Beethoven

Iraq

During a brief respite from the attacks that have paralyzed his city, an Iraqi man takes his children out for ice cream. For one moment on the news, America sees an Iraqi father watch his children lap up soft serve during an ordinary moment of family togetherness. The man shrugs when asked if he believes that peace is near. He is philosophical, not hating (or loving) America or the Iraqi fundamentalist insurgents. He merely regrets the circumstances that have inhibited the course of his ordinary life. Other images, like soldiers 'rapping' with Iraqi children might seem like more radical cultural mergers of American and Iraqi society are really just status quo images of wartime and have parallels with other typical dramatic media images of war, like the tearing down of the statue of Lenin. But this image of an apparently ordinary day is really the most avante guard image -- it shows that Iraqis just want to get on with their lives. Their culture is not exotic and most Iraqis are obsessed with religion or politics. Most people remember personal aspects of their lives as fond memories, not the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and they are not dreaming of democracy in the form of a republican legislature, they merely want their children to be happy. This is what connects Americans with Iraqis more fundamentally -- a common humanity, not abstract desires to change the government.

Discussion 2: Beethoven

This passage prompts the question -- why do we tend to classify Beethoven as a Romantic artist and David as Neoclassical? After all, both artists combined Romantic and Neoclassical elements in their composition. Perhaps the answer is that when we listen to a composition by Beethoven, we feel as listeners that we have gained a sense of who Beethoven was like as a man, the emotions that moved him as a human being. David, in contrast, although he had clear political views that shifted and evolved over the course of the French Revolution to the rule of Napoleon is not an emotional presence in his paintings. David's paintings seem to be historical, almost photographic depictions of 'real life' or imagined real life in the classical past like the "Oath of the Horatii." His paintings seem to be about other people, like Napoleon or Marat, not about himself, unlike Beethoven's works, where Beethoven's emotions seem to bubble beneath the surface.