At the end of September, I went to this amazing (and inaugural as it was designed for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts but is now going on tour around the world) exhibit celebrating the French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier (see picture of the entrance to the museum above). One of the big information panels in the exhibit said: "Jean Paul Gaultier is fascinated by the Paris of the Belle Epoque and the interwar years..." That made me so happy that I had to go back and re-read that panel twice more before I left the exhibit. It really struck me as I love the idea of being fascinated by a different period of history in general, and being fascinated by a particular period to the point that it influences a lot of your work is even better.
Maybe because South African Nadine Gordimer is one of my favourite writers, and her book The Lying Days is one of my favourite books, and maybe because the South African History course I took at Berkeley was one of my favourite classes, but South Africa under apatheid fascinates me. I cannot comprehend how there were enough white people in that country who accepted apartheid rule such that the regime did not end officially until 1994. Gordimer's books explore so many of the issues and the tensions of that time period so well, and her characters struggle with social justice and equality and all these topics in very real ways. I am also fascinated by
Argentina under the military regime in the 1970s and early 1980s and Chile under Pinochet. It seems like I'm drawn to these societies where the left and the right are so divided on everything; where large groups of citizens are willing, and are forced, to fight and sometimes go underground to achieve basic fairness for everyone. Mostly I feel awe at the incredible bravery of the people in South Africa who fought against apartheid and the Argentines and Chileans who fought the brutal military regimes. I'd like to think that if I lived in any of those countries during those periods I would have been one of those people but even writing that seems so presumptuous as I can easily say that safe here in 2011 when those people faced real danger every day and still fought.
In Paris I taught English at the same school as S., an American woman. She was pretty cool, and had had a fairly adventurous life which had somehow brought her to Paris to teach English at almost age 50. The year and a half before she'd arrived in Paris (which was right around the time I arrived there in January 2007), she, her husband C. and their adorable daughter, T., who they had adopted from Guatemala, took care of an old castle somewhere in the south of France. I never got the whole story of how/why things got so bad there (or how they had even ended up there from their pre-France existence in suburban Connecticut) but S. did tell me that her and C.'s marriage almost ended because of the stress they were under while living in that castle. I really liked T. and I guess because I was accepting/enthusiastic about her adoption, S. told me (mind you this was at a party at my apt at the end of May at which everyone present got very drunk... S. to the point that later in the night when trying to put pieces of pita bread in her mouth she kept missing and when I was cleaning up the next morning I found a pile of pita bread on the floor by the chair where she'd been sitting) that I belonged in the 1970s. When I asked her why, she said something (pretty vague actually) along the lines that I was super accepting and would have fit in well then. Overall it was a really unsatisfying response from her because being told you belong in the 1970s is a kind of intriguing thing to hear. Yet it loses some of its intrigue when you're not quite sure why the other person thinks you belong there! In any event, I told S. I was happy to be alive when I was/am and be the age that I was then (and am now). But that being said, I do have some opinions on some of the different decades.
I feel like the 1960s (particularly in the US) are really glamourized in today's society, and I feel like, for me at least, the 1970s is kind of a mystery decade. What was it like? (Another reason S.'s inability to elaborate on why I belonged there was frustrating.) It is the 1980s I feel like I am the most curious about. Having been born in January 1984 I was alive for six years of that decade but I was so little, and I had no idea about all the interesting things happening on the planet I lived on. From a historical point of view, I would argue that the 1980s was the most pivotal decade of the Cold War - civil wars raged across Central America, communism was teetering to its end in Eastern Europe and the US was getting ready to be the world's undisputed super power. A few years ago when L. spent the summer in Nicaragua, she sent me a postcard with this very poignant image of a group of revolutionaries walking down the road - with a man and a woman lagging a little behind with their arms around each other. Unfortunately that postcard is at my house in Toronto, and I can't find a similar picture online but it was really special, and seemed to encompass so much of what I find fascinating about all those civil wars. There were countries deeply divided along ideological lines, and people on the left willing to fight to the end for social justice, and amid all that there were two revolutionaries who were also in love. I know it wasn't all so romantic - in most ways it was really awful and so many people were needlessly killed. But there is something romantic about being a revolutionary, and the picture on that postcard really captured that sentiment. I really wish I had been old enough to be aware of the changes in Eastern Europe too. I can't believe I was actually alive when the Berlin Wall fell as I feel like I would be so fascinated and intrigued by something like that if it happened now, but then I was 5 and couldn't have understood what that wall even meant.
I think we'll always get inspiration from the past, and we should continue to do so. But as I was writing this I reflected upon how our world is very much in turmoil today, and in some ways mirrors what was happening in the 1980s. So many societies seem deeply divided, the Arab Spring has brought a lot of positive change and hope, but also uncertainty; and though there is no clear cut successor waiting in the wings (although China may beg to differ) it seems as though the US's position as sole super power won't last for much longer. So I should echo what I told S. that night in Paris and feel grateful that I am alive now, to watch all these events unfold. And maybe there is a little girl somewhere who is only five now who may one day look back on this period and wish she had been more aware of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment