ON TAR ART

Live or die, life is really short and it’s meant to be lived. Everyone gets to choose and never give up. I’ve been on airplanes millions of miles everywhere. It’s my passion. You get on a plane that is going towards the unknown and you are told that you are welcome. That’s when I feel alive. I have met many people, some of them have stayed in my life, and some have not. You shouldn’t be afraid of life; you should live it with a smile and courage. You never know when the last day will be.

an online post

When the British playwright and screenwriter David Hare was meeting with Steven Spielberg sometime after the release of the film The Hours, which he had written, Spielberg said to him confessedly: “Everyone knows you have written the best screenplay of the year”, after which the renowned director looked down. It was in that moment Hare realised that he had not received Steven Spielberg’s vote for the Academy Award for the best screenplay of the year.

Now that the worst of awards presented to film are over for another year, some universal truths remain and are nowhere as noticeable as in how Tár, the film written and directed by Todd Field, dwindled away with hardly any of the more prestigious trophies in its wake. This is not to say that the impact of this highly ambitious and artistic film – both features to elicit frowns and uncomfortableness – cannot be felt even after many days of seeing it. As a piece of cinema, Tár, like its eponymous central character, stands alone, not entertaining enough to relax its viewer and not poetic enough to permit a full dismissal upon seeing it. For those who have become aware of the film merely as a cultural curiosity it represents exactly the kind of target for unbridled anger we have come to expect from cinematic art, now more than ever, when our universe is in constant danger and needs periodic rescuing from superhuman beings. What, says the moviegoer, to watch a lesbian conductor do what? What for?

Tár, like all great works of art, is about many things and hardly any of them are explicitly on its surface. It is simply not possible to walk away from it spouting conclusions such as life-affirming, tragic, gorgeous and mysterious, without the awareness of a more buried uneasiness undoing any full take on the experience. No sigh of relief for this work, no ‘putting cinema to its place’ without the guilt from a tendency to unculture oneself; to not have to face the world of contradictions or the questions (all of the deeper questions) still unanswered. In a word, no escaping from art. When a powerful work of art is presented to the public it is rarely met with universal praise or an immediate acceptance, because artistic expression – real, deep-seededartistic expression – cannot be met with indifference or banality. It can be banned and constricted, but to have a real take on it one would have to – heaven forbid – take a closer look, and in this act the socially acceptable veil of an approach to art (when so much of it is now restricted to demonetised no-longer-than-a-minute appearances to be glimpsed, swiped and forgotten) starts immediately to come down. Similarly, when a person is truly heard, and this is naturally one of the themes of Tár, only two things remain, a recognition through empathy and the stubbornness of a refusal.

To ignore the highest form of cinematic art is akin to refusing to see the world as it is. By saying no to a work of art the consumer (of culture, of life) is choosing a less cultured path, something to contain an ultimately boundless existence, and puts an importance on a hierarchy that is there to comfort and to lull to sleep, in shifting variations, but never far from the underlying message that art is in its place to service a society and the values within, and never the other way around. When a film such as Tár comes along, this agreement is in immediate danger of starting to disintegrate in the mind of the viewer. Watching a film seems an activity simple enough, safe even, and yet there are occasions when something outside of control starts emerge, the near-lifeless undercurrent starts to move, and at last the voice of an artist is heard. It pierces through political discourse, conversations about opportunity and rights, the truth about what remains important, through infrastructure and culture itself, and finally reaches the heart of the matter, morality. It is here that the greatest danger of all is revealed. The protecting and seemingly benevolent forces that run all the way through to the most revered institutions in a society (therewithin the ‘message’ to the masses) start to tremble with the slightest suspicion of art running wild, and while recent developments would suggest that the acceptance of the artist is gaining more footing than before, certainly in Western countries, this is quickly being replaced by the story of a societal awakening, of a country correcting its course, and hereupon the appeasement of any and every neglected sector of artistic people, now indistinguishable from other neglected groups, and the qualified critic who is inseparable from the one who simply gathers a following.

Nowhere is this take on art present as vividly as in the American film industry. The existential struggle that is ravaging through it on every level is narrowing many of its freer qualities, among them the celebration of art for art’s sake. The cultural shift has taken on such politically subverting elements that there is now one question to settle before all others: to remain American through and through, how can cinematic art continue to be a part of its surrounding society? To this day the greatest outcome of this struggle, still universally seen and heard, is the Academy Award for the best film of the year. I have no desire to take a stance here on whether films are political, since all art in one form or another is political, but to define the grievous destiny of cinema more accurately, it can be said that as much as artistic work remains political and in dialogue with the political forces of a society, it is equally a reflection of the kind ofpolitical environment that surrounds it. To remain free in one’s art, there are ultimately only two routes to take. Either the work is subjected to a specific political goal, however vague in detail, or the political discourse is made aware of itself, not only by criticising it, but by creating art powerful enough to illuminate the flaws of a unified vision for the world.

But what does it mean to step away from society itself? In the first place, the artist refuses whatever notion is given as the way things should be. This is no small feat, for if we keep with our example of the most dominating form of them all, the American art, to turn away from or to even show indifference towards a literally potent, unrivalled industry (as with entertainment, so with military), one is turning away from the American exceptionalism and the American dream, its liberal forces, its joys and abundant gifts, the promise of a unified world under one banner, and to a certain extent from behaviour and morality itself. Artistic work that refuses to show what should be and instead turns its focus on what is cannot be celebrated by a culture that is more concerned with an image and an impact on the world than on an authentic view of what there is behind a press conference pamphlet, and this is true of most Western cultures. The time we are living is terrible for art for art’s sake, because a social stranglehold is now forbidding financial forces from finding interest in the complexity of human life, and instead a light is shone on the relentlessly redeeming qualities of it; a heroine must rise, lost connections must be mended, forgotten truths remembered, obstacles overcome, and all human complexities resolved. In a phrase, good must continue to prevail. From here we return to Tár.

Todd Field’s third film has mostly been criticised for being pretentious and brooding, and this reaction culminates in the reception of the acting by Cate Blanchett. Works of art that address directly one or two of the inconveniencies that are present in the act of viewing itself are periodically pushed back and criticised for doing precisely this. When a film begins to communicate on the level of the awareness the viewer is having about the ongoing viewing, reactions are bound to be varied. It is easy to ironize this exchange, and the latter period of cinema is noticeably full of irony. In some ways this is an era of entertainment that can only be described as ironic, when budgets and brutalities are beyond comprehension, and the ever-expanding ‘messages’ are those of security, salvation, awareness, and acceptance. But when a film does not make a mockery of its thematic depth, when it doesn’t shield itself against the ironizing gaze, but rather opens up to represent a simple channel for conflicting human responses, when it neither shakes up nor pacifies, it has the potential of turning into an occurrence of a truly artistic experience. Among the many unspoken agreements the public is now having with cinema is that it can represent life in all kinds of ways but not become a part of life. Sitting in a movie theatre is still by and large an escape from something unbearable by itself, and however briefly, perpetual hope descends to eradicate a looming responsibility, and a life without art. Tár is a film that by all accounts cannot be enjoyed completely personally, and in fact it can be argued that this is one of its objectives, in other words, the refusal of anypersonal relief. The judging eye is put to the test, and the work of art finally stares back, as if to say, “This is what you are, no more than this, no less”.

Another point of contention though less frequently articulated is the intelligence of Tár. Popular artistic entertainment puts itself at risk by becoming intelligent, and the intelligent actor is the bearer of disappointment felt by the offended viewer. Thinking is still largely unacceptable activity in a movie theatre, and thoughts that are not easily articulated, worse still the ones that need illuminatingrather than verbal expression, eat away at the promised sense of comfort one is meant to experience before anything else. Artists the world over are accused of making a point about creating art, and this is faithfully presented to them as though the thought had never occurred to them in the first place, but a finished work that can withstand the entirety of accusations is closer to a monumental existence in a literal sense; not separate to the experience the shorts-wearing, phone-operating obedient tourist is having at the pyramids of Egypt or the Colosseum. There are moments when the ridiculousness of the endeavour rushes to the head, and the following thoughts are inevitable: What are we doing with these ruins, what is the point of them? What if we simply blew them to bits and carried on with our lives? Who would suffer from it? Ancient Egyptians? Romans? Once again, these are themes of Tár. Artistically speaking, the film is at its highest when depicting the preciousness of art, the obsession surrounding it, and the three letters easily rearranged to ridicule and obliterate it. It speaks as much to radical student theatres as it does to the concert-going public, but only a great artist, someone at the absolute peak of their craft, is able to communicate within that sweet spot, where art is both revered and frowned upon, without the viewer ever being absolved with a ruling. In the marriage of Todd Field and Cate Blanchett this resonant force is present in rare form.

The arrangement of counter forces in Tár is truly all-encompassing: women composers and conductors, lesbians, European life, high art, wealth, languages, exotic landscapes, psychology, female relationships, nazis – one building block after another saying to the man holding the financial reins: no, no, no, and for the last time, no. And yet the images that linger in mind days after seeing the film are of ordinary quality, more allied with how the experience of the world has now become to millions of people, to the vast mass that can now travel, enjoy culture and the arts, and have every opinion about life – in short, a vision of luxurious banality. We see a person coming home wheeling a suitcase late at night, we see corridors of hotels, we see an exotic waterfall, we see calming rivers, we see Berlin in all its worn-out polyphony, we see concert halls, European cafés, parks, good-looking and well-dressed people wrapped in thought, and things, things and more things. This multitude of things is what keeps Tár from becoming a purely elitist work. The viewer is the continuation of Lydia Tár, flawed and in a sense having accidentally stumbled into the world of classical music, eventually being held captive by the assigned position – as the conductor, as the film critic – and yearning for some kind of relief, of humanity even, where titles and past failings can finally wash away to reveal a person like any other, with as much potential for love and destruction as anyone. A film that can communicate to all levels of society in such expansive ways is popular art in the truer sense. Upon seeing it, Tár can be denounced, but it cannot be diminished in its effectiveness. It is the cinematic equivalent of a citizen stopped walking through a busy metropolis by a sudden political or humanitarian plea. Nothing quite hits the tax-paying consuming body like a foreign cry for assistance. In this shared understanding, in this intelligence, lies our real predicament. The viewer cannot help the opinion forming, as Lydia Tár cannot help being the great artist and behaving as such, and there is no unaffected state to return to anymore, for to denounce anytake on the film is to denounce one’s own intelligence, the very core of human existence and the source of cinematic art, among other things.

What I have wanted to say in this essay is that while there has been universal praise for the film Tár, there is something to be said about the fact that at the greatest film event of them all it was all but neglected. Not one Academy Award was presented to this film, and I cannot think that it didn’t have something to do with the seemingly more challenging aspects of it, with its unapologetic mixture of simplicity and complexity, of artistic and of decrepit, of East and West, and of being neither here nor there, and the greatest sin of them all, of not being about one universally understandable thing, or the kinds of things films are meant to be about, such as the importance of family, realizing one’s own value, making amends, overcoming insurmountable obstacles, finding a voice, etc. Surely a popular film cannot only be about art? But there it is, an artistic film like none before it, one not produced by recycling what is soothing or shocking to the moviegoer’s mind, but rather by pushing to the front that which is unpopular and nevertheless unquestionably still there, like the event from our past we wished to forget so badly we nearly succeeded at it over many years, until for whatever reason and quite disagreeably it surfaces again, forcing us to bear the entirety of our failings, of still remaining human despite our perfected story. But for all the film’s rawness, Tár is perhaps most surprisingly not unpleasant. (Another stroke of incredible artistic luck.) On the contrary, its viewing is mostly an enjoyable experience, and furthermore powerful in that it manages to introduce a character that has been missing not only in cinema but more pathologically in the attentive political discourse at large, and by default the consciousness of the citizen: the fearful, uncertain leader.

The discomfort felt at morally ambiguous deeds are no more than the fears of the experiencing witness manifested. We are unnerved by bad behaviour and simultaneously drawn to it, and a story that succeeds both at giving us space to purse our lips and position our noses for a downwards lookand simultaneously awaken our bloodthirst is worth the price of admission alone. Consider the climax of Tár, where our floundering protagonist charges the stage of a concert hall and pushes the substituting conductor down from the podium. What could be more inappropriate? What more embarrassing? How could anyone have misjudged their response so completely? And still, Lydia Tár isn’t entirely wrong. Even here, when her struggle for art is at its most absurd, her actions are not unrecognisable. Who hasn’t thought about what it would be like to conduct an orchestra or do anything in front of a full concert hall, inappropriate or otherwise? In addition to this, the greater themes of the film are revealed in this scene. This is what wewant from an artistic experience, this what we expect from a civilised society; an evening of classical music must be a safe space, certainly after tickets have been bought and behaviour fitted to the occasion.

Tár brings to mind two films of somewhat equal substance, Black Swan and The Square, but the main difference here is a lack of terror and an addition of empathy. The company of Lydia Tár is not altogether unpleasant, and at moments it is the very opposite of this. At the end she gets nothing less than what she deserves, and she bears her fate finally with surprising dignity. After the unbearable Europeanness and a few glimpses of New York, Tár is cast off to two locations where high art isn’t – at least not in the sense in which we consider it. Both places are interestingly left undefined. First we see the conductor return to her humble American beginnings in a detached suburban house, firstly to rekindle her love of music and conducting with VHS cassettes and in the next moment to be brutalised by her unsympathetic brother calling her Linda – again, when is the particular dynamic of families of artistic people ever discussed? –, and finally Lydia Tár leaves her Western surroundings entirely and ends up living, and conducting, in an unspecified Asian country. There are a few references to Marlon Brando, but otherwise we could be anywhere from India to Indonesia, at least to the forever-traveling eye. It is hard to think of a more appropriate ending if one wanted to pull the rug from under the all-knowing, all-seen cultured audience who has at long last concluded that it has been watching a film about somebody unknown to it. And then without warning the ultimate discomfort falls upon the viewer. A tropical landscape fills the screen, no language is understood anymore, and the way in which most people on the planet have been living all along, with very little prospects of change, is simply dropped to silence a self-important voice. All of this is pretention, of course, we have not left our comfortable cinema seats, and the difficult question about human value lingers to unite those who have never seen life outside a Western city, and those who dreamed of making it to be big city and sometimes in this process left their home countries far behind, the environmentally savvy and the pure consumer alike, all are united by the awareness of a paradoxical, counter-intuitive world we must share in one way or another, one which cannot really be discussed away nor made sense of with a soothing turn of a phrase. This world can only be looked at, and in this undertaking there remains no greater approach than art.

Joining in anger

It is not that Joe Rogan and Jewel sat together and that after the eleventh “holy shit” out of the mouth of Rogan the American society was more enlightened, taken care of, covered with a wisdom that could have been self-explanatory but was dependent upon those that had suffered, had become rich and successful, and were now cutting through a shared experience with the clearest eye and a trademarked understanding on human psychology and educational needs. There they were: Jewel and Joe. Joe and Jewel. It wasn’t the communion of these two voices soaring above whatever the average American was going through while it was happening. It wasn’t the story of the suffering. There was no American story that could be told, nothing separate from the painstakingly visceral struggle for a sense of wealth and community, of peace, of a piece of land and a flag above it to wave with the winds of all eternity. These had always been there. It was the voice out of the mouth of the current orator, the voice of the people, as it were, with campfire extinguished, but the flame of the eye still gleaming, still staring into the withering nothingness of an uncertain camper. I, it said, I as the leader of this particular camp, with great kindness in my heart, with my little position and with the security of the mass that upholds me, I will now proceed to shut you up. It was the voice that can only be produced by word-ready, energy-surging, survivalist reactionary, one who has learned that to have a talk is the safest way into having a voice in the world. To just keep talking is to keep the fire burning.

Elsewhere it wasn’t. It couldn’t be found in television produce that had started to drag, not specifically and not in one product, never only in one, but in the attitude that had taken over the production of televised drama. Here is how it happened. It was discovered that there were no longer limitations on how far dramatic content could reach, and so it was decided that the only option to respond to an unlimited media network – and it is a response, make no mistake – was to proceed to take over the world. Nobody really understood the significance of this at first, and it was still relatively easy to laugh at it, to shrug it off. But after the consumption of an adequate dramatical content had turned into anticipation and quickly thereafter ‘my time alone’ with all of drama melting into one and the few gaps in it filled with post-productions and midway-productions by amateurs in channels fast turning into something indistinguishable from the original product, only then it started to become clear that there was in fact a coated state, a fallout of sorts, taking hold. Entire cultures were drowning in something that couldn’t be traced back to one event or culpable party. It had simply been there ready to be responded to. It was understandable why producers and shareholders took this course. It is only what anyone would have done. The media-consuming mind was starting to overheat, but there was no turning back, not with things as they stood and with the financial opportunities they undoubtedly presented. The need for action was seen in an obsession with nuclear holocaust, Hitler and Nazis, American presidency, Vladimir Putin and Russia, with climate, sexuality, sexual orientation and gender, superheroes, races, historical wrongdoings, abuse, and in sharing, joining, and separating. Of the last three, the need to join was by far the greatest. It was important not only to join a cause and join those that were riding on momentum, but to join a time in history, to keep production going, to dream with expanse, into universes and galaxies, and if any barrier would appear, a foreign language, for example, this anomaly could be overcome by joining with more people, translators, distributors, the media, high school students, the opposition. And the dream came true, and everyone was swirling in the same vortex, not united in geography or culture, but in essence; everyone saw the same program, everyone could speak on it. The unwashed young male with his critical do-it-myself-from-my-armchair-surrounded-by-toys-and-technology was as much a part of it as any first-rate film critic. Nobody was above anyone else; nobody had an opinion more worth hearing. And in this cacophony of no beginning and no end, with the produce inseparable from the story behind it, when theories and criticisms were absorbing not only what was being watched but the producing forces behind it, and indeed it was beginning to seem that the great analysing multitude was determined to see into every human motivation behind every action, before and after, and the enjoyment of the global moment was shaped by the pursuit of ownership of thought, then it became clear where the truest power lay. It had been known for a long time before the walls had started to fall between the greater world and the voice worth listening to, and now when the Western Mouth was only producing Critical Thought, unemotional, unfettered, unapologetic, boldened by righteousness and the desire to leave this crumbling fragile existence behind, then the old truth came forward: to capture the raging mind, greatly harmed by its own actions, it must be given more to consume, more to watch, more pleasure and enjoyment to battle against. When this course of action was finally in place, when the amount to watch was crushing every farcical attempt at organizing it mentally, only then peace would reign. Drama had started to deteriorate, it lingered over an ever-consuming mass like cloudy sky on a rainless day, and thought was surpassed, in its stead there stood a monumental box of pleasures, open to all cultures, all genders and races, young and old, anyone with an eye to see and a mouth to speak.

It didn’t appear in the pianist that I had deemed homosexual with absolute certainty, and who then appeared in a television show as a prize bachelor, desired by heterosexual women. Some thoughts occurred out of this. For a classically trained pianist, of which there are too many to get a grasp on, there are very few alternatives outside of being purely a classical musician. It is probable that the pianists who are classical musicians to a fault are like screenwriters and poets, that is, a very rare breed of people that don’t appear all that often. What this means is that a true screenwriter, for example, is unlike any other. This is an artist who simply cannot help being specifically an example of the artform of which he is a part of, whose consequence, it seems, is writing for the screen, and while some other activities could be imagined on occasion – writing for the stage, writing a novel – these would result in attempts as futile as pretending to be from another culture or a language. Classical musicians the world over are now being asked to adapt to a more social time, where any kind of sharing is accepted for building a brand, with good looks and an enviable lifestyle, all the while becoming – announcing it! – an actor, a writer, a life coach, and anything else that expands the horizon of possibilities should the narrow path of mere classical music, which in all likelihood does not expand, remain hidden. The pianist in question is of a particular Southeastern European variety of younger male musicians. These are men who for all their musical gifts dedicate a considerable portion to channelling popular music through classical means, an act where no worn-out radio hit is beyond consideration for repertoire, where music videos and musings, posts and talks of ‘reaching for our common goals’ are parts of a sacrifice to the god of commercialism, the plate that is served to the concert-goer, safely wrapped in rediscovery, enthralled, excited, but never yanked, never forced to leave the comfortable concert hall seat or the reaffirmed reverence – in other words, where art isn’t. When an opportunity is presented to a handsome, desired, gifted young man with strangely no spouse to speak of, can it be that even the homosexual will leave his secret behind and join (there is that word again) a television program? What is – and this is the only question – homosexuality South of Ukraine? Have we now accepted it all, as we would like to think, or is it really there, in the media, in celebrity, in musicians and artists (where it must be) and in the brands that people under 30 and under 40 are now constructing with an almost feverish dedication? When the brand is being changed as violently as it now is, with forcefully awakening and recasting, diversifying and opening a mouth only to speak in a universally acceptable tone, is it not possible that this acceptable behaviour hides within it those that must eventually talk the talk? Where has the female-marrying homosexual gone or has he indeed gone anywhere, and in his marrying is he not bringing forth the mystery of sexuality? Is it not the anti-political nature of sexuality we are witnessing here? The homosexual who for all his blessings will never own the world and because of this can only join in, through the political door, through the door that is socially acceptable, endearing even, but never through his innermost mystery, sexuality. And there we see him, still under the boot of his country, still lost and outside of it, forced to leave and become ever more perfect, finally reclaiming, but closer, so much closer now to the central behavioural pattern, slightly more freed by the boredom of a newly awakened younger heterosexual, the gatekeeper of acceptable change. If he didn’t agree, and worse still, if he was indifferent, there would be no change that the homosexual could truly call his own, even when he was living it. Only momentum creates societal change, and now at the moment of an unforeseen battle for attention, when much is disputed and much is falling by the wayside, never to be discussed, the only way toward a central experience is to elevate a response to a level where everyone can understand it. And here at the crossroads of cultural unity and individual life is where we are still existing, however more digital and fleeting.

Not much can be seen on the big screen which is still very much there. Still the greater story and the vision that is uniting people across cultures. Essentially there are two ways for a filmmaker to go. Either you choose technical achievement over substance or substance over technical achievement, but you cannot have both, as far as the global market is concerned. On which the emphasis now lies is fairly easy to see. One of the greater developments within the technical is cinematic content becoming more serious with each passing year. Nothing is truly out of place anymore. There is no Arnold Schwarzenegger, no real camp in the disguise of a major film, certainly no intellectual properties outside of the public opinion, nothing is old and nothing is new, and much seems to have been replaced by the race for intellectual and its particularly ironic dominion. This doesn’t mean that there was necessarily anything light-hearted about cinema before. What we are talking about here is a seriousness that keeps evolving. Whereas before there was nothing to compare the experience to and therefore the viewer had no choice but to accept what was being distributed, now the comparison is the experience, the mind cannot shut down the intellectual forces that are bombarding it in every moment, and the activity becomes one of trying to rise above the uncontrollable stimuli and urges and have a cerebral hold on the experience. To remain intelligent amidst stupefying forces is a task itself, and against a mass-produced hegemony of social understanding which absorbs not only forms of entertainment but responses to them, there is no discernible internal counter measure.

When the enemy cannot be won it must be absorbed in body and soul. When we get too close to the danger of self-realization, that is not the time of yielding in embarrassment but of multiplying, of stretching beyond the limits of understanding with all the unsolved, burning hurt that will always find hope in another person and in the person after this. Procreation in body and in spirit is what keeps survival in its place, and the unquestionable human forces that make us work, forget, suffer and begin anew, these are meant to unite us, to bring us together, always together, never to remain foreign to anything. When the moment of horror has passed with what used to be called cinema now translating to franchise, no-one is lost to the change nor outside of it. The word has been adopted and the modern viewer has taken the intellectual leap to overcome an impotence caused by a sea of entertainment absolutely outside of control. To join is the only way, the only dream left worth dreaming. What we are talking about here is a battle for the mind, the consumerist brain that is filled to the brim and yet yearns for more. Any signpost, any recollection is now acceptable material for another season of entertainment. Anything will be watched. Anything can collect a critical mass to ensure its survival in a global market, and if it has not been believed before, the greatest hit of them all can now be manufactured, from conception to final result, with great manpower behind it, aided by the dangerously fearful wind of never being able to work again. Someone always says yes, someone believes, and to come to see that criticism is also a display of a kind of belief, the mystery simply keeps unfolding.

Nobody was talking about franchises twenty years ago, hardly ten years ago, and now they appear as the only thing left to talk about. The crucial thing about a franchise is that it is a mental package of something. The consumer by and large knows what will be experienced and enjoyed and can prepare for the moment well in advance. The speed at which this change has happened can be seen in the wave that refuses to crash, that sweeps within any individual product and swells as something self-contained. Entire film series sink into the greater mass of warm water, as happened to innumerable superhero films and a later trilogy of Star Wars films that seems to have come and gone without much cultural impact to talk of. Why are franchises so successful now? Why are films as a rule making more money than was ever conceivable in the 80s or 90s? Partly this must be because markets have grown bigger, and much more of the rest of the world, as it were, has been conquered, not only in entertainment, but international business, marketing, tourism, entrepreneurial operations, by visiting the same restaurants and cafés, by shopping, and most importantly, with the spread of common thought and behaviour. But to have access to a hundred years of forever existing stream of images is to soon want to control this stream, and the most effective way to do so is to start by acknowledging the intellectual hold the recorded past has on the modern person. Going back, whether in an effort to correct it or simply make it technologically better, might be the side product of a digitalisation of moving images and the similar feeling many still get when scrolling down an article instead of looking at it on a physical page, that there is something ultimately unreal about the experience and therefore defenseless. What remains real is the relationship to the product, the helpless simplicity by which we are now surrendering to it, when no element in the chain of production is understood anymore. It matters not what the outpourings of limitless global content are now doing to generations of consumers, because what must be answered to, in the end, is the fear of losing as well as being left out of anything that constitutes as the most enjoyable way of spending one’s time. The likewise exploded distribution through more and more channels, however internet-based, requires entire nations (i.e. markets) to take action to secure the consumption of their citizens.

It is no wonder that a battle over ‘cultural rights’ emerges online. What can be considered appropriate cultural work is being debated now in such a way that the outcome of this conflict may turn out to be the very intellectual culmination of our age. It is likely that the myriad of differing opinions continues to be the case, and simply through exhaustion and the acceptance of the impossibility of the world will anything be resolved. To be frustrated, i.e. angry, is to continue to have some hold on the world, a perpetually doomed attempt at explaining to the rest of the world how things are and how they might be changed, all the while the global population drifting to an unreachable and thereby unbearable distance. To join in anger, if nothing else, is still something worth doing, if only a glimpse of a battle one might consider telling future generations about. How there was so much stupidity and I alone could see through it all. How I finished victorious, if not in wealth, if not in importance, then at least by keeping my convictions, the citizen at long last awarded by the affirmation of how futile the entire effort had been.

To be angry at the state of cinema and television is to feel something, which is strangely an outcome of the very thing the everyday critic is subjected to by that which consumes him and to which he remains the consumer and very little else. Appeasing the mob is out of the hands of film producers, as can be seen, and yet not entirely without their approval. The numbness of ‘the great take on culture’ as it is presented by a worldwide web has presented demands for marketing departments and indeed shifted some models for good, but mostly it is the actors, the lucky and coveted ones, who get thrown into the pit. The life of an actor, in essence, has not changed, and culturally speaking this is an era of the actor, of the acting presence, like none that we have seen. Perhaps because of our sympathy towards them, however subconscious it may be, they are not to be blamed for the most part, rather it is the machinery behind them, the imagined, although in many cases surprisingly manifested, group of those that hold the reins and become the target for most of the hatred felt by the cultural internet warrior. On the fighting side we see the protectors, those who assume to know the ins and outs of entertainment so well that over time the illusion has grown to such proportions that many now believe that the actual production of drama somehow depends on their opinion. When at the dawn of the internet era there was perhaps a brief moment when it did seem like the current of culture could actually be controlled by a mass of outsiders, and when their main channels of communication were yet not monetized or degraded to a afterthought of the mainstream, this no longer remains, and now the truth-seeing crowd is nowhere near a powerful position. Even if there were a million of them, it would not be enough to shake one pilar of the culture-producing construction that has long since taken over. Now the latest financially successful product of mass entertainment – which is, of course, all we are interested in – and those that oppose it and try obstinately to reveal its flaws are simply things that happen, with isochronous timing. Everyone from the casual consumer to the angriest off-warrior is chained to the same helpless existence, all surviving, all dependent on it, all with as much and as little at stake in the greater scheme of things. The unconquerable wave of produce is rushing to every corner of the earth, and all anyone can do is to get angry about it.

What remains essential is the physical reality of film production. To be aware, even partly, of what is physically happening in artistic production is the only way of having some sense of what will shape the upcoming years of consumption. How much will simply be rolled over, how much seemingly corrected, ridiculously on the surface, and then, how much of bad behaviour will continue to go on, wrapped in the mystery of ‘the artist’, forever justified by the urgency of his task. In times of political change such as ours, when an entire societal front is being put through a painful facelift, artistic freedom is one of the first to disintegrate. Simply put, there cannot be political change and artistic freedom happening at the same time. The well-behaving human that has now been erected as the only monument worth aspiring to is a latter attempt at putting the artist to his place, reminding him of the simple truth he still refuses to surrender to: good behaviour first. That there is so much bad behaviour that doesn’t seem to diminish – far from it – is in its fresh form enough evidence of that badly drained phrase the human experience, especially when it comes from those that have been wronged and feel entitled to let the rest of the world know all about it. There was a time when art had a resonance with its surrounding society, it revealed more than what a debate club could, and a comment on the times came naturally from someone dedicated to artistic expression. It held this position in part because of the control of information and the scarce avenues for an ordinary person to get to the core of the experience. This position is no longer expected from art or the artist. Art is present, make no mistake, but in its place to take part in astonishingly enormous discussions the outcome of which is clear to anyone with any sensitivity left to consider it. In actuality it is expecting the fatigued Christmastime-customer to sit for three hours in pure fantasy and confront the ever-lingering question: what can the 15-year-old family-oriented American understand?

When we have overcome our suffering

Here is a correspondence I fell into a few months ago when the fooling of the application user was at its latest stage and I as its latest victim. To most people who were targeted in this way the interaction and the language involved appeared very similar, and there are some who to this day have not realised the hoax. The user in question – assuming there was one person behind this – has since disappeared, but the language and the overall effect remain as an example of the intricacies that revolve around human interactions at a time like ours. Here is the first message he sent me:  

“Hello, I’m Steven.”

After enough similar kinds of attempts at contact, I have learned that, firstly, nobody is called Steven, and even if someone happened to be called Steven, there is no way any real person would start a conversation with this introduction. In a way, there is everything one needs to know about the situation already present in this first message, and to read into it is to discover a subtext of apology, irony and wilful stupidity wrapped all into one. The overall information is a kind of plea for the world in which we now live, where we cannot have the time to bother to think or worry about the actual human being, the other person, if there is one, or whether there is a real need to know anything more. Certainly an agenda of deceit behind a pleasing façade is much older than anything we discover on a smart phone. In any case, after a few back-and-forths of no noticeable importance, ‘Steven’ wrote this to me:

“Has the pandemic affected your work a lot? I’m in the real estate business, what industry are you in? The pandemic has affected my work a lot, many of my clients have no funds to buy houses, causing my business to become weaker and weaker.”

I had continued in a half-aware manner, possibly out of habit, and there seemed to be something interesting in ‘Steven’ opening up about hisprofessional insecurity. On his profile he was all cars and yachts, great food, traveling, and other such things, but there appeared to be a real person in the pictures, quite probably from California, as he had explained, and I became interested in who this person in the pictures really was, and whether he knew what was being done to his likeness. I asked ‘Steven’ about his week, and this is when he made his first mistake:

“Yes, I am visiting my friends in Dublin now.”

In Dublin? I asked. ‘Steven’ corrected himself quickly.

“No, I’m talking about being in Dublin some time ago and visiting my friends here now.”

Now, in addition to this being on the weaker side as far as correcting arguments go, there are two things that reveal the underlying fraud. The way in which ‘Steven’ simply ignores mixing up two completely distinct cities (Dublin and Helsinki) is telling as such, but it’s really the end of his answer, when he talks about ‘my friends’, that betrays his intent. The lack of detail is something that follows an internet scammer like flies follow a coke can, and anyone who has been paying attention to the way in which a great number of people now refer to their exciting lives – with ‘my friends’, in particular – knows something about the unavoidable conflict in such expressions. Here already can be seen the central problem in trying to deceit people living in such places as Helsinki (and Dublin, I assume), namely that there is such a misunderstanding about how the average local person is living that the floundering approach is that of a pseudo-American fantasy – which is of course what much of life inside social media is about and which is not the inventionof an internet scammer – with cars, wealth, travels, and an altogether instrumental take on human life. To overlook how separate an individual on social media is from this vision is simply symptomatic, since a kind of separation has to take place for any person to refuse their immediate surroundings and turn to the smartphone. In this escape into numbness and perhaps a meek rumble of a more exciting life there are some, and perhaps many more than we would imagine, that eventually surrender to the deception willingly. After a lifetime of anxiety and no cure for it but more videos and images, there emerges a desire for something that can be called real, no more than a break, one chance for the mundane to finally become more meaningful, through one special contact to start to sparkle and move upwards. Strangely enough, this sentiment of the victim is not entirely different from that of the person who is trying to fool him at the other end. At the very least, whatever is happening in the mind of someone dedicated to a life of deception cannot compare to the personal circumstance preceding such a choice.

The story of being fooled is the great story of our time, and people are now being divided into groups and camps simply based on who has the better answers and the morality. And despite this deception is running amok in perhaps more dangerous and inventive ways than ever before. While I was entertaining myself with my latest scam artist by commenting on a theatre production I was working on and enjoying his humanity-challenging responses (“Hope your poster can be made successfully”, “This sounds interesting, hope your drama is going well”), I eventually got to the heart of the matter:

“May go to dinner with friends on weekends, barbecue, and most importantly, check out my wallet for mobile mining.”

Checking your wallet for what? I asked.

“Haven’t you used an e-wallet? Mobile mining is of course making money. I made a thousand dollars in mobile mining today and I’m so excited.”

Naturally, I was hurt, most of all since I had not hinted at financial problems (as he had in his previous message), and after the floodgates had opened in their forever graceless manner, there wasn’t really any reason to uphold the charade. Foolishly I tried to get to the real person behind the messages, as though ‘Steven’ would simply open up to a stranger about his life of crime. His response, however, was surprisingly personal:

“I want to ask you, we just discussed a topic, do you need to be so sensitive? Does the chat have to talk about other topics? Do I have to talk about your favourite topic when I chat with you?”

This reaction is a later development, as far as I can tell, and it is somewhat interesting how ‘Steven’ would not simply drop the conversation as soon as his cover was blown. Why so upset, ‘Steven’? What, if anything, is this reaction about? There are some who can continue to be hooked even after the reality of the situation in all its absurdity has been revealed to them, but for the dispute to become about who is the more selfish of the two is an illuminating turn. Without a doubt many casual conversations between profiles and other lesser-known entities are now stained by self-centeredness and the question what can I get out of this? In this situation, which no participant can truly escape, the most unlikely opposites are brought closer together, and it begins with the choice to delegate human complexities to algorithms and pure fantasy. If everyone else is doing it, one now thinks, if indeed everyone is guilty on one level or another, what can confidently be called a crime anymore? What does it mean to mislead someone in an environment where the very participation is inseparable from self-delusion and foolishness?

Even the Hurting Westerner finds it now in himself to ask: how can these people who fool others so thoughtlessly online sleep at night? And moreover: haven’t I, after all the right choices, the taxes paid, irony acquired and much of life to work less pleasurable lost, haven’t I already suffered my part? And the answer, traveling through zeros and ones, across cultures and continents, from one struggling heart to another, is a resounding no. It echoes through deserts and forests with a force or a hundred hurricanes and throws the Western Victim against his sacred structure, his one and only comfort even in his discomfort, the wall of free markets and social benefits, with faint traces of languages learned and skills attained, and most noticeably with its surrounding water drains clogged by an inexplicable mass, the produce of films and series consumed, moulding into an unspeakable bulk. The beaten man is left to his final frontier, drenched in rain, and armed with nothing besides his singular suffering. And still the question remains, still on his lips, still in his thinking mind: What are the ethical implications of a life of deception? Is there a meaning to be found in it at all? Are we now to be fooled as a matter of course, as we used to walk down a street market and leave it with unknowingly less money in our pockets, or in our folly we tried to help a group of street children, map in hand, and all the while under the cover hands were reaching for our pockets for cash and valuables? These were hands that we knewwould be reaching for something more, we knew we would be poked awake from our trance of safety and privilege. Even getting angry would not quite block it out, since to lose a little bit of money was – we knew it, deep down it was clear to us – no tragedy at all, because before everything else we had been fooled by revealing our way of life. Right then we were faced with a desperation we had always been able to turn away from, but now we had no other choice than to accept the part of the Western Tourist and see that even in the modern European city there is a jungle of palpable survival and within it a morality that crumbles into nothingness when the truer question of living any kind of life at all is brought into its realm. Who is to blame for this? Certainly not the street children. Equally blameless is the scam artist online. While it is now relatively easier to snatch a few pockets of unsuspecting social media users, it is unlikely that given a choice in the matter, someone would turn to it as an enjoyable way to make a living. The ethical question remains, and there is undoubtedly awareness, but what can no longer be overlooked are the hurt and desperation that overturn the gentle approach. If social life is indeed now all, and however locked its graceful appearance, there is a rotting reflection that is less pleasant to behold but as much a part of the social experience as it has ever been, and it doesn’t fade away by scrolling, posting, or with a million hearts and smiles. It is there only to be looked at and accepted.

The beast of a life spent on socio-virtual platforms, beyond culture, is now too enormous to be tamed or reasoned with, and like a great ocean liner it drags with it many unwanted elements, among them those that make a living out of scamming people. The enormity of the phenomenon reveals its truest nature. Even if a cyber-terrorist caught one person in a hundred and no more, it might still prove to be business worth spending time on. To reach someone, anyone, is now a part of a shadowy existence that covers not only the deliberately dishonest. A much greater mass, quite possibly nearly every engaged user, feels the urge to find relief, understanding, wisdom, and even artistic fulfilment in a post and a reaction. The language of behaviour is not owned by any individual fraudster and therefore he cannot be held accountable for it. To blame him for things having turned sour is as unnecessary as blaming circumstance for one’s personal shortcomings. Whoever is out there fooling the innocents has barely poisoned a well, for all we know not even this. Likely he has simply jumped in, down the same drain everyone else was going, with moralities and personal reasons blown in the surge. The simplicity of a picture collection of cars, yachts, vacation resorts and good-looking, animated people, seems to be enough for the modern victim. The newest demand in a globalised maze of those without and those with more than enough is to create a world of desire, of pure fantasy, sexual as well as financial, and open a door for the unknowing consumer to walk through, past the broken English, through technical, organized non-humanity, into the possibility of wealth and happiness, and then to be met with the most human experience of all: shame, hurt, loneliness and stupidity.

It is evident that ‘Steven’ was not – again assuming there was one person behind the messages – truly hurt or challenged by my questions. There was a mechanised approach to his responses all the way to the defence speech. No pulse was raised, no face flustered. There was not a pause of any kind. The unempathetic quest for an undeniably better life, where one could have a chance at some of the things in the made-up profile, perhaps only a better apartment, was still targeting the well-meaning person, desperate to understand. The ability to accept and understand is among the greatest privileges a person can have, and still it pales in comparison to the pull of the conflict. In the fight for a chance at a truly better life nothing is beyond becoming ammunition, not stealing another person’s identity, lying about one’s whereabouts, sexual orientation, age, background, or name, and to be appalled by such behaviour, to steer towards ‘common humanity’ and a life less criminal is to still bathe in deliberate misunderstanding. Having a chance at allis what needs to be taken as the frame for social enquiry. A conflict of whatever kind is brought about by pain and unfairness, but to live inside a lesser existence, really live in it, changes many thoughts. In our fights with those that are trying to wrong us there is a misplacement of emphasis. We are still looking for the reaction that is like ours, still for some kind of universal diplomacy, focusing on what is being said instead of how it is said.

I can never really understand an online scammer or the circumstance that produces such action because I don’t really need to understand it. I can remove myself from the experience, helpless as I am, and withdraw to the one guarantee I am presented by my own socio-political surroundings, financial security. The deeper unfathomable suffering affects me through these interactions, and it resembles a suffering in me, but never without becoming an existential enquiry, an entitlement to reveal to myself my truer predicament. It is not I who needs to fool another person to get my way. This would be nothing more than a pastime, another example among many of the ways in which amusement can be found within the numbness of being. To understand anything about another person’s experience we must rid ourselves of a notion of the reptilian human, to look beyond a smartphone-using muddled organism and refuse to believe that such devises, pandemic as they are, make us the same. We would have to question the very concepts of lie, truth, morality, and many more, and not only to get a better view of the world, but to be able to look at ourselves, self-satisfied in our analysis, the never-ending operational mind still spinning on top of a pile of waste, still hurting, still anxious.

After we have been entertained for a lifetime, it is natural to begin to see the continuing discomfort as entertaining. It is the consumer marvelling at the stupidity of the world, late at night, alone on the couch, drink in hand, with innumerable versions of entertainment at his disposal. This is his hurt, this his cross to bear, and if in his deepening stupor he ends up losing money in a scamming operation, he can simply use it as fuel for more of what has been sustaining him for most of his life. He can go back to his television, his entertainment. He will not have to suffer endlessly, not he, not in the least. On the contrary, he can now find more comfort inside his own personal take on the stupidity and immorality of the world, no matter how many drinks it takes him. And the thought and the drink and the life that ebbs away while all of this is happening, it all melts into one critical immobile culture veteran, a creature with no door to escape through except for the mouth that still is spewing truth.

Finally, I come back to language. The unimportance of it, the let-down, the absence of a moment of thought in the face of a raging, devastating burst of pure reaction, one to be witnessed and shared and nothing more, a mother of all waves to drown an entire civilisation, left as ruins surrounded by water, still fundamentally there but of no real haven to a living person anymore. To take an example, I remember the first person who tried to fool me with talk of crypto currency. After a few messages where he had explained about his fantastical life in Helsinki, how he was an expert in investing and eager to teach me all about it, I grew tired, and I asked him how his English was doing. He responded without hesitation: “What do you think? No worse than you.” I see now that it wasn’t what he wrote back to me. It was how he did it.  

Teaching Finnish

“There is involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that require the assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite.”

William Hazlitt

After the latest course of Finnish I had taught online I received a feedback in English, about a page long, on many things that had gone wrong during the course. The feedback was anonymous, so I would have to turn to guess work to find out who could have been behind it, but here are the main points of it:

1. during the course there was very little support for studying outsidethe lessons, and the student felt that everything had to be learnt during the sessions
2. there was too much Finnish spoken on the course and especially at times when it was not necessary; the student would have preferred instructions given in English and then repeated in Finnish
3. the student had felt stupid on the course and hadn’t had the courage to ask more questions for fear of ridicule
4. the study material was lacking in many ways, some of it was solvable with the help of Google, but all in all there was not enough material outside of the book used

The feedback was written in very good English and throughout it the writer was giving the impression of speaking for the entire group, or at the least of having a kind of special understanding through which to scrutinize the course. Somewhere in the text there was a link to a method called ‘flipped classroom’, and the student felt it could solve much of the lacking pedagogy. As I mentioned before, I cannot have absolute certainty about the nationality of the student, but from what I can recall from the course, and cumulatively have pieced together during a decade of teaching, I would not speculate farther than Germany, perhaps not even that far.

Anyone who has taught Finnish for more than a year to adult students knows the situation and the described reaction very well. All at once the ongoing system of courses it put under a microscope and a seemingly greater mind starts pointing out everything wrong with the linguistic pursuit. The most dangerous tendency is to fall into a battle of wills over who has the better idea of how a language should be learnt – in other words, the intellectualisation of a full-bodied, mystical sensation. Perhaps among other things, the feedback above is an unmistakable attempt at the intellectual control over something over which there is no intellectual control. The only feedback worth giving after nearly a year of learning Finnish would of course be in Finnish, and the text would speak for itself, but here we coincidentally encounter one of the most enduring conundrums facing the teachers of Finnish and their intellectual opponents, whoever they may be, namely that there is much to talk about in English, perhaps ultimately only in English, and if there is no place for English in a learning environment in Finland, something must have gone wrong.

For most teachers of Finnish who are working for the city of Helsinki, some unchanging realities seem to stay in place and therefore should be taken into consideration before addressing any of the points made earlier by the student. First, the social reality of many students as understood by the operational forces of the city tends to override any learning event. The prominence of acceptance and inclusion is so strong after years of socio-political promotion that whatever is lost in pedagogical hindsight is compensated by an ever-growing social awareness. What this means in practice is that although less than half of the students of the original list remain on the course after two months, and less than half of these actually give any feedback after the course is over, the essential remains: that a course has been offered and a chance for feedback was there for those that wanted it. So when the school reports back to the teacher that there was ‘a wish’ for, let’s say, more variation, what is running through a teacher’s mind is a sea of students who were lost without a trace and whose hopes and criticisms are now in danger of being eclipsed by a singular wordsmith of the English language.

It is hard to think of another environment where a teacher of a target language was expected to be so equipped with English that the entire learning experience had to be covered with an analytical approach, and any practical application – in other words, using the language in any meaningful way – would turn out so neglected. To encounter another flock of professionals so ready to let go of their area of interest with a hope to make the greater experience more pleasant for the customer would prove to be quite difficult. To even raise such an option would be nonsensical for most considering the outcome, and yet here we have an entire nation still steeped in the embarrassment of its own language. A feeling such as national discomfort or fear takes many barely noticeable forms that unite in their denial, and for most Finns the topic discussed here would not enter consciousness. Even when someone had skipped from Finnish to English in a bar conversation, and this shift had been accompanied by a mumble of ‘how we all know how difficult the language is’, it would have most likely been due to a course-correction on the part of the native speaker, bathed in a shame beyond words, not necessarily because of anything that the learner next to the Finn would have said or done.

Merely half the reason for the disgrace of the Finnish language lies with the Finns, however. While a student of an ultimately foreign language may not understand much, he does understand an apologetic tone and the shrivelling of a teacher in the face of ‘more important’ matters, purported through more important language, one we can all truly be a part of. How could anyone possibly understand Finnish? What would be the point of it? These are the unspoken questions at the beginning of a year-long journey into Finnish, and in many ways, if not conclusively, the answers to these will determine the outcome of such a journey. The year of studying, which is by no means enough even for the cleverest, has been put in place mostly for financial reasons, but there is indeed something in an entire year of committing oneself to learning anything. Most commonly it is this first year, and the first months of it, that determine a student’s attitude towards the task at hand. Now that language learning has been seemingly made easier and more accessible than ever before (indeed it is still largely unclear how much of tangible benefits have come from applications of word memorising and the ability to scan any text and have its translation appear in real time), the notion of ‘Finnish for busy people’ intertwined with the obsession of reducing another language into a video game – as we reduce other people into profiles and comments – with scores and levels, all of this hangs about one northern misunderstood culture like a mist on a Sunday morning. The city is still there with its structures intact, but it must now be felt through in frustratingly challenging conditions, more as a group of tourists than an integral parts of an awakening population.

I’ll persist with a few more words on the limitations facing the business of Finnish teaching. When a student cannot or does not want to attend a full-time course, that is, something for every day, what is being offered is usually a course two or three times a week, in the evenings, lasting altogether for about ten weeks. Now, many things may be achieved by paying attention to them two times a week for a few hours, but learning a language is not one of them. The city of Helsinki itself does not communicate about this problem to the students, and as many other variables of the course, this task is left to the willingness and consideration of the teacher. I must admit it took me a few weeks before I realised that despite not being handed down such material, any course will benefit from a set of rules for how to study a language in a group, as well as a general idea on what language learning is actually about. It takes a qualified teacher from one to two days to have a basic understanding of the differences in levels and approaches to learning appearing in a group. After this it is a question of whether there are resources for dividing the group into more suitable subgroups (usually there aren’t), as well as how properly the needs of the whole group can be met. In other words, a teacher (any teacher) is facing an impossible task. Even if a suitable organization should be found at the end of much deliberating, most courses would be over before any of it could be put into action.

These are some of the problems that a Finnish teacher faces every day, sometimes worse, sometimes better. There is a special pain involved in learning Finnish, not quite comparable to anything else, and the emotional response to this pain usually spills over in a handful of students. Interestingly enough, in most cases this critical outpouring and the precision it takes comes from highly educated students of privileged backgrounds, and nearly without exception from home countries that rank higher than Finland on any imaginable scale of cultural importance. The comfort of an important home country alone is enough to stifle the learning of a lesser language. Among others we discover a markedly casual take on the obligation, usually combined with a sense and a belief in considerable individual abilities beyond sessions with one’s teacher. I remember one man who thought it valuable to keep participating on a Finnish course à la distance while working at an airport. We watched as he drove around in a forklift with a yellow light blinking round his head, the unmistakable image of a person torn between two worlds, and on the nights when he was at home, had had every child he had conceived in a remarkably short period sitting on his lap or climbing on top of him and shouting in his ear. A clowning performance was not far from comparison. Before the inevitable acceptance finally set in, the student was convinced that despite his hindrances it was important for him to continue because he could, as he put it, “revise later”. This was obviously a lie, whether involuntary or shrouded in self-delusion, and while it was clear that he believed this to be a workable method, his error in judgement was no anomaly. In an era of internet lectures, talks and a life-altering wisdom served at a speed unforeseen, isn’t it only natural that before long the very feeling towards learning – Finnish, singing, physical exercise, cooking, and whatever else – can emerge without a care for observable commitment?

Two acquaintances come to mind while thinking about the ultimate destiny of some Finnish learners. One of them took every course imaginable and abruptly moved to London. The other made his way all the way to acquiring Finnish citizenship, and then left the country, strangely enough with his sights set on London as well. There could be benefits for both of them due to their Finnish-entwined histories, but these are likely the kinds of take-offs that leave no trace whatsoever; where the individual would all but have to be dragged back to accept the serenity of the northern life. As for the national test, there are still countless foreigners who muster whatever strength they can to rise to the minimal passable level, and afterwards lose their language faster than one can say have you seen the latest season of. This, to me, is rather unimaginable in England, nor much more probable in France, Spain, Italy or Germany. To be able to survive in such epicentres without an understanding of the language spoken would even today be quite unheard of, something left for exchange students or the occasional au pair. We must conclude, then, that to have to make such concessions, nearly an act beside oneself, is unquestionably an altogether Finnish phenomenon. In the cloud of bemoaning, self-doubt and frustration that seizes the Finnish student as well as his native counterpart, the easily produced shrug is met only with bewilderment and an unspoken acceptance of a language that cannot be learned, this also to be understood as the wish of the hitherto dormant Finn – and still there are many who learn.

After many years of teaching Finnish I have come to the conclusion that it is a good sign if at the end of a course there are some students who are not altogether happy, and even better if there is someone who is downright hostile by the end. Human emotion stands in the way of all learning, and now in an era or distraction the very impossibility of saying no, even to the apparent means of betterment and simplification, is taking hold, and the fight over a change of mind – which is what learning another language is ultimately about – is between a world of possibility and ease, and to some degree of saying no to this brave new world. As I am writing this, the most beautiful summer is extending all around me, and thus the need to write anything, to learn anything, finds another insurmountable obstacle in the form of the most wonderous manifestation: the beauty of nature. There is a foe to consider – nature! Continually separate from us, beyond comprehension, but after innumerable comparisons conceivably somehow similar to language, the clearest indication there is of human nature. To accept the perils as well as the joys of language learning is to accept one’s own nature, the hidden possibilities inside, and the painful and inevitable change. For a Finnish teacher there is no alternative to accepting the tidal wave of human emotions and toils roaring towards town. Between having a student walk out with a door slam and another finishing the same course with proposing a date, a teacher must be prepared for many things, at the top of which are the most human surprises and the impossible task of keeping everyone happy.

The five hundred

Rolling Stone has published its latest list of the five hundred best albums of all times, this time mostly refreshed by what the western world has repeatedly made to understand as diversity, all the way to raising Marvin Gaye to the top spot, and almost immediately the list is met with criticism not only of its too-little-too-late manoeuvrings but also of the very need for a list in our time. This reaction, unanticipated in its ingredients but not in essence, proves that there is an uncontrollable mass of music listeners by whom it simply cannot be done right, not even after the inclusion of colour and gender. Perhaps more than ever before, people are showing their anger (or, in a vaguer sense, reaction) at any authority telling them how things are, and popular music is at the top of debilitating experiences for modern consumers: accessible enough to allow an everyman’s expertise, but simultaneously on the verge of being valued for reasons ultimately unrelated to music. Of course it shouldn’t be assumed that the editors at Rolling Stone are not aware of this.

To begin with, it might be easiest to state some of the most obvious conclusions and be rid of them. Here in no particular order:

There is no competition in music. The need for a list is brought about ultimately by two things: a continuing attempt to limit music to a mathematical and calculable entity and a frustration with the now unlimited amount of popular music, much of which can only be lost. Certainly there is no-one who has actually listened through the entire list of the five hundred albums, and I doubt if anyone has done so even with the top twenty, let alone done so with actively assessing the contents of each album. Even if someone decided to set out on such a quest, by the time they got to, let’s say, the hundredth album the musical landscape – as the fleeting amalgamation is repeatedly referred to – would once again have changed.

Cultural impact overrides musical importance. Music journalism is a strange enterprise, since there is only a questionable value in writing about music, and invariably when journalists take it upon themselves to list the qualities of some musical output or another they end up writing about a great many things that have little to do with music. The situation is perhaps worst in music because such a primitive emotional response is often awakened that any listener would be swept away so strongly that sooner or later something would have to be said or talked about. Here is one of the more obvious reasons why it is difficult to talk about why a piece of music is better than another, and also why it is easier to recognize the merits of an album such as they are, first and foremost as a mental construct and an approximation of an already existing state. But it is not only the cultural impact of a music album we are talking about here, but the musical importance of music journalism itself, and Rolling Stone without question is at the very heart of such a conundrum. What it is therefore constantly promoting, even when renewing its list, is an acceptable terrain of American music. There are some foreign albums on the latest list, of course, but never to such an extent that would challenge the culturally unified whole. Looking at the list of the five hundred one gets the feeling of looking at the American society, neatly listed, with all its agents in their places.

Music is for men. Since there is no competition in music, and while concessions have been made to follow with at least some of the trends and developments of the times, the paradigm for celebratory, life-affirming music can stretch or reduce, but not change in its essence. This is most dominant in the presence of the male musician, for while women are beginning to populate lists of the most acceptable cultural items, there is no proof to suggest an actual shift in the central thought. Looking at the evidence, out of the fifty greatest albums ever produced seven are made by women, and in the top ten there are barely two, both of which are without doubt largely unknown to a male audience. Joni Mitchell is finally elevated to third place with the common album choice Blue, but the top of three – a black man, a group of white men and a woman – is indicative of very little change, culturally speaking, since the shift from a leading white man to a leading black man comes over a decade after it has been witnessed in the country’s highest position. As it stands, Joni Mitchell is held back by at least six men of music, and to get to Lauryn Hill one would have to wriggle through an entire platoon of male musicians.

Greatness equals commemorating. The biggest difficulty and source of contempt for the magazine is in the use of the word great. In its vagueness a concept of greatness can involve ’acceptable merit’, ’sufficient noticeability’, ’up-to-the-minute resonance’, and many more things. As a later development we see a call for the celebration of those that have been systematically left out, predominately minorities, and a rising tide from not only a crisis in journalism but from a hitherto never-changing culture has begun to threaten Rolling Stone in a detectable way. Ours is a time when many, if not all, of the greatest establishments are forced to tip-toe around a suddenly foreign ground, an inconsiderably overlooked minefield of hurt and misunderstanding, continuously filled with the fear of causing further harm. A list for our age can only aim at appeasement of the public as well as salvation of the journalist, but even after the humane refreshment the end result may not be any better for it, as we have already witnessed. To run to the aid of a suffering public, as it were, is to neglect the amount of hurt and the unwillingness of many to be appeased.

I was here first. One explanation for postmodern art that I have come across goes as follows: whereas in the old days an artist was a skilled craftsman who was capable for producing works that the general public could not, what we have now are people who are producing works that many others could themselves produce, and when they are faced with this predicament, that is, when someone says, ’I could do that as well’, the correct response is to now say, ’Yes, but you didn’t and I did’. This, to me, is as close a description of a popular magazine as can be. With Rolling Stone, for example, one of the greatest sources of anger seems to be in the sheer audacity of their dealings, and while this reaction can be traced all the way back to the guilt of a magazine reader, at least a part of the success of this kind of publication is in the tension between its public and its editors. A list for everybody is not a list at all, and journalists at Rolling Stone know this, as they know that the universality of a story is no story worth telling. There is something interesting at play with the magazine, a kind of exhibition of popular modern art, with much of the publication’s success and enjoyment coming from the mere privilege of being allowed to exhibit, to give a somewhat violent view of contemporary life and times, and then to fall silent. There is an unapologetic streak in publishing lists such as this, but it is no less present than that of the reader’s or the critic’s.

So here we have a seemingly updated scene of popular modern music, undoubtedly already on its way to oblivion. What is most striking about this moment and inarguably a great source of pain for many is that criticism and lists have persisted well into the twenty-first century. The revisions to the list come at a late hour, and there could be an overall correction at work, were it not for the concurrence which has already taken place at the beginning of the very first list and the need to compartmentalize the products of popular music. What has once begun cannot completely ever change. After a piece of work has been called great it cannot be un-called great, not entirely, as an advertisement cannot not speak to a consumer after the fact. A reported change by Rolling Stone has been that of an expansion of ’the canon’, but this is only following closely with an era of everything expanding rapidly. Simply put, there doesn’t seem to be any popular modern life at all without an all-encompassing expansion. The case with many of the albums chosen for the list is that they mainly serve as a gateway into the actual discovery of the artist and ultimately better works than those mentioned. This library of music is now so vast that there is no-one who can keep track of it all, and even if someone set out to find the bigger picture, by the time they had got through merely a dozen artists, the amount of information would already be too great to grasp satisfyingly. I suppose one could scroll through them all, or have a playlist in the background for a few weeks, but what would that bring other than an even worse cacophony of musical outings or indeed a deterioration of the importance of music?

There is no doubt examining the past fifty years that things have been neglected and deliberately forgotten, but the real question is whether there is a modern album that can demonstrate the same kind of greatness that The Beatles or The Rolling Stones did in their day. How could there be? The frustration felt in many responses to the latest list is one caused by the disintegration of the very thing such a list is there to uphold. Now is not the time for lists, and even if it were, their impact would not come near the excitement or longevity of present politics or an ongoing overturning of public figures and institutions. What has come as an unpleasant surprise to many people in an era of constant streaming and digital libraries is how much music there really is and has been for much longer than its canonisation in magazines. The outright horror of the amount of music that cannot be talked away in an afternoon program is calling for responses similar to those that occur after a large amount of people realize that they have been outrageously swindled, namely indifference, obsession, fear and anger. I quote one especially wounded writer:

“The term ‘greatness’ is very useful for one reason — because of its vagueness. An album’s greatness doesn’t depend on the number of lives that the music touched, or innovative techniques incorporated into the music, or the circumstances under which it was written. In Rolling Stone magazine, what makes an album ‘great’ is that music industry insiders happened to like it. All 500 albums on the list are monumental accomplishments independently of each other, as are albums that didn’t either make the list or get nominated. Pitting the albums against each other only cheapens each work’s individual artistic merit.”

To attack a concept such as greatness doesn’t ultimately take much away from the everyday feeling of greatness. In fact, there is more to be said about the attitude toward the idea of greatness in the text above than there is about whatever it is that makes an album great. It is quite possible that instead of any vagueness of greatness constituting as an absence of meaning, seeing something as great might on the contrary include many kinds of cumulative notions of such a state. The quotation marks the writer has placed around the word great seem no accident or rhetorical choice, but rather an emotional posture. Interestingly enough, this turns out to be an attack on authority, not an analysis of musical merit or anything of the sort. Rolling Stone and its elite contributors, the writer looks to be saying, who do they think they are. The selected group (over three hundred according to the article) are needlessly isolated as a privileged bunch first of all because there is no reason to believe that they would possess any special knowledge in such a boundless entity as music, but moreover because of the alternative. Had the choice been left up to the entire population, the end results might not have been any more satisfying for it. They might very well have been worse. And so it appears that ’greatness’ is absolutely open to the lives music touches as well as innovative techniques and many more things, and no music journalist or contributor is above this. The reactions similar to the quoted article add to the list of the five hundred, of course, and the final picture is far more fascinating as a result. We are discussing, in a phrase, a popularised take on music. What is not discussed, however, is how a great piece of music, much as it is generated by talent, is similarly prompted by happenstance and sheer luck. There is no musical success, as there is none in theatre or film, without an acceptance of forces greater than that of the individual artist. Rolling Stone may have successfully updated its list of the five hundred greatest albums of all time and thereby subjected itself to innumerable opinions on music journalism’s hold on a concept of greatness, but the most powerful act of them all appears to be the publishing of the list in the first place.