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CorrespondenceAn International Review of Culture and Society

I n T h i s I s s u e

The Cultural Politics of FilmRoots of Globalization in the Cinema 3

Paradoxical French Cinema 4

Latin American Cinema 5

Why Hollywood Rules the World 6

France’s Film Subsidy System 8

French Cinema’s American Obsession 9

Denmark’s New Golden Age of Film 10

The Most Important Art 11

Film and New MediaAfrican Video-Films 13

Internet Film Culture 14

The Legacy of the 1960sRefashioning of a German Radical 16

Dany the Red 17

We Have a Situation 18

Our Man at the Times 19

Questions of National IdentitySpain’s Forgetting of Things Past 21

A Rise of Nationalism in Japan? 22

“Post-Zionist” Textbooks 23

Polish Anti-Semitism 24

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Globalization and Cinema

For those who want to make the case that globalization is essentially “Amer-icanization,” exhibit number one is usually Hollywood’s dominance ofinternational cinema. American movies account for more than 70 percent

of films seen in most of Western Europe and have a 90 percent market share inmany other countries around the world. If poets were “the unacknowledged leg-islators of the world” when Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in the early nineteenthcentury, that role passed to filmmakers during the twentieth century. An extra-ordinary 1.5 billion movie tickets were sold in the United States alone in 2000,and that constitutes only a fraction of the films seen on television and on videoin one country. Because of its power to influence public opinion and shape cul-tural values, the hegemony of Hollywood films has become a major internationalpolitical issue. Some have accused American movie studios of practicing “cul-tural imperialism,” and many countries have established “domestic content”rules to protect their film industries. Access to film and television markets hasbecome one of the thorniest issues in recent international trade agreements.

Previous issues of Correspondence have focused primarily on written culture sowe felt it important to consider the politics of film in this and coming issues.Richard Peña reminds us that worries of “cultural imperialism” have been with usfrom the beginning of the film era—but that at an earlier time the United Stateshad tried to defend itself from the invasion of French cinema. Tyler Cowen arguesagainst the protectionist reflexes in countries such as France and insists that thedecline of the many European film industries is the result of the subsidy systemsthat were invented to nurture them. The most exciting new developments in inter-national film, he writes, have come from the lively markets of India and Hong Kong,which are driven by commercial interests rather than government support. Threedifferent articles present aspects of the French point of view. Serge Toubianalaments the increasingly regional nature of French cinema despite its global ambi-tions. Frédéric Martel describes and writes appreciatively of the success of theFrench subsidy system, while Guy Konipnicki criticizes recent French cinema fortrying unsuccessfully to imitate the formulae of Hollywood.Christina Stojanovadescribes the virtual collapse of Eastern European cinema in the wake of the dis-mantling of the Berlin Wall and the state subsidy systems of the former Soviet bloc.

But the pro- and anti-Hollywood debate is only one aspect of contemporaryworld cinema. Denmark, as Morton Piil explains, has become the exception to allrules. Despite having a domestic audience of only five million, its modest subsidysystem has created commercially viable movies that have enjoyed great critical suc-cess and international appeal. N. Frank Ukadike describes a perhaps even moreremarkable response to globalization. Unable to compete with big-budget Holly-wood films, African filmmakers in Ghana and Nigeria started making hundreds ofinexpensive video-films, which have now won a much bigger audience than tradi-tional celluloid films by creating movies specifically for an African public.Jonathan Rosenbaum suggests that digital technology may do for the rest of theworld what video has already accomplished in parts of Africa: by lowering costand making films accessible on the Internet, digitization may change the economiccalculus of film and the terms of engagement between producers and consumers. ◆

——Alexander Stille

Issue No. 8 Summer/Fall 2001

An International Project of the Committee on Intellectual CorrespondencePublished by the Council on Foreign Relations

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Blair’s Cultural Policy Tony Blair’s Grands Projets 26

Blair’s Market Populism 27

PoliticsDispiriting Science 29

Europe and the U.S. Death Penalty 31

Japanese Police Scandals 32

Food PoliticsSafe Food, Endangered Food Culture 34

Slow Food 36

LiteratureThe Feuilleton Culture Wars 37

Can One Still Write in German? 38

Nabokov’s Russian Return 39

ConfucianismLove & Politics in Japanese Classics 40

Japan and Confucianism 41

Confucianism and Democracy 43

Children’s LiteratureThe Harry Potter Phenomenon 44

The French and the “Anglo-Saxon”

Infantilization of Culture 44

Foreign Models for

Japan’s Children’s Literature 46

Mafalda,Argentine Child Dissident 47

Patoruzú, Argentine Indian Hero 49

On Preliteracy 50

MiscellanyEnglish Made Difficult 2

The Towers of London 30

European Absolut-ism 35

List of Contributors 52

Miscellany

English Made Difficult

The vagaries of English pronunciation have long tormented language stu-dents, but now their difficulties have been confirmed by neurologicalscience: dyslexia is far more common in English-speaking countries than

in those whose languages have fewer sounds and simpler spelling. Dyslexiainvolves a brain structure that makes it difficult for a learning reader to connectverbal sounds with the letters or symbols that “spell’’ that sound. Italian, forexample, contains thirty-three sounds, spelled with only twenty-five letters orletter combinations. English, by contrast, has 1120 ways for letters in the writ-ten language to symbolize the spoken language’s forty sounds. French spokenlanguage is almost as complex.

In English, many words share the same letter combinations, but involve dif-ferent sounds when spoken. In French, the complexity lies in different lettercombinations that “spell’’ the same or similar sound, such as “au temps’’ (at thetime) and “autant’’ (as much, so much).

An international team that compared the brain-scan images and reading skillsof dyslexic university students in Italy, France, and England and published theirfindings in the U.S. magazine Science (“Dyslexia: Cultural Diversity and Biologi-cal Unity,” Science, March 16, 2001) reports twice as many identified dyslexicsin English-speaking countries as in countries with less complex phonetics. Whilestudents took reading exams, positron emission tomography (PET scanning) wasused to measure and image blood flow in specific parts of the brain, an indica-tion of neurological activity. All of the students had the same deficits in the lefttemporal lobe of the brain. The team found virtually no difference in the neuro-logical signature for dyslexia, but an immense difference in how well the stu-dents learned to read their native languages. The English, French, and Italiandyslexics did equally poorly in tests based on the short-term memory of verbalsounds; yet the Italians could read their native language far better than the Eng-lish and French students theirs.

Because diagnosing learning disabilities is notoriously subjective, and mostreading disorders are due to such social factors as inadequate education, the neu-rological study team specifically targeted university students. Yet because iden-tified dyslexics are rare in Italy, since the language mitigates the dyslexic’s con-dition, the researchers had to find dyslexic Italian students through special teststo discern the neurological signature for the disorder.

It is estimated that between 5 and 15 percent of Americans have some degreeof dyslexia. And although native French- or English-speaking dyslexics are“very successful people” by virtue of the compensatory skills their disabilityhas demanded, they need more time taking exams, for instance, and continueto misspell. This suggests that language difference alone makes it harder forEnglish-speaking dyslexics to learn how to read. “The complexity of the Eng-lish and French written languages stems from historical events that have intro-duced spellings from other languages, while, in comparison, Italian has re-mained quite pure,’’ said Eraldo Paulesu of the University of Milan Bicocca, thelead author of the study.

A study that found an Australian boy in Japan who was dyslexic in Englishbut not in Japanese clearly suggests that language significantly determines theseverity of a reading disorder. Neurologists cannot agree why dyslexics’ brainsdiffer from normal readers’, and, says Paulesu, short of advising an early moveto countries with simple sound-symbol connections, cannot yet help dyslexicstudents overcome their reading disability. ◆

—David JacobsonSources: Paul Recer, Associated Press dispatch, March 15, 2001.Laura Helmuth, “Dyslexia: Same Brains, Different Languages,” Science, March 2001.

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The Cultural Politics of Film

(greater access to world markets), not less. The semantic andconsequent political quagmire around the meaning and futureof globalization seems to have a special urgency in discussionsabout film and related media, as in this case the effects of glob-alization are seen to be ideological as well as economic.

In fact, globalization has been, in one form or another, a fac-tor in film history since the beginningof the medium. Developed by severaldifferent people in the first part of the1890s, the technology which mademotion pictures possible was quicklystandardized, so that by 1900 therewas hardly any major variance in themechanics of how films were shot,processed or projected—films madein China could literally be screened inPeru. Early film producers seeminglywere quickly aware of this, and soonbegan searching for and creating mar-kets for their films far beyond theirnational or continental boundaries.The French were the first out of thegate; by 1903, pioneer filmmakerGeorges Méliès sent his brother Gas-ton to New York to open a branchoffice to service his customers, and by1905 Charles Pathé also had an Amer-ican office. Indeed, as Richard Abel points out in his fascinat-ing book The Red Rooster Scare, the proliferation of French cin-ema in the U.S. in those earliest years of film history wasdenounced because of its feared adverse effects on Americanaudiences, especially those susceptible immigrants who werehaving enough trouble becoming “Americanized.”

Within a few years, of course, the situation would changedrastically. The onset of World War I disrupted the nascentfilm industries of France and Italy—the two biggest interna-tional exporters—at precisely the moment that American cin-ema, undergoing a process of consolidation, was becoming bigbusiness. Quickly taking over the secondary markets devel-oped by the Europeans—such as Latin America and Australia—the U.S. film industry began to establish a control overworld film markets that, despite a few bumps along the way,it continues to exert today. By the mid-1920s, the Americandomination of most European markets (90 percent of the U.K.market, 80 percent of the French and Italian markets) led sev-eral nations to attempt to impose import quotas, both as a

means of protecting their own film industries and, it was said,as a way of limiting American influence on their cultures.

Precisely why American films remained so dominant inter-nationally is a subject of continued debate. The process of con-glomeration, in which smaller companies came together toform larger entities, continued in the industry until, by the

beginning of the sound era (1929),seven companies (known as the stu-dios) were responsible for about 90percent of Hollywood films; thesecompanies, although competitors, co-operated to ensure the continuedpower of American cinema abroad.Studios not only made films and heldcontracts on talent; they also con-trolled the distribution and exhibi-tion of films, making for an industrythat economists would term “verti-cally integrated.” The U.S. had a hugeinternal market to exploit, whichprovided a bedrock for the industry.In 1939, for example, a year that sawthe release of Gone with the Wind, TheWizard of Oz, and Mr. Smith Goes toWashington, it’s estimated that theU.S. industry only broke even withthe American market alone; the

industry’s profits, then, were entirely generated throughexports. American companies were also known to engage inpractices (later declared illegal, at least in the U.S.) such as“block booking,” in which an exhibitor is forced to accept alarge package of films in order to get some of the most poten-tially profitable titles, thus limiting the possibilities for for-eign films to find space on their own domestic screens.

This situation would begin to change in the years after WorldWar II. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the majorAmerican film studios to sell off their distribution and exhibi-tion chains, thus ending the vertical integration of the filmindustry that had proved so profitable. The twin onslaughts ofthe growth of American television and increasing suburbaniza-tion decimated film audiences, effectively destroying the finan-cial security of the film industry. Simultaneously, other filmindustries (France, Italy, Japan) began to grow, re-conqueringlarge parts of their own markets and creating or reviving filmexports. The impact of this was felt even in the U.S., where inthe 1950s “foreign films” suddenly became regular presences

The Roots of Globalization in the Cinema

“Globalization” has become one of the great vacuum words of our time; it seems to suck up anymeaning anyone wishes to ascribe to it. Protesters from Seattle to Beijing have decried whatthey see as the disastrous effects of globalization (uncontrolled competition) on the fragile

economies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America; meanwhile, in a recent interview U.N. Secretary GeneralKofi Annan maintained that what’s needed to right the present economic imbalance is more globalization

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in American movie theaters—many of them independentlyowned and operated after decades as part of studio-owned or -controlled chains. The revival of these film industries was partand parcel of strategies of postwar economic recovery, andmany governments began to actively promote filmmaking inboth the economic and cultural interest of the nation.

Industrially, the 1950s and 1960s were rocky decades forthe American cinema; perhaps not accidentally, it’s also theera remembered as the “golden age” of foreign film. By the1970s, though, new corporate strategies had begun to emerge.American studios, at least what remained of them, were incor-porated into new kinds of media conglomerates, in which onecompany (say, Time Warner) would own or control film stu-dios, magazines, publishing houses, record labels, and even-tually even television networks. If the old studio system hadbeen vertically integrated, one now spoke of the Americanfilm industry being horizontally integrated; synergies werecreated between the studios and all the other componentswithin the conglomerate. Moreover, by the late 1970s newmarket opportunities emerged, such as cable television, paytelevision, and videocassettes; the studios, at least those withtheir film libraries still intact, became enormously valuable“cash cows” for these conglomerates, as they offered the pos-sibility for new earnings with relatively little investment.Gradually, the economic power of the now re-imagined andre-configured American film industry came to surpass that ofHollywood even in its greatest years.

This renewed power of the industry allowed it to devote itsenergies to aggressive overseas export and marketing of its films,which inevitably has brought American cinema into even morebitter competition with other cinemas, as seen in the GATTnegotiations. In some ways this was aided by the fact that oftenthe media conglomerates which now controlled the studios werethemselves multinational (Bertelsmann, Sony, Murdoch/NewsCorporation, etc.). New technologies such as satellite televisiontransmission or the Internet have enabled the industry to mar-ket its products directly to foreign consumers, bypassingdomestic middlemen. Recently, there has been a spate of newmovie theater construction internationally financed by thesesame media conglomerates—theaters that, as might be ex-pected, usually screen only American-produced films.

So in many ways, one could say regarding globalization inthe contemporary cinema that it truly is both the best of timesand the worst of times. New technologies hold out the possi-bility for filmmakers everywhere that their works could beavailable to audiences around the world, yet those same tech-nologies have also made it easier for the biggest and most pow-erful producers to dominate markets even more effectively.Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became the first foreign lan-guage film in the U.S. to earn over $100 million, yet few otherforeign language films have been at all profitable this year.

Whatever the future holds for cinema, one thing is certain:whether understood in a positive or negative sense, globaliza-tion of world cinema will only increase in the coming years,and filmmakers, as well as film audiences, will all have todecide how we can make it work to our advantage. ◆

—Richard Peña

Paradoxical French Cinema

French cinema is in a schizophrenic situation, caughtbetween the increasingly “regional” nature of its artis-tic and cultural influence and the increasingly global

ambitions of the communication groups that finance it, asseen in the recent acquisition of Universal Studios byVivendi, whose main shareholder is the French televisionchannel, Canal Plus....But despite the power of the Frenchcommunication groups, Canal Plus, Hachette or Pathé, Frenchcinema has more and more the characteristics of a regionalphenomenon. That’s not entirely bad when compared to thesituation of our neighboring countries such as Italy, Ger-many, or even Great Britain. Their cinemas are basically onthe brink of extinction, where public authorities have eithersealed their defeat or placed them entirely at the mercy of pri-vate television. If French cinema still constitutes an excep-tion in Europe, it is because it continues to express a sense ofnational identity, both industrially as well as linguisticallyand culturally, while remaining open to the outside world.This notwithstanding, the push of “globalization” is such,the hegemony of the United States so powerful, that Frenchcinema’s influence has been reduced to within its own bor-ders. In short, we export fewer films and they are less visibleon screens around the world.

There is a paradox, then, between the desire of Frenchgroups to assert themselves on the world market and the weakreach of our cinema. This paradox has a history,…a traditionof public aid to the cinema that goes back to the immediatepostwar period. Protected by national rules, French cinemahas trouble asserting itself on the world market. At the begin-ning of the 1980s, the domestic market share of French movieswas above 50 percent but in recent years has fallen to 30 or 35percent. At the same time, the share of American films hasgrown to about 60 percent of the market. This phenomenon ishappening in the rest of the world on an even grander scale.

The American hegemony is based on exceptional commer-cial ability and incomparable marketing. But it exists alsobecause the films, the “products” proposed by Hollywood,find their audience. Young people under twenty-four, whoconstitute the bulk of the movie-going public, “vote” enmasse for American movies. It is a question of immediate cul-tural identification with a way of life. They dream Ameri-can, dress American, and eat American....The multiplex the-aters are helping to increase box office admissions, but thisis helping films that already have high visibility through themedia and advertising. In a multiplex with twenty screens itis not unusual to see a film like Star Wars playing on threeof them at once....This contributes to putting the French cin-ema on the defensive, and the authors of films in a marginalposition.

One of the reasons for the decline of our cinema is the agingof our so-called “commercial” or popular cinema, which hasfailed to renew itself. Up until the 1970s, French cinema wasstill a center of gravity—Yves Montand, Jean-Paul Belmondo,Simone Signoret, Alain Delon, Phillipe Noiret, Romy Schnei-der, Catherine Deneuve....The handicap of the French cinema

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is not having a cinema of genres, which is the great strengthof American film. With Gladiator, for example, they revived agenre that was completely dead and buried!

The public, basically, does not want to hear about reality. Itgoes to the movies in order not to recognize itself. For a longtime, I believed in the ideas of Roberto Rossellini or Jean-LucGodard, or Claude Lanzmann, for whom making movies con-sists of showing the viewer what the director feels he needsto know to understand his time. But as seductive and stimu-lating as this idea is, both aesthetically and philosophically, ithas never worked commercially. The whole format of themovies is structured so that the public cannot see or hear any-thing of the “real world.” It is the realm of entertainment, theequivalent of Euro-Disney. ◆

—Serge Toubiana* (translated by Alexander Stille)Source: Interview with Toubiana, Le Débat, Nov.-Dec. 2000.

* Former editor of Cahiers du cinéma

In Search of an Audience:Latin American Cinema

Since 1996 film production in Argentina has tripled,with 1999 a banner year for the unprecedented num-ber of films commercially released. In Chile El Cha-

cotero Sentimental (The sentimental joker) beat all box-officerecords. At 1999 Oscar time, Brazilian director Walter Salles’s1998 feature Central do Brasil (Central Station) nearly wonBest Foreign Film. The Colombians have scored a triumphwith Sergio Cabrera’s Golpe de Estadio (Stadium putsch)(1999), the mind-boggling story of a soccer match that bringsabout a truce between army and guerrilla forces. In Mexico,Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas (Sex, modesty, tears) drew an audi-ence of five million, an unheard-of number that put it in thirdplace at the box office, after Titanic and the animated versionof Tarzan. “Not even the most optimistic expectations,”according to Mexican critic Leonardo García Tsao, “couldhave predicted such success.”

Does this mean we’re in a golden age of Latin American cin-ema? Is the film industry in this region in an unprecedentedheyday? Far from it, in fact. In some countries there’s a crisisin creativity, in others a crisis in product; in all, there’s a cri-sis in distribution. “Latin American cinema,” jokes Argentinecritic Salvador Samaritano, director of Buenos Aires FilmSchool, “has always been a dying art.” In fact, Latin Ameri-can cinema doesn’t exist. What does exist is a Brazilian cin-ema, a Mexican cinema, an Argentine cinema ....

“We barely know the filmmaking of other Latin Americancountries,” complains the Brazilian Sara Silveira, director ofthe independent production company Dezenove Som e Ima-gens. “We don’t even get the chance to see movies fromArgentina, though it’s right next door.” The problem is dis-tribution, which is totally in the hands of big U.S. companies.For a Latin American film to be seen beyond its borders, ithas to be bought and distributed in the United States., whichthen allows, in some cases, for it to be seen in other LatinAmerican countries.

It’s incredible but true: Latin America can’t see moviesmade in Latin America. The U.S., in fact, sees more LatinAmerican movies than Latin America does. The only moviesthat manage to circulate throughout Latin America are thosenominated for Oscars, like Central do Brasil, or directed by aLatin American director established in Hollywood....Everyso often, some Latin American movie causes a stir in the U.S.:for instance, the Mexican Like Water for Chocolate, or theCuban films Strawberries and Chocolate and Guantanamera.Distributors then decide to release it to the rest of the world.Another possible circuit is that of film festivals, the best-attended of which is Havana’s International Festival of NewLatin American Cinema. But the general public doesn’t attendfestivals, and in the absence of any regional distributor,coproductions represent the only chance for a film to be dis-tributed in more than one country.

Argentina and Brazil are obviously in the midst of a cinemarenaissance. In both cases, the revival was made possible bylegislation supporting local production. Brazil’s law, in effectsince 1996, allows individuals and companies to deductinvestments in film productions from their income tax.Through this initiative, production has risen to some thirtyfilms annually—though in 1999, of course, devaluation againreduced such investments. Argentina, through a law adoptedin 1994, is producing more films than ever before: thirty-onewere made in 1999, as against an average of ten in years beforethe law. This new arrangement requires TV networks to con-tribute between 6 and 8 percent of their publicity profits tofilm production. In addition, 10 percent of ticket sales and 10percent of video cassette sales go into the cinema. “Thanks tothe film aid law,” adds Argentine director Eduardo Calcagno,“one can try to smuggle in another kind of film to a publicthat’s interested a priori only in movie entertainment, inescapist fare.”

And apparently the countries that have no such laws go theway of entertainment. Mexico, which in the 1950s producedup to 150 movies a year, now makes no more than ten. But inmid-1999 Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas came out, a sentimental sexcomedy by the young director Antonio Serrano, which tookin over $10 million, breaking all records at the Mexican boxoffice. Three tales of sex and mixed-up emotions make up thestory-line also of El Chacotero Sentimental by Chilean direc-tor Cristían Galaz, which was the movie of 1999: 400,000rushed out to see it, making it the biggest film hit in Chile’shistory. “People like to see themselves in movies,” commentsGalaz. “It’s not caricature; it’s a portrayal of people as theyreally are.”

The commercial success of both these films enables new pro-jects to be financed. This might well encourage certain law-makers. “If we had the sorts of fiscal incentives they grant inArgentina or Brazil to producers and distributors,” says Mex-ican critic García Tsao, “the situation in Mexico would betotally different.” ◆

—Samuel Silva and Minerva Vacio(translated from the French by David Jacobson)

Source: Américaeconomía (Santiago, Chile), undated, excerptedand translated in Courrier international (Paris), June 22-28, 2000.

Cultural innovations often come in geographic clusters.Today, however, there is widespread fear of too muchconcentration in the film industry, where Hollywood

dominates the market for big-box-office movies, occasioningcharges of U.S. cultural imperialism.

What lies behind these charges?The United States has at least one natural advantage in

moviemaking—the largest single home market for cinema indollar terms. Total attendance but not revenue is higher inIndia. Aggregate market size nonetheless remains only a sin-gle factor in determining who be-comes a market leader. The UnitedStates, for instance, has long beena major presence, but only re-cently have European movies heldsuch a low share of their homemarkets. In the mid-1960s, Ameri-can films accounted for 35 percentof box-office revenues in Conti-nental Europe; today the figureranges between 80 and 90 percent.The greater population of the U.S.,and the greater American interestin moviegoing, do not themselvesaccount for these changes.

Furthermore, only certain kindsof cinema cluster in Hollywood. Ina typical year the Western Euro-pean nations make more moviesthan America does. In numericterms most of the world’s movies come from Asia. India typi-cally releases eight or nine hundred commercial films a year,compared to about 250 from the United States.

The Hollywood advantage is concentrated in highly visibleentertainment films with broad global appeal. The typicalEuropean film has about one percent of the audience of thetypical Hollywood film, and this differential has been grow-ing in markets around the world.

The question, then, is why Hollywood movies have moreglobal export success, while European movies are aimed at smallbut guaranteed local audiences. And why, since the 1970s, havemost European cinemas seen their export markets collapse?

As television became widespread throughout Europe,movie audiences dwindled. In Germany, 800 million movietickets were bought in 1956 but only 180 million were boughtin 1962. At the same time, the number of television sets rosefrom 700,000 to 7.2 million. In the U.K., cinema attendancefell from 292 million in 1967 to 73 million in 1986. This nega-tive-demand shock forced European moviemaking to contract.Hollywood stepped into the void. Starting as early as the1950s, American moviemakers responded to television bymaking high-stakes, risky investments in marketing, glamour,and special effects. American directors found greater latitudeto experiment with sex and violence once the Hays Code was

abandoned in 1966. By the 1970s, Hollywood movies, such asJaws and Star Wars, had become significantly more excitingto mass audiences than a decade before, just as Europeanmoviemakers found themselves unable to compete with tele-vision. For Hollywood it was a blessing in disguise that tele-vision hit the American market first.

Demographics have worsened the European problem. In mostcountries, people over thirty-five generally prefer television tomoviegoing, which has become the province of the young. MostEuropean countries suffer twice here. They have older popula-

tions than does the United States.And their “art-house” styles bet-ter suit older audiences, makingthem less exportable.

The success of American filmshas made them easier to finance,market, and export. Hollywoodfilms have become increasinglyglobal, while European films tar-get small but guaranteed revenuesources, such as state subsidies orgovernment-regulated televisionstations. A vicious circle has beencreated: the more European pro-ducers fail in global markets, themore they rely on television rev-enue and subsidies. The more theyrely on television and subsidies,the more they fail in global mar-kets. Television receipts account

for more than half of film revenue in France, but only 19 per-cent in the U.S., where there is also a much larger market forvideo rentals, a market that is less passive, and more competi-tive, than television.

Television and subsidies are closely linked. Most WesternEuropean nations have television stations that are owned, con-trolled, or strictly regulated by their governments, which usethem to promote a national cultural agenda. Typically the sta-tions face domestic content restrictions, must spend a certainpercentage of revenue on domestic films, must operate a filmproduction subsidiary, or willfully finance films for politicalreasons. The end result is overpayment for broadcast rights—the most important subsidy many European moviemakersreceive. Audience levels are typically no more than one or twomillion at the television level, even in the larger countries suchas France—too small to justify the sums paid to moviemakersfor television rights on economic grounds.

Subsidies have made government the primary customer inmany cases. French producers receive “Sofica” tax shelters(estimated worth of more than 5 percent of total budgets),automatic box-office aid from the government (estimated at7.7 percent of total budget), the discretionary “advance onearnings” subsidy [see Martel, p. 8], which takes the form ofan interest-free loan (estimated at over 5 percent of total bud-

Why Hollywood Rules the World (and Should We Care?)

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UNITED STATES vs. WESTERN EUROPE

Population272 million vs. 366 million

Cinema tickets sold1.48 billion vs. 805 million

Number of screens37,165 vs. 23,168

Frequency of film-viewing5.37 times a year vs. 2.2 times a year

Inhabitants per screen7,334 vs. 15,821

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get), and subsidies to promote French films abroad. A 1970study estimated that 60 percent of the “avance sur recettes”subsidy was in fact never recovered. Money is also advancedfor the development of new film ideas, and for script rewrit-ing if the proposed film is rejected when it applies for subsi-dies on the first go-round. There is a special subsidy fund forcoproductions with Eastern European filmmakers. The Frenchgovernment also subsidizes the upkeep and construction ofcinemas and encourages French banks to lend money tomoviemaking projects. Martin Dale, a cinema industry ana-lyst, has estimated that the state provides at least 70 percentof the funding for the average Continental film, taking all sub-sidies into account.

Subsidies encourage producers to serve domestic demandand the wishes of politicians, rather than international export.The film industries will not develop specialized talents indemand forecasting and marketing, as Hollywood has done.

The training of cinematic talent in the United States andEurope reflects these differences. American film schools arelike business schools in many regards. European film schoolshave become more like humanities programs, emphasizingsemiotics, critical theory, and contemporary left-wing phi-losophies. The European directors that survive tend to havelongstanding political connections; one 1995 study estimatedthat 85 percent of the film directors in France were over fiftyat the time. Many younger talents set their sights on Holly-wood from the beginning.

In contrast, the two non-Hollywood cinemas that haveenjoyed the most export success—India and Hong Kong—arerun on an explicitly commercial basis. While some Indianfilms receive government subsidies, the vast majority do notand, with large audiences in much of Asia, Africa, the MiddleEast and elsewhere, probably reach more people than anyother national industry. Though much criticized for theirgeneric nature or sappy plots, they are often visually andmusically quite beautiful and, compared to Western produc-tions, even pathbreaking.

The Hong Kong film industry has experienced export suc-cess from the 1970s onward, mostly throughout Southeast

Asia. At its peak it released more films per year than any West-ern country, and as an exporter was second only to the UnitedStates. And Hong Kong cinema arose in a market dominatedby Hollywood through the late 1960s.

Hong Kong movies first focused on the martial arts, but thenbranched out to include police movies, romance, comedy, hor-ror, ghost stories, and other genres. The best of these movies,by directors such as John Woo, are acclaimed as high art andhave strongly influenced directors around the world.

Today’s mainstream European cinema appears less creativeand less vital than its 1950-1970 heyday. But cinematic cre-ativity has almost certainly risen in Taiwan, China, Iran, SouthKorea, the Philippines, and many parts of Africa, among otherlocales. Even within Europe, the creative decline is restrictedto a few of the larger nations, such as France and Italy. Danishcinema is more influential and more successful today than intimes past, as is, arguably, Spanish cinema. While filmmakersin these countries struggle against Hollywood competition,creative world filmmaking is not on a downward trajectory.

European governments are understandably reluctant toremove the subsidies. In the short run, laissez-faire wouldlikely bring a greater Hollywood presence in European cin-ema. European governments would like to return to somethinglike the 1930-1970 period when a strong Hollywood presencedid not crowd out native creativity. In 1973, Hollywood heldonly 23 percent of the Italian market, and large numbers ofhigh-quality Italian movies were commercially viable. Holly-wood had dominated the postwar Italian market, but Italianmoviemakers fought back, in part by appropriating Holly-wood techniques. Even as recently as 1985, French moviesoutgrossed the Hollywood product in their home market.Since that time, Hollywood could capture 80 percent of Frenchfilm revenue largely because French revenues have declined,not because Hollywood revenues have risen so much. TheFrench might reconsider their own “Golden Age” in the1930s, when directors such as Vigo, Renoir, and Carné madetheir classics, and over thirteen hundred films were produced,all without government subsidies. ◆

—Tyler Cowen

WESTERN EUROPEAN FILM STATISTICSFOR 1999

Country Population Cinema admissions Number of Number of Domestic American Other European(in millions) (in millions) screens films market share market share market share

Germany 82 148 4,651 74 13.1% 76.0% 10.2%

Spain 39 131 3,354 82 14.0% 64.2% 19.3%

France 58 155 4,971 181 32.2% 54.1% 11.1%

Italy 57 98 2,839 106 24.0% 53.6% 21.4%

U.K. 59 139 2,826 92 *12.0% *86.0% —

Denmark 5.3 11 331 16 25.9% 58.7% 15.1%

* statistics available only for 1998 Source: Media Salles, Milan, Italy. Website: www.mediasalles.it

8


Three cardinal rules have always guided France’s uniquefilm subsidy system: American movies should financeFrench ones; TV networks should finance directors’

projects; and popular and commercial movies should finance“directors’ films” (films d’auteur). This model, economicallyoriginal and juridically complex, evolved through more than ahalf-century of technically subtle legislation.

Though French “art films” gained worldwide prominencethrough the “New Wave” launched in 1959, the two economicprinciples that made such films possible, financial aid andmarket regulation, were established ten years earlier. The firstsignificant law, drafted in late 1948, created a “financial aidfund,” a very simple flat-tax system on all tickets to movies,French and foreign. Thus with every screening they attended,French moviegoers were contributing to a small fund todevelop and promote their national cinema.

The system is not specifically anti-American, since the box-office proceeds of all films, foreign or French, contribute tothe fund. And note too that this system, quite innovatively,was first applicable within French cinema itself, as commer-cial hits were used to finance small-budget films d’auteur forsmaller audiences.

The money raised in this way is reinvested in French film pro-jects, and awarded, through the joint administrative supervi-sion of a public organization, the Centre national de la ciné-matographie (CNC), and a professional committee of Frenchdirectors, actors, and producers. But if this regulatory mecha-nism gradually took the form of indirect state intervention, suchintervention at the outset didn’t really extend to financing. Thestate organized, but didn’t subsidize, the movie industry.

The nature of the system was transformed, however, in 1958when de Gaulle made André Malraux his minister of culture.Malraux, though consistently defending cinema’s artisticautonomy, nevertheless claimed the right to oversee the CNC(taking it from the ministry of economics), granted specific newaid to the sector, and created the mechanism of the “avance surrecettes”—the second major component of the system.

This “advance on earnings” system is even more original inits contributing aid to “small,” particularly first-time, directors,and to the cinéma d’auteur. As its name indicates, it is a mecha-nism that, on the basis of a screenplay accepted by various com-mittees and review boards, grants selective public financial aidthat lets a director shoot a first or original film for which he orshe could not otherwise find backing. This classic mechanismin French cultural policy works particularly well for filmmak-ing, since it is coupled with strong state intervention to assistproducers and distributors of “art films.” Alain Resnais,Jacques Rivette, Marguerite Duras, Agnès Varda were some ofthe fledgling directors enabled by this “advance”; today, thelist includes some forty directors a year.

Beyond the two essential mechanisms of “financial aid funds”and “advance on earnings,” other, smaller forms of selective aidhave been in place since 1959. Competition for that aid is strictlymonitored to avoid concentrations both of production and cir-

culation, which helps to maintain 5,000 screens throughoutFrance. There are specific forms of aid for independent moviehouses and those in small towns and rural areas, which help todistribute non-commercial work to the most remote regions.The state helps finance the Cinémathèque française archive andfilmmaking training; and it provides film appreciation in lycéesand universities. Since the 1980s, and despite France’s strongcommitment to European unification (which might have trans-lated into a reduction of specific aid), the French cinema hasgradually become a genuine “cultural exception.”

The French system also uses television to support cinemaby requiring both public and private stations to coproducefilms for television and by establishing programming quotasfor French and European works.

Clearly, regulation has achieved comprehensive support ofFrance’s cinema, from creation and production to theatrical andtelevision presentation. Cinema, under this system, even comesto seem an economic sector immune to economic laws, a marketproduct untouched by trade liberalization.

The result of this policy is admirable in several respects. TheFrench cinema is in good health, at least when compared withthe rest of Western Europe. In 2000, 145 films of French ori-gin were released in the French film market. Almost all (93percent) were shot in French. About a third were producedwith “preproduction advance on earnings” aid. Movie atten-dance also rose to 166 million tickets; nearly 30 percent of thefilms attended were French. On balance, then, the financingof French cinema is overwhelmingly positive. Indeed, the pol-icy of film support enjoys broad—and rare—consensus on theleft and right to defend a certain “cultural exception” here.Cinema is one of the nation’s last rallying points.

Still, although the “French exception” has created goodnational numbers, they hide an undeniable element of crisis:French movies, for the last decade, have had an increasinglyhard time reaching a broad audience, even in France, and theirdirectors meet with little international acclaim.

Attempts to compete with American blockbusters exist(Astérix, Taxi, Luc Besson’s films), with frequent success, infact, but not enough to jumpstart the system. French cinemanot only hasn’t learned how to produce movies for the worldmarket, it can’t even mass-produce for a home market. It is asthough France, as a once great nation, has shattered its ownmyths, deconstructed its own model, managed to be subver-sive and self-critical in the extreme—and then, taken no careto “reconstruct” itself or set itself new goals. And its cinemanaturally reflects this situation.

Yet in a generally Americanized world that has often lostthe culture war to the “dreamless machine”—the TV—Francemay well embody a potent counter-model of hope beyond itsborders. To do that, however, it must allow its movie-financ-ing model to open up to Europe’s cultural diversity, and aboveall, as it confronts spaces that have grown too narrowly indi-vidual and “authorial,” take some new collective risks. ◆

—Frédéric Martel (translated by David Jacobson)

France’s Film Subsidy System

9


cine-marketing too. So much for the legend of crass Americanfare versus an age-old European, and particularly French, tra-dition of refinement! The characters in our comedies of FrenchJewish life, say, have more in common with Midwestern hay-seeds than they do with those in Woody Allen. But then, youhave to be a Yankee, really, to fill theaters with charactersobsessed by Dostoyevsky or Chekhov. Robert Altman andWoody Allen belong, of course, to a Francophile tradition inAmerican cinema, one that savors the intellectual recognition

the French have bestowed on them.The French, in turn, have imitatedthe Oscars with their “Césars,” butAmerican actors or directors feelthey’ve “arrived” when they’re hon-ored at Cannes, just as a JulietteBinoche is at the height of her glorywinning an Oscar, not a mere César.

This mirror-play between our twocountries extends to themes as well.Americans have long adapted Frenchliterature and moments in French his-tory, and the French have recipro-cated with adaptations of great Amer-ican crime novels. Recently, however,spurred largely by Hollywood exam-ple, the French have returned—backbeyond the “New Wave” directorswho so reviled them—to make large-scale historical dramas. But whatFrench productions often forget in

these large spectacle films is that American successes dependednot only on casting (a term that now appears in English inFrench film credits) but on writers and directors, and eventhose auteurs like Spielberg they don’t take very seriously.French auteurs today are for the most part left to their small-scale “art-house” productions; the moment French producersthink toward a “broad audience,” they sugar-coat their prod-ucts with nice, soft, consensual stories, albeit with stars whosepresences have substantially hiked up production costs.

And like the Americans, we’ll soon be making feature filmsout of cult TV series. Because when our filmmakers aren’t imi-tating American techniques, the sociology and marketingsquads are systematically going after their themes. This is astrue in genres like the thriller or horror flick as in comediesand dramas that work in politically correct formulas that haveplayed well in America (e.g., the gay hero).

From the rise of superproductions to borrowing of success-ful formulas, French cinema seems to be trying to shed itsoriginality as if it were a handicap, and the only competitionwere one of budget. The result: After our own Taxi 2, or Verc-ingétorix, we can only breathlessly await Clint Eastwood’sBreezy and Ridley Scott’s Hannibal. ◆

—Guy Konopnicki (translated by David Jacobson)Source: Abridged from Marianne, March 5-11, 2001.

MGM may not be what it once was, but in the Frenchmovie market at least, Hollywood still roars like alion. Sixty-four percent of the films seen by the

French in 2000 were American; when the remaining 36 per-cent comprises the entire rest of the world, and there areworks to see by major foreign directors such as Lars von Trier,Pedro Almodovar, or Ken Loach, fewer and fewer of themovies the French go to see are by their compatriots. The defi-ciency here is not one of unavailable means, but simply ofquality rarely found anymore inFrench cinema. Today you can nolonger claim that on the one hand,there is the “good” French cinema,whose auteurs are the envy of theworld, and on the other hand, theterrible, diabolically commercialAmerican cinema, with its specialeffects and blockbusters. Americanbox-office hits in recent years haveborne the signatures of Kubrick, theCoen brothers, Robert Altman, ClintEastwood, Woody Allen—and, to alesser extent, of various French direc-tors who have become full-fledgedAmerican directors (Luc Besson,Jean-Jacques Antaille). Even Amer-ica’s superproductions and special-effects extravaganzas are the work ofsingular directors such as RidleyScott, David Cronenberg, Joe Dante,and, of course, Steven Spielberg. Like them or not, they tooare auteurs, with their distinctive styles and visions.

Faced with this, the French respond by trying to adapt themethods attributed to American cinema in its heyday. Ratherthan come up with some ascetic Danish-style “dogma” forEuropean cinema, French production is attacking on the Amer-icans’ own turf, beefing up budgets and taking large financialrisks. For, contrary to popular belief, French cinema has finan-cial means—more than it’s ever had. The biggest companyaround, Vivendi-Canal Plus-Universal, is French. But shootingbudgets were already soaring before the merger, and they arefueling French blockbusters. When films stay small-scale now,it’s mainly to be provocative, as in the pornographic Baise-moi.But French cinema is allowing itself everything American cin-ema used to be blamed for: sex, violence, epic-scale historicalreconstruction. All that distinguishes France’s biggest hits of2000 from some American B-movie is that the car chase is hap-pening in Marseille, not Los Angeles, among Peugeots, notChryslers. And the repetitiveness we once condemned in suchhit film series as Rocky, Rambo, and Halloween, is becoming amore common French practice too; what does well quicklyreturns as a sequel with “2” at the end of the title.

Another Hollywood formula, the targeting or catering to aspecific community or minority, is starting to drive French

French Cinema’s American Obsession

© M

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APalme d’Or triumph in Cannes, popular appeal andgilded subsidies—Danish cinema is stronger thanever in the first year of the new millennium. Dancer

in the Dark, Lars von Trier’s winning movie at Cannes 2000, isthe flagship of a renaissance that’s been on its way for quite awhile. As a film nation, Denmark is often regarded as synony-mous with a few great individuals such as Asta Nielsen (thesilent movie star) and Carl Theodor Dreyer (the director), butin fact Danish cinema has always proved capable of rejuvena-tion. Talent has never been in short supply; the stumblingblock has been the limited domestic market of just over fivemillion inhabitants, combined with state subsidies that werefar too modest.

In the last two years output (including coproductions) hasgrown to about twenty features a year, and Danish film has notonly reasserted its grip on the box office at home but has alsomade a surprisingly powerful impact on the international mar-ket. In 1999 and 2000 the domestic share of the box office aver-aged over 20 percent, a very decent figure considering themassive promotional campaigns for the popular Hollywoodmovies. The two greatest successes—with sales approaching amillion tickets apiece (or a fifth of the entire population!)—have been witty, intelligent comedies, Susanne Bier’s The Oneand Only (1999) and Lone Scherfig’s Italian for Beginners (2000).The latter won a Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festivaland was the fifth Danish movie to be made in accordance withthe celebrated Dogme principles—a set of rules agreed uponby Danish directors in order to produce a more authentic kindof cinema, including the use of hand-held cameras and a banon artificial lighting and special effects. The previous yearanother Dogme film won a Silver Bear at Berlin—Søren Kragh-Jacobsen’s affectionate comedy-drama Mifune, starring IbenHjejle, which met with considerable critical acclaim in the U.S.and the U.K. In 1999 Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration wonthe Grand Prix at Cannes, was seen by over two million peo-ple outside Denmark, and won the New York and Los Angelesfilm critics’ awards for best foreign film.

So Lars von Trier is far from the only international successin an industry that had frequently been in severe crisis in thelast two decades, with years in which the national output offeature films dwindled to just ten a year. Various factors com-bined to create the foundation of this revival of the late 1990s:

1. The National Film School of Denmark was founded thirty-five years ago, and its accumulated expertise began to bearfruit seriously in the last ten years. Most of the big namestoday—from Lars von Trier and Susanne Bier to Thomas Vin-terberg and Lone Scherfig—are alumni of the college, whosegraduation films have repeatedly served to identify promis-ing new talent.

2. The government and Danish television broadcasters haveincreased their stake in film production. In 2000 the treasuryallocated DKK 154 million (U.S. $18 million), a small amountby Hollywood standards but double the 1998 figure, and Dan-

ish directors have made the money work. Simultaneously DRTV, the Danish public-service broadcaster, has specialized inproducing the relatively inexpensive Dogme films, includingvon Trier’s The Idiots and Vinterberg’s The Celebration.

3. The special way state subsidies for features are distrib-uted is also important. Just over half the funds available areallocated by three film consultants. They don’t work as a com-mittee, but take a personal view of each project based on artis-tic criteria and close contact with the directors, scriptwriters,and producers. This makes it possible to support innovativefilms that might not make it through a committee.

4. Danish film was given the decisive thrust into the futureby the controversial and frequently misunderstood Dogmerules. At heart they are perfectly serious, but their launch inmanifesto form in 1995 was imbued with von Trier’s sense ofpedantic irony. The spirit of the Dogme rules (which von Trierdrew up with Thomas Vinterberg) is more important thantheir letter, and may really be reduced to a single principle:The director must always put human drama before technicalconsiderations. The fact that several Dogme films were actu-ally shot with hand-held cameras is due to this simple funda-mental rule. Curiosity rather than the urge to create “beauti-ful” images must dictate the work of the cinematographer. Allshooting must be on location, all sound must be direct, nogenre films are allowed (murder, gunfights, etc., must notoccur). The flexible hand-held camera of Dogme filmmakingallows actors new freedom for spontaneous expression andinspired improvisation. But Dogme films like The Celebration,Mifune, The Idiots, and Italian for Beginners were based onstrong, thoroughly developed scripts. Improvisation is not thekey to the success of these films, but one tool among many.

The Dogme rules, however, have often been misunderstoodby persons, mainly non-Danish, who don’t take von Trier’speculiar cast of mind into account. His rules are partly ironicand partly a promotion gimmick, so must not be interpretedtoo literally. But the core is serious, as proved by his own filmsand most of the other Danish Dogme films. The non-DanishDogme films, by contrast, have almost all been very poor.

An important precursor to the Dogme movement was vonTrier’s satirical, stylistically innovative television series Riget(The Kingdom), which was also theatrically released in two four-hour presentations (1994 and 1997). The series was shot usinghand-held cameras and practically no artificial lighting, and thevisual style, with its disregard for the rules of movie syntax,was very much inspired by U.S. police series such as N.Y.P.D.Blues and particularly Barry Levinson’s Homicide (1992).

The series was not only von Trier’s popular breakthroughin Denmark, but, with its deft astonishing amalgam of styles,also aroused considerable attention abroad (“There really is ahospital in Copenhagen called The Kingdom,” reported oneBritish critic with a shudder). Two years later, von Trier bothrammed audiences in the solar plexus and tugged at theirheart strings with his dizzying melodrama Breaking the

Denmark’s New Golden Age of Film

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Waves, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and went on tobecome an international hit, placing him in the small numberof the world’s leading directors.

Since the 1960s Danish film has been very much marked bya trend toward realism that Lars von Trier repudiated in spec-tacular fashion with the release of his highly stylized featuredebut, The Element of Crime (1984), winner of the Prize forTechnique at Cannes. But eighteen years earlier HenningCarlsen’s Hunger, based on Knut Hamsun’s novel, was one ofthe most highly praised films at Cannes. Realism continued inBille August’s In My Life (1978), Twist and Shout (1984), andAcademy Award and Palme d’Or winner Pelle the Conqueror,(1987). Another major Danish director, Nils Malmros, pro-vided a superb collective portrait of the agonies of adolescencein his modern classic The Tree of Knowledge (1981). Indeed, inthe 1980s Danish film built up massive expertise in films forchildren and teens including Søren Kragh-Jacobsen’s Shadowof Emma (1988).

The realist tradition has been continued in well-roundedfilms such as Kaspar Rostrup’s A Place Nearby and Per Fly’sdebut feature The Bench, both from the year 2000. Meanwhile ayoung, more U.S.-oriented director, Nicolas Winding Refn hastold violent, crime-pervaded urban tales in Pusher (1996) andBleeder (1999); both films have found international distributors.

The current urge on the part of Danish directors (includingRefn) to shoot films in English and produce them abroadwould be problematic if Denmark was short of talent. Withincreased state funding and more response from abroad thanever before, Danish cinema at last has the opportunity to giveits growing talent pool the scope it needs. Names such asAcademy Award winner Anders Thomas Jensen, Lotte Svend-sen, Natasha Arthy, Jesper W. Nielsen, Åke Sandgren, and OleChristian Madsen—the two last with Dogme films already fin-ished—are ready to demonstrate that Danish film has plentymore to offer beyond von Trier, Vinterberg, and company. ◆

—Morten Piil

The Most Important Art

The Eastern European cinema will remain among themost controversial legacies of communism. Films inthis system had wide and often unpredictable politi-

cal implications and social effects. Despite the tremendouspopularity of the low melodramas churned out between thewars, “the most important art” was emphatically insensitiveto the tastes of the so-called mass viewer. Following the Sovietmodel, Eastern European cinemas were totalitarian institu-tions par excellence, with centralized and strictly censoredfilm production, designed to translate in accessible images themethodical efforts of the totalitarian state.

Ironically, this totalitarian cinema allowed rare glimpses ofparadise (or loopholes in the system), when an ideal marriagebetween generous state subsidies and artistic freedom engen-dered works that challenged, covertly or overtly, the politi-cal, moral, and aesthetic status quo. A relatively small groupof dissident films secured international fame and exemplarystanding for their authors and their respective national cine-mas; yet their energy often took less accessible cinematicforms (documentaries, animation).

With the end of the cold war, films from Eastern Europe losttheir dissident aura, and, with other “world” cinemas, humblytook their place in the long line for the attention of Western pro-ducers and distributors. Western Europe, however, had its ownworries over impending cultural globalization. All post-com-munist countries suffered a dismantling of state budgets fol-lowed by lack of private investment, collapse of the traditionaldistribution network and film-production structure, a drasti-cally dwindling audience, and Americanization of film fare.

But Eastern Europe’s cinema was the first hit by the fall ofcommunism. The powers-that-be reached an amazingly swiftconsensus with most of the filmmakers on reorganizing thecentralized industry into many small, entrepreneurial, mar-ket-oriented companies. Traumatically and unexpectedly,Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic did not necessarilycome out better than Bulgaria, Romania, or ex-Yugoslavia. Theproduction of fiction films in Bulgaria, for example, fell from21 in 1989 to 4 in 1994; in Hungary from 33 to 6, in Slovakiafrom 10 to 3; in the Czech Republic from 32 to 19. Since themid-1990s, film production in Poland and the Czech Republichas slowly begun climbing toward its pre-1989 figures thanksto pan-European coproductions but mainly to the financialsupport of national television, principal producer or copro-ducer of all local films. Both countries produced twenty filmsin 1997. Production in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and espe-cially in Russia, however, has continued to decline, throughincreasing unaffordability of tickets (in Bulgaria a film ticketin 1996 was twice as expensive as a ticket for live theater per-formance!) and lack of adequate tax legislation.

The political transition has also triggered the existential andemotional changes of a general crisis of values. Eastern Euro-pean dissident directors were instrumental in bringing downthe totalitarian regime and guiding its aftermath; but for thefirst time in its modern history, their states have ceased financ-ing arts and culture, testing not only the physical survival of

EASTERN EUROPEAN FILM STATISTICS

Country Number of fiction Cinema admissionsfilms produced (in millions)

1989 1994 1997 1989 1994 1997

Bulgaria 21 4 3 34.2 12.2 1.97

Czech Republic 32 19 20 56.5 16.7 16.8

Estonia 4 3 1 7.3 1.37 .96

Hungary 33 6 16 34 16.2 16.8

Latvia 9 1 1 11.6 1.6 1.27

Lithuania — 2 2 13.9 1.5 —

Poland 22 24 20 70 22.2 23.7

Romania 23 12 6 154 26 9.5

Russia 300 56 53 1336 389.7 55.0

Slovakia 10 3 3 19 6.3 4.04

Slovenia 3 1 4 2.8 2.8 2.5

Source: Media Salles, Milan, Italy. Website: www.mediasalles.it

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its intelligentsia but also the very idea of nationhood, nationalidentity, and culture.

The absence of consistent cultural policy has made a largenumber of highly qualified Eastern European filmmakers andentire well-developed film industries totally dependent on thedemands of foreign producers and coproducers. Even with theparticipation of such prestigious institutions as Euroimages,Canal +, or Channel Four, there are no guarantees EasternEuropean directors won’t find themselves in a positionpainfully reminiscent of the totalitarian past. The pressure tofind a magic formula for a universally marketable hybrid ofWestern money and Eastern European sensibility is no less tax-ing than Comrade Stalin’s suggestion to create art national inform and socialist in content. The only agency to exercise somekind of visionary protectionism, mindful of local cultural insti-tutions, is the Brussels-based Euroimages, which to date hashelped produce more than forty films across the region. It hasalso sponsored two or three precious repertory film theatersper country, the only places people can still see their nationalfilm production along with other European art films. Yet evi-dently, coproductions capitalize on the already-establishedpopularity of a national cinema and individual directors. Ifthose become history, and the post-communist national cin-ema fails to produce new indigenous masters, coproductionwill lose its meaning as an alternative to Hollywood.

The traditional elitism of the Eastern European intelli-gentsia, meanwhile, also seriously impedes the survival ofpost-communist cinema. Under communism, the intelli-gentsia’s elitism was coupled with the official obsession to(re)educate the masses. This attitude suited filmmakers’ obses-sion with serious art and auteur cinema. Spectacular, accessi-ble Hollywood entertainment represents a further challengefor Eastern European filmmakers.

The psychological depths and moral concerns so typical ofthe Eastern European cinema under communism are quietlybeing relegated to the museum of cinema. In post-commu-nism, the Aesopean allusions and political euphemisms ofJancso’s films, for example, have become increasingly her-metic. More narrative and universally intelligible classics willenjoy a longer life-span thanks to their accessible narrativesand universally intelligible characters, of course; but youngfilm-lovers on both sides of the ocean do not know—or careto know—the concrete historical circumstances necessary tocomprehend the complex political and social metaphors ofmuch classic Eastern European cinema.

Yet against all financial and cultural odds, Eastern Europeanfilmmakers from the middle and younger generations arestruggling hard to reflect and analyze the current crisis—andtrying to preserve their national film styles as a psychologicalcompass in disorienting times. Their efforts over the lastdecade fall into two broad categories: those in quest of thetruth, and those in quest of the viewer.

The quest for the truth further subdivides along stylisticand ideological lines into a realistic-descriptive approach thatflaunts the humanistic spirit and historical optimism of theEnlightenment, and one guided by experimental aesthetics,existential pessimism, and social nihilism. The former view

the totalitarian system as imposed from without, and thenational character as fundamentally humane, graduallyreawakening a reservoir of self-knowledge. The widely ad-mired Sunshine from Hungary is an example. Although thesefilms formally belong to various genres, they all could bedefined as “dramas of survival,” in which characters’ moralmake-up is predetermined by tragic historical circumstances,i.e. by the totalitarian system.

The second approach interprets the post-communist crisisas the result of an existential breakdown that has broughtEastern Europeans to a stage of complete social and moral stu-por. Works of this sort release dissident energies, pent up fromthe times of totalitarianism and have pushed ad absurdum theprinciples of the classical Eastern European “dissident” cin-ema. Their extreme pessimism and aggressively avant-gardestyle, in the context of the new economic and social reality ofEastern Europe, demonstrates a total, one might say suicidal,disregard of the viewer.

By contrast, the quest for the viewer includes attempts toadapt American genre formulas to post-communist reality, andto revive popular genres from the interwar period such asmelodrama and the nationalist epic. (Understandably, the lat-ter are still well beyond the budgets of impoverished post-com-munist cinemas; when they appear, as in E. Kusturica’s Under-ground (1995), they usually deconstruct rather than boost theofficially sponsored nationalist sentiments of the genre.)

The most successful genre to date seems to be what I havecalled the mafia thriller, which was launched by the Polishfilm Pigs (Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Poland, 1992) and has beencontinued mainly in Poland and Russia.

Melodramas, excluding the Oscar-winning Czech film Kolya(1996 by J. Sverak) have enjoyed an uneven success, owingpartly to their novelty, but, more significantly, to the absenceof any nominal consensus on the basic values of post-commu-nist society: what is socially acceptable and what is not; whatis prestigious and what is not, essentially, what is Good andwhat is Evil. Neo-liberalism has provided an ideology for thepost-communist transition in the public sphere but little guid-ance in the private sphere. This confusion is evident in therepresentation of women as either nurturing mothers andwives, or objects of sexual desire.

A newly ascendant generation of filmmakers, born in the1960s, seems to be finding solace in a closed existential world,far from the maddening, unresolvable post-communist ten-sions. The witty magical-realist allegories of some of the mostoriginal Eastern European directors, such as Ildiko Enyedi(Simon the Magician, Hungary/France, 1998), Jan-Jakub Kol-ski (Jancso, the Water Magician, Poland, 1993), and MartinSulik (The Garden, Slovakia, 1995), are part of this tendency.Their films bode well for the future of Eastern European cin-ema. Free of the messianic pathos of moral leadership so typi-cal of previous generations, they are meeting the demands oftheir financially constrained local film industries withoutabandoning either high artistic standards or viewers fromboth sides of the East-West divide. They confute the prema-ture rumors of the death of the Eastern European cinema. ◆

—Christina Stojanova

13

Film and New Media

so in effortlessly normal conversation. Independent directorTom Ribeiro best explains this increased appetite for locallymade movies: “First [Ghanaians] used to enjoy cowboy films.That died off. Then Kung-Fu pictures. That died off. Then justkilling, killing, killing. And we think, is that all Americansknow?” No wonder, then, that since the early ‘90s, theatersin the major cities of Accra, Takoradi, Tamale, have exclu-sively played Ghanaian video-films.

The video phenomenon, however, also expresses the valuesand aspirations of a new, get-rich-quick age. In Nigeria, forexample, under the guise of social criticism, many video cam-eras dwell on the latest models of Acura, Infiniti, Jaguar, Mer-cedes, and Rolls-Royce luxury cars of the nouveaux riches ofLagos rather than the familiar rattletrap taxis that ply the coun-try’s roads, conjuring up images of an imaginary Africa of unri-valed prosperity. Designer clothes and imported winesallegedly point to misplaced priorities, but also reflect currentmaterial cravings.

And while it is part of a new capitalist economic order, videohas allowed social mobility, bringing up many of the newvideo-film entrepreneurs from the lower ranks of their soci-eties. One of the pioneers of Ghanaian video-films is SocratesSafo, whose filmmaking “schooling” consisted of watchingmovies while working as a janitor in a theater in order to payfor his training as an auto mechanic. With backing from hiscoworker friends, he shot an experimental but commerciallysuccessful feature, Ghost Tears, the first of five tragic romancesto date—and supposedly one of the six highest-grossing fea-tures of the late 1980s. Safo recounts the woes of unfaithfulhusbands whose mistresses’ wild spending sprees reduce themto abject poverty and eventual mental derangement, ridicule,and haunting by malevolent ghosts. Safo’s plots draw on thefolktales traditionally told in Ghanaian families in the eve-nings, as well as the modern Ghanaian newspaper practice ofexposing government officials’ extramarital affairs.

Genre experiments have proliferated. Dubbed “Ghana’s firsthip-hop film,” Bampoe-Addo’s Abrantee portrays youthfulexuberance and love. Tricky Twist and Matters of the Heart arepopular comedies starring the well-known comic actor Augus-tine Abey. While Bismarck Nunoo’s Phobia Girl and Sam B’sDeliverance have explored the metaphysical/supernatural, inSidiku Buari’s Ogboo I and Ogboo II characters are transformedinto animals and vice versa. Ogboo uses folkloric symbols andconventions to illustrate contemporary economic problemssuch as corruption both in the most traditional and “sacred”establishments (i.e., the native medicine men) and the more“Westernized” institutions (such as the law and the police).

Traditionally denied access to film, women have recentlybeen able to get behind the camera through the video counter-culture. Female video-makers are exposing cultural conventionsand finding innovative strategies to challenge Eurocentric andmale-chauvinistic assumptions about black female subjectivity.One of the most innovative video-films by an African woman isVeronica Quashie’s Twin Lovers (Ghana, 1996), about the lure of

In Africa, where movie screens have long been dominatedby Indian romance musicals, Hollywood B- and ChineseKung-Fu films, a parallel movie industry has emerged in

recent years, as cheaply made video-films by, for, and aboutAfricans have begun drawing a much larger audience than theirforeign-made celluloid competitors. In Nigeria and Ghana, localvideo filmmakers are churning out a combined total of aboutseven hundred feature-length movies a year—more than thenumber of celluloid films either Hollywood or the EuropeanUnion produces. In 2000, Nigeria’s registered video rental clubsjumped from 333 to 738. Along with traditional movie theatersprojecting videos, there are thousands of informal makeshiftvideo parlors in cities, towns, and villages around Nigeria andGhana, where proprietors charge viewers a small fee to watchvideo-films on television monitors. The resulting new industrybrings a new audience for African movies, much larger than thetraditionally elite one that is confined to a few urban theaters.Hollywood, says one critic, may rule the rest of the world, butin Ghana it has been trounced by “Ghanawood.”

Ironically, the flowering of African video is a direct effect ofthe continent’s prolonged economic crisis, which had virtuallyparalyzed its film industry. With the “Structural AdjustmentProgram” (SAP) imposed by the International Monetary Fund,both Ghana’s and Nigeria’s currencies were dramatically deval-ued, depriving filmmakers of hard currency to import film-making equipment, buy raw film stock, or afford postproduc-tion. The result in Ghana, for example, was only sixfeature-length films in the 1980s, none in the 1990s.

Filmmakers soon turned to the video format, hitherto usedfor fairly universal home-movie purposes, recording marriage,birth, naming, and death ceremonies. Once the medium’s com-mercial potential was grasped, however, the ranks of video-makers suddenly included anyone able to afford a video cam-era and captivate a popular audience through storytelling.

The video-film boom, then, has changed not only the vol-ume but the content of African film production. During thepostcolonial 1960s and 1970s, African cinema was highlypolitical, pervaded with Marxist philosophical rhetoric andrevolutionary ideology. The new video-film universe, collo-quial and dominated by popular themes and hot social issues,offers comedies, satires, musicals, adventure tales, soap operas,and even horror movies.

In this fledgling industry, most videos are still technicallycrude, produced by autodidacts, yet able to galvanize a massaudience intrigued to see their societies depicted as they reallyare. The films originally made in Nigeria and Ghana havebegun to find a wide public in other African countries, as wellas in expatriate African communities throughout the world.Foreign-made films, while technically superior, either ignoreAfrica entirely or depict only its disease and poverty.

By contrast, the new genre-videos deal with Africa’s con-temporary real-life problems: teenage pregnancy, marital infi-delity, political corruption, and organized crime gangs. Evenwhen they treat the subjects of magic and witchcraft, they do

African Video-Films: An Alternate Reality

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Film and New Media

the city, sexual promiscuity among young people, and the per-ils of “sugar daddies.” At about twenty-two, the protagonistJuliet is still a virgin when she meets Kobbie through friends.One such “friend,” Doreen, spikes her drink, allowing Kobbieto lure her home to be raped. Kobbie, a rich engineer and noto-rious Casanova, uses his charm as well as intimidation anddeceit to achieve his goal. As a village girl, Juliet was pure, butthe vice-ridden city to which she’s come for education destroysher ambitions. Now pregnant, she is terrified her father will killher if she fails to perform the puberty initiation, a ritual ofhonor and source of parental pride.

As in Ghana, the Nigerian video scene is dominated by“emergency” (Nigerian slang for upstart) directors and pro-ducers bent simply on making money. Production is open toanyone with the necessary funds: businessmen, traders, the-ater and television personalities. This commercial approachhas paid off. And although many directors work in English todraw the broadest possible audience, the low cost of videoshas also spawned a great many films in various local lan-guages, such as Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa, Nigeria’s three mainlanguage groups. The low cost of video subtitling and Englishdubbing allows some of the videos to cross ethnic lines.Yoruba videos have become one of the country’s most populargenres, thanks to plot structures that draw on the fantastical,supernatural dimensions of the Yoruba cosmology. Thesevideos are a weak imitation of the excellent and highly pro-fessional Yoruba traveling theaters, which the video-filmsnevertheless rival in audience appeal. Some at least do usepopular theater actors.

The Igbo, another of Nigeria’s main ethnic groups, wereinstrumental in beginning the video boom. Taboo, directedby Vic Mordi, takes up the question of arranged marriage,recalling the romance themes and sexual titillation of Indianfilms (which remain very popular in many African countries).The singing and dancing blend the conventions of the typicalIndian romance film with traditional Igbo theater. But Taboo’shybrid structure does not diminish its engagement with seri-ous cultural issues, as in the depiction of the caste system inthe “impossibility” of a member of the upper class family tomarry someone of a lower caste, the Osu. In some Igbo cul-tures, the Osu is a slave, a social outcast. Music and dancenever obfuscate the detail of the conflict and resolution, northe drama’s moral force.

As in the Ghanaian and Yoruba video-films, Igbo video-filmshold a mirror to its society’s vices. Dirty Deal, produced anddirected by Kenneth Nnebue, and Circle of Doom by Vic Mordi,are about the notorious “419” crime syndicate; and Diet of Liesby Chris Oyams pokes fun at sugar daddies. Consultation bybarren couples with the river goddess (Mammy Wata) is thetheme of Zeb Ejin’s Nneka, the Pretty Serpent. Other featuresdeal with syncretic religions, Christian-Muslim conflicts,women’s marginal status and lack of inheritance and propertyrights, and the social decay wrought by materialist values. Thenew African video-films, while they coat the pill with thesweetening flavor of entertainment, in particular comedy, havebegun to serve as an important forum for social criticism. ◆

—N. Frank Ukadike

Internet Film CultureSince the paper I write for—an alternative weekly called

the Chicago Reader — began to post my extended film reviewsonline in 1996, some significant changes in my life and careerhave taken place. With my readership thus expanded fromChicago and environs to the English-speaking Internet, Istarted to receive feedback from unexpected corners of theglobe, including Iran, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. Last fall, Iwas invited by several young film critics in Argentina to givesome lectures in Buenos Aires, and this led a few months laterto my most recent book, Movie Wars, being published inSpanish by Buenos Aires’s International Festival of Indepen-dent Cinema. Teenagers in Rochester, New York and Londonwith a particular interest in foreign films, which I often con-centrate on, began sending me e-mails, and I discovered thatsome of my pieces were getting cited in French newspapersand on Swedish Websites. I hasten to add that I’m far frombeing the only American film critic with an interest in inter-national cinema to achieve this kind of global currency. Twoof my favorite contemporary film magazines, Senses of Cinemaand Screening the Past—both of them strictly online affairsbased in Melbourne that appear on a bimonthly basis—regu-larly print, cite, and/or interview critics, scholars, and histo-rians (as well as solicit their “all-time” ten-best lists) fromaround the globe, and are possibly even more internationalthan the venerable British Sight and Sound has ever been.(Another comparable publication on paper, the Toronto-basedquarterly Cinema Scope, offers portions of its contents online.)

In some ways, these cybernetic links are only the cuttingedge of what appears to be an exciting new kind of film cul-ture that traverses national boundaries, pools diverseresources, and can exchange information in an unprecedentedfashion. It’s an invisible phenomenon to the more isolationistAmericans who assume that so-called Hollywood block-busters—many of them made and financed by non-Ameri-cans—are the only game in town, and therefore marginalizeeverything else in movies as esoterica.

But for a rapidly expanding and, significantly, mainlyyouthful cultural underground, these so-called esotericmovies are becoming much easier to access (and hear about)on a global scale. Outside the U.S., where multistandard VCRsplaying NTSC, PAL, and SECAM formats are easier to comeby, the possibilities of swapping videos of relatively scarcemovies are steadily expanding. This is an activity that’salready enjoyed by many American film professionals whopossess such equipment, but it’s a sad yet symptomatic factthat most Americans are still unaware of these different for-mats, multisystem VCRs, or the ease with which one can orderforeign videos online.

On the other hand, given Internet access, one suspects itmay only be a matter of time (and advertising muscle) beforenonprofessional film freaks in the States start benefiting fromthese options. And sometimes the finds are unexpected: in theprocess of searching out films by Yasuzo Masumura (1924-1986)—a fascinating, singular, and prolific Japanese studiodirector whose fifty-five features are virtually unknown as

much about our identities as racial or national origins.The paradox is that people across the globe have conceiv-

ably never had more in common with one another at any othertime in history. Why? Because the multicorporations that rulethe world much more than national or city governments tendto do the same things everywhere. A Starbucks invading themain street of Savannah, Georgia, in spite of local protests ora Wendy’s becoming a popular hangout for teenage girls inTokyo’s Ginza district are only two examples of phenomenathat could be multiplied a hundredfold across the planet. Inher recent book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies,Naomi Klein charts the growth of organized political opposi-tion to these multicorporations—an international movementthat has ironically been much more visible in smaller coun-tries such as Canada (where Klein lives) or England (where her

book has already sold over 100,000copies) than in larger ones like theU.S., Russia, and China, which tendto get too preoccupied with their ownapparent diversities to be able to per-ceive wider common interests of thiskind. But it already seems fairly cer-tain that if this myopia is to change,it will be the Internet more than theevening news that will make theglobal movement apparent.

Insofar as the Internet tends to havean equalizing and somewhat democ-ratic influence—potentially giving agood many Web-surfers across theglobe something else in common—itcould be argued that the advent ofdigital video has similarly levelledcinema’s playing field. One obvious

thing that DV does is place people on both sides of the cameraon something that more nearly resembles an equal footing.Strictly in terms of class, a 35-millimeter camera creates some-thing like apartheid between a filmmaker and his or her typi-cal camera subjects, fictional or non-fictional, with the equiv-alent of an entire industry, an ideology, and a great deal ofmoney and equipment standing in between the two. DVremoves that barrier, inviting everyone to play the same game.

By the same token, one could speculate that if tristandardvideo systems become as popular in the U.S. as they alreadyare in Europe, the possibilities of international swaps and pur-chases of videos could wind up confounding the cinematicisolationism that currently infects American moviegoing. Nowthat national boundaries are rapidly becoming defined moreby the reach of marketing and advertising campaigns than byany particular concentration of national characteristics,there’s no reason why adventurous filmgoers always have tobe as landlocked as the media implies they should be. Signifi-cantly, despite efforts on the part of multinationals to keepvarious DVD systems separate and incompatible, playersbreaking through such limitations are already being auctionedoff on the Internet. ◆

—Jonathan Rosenbaum

15

Film and New Media

well as unavailable in the U.S.—I discovered from a Philadel-phia contact that English subtitled videos of two of the bestwere available from film enthusiasts in Israel, and I now havecopies of both. Intercultural exchanges of all kinds are on therise: even within the so-called Hollywood mainstream, wide-spread video piracy has already ensured that more of themovies being seen today by teenagers in Iran as well as cer-tain parts of Eastern Europe are unsubtitled dubs of brand-new American features rather than domestic products of anykind. The kids may not be able to follow much or any of thedialogue, but the lure of global culture proves irresistible.Similarly, the broken English that often serves as the linguafranca in e-mail circling the globe is beginning to lose mostsigns of nationality for the sake of global currency.

It might be argued, for that matter, that the more that cer-tain popular videos circulate interna-tionally, the more the various signsof nationality become simplified andabbreviated as well as somewhat con-fused. What we’ve gotten accus-tomed to calling “typically Ameri-can” when we speak of blockbustermovies or hamburgers may be easierto market with those associations,but that doesn’t mean that they tellus anything significant about life asit’s currently lived in the UnitedStates. (The hamburgers may notalways taste the same either, even ifthe advertising tries to persuade usthat they do.) Compare the 1977 StarWars to the 1996 Independence Day,and one of the first things thatbecomes apparent is that whereas theearlier movie reflected both American life in the mid-’70s andthe pop-drenched personality of a single American writer-director, the latter movie, whose director and cowriter is Ger-man, has to reach back to the 1950s to find its “all-American”iconography of the future, including its clichéd images ofother countries. In other words, now that blockbusters arebeing aimed at the global market from the outset, and are fre-quently financed and owned by multinational rather thannational entities, assigning them an American label may bemore a form of advertising than a meaningful indication oftheir existential identity.

It’s interesting that even a prescient international filmmakerlike Jim Jarmusch who personally shuns the Internet intu-itively grasps many of the principles of crosscultural “sam-pling” that emerges from its busy traffic. His recent featureGhost Dog: The Way of the Samurai—which mixes codes ofsamurai behavior carried out by an African-American loner(Forest Whitaker), rituals of Italian gangsters who hang out ina Chinese restaurant and quote rap lyrics, and English Victo-rian and Japanese fiction (Frankenstein and Rashomon) readin a black ghetto where a Haitian (Isaach de Bankole) sells icecream—suggests that we’re all turning into unstable combosof this kind, where nicknames like “Ghost Dog” may say as

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lies political strategy. Fischer has figured out how to conveythree messages to the public: 1. I have changed. 2. I am in totalcontrol of myself. 3. He who has changed and is in control ofhimself is a born politician in times of change.

Fischer had to testify in court as a witness in the trial ofHans-Joachim Klein at the beginning of this year. Klein wasaccused of having taken part in three murders during the 1975attack on the OPEC conference in Vienna. Klein and Fischerknew each other from the radical leftist scene in Frankfurt inthe 1970s. Klein, found guilty of murder, received the rela-tively mild sentence of nine years in prison; he had agreed toturn state’s witness, and had credibly declared that he haddistanced himself from his terrorist past.

At the outset of the trial, Germany’s largest illustrated mag-azine, Stern, interviewed Fischer and published photos fromhis radical past. One scene, broadcast from every German tele-vision station, was downright repulsive: Fischer and four like-minded comrades were beating a police officer even after hehad fallen to the ground. Not until another policeman drewhis weapon did they let up. These were not new pictures—even if many viewers hadn’t seen them before. A storm ofindignation broke out on the political right, with calls for theforeign minister to resign. But, surprisingly, the broader Ger-man public remained unmoved: to this day, more than 60 per-cent of those surveyed say they oppose a parliamentary inves-tigation into Fischer’s past, and 80 percent are adamantlyopposed to his resignation.

In court, Fischer initially showed self-confidence; then,with growing nervousness, he became increasingly insolent.At one point he sarcastically asked the judge whether heshould tell how he and Cohn-Bendit had planned to unleashWorld War III. He answered precise questions with piquedimprecision. His links to the radical leftist scene were proba-bly closer than he has yet admitted. More difficulties arosewhen word got out that, in 1969, he took part in a PLO con-ference that condemned Israeli Zionism and the United States.If Fischer made false statements in court, it could still cost himhis office sometime in the future.

Yet all this rouses his political opponents more than thegeneral public. Why? We can only speculate. The Germanshave changed as a nation: the West Germans after 1945, andthe East Germans after 1945 and again after 1989. Germanswant others to believe in the sincerity of their transforma-tion, so they find anyone likeable who knows how to makehis own process of transformation convincing. Many Ger-mans see themselves in the young Joseph Fischer; after all, as

The Legacy of the 1960s

Hessian state environment minister has become the FederalRepublic of Germany’s foreign minister and vice chancellor.He wears Armani suits, and his tie is as impeccably understatedas his diplomatic pronouncements. But the commotion he iscausing in the German public arena is as loud as it was in 1985.He stands before the court and must testify as a witness in aterrorism trial. And the question on everyone’s mind is: InJoschka Fischer, has Germany let a sympathizer, perhaps evenan accomplice, of terrorism, become foreign minister?

Fischer’s career belies Oscar Wilde’s assertion that life imi-tates art. The life story of this politician, who scores betterthan any other in German public opinion surveys, can be toldonly as literature.

Joseph Martin Fischer, nicknamed Joschka, was born in1948. He left his college-prep school without a diploma andbegan studying in Frankfurt in 1967. Among his instructorswere Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas. He becamea friend of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and a member of the militantgroup “Revolutionary Struggle,” which occupied apartmentbuildings and waged street battles with the police. Fischerworked for Opel and for a while earned his living as a taxidriver. As he describes it, the Red Army Faction (RAF) mur-der of the industrialist Hans Martin Schleyer in 1977 markedan ideological and political turning point for him: he came torealize that leftist radicalism had no political future, and par-liamentarianism must be defended against a movement thathad ended in terror. Fischer joined the Greens and became adelegate in Germany’s federal parliament in 1983, when hisparty won 5.6 percent of the vote. He was state environmentminister in Hesse from 1985 until 1987, when he steppeddown in a dispute over nuclear policy. He became a ministerin Hesse again in 1991, and, when Social Democrat GerhardSchröder formed an SPD-Green (“red-green”) coalition gov-ernment in 1998, he appointed Fischer vice-chancellor andthen foreign minister.

Fischer started out pudgy and plump-cheeked. The higherhe rose, the more ascetic and hollow-cheeked he became. Ver-bal duels between the slimmed-down Joschka Fischer and thestill-fat Helmut Kohl recalled the first meeting between G.B.Shaw and G.K. Chesterton: “To look at you, Shaw, you wouldthink there was a famine in England.” Shaw: “And to look atyou, Chesterton, one would think you caused it!” Fischer is amaster of self-presentation: no one celebrates his own conver-sions better, as anyone who ever dined with him can testify.You quickly lost your appetite when Fischer ordered: “A glassof water. Then coffee. Black. No sugar.” Behind such episodes

The Refashioning of a German Radical

It was not during the “German Autumn” of 1977, as the wave of terror reached its peak in WestGermany, that many good German citizens felt the Second German Republic had come to an end,but much later, on December 12, 1985. On that day, millions of television viewers watched in

disbelief as the new Green Party environment minister of the state of Hesse took his oath of office intennis shoes, a worn-out sport jacket and—the supreme act of revolt—no tie. Sixteen years later, the

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young people they were enthusiastic members of the HitlerYouth or later of the Free German Youth (FDJ), a Communistorganization in East Germany. The tangle in many Germanbiographies brings a national sympathy for Joschka Fischer:he’s one of us.

Even when he still wore tennis shoes, Fischer belonged tothe pragmatic wing of the Greens whose members are calledRealos. This wing had the chutzpah to alter Rudi Dutschke’smotto of the “long march through the institutions.” Dutschkewanted to penetrate the institutions in order to changethem—and society. Fischer & Co. have entered the institutionsand cozily set up house in them. And let themselves bechanged by those institutions.

Thus, a Minister Trittin defends the cross-country trans-port of nuclear waste after once militantly taking to thestreets to fight such things. Thus, a Minister Fischer advo-cates the use of Bundeswehr troops in Kosovo, though heonce would have fought such a measure tooth and nail,showing that the staunchest defenders of realpolitik are con-verts from ideologies.

This has created a political problem for the Greens: they havearrived at the same political center into which the SocialDemocrats, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals arealready crowding. Only the former East German communistsstill claim to carry out leftist politics—but their leftist politics,too, are shaped more by a petite bourgeoisie than by a socialistconsciousness. The Germans have become political centralists,and German politics boring. The Greens have lost their illu-sions. The question is whether that has not blurred their edgesso much that they will vanish in the coming elections. Somealready whisper that, if this should happen, Fischer has longsince planned his move to the Social Democrats.

The opposition is enraged at the virtuosity with which Fis-cher presents his realpolitik as a policy to which there is noalternative. For Fischer, like most of his allies among theGreens, was once a moralist. He and his generation longclaimed to be the first in Germany to draw public attention tothe everyday fascism of Germans during the Third Reich.There is little truth in this, because what Fischer and hisfriends focused on in the 1970s was fascism as an ideologicalsystem, not National Socialism as an actual experience. Theyused suspicion of fascism to morally and humanly discredittheir older political opponents.

Beyond that, the Greens have always mercilessly lashed outat every personal weakness of their political opponents—mostrecently in the affair surrounding former chancellor Kohl’sillegal party donations. Yet Fischer does not want to be judgedaccording to moral, but only according to political, standards.In this, incidentally, he resembles Kohl, who also believes hispolitical life’s work exempts him from blame for ignoring legalniceties. Thus the Greens and the conservatives resemble eachother more than they are likely to admit publicly. In this situ-ation, it is hardly a coincidence that we are hearing more andmore speculation that a “black-green” (Conservative-Green)coalition might succeed the “red-green” one, which wouldpush the German turn to realpolitik to new heights. ◆

—Wolf Lepenies (translated by David Jacobson)

Dany the Red

The controversy over the political activities of GermanForeign Minister Joschka Fisher during the 1960s and1970s is part of a larger “trial” of the generation of ‘68

that has been underway in the European press for severalyears now. The latest, and most surprising, “defendant” isDaniel Cohn-Bendit, the red-haired Peter Pan of the ParisianLatin Quarter in May ‘68 and one of the most visible politicalfigures on the European left today.

Cohn-Bendit, known universally as Dany, has always beensurrounded by drama. Born in France in 1945 to a German-Jew-ish couple that had fled Hitler, he spent his early years inParisian schools, then moved to Germany with his family in1958. After graduation in 1965 he crossed the Rhine again toenroll at the new satellite-campus of the University of Paris innearby Nanterre, a dreary and anonymous place that becamethe center of student dissatisfaction. Dany quickly galvanizedthat dissatisfaction and took it, as we used to say, to the streets—first in Nanterre, then in the narrow rues surrounding the Sor-bonne in central Paris. When the simmering contestationflashed into violence in May ‘68, Dany was everywhere, nowplaying the serious agitator leading meetings and confrontingpolicemen in riot gear, now playing the merry prankster forjournalists. His good looks, his ethnic “bastardy” (his term), andhis sense of humor, such a refreshing contrast to the dour Stal-inists in the French Communist Party, lent élan to the studentmovement and convinced many that it portended a break inFrench history as important as the Paris Commune, the revolu-tion of 1848, or the French Revolution itself. By the end of Maythe French government had heard enough from Dany anddeported him. He was not allowed to return for another decade.

Back in Germany Cohn-Bendit became an active figure onthe German left, though he was a vocal critic of the manicheanand militaristic propensities that would soon give birth to ter-rorism there. Most of his time was spent editing a magazine inFrankfurt and working at an anti-authoritarian child-carecenter. After a while, like his friend Joschka Fischer, he beganthe long march through the institutions. He joined the GreenParty in 1984, became assistant mayor of Frankfurt in chargeof multicultural affairs in 1989, served as a German deputy tothe European Parliament, and finally, in 1998, was elected tothe same post in France. (The post of European deputy is theonly one which non-Frenchmen may hold in France.) For thepast few years he has had his small share of the media lime-light in France as a spokesman for the “idea of Europe” andGreen politics—a good example, it would seem, of the politi-cal maturation of the ‘68 generation.

For a short time this past winter, however, Dany became apariah again. In January Bettina Röhl, the daughter of the Ger-man terrorist Ulrike Meinhof who provoked the Fischer affairin Germany, gave an interview to the French paper Libération,in which she pointed out a passage in one of Dany’s books fromthe seventies which could be read to suggest that he had sexu-ally abused children in the day-care center where he worked.The passage, from Le Grand bazar (1975), reads in part: “Sev-eral times certain kids opened my fly and began to tickle me. I

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reacted differently according to circumstances…but if theyinsisted I caressed them nonetheless.” Libération, a mainstreampaper founded as a radical-left one in the aftermath of May ‘68,refused to publish the information. The London Observer pickedit up, as did other European papers and magazines, Franceincluded. Parents of the children he cared for rushed to hisdefense, as did his many friends in the media and European pol-itics, who pointed out that the passage is ambiguous and won-dered why no one objected to it when the book was published.

It soon became clear that the issue was not Dany but thelegacy of the sixties, especially in sexual matters. That ques-tion has been debated endlessly in the United States but notby the French, who consider themselves always to have beenmore open-minded and worldly about sex than the Anglo-Saxons. But pedophilia? To its credit, when the Dany storybroke, the staff at Libération went back to the archives anddiscovered that, in fact, the paper had published a number ofarticles and petitions on pedophilia in the seventies and eveneighties that were anything but critical. Sorj Chalandon col-lected a number of shocking instances in his article of Febru-ary 23: an account of a man who seduced the five-year-olddaughter of a friend, defenses of teachers convicted of ped-erasty, and petitions calling for the abolition of the legal ageof sexual majority, signed by, among others, Jean-Paul Sartreand Simone de Beauvoir, philosophers Michel Foucault andJacques Derrida, and novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet. But, asChalandon explains, the issue back then was not sex but,justement, liberation—liberation from the moral order, fromall hierarchies including those of age, from the “grid” thatsociety imposed on sexuality through schools, the family, andchurches. What did sleeping with children mean back then,at least in theory? Chalandon asks. “A liberty like any other.”

Dany reacted strongly to this portrayal of the ‘68ers’ view ofchild sex, arguing that without the new openness about sexu-ality that began in the sixties we wouldn’t now be aware of justhow much sexual abuse exists, and has always existed. Thepoint of sexual liberation was to make sex consensual amongmen and women, not underwrite the non-consensual abuse ofchildren. Dany continues to defend what he calls “libertarianliberalism” against both the anti-liberal left (which rejectsdemocratic procedures, the rule of law, and the market) andthe right-wing critics of the sixties who fail to recognize thegood fruits of the liberation movements, especially for women.And, indeed, the conservative paper Le Figaro jumped on theDany story, calling for a moral “inventory” and even “repen-tance” by the entire ‘68 generation. To which Serge July, theeditor of Libération, angrily responded: “I’ve already examinedmy conscience and I prefer a thousand times over the familiesof today, though they be somewhat ramshackle, often recom-posed, with more liberated women, men who are changing,and children who are wanted and autonomous, to the authori-tarian, stifling, and violent families of the past.” And so, itappears, do most Frenchmen. What relation these changesmight bear to the apparent proliferation, thanks to the Inter-net, of networks of pedophiles and child pornographers in allWestern countries is a question they have yet to resolve. ◆

—Mark Lilla

We Have a Situation

While the political legacy of the 1968 generation iscoming under scrutiny in Europe, a least part ofits cultural legacy is currently being celebrated,

especially in France. Over the past several years publishershave produced a steady stream of books on a small, obscure,and seemingly marginal group of bohemian visionaries calledthe Situationist International, which was founded in 1957 anddissolved in acrimony in 1970. Why such an ephemeral orga-nization should still have a hold on the European imaginationis a matter worth pondering.

Although the Situationists claimed in their heyday to havehad chapters in sixteen countries, including the United States,recent histories of the “movement” (such as Laurent Chollet’sL’insurrection situationniste (Dagorno)), suggest that it proba-bly never had more than a hundred active members, and thatby the end most of these had, in traditional avant-garde left-wing fashion, been excommunicated or split to form their owngroups. Their lineage, however, could be traced to the Dada-ists and Surrealists, who were active in the first half of thetwentieth century. Dada and Surrealism began as aestheticmovements with only an indirect interest in politics, but inthe years leading up to World War II the Surrealists in partic-ular followed their leader André Breton into the pro-commu-nist camp. After the war the Surrealists regrouped but ceasedto have significant direct cultural influence.

Indirectly, however, the examples of Dada and the earlySurrealists continued to inspire young people who found con-temporary bourgeois life stifling and conventional, yet whocould not bring themselves to swallow the economic and polit-ical dogmas of the Stalinism then dominating French intellec-tual life. Capitalism was part of the problem, to be sure; butso was the kind of culture capitalism had produced, a cultureof consumption and images of consumption, of inhumanarchitecture and brutal urban spaces, of sexual repression andexploitation, of isolation and sadness. Modern capitalism hadproduced a script for modern man, and this script had takenon a life of its own, independent of economic and politicalrelations. This script had to be exposed and subverted, a taskthe Dadaists and Surrealists had begun with aesthetic gesturesthat juxtaposed images, toyed with the unconscious, anddeflated bourgeois pieties with humor. Situationism wasfounded on the conviction that these avant-garde gesturescould be taken to the streets through the creation of “situa-tions” that would break the illusions of normality created bythe “spectacle” of modern life. Indeed, beyond the streets tothe Métro, where they served free dinners, complete with sil-ver service, wine, and different courses at each stop; or NotreDame cathedral, which they entered disguised as monks, inorder to shout “God is dead” during Mass.

The classic work of Situationism was Guy Debord’s La Soci-eté du spectacle (1967), which has recently been reissued inpaperback. Debord was the Svengali of the movement, thefounder who attracted young writers and artists to his group,only to denounce and excommunicate them when they devi-ated from his dogmas. Debord was a complicated case, as one

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sees in his Correspondence (2 vols., Fayard) and even in thegenerally admiring new study of his thought, Anselm Jappe’sGuy Debord: Essai (Denoël). But La Société du spectacle is a clas-sic of gonzo sociology and has had tremendous influence onsubsequent French thought on modernity, notably in thework of Jean Baudrillard. Debord argued that Marx’s pictureof capitalist society, in which the economic and political real-ity was covered over by ideological falsification that onlyMarxism could penetrate, no longer applied. The distinctionbetween image and reality had disappeared: modern life isnothing but a spectacle, a show in which our relations witheach other and our physical environment is entirely mediatedby shadowy representations. In 221 tightly written “theses”Debord described the hall of mirrors in which we now live,and which could be escaped only by breaking those mirrors.

About the time this work appeared, one of Debord’s com-rades, a Belgian writer named Raoul Vaneigem, published anequally influential manifesto called Traité de savoir-vivre àl’usage des jeunes générations (1967), which can be roughlytranslated, Life: A User’s Manual for Young People. This littlebook, which has also been reissued in paperback, made theconnection between Debord’s sociological analysis and thedissatisfactions of youth. The truly revolutionary class wouldnot be the workers, Vaneigem suggested, but young peoplewho would create “situations” in the name of authenticity,autonomy, spontaneity, passion, and eroticism. Against thecold, antiseptic lives young people were offered in postwarEurope, Vaneigem called on them to acquire une nouvelle inno-cence: “With a world of ecstatic pleasures to gain, we havenothing to lose but our boredom.”

Reading Debord’s and Vaneigem’s books today, along withreprints of the movement’s magazine, Situationiste Interna-tionale, one can see how they helped to shape the sensibilityof 1968. The demonstrations that turned into street theater,the slogans painted on the walls (“Change your life!”, “Underthe cobblestones, the beach!”, “Never work!”, “Come for-ever!”) that mixed a childish anarchism with an artsy irony—these were pages taken directly from the Situationists’ writ-ings. The movement of French students was certainlypolitical, though not political in the way their parents’ gener-ation had been; it was equally skeptical of capitalist and com-munist authority, morally libertarian, and self-consciouslyshort-sighted, celebrating spontaneous action as a means ofexposing the calculated, scripted quality of modern politicallife. Whether they knew it or not, those students created a“situation” whose effects can still be felt today.

Within two years of May ‘68 the Situationist Internationalfinally dissolved after long, bitter arguments over how toexploit the “revolution” and whether a more politically mili-tant position was necessary. The original founders dispersed,some finding jobs as teachers, others continuing to write,paint, or design buildings. Debord remained his shadowy self,surrounded by scandal, and took his own life in 1994;Vaneigem is alive and still writing. Yet the persistent nostalgiasurrounding this little avant-garde circle may reflect more thefailure of the group’s aspirations than their successes. The best-selling French novel in recent decades, Michael Houellebecq’s

The Elementary Particles (1998), paints a horrific picture of theemotional wasteland that young people inhabit today—awasteland created, in Houellebecq’s view, by the cultural rev-olution of the sixties. Yet as one reads his description of thecurrent malaise—the sexual anomie, the personal isolation, themindless, unsatisfying consumption—one cannot but see theparallels between it and the world the Situationists thoughtthey were describing. And so we are left to wonder: has noth-ing changed? Or did the Situationists, and the cultural revolu-tion they helped to inspire, actually accelerate the very forcesthey wished to combat? This second thought arises after read-ing Chollet’s glossy, coffee-table history of “insurrection,”which looks spectacular—and costs nearly $30. ◆

—Mark Lilla

Our Man at theTimes

During his four-day visit to New York for the UnitedNations Millennium Summit last September, Fidel Cas-tro made time to visit the offices of the New York Times.

As he walked down the portrait gallery, he asked, “Where isHerbert Matthews’s portrait? There was a good journalist!” Butno picture of the paper’s foreign correspondent and editorialistfor thirty-six years hangs among New York Times legends—asit does in the Museo National de la Revolución in Havana,among tattered clothes, images of revolutionary heroes, and oldrifles: a small black-and-white photo showing Matthews againsta leafy background, a cigar between his lips and a notebook inhis hand. By his side, Fidel Castro lights a cigar.

This scene took place in February 1957, in the humid duskof the Sierra Maestra mountains, 750 kilometers east of Havana.The Times had hastily dispatched Matthews to the island, afterlearning that Castro was still alive, hiding in the mountains. InDecember 1956, Castro’s body and that of his brother, Raúl,had been officially identified and allegedly buried by theCuban army. The thirty-year-old rebel and his eighty-one fol-lowers had sailed from Mexico a week before. Castro was con-vinced that Cuba, worn by violence and corruption, was ripefor rebellion, and that his landing, coordinated with an upris-ing in Santiago de Cuba, would spur popular revolt. But, inrough seas and heavy rain, the pitiful yacht ran aground inswampland two days too late. The army of Fulgencio Batistahad crushed the Santiago uprising, and for days special troopshunted and machine-gunned the rebels. A dozen survivors,including the Castro brothers and Che Guevara, made for thewoods, where peasants helped them hold out for two months.Since the Cuban press was censored, Castro, who was officiallydead, coveted the foreign press and sent a messenger to theTimes’s Havana correspondent, Ruby H. Phillips, who, beingknown to authorities, could not pursue the story herself.

Matthews and his wife, disguised as tourists, traveled toOriente province. From Manzanillo, the rebels droveMatthews for two hours through sugar-cane fields, thenwalked him through the woods. The fifty-seven-year-old jour-nalist sat waiting on a blanket all night until Castro arrivedand granted him a three-hour interview. “There was a storyto be got, a censorship to be broken,” Matthews recalled in his

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memoirs. “I got it and I did it—and it so happens that neitherCuba nor the United States is going to be the same again.”

Indeed, on February 24, 25, and 26, 1957, the New YorkTimes published three lengthy articles (two on the front page)that unleashed a political tidal wave both in Cuba and the U.S.Describing in graphic detail the corruption of the Batistaregime and the atrocities committed by the army, Matthewscondemned the U.S. military and diplomatic support andpraised the island’s growing opposition and civil resistance.Above all, Matthews gave prominent place to Fidel Castro andhis July 26th Movement (named after the date in 1953 of Cas-tro’s first, and unsuccessful, armed attack on Batista at theMoncada barracks, which brought him eighteen months inprison, capture, torture, and death to many young followers—and wide popular support): Castro’s rebels “dominated” theSierra Maestra and were defeating the best of Batista’s army.He quoted Castro’s reference to “groups of ten to forty” andlater estimated Castro’s followers at forty. Actually, theytotaled eighteen. Castro revealed his trick in April 1959 at theOverseas Press Club in New York: during his interview he hadcleverly had his men change clothes and mill around to givethe impression of a crowd, and had Raúl interrupt with newsof a fictitious “second column.”

In his articles, Matthews noted that their political agendawas somewhat vague, yet defined the movement as “a new dealfor Cuba, radical, democratic, and therefore anti-Communist.”Though his movement spoke of nationalism, anti-colonialism,and anti-imperialism, Castro bore no animosity toward theUnited States. Matthews was obviously captivated by theyoung rebel. His extraordinarily flattering portrait challengeddeeply rooted ideas among U.S. officials and the public that,despite growing signs of civil discontent, Cuba under Batista’spro-American regime was prosperous and peaceful. ArthurGardner, the American ambassador in Havana, enraged by theTimes articles, dashed off reassurances to Washington thatBatista had the situation “fairly well under control.”

In Cuba, the articles dramatically undermined Batista’scredibility. As Matthews was heading home, his notes hiddenin his wife’s girdle, Castro quickly outwitted Batista’s censoredpress: he sent a man to New York to copy and send the arti-cles back. Thousands of copies were distributed throughoutthe island. Days later, Batista suddenly lifted the censorship,allowing Cuban newspapers and radio stations to discuss thearticles—priceless advertisement for the July 26th Movement.Batista’s opponents thus learned that Castro was very muchalive and combat-ready. To save face, the Cuban Defense Min-ister declared that “the interview and the adventuresdescribed by correspondent Matthews can be considered achapter in a fantasy novel. Mr. Matthews has not interviewedthe pro-Communist insurgent Fidel Castro.” He expressed sur-prise that Matthews had missed the opportunity of being pho-tographed with Castro to prove his words.

The New York Times diligently published the minister’sstatement followed by the now-famous double photo. Justbefore copies reached the island, the military commander ofOriente Province, whose troops had hunted Castro’s men,asserted: “The North American newspaperman’s statements

are totally untrue due to the physical impossibility of enter-ing the zone in which the imaginary interview took place. Noone can enter the zone without being seen. In my opinion thisgentleman was never in Cuba.” Even Batista thought the storywas fake and denounced the “composite picture.” But, as thepresident of the National Bank of Cuba told him: “If it’s pub-lished in the New York Times, it’s true in New York, true inBerlin, true in London, and true in Havana. You can dependon it that the whole world will believe the story.”

In January 1959, after a two-year struggle, Fidel Castro tri-umphantly entered Havana. Herbert Matthews, who wrotemost of the articles and virtually every editorial on Cuba dur-ing that time, invariably kept to his initial positions, main-taining that Castro was not a Communist and imploring Amer-icans to disregard Castro’s bad temper and back the socialrevolution. Given the cold war context, he warned, bad rela-tions between the two countries would bolster Cuba’s Com-munists, who were already trying to appropriate the revolu-tion. But in 1960, the revolution’s land reform directly hurtAmerican economic interests in the island and diplomatic rela-tions severely deteriorated. The New York Times decided thatMatthews could still write editorials but had become too”subjective” and ”emotional” to send to Cuba again.

In January 1961, President Eisenhower severed diplomaticrelations with Cuba. For most Republicans, the conservativepress, and Batista supporters who could not, and still cannot,accept that the U.S. “lost” Cuba, Herbert Matthews, and byextension the New York Times, became ideal scapegoats.Matthews required government protection after receiving deaththreats and was forced off a University of New Mexico podiumafter a bomb scare. He was fired from the Inter-American PressAssociation and avoided visiting the Overseas Press Club.

Until his death twenty years after the Sierra Maestra inter-view, Matthews had to face tremendous criticism—includingEisenhower’s charge in 1965 that he had “almost singlehand-edly” made Castro a national hero—but refused to take blamefor ‘creating’ Castro, “a man of destiny who would…havemade his mark sooner or later.” Others disagreed. In 1960,Ambassador Gardner claimed that the three Times articles“served to inflate Castro to world stature and world recogni-tion. Until that time, Castro had just been another bandit inthe Oriente mountains of Cuba....” A cartoon in the NationalReview of May 1960 showed Castro riding a map of Cuba, itscaption a parody of the newspaper’s famous advertisementcampaign: “I got my job through the New York Times.”

As late as 1984, William Ratliff, a research fellow at Stanford’sHoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace concluded:“Seldom has a single writer so influentially set the tone—at leastas perceived by a broad cross-section of its interested reader-ship—toward a person, movement, or historical phenomenon.”

But blaming the journalist allows many to ignore other pos-sible explanations. Discontent in Cuba with economic andsocial conditions and political corruption was widespreadbefore the 1957 articles. American diplomacy failed to graspits extent, called for uncritical support of Batista, and wastotally unprepared for the revolution of 1959. ◆

—Julie Pecheur

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Questions of National Identity

Spain’s Forgetting of Things Past

When an odd array of skinheads and octogenarianright-wingers turned up at Francisco Franco’stomb last November 20 to commemorate the

twenty-fifth anniversary of the Spanish caudillo’s death, theymet with simple, effective rebuke. The doors to the basilicawere shut; federal guards had been given the day off. “This islike closing the cemeteries on All Saints’ Day,” one mournercomplained. His observation sums up the way Spain has con-tained history’s ghosts.

Indeed, since Franco’s death, Spanish public officials havetended to turn a blind eye to unpleasant reminders of therecent past. In what is known unofficially as the pacto delolvido (the “pact of forgetting”), the right and left agreed in1975 to end the century’s vicious cycle of recrimination byabstaining from retrospective public inquiries. A popular slo-gan of the day, libertad sin ira (“freedom without rage”), gavevoice to a policy of collective amnesia, which meant, in prac-tice, amnesty for human-rights abuses perpetrated during theauthoritarian Franco regime (1939-1975) and the three-yearcivil war that preceded it.

The pact involved no small amount of forgetting. Precise fig-ures will never be known, and of course are disputed. Butrespectable estimates set political executions carried out byFranco’s forces during the Civil War at close to 42,000, withthe postwar repression claiming another 28-30,000 lives up to1950. This omits the less dramatic, but still egregious, torture,incarceration, forced exile, and murder since that time. Manyresponsible for these acts are still alive. For its part, the Span-ish left had similar enormities to forget: some 72,000 men andwomen executed in the Republican zone during the Civil War,including roughly 7,000 clergy. One of the most notorious sus-pects, the Communist Santiago Carrillo, is still alive (until 1982he served as General Secretary of the party). In short, plentyof ghosts haunted the Spanish landscape in 1975. They still do.As some native commentators have appreciated, it is uncom-fortably ironic that a Spanish prosecutor, Baltasar Garzón, hasspearheaded the human-rights crusade against the ChileanPinochet and Argentina’s generals. Should he turn his gazehomeward, he could undoubtedly expand his case file.

Yet rather than dispel its ghosts by turning on the lights,Spain has chosen to keep them in the dark—arguably a suc-cessful policy that has helped to make the country the stable,thriving democracy it is today. The paltry number of Franco’smourners last November (and the virtual non-existence of aSpanish extreme right) seem to testify to this success, con-firming the nineteenth-century French political philosopherErnest Renan’s observation that forgetting is an “essential fac-tor in the history of the nation.”

This is no easy proposition for those of us living amid whatcommentators call our present “memory boom,” the applica-tion of the dictum “never forget” to all facets of experience.For precisely this unwillingness to confront old demonsreturned to haunt countries like Germany, Austria, France,and Japan after the war. They, too, pursued initial policies of

forgetting in their post-‘45 transitions to democracy, only tobe forced later to confront the trauma of psycho-historicalrepression. Might Spain be forestalling its own “Vichy syn-drome,” its own painful reckoning with the past?

To anyone following Spanish news of late, this may seem tobe the case. Last June, a group of historians and intellectualsin Barcelona issued a manifesto calling upon the Congress ofDeputies to “morally condemn those responsible for thecrimes of Franquismo,” while petitioning the hierarchy of theCatholic Church to “ask public pardon for its complicity insustaining the dictatorship.” In December, the Catalan re-gional parliament approved a statement introduced by theleft-wing Catalan nationalist party, the Esquerra Republicana(ER), condemning “those responsible for the crimes, the per-secution, the barbarity, and exile” committed during the dic-tatorship. Finally, in February 2001, the Basque NationalistParty (PNV) introduced a measure in the Spanish congresscondemning Franco’s coup d’état of July 18, 1936, and de-manding that all symbols and references to the Franco regimebe removed from public buildings. The measure was quelledby the conservative majority of President José Maria Aznar’sPartido Popular (PP).

This flurry of activity notwithstanding, Spain is unlikelyto undergo a period of painful public reckoning, or HelmutKohl-style apology for past sins. In the first place, the pactodel olvido has been violated before. The Spanish Socialist party(PSOE), which governed Spain from 1982 to 1996, employedthis tactic in the 1990s, waving the bloody shirt in the losingelection of 1996 and introducing legislation in 1999 condemn-ing Franco’s “fascist military revolt.” Its motivation, however,was transparently political. A spurious, and ultimately failed,effort to link the conservative PP to Franco’s crimes, thePSOE’s invocation of the past was a tacit admission of presentfragility. Much the same can be said of the Catalan and Basqueparties initiating the latest round of historical condemnations.They also face the challenge of an ascendant PP, and so hopeto score political points by loosing the ghost of the man noto-rious for suppressing regional freedoms. Their efforts, how-ever, betray more their own electoral uncertainties than thedelicate state of Spanish national conscience.

For in truth that conscience—like Spanish democracy as awhole—is relatively healthy. The very fact that these allega-tions can now be bandied about with impunity shows that oldwounds have largely healed. Moreover, despite the relativepolitical silence demanded by the pacto del olvido, Spaniardshave long worked to exorcise their demons in less officialcapacities. Since the late 1970s historians have conducted aremarkably frank and fair assessment of the recent past, ensur-ing that, unlike in Germany or France after the war, few hid-den demons are liable to come leaping out of the dark. By andlarge, the Spanish know the unsavory things that haunt theirgraveyards. But they also know that with ample blame to goaround, they are probably best kept where they are. ◆

—Darrin M. McMahon

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in the last thirty years, nor is likely do so in the near future.Most recently, events suggesting the rise of nationalism in

Japan have again attracted the Western press. In 2000, the out-spoken nationalist Shintaro Ishihara was elected governor ofTokyo. Despite his controversial xenophobic statements, heremains popular with the electorate.Works by the cartoonist Yoshinori Koba-yashi about Word War II or currentsocial and political events convey neo-rightist messages to largely apoliticalyouth. Is Japan truly “right-leaning”?

In the first issue of Correspondence(“Japan’s Textbook Debate: Who ControlsHistory?” Fall/Winter 1997-98), we re-ported on politicization of history text-books in Japan and a case in which a his-torian whose textbook under governmentauthorization review was asked to dilutehis description of Japan’s prewar invasionof Asia. He sued, claiming this authoriza-tion system constitutes wrongful govern-ment censorship, and violates guaranteedfreedom of speech. The courts ruled theauthorization system was lawful, butrestricted government intervention intextbook content, which tended to reflectthe “progressive,” i.e. highly negative, view of prewar Japan.This outcome largely satisfied the protesting Chinese andKorean governments, but infuriated Japanese nationalists, whomaintain that a more “balanced” perspective should be taught,and wrote their own textbook, which they submitted for gov-ernment authorization. The Ministry of Education demandedmultiple revisions, which, to everyone’s surprise, the groupagreed to make. The revision won authorization and is teach-able, if individual schools and the board of education choose it.

The teachers’ unions, strongly left-leaning, and the “progres-sive” intellectuals, reacted vehemently to this government deci-sion, which, together with the official objections of China andKorea, deeply embarrassed the Japanese government. Once crit-icized for its textbook censorship, Japan was now condemnedfor lack of appropriate censorship. In reality, teachers can freelyteach history regardless of choice and contents of textbooks.Moreover, since textbooks can be published freely in the mar-ket without “authorized” approval, the issue is largely political.

Thus, the well-known debate over prewar Japan continuesamong the intellectuals of Japan’s left and right. Little-known

overseas, however, is the third position, which attempts toreevaluate the meaning of history for the nation-state. Masa-kazu Yamazaki, Japanese director of Correspondence, has arguedthat these debates conflate two different histories: “history asperception,” in which a free individual’s description contributes

to knowledge and scholarship, and “his-tory as tradition,” in which a myth orshared memory helps build a collectiveidentity. In the twentieth century, the orga-nization of the state, resting partly on tra-dition and partly on universal principles,combined these two histories, created itstradition as a nation-state, and offered his-tory education by the state to strengthenits legitimacy and unify its people.

At the same time, the wave of globaliza-tion and the revitalization of various eth-nic groups have weakened the hold of thenation-state, and people’s sense of belong-ing today has become more complex. Thenation-state can therefore stop the contin-uous animosity over the bitter past by nottrying to create a “national history” andrevert to a genuinely legal and institu-tional entity. Yamazaki distinguishes jus-tice in politics from truth in scholarship;

statements political officials make must recognize circumstancesof the past as well as the feelings of neighboring countries.

The philosopher Seiji Takeda, on the other hand, argues thatthe textbook debate between the left and right is flawed bytheir shared belief that history education can provide a com-munity-based worldview among citizens. Education scholarTakehiko Kariya also argues that the state should stop “legit-imizing” historical knowledge if history is to be part of com-pulsory education, a textbook including multiple, conflictingviews of history should be used.

The Japanese "progressives" who oppose the writers the for-eign press identifies as "nationalists" may be as nationalistic. If"right-wing nationalism" means affinity for prewar Japan, "left-ist nationalism" expresses itself as self-assertion toward the U.S.policy, often in the form of idealistic neutralism, radical anti-militarism or in the protests against U.S. army bases in Japan."Left nationalism" has been fueled by such recent incidents asthe rape trial of an American soldier based in Okinawa or theaccident earlier this year in which a U.S. nuclear submarine hita Japanese fishing training vessel, killing nine people. Despite

A Rise of Nationalism in Japan?

Since the end of the 1960s, Western authors and the media have repeatedly expressed thealarmist view that nationalism is on the rise in Japan. Such prominent figures as HenryKissinger have predicted that Japan would dramatically reverse its postwar preference for

keeping a low international profile, convert its economic power into military power, and embark onsubstantial rearmament, perhaps even including nuclear weapons. Yet this idea has not materialized

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a full acknowledgment of responsibility and various messagesof apology on the part of the U.S., Japan’s media continued tocover this incident day after day, criticizing the United States,and roused further resistance against U.S. forces in Japan.

Akihiko Tanaka, one of Japan’s most prominent scholars ofinternational politics, argued that the Japanese governmentshould demand a U.S. investigation of the incident, appropri-ately representing the feelings of families of the victims, butat the same time deliver a clear message recognizing the impor-tance of U.S.-Japan relations to its most important ally, theUnited States. He notes that the Japanese government hasfailed to do both—while Japan’s opposition parties, by usingthe populist anti-American sentiment as a political tool to crit-icize the government and repeatedly claiming that the LDPgovernment is too weak vis-à-vis the U.S. government, havehurt their own credibility as a political force able to takecharge of Japanese diplomacy.

Japan’s unfulfilled nationalism has always been a major prob-lem for both the left and right, and has been an important fac-tor in debates among Japanese intellectuals. However, Japanesenationalism is not necessarily a return to the past; it is more com-plex, as Japanese people nowadays have a diverse sense of iden-tity, transcending the nation-state. Once more the alarmist viewthat nationalism is resurgent seems a case of “crying wolf.” ◆

—Masayuki Tadokoro

“Post-Zionist” Textbooks

Just two hours after taking office, Ariel Sharon’s newminister of education, Limor Livnat, declared she would“uproot” all “post-Zionist values” from Israel’s school

textbooks, and again teach our children the love of Zionism.The complaint is not new. A public controversy around text-

books has been raging for some years now, at times at quitehigh pitch. So high a pitch, in fact, that historian Eyal Navehof Tel Aviv University, author of a twentieth-century historytextbook, has received death threats from right-wing extrem-ists who claimed he was stabbing our young in the back.

The controversy has traveled overseas. Yoram Hazony, authorof The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul, published afierce attack on the new textbooks, not only in Israel’s leadingnewspapers, but also in the Washington-based New Republic.As in his book, Hazony asserted that Israel’s establishmentelites have turned their backs on Zionism and are progressivelyeroding the moral legitimacy of the Jewish state. But are ourtextbooks really post-Zionist? No, they’re not. Yet Hazony andLivnat do sense something that should not be dismissed.

Post-Zionism is a tricky term. It was the label a group ofardently anti-Zionist young scholars coined for themselves togive their highly ideological stance a solemn air of academicdetachment. Being “post,” they are after-the-fact, aloof, nolonger trapped in our outdated “Zionocentrism.” But thescholarship they produced is, mostly, a negative image ofcrude Zionist propaganda from the 1950s. The old propaganda(and early textbooks) told us, for example, that “the Arabs”—never referred to back then as Palestinians—left Israel in the1948 war of their own free will; they went to live in refugee

camps, obeying their misguided leadership, despite our hos-pitable urgings to make themselves at home in our new state.Post-Zionists hold, conversely, that Zionism was a deliberateracist plan of ethnic cleansing, and the ’48 war just the oppor-tunity its leaders were waiting for to brutally implement it.

Neither version is accurate. Our best-informed historicalresearch reveals something in-between, and the new textbooksseem to take this research quite seriously. According to EliePodeh’s recent study of Israeli history textbooks (History andMemory, Spring/Summer 2000) they are guided by what hecalled the “academic school,” whose adherents aim—pardonthe old-fashioned expression—to get the facts right. Accord-ingly, the 1948 war emerges in some, if not all, of these booksvery much as it does in research: we now know that manyPalestinians fled war zones, but there were also many ad-hocexpulsions. The war was imposed on Israel, but in the haphaz-ard struggle to achieve statehood, Israelis were not saints.

There is, of course, more to textbooks than facts, and moreto one’s evaluation of Israel’s war of independence than thequestion of counting and classifying refugees. The writers ofthese new textbooks are, for the most part, professional histo-rians or professional educators. And they reflect a middle-of-the-road academic mood that is uneasy with both old indoc-trination and new post-Zionism. Their worldview refuses theidea that Israel has no moral right to exist, but also refuses toignore the tragedy that Zionism brought on the Palestinians.The choice to be “academic,” then, reflects the sort of soberview of the conflict that a great many Israelis have been hold-ing since the Oslo Accord was signed.

But, although this does not show up in the textbooks, therehas been a gradual, partial retreat of Israel’s educated classesfrom nationalism in general and Zionism in particular. To besure, most educated Israelis are far from renouncing the idea ofthe Jewish state; but still they are less comfortable with nation-alism than they used to be. Both Hazony and Minister Livnat,among others, sense this. And while the textbooks haveretreated to sobriety rather than anti-nationalism, their criticsview the books in the light of this wider change of mood.

Hazony has offered an explanation for this more generaluneasiness with nationalism. His The Jewish State blames Mar-tin Buber and his Hebrew University disciples for poisoningthe spiritual wells of the Jewish state with anti-Zionism—sosuccessfully that they sent Israel’s entire elite into a post-Zion-ist orbit. This claim is so out of touch with Israeli life, it couldonly hold water abroad. Anyone truly familiar with Israelknows that Buber was never that influential, nor was theHebrew University really anti-Zionist.

But there is something even more ironic about Hazony’s book.He is not simply wrong. He and Livnat are, in fact, part of thecause for the growing uneasiness over nationalism. Althoughhe greatly exaggerates it, the phenomenon he complains aboutis, in part, a response to the expansionist form of nationalismhe himself espouses. It is also due to the impact of American,free-market-based conceptions of society, which he wholeheart-edly embraces. A settler himself and head of the Shalem Cen-ter, an Israeli right-wing think tank closely tied to the Ameri-can New Right, he vigorously and quite ingeniously promotes

Polish Anti-Semitism

It is a seemingly simple story. Sixty years ago, on July 10,1941, in the town of Jedwabne, in northeastern Poland,1,600 Jews were rounded up into a barn and burned alive.

Those responsible for this brutal murder went on trial in 1949.Eleven were sentenced to between eight and fifteen years ofprison; one was sentenced to death; nine of the accused wereacquitted. In 1957, all were released. Any trace of the crime’smain instigator was lost, after his wartime arrest by the Ger-mans for appropriating the Jews’ property. The murderers ofthe 1,600 Jews were Poles—indeed, their neighbors.

It is no accident, then, that the book relating this simplestory, written by historian Jan Tomasz Gross, a Pole long set-tled in the United States, is titled Neighbors: The Destructionof the Jewish Community in Jedwabne. The sparely writtentext, based on the testimonies of those defendants in the trial,but above all that of Szmul Wasersztajn, one of the seven Jew-ish survivors, has stirred an unprecedented debate in Poland.

This debate raises questions of collaboration, responsibility,shame, identity. Beyond historians and journalists, thoseinvolved include Poland’s president, premier, and primate ofthe Catholic Church. And the Institute of National Memory, anorganization that documents crimes—chiefly Nazi and Commu-nist—against the Polish people, has opened an investigation.

But even the debate has its history, having snowballed witheach day’s new participant. For Gross has broken the taboo ofPolish collaboration and joint responsibility for the Shoah.The running liberal explanation had been: Nazi-occupiedPoland became, paradoxically, the only one in Europe whereyou could be both anti-Semitic and anti-Fascist. By this para-dox the Poles (except for the numerous well-documented casesof informants on Jews to the Germans) did not participate—unlike certain neighbors (the Lithuanians, for example)—inthe Shoah. They were often passive spectators, at times out-right police spies, but never murderers and collaborationists.

Gross, on the other hand, tells how, just days before thewithdrawal of the Red Army (which occupied Jedwabne inSeptember 1939 through the Hitler-Stalin Pact) the townspeo-ple, headed by the German-appointed mayor, unleashed apogrom, followed by a massacre. In pogroms houses are raided,property looted and destroyed, and occasionally, people killedin the course of the attacks. This is what occurred in Jed-wabne’s streets. Afterward, however, they rounded up all their

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the settlements and the free market, two forces that, in comple-mentary ways, were central in creating the current mood.

Unquestionably the occupation of the West Bank and theGaza Strip was the main force. The hawkish right has enlistedall possible nationalist symbols to support the occupation,and, for over three decades, tainted them with the GreaterIsrael ideology. Nationalism began to seem to many not thefulfillment of the right to self-determination, as it was for clas-sical Zionism, but rank chauvinism. And the more chauvin-ism seeped into our politics the more uncomfortable manywho cherish democracy became with nationalism itself.

Gradually, the occupation brought about a curious change,which Israelis have so far paid little attention to. The dailypresence of the Israeli army in the territories has shifted thelanguage of the debate from national to individual terms.Many of those who oppose occupation have stopped talkingabout the rights of nations to self-determination and beguntalking almost exclusively about the rights of individuals. Theidea that Palestinians have a right to independence, and forthe very same reason that Israelis do, has receded into thebackground and the occupation has been denounced almostsolely for violating human rights.

Those human-rights violations, of course, were so glaring—how else to maintain occupation?—that they became impossi-ble to ignore. But what facilitated the smooth shift in our morallanguage was not just the existence of violence but the steady,growing American influence. Our economy, our jurisprudence,our philosophy of education have, by and large, changed base:from an emphasis on solidarity to the ideology of individual-ism as the long and short of moral argument, with its peculiarblindness to national and collective rights.

The problem is, of course, that the Palestinian struggle againstIsrael is very clearly a national one. To reduce it to individualrights is to misunderstand it altogether. And so, ironically, thepartial, gradual drifting away from Zionism, which sprang fromsympathy with the Palestinians, ended (for some, certainly notall) in obscuring the nature of the Palestinian cause. At the mar-gins, among actual post-Zionists, it reached its logical extremein the bizarre idea of “a state of all its citizens.” A pure, non-national democracy between the Jordan and the MediterraneanSea. To Palestinians—with the possible exception of EdwardSaid, a long-time champion of this non-national state—it allsounds strangely like what the most far-right hawks demand:annexation to a Western state. Colonialism all over again.

George Orwell once remarked that Western intellectualsnever forget the liberating power of ideology and the oppres-sive power of nationalism, but they rarely remember theoppressive power of ideology and the liberating force of nation-alism. In the case of Israel this seems a timely reminder. For thelogic of our own demand for statehood, the right to self-deter-mination, is now the fuel that threatens to ignite the wholeregion. And so the more we drift away from our own nationalsentiment, the less we understand what is going on around us.

This unease with nationalism—so far mostly a buzz in thebackground, a change of tone rather than a major shift in pol-itics—has not really penetrated our textbooks. It may, how-ever, have been part of what curbed the excess of national-

chauvinist rhetoric, tailored for the days when Israel strug-gled for its very existence. So much the better. Now we canafford to be more sober. As can our textbooks. This may notplease Hazony and Livnat or the post-Zionists either. Butshould the textbooks move from curbing of chauvinism toactual moral rejection of nationalism, the dovish left, as wellas the right, should start worrying. Textbooks do depend onthe mood in the academy, and theories that dismiss national-ism are becoming commonplace among younger scholars. Avery bloody century has taught us how dearly we must payfor underestimating the force of nationalism. ◆

—Gadi Taub

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Jewish fellow citizens, minus seven escapees, lined them up infours, as in an extermination camp, herded them into the barn,fetched gasoline from a local farmer, and set the barn ablaze.

The odd thing is that the events in Jedwabne were publicknowledge for years. Not only had a normal trial taken place.In 1966, the historian Szymon Datner had reconstructed Jed-wabne’s crime, although, under the constraints of regime cen-sorship (which made all Poles out to be patriots), he assignedpolitical responsibility to the Germans. In 1980, eyewitnessaccounts, unconditioned and uncensored, were published inYedwabne: History and Memorial Book, a book of remembrancefor a destroyed community by survivors and their children. Thebook reprinted the testimony Wasersztajn had given in 1945,before the Jewish historical commission of Bialystok. In thatsame year, the two families who had hidden the seven Jewishsurvivors (including Wasersztajn) and saved them from mur-der, were attacked by neighbors and their lives threatened. Onefamily, the Wyrzykowskis, subsequently moved to Warsaw.

In the spring of 2000, a book of essays was published inPoland to honor the historian Tomasz Strzembosz (a future pro-tagonist in the debate). In one of these essays, Gross cites thetestimony of Wasersztajn (who died on February 9, 2000).Finally, in May 2000, the publishing house Pagranicze (“theborder”) in Sejny, a Polish town that borders Lithuania, issuedthe book Sasiedzi (Neighbors). Gross in his conclusion de-nounced as a lie the memorial plaque in Jedwabne speaking of1,600 citizens murdered by the Germans—and signed “[The]Community”—since it was the Community that killed the Jews.

The real debate, which divided public opinion, began somemonths later, around the winter of 2000, just—and perhapsby no coincidence—as U.S. book publication approached. Thehistorian Andrzej Paczkowski outlined four positions in thisdebate in the newspaper Rzeczpospolita (March 24, 2001). Thefirst was “affirmative:” that of those who, in his words, “stressthe moral aspect” [of the event] and “underscore the absoluteneed for both individual and collective atonement....” The sec-ond is “open-defensive,” adopted by those who “recognizethat the Jedwabne pogrom was a crime perpetrated by the Poles[...], but “take a critical stance toward the book, raising objec-tions to some of its scientific premises.” This involves the olddispute about the credibility of victims’ testimonies in relationto archival documents. The third position is the “closed-defen-sive,” based on the argument that the Poles were mere“helpers” and the action led “by the Germans”; and above all,that the Poles’ conduct was determined by the effects of twoyears of Soviet occupation and the role the Jews played in it.Finally, the fourth position, which Paczkowski defined as“refusal,” is that of those bare-faced anti-Semites who view thebook as part of a Jewish conspiracy to harm the Polish nation.

But another position should be added, the oddest at that,whose merit at least is to have brought the debate to its crud-est and most extreme terms. Let’s call it amazement and sin-cere bewilderment. This is the position of Jack Zakowski, ajournalist, author of major books and a figure in the Polishliberal scene. A non-Jewish Pole—a fundamental distinctionin this context—he raised provocative questions in the GazetaWyborcza (November18, 2000), above all: In speaking of col-

lective guilt in which the fathers’ responsibility is visited ontheir children, isn’t Gross perhaps using “ethnic” language?

More interesting, however, was the reaction of the CatholicChurch and its heads. In particular that of Poland’s primate,Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who, on Radio Jozef, after alluding tothe “ethnic and political” aspects of the question, went on tosay: “As a priest I am most interested in the moral aspect. Thisis tied to a recognition of generational responsibility based onasking God’s pardon for the sins of one’s forebears and askingfor forgiveness of the victims’ descendants.” More radical isthe position of Tadeusz Pieronek, one of Poland’s most pub-licly prominent bishops, who spoke of “genocide” and criti-cized some priests who instead had taken quasi-negationistpositions. Above all Pieronek stated that “[guilt for the crime]falls on all of us Poles.” And further: “We must shoulder theresponsibility [for the actions] of those born before us whowere criminals.” Thus Pieronek subscribed to the asking offorgiveness in the name of the Poles proposed by the ex-Com-munist and avowed atheist Aleksander Kwasniewski, oftenperceived as an adversary by the Church.

Wojciech Sadurski, a jurist and professor of the Istituto Uni-versitario Europeo in Florence, wrote on several occasions ofthe importance that statements of regret, and especially thevalue of shame, have in building a civil society.

Has the shock of the Jedwabne debate been salutary, then?Perhaps. Anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir thinks so.Speaking psychoanalytically of anti-Semitism as Polish soci-ety’s collective sickness, she writes that Gross’s book hasopened up the chance for Poles to speak at last of a repressedreality, because “our memory is a place in which there are noJews.” Literary historian Maria Janion concurred, explainingin an interview how rife with anti-Semitism Polish culture,even enlightened and Enlightenment culture, has alwaysbeen, and how taboo it has been to even mention the anti-Semitism of many of Poland’s founding fathers.

But probably the most significant text has been that pub-lished in the weekly Polityka (February 10, 2001) by a veteranopposition historian, Jerzy Jedlicki. In his large essay, Jedlickiextended the field of inquiry, noting the long history discus-sion of the Shoah and Jewish-Polish relations in Poland actu-ally has. “[But] the Shoah has not prompted a general reassess-ment of positions, it has only deepened longstandingdivisions.” Yet Gross’s book marked a turning point. Finally,Jedlicki asked: “What is more important in the generalnational account: heroism or contempt, piety or lack ofpiety?” To which he answered: “Both matter…We cannot,alas, choose just one.... If we accept the legacy of prior gener-ations, then we must claim the legacy both of their greatnessand their pettiness, their honor and their shame.”

Meanwhile, the memorial plaque Gross criticized has beenremoved. And on July 10, 2001, the sixtieth anniversary ofthe crime, there was a public ceremony in Jedwabne. The headof state came and asked for pardon. Priests, bishops, andchurch officials prayed with rabbis. Poland’s status as a free,sovereign country can now afford itself the luxury of hearingout the most painful truths. ◆

—Wlodek Goldkorn (translated by David Jacobson)

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Blair’s Cultural Policy: Pro and Con

The 6.5 million who did squeeze in made the Dome as big adraw as the Louvre, and three times bigger than its nearestBritish rivals among paying tourist attractions. Visitor satis-faction was very high: 88 percent, and, tellingly, given thenearly universal chorus of press pans, half thought the Domebetter than expected, a third much better.

Why the bad press? While the worst flaws were logistical,journalists took aim mostly at the Dome’s content—the sixteeninfotainment “zones” inside, addressing themes such as work,learning, communication, faith, community, environment.Hastily assembled and, for Britain, unusually corporate-spon-sored, these stylishly designed zones confounded pundits bytheir mix of Disneyland and vague didacticism. They were atonce low on theme-park-like thrills and also on the arty avant-gardism that drew intellectuals to the 1951 Festival of Britain.Quirky, uneven, rather earnest for a mass-market family attrac-tion, above all middlebrow, they aimed to “intrigue” ratherthan educate, impress rather than inculcate. The Dome found ahuge audience markedly more cross-class and multiculturalthan normally found in the metropolitan halls of culture—anunusual achievement that discomfited the traditional guardiansof high culture as well as journalists who like their cultural cat-egories clear and exclusive. This gave the Dome considerablesymbolic social value—despite the botched logistics—and insome sense accurately symbolized Labour’s cultural policy,which does strive, however clumsily and often only rhetori-cally, to offer “one big tent” for a once badly divided society.

The Dome example has also spread—literally—quite far.Practically every major museum in London now has, thanksto the lottery, a dome of its own: the British Museum’s GreatCourt, the courtyards of the Wallace Collection and theNational Maritime Museum, the yawning, dome-like spacesof Tate Modern. Though fundamentally enhancements ofexisting high-culture institutions, in many details large andsmall they carry with them elements of the government’ssocial message. The British Museum is the nation’s biggestnon-paying visitor attraction and for years has been beggingfor relief for its over-congested halls. Connoisseurial outpostslike the Wallace have had to earn their lottery shilling throughall sorts of promises regarding education and access. The con-tent of the National Maritime Museum’s new exhibitionspaces are suspiciously reminiscent of the Dome’s, only a partof them successful educationally. The gospel of social inclu-sion is clearer beyond London: more Domes (a hugely success-ful eco-botanical one in Cornwall, the Eden Project; anotherhorticultural one in Wales), a national center for popularmusic in Sheffield in a gorgeous but substance- and visitor-less building. Two of the happiest projects merge high-cul-ture curators with aggressively populist presentation and localcommunity spirit in depressed industrial towns: a multimediacenter in Salford showcasing a naïve modernist painter and acontemporary art gallery in Walsall featuring a brew-pub andsingles nights in a feted architect’s dream.

Like the Dome, many of these projects took wing in the Major

Like all Western countries enjoying mounting prosper-ity, Britain has had widening inequality too, thoughthis trend slackened in the 1990s. Unlike some other

Western countries, however, Britain has unusually many toolsto mend the tearing social fabric. The economic boom hasproved more amenable to repairing Britain’s historic socialdivisions, based on class, than America’s, based on race, orIreland’s, based on religion, or Italy’s, based on region. And asystem of undivided sovereignty gives the governmentmighty powers of social regeneration, if its own ideologicalpredispositions and shrilly critical media allow it to use them.

Thus even the watered-down social democracy of TonyBlair’s “Third Way” can in theory address inequality moredirectly and effectively than stiffer ideological regimes suchas the French. But it does so through buzzwords—“socialexclusion”; “government for the many, not for the few” (a slo-gan crafted to appeal to traditional “Old Labour” heartlands);“joined-up government” (policy cooperation across depart-ments). The buzzwords ripple through a huge range of gov-ernment agencies and, importantly, denationalized and vol-untary bodies still anxious to ingratiate themselves withgovernment. And all these bodies, public, semi-public, andprivate, are—in this new age of “customer care,” “citizens’charters,” “accountability,” “transparency”—determined totranslate the buzzwords into action.

Nowhere has the instrumentalization of New Labour buzz-words been more apparent—and more controversial—than inthe field of culture. British governments traditionally steeredclear of culture, one of the few in the West never to have, beforethe 1990s, a culture ministry. High culture was adequatelyfunded by private enterprise for a small audience. The BBC wasalways an anomaly, though a creative one. Left-of-center gov-ernments were wary of stirring up their supporters’ classresentments by pampering the arts; right-of-center govern-ments were too much in thrall to commercialism. John Major’sweak Tory government was the first to partially break from thistradition, viewing arts patronage as a cheap way to appear tobe moderating brutal Thatcherite materialism. A Cabinet-levelDepartment of National Heritage, a virtual culture ministry, wasset up in 1992. More significantly, the “good causes” identifiedas the beneficiaries of an enormous National Lottery launchedin 1995 immediately gave a central place to the arts, more par-ticularly to building projects for cultural purposes, a novelBritish analogue to François Mitterrand’s grands projets.

Many of these grands projets were already under way whenLabour came to power, including the most spectacular, theMillennium Dome, which has come to symbolize—for betteror, more often, for worse—Labour’s cultural policies. TheDome’s high-tech fabric tent covering twenty acres ofreclaimed chemical dump on the River Thames near Green-wich opened on schedule on New Year’s Eve 1999, thoughlogistical errors soon cut its expected attendance by half. Thegovernment had to devote a further tranche of lottery moneyto closing the gap, bringing the total bill to £628 million.

Tony Blair’s Grands Projets

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government’s dying days, but as they have materialized underLabour, bear Labour rhetoric and the accoutrements of Laboursocial policy: “access” prioritized over content, “life-longlearning” and “social inclusion” over artistic innovation, “com-munity” over the expertise of the arts professionals. Throughother lottery money diverted to smaller community-based pro-jects below journalists’ radar, art content is lower, and moredemotic cultural tools are used to gain wider audiences. TheDepartment of National Heritage, now the Department of Cul-ture, Media and Sport, has suffered the same makeover: for thefirst time “culture” has been smuggled into the heart of gov-ernment, but only by equivalency with tabloids and football.

A similar process has struck the related area of educationalpolicy, with Conservative departures re-spun and re-tailoredto Labour specifications. Schools have been bombarded withnational tests, standard-setting exercises and inspections,most of Conservative origin, but with new emphasis on buck-ing up inner-city failures and fading out the Conservativechimera of “parental choice.” Universities, which rose tounprecedented numbers under the Conservatives in the early‘90s, are being expanded further to reach an ambitious 50 per-cent of the age cohort—this in a country which in the 1970shad one of the smallest university populations in WesternEurope. “Social inclusion” is again the rallying cry here. Afamous recent episode, where Labour’s Gordon Brown made alargely groundless attack on Oxford University for rejectingbright young things from deprived inner-city schools, was ashameful piece of scapegoating but effective in focusing theminds of elite university managers on the government’s mes-sage. Everywhere plans are now afoot to bring inner-city set-tings university missions on a scale that a few years ago wouldhave been unthinkable.

That episode well illustrates the way in which British gov-ernment institutions, even though stripped by privatizationof many of their overt levers of power, can still exert formida-ble powers of moral suasion—particularly if their messageboils down to a few simple phrases (understandable even tothe dimmest bureaucrat), remorselessly rammed home by agovernment skilled in the dark arts of “spin,” and ramifiedacross all the available agencies of “joined-up government.”No one—least of all the government—imagines that its cul-tural policy could be the linchpin for social cohesion. “Cul-ture, Media and Sport” still occupies a low place in the minis-terial pecking order. Even the dilute egalitarianism of TonyBlair’s “New Labour” will achieve its ends far more throughsocial and economic policy. But culture in the service of socialpolicy may collaterally drag culture into the sightlines ofmany hitherto wary people—ministers as well as masses. Inthe long or even medium term, intellectuals may mind thatlevelling up risks dumbing down, disturbing preciousachievements of high culture easily damaged in handling. Inthe short term, however, there is some good to be gained fromforcing the purveyors of high culture to meet their fellow citi-zens at the middling point. Only so much magic can bewrought by highbrow radio programs no one listens to, uni-versities no one attends, art films no one sees. ◆

—Peter Mandler

Blair’s Market Populism

If a foreigner in a hurry asked what was new about Britainunder its “New” Labour Government, the short answerwould be “not much.” A party that, as late as 1994,

described itself as democratic socialist has tramped enthusi-astically down the Conservative path. Privatization has struckthe National Health Service and state schools—which evenThatcher at her most imperial dared not touch. Despite rulingin a time of peace and plenty, Tony Blair has presided over awidening of the gulf between rich and poor (wage inequalityis allegedly greater now than at the time of the Industrial Rev-olution), and has spent a lower proportion of gross domesticproduct on health and education than the last Tory govern-ment. Foreign policy has continued to follow U.S. interests.Blair appears as confused as John Major about Britain’s inte-gration into the European Union.

For all that, there is a distinct Blairite ideology—or at leasta definite style—its adherents insist is anything but conserv-ative. Blair took office in 1997 proclaiming he represented a“young country” and a “new generation.” At his 1999 partyconference he cried with characteristic evangelical uplift:“Arrayed against us: the forces of conservatism, the cynics ,the elites, the establishment. On our side, the forces of moder-nity and justice. Those who believe in a Britain for all the peo-ple. Those who fight social injustice… Those who believe in asociety of equality, of opportunity and responsibility. Thosewho have the courage to change.”

The personal histories of Blair’s ideologues have left themwell placed to pull off the curious trick of dressing reactionaryprograms in revolutionary rhetoric. Many are ex-Marxistswho grouped around the think tank suitably titled Demos.Geoff Mulgan, the head of the prime minister’s policy unit,and Charles Leadbeater, the policy wonk the PM mostadmires, are an ex-Communist and ex-Trotskyist respectively.Like the New York neo-conservatives, when they replacedtheir faith in socialism with a faith in the market, they retainedan intolerance of heterodoxy; argument, however plausible,and moral considerations, however fine, cannot change theinevitable march of progress; history is moving down thetracks and questioning its terminus is pointless.

“New” Labour teleology originally saw the future in thetiger economies of the East. Blair made one of his first speecheson his elusive “Third Way” between social democracy andThatcherism in Singapore (with no comment on his host’s waywith dissenters). When the Asian Miracle had the bad man-ners to collapse, adulation was transferred to the “new econ-omy.” “Globalization is good!” shouted Leadbeater in Livingon Thin Air, his book on the weightless world of e-commerce,purringly admired by much of the London political establish-ment. He was echoing a prime minister whose speeches havea hollow and disturbingly Orwellian ring: “Realism and ide-alism at last in harmony!” “To be in touch is to be in sympa-thy!” “I am listening! I hear! And I will act!” What might becalled “capitalist realism” is not merely the dialect of a smallgroup in Westminster. Blair and his advisers are inspired bythe discourse of a corporate America where criticism of busi-

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ness is “elitist” and a refusal to believe in the truth of adver-tising “cynical.”

Blairism has adopted a political vision close to what theAmerican social critic Thomas Frank has defined as “marketpopulism” in his recent book, One Market Under God: “Tak-ing as fact the notion that business gives people what theywant, market populism proceeds to build all manner of pop-ulist fantasies: of businessmen as public servants; of indus-trial and cultural production as a simple reflection of populardesire; of the box office as voting booth. By consuming thefruits of industry we the people are endorsing it in a plebiscitefar more democratic than a mere election.”

Blair, far more than his Thatcheritepredecessors, sees himself as sellinggovernment in a political supermarket.In 1998 he delivered a suggestivelytitled “annual report,” which includedthe admonition: “In all walks of life,people act as consumers, not just citi-zens.” His education minister, DavidBlunkett, wants head teachers to emu-late “the managing directors of bigcompanies.” Labour, a party foundedby trade unions, woos billionaires fordonations with promises of preferen-tial access. Americans who havewatched Blair’s hero Bill Clinton inoperation may not find the above par-ticularly shocking. But no one on theBritish “left” before the arrival of“New” Labour would have said, as oneof the party’s modernizers did indeedsay, that the “era of pure representa-tive democracy” is coming to an end and parliaments and con-gresses should be replaced with opinion polls, tele-sales andfocus groups—the tools of the marketing department huckster.

Blairites can commodify. Thus Leadbeater described the con-flict between Diana Spencer and the House of Windsor as a warof competing brands. The Windsor Court was “imprisoned bythe assets and protocol which were once its strength.” Ms.Spencer, was “the upstart challenger.” As we enter the worldof what he calls “Dianomics” established incumbents will face“younger, nimbler contenders armed with new technologies,”just like Di. “For the Royal family read IBM; for Diana readMicrosoft. For the Royal family read Barclays and Natwest, forDiana, read First Direct.” (Leadbeater did not seem to under-stand that the essential point point about a monarchy is thatconsumers cannot refuse to patronize the unelected head ofstate, however shoddy Her service has become.)

Corporations are undoubtedly modern and the modernistBlair is far more sympathetic to their global ambitions thanthe xenophobic rump of the Conservative Party. But they areautocracies, not democracies, and the imitation of corporatediscipline has produced a suffocating atmosphere. The Britishelectoral system allows a party to win a huge majority on aminority of the vote and render the legislature powerlessbefore the executive. Blair’s MPs are treated as middle-man-


agers whose loyalty to the CEO must be absolute. Many werevetted by the party before being allowed to stand for Parlia-ment and happily accept that they are in the House of Com-mons to endorse the Government’s wishes. Rebels find theirparty machine briefs against them in the press. In private—never in public—senior politicians say they will not speak outfor fear that messy love affairs from their past will appear inthe pro-Blair tabloids within days.

As in Westminster, so in the rest of the country. The artsand universities are largely funded from the public purse inBritain, and the state until recently kept at arm’s length. Butas every brand-conscious marketeer knows, image matters,

and Chris Smith, Blair’s culture min-ister, told the arts that autonomycould no longer be tolerated. Theenemy was, as ever, elitism. ArtsCouncil chairman Gerry Robinsonexplained: “Too often in the past, thearts have taken a patronizing attitudeto audiences. Too often artists andperformers have continued to plytheir trade to the same white, middle-class audience” while holding on tothe “vague hope that the massesmight get wise to their brilliance.”Robinson, ironically, is the fantasti-cally wealthy white chairman of aleisure conglomerate, who was giventhe Arts Council after contributing asmall part of his fortune to NewLabour funds. Artists who wrestledwith complexity, successfully or oth-erwise, were elitists. He was a mil-

lionaire proletarian forcing them to attend to the yearnings ofthe oppressed. The Millennium Dome, neither highbrow norpopulist nor anything in particular, is a monument to thisvacuity as, increasingly, is the BBC, which faces continuouspolitical pressure about the contents of its reports.

The universities are also learning the dangers of elitism.When a pair of academics produced a study critical of govern-ment policy, Blunkett warned: “If this is what our money isgoing on, it is time for a review of the funding of social sci-ence research.” And while censorship has always existed, noBritish politician has had the nerve to be quite so blunt before.

I’m not saying that Britain is a tyranny. A lively and rudedemocratic culture survives. Rather it is a suspicious, over-regi-mented country in which millions, quite sensibly, are giving upon politics, and each new election brings a record low turnout.Sadly, when Blair assumed control of his party in 1994 andtransformed Labour into “New” Labour he promised that hisnewness would consist of opening up the monarchical Britishstate. He has since reneged on his promises to introduce a robustfreedom of information act, to support proportional representa-tion so the country’s diverse opinions might be represented,and to eliminate the sleaze of corporate funding of power, whichmight allow the public to be citizens, not just consumers. ◆

—Nick Cohen

© M

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Politics

In its scientific policy, the European Commission refutesthe words of a great European man of science. Levis,argutus, inventor—deft, clever, inventive—were how Carl

von Linné described in the eighteenth century what he sawas the crowning form of homo sapiens, homo europaeus. TheCommission is hardly behaving deftly, cleverly, or inventively.For it is implementing a science policy that lacks Geist—a pol-icy without “mind” or “spirit.”

In its overall planning, the Commission has adopted a “Cen-ters of Excellence” program aimed at supporting outstandingresearch institutions in Central and Eastern Europe. Out of 185applicant institutions, thirty-four in eleven countries have beenselected. Over the next three years they will receive up to twomillion German marks [U.S. $872,600]. Only two of these thirty-four institutions are devoted to the human and social sciences.According to a report in Le Monde, the Commission does, how-ever, have a small research budget for socio-economic projects.These figures reflect typical Brussels priorities for the sciences.

Commissioner Philippe Busquin has banished human andsocial sciences to the furthest fringes of his “Research Area.”Some economics, a few drops of sociology may lubricate gov-erning and administrative action and give some extra legiti-macy—but that’s all. To the sober question those affected bythis policy have raised, namely, whether the Commissioncould not do a bit more for the human and social sciences,Busquin responds in J.F.K. fashion: Applicants should firstask themselves what they can do for Europe.

But a European science policy that slashes support for thehuman and social sciences also mutilates itself. It forgets thatour continent owes its cultural identity largely to the human-iores litterae. For Jacob Burckhardt the centers of Western civ-ilization were “great forums of intellectual exchange.” IfEurope wishes to be such a forum in the future too, inspiringits natives and attracting outsiders, it cannot afford to nur-ture only the “hard” sciences and technology. Europe seesitself as a model of civil society, in which cultural diversity,difference in historical experiences, and plurality of languagesare inestimable advantages, not disadvantages. In this Euro-pean civil society the sciences citoyennes have their place.

That the conference of European university presidentsreached a similar position can be dismissed as group politics:of course they have to promote their clientele’s work. Yet notonly they and their functionaries protest the short memoryfor the humanities the Brussels science policy reveals,but—the politicians. Not in some humanities apologia, but inthe Livre blanc européen sur la gouvernance, do we read thatthe E.U.’s insufficient legitimacy may stem in part from itsneglect of humanities and social sciences.

Among the harshest critics of the Commission and its sci-ence policy is France’s minister of research Roger-GérardSchwartzenberg. The human and social sciences have, he says,become poor, barely respectable cousins in the Europeanresearch family. No longer the backbone of states, they are atbest tolerated. Furthermore, the Union’s science policy is

heavy on big-institution funding but light on ideas. It over-looks individual researchers. Were they alive today, quipsSchwartzenberg, neither Sigmund Freud nor Marc Bloch norHans Kelsen would stand a chance of Commission funding.

Schwartzenberg is not alone in his criticism. Whenever aEuropean country takes over presidency of the Union, its min-ister of sciences immediately calls for a thorough shift in pri-orities, in favor of the human and social sciences. The Por-tuguese and French said as much last year, and in Uppsala theSwedish minister recently swore allegiance to the humanities;the Belgians promise to carry on this tradition when they suc-ceed the Swedes inthe presidency.

Statements by min-isters in this special-ized domain, how-ever, fail to impressthe Commission. No-thing declared in Lis-bon, Paris, Uppsala, orBrussels the capital ofBelgium, sways Brus-sels the Euro-metrop-olis. In European sum-mit meetings, including the last one in Lisbon, the significanceof science and technology is loudly proclaimed. They state thelong-term goal of making our continent the most competitive—i.e. wholly “knowledge-based”—economy in the world.

To judge this ritual correctly, it helps to remember that inits founding documents the European Union set the goal ofstrengthening the scientific and technical bases of industrialproduction. Nothing beyond this was either asked of norentrusted to the sciences. European science policy is essen-tially industrial policy. In this the Commission is remainingtrue to the Union’s original intentions—strengthening itspower in the face of any desire for change expressed on thepart of individual member states, which will remain unavail-ing until they congeal into a joint European program.

Europe thinks it can catch up with, and perhaps overtake,America, if it focuses all its efforts on becoming a transna-tional knowledge society. The European politicians dartingfrom one “Science Park” inauguration to another are appar-ently unaware that the presidents of major American privateuniversities, even in California, not to say Silicon Valley, areeloquent on the importance of the “humanities” and socialsciences in the education of their best students.

In many areas of public policy—the labor market, pensions,family life, and immigration, or the debate, say, over “Euro-pean Islam” or relations with Turkey—it is becoming uncom-fortably clear that research findings of the social sciences aretaken into account either too little or too late. The disadvan-tages of a narrow, short-term science policy are also evidentin the expansion process of the European Union. It growspainfully obvious to new candidates how far they still are

Dispiriting Science

A European sciencepolicy that slashessupport for humanand social sciencesalso mutilates itself

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from being considered “proper” Europeans. It is all the moreimportant, then, to recognize the value of the dowry thatmany countries in Central and Eastern Europe bring to theUnion. Not least among their gifts are large portions of thehuman sciences, including quite formidable linguistic compe-tence. In an ideal seminar on the sociology of religion, stu-dents would read Durkheim in French, Max Weber in Ger-man, and Tawney in English. Today you can barely conductsuch a seminar in Paris or Berlin or at Harvard, but you couldstill in Crakow, Budapest, and Bucharest.

Setting a priority on support of natural sciences and tech-nology for the applicant countries fits the logic of the Union’sexpansion process.The natural sciences in Eastern Europe areno different from those in the West. They have been kept backonly by insufficient subsidies and thus research possibilities.The humanities, however, are contextual disciplines. That dif-ferent historical circumstances have made sister fields developin very different ways in many countries of Central and East-ern Europe than in the West, is a boon. Here, differences aresigns of intellectual wealth, not lack.

Natural and technical sciences easily conform to the logic ofthe expansion process. This is designated by the central con-cept of acquis communautaire, i.e. what has already beenachieved by members of the Union. But such a designation isentirely unsuitable for the human sciences. In their case, itwould be senseless arrogance to steer Central and East Euro-pean countries toward what we in the West have already“achieved.” What matters far more here is an acquis commun,the common basis of a spiritual and intellectual Europe. Thisis what our continent must reflect on, if it wishes to attain that“civilization of solidarity” that Walther Rathenau defined asthe goal of a European unification process.

In the wake of the Great War, Paul Valéry, too, spoke of thehomo europaeus Linné had defined as the crown of creation. Thefirst “world” war was largely a European one, which endedEurope’s preeminence, making it just one civilization amongothers. Europeans had to accept that country names such asFrance, England, and Russia would someday have the archaicring of Nineva and Babylon. Academies, pure and applied sci-ences, grammars and dictionaries, classicists and romantics,Symbolists, critics, and critics of critics—all would somedayfade away. There is irony in Valéry’s words. But stronger still issorrow, born of the horrors of the world war, for European civi-lization and its impotence in the face of inhuman crimes.

It must seem all the more amazing, then, that European civ-ilization not only survived the First but also the Second WorldWar, and with it even greater crimes. Perhaps it was thisamazement and a sense of gratitude that allowed Jean Monnetto state, as he launched his project for European unification,that he would make culture, not coal and steel, its foundation.He surely did not mean by this that one could approach cul-ture and intellect like coal and steel. It is high time now thatas expansion proceeds, a science policy of the European Unionbecome a European science policy—one, that is, in which thehuman and social sciences find their rightful place. ◆

—Wolf Lepenies (translated by David Jacobson)Source: “Europa ohne Geist?” Süddeutsche Zeitung, March14, 2001.

Miscellany

The Towers of London

London is a low-rise metropolis, with planning lawsto preserve historic sight-lines and keep parks, mon-uments, and squares from the shadows tall buildings

cast. Yet its business-based City of London’s financial ser-vices industry has grown to 38 percent of the city’s grossdomestic product—and with it, demand for skyscrapers.The pressure comes both from Canary Wharf, east London’sdecade-old high-rise business district, and from Europeanfinancial centers. Corporate tenants require City headquar-ters to be comparable with others abroad, i.e. high-rise.

Many local preservationists do not gauge architecturalquality in height. English Heritage, one of two public advi-sory organizations, recently objected to proposals for a 66-story tower at London Bridge designed by Renzo Piano anda 37-story tower at Bishopsgate. London’s economy, itargues, has thrived precisely by keeping the texture of itsolder neighborhoods; planners eager to increase densitiescan do so with “groundscrapers”—low-rise buildings asbroad as soccer fields. Cabe (Commission for the Built Envi-ronment) disagrees, endorsing the Bishopsgate tower, andjudging only the architectural quality of individual towers.

Financial institutions, favoring skyscrapers, considergroundscrapers impractical: they require walking hundredsof yards and are, as one executive at Canary Wharf com-mented, like working in an airport. Canary Wharf’s chiefexecutive points out that efficient groundscrapers have tobe enormous—unthinkable in today’s London. Moreover,investment banks seeking big trading floors want only openspaces up to 60,000 sq. ft. Groundscrapers offer too littlenatural light, given the vast distance from core to windows.

Cabe chairman Sir Stuart Lipton emphasizes the envi-ronmental advantages of skyscrapers. Groundscrapers useup land, whereas developers can create public spacearound the base of tall buildings. High-rises near centraltransport networks can ease suburban sprawl and sparefurther investment in transport infrastructure.

Skyscrapers, admits architect Renzo Piano, while adding“intensity” to city life, alter a skyline’s cultural character,cast shadows, even alter wind patterns. Despite this, Lon-don mayor Ken Livingstone recently worried aloud at a sky-scraper conference that London’s financial preeminence wasconstantly menaced by Continental cities. The City’s corpo-ration therefore wants government planning restrictionsrelaxed so that at least fourteen institutions currently seek-ing large spaces in its scant “Square Mile” will not be luredeast or to north London’s lower-cost Paddington district.

To these officials, office towers seem as inevitable andfitting to the coming century as Wren’s spires were to his.They symbolize, in Sir Stuart’s words, “the cry for spaceand light and the new dominance of money.”

—David JacobsonSource: Norma Cohen, “The Skyscraper Invades London,”

Financial Times, July 4, 2001.

On ending his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to France, FelixRohatyn wrote that one issue in particular was castinga shadow on America’s image in Europe: capital pun-

ishment. Indeed, frequent protests outside of U.S. embassies,harshly critical newspaper editorials, loud front-page headlines,and innumerable Websites signal a growing European move-ment against the American death penalty. In 1997, in perhapsthe most extravagant public gesture to date, the mayor ofPalermo went so far as to have the remains of Joseph O’Dell, anAmerican condemned to death in Virginia for rape and murder,flown to Italy and buried with great cere-mony in a city cemetery. This April theEuropean Union forwarded a resolution tothe U.N. Human Rights Commission call-ing for a worldwide moratorium. This lat-est resolution follows years of statementsby European officials appealing to the U.S.to rethink its use of capital punishment.

The death penalty asymmetry has gen-erated bitter antagonism in internationallegal matters. A number of extraditioncases have made it clear that U.S. courtscannot expect to obtain a defendant’sextradition from a European country ifthey plan to pursue a death sentence, thuscomplicating attempts to lay the founda-tions of an international penal system tohandle terrorism and war crimes.

French international relations scholarDominique Moïsi embeds the death penalty issue in a largercontext, suggesting a “decoupling” between the U.S. andEurope. This post-cold-war sensibility associates the deathpenalty with other signs of American unilateralism, such asthe decision to build a national missile defense system and torenounce the Kyoto accords on pollution levels. These grow-ing differences with the U.S. are helping to define a distinctEuropean liberalism. As debate over whether to admit Turkeyinto the E.U. has shown, abolition of the death penalty hasbecome a defining feature of membership in the new Europe.

Abolitionism has been part of the philosophical baggage ofEuropean liberalism since Cesare Beccaria’s 1764 treatise Deidelitti e delle pene (Of crimes and punishments), and there was,for example, a significant abolition movement in Germany inthe mid-nineteenth century. But—with the prior exceptionsof Portugal, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Iceland, andMonaco—abolition was largely a twentieth-century achieve-ment. The movement toward it emerged after World War II andthe International Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Inoverhauling their legal systems, both Germany and Italy, anx-ious to make a break with fascism, created constitutional banson the death penalty despite widespread popular support forits continuation. Amid much debate, the British Parliamenttried to limit capital punishment to five categories of homicidewith the 1957 Homicide Act; but the combination of question-

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able executions and dissatisfaction with the murkiness of thenew statutes ushered in full abolition with the Murder Act of1965. Around this same time, the U.N. began issuing regularworldwide reviews, which continue to this day. The first twolandmarks in an effort at analysis based on global develop-ments were Marc Ancel’s 1962 reports covering 1956 to 1960and the 1967 “Morris Report” by American criminologist Nor-val Morris, based on countries’ responses to a U.N. question-naire and covering developments between 1961 and 1965.

Clearly by the 1970s capital punishment was broadly per-ceived as an international human rightsaffair. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court’sdecision in Furman v. Georgia found cap-ital punishment in its “arbitrary andcapricious” nature to constitute “crueland unusual punishment” and a violationof due process, and thus unconstitu-tional; but only four years passed beforereinstatement, after states tailored theirstatutes to comply with the SupremeCourt’s objections to “arbitrary imposi-tion” of death sentences. In Spain, theFranco regime’s execution of five Basqueterrorists in September 1975 broughtworldwide protest that turned the pub-lic spotlight on the practices of manyother governments and widened thedebate. Immediately after assuming theFrench presidential office in May 1981,

François Mitterrand cleared the way for Minister of JusticeRobert Badinter’s campaign for an abolition bill, which passedinto law in October 1981. The ground was then set for theCouncil of Europe’s pushing abolition through in the rest ofEurope. Protocol No. 6 of the European Convention on HumanRights, the first international instrument of death penalty abo-lition, was opened for signature on April 23, 1983.

In Eastern Europe, the application of capital punishmentdiminished after “de-Stalinization” in 1956. In public debatemany now felt free to emphasize Marx’s abhorrence of capitalpunishment over Lenin’s insistence that the death penalty wasnecessary to defend the revolution from “class enemies.” Butformal abolition was not achieved until the period of collapsein the 1980s. Socialist Unity Party leader and East Germanhead of state Erich Honecker’s face-saving efforts vis-à-visintensifying international criticism of his regime broughtforth the first total abolition in the East in 1987.

Subsequently, in the 1990s, abolition was tied to the sweepof liberalization and democratization through the region; Roma-nia, Slovenia, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary endedtheir uses of the death penalty. In the former Soviet Union,despite the initial resistance of the newly independent states,abolition gained ground in the late 1990s. Many Eastern Euro-pean countries were reluctant to give up the death penalty pre-cisely because it was perceived as American. “Any implied crit-

Europe and the U.S. Death Penalty

© M

atte

o Pe

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Japanese Police Scandals:A Crisis in Authority

Since the autumn of 1999 a whole series of police-related scandals have come to light in Japan. In Kana-gawa Prefecture, a police spokesman repeatedly made

false public statements about police officers’ crimes, aboutwhich evidence was systematically being concealed; even-tually, several senior police officers were charged and foundguilty. In Niigata Prefecture, a young girl kidnapped nineyears earlier was found confined in a second-story room of aprivate house, her sequestration the result of an inept initialpolice investigation. But matters didn’t end there. The inci-dents in Kanagawa Prefecture demanded that a senior officerof the National Police Agency directly inspect the NiigataPrefectural Police Headquarters. His visit was quite perfunc-tory, though—he and the director of the Niigata headquar-ters soon repaired to his hotel to play mahjong. To add insultto injury, the director did not return to his post even wheninformed that the kidnapped girl had been found. In yetanother disturbing case in Saitama Prefecture, a woman wasmurdered when the police refused to believe her complaintof being stalked. The officers in charge of the case receivedcriminal sentences.

As a result of this string of incidents, the police wereseverely criticized by the public, and police stations wereswamped by telephone calls and e-mail messages protestingpolice behavior. At one point, matters had degenerated somuch that it was difficult for an officer to make even anarrest for a traffic offense. A commission has been set up toconsider reform of the police, and a number of recommenda-tions have been made, but the image of the police is unlikelyto recover from this damage without great effort.

Why this rash of scandals? Some argue that the institutionof the police has become exhausted, lowering law-enforce-ment discipline and morale. Because the powerful in Japanbefore World War II used the police as a tool in their politi-cal maneuvering, the latter were reformed after the war, topreserve their political neutrality, into a privileged organi-zation without public accountability. Exempt from appro-priate external checks, they grew autocratic and so incapableof self-discipline their recent scandals were almost in-evitable. This problem has been endemic to Japan’s govern-ment for the past decade or so. The country’s bureaucracy,once considered the secret of Japan’s success, has largely lostthe public’s trust due to corruption, incompetence, andsecrecy. Some see the police as privileged bureaucrats, andtheir lack of democratic monitoring as the cause of theirscandals.

According to Hiroshi Kubo, a journalist well-versed inpolice matters, however, the cause of the scandals is uniqueto the police. Although Japan’s postwar reforms were gearedto decentralizing the police force, they produced a hybridsystem combining some of the problems of excessive central-ization and decentralized lack of control. The Tokyo govern-ment oversaw an elite corps of bureaucrats known as

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icism of the United States and its use of the death penalty weremet with derision,” wrote Peter Hodgkinson, who served as theCouncil of Europe’s death penalty expert during its negotia-tions with the Baltic states over membership. “If the deathpenalty was good for the United States, then it was good for theBaltic states and my references to the scholarship were simplynot believed.” But the intractableness gave way and spreadbeyond the Baltic; Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Azerbaijan,Ukraine, and Turkmenistan totally abolished the death penalty.The Latvian parliament voted to ratify Protocol No. 6 in 1999,abolishing the death penalty for ordinary crimes. Russia con-tinues a moratorium, applied under Yeltsin in 1996.

The centripetal pull of European consolidation under theCouncil of Europe propelled abolition in Eastern Europe andthe former Soviet Union, and prompted the removal of capitalpunishment from military penal codes throughout Europe.Abolition has been woven into the complex set of conditionsand privileges of Council membership.

Public support for capital punishment has not disappearedin Europe; a 1999 Gallup poll shows over 60 percent in Hun-gary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and in the U.K. in favor. Ris-ing crime rates and the impact of organized crime are cause forenormous public pressure for executions in Russia, as describedby Presidential Pardons Commission Chairman Anatoly Pris-tavkin in a 1999 Council of Europe report (“The Death Penalty:Abolition in Europe”). In detailing abolition in his country, Slo-vakian Minister of Justice Robert Fico points with concern tothe “lack of expert discussion” that preceded the change. Hor-rific prison conditions in places like the Ukraine and the lackof funds to build or renovate prisons have revived discussionof the death penalty as an alternative. But confidence remainsin the “new system of values” that defines abolition as a “nat-ural, logical consequence of liberalism,” as Russian parliamen-tarian Sergei Kovalev concludes in the Council’s report. In fac-ing populism’s challenges to democracy, ending the deathpenalty has been a demonstration of political will to “get itright,” to paraphrase a statement from the Council’s Parliamen-tary Assembly Vice-President Renate Wohlwend, who com-pleted a death penalty fact-finding mission to the U.S. in April.

Writing for the New Republic in July 2000, Joshua MicahMarshall reasoned across the death penalty divide by citingthe differences between the American separation-of-powersand European parliamentary systems. The difference suggeststhat abolition is unlikely in the U.S. without majority publicsupport, as was not the case with abolition in Europe. Whetherdetermined by the public at large or by official mandate, thefuture of the American death penalty, retained by thirty-eightstates and the federal government, is under some domesticscrutiny. The burning question is over a death penalty mora-torium, imposed in Illinois in January 2000, proposed for pub-lic referendum in the Texas legislature last April, and sup-ported by a national majority, according to some recent polls.It is apparent that moves toward a moratorium in the U.S. areprompted more by concerns over exactitude in the justice sys-tem, as raised by the forensic use of DNA analysis, than overconcerns with the rest of the world’s view of America. ◆

—Cyrus Samii

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“career” officers who commanded the majority of police offi-cers. This second corps of “non-career” officers are recruitedand paid by local authorities. The career group lacks suffi-cient knowledge, ability, and interest in the actual work ofthe cop on the beat, and focuses on its own safe climb up thebureaucratic ladder. The non-career group, on the otherhand, routinely frustrated by lack of promotion and status,could not help but lose discipline and morale. This, saysKubo, lies behind the many scandals we have had.

Japan, of course, has had police scandals in the past; whatmakes criticism of the policemore severe this time? Somepoint to a rapid deteriorationin public safety in Japan inrecent years. Although for-eign visitors to Japan are fre-quently surprised to learnthat a purse forgotten in aTokyo taxi will often bereturned intact, the city mayno longer be as safe as it oncewas. National crime statisticsshow crime declining fromthe somewhat chaotic periodafter the end of World WarII, as the country enjoyed itseconomic boom; but from alow of 1.2 million cases in1973, the annual figure dou-bled to 2.4 million in 2000,the highest incidence sincethe war.

Fortunately, rates for suchcrimes as murder or arson arestill declining. Thefts, how-ever, account for 90 percentof crimes. Since these statis-tics are based on cases re-ported to the police, peoplewho would not previouslyhave reported theft andother “light” crimes maysimply be taking the troubleto report them more now. In any event, publicly availablestatistics suggest that Japan is still a very safe country. Yetnew types of crime do worry the Japanese. Juvenile crime,organized theft by foreign gangs, and the Aum Shinrikyosect’s indiscriminate terrorism using poison gas, for exam-ple, are unfamiliar, and psychologically uncharted, phenom-ena for Japanese society.

It is also argued that the scandals are causing such a stirbecause of the press’s active interest in them. Traditionallythe Japanese press has been very dependent on the police astheir news source. Thus they would make little of a policescandal even when word of one leaked out. This cozinessbetween the media and news sources has lately come underattack, making journalists’ relationships with their news

sources, including the police, more businesslike. As a result,some say, police standards may actually be improving.

Whichever of these hypotheses is correct, the interestingthing is that the tone of the reactions to the recent scandalshas changed. Once, postwar Japanese journalism was heav-ily influenced by liberal, idealist intellectuals. There wasstrong distrust of state power, and criticism of the police wasmainly directed at their abuse of authority and the resultingcurtailment of civil liberties. The tenor of criticism sur-rounding this latest chain of scandals is that the police are

not doing enough to main-tain public safety. In pointof fact, the conviction that“water and safety arefree”—i,e., they should beavailable without relianceon the government—hasdeep roots. The postwarJapanese have begun toturn away from the state’spresence as an authoritar-ian force, punishing crimi-nals and controlling vio-lence. That is why thepolice, the judiciary, thearmed forces, and otherstructures of state powerhave been in some measurerejected by society; whythose structures have be-come rigidly bureaucratic;and why an incentivestructure has evolved un-der which defense of theorganization is more re-warding for members of thepolice and the judicialbureaucracy than theirtrue work.

Perhaps the mountingcriticism of the police andthe rising debate on judi-cial reform signify the dis-

illusionment of the Japanese people with their nation’s pater-nalistic authority, on which they had relied heavily in thepast. Japan may soon have heightened calls on the one handfor increasing state power, and, on the other hand, for secu-rity bought in the marketplace if people can’t rely on publicprotection mechanisms. Indeed, private security companiesare thriving; if this keeps up, the wealthy in Tokyo maysomeday live like their New York counterparts—in apart-ments guarded by doormen. ◆

—Masayuki TadokoroSources: Hiroshi Kubo, Keisatsu Hokai, Tokyo: Takarajima-sha,

2001.Atsuyuki Sassa, Nihon Keisatsu, Anzen Shinwa wa Owattaka,

Tokyo: PHP, 1999.

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incomes after expenses down to the equivalent of just under$12,000—”70 percent down on six years ago.’’ When theBritish army finishes shooting and burning the millions ofhealthy animals it calculates must die to cordon off the virus,it seems inevitable that many, some say most, of the country’s165,000 family-owned livestock farms will fail.

For virologists familiar with the latest vaccines and diag-nostic tests, the European Union’s resolve to let the diseaseburn out in Britain rather than move in to vaccinate is unfath-omable. But the political will is not there to stop the nine-teenth-century-style bloodbath. In fact, it serves a purposequite outside disease control. As the E.U. struggles to curboverproduction, rationalize farm subsidies, and prepare pro-ducers for a globalized market, the annihilation of British live-stock farming comes as a solution. The subsequent consolida-tion, with the numbers of farms shrinking, and methodsmodernizing, suits a process already underway across Europefor decades. Vast amounts of the Union’s budget are mired infarm subsidies, correcting milk, butter, and meat mountains.

Food safety had thus provided a compelling guise for intro-ducing measures that would also, handily, thin a crowdedindustry. Last year, the European Union approved a raft offood safety legislation that in the next three years will requireevery food producer, processor, and retailer in the Union toadopt food safety protocols recommended by Kraft Food anddeveloped for the U.S. National Aeronautics and SpaceAgency. The NASA plan is called “Hazard Analysis and Criti-cal Control Point,” or HACCP (pronounced hass-up.)

Proponents of the HACCP-ization of Europe within the E.U.argue that it is “only positive and not negative.” E.U. Healthand Consumer Commissioner David Byrne beats the safetydrum in speech after speech: “Safety is the most importantingredient in our food.” But critics contend that this food willbe sterile, that HACCP offers little real safety value, speeds aseemingly inexorable rise in factory food production, and willnot only end British livestock farming, but kill Europe’s mostvulnerable and venerable artisanal food producers.

HACCP was developed by the Pillsbury Company in 1959,when NASA asked it for safety protocols for astronauts’rations, to prevent the disaster of food poisoning in space suitsat zero gravity. The result was less a rule book than a recom-mendation for a safety-minded approach. HACCP now re-quires that businesses write down how they make a food,identify the danger spots along the preparation line, thencheck against those risks. A dairy’s “critical control points”might include checking thermometers to ensure pasteuriza-

tion temperatures are hot enough. In a butcher shop, grindercleaning must be logged, meat locker temperatures noted, etc.The estimated fifteen extra hours of HACCP paperwork perweek would ruin the smallest businesses.

It was the phasing in of HACCP throughout the 1990s by theCodex Alimentarius Commission (Latin for “food rules”), thefood safety arm of the United Nations, that internationalizedit. Codex sets the World Trade Organization’s minimum trad-ing standards. Its guidelines are not laws, stresses U.S. delegateMike Wehr, but trading nations must meet them to avoid legaltrade embargoes. The standards set by the 165 member coun-tries of Codex are studies in the art of compromise: the samemilk standard that fits France must also apply to Mexico. TheCodex pasteurization equivalency standard is why the Camem-bert we buy in the U.S. doesn’t taste like the French original.The milk has been cooked to destroy potential pathogens. Evenwithin France, the Codex standards have given rise to a newclass of cheese jokingly called “vrai faux”—pasteurized,bland, but sold in folklorique packaging.

HACCP became the domestic U.S. standard under Clinton,whose administration, two weeks into office in 1993, was shakenby the country’s first major E. coli O157:H7 poisoning. Sevenhundred people were sickened by hamburgers traced to a restau-rant chain in Seattle. Four died. Bucking tradition, the Clintonadministration appointed a lawyer, not food safety specialist, tolead the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Ser-vice. Along with mandatory warning labels, Michael Taylorforced the beef industry to adopt HACCP in all plants. By intentor accident, consolidation was dramatic. Eighty per cent ofAmerican beef is now processed by four big corporations.

A series of similar food safety disasters in Europe madeHACCP an attractive tool to David Byrne (also a lawyer) whenhe assumed the leadership of the Health and Consumer arm ofthe European Commission three years ago. Since 1995, theeruption of a human form of mad cow disease in Britain andFrance, two major E. coli outbreaks in Scotland and Bavaria,and a dioxin scare in Belgium, have provided just the ammu-nition needed to rationalize the European food supply.

To some, devolution of farming to agribusiness rewards badbehavior. They stress that mad cow disease was caused by fivemultinational agribusinesses’ dark practices at feed mills, notfarmers. The solution favored as just by food lovers, environ-mentalists, and even Prince Charles has been turning E.U.farm subsidies away from farms practicing high-yield conven-tional methods and toward less productive but more environ-mentally friendly organic ones.

Food Politics

Safe Food, Endangered Food Culture

Family farming in Britain was already in crisis when foot-and-mouth disease was detected in anEssex abattoir this past February. Government veterinary staff were down by almost 50 percent. State-licensed power plants were still incinerating the pulped and rendered remains of

more than four million cattle and calves preemptively killed to contain mad cow disease. More thanone farmer a week was committing suicide. The National Farmers’ Union calculated average farm

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Food Politics

This is costly for consumers and governments. Inspectingand monitoring the activities of large networks of small farms,abattoirs, processors, and shops was (and remains) difficultand expensive. Then there was the liability for regulatory fail-ure. The U.K. government is now negotiating millions in com-pensation to human victims of mad cow disease. Byrne’s newhygiene regulations and HACCP bring a profound shift of lia-bility, with food operators “bearing full responsibility for thesafety of the food they produce,” according to the openingstatements in the introduction to new regulations.

But the HACCP system is not without benefit for food pro-ducers capable of complying. It brings a business that muchcloser to meeting the international trading standards of theCodex. Soon many foods made under European Union regula-tions will have an instant global passport.

This brings tears to foodies’ eyes. as did last year’s specula-tion that E. coli O157:H7 might survive the acidity of raw milkin classic hard cheeses—which would mean a Codex ban onEnglish Cheddar and Italian Parmesan, for instance. A groupcalled the Cheese of Choice Coalition displayed petitions athigh-end cheese shops across the U.S., later delivered to aSlow Food convention in Italy. [See Stille, p. 36]

Wehr, however, says that while government scientists arelooking at E. coli O157:H7 in hard cheeses, no such traderestrictions are imminent. He also points out to those charg-ing that the U.S. enjoys unfair dominance in Codex concern-ing cheese standards that E.U. member states have fifteen del-egations with individual votes, the U.S. only one.

But for British food safety advisor (and confessed Euro-phobe) Richard North, HACCP stands for “Hardly AnyoneComprehends Commission Policy.” “You’re not allowed toclean your hen house until you have a written procedure say-ing how you will do it,” he says. The Republic of Ireland, amajor exporter of food, particularly dairy food, was one of thefirst countries to make HACCP mandatory. Darina Allen, anationally celebrated food guru and proprietor of the Bally-maloe cooking school, decries HACCP as a disaster. “Qualityfood producers are being hassled out of existence,” she says.

Will HACCP save lives? E.U. officials themselves admit thatit is too early to tell. Data on pre-reform food poisoning levelsare too sketchy in Europe to be sure. In the U.S., unions rep-resenting government meat inspectors insist that HACCP costslives. Militant meat inspectors were last seen on a Datelineexposé decrying conditions in a HACCP-run Colorado plantrecently associated with a fatal E. coli O157:H7 outbreak.

The U.K.’s foot-and-mouth epidemic was first spotted in anEssex slaughterhouse by a veterinary meat inspector. Whileunder HACCP, European abattoirs will become easier toinspect, since there will be far fewer of them, concentrationbrings the kind of Colorado conditions where an inspector maybe keeping track of three hundred animals an hour. RichardNorth, himself a former health inspector, argues that shiftingto HACCP has little safety value for the food industry or theconsumer. “It is the ultimate blame avoidance and blame trans-fer system,” he says. “Failures in food inspection will be legallydefensible provided the paperwork has been maintained.” ◆

—Emily Green

Miscellany

European Absolut-ism

European Union rules on fair competition are forcingmember state Sweden, where binge drinking is atradition, to dismantle its anti-alcohol policies. For

decades, the country’s sparse, high-priced, clinical, and ill-stocked liquor stores have closed early on weekdays andnever opened on weekends. Now, redecorated stores openlate and on Saturdays, and offer wide wine selections. Thebeer tax is down, the wine tax likely to follow, and the hardliquor tax expected to be phased out. Even restrictions thatneedn’t go, like the high taxes, are undermined by openborders: Swedish pensioners today make extra cash by dri-ving trunks full of untaxed beer from Denmark.

Faced with rising alcohol consumption and black marke-teering, many Swedes fear that past restraints of state-owned monopolies and high taxes have not cured the coun-try’s bad drinking habits, spread during mid-nineteenth-century industrialization when liquor became cheap. Swe-den had over 175,000 distilling machines for about eightmillion inhabitants, and consumption neared 49 quarts ofalcohol per adult per year compared with about 9.5 today.

Whereas southern Europe merged drinking with diningand scorned blatant signs of intoxication, in Sweden andother Scandinavian countries drinking was less fre-quent,and intoxication a form of group recreation. Whiletheir southern counterparts have more long-term drink-ing-related health problems, Swedish drinkers lean towardhigh rates of violence, accidents, suicide, and homicide.

To curb these social ills, for nearly forty years, until 1955,Swedes needed ration cards to buy liquor. When Swedenjoined the E.U. in 1995, the government still monopolizedproduction and both wholesale and retail distribution ofspirits, which meant high prices and low availability.

The country has until 2004 to meet E.U. standards.Although it has had to give up its monopoly on productionand wholesale distribution of alcohol, it can keep its monop-oly on retail stores if it makes more products available andexpands store hours; and it has managed to negotiate a step-by-step increase in the amount of alcohol that Swedes canbuy in lower-taxed countries and bring home.

At home, meanwhile, Swedish officials have revampedan anti-alcohol plan focusing on education, tougherdrunk-driving laws, tougher regulations on servingdrinks to minors, and a ban on liquor advertising (which,however, allegedly violates the “free movement of serviceswithin Union countries”). Officials hope to show E.U. part-ners that a market commodity in one country may consti-tute a health issue in another. The lesson, however, mayalready have be driven home to European partners, associal patterns converge; even southern countries are nowseeing a rise in binge drinking among youth.

—David JacobsonSource: Suzanne Daley, “Europe Making Sweden Ease Alcohol

Rules,” New York Times, March 28, 2001.

36

If in France, the defense of traditional food culture is epit-omized by the image of José Bové, the political ac-tivist/farmer driving a back-hoe into a local McDonald’s

franchise, in Italy it is symbolized by the movement calledSlow Food. Rather than attack fast food directly, Slow Foodtries to preserve and reinforce traditional ways of growing,producing, and preparing food: the cultivation of grains thatwere widespread when the Etruscans ruled central Italy; theraising of a rare, succulent black pig that was the rage at thecourt of the Dukes of Modena in the Renaissance; the grow-ing of heirloom species of peach and tomato that are exceed-ingly flavorful but take too long to mature for mass produc-tion or are too irregularly shaped for supermarket containers;the making of nearly extinct types of cheeses, whose recipeshave been passed on by word-of-mouth over centuries but arenow made by a handful of elderly farmers.

The movement, which has adopted the snail as its officialsymbol, was founded at a meeting of various internationalgroups in Paris in 1986, where its members endorsed a SlowFood Manifesto, which states:

A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only wayto oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.

May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure andslow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the conta-gion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.

Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food.Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cook-ing and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.

In the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed ourway of being and threatens our environment and our land-scapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressiveanswer.

While Slow Food may have seemed at first a Quixotic defenseof quaint but impractical traditions and an elitist movement ofgourmets, now—in the age of mad cow and foot-and-mouth dis-ease, of growing protests over globalization and geneticallymodified food, of rising interest in eco- and gastro-tourism—ithas evolved into something of a political and economic force.Since 1995, when it began to develop the notion of “eco-gas-tronomy,” it has grown from 20,000 members to 70,000 mem-bers in forty-two countries. To press its political concerns, SlowFood has opened an office in Brussels, where it lobbies the Euro-pean Union on agriculture and trade policy as well as an officein New York, which organizes trade fairs and tries to find mar-kets for traditional food producers. Two years ago, Slow Foodflexed its muscles when the European Union tried to enforce adirective that set identical hygienic standards for all Europeanfood producers that were originally invented by the Americanspace agency NASA. [See Emily Green, p. 34] The standards,known as Hazard Analysis Control Critical Point, have helpedto keep astronauts from getting sick in space and are used suc-cessfully by corporate giants such as Kraft Foods, but wouldhave imposed impossible burdens of reporting, paperwork, andnew equipment on thousands of small farmers and driven them

Food Politics

out of business. “We cannot allow the elimination of the heartof Italian gastronomy,” declared Carlo Petrini, the founder andpresident of Slow Food. “The artisan quality of our cheeses, ofour chocolates, or our wines is already a backbone of our touristindustry. Are we going to renounce this in order to force a sin-gle cheesemaker to satisfy the technicalities of a NASA direc-tive?” Slow Food star-ted a petition that wassigned by 150 mem-bers of the Italian Par-liament, and eventu-ally Italy obtainedexemptions for thou-sands of artisan mak-ers of cheeses, icecreams, and prosciut-tos. “Ancient tradi-tions of cultivatingand making food haveto be considered as part of cultural heritage not just as tradecommodities,” says Luciana Castellina, who spent twenty yearsas an Italian representative of the European Parliament. Aninteresting sign of the times, Castellina, who spent most of hercareer supporting various far-left parties, now dedicates herpolitical energies to the causes of Slow Food and the Italian filmindustry—both of which she sees as part of the same web ofcultural diversity. In fact, Slow Food has many joint projectswith the Legambiente, Italy’s main environmental organization,insisting that defense of gastronomical diversity is part of thelarger cause of biodiversity. A recently-conducted census ofItalian foods has identified 1,657 types of cheeses and driedmeats. Hundreds exist, however, only on paper, their makershaving recently died off or gone out of business.

If Slow Food has acquired some political clout it is becauseit represents both powerful economic interests as well as apotentially even bigger business. Slow Food now produces amagazine, gastronomic guides, wine guides, guides to theosterie of Italy, “Slow Itineraries,” and has organized majortrade shows that have opened international markets up to tra-ditional food producers. By giving them publicity, Slow Foodhas turned a number of sleepy provincial restaurants, vintners,and cheese-makers into booming businesses. In an age ofextreme prosperity, in which food has become fashion and topchefs have become international celebrities, the market forhigh-quality, specialty foods is growing, especially in the wakeof recent health scares. A few years ago, Slow Food organized aconsortium of cattle-breeders near its headquarters in thenorthern Italian region of Piedmont, encouraging them to raisea rare breed of local cow with strictly organic methods. Ini-tially, the cost of raising the cattle appeared to make it unprof-itable; but now, in the wake of mad cow disease, and beef con-sumption down by 30 percent in Italy, local butchers aredesperate to get their hands on the consortium’s cattle. ◆

—Alexander Stille

Slow Food

A firm defense ofquiet material plea-sure is the only wayto oppose the univer-sal folly of Fast Life

37

Literature

On June 27, 2000, German culture changed. On thatday the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung devotedthree feuilleton pages to printing 0.1 % of the

human genetic code (“GAGGAT GTGGAG AAATAG …”), thelast sequence of the human genome to be deciphered at CraigVenture’s Celera Genomics, which the paper introduced as“the greatest scientific sensation of our time.” This surreal-istic act is now widely viewed as the starting point of a newtrend that Le Monde (March 16, 2001) described as the inva-sion of German thought by biotechnology, genetics, and thelife sciences in general. After the code excerpt, hardly a daypassed without some lengthy contribution to the bioethicsand biopolitics debate appearing in what is still regarded asGermany’s leading cultural supplement and intellectualprint forum. The politically conservative Frankfurter Allge-meine Zeitung (FAZ) feuilleton maintains this status throughtradition, thematic range, and sheer page length, althoughthe paper’s circulation (400,554) is surpassed by Munich’sSüddeutsche Zeitung (418,947).

The summer media coup and its aftermath was staged byFrank Schirrmacher (born 1959), a literary critic by trainingand one of the FAZ publishers responsible for the feuilleton’seditorial policy. Good design heightened the impact of thenow-famous spread of seeming gobbledegook, which earnedthe paper an “Award of Excellence” at the European Newspa-per Design Awards 2000. Since its appearance, the discussionof developments in biological, biotechnological, and biomed-ical research and their possible social and ethical implicationshave been lifted from the science page, a corner of Germannewspapers hitherto ignored by the general, and particularlythe culturally attuned, public. Since the start of Schirrma-cher’s well-orchestrated controversy, the science world issteadily gaining a lay audience which prior decades of effortsto increase its cultural and social standing could never muster.

Schirrmacher’s enthusiasm for Craig Venture, his attitude ofhaving raised biopolitics from obscurity in Germany, and thespace the FAZ allotted to the opinions of information-agegurus Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil have been severely criticizedfor their air of technological euphoria and their popularizingblend of technical jargon and science fiction; so have the con-cept of culture implied in Schirrmacher’s claim that sciencetoday is more exciting than many novels and films and theabsence in this debate of either science or culture historians.

But even Schirrmacher’s sterner critics don’t deny he beateveryone else in Germany at staking out a major theme for ourtime, and expertly stage-managed its introduction six monthsbefore anyone would have guessed that mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, or Dutch euthanasia laws would pushbiopolitical topics to the top of the political agenda, or thattheir political, economic, social, ethical, scientific, and tech-nological aspects demanded analysis. Nor did anyone foreseelast summer that half a year later the traditionally minor cabi-net post of agriculture secretary would be redefined as con-sumers’ advocate and provide the institutional basis for the

The Feuilleton Culture Warsmeteoric rise of the Green Party’s Renate Künast, now anessential link in the governing coalition and one of its mostpopular politicians. In light of these developments, the forumSchirrmacher created allows for a broad critical spectrum ofopinion, and may well usher in the kind of excellent popularscience writing the U.S. excels in.

Schirrmacher’s “moment” may also be seen as the result of alonger-term demotion of traditional topics of high culture.Over the last decades it has become increasingly hard to pre-sent the description of a recent Beethoven performance, theanalysis of new poems, plays, and novels, or the criticism of anew staging of a classical tragedy as the activity most relevantto self-reflective social discourse. Joachim Kaiser, born in 1928and still the grand old man of the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s feuil-leton, has voiced bitter complaints about this turn away from“high culture” in an interview in Der Spiegel (April 2, 2001).

If thirty years ago many critics were literary scholars, todaythey tend to be historians or social scientists assessing the cul-tural aspects of politics. An alleged bit of Schirrmacher fall-out illustrates this. The Süddeutsche Zeitung recently an-nounced its feuilleton would be hiring writers Ulrich Raulff,Thomas Steinfeld, and Franziska Augstein, i. e. the FAZ’sfeuilleton director, its literature section director, and one ofits cultural correspondents. The FAZ in turn announced that,beyond its own Patrick Bahners succeeding Raulff, it was hir-ing six media and culture critics from the SZ. The seeminglyroutine reshuffling created a public stir, with articles specu-lating on the background and implications of this “war of thefeuilletons” and its ongoing redefinitions of concepts of cul-ture and the relation between culture and politics. Of the fourleading German critics cited above, three are trained histori-ans. The recent bioethical debate hasn’t really pushed classicfeuilleton themes off their first pages—that’s happened—butit jostles for space with other debates on socioeconomic andhistorical problems.

Some critics therefore see the biopolitical turn as a delayedresponse to a crisis among conservatives after the Helmut Kohlera and party finance scandal that marred its end. What a reliefit must have been to triumphalistically embrace the politicaland cultural implications of the “new biology” rather than sim-ply toe the conservative line in a time of political disorienta-tion and embarrassment. That triumphalist tone sells the newpreference for science by a shock-the-bourgeois strategy andidentifying these attitudes with the values of the younger gen-eration; it expounds new attitudes to science while ignoringhumanist sensitivities to any affinity with the biological creedsof National Socialism; and it patriotically suggests that if Ger-many isn’t at the forefront of science, it can at least pioneer cul-tural implementations of the latest perspectives. But oneshouldn’t overestimate the extent to which the media can deter-mine what will be perceived as substantive new problems:parts of the ideological baggage currently connected with themmay still be jettisoned as they are further explored. ◆

—Michael Becker

38

Literature

literature.” In Berlin, says Le Monde, culture is very much “onthe move.” The city attracts young writers as well as literaryagents whose increasingly important mediations betweenpublishers and writers account for about half the new bookcontracts. Prohibitive prices for copyrights of foreign books,especially from the U.S., have intensified the search for newGerman talents and first-time novelists, even if the density ofwriters per square meter in Berlin doesn’t always translate intoquality. Anything, says Le Monde, can get published in Ger-many today on the pretext it’s happening in Berlin.

Discussion of individual authors such as Georg Klein,Thomas Brussig, and Judith Hermann, seemed almost swal-lowed up by observations on the trends they are supposed toexemplify. German literature in the hands of “the young” issaid to have become less experimental, less complex, and moreentertaining, less typically German, more focused on such uni-versal literary themes as happiness, love, loneliness, and inter-personal relations. Thomas Brussig’s novel Am kürzeren Endeder Sonnenallee (At the short end of Sun Avenue) grew out ofhis collaboration with Leander Haussmann, a highly success-ful young German stage director, on the script for the film Son-nenallee. The film version and the more nuanced novel areequally effective in portraying details of everyday life in Com-munist East Berlin shortly before the opening of the Wallwithin a light comedy of first love. Georg Klein has been pro-claimed the new superstar of German literature after two bleakmetropolitan suspense stories: Libidissi, a spy novel set in afictive oriental capital, and Barbar Rosa, a detective story inpresent-day Berlin. Klein’s style is both precise and ambigu-ous, and packed with literary allusions, almost the opposite ofJudith Hermann’s everyday language, though both know howto evoke intense atmospheres. Judith Hermann’s first bookSommerhaus, später (Summer house, later), is a collection ofnine melancholy short stories, often set in Berlin, whose pro-tagonists inhabit a vaguely bohemian world. Stumbling intoand out of relationships, ill at ease, they recognize their emo-tions only in retrospect; yet for all their seeming indecisionand passivity, they show a strength of sheer obstinacy. Thesethree authors exemplify a larger trend, and may, though justbarely, be more successful than about a dozen other youngerwriters (some already in their forties). Though they don’t forma tight-knit group, they seem to share quite a few traits, and itis difficult to say whether in twenty years their success willstill be seen to mark a new period in German literature.

Although the “new” German writers garnered most atten-tion in Paris, more established ones were not completely

ignored. (The French, for example, seemed to think better ofToo Far Afield, Günter Grass’s unification novel and homageto the German novelist Theodor Fontane, than did Germancritics six years ago.) Reactions to the young German voiceson home soil, at the Leipzig Book Fair, held shortly after the“Salon du Livre,” were more sceptical. Reviewers generally,according to Michael Naumann, an editor of Die Zeit and for-mer publisher and federal secretary of culture, find it increas-ingly hard to keep the public informed about the bewilderingspate of new publications. Toward young authors, as one criticremarked, they pursue a “wait-and-see policy.” Does this meanthat the failure or success of new titles today depends moreheavily on the size of their promotion budgets?

German culture critics are still in the business of preparingthe reception of new books. They write daily some forty reviewsfor the feuilletons, or culture sections. Newspapers such as theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, or theweekly Die Zeit each review more than a thousand fiction andnon-fiction books every year.

Whatever they may think about the status of literaturetoday, most German readers seem to agree that fixed bookprices are an absolute prerequisite for the continued existenceof German culture. The belief in fixed book prices as the pre-condition for the continued production of a wide variety ofhigh-quality books seems to be a major exception to the pre-sent belief in the greater efficiency of competitive markets inproviding scarce goods to meet human needs. A flood of arti-cles has been devoted to this topic over the last few years. Notonly German booksellers and book publishers were recentlyrelieved to hear of Italy’s passage of a law to fix book prices,and that the federal secretary of culture in Germany has pro-posed a similar law replacing the current system which safe-guards fixed book prices only by contract.

Unfortunately this will not solve all problems in the worldof German books. The Leipzig Book Fair is mainly a publicpromotion event attracting large audiences, unlike the Frank-furt Book Fair, at which copyrights are sold and contractsdrawn up. Its future to a large extent will depend on contin-ued financial support from Bertelsmann/Random Housewhich earns a capital yield of circa 10 percent on a turnoverof $1.6 billion and expects similar yields from its German booksection that controls about 10 percent of the German bookmarket. But the medium yields of most German book publish-ers are far below 10 percent. Will this affect the content andquality of books written in German? ◆

—Michael Becker

Can One Still Write in German?

“Peut-on encore écrire an allemand?” Yes, if one’s young and living in Berlin. That, at least,according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, was the main message from the Paris “Salon duLivre,” where Germany was this year’s guest of honor, and a message reinforced by Le Monde

des Livres. In the issue covering the event (March 16, 2001), the main topics were Berlin in general and“Le boom berlinois,” its literary developments, new generation of writers, “wonder girls” and “pop

39

Literature

Vladimir Nabokov: American writer, born April 23, 1899 inSt. Petersburg, Russia

It was a matter of fierce pride for any Bolshevik: “Russiansread more than any other people on earth.” Which in turnwas a matter of bewilderment for any number of Western

economists and management consultants who could not helpnoting that hypothetical and literary concepts have a far greaterhold on this people than practical ones. As a result, capitalismand democracy here in Russia scarcely resemble any Westernconception of those ideas. Russia’s bookstores, however, are abibliophile’s dream, even if you can’t get a latte as you browse.

My Russian heart warms to see thatdespite robber barons, Wild West capi-talism, Internet access, trendy restau-rants, pubs, and the multiple jobs peoplekeep just to make ends meet, Russiansstill read books, constantly. My Ameri-canized rational mind, however, longs tofind a practical way for Russia’s readingpassion, and its belief in the writer asprophet and teacher, to be made to ben-efit everyone. Here, after all, Solzhenit-syn and dissident writers were moreimportant than Brezhnev and otherpoliticians. So we were postmodern inour contempt for politics even before wehad a real politics.

Full of messianic intentions, I took asemester off from my research on theRussian economic transition to venture afew months of teaching at Moscow StateUniversity (MGU), where I would give a course on VladimirNabokov, “Nabokov and Us.” Of course, I saw myself in manyways walking in Nabokov’s footsteps: the long eleven yearsI’ve spent in Princeton and New York have turned a dreamyRussian intellectual into a practical Westerner. Please don’ttake this as a delusion of grandeur; I am saying only that myexperiences in America, not my writings, have been akin toNabokov’s. So in returning to Moscow I felt I had somethingto reveal to my fellow Russians: to become liberal and free,Russia must put its best traditions of reading to practical use.We should switch to reading Nabokov rather than IMF briefs(official documents have never been a Russian forte), forNabokov provides a better road map of the way forward thansome uncertain successes of faraway Indonesia and Brazil: hemanaged to remain Russian, dreamily, greedily, unambigu-ously, yet be American at the same time.

Like all missionaries, I was humbled to discover (with satis-faction rather than disappointment) that I was almost late withmy “good news.” Nabokov, who stoically accepted (or at leastclaimed such) that he would have very few readers in hissocialist homeland—indeed, he imagined his audience in Rus-sia as a “room filled with people, wearing his own mask”—would have been extremely delighted at his reception in his

homeland today: the whole country is wearing his mask.The contemporary Russian reader reads Nabokov into

everything. In response to a recently carved bust of PresidentPutin, Russians quoted Nabokov, “Portraits of the head of thegovernment should not exceed a postage stamp in size.” ThoseRussians who still stubbornly disregard material comfortrecall his phrase about the “nuisance of ownership”; thosewho insist on individualistic values follow him in being “anindivisible monist.” Nabokov is translated, retranslated, andrepublished. There is even a Nabokov Reader, a guidebook forschoolteachers on how and why to read Nabokov.

Expecting just a few fanatic studentsin my class at the university’s School ofJournalism, I walked into the room eachsession to find the number of peoplewearing Nabokov’s “masks” doubled ortripled. The first week I had six students,the next, twelve, then eighteen, andfinally thirty. They are deft and deter-mined, reciting passages of Lolita andSpeak, Memory by heart in both Englishand Russian; they don’t skip classes ormake excuses as we did in my time atMGU fifteen years ago. Instead of piti-fully crying over Akhmatova’s “PoemWithout a Hero,” or helplessly whisper-ing in some kitchen about Solzhenitsyn’sGulag Archipelago, these level-headedkids of the post-post-communist newcentury put literature to practical use.They told me they find nineteenth-cen-

tury writers too dramatic, too pathetic—and those of thetwentieth-century too critical, unhappy, and dissident. Post-communist literature is too trashy. But Nabokov is just right!

“Pushkin has been everything for you, Nabokov is ourPushkin”—and I detect a tinge of disdain for the old-fash-ioned traditions of the past. “He managed,” their facesbrighten with admiration, “to remain ‘high’ literature but bepragmatic, no-nonsense, a great stylist with cool themes anda brave, strong, victorious individual as hero.” “My favoritecreatures, my resplendent characters—in The Gift, in Invita-tion to a Beheading, in Ada, in Glory, et cetera—are victors inthe long run,” they quote passionately. “We,” they say withpride in themselves, “are that ‘et cetera.’ Nabokov is a literarymanual for our everyday life on the road from unapplied Russ-ian intellectual to efficient, pragmatic, western individual.”“Something like Pnin, but better,” one girl added resolutely.

“Why do you need me then, why do you come to thisclass?” I asked the now full classroom. They said they needsomebody who had already gone the way Nabokov and hischaracters had—to make sure it’s doable, to verbalize theexperience through his books.

Russia’s liberal transition has not been in vain after all. ◆—Nina Khrushcheva

Nabokov’s Russian Return

© M

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40

Confucianism

Kimi to neyo ka, gomangoku toro ka. Nan no gomangoku, kimito neyo. (Shall I sleep with you or take fifty thousand koku?What are fifty thousand koku? I’ll sleep with you.) This is aphrase from a popular song of the Edo period (1600-1868). Thekoku (about five bushels, or 180 liters) was the unit used toexpress the size of landholdings under the feudal system, mea-sured by annual yield of rice. The song refers to the gallantryof a samurai who faces the choice between the love of a womanand the chance to become lord of a feudal domain, and picksthe former. Even the samurai places love over political ambi-tion, and the masses sing in praise of his choice. This aestheticembodies one aspect of Japanese political thought.

The distinctively high evaluation of love, alongside thepraise of literary prowess, was a feature of the Japanese cul-tural tradition going back to the eighth century. Japan’s earli-est anthology of lyrical verse, the Man’yoshu, is filled withpoems in praise of love, indicating that the biggest concernsfor Japan’s ancient poets, who in their work transcended thebarriers of class, were the joy of winning love and the sorrowof losing it. Love between men and women was also the cen-tral theme of the tenth-century prose-and-poetry classic IseMonogatari (Tales of Ise), and the eleventh-century GenjiMonogatari (Tale of Genji), the world’s oldest novel.

What is of great interest in all these works is that success inlove is depicted, both in legends and fictional tales, as being aprivilege enjoyed by those who have failed in the quest forpolitical power. Otsu no Oji, one of the representative poetsincluded in the Man’yoshu, was killed as a result of the schem-ing of his elder brother and stepmother in a struggle for suc-cession to the throne. But he is reported to have won out overthe same brother in their competition for the love of the leg-endary beauty Ishikawa no Himetone; having won her heart,he and she left beautiful poems for posterity. Ariwara no Nari-hira, who was extolled as one of the six greatest poets of theninth century and whose exploits are the central theme of theIse Monogatari, is reputed to have enjoyed the love of manybeautiful women thanks to his own comely looks and sensitiv-ity. His was also a tale of political failure: though he was borna grandson to the monarch, his father was accused of disloy-alty, permanently barring Narihira from succession to thethrone. Also consider Hikaru Genji, the tenth-century protag-onist of the Genji Monogatari, perhaps the most brilliant “ser-ial lover” in the history of fiction: Genji was acclaimed as byfar the most talented and charming figure at court, but becausehis mother was of low birth, his path to the throne was barred.

The tradition of granting success in love as compensation

for failure in politics and making political losers the heroes oflove stories continued as a consistent thread in Japanese liter-ature through the nineteenth century. Consider the twelfth-century Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who became the most pop-ular tragic warrior figure among the masses. Yoshitsunerebuilt the fortunes of his ruined house, and he succeeded inhaving his elder brother made shogun, but he was killed asthe result of his brother’s mistrust. The masses in subsequentages felt pity for him and depicted him in their tales as the vic-tor in many splendid love affairs. The declaimed tales portray-ing the tragic love between the young Yoshitsune and Joruriin fact became the source of an entire genre of narrative chant-ing, called joruri. And for centuries Yoshitsune was also cele-brated in No and kabuki drama. Another tragic hero was thefourteenth-century military leader Nitta Yoshisada, whosedistinguished house was destroyed in the unsuccessful strug-gle for the restoration of imperial rule. In the historical narra-tive Taiheiki the court’s greatest beauty becomes Yoshisada’sspouse; the story of this couple stands out as the only paeanto love in this forty-volume record of military conflict.

What bears noting here is the cause-and-effect relationshipseen in the ancient and medieval tales of love. The hero is notdepicted as failing because he has fallen in love. His tragic fateis determined by some other cause, and happiness in love isgranted to him as a form of relief. For the writers and readersof these tales, love was clearly of sufficient value to serve as asubstitute for riches and power, providing relief and compen-sation for the loss of these other desired items.

Another key point is that love in these tales is distinguishedfrom mere sexual satisfaction, and the tragic nature of loveitself is stressed. The loss of love is depicted more beautifullythan its attainment; what is stressed is its impermanence. Thelovers themselves recognize the fragility of their happiness,and they even sometimes appear to love for the purpose ofbeing able to compose poems on the resulting sorrow.

This view of love was carried over to the Edo period, and itbecame the main theme of the works of Chikamatsu Monzae-mon and other authors of Edo joruri works. The hero and hero-ine in these tales were the son of a merchant family and a pros-titute, but they abandoned wealth, honor, and secure lives forthe sake of their love. What is most remarkable is that theywould even abandon the supreme Confucian value, filial piety.In these works love is placed in the balance against the offi-cial social order, based on loyalty to one’s family and one’semployer, and the main characters, finding them of equalvalue, agonize over which to choose. They then decide to com-

Love and Politics in the Japanese Classics

Irootoko, kane to chikara wa nakarikeri. (The man who loves has neither money nor power.) Sogoes a familiar Japanese proverb. This is not simply a put-down of men who enjoy women’s lovebut lack material means. In fact, to some extent it is an expression of envy toward such men. It

voices the feeling of the Japanese that regards success in love as equal in value to economic success andthe attainment of power.

mit suicide together, paying with their lives for victory inlove. Society approved such behavior and frequently viewedit as a heroic choice. In representative works by Chikamatsu,we see members of the general public rating and admiring theyear’s love suicides.

In his Love in the Western World, Denis de Rougement de-clares that love, as distinct from sexual desire, first became thesubject of Western literature in the twelfth century. Whatemerged as a typical example was the tale of Tristan andIsolde—a love fated to remain unconsummated, for which rea-son it burned as an interior passion and was sublimated into aspiritual value. In this respect the love depicted in the Japan-ese classics may be said to have a structure that on the surfaceis the opposite. The love seen in the Ise Monogatari and the lovedepicted by Chikamatsu both presented consummation asbeing accompanied by presentiments of separation. But boththe Western and Japanese depictions share an inner cherishingof love as a longing or a memory and idealizing of it as a value.

According to Chinese comparative literature scholar ZhangJing, this idealized concept of love was not found in tradi-tional Chinese literature. Works that depict relations betweenmen and women are few in number, pornographic when theyexisted, and not considered part of proper literary history.This was due to Confucian asceticism and a negative attitudetoward the union of men and women in general. TraditionalChinese literature drew no distinction between spiritual andphysical love, and when it depicted relations between menand women, it always tended to lapse into graphic sexualdescriptions. The representative major works dealing withsexual love, adds Zhang Jing, emerged in the Qing dynasty(1644-1911), since it was of Manchu origin and the hold ofConfucianism was loosened under it.

Zhang may overstate his position somewhat, but it is clearthat in China love was not weighed against political successor put on equal terms with the official social order. There isthe tale of the emperor who was ruined after being captivatedby the charms of a spectacularly beautiful woman; but this isa tale of disgraceful failure. Nowhere do we find a protagonistwho fails in politics but is celebrated for his success in love.Nor do we find lovers who commit suicide being praised ascourageous heroes. Confucian ethics call for loyalty to one’sparents and lord, sympathy for the weak, and sincerity toone’s friends, but they contain no idealized treatment of love.

It has not yet been determined why such a concept of loveemerged in Japan and continued to be a central literary theme.Was it because Confucianism did not become well-rooted inJapan? Or was it the other way around—did the appeal of lovein its own right interfere with the acceptance of Confucian-ism? The topic remains for future scholars to consider. Whatis already abundantly clear, however, is that this traditionalconcept of love contributed to Japan’s spontaneous modern-ization and aided the emergence of the concepts of individu-alism and human rights among the Japanese. Even beforeJapan’s modernization, the concept of love was the basic inspi-ration for youthful rebellion against the Confucian socialorder and, in particular, against paternal authority.

From the late nineteenth century on, rebellion against one’s

father, along with the attempt to escape from the old familyorder, became the major theme of Japanese literature. A youngman’s purpose became the quest for free love, in opposition tothe idea of accepting an arranged match; his rebellion did notstart out as a demand for his father’s assets or a rejection of hisfather’s religious or political thinking. Young men started tothink on their own about politics only after abandoning theirfamilies, and the impetus for leaving their families behind wastheir quest for free love. And this love was distinguished fromsexual desire as a spiritual value idealized at times to an almostcomical degree.

In Correspondence, Issue No. 6, I wrote about one such char-acter, the protagonist of Soseki Natsume’s novel Kororo (TheHeart). He rejects the marriage his parents have arranged andleaves home, but is ultimately unable to find happiness. Thecause of his failure is his overly idealized concept of love, hisquest for a form of love that is absolutely free, based com-pletely on autonomous choice, and not driven even by hisown desire. His thinking is an unconscious blend of the West-ern, Kantian concept of free will, Confucian asceticism, andthe traditional Japanese vision of idealized love. This bringshim not happiness but existentialist solitude—the sense of amodern, autonomous self.

The love stories of the past were told in homage to fallenprinces. In modern times they have changed their object tocompensation for young men who have driven themselvesfrom their families and abandoned the possibility of happi-ness within the constraints of premodern society. ◆

—Masakazu Yamazaki

Japan and Confucianism

Hegel viewed Confucianism as the ideology thatallowed China to sustain what he called “the empireof continuity.” Max Weber, on the other hand, sug-

gested that Confucianism’s lack of rigorous rational thinkinghad kept it from developing the modern scientific traditioncharacteristic of the West. Confucianism was widely perceivedas a negative legacy of the past, which had led to Asia’s stag-nation. But if Confucianism prevented the modernization ofChina, how can Japan’s modernization be explained? This is aproblem that many social scientists, including Max Weber,struggled to deal with, and many hypotheses have beenadvanced. One hypothesis is that the influence of Confucian-ism was fairly limited in Japan, compared to China or Korea.Japanese people naturalized Confucianism to their advantage,just as they did Buddhism and Christianity, and therefore,Japan was never sufficiently Confucian.

However, during the militaristic rule of Japan before WorldWar II, loyalty to the nation and unconditional devotion tothe group were justified by Confucian rhetoric. Many arguedtherefore that Confucianism is anti-modern, and a source ofthe distorted nature of Japan’s modernization. Long after thewar, Confucianism was negatively regarded as the feudal ide-ology of chauvinism and emperor worship, irremediably anti-modern and anti-democratic.

Despite such an anti-Confucian intellectual environment,

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Confucianism

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Confucianism

however, a considerable number of experts in Japan offered aconciliatory understanding of Confucianism and modernity.Even one of the most liberal intellectuals, Masao Maruyama,was critical of the depiction of Confucianism as static and anti-modern. According to Maruyama, between the sixteenth andnineteenth century, the extremely ideological thinking ofearly neo-Confucianism (founded by Zhu Xi, 1130-1200) wasdissolved and gradually modified to suit changing times.Thus,he argued that within Confucian thinking in Japan, there wereconditions that allowed Japan rapid modernization after themid-nineteenth century. In other words, the modern rational-ism of Japan has its roots in the Confucian spirit of the Toku-gawa period.

A well-known authority in Chinese philosophy, Kenji Shi-mada, thoroughly examined the classic litera-ture to clarify that Confucianism not onlyperpetuated tradition by reintroducing theteachings of Confucius, but that Confucian-ism itself had gone through dynamic devel-opment throughout history. During the Songdynasty, Shimada explained, the emperor’sbureaucrats were selected on a competitivebasis—through rigid testing of their Confu-cian knowledge—and assumed the role ofnoble aristocrats. The political role of Confu-cian intellectuals expanded accordingly.China’s intellectual elite were expected to fol-low the principle of noblesse oblige as well ascommand a wide range of scholarship fromontology, ethics, and classic literature, to pol-icy debates. This was the background of ZhuXi’s neo-Confucianism.

Nor, according to Shimada, did the philo-sophical development of Confucianism stop with Zhu Xi. AfterZhu Xi’s death Wang Yangming appeared and spread his phi-losophy of action and emotion in place of his predecessor’sexcessively ideological scholarship. His philosophy even ledsome philosophers to criticize Confucius. Given this dynamismand diversity within Confucian thought, Japanese theoristshave often argued for its affinity, or at least its compatibility,with Western rationalism and egalitarian thinking.

Interest in Confucianism reemerged in the 1980s as Asia’seconomic development drew worldwide attention. SomeWestern analysts and Asian thinkers and public figures suchas Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew even defined Confucian-ism as the spiritual backbone of economic growth in Asia, notthe source of its stagnation. While it is possible to argue thatJapan is not truly Confucian, it is impossible to make thatargument with Korea and Taiwan, which have also success-fully industrialized and democratized. With the astonishingachievement of countries with much stronger Confucian influ-ence, some Asian intellectuals argued that the Asian societiessucceeded in their modernization due to Confucian tradition’sstrong emphasis on discipline, in contrast to the permissiveand individualistic West. Such arguments influenced thereevaluation of Confucianism in Japan.

One counterargument to this was that Confucian ethics were

secular and Confucian religious precepts less stringent. Inother words, Confucianism was not an all-controlling, theo-cratic system, and as such it could passively support modern-ization. So the relationship between Confucianism and mod-ern values was understood in various ways. In one sense thiswas natural, given its long history and diverse contents.

In recent years, Confucianism has been invoked in many Asiancountries in contrast with the Western philosophy of humanrights and as part of a critical reevaluation of postwar democ-racy and liberalism in Japan. Takao Sakamoto, an influentialscholar of modern Japanese political thought, says that the dif-ferences between communitarian Confucian ethics and the moreindividualistic Western notion of human rights stems from dif-ferences in their basic understanding of humanity rather than

differences of concrete rules and ethical codesthat each thought-system demands. Confu-cianism understands human beings not asindividual entities but within the context ofhuman relations or roles within a social order,such as prince and subordinate, father andson, husband and wife. Moral rules are set inaccordance with respective positions withinmutual human relations. One of the leaders inConfucian studies in modern Japan, NobuyukiKaji, argues that the essence of Confucianthought lies in its communitarianism, itsemphasis on family ethics, based on kinship.He suggests that there are distinct differencesfrom the Western notion of human rights,which is based on abstract notions of humanequality and universality of human rights.

Why are such views of Confucianism influ-ential? Some argue that the introduction of

democracy and liberalism during the American occupationresulted in the weakening of the communitarian consciousnessthat was long the fundamental norm of Japanese society. Con-sequently, even family ties became fragile, and led to theincrease in juvenile crime, devastation of schools, and collapseof authority in the society at large, thus leading to the ethicaldeterioration of postwar Japan. Kaji suggests that liberalismand individualism, which became the official orthodox ethicsof postwar Japan, has their spiritual roots in the contractualrelationship between god and the individual. Thus, they workwell in a Western society where the Christian ethic of self-dis-cipline is well internalized, but not in Japan where Confucianethics were lost and an alternative spiritual backbone did notexist. He argues that the uncritical devotion to individualismin Japan gave birth only to self-indulgence and decadence. Therecent reevaluation of Confucianism therefore is not necessar-ily a direct reaction to the Western world. Rather, it is deeplylinked to the critical reexamination of ethics in Japan—andsuch orthodox postwar Japanese values as human rights,democracy, and individualism—and to the reevaluation ofJapan’s postwar period. While this period has largely beenadmired for its democratization and economic prosperity, someconservative thinkers see it as as an era of moral failure. ◆

—Masayuki Tadokoro

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Confucianism

for education, which could be considered a legacy of Confu-cian ethics, provided an engine for economic growth.Expanded public education provided an abundance of literateand skilled laborers. Confucian respect for seniority may havecontributed to the smooth start-up of industrial development.

Rapid economic growth, however, could not satisfy populardesire for democracy. The social transformation brought by thisrapid government-driven industrialization brought unforeseenconsequences: economic growth created a broad middle classeager for stable democracy once its basic needs were met. Whenstudents, intellectuals, and religious leaders—considered theconscience of a nation—continued to decry authoritarian rule,the middle class lent its support to a democratic movement. Tomany Koreans, reckless oppression by authoritarian rulersseemed the symptom of a dysfunctional government. On theother hand, heavy and concentrated investments in a limitednumber of big corporations, called chaebul, created a large num-ber of young male laborers in confined industrial complexes.The working-class consciousness they acquired led to theirappeal for democratic labor relations, which in turn burgeonedinto nationwide pro-democracy agitation.

Democracy in Korea was won by a fierce struggle waged by aloose alliance of students and intellectuals, laborers, and white-collar workers. This feature may be considered a deviation fromthe Confucian ethic, which honors hierarchical stratificationand loyalty to one’s government. But Koreans wished for democ-racy not because it fits the Confucian conception that they arefamiliar with, but because political democracy and due respectfor human rights are universal values.

In Korea the Confucian legacy has been attenuated by rapidindustrial development. But this does not mean that the Confu-cian legacy disappeared. In private, such Confucian norms asrespect for elders, regard for family, filial piety, expectations ofsincerity, the search for truth, and high esteem continue to becherished. Violation of these norms would invite criticalresponses from others. In the public political realm, however,such Confucian ethics as emphasis on hierarchical order andthe extension of filial piety to loyalty to public authority didnot change Koreans’ desires for democracy, justice, and equal-ity. When necessary, people did not hesitate to fight againstauthoritarian government in pursuit of democracy because theKoreans have learned that democracy is never simply given byincumbent rulers or by external forces.

Culture is not destiny. Confucianism itself does not guaran-tee the arrival of democracy; nor does it hinder or prevent itsdevelopment. The Korean experience suggests that Confucian-ism may both facilitate democratic transition and justifyauthoritarian rule. What really matters is people’s willingnessto fight for political democracy and civil liberty. Democracyis attained by actions enlightened by universal values. Inunderstanding democratization, one should duly take accountnot only of attitudinal codes but also of group conflictsaffected by industrialization and urbanization. ◆

—Cheol Hee Park

In recent years, there has been an intense debate in Asiaover Confucianism and democracy. One group of intellec-tuals regards Confucius as a bulwark against Western-style

democracy. They have invoked Confucius’s principle of filialpiety to justify an “Asian way,” combining economic develop-ment with traditional respect for authority and loyalty to apowerful ruler. Another insists Confucianism contains theseeds of democracy and human rights and facilitated ratherthan blocked the growth of democracy in Asia.

Each side has its favorite quotations ready at hand. Theauthoritarian traditionalists often quote the famous Confuciansaying: “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the fathera father, the son a son.” The longtime leader of Singapore, LeeKuan Yew, echoed this when he declared: “Eastern societiesbelieve that the individual exists in the context of his family.He is not pristine and separate. The family is part of theextended family, and then friends and the wider society.” Asiandemocrats intent on rescuing Confucius for their cause preferto focus on the idea of mutual obligation between ruler and sub-ject, present in other Confucian maxims such as: “The rulershould employ his subject according to the rules of propriety;the subject should serve his ruler with loyalty.” These scholarsperceive the idea of “implicit rights” in the idea of reciprocity.

Contrary to these two opposing views, I would argue thatthere is no direct causal link between Confucianism and democ-racy. Confucian tradition has coexisted with both authoritari-anism and democracy in modern times. It is not Confucianismthat brings about democracy; nor does Confucianism hinderthe development of democracy in Asian countries. One needonly consider the different historical paths Asians have takenunder the influence of Confucian tradition. With America play-ing a crucial role in reshaping its political regime, Japan has cre-ated a long-stable democracy in the postwar period. SouthKorea, with its strong Confucian cultural legacy, has experi-enced both authoritarianism and democracy over the lastdecades, while North Korea, also sharing in Confucian tradi-tion, has never known democracy. China, the matrix of Confu-cianism, has a long road ahead before the one-party state ends.

The Korean experience reveals a dual Confucian legacy.South Korea’s former first president Rhee Syngman (1948-60)relied on Confucian rhetoric to legitimize his rule. People oftencalled him the father of the country. As an extension of filialpiety, loyalty to a president was made to justify his autocraticrule. Rhee was forced to step down, however, after massivedemonstrations by students and intellectuals, whose move-ment gained its legitimacy from Mencius’ teaching that revo-lution against an illegitimate ruler is acceptable. Confucian tra-dition accords deep respect to scholars and intellectuals, whosevoices rulers can ignore only at their peril; so it has become atradition for students to stand up to authoritarian rule.

The flowering of democracy in Korea was cut short by the1961 military coup of Park Chung Hee (president, 1963-79). Tocompensate for weak political legitimacy, his regime rapidlystepped up industrialization. The Korean people’s enthusiasm

Confucianism and Democracy

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Children’s Literature

The Harry Potter Phenomenon

Who would have thought, four or five years ago, that the broadest international cultural phenomenon would have been aset of children’s books, the Harry Potter stories (a projected set of seven volumes, the fourth released in the UnitedStates at special midnight bookstore sales clearly not geared to children’s attendance), which have now been published

in over thirty-three countries, with a worldwide sale of over a hundred million copies.The closest comparison is the Japanese Pokémon phenomenon, a set of video games, cartoons, and collectors’ cards, about heroes

fighting monsters: a television series based on the pocket monsters is the most popular children’s program in the U.S.; the five top-selling video games are all Pokémon-themed; and more than fifty million Pokémon game cards have been sold.

But the Harry Potter series are books, to be read, and this is what makes it even a more extraordinary marvel. The novels, by asingle mother—J. (for Joanne) K. Rowling, living in Edinburgh—are about a ten-year-old boy, raised by evil stepparents, who is sentto the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, where it is revealed that, like his real parents, he is a wizard. In the school,owls deliver the mail, people in paintings wander out of the frames, and sports are played on broomsticks. It is not only the situationsthat are fanciful, but the words are comically enticing: Muggles for non-magical people; the pseudo-Latin spells cast on people (Petri-ficus Totalus!); and the mouth-filling names of the four houses that make up the Hogwarts School (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff,and Ravenclaw). Children—and adults—reading these mirthful names chant them to one another in delight.

How does one explain the beguiling success of the Harry Potter tales? Moreover: “Why are so many of the best-known children’s booksBritish or American?” as Alison Lurie, the American novelist, wrote in the New York Review of Books (December 16, 1999). “Othercountries have produced a single brilliant classic or series: Denmark, for instance, has Andersen’s fairy tales, Italy has Pinocchio, Francehas Babar, Finland has Moomintroll. A list of famous children’s books in English, however, could easily take up the rest of this column.”

“One explanation,” she says, “may be that in Britain and America more people never quite grow up. They may sometimes put ona good show of maturity, but secretly they remain children, longing for the pleasures and privileges of childhood that once were, orwere said to be, theirs.”

An intriguing hypothesis, and readers will have to judge for themselves if the explanation is compelling. We have asked David A.Bell, Stasoshi Mukai, and Michael Greenberg and Edgar Krebs to write about children’s literature in France, Japan, and Argentina,while from Germany, Donata Elschenbroich reports on her investigations into “preliteracy” around the world as Western pedagoguesreassert the developmental benefits of early exposure to reading and writing.

—Daniel Bell

In answering this question, it may be worth while to con-sider three different works which have, over the centuries,best succeeded in appealing to both French children andadults: the late-seventeenth-century fairy tales of Perrault,Bruno’s late nineteenth-century classic La Tour de France pardeux enfants, and finally, the Astérix comic tales. The firstand third of these surely require no introduction. The sec-ond is the story of two orphans from Alsace-Lorraine who,in the wake of France’s defeat by Germany in 1870-71, maketheir way across the country in search of their uncle. A stan-dard text in French schools throughout much of the twenti-eth century, it has only recently begun to fade out of livingmemory. The Astérix volume La Tour de Gaule d’Astérix(translated into English as Astérix and the Banquet) is a gen-tle parody of Bruno’s book, although the joke has been loston non-French readers.

What is most striking about all three of these works is thatalthough each manages to appeal to adults and children alike,in each case the authors in question consciously intendedadults to read them differently from children. Perrault, forinstance, intended his fairy tales to appeal to a courtly audi-ence, and wrote them in an impeccably classical, highly styl-ized language, with the intention that adult readers wouldappreciate its delicacies and artifices. He did not present themas the authentic, immemorial voice of rural folklore, as later

The astounding success of the Harry Potter books hasfocused attention on the Anglo-American traditionof children’s literature. Despite the inability of

almost any contemporary fictional work to avoid beingbruised in the “culture wars” (Harry Potter has beendenounced in various quarters for everything from sexismto satanism), the series has nonetheless been widely hailedas a worthy addition to a canon that includes Alice in Won-derland, Little Women, The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, andthe Narnia Chronicles.

Indeed, the popularity of the Harry Potter books, like thoseof the other members of the canon, comes from their popular-ity among adults. Ask any American child for a list of favoritebooks, and Harry Potter or The Wizard of Oz may well appear,but almost certainly in the company of other titles, from theHardy Boys or Nancy Drew to the works of Judy Blume, whichrarely feature in the same canon, because their appeal rarelysurvives a child’s adolescence. Rowling and Tolkien are quitedifferent matters; they do.

In asking why other countries have not developed such acanon, therefore, the proper question may not be whyFrench or Italian writers have failed to deliver works pleas-ing to children. The question is rather: Why have Englishand American adult readers have been so eager to embraceworks written for children?

The French and “Anglo-Saxon”Infantilization of Culture

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Romantic editors would do, but as carefully sculpted courtlyfictions, virtual poems in prose.

As for La Tour de France, it was written, after the Frenchdefeat, in a highly self-conscious patriotic vein, intended aspart of a campaign to comfort the French in their humiliation,to singe the memory of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine into everyyoung citizen, and to help to prepare the nation’s return toglory. To the extent that the text appealed to adults, it did soby relentlessly reminding them of their patriotic duty toinstill its lessons in their own children. Far from encouragingthem to imagine themselves once again as children, it empha-sized their responsibilities as adults and parents.

The Astérix books, whose enormous popularity has onlypartly survived the death of their co-author René Goscinny(he wrote the texts, while Albert Uderzo drew the pictures),also operate very explicitly on two separate levels. For chil-dren, they present wonderfully amusing and exciting adven-tures. For adults, however, they appeal through Goscinny’swit, which expresses itself above all in endless, complex puns,and in satires of familiar French political and cultural icons.Thus in these strips depicting the resistance of a small Gaul-ish village to the occupying Roman armies of Julius Caesar,characters bear such names as Astérix and Obélix (all Gaulishnames need to end in -ix), while the Roman camps surround-ing the village (whose names need to end in -um) include Lau-danum and Babaorum—from the pastry baba au rhum. TheGauls’ dog is named Idéfix (idée fixe), which the English edi-tion wonderfully translates as Dogmatix.

The stories frequently play off traditional French stereo-types of foreigners (the violent Germans, the culinarily incom-petent English), and the frequently-mocked figure of JuliusCaesar bears more than a passing resemblance to Charles deGaulle. All of these references, of course, sail over the headsof French children, and also of most foreign readers, whichexplains why so few foreign adults have become aficionados.It also explains why, since the comparatively heavy-handedUderzo took over the series himself following Goscinny’sdeath, the appeal to French adults has evaporated.

In short, while all three works appeal to adults as well aschildren, they explicitly appeal to them as adults. Is this trueof the Anglo-American children’s canon? To be sure, adultshave found many things in Lewis Carroll, Tolkien or, Rowl-ing which their children miss.There is even coded Populist-era political satire in The Wizard of Oz (the Yellow Brick Roadrepresenting the Gold Standard, the Scarecrow and the TinMan representing agricultural and industrial interests, etc.).Nonetheless, it is hard to resist the conclusion that, unlikethe French stories, the essential appeal of these works foradults resides in the fact that reading them provides a fan-tasy of a return to childhood, with its black-and-white cate-gories, easy certainties, and above all, perhaps, an absence ofsexual tension.

In this context, it is important to note that the Anglo-Amer-ican canon of children’s literature got its start in the Victorianperiod, a time of extraordinary public puritanism in both Eng-lish and American high culture. It has often been remarkedthat this puritanism, with its almost complete elimination of

sexuality from official, “respectable” culture, had certaininfantilizing effects, especially upon the English and Ameri-can middle classes. The Victorian “cult of childhood,” with itsemphasis on the early years as ones of complete innocence andpurity, was directed as much at adults as at children, and thesame can be said of the literature that emerged from this cult.In France, by contrast, the official proscription of sexualitynever had anywhere near as broad or deep a reach.

Today, despite the sexual revolution, the influence of Victo-rian puritanism remains strong in Anglo-American culture,which may go far toward explaining not merely the continuedappeal of children’s literature to adults, but the continuedappeal of the same titles which appealed to our great-grand-parents. Alice in Wonderland has never been out of print. It isno coincidence that the ultimate praise for Harry Potter is pre-cisely comparison to these classics.

Writers like Alison Lurie take pride in the fact that Anglo-American culture, unlike the cultures of continental Europe,has managed to produce this remarkable array of books.Meanwhile, in France, writers continue routinely to depictAmericans in particular as large children who have neverquite made it all the way through adolescence. In truth, thetwo observations are two sides of the same coin—testimonyto a prevailing strain of infantilization in Anglo-American cul-ture which has, quite astonishingly, managed to generate someexcellent works of art. ◆

—David A. Bell

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The year 2000 marked the centenary of Antoine deSaint-Exupéry’s birth. All of his works, from his firstnovel, Courrier Sud (Southern Mail), which drew on

his experience as a pilot, to his final uncompleted masterpiece,Citadelle (The Wisdom of the Sands), have been translated intoJapanese, yet it is not these novels which are most widely reador familiar to Japanese readers today, but rather his sole ven-ture into children’s literature, Le Petit prince (The LittlePrince), which he wrote in exile in the United States in 1943after fleeing Nazi-occupied France.

The first Japanese translation of Le Petit prince appeared in1953. It has gone through several editions since, selling overfive million copies. A commemorative new edition was pub-lished in March 2000 with illustrations from the original Amer-ican edition. It rose instantly to the top of the bestseller list.

It is not unusual for translations of European and NorthAmerican children’s literature to become bestsellers in Japan.A translation of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philoso-pher’s Stone did so just last year, and a glance through the best-seller lists of previous years reveals many more examples,including Michael Ende’s Momo, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord ofthe Rings, and Tove Marika Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll.

The history of children’s literature translations in Japan canbe traced back to the end of the nineteenth century. Thefavorite at that time was Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little LordFauntleroy, followed by Jules Verne’s Deux Ans de Vacances.These were not only exciting and suspenseful adventure tales,in which children surmounted unusual difficulties, they alsocreated the concept of a children’s literature rich with inter-nal description and poetic allegory to take root within the bar-ren world of Japanese children’s literature.

When speaking of Japanese children’s literature, it is com-mon to take the thirty-two volumes of Nihonbungaku (Japan-ese Literature), also published around the end of the nine-teenth century, and from it Sazanami Iwaya’s vengefulparable, Koganemaru, found in the first volume, as the begin-ning of the central stream, and to consider Lord Fauntleroyand Deux Ans de Vacances as secondary. I believe, however,the opposite is true. Translations of foreign literature, farsuperior in both theme and content, came first, and spurredJapanese authors to experiment and create their own worksfor children. Yet considering that they started from scratch,they made astonishingly rapid progress.

In the twentieth century, classic children’s tales such asthose by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersenbegan to be translated, and on this foundation, MiekichiSuzuki launched the children’s literary magazine Akaitori(Red Bird) in 1918. This opened a golden age of contributionsfrom established writers. It was during this period that MimeiOgawa, the first Japanese writer to specialize in children’s sto-ries, began his career, as did Kenji Miyazawa, whose children’stales, which remained obscure during his brief lifetime, arenow revered as exceptional literary works.

The late 1920s witnessed a fierce competition between two

publishers to create the most comprehensive collection ofJapanese and foreign children’s literature, Shogakuseizenshu(The Complete Primary School Child’s Collection) and Nihonji-dobunko (The Japan Collection of Children’s Literature). Thesize of these collections was substantial, eighty-eight and sev-enty-six volumes respectively, and the vitality of the children’sliterature market during this period is apparent from the pub-lishers’ extravagant advertising campaigns. Shonenkurabu (TheBoys’ Club), founded in 1914, is another children’s magazinefrom this time that deserves attention, though it is frequentlyoverlooked. An entertainment version of Akaitori, it carriedmany serial adventure stories, historical works, detective sto-ries, and science fic-tion. With a circula-tion of 750,000 copiesin 1936 it became thelargest boys’ maga-zine in Japan.

But as Japan’s in-volvement in the Sec-ond World War inten-sified, Shonenkurabucame under state con-trol, and children’s literature in Japan went into a period oflimbo. A resurgence in the genre came on the heels of Japan’sdefeat in 1945. A series of new children’s magazines such asAkatombo (Red Dragonfly), Ginga (Galaxy), and Kodomonohi-roba (Children’s Plaza) appeared, and new authors with them.This second golden age, however, was briefer, lasting a merefive years. It is no exaggeration to say that the greatest obstacleto a lasting renaissance was the role of leftist theories about chil-dren’s literature, with a proliferation of stereotyped works con-demning the cruelty and stupidity of war and an excessiveemphasis on realism in illustrations. There was simply notenough adventure or fantasy—those essential elements of chil-dren’s literature which set young readers’ hearts racing andinspire them to dream—to sustain those works.

In contrast, the recent highly acclaimed Shonen H (The BoyH) by Kappa Seno, a description of life during the Second WorldWar as witnessed by the author as a young boy, does manageto evoke war’s cruelty and stupidity while capturing the heartsof young readers with its sustained element of adventure.

In 1950, when the postwar children’s literature of realismhad waned and children’s literature magazines, includingAkatombo, had disappeared, the publishing house Iwanamistepped in to fill the gap with its Iwanami Shonenbunko, a col-lection of translated foreign children’s books, which suppliedthe elements of adventure and fantasy lacking in Japanese lit-erature. Several other publishing houses followed Iawanami’slead, and since then translations of foreign works have madeup more than half of children’s-book publications in Japan.Yet of all the translated works over the years, none has thrilledyoung people more than Le Petit prince. ◆

—Satoshi Mukai

Foreign Models for Japan’s Children’s Literature

The greatest obstacleto a lasting renais-sance was leftisttheories of literature

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understood Quino’s worldly humor at such a young age, she’llshrug as if to say, “Everyone understands it.” This is becauseMafalda embodies a social attitude so etched in the nationalconsciousness that it transcends explanation; it is a given,something in the air, like the perennial humidity of the RiverPlate. This wryly philosophical child reflects the fact thatArgentina, though a vast New World country, had no histori-cal age of innocence; it was hatched into a state of disappoint-ment. One typical strip shows Mafalda sitting on a beach,yelling at a crab crawling by her: “Stop walking backwards!You stupid creature without a future!” Then, peering over thehorizon, she quickly checks herself: “Unless the future’s sobad it’s decided to turn around?” Like Argentina itself,Mafalda and her friends have been born into a most precari-ous social position: the Third World middle class, ever sub-ject to the obliterating effects of a sudden coup d’état, cur-rency collapse, or other man-made disasters. (Mafalda’s fatheris a salaried white-collar grunt; his Kafkaesque job is to sellinsurance in a country where indemnity is virtually impossi-ble.) This has made them astute observers of the world’s socialand political hypocrisies; they have precious few illusionsabout what life may hold in store.

Quino is the voice of the European in South America,bewildered by how he ended up in a New World with lesssocial and economic fluidity than the old one he left behind.Born in 1932 to Andalusian immigrants, he understands thefrustrations of the middle-class Argentine to perfection.Mafalda is the sophisticate without money, the cosmopolitanwithout a passport, droll, thwarted, experientially wise—inshort, the educated South American. Ingrained in her is apainful awareness of Argentina’s dubious status as perhapsthe world’s most underachieving nation, a country whoseenormous natural wealth is hoarded by the few, then squan-dered by social upheaval and political incompetence. Theaverage Argentine exists in a perpetual state of pessimism,the specter of his country’s unfulfilled promise hovering overhim like a constant reproach. Quino’s ability to capture the

Asix-year-old child sits alone, deep in thought. “If it’strue that flying saucers come from a world moreadvanced than ours,” he muses, “then no one can tell

us that we live in an underdeveloped country. Because it turnsout the whole planet is underdeveloped….” Suddenly histhoughtful expression changes. He looks up at the sky andjoyously shouts to the far-off planets: “Thank you for savingour international prestige!”

Welcome to the world of Mafalda, creation of the Argen-tine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known byhis nom de plume, Quino. Quino’s black-and-white, mostlyfour-panel comic strip began appearing in Buenos Aires in1964 (in the tabloid Clarín, the country’s largest-circulationnewspaper), a daily dose of fatalistic humor that Argentinesquickly came to regard as an indispensable part of nationallife. Nine years later, in 1973, Quino discontinued the strip,and to Argentines who had come to rely on Mafalda as acomic salve to their country’s incurable ills, the loss wasalmost a cause for mourning. Somewhat improbably, Mafaldahad survived a succession of hostile military regimes, whoknew that the forced removal of this irreverent and some-times radical group of children from the nation’s newspaperswould cause them more embarrassment than they cared tohandle. Frequently asked what Mafalda would be like todayhad she grown in real time with the cartoon strip, Quino hasalways replied that she would long since be dead, one of theregime’s desaparecidos. Quino’s political cover was the ten-der age of his protagonist and her friends. In his introduc-tion to Todo Mafalda (the complete collection published byEditorial Lumen in 1992), the novelist Gabriel GarcíaMárquez wrote: “Quino shows us that children are the truerepositories of wisdom.”

But is Mafalda “children’s literature?” Certainly not by itscreator’s design. As a cultural phenomena, however, it hascrossed the boundary of age. Ask an Argentine in her thirtieshow she learned to read, and the chances are good her answerwill be, “From Mafalda.” If one wonders how she could have

Mafalda, the Child Dissident of Argentina

“Let’s see this new story book.” • “In a faraway land, there lived an ogre who ate children.” • “Come off it! Always eating us!” • “How longare we going to be poultry for literature?”

© Joaquín Salvador Lavado (Quino), Todo Mafalda, Editorial Lumen, p. 151.

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profound fatalism born of this state is the key to the popular-ity of his creation.

Among the principal members of Mafalda’s circle is the bull-necked Manolito, who helps his father tend their small neigh-borhood grocery store, while dreaming of owning supermar-kets in a ruthless future of personal capitalist glory. TinyLibertad, by contrast, is a pure anarchist soul, a kind of touch-stone of truth whose sagacious and idiosyncratic turn of minddrives her elders—and sometimes her companions—to dis-traction. Susanita is an outspoken conformist, outraged byfeminism and most other threatening harbingers of change.And then there is Mafalda herself, around whom this littleworld orbits, a common-sense philosopher with an untamablebush of black hair and a relentless curiosity that constantlysheds new light on the planet’s most incurable problem:human folly. “So young,” she marvels over the crib of her gur-gling newborn brother, “and already he’s talking nonsense!”As children, they are powerless to change this unfortunatestate of affairs, and that powerlessness is what makes theirobservations so trenchant. They are not children in the roman-tic, fanciful sense of Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter, butrather in the way that we all sometimes are like children: asimpotent citizens of an out-of-control world. Hence the stand-ing comedy of Mafalda’s revulsion athaving to eat her mother’s soup, orher reluctance to do necessary vio-lence to household flies. She puts upa sign telling flies to keep out, andfuriously swats one that has strayedin with a shout of “Illiterate!”

Umberto Eco, who as editor at Bom-piani was the first to publish theMafalda strip in Europe (in 1969), rec-ognized the immense influence ofCharles Schultz’s Peanuts on Quino’screation, as well as the fundamentaldifferences between them. “CharlieBrown,” wrote Eco, “lives in his owninfantile world, from which adults arestrictly excluded; while Mafalda livesin permanent dialectical confronta-

tion with the adult world.... Charlie Brown evidently has readthe Freudian revisionists and goes out in search of a lost har-mony; Mafalda most probably has read Che Guevara.” It isinteresting to view Mafalda in light of the recent surge of chil-dren’s stories that have crossed over to adult popular culture.Mafalda, like Peanuts, made the opposite journey: from a pri-marily adult audience to one that came to include children.Broadly speaking, there are two central veins in children’s liter-ature: one depicts childhood as a time of boundless imagina-tion, a time of enchantment and hallucinatory distortion, exem-plified by Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, and even Dr.Seuss; the other sees the child as a pure respondent to the adultworld, García Márquez’s “repository of wisdom.” This childmay seem like a miniature adult, but she isn’t; she is an observerwithout explicit enemies, special interests, or an axe to grind.Oliver Twist belongs to this latter camp, as does Bart Simpson.

We may remember that in the Middle Ages one’s childhoodwas considered to have ended by the age of seven. After that,it was time to work. The folk tales collected by the Grimmbrothers in Germany (and by Italo Calvino in Italy) were notexpressly created for children. They were allegorical storiesof the poor whose powerlessness consigned them to a perpet-ual state of infancy, filled with irrational fears and elaborate

superstitions. The only way out ofone’s miserable plight was by magic.Today those stories are part of theclassical canon of children’s litera-ture. Mafalda inadvertently offersherself as a bridge to those medievaltales when, in one of her many rumi-nations, she notes the two contradic-tory worlds she straddles: on the onehand she innocently believes in thestory of the Three Magi because herfather assured her it was true; on theother hand, she is highly pessimisticabout the possibility of peace onearth, because every day offers fur-ther proof that such a thing is trulya fairy tale. ◆

—Michael Greenberg

“Or did you have big plans?”© Joaquín Salvador Lavado (Quino), Todo Mafalda, Editorial Lumen, p. 291.

Asked what Mafaldawould be like today hadshe grown in real timewith the cartoon strip,Quino has always repliedthat she would long sincebe dead, one of theregime's desaparecidos

Why would the reputedly most European and un-Latin American of nations, Argentina, have in aPatagonian Indian, called Patoruzú, its most suc-

cessful, almost legendary, cartoon character and popular cul-ture hero? The mirage of an all-white nation is a relativelymodern conceit, shared and reinforced by locals and foreign-ers alike, but one which took shape only in the late nineteenthcentury. An historical perspective helps to dispel it, and toexplain the appeal of an Indian “Superman.”

Buenos Aires, Argentina’s metropolis, was a backwater vil-lage until late in the eighteenth century, when the Bourbonsmade it the capital of a new administrative colonial entity:the Viceroyalty of theRiver Plata. The village,founded by Pedro deMendoza in 1536, was abare outpost in the mid-dle of the pampas, withno trees in sight andsurrounded by an unli-mited expanse of grass.The neighboring Indi-ans laid siege to it, pro-voking famine, pesti-lence, and horror. TheSpaniards decided tomove their settlementnorth to Asunción, inParaguay, later the cen-ter of the famous JesuitProvince, home to several Indian groups, some of which, likethe Abipones and the Mocobí, the intellectually inclinedFathers portrayed in splendid early ethnographies.

What is now Argentine territory was first settled from thenorth, through conquering forays out of Peru. For almostthree centuries, until the Bourbons accelerated the incorpora-tion of their southernmost American domain to the widerworld, the future nation of Argentina—from its Amazonianand Andean limits in the north, to Patagonia and Tierra delFuego in the south—was mostly Indian country. It was alsoan active theater for métissage—the biological and culturalmixing of natives and foreigners — and the emergence of adistinct criollo society, with complex roots on both culturalsides (which modern scholars and novelists still need to cap-ture and turn into narratives worthy of the topic).

Enter the Revolution, in 1810. Its criollo leaders were veryaware that without Indian support, their hopes to establish anindependent government would not prosper. Proclamationsand declarations were issued in the three main Indian lan-guages of the Viceroyalty: Quechua, Araucanian, and Guarani.General José de San Martín, the Argentine hero of the inde-pendence wars, courted his Indian and Black battalions, andbefore landing in Peru to carry on the war against Spain, dis-patched letters written in Quechua announcing his mission to

the native Indian inhabitants. Soon after independence a splitemerged between the fast-rising capital of Buenos Aires, andthe provinces of the northeast and northwest (Patagonia wassettled only in the latter part of the nineteenth century). Thecaudillos of the provinces drew their following from thecountryside, as they knew how to connect with its Gauchoand Indian populations. Buenos Aires, the new nation’s portand point of contact with the wider world, gave rise to a mer-chant elite, which in turn produced a notable group of intel-lectuals, writers and poets, of whom Jorge Luis Borges is themost visible and exemplary late heir.

These writers were typically torn between their attractionfor the Enlightenment,the urgency of imagin-ing and building a na-tion, and the dark se-ductions of the untamedwilderness. When over-whelming numbers ofEuropean immigrantsbegan to arrive at theend of the nineteenthcentury, tripling the lo-cal population by theearly twentieth, thesewriters, in self-defense,came up with a nationalsymbol: the Gaucho. Aproduct of urban elites,this icon, drawn from

real life, displaced the Indian as a potential alternative. He wasa frontier type, an outcast of both the white town and city set-tlements and the Indian societies that lay beyond them.

Yet the Gaucho falls short as ultimate symbol of Argentina.An Indian specter haunts him, the final face in the mirror.Borges knew this and made it clear in short stories such as“The South,” in which the narrator, a European immigrant,fatefully takes a train to where all had once begun, the pam-pas (the center of the labyrinth), to meet his death at the pointof an Indian’s knife.

Patoruzú came into being in 1928 as a secondary character inthe comic-strip pages of a Buenos Aires newspaper. He quicklystruck a chord with the public and began to develop indepen-dently. Dante Quinterno, its creator, now ninety-one years old,has been reluctant to discuss the genesis of Patoruzú with jour-nalists or academics. The son of Italian immigrants, he had anearly start as a graphic artist, and has remained steadfastlyaverse to publicity or theorizing of any kind. Nevertheless, thegradual emergence of the character into the archetypal role ofhero is evident, and does not require his elucidation.

Patoruzú does not reflect an ethnographic reality: he is animmensely rich Tehuelche Indian who owns a vast estate inPatagonia. The Tehuelches (Magellan’s tall and sturdyPatagones) were virtually wiped out when General (later

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Patoruzú, the Indian Hero of Argentina

“A white man! And he hascontrol over everybody!”

“Swine! Hitting an old Indian!”

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President) Roca launched the military campaign in the 1880sthat ended the Indian control of Patagonia. Patoruzú’s suc-cess hinges on the fact that he turned the tables, and pro-vided a positive symbol for the suppressed Indian within.Innocent, well-meaning, ever on a Quixotic mission to rightwrongs, he is driven and rewarded by his lack of guile, aninvigorating connection to his traditional wilderness, andan overwhelming physical prowess that naturally allows himto perform extraordinary feats. In contrast, city life, whitemen, and white society are portrayed as the source of duplic-ity and evil, and of all the misdeeds Patoruzú combats andbrings under control. Isidoro Canoñes, his sidekick, is white.The nephew of a retired Colonel who was a friend of Pato-ruzú’s father, Isidoro is a porteño (i.e. native of Buenos Aires),and a lovable rogue. With his dark hair combed backwardsand his distinctive double-breasted suit, Isidoro is always inpursuit of money and women, and constantly getting intotrouble. But whenever this happens, the good Indian is thereto help him and to forgive, even when Isidoro, led by greed,aids land-speculators who have set their eyes on the Patag-onian estate. Isidoro is not evil, but the weak and frivolousscion through whom the values of the Brave New Worldcome into view.

Over the years the story grew in complexity. Other mem-bers of the Patoruzú family appeared: Patora, the sister per-petually in search of a mate; Upa, a simple-minded youngerbrother who uses his big belly to corner and subdue wrong-doers (named after the Quechua word for infant or mute adult,he inspired the famous character of Astérix); Chacha,Patoruzú’s no-nonsense wet nurse, a criolla who administersthe estate and restores the hero’s body and spirit with herbsand sublime empanadas. And there is Pampero, Patoruzú’shorse, which he sometimes rides to the city, where it hasadventures of its own.

Always wearing a poncho, uchutas (Inca sandals), rolled-uppants, a head-band with a feather stuck in it, and carrying theboleadoras, the ball-weighted lasso his ancestors used to huntostriches and cattle which he now wields to combat the badguys, Patoruzú looks the part of an Indian action hero. Thecharacter was so successful that Quinterno built a team ofartists around him and launched a magazine devoted toPatoruzú’s adventures. In its heyday it sold more than one mil-lion copies, and still appears. Its following remains mixed:children from all sorts of backgrounds, urban and rural; ado-lescents and young adults; even, I am told, Chririguano Indi-ans in Bolivia, and former president Menem.

The Golden Book of Patoruzú (as the thick magazine withextra stories was known), came out for Christmas, and was anArgentine institution. As a child, I waited eagerly for it in ourcountryside home. A wire fence in the backyard marked theincessantly attractive border beyond which the horizontalvertigo of the pampas began. Pombo, the newsman, wouldbicycle from town into that magic circle to deliver the maga-zine. His clothes were crumpled, and he was always drunk. Itrace to the look in his eyes and to that frontier my earliestrecollections of strangeness and danger. ◆

—Edgar Krebs

On Preliteracy

At the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin I once asked thefellows to recount their earliest memory of readingor writing. Thirty out of thirty-five researchers

recalled having had their first reading experiences at homein their family.

Twenty years hence, another generation, raised in the wan-ing years of what Swedish writer Ellen Key heralded in 1900as “the century of the child,” may well remember somethingelse entirely: how they were kept back from reading in Ger-man nursery school and kindergarten by a lack of encourage-ment if not outright discouragement on the part of their teach-ers. Perhaps these children even had a sense that showing toomuch curiosity for the world of writing and signs might maketheir mothers look bad, so that they reined in their impulsesuntil they started school, just as the pedagogues recom-mended to their parents.

Among the misconceived fads the “century of the child”has left behind in Germany lies the notion of a happy child-hood as one free of all knowledge and writing. Mothers intim-idated by pedagogues asked: Is it all right for my child to beleft-handed? If my child writes reversing characters, is theretrouble ahead in reading and writing? A child’s first steps intoliteracy were seen as so precarious that nonprofessionals aswell as parents or kindergarten teachers—since the latter areonly socially, not educationally, responsible in Germany—shouldn’t even go near it. Germany is not a country with wor-risome rates of adult illiteracy. But joy in writing—expressivewriting that instills trust in the world—remains, as it long hasbeen, the privilege of the few. Is that because most of uslearned to write in school, and could only experience it as analien task?

Some recent initiatives in Anglo-Saxon countries havehelped to free us from this view of pre-school “preliteracy.”For children probe the meaning of the notations and signsthat surround them, and are unhappy to be shut out fromadults’ secrets.

In every literate culture, learning to read is an initiation, atransition from a state of dependency and limited understand-ing to competency, partaking in collective memory throughnotations. In many cultures the introduction into literacy is amother’s task. “Mary Teaching the Infant Jesus to Read” and“Anna Instructing Mary” were favorite motifs in medievalpainting. In the nineteenth century, at a time when reading inEurope was largely a privilege of the upper classes, Japanesechildren were familiar with written characters even in remotevillages; today they are taught the syllabic characters by theirmothers. When they enter school at age six, they have alreadyread some books written in hiragana, whose fifty charactersthey will have learned through shopping, advertising, and ahighly developed children’s literature, as well as in front ofthe television, which in Japan is an accepted, indeed verywell-trusted, teacher. A traditional series for mother andchild, okaasan-to ishho, which most mothers know from theirown childhood, further acquaints them with the hiraganacharacters. Finally, of course, they also receive a quarter-hour

of formal instruction every day from their mother, on the flooror at table. Here, the “mother-tongue” is also mother-script.

The veneration in which every literate culture holds writ-ten language is particularly fervent in Japan. The gods do notso much hear prayers as read them. Children are encouragedat a tender age to put their wishes and requests into littlenotes. In kindergarten teachers help them in this, for instanceat the Tanabata, the spring festival. “Please let Jun-chan makethe soccer club!” Let Yukiko-chan get over her allergy….” Thewind stirs the white paper strips left in trees and bushes.

The holy writ of Hebrew tradi-tion is father-, not mother-script.The reading of texts, a religiousduty, or mitzvah, should never bea compulsory school chore; studyshould become a passion. To culti-vate love of scripture with all one’sbody and soul, texts in themedieval Torah schools weredaubed with honey which theyoungest children were urged tolick off. Vigorous rocking whilereading and reciting prayers ispracticed to rouse the memory.When we filmed recently in Israel,the historic land of a scripturalculture, we observed how muchtime and ingenuity is invested inthe forms of children’s preliter-acy—in kibbutz pre-schools aswell as in both secular and ortho-dox kindergartens. Instructorsalways manage to bring some newdirection to children’s play andfind new occasions for writing,drawing, and message-sending. InIsrael, a land of immigration,whenever families newly arrivedwithout books could find no con-nection to their rapidly modernized new environment, socialworkers in literacy programs would visit the home bringingchildren’s books and ideas for games.

“Preliteracy” is also the focal point in educational programsof the Blair government in England. In the country’s by nowthirty “Early Excellence Centers,” generously equipped fam-ily centers designed to provide new forms of learning foradults and children in education-fostering sites, no staff iswithout its “family literacy worker.” The goal is that by thefirst year of life a child will have had some direct exposure towriting and communicating through signs. The enthusiasmwith which children in early years “write” the world is infec-tious. The example of their children has inspired many youngparents, often themselves school dropouts and illiterates, touse to the Excellence Center either to get their own schooldiplomas or to receive vocational training.

Long before school begins, children know that written mes-sages are mood-altering, that writing marks property, that

signs convey a value judgment about objects, that music canbe notated by signs, that print tells a story and therefore pro-vides a narrative structure, and that books conjure up newthoughts and images.

The preschool years are an ideally formative time for chil-dren to be inscribed into various writing modes—into thecommunicative, solicitous writing of the first messages andinvitations, or into the first scientific documentation (forinstance, charting bodily growth). In nursery school orkindergarten there is as yet no fixed curriculum, no hourly

lesson plan, no report card—justtime and space for errors and rep-etitions. Time to stroll throughwriting, to pull letters out of graf-fiti, movie posters. For expeditionsthrough stationery stores, andtime to be busy in the writing cor-ner of a kindergarten with black-board, felt pens, and computers.When they make a picture of let-ters, they’re not yet writing; yetthey are encircling the world ofsigns. How the gap betweenabstract signs and meaning isfinally bridged remains a mystery.

Over time, the capacity to ac-tively, self-confidently relate toreading and writing takes on more,not less, value: every computerstep is writing-driven. In manyGerman kindergartens today evenfour-year-olds can be seen busywith reading programs, once ortwice a week. They seem to enjoythem; they show concentration,and when they correctly arrangepuzzle parts into letters, the com-puter salutes them with a musicalflourish. And yet, even if a com-

puter prints out their name more perfectly than they can yetwrite it themselves, the joy they take in this doesn’t seem to govery deep. Which is also why there is a demand to cultivatethe hand as a human writing tool. When children write outletters, when they follow the ancient handiwork of writing onclay or wax tablets, or form letters with a stick on the forestground, or trace them with their fingertip on a fogged-up win-dowpane, “the brain speaks with the hand and the hand withthe brain.” And when they break into rhythmic movement andsong, they are also practicing the spoken language, that con-tinuum of sounds and syllables, that making out of word-beginnings and syllable-endings—that “phonological aware-ness” that today, the world over, is recognized as a centralcomponent of “preliteracy.”

The ordaining of a childhood “free of writing” underes-timated children and needlessly deferred much of theirpleasure. ◆

—Donata Elschenbroich (translated by David Jacobson)

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T H E C O M M I T T E E O NINTELLECTUAL CORRESPONDENCEis an international project spon-sored by the Suntory Foundation(Japan), the Wissenschaftskolleg zuBerlin, and the American Academyof Arts and Sciences.

DirectorsDaniel BellWolf LepeniesMasakazu Yamazaki

Editor

Alexander Stille

Managing Editor

David Jacobson

Associates of the Directors

JapanMasayuki Tadokoro

GermanyMichael Becker

U.S.Mark Lilla

Graphic DesignerGlenna Lang

U.S. Address:

CORRESPONDENCE

c/o Council on Foreign Relations58 East 68th StreetNew York, New York 10021

Telephone: (212) 434-9574FAX: (212) 434-9832E-mail: [email protected]

��The Council on Foreign Relations andthe Committee on Intellectual Corre-spondence gratefully acknowledge thegenerous support of the SasakawaPeace Foundation of Japan, StephenSwid, and the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin undGerd Bucerius, a foundation of theGerman newspaper Die Zeit.

Correspondence is published twice a yearby the Council on Foreign Relations, whichdoes not accept responsibility for the viewsexpressed in the articles presented here.

Contributors

Contributors to this Issue

■ Michael Becker is program director at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.■ David A. Bell teaches French history at Johns Hopkins University and isauthor of the forthcoming The Cult of the Nation of France. ■ Nick Cohen is acolumnist in the Observer and New Statesman (London) and the author of CruelBritannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous. ■ Tyler Cowen, profes-sor of economics at George Mason University, is the author of In Praise of Com-mercial Culture and the forthcoming Minerva’s Owl: Sources of Creative GlobalCulture. ■ Donata Elschenbroich is a senior researcher at the DeutschesJugendinstitut München whose recent publications and films includeWeltwissen der Siebenjährigen and Ins Schreiben hinein. ■ Wlodek Goldkorn,New York correspondent for the Italian weekly L’Espresso, is the author of Usciredal ghetto (1988), a study of twentieth-century Eastern European Jewry.■ Emily Green, a Los Angeles Times staff writer on science and food produc-tion, reported for many years in leading British journals on agriculture and foodin the U.K. ■ Michael Greenberg is a contributing editor at the Boston Reviewand frequently writes for the Times Literary Supplement, among other publica-tions. ■ Nina Khrushcheva is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute ofthe New School University. ■ Edgar Krebs is Research Associate at the Depart-ment of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Insti-tution. ■ Wolf Lepenies, a director of the Committee on Intellectual Correspon-dence, is the director of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. ■ Mark Lilla isProfessor of Social Thought at the University of Chicago. ■ Darrin McMahon,a fellow at the Remarque Institute (New York University), is the author of theforthcoming Enemies of the Enlightenment. ■ Peter Mandler teaches modernBritish history at Cambridge University and is the author, most recently, of TheFall and Rise of the Stately Home. ■ Frédéric Martel is a freelance journalistand researcher in the sociology of culture at the École des Hautes Études enSciences Sociales, Paris. ■ Satoshi Mukai has worked as a literary critic inJapan ever since leaving the major advertising company Dentsu in 1982.■ Cheol Hee Park is an associate professor at the National Graduate Institutefor Policy Studies, Tokyo. ■ Julie Pecheur, a graduate student in internationalrelations at Columbia University, writes for various French newspapers, includ-ing Le Nouvel Observateur. ■ Richard Peña is programming director of the FilmSociety of Lincoln Center in New York. ■ Matteo Pericoli is an Italian archi-tect and illustrator who lives in New York. ■ Morten Piil, a film critic for thedaily Danish newspaper Information, has edited and written most of the seven-hundred-page guide Danish Films from A to Z (2000). ■ Jonathan Rosenbaumis a film critic for the Chicago Reader and is the author, most recently, of MovieWars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See.■ Cyrus Samii has researched capital punishment for a film by the Press andthe Public Project, Inc. in New York. ■ Alexander Stille is the author, mostrecently, of Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First ItalianRepublic and is editor of Correspondence. ■ Christina Stojanova is a film criticand scholar of Central and Eastern European and Québecois cinema, and teachesat the University of Toronto, and Queen’s University, Ontario. ■ MasayukiTadokoro is a professor of international relations at the National Defense Acad-emy in Yokosuka, Japan. ■ Gadi Taub is co-editor of Mikarov, an Israeli jour-nal of literature and society. ■ N. Frank Ukadike, Associate Professor of filmand African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University, is the author, most recently,of the forthcoming The New African Cinema. ■ Masakazu Yamazaki, a direc-tor of the Committee on Intellectual Correspondence, is artistic director of theHyogo Prefecture Theater in Kobe, Japan.

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