism, and new media. The movement to expand these programs is what I call “civic renewal.” It is important.
But if all you do is to create opportunities for voluntary interactions among people who know each other personally (or who can get to know each other), then I would press you to think also about the mass scale. It is not enough for us to build online communities and face-to-face discussions or service opportunities for a small proportion of the population. Decisions of enormous importance are being made every day by national governments and massive corporations. Even if you are not interested in them, they are interested in you. We must work at that level too. Otherwise, our efforts are just cute and nice; they are not real politics.
At the mass scale, politics is no longer relational. It’s not about getting to know people personally and influencing their ideas and values. It’s about leverage—causing other people to act from afar. A vote, for instance, is a small act of leverage. So is a strike or lawsuit.
Some people are busy at the grassroots level engaging with their fellow citizens, discussing issues, developing relationships, and working on important issues and problems. They are quietly rebuilding our civil society. The question is: Where can those good citizens obtain large-scale leverage in a nation of 300 million that has very rigid institutions? One possible answer is: during a national presidential campaign.
In fact, when the 2008 presidential election was first heating up, many of my colleagues saw openings to bring civic renewal into national politics.
First of all, both parties had competitive primary elections that year, so lots of the presidential campaigns were startups. They were eager to incorporate newcomers as volunteers or even as paid staffers and eager to experiment with new tools and methods. There were openings for newcomers to enter politics through the campaigns. Many of today’s younger civic activists cut their teeth working for a 2008 presidential candidate.
Second, because most of the campaigns were long shots to begin with, they were willing to try risky strategies that empowered their grassroots volunteers. They allowed robust discussions on their websites and let their volunteers develop strategies and methods that would work in their own communities.
Third, several of the campaigns offered genuine ideas about civic renewal. John McCain advocated a dramatic expansion of civilian national service, joining Senator Obama in New York on the auspicious and politically precious day of September 11 to call for tripling the size of AmeriCorps. That was a policy to enhance civic participation in America, and it was part of a larger message that also connected to Senator McCain’s service in uniform.
It is widely forgotten now, but John Edwards was committed to a national citizens’ deliberation on important policy ideas that would generate official federal legislation. That was a different kind of policy proposal—and also quite promising.
Finally, Barack Obama spoke about the citizen’s role in politics with more depth and commitment than any presidential candidate since Bobby Kennedy in 1968. That is my judgment, anyway, and I have written about it in some detail. Senator Obama made civic renewal a signature campaign theme. He developed various appropriate policy proposals, from transparency in government to expanded national service.
But perhaps more impressively, his campaign embodied his message of civic engagement in the way it organized itself. Grassroots volunteers were no longer asked to reach certain numbers of voters with scripted messages. Instead, they were trained to form relationships with people in their communities and to develop their fellow citizens’ leadership skills. They were given the power to create their own messages and were held accountable for the number of true relationships they built. This was a great example of a mix of relational politics and mass politics, and it carried Obama all the way to the White House.
Is the 2016 election another source of leverage, another opening for improving American democracy?
On the day after the election, November 9, 2016, some people will be happy. A candidate whom they admire will be the incoming president of the United States. I understand and appreciate their enthusiasm and do not want to rain on their parade. They will have worked for a cause and won it, fair and square.
Still, I think most of us will reflect back on the 2016 election and say: “That was a … [let me think of a word I can use at a polite forum at UT Austin] … that was a …. disaster!” Measured by all of the criteria that I mentioned when I began this talk, the campaign will look like an almost absurd failure, a travesty.
Will all Americans be engaged and will they count equally? Absolutely not, in an election cycle expected to cost $5 billion. A few individuals will personally contribute amounts in the hundreds of millions, and they will certainly count for more than you and me. Candidates are openly boasting of their success in lining up big donors right now, during what is openly called the “money primary.”
Also, the campaign battleground will be small, limited to swing voters in swing states and the very few competitive congressional districts. In vast states like Texas, voters will not be seen to matter much at all.
Will new people bring new ideas and energies into politics? Not, I fear, through the presidential campaigns, because the leading candidates on both sides are the opposite of startups. They are extremely experienced professional operations with little room for newcomers.
And while the innovations of the 2008 campaign involved empowering volunteers to develop their own messages and strategies, the main innovations since then have involved the use of Big Data to hone and test messages sent from campaign HQ to citizens. The whole point of these methods is to affect individuals in reliable and predictable ways—not to hear their views or empower them to act. The value of algorithms and data is rising; the role of volunteers is increasingly trivial.
Will we see a great conversation about the fundamental issues facing the country? I am sorry to say that also seems highly unlikely. In every modern campaign, so many factors direct the conversation into trivialities and distractions, not to mention fear-mongering and outright lies.
And this year, there is an additional reason to be skeptical about the national conversation. Realistically, a Democratic president will not be able to accomplish a domestic policy agenda in her or his first term, because Congress is almost certain to be controlled by Republicans. The most she or he can actually accomplish is to veto Republican legislation and negotiate the annual budget to the status quo. That means that the Democratic candidates must talk about what they would do if elected knowing that they actually cannot do very much at all. All the rhetoric from one side of the campaign will be basically false, which is not good for the discussion.
Republicans can be more genuinely ambitious but it remains to be seen whether any of them will put forward a serious platform.
Incidentally, the same situation applied in the 2012 election, which struck me as one of the least edifying dialogues in modern times. The televised debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney were dominated by each man’s saying: “You propose X,” and his opponent saying, “No I don’t.” They never got to argue about what they did support. The whole conversation was incredibly confusing and misleading.
Will the 2016 campaign touch the better angels of our nature and call us to work together on important problems in our own communities? I hope so, but again I am not terribly optimistic. Much of the $5 billion that will be spent in this cycle will be used to frighten and distract, not to inspire and empower.
Politicians always over-promise what they can deliver and try to persuade us that they will solve our problems for us. That is always a disempowering message. It will be worse than usual this time because few Americans really believe that national leaders can achieve anything significant, given the frozen political situation in DC. So the candidates will relentlessly exaggerate their own potential and thereby minimize the role of ordinary citizens.
I was asked to inspire you; that was my explicit charge for today. So far, I am doing a miserable job. I am painting a very depressing picture of the months ahead.
But I actually do intend an inspirational message. Imagine that it is November 9, 2016, the day after the national election. The official campaign, as waged by professional politicians and covered by the mass media, is just as I have predicted: a civic nightmare. But imagine that Americans do not wake up on the day after the vote and remark, “What a disaster!” Instead, imagine that they say, “This is the year that we the people reclaimed our political system. Yes, the candidates ran multi-billion-dollar campaigns using scripted, misleading messages to influence a few swing voters and demobilize their opponents through fear. But that is not the main story of the 2016 election. Despite the behavior of the candidates and their enablers among the donor class and the mass media, this election actually was a great discussion of fundamental issues. It actually did reach most Americans and it did inspire us not only to vote but to act in other ways to improve the world. We learned about each other and gained a measure of respect for our fellow citizens who disagree. We saw at least the dim outlines of true solutions emerge. We saw a role for ourselves in achieving those solutions. We still expect relatively little from Congress in the next months, but we expect a great deal from ourselves as a people. We are ready to step up to our responsibilities as a great self-governing nation.”
Why would that happen? In all seriousness, it would happen because of your work. It would happen because you have labored and innovated and collaborated. You have built apps and websites where citizens can genuinely discuss important issues with people who disagree. You have covered news in ways that bring out the real issues and engages diverse voices. You have empowered even the most disempowered Americans with tools and ideas and skills that reconnect them to politics and civic life.
None of you can accomplish that alone. The budget of each organization represented in this room is a tiny fraction of the weekly spending of one of the presidential campaigns that will be flooding the airwaves with fear and misinformation. But we can accomplish a great deal together and with the many willing allies who are not here with us today.
We need to find new ways to set common goals and collaborate effectively in our communities, holding ourselves accountable for common outcomes.
In Bolivia this month, Pope Francis reflected on the global impasse among political elites that is putting not just the US but the whole earth in danger. He said, “People and their movements are called to cry out, to mobilize and to demand – peacefully, but firmly – that appropriate and urgently-needed measures be taken.” He concluded his Bolivia speech by saying, “the future of humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great powers and the elites. It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and in their ability to organize.”
These are great and timely words. We are unlikely to hear them from our most powerful politicians, but we can make them the inspiration for our own efforts. This is the year that we can take back American politics. It is up to us.
The post the year the people took back politics: a vision for 2016 appeared first on Peter Levine.
Sarah Shugars evaluates the prospects for compromise in matters of justice and injustice:
…if a full victory is beyond our reach perhaps a step towards justice is better than the status quo. Or, perhaps, a step towards justice will simply mollify the moderates, who will no longer feel the need to fight for more robust reform. On the other hand, refusing to compromise may earn you enemies – alienating moderates who might otherwise be willing to support your cause. These are complex, strategic questions which every movement and activist must evaluate and consider. Importantly, a willingness to compromise for the good of the movement should not be confused with an instinctual response of conflict-avoidance.
I don’t think Shugars justifies that last line: perhaps it’s wrong to avoid conflict, but perhaps too those instincts have wisdom, such as the importance of preserving comity for future matters. A nation torn by value-based disagreements can fail to fix a lot of roads and schools while they glare daggers at each other. (Ask me how I know!)
And activists are not always the best judges of either their opponents or the effective strategies for achieving their goals (nor are philosophers and political theorists, of course). In any case the question of instinct here suppresses a decision about the default strategies we should adopt that is itself strategic and requires the utmost prudence and practical wisdom.
Shugars also quotes the excellent Charles Mackay poem, No Enemies, with its rousing challenge that those without enemies have stood by as cowards before injustice. But we ought also to consider Wendell Berry:
If you are not to become a monster,you must care what they think.If you care what they think,how will you not hate them,and so become a monsterof the opposite kind? From where thenis love to come—love for your enemythat is the way of liberty?From forgiveness. Forgiven, they gofree of you, and you of them;they are to you as sunlighton a green branch. You must notthink of them again, exceptas monsters like yourself,pitiable because unforgiving.
Compromise is often considered to be a good thing – just as we are taught to share toys as kids, we are also taught to share solutions.
If we can’t both get what we want, then reasonable adults will find a compromise – each getting a little of what they want while ceding some ground.
That might be all well and good if we’re debating something relatively trivial, but what about when it comes to issues of justice?
Then the best course is not so clear – if a full victory is beyond our reach perhaps a step towards justice is better than the status quo. Or, perhaps, a step towards justice will simply mollify the moderates, who will no longer feel the need to fight for more robust reform. On the other hand, refusing to compromise may earn you enemies – alienating moderates who might otherwise be willing to support your cause.
These are complex, strategic questions which every movement and activist must evaluate and consider.
Importantly, a wiliness to compromise for the good of the movement should not be confused with an instinctual response of conflict-avoidance.
Compromise can be good, but it should be a strategic choice – not a convenient dodge.
When debating such matters for myself, I’m reminded of the words of Charles Mackay in his poem No Enemies:
You have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
