I recently read The Count of Montecristo by Dumas for the first time. I have read The Three Musketeers twice, the second time less than a year ago, and ever since I have been wanting to crack this other beloved ‘classic.’ In The Three Musketeers I was struck by how Dumas had single-handedly invented a swashbuckling, smart-ass talkin’ type of adventure story that has been with us ever since, through to Starsky and Hutch (t.v. series, not the film, please, some dignity) and the Lethal Weapon movies. It was great to drink from the source and find the water to be so fresh. But the unabridged The Count of Montecristo beckoned, with its daunting 1,300 pages, like a dark lighthouse shining in the distance, ominous and thrilling. I had to read this powerhouse of western popular literature, this Star Wars of the nineteenth-century.

The novel tells the story of Edmund Dantes, who is framed for a crime he did not commit and banished to a dungeon in a castle on a desolate island. There, he learns of a magical treasure from a fellow inmate, escapes and… well, let’s just say that one of the men responsible for the imprisonment puts it best when he says: “Yes, but people get out of prison and when you get out of prison and you are called Edmond Dantes, you take revenge.” Slow, insinuating, hidden and incontrovertible revenge, hidden in plain sight. He comes back to France, unimaginably rich and like a methodical, soulless vampire, seeks to destroy the men responsible for his suffering. It’s a cool set-up and Dumas does a lot with it. He packs the novel with thrills, uncanny gothic scenes, savage murder, endless disquisitions on money and credit, philosophical ruminations on the orient, extended and over-the-top sentimental pap, Italian travelogue, and bandit literature. The novel is thrilling for a few hundred pages, fascinating for another two hundred, exhausting and boring for another few hundred and then breathlessly exciting for the finish. It’s a feast. And it does give you some things to think about.

The Count of Montecristo and the Powers of Fiction

The conceit at the center of the plot of the novel is the fantasy of a man with almost limitless means to manipulate, control and ultimately punish others. At one point in the novel, Maximilien declares that the Count seems to control his every action and know his every thought. This is why I think that the character of the Count of Montecristo is an analogue of the figure of the author, the ultimate puppet-master, the figure that knows and controls all. The repeated mention of The Arabian Nights (or 1001 Nights) in the novel supports this reading, because, after all, what is the Arabian Nights if not a celebration of the powers of story-telling and authorship?

Orientalism

The Count of Montecristo is a profoundly orientalist work, meaning that it draws from images and concepts associated with the exotic and threatening East to define its protagonist and his quest for vengeance. The Count is many things–he is a Byronic, vampiric figure, and a cosmopolitan, but he is also an oriental character. His way of achieving vengeance is that of the Orient, as Montecristo himself speaks of poisons and crime with the Crown Prosecutors villainous wife. It is interesting to note that as an oriental, avenging figure, Montecristo becomes opaque when revenge is his primary function. Before and after that, Montecristo is a man, Edmund Dantes, and as such, a feeling, complex being.

Well, there is more to say, but I think I rather read Ivan Turgenev, so I am signing off from these speedy notes.

One of the biggest and most beautiful internet videos is Where the Hell is Matt Harding? It first appeared on youtube in 2005 and became a “feel good” classic of the genre.

Now Matt Harding has come back with a powerful sequel dated 2008 that is making the internet rounds all over again. There’s a different theme song, different locales and most importantly, he’s accompanied by jubilant crowds of goofy people. If you sample some of the gushing comments on vimeo we can see the effect that this video has on people, and the recurring confession that the video inspires tears of joy.

• Karina says: “This made me smile so much and for some reason cry a little… Well done… I wish I had the courage to do something like that”
  Drew says: “I’m supposed to be a 40-yr-old tough guy, but this vid just really got me, and I started smiling and crying (for good reasons) all of a sudden. Very powerful.”
• Beth says: “Felt like the world came together, for a minute. Who cares about differences! Felt a like I was dancing with everyone in the video and loving every minute of it! The Choreographed Indian shoot- lovely! Thanks Matt!!”
• Jen says: “I still have goosebumps and tears of joy streaming down my face. What an amazing piece of work this is. To imagine all of the fantastic people you met, places you’ve seen and all of the joyous dancing you’ve done~ is something I cannot do. Thank you for bringing this to light…I love your jig and I’m so happy you were able to do something as grand, yet simple as this…peace, joy and hugs to you. still weeping joyously:)”

In this age of malaise, of apocalyptic visions of terrorism and climate change, Matt Harding has stumbled onto something singular in the medium of the moment: to inspire people with hope that feels visceral and genuine. In an internet defined by simulacra and irony, Matt Harding succeeds in delivering joy and hope.

In a July 9 article for The New York Times, Charles McGrath wrote: “In many ways ‘Dancing’ is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it’s short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it’s open to a multitude of interpretations. It could be a little commercial for one-world feel-goodism. It could be an allegory of American foreign policy: a bumptious foreigner turning up all over the world and answering just to his own inner music. Or it could be about nothing at all — just a guy dancing.”

It is paradoxical, but in spite of the diversity of filming locations, Harding’s video makes all the world essentially the same, happy place: a stage for his goofy jig. Harding’s video flattens the world and makes it plastic– its diversity is not cultural or political but purely aesthetic or visual. It’s as if the world were just a set of picturesque backdrops, rather than a network of places inhabited by different people with different languages and cultures. Nothing divides us, we’re all the same happy people everywhere, we just wanna dance! In this regard, Harding’s video is a kind of popular, web-video reinvention of Edward Steichen’s famous exhibition of photographs and subsequent book called The Family of Man from the 1950’s. In this collective, photographic experiment, Steichen proposed the universalist notion that we’re all the same because of certain, repeated emotional motifs or experiences regardless of our cultural or geographical background.

The Matt Harding videos are also a metaphor for the kind of self-expression that the internet is best at engendering: recycling, repeating, recreating and speaking back. Harding’s videos represent the conceit that the world is entirely within reach, knowable and representable. Through the internet, you can be whatever you want wherever you want. You are ‘free’ to roam. You have unlimited connectivity with other people and places. Whether or not these are real things, or worthwhile conceits, is besides the point. I’m arguing that Matt Harding is a metaphor of how some of us view the digital age.

Harding’s videos are multilayered. There are three planes and scripts superimposed upon one another: the background (tourist landmark or vista), Matt himself dancing, and the foreground explanatory caption that names the location where Matt is dancing. The background images are the beautiful landmarks that people might normally frame in a touristy photography. Harding’s dance in front of these landmarks puts an ironic, human signature on them, a grafitti that makes them intimate in unexpected ways. What is majestic, different, exotic, sublime or beautiful is accented with college dorm goofiness. We all know someone like Matt. Or all of us were like Matt once. And some of us are still Matt inside. In seeing him in front of the Taj Majal or an exotic mural, our happiness for Matt nurtures something inside of ourselves. And underlying it all, the music, which in the case of this latest film, carries the lyrics of the poem “Stream of Life” by Rabindranath Tagore: “The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures…”

Matt Harding teaches us that dancing is a universal language. His first video is not as good as the second in my opinion because it does not capture the communal nature of dance. The thrill of the second video is seeing people join in with so much gusto. And so it has been since time immemorial… whenever there has been dance and celebration, people have done it together.

There’s so much to look at in Matt Harding’s newest video. It rewards repeated viewings. There’s the man in the orange boots, the bearded Frenchman, the Soweto girls, the goofball in the orange shirt and blue shorts…

It’s that time of the year when the “best of…” lists come out. These are my favorites so far. I can only think of 5 stand-outs. (One or two may be technically from 2006, but I saw all of them in 2007).

1. Once (Ireland)

Very simple, and absolutely charming and uplifting. Out on DVD on December 18, 2007.

2. 3:10 to Yuma (USA)

Christian Bale is brilliant. A complex and mythical character study dressed up in the genre of the western.

3. After the Wedding (Denmark)

This is a Danish movie that’s kind of soap-opera-ish. But it works beautifully and is very involving.

4. The Bourne Ultimatum (USA)

What can I say? It has been said already.

5. No Country for Old Men (USA)

Not for the faint of heart. Brutal and unrelenting. But exquisitely made.

 First, the Inimitable Mr. Louis Armstrong, doing one of his signatures.

Now, the immensely talented Ruben Blades, doing the latin descendant of Mack the Knife, “Pedro Navaja”(Peter the Knife or Switchblade). Check out Oscar H on the piano!

 The one and only time the great Charlie Chaplin’s vagabond spoke was when he sung this song in “Modern Times” (1936), one of my all-time favorite movies. The lyrics are in gibberish!!

Went to see Ann Patchett, one of our favorite novelists, at a Dallas Writer’s Garrett event last night in Richardson. Patchett is the author of Bel Canto, a great novel about terrorism and love, Truth and Beauty, a memoir, and her latest, a novel called Run that’s doing very well on the NY Times bestseller list.

Fun event. Ran into Professor Laurin Porter of UT Arlington’s English Department there, as well as Professor Stephen Souris of Texas Woman’s University.

Patchett was fun. A few highlights:

1. She’s clearly indebted to nineteenth-century novel–she is currently on a Henry James binge and she cited Tolstoy twice.
2. I liked the bit about how reading novels makes you a better person because it forces you into the head of the “other”, it forces you to live other people’s lives for a short time. (She said it more eloquently than I am expressing it here.)
3. Patchett does not watch T.V.

Louise Erdrich is coming in 2008. We may have to go see her too. The Master Butcher’s Singing Club is one of my favorite novels of the past few years.

I’m grateful to Inside Higher Ed for publishing my latest essay, on academic avatars. It’s nice to write something relatively quickly and have it read quickly and responded to so quickly. It’s not like writing articles for peer reviewed journals, which sometimes languish for years before seeing print, or even worse, trying to publish a book with an academic press, which can also take years (and that’s if you’re lucky enough to get a contract.) It’s interesting to see the blog stats spike on this page thanks to Inside Higher Ed. I’ve had more hits in the last two days than I’ve had in seven months. And the only reason I had alot of hits seven months ago was because I published two photographs of what looked like UFOs over Trafalgar Square in London and that made the UFO avatars flip out and link to me like crazy. At one point I couldn’t even see my page it was getting so many hits. At any rate, I feel pretty lucky to have the chance to write for Inside Higher Ed and hopefully the piece will be well received. I was pretty even handed in judging academic avatars– I got my digs in but ended up affirming the importance of faculty having avatars. I wish I could have named and linked the outrageous faculty avatars I studied before writing the piece. The guy I mention at the end of the article is not made up, and he had, and may still have, an avatar that shows him holding a martini and looking at the camera creepishly. This on his faculty homepage.

There was one more thing I wanted to say but which I did not say– how some faculty avatars seek to be totalizing centers for guiding students on all aspects of academic life. Perhaps we may call it a mentoring avatar? Seek and ye shall find such avatars.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if this piece sparks any discussion. The avatar topic may be played out. But who knows. I did not expect my youtube piece to go as viral as it did. I’m glad to have had my say and now I will go away for a few months. Maybe I will pop up again in Inside Higher Ed in 2008. There are a few ideas kicking around in my head for other pieces.

In 1988, I trekked to San Francisco on a bus from Santa Cruz to stand (or better said, sit) in line all day long to get a standing room only ticket to see Luciano Pavarotti in one of his signature roles, Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme. I’ve seen La Boheme over the years (3 more times) and I’ve always enjoyed it deeply, in some ways this simplest and most accessible of operas becomes richer with multiple viewings. But nothing with compare to the excitement of that first time– the camaraderie of all of us who sat in line all day long, talking opera, sharing stories, watching each other’s place while we went to the bathroom. Nothing compares to the growing excitement as the time neared for the show, as we watched the people with seats go in before us. Finally, the mad rush of hundreds of us into the Opera House, desperate to put our elbows up on the back row bannister so that we could see the Opera from the back, standing.

The red-headed man in the greek sailor’s cap who sat next to me all day long later sent me an audiotape through the mail, with a recording of Kiri te Kanawa that I listened to hundreds of times in the years to come. I wish I knew his name, and had his address so that I can write to him and talk about Luciano tonight. For one shining evening, I heard one of the legends of opera sing, and he was simply magnificent. Afterwards, I was lucky enough to get his autograph (as well as Mirella Freni’s), both of which I still treasure today.

My former student and friend John LoGalbo sent me a link to a youtube video of Luciano and I was moved to discover that it is of the very same production I saw in San Francisco in 1988 (the tag on the video erroneously says 1990) but it is 1988, I double checked it. I’m so grateful to see this snippet and know it was from the same season I saw him perform in La Boheme. Today with his passing, it is the end of an era, an era which has yet to replace him, the greatest example of the opera singer superstar. In my small way, I’m glad that I could be a part of the chapter of the history of opera that Luciano wrote. Thank you Rodolfo, and rest in peace.

Here is Luciano Pavarotti singing Rodolfo’s aria “Che Gelida Manina” (Your Hand is Cold), one of the most beloved arias in the history of opera, from La Boheme, with Mirella Freni as Mimí.