Walls of the mind

Today is the 49th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall. The beginnings of the Wall date from 13 August 1961. Back then few thought the hastily-constructed barrier would stand for over twenty-eight years. At the time it was conceived as a way of stopping the flood of East Germans out of their dysfunctional country and into the more promising West. For a while it seemed to have the desired affect and the East German economy began to stabilise. People settled in and began to find a way to co-exist in the shadow of the Cold War.

Almost fifty years later, and over twenty years after the fall of the Wall in November 1989, the division of Germany is still present in many respects. Surveys show that only 61 percent of former East Germans are pleased with today's unified Germany. In the former West the figure is 71 percent. Economic differences remain pronounced. Progress toward the reduction of wage differentials between the two former states has been slow.

The continuing after-affects of the Wall is testimony to the power of mental barriers, the walls in people's minds. Many conflict zones around the world still have walls and there are many other more (slightly) subtle barriers that are designed to keep poor people out of wealthy western countries. The East Germans government built its wall to keep people in. Today most western governments are building virtual (and real) walls to keep people out. Either way, the most inhibiting walls, barriers and boundaries are in the heads of politicians and their short-sighted supporters.

Photo: one of the few remaining sections of the wall in its original location. Taken in January 2010.

Instant gratification, flamenco and cultural hollowness

Recently I was at the wedding of two friends. The bride was a Spanish woman who comes from a family of flamenco dancers and teachers. Her mother, cousins and aunts are all initiated into the proud tradition of Spanish dance. At the reception we were all treated to a wonderful display of flamenco by the bride and her extended family.

Beyond the entertainment value of the dancing the revelation of this occasion was the respect shown by the younger women to their older relatives on the dance floor. The young dancers were all very talented and capable, but as the elder generation of women came to dance it was clear that there was something in their dancing that it takes a lifetime to learn, something that only people who had experienced some of life could understand and express. It was also something that the younger women clearly respected while knowing that they could only learn to master their danceform through decades of dedication.

But western society has become so dominated by a youth cult that we have lost sight of this extra something on display on this night. Fast, strong, youthful and beautiful bodies are all that count. Experience, patience, long-term dedication and devotion to a lifetime's project are not the kind of attributes that cut much ice today. Instant gratification, short-term thinking and the expectation that people in their early thirties should already have everything sorted have killed off lifetime achievements and left us with the hollowness at the heart of so much of our contemporary culture.

Grab for cash an admission of musical bankruptcy

The Vienna Philharmonic is a great orchestra with a wide and fascinating repertoire. Every year on New Year's Day it plays the world's most famous orchestral concert. This is also one of the most lucrative events in the classical music calendar. The global TV rights alone see to that.

But New Year's day comes but once a year. And so in recent years the orchestra has been mounting an outdoor concert in the grounds of the picturesque Schönbrunn Palace in June. So far so good. But why does the program have to be more or less the same old waltz fare that traditionally dominates the January concert? This year's Schönbrunn concert began promisingly enough with film music from John Williams' Star Wars score. But already the second number threw us back into the ballroom of the Strauss clan and their ilk.

The result is an admission of programming failure and musical bankruptcy. Of course an outdoor concert on a warm summer night needs toe-tapping favorites, but overloading the program with Viennese schmaltz tells the casual viewer at home that there is no entertaining classical music other than the same old waltz numbers. It is a pity when there is so much other great music for a balmy summer evening.

Gustav Mahler, 150 years old and a man of our time

Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday was celebrated yesterday. The great Austrian composer once predicted that his time would come and history has proven him right. His ten symphonies are now fixed stars in the international orchestral repertoire, despite their great technical demands on players and the financial demands on orchestra managements thanks to the large number of players required.

But as recently as the 1960s Mahler's music was still exotic and rarely performed. Many commentators have commented on parallels between Mahler's musical world and the spiritual needs of our world. The man himself, a complex mix of intense and demanding perfectionism and a touching fragility seems to resonate with our time. His struggle with religious belief makes Mahler familiar to us. He wants to believe but never quite succeeds.

The kaleidoscopic shifts in the music anticipate the cutting between scenes and camera angles in modern cinema. Mahler's integration of musical material from outside the world of "classical" music is a premonition of postmodernism

Gustav Mahler is 150 years old and yet an artist of our time. Many happy returns!

Pulp fiction reaches the papers

What should we do about newspapers? They are increasingly controlled by companies that are focused primarily on short-term profit. Their pages are dominated by infotainment and lifestyle features and in many papers the content has been forced to the edges by full-page and half-page advertising. Experienced journalists are being fired and ever more content is syndicated with a resulting drop in diversity of opinion. The attempt to maintain a semblance of political independence and objectivity in commentary seems to have gone out of fashion. The German public intellectual Jürgen Habermas has written an excellent article on this question (see 'Media, Markets and Consumers: the Quality Press as the Backbone of the Political Sphere' in Europe The Faltering Project (2009).

Newspaper publishers argue that the problem lies on the demand rather than the supply side. They believe that the public is losing interest in serious political, economic or social analysis and journalism. Circulation is all that counts, and they cannot make people read (and pay for) content that does not interest them. Some commentators argue that the blogosphere and other new-media sources are compensating for the decline in serious journalism in the traditional press. Others are skeptical about such claims.

Meanwhile an information divide is emerging in many western societies. A small elite is aware of how information and opinion is controlled and manipulated. Its members use the few remaining sources of quality journalism and information to further cement their power. They are well enough educated and experienced to cut through the infotainment flood. The great mass of the population seems happy to surrender any potential role in the intellectual and political structuring of the society in which they live. The entertainment of superficial and short-lived "scandals" - usually about "them up there" - suffices to satisfy the desire to feel "informed". The attention span is short and the next breaking celebrity divorce or restaurant review is only a flick of a page away.

Whither Britain's cultural life?

Britain has finally emerged from the political wilderness of the last week when the election of a hung parliament led to five days of speculation as to who would become the next Prime Minister. People interested in culture and the arts will now be wondering what the future holds under a coalition government led by the Tory David Cameron.

Experience shows that the most important feature of an arts minister or prime minister, as far as the cultural sector is concerned - is their level of personal engagement with the arts and culture. Political ideology is not so important. In Australia, the Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating was famous for his love of orchestral music, in particular the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. It was on his watch that Australia's one and only national cultural policy, Creative Nation, was launched in 1994.

Today, self-confessed arts aficionados are rare amongst politicians. They are keen to be seen in the crowd at sports events, but not at the arts. With most politicians these days keen to portray themselves as followers rather than leaders - thus there obsession with opinion polls - any appreciation of the arts is probably refined to the prime ministerial living room.

The UK's previously shadow minister for the arts, Jeremy Hunt, claims to enjoy opera and says that arts funding will not be radically cut under the new government. Only time will tell a) whether the new UK coalition can stand the pressures of running the country, and b) whether David Cameron really gets culture and the arts.

The White Ribbon

Don't miss Michael Haneke's new film The White Ribbon. I don't normally do reviews or straight recommendations here, but this film is a must.

It has the power to restore your faith in film as a medium. Shot in black and white and with almost no music, the film's austerity is a great antidote to the many contemporary films that are overburdened by effects, flashy sets and locations. Its claustrophobic intensity means that the 144 minutes pass with 'ease'.

Like any great film, The White Ribbon leaves you with more questions than it answers. Some commentators see it as a study of prototypical National Socialism. But that is too simple. The strict social hierarchies, deep-seated deference to authority and willingness to "turn a blind eye" are all features of the village Haneke depicts. They are also prerequisites for fascism. But they were, in 1913, not exclusive to Germany. They could also describe life for many people in countries such as Britain, France, Sweden, the USA and Australia. And yet these countries did not adopt Fascism in the 1920s and 30s.

That said, it is fascinating to watch the film and think that the children who were around the age of ten in 1913 would become members of the generation that were the leaders and decision makers of the Third Reich. The real perpetrators, Hitler's Willing Executioners, to borrow the title of Daniel Goldhagen's book, were on average in their late thirties and early forties during the Third Reich, most having been born around 1905. Haneke's film is a thought provoking study of their collective childhood.

It is also very welcome to have a film about a period of European history - the last days before World War I - that has been overshadowed by films about events during and surrounding World War II. In many ways the latter conflict cannot be understood without having familiarity with the earlier war. Haneke's film is a wonderful contribution to establishing that familiarity.