A Role Model From The Hunger Games

Busy week. The big chore was a profile and drawing, both of mega-structure architect Paolo Soleri, for Zenith City Weekly. When I started this series, I thought I could pull the profiles out of my skull. They all take research.

Last weekend, Sam and Marissa took us to the opening of The Hunger Games. Directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Sea Biscuit), based on the novel by Suzanne Collins, HG is set in a dystopian future US, in which the dominant Capital exact tribute from its twelve provinces in the form of twenty-four teenagers who battle to the death of all but one on television. Jennifer Lawrence carries the show as the identity figure, with Josh Hutcherson as co-fighter and love interest. Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, and, especially, Woody Harrelson lead a strong chorus.

The Capital is all flamboyant manners, contrasted with a Dorothea Lange grittiness in the provinces.

Two reactions.

Dystopia seems appropriate now, a reaction to our current peril, but I couldn't detect a justifying glimmer of the society I know in this film (or in the book). Nor could I trace a path from now to the world of HG.  I see two opposing points of view as possible foundations for an honest dystopia.

One is currently dominant, growing out of the 2008 recession and weak recovery, and Tea Party populism. In this view, taxation and regulation limit the engines of progress, that is capitalism, industry and technology. This imnpoverishes society and threatens a becoming human existence. Probably it threatens civilization.

In the other view, materialism mistakes capital for income, sees 20th century ingenuity at consuming capital as technological triumph over scarcity, and demands more in the face of overshot limits.

Maybe that's a little too deep. HG is a bagatelle, and taking a position on the economic controversy of our time might limit its greatest virtue. There were three little girls in front of us, two sisters and a friend, escorted by the sisters' father. The younger sister was probably eight, the friend and the older sister may have been eleven. They had all read the book, in fact they had read the entire trilogy,  and were excited to see the film. Jennifer Lawrence's character is steadfast, strong, self-sacrificing, competent, kind, moral, and (begrudgingly) flexible. She's a real heroine.

The closest comparable action hero Barbara and I could think of was Ripley in the Alien movies, which weren't made for girls of tender years. The girls in front of us and their generation have an advantage none of their older sisters did.

Jill From Tuesday Night

I'm getting more confidant, and minding clumsinesses like the hands in the bottom study less. The humanoid smudge is a fifteen-minute blind contour, using the same pen as the other drawing on the page.

Discovered with Patrica at Drawing Group that we both have spent time following the instructions of Kimon Niccolaides' The Natural Way to Draw, she more than I, and with a student of Niccolaides, and at the Art Students' League.

I rediscovered Marshall McLuhan a few weeks ago, and thinking about media as environments and massages has been really juicy. It's been a no-brainer (snicker) to sort of map McLuhan onto more recent brain research: f'rinstance, Germans got volunteers to learn to juggle, and found that they started making new brain tissue. We're tripping across similar info frequently these days. So that's how the massage works. Anything you do is a skill, including understanding a television commercial.

Now I need to map that onto ecology, limits to growth, sexual liberty, etc., etcetera being Teilhard's and Soleri's notion that we will take conscious, somatic control of evolution.

Map Of The Universe

Old notes. I don't recall whether I remembered the diagram, or copied it from Soleri's City in the Image of Man. The expository baloney on the bottom and the verso side is all mine.

Dear Can't Learn Less: I have been seeing a new boy for about five weeks. He is attentive and considerate (the sex is great!), but something he said troubles me. He is a vegan, and he claims that veganism is the existentially correct diet. I like meat. I like rib eye steak, pork chops, roast lamb with mint jelly, hot dogs, corned beef, salami, veal, breaded pork tenderloins, hamburgers, prairie oysters, roast beef, sloppy joes, bratwurst, chateaubriand, jerky, heart, brains, kidneys, tongue, Virginia ham, Canadian bacon, Swiss Steak, filet mignon, and don't get me started on sea food. I want blood, guts, and veins in my teeth. Is he right?


Bemused Carnivore


Dear Bemused Carnivore: Unlax. There's no existentially correct anything, but everything has consequences. What do you want? If you want to spend a lot of time with your dentist, keep a Tootsie Pop in your mouth anytime you're not drinking soda pop. If you want a reputation for flatulence, continue with the diet you described. Your vegan friend (I'm glad you're getting your oven cooled) is probably concerned that eating animal products causes pain to sentient beings, but he probably also believes that a plant diet is ecologically and economically superior. I have my own thoughts on that. In any case, what do you value? Do some homework and design a diet that promotes the kind of world you value. At the very least, though, eat your vegetables and get some fiber in your guts. Your friends will thank you.

Shared Esthetic: Bonticou's Peeps