Saturday, December 15, 2007

Leni Fiefenstahl - Africa


First Exhibit. Here is a book of 126 splendid color photographs by Leni Riefenstahl, certainly the most ravishing book of photographs published anywhere in recent years. In the intractable mountains of the southern Sudan live about eight thousand aloof, godlike Nuba, emblems of physical perfection, with large, well-shaped, partly shaven heads, expressive faces, and muscular bodies that are depilated and decorated with scars; smeared with sacred gray-white ash, the men prance, squat, brood, wrestle on the arid slopes.

And here is a fascinating layout of twelve black-and-white photographs of Riefenstahl on the back cover of The Last of the Nuba, also ravishing, a chronological sequence of expressions (from sultry inwardness to the grin of a Texas matron on safari) vanquishing the intractable march of aging. The first photograph was taken in 1927 when she was twenty-five and already a movie star, the most recent are dated 1969 (she is cuddling a naked African baby) and 1972 (she is holding a camera), and each of them shows some version of an ideal presence, a kind of imperishable beauty, like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's, that only gets gayer and more metallic and healthier-looking with old age. And here is a biographical sketch of Riefenstahl on the dust jacket, and an introduction (unsigned) entitled "How Leni Riefenstahl came to study the Mesakin Nuba of Kordofain"—full of disquieting lies. - Fascinating Fascism
by Susan Sontag


14 comments:

Michael Fisher said...

DV, are you trying to make up for your recent faux pas by exhibiting the works of Hitler's favorite film maker, photographer, and propagandist?

CNu said...

Linking it might help folk unfamiliar with the theocratic ouevre DV, or unaccustomed to thinking in the language of form....,

CNu said...

Not many people familiar with the innermost preoccupations of the architects of the reich....,

Michael Fisher said...

Hmmm...

So you're posting the commentary of one known racist, Susan Sontag, of the works of another known racist, Leni Riefenstahl.

Interesting.

Denmark Vesey said...

Faux Pas?

Moi?

Nah.

Even my errors are correct.

Denmark Vesey said...

Michael Fisher said... "So you're posting the commentary of one known racist, Susan Sontag, of the works of another known racist, Leni Riefenstahl.

Interesting."


Ah Mike. Come on man. You know me better than that. I’m a hustler trafficking in ideas and thought.

I don’t need white people enough to think of them as “racists”.

A good idea is a good idea regardless of the intellectually lazy racial psychobabble projected onto its author.

Mike,

Who aint a racist?

Michael Fisher said...

DV...

"Who aint a racist?"

For one I, for two, you, for three, any non-white person.

achali said...

"Who aint a racist?"

That sounds like someone so overwhelmed with racism that he's excused himself from worrying about it in an effort to escape it, and in turn becomes someone who every now and then might do some racist imitating/reinforcing shit because he no longer cares what's racist and what's not.

Many of us in the U.S. (per what Baldwin warned) do this. I do this on blogs too and in life. Sometimes you wake up and don't want to have to think about a white supremacy and alla that mumbo jumbo. And you just want to post a free mp3 of some white rock band who's music just sounds pleasing. Or post some pictures "that I just find are beautiful" and don't want to have to think about the racist lady behind them, Or you want to hit up a club and drink till you fall on your ass. Or you want to hit up a good restaurant and eat like a pig. Or you want to buy a benz. Or buy a platinum chain. Or bone a white girl. Or whatever.

It's a slippery slope indeed. And they are interrelated.

Because I live in America, without a strong or isolated community to help keep me from that slope, I slip down that slope occasionally. And so I empathize and everyone who slips down that slope no matter how far they sometimes slip.

This is my generation's dilemma, lock stock and barrel. I'm 24, graduated from Howard. We've become disillusioned with having to "battle" every element of this society and so we declare (to ourselves primarily) that it doesn't matter, it doesn't effect us if we don't choose to have it effect us, and when get disenchanted with the idea of being vigilant with our consciousness/awareness of what's ailing us and what needs to be resisted, we loose the desire to analyze things the way Fisher is doing. It becomes a burdensome thing that isolates you from being able to "just be". And we sometimes end up diving right into doing things the way they've been done.

So Fisher, basically he's saying he doesn't care about being as vigilant as you are. He doesn't want to be "worrying" about what is reinforcing and what is not reinforcing white supremacy all the time... or at least not as much as you appear to. He sees yours as over-analysis.

Ever since i've started following this blog and the others in the circle, i've wondered (with no disrespect) why you (Fisher) spend so much time dialogging here?

I can tell that dispite folks cracks on you, you obviously ain't at home stressing over any of these points you make. You're obviously not the 20-something year old Farrakhan "character" in a Spike Lee flick.

So I can only conclude that you either really genuinely love these cats and want to convince these cats (the community that reads these blogs) that the fight is worth fighting and is essential to their progress and survival, or you don't really love these folks and you just have some savior complex that won't allow you to agree to disagree. Yes?

A story I'll never forget is in the book 2000 Seasons, after being kidnapped and put on a ship, our characters escape by performing a rebellion on the ship and steer the ship to shore. Only they don't know where they are. Complicating this is that some of their captors were some of their own tribesmen. The main characters talk among themselves asking each other what they should do. They talk about if they should bring the tribesmen/captors, referred to as "zombies" if i remember right, with them. If they should try and go look for their old village which is possibly destroyed or thousands of miles away. Or if they should build a new village and whether or not the zombies can in their current state be trusted to participate in that building and to what extent. This has been a common symbolic dilemma and is everyday. Basically it's constantly, daily, deciding which battles are worth fighting and when it's time to move on. A hard to solve and reoccurring dilemma indeed.

Michael Fisher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael Fisher said...

achali...

"So I can only conclude that you either really genuinely love these cats and want to convince these cats (the community that reads these blogs) that the fight is worth fighting and is essential to their progress and survival, or you don't really love these folks and you just have some savior complex that won't allow you to agree to disagree. Yes?"

That's an interesting thought.

I certainly have no love for DV becasue I think he is intellectually dishonest and manipulative. Nor do I believe that I will ever convince him. Nor have I the desire too.

I do it because of the black people who read these blogs.

Folks like DV abound throughout the black community confusing the hell out of our youth in particular. So confronting them with rational logical arguments and having folks witness the outcome of these discussions may help black people to reduce the confusion.

If DV didn't exist he'd have to be invented.

Plus look at what has been accomplished.

DV has been talking, ranting, and raving about the Global System of White Supremacy for many weeks now.

The fact that he says it is a crock of bull it ain't important at all. He brought the concept to the table.

Now people have to think about it one way or the other. Once they start using logic...

See?

achali said...

"I do it because of the black people who read these blogs."

Understood.

achali said...

New thought: Fisher, I was thinking that perhaps one tactic that might be more effective/useful/productive for those of us who check out this blog who might "slip" and "indulge" and struggle with this world everyday is for you to maybe make yourself more vulnerable.

That also might defuse the attacks calling you a "high priest", etc.

Because from what I've read in the past few days, you make sense. But I wonder, are you really that strong of a dude? Don't you slip too?

Can you empathize with indulgence? And the desire that folks have to "just be" (even if that desire is in the midst of a war-like world, even if that desire is mistaken or unwise)

Or are you wholly intolerate?

I think a partner in struggle is much more valuable to someone struggling than a priest in the struggle. And because you are human, "black", and live in America, I assume that you are no high priest of blackness, despite the jokes. Maybe it would help and even be strategically wise to admit that indeed you are not a shining example of where everyone needs to be, but rather a person conveying a vision for what we ought to resist, a vision for how to struggle better, a vision for where we might want to go.

Michael Fisher said...

achali...

"But I wonder, are you really that strong of a dude? Don't you slip too?"

Of course I slip.

"are you really that strong of a dude?"

Hmmm...

Never really thought of it that way. But... looking back on my life, I recall that when I was a pre-teen, after having been so, I resolved never again to be weak in the face of injustice.

Injustice just pisses me the fcuk off, if you know what I mean.

Michael Fisher said...

achali...

"despite the jokes"

Well, looking at the "monkey" comment above, who is the one demeaned. The Joker or the Jokee?