When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Leslie Dumont

Dark Knight Rises, starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, 2012      

[I noted in a recent thumbs down film review of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable’s 1933 Dancing Girl which really turned out to be just a freebie chance to get a lot of stuff off my shoulders since the film itself took about thirty seconds to pan about what had been going on around this publication in the short time I have been here. Here as a result of it turns out a serious decision by new site manager Greg Green to change things around, to get young women, younger everything if not yet more widespread racial and ethnic diversity which the times and American social demographics cry out writing major pieces rather than the old standard stringer role that went on here for years. I have heard, mostly around the water cooler and mostly from Seth Garth who has become something of a mentor to me, that some of the older white writers have not been happy with this new regime, especially one Sam Lowell who I am now locking horns with over what is really the direction of the publication.

Frankly Greg has been all over the place trying new ideas, some working and some even to a novice like me just out of journalism grad school kind of crazy. I will give an example because it directly affects how I wound up doing this review of one of the endless DC Comics Batman sagas that has hit the cinemas. Greg, trying to assert his authority as new site manager, after what appears to have been an all-out bloodless blood-bath to remove former chief Allan Jackson who I really want to talk more about since it turned out he was “resurrected” or according to Seth who was involved in radical politics back in the 1960s with Allan “rehabilitated” to do the successful encore of The Roots Is The Toots series had the “bright” idea to have the older writers broaden their horizons by reviewing various Marvel/DC Comic films. That set of assignments set up a firestorm among the older guys who could not possibility sit through such fare much less understand why hard-working parents are forced to refinance their homes to get tickets, deadly soda and inane popcorn for their loving off-spring under penalty of insurrection-or worse.         

I freely admit I hope that the thing would fizzle giving me a chance to do my thing with fresher eyes and with a less draconian view of such films since they were a staple of one of my journalism classes- The Rise of The Blockbuster. As such thing were bound to do the older writers got squirrelly about things and so Will Bradley, Maura Mason, Lenny Grace and I think a couple of others, younger writers all got the assignments. But that is not the end of the story although I have already detailed my “dispute” with Sam Lowell in that last review mentioned above when he connived to get a prestige assignment away from me and under Seth Garth’s guidance and mentorship screamed to high heavens and got a couple of series of my own including the superhero comics work. Work that I will like Sam did to me on that prestige series rewrite what others have written in the interest of completeness. Since this one got lost in the turnover I will start with the last saga of the Dark Knight trilogy. Sarah Lemoyne]     

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There is a lot the average reader of film reviews, probably reviews of any kind at least professional reviews about what goes on behind the scenes in the selection, assignment and use of the editorial fist. Some of it is generic to any organization but other things are subject to the whims of whoever is in charge. The play of say the New York Review of Books which goes for high-brow twisting reviews is very different from the cloisters of the American Film Gazette which in its long history has reviewed virtually every Hollywood and foreign film ever made in its nearly seventy-five year existence. That who is in charge, who is in charge here is my first point and for a reason having nothing to do with this yet another super-hero comic book come to cinema Dark Knight Rises which frankly I thought had been abandoned once the site manager, the guy who shapes and gives out the assignments here, heard loud and clear from us peon writers that the mass audience for this stuff does not, I emphasize, does not read film reviews in exotic flower publications filled with plenty of other stuff they could care less about.

Greg Green, the guy who shapes the contours of what gets into the public prints here after a grueling internal battle in 2017 before I signed on thought, I believe in order to quell the disquiet after that battle, to solidify his new position and create his own brand, or maybe all of the above that reviewers should feel free, without recrimination, to what old leftie the wizened and somewhat senile Sam Lowell has called “fire on the party headquarters” meaning a reviewer can, if she or he so chooses, go beyond the scope of the review and let readers get an insight glimpse of what goes on in section of the publishing world. I have taken that liberty here and without recrimination since it has seen the light of day. More ominous thought, my second point stab, is why after all of the anguish and gnashing of teeth by serious writers here are we going back to reviewing this kids’ stuff, this comic book madness. That is where the whims and whatever other fluff is going on in an editor’s head comes into play. Greg although he acquiesced ready did believe that action-packed films, above all comic book super-heroes were the wave of the future.

He suffered in silence for a while apparently but once Black Panther came out and he saw the gross ticket receipts he did a big backslide. He called it “in the interest of completeness,” meaning that we collectively had not reviewed every possible film in the genre. So here I am, woe is me, doing hard time going on and on about what mind-numbing stuff I have to review. I had to laugh when in a recent review of one of the million 007 James Bond films, another Greg Green pet project, Seth Garth brought back to memory the old days in the industry when we got paid by the word and he, I, would when we were lowly stringers trying not to starve “pad” our reviews with plenty of stuff which had not much to do with the film and hope to not get edited too badly. Now I have to write this extraneous stuff for a flat fee. And I do so here.     

This Superman, no, Batman long drawn out film is the long- expected sequel to the first one in this series. Stay with me on this since Batman like his buddy Superman has had various reincarnations depending on a generation’s take on what will play, or at least some half-baked Hollywood screenwriter’s idea of what will play, beyond the bang-bang action a minute pace expected of these things. In the first film Batman had taken the sword over the death of some do-gooder D.A. who harbored evil thoughts although he had nothing to do with that good guy turned bad guy’s demise. Except it allowed him, Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, to hibernate in some isolated splendor out on mansion row and not worry about scumbags and creeps returning to fair Gotham (the sky line of which looked amazing like, ah, New York City), to wreak havoc and turn the place into a cesspool of drugs, prostitution, gambling, shady deals and endless corruption-again. A thankless task.  

Maybe someday we will reduce the scumbag and creep population to manageable size but for now every crazy monomaniac with some dough and manpower sees such places as Western Civilization urban areas as fair game, as merely a subject for spoils. Enter one hellish brute Bane and his underground, literally underground, army ready to reduce Gotham to their playground. This guy is relentless, tough and unlike others who have tried to make an end run on the town had a plan, a plan beyond total devastation if he does not get his way. So once word gets up to Mansion Row Batman has the old flame lighted under his ass to save “his” city once again. Save with the sometimes help, sometimes unhelpfulness of Cat Woman, played by fetching Anne Hathaway breaking the mold of her girl next door looks who has her own agenda, has her own rock to get out from under.

Like I said this Bane really was a piece of work, really had his stuff together despite wearing a weird semi-mask to alleviate ancient wounds. As the battled ensues on the first go-round Batman shows some rust after that long hiatus and loses the round, is taken prisoner never to be seen again. At least that is what Bane had thought. Once Bane and crew take some action which includes having access to a nuclear machine which can be turned into a weapon the town’s police force and its general population accept the new regime for a while. At one point the machine was in cold storage but a big- time woman environmentalist has taken charge and so despite her the damn thing was weaponized. A few resistance fighters, including Cat Woman in her better moments, pushed back until Batman escaped coming back to town looking for creeps, scumbags and glory. Push back not only against Bane and his thugs but that woman who controlled the nuclear button turned out to be something like the big guy’s lover, or friend. So chaos looms, looms as long as Batman can’t figure out how to get that freaking bomb out of Gotham City’s harms’ way.           

Bruce/Batman falls on his sword again but really only off-stage in case there is to be another sequel, the desire to make this yet another trilogy which seems to be the way these comic book adventures go. Having said all that I hope, I really hope, everybody can see what a forlorn task it is write this foolishness. I hope Greg is listening-again. Just kidding but I wanted to show that I can do insightful film panning just as well as moribund Sam Lowell, or whoever writes his stuff these days         

Damn It- Free Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Prison!

Damn It- President Trump Pardon Native American Leader Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Prison! 

Statement by the Committee For International Labor Defense 


Now that the bid by Amnesty International and others nationally and internationally seeking to get former President Barack Obama to pardon Leonard Peltier have gone for nought we supporters are between a rockand a hard place. The denial notice was for very flimsy reasons despite the fact that even the prosecutor does not know who killed those two FBI agents in a firefight at Pine Ridge. Hell it could have been friendly forces who knows sometimes in a war zone, and that was exactly what that situation was, who knows. (For a current example of another war zone on Native lands check the story on what the various local,state, federal and mercenary forces brought in by the pipe line company at Standing Rock. One false move, provoked or not, would have ended in a bloodbath according to a well-respected Vietnam veteran who along with a few thousand other vets showed up to defend the lands and water and  thought he was in the Central Highlands again.) 

All we know is that Brother Peltier has spent forty some years behind bars and has a slew of medical problems which would have let Obama pardon just on compassionate grounds. He didn't. Don't expect, we almost have to laugh even saying such a thing, one Donald J.Trump, POTUS, and maybe off to jail himself to pardon Leonard Peltier before his term of office is up.         

Still Leonard Peltier along with Mumia Abu-Jamal and now Reality Leigh Winner are America's best known political prisoners and need to be supported and freed. To that end we in Boston have committed ourselves to as best we are able to continue ot keep the Peltier case in the public eye by holding  periodic vigils calling for his pardon and freedom. We call on all Leonard Peltier supporters to keep his name before the public. Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Prison     
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Latest Leaflet 

We demand freedom for Leonard Peltier!

Native American activist Leonard Peltier has spent over 40 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was one of the people convicted of killing 2 FBI agents in a shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Reservation on June 26, 1975.  The others who were convicted with him have long since been released.  Prosecutors and federal agents manufactured evidence against him (including the so-called “murder weapon”); hid proof of his innocence; presented false testimony obtained through torturous interrogation techniques; ignored court orders; and lied to the jury.

In spite of his unjust imprisonment and terrible personal situation, being old and sick and likely to die in jail, he writes every year to the participants at the National Day of Mourning, which is held by Natives in Plymouth, MA in place of Thanksgiving, offering wishes for the earth and all those present and gratitude for the support he receives.  To read some of his statements, go to UAINE.org (United American Indians of New England).  That is also a good site for info about the National Day of Mourning and the campaign against Columbus Day and in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day.

Sometimes people claim that the US does not have political prisoners, but Leonard Peltier has been in prison for a very long time and even the FBI admits that they do not know who killed those FBI agents.  If Leonard Peltier dies in prison, it will be one of the worst miscarriages of justice in this country’s long history of injustice.

For more info and to sign a petition demanding hearings on the Pine Ridge “Reign of Terror” and COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence program conducted against activists including Native groups, go to WhoIsLeonardPeltier.info.

Write to Leonard Peltier at Leonard Peltier, #89637-132, USP Coleman 1, P O Box 1033, Coleman, FL 33521.  Prisoners really appreciate mail, even from people they don’t know.  Cards and letters are always welcome.

This rally is organized by the Committee for Int’l Labor Defense, CForILD@gmail.com, InternationalLaborDefense.org.

In Harvard Square Cambridge, Ma Tuesday December 19^th 5 PM to 6 PM The Committee For International Labor Defense (labor donated)

Free Native American Leader Leonard Peltier-Free “The Voice Of the Voiceless” Mumia Abu Jamal-Free Russian Interference Whistle-Blower Reality Leigh Winner-Hands Off Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden and all our political prisoners from this year’s anti-fascist struggles.   

Holidays are tough times for political prisoners- join us to show your support from outside the wall for those inside the walls so that they know they do not stand alone.  

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Today the Committee for International Labor Defense (CILD) follows in the tradition of the International Labor Defense, established by the early Communist Party to mobilize labor and progressive-centered protest to free leftist political prisoners. An especially important tradition during the holiday season for those inside the prisons and their families.

Every political prisoner we honor today had the instinct and inner strength to rebel against the injustices which were there for all to see. They knew that if they fought those injustices in the face of governmental repression the prisons were part of the price they might have to pay for standing up for what they believed in.

The political prisoners of today, just as those in previous periods of history, are representatives of the most courageous and advanced section of the oppressed. They are individuals of particular audacity and ability who have stood out conspicuously as leaders and militants, and have thereby incurred the hatred of the oppressors.

As James Cannon one of the founders of the ILD said in The Cause That Passes Through a Prison- “The class-war prisoners are stronger than all the jails and jailers and judges. They rise triumphant over all their enemies and oppressors. Confined in prison, covered with ignominy, branded as criminals, they are not defeated. They are destined to triumph...”

This stand-out is organized by the Committee for Int’l Labor Defense, CForILD@gmail.com, InternationalLaborDefense.org.

Artist's Corner- The Civil War Work of Winslow Homer- In Honor Of The Northern Armies In The American Civil War As We Enter The

Click on the headline to link to a site that features Winslow Homer's American Civil War work.

From The ALH Archives -Stop The Gun Violence-Nothing More Needs To Be Said

From The ALH Archives -Stop The Gun Violence-Nothing More Needs To Be Said

By Fritz Taylor

I know exactly why Greg Green gave me this archival caption assignment. I am maybe the only one on staff here, I am not sure of Sam Lowell, who agrees with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on an individual’s Second Amendment right to bear arms. Having grown up in then rural Fulton County down in Georgia where guns, learning to shoot are a way of life and then having served in the military I am very familiar with weapons.  Like to go to the firing range and see what my latest abilities are. No subtle or sweet reason argument here although I have been known after a couple of hard liquor drinks and egged on by say Will Bradley or Seth Garth, maybe even Sarah Le Moyne to state that I want the right to bear arms because I don’t want the cops, the crazies, the criminals and the cranks to be the only ones with fire power.        

I do not like the NRA, have never joined despite constant mail giving me a million chances to join that organization and defense my rights big time. See that is where I draw some very big lines on this gun question. This gun madness question of late. It is a very, very long distance from exercising my right to bear arms essentially defensively against cops, crazies, cranks and criminal or whatever attempts to harm me and mine and opposing every attempt to limit access by crazies and criminals to weapons. A very long way from an occasional admittedly male-hunter warrior drive to some secluded firing range to burst off a few rounds and not have safe-guards against the very real dangerous people in the world who should not be allowed access to endless weapons depots. Yeah, call me a liberal, call me a bleeding heart, but we have got to protect our kids, grandkids, and somebody else’s too by dropping the violence index which is sky high right now.           

Vote Union-Go Union-Picket Lines Mean Don't Cross

From The ALH  Archives- Vote Union-Go Union-Picket Lines Mean Don't Cross 

By Brad Fox, Senior

My son Brad Fox, Junior a stringer here just as  I had started out in that position long ago and mercifully done recently wrote a archival caption dealing with series of civil disobedience acts by veterans at the White House in the time of the Obama Administration during one its periodic escalations of the troop levels, read war, in Afghanistan. He noted that I had covered that event for this publication and, oh, that I had been arrested that day along with the veterans since the mounted D.C. police usually cool and experienced in such demonstrations went a little whacky, started pushing people around.

That arrest, that standing in solidarity with my brother veterans, who were also hand-cuffing themselves to the White House fence, that not crossing the line, or in that case crossing the line, the police line to do that act of solidarity was not learned from anti-war demonstrations. Although it has come in handy in those situations as well. My learning curve about acts of solidarity were learned as a kid when my father was a union organizer for the electrical workers, the IBEW.

Specifically learned when I was maybe a sophomore in high school and he took me out to Springfield in Western Massachusetts where the IBEW local was on strike against Monmouth Electric (since swallowed up into GE) in a bitter action that would not be resolved for something like two months, partially in winter I remember standing on the line one very cold morning with the wind blowing down from the Berkshires and the Connecticut River. This site had been the scene of a bitter IBEW union organizing effort maybe ten years before the time I am talking about both because of management’s position but also a significant although minority of workers who were something like afraid of the union because they might lose their jobs or other considerations.

My father told me that those ten years had changed most of the workers’ positions on the union. He pointed out to me several who had endlessly argued against the union drive holding their own. Holding their own against a band of thugs, scabs, a rightful name for such vermin, that the company had hired to take the places of the striking workers. My father said to me more than once during that campaign, usually when we were driving home for the day -picket lines mean don’t cross. That advise has stood me in good stead since then and in a funny crossover from the day of the veterans’ protest and CD action-join the picket line.      

From The Bath Irons Works (The Destroyer Builders In Maine( Archives

From The Bath Irons Works (The Naval Destroyer Builders In Maine) Archives

By Fritz Taylor

Yes I am a Vietnam Veteran and yes as I recently pointed out while I hate the NRA I favor my Second Amendment right to bear arm. That latter position a personal one because like the late Doctor Gonzo, Hunter Thompson I like to go to some secluded firing range and rattle off a few rounds. But whatever vestiges I have of my growing up in Fulton County, Georgia I “got religion” on the questions of war and peace through the hellhole of Vietnam experience. Not right away, not completely at first but now I am comfortable with the twenty plus years I have spent screaming (if necessary) against the endless wars, the bloated military budgets and the glorification of the fog war creates in the public, and among soldiers and politicians.

Now I was strictly Army, Fourth Division so you know I saw some hellish action in Vietnam, particularly when we were sent to re-enforce up in the Central Highland and I can tell you plenty about that branch of the service, the waste and the like. You can always learn sometime new though in this struggle against war and endless budgets. As I did a few years ago when I through my friendships with Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris went up to Maine to help out in the annual Maine Peace Walk sponsored by Veterans for Peace and other local activist peace groups.

That “helping out” entailed walking half the freaking state of Maine at least on the oceanside, the side where U.S. Route One slithers down the coast. Over a period of several days. I had started up in Brunswick, up at Bowdoin College where I met walkers who had started up I believe in Rangeley which I do not have a clue where that is except it is pretty far north in Maine with plenty left before you reach the Canadian border.   

When you mention Brunswick you really automatically mention Bath as I found out. In little old out of the way Bath, which is a pretty town along the river and close to the ocean, you have the very large Bath Iron Works which despite its benign name is the main producer of the Navy’s destroyer fleet, the modern one which goes for billions a pop. Needless to say the organizers planned a serious stop at that location along the route to protest these ships being built (and proposing as an alternative something like a Green New Deal to keep the citizenry usefully employed). Probably just as naturally our appearance there was met with mixed reviews depending on whether you worked there or were part of the gentrification also going on in the area now that Southern Maine had become very expensive and overrun with foreigners (mostly from Massachusetts and New York-of course a foreigner in Maine is anybody not born there with certified birth certificate proof).

That was quite an experience, learned some stuff but what was, is really important is that over the past few years a number of mainly Maine citizens have taken it upon themselves to protest by acts of civil disobedience every time some new destroyer is launched. Hats off to the sister and brothers of that branch of the resistance struggle. My kind of people.

    

When Singer-Songwriter Nick Collins Broke His Silence-And Gave A Die-hard Fan His Autograph

By Sarah Le Moyne

It drives my partner, my love, Jenny, crazy with jealousy but I have always had a crush on the legendary reclusive rock and roll, blues too guitarist, lyricist and song-writing Nick Collins since I was in middle school (and before I became aware of my sexual preferences). Jenny does not understand this long-term infatuation, that it is totally possible to have a schoolgirl crush without it meaning anything sexual or otherwise. I, we have never seriously discussed attitudes toward men, but she is probably off of the Nick Collins tirade she raised more hostile than I am to the gender.     

But back to Nick Collins whom I first heard on the radio at home on some parents gone out Saturday night and I was minding my younger sisters when I heard his cover of To Each This Own, a slow dreamy ballad filled with sentimental longings (of which I was filled with as well) and then switching up to Tumbling Down, a classic Collins rocker. That pair along with the bluesy Don’t Bring On Your Love So Strong staples of my youthful infatuation (and still can move me). I admit, freely admit that I would go to Marla’s Variety Store a few streets over and grab any fan magazine she had in stock that had something about Nick Collins in it.

Here is the funny part, or the first part of this funny story when you think about it. There was very little really known about Nick, most of the stuff in the fan and celebrity magazines was, well, bullshit, press agent hand-out stuff or stuff whoever wrote the story made up. The truth is that onstage Nick Collins was a mad man, an oldtime rocker in the Chuck Berry mode, a blues man out of T-Bone Walker or a jazz/ballad man out of Frankie Devine but once he left the stage he was gone, nobody could find him. The legendary parties he supposedly threw were real enough but strictly record company or later film company galas-minus Nick. So people speculated if it had to do with is slight speech impediment, others his tough Billie Holiday-like upbringing and yet others that he was so strung out on junk that he had to hide, had to hide the pain too I would think or risk arrest or bad publicity exposure when junkies we not well thought of  no matter how good they made audiences feel through their pain.        

Here is the end shot of the funny part. Apparently Nick was used to wearing some kind of disguise or something like that to avoid the screaming teenagers and their mothers who mobbed him or tried to. One late night in the Houston Airport though Rhonda Frank had been waiting for a delayed flight bringing home her brother when she spotted (through the disguise) Nick Collins who seemed to have taken up taking late flights out. She raced up to him and without letting him deny who he was asked for his autograph. Expecting a first no Rhonda was prepared to press the issue, make a scene. But no, she did not have to because Nick must have a little funny quirk in him somewhere since he merely said “sure” since Rhonda had proved, unlike a million photographers, to be a very good detective. I sure wish I had a Nick Collins autograph but don’t tell Jenny that.     

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Woody Guthrie's Spanish Civil War Salute "Jarama Valley"

Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Woody Guthrie performing his Spanish Civil War tribute, "Jarama Valley".


In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

"Jarama Valley" Lyrics- Woody Guthrie

there's a valley in spain called Jarama
its a place that we all know so well
it was there that we fought against the fascists
we saw a peacful valey turn to hell

from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through

we were men of a laken battelion
we're proud of the fight that we made
we know that you people love the valley
we're remember a laken vrigade

from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through

you will never find peace with these fascists
you'll never find friends such as we
so remember that valley iof jarama
and the people that'll set that valley free

from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through

all this world is like this valley called jarama
so green and so bright and so fair
no fascists can dwell in our valley
nor breathe in our new freedoms air

from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through

Victor Granovsky 1952–2019 On May 15, our veteran comrade Victor Granovsky died in New York City at age 66 after an eight-month struggle with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”).

Frank Jackman comment:

I don’t usually comment on the passing of leftist cadre (meaning in my terms socialists, communists, anarchists mostly in the modern era). Especially long-time through thick and thin, ups and downs, and in our generation, the Generation of ’68, the fallen promise of the 1960s and the demise of the Soviet Union which changed things on a global scale and not for the better cadre. But I would run into Victor every now and again in Boston or Cambridge selling his paper (as I did mine), haranguing the passers-by (as I did) and trying to make a difference in his way. To do so, to stay the course against every possible reason to abandon hope for some kind of socialist breakthrough, especially in America requires me to tip my hat, to lower the red flag he lived by as another veteran of the social struggles of the past fifty years passes on.    

Workers Vanguard No. 1157	21 June 2019

Victor Granovsky

1952–2019

On May 15, our veteran comrade Victor Granovsky died in New York City at age 66 after an eight-month struggle with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”). We send heartfelt condolences to his sister, and comrade, Irene, her husband Tom and their family, and to Victor’s many comrades and friends around the globe. In the early 1990s, Victor was instrumental in the International Communist League’s Trotskyist intervention against capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. Later, drawing on his exhaustive knowledge of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, he played an important role on the Spartacist editorial board. A graphic designer by profession, he helped define the look of our propaganda. Victor was also known as the ICL’s funniest, most dramatic storyteller, as well as a withering satirical polemicist.

Victor was born in 1952 in Shanghai, China, the son of Russian immigrants. His father lived through the Bolshevik-led October Revolution, and both his parents were in Shanghai during the 1949 Chinese Revolution. In his youth, Victor grasped that revolutions can happen and are serious business. In the mid 1950s, the family left China and made its way to Sydney, Australia, then settled in Los Angeles in 1958.

Growing up in the 1960s, Victor was exposed to a creative milieu of young artists and musicians, and took advantage of free classes in drawing, printmaking and filmmaking to hone his artistic skills. Later, amid the radicalization spurred by the Vietnam War and the state terror unleashed against the Black Panthers, Victor joined the Hollywood High School chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

In 1969, SDS underwent a split nationwide, largely over the question of the centrality of the proletariat as an agency for revolutionary social change. Victor and most of his comrades were recruited to the Young Communist League, youth group of Nelson Peery’s hard-Stalinist California Communist League (CCL). Before long, some CCL members, along with the Hollywood High comrades, were expelled for raising criticisms of Stalin, although they continued to regard themselves as Maoists. They formed a new group, the Communist Working Collective (CWC), and eventually reviewed Leon Trotsky’s key writings. As one CWCer recalled, “After studying The Third International After Lenin, we were Trotskyists.” In 1971, the CWC fused with the Spartacist League. Victor co-authored the article “Communist Working Collective: From Maoism to Trotskyism” on the fusion in the first issue of Workers Vanguard (October 1971).

The SL’s revolutionary regroupments in this period, particularly the CWC fusion, allowed us to launch WV and expand our roots in the American working class. Victor was among those comrades who enthusiastically went into industry, taking a job in an auto plant in Detroit, which comrades dubbed “America’s Vyborg” after the industrial neighborhood in Petrograd where the Bolsheviks acquired a strong base of support. In the mid 1970s, after spending time in our Houston local, he moved to our center in New York.

There, Victor joined WV’s Composition (Comp) department. He was an extremely talented designer who thrived in the paper’s political collective, which stands in marked contrast to the petty-bourgeois publishing industry where designers are either the stars or the peons. In a presentation to younger Comp comrades last fall, Victor explained the purpose of design for a communist newspaper: “Twenty-five percent, approximately, of all ICL propaganda is graphics: hard-hitting headlines and photos, design that grabs people who may not necessarily be in the habit of reading such dense scientific material such as we publish.” He went on: “You want photos and graphics to be windows into the content of the propaganda that we write.”

Among his many pieces of work, Victor designed the Spartakist Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (the ICL’s German section) poster and button for the 1990 East German elections, in which we were unique in proclaiming “Nein” to capitalist counterrevolution. The ICL threw everything we had into the incipient proletarian political revolution in the bureaucratically deformed workers state of East Germany (DDR) as part of fighting for the revolutionary reunification of Germany.

In the same period, Victor was part of our international teams making exploratory forays into the Soviet degenerated workers state. As Stalinist rule broke down, the question was posed: would the nascent bourgeoisie in Russia, with the backing of the imperialists, consolidate a capitalist state, or would the working class seize the opportunity to fight for political power? Victor, who had basic Russian-language capacity, studied hard to increase his fluency and literacy in order to help implant an outpost of Trotskyism in the homeland of the October Revolution. He served as the ICL’s main public spokesman throughout the existence of our Moscow station, until the mid 1990s.

On one of his early trips in October 1990, Victor and another comrade attended a Soviet coal miners congress in Donetsk, Ukraine, which had been the center of a nationwide strike the year before. There our comrades discovered a rogues’ gallery of “AFL-CIA” counterrevolutionary forces, centered on the anti-communist British Union of Democratic Miners (UDM). The UDM, a scab outfit, wanted to get the Soviet miners to repudiate their significant monetary support to the great 1984-85 British coal strike led by National Union of Mineworkers head Arthur Scargill, who was pro-Soviet. Victor described our intervention during a historically comprehensive and detailed presentation given in 2007: “Though there were only two of us Spartacists at this conference, we played a crucial role in the decision of the congress not to pursue the UDM’s appeal to denounce Scargill.” (For more, see “We Are the Party of the Russian Revolution, Part Three,” WV No. 926, 5 December 2008.)

After U.S. imperialism’s man Boris Yeltsin launched his counterrevolutionary coup in August 1991, Victor and other Moscow station comrades got out 100,000 copies of a Russian translation of the WV article “Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!” This leaflet was the first published leftist protest against Yeltsin’s U.S.-backed power grab. The ICL honored Trotsky’s insistence that “in the hour of mortal danger, [revolutionary internationalists] must remain on the last barricade.”

In the end, there was no mass resistance by the Soviet working class against capitalist counterrevolution. Decades of Stalinist misrule had left the Russian proletariat atomized and lacking any consistent and coherent socialist class consciousness. The destruction of the Soviet Union and the European deformed workers states was an unparalleled defeat for working people the world over.

After our comrade Martha Phillips was murdered at her post in Moscow in February 1992, Victor represented the ICL at a press conference, making sure she would not be a nameless, faceless victim. In July 1992, Victor appeared on the main all-Russian television station for a segment titled “Trotskyism: Next Stop Moscow?” The following year, Victor was critical in the preparation and publication by the Prometheus Research Library (PRL) of the Russian-language edition of Trotsky’s The Third International After Lenin, the first version to appear in the language in which it was written.

Victor never got a college degree; what he knew he learned on his own or through the party. But more powerful than a diploma, he had an insatiable curiosity. Through hard work and intense study, he developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the October Revolution. During a talk last year, Victor recalled that during his time in Moscow, even while “desperately dashing to a demo, there would always be an antiquarian bookstore on the way. And if you ducked in there, you might leave with a treasure that you would never have found anywhere else in the world.” He was able to amass hundreds of books and manuscripts for the PRL, the SL’s central reference archive, including a comprehensive collection of Bolshevik congress and conference minutes, and memoirs from Bolsheviks and Trotskyist Left Oppositionists. With his natural wit, Victor recounted that he got this material out of Russia by telling customs officers that it represented “humanitarian aid from Russia to the working people of America.”

Victor was a member of the ICL’s International Executive Committee from 2003 to 2007. His astute political understanding and his linguistic skills were an exceptional asset, which facilitated our publication of Russian-language propaganda over the years. He made many of his finest contributions as an editorial board member of the English-language edition of our international theoretical journal Spartacist. Victor initiated the article in Spartacist No. 59 (Spring 2006) defending the 1921 Bolshevik suppression of the counterrevolutionary mutiny at the Kronstadt naval base. In 1999, a two-volume set of historical documents was published in Russian on the Kronstadt uprising, long a rallying cry for anti-Communists. Victor read the entire collection and translated hundreds of pages for his ed board comrades. The article succeeded in demolishing the lies by anarchists and liberals by proving once again the counterrevolutionary nature of the Kronstadt mutiny and the forces behind it.

In another instance, when WV published Lenin’s 25 October 1917 speech to the Petrograd Soviet, Victor had the political savvy to recognize that the text quoted in WV had a Stalinist-nationalist bent, as it referred to “building a proletarian socialist state in Russia.” This conception is at odds with Lenin’s Marxist understanding that socialism—a global classless egalitarian society of material abundance—cannot be built in one country. In a letter to the editor (WV No. 861, 6 January 2006), Victor explained that the version we used from Lenin’s Collected Works was not in fact a verbatim transcript but an unreliable newspaper account! He noted that other newspapers reported that Lenin, as on other occasions, spoke of the Russian Revolution as a spark to ignite a Europe-wide socialist revolution.

At the end of 2013, Victor resigned from the party due to personal difficulties, but continued to work with us, vowing to rejoin as soon as he could. Last September, when he learned he was dying of ALS, his most urgent wish was to rejoin, and once he did he was a fish back in water. In his last few months as a Spartacist, Victor tried to convey to the party the wealth of his experiences, while working intensely to inventory and annotate his Russian-language collection for the PRL. During a presentation at the library in December, Victor emphasized, “Comrades can be proud that we were the ones who planted the flag of Trotskyism, defended October to the very last.” The Bolshevik Revolution pulses through the veins of all ICL comrades, but it seemed to have a special urgency for Victor. We honor this beloved comrade by following his example of passionate and rigorous study of language and the history of the Marxist movement, as well as his courage and boldness in the fight for new October Revolutions, wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The Jar Of Isabella X- A Journey Through The Arts-The Boston School, Ah, At The Museum Of Fine Arts-Thwarted Love With A Bizarre Twist- Alexander’s Keats’ Inspired Isabella And The Pot Of Basil

The Jar Of Isabella X- A Journey Through The Arts-The Boston School, Ah, At The Museum Of Fine Arts-Thwarted Love With A Bizarre Twist- Alexander’s Keats’ Inspired Isabella And The Pot Of Basil

By Laura Perkins    

I will get to the subject in hand, a take on the marvelous and mesmerizing Isabella, Or A Jar Of Basil seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston a while back while on assignment for this upstart series which site manager has given to me under circumstances not of my own making. However the reaction I received to my first foray into this new review area for when in discussing John Singer Sargent’s The Portrait of Madame X has forced my hand to reply if that is the right word to all kinds charges of pandering to what is essentially soft-core pornography, or taking such a view of the painting. I might repeat for what it is worth that when I took this assignment, I told Greg Green that I would decide what I wanted to focus on in each painting, Not what the art world, the world of self-serving curators deemed the reason the damn things were in some museum other than as pace-fillers. So I will vent as is my prerogative. Laura Perkins]      

You never know what will happen in this business. This latter-day publishing business where unlike the old days you can lose stuff in an instant, lose by an injudicious hit of the delete button. That happened to me of late in something of an omen when I tried to do a second installment of what is according to site manager Greg Green an on-going series of painting which I am at liberty to choose to get us up to date in the art world, an area woefully under- represented in this publication. If I behave myself of which more below. Without overestimating the old days and their sluggish technologies there was something to be said for hand-written yellow pads and carbon copy smudge typewritten materials even without all the comforts of what the new technology has brought us. In any case I am starting to get the hang of it, the last barrier of cyberspace, getting used to the idea that not every utterance, every word needs to be etched eternally in the ether. Strangely I did believe that proposition in yellow pad (some of which I still have from my 1970s days as a free-lancer) and typewriter times (some also when I was weaned off of the yellow pad which was both too cumbersome and too slow when I had to make a day to day living out of my words). That typewriter in turn gave way to word processor and such when that too proved too cumbersome and too slow to make a day to day living out of my words. I would also add as will become clear below that I miss the old days when a reader had something bilious to say, some vitriolic smattering of words she or he had to not only write the spiel out but put stamp to envelope and actually go mail the damn thing. Which meant that they had to put some effort into the task unlike today they can fire off some silly salvo and move on to the next target of their villainy.    

But enough of personal recollections in the dark ages of this “publish or perish” business. As one and all should know by my first foray into the subject, at least first foray since I was named “unofficial” art critic I am taking quirky looks at some of the great paintings that intertest me. And not for art curator purposes either. I became an Art critic by default when Sam Lowell, my longtime companion who balked at doing this assignment. Sam, for better or worse, balked since he is in hot pursuit of why famed California private detective Lew Archer, yes that Lew Archer, who if you are old enough to remember solved the Galton kidnapping case, the Carlton murders and the infamous wife-done Hallman serial killings all under the noises of the public coppers, never made the vaunted P.I. Hall of Fame after such a glorious start. Sam has a “theory” which he can tell the reader if interested all I know is that site manager Greg Green let him off the hook to pursue his leads. Let Sam off the hook and put me on the hook once he knew from Leslie Dumont I had taken some art classes and at least had gone to an art museum unlike his other potential candidates.

By the way Sam’s credentials are far greater than mind could ever be since I only took art appreciation classes in high school and college and since then have limited my experiences in the field to an infinite number of doodling sessions when some windbag is fouling up the air at one conference or another. Sam actually could have gone to art school, his high school art teacher encouraged him endlessly and would have paved the way for him. Actually, now that I think about it did pave the way for him at his alma mater the highly regarded Massachusetts School of Art. Sam, from the desperately poor Acre section of North Adamsville where he grew up got a serious chill, a serious no when his mother found out he had applied and been accepted. She painted, nice word although not literally true, a horrendous picture of him in some flea-bitten, rat-infested and crime-ridden cold-water flat garret with him barely able to hold his frozen hand brush to canvas for the rest of his life. Her idea, a not uncommon one in the Acre from what some of the other guys who grew up there have told me, was for him to be the first in the family to have a nice steady white-collar civil service job which would bring the family fortunes up a notch. He didn’t do that but neither did he to his sometimes-later regret pursue that art dream, cold water flat and frozen fingers or not. I got the job even though I made it clear to Greg that I would not pose as an art critic and would take my shots where they would lead me without any regard for what they meant for the greater art world.  

My first foray not so strangely was John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. How it got there is a long story as is the story behind many art acquisitions but will not detain us because I have bigger fish to fry today. My main axis on that first assignment was to deal with the obvious sexual allure (circa the 1880s which was demurer than now) of the painting and of Madame’s scandalous sex life considering she was married to some French pillar of society, a well-heeled and connected banker. You can read my take in the archives (see January 8, 2019) but mostly what I have found out was that Madame Guiteau, no need to be coy about that “Madame X” business she foisted on a less than candid world was that she was so intend on being a social climber, of working her way up French high society that she slept with any guy who could get her moving up what Seth Garth calls “the food chain.”

Fair enough then if today not fair enough in a post-#MeToo world since beautiful women, perceived beautiful women were known to, for good or evil, use their “profession” beauty to get ahead in this wicked old world. I said some other stuff, but this is what has brought me a ton of blow-back, blow-back which Sam, dear Sam in this instance, warned me would happen when I laid out my argument. He always said reviewing was a tough cutthroat racket and now I have had my baptism of fire. The gist of the responses has dealt with exactly how John Singer Sargent (hereafter Singer Sargent we don’t have to go on endlessly with the robber baron era habit of three name monikers among the elite to show pedigree or prove legitimacy in or more democratic age) got the Madame to pose so provocatively in the first place.

Even Sam was surprised though at the apparent source of the criticism not of me, although that may be in question the evangelicals. People not known to frequent this publication but who saw an opening to see who was, or was not, doing Satan’s work, who was damned and why. Here is where we get into what Sam and others call the “trolls” and their “alternate facts,” actually alternate universe outlook. A major rash of e-mails pointed out that Singer Sargent had obviously picked his model up out of the gutter and gave her a few sous, francs, some French money to pose for him, that he got some kind of sexual pleasure out of what he was doing as well as painting a great if toilsome masterpiece. Those skimpy straps ready to tell all, something like that. Certainly the gown and her provocative pose spoke of eternal damnation to these mob. The other big “school of thought” was that the model, nobody wanted to tie Madame Guiteau, a well-oiled member of high society looking to move upward with the age old art of using her professional beauty to work her way up that chain, had been tossed out of a high-end bordello in New York City after she had “stolen” some dough from one of the customers. Jay Gould, yes, the robber baron Jay Gould, and had to flee to avoid his wrath and her imprisonment.        

            

Under either theory what these ding-dongs have in common is the erroneous idea that Singer Sargent was getting sexual pleasure out of the provocative poses of the model, especially that very suggestive slipping of one of the straps of her evil thought jet black evening gown. What they could not factor in was the idea that Singer Sargent, as was well know, had a number of “assistants,” male and female, who found his bed. Which ones, which sex is problematic but most people with an opinion have mentioned that the females acted as cover. I have uncovered some useful information in that regard. The great English poet and self-acknowledged gay man when that was not cool to say in polite society, when it was the love  “that dare not speak its name,”    W.H. Auden had always claimed Singer Sargent for the “Homintern,” a name which he or one of his crowd, one of his gay friends maybe Christopher Isherwood or Stephen Spender, coined as a spin-off from the Comintern which both had at one time supported to mean that the guy was a member of the fraternity, was gay in the cloaked terminology of the times. Yes, the evangelicals will have a field day with this one if they can figure it out. What I don’t get is people who are ready to absolve every sexual predator alive if he or she repents has no mercy for somebody who used their sex, as with Madame X, to get ahead whether we agree or not.      

Most of the other comments descended downward from that Madame is a whore trope and are not worthy of comment. What is worthy is one that attempted to take the high road, attempted to in the end try to whitewash the whole sordid affair. One Arthur Gilmore Doyle, here we go with the “three name” Brahmin (although not all the “three name” crowd were Brahmins, Boston variety since Singer Sargent would trace his lineage from the Philadelphia Main Line crowd but they are all of a piece), who argued, if that is the right word, that Singer Sargent would not stoop to having some “fallen woman,” his term, pose for him under any circumstances. So here we have the class line drawn in lieu of the sex line. Or maybe both lines since he seemed very fussy about the whole matter.

Doyle further mentioned that Madame X if she posed for Singer Sargent was a pure as the driven snow. Worse disputed the evidence presented by the famous Parisian paint-maker Bleu who provided Singer Sargent (and others) with his paints in his memoir that when Madame was in her plebian wants mood he was her lover. Going up the back stairway to her boudoir, sometimes when her husband was down in his study figuring out ways to make money to keep his growing number of creditors at bay. Disputed as well, the testimony of Madame’s personal maid that she let him in and further, under orders from Madame, had cut that provocative gown strap with her own scissors. You see according to Doyle one   could never believe the hired help, not even somebody who had to change the sweaty sheets after each exhortation. Yes, the class line indeed.

We have already dealt with the predilections of Singer Sargent for his male “assistants” which may not freak out Brother Doyle as much as it was the gay-bashing evangelicals since it was an open secret that half the bluebloods were same-sex inclined. And everybody knew and accepted it unlike in poor Oscar Wilde’s irate father of Lord Alfred Douglas who was crazy with hate about the whole matter. Where the heck do you think they got the term “Boston marriage” when two unmarried women lived together lesbian splendor.

What has amazed me about this first volley into the art world, or the social aspect of it is that nobody thus far has mentioned word one about why Madame had not allowed herself to be posed in a frontal position by Sargent (and upon further investigation by any other artist with one possible later exception to be mentioned below). That is she did not want her beak-like nose to be fully exposed to the light of day. Apparently Madame was so vain to have that horrendous little pointed nose shown too prominently would have detracted from his sullen suggestive pose. Remember she was using her professional beauty to advance in the world, a hard task for an “ice queen” and so that was her order. Upon further investigation there is some evidence that later in life, in 1907 she did pose in a frontal position but by that time the wear and tear of using her beauty for social advantage, the dissipation showed through. And the nose was even more hideous that I expected. So Madame did make a smart move, very smart. Still I don’t know why nobody in the flutter of responses picked up on that beak even to defend her against my charges that maybe men liked that kind of nose then. Fashion and beauty tend to change with the ages, with time.   

But let’s move on. Finally I can get to the subject matter for today’s piece, John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil which is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (here we go again with the three name moniker business that drives me crazy so let’s call him Alexander and be done with it). Alexander was linked to the Boston School who were for the most part interested in realistic portrayal of whatever subject matter they were painting. When you first go into the room where the painting is located you are immediately drawn to this high Victorian beauty in a great gauzey with sharply drawn flowing lines dressing gown strangely caressing a jar, a big jar with some kind of plant of unknown original within. Looking at the caption provided with the painting tells us that the plants are basil, allegedly associated with love, thwarted love. Upon closer inspection they looked like poppies to me, like the stuff that opium and heroin are made of. The reader may be surprised that the stuff is high end dope and reject that notion out of hand. Don’t be so quick the annals are filled with details of guys like Thomas de Quincy and Sam Coleridge taking the pipe in the days when that stuff was not regulated and frowned upon. Half the high society types were wired to the stuff, to lanadum for their highs in order to get through the day in that stuffy society.

Reading further though gives the reason she is eyes closed in some form of ecstasy, a adherent to some bizarre love cult. This Isabella back a few hundred years ago according to the English poet John Keats who got it from the ribald Italian storyteller Boccaccio had a plebian lover, a good worker for her father’s estate in Italy. A couple of brothers not crazy about kowtowing to a mere commoner killed the lover and buried him out in some ditch far away. Isabella bought their story that lover boy had drifted to the next best thing and had gotten pretty sullen and forlorn about her long-gone lover. Then in a dream, and here I suggest an opium dream or whatever elixir they got high on back then, she figured out the truth, the brothers had killed her lover. She went out and found the body, had the head and put it in the jar to keep forever, or as long as she lived. That is the public story but remember this is stone cold Italy in times when guys like Machiavelli suggested ways to get even with the bad guys. Isabella hired a couple of “hit men” to gain her revenge. And she got it. Then she could go back to her opium dreams and those gentle sensual, sexual caresses of her jarred lover’s head. I expect blowback on this idea but please, please don’t start with those accusations that these are the meanderings of a sex-crazed old lady.