CULTURE AT RISK - ICC at The Hague, Prosecutes Cultural Vandalism

"International Criminal Court brings a cultural vandal to justice" PBS NewsHour 8/22/2016

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SUMMARY:  Four years ago, 16 holy tombs in Timbuktu, dating back to the 14th century, were demolished in an attack by Islamic militants.  In the first-ever war crimes trial for cultural destruction, one of the men involved admitted his guilt and voiced regret at the International Criminal Court.  Jeffrey Brown talks with DePaul University's Patty Gerstenblith for more on the challenges of prosecuting these crimes.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  It's a first for the International Criminal Court at The Hague, a trial dealing with the destruction of cultural heritage.

It's over the deliberate wrecking in 2012 of historic earthen buildings and religious shrines in the West African nation of Mali.

Jeffrey Brown has the story.  It's part of our ongoing series Culture at Risk.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Sixty holy tombs dating back to the 14th century, all reduced to rubble in a wave of violence unleashed on Timbuktu by Islamist militants four years ago.

Today, one of those responsible stood in front of the International Criminal Court and admitted his guilt.

AHMAD AL-FAQI AL-MAHDI, Former Islamist militant (through translator):  I regret all the damage that my actions have caused.  I regret what I have caused to my family, my community in Timbuktu, what I have caused my home nation, Mali.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Prosecutors say Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi directed the destruction of nine mausoleums and damage to a mosque.  He'd been recruited to lead a vice squad by a group of Islamist rebels, affiliated with al-Qaida, who seized control of Northern Mali in 2012.

AHMAD AL-FAQI AL-MAHDI (through translator):  I was influenced by a group of deviant people from al-Qaida, and they were able to influence me, to carry me in their evil wave, through actions that affected the whole population.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The rebels were eventually driven out by French troops in 2013.  The heaps of rubble they left behind have since mostly been rebuilt with help from UNESCO.

In recent years, cultural relics across Northern Africa and the Mideast have been targeted by militant groups, most dramatically by the Islamic State at sites including the ancient cities of Palmyra, Syria, and Nimrud in Iraq.  Unlike Mali, those countries are not subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Mahdi, who, in the plea bargain faces 11 years in prison, today called for an end to such acts.

AHMAD AL-FAQI AL-MAHDI (through translator):  I would like to give a piece of advice to Muslims all over the world, not to get involved in the same acts I got involved in, because they are not going to lead to any good to humanity.

CULTURE WARS - Artist Robert Mapplethorpe

"Seeing Robert Mapplethorpe’s idea of perfection in a new retrospective" PBS NewsHour 5/5/2016

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SUMMARY:  Artist Robert Mapplethorpe found himself at the center of the culture wars of the 1980s and ‘90s for his best-known work, homoerotic and often explicit photographs that drew the ire of federal lawmakers.  Now two major Los Angeles museums have mounted a retrospective of his work, asking viewers to take another look.  Jeffrey Brown examines the artist’s life and legacy.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):   Now, looking back and looking anew at an artist at the center of the so-called “culture wars” of the 1980s and ’90s.

Jeffrey Brown reports from Los Angeles.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  'Take another look;' that’s the invitation from two Los Angeles museums, together presenting a major retrospective of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Mapplethorpe was best known for his homo-erotic photographs and explicit sadomasochistic imagery, and the political and legal battles around them.

Even now, we’ve chosen not to present his most controversial work.  But the new exhibition, “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium”, wants us to see how much more there was to the artist.

BRITT SALVESEN, Los Angeles County Museum of Art:  This gallery gets us to the 1980s —

JEFFREY BROWN:  Britt Salvesen is a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

BRITT SALVESEN:   For several years after the culture wars debate of the late ’80s, early ’90s, it was impossible to see the work as art because we were preoccupied with its status as evidence, let’s say.

JEFFREY BROWN:  As part of that culture war.

BRITT SALVESEN:  Yes.  And that really forestalled an assessment of his artwork.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Mapplethorpe grew up in a conservative Irish Catholic household in Queens, New York, and in the 1970s became part of the city’s burgeoning gay scene.  He focused from the beginning on three main subjects: portraiture, including artists and celebrities of the day, floral still lifes, and sex and the body.

BRITT SALVESEN:  Those are very traditional art historical subjects, I mean long before photography.  So the question becomes, how do you make them your own?   And I think Mapplethorpe does it through a refinement, a reduction of extraneous elements.  His sense of perfection and beauty is what he applies to those traditional subjects.

NATIVE TONGUES - World Loss When One Dies

"What does the world lose when a language dies?" PBS NewsHour 1/27/2015

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SUMMARY:  “Language Matters,” (link to full video) a new PBS documentary, explores how linguistic heritage and traditional cultures around the world are at risk of being lost forever.  Jeffrey Brown talks to the show’s host, poet Bob Holman, about the fight to revive languages on the brink.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And finally tonight: to languages around the world at risk of being lost.

That’s the subject of a new documentary premiering on some PBS stations this week and now streaming online.

Jeffrey Brown has our look.

NARRATOR:  You are listening to a song sung in a language called Amurdak, a language spoken in northern Australia.  There is virtually only one person left on our planet who speaks Amurdak.

His name is Charlie Mangulda.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  A language nearly gone from an aboriginal community on Australia’s Goulburn Islands.

The new PBS documentary “Language Matters” explore tongues around the globe at risk of being lost forever and what is lost with them.

GWYNETH LEWIS, National Poet of Wales:  We are being narrowed and homogenized by the loss of languages that we’re not even aware of.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Predictions are dire that, by the end of this century, more than half of the world’s 6,000 languages will be gone.

BOB HOLMAN, Host, “Language Matters”:  Every language has poetry, although it’s very different from culture to culture.  And as I began to learn about how these languages are disappearing, that kind of poetry is also going.  The entire inner life of a people is disappearing when their language vanishes.

MIAMI - Marine Stadium Second Life

"Graffiti art gives abandoned Miami stadium a second life" PBS NewsHour 7/21/2014

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JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It sits abandoned on a thin stretch of land called Virginia Key, overlooking a manmade basin between Miami’s South Channel and Biscayne Bay, a magnificent setting, downtown Miami in the near distance.

Today, the 6,500-seat Marine Stadium is littered with garbage, every reachable inch of it covered in graffiti, forgotten by many, but not those who remember its role as a cultural centerpiece for a rising city.  One of those is Miami’s own music star Gloria Estefan.

GLORIA ESTEFAN:  This is one of those things in the city that has history.  It’s almost 50 years old.

JEFFREY BROWN:  That’s — 50 years old is not that long, right?

GLORIA ESTEFAN:  In Miami, it is.

JEFFREY BROWN:  In fact, the stadium turned 50 years old just last December.  And Estefan has joined a grassroots effort not only to save it, but to give it renewed life.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Miami was still finding its identity as something more than a seasonal tourist destination.  When Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, waves of Cubans began leaving for South Florida, seeking new lives and redefining the city’s culture.

"From painting overpasses to stadiums, a graffiti artist on his evolving art form" PBS NewsHour 7/18/2014

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For more than 30 years, Los Angeles-based artist RISK has been creating colorful murals on everything from highway overpasses — known as “heavens” — to dilapidated buildings, walls, trains and buses.

“I like to evoke emotion with colors and not letters or imagery,” he said, “so I have to really look at the environment and see where I’m at and kind of work that into it.”

Recently that environment was South Florida, where he joined eight other graffiti artists to paint on the abandoned Miami Marine Stadium, part of an effort to raise attention and money for the stadium’s restoration.  Curated by New York-based stencil artist Logan Hicks, the project is called ART History and runs through 2014.

While reporting on the broader story of the Miami Marine Stadium, which was built in the 1960s and abandoned in the 1990s, Jeffrey Brown spoke with RISK about his project there, his body of work and the very temporary nature of his art form.

AMERICA - Keeping Our Heritage

"Keeping America's Heritage of Sights and Sounds Fresh for Future Generations" PBS Newshour 5/7/2013

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SUMMARY:  These days it may seem like you can find any movie, TV show or song you want online.  But a vast amount of America's cultural treasures is in danger of extinction.  Jeffrey Brown reports on conservation efforts at the Library of Congress, which holds the largest audio and visual collection in the world.

AMERICA - Orchestra Labor and Financial Problems Nationwide

"San Francisco Strike Is Latest Orchestra Labor Dispute Playing Out Nationally" PBS Newshour 3/26/2013

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JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  Next: A strike by a leading symphony is the latest in a string of labor and financial headaches for the nation's orchestras.

NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels has the story.

SPENCER MICHELS (Newshour):  The San Francisco Symphony, under its conductor and musical director, Michael Tilson Thomas, canceled all its San Francisco concerts for the past few weeks, and called off an East Coast tour that included a performance in New York's Carnegie Hall.

Instead of performing, musicians milled about in front of Davies Hall in San Francisco and refused to play, until they got a contract that met their demands for higher pay and paid health care benefits comparable to other top orchestras.  It was just the latest trouble on the national classical music front.

Since 2002, classical music performances have seen a decline in attendance of 13 percent across the country.  Season ticket sales decreased as well, forcing orchestras to market single tickets, an expensive proposition, and to search for new audiences by finding new approaches to concerts.

Last year, Chicago Symphony musicians struck, asking for more pay and better health care.  That strike was settled quickly, with modest pay increases, but larger health care payments.  In Detroit, the symphony went out for six months in 2011.  The musicians finally accepted a 25 percent pay cut.  The celebrated Philadelphia Orchestra emerged from bankruptcy protection last year, and still faces financial problems.

GUN CONTROL - Role of Violent Video Games

"Can Violent Video Games Play a Role in Violent Behavior?" PBS Newshour 2/19/2013

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SUMMARY:  In our continuing look at the gun debate for PBS's week-long special "After Newtown," Jeffrey Brown explores whether there is any connection between violent video games and violent behavior.

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  And we turn to our series on the national conversation surrounding guns, violence, and mental health in the wake of the Connecticut shootings.  Public officials and other critics have raised concerns about the role of media and culture, particularly violent video games.

Jeffrey Brown explores some of those questions in this report, all part of the week-long PBS effort "After Newtown."

And a note:  The story contains graphic violence.

"The Gun Debate" PBS Newshour

IMHO:  Violent video games do not CAUSE violence, but they ARE A REFLECTION of U.S. culture.

Having said that, there are really violent (high levels of violence and stereotyping) games like Postal 2 which is part of an 1997 series.


IN ADDITION:

"Raising Adam Lanza" 2-Parts
After Newtown, PBS Frontline 2/19/2013
(54:47)

AFRICA - Islamic Fanatics Destroying Mali Culture

NOTE: Many Malians ARE Muslims. This situation highlights what happens when fanatics/extremists of any shade take control. In this case, the militants believe that the Mali Muslims are not 'pure' enough.

"Islamic Militants Destroy Malian Cultural Heritage, Purporting a 'Pure Islam'" PBS Newshour 8/23/2012

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SUMMARY: Many Malians harmoniously practice Islam alongside cultural traditions such as animism. But these Malians fear that they will be the first targeted as infidels by Islamic militants, who have already destroyed traditional Malian shrines. Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News reports.

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): .....another story from the West African nation of Mali.

Earlier this week, Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News reported on the rise of Islamic militants and the exodus of refugees.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Mali, one of the most culturally diverse countries on Earth, a land of music, mud mosques, ancient Islamic manuscripts, animists, all now under threat.

About 50 miles from the capital, Bamako, I meet the Hunters. They brandish their 19th century flintlock rifles and their talismans. The Islamists who now control Northern Mali hate all this, but the Hunters culture goes back 1,000 years, and they like to show it off.

These men see themselves as Muslims, but they mix their Islam with animism, traditional culture, and they know that, if the Islamists came down from the north to here, then they'd be the first target. But they're an essential part of Malian culture.

They show me how they aim their rifles, no shooting, though, because it's Ramadan, and they say they can always send magic to destroy the Islamists.

DAGABA TRAORE, Hunters community leader (through translator): We're scared of the new Islamic wave. When they see us wearing Hunters clothes, they won't regard us as Muslims. They will automatically think we're infidels who cannot know Allah.

But our external appearance is different from what we feel inside. These foreigners are showing us a kind of Islam which has never been Prophet Mohammed's message, by taking knives and killing others.

AMERICA - Political Partisanship, View From the Left

"E.J. Dionne: Political Heartstrings Torn Between Individualism and Community" PBS Newshour 8/20/2012

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SUMMARY: Judy Woodruff talks to E.J. Dionne about his new book, "Our Divided Political Heart," in which he argues that America's heartstrings are torn by two contrasting devotions: a love of individualism and a quest for community.

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): In order to understand the present, we must first understand the past. And as our political parties grow farther apart and find it harder to work together, we can study our history for clues to a possible solution.

That's the idea behind a new book, "Our Divided Political Heart," from Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

MEDIA - American Cultural Critics

"The Artists of Cultural Criticism: Remembering Robert Hughes and Judith Crist" PBS Newshour 8/7/2012

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SUMMARY: As taste-makers, critics can reveal the best and worst in art and film -- from inspiration to distraction. Jeffrey Brown and New York Times' A.O. Scott remember two such critics: Robert Hughes, who spent three decades writing for Time Magazine, and Judith Crist, who championed a new wave of actors and directors in the 1960s.

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): .... the critic speaks and sometimes roars. We remember two legends of the genre.

Art critic and historian Robert Hughes died Monday in New York after a long illness. He was 72 years old. A native of Australia, Hughes spent more than three decades as art critic for "TIME" magazine, and reached many millions more through his work on television.

His 1980 documentary "The Shock of the New" changed conceptions about 20th century art. It originated on the BBC and also aired on PBS. Later, Hughes wrote and presented "American Visions," another series that aired on PBS.

Here's an excerpt of Hughes discussing the work of the American painter Winslow Homer.

CHINA - Youth Migration

"Urban Migration for Young Chinese on the Rise" PBS Newshour 7/12/2012

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SUMMARY: Tens of millions of Chinese villagers have moved to the cities in China, but they find living conditions harsh and establishing meaningful relations difficult. Because of the Household Registration System, they have fewer rights than those born in the cities. Sharron Lovell from our partner GlobalPost reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): ....Making a move from the country to the big city, it's a cultural shift well known in many Western societies, and now it's becoming common for young Chinese men and women, too.

OPINION - Is America Becoming a Me-Society?

"WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY ARE WE BECOMING - DOES ANYBODY CARE?" by Cliff Wilson, Cliff's Notes 6/14/2012

America today is not the society of my youth (the 1950's) nor of my young adulthood (the 1970's). Those were times when people seemed to care about more than just themselves. In the 50's there were still so many who had fought in WWII and felt proud that this nation had saved the world from Nazism and Fascism. Though it took much struggle as that decade merged into the 1960's the majority of Americans decided to care about the injustices that this nation had imposed on citizens of color for the prior one hundred years. White Priests and Rabbis marched with black Pastors in the demonstrations for voting rights. And young white teenagers joined in the sit-ins at lunch counters and in voting registration drives. There was violence and blacks died but so did whites who supported equal rights. Ultimately what was just prevailed and our society became more open and more equitable.

What of today? A recent poll shows that since most Americans have some form of photo ID they support making every voter have photo ID even though they know it will discriminate against minorities, young people and elderly people. But if you have an ID evidently you don’t care.

And, what of our economy? People who have someone in the family collecting unemployment or out of work want to see the government create jobs and do the kinds of things that FDR did in the thirties. But the majority seems to support drifting along hoping it will get no worse for them and seeing no need for government programs to help others. It would appear that unlike the 1960's & 70's when Americans declared war on poverty today the majority wants to declare war on the poor.

Look at the issues of women’s reproductive freedoms - of access to abortion and contraception. Many of those who oppose access do support it - for themselves. Those who for religious or personal reasons oppose such processes oppose access for anyone. Again, the needs of Me take precedence over the needs of others.

Even neighborliness has taken a hit. In the days of yore if someone went into the hospital neighbors would offer to cut the grass. Today those neighbors call the local government and demand that the hospitalized resident be given a ticket for high grass. Of course we all want to see our properties kept tidy and clean but neighbors could pitch in and help those who for health reasons can’t take care of the property themselves. Not today - because it seems they only care about the impact upon their own property.

Somewhere in the past three decades our society changed. From a nation and a people who prided themselves on helping others we became a ME society. Even in our politics where once political candidates ran as teams now we see again and again candidates worrying only about themselves and their chances of getting elected - one of the reasons today's winners often can’t govern.

We were once a society that believed that education was the best thing we could give our young people. So we created the best public schools and opened our colleges and universities to all regardless of income levels. Now in state after state those who can prefer private for profit education are reducing aid to public schools; and as college loans become unbearably expensive those same people advocate cutting access to loans. Our society seems to be headed back to education for those who can afford it, rather than education for all, and our society cannot afford that shortsighted attitude. But those who can afford education and those who don’t see the value of it don’t seem to care.

We believed that 'no man was an island unto himself'. Today isolationism as far as the rest of world goes is again on the upsurge. Not the isolationism fathered by the drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that we fought for too long, but an isolationism that even rejects economic help to those who need it or economic sanctions as a non violent way of helping others gain their freedoms.
Americans may negotiate treaties like the Law of the Seas and put forth ideas like an International Criminal Court but those agreements languish in the U. S. Senate with little popular support because like in the 1920's (the last great ME decade) it seems no one cares.

History of public policy often goes in cycles. If that holds true than the generation of my grandchildren who are growing up in the first decades of the 21st century may look back upon all we tried to do in the middle of the 20th century and say “We can do that and we will do that better.” They may recognize the value of justice for all, of economic opportunity for everyone and a world at peace based on installing principles throughout the globe. I certainly hope they will. I hope they will be a generation that cares about all the people in the land just as their grandparents cared about them.

CHINA - Youth and Western Culture

"Why China's Youth Find Western Culture Attractive" PBS Newshour 2/13/2012

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KATHLEEN MCLAUGHLIN, GlobalPost: From clothes to coffee, to food and movies, Western culture is big and getting bigger in China. KFC is the country's most popular restaurant chain. A Buick is the top-selling car.

At a public square in Beijing, 35-year-old Hou Xiazhou and friends show off moves they learned from watching their American idols on the Internet.

HOU XIAZHOU, skateboarder (through translator): The West influences us a great deal. For example, those of us who skateboard now are all learning from the West, from America. We watch how their professional skateboarders practice, and imitate their methods. The way they dress influences how we dress. We imitate how they skateboard. Watching them inspires us to think about how skateboarding should be.

KATHLEEN MCLAUGHLIN: Western culture swept into China when the country opened to foreign trade 30 years ago. Western brands and ideas have exploded in the past decade, as economic boom expanded the country's middle class.

Now the government is pushing back. President Hu Jintao says China's culture is being infiltrated by hostile Western forces. And the government has set new limits on Chinese mass media. First, they issued edicts that killed some racy and wildly popular TV shows and pushed others out of prime time.