The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten's coverage of the US Capitol invasion by Trump's thugs

 

This was the Friday January 8th coverage in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten of the invasion of the US Capitol by Trump's thugs on Wednesday January 6th, a day that will live in infamy. The first fifteen pages of the newspaper that day were devoted to this news story. On Thursday night, the main television news show at 7 pm on NRK devoted the first 35 minutes of its newscast to the same story.

Anyone who thinks that the USA lives in a vacuum or can live in a vacuum, isolated from the rest of the world, is deluded. Like it or not, what happens in the USA affects the rest of the world, which by the way was horrified at the events that unfolded in Washington DC on Wednesday January 6th. This is not supposed to happen in the USA. 

To all those who participated in the invasion, remember--the deaths of five people are on your consciences. You are pathetic individuals just like your leader. You have dragged the good name of the USA through the mud. You showed the world just how deluded and evil you are. You embarrassed the country and committed major crimes, and my hope is that you all rot in prison for years to come, together with the man who incited you to action--a pathetic piece of shit and an evil man. I feel sure that there is a special place in hell for men like him. My hope is that his future suffering befits his crimes. 

It is what it appears to be

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten ran an interesting article this morning that I read while eating breakfast, commenting on a few choice parts to my husband, who reacted to the story more or less as I did. Here is the short summary of the newspaper story--a female TV reporter named Live Nelvik decided to do a reality program called ‘Dama til’, which means ‘Girlfriend of’—the point of the program being that she would interview well-known men with different careers—politicians, artists, celebrities, etc. and get them to talk about their lives and careers with her as though she was their girlfriend. One of the men who said yes to being on her program was Vebjørn Sand, the well-known artist. According to the newspaper, he wanted his contribution to the program to be educational and part of that entailed visiting his father, who is also a well-known artist. His father’s interest in art had a big influence on his son, and they seem to have a very good relationship. The TV reporter was invited home to Vebjørn’s father’s house, who opened his home to her and her TV camera crew, served them food, and showed them his studio. The article goes on to report that Sand’s father showed her different art techniques and gave her a picture he had started on, that she could work on further. She then picked up a crayon and wrote over the entire image –"FUCK!" all the while filming was going on. She was very keen that Sand’s father get her message clearly, so she turned to him and said, "Look, I wrote 'fuck”. Nelvik by the way is 29 years old if anyone wondered; if I hadn't seen her age I would have thought this was the behavior of a bratty child trying to be the center of attention. Both father and son were very upset by her behavior, and the recording ended there and then.

I’m not writing this blog post in particular defense of Sand or his father; their reactions were appropriate and they obviously know how to defend themselves. I’m writing it because the entire story made me want to vomit. Why? Because this type of TV program is crap, stupid behavior is stupid, and rude behavior is rude. Can’t put a pretty face on crap, stupidity and rudeness. Nelvik was rude and crass and there is nothing else to say, and if this is the new trend—to be ‘in your face’, rude and idiotic to people in the name of TV entertainment, well, good luck to the future of cultured society. Sand and his father reacted rather civilly, I have to say. Nelvik risks getting verbally berated or worse in the future by a different kind of man if she continues in this vein, one who doesn’t take kindly to watching his elderly father or mother get mocked and personally attacked in the name of increased TV viewership, and one who doesn't care if the camera is filming his tirade (but of course this could be entertainment too--trying to provoke such episodes--so who knows. Actually, it's been done already--the Jerry Springer show--American crap TV). Because that's what this is all about--getting the ratings up at any cost. 'Se på meg' (look at me). I prefer Sand’s more civil reaction to the entire episode, but one of these days, Nelvik may mock the wrong person. And then it will be interesting to see if her TV crew continues filming during the aftermath of her crassness. Good luck to you. 

Woyzeck at the Norwegian Opera and Ballet

Last night my husband and I went to see the modern dance production of Woyzeck at the Norwegian Opera and Ballet. It was in fact the fourth performance of this modern dance piece; it premiered in Oslo during the last week of September. The story of Woyzeck, written originally as a play by Georg Büchner, has also been adapted as an opera and as a number of different films, but this was one of the few times it has been presented as a dance piece. It was created by the German choreographer Christian Spuck to music by Martin Donner, Philip Glass, Gyorgy Kurtag, and Alfred Schnittke. As fate would have it, Inger-Margrethe Lunde, the theater critic for Aftenposten (the Norwegian newspaper), did not like it. In fact, she strongly disliked it, going so far as to call it ‘bullshit’. I am attaching the link to her review (in Norwegian—it can be translated using Google Translate but you have to tolerate some weird translations here and there): http://oslopuls.aftenposten.no/kunst_scene/article605271.ece.  She headlined her review with the words “Embarrassing and disappointing”, followed by “Bullshit, I think, despite the frantic, endless standing ovation”. And the review gets worse from there, ending with the same-- “Bullshit, I think”…… I cannot remember ever reading a review of any production, dance or otherwise, quite like hers. When I read her review, I thought, yikes, just our luck; we have season tickets to the ballet, and Woyzeck was the first dance of the season for our subscription. I have to say I was dreading it, because there is nothing worse than sitting for two hours watching something that is boring. That has happened on occasion—that I have been bored by an opera, but I do manage to differentiate between my subjective feelings and my objective appraisal of the actual performance—were the singers good, were the sets attractive, and so on. I am not opposed to someone writing a negative review, but hers could have been more professionally-done. In any case, as luck would have it, we ended up not sharing Lunde’s opinion of Woyzeck. And in fact I have to wonder if we actually saw the same dance piece. I cannot understand what it was she did not like, and have to conclude that it was the theme of the story (the humiliation and cruelty that one man is subjected to that results in a tragic outcome) that bothered her. That I can understand—that it would have bothered her. But not that it would lead to her disliking the entire production or calling it bullshit. Because it wasn’t. I was actually quite moved by this dance production, especially by one of the final scenes where the low-ranking soldier Woyzeck dances with his girlfriend Marie who has been unfaithful to him; the dancer who played Woyzeck last night, Kaloyan Boyadjiev, was wonderfully expressive with his body and his arms, and really made you feel his humiliation, his pain and his desperation. His murder of Marie is the culmination of a long series of humiliations that he has been forced to endure because of his poverty; he is often humiliated by the army for which he does odd jobs and by the scientists who poke and probe him as part of the experiment that he is a part of. He endures all of these humiliations in order to earn some money, and when he comes home in the evening to Marie and their son, he is free and you see that in the way they dance with each other. They actually know some happiness and they seem to be in love. So that makes it all the more tragic and poignant at the end when he realizes he has lost her, lost the only thing that means anything to him.

Apart from what Lunde explained about the story of Woyzeck in her review (and I forgot the plot by the time we went to see it), I really did not know the story in detail nor what we were about to see when we walked into the theater. It was the same for my husband. During the dance, I had so many thoughts and feelings about what was transpiring on stage. Franz Kafka came to mind (as it did for my husband as well), as well as the brilliant English series, The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan (where the prisoner, a former spy, was just a number, surrounded by a nameless bureaucratic system of jailers all trying to probe him for information). The feeling of systematic cruelty, of a total lack of empathy, pervaded the piece. I found myself thinking about totalitarianism and communism and the loss of personal dignity and identity. So if a dance piece can make me feel all those things, as well as move me because of its poignancy, then for me it was something of value that I was privileged to experience. It is impossible to defend the man Woyzeck because he murdered Marie, but it is completely possible to understand what drove him to do that. I felt sorry for him in spite of his tragic choice. That is a testament to the quality of the dancing and the quality of the production. I’m proud to say that I disagree completely with Inger-Margrethe Lunde, and I truly hope, as my husband also commented, that her review did not discourage people from going to see the production. My guess is that it did, unfortunately. So perhaps she should take heed for the future and remember that the dancers have worked hard, likewise the choreographer. She should separate her personal feelings from an objective appraisal of the production. There do exist objective criteria for the evaluation of cultural events and creations. Perhaps she had a bad day going into the theater—car broke down, problems at work, or other irritations. Let’s hope she manages to write a better review next time.