Metropolitan Museum Evokes "1984," "The Sympathizer"

The latest development at New York's Metropolitan Museum brings to mind books like George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" and the equally grim tale "The Sympathizer" by Viet Thanh Nguyen. In both stories, the chief protagonist runs afoul of an authoritarian regime and as part of his punishment, must make confessions.

On Nov. 26, 2020, the New York Times ran an article in its art section that the Met had appointed its first Chief Diversity Officer, Lavita McMath Turner, a Black woman with experience in such matters, most recently at the City University of New York.  That's not a big surprise.  Many major U.S. cultural institutions have recently taken a similar step.  Moreover, as the NYT article pointed out, the NY city government informed its cultural institutions that if they didn't take steps to diversify their staffs, they might lose some of their public funding. 

What most interested me was an element of confession associated with the Met's announcement.  It came at least in part as a result of a staff letter five months ago, the NYT said, that urged the museum's leaders to acknowledge "a deeply rooted logic of white supremacy and culture of systemic racism at our institution."

The notions of white supremacy and systemic racism are key phrases and concepts in the current movement that sometimes go as far as attempting to "cancel culture" in bringing about change, much of which is arguably overdue. If one doesn't decry "white supremacy" and "systemic racism" in those terms, however, one is insufficiently "woke" and, well, might suffer the fate of Orwell's Winston Smith or Nguyen's anonymous narrator -- periods of punishment and correction.

While those advocating such a reconsideration of the very basis of U.S. society tend to paint it in terms of a moral awakening and reckoning, is also purely and simply a power struggle.

The Met's President and CEO Daniel H. Weiss and Direct Max Hollein stopped short of repeating the key phrases -- "white supremacy" and "systemic racism" -- in the institution's July 6, 2020 mea culpa. But the document made it clear that a confession along such lines is in the offing.

"Our government, policies, systems, and institutions have all contributed to perpetuating racism and injustice, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art must reflect on its past and aspire to be an agent of change," the July 6 statement said.

Along with promised reforms and new initiatives on various fronts -- hiring, staffing, collecting, exhibitions, etc. -- substantive change "will also require that we understand our past and that we accept the importance of truth-seeking as a necessary part of the process of learning and reconciliation."  

In other words, forward-looking reforms are not enough. 

"A set of commitments to anti-racism cannot begin without an honest assessment of an institution’s own history and present practices. This process will require that we investigate our own history and that we accept the importance of truth-seeking as an essential element of healing and reconciliation. We will begin this work in the coming year through an institution-wide initiative and produce a public report."

That was number one on the list of steps the Museum said it planned to take.

In writing this, I don't mean to beat up on the Met per se.  It's just that these developments are an excellent example of the nature of the culture war in which the U.S. is currently engulfed, and particularly in the arena of high-culture arts and that of academia. 

But at the same time, they give rise to an interesting question: if the Met's forthcoming self-examination concludes that the institution and thus its leadership have been complicit in preserving white supremacy and that the Met is part of systemic racism, can Weiss survive as president and CEO? It's hard to have it both ways.

 

Humdrum-Sex, Disturbing Violence Loom Large in "Ghoul"

 Back about four years ago, when I was reading The New Yorker regularly (I stopped because I thought the magazine's coverage of the arts had significantly deteriorated), I came to realize that most of its weekly short stories were "downers."  You can read what I had to say about that here.

Well, I decided to re-subscribe and the latest short story, "Ghoul," by George Saunders, fits easily into that trend. It's unrelentingly dystopian if rather imaginatively set in an underground theme park that calls to mind Dante's "Inferno."

Asked in a New Yorker author interview whether the story has a message, perhaps as a metaphor to the current U.S. sociopolitical situation, Saunders said he didn't know what his story meant. He described it, in effect, as an exercise in writing -- an attempt to write something that will "try to get the reader to finish the story -- no easy feat -- by making each little motion of the narrative compelling."

How does he accomplish that? In large part in the tried and true manner -- heavy doses of sex and violence. Not much in the way of innovation there, but as we know, sex and violence sells -- and the New Yorker pays authors well for the stories it publishes.  

While the sex is depicted as rather casual, very open "mating" about which no one is much concerned, the violence is another story.  This theme park is run on the basis of a bunch of rules and the population (sort of a circus-performer-like tribe) is encouraged to rat on each other when transgressions take place.  As opposed to Dante, that brings to mind George Orwell and "1984." Those deemed guilty in "Goul" are kicked to death by their colleagues and friends, and one way to break the rules is to not kick hard enough.

When the chief protagonist, a man named Brian, gets involved in one of these situations, he has a bit of an awakening that Saunders identifies as perhaps the most significant moment in the tale.

“Sometimes in life the foundation upon which one stands will give a tilt, and everything that one has previously believed and held dear will begin sliding about, and suddenly all things will seem strange and new.” [Brian thinks to himself]  Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I find I’ve reached the same conclusion as Brian (aided, I’d say, by the process of writing this story): it depends. It depends on what we do next in the face of this new understanding of ourselves."  So Saunders told the New Yorker.

Readers can make of that what they will and that's the point, Saunders would say.

George Orwell: Frighteningly Prescient With More To Come

A May 2015 post entitled "Fiction of the Future" was the first in which I discussed the idea that one purpose of literature is to look ahead and try to imagine what might come of us, unconstrained by prevailing limits of scientific or other relevant knowledge. Therein, I cited George Orwell's 1940 novel "Nighteen Eighty-Four" as probably the most famous title within this genre.

Thanks to a service called "LitHub Daily," I just read a thoroughly researched, exceptionally chilling article by Stephen Rohde that shows how very prescient Orwell was.  Entitled "Big Brother Is Watching You: Is America at Risk of Becoming Orwell’s Nightmare?" and published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, this rather lengthy piece is highly recommended.

There is little more to say about the subject now, but I suspect I will return to the topic in the future.
 

Fiction That Forecasts the Future

The lead article in the Book Review section of the Monday, May 17, 2015 "New York Times" took a look at two non-fiction offerings that purport to forecast the future.

In "The Rise of the Robots," Martin Ford argues that even the well-educated will soon face a jobless future as a result of increasingly sophisticated technology. Meanwhile, Craig Lambert, in "Shadow Work," notes that there will still be plenty of work that needs to be done -- much of it rather menial because, well, humans will still be humans. But no one will pay for it.

I mention these books not for their own sake, but rather because the NYT review reminded me that one of the roles of fiction is to look into the future.