Be the nerd

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently published this picture on her Facebook profile. 

This was, as she stated, “based on Mark [Zuckerberg]'s response to a Facebook comment from a woman who said she encourages her granddaughters to date the nerd in school. Even better, Mark said, would be “to encourage them to *be* the nerd in their school so they can be the next successful inventor.”

The word or, may I say, the characterization “nerd” cannot resonate through me without evoking painful adolescent memories. I was the nerd at my school. One of the nerds. Minimal to no interest in fashion, very poor performance in love matters, below zero cool level. However, I did have excellent grades, was involved in all sorts of extra-curricular activities and appreciated all things art and culture around me.

And this how I usually spent my free time: with a couple of other “nerds”, engaging in “nerdy” activities like watching Coppola movies, attending ballet performances, talking about books, and, of course, study groups (!) while our classmates were out partying and flirting, as “normal” teenagers do.

That was the good part. The bad part was all those parties you were not invited to. And all those hours spent on your own waiting for the break so that you could meet up with your “nerd” friends. And the boys that either ignored you or had to think twice before socializing with you in fear of the high-school “public outcry”.

Of course there had been attempts to infiltrate the cool gang, because, hey, you can’t expect a 13-year old to just meditate and live in the moment when others around you go on shopping sprees and cool kids’ birthday parties. These attempts most of the times failed hopelessly: a classmate had put it very bluntly: “I don’t care what the others think, but I don’t want you in our group, and I want you to leave now” - (thank you for the honesty).

The “nerds” labelling was not only nurtured at school; most of the times, it started from the family. At parent - teacher conferences, my mom had several times heard the term uttered by parents. No wonder this would happen in a society and era (Greek ‘90s) where the general tendency held looks and social status as the most valuable assets.

This analysis could go deeper and deeper, if only I were a qualified psychologist and/or sociologist. But I can’t help thinking about the tall poppy syndrome which had been brought to my attention a couple of decades ago, while still in my “nerd” days, by my aunt. She had recounted to me the story of “the tyrannical Roman King, Tarquin the Proud. He [....] received a messenger from his son Sextus Tarquinius asking what he should do next in Gabii, since he had become all-powerful there. Rather than answering the messenger verbally, Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick, and symbolically swept it across his garden, thus cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies that were growing there.”

This was a revelation. But, whichever way you deal with your issues on a cognitive level, there is always the emotional part that you have to deal with. And trust me, it’s not enough to make you a happy teenager. And unfortunately, this phenomenon does not stop at the end of high school.

But it does get better. Life-changingly better.

Let’s hear it from a “nerd-icon”, Star Trek’s Will Wheaton: “How do you react to being called a nerd? It’s not about what you said, it’s not about what you did or what you love. It’s about them feeling bad about themselves. They feel sad. They don’t get positive attention from their parents. They don’t feel as smart as you. They don’t understand things that you understand. Maybe their parents are pushing them to become something they don’t wanna become. So they take it out on you. The kind and best reaction is to pity them and don’t let them make you feel bad. It definitely gets better as you get older.”

So, is it University life and all the people you meet there that makes it better? Is it the travelling, the moving abroad, all the like-minded people you meet along the way? Is it the success, the career, the partying, the love life, the hobbies? Is it, at the end of the day, just the fact that experience gives you the tools to finally construct a life where you can BE YOURSELF regardless of how you look and what or who you love? Each and every one of that and all of that together.

As you get older as a “nerd”, and you inexorably become “nerdier” and “nerdier”, but your life gets fuller and fuller, there’s one realization that’s bound to happen: you’ll never regret not even one hour of “nerdiness”. Because that hour has given birth to many hours of success.

Keep studying. Keep rocking.

A Walk of Shame

A part of the darkest history on public display.

A nation that is mature enough and willing to face the ghosts of the past.

We can only overcome our fears by looking straight at them.

Look hard. And never forget.

(all photos © Angeliki Tsapatsari)

The “whores of the Nazis”: Malena, bourgeois monstrosity and the punishment of sexuality

Browsing through my Facebook newsfeed, I recently came across some shocking material: black and white pictures of head shaving and lynching of women after the end of World War II, in France, Italy and elsewhere. Horrifying images of mobs physically abusing and forcibly head shaving women accused of “collaboration with the enemy.” No mercy was shown for “the whores of the Nazis.”

    Who are we talking about exactly? The categories under which “collaboration with the enemy by a female” was classified were roughly four: political/ideological collaboration, it goes without saying, meaning women that actively collaborated or sympathized with the Axis cause and/or relevant organizations. Secondly, women that were accused of financial collaboration with the enemy, having benefited and profited from business dealings with the Occupying forces. Thirdly, if the woman originated from a country that had sided with the Axis. And, lastly, women accused of having forged personal relationships with occupying soldiers.

     Public lynching is neither legally nor morally acceptable as a punishment for any of the above mentioned activities. But it is particularly outrageous when it comes as a punishment of sexuality and personal relationships. I read an academic’s very succinct comment on this:

“What crime was it exactly, to sleep with an occupying soldier? What form of military cooperation was it to bear the child of a German? And why were there only women punished for their sexuality?

   I suspect that the main reason for which the “whores of the Nazis” were lynched in France and other countries was in order to hide the national responsibility, and the undeniable fact that the majority of the country collaborated with the occupation; not in bed, but giving away Jews, working in the Axis factories, and in other forms.

   Equally savage was the rape of German women by explicit directive of the Red Army. Which war crime had they committed, and how an actual war crime in reprisal could work as a punishment of the former?

  Pure vengeance never equals to more than concealment of our own failures, using the worst prejudices and actually destroying the moral superiority of a just cause.”

   

   I would like to throw the spotlight on the last phrase, “... actually destroying the moral superiority of a just cause.” Having had a grandfather that fought in the war against Nazism and a grandmother that suffered thoroughly because of this, I could not agree more. These acts of cruel “vengeance” destroyed the moral superiority of the just and holy cause of fighting Nazism. These acts followed in the ideological, vindictive trail of inhumane overkills such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, as many jurists have claimed through the decades, the legally flawed Nuremberg trials.

 Who perpetrated these acts of “vengeance” and why? Usually it was a mob of “indignant citizens” acting based on a sense of self-proclaimed moral superiority, unable to accept in their communities “tainted women”, “the whores of the Nazis”.  These were people that, deeply ashamed of their own insufficiency and cowardliness, thought they could steal some of the War veterans’ splendour by attacking the weaker. One attacked woman outnumbered by ten. This was:

“Jealousy masqueraded as moral outrage, because people envied the food and entertainment these women had received as a result of their conduct.   Some were daubed with tar, some stripped half naked, some marked with swastikas in paint or lipstick. [...] Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment. Revenge on women represented a form of expiation for the frustrations and sense of impotence among males humiliated by their country's occupation. One could almost say that it was the equivalent of rape by the victor.”

   I will never forget the first time I watched Giuseppe Tornatore’s film “Malena”. Even though the film, overall, did not overwhelm me, there is this specific scene that haunts me up to this day. In plainer terms, it makes my stomach turn and fills me with burning rage. We watch a woman, who thought her husband dead at war and who had slept with German occupying officers, getting lynched by a mob of “respectful houswewives” of her town, on Liberation Day, while the men, that had so much admired and venerated her over the years, stand as hapless by-watchers. A few days later, we see the other side of the coin: Malena’s husband has made it back from the war, a war veteran missing one arm. As they stroll peaceful through the small town’s market, heads turn right and left and greet them both respectfully. They can still gossip away as much as they want, but the married couple has been re-instated as a member of their “respectful” community. Their victim is not weak anymore. She has gone back to the same cage of social conventions that they’re in.

   Giuseppe Tornatore has managed to make a very strong dramatic statement on this obscure and monstrous corner of WWII history. He managed to vividly and pungently depict a wide range of emotions and uncomfortable truths: how much jealousy is hidden behind these atrocities, how much Christian guilt, how much sexual deprivation and puritanism, how much grudge towards an exceptionally beautiful and sensual woman… And how many of these “respectful housewives”  wouldn’t have switched positions with her any day, for any price, for a life of food, make-up and nice dresses, only if they had the guts to go against the social conventions…

     Watching a woman getting lynched by other women as a punishment of her sexuality, I cannot help but wonder: is it maybe ourselves, women, that have pushed the situation to these extremes and are equally responsible for our victimization? Women being the sidelined an, in many parts of the world, still oppressed majority, is it our fault that we didn’t raise more open-minded boys and girls? Is it our responsibility that we have not fully realized that we are simply and plainly “the other half of the sky”?

      So, here is what I suggest: next time we are about to celebrate a major national holiday, another anniversary of a glorious war won, of another national struggle that, through sacrifice and valor, was brought to its illustrious ending, let us take a minute to remember and ponder on all those lives of women and children ended or stigmatized. The perishing of these lives, the killing of those dreams never served any military purpose. It serves just as another proof of what I read recently in one of my favourite Greek columns:

“I believe that in revolutions, even if they start out of justified and holy indignation, women and children are (once again) victims greeted with great indifference; the weak are the ones that continue to suffer even during the re-adjustment period.”

The Gangs of New York: tribal chaos in the Big Apple

Recently, I had the chance to watch a movie I had wanted to see for many years but had never managed: Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York. I was aware of several critics classifying the film as a “lesser” Scorsese work,but I was surprised to see that, regardless of the artistic result, which by the way I very much liked, the movie brought forward fundamental issues in a very poignant way.

   Let’s take it from the beginning: is the Gangs of New York another Scorsese mob movie? Yes and no. It is a movie about organized crime and its relations to the corrupt political establishment, violence, prostitution, lives ending abruptly all the time as if they had zero value. But this Scorsese movie goes beyond. Apart from its historical context, it makes a statement, among others, about class conflict, immigration, national identity, racism and the feeling of belonging somewhere.

 The film is characterized throughout by a scenery of abject poverty. For us non-Americans, but for Americans as well I guess, it is hard to imagine New York City in such a way. The social conditions that the film describes resemble more a Dickensian novel, than what we have in mind as life in the Big Apple: the catacombs and the ethnic clothing, the clashes between fire brigade squads and between Municipal and Metropolitan Police came as a total surprise to my European mind, used to view the 19th century American East Coast under the prism of historic figures like Lincoln and the world of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, all sprinkled with lots of New England splendour.

   Indeed, Scorsese has delved successfully into New York’s colonial splendour in an earlier movie, based on the excellent novel by Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence. In both movies, the background is New York City in the 1860s to 1870s, but the lives of their protagonists couldn’t be further apart, even if there were just a few blocks dividing them. We catch a glimpse of the world of the Age of Innocence in the Gangs of New York: it is where Cameron Diaz’s Jenny Everdean grifts for a (still miserable) living; it is there that, when the Draft Riots erupt, the mass breaks into the aristocrats’ mansions, plunders them and threatens or even kills their inhabitants.

   This is the backdrop when another mortal gang clash is about to begin, at the finale of the movie. Amsterdam Vallon has sworn to avenge his father; Bill Cutting is ready to bestow retribution to Amsterdam for the betrayal of his trust and friendship. But this clash is never meant to start: the mass disperses under the bombing of the 20th Independent Battery of New York Volunteer Artillery. Amsterdam and Bill are covered in ashes with the latter dying a while later after he is hit by a shell blast and subsequently stabbed to death by Amsterdam.

   Expectations were being built up towards this battle, the replay of the opening battle, where the reckoning and retribution was meant to happen; but this climax never comes. Or at least not in the way we would expect it. This clash, that seemed so utterly important in the Five Points microcosm, riddled with criminality and misery, is overwhelmed by something much bigger: the conflict of classes.

   As is very wisely stated in a relevant article: “The Gangs of New York suggests that questions of ethnic identity in America will inevitably be overcome by more powerful questions of race and class, as the film demonstrates through the eruption of the Draft Riots and how they ultimately render the ethnic gang wars insignificant.” Gangs, mobsters, masses, Irish and Nativists alike, all were to be drafted to fight in a war they barely understood, sympathized with or wanted; all went down with the shell blasts.

  Scorsese’s statement on the conflict of classes is closely intertwined with the ever-recurrent social issue of immigration. As Coppola had done in The Godfather, Scorsese returns the well-known theme of the arrival of European immigrants’ to New York City. In The Gangs of New York we follow Irish immigration closely. We follow people that are heading from abject poverty to abject poverty plus criminality in their new lives. In addition, the historic juncture is critical: the moment the Irish immigrants set foot in their new homeland they are drafted to fight in the Civil War. And, to top it all off, they will receive a far from warm welcome by the Nativists.

      In the reactions of the Nativists to the massive flow of Irish immigration, we see once again the same old story of racism and resistance to anything new, of conservatism that hampers people from realizing the historic changes going on and vehemently opposing realities that are sure to unravel around them. The Nativist ideals of the day are impersonated by Daniel Day Lewis’s brilliantly vicious Bill Cutting. Bill Cutting thinks of “Americanness” as a bond of blood - his father had fought in the Revolution against the British Empire, therefore, to him, only citizens that have contributed to the birth of their nation can claim to be American. People who just arrived? Send them back to Ireland.

     But the inability of societies to adapt to change is not a social phenomenon we have left behind in the 19th century. As the author already mentioned above puts it, “In a nation torn apart by the debate over illegal immigration from Mexico, it is no surprise that the representation of Irish immigrants in Gangs of New York holds a special relevance to modern audiences.” Societies are highly intolerant to injections of new blood, even if they seem to have adequately defined and resolved fundamental but puzzling issues such as national identity; even if this new blood is running in their own family: with sincere surprise and disgust, I found out recently that the Greek neo-nazist and anti-immigration organization “Golden Dawn” has opened up a new chapter in New York City. This chapter is made up by “Nativists” of a sort. Their selective memory shuns out the lives of their grandparents, who arrived in America in ragged clothes, were held on quarantine on Ellis Island and were sharing packed and filthy rooms paying Five Cents a Spot for a night’s lodging.

   But change always becomes self-evident in the end, even though it has first been ridiculed, fiercely and violently opposed. What politician “Boss” Tweed says to Amsterdam, "I love the Irish, son, but higher than alderman you shall never climb," seems ironic since less than a century later, the first Catholic American of Irish origins occupied the highest office. It was the same ironic smirk I had on my face while watching certain scenes of  Lincoln: “Who among us is prepared to give Negroes the vote? What shall follow upon that? Universal enfranchisement? Votes for women?” 21st century reality in the Western hemisphere would give many of these 19th century fellows quite a shock. I sincerely hope that, 100 years from now, conservatives of our age would be subject to the same sort of shock.

    In the end, what The Gangs of New York teach us is that the world has learned something out of this experience. The US model of presidential democracy, building on the legacy of the Revolution, with all its flaws, has set an example of how to deal with complex issues such as national identity, multiculturalism, equality before the law. No-one has said it better than the director himself: “The country was up for grabs, and New York was a powder keg. This was the America not the West with its wide open spaces, but of claustrophobia, where everyone was crushed together [...] It was chaos, tribal chaos. Gradually, there was a street by street, block by block, working out of democracy as people learned somehow to live together. If democracy didn't happen in New York, it wasn't going to happen anywhere.”

Goodbye Lenin, Hello Angela

                                                            © Angeliki Tsapatsari

 

                                                            © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                  © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                   © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                   © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                   © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                       © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                   © Angeliki Tsapatsari

More Walls to Tear Down (Part I)

                                                              © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                              © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                               © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                              © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                               © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                               © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                               © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                                © Angeliki Tsapatsari

                                                               © Angeliki Tsapatsari

"Τραγούδα λεύτερη καρδιά...": Μια μαντινάδα για το Γιάννη Χαρούλη

    Χτες βράδυ είχα την χαρά να παρακολουθήσω τη ζωντανή εμφάνιση ενός νέου Ελληνα καλλιτέχνη με μοναδικό στίγμα, του Γιάννη Χαρούλη. Οι εμφανίσεις του στο Βοτανικό τις ημέρες της ολιγοήμερης παραμονής μου στην πατρίδα ήταν μια πολύ ευχάριστη σύμπτωση που δε θα άφηνα να πάει χαμένη. Ηταν μια βραδιά μαγική, πανθομολογούμενα. Πολλά τα highlights, οι αναμνήσεις και τα συναισθήματα στον απότοκό της.

     

    Θυμήθηκα πόσο διαφορετικό είναι απλά να αγαπάς και να παρακολουθείς έναν καλλιτέχνη από το ραδιόφωνο, την τηλεόραση και το Youtube από το να ΧΑΙΡΕΣΑΙ μια ζωντανή παράσταση. Και πόσο μάλλον όταν ο καλλιτέχνης αυτός δεν είναι απλά διεκπεραιωτικός, δεν κυνηγάει απλά το μεροκάματο του σήμερα. Η μουσική είναι το οξυγόνο για το είναι του και ο παλμός του διαπερνάει όλο το κοινό του. «Τελευταία βραδιά απόψε, ρε γαμώτο» είπε χτες ο Γιάννης, και σου έδινε την αίσθηση ότι εκείνη τη στιγμή δεν θα ήθελε να είναι πουθενά αλλού στον κόσμο. Δεν θυμάμαι τρία encore σε καμία άλλη εμφάνιση καλλιτέχνη και το ακροατήριο να σείεται και για τέταρτο, να ζητάει κι άλλο.

    Μια συναυλία όμως δεν είναι μόνο ένας καλλιτέχνης και το έργο του. Μια συναυλία, αν αφεθείς ελεύθερος, μπορεί να σε ταξιδέψει μακριά, έξω από τους τέσσερις τοίχους του χώρου, σε μέρη πολλά και αναμνήσεις γλυκόπικρες.

    Μα γιατί το τραγούδι να’ναι λυπητερό... Τα ζεστά καλοκαιρινά βράδια της προεφηβείας μου, με το παράθυρα, τις μπαλκονόπορτες και το ραδιόφωνο ανοιχτά, να κολλάω στον κρύο τοίχο για να ξεφύγω για λίγο του καύσωνα και το τραγούδι αυτό να γεμίζει χαμηλόφωνα το χώρο. Χρόνια μετά, έλα πάρε με, σ’ άλλα ταξίδια μακρινά στου δειλινού τα μενεξιά. Αλλα χρόνια, ίδια αίσθηση...

    Πώς να μην ταξιδέψεις στην Κρήτη; Βράδια στα Χανιά να περπατάς στα πλακόστρωτα κάτω από τις βουκαμβίλιες, να οδηγείς το καταμεσήμερο στα βουνά με την ήλιο κάθετο και το άνυδρο τοπίο της Νότιας Κρήτης να σε κοιτάει αυστηρά. Βοσκαρουδάκι αμούστακο στα όρη που γυρίζεις. Η δωρικότητα και ο πόνος που ακόμα στάζουν οι τοίχοι της Σπιναλόγκας. Μαύρη πεταλούδα. Όσο βαρούν τα σίδερα, βαρούν τα μαύρα ρούχα. Η μουσική σαν αέρας που σε ταξιδεύει πετώντας μεσα απο τα στενά. Πάνω στην ουρά του αλόγου. Απομεσήμερα ανάμεσα στα λιόδεντρα, όλοι μου λεν ν’ απαρνηθώ του Λασιθιού το δρόμο, μα εγώ θα πηαίνω να’ ρχομαι για ένα χατήρι μόνο. Φίλοι να σε κερνάνε ρακές βράδυ, Δεκαπενταύγουστο, στην ακροθαλασσιά και μια λύρα να δίνει το ρυθμό κάπου στο βάθος, μια ντουφεκιά ζαχαρωτή από ένα τρανζιστοράκι που να λέει «Δεύτερο Πρόγραμμα της Ελληνικής Ραδιοφωνίας, ο Κώστας από Μελβούρνη αφιερώνει σε όλους τους συγχωριανούς του» και να σε φτάνει στην άκρη του κόσμου. Και να λες, τι είναι η Ελλάδα; Η απεραντοσύνη της που ταξιδεύει πάνω από πολιτείες και πελάγη και απλώνεται σ΄ όλη τη Γη. Μέχρι το χάραμα. Μέχρι να φύγουμε πάλι. Για δρόμους που δε θέλησα, στις χαραυγές ξεχνιέμαι.

    Οσο κλισέ κι αν ακούγεται, η μουσική παράδοση παραμένει ζωντανή. Εξελίσσεται, αναπτύσσεται και ευημερεί, τζαμάροντας με ντραμς κι ηλεκτρικές κιθάρες μεταφέροντας το χτες στο σήμερα και το σήμερα στο αύριο. Δεξιοτεχνία στο κλαρίνο και την τσαμπούνα και μαλλί ράστα και εκρηκτικό hard rock λαούτο με μπόλικο headbanging. Το κοινό να παραληρεί. Οι μουσικοί έβαλαν μέσα την ψυχή τους και ευλόγησαν την παντρειά του παλιού με το ροκ του μέλλοντός μας. Λοιπόν ναι, την παράδοση την έχουμε ήδη πακετάρει σε καινούργιες φρεσκοαγορασμένες βαλίτσες και την παίρνουμε μαζί μας, με προορισμό το 2100 και ακόμα παραπέρα.

    Και τι να πρωτοπείς για τον πρωταγωνιστή της βραδιάς; Ηλεκτρική ενέργεια, μεταδοτικότητα, παλμός ξεσηκωτικός; Αυτά είναι σήμα κατατεθέν Χαρούλη, κινδυνεύω και πάλι να γίνω κλισέ... Θα κρατήσω τρια, λιγότερο προφανή αλλά πολύ σημαντικά, χαρακτηριστικά: μια αν δεν πω συστολή, θα πω σεμνότητα και λιτότητα, στα λόγια, στις εκφράσεις, στην όλη παρουσία. Τον τιμά αφάνταστα μπροστά σε ένα κοινο που πάλλεται και σείεται εξαιτίας του. Τον τιμά ακόμα περισσότερο στην εποχή της ακατάσχετης λογοδιάρροιας και πολιτικολογίας των πάντων επί παντός, στην εποχή που όλοι θα πουν την άποψή τους ακόμα και αν δεν είναι και πολύ σίγουροι για το πως τη σχημάτισαν, ακόμα κι αν ο χώρος είναι μια μουσική συναυλία. Ο Χαρούλης εκφράστηκε μέσα από τα τραγούδια. Άλλωστε, ποιό πολιτικό σχόλιο θα ήταν ποτέ πιο οξυδερκές και γεμάτο νόημα από τα «Μαλαματένια Λόγια»; Κρατάω επίσης το συναίσθημα, την αναφορά του στους γονείς του, «το Μανωλιό και το Λενιώ»,  «μακριά από το νησί μου κι από κείνη π’ αγαπώ» και το μεταδοτικό του χαμόγελο που φαντάζει τόσο πηγαίο. Η πορεία του ως τώρα με κάνει να πιστεύω ακράδαντα οτι αυτή η μετριοφροσύνη θα συνεχίσει να τον συνοδεύει. Εύχομαι και το χαμόγελο.

    Χτες βράδυ, το εσωτερικό μου ημερολόγιο έδειξε Άνοιξη. Ο παλμός αυτής της συναυλίας  ήταν η αρχή της Άνοιξης και ο προάγγελος ενός ακόμα Μεγάλου Ελληνικού Καλοκαιριού που με το καλό θα ακολουθήσει. Θα έπρεπε ίσως να κλείσω με κάποια βαρύγδουπη, ίσως κάπως θολή έκφραση αλλά η πολύ καλώς εννοούμενη λαϊκότητα, απλότητα και νεανικότητα της χτεσινής βραδιάς δε θα μου το επέτρεπε. Δίνουμε ραντεβού με το Γιάννη και την παρέα του για κάποια φεγγαρολουσμένο καλοκαιρινό βράδυ σε κάποια γωνιά της Ελλάδας. Μέχρι τότε, «Τραγούδα λεύτερη καρδιά, με το ριζίτη τρόπο, αίμα είναι το τραγούδι σου στσι φλέβες των ανθρώπω».