Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „George Dickie“

Šiuolaikinėje analitinėje meno filosofijoje viena pagrindinių problemų – ar įmanoma ir kaip įmanoma apibrėžti meną? Straipsnyje analizuojamas George’o Dickie’o institucinis meno apibrėžimas. Parodoma, kaip jis atsako į antiesencialistų argumentus, neigiančius meno apibrėžimo galimybę. Teigiama, kad meno apibrėžimą Dickie’s įrodinėja pasitelkdamas ekstensionalistinę metodologiją, kuria remdamasis meno ir ne-meno atskyrimo kriterijus aiškina kaip semantinius eksternalistinius, episteminius eksternalistiniusir normatyviai neutralius. Tvirtinama, kad Dickie’o suformuluotas institucinis meno apibrėžimas negali būti laikomas meno apibrėžimu, nes jis remiasi ydingo loginio rato principu. Iš to daroma išvada, kad Dickie’s nepagrindžia meno apibrėžimo galimybės, bet pasiūlo ekstensionalistinę institucinę meno sampratą.Indefiniteness of George Dickie’s Extensional-Institutional Definition of ArtIeva Straukaitė SummaryA major problem in contemporary analytic philosophy of art is whether and how it is possible to define art. The paper analyzes George Dickie’s institutional definition of art. His response to anti-essentialists’ arguments which deny the possibility to define art is presented. It is argued that Dickie attempts to substantiate his definition of art by invoking extensional methodology on the basis of which he construes the criteria for distinguishing between art and non-art as externalistic semantic, externalistic epistemic, and value-neutral. It is asserted that the institutional definition of art formulated by Dickie cannot be considered a definition of art as it is sustained by a logically vicious circle. Hence the conclusion that Dickie does not substantiate the possibility of a definition of art but introduces an extensional-institutional conception of art.

No artigo O mito da atitude estética, dentre outros trabalhos, o filósofo George Dickie se opõe a teses que circunscrevem a apreciação das obras de arte a determinados estados psicológicos centrados na noção de desinteresse prático e que fundamentariam o único espaço onde elas teriam significado enquanto tais. Nosso propósito aqui, num primeiro momento, será explicitar um dos aspectos pontuais desta crítica, qual seja, a análise e objeção ao conceito de “atitude estética” defendido por Jerome Stolnitz. Num segundo momento, questionaremos se, de modo geral, a objeção àquele conceito pode ser estendida ao valor da estética (não apenas vinculada à certa “atitude”), considerada irrelevante para a teoria institucional da arte, o centro da filosofia de Dickie. Nesta direção, retomaremos a antiga discussão sobre a demarcação de fronteiras entre estética e filosofia da arte, mas o faremos a partir da perspectiva de Dickie e, longe de esgotá-la, apenas indicaremos possíveis caminhos para a relação entre estas duas instâncias.

Late in March 1604, as his biographer John Strype records, Archbishop John Whitgift's “Corps was carried to Croydon … and there honourably interred in the Parish-Church … with a decent Solemnity.” Sir George Paule concurred, noting that the “Funerall was very honourably (as befitted his place) solemnized.” The funeral's honor, decency, and solemnity were somewhat marred, however, for among those laudatory elegies and epitaphs traditionally placed upon hearses, some audacious soul had contrived to pin a far from complimentary piece of doggerel. Entitled “The Lamentation of Dickie for the Death of his Brother Jockie”—Jockie being Whitgift and Dickie his successor as archbishop, Richard Bancroft—the poem was a vicious tirade against the late archbishop and his policies. The fullest extant copy survives in a collection of political papers once owned by the Kentishman Sir Peter Manwood:The prelats pope, the canonists hope,The Cortyers oracle, virginities spectacle,Reformers hinderer, trew pastors slanderer,The papists broker, the Atheists ClokerThe ceremonyes procter, the latyn docterThe dumb doggs patron, non resid[e]ns championA well a daye is dead & gone,and Jockey hath left dumb dickye alone.Prelats relent, Cortyers lamentPapiste bee sadd, Athiests runn maddGrone formalists, mone pluralistsfrowne ye docters, mourne yee ProctersBegge Registers, starve paratorsscowle ye summoners, howle yee songstersYour great Patron is dead & gone,& Jockey hath left dumb dickye alone.Popishe Ambition[,] vaine superstition,coulured conformity[,] canckared envye,Cunninge hipocrisie[,] faigned simplicity,masked ympiety, servile flatterye,Goe all daunce about his hearse,& for his dirge chant this verseOur great patron is dead and gone,& Jhockey hath left dumb dickey alone.Yf store of mourners yet there lackelett Croyden coull[i]ers bee more blackeAnd for a Cophin take a sackebearing the corpes upon their backedickye more blacke then any oneas chief mourner may marche aloneSinginge this requiem Jhocky is gone,& dickye hopes to play Jhocky aloneholla dickye bee not so bould,to woulve yt in Cheif Jhesis fouldas yf to hell thy Soule weare sould,lest as Jhocky was oft foretouldIf thou a persecutor stand,God likewise strike thee wth his hand:A-rankinge thee in the bloudy bandof ravening cleargie woolves in the land.

<p>O artigo apresenta duas versões temporalmente afastadas da noção de "mundo da arte" formulados pelo filosófo Arthur C. Danto (1924-2013). A primeira apresentada no clássico artigo de 1964 "The artworld", em resposta a seu círculo filosófico mais próximo, e diante da aparente radicalidade dos exemplares exibidos como obras de arte naquele período; e a segunda, apresentada no ensaio "The art world revisited: comedies of similarities", de 1992, como uma tentativa cabal de afastar sua teoria da sombra da Teoria Institucional de George Dickie e da noção de mundo da arte ali implicada.</p>

In 1973, the philosopher George Dickie proposed an ingenious new answer to the old question: what is art? Arthood, he suggested, is not an intrinsic property of objects, but a status conferred upon them by the institutions of the art world. He accordingly attached an exemplary significance to works like Duchamp's urinal, whose very lack of intrinsic distinction focuses our attention upon their institutional context. But his theory was about art in general, and not just readymades. ‘I am not claiming that Duchamp and his friends invented the conferring of the status of art; they simply used an existing institutional device in an unusual way.’

Este artículo reflexiona sobre la paradójica situación que se genera en las diferentes formas de evaluación del arte contemporáneo ante la ausencia de una teoría que fundamente los criterios orientadores. Junto con ello, se propone la hipótesis de que tanto el purismo estético como la defensa de la autonomía de la experiencia estética han conducido al agotamiento de los lenguajes artísticos en la segunda mitad del siglo xx. Finalmente, se presenta a la teoría emblemática que acompaña el arte contemporáneo –la teoría institucional de George Dickie– como un intento de explicación del arte que –sintomáticamente– carece de criterios para el reconocimiento de la apreciación del arte.

El proceso del arte en Monterrey conllevó un crecimiento heterogéneo. La posición geográfica de la ciudad, rasgos industriales y sus atributos culturales configuraron la práctica artística de la región, así como a los protagonistas en esta escena. Tomando en consideración a la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) como pionera en la profesionalización de los especialistas en artes visuales, se abordará a la Facultad de Artes Visuales (FAV) desde la teoría institucional del arte propuesta por George Dickie para entender la naturaleza de uno de los agentes clave en la historia del arte de la ciudad de Monterrey. A partir de este enfoque teórico se vinculará el concepto de capital social de Pierre Bourdieu, para explicar la formación y composición de las redes de contacto que ayudan en la proyección profesional de los artistas visuales.

AbstractContemporary theories of institutions as clusters of stable solutions to recurrent coordination problems can illuminate and explain some unresolved difficulties and problems adhering to institutional definitions of art initiated by George Dickie and Arthur Danto. Their account of what confers upon objects their institutional character does not fit well with current work on institutions and social ontology. The claim that “the artworld” confers the status of “art” onto objects remains utterly mysterious. The “artworld” is a generic notion that designates a sphere of human activity that involves practices that create goals that have led to the emergence of formal and informal institutions. But those institutions, rather than magically “creating” objects subjected to esthetic appreciation, merely solve familiar and ubiquitous coordination problems created by artistic activity in ways other institutions in other areas (science, religion, education…) solve similar and/or analogous coordination problems.

We used population estimates (VPA) fishing effort and catch data for Georges Bank haddock, Melanogrammus aeglefinus, from 1964 through 1984 to test Paloheimo and Dickie's hypothesis which predicts: (1) that the catchability coefficient (q) from the commercial fishery is inversely related to haddock stock size (N) and stock area (Area); (2) that commercial catch per effort (C/f) data are curvilinearly related to stock abundance; and (3) that search time in the Georges Bank haddock fishery is inversely related to stock abundance. The catchability coefficients for the Georges Bank trawl fishery were inversely related to haddock stock size (r = −0.82, P < 0.001) and stock area (r = −0.75, P < 0.001). There was also a significant curvilinear relationship between commercial C/f and absolute and relative haddock stock biomass from 1964 through 1984. The slope estimate (B + 1) from this relationship was less than 1.0 (r = 4.18 to 8.95, P < 0.001), indicating nonlinearity between C/f and N. Finally, the relative search time expended by the haddock commercial fishery was inversely related to stock size from 1964 through 1984 (r = −0.75, P < 0.001). These results are consistent with the three predictions of the Paloheimo and Dickie hypothesis, suggesting that fishing mortality rates on Georges Bank haddock are a depensatory function of stock biomass.

In examining Michel Foucault’s philosophical vision I have used Gilles Deleuze’s definition: “A seer is someone who sees something not seen.” Being situated on the border between the discursive and the non-discursive, images offer an opportunity to get out of the discursivity; this rupture enables one to see and say something new. The images carry in themselves “an uncertainty essential for creativity”. This property relates images to Foucault’s philosophical vision, aimed at destroying the evidence characteristic of a historical formation in the sphere of what is seen and what is said.In addition, one can notice three different directions in Foucault’s understanding of art, which correspond to different periods in his thinking. In his first work Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1961) there is a vertical view. Influenced by Martin Heidegger’s ontological conception of art, Foucalt sees images as “growing out of the Earth”, as a specific truth which he valued highly during this period.”Archéologie du savoir (1969) reveals a different vision of art. In this work, Foucault stressed that, at least in one of its dimensions, art is a discursive practice “at the most superficial (discursive) level”. In this “superficial” phase, his account of art may be compared to George Dickie’s institutional theory of art. I call the gaze moving along the surface the horizontal.However, as early as the 1970s, Foucault’s understanding of art becomes spherical: art lacks an ontological dimension; instead, images emerge in a historical fabric, within a network of power, as a result of complex interaction between various forces. Foucault participates in this “fight” mainly at the discursive level, but he does not suffocate images with text; instead, he revitalizes them, making them visible again in a novel way.Eventually the question arises whether the direction of the view has an effect on the interpretation of art.Firstly, there is the problem of value. In a broader wider perspective, the vertical is inherently tied to this. It touches on hierarchy, on looking up from below and the awe this invokes. A connotation is assigned to divine structures and the symbolic significance of such things. Growing from the artist’s hand via forces unknown, self-made artworks thus evoke a different kind of reverence than those produced merely on a flat surface. Foucault’s earlier works in his vertical period reference visual art notably more than his later works. Pictures made in the vertical seem to offer him more inspiration. It is only during this period that pictures speak to him, later it would be reversed – he would speak of the image.Admittedly he never finished his horizontal interpretation, producing only a barebones sketch. Such an approach does not demand viewing or listening to the art itself, but rather offers a possible way to hold a discussion on it. Maybe Foucault just did not have the time to write on the horizontal or maybe it simply did not engage him enough.The horizontal approach, specifically the version put forth by Dickie is a consumer-centric vision. Art would mean a market that is based purely on supply and demand. With this approach, artworks tend to contract the one time use and disposability of commodities.Secondly, there is the issue of visual art’s material or virtual nature. Words like verticality and Earth remind us that art has been material (until now) and thus literally originates from the ground. One can easily argue that works come from the Earth and emerge with the help of the artist, as Heidegger claimed. If we say that artworks have been material until now, we draw attention to the evolution of art as a configuration of shining pixels on a computer screen. The screen may be material but how and in what way is the light emitted from the tiny points of light material? However one approaches it, the virtual image is material in a different way than traditional works of art. Might it be that Foucault’s spherical view is a good fit for analyzing such virtual art?

Historians of economics and philosophy have noted Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel's debt to Adam Smith and have suggested that Hegel's analysis of civil society rests on a Smithian foundation. Laurence Dickey recognized that “Hegel's interest in the Scots coincided with the late eighteenth-century German interest in the relationship between socioeconomic processes in history and the development of civil institutions” (Dickey 1987, p. 194). Georg Lukacs emphasized that “it is highly probable that the study of Adam Smith was a turning-point in Hegel's evolution” (Lukacs 1976, p. 172). In his study of The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, Ernest Mandel maintained that Marx discovered political economy and its importance to philosophy in his reading of Hegel. Says Mandel:

In George Washington Harris's Reconstruction sketch, “Trapping a Sheriff, Almost,” a rowdy Southern hero named Wirt Staples thunders outside of a courthouse waving a terrified African-American boy over his head in one hand and a dried venison steak in the other. With his muscles moving “like rabbits onder the skin,” and his hips and thighs “[playing] like the swell on the river” (Sut Lovingood, 244), Wirt Staples represents Harris's fantasy of Southern superiority reemergent amidst Reconstruction chaos. The sketch ends with Wirt throwing the venison steak at a Reconstruction judge's head and kicking the boy through the shop window of a watch repairman, assaulting a figure of Northern authority and brutally exiling the black threat from Southern territory. As a final, triumphant gesture, Wirt saddles his horse and bellows, “The Lion's loose, shet your doors!” (Sut Lovingood, 254). The collection in which the sketch appeared, Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun by a “Nat'ral Born Durn'd Fool” (1867). was published by a Northern press and advertised along with titles of parlor humor such as Dick's Ethiopian Scenes, Tambo's End-Men's Gags, and Brudder Bons' Book of Stump Speeches. “It would be difficult,” the advertisement assures readers, “to cram a larger amount of pungent humor into 300 pages than will be found in this really funny book” (Sut Lovingood, 312).

Abstract. Norddeutschland und angrenzende Gebiete, beeinflusst durch die skandinavischen Inlandvereisungen, sind klassische Regionen der Quartärgeologie und -stratigraphie. Der Schweizer Geologe VON MORLOT (1844) vermutete bereits, dass die nordischen Vergletscherungen das Erzgebirge in Sachsen erreicht haben könnten. Die Entdeckung der Gletscherschrammen auf triassischem Muschelkalk in Rüdersdorf bei Berlin durch TORRELL (1875) führte zur generellen Akzeptanz der Glazialtheorie in Deutschland. PENCK (1879) vermutete, dass Norddeutschland durch drei voneinander getrennte Vergletscherungen beeinflusst wurde. Die Kartierung der pleistozänen Ablagerungen durch den Preussischen Geologischen Dienst seit 1910 war ein Meilenstein für die Quartärstratigraphie, und die Begriffe „Elster“, „Saale“ und „Weichsel“ wurden in die wissenschaftliche Literatur eingeführt. Quartärgeologen wie L. SIEGERT, W. WEISSERMEL, K. KEILHACK, R. GRAHMANN und P. WOLDSTEDT beschrieben bereits Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts fundamentale Zusammenhänge der Glazialgeschichte des nordmitteleuropäischen Tieflandes und ihre Korrelation mit fluvialen Prozessen. Die Quartärstratigraphie in Norddeutschland besitzt nicht zuletzt durch das dichte Netz an Bohrungen und durch die gut untersuchten Profilaufschlüsse in den Braunkohlentagebauen eine solide Basis. Von besonderer Bedeutung für die Stratigraphie ist in diesem Gebiet die Verzahnung von glaziärer und periglaziärer Fazies, d.h. die Beziehung zwischen Schotterterrassen, Moränenablagerungen und überdies zwischengeschalteten Interglazialsedimenten. In ihrer vertikalen Abfolge folgen sie in klassischer Weise dem stratigraphischen Grundgesetz.

-Monika Arnez, Keith Foulcher ,Clearing a space; Postcolonial readings of modern Indonesian literature. Leiden: KITlV Press, 2002, 381 pp. [Verhandelingen 202.], Tony Day (eds) -R.H. Barnes, Thomas Reuter, The house of our ancestors; Precedence and dualism in highland Balinese society. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002, viii + 359 pp. [Verhandelingen 198.] -Freek Colombijn, Adriaan Bedner, Administrative courts in Indonesia; A socio-legal study. The Hague: Kluwer law international, 2001, xiv + 300 pp. [The London-Leiden series on law, administration and development 6.] -Manuelle Franck, Peter J.M. Nas, The Indonesian town revisited. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian studies, 2002, vi + 428 pp. [Southeast Asian dynamics.] -Hans Hägerdal, Ernst van Veen, Decay or defeat? An inquiry into the Portuguese decline in Asia 1580-1645. 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Este artigo examina os argumentos apresentados por Monroe Beardsley contra a tese de que a arte é essencialmente institucional. Beardsley mira sua crítica na versão mais bem elaborada de uma teoria institucional da arte, a teoria de George Dickie. Ele argumenta que Dickie usa o termo “instituição” de forma ambígua, como type e token, e que, afirmar a existência de um contexto institucional não é o mesmo que afirmar que as atividades que pressupõem este contexto são institucionais. Pretende-se mostrar que, embora Dickie reelabore sua teoria a fim de fortalecer sua tese inicial, ele não consegue responderde forma satisfatória ao “Argumento Beardsley-Anscombe”. Além disso, este artigo apresenta e discute brevemente a última elaboração de Dickie, em que ele defende que a arte é uma espécie cultural

O presente estudo tenta compreender, ainda que de maneira sumária, quais os caminhos que a Estética tomou; desde Hegel e a dedução filosófica dos conceitos, até a corrente, influenciada por Wittgenstein, da análise da linguagem comum, acabando por apontar, diante das dificuldades dos referidos caminhos, para a Estética da circularidade; tanto a de Heidegger quanto a de George Dickie. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Estética. Filosofia da arte. Conceito. Linguagem comum. Circularidade.

La objetividad y los sólidos fundamentos de la Métrica nos permiten formular la pregunta “¿qué es el verso?”, y dar respuesta a la misma con criterios científi cos, describiendo coherentemente cómo funciona el verso, unidad rítmica, en el conjunto poemático. En ningún caso implica esto una posición esencialista. Pero sí se someten aquí a crítica la teoría institucional de George Dickie y otras formas del relativismo artístico, tales como los análisis circunstancialistas de Nelson Goodman y Arthur Danto.

Dégueulasse is French slang for “disgusting,” derived in 1867 from the French verb dégueuler, to vomit. Despite its vulgar status, it is frequently used by almost every French speaker, including foreigners and students. It is also a term that has often been employed to describe the 1973 cult film, La Grande bouffe [Blow Out], by Marco Ferreri, which recounts in grotesque detail the gastronomic suicide of four male protagonists. This R-rated French-Italian production was booed, and the director spat on, at the 26th Cannes Film Festival—the Jury President, Ingrid Bergman, said it was the most “sordid” film she’d ever seen, and is even reported to have vomited after watching it (Télérama). Ferreri nevertheless walked away with the Prix FIPRESCI, awarded by the Federation of International Critics, and it is apparently the largest grossing release in the history of Paris with more than 700,000 entries in Paris and almost 3 million in France overall. Scandal sells, and this was especially seemingly so 1970s, when this film was avidly consumed as part of an unholy trinity alongside Bernardo Bertolucci’s Le Dernier Tango à Paris [Last Tango in Paris] (1972) and Jean Eustache’s La Maman et la putain [The Mother and the Whore] (1973). Fast forward forty years, though, and at the very moment when La Grande bouffe was being commemorated with a special screening on the 2013 Cannes Film Festival programme, a handful of University of Melbourne French students in a subject called “Matters of Taste” were boycotting the film as an unacceptable assault to their sensibilities. Over the decade that I have been showing the film to undergraduate students, this has never happened before. In this article, I want to examine critically the questions of taste that underpin this particular predicament. Analysing firstly the intradiegetic portrayal of taste in the film, through both gustatory and aesthetic signifiers, then the choice of the film as a key element in a University subject corpus, I will finally question the (dis)taste displayed by certain students, contextualising it as part of an ongoing socio-cultural commentary on food, sex, life, and death. Framed by a brief foray into Bourdieusian theories of taste, I will attempt to draw some conclusions on the continual renegotiation of gustatory and aesthetic tastes in relation to La Grande bouffe, and thereby deepen understanding of why it has become the incarnation of dégueulasse today. Theories of Taste In the 1970s, the parameters of “good” and “bad” taste imploded in the West, following political challenges to the power of the bourgeoisie that also undermined their status as the contemporary arbiters of taste. This revolution of manners was particularly shattering in France, fuelled by the initial success of the May 68 student, worker, and women’s rights movements (Ross). The democratization of taste served to legitimize desires different from those previously dictated by bourgeois norms, enabling greater diversity in representing taste across a broad spectrum. It was reflected in the cultural products of the 1970s, including cinema, which had already broken with tradition during the New Wave in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and became a vector for political ideologies as well as radical aesthetic choices (Smith). Commonly regarded as “the decade that taste forgot,” the 1970s were also a time for re-assessing the sociology of taste, with the magisterial publication of Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979, English trans. 1984). As Bourdieu refuted Kant’s differentiation between the legitimate aesthetic, so defined by its “disinterestedness,” and the common aesthetic, derived from sensory pleasures and ordinary meanings, he also attempted to abolish the opposition between the “taste of reflection” (pure pleasure) and the “taste of sense” (facile pleasure) (Bourdieu 7). In so doing, he laid the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding the apparently incommensurable choices that are not the innate expression of our unique personalities, but rather the product of our class, education, family experiences—our habitus. Where Bourdieu’s theories align most closely with the relationship between taste and revulsion is in the realm of aesthetic disposition and its desire to differentiate: “good” taste is almost always predicated on the distaste of the tastes of others. Tastes (i.e. manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance (“sick-making”) of the tastes of others. “De gustibus non est disputandum”: not because “tous les goûts sont dans la nature,” but because each taste feels itself to be natural—and so it almost is, being a habitus—which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes (Bourdieu). Although today’s “Gen Y” Melbourne University students are a long way from 1970s French working class/bourgeois culture clashes, these observations on taste as the corollary of distaste are still salient tools of interpretation of their attitudes towards La Grande bouffe. And, just as Bourdieu effectively deconstructed Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and the 18th “century of taste” notions of universality and morality in aesthetics (Dickie, Gadamer, Allison) in his groundbreaking study of distinction, his own theories have in turn been subject to revision in an age of omnivorous consumption and eclectic globalisation, with various cultural practices further destabilising the hierarchies that formerly monopolized legitimate taste (Sciences Humaines, etc). Bourdieu’s theories are still, however, useful for analysing La Grande bouffe given the contemporaneous production of these texts, as they provide a frame for understanding (dis)taste both within the filmic narrative and in the wider context of its reception. Taste and Distaste in La Grande bouffe To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it’s a physiological act, it’s urban guerrilla […] Enough with feelings, I want to make a physiological film (Celluloid Liberation Front). Marco Ferreri’s statements about his motivations for La Grande bouffe coincide here with Bourdieu’s explanation of taste: clearly the director wished to depart from psychological cinema favoured by contemporary critics and audiences and demonstrated his distaste for their preference. There were, however, psychological impulses underpinning his subject matter, as according to film academic Maurizio Viano, Ferrari had a self-destructive, compulsive relation to food, having been forced to spend a few weeks in a Swiss clinic specialising in eating disorders in 1972–1973 (Viano). Food issues abound in his biography. In an interview with Tullio Masoni, the director declared: “I was fat as a child”; his composer Phillipe Sarde recalls the grand Italian-style dinners that he would organise in Paris during the film; and, two of the film’s stars, Marcello Mastroianni and Ugo Tognazzi, actually credit the conception of La Grande bouffe to a Rabelaisian feast prepared by Tognazzi, during which Ferreri exclaimed “hey guys, we are killing ourselves!” (Viano 197–8). Evidently, there were psychological factors behind this film, but it was nevertheless the physiological aspects that Ferreri chose to foreground in his creation. The resulting film does indeed privilege the physiological, as the protagonists fornicate, fart, vomit, defecate, and—of course—eat, to wild excess. The opening scenes do not betray such sordid sequences; the four bourgeois men are introduced one by one so as to establish their class credentials as well as display their different tastes. We first encounter Ugo (Tognazzi), an Italian chef of humble peasant origins, as he leaves his elegant restaurant “Le Biscuit à soupe” and his bourgeois French wife, to take his knives and recipes away with him for the weekend. Then Michel (Piccoli), a TV host who has pre-taped his shows, gives his apartment keys to his 1970s-styled baba-cool daughter as he bids her farewell, and packs up his cleaning products and rubber gloves to take with him. Marcello (Mastroianni) emerges from a cockpit in his aviator sunglasses and smart pilot’s uniform, ordering his sexy airhostesses to carry his cheese and wine for him as he takes a last longing look around his plane. Finally, the judge and owner of the property where the action will unfold, Philippe (Noiret), is awoken by an elderly woman, Nicole, who feeds him tea and brioche, pestering him for details of his whereabouts for the weekend, until he demonstrates his free will and authority, joking about his serious life, and lying to her about attending a legal conference in London. Having given over power of attorney to Nicole, he hints at the finality of his departure, but is trying to wrest back his independence as his nanny exhorts him not to go off with whores. She would rather continue to “sacrifice herself for him” and “keep it in the family,” as she discreetly pleasures him in this scene. Scholars have identified each protagonist as an ideological signifier. For some, they represent power—Philippe is justice—and three products of that ideology: Michel is spectacle, Ugo is food, and Marcello is adventure (Celluloid Liberation Front). For others, these characters are the perfect incarnations of the first four Freudian stages of sexual development: Philippe is Oedipal, Michel is indifferent, Ugo is oral, and Marcello is impotent (Tury & Peter); or even the four temperaments of Hippocratic humouralism: Philippe the phlegmatic, Michel the melancholic, Ugo the sanguine, and Marcello the choleric (Calvesi, Viano). I would like to offer another dimension to these categories, positing that it is each protagonist’s taste that prescribes his participation in this gastronomic suicide as well as the means by which he eventually dies. Before I develop this hypothesis, I will first describe the main thrust of the narrative. The four men arrive at the villa at 68 rue Boileau where they intend to end their days (although this is not yet revealed). All is prepared for the most sophisticated and decadent feasting imaginable, with a delivery of the best meats and poultry unfurling like a surrealist painting. Surrounded by elegant artworks and demonstrating their cultural capital by reciting Shakespeare, Brillat-Savarin, and other classics, the men embark on a race to their death, beginning with a competition to eat the most oysters while watching a vintage pornographic slideshow. There is a strong thread of masculine athletic engagement in this film, as has been studied in detail by James R. Keller in “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism,” and this is exacerbated by the arrival of a young but matronly schoolmistress Andréa (Ferréol) with her students who want to see the garden. She accepts the men’s invitation to stay on in the house to become another object of competitive desire, and fully embraces all the sexual and gustatory indulgence around her. Marcello goes further by inviting three prostitutes to join them and Ugo prepares a banquet fit for a funeral. The excessive eating makes Michel flatulent and Marcello impotent; when Marcello kicks the toilet in frustration, it explodes in the famous fecal fountain scene that apparently so disgusted his then partner Catherine Deneuve, that she did not speak to him for a week (Ebert). The prostitutes flee the revolting madness, but Andréa stays like an Angel of Death, helping the men meet their end and, in surviving, perhaps symbolically marking an end to the masculinist bourgeoisie they represent.To return to the role of taste in defining the rise and demise of the protagonists, let me begin with Marcello, as he is the first to die. Despite his bourgeois attitudes, he is a modern man, associated with machines and mobility, such as the planes and the beautiful Bugatti, which he strokes with greater sensuality than the women he hoists onto it. His taste is for the functioning mechanical body, fast and competitive, much like himself when he is gorging on oysters. But his own body betrays him when his “masculine mechanics” stop functioning, and it is the fact that the Bugatti has broken down that actually causes his death—he is found frozen in driver’s seat after trying to escape in the Bugatti during the night. Marcello’s taste for the mechanical leads therefore to his eventual demise. Michel is the next victim of his own taste, which privileges aesthetic beauty, elegance, the arts, and fashion, and euphemises the less attractive or impolite, the scatological, boorish side of life. His feminized attire—pink polo-neck and flowing caftan—cannot distract from what is happening in his body. The bourgeois manners that bind him to beauty mean that breaking wind traumatises him. His elegant gestures at the dance barre encourage rather than disguise his flatulence; his loud piano playing cannot cover the sound of his loud farts, much to the mirth of Philippe and Andréa. In a final effort to conceal his painful bowel obstruction, he slips outside to die in obscene and noisy agony, balanced in an improbably balletic pose on the balcony balustrade. His desire for elegance and euphemism heralds his death. Neither Marcello nor Michel go willingly to their ends. Their tastes are thwarted, and their deaths are disgusting to them. Their cadavers are placed in the freezer room as silent witnesses to the orgy that accelerates towards its fatal goal. Ugo’s taste is more earthy and inherently linked to the aims of the adventure. He is the one who states explicitly: “If you don’t eat, you won’t die.” He wants to cook for others and be appreciated for his talents, as well as eat and have sex, preferably at the same time. It is a combination of these desires that kills him as he force-feeds himself the monumental creation of pâté in the shape of the Cathedral of Saint-Peter that has been rejected as too dry by Philippe, and too rich by Andréa. The pride that makes him attempt to finish eating his masterpiece while Andréa masturbates him on the dining table leads to a heart-stopping finale for Ugo. As for Philippe, his taste is transgressive. In spite of his upstanding career as a judge, he lies and flouts convention in his unorthodox relationship with nanny Nicole. Andréa represents another maternal figure to whom he is attracted and, while he wishes to marry her, thereby conforming to bourgeois norms, he also has sex with her, and her promiscuous nature is clearly signalled. Given his status as a judge, he reasons that he can not bring Marcello’s frozen body inside because concealing a cadaver is a crime, yet he promotes collective suicide on his premises. Philippe’s final transgression of the rules combines diabetic disobedience with Oedipal complex—Andréa serves him a sugary pink jelly dessert in the form of a woman’s breasts, complete with cherries, which he consumes knowingly and mournfully, causing his death. Unlike Marcello and Michel, Ugo and Philippe choose their demise by indulging their tastes for ingestion and transgression. Following Ferreri’s motivations and this analysis of the four male protagonists, taste is clearly a cornerstone of La Grande bouffe’s conception and narrative structure. It is equally evident that these tastes are contrary to bourgeois norms, provoking distaste and even revulsion in spectators. The film’s reception at the time of its release and ever since have confirmed this tendency in both critical reviews and popular feedback as André Habib’s article on Salo and La Grande bouffe (2001) meticulously demonstrates. With such a violent reaction, one might wonder why La Grande bouffe is found on so many cinema studies curricula and is considered to be a must-see film (The Guardian). Corpus and Corporeality in Food Film Studies I chose La Grande bouffe as the first film in the “Matters of Taste” subject, alongside Luis Bunuel’s Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, and Laurent Bénégui’s Au Petit Marguery, as all are considered classic films depicting French eating cultures. Certainly any French cinema student would know La Grande bouffe and most cinephiles around the world have seen it. It is essential background knowledge for students studying French eating cultures and features as a key reference in much scholarly research and popular culture on the subject. After explaining the canonical status of La Grande bouffe and thus validating its inclusion in the course, I warned students about the explicit nature of the film. We studied it for one week out of the 12 weeks of semester, focusing on questions of taste in the film and the socio-cultural representations of food. Although the almost ubiquitous response was: “C’est dégueulasse!,” there was no serious resistance until the final exam when a few students declared that they would boycott any questions on La Grande bouffe. I had not actually included any such questions in the exam. The student evaluations at the end of semester indicated that several students questioned the inclusion of this “disgusting pornography” in the corpus. There is undoubtedly less nudity, violence, gore, or sex in this film than in the Game of Thrones TV series. What, then, repulses these Gen Y students? Is it as Pasolini suggests, the neorealistic dialogue and décor that disturbs, given the ontologically challenging subject of suicide? (Viano). Or is it the fact that there is no reason given for the desire to end their lives, which privileges the physiological over the psychological? Is the scatological more confronting than the pornographic? Interestingly, “food porn” is now a widely accepted term to describe a glamourized and sometimes sexualized presentation of food, with Nigella Lawson as its star, and hundreds of blog sites reinforcing its popularity. Yet as Andrew Chan points out in his article “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography,” this film is where it all began: “the genealogy reaches further back, as brilliantly visualized in Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film La Grande bouffe, in which four men eat, screw and fart themselves to death” (47). Is it the overt corporeality depicted in the film that shocks cerebral students into revulsion and rebellion? Conclusion In the guise of a conclusion, I suggest that my Gen Y students’ taste may reveal a Bourdieusian distaste for the taste of others, in a third degree reaction to the 1970s distaste for bourgeois taste. First degree: Ferreri and his entourage reject the psychological for the physiological in order to condemn bourgeois values, provoking scandal in the 1970s, but providing compelling cinema on a socio-political scale. Second degree: in spite of the outcry, high audience numbers demonstrate their taste for scandal, and La Grande bouffe becomes a must-see canonical film, encouraging my choice to include it in the “Matters of Taste” corpus. Third degree: my Gen Y students’ taste expresses a distaste for the academic norms that I have embraced in showing them the film, a distaste that may be more aesthetic than political. Oui, c’est dégueulasse, mais … Bibliography Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1984. Calvesi, M. “Dipingere all moviola” (Painting at the Moviola). Corriere della Sera, 10 Oct. 1976. Reprint. “Arti figurative e il cinema” (Cinema and the Visual Arts). Avanguardia di massa. Ed. M. Calvesi. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978. 243–46. Celluloid Liberation Front. “Consumerist Ultimate Indigestion: La Grande Bouffe's Deadly Physiological Pleasures.” Bright Lights Film Journal 60 (2008). 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://brightlightsfilm.com/60/60lagrandebouffe.php#.Utd6gs1-es5›. Chan, Andrew. “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 3.4 (2003): 47–53. Dickie, George. The Century of Taste: The Philosophical Odyssey of Taste in the Eighteenth Century. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Ebert, Roger, “La Grande bouffe.” 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-grande-bouffe-1973›. Ferreri, Marco. La Grande bouffe. Italy-France, 1973. Freedman, Paul H. Food: The History of Taste. U of California P, 2007. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Winsheimer and Donald C. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1999. Habib, André. “Remarques sur une ‘réception impossible’: Salo and La Grande bouffe.” Hors champ (cinéma), 4 Jan. 2001. 11 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/cinema/030101/salo-bouffe.html›. Keller, James R. “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism.” Food, Film and Culture: A Genre Study. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2006: 49–59. Masoni, Tullio. Marco Ferreri. Gremese, 1998. Pasolini, P.P. “Le ambigue forme della ritualita narrativa.” Cinema Nuovo 231 (1974): 342–46. Ross, Kristin. May 68 and its Afterlives. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Smith, Alison. French Cinema in the 1970s: The Echoes of May. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Télérama: “La Grande bouffe: l’un des derniers grands scandales du Festival de Cannes. 19 May 2013. 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.telerama.fr/festival-de-cannes/2013/la-grande-bouffe-l-un-des-derniers-grands-scandales-du-festival-de-cannes,97615.php›. The Guardian: 1000 films to see before you die. 2007. 17 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/film/series/1000-films-to-see-before-you-die› Tury, F., and O. Peter. “Food, Life, and Death: The Film La Grande bouffe of Marco Ferreri in an Art Psychological Point of View.” European Psychiatry 22.1 (2007): S214. Viano, Maurizio. “La Grande Abbuffata/La Grande bouffe.” The Cinema of Italy. Ed. Giorgio Bertellini. London: Wallflower Press, 2004: 193–202.

February 15, 1999 THE DIGITAL EXAM digital was such a sanitary hi-tech word until my urologist snuck up from behind and gave me the bird shocked and taken back I try to ignore the painful experience by pondering the conundrum of homosexuality there had to be more to it than that "You can get dressed now" was the good doctor’s way of saying "Pull up your pants, Dude, and I’ll see you back in my office." but his casual demeanor seemed to exude foreboding "There is a stiffness in the gland demanding further examination. I’d like to schedule a blood test, ultrasound and biopsy." the doctor’s lips kept moving but I couldn’t hear him through the sheet of white fear that guillotined between us CANCER! The big C! Me? I spent the rest of that day up to my genitals in the grave I was digging. Hamlet gazing full into the face of the skull "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well, Horatio. Before scalpel took gland. Back when he sang in a bass baritone." desperate for encouragement I turn to the illustrated brochure the informative flyer detailing the upcoming procedure where in the ultrasound and biopsy probe resembled the head of a black water moccasin baring its fang "Dang!" says I jumping back relief came 36 hours later something about the PSA blood test the prostate specific-antigen results leading the doctor to now suspect infection prescribing an antibiotic of course five weeks from now the FOLLOW-UP APPOINTMENT! and as the date approaches tension will build like in those Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon films when you know there’s a snake in the grass and Danny Glover isn’t there to cover your ass *** April 2, 1999 As it turns out, at the follow-up appointment, things had worsened so the biopsy and bone scan were re-scheduled and it was discovered that I do have incurable metastatic advanced prostate cancer. Of course the doctor is most optimistic about all the new and miraculous treatments available. But before I go into that, I want you to know that I find myself experiencing a strange and wonderful kind of peace. Hell, I’ve lived 70 years already — done exactly what I wanted to do with my life. All worthwhile dreams have come true. Made my living since 1968 as a "Performance Poet" — Billie Barbara and I have been together for 47 years — growing closer with each passing day. We have four great kids, five neat and nifty grandchildren. All things considered, I’ve been truly blessed and whether my departure date is next year or 15 years from now I’m determined not to wreck my life by doing a lousy job with my death. LIKE HAROLD / LIKE HOWARD like Harold I don’t want to blow my death I don’t want to see a lifetime of pluck and courage rubbed out by five weeks of whiny fractious behavior granted Harold’s was a scary way to go from diagnosis to last breath the cancer moving fast but five weeks of bitching and moaning was more than enough to erase every trace of a man I have wanted to emulate his wife sending word that even she can’t remember what he was like before his undignified departure no — I don’t want to go like Harold like Howard let me come swimming up out of the deepening coma face serene as if seen through undisturbed water breaking the surface to eagerly take the hand of bedside well wishers unexpected behavior I must admit as Howard has always been a world class hypochondriac second only to me the two of us able to sit for hours discussing the subtle shade of a mole turning each other on with long drawn out organ recitals in the end one would have thought such a legendary self centered soul would cower and fold up completely like Harold but no — when my time comes let me go sweetly like Howard *** April 7, 1999 The treatment was decided upon. Next Monday, the good Doctor is going to pit my apricots. From here on the Sultan can rest easy when Masten hangs with his harem. Prognosis good. No more testosterone - no more growth. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking forward to giving up the family jewels. I must say that over the years they’ve done me proud and to be totally honest I don’t think Billie Barbara will be all that disappointed either. I’m told that Viagra will help in this area., However, I’m also told that the drug is very expensive. Something like twelve bucks a pop. But hell, Billie Barbara and I can afford twenty four dollars a year.. Some thoughts the morning of— Yesterday I did a program for the Unitarian Society of Livermore. About 60 people. I had a bet with the fellow who introduced me, that at least 7 out of the 60 would come up after the reading (which would include my recent prostate musings) and share a personal war story about prostate cancer. I was right. Exactly 7 approached with an encouraging tale about themselves, a husband, a brother, a son. I was told to prepare myself for hot flashes and water retention. To which Billie Barbara said "Join the club!" I ended the presentation with one of those inspirational poetic moments. A hot flash, if you will. "It just occurred to me," I said, " I’m going to get rich selling a bumper sticker I just thought of — REAL MEN DON’T NEED BALLS A couple of days after the event The Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula is referred to as CHOMP, and the afternoon of April 12th I must say this august institution certainly lived up to it’s name. The waiting room in the Out Patient Wing is an event unto itself. Patients huddled together with friends and family, everyone speaking in hushed voices. The doomed keeping a wary eye on the ominous swinging doors, where a big tough looking nurse appeared from time to time shouting: NEXT! Actually the woman was quite sweet and mild mannered, enunciating each patient’s name in a calm friendly manner. But waiting to have done to me what was going to be done to me - the chilling word "NEXT!" is what I heard and "Out Patient Wing" certainly seemed a misnomer to me. Wasn’t the "Out-Patient Wing" where you went to have splinters removed? Of course I knew better, because in the pre-op interview the young interviewer, upon reading "Bilateral Orchiectomy" winced visibly, exclaiming under her breath "Bummer!" I recently came across this haiku — bilateral orchiectomy the sound a patient makes when he learns what it is Our daughter April lives in New York and couldn’t join the Waiting Room rooting section so as her stand in she sent her best friend Molly Williams. Now, Molly works as a veterinarian in a local animal shelter and a when I told her my operation was supposed to take no more than half an hour, she laughed: "Heck Ric, I’ll do it in five minutes and not even use gloves." NEXT! My turn to be led through those swinging doors, pitifully looking back over my shoulder. Wife, family and friends, bravely giving me the thumbs up. Things blur and run together after that. I do remember telling the nurse who was prepping me that I was afraid of being put to sleep. "Not to worry" she said, I’d have a chance to express these fears to the anesthetist before the operation would begin. And as promised the man did drop by to assure me that I would get a little something to ease my anxiety before he put me under. When the moment finally arrived, he said that I might feel a slight prick as he gave me the relaxant. Of course, that is the last thing I remember - the prick! Obviously, I‘d been suckered in by the mask man’s modus operandi. On the other side of this I surface to begin the waiting. WAITING for the catheter to be removed — for the incision to heal — WAITING to see if the pain subsides and I can loose the cane — WAITING to learn if my PSA will respond to treatment. Waiting—waiting—waiting—and I’ve never been a cheerful waiter. *** May 7, 1999 The doctor tells me I must keep taking Casodex— one a day at eleven dollars a cap - for the rest of my life. And no more doctor freebees. No wonder the listed side effect of this pricey medication is depression. But the recent funk I’ve fallen into is much deeper than dollars and cents. In the past I’ve had my share of operations and illnesses and always during the recuperation I could look forward to being my old self again. But not this time .... Not this time. Funny bumper stickers can only hold reality at bay for a short while. And anyway Billie had me remove the homemade REAL MEN DON’T NEED BALLS bumper sticker from the back of our car — She didn’t like the dirty looks she got while driving around town alone. *** Eight months later BILATERAL ORCHECTOMY never could look up words in the dictionary in a high school assignment writing an autobiography I described my self as a unique person scribbled in the margin the teachers correction fairly chortled "unique" not "eunuch" how could he have known that one day I would actually become a misspelling backed against the wall by advanced prostate cancer I chose the operation over the enormous ongoing expense of chemical castration "No big deal." I thought at the time what’s the difference they both add up to the same thing but in the movies these days during the hot gratuitous sex scene I yawn…bored... wishing they’d quit dicking around and get on with the plot and on TV the buxom cuties that titillate around the products certainly arn’t selling me anything I realize now that although it would probably kill them the guys who went chemical still have an option I don’t philosophically I’m the same person but biologically I ‘m like the picture puzzle our family traditionally puts together over the holidays the French impressionist rendition of a flower shop interior in all it’s bright colorful confusion this season I didn’t work the puzzle quite as enthusiastically... and for good reason this year I know pieces are missing where the orchids used to be "So?" says I to myself "You’re still here to smell the roses." *** January 13, 2000 Real bad news! At the third routine follow-up appointment. My urologist informs me that my PSA has started rising again. The orchectomy and Casodex are no longer keeping the cancer in remission. In the vernacular, I have become "hormone refractory" and there was nothing more he, as a urologist could do for me. An appointment with a local oncologist was arranged and another bone scan scheduled. The "T" word having finally been said the ostrich pulled his head from the sand and began looking around. Knowing what I know now, I’m still annoyed at my urologist for not telling me when I was first diagnosed to either join a support group and radically change my diet or find another urologist. I immediately did both - becoming vegan and finding help on-line as well as at the local Prostate Cancer Support Group. This during the endless eighteen day wait before the oncologist could fit me in. *** IRON SOCKS time now for a bit of reverse prejudice I once purchased some stockings called "Iron Socks" guaranteed to last for five years they lasted ten! but when I went back for another pair the clerk had never heard of them as a cancer survivor… so far in an over populated world I consider the multi-billion dollar medical and pharmaceutical industries realizing that there is absolutely no incentive to come up with a permanent cure *** From here on, I’ll let the poems document the part of the journey that brings us up to the present. A place where I can say — spiritually speaking, that the best thing that ever happened to me is metastatic hormone refractory advanced prostate cancer. *** SUPPORT GROUPS included in this close fraternity... in this room full of brotherly love I wonder where I’ve been for the last 11 months no — that’s not quite right… I know where I’ve been I’ve been in denial after the shock of diagnosis the rude indignity of castration the quick fix of a Casodex why would I want to hang out with a bunch of old duffers dying of prostate cancer? ignoring the fact that everybody dies we all know it but few of us believe it those who do, however rack up more precious moments than the entire citizenry of the fools paradise not to mention studies showing that those who do choose to join a support group on average live years longer than the stiff upper lip recluse and while I’m on the subject I wonder where I’d be without the internet and the dear supportive spirits met there in cyber-space a place where aid care and concern are not determined by age, gender, race, physical appearance, economic situation or geological location and this from a die-hard like me who not ten years ago held the computer in great disdain convinced that poetry should be composed on the back of envelopes with a blunt pencil while riding on trains thank god I’m past these hang-ups because without a support system I doubt if this recent malignant flare-up could have been withstood how terrifying… the thought of being at my writing desk alone… disconnected typing out memos to myself on my dead father’s ancient Underwood *** PC SPES in the sea that is me the hormone blockade fails my urologist handing me over to a young oncologist who recently began practicing locally having retired from the stainless steel and white enamel of the high tech Stanford medical machine in the examination room numbly thumbing through a magazine I wait expecting to be treated like a link of sausage another appointment ground out in a fifteen minute interval what I got was an 18th century throw back a hands-on horse and buggy physician with seemingly all the time in the world it was decided that for the next three weeks (between blood tests) all treatment would cease to determine how my PSA was behaving this done, at the next appointment the next step would be decided upon and after more than an hour of genial give and take with every question answered all options covered it was I who stood up first to go for me a most unique experience in the annals of the modern medicine show however condemned to three weeks in limbo knowing the cancer was growing had me going online reaching out into cyberspace to see what I could find and what I found was PC SPES a botanical herbal alternative medicine well documented and researched but not approved by the FDA aware that the treatment was not one my doctor had mentioned (I have since learned that to do so would make him legally vulnerable) I decided to give it a try on my own sending off for a ten day supply taking the first dose as close after the second blood test as I could two days later back in the doctors office I confess expecting a slap on the wrist instead I receive a bouquet for holding off until after the second PSA then taking the PC SPES container from my hand and like a Native American medicine man he holds it high over his head shaking it "Okay then, this approach gets the first ride!" at the receptionist desk scheduling my next appointment I thought about how difficult it must be out here on the frontier practicing medicine with your hands tied *** PREJUDICE "It's a jungle out there!" Dr. J. George Taylor was fond of saying "And all chiropractors are quacks! Manipulating pocket pickers!" the old physician exposing his daughter to a prejudice so infectious I suspect it became part of her DNA and she a wannabe doctor herself infects me her son with the notion that if it wasn’t performed or prescribed by a licensed M.D. it had to be Medicine Show hoopla or snake oil elixir certainly today’s countless array of practitioners and patent remedies has both of them spinning in their grave but Ma you and Grandpa never heard the words hormone-refractory even the great white hunters of our prestigious cancer clinics don't know how to stop the tiger that is stalking me and so with a PSA rising again to 11.9 I get my oncologist to let me try PC SPES a Chinese herbal formula yes, the desperate do become gullible me, reading and re-reading the promotional material dutifully dosing myself between blood tests and this against the smirk of disapproval mother and grandfather wagging their heads in unison: "It won’t work." "It won’t work." having condemned myself beforehand the moment of truth finally arrives I pace the floor nervously the doctor appears at the door "How does it feel to be a man with a PSA falling to 4.8?" it seems that for the time being at least the tiger is content to play a waiting game which is simply great! Mother tell Grandpa I just may escape our families bigotry before it’s too late *** HELPLINE HARRY "Hi, how are you?" these days I'm never sure how to field routine grounders like this am I simply being greeted? or does the greeter actually want a list of grisly medical details my wife says it's easy she just waits to see if the "How is he?" is followed by a hushed "I mean… really?" for the former a simple "Fine, and how are you?" will do for the latter the news isn't great indications are that the miracle herbal treatment is beginning to fail my oncologist offering up a confusing array of clinical trials and treatments that flirt seductively but speak in a foreign language I don't fully understand so Harry, once again I call on you a savvy old tanker who has maneuvered his battle scared machine through years of malignant mine fields and metastatic mortar attacks true five star Generals know much about winning wars and such but the Command Post is usually so far removed from the front lines I suspect they haven't a clue as to what the dog-faces are going through down here in the trenches it's the seasoned campaigners who have my ear the tough tenacious lovable old survivors like you *** "POOR DEVIL!" in my early twenties I went along with Dylan Thomas boasting that I wanted to go out not gently but raging shaking my fist staring death down however this daring statement was somewhat revised when in my forties I realized that death does the staring I do the down so I began hoping it would happen to me like it happened to the sentry in all those John Wayne Fort Apache movies found dead in the morning face down — an arrow in the back "Poor devil." the Sergeant always said "Never knew what hit him." at the time I liked that... the end taking me completely by surprise the bravado left in the hands of a hard drinking Welshman still wet behind the ears older and wiser now over seventy and with a terminal disease the only thing right about what the Sergeant said was the "Poor devil" part "Poor devil" never used an opening to tell loved ones he loved them never seized the opportunity to give praise for the sun rise or drink in a sunset moment after moment passing him by while he marched through life staring straight ahead believing in tomorrow "Poor devil!" how much fuller richer and pleasing life becomes when you are lucky enough to see the arrow coming *** END LINE (Dedicated to Jim Fulks.) I’ve always been a yin / yang - life / death - up / down clear / blur - front / back kind of guy my own peculiar duality being philosopher slash hypochondriac win win characteristics when you’ve been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer finally the hypochondriac has something more than windmills to tilt with the philosopher arming himself with exactly the proper petard an anonymous statement found in an e-mail message beneath the signature of a cancer survivor’s name a perfect end line wily and wise quote: I ask God: "How much time do I have before I die?" "Enough to make a difference." God replies *** STRUM lived experience taught them most of what they know so MD's treating men diagnosed with androgen-independent advanced prostate cancer tend to put us on death row and taking the past into account this negativity is understandable… these good hearted doctors watching us come and go honestly doing what they can like kindly prison guards attempting to make the life we have left as pleasant as possible to be otherwise a physician would have to be a bit delusional evangelical even… to work so diligently for and believe so completely in the last minute reprieve for those of us confined on cell block PC doing time with an executioner stalking it is exhilarating to find an oncologist willing to fly in the face of history refusing to call the likes of me "Dead man walking." *** BAG OF WOE there are always moments when I can almost hear the reader asking: "How can you use that as grist for your poetry mill? How can you dwell on such private property, at least without masking the details?" well... for the feedback of course the war stories that my stories prompt you to tell but perhaps the question can best be answered by the ‘bag of woe’ parable the "Once Upon a Time" tale about the troubled village of Contrary its harried citizens and the magical mystical miracle worker who showed up one dreary day saying: I am aware of your torment and woe and I am here to lighten your load! he then instructed the beleaguered citizens to go home and rummage through their harried lives bag up your troubles he said both large and small stuff them all in a sack and drag them down to the town square and stack them around on the wall and when everyone was back and every bag was there the magical mystical miracle worker said: "It’s true, just as I promised. You won’t have to take your sack of troubles home leave it behind when you go however, you will have to take along somebody’s bag of woe so the citizens of Contrary all went to find their own bag and shouldering the load discovered that it was magically and mystically much easier to carry --- End ---