March 2010

The big next project is on Alisa Zinov’evna Rosenbaum, who is better known in the US as Ayn Rand. I’m attempting to illustrate her novels using images from Stalin’s Socialist Realism. Rand’s imagery is hyper-romantic, monumental and heroic. Very similar to the Socialist Realist formula, if you think about it. The difference is of course that while in Socialist Realism, it’s the Worker who is heroic, while in Rand’s texts it’s the Industrialist. Aside from that it’s uncanny how similar the two styles are.

So, twenty years on, is there a significance to the shared sexuality of these captains of media, or is it just biography? I don’t know if gayness can ever just be background. In our overheated culture, sexual preference is central to personality—particularly when it’s so closely guarded. Successful people who choose to remain in the closet are necessarily excellent adapters. The closet is a hothouse specially designed to chameleons. It creates extreme extroversion, which allowed both men to be so flexible, and so eager to be a part of what was happening next. Wenner and Geffen had a choice between being in with the in crowd or being out of the closet.

Viewed in this way, the film’s notion of bureaucracy and institutional structure appears quite unconventional. In the classic Weberian model, bureaucracy is characterized by meritocratic values, impersonal legal norms, and a particular kind of instrumental rationality; according to popular stereotype, bureaucracies are staffed by faceless functionaries and prize process over results. Yet here, the bureaucracy is defined precisely by the personal relationships that subsist between its employees. Its fault is not that it is too abstract or too by-the-book. Quite the opposite: bureaucratic politics in Seventeen Moments of Spring is quintessentially narrow-minded and myopic. It sins, in short, by refusing engagement with abstract questions.

Even when I was little I can even remember doing somewhat provocative things. One episode comes to mind that certainly wasn’t filmed but was definitely a performance, though I guess a more site-specific, ephemeral one. My 8th grade class went on a field trip to an alligator river to go canoeing and I found a way to jump or fall into the water. I’m still not really sure which it was. I think it was pretend to fall but jump. There were alligators – not sure why 8th graders were canoeing in water with alligators but whatever – and it was such a big to-do. I then inspired many other people to jump into the water and it was mayhem. I don’t remember exactly what happened. It was like the work spread and on different field trips everyone was jumping out of their canoe.