tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/manhattan-45723/articlesManhattan – The Conversation2023-12-20T01:28:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2200192023-12-20T01:28:46Z2023-12-20T01:28:46ZWith ‘White Christmas,’ Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby helped make Christmas a holiday that all Americans could celebrate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566447/original/file-20231218-29-3t65vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=451%2C37%2C5721%2C3895&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After Irving Berlin, left, penned 'White Christmas,' he pegged Bing Crosby as the ideal singer for what would become a holiday classic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-composer-lyricist-and-songwriter-irving-berlin-and-news-photo/1296904202?adppopup=true">Irving Haberman/IH Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/obituaries/irving-berlin-nation-s-songwriter-dies.html">Irving Berlin</a> was a Jewish immigrant who loved America. As his 1938 song “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200000007/">God Bless America</a>” suggests, he believed deeply in the nation’s potential for goodness, unity and global leadership. </p>
<p>In 1940, he wrote another quintessential American song, “<a href="https://achristmasclassic.org/">White Christmas</a>,” which the popular entertainer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/10/15/archives/bing-crosby-73-dies-in-madrid-at-golf-course-bing-crosby-73-dies-at.html">Bing Crosby</a> eventually made famous.</p>
<p>But this was a profoundly sad time for humanity. World War II – what would become <a href="https://www.highpointnc.gov/2111/World-War-II">the deadliest war in human history</a> – had begun in Europe and Asia, just as Americans were starting to pick up the pieces from the Great Depression.</p>
<p>Today, it can seem like humanity is at another tipping point: <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-depolarise-deeply-divided-societies-podcast-193427">political polarization</a>, war in <a href="https://theconversation.com/west-banks-settler-violence-problem-is-a-second-sign-that-israels-policy-of-ignoring-palestinians-drive-for-a-homeland-isnt-a-long-term-solution-217177">the Middle East</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-attempt-to-control-narrative-in-ukraine-employs-age-old-tactic-of-othering-the-enemy-206154">and Europe</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/2023s-extreme-storms-heat-and-wildfires-broke-records-a-scientist-explains-how-global-warming-fuels-climate-disasters-217500">a global climate crisis</a>. Yet like other historians, I’ve long thought that <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pGEB0QIAAAAJ&hl=en">the study of the past</a> can help point the way forward.</p>
<p>“White Christmas” has resonated for more than 80 years, and I think the reasons why are worth understanding.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GJ36gbGlm8Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bing Crosby sings ‘White Christmas’ in the 1942 musical ‘Holiday Inn.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Yearning for unity</h2>
<p>Christmas in America had always reflected a mix of influences, from ancient Roman <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-tree-is-a-tradition-older-than-christmas-195636">celebrations of the winter solstice</a> to the Norse festival <a href="https://theconversation.com/yule-a-celebration-of-the-return-of-light-and-warmth-218779">known as Yule</a>. </p>
<p>Catholics in Europe had celebrated Christmas with public merriment since the Middle Ages, but Protestants often denounced the holiday as a vestige of paganism. These religious tensions <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-puritans-cracked-down-on-celebrating-christmas-151359">spilled over to the American colonies</a> and persisted after the Revolutionary War, when slavery divided the nation even further.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, many Americans pined for national traditions that could unify the country. Protestant opposition to Christmas celebrations had relaxed, so Congress finally <a href="https://time.com/4608452/christmas-america-national-holiday/">declared Christmas a federal holiday in 1870</a>. Millions of Americans soon adopted <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-tree-is-a-tradition-older-than-christmas-195636">the German tradition of decorating trees</a>. They also exchanged presents, sent cards and shared stories of Santa Claus, a figure whose image the cartoonist <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/">Thomas Nast</a> perfected in the late 19th century.</p>
<p>The Christmases that Berlin and Crosby “used to know” were those of the 1910s and 1920s, when the season expanded to include <a href="https://madisonsquarepark.org/community/news/2021/04/holiday-tree/">the nation’s first public Christmas tree lighting ceremony</a> and <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-first-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade">the appearance of Santa Claus</a> at the end of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. </p>
<p>Despite these evolving secular influences, Christmas music and entertainment continued to emphasize Christianity. Churchgoers and carolers often sang “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World.”</p>
<h2>‘The best song anybody ever wrote’</h2>
<p>Berlin’s inspiration for the song came in 1937, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/White-Christmas/Jody-Rosen/9780743218764">when he spent Christmas in Beverly Hills</a>. He was near the film studios where he worked but far from his wife, Ellin – a devout Catholic – and the New York City home in Manhattan where they had always celebrated the holiday with their three daughters. </p>
<p>Being apart from Ellin that Christmas was particularly difficult: Their infant son had died on Dec. 26, 1928. Irving knew his wife would have to make the annual visit to their son’s grave by herself.</p>
<p>By 1940, Berlin had come up with his lyrics. In his Manhattan office, he sat at his piano and asked his arranger to take down the notes.</p>
<p>“Not only is it the best song I ever wrote,” <a href="https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/laurence-bergreen/as-thousands-cheer/9780306806759/">he promised</a>, “it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.”</p>
<p>Berlin had connected his lonesome Christmas to the broader turmoil of the time, including the outbreak of World War II and fraught debates about America’s role in the world. </p>
<p>This new song reflected his response: a dream of better times and places. It evoked a small town of yesteryear in which horse-drawn sleighs crossed freshly fallen snow. It also imagined a future in which dark days would be “merry and bright” once again.</p>
<p>This was a new kind of Christmas carol. It did not mention the birth of Jesus, angels or wise men – and it was a song that all Americans, including Jewish immigrants, could embrace.</p>
<p>Berlin soon took “White Christmas” back to Hollywood. He wanted it to appear in his newest musical, one that would tell the story of a retired singer whose hotel offered rooms and entertainment, but only on American holidays. He titled the film “Holiday Inn” and pitched it to Paramount Pictures, with Crosby as the lead.</p>
<h2>Fighting for ‘the right to dream’</h2>
<p>Raised in Spokane, Washington, Crosby had launched his music career in the 1920s. A weekly radio show and a contract with Paramount led to stardom during the 1930s. </p>
<p>With his slim build and protruding ears, Crosby did not look the part of a leading man. But his easygoing demeanor and mellow voice made him immensely popular. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034862/">Holiday Inn</a>” premiered in August 1942. Reviewers barely mentioned the song, but ordinary Americans couldn’t get enough of it. By December it was on every radio, in every jukebox and, as the Christian Science Monitor newspaper noted, in nearly “every home and heart” in the country.</p>
<p>The key reason was the nation’s entry into World War II.</p>
<p>“White Christmas” was not overtly patriotic, but it made Americans think about why they fought, sacrificed and endured separation from their loved ones. <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/White-Christmas/Jody-Rosen/9780743218764">As an editorial</a> in the Buffalo Courier-Express concluded, the song “provided a forcible reminder that we are fighting for the right to dream and for memories to dream about.”</p>
<p>This made it a song all Americans could embrace, including those not always treated like Americans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of Santa Clause wearing a stars-and-stripes hat as a young boy and girl sit on his lap." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566453/original/file-20231219-15-3zn321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During World War II, aspects of the Christmas holiday – family, home, comfort and safety – took on greater meaning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/retro-santa-claus-wearing-a-stars-and-stripes-tophat-with-a-news-photo/525363617?adppopup=true">GraphicaArtis/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Affirming faith in humanity</h2>
<p>Berlin and Crosby didn’t set out to change how Americans celebrate Christmas. But that’s what they ended up doing.</p>
<p>Their song’s universal appeal and phenomenal success launched a new era of holiday entertainment – traditions that helped Americanize the Christmas season.</p>
<p>Like “White Christmas,” popular songs such as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (1943) tapped into a longing for being with friends and family. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (1949) and other new songs celebrated snow, sleigh rides and Santa Claus, not the birth of Jesus.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Red and blue cover for sheet music featuring photographs of two smiling young men and two smiling young women." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566381/original/file-20231218-25-udqob2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sheet music for Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sheet-music-for-irving-berlins-white-christmas-new-york-news-photo/455915107?adppopup=true">Robert R. McElroy/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“White Christmas” <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Bing_Crosby_a_Pocketful_of_Dreams.html?id=2DRE2U_8WJIC">had already sold 5 million copies by 1947</a> when Crosby recorded “Merry Christmas,” the first Christmas album ever produced. On the album, “White Christmas” appeared alongside holiday classics such as “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”</p>
<p>Hollywood followed suit. In the popular 1946 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/">It’s a Wonderful Life</a>,” for example, bonds of family and friendship proved their value just in time for Christmas. </p>
<p>Faith was affirmed, but it was a faith in humanity. </p>
<p>Over the coming decades, Christmas entertainment continued to reach new audiences.</p>
<p>The upbeat songs of Phil Spector’s 1963 album “A Christmas Gift for You,” for example, appealed to baby boomers. Producers also catered to younger audiences with television specials such as “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”</p>
<p>Hollywood then rediscovered Christmas during the 1980s, largely because of “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_q_christmas%2520story">A Christmas Story</a>,” a film that didn’t exactly view Christmas through rose-colored glasses. While satirizing the chaos and angst of the holiday season, the film nonetheless embraced Christmas, warts and all. A steady stream of Christmas films followed – “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096061/">Scrooged</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099785/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_q_home%2520alone">Home Alone</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319343/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_q_elf">Elf</a>” – where themes of nostalgia, family and togetherness were ever-present.</p>
<p>Since the 1940s, the Christmas season has become even more inclusive. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/23/christmas-also-celebrated-by-many-non-christians/">A 2013 Pew Research survey</a> found that 81% of non-Christians in the U.S. celebrate Christmas. Yes, the holiday has also <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122132/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/">become more commercial</a>. But that, too, has made it all the more American.</p>
<p>Amid these changes, Irving Berlin’s song has been a holiday mainstay, reminding listeners of what makes them not just American, but human: the importance of home, a longing for togetherness and a shared hope for a better future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ray Rast does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The secular carol doesn’t mention Jesus, angels or wise men, while reminding listeners of what makes them not just American, but human.Ray Rast, Associate Professor of History, Gonzaga UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107642023-08-23T12:27:04Z2023-08-23T12:27:04ZWhy have you read ‘The Great Gatsby’ but not Ursula Parrott’s ‘Ex-Wife’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543788/original/file-20230821-29-jhus0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C53%2C1079%2C810&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Writer Ursula Parrott, pictured with her son, Marc, in 1935. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.neh.gov/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2023-04/Ursula_w_son_Fig_12_Gordon.jpg?itok=LBc8_0fM">ACME Newspapers</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Great-Gatsby/F-Scott-Fitzgerald/9781982146702">The Great Gatsby</a>.” Four years later, Ursula Parrott published her first novel, “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ex-Wife/Ursula-Parrott/9781946022561">Ex-Wife</a>.” </p>
<p>I probably read “The Great Gatsby” a dozen times between junior high school and my late 20s. But I had never even heard of Ursula Parrott or her 1929 bestseller until I stumbled across a screenplay adaption of one of Parrott’s short stories. </p>
<p>Fitzgerald, in fact, had been hired to write that screenplay. Even though “Infidelity” was never produced because it was <a href="https://collections.new.oscars.org/Details/Collection/627">deemed too risqué by Hollywood’s Production Code Administration</a>, its very existence piqued my curiosity.</p>
<p>Why was the most famous author of the Jazz Age hired to adapt a story by a totally unknown writer? And who on earth was Ursula Parrott?</p>
<p>I acquired a used copy of “Ex-Wife” on eBay and soon realized that Ursula Parrott was not unknown; she was just forgotten. </p>
<p>In April 2023, <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520391543/becoming-the-ex-wife">I published a biography</a> of Parrott. Since then, I’ve continued to try to understand just how and why she and her writing drifted into obscurity – how “The Great Gatsby” is required reading but few have heard of “Ex-Wife” or its author.</p>
<h2>Greeted by mixed reviews</h2>
<p>Both “Ex-Wife” and “The Great Gatsby” are modern novels of love and loss, money and (mostly bad) manners. They’re set in New York and saturated with the energy, language and spirit of the time. <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1929/08/11/91915237.html?pageNumber=30">Both garnered mixed reviews</a>, deemed by many critics as entertaining and of the moment <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/04/to-early-reviewers-the-great-gatsby-was-not-so-great/390252/">but not great literature</a>.</p>
<p>At first, “Ex-Wife” was far more successful than “Gatsby,” blasting through a dozen printings and selling over 100,000 copies. It was translated into multiple languages and reprinted in paperback editions through the late 1940s. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, “The Great Gatsby” went through <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781571133717/american-icon/">a mere two printings totaling less than 24,000 copies</a>, not all of which sold. By the time Fitzgerald died in 1940, the novel had essentially been forgotten.</p>
<p>“Ex-Wife” centers on a 24-year-old woman named Patricia whose husband is divorcing her. Supporting herself with a job in department store advertising, she learns to navigate life in Manhattan as a divorcée. </p>
<p>Whereas “The Great Gatsby” is largely a suburban novel with trips into the city, “Ex-Wife” is fully immersed in Manhattan, especially Greenwich Village, where Parrott herself lived after she married her first husband. The novel’s characters drink Clover Clubs, Alexanders, brandy flips and Manhattans while frequenting the Brevoort, the Waldorf, Delano’s and Dante’s. </p>
<p>“Ex-Wife” revels in the rhythms of the city: One chapter even includes musical bars from George Gershwin’s hit “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200156779">Rhapsody in Blue</a>” sprinkled between paragraphs. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Musical notes appear on a page underneath dialogue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544084/original/file-20230822-15-g3yjz0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544084/original/file-20230822-15-g3yjz0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544084/original/file-20230822-15-g3yjz0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544084/original/file-20230822-15-g3yjz0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544084/original/file-20230822-15-g3yjz0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544084/original/file-20230822-15-g3yjz0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544084/original/file-20230822-15-g3yjz0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chapter 12 of ‘Ex-Wife’ features bars from ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marsha Gordon</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But “Ex-Wife” is not all martinis and music. Parrott uses it to address, in unsparing directness, the challenges that women faced and the limited paths available to them. This alone sets it apart from the male protagonists of “The Great Gatsby” and the novel’s scant attention to the experiences of its female characters.</p>
<p>Parrott’s witty and biting novel was, in fact, concerned first and foremost with a generation of young women who had abandoned Victorian sensibilities: They got educations and jobs, drank, had premarital and extramarital sex, and cast aside pretensions of being the fairer, gentler sex. </p>
<p>But in shedding these mores, they also sacrificed protections. Patricia reflects on how men of their generation used women’s self-sufficiency and independence as an excuse to leave them to fend for themselves: “Freedom for women turned out to be God’s greatest gift to men.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover featuring drawing of a young, forlorn woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543765/original/file-20230821-29-lmgeo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Ex-Wife’ sold four times as many copies as ‘The Great Gatsby’ in the 1920s and 1930s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff689e048-ef86-4a0b-bcff-e59400fd1186_413x576.jpeg">Screen Splits</a></span>
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<p>“Ex-Wife” depicts a culture in which women often suffer at the hands of men. At one point, Patricia is brutally raped. In another scene, her husband throws her through a glass window during a fight, a moment as harrowing for its rendering of domestic violence as it is for Pat’s nonchalant reaction to it. In one of the book’s most moving episodes, Pat is compelled to procure a risky abortion at her soon-to-be ex-husband’s insistence but at her financial, physical and psychological cost. </p>
<p>“One survives almost everything,” Patricia unhappily realizes.</p>
<p>She survives, however, thanks only to a streetwise female friend and mentor, her own ability to earn a living, practiced if not heartfelt flippancy, the numbing effects of alcohol and an acceptance that everything in her life is both transient and precarious.</p>
<h2>Art imitates life</h2>
<p>Ursula Parrott <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520391543/becoming-the-ex-wife">had a keen understanding</a> of gender inequality and male privilege: Her own publisher made passes at her, her banker once proposed sexual favors in lieu of interest payments, and she experienced a rape not unlike the one she depicted in “Ex-Wife.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Black and white photograph of woman sitting on balcony smiling and using a typewriter." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543763/original/file-20230821-19-vgphn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543763/original/file-20230821-19-vgphn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543763/original/file-20230821-19-vgphn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543763/original/file-20230821-19-vgphn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543763/original/file-20230821-19-vgphn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543763/original/file-20230821-19-vgphn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543763/original/file-20230821-19-vgphn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ursula Parrott in California in 1931, two years after the publication of ‘Ex-Wife.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photos</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before she became a novelist, Parrott, who earned a degree in English from Radcliffe, had desperately wanted a career in journalism. However, she was barred from employment at all New York newspapers because her ex-husband, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/21/obituaries/lindesay-parrott-ex-times-reporter.html">reporter Lindesay Parrott</a>, marked his professional territory by warning the city’s editors – all male, of course – not to hire her. </p>
<p>There is a similar form of male chauvinism at work in the way that Parrott’s writing was often treated by critics during her lifetime. Many described her books and short stories as romantic or melodramatic, fit only for consumption by women.</p>
<p>“Melodramatic,” <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520391543/becoming-the-ex-wife">Parrott once smartly observed in a letter</a>, is “just a word men use to describe any agony that might otherwise make them feel uncomfortable.”</p>
<h2>Gatsby’s boosters</h2>
<p>I am convinced that “Ex-Wife” deserves a place <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/01/11/why-do-we-keep-reading-the-great-gatsby/">alongside Fitzgerald’s novel</a> in classrooms and in the hands of a new generation of readers based on the merits of its style and contents. </p>
<p>But more importantly, I’m convinced that the reason Fitzgerald’s novel is so ingrained in American life and letters has little to do with its originality, craft or quality and everything to do with <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/so-we-read-on-how-the-great-gatsby-came-to-be-and-why-it-endures-maureen-corrigan/110705">the way books were marketed and promoted</a> over the arc of the 20th century. </p>
<p>“The Great Gatsby” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/achenblog/wp/2015/03/20/why-the-great-gatsby-is-the-great-american-novel/">owes its resuscitation from obscurity</a> in the 1940s to the efforts of prominent male critics and scholars – and even to the American military.</p>
<p>Fitzgerald had important friends and admirers, among them the esteemed literary critic Edmund Wilson, who was instrumental in the republication of “Gatsby” in 1941. <a href="https://paw.princeton.edu/article/enduring-power-gatsby">Thanks to Wilson’s efforts</a>, Fitzgerald’s novel could be taken up by other well-regarded and influential scholars like Lionel Trilling, <a href="http://thenation.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/1949.pdf">who wrote admiringly</a> about Fitzgerald in The Nation in 1945, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/29/obituaries/malcolm-cowley-writer-is-dead-at-90.html">Malcolm Cowley</a>, who edited collections of Fitzgerald’s short stories and celebrated his literary gifts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Seated man in suit holding a cigarette and looking out a window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543773/original/file-20230821-10983-meide4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543773/original/file-20230821-10983-meide4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543773/original/file-20230821-10983-meide4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543773/original/file-20230821-10983-meide4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543773/original/file-20230821-10983-meide4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543773/original/file-20230821-10983-meide4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543773/original/file-20230821-10983-meide4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Critics like Lionel Trilling rescued ‘The Great Gatsby’ from obscurity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-american-literary-critic-lionel-trilling-is-shown-here-news-photo/515252642?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>After Trilling, a parade of writers took up Gatsby’s cause, praising it for precisely the same traits that might also have been found in “Ex-Wife,” had anyone bothered to look: its use of contemporary language, its critique of hedonistic behavior, its rich attention to period detail and its depressing portrayal of aimless, unmoored characters trying and failing to find meaning in modern America.</p>
<p>Consider just one instance of differential legacy-tending: during World War II, the American military <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62358/how-wwii-saved-great-gatsby-obscurity">provided over 150,000 free copies</a> of “The Great Gatsby” to American soldiers – ensuring a readership that well exceeded the number of people who had, to date, actually bought the book.</p>
<p>But when the <a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/07/25/victory-book-campaign-and-nypl">Victory Book Campaign</a> started its drive to collect novels for overseas servicemen, it explicitly warned potential donors to desist from handing over any “women’s love stories,” specifically naming Ursula Parrott among the authors whose books they would not be putting in soldiers’ hands.</p>
<h2>Making the case for ‘Ex-Wife’</h2>
<p>There are, of course, many other factors at play here. <a href="https://www.theawl.com/2014/01/all-the-drunk-dudes-the-parodic-manliness-of-the-alcoholic-writer/">There’s the tendency to romanticize</a> the tragic lives of male authors who drink heavily, spend recklessly and make bad decisions – departments in which Fitzgerald and Parrott seem pretty equally matched. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Newspaper clipping suggesting authors to avoid when sending troops books." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543768/original/file-20230821-19874-9e3281.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Book donors were discouraged from sending ‘women’s love stories’ to troops during World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Moberly, Missouri Monitor</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>There’s also what can only be described as a collective <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/05/07/why-the-great-gatsby-is-the-great-american-novel/2130161/">refusal to categorize</a> “The Great Gatsby” as a romance novel, a category that has historically been used <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-the-romance-writers-of-america-can-implode-over-racism-no-group-is-safe-130034">to diminish women’s writing</a>.</p>
<p>“The Great Gatsby”‘s ascension from obscurity to ubiquity is only one example of how Parrott’s book was passed over. “Ex-Wife” and William Faulkner’s “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/48428/the-sound-and-the-fury-by-william-faulkner/">The Sound and the Fury</a>” were marketed alongside each other by publishers Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. Faulkner biographer Carl Rollyson observes that Faulkner’s book <a href="https://www.nysun.com/article/even-as-william-faulker-struggled-ursula-parrott-thrived">sold “less than a tenth” as many copies as Parrott’s</a>. But Faulkner amassed critical praise in the right places, and Parrott, Rollyson concludes, “did not manage herself or her work the way writers like Faulkner did.” </p>
<p>But this is not merely a question of self-management. It is true that Parrott did not publish during the last, difficult decade of her life. After a series of public scandals, missed deadlines, ongoing battles with alcohol and financial missteps, she tried to write herself back into literary society, to no avail. </p>
<p>The real difference, in my view, is that Parrott had nobody to tend to her legacy – no Trilling or Wilson or Cowley in her corner to bring her writings back into circulation or make a case for her genius or her novel’s importance.</p>
<p>However, there is no reason to believe that the erasure of “Ex-Wife” from cultural memory is a fait accompli, or that “The Great Gatsby” will always be the go-to Jazz Age novel. Writer Glenway Wescott, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/116002/moral-scott-fitzgerald">in his February 1941 tribute to Fitzgerald</a>, wrote of “The Great Gatsby”: “A masterpiece often seems a period-piece for a while; then comes down out of the attic, to function anew and to last.”</p>
<p>Consider this article a “better late than never” effort to make the case that “Ex-Wife” deserves to come out of the attic of America’s lost literary past to be read, discussed and taught as one of the important American novels of the 1920s. </p>
<p>After McNally Editions republished “<a href="https://www.mcnallyeditions.com/books/p/ex-wife">Ex-Wife</a>” in May 2023, reviewers remarked on the “freshness of its prose” and the “remarkable erotic freedom” it depicted, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/books/she-wrote-frankly-about-divorce-and-suffered-the-consequences.html">The New York Times</a> review put it; <a href="https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-dark-side-of-the-jazz-age-fletcher">The Baffler described Parrott’s writing</a> as “deftly crafted, wryly observed, and thoroughly unsettling.”</p>
<p>“The Great Gatsby” is a fantastic period piece. But “Ex-Wife” manages to be both that and to remain timely. Women’s lives and bodies continue to be subject to all manner of scrutiny, critique and legislation, which means that many of the things that Parrott wrote about in “Ex-Wife” – the double standard, women in the workplace, work-life balance, rape and even abortion – remain astonishingly relevant today.</p>
<p>In “Ex-Wife” – and in many of her 19 other books and over 100 stories – Parrott wrote from what amounts to Daisy Buchanan’s point of view rather than Nick Carraway’s, to use “The Great Gatsby” again as a reference point. </p>
<p>Imagine what a different story “Gatsby” would have been had the reader seen the world through Daisy’s eyes? </p>
<p>Or don’t imagine. Rather, give “Ex-Wife” a read.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210764/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marsha Gordon has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Program and the National Humanities Center.</span></em></p>‘Ex-Wife’ originally outsold ‘The Great Gatsby,’ but critics sniffed at the novel, deeming it a melodramatic period piece − even though it tackled timeless issues like gender, money and power.Marsha Gordon, Professor of Film Studies, North Carolina State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014972023-05-12T11:14:01Z2023-05-12T11:14:01ZSeinfeld: how a sitcom ‘about nothing’ changed television for good<p>A quarter of a century ago, on 14 May 1998, the final episode of Seinfeld was broadcast, ending one of the most significant sitcoms of all time after nine seasons and 180 episodes. In fact the self-styled “show about nothing” was so important we can talk about the pre-Seinfeld and post-Seinfeld eras. </p>
<p>Set in Manhattan, Seinfeld focused on the minutiae of daily life for four friends: Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), his best friend, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), his ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his neighbour Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). </p>
<p>Such a setup might sound familiar to fans of 90s American comedy shows. But Seinfeld abandoned the traditional sitcom structure of an A story and a B story and instead gave each character their own storyline, full of self-aware and metatextual jokes.</p>
<p>While co-creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld wanted a single-camera, filmlike aesthetic, the network, NBC, forced them to adopt a multi-camera setup taped in front of a live studio audience to supply the laughter track. </p>
<p>Eventually, David and Seinfeld subverted that by shooting more scenes using single cameras and externally so that they could not be taped in front of a studio audience. They also employed a rapid-paced, quick-cutting, music-led style that was then unusual for sitcoms. </p>
<p>This created the opportunities for expanding the narrative and cinematographic possibilities we’ve seen since. Seinfeld was a forerunner of the cinematic television we watch today. </p>
<p>Consider the elaborate single-camera set pieces of the comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, or the epic, cinematic look of Netflix’s Better Call Saul.</p>
<p>Seinfeld tackled a host of then-taboo topics, which were part of everyday life, including antisemitism, same-gender relationships and masturbation. But because censorship and social mores at that time would not allow the characters to say the word “masturbation”, instead they referred to who can be the “master of their domain”. Such topics are commonplace these days.</p>
<p>All four characters are antiheroes. None of them is particularly likeable nor were they intended to be. They are morally ambiguous, malicious, selfish, self-involved and extremely petty. They refuse to improve themselves, evolve or even manifest the slightest desire for change. They learn no lessons and the arc of the entire series revisits those they have wronged. </p>
<p>Similar characters can be found in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367279/">Arrested Development</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472954/">It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</a>. Also, consider Walter White from <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70143836">Breaking Bad</a> and <a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-sopranos">Tony Soprano</a>.</p>
<p>If all four leads in Seinfeld are bad, then George is the worst. Modelled on co-creator, Larry David, he is the epitome of male privilege. Such characters populate the televisual landscape today, not least in David’s later show, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/curb-your-enthusiasm">Curb Your Enthusiasm</a>, in which he stars as a version of himself. </p>
<p>Elaine Benes stands out as a strong female character for the time. In one episode, in the face of a shortage of contraception, she judges whether her sexual partners are “sponge-worthy” or not. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays her with a tremendous physical comedy, as well as comic timing. She was unapologetic, and her sexuality and work life are foregrounded. Clearly, this set the template for her later series, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/veep">Veep</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Festivus is celebrated on December 23 each year, thanks to Seinfeld.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The show generated billions of dollars in revenue, making NBC US$150 million (about £93 million) a year at its peak. By the ninth and final season, Jerry Seinfeld was earning US$1 million an episode. NBC executives tried to get him to return for a tenth season by offering him US$5 million an episode, but Seinfeld turned it down. </p>
<p>Among the show’s fans was the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. “He was crazy about The Simpsons and Seinfeld,” his friend <a href="https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/kubrick-by-michael-herr/">Michael Herr recounted</a>. As a Kubrick expert, I even suspect that the set design influenced his final film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/">Eyes Wide Shut</a> (1999).</p>
<p>Watching Seinfeld again now – and I have re-watched every episode – some of it lands terribly today. Take the episodes with Babu Bhatt, a Pakistani immigrant who runs a restaurant across the street from Jerry’s apartment. He appears in three episodes of the show and is known for his catchphrase, “Very bad man!” which he uses to insult Jerry. </p>
<p>The problem is that Babu is played by actor Brian George, who was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish parents, and is clearly wearing makeup and affecting a south Asian accent. </p>
<p>At the same time, the lack of diversity in Seinfeld is striking. New York is represented by Manhattan alone, rather than any of the other four boroughs that make up the metropolis. Its image of the Big Apple is white and middle class. </p>
<p>As journalist and screenwriter Lindy West has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/09/politically-correct-jerry-seinfeld-comedy-marginalised-voices">observed</a>, the series featured only 19 black people, 18 of whom were one-off characters such as “the waiter” and “the guy who parks cars”. There was only one recurring black character – Kramer’s lawyer, Jackie Chiles – whose mimicry of OJ Simpson’s lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, makes him look like a real shyster. </p>
<p>So, while Seinfeld may feel like a dated product of the late 1990s, it was ahead of the curve aesthetically, structurally and in terms of narrative and characterisation. Today’s television would be unthinkable without it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams has received funding from research councils and charities including the AHRC and The British Academy among others. </span></em></p>The 90s sitcom featuring Jerry Seinfeld influenced the type of cinematic television we are so familiar with nowadays.Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027482023-05-11T20:08:39Z2023-05-11T20:08:39ZFriday essay: cancellation or conflicted joy – grappling with the work of our ‘art monsters’<p>Author Claire Dederer started off writing a book about the film director Roman Polanski. Forty-five years ago, Polanski fled the United States after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. </p>
<p>Samantha Galley (now Geimer), who was 13 years old in 1977 when she said <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-19/roman-polanski-case-new-testimony/101250020">she was drugged and raped by the director</a>, has told her side of the story numerous times, including in her 2013 memoir <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Girl-Life-Shadow-Roman-Polanski/dp/1476716846">The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.</a></p>
<p>Geimer has forgiven Polanski. And just last month, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/roman-polanski-rape-victim-samantha-geimer-defends-director-1234828246/">in an interview</a> with the director’s wife Emmanuel Seigner, she reiterated that “what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me”. What weighs heavily on her is having to repeat that, over and again.</p>
<p>Dederer, who started her writing life as a film critic, has long been a Polanski fan. But for her, Polanski <em>is</em> a big problem. For more than any other contemporary figure, Dederer argues, it is Polanski who balances so equally the forces of “the absoluteness of the monstrosity and the absoluteness of the genius”.</p>
<p>Dederer knew a book about Polanski was going to be complicated – that’s why she embarked on it. But somewhere along the way, her project morphed into <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/claire-dederer/monsters-a-fan-s-dilemma">Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma</a>. It’s a thrilling work of feminist cultural criticism which promises to be career-defining for her and essential reading for those of us who have wrestled with the ethics and emotions of fandom. </p>
<p>Fallen idols: we all have at least one. While I was reading Monsters, comedian and satirist <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-barry-humphries-the-man-who-enriched-the-culture-reimagined-the-one-man-show-and-upended-the-cultural-cringe-188719">Barry Humphries died</a>, prompting a nationwide debate about how he should best be remembered – for his iconic roles as Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson and general comic genius, or for his transphobia, casual racism and rather flippant defences of unacceptable workplace behaviours? </p>
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<span class="caption">Barry Humphries’ death sparked a national debate about how he should be remembered. Rob Griffith AP.</span>
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<p>There’s plenty of evidence for all of it – watch a classic skit on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVyIiDAS9RU">YouTube</a> and revel in his brilliance. Or read an account of how he described trans as a “fashion” and referred to gender reassignment surgery as “self-mutilation” to comprehend why the Melbourne International Comedy Festival <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47943745">decided to rename</a> their prestigious Barry Award back in 2019. </p>
<p>Or why, in the immediate wake of his death, some trans people and their allies were compelled to call out the hypocrisy of a man who made his fortune performing in drag, yet purportedly <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/27/barry-humphries-trans-views-jk-rowling-email/">sent a letter of support aimed at J.K. Rowling</a> in support of her anti-trans agenda.</p>
<p>Then friends and contemporaries of Humphries paid tribute. Film director Bruce Beresford <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/apr/25/barry-humphries-melbourne-comedy-festival-says-tribute-is-in-works-after-criticism">described</a> the Comedy Festival’s decision as a “disgrace” and Humphries as “one of the great comic geniuses”. </p>
<p>Entertainer Miriam Margolyes, who had “sharply disagreed politically” with her friend of 65 years, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-23/barry-humphries-was-saddened-cancelled-miriam-margolyes/102257954">also lambasted</a> what she saw as her friend’s late-in-life “cancellation”. Margolyes declared, “He was acerbic, and he was often quite nasty, but he was a genius, and you have to accept it.” </p>
<p>But do we?</p>
<p>This is where Dederer’s Monsters starts off – she recognises Polanski’s genius, yes, but the Geimer incident also changed her experience of consuming his art. And she has so much more to say, including about the terms “genius” and “cancel culture” and their limitations.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-barry-humphries-humour-is-now-history-thats-the-fate-of-topical-satirical-comedy-117499">Friday essay: Barry Humphries' humour is now history – that's the fate of topical, satirical comedy</a>
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<h2>‘I felt like Woody Allen’</h2>
<p>My own fallen idols include the film director Woody Allen, who also happens to be one of Dederer’s. “When I was young”, she recalls, “I felt like Woody Allen. I intuited or believed he represented me on-screen. He was me. This was one of the peculiar aspects of his genius – this ability to stand in for the audience”.</p>
<p>I too had once felt like Woody Allen – I was a teenage girl living in Sydney’s western suburbs, and he was a then-middle-aged Jewish New Yorker who played clarinet in a jazz club every Monday night. But somehow, like Dederer, I identified with him. I also aspired to one day live in Manhattan in a book-lined apartment in the vicinity of Central Park. My future life would be filled with dinner parties, love affairs, shrink sessions and one-liners.</p>
<p>For Dederer, revelations of Allen’s relationship with his then-wife Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn were experienced as a “terrible betrayal of me personally”. He had slipped from “one of us, the powerless” to “predator”. </p>
<p>My own feelings were murkier, and it was convenient that the quality of his movies started to descend with his reputation. By the time his daughter Dylan Farrow’s account of his alleged sexual abuse of her started to be widely publicised, I was no longer a fan. (Allen has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56563149">long denied these allegations</a>).</p>
<p>Between Dylan Farrow’s <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/?mcubz=1">Open Letter</a> about Allen, published in the New York Times in 2014 (and still available online, with over 3500 comments below), and the HBO documentary series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13990468/">Allen v. Farrow</a>, first aired in early 2021, #MeToo went viral. </p>
<p>Woody Allen’s son and Dylan’s brother, Ronan, was one of one of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories">the journalists who helped expose</a> the astounding extent of the abuses perpetrated by film producer Harvey Weinstein, now serving multiple prison sentences.</p>
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<span class="caption">Ronan Farrow, Woody Allen’s son, (pictured with mother Mia) helped expose Harvey Weinstein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Pizello/AP</span></span>
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<h2>The stain</h2>
<p>Against this backdrop, Dederer’s book can be seen as both timely and overdue. Yet, as is obvious from her 2017 Paris Review essay <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/20/art-monstrous-men/">What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?</a>, she started exploring the terrain long before the celebrity phase of #MeToo kicked in. </p>
<p>With a book to play with, Dederer fleshes out her concerns, but Monsters is not – or not only – an extended version of her viral essay, or a catalogue of the monstrous acts of male artists. Through a blend of memoir, cultural critique and feminist analysis, Dederer offers a hybrid form that is far more ambitious, wide-ranging, slippery and complicated. </p>
<p>Sensing in the “psychic theatre of public condemnation” against disgraced celebrities a “kind of elaborate misdirection” or deflection, Dederer turns her gaze to the audience, including herself. </p>
<p>Monsters follows an intuitive logic, guided by Dederer’s shifting sense of her own project. Early on, she re-watches Roman Polanski’s films, an exercise that confirms his talent but fails to ease her conscience. “Polanski would be no problem at all for the viewer,” she notes, “if the films were bad. But they’re not”. </p>
<p>From the outset, the question of “do we separate the art from the artist?” opens up other, more interesting questions – like, who is this “we” that proposes such a separation is possible, or desirable?</p>
<p>When Dederer returns to Allen’s multi-Oscar-winning <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Annie Hall</a> (1977), she declares it “the greatest comic film of the twentieth century” – a critical assessment she later mocks for its grandiosity, for she is not that kind of critic. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, Allen’s other peak-period “classic”, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/style/woody-allen-manhattan.html">Manhattan</a> (1979) – in which Allen’s character Isaac romances the teenaged Tracy, played by Mariel Hemingway – does not stack up so well. </p>
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<span class="caption">Manhattan, the film in which Woody Allen romances a teenager, ‘does not stack up so well’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MGM/IMDB</span></span>
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<p>Her women friends share her “complicated” feelings and emotions. For numerous older, white men of her acquaintance, however, Manhattan remains a work of unequivocal genius, untainted by its proximity to the director’s “real-life creepiness”.</p>
<p>From the opening chapters on Polanski and Allen, Dederer moves in all sorts of productive directions. Almost immediately she undermines her own title, making a compelling case for the metaphor of “the stain” as a more apt alternative to the rage-filled “monster”. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-separating-the-art-from-the-badly-behaved-artist-a-philosophers-view-116279">Friday essay: separating the art from the badly behaved artist – a philosopher's view</a>
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<h2>Venerating white male rock stars</h2>
<p>Next, the persistently masculinist category of “genius”, embodied in Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, is examined as a product of the mass media, with a legacy most obvious in the veneration of white male rock stars. </p>
<p>More than once, Dederer brings up David Bowie, who in life (and now in death) has largely escaped reputational damage from <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/the_dark_side_of_david_bowie_as_the_mourning_goes_on_we_cant_ignore_his_history_with_underaged_groupies_in_70s/">allegedly having sex</a> with underage girls. She does so out of curiosity not condemnation, and with a sense of her own complicity and investment as a fan.</p>
<p>Rock stars like Bowie, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger – all of whom <a href="https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/i-lost-my-virginity-to-david-bowie">apparently slept with</a> teenaged Lori Mattix in the 1970s, to name one high-profile example – have, of course, often been excused for their bad behaviour on the basis that those were different times. </p>
<p>Integral to this argument is the smug assumption that we live in a more enlightened present. Dederer encourages readers to ponder their own participation in such a liberal fantasy. </p>
<p>She also spotlights enduring strains of antisemitism and racism, including historical amnesia about figures like <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/virginia-woolfs-anti-jew-diatribe-20030616-gdgxsg.html">Virginia Woolf</a>, whose diaries were “pocked” with “flippant anti-Semitic remarks”. When Dederer discusses Woolf with a Jewish friend, her friend replies “Well, if we give up the anti-Semites, we’ll have to give up everyone”. </p>
<p>Feminism propels Dederer’s analysis, and morphs with it. The feminism she initially identifies with is virtuous, fault-finding and punitive – or white, liberal and carceral. Accordingly, she depicts her feminism and her desire to be “demonstrably good” as “coming into conflict” with wanting to be a “citizen of the world of art” and her “increasingly leftist politics”. However, while such distinctions can be blind to the long history of (for example) left-wing feminism, they also dissolve as the book goes along.</p>
<h2>Staking a claim for the ‘I’ in criticism</h2>
<p>In the most pivotal chapter in the book, Dederer shares her own history as a cultural critic. It’s a significant contribution to feminist criticism, not least of all because Dederer challenges the phallocentric model of the critic as a “kind of priest” who dispenses “critical pronouncements” as gospel. </p>
<p>Against this, in the spirit of critics like Vivian Gornick, she stakes a claim for the “I”, of criticism as “relentlessly, proudly subjective”. Feminist challenges of this kind are hardly new, but Dederer’s insights are fresh, welcome and well-pitched. </p>
<p>Critics who cloak their opinions in the “garb of authority”, she reminds us, are part of the problem. “Consuming a piece of art”, Dederer concludes, involves “two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist, which might disrupt the viewing of the art, the biography of the audience member, which might shape the viewing of the art”.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Dederer models her critical practice to dazzling effect. Another stand-out chapter is her re-reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s most infamous novel, <a href="https://theconversation.com/lolita-why-this-vivid-illicit-portrait-of-a-pervert-matters-at-a-time-of-endless-commodification-of-young-girls-189688">Lolita </a>(1955). If <a href="https://www.avclub.com/reminder-pablo-picasso-was-a-bit-of-an-asshole-1836674197">Picasso</a> and <a href="https://bookninja.com/2021/04/12/on-great-writers-who-are-terrible-people-hemingway-edition/">Hemingway</a> have been largely spared the conflation of the art with the artist, Nabokov has had no such luck. By writing from the perspective of Humbert Humbert, “the child rapist”, the author was widely assumed to be a “monster” himself. </p>
<p>Dederer first read Lolita at age 13 and was “horrified” by it, including because Lolita herself did not seem like a “real character”, only an “absence”. The adult Dederer comes to see that may be precisely the point, that Lolita is “a portrait of a girl’s annihilation”. Yet Dederer does not disavow her younger self, who after all was onto something. </p>
<p>She also takes seriously the fandom of children who grew up obsessed with <a href="https://theconversation.com/rethinking-harry-potter-twenty-years-on-86761">Harry Potter</a> and the observations of her children and their friends. Her kids, she notices, are not tortured about Picasso the same way she is, or at all. At an exhibition of his work, curated to tell the story of “Picasso-as-asshole”, they ask to leave.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lolita-why-this-vivid-illicit-portrait-of-a-pervert-matters-at-a-time-of-endless-commodification-of-young-girls-189688">Lolita: why this 'vivid, illicit' portrait of a pervert matters at a time of endless commodification of young girls</a>
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<h2>‘Maybe I’m not monstrous enough’</h2>
<p>Motherhood is a central theme in Monsters. A gifted memoirist, Dederer builds on her previous books <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/poser-9781408817827/">Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses</a> (2010) and <a href="https://www.clairedederer.com/love-and-trouble">Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning</a> (2017) by sharing her experience as a “writer-mother”, and the dilemmas that flow from it. </p>
<p>Contemplating her writing career to date, Dederer wonders “maybe I’m not monstrous enough”. “Every writer-mother I know,” she contends, has asked herself the question: “If I were more selfish, would my work be better?” </p>
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<span class="caption">Joni Mitchell surrendered her baby daughter for adoption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Suzanne Plunkett/AP</span></span>
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<p>The female version of the monstrous male artist slash sexual predator, Dederer tells us, is the mother who abandons her children – and these “female monsters” are far fewer. Dederer weaves her own account of spending five conflicted weeks at an artist retreat in Marfa, Texas, into the vastly bigger stories of “abandoning mothers”: writer Doris Lessing (who, when she was 23, <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2022/04/doris-lessing-abandoned-children-motherhood-letters.html#:%7E:text=Lessing%20was%20said%20to%20have,been%20both%20vilified%20and%20celebrated.">left her two toddlers</a> behind in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, to move to London) and singer songwriter Joni Mitchell, who, as a destitute folk singer, surrendered her baby daughter for adoption. This way, Dederer encourages readers to contemplate stubborn cultural resistance and obstacles to women’s artistic freedom.</p>
<p>Dederer admirably creates space for maternal ambivalence and stakes a claim for female ambition. These motherhood chapters are scattered with gems – like Dederer’s appreciation of Jane Campion’s cinematic evocation in the 1990 biopic <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099040/">Angel at My Table</a> of writer Janet Frame (a non-mother) luxuriating in her writerly solitude after years in a mental hospital. But for me, they read as more predictable, less convincing and even oddly retrograde in parts, especially given the binary of mother/non-mother is largely left untouched. </p>
<p>I found myself wishing Dederer had cast her net wider (Sylvia Plath – again?) and challenged some of her own assumptions more. Surely the lives of say, Toni Morrison or Cate Blanchett – genius-mother-artists – would throw some new light on the dilemmas Dederer poses as endemic and perennial among “writer-mothers” like herself and her friends. </p>
<p>Is female ambition, for example, really still so widely and uniformly discouraged? And what of not-so-hetronormative models of motherhood and parenthood that offer alternatives, and which are under attack throughout the US by conservatives who deem them monstrous?</p>
<h2>Your own art monsters</h2>
<p>In any case, Monsters is, taken as a whole, a wonderfully generative read that is enhanced, not undermined, by Dederer’s unapologetic subjectivity. But nor is it confined to Dederer’s worldview or canon of fallen or “stained” idols. Her former or current cherished artists may not overlap with your own, but reading Monsters will surely bring them to mind.</p>
<p>Animated by the chapter on Woody Allen, I found myself scouring the shelves for my copy of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55386.Getting_Even">Getting Even</a> (1971), his classic comic short-story collection. It includes <a href="http://thisrecording.com/today/2009/7/1/in-which-woody-recalls-his-roaring-twenties.html">A Twenties Memory</a>, in which Allen gleefully skewers some of the “genuises” discussed in Dederer’s book: Picasso and Hemingway, among others. But I couldn’t find it – I must have thrown it out, like the people described in Monsters who did the same with their Allen books and movies.</p>
<p>Throughout, Dederer engages with others who have wrestled with their emotional responses to the art and lives of beloved monstrous men, like <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-08-30-vw-29516-story.html">Pearl Cleage on Miles Davis</a> (who, as Dederer notes, “wrote frankly” in his 1989 autobiography, about beating his wives). The book is overflowing with conversations, and it inspires them too. Since reading it, I’ve talked to a number of friends about our mixed feelings about Woody Allen – including men. He was big among Gen X-ers, as was Johnny Depp (but I won’t go there …).</p>
<p>Then there’s Morrissey, the former lead singer of The Smiths (the greatest band of the 20th century!). He’s not mentioned by Dederer, but he is – for me, and at least five other people I know – our most beloved “monster”. </p>
<p>In Morrissey’s case, it’s not sexual abuse that has “stained” his reputation and the Smiths’ legacy, but his far right, neo-fascist turn (though I’ve since discovered, after conducting a quick update search, that “Moz”, as he was once affectionately known, has also <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42050512">victim-blamed</a> those who were allegedly abused by Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/30/bigmouth-strikes-again-morrissey-songs-loneliness-shyness-misfits-far-right-party-tonight-show-jimmy-fallon">Billy Bragg</a> captured something of the despair and rage felt by Morrissey fans when he described the singer as “the Oswald Mosley of Pop”, an artist who has betrayed his fans and empowered “the very people Smiths fans were brought into being to oppose”.</p>
<p>The night I learned Queen Elizabeth II had died, I did something I had not done in a long time – I played <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS3UMjNUqFM">the Derek-Jarman-directed video</a> of The Smiths song The Queen Is Dead on You Tube. Then I sent a friend a text: “I’m allowed to play The Smiths tonight!” I’ve had them on regular rotation since.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YS3UMjNUqFM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Zora Simic felt ‘allowed’ to listen to The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead after Queen Elizabeth II died, despite Morrissey’s ‘stained’ reputation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The closest Dederer comes to a conclusion is to let us tortured fans “off the hook” because under capitalism, our consumer choices will “solve nothing”. We “do not need to have a grand unified theory about Michael Jackson”. I chuckled reading this passage, recalling my recent rediscovery of The Smiths back catalogue and the conflicted joy it has brought me.</p>
<p>For me, what was most rewarding about reading Monsters is that Dederer describes and gets “it” – the pleasure and pain of being a fan, feminist, critic and person with a unique history. And bringing all of this to the art we love (and to our criticisms of “untouchable” geniuses). </p>
<p>More broadly, Monsters is assured of ongoing relevance, at least for the near future. Dederer reminds us that dilemmas like how we should remember Barry Humphries will never be fully resolved – not by “thinking”, nor through a moral calculus that weighs up the variables. </p>
<p>What we can pay attention to, however, is how authoritative claims of “genius” continue to hold sway in this purported age of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-joanna-bourke-the-nsw-arts-minister-and-the-unruly-contradictions-of-cancel-culture-189377">cancel culture</a>”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zora Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So many of our artistic geniuses have complicated legacies. What do we do with work we love by artists whose behaviour is more difficult to admire?Zora Simic, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1614692021-06-11T12:39:08Z2021-06-11T12:39:08Z‘In the Heights’ celebrates the resilience Washington Heights has used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405707/original/file-20210610-13-v89s35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C10%2C2326%2C1668&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For decades, Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood has been home to a mosaic of ethnic groups.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/children-enjoy-the-high-bridge-park-pool-at-174th-street-on-news-photo/451334472?adppopup=true">Andrew Burton/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With camera work that swoops from rooftops to street corners, the film “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0CL-ZSuCrQ">In the Heights</a>” brings to life the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HAR3QBuiiU">dynamism</a> of northern Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. </p>
<p>Directed by Jon M. Chu, “In the Heights” updates Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Tony Award-winning musical of the same name. Set in a changing neighborhood defined by Dominicans and Latino immigrants, the film eloquently expresses the feel of a hardworking place where your block is your home and a 10-minute walk is a journey to another world. </p>
<p>For me, the film hit home. It brought me back to the years I spent researching and writing my book “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501746840/crossing-broadway/">Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City</a>,” when I interviewed residents, walked police patrols and dug into municipal records. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Lin-Manuel Miranda poses in front of a cart that sells flavored ice." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405703/original/file-20210610-28-1k4q5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Lin-Manuel Miranda on location while filming ‘In the Heights’ in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/lin-manuel-miranda-seen-on-location-for-in-the-heights-in-news-photo/1151102694?adppopup=true">James Devaney/GC Images via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In Washington Heights, long home to a mosaic of ethnic groups, some people have recoiled from human differences and huddled up in tight but exclusionary enclaves – ignorant of their neighbors at best, nasty toward them at worst. </p>
<p>Other residents, street-smart cosmopolitans, learned to cross racial and ethnic boundaries to save their neighborhood from crime, decayed housing and inadequate schools. In the 1990s, their efforts turned Washington Heights, once known for a <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-034pct.pdf">murderous</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/01/nyregion/washington-heights-cocaine-trade-thrives.html">drug trade</a>, into a gentrification hot spot. </p>
<p>My book was released in paperback during the fall of 2019. Just five months later, <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-statistics-tracking-epidemic-new-york">COVID-19</a> came. </p>
<p>Could a neighborhood already grappling with <a href="https://furmancenter.org/files/sotc/Part_1_Gentrification_SOCin2015_9JUNE2016.pdf">the challenges of gentrification</a> – a prominent theme of “In the Heights” – survive a global health disaster? And could a film conceived before COVID-19 emerged speak to a city that sometimes seems to be transformed by the pandemic? </p>
<p>So far – and even though Washington Heights stands out in Manhattan <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.page#rates">for its suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic</a> – the answer is a cautious yes. </p>
<p>But that painful victory, won with vaccines, local institutions and local ingenuity, will be valuable only if enough can be learned from northern Manhattan’s solidarity and activism to build a healthier and more just city as the pandemic recedes.</p>
<h2>A neighborhood rife with vulnerabilities</h2>
<p>Like other immigrant neighborhoods confronting the pandemic, Washington Heights and Inwood – the neighborhood to its immediate north – faced serious vulnerabilities. </p>
<p>Immigrant labor and business acumen rescued New York City from <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/blackout-gallery/">the urban crisis in the 1970s and 1980s</a>, when white flight, job losses, a withering tax base and high crime devastated the city. </p>
<p>But as my co-author David M. Reimers and I pointed out in “<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/all-the-nations-under-heaven/9780231189859">All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York</a>,” the rebuilt city is marked by inequality. <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/new-urban-crisis-article-1.3031009">Rents are astronomic</a>, so families in Washington Heights and Inwood often double up to make costs more bearable. In the face of an easily transmitted disease, <a href="https://furmancenter.org/thestoop/entry/covid-19-cases-in-new-york-city-a-neighborhood-level-analysis">overcrowded housing</a> was a ticking bomb.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sign in a storefront requests only three customers enter at a time." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405731/original/file-20210610-20-19lmtwm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many Washington Heights residents couldn’t hunker down in their homes during the pandemic. They needed to staff stores that keep the city running.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Led Black</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Residents in these uptown neighborhoods <a href="https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/new-york-citys-frontline-workers/">were also endangered by their jobs</a>. In a city where many white-collar workers could work from home on their laptops, a disproportionate number of Washington Heights residents had to venture out to staff stores, clean buildings, deliver groceries and provide health and child care. As one uptown resident told me, her neighbors weren’t <a href="https://theconversation.com/unwanted-weight-gain-or-weight-loss-during-the-pandemic-blame-your-stress-hormones-157852">worrying about gaining 15 pounds</a> – they were worried whether their next customer would infect them.</p>
<p>Equally troubling, many uptown residents had nowhere to run to. In more affluent neighborhoods, like the Upper East Side where I live, many people with country houses could decamp. In Washington Heights and Inwood, most people hunkered down in their apartments. </p>
<h2>Bonds forged in mutual struggle</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, Washington Heights and Inwood have strengths born in the hard experience of making a new home in New York. </p>
<p>The neighborhood has long been the destination of newcomers to the city, among them African Americans escaping Jim Crow, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnG6pLwOflQ">Irish immigrants</a> putting behind them political and economic hardship, Puerto Ricans looking for prosperity, Eastern European Jews in flight from pogroms, <a href="https://www.lbi.org/exhibitions/virtual-refuge-heights/">German Jewish refugees from Nazism</a> and Greeks expelled from Istanbul. In the 1970s, Dominicans fleeing political repression and economic hardship began to arrive in transforming numbers, along with a small but significant number of Soviet Jews escaping anti-Semitism. </p>
<p>For all their differences the German Jews, Soviet Jews and Dominicans had one thing in common: individual and collective memories of living with three brutal dictators – Hitler, Stalin and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-13560512">Rafael Trujillo</a>. Such experiences were traumatic and could foster a tendency to stick to the safety of your own kind, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkij4w1V1qA&t=535s">but they also bred resilience</a>. </p>
<p>Starting in the 1970s, and with cumulative impact by the late 1990s, significant numbers of these residents crossed racial and ethnic boundaries to revive and strengthen their <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501746840/crossing-broadway/">neighborhood</a>.</p>
<p>Thirty years later, when federal authority was absent and the pandemic surged, public-spirited residents – fortified by community institutions – stepped up again. In both cases, it was a clear example of what the sociologist Robert J. Sampson has called “<a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/sampson/publications/term/4929">collective efficacy</a>.”</p>
<h2>The community steps up</h2>
<p>Back when the neighborhood was ravaged by the crack epidemic, <a href="https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/research/office-diversity-culture-and-inclusion/coach-dave-crenshaw">Dave Crenshaw</a>, the son of African American political activists, took action. Crenshaw set up athletic activities with the Uptown Dreamers – a youth group that combined sports, community service and educational uplift. The program gave young people, especially women, an alternative to dangerous streets. </p>
<p>When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, Crenshaw built on his track record. He worked with <a href="https://www.cloth159.org/">The Community League of the Heights</a>, a community development organization founded in 1952, <a href="https://www.wordupbooks.com/">Word Up</a>, a community bookshop and arts space dating to 2011, and students from Columbia University’s <a href="https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu">Mailman School of Public Health</a>. Together, they distributed food and masks, cleaned up grubby street corners, and got people tested and vaccinated. </p>
<p>Further north, the <a href="http://www.ywashhts.org/about-us/our-history">YM-YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood</a>, founded in 1917, built on its record of serving both Jews and the entire community. Victoria Neznansky – a social worker from the former Soviet Union – worked with her staff to help traumatized families, distribute money to people in need, and bring together two restaurants – one kosher and one Dominican – to feed homebound neighborhood residents. </p>
<p>At <a href="https://www.upliftnyc.us/">Uplift NYC</a>, an uptown nonprofit with strong local roots, Domingo Estevez and Lucas Almonte had anticipated, during the summer of 2020, running summer programs that included a tech camp, basketball and a youth hackathon. When the pandemic struck, they nimbly <a href="https://www.thecity.nyc/coronavirus/2020/5/11/21257152/chicken-plantains-and-cafe-bustelo-uplift-nyc-pivots-to-help-uptown-families">shifted to providing culturally familiar foods</a> – like plantains, chickens and Cafe Bustelo coffee – to neighbors in need and people who couldn’t go outside. </p>
<p>Arts and media organizations eased the isolation of lockdown. When the pandemic loomed, blogger Led Black, at the local website the <a href="https://www.uptowncollective.com/">Uptown Collective</a>, told readers that “solidarity is the only way forward.” In his posts he shared his griefs and vented his rage at President Donald Trump. He closed every column with “Pa’Lante Siempre Pa’Lante!” or “Forward, Always Forward!” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.inwoodartworks.nyc/">Inwood Art Works</a>, which promotes local artists and the arts, shut down a film festival scheduled for March 2020 and started “Short Film Fridays,” a weekly presentation of local films on YouTube. The organization also launched the “New York City Quarantine Film Festival,” which explored topics such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-NJk7Qi5PA&list=PLVycio1FS4cVDOqlfGJQckqCG7EVw6B9r&index=75">life uptown in the COVID-19 pandemic</a>, the beauty of uptown <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA00-KxZRmI&list=PLVycio1FS4cVDOqlfGJQckqCG7EVw6B9r&index=7">parks</a> and the life of an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFgFUDa-u9c&list=PLVycio1FS4cVDOqlfGJQckqCG7EVw6B9r&index=27">essential worker</a>.</p>
<h2>Dreams of a better life</h2>
<p>Of course, Washington Heights suffered during the pandemic. </p>
<p>Beloved local businesses vanished. Foremost among them was Coogan’s, a bar and restaurant that was the unofficial town hall of upper Manhattan, whose life and death were chronicled in the documentary “<a href="https://www.womanaroundtown.com/sections/playing-around/coogans-way-documentary-premieres-at-the-harlem-international-film-festival/">Coogan’s Way</a>,” which is now screening at film festivals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People congregate outside Coogan's restaurant." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405705/original/file-20210610-17-dm12aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405705/original/file-20210610-17-dm12aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405705/original/file-20210610-17-dm12aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405705/original/file-20210610-17-dm12aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405705/original/file-20210610-17-dm12aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405705/original/file-20210610-17-dm12aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405705/original/file-20210610-17-dm12aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coogan’s – a bar and restaurant that served as a neighborhood institution – wa shuttered during the pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-congregate-outside-coogans-restaurant-in-washington-news-photo/1224024645?adppopup=true">Rob Kim/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Families were forced to live with unemployment, isolation and fear of infection. As the social fabric frayed, loud noise levels and reckless driving of motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles <a href="https://patch.com/new-york/washington-heights-inwood/borough-president-mayor-do-something-atvs-bikes">raised alarm</a>. Worst of all, the neighborhood’s <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.page#rates">residents died</a> at rates greater than in Manhattan overall. </p>
<p>In Washington Heights and the rest of New York City, the coronavirus pandemic exposed long-brewing inequalities. It also illuminated character, community, strong local institutions and dreams of a better life. All these receive loving and lyrical attention in “In the Heights.” </p>
<p>We live, I believe, in an era when it is important to see the strengths that immigrants and their institutions bring to our cities. This film could not have come at a better time.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert W. Snyder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Local institutions and community bonds forged during the turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s helped a vulnerable neighborhood walloped by the pandemic endure.Robert W. Snyder, Professor Emeritus of Journalism and American Studies, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1483032020-11-12T18:15:55Z2020-11-12T18:15:55ZNew Yorkers knew Donald Trump first – and they spurned him before many American voters did<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368358/original/file-20201109-15-1viqfuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C61%2C3384%2C2198&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Every single voting district in Manhattan, where Trump lives, went for Joe Biden. Times Square, Nov. 7, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-yorkers-flooded-the-streets-to-celebrate-the-election-news-photo/1229522993?adppopup=true">Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald J. Trump was a president from, but not of, New York. </p>
<p>In the final months of his presidency, Trump <a href="https://theconversation.com/drafts/148303/edit">attacked New York as a lawless “ghost town</a>,” and got attacked right back. At least <a href="https://web.enrboenyc.us/OF1CY0PY3.html">73% of New Yorkers citywide voted against their hometown candidate</a> in election 2020, with <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/what-happens-now-counting-ballots-new-york-city">absentee ballots still being counted</a>. In Manhattan, where Trump lived before becoming president, <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/map-see-how-your-nyc-neighbors-voted-2020-election">every single voting district went for Joe Biden</a>.</p>
<p>When Trump was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-president.html">elected in 2016</a>, it was his first serious venture into electoral politics. In the half-century before his election, the then 70-year-old Trump had been a real estate developer, serial entrepreneur and reality television star.</p>
<p>Back then, Trump’s personal story and style were deeply intertwined with New York. After winning the election, he floated the idea of remaining <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/us/politics/trump-president.html">at least part-time</a> in his home in Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue rather than moving entirely into the White House.</p>
<p>As a New Yorker whose mother and grandparents were also born here, I have long <a href="http://lincolnmitchell.com/new-york-observer">observed Donald Trump’s strange relationship with our shared hometown</a>. Trump may seem like a quintessential New Yorker, but he is in some respects a non-New Yorker’s idea of a New Yorker. He is brash, speaks his mind and is not given to unnecessary politesse, all stereotypes about this city. </p>
<p>But Trump was always difficult to place into New York’s cultural geography. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters in NYC at night, holding anti-Trump signs and waving American flags" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364801/original/file-20201021-23-1r1s5nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York City erupted in protest when Trump was declared winner of the 2016 election, with demonstrations centering on Trump Tower on Fifth Ave.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protestors-flood-fifth-avenue-as-they-rally-against-donald-news-photo/622094540?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A WASP from Queens</h2>
<p>New York is the biggest, most diverse and <a href="https://www.runningpress.com/titles/christian-blauvelt/turner-classic-movies-cinematic-cities-new-york/9780762495429/">most cinematic</a> of all American cities. People worldwide are familiar with the different types of New Yorkers: the hard-working immigrant, the Wall Street banker, the gruff blue-collar Brooklynite, the African American Harlemite a few generations removed from slavery or, like me, the Jewish Upper West Sider. </p>
<p>Donald Trump is none of those.</p>
<p>White Anglo-Saxon Protestants born to money are a well-known New York type as well, but Donald Trump is not your classic New York WASP, either. He is from the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens, a wealthy enclave in a working-class borough that’s home to New Yorkers of all races and nations – not the tony Upper East Side.</p>
<p>The brash loudmouth from Queens or Brooklyn is also a pop culture stereotype: Think <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEqy6K18Yo">John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever”</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DloguDxSTws">Fran Drescher in “The Nanny</a>.” But these “outer borough” characters are usually Italian American, Jewish or African American, and almost always working-class. </p>
<p>Trump was also a secular Protestant in real estate, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/665975/summary">a heavily Jewish business</a> in New York. </p>
<p>This background makes Trump unusual in New York. He defies the standard categories. </p>
<h2>More gadfly than player</h2>
<p>Though he is the scion of a wealthy real estate family, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-outer-borough-president/514673/">the city’s old aristocracy never quite accepted Trump</a>. In a tribal city, Donald Trump has no real tribe. </p>
<p>Since he began running for office, much has been made of Trump’s often failed efforts <a href="https://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/10/21/donald-trump-again-fails-to-mix-in-high-society/">to gain approval from the Manhattan elite</a>. That hardly made him unique: Many strivers <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1491897/Revealed-how-New-Yorks-old-money-shuts-its-doors-against-the-nouveau-riche.html">never gain entrance into New York high society</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Donald Trump’s life in the late 1970s through the 1990s was like a cartoon version of wealthy New York: gaudy apartments on Fifth Avenue, deal-making, nightclubs, gallivanting with models and schmoozing with the rich, famous and powerful – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/07/business/the-empire-and-ego-of-donald-trump.html">all made possible by inherited wealth</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white image of Trump with skyscrapers in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364796/original/file-20201021-23-utj0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364796/original/file-20201021-23-utj0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364796/original/file-20201021-23-utj0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364796/original/file-20201021-23-utj0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364796/original/file-20201021-23-utj0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364796/original/file-20201021-23-utj0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364796/original/file-20201021-23-utj0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Donald Trump in Central Park, Aug. 7, 1985.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/donald-trump-at-wollman-rink-in-central-park-august-07-1985-news-photo/534415438?adppopup=true">Arty Pomerantz/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For many of those years, <a href="https://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Barr.pdf">the city’s real estate market only went up</a>. Real estate is a very serious business in New York – roughly <a href="https://rebny.com/content/rebny/en/research/real_estate_policy_reports/2019_Economic_Impact_of_New_York_Citys_Real_Estate_Industry.html">50% of the city’s tax revenue comes from the real estate sector</a> – and those who were deep in that business understood that Trump was always more a gadfly than a player. </p>
<p>Steve Kaufman, president of the <a href="https://www.kaufmanorganization.com/">Kaufman Organization</a>, which manages around 20 Manhattan office buildings, has been in the business for almost half a century. </p>
<p>Trump has “made a couple of good deals in his career, but he’s not regarded as a serious real estate investor,” Kaufman told me in an October 2020 interview for this story.</p>
<p>“People in real estate are afraid to do business with him because he and his family and his organization are not honest people,” he added, referring to, among other things, Trump’s reputation for <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/">not paying his contractors</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s good deals included the purchase of 40 Wall Street and the purchase and renovation of the Grand Hyatt Hotel on 42nd Street. But serial bankruptcies <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html">reveal his many failed ventures</a>. </p>
<p>Everyday New Yorkers could see Trump wasn’t such a big deal just from walking around the city and seeing its buildings. Unlike other major New York real estate investors, such as Rudin and Tisch – whose family names grace hospitals, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/nyregion/jack-rudin-patriarch-of-family-of-new-york-developers-dies-at-92.html">cultural institutions</a>, schools and <a href="https://tisch.nyu.edu">NYU’s School of the Arts</a> – few buildings and cultural institutions bear the Trump name.</p>
<h2>A genius brand-builder</h2>
<p>As a young adult in Manhattan during the 1960s and 1970s, Donald Trump was not trying to “make it,” become rich or leave a mark on New York’s cultural or philanthropic communities. </p>
<p>Rather, Trump came from Queens to Manhattan to build up his name – what we would now call “brand” – and to have some fun. At that he was pretty successful. </p>
<p>For decades, the tabloids covered his wealth, romances and life on the city’s perpetual party circuit. The journalist Michael D'Antonio <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3246349/I-watch-supermodels-getting-sc-ed-bench-Donald-Trump-prowled-posh-NYC-clubs-racist-gay-hating-super-lawyer-Roy-Cohn-asked-conquests-like-Carla-Bruni-AIDS-test.html">described Trump during these years</a>, observing the time he spent at the fashionable Le Club. </p>
<p>“The whole point of Le Club was to be noticed as powerful or beautiful and to be photographed alongside a celebrity and thereby become one yourself,” he wrote.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Trump in a high-ceilinged foyer with dramatic wallpaper, rug and staircase" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364824/original/file-20201021-21-lramg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump, here in his Greenwich, Conn. home in 1987, always had a unique decorative style.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/donald-trump-real-estate-mogul-entrepreneur-and-billionare-news-photo/74417092?adppopup=true">Joe McNally/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>As he was living the socialite life, Trump was also building a national image as a smart businessman and dealmaker who <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/trump-the-art-of-the-deal/oclc/1182861873">navigated the tough world of New York City real estate and finance</a>. That story, as New Yorkers knew, was <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/what_donald_trumps_bankruptcies_say_about_deal_maker/">mostly spin</a> – but Trump was so good at it that he spun it into a successful television show, “The Apprentice,” and then all the way to the White House. </p>
<p>Howard Rubenstein, a prominent New York public relations man, <a href="https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trump-tabloids-daily-news-new-york-post-press.php">noted over a decade ago</a>, “In my whole life, I have never met anybody who’s as brilliant as Donald is at building a brand … He’s an absolute genius at it.” </p>
<h2>Not a New York president</h2>
<p>While Trump fit into New York’s generic urban wealth image, he was never part of the other New York, the one in which the majority of its roughly 9 million people live. </p>
<p>New York has long been a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-cities-help-immigrants-feel-at-home-4-charts-97501">gateway to freedom and prosperity for millions of immigrants</a>, their children and grandchildren. Yet President Trump campaigned on <a href="https://theconversation.com/migrant-caravans-restart-as-pandemic-deepens-the-humanitarian-crisis-at-the-us-mexico-border-146893">radically limiting immigration into the U.S.</a>, which may help explain why New York also <a href="https://abc7ny.com/election-2016-nyc-results-president/1598306/">voted against Trump by a margin of 4-1 in 2016</a>. </p>
<p>As president he <a href="https://theconversation.com/severed-families-raided-workplaces-and-a-climate-of-fear-assessing-trumps-immigration-crackdown-147344">followed through on his immigration threats</a>. He <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/pay-no-attention-to-that-pandemic-behind-the-curtain">abandoned his hometown when it became the center of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic</a>, simultaneously downplaying the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/27/coronavirus-trump-fox-ventilator/">severity of the outbreak</a> while contemplating an “enforceable quarantine” of the New York metropolitan area.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Trump, surrounded by police, waves to supporters in a crowd with protesters in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364802/original/file-20201021-15-15vye3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C49%2C2941%2C1850&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364802/original/file-20201021-15-15vye3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364802/original/file-20201021-15-15vye3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364802/original/file-20201021-15-15vye3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364802/original/file-20201021-15-15vye3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364802/original/file-20201021-15-15vye3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364802/original/file-20201021-15-15vye3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump lived on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan but was never really accepted into New York high society.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/donald-trump-greets-supporters-outside-of-trump-tower-in-news-photo/613952692?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some would-be New York tycoons grow up in a diverse multilingual neighborhood and walk the gritty streets trying to get their start in business. Many love being around the city’s intellectual and cultural life, or are part of its old aristocracy. </p>
<p>Those are New York stories, but they are not Donald Trump’s story. He didn’t even enjoy his city’s variety of ethnic food, <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/articles/this-is-what-donald-trump-eats-in-a-day/">according to reporting on his diet</a>.</p>
<p>Donald Trump was always a <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/2/28/14753248/trump-steak-well-done-ketchup-personality">well-done steak guy</a> in a bagels-and-lox, or slice-of-pizza, or arroz con pollo or soup dumplings town.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lincoln has provided political and communications advice to numerous organizations including the Rockefeller Foundation, 1199/SEIU and other domestic NGOs. For several years, he worked as a political consultant managing and advising U.S. political campaigns, primarily in New York City. </span></em></p>Trump was the first US president from New York City since Teddy Roosevelt, but he was never a hometown hero. Jubilant celebrations erupted across New York after Biden’s projected win.Lincoln Mitchell, Associate Adjunct Research Scholar, Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1293332020-01-14T13:48:25Z2020-01-14T13:48:25Z‘Uncut Gems’ celebrates Manhattan’s Diamond District, a neighborhood that’s a window into the past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309734/original/file-20200113-103954-14t68el.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A diamond wholesaler displays two three-carat diamonds in Manhattan's Diamond District.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-NY-USA-DIAMOND-DISTRICT/f7a26d1f947744b0940390ec173eb574/38/0">AP Photo/Kathy Willens</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In “<a href="https://a24films.com/films/uncut-gems">Uncut Gems</a>,” an overleveraged diamond jeweler named Howard Ratner, played by Adam Sandler, frantically tries to cover his bad business bets by making bigger ones. </p>
<p>The film brilliantly captures the manic energy of New York City’s Diamond District, a bustling commercial stretch on Manhattan’s 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. A preserve for the barter economy and the transaction sealed by a handshake, this small slice of the city has sustained a unique way of life.</p>
<p>It has survived urban decay, revitalization and gentrification. It has withstood the rise of modern finance and e-commerce, resisted economic booms and busts, and adapted to the ebbs and flows of global migration. </p>
<p>In my book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">Stateless Commerce: The Diamond Network and the Persistence of Relational Exchange</a>,” I explore how New York’s Diamond District seems to withstand the forces of economic change. I found that the mechanisms of a pre-modern economy are precisely the devices that allow diamond merchants to thrive in the 21st century.</p>
<h2>A 17th-century industry in a 21st-century city</h2>
<p>From the mid-19th century until the 1920s, New York’s diamond epicenter was Maiden Lane, four blocks north of Wall Street. When wealthier banks started driving up downtown rents in the 1920s, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/realestate/31scap.html">diamond businesses started moving uptown to 47th Street</a>. </p>
<p>Forty-seventh Street’s significance grew substantially as refugee diamond merchants fled to New York during World War II. When Belgium and Israel <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=349040">established themselves as post-WWII diamond hubs</a>, the industry for decades was dominated by Jewish merchants triangulating from Antwerp, Tel Aviv and New York. A visitor in the 1970s would have heard as much Yiddish and Hebrew as American English. Starting in the 1990s, <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb4c/78fd9b3e2c512af09e469758dc6280b5405e.pdf">a surge of Indian diamond merchants</a> entered the industry, eventually making Mumbai the unquestioned capital of today’s diamond world. </p>
<p>Even as the faces have changed, business practices have remained the same. The New York Times in 2001 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/business/the-diamond-game-shedding-its-mystery.html">described 47th Street</a> as “an anachronism, a 17th-century industry smack in the middle of a 21st-century city.” And an ethnographer of 47th Street <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801439896/diamond-stories/">once said</a> that the diamond industry allows its residents “to mix in and stay apart, [to] adapt to new times in ways that are both modern and traditional, indeed ancient.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three men converse in Manhattan’s Diamond District.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/three-men-conversing-on-a-sidewalk-in-the-diamond-district-news-photo/174011279">Frederick Kelly/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The district’s endurance is remarkable. It withstood the area’s decline in the 1970s and 1980s, a period when Times Square – just a few blocks west of the district – was home to a high crime rate, peep shows and what Rolling Stone <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/18/us/80s-times-square-then-and-now/index.html">called</a> “the sleaziest block in America.” </p>
<p>More recently, the district has survived the area’s rapid gentrification. The district remains an island of cramped retail space and backroom manufacturing even as Manhattan commercial rents <a href="https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/manhattan-office-rents-reach-historic-high-cbre">reach historic highs</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJYU6alFZmE&feature=youtu.be">Visit 47th Street today</a>, and the stylish pedestrians of Fifth and Sixth Avenues vanish. In their place are elderly, ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing black overcoats and fedoras; south and central Asians with traditional karakul hats; and gaggles of merchants shouting in languages from across the world.</p>
<p>Diamond merchants – also known as “<a href="https://www.yourdictionary.com/diamantaire">diamantaires</a>” – openly do business on the sidewalk, negotiating terms for bundles of gemstones as if they were fruit in an open-air market. Others bark on cellphones and hold briefcases handcuffed to their wrists, sealing deals <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/magazine/the-secret-slang-of-the-diamond-district.html">using lingo</a> that outsiders can’t comprehend. Jewelry salespeople peddle their products to passersby, luring customers in a way that evokes the merchants of an Old World bazaar.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Deals are made out in the open.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-United-/ee7cd05f5fe5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo/Mark Lennihan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Massive risk – with no legal recourse</h2>
<p>How has the diamond district withstood the pressures of time?</p>
<p>It helps to understand <a href="https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=845069121118112102089122031091089100034054008081016087100064097026124074076088026106117048061042052044115124016076071086019091112042011052088086087013065118115069003089023096003127066115114117002021088109083082105121111117084073003077105026019115068&EXT=pdf">the mechanics of a typical diamond transaction</a>. </p>
<p>Practically all diamonds on 47th street are new ones; very few come from pawns or estate sales. They arrive in New York by multiple pathways, but as an example: the diamond giant DeBeers mines stones in Africa and then sells them rough or uncut in London. These are resold in Antwerp. Then most go to Mumbai and Gujarat, India for polishing and cutting, before arriving at 47th Street, where they are then sold to dealers and jewelry manufacturers.</p>
<p>Forty-seventh Street is, in fact, a thick network of middlemen, with diamantaires buying and selling large caches of diamonds much like stock brokers buy and sell at the New York Stock Exchange. And since diamonds are so expensive – a pocketful of diamonds easily exceeds hundreds of thousands of dollars in value – diamantaires rarely have sufficient liquid assets to pay for stones in cash. So they rely on purchasing stones on credit.</p>
<p>But a credit sale exposes a diamond seller to an enormous financial risk. Because diamonds are portable, universally valuable and virtually untraceable, a would-be purchaser on credit could easily abscond with a cache of diamonds. Even if a thief skipped town, leaving assets behind that a jilted seller could recover, those assets would pale in value to lost diamonds.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A diamond cutter displays a tool used to determine the angles of a large emerald cut diamond.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-NY-USA-DIAMOND-DISTRICT/18f69742ca9c44b9ac61610a4a79b0e4/30/0">AP Photo/Kathy Willens</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though credit sales impose some risk on sellers in every business, other industries can use the law to secure their sales of expensive items. Banks attach liens on cars or mortgages on homes, which enable those lenders to recover the secured items if payment is missed. Bonds are routinely administered when expensive products arrive in ports of entry. Sellers are even given assurances by intermediaries for credit card purchases. These legal devices give sellers and lenders the assurance that they can recover funds from a cheating or overextended purchaser.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">But none of these modern instruments are available to diamond sellers</a>, meaning that if a party were to cheat, there is no legal recourse. The law is of no use to diamond sellers, so they must operate outside the law.</p>
<h2>Your reputation is all your have</h2>
<p>If there’s no long arm of the law, what prevents theft and other forms of wrongdoing? </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/26/opinion/the-editorial-notebook-the-real-treasure-of-47th-street.html">a 1984 New York Times article</a>, diamantaires “trust each other not to walk away with the world’s most valuable, easily concealed commodity … They are protected from embezzling only by the character of those who transport.” The article concluded that mutual trust is “the real treasure” of the diamond industry.</p>
<p>A market defined by mutual trust is all well and good. But merchants know that blind trust is naive. They’re aware that the diamond industry – like all others – includes many Howard Ratners, and that trust only works when there are repercussions for bad behavior. </p>
<p>The true genius of the Diamond District, I discovered, is a reputation mechanism that rewards honest behavior and shuns merchants with a blemished record. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">two pillars that hold people accountable</a>.</p>
<p>First, the industry imposes economic sanctions on those who fail to uphold their financial obligations. A trade association publicizes to the entire industry the identities of anyone reported to have cheated, misallocated funds or exhibited any disreputable conduct. The formal mechanism is a bulletin board that – much like the “Wanted” posters in the Old West – displays pictures of individuals who haven’t paid their debts. Those whose faces appear on the wall are known to be in default and are shunned by the industry. Those who remain off the board and maintain an unblemished reputation are guaranteed a lifetime of lucrative business. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Egyptian jeweler named Ramses Said has been working at his family’s Diamond District business since he was 14 years old.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/NYC-Daily-Life/45bb592a6aec49749bf524881450097a/57/0">AP Photo/Richard Drew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, families and communities police their own. Family businesses form the backbone of the industry, and reputations are bequeathed and inherited. Those who break the code of trust bring harm not only to their own reputation but also that of their family. The reputational stakes are high, since many plan to bequeath their lucrative businesses to their children. They’re also sources of employment for extended family and ethnic compatriots. Since families and communities have so much to gain by everyone behaving honorably, they bring shame and impose penalties to any of their own who cheat in the business.</p>
<p>The importance of business reputations explains why the industry has been able to sustain a pre-modern, pre-legal system. It allows old world commerce to outperform modern capitalism on its home turf – and the Diamond District is a reminder that family businesses and community enterprises still have a place in the 21st century.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barak Richman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Surrounded by skyscrapers and high-end boutiques, 47th Street continues to operate like an Old World bazaar, with million-dollar deals sealed by handshakes and insured by a family’s reputation.Barak Richman, Katharine T. Bartlett Professor of Law, Duke UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095532019-01-24T11:55:55Z2019-01-24T11:55:55ZNot so long ago, cities were starved for trees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255209/original/file-20190123-135130-1s0f4fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C8%2C2708%2C1752&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 1919, 1,376 new Norway Maples were planted along streets in Brooklyn.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Parks of the Borough of Brooklyn, City of New York</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many cities, in recent years, have initiated tree planting campaigns to offset carbon dioxide emissions and improve urban microclimates.</p>
<p>In 2007, New York City launched <a href="https://www.milliontreesnyc.org/html/about/about.shtml">MillionTrees NYC</a>, a program designed to plant 1 million new trees along streets, in parks and on private and public properties by 2017. They hit their goal two years ahead of time.</p>
<p>These programs are popular for a reason: Not only do trees improve the city’s appearance, but they also mitigate the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/heat-islands">urban heat island effect</a> – the tendency for dense cities to be hotter than surrounding areas. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/02/how-planting-trees-in-cities-can-save-thousands-of-lives/?utm_term=.7cae50ae9d54">Studies have shown</a> that trees reduce pollutants in the air, and even the mere sight of trees and the availability of green spaces in cities can decrease stress.</p>
<p>But as I show in my new book, “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300225785/seeing-trees">Seeing Trees: A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin</a>,” trees weren’t always a part of the urban landscape. It took a systematic, coordinated effort to get the first ones planted.</p>
<h2>A landscape that was hot, congested – and treeless</h2>
<p>As New York City’s population <a href="http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/new-york-city-population/">exploded in the 19th century</a>, poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding and hot summers made the city a petri dish for disease: Between 1832 and 1866, cholera outbreaks alone had killed an estimated 12,230 people.</p>
<p>By the turn of the 20th century, living conditions had deteriorated. Neighborhoods continued to be overcrowded, indoor plumbing was still lacking and open sewers could still be found along many of the city’s dusty streets and alleys. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255201/original/file-20190123-135130-1qzgyup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By the turn of the century, the city’s congested streets could be choked with people, but without a green leaf in sight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mulberry_Street_NYC_c1900_LOC_3g04637u_edit.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trees could be entirely absent from a neighborhood. The few trees that did line city streets – mostly ailanthus, elms and buttonwoods – could be individually cataloged with relatively little effort. For example, in 1910, The New York Times reported on the decreasing number of trees along Fifth Avenue. The article noted that between 14th Street and 59th Street, there were only seven trees on the west side and six on the east side of the avenue.</p>
<p>Real estate development, subway expansion and utility line construction had clearly taken their toll. </p>
<h2>A physician proposes a solution</h2>
<p>In the 1870s, eminent New York City physician <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1922/08/27/archives/dr-stephen-smith-dies-in-100th-year-famous-physician-was-a-pioneer.html">Stephen Smith</a> spearheaded a movement to plant more trees. Doing so, he argued, would save lives. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255197/original/file-20190123-135142-2r9hwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255197/original/file-20190123-135142-2r9hwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255197/original/file-20190123-135142-2r9hwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255197/original/file-20190123-135142-2r9hwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255197/original/file-20190123-135142-2r9hwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255197/original/file-20190123-135142-2r9hwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255197/original/file-20190123-135142-2r9hwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Physician and public health advocate Stephen Smith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Stephen_Smith#/media/File:Stephen_Smith_Surgeon2.jpg">Wikisource</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smith, who pioneered the city’s sanitary reforms and founded the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222398/">Metropolitan Board of Health</a>, was the author of a groundbreaking study that correlated high temperatures with childhood deaths from a number of infectious diseases. He concluded that planting street trees could mitigate oppressive heat and save 3,000 to 5,000 lives per year. </p>
<p>To promote street tree planting in his city, Smith <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_54/February_1899/Vegetation_a_Remedy_for_the_Summer_Heat_of_Cities">drew attention</a> to what became known as the Washington Elm study.</p>
<p>Attributed to Harvard College mathematics professor <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-benjamin/">Benjamin Peirce</a>, the study claimed that the famous <a href="http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1931-5--the-cambridge-washington-elm.pdf">Washington Elm</a> standing on the Cambridge Common in Massachusetts had an estimated crop of 7 million leaves that, if laid out next to each other, would cover a surface of 5 acres. The study illustrated the vast potential of a single tree’s foliage to absorb carbon dioxide, emit oxygen and provide shade. </p>
<p>In 1873, Smith drafted and introduced his first bill to the New York state legislature for the establishment of a Bureau of Forestry, which would promote the cultivation of street trees.</p>
<p>But the bill stalled; it took several additional attempts and amendments before it was finally approved in 1902. Even then, it didn’t provide adequate funds for municipal street tree planting. So, in 1897, Smith joined a group of citizens who decided to take matters into their own hands. Calling themselves the <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-tree-planting-association-of-new-york-city#/?tab=navigation">Tree Planting Association</a>, they helped homeowners plant trees in front of their residences. A few years later, they also established the Tenement Shade Tree Committee to plant trees along tenement blocks and in front of public schools. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255203/original/file-20190123-135142-72fmy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Tree Planting Association of New York quickly attracted a robust list of members.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/pdf/govpub/4050annual_report_brooklyn_dept_parks_1920.pdf">New York Public Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The city encouraged residents living on a block to collaborate on planting decisions so that trees could be planted at regular intervals, providing even shade and a uniform aesthetic. Some species, like the <a href="https://www.mortonarb.org/trees-plants/tree-plant-descriptions/norway-maple-not-recommended">Norway maple</a>, were favored because of their tall trunks and their ability to grow in poor soil and withstand urban pollution.</p>
<p>The association’s first list of members read like a New York City “Who’s Who”: philanthropist and housing reformer <a href="https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/396">Robert de Forest</a>; art dealer <a href="https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/wallach-division/print-collection/avery">Samuel P. Avery</a>; sculptor <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/astg/hd_astg.htm">Augustus St. Gaudens</a>; industrialist and former mayor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Cooper_(mayor)">Edward Cooper</a>; and financiers <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-P-Morgan">J.P. Morgan</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bayard_Cutting">W. Bayard Cutting</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-C-Whitney">William Collins Whitney</a>. </p>
<h2>On the front lines of fighting climate change</h2>
<p>For these early activists planting trees was a way to cool streets and buildings in the summer and beautify the city’s gritty urban landscape.</p>
<p>Only later would scientists come to realize the enormous potential that urban trees besides entire forests held in mitigating the effects of climate change.</p>
<p>In 1958, Chauncey D. Leake, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, warned of the warming atmosphere <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/326758">in a well-received paper at the National Conference on Air Pollution</a>. He pointed out that warming temperatures could cause the huge polar ice caps to melt, leading to sea-level rise. To lower levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he suggested planting 10 trees for every automobile and 100 for every truck.</p>
<p>Leake’s proposal was an early attempt at using tree planting to offset global warming. Since then – and particularly over the last two decades – methods that calculate the number of trees needed to offset carbon dioxide emissions have become more sophisticated. For this purpose scientists and foresters from the U.S. Forest Service and the University of California Davis developed <a href="https://www.itreetools.org/">iTree</a>, a suite of software tools that help to determine a tree species’ ability to sequester carbon, reduce pollution and decrease storm water runoff in a particular ecosystem.</p>
<p>Despite their popularity, new trees can be met with resistance. While many residents enjoy the shade and look of a tree, there’s always someone who sees them as a nuisance that blocks sunlight from entering their apartment. Others complain about the smelly flowers that some trees produce, the seeds they shed, and the way they attract birds that speckle sidewalks with their droppings.</p>
<p>But as the perils of climate change become more apparent, the hope is that the broader benefits of trees prevail over personal predispositions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109553/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sonja Dümpelmann's book Seeing Trees was published with assistance from The Foundation for Landscape Studies and a Dean's Annual Research Grant from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. </span></em></p>In 1910, along one 45-block stretch of New York City’s Fifth Avenue, there were only 13 trees.Sonja Dümpelmann, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/987852018-06-27T13:19:58Z2018-06-27T13:19:58ZSex and the City is 20 – and still in fashion<p>At the London <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2010/may/27/sex-and-the-city-premiere">premiere of Sex and the City 2</a>, there was one climactic scene which had the audience gasping and applauding. It featured the lead character Carrie Bradshaw opening the door to … a spectacular new walk-in wardrobe which was a present from her husband. Actor Cynthia Nixon, who plays lawyer Miranda in the TV series and spin-off movies, later explained that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWlmzWm0y8c">she was</a> a “little devastated” by the reaction.</p>
<p>For Nixon, the scene, and the viewers’ response, undermined the original series’ importance as a bastion of female empowerment. She explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The show was so much about female empowerment and about women making their own choices, and women standing up for what they wanted and supporting themselves. So, to me, to have this be a kind of climax of the film – that your very wealthy husband built you a really nice closet for your clothes – that’s not really what you love about the show, is it? Because that’s not what we were making it for.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now running for governor of New York, Nixon, quickly added: “We love clothes! I’m not saying we don’t love the clothes!” </p>
<h2>Fashion and feminism</h2>
<p>The cult phenomenon that was Sex in the City told the story of newspaper columnist Carrie and her three 30-something best friends, as they navigated life in Manhattan. After its launch in 1998, the Emmy award-winning HBO series was lauded for its frank discussions of female sexuality and friendship, securing its position as a zeitgeist of feminism (though those involved with the show were careful to avoid this particular “f-word”). </p>
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<p>Sex and the City also broke aesthetic ground for television in its spectacular use of fashion. Costume designer Patricia Field took the existing model of costume as subservient to character and narrative and flipped it on its head. She said in an interview with <a href="https://wwd.com">Women’s Wear Daily</a> that by season two, the show’s writers began “to write for our wardrobe”. </p>
<p>The programme’s dual commitment to female empowerment and fashion proved troubling for some critics. The two have historically been at odds, with some holding a view of fashion as a tool of oppression, tied to female objectification. </p>
<p>Sex and the City sought to trouble this way of thinking by highlighting fashion’s role in identity construction, and acknowledging the way in which spectacular fashion can challenge gender norms. In doing so, the show distinguished itself in favour of a feminism based on individual agency and choice.</p>
<h2>Choice and the City</h2>
<p>Choice and the individual’s right to choose were central to storylines that dealt with feminist issues such as abortion, motherhood and female sexuality. Often, fashion was used as a metaphor to work through them. </p>
<p>In the episode <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0698609/">A Woman’s Right to Shoes</a>, Carrie is “shoe shamed” by an old friend for spending US$485 on a pair of shoes. Later, she calculates that she has spent US$3,200 on wedding gifts and baby showers in support of her friend’s lifestyle choices. Yet because she has chosen to reject a life of traditional domesticity, she had received nothing in return. </p>
<p>In the show’s <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-City-Kiss-Amy-Sohn/dp/0743457307/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530092937&sr=1-1&keywords=Sex+in+the+City%3A+Kiss+and+tell">companion book</a>, Kristin Davis (who played Charlotte) applauds the show’s non-judgmental attitude when it came to an individual woman’s way of life. She says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I love that the four of us are so different, that we can have the variety of choices displayed without saying, ‘this is the right one’ or ‘this is the wrong one’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But while the show marked a departure from traditional notions of idealised femininity, its representation of women was certainly not diverse. Women of colour were almost entirely absent, and issues of class rarely explored. </p>
<p>In this way the show fell victim to a kind of feminism that, in celebrating individual choice and agency, often fails to recognise the ways that “choice” is only available to those with a certain amount of privilege. </p>
<h2>Moving on</h2>
<p>While Sex and the City is certainly a product of its time in terms of political awareness, it is not a relic of the past. Digital technologies have ensured the show remains a part of public consciousness. </p>
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<p>On demand services encourage new viewers to “binge watch” all six series, while existing fans embrace new ways of engaging with its content on social media. These online spaces have provided a forum for productive debate and discussion, where the show is viewed with a contemporary lens. </p>
<p>A recent example of this kind of engagement came in December 2017, when Lauren Garroni and Chelsea Fairless created the <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wokecharlotte">#wokecharlotte meme</a> to expose problematic moments within the show. Screen captions from particular scenes juxtaposed with images of Charlotte calling out racism and transphobia were shared on the pair’s <a href="https://www.instagram.com/everyoutfitonsatc/?hl=en">Instagram account</a> and immediately went viral. They have since launched a line of t-shirts endorsing Nixon’s candidacy for New York governor that bear the slogan: “I’m a Miranda and I’m voting for Cynthia.” </p>
<p>So as the show celebrates its 20th anniversary, the continued political significance of Sex and the City cannot be denied. It continues to invite debate and discussion, raising relevant questions about society and our place within it. </p>
<p>Two decades old and still fashionable? That’s something to applaud – even more than Carrie’s new closet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Warner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The HBO series was a big hit in 2008, but is it still relevant two decades on?Helen Warner, Lecturer in Cultural Politics, Communication and Media Studies, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/871272017-12-11T13:10:54Z2017-12-11T13:10:54ZBed bugs are back – here’s how one neighbourhood is learning to live with them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193795/original/file-20171108-14193-3nheb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Insecta cimicidae. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bed-bug-cimex-lectularius-543036598?src=kqVqcB67FzlRlmd-QCRYiQ-1-31">Akos Nagy</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When it came to managing bed bugs in the early 1900s, the world <a href="https://watermark.silverchair.com/ae57-0014.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAaEwggGdBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggGOMIIBigIBADCCAYMGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMPX8LJqU5yjUhe7XnAgEQgIIBVMc55Meyuxkf1aw7wvZz-gt5fvd8Wj_emcVWYZEhUxhYpKC4qRx4N2WOxqXTHtbZTpcC3hyGxox10stqSCODLrL53eXScgu3O0wacCs2gzCQLO9uTQXiMaeNfbythBAp-ulr2dURYDhkyEpQQdQlqZKzPk-Ry7k-ZJFTPABLwie3Aqg8x_307umuqHim31jTHLS3-aAH5mhLAX7B-GyPfoC9XmU-UtDYMt6l3Mezp8BA4eN5AAUyzTPv_eJCVWd_wehNSpFpFib0l4Hj8K9V9yswTF1eerIWX_R9m_y3VHlZFbD5yXXCHg9Yx1EYxOCdWfAiS-RfmU-YCyFH_UIhjVDYLhaCnKzEQhDs4avhsLpEms_CJGgaWqIYyjoJ1okBcvxt2h5VIjLMASLE8k2OHi3CsjUM8x5i_q36GPpGJlDJuIKSSPNiX9C5Wf2kTZKy-PGzAgA">took its lead</a> from an approach developed in the slums of Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city. Known as the “Glasgow system”, it emphasised educating tenants about cleanliness and bed bug behaviour, backed up with regular visits from the public health department. </p>
<p>Nearly 100 years later, in the midst of a worldwide <a href="https://www.bedbugcentral.com/bedbugs101/history-resurgence">bed bug resurgence</a>, Glasgow again has much to offer the current debate. The experience of people in Govanhill, a locality just south of the city centre, is that once these insects become endemic they are effectively impossible to remove. </p>
<p>Some residents have taken the view that the best response is learn to live side by side with them. This fits with a world view that we will arguably all have to adopt if we are to come to terms with our environment in the coming decades. </p>
<p>Govanhill reflects the challenges and opportunities of 21st-century Europe as well as anywhere. Variously dubbed “<a href="http://www.documentscotland.com/portfolio/photographs-govanhill-community-glasgow-scotland/">Govanhell</a>” or “<a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/govanhill-glasgow-s-ellis-island-1-2783217">Glasgow’s Ellis Island</a>”, the district has come to represent the social, environmental and economic problems associated with migration. It has seen waves of migrants down the years – Irish, European Jewish, south Asian and most recently eastern Europeans – all represented in the changing shopfronts and the numerous places of worship.</p>
<p>Govanhill has become renowned in recent years for poor housing, poverty and crime – as well as for artists and vibrant community activists. And it faces major environmental issues, with constant rubbish dumping and infestations of bed bugs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194183/original/file-20171110-29364-11bg3hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Allison Street, Govanhill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesbrownontheroad/4041763379/in/photolist-7aa6rv-5mWacF-aJECDT-7adUzf-cFFUxj-7adRUd-7aa2Xz-efaZbp-cFG1P3-7aa6hz-7N73xD-cFG2vS-7a9Y4z-7adRes-7aa3h6-7aa3Xa-7aa5UD-cFFUfy-aJECaD-7adQsd-aJECiZ-aJEC32-4ZcHyV-9tvnFu-aJECni-7aa1xn-7adRxE-Xg9djP-aJECGP-cFFULf-cFFVB3-cFFWLG-aJECtF-26Bc3-aJECUB-7adR4s-aoky8q-aohQZv-ox1Uq-cFFXbL-62pAy4-aohWWH-aJECeZ-rQYzV4-iYBe-7aa7iH-Wgas8M-62pBYx-WgatZH-S1s5S8">James Benedict Brown</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The district has attracted <a href="http://www.gcph.co.uk/latest/news/350_govanhill_equally_well_test_site-final_evaluation_report">numerous</a> <a href="https://news.gov.scot/news/housing-improvements-in-south-glasgow">public</a> initiatives <a href="https://www.glasgowcpp.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=39192&p=0">worth</a> millions of pounds, including a dedicated pest control unit that <a href="http://www.speymouth.co.uk/govanhill-a-response-from-glasgow-city-council/">deals with</a> hundreds of cases each year. Yet there are few signs this has reduced the overall problem – not least because bed bugs are highly adaptive: they can lie dormant for extensive periods and their reproduction cycle encourages pregnant females to move around. </p>
<p>One Govanhill resident I interviewed questioned the practices of the council pest controllers who visited her flat – both their thoroughness and the fact that they only appeared to be tackling one residence at a time. When they came to work on her neighbours’ flat a couple of months later, she tested her suspicions by taping a cloth to the adjoining vent. After the treatment she says she found a collection of bugs clinging to the cloth to flee the chemical onslaught. </p>
<p>Until then, this woman had been ashamed and horrified by the bugs and was preoccupied with having them exterminated. But now she wanted to learn more about them and eventually accepted, reluctantly, that they may be part of the new normal – even if the council did everything perfectly, the problem may be too big to solve.</p>
<p>Having talked to many in the area, I have found this trajectory is common. Many people who have come to terms with the fact that you can’t beat bugs resign themselves to living with them instead. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193765/original/file-20171108-26962-12jkzpr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exhibit A.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heather Lynch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bed bugs international</h2>
<p>Bed bugs are again a global problem. In New York, case numbers <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3255965/">rose from</a> 523 in 2003 to 10,985 in 2010. Australia has experienced a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3255965/">big increase</a> – and the same appears true in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3671460/">France</a> and <a href="http://journals.fcla.edu/flaent/article/viewFile/82164/79265">China</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193768/original/file-20171108-27001-2i6aqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bugs take Manhattan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heather Lynch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scientists give three main reasons. Bed bugs, like many insects, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22235873">have developed</a> resistance to the extermination chemicals. These chemicals have <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016336">made it possible</a> for stronger bugs to evolve, while <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/flight-ways/9780231166195">endangering</a> other animals such as the albatross at the same time. Current environmental research <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/flight-ways/9780231166195">evidences</a> how oceans are being polluted by the chemical waste from pesticide production and also tiny pieces of the plastic packaging. It’s an example of how behaviours in one part of the world can affect species elsewhere.</p>
<p>Modern staples, including central heating and soft furnishings, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ae/article-pdf/52/2/102/18746970/ae52-0102.pdf">have also created</a> the ideal environment for bed bugs. Frequent travel has enabled them to hitch a ride between continents in suitcases and clothing. As a result the bedbug species common to the southern hemisphere is now evident in the north. We are also victims of having concluded some 60 years ago that we had vanquished bed bugs forever: the average person <a href="http://cmr.asm.org/content/25/1/164.full">is nowadays</a> far less knowledgeable about detecting and managing them than previously. </p>
<p>Poverty, on the other hand, is not an essential part of the mix. Bed bugs have been an issue for five-star hotels <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3438634/Five-star-hotels-infested-BED-BUGS-major-surge-blood-sucking-insects-New-York-City.html">in Manhattan</a> and even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/19/british-airways-issues-apology-for-bedbug-infestation">British Airways flights</a> lately. It makes more sense to see them as one of the growing number of environmental impacts from how we humans live.</p>
<h2>The new normal</h2>
<p>Bed bug bites can cause significant discomfort to those who attract them and we mustn’t downplay this, but there is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ae/article-pdf/52/2/102/18746970/ae52-0102.pdf">no evidence</a> that they are vectors of disease like mosquitoes, for example. The stress of discovering them in your life is probably more harmful than anything they actually do. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the idea of coming to terms with bed bugs presents an ethical dilemma. Some would probably argue that just because people can adjust to hardship, it doesn’t mean they should have to. Why should they, when wealthier people can employ private pest controllers or move elsewhere?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193767/original/file-20171108-26962-19moleu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Collateral damage?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heather Lynch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I think this is shortsighted when you factor in environmental damage from insecticides. The idea that the poor need to be rescued may also be demeaning – the people I interviewed in Govanhill had arrived at a lifestyle decision to live with the bugs based on their own experience and analysis. To insist on eradicating the bugs arguably imposes a middle-class norm that associates them with degradation and squalor. </p>
<p>The reality <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1924-capitalism-in-the-web-of-life">is that</a> affluent people’s lifestyles are far more environmentally harmful than those of less well-off people. We arguably need new norms to mitigate the risks of chemical resistance, pollution and global warming. Perhaps some of us need to forego certain comforts, whether it be plastic packaging, electricity use or air miles. </p>
<p>The Govanhill residents who have learned to live with bed bugs may be ahead of the curve here. Instead of society always assuming it knows what’s best for people in the area, they may be the ones who can help everybody else to adapt instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87127/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Lynch is on the board of Crossroads, a Gorbals-based community organisation that does some work in Govanhill.</span></em></p>The experiences of a migrant district in Scotland’s biggest city could be the shape of things to come.Heather Lynch, Lecturer, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/867462017-11-01T23:51:09Z2017-11-01T23:51:09ZWhat draws ‘lone wolves’ to the Islamic State?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192907/original/file-20171101-19847-102yfck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Police work near a damaged Home Depot truck on Nov. 1, 2017, after a motorist drove onto a bike path near the World Trade Center memorial. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Andres Kudacki</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent attack on a bike path in <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/spain-terror-threat-van-attack-isis-first-europe-country-651983">lower Manhattan</a> once again compels us to ask: Why do people pledge allegiance to the Islamic State?</p>
<p>Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the attack, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/nyregion/sayfullo-saipov-manhattan-truck-attack.html">isn’t a devout Muslim</a>. He cursed and came late to prayers, according to acquaintances <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/nyregion/sayfullo-saipov-manhattan-truck-attack.html">who talked to The New York Times</a>. So why would he want to be a martyr?</p>
<p>As a professor of modern Middle Eastern history, I have spent the majority of my professional life studying the region, its culture, society and politics. In recent years, I have researched and written about IS and its terrorist activities. While other experts and I have long looked at how radicalization occurs, some new ideas are emerging.</p>
<h2>Of lone wolves, flaming bananas and machismo</h2>
<p>Like this recent attack in New York, many IS attacks around the globe are carried out by individuals the media have dubbed <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/23/world/isis-lone-wolf-social-media-trnd/index.html">“lone wolves”</a> – that is, freelancers who act without the direct knowledge of the IS leadership. To avoid glamorizing them, the RAND Corporation prefers the term <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/30313709/Terrorism-and-Beyond-A-21st-Century-Perspective">“flaming bananas</a>.” </p>
<p>There are two theories as to why these individuals pledge allegiance to the group. The first is that they get <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hughes-stop-isis-recruit-radicalization-20160517-snap-story.html">“radicalized.”</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-radicalization-happens-and-who-is-at-risk-52248">Radicalization</a> refers to a step-by-step process whereby individuals become increasingly susceptible to jihadi ideas. First, they cut themselves off from social networks such as family, which provide them with support and a conventional value system. They then immerse themselves in a radical religious counterculture. They might do this on their own, or a jihadi recruiter might bring them into the fold. Either way, the result is the same.</p>
<p>Some observers claim IS propaganda plays a key role in recruitment. Rather than presenting a religious rationale for the group’s actions, IS propaganda tends to focus on the violence the group perpetrates. IS has even released a <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/variety/2014/09/20/Grand-Theft-Auto-ISIS-Militants-reveal-video-game.html">video game based on Grand Theft Auto 5</a> in which, rather than stealing cars and battling the police, the player destroys advancing personnel carriers and shoots enemy soldiers. </p>
<p>Perhaps, then, the radicalization model is wrong or not universally applicable. Perhaps there’s something other than religious zealotry at play.</p>
<p>Consider the widely reported story of two would-be jihadists who, before they left Birmingham, U.K., for Syria, <a href="https://apnews.com/9f94ff7f1e294118956b049a51548b33">ordered “Islam for Dummies”</a> and “The Koran for Dummies” to fill the gaps in their knowledge.</p>
<p>Newspaper stories time and again puzzle over the problem of how it happens that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/isis-criminals-converts/426822/">individuals who go on to join IS were found in bars,</a> even gay bars, or had Western girlfriends and smoked and drank almost up to the time they committed some act of violence for the group. The most common explanation is that their dissolute lifestyle was a cover. </p>
<p>After the driver of a truck ran down and killed 84 people in Nice, France, for example, the French interior minister was at a loss to explain how <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nice-france-terror-attack-truck-driver-algerian-isis-manuel-valls-booed/">someone who drank during Ramadan</a> – which had ended a week and a half before – could have radicalized so quickly.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182648/original/file-20170818-7959-10oswx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182648/original/file-20170818-7959-10oswx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182648/original/file-20170818-7959-10oswx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182648/original/file-20170818-7959-10oswx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182648/original/file-20170818-7959-10oswx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182648/original/file-20170818-7959-10oswx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182648/original/file-20170818-7959-10oswx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former French President Francois Hollande in Paris in September 2016 at a memorial service for victims killed by terrorism in France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/France-Terrorism/7a09ec8328bb45228f357169ec615fb6/22/0">AP Photo/Michael Euler</a></span>
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<p>A number of experts have argued that the radicalization model should be replaced by, or <a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/298536508/Radicalisation-and-Subcultures-a-Theoretical-Analysis">supplemented with, a different model</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than joining a radically different religious counterculture, individuals are attracted to IS, these experts argue, because its actions reaffirm the cultural values of those who are marginalized, or those who exhibit what psychiatrists call “anti-social personality disorders.”</p>
<p>Could it be that IS volunteers are drawn to a value system that asserts an aggressive machismo, disparages steady work and sustains the impulse for immediate gratification? Could it be that they are attracted to a culture that promotes redemption through violence, loyalty, patriarchal values, thrill-seeking to the point of martyrdom and the diminution of women to objects of pleasure?</p>
<p>In this reading, IS more closely resembles the sort of street gang with which many of its Western and Westernized enlistees are familiar than its more austere competitor, al-Qaida.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James L. Gelvin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the Manhattan bike path attack, wasn’t a devout Muslim. He cursed and came late to prayers. A terrorism expert explains why such a man may want to be a martyr.James L. Gelvin, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.