From Rome with Love, II

By Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

When encountering something outside one's usual experience, one's first instinct is to draw comparisons and contrasts with what one knows. Trite and true, right?

It sounds so simple.

But of course there are deep philosophical and psychological questions about what makes us us and what makes them them--and ethical questions about whether it should. Layer onto this questions from theology, cognitive science, anthropology, and history, let alone art and literature, and we must ask, in more ways than one, who do we think we are?

When we take note of so-called cultural differences, is a generalization about our own or another culture ever accurate? Many recent reviews of Woody Allen's To Rome with Love (still haven't seen it) judge it replete with superficial stereotypes. Are works of cultural history or social criticism often that different, however careful they might try to be? Isn't the risk of over-simplifying--or, obversely, of over-complicating, more au courant in academia these days--a pitfall of generalizing at all, and thus of characterizing, portraying, or observing?

I am excited about the "For the Love of Film" preservation blogathon that begins today. (Look out for the upcoming posts by some of my fellow USIH bloggers later this week.) Musing on the Italian/American film connection, I came across a blog that compared Italian and American posters for the same classic American films by setting the posters side by side (here for Hitchcock film posters). They really do seem different. As with album cover art or wine labels, movie posters become increasingly intriguing the more I see.

This blogger and those who commented on her posts see the Italian posters as largely more compelling because "more artistic/intriguing/seductive." Other people, though, argue that translation isn't always an improvement, as when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in English becomes the equivalent of If You Leave Me, I Delete You in Italian. (For this and other amusing examples from countries in addition to Italy, see here)

If we see differences, do we automatically conclude they are the result of cultural differences? If we see similarities, do we assume cultural similarity? Or perhaps these are gross generalizations, categorical simplifications.

Study after study these days, no matter what the subject matter, concludes: it was complex. Isn't that how it always is, once one gets to know anything better? That is is more complicated than it first appeared?

Not necessarily. Some of us actually might be predisposed to think of things as more complicated than they really are, only to find out, upon closer acquaintance that they are more understandable. People whose differences scared us through their foreign-ness might have seemed complicated until we see the patterns of their lives up close. Unfortunately, a workable simplicity only comes to some people by discovering that others are "just like us." This can do injustice to others, and to ourselves, as much as the famous faux pas (or worse) of "othering." To make matters worse, an excessive fear of "othering" can actually lead to the "othering" of oneself, I think, through the self-accusation: otherer. Like Hester Prynne, only with an "O."

The aim of the Fulbright Commission, by whose good graces I am living and teaching in Rome this semester, is "to increase understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries." With so much to be wary of today in terms of self-advertisement and what institutions really deliver, it is refreshing to see the ways Fulbright actually does make this possible. By supporting scholars at all levels for different lengths of time in numerous locations, but always in service of this kind of mutual learning, Fulbright offers opportunities for intellectual exchanges of the humble, day-to-day sort. It could be an inspiration to USIH, but then it seems that this is precisely what USIH is doing.

As we often see others as though through veils of our own past, present, and hopes or fears of the future, it is amazing we can ever see anyone at all. (As the Dylan line goes, "It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." And of course, it remains to be seen if we can. In an upcoming post, I hope to describe my experience in Pollenzo, where the Slow Food movement took root.) As in an earlier Woody Allen film, in a bedroom scene in which he cannot abandon himself to love making because of the superimposition of the image of his mother on his lover's face, our imaginations--whether from guilt or another state--often make it impossible to glimpse one another at all. Other people become figments of our fantasies, whether pleasant or horrifying, and another place at best a mere utopia, from the Greek, meaning "no place."

To get beyond this might be a worthy goal, but it might also be an impossible one. And it may be undesirable, in any event. Worse than superficiality and stereotyping, it casts the multitudinous veils, which are just as much a part of anyone as anything else, as irrelevant. Drawing them back is a particular technique of observing. But it is when we strive for abstracted knowledge (abstracted from them, yes; abstracted from ourselves as well) of other people and places, we are prone to over-simplify or over-complicate. Understanding is another thing entirely.

[Updated: 5/14/2012, 7:40 am CST]

From Rome with Love

[Post #2 from Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn. -TL]

As Woody Allen's new movie, "To Rome with Love," opens here only in dubbed form and to mixed reviews, I am happy many Americans will see new Rome footage. Since I have a strong preference for a synchronization of lips and words, I haven't yet seen the movie. But the idea of seeing Woody Allen mouthing one set of words while hearing a masculine Italian voice providing another may prove a set piece of ventriloquistic humor impossible to resist. I just caught a few minutes of "Cheaper by the Dozen" on Italian t.v. and Steve Martin's interior monologue, funny enough in English no doubt, reached the level of true hilarity. The thought that this quintessentially American actor, playing a bumbling and quintessentially American father on a quintessentially American family vacation, turns to Italian when thinking to himself is so far-fetched that it makes me laugh even now.

That Woody Allen's new flick has a role for Rome is exciting to me because, as farfetched as it still seems three months into my stay, with only six weeks remaining, I am actually here in Rome. Thus, the film's locations are sure to include some of my current stomping grounds. As Fulbright Lecturer in American Intellectual History at the University of Rome III (Roma Tre), Rome is miraculously my home away from home for the semester. Like the invitation to join the USIH blogging community, this Fulbright is a great surprise and honor. Nothing in my past ever seemed to indicate to me I would one day be here (no path I was on ever seemed destined to lead to Rome, that is, unless you meant Rome, New York). Now I am walking on cobblestones well trodden upon, not only by vast numbers of Romans over the ages, and visitors from all over the globe with varying motives and degrees of welcome, but more recently, by our distinguished colleagues and friends, mainstays of USIH and all things intellectual in this country, Casey Blake and Wilfred McClay. The names of other previous holders of this teaching and research fellowship might also be familiar to intellectual history aficionados: Alex Bloom, author of Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World, for one, whom it was my joy to meet here this March.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think we are not paying enough attention to Italy. Anyone at all moved by its rich heritage and contribution would say the same. But I am not talking here solely about the "we" of my fellow countrymen and women in general. For the tourists among them, at least, Italy is in the forefront of their minds, a charm many hope to add to their little bracelets, along with the other wonders of the world. (For a little more on the littleness of some touristic tendencies, see my Longing For The Real post "Tourism or Narcissism?") And Americans deeply interested in everything from art and archeology to cuisine and classical antiquity have always had their attention riveted on Italy.

Here, in my first regular Sunday installment on the USIH blog, I am thinking instead of how little attention many of us, scholars of American history, have been paying of late to Italian things or, for that matter, German--and the list goes on. Within the discipline of history, as we are well aware, the post-1960s period saw fields such as Diplomatic History and Intellectual History eclipsed by the New Social History and specializations such as African American History and Women's History. American and European history increasingly found themselves sharing shrinking resources with the (misleadingly) so-called non-Western fields, sometimes for reasons that were more political than intellectual. At the same time, the Humanities have been eclipsed by an invidious occupationalism whereby many view liberal study and utilitarian programs of professional certification as mutually exclusive. As a result the purposes of the University itself have been altered almost beyond recognition.

All of this, on top of our already considerable, even legendary self-centeredness, forms quite a dead-weight.

But to understand causes for historical developments is not the same as accepting the results. This is the genius of innovations like USIH and other like-spirited efforts. Remarkably, they have risen at precisely a time of the utmost precarity for our field and all of the related fields and institutions that are ordinarily its vital supports. (For two excellent meditations on precarity in our profession and beyond, see the posts by my fellow Longing For The Real bloggers, my doctoral student colleagues Erik Hmiel (also my advisee at Syracuse University) and the University of Rochester's Michael Fisher. (Pace Michael, my thanks go to Erik for summoning the word, which far better than the bland solidity of precariousness captures the feeling of teetering on the brink of the abyss.) At a time when we cannot pretend there will be academic jobs in intellectual history to allow all of the deserving scholars in the field to make a living with their true talents, it is truly astounding, and heartening, that endeavors like this should emerge.

So why not go all the way? There is great work going on here too in American intellectual history, as in many other countries, and much never gets translated. We are missing out! "Foreign" films may be subtitled in English instead of dubbed, but works of scholarship are neither. Italians interested in this field are also no strangers to the precarity of an area of inquiry they hold dear. A student in one of my graduate seminars here, whose English is impressive but whose vocabulary does not have the free range of a native speaker's, surprised me during our last class by dubbing the situation facing the field of intellectual history here one precisely of...pracarity.

The most famous line of Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee" is surely "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Separating ourselves from traditions and current practices so entwined with our own is asking for the kind of inner emptiness she rendered so poignant and poignantly.

The song presents the predicament of freedom so central to the experience of being American, and of being human, for that matter. The tension between independence and the yearning for rootedness and lasting connection is embodied in this story of two people who experience true yet fleeting communion hitch-hiking one rainy night aboard an eighteen-wheeler, "window wipers slapping time," singing every song they knew. While this song is ostensibly all about not getting attached, not being tied down, it simultaneously lingers longingly and lovingly over specific people and places. Particular cities are mentioned (Baton Rouge, New Orleans) and we learn there is such a thing as home after all: "I let him slip away./He's looking for that home and I hope he finds it." The sweet languor of the song's opening gives way by the end to unbridled movement forward and the frantic cry of passion and loss. Early references to the blues foreshadow the painful cataclysm of the line, "I would trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday." With precarity like this in the best of times, who needs anything worse?

Precarity in personal and professional life can run hauntingly parallel for each of us at any time. We have surely chosen a vocation in which they not only intersect, but often become one inseparable line. Always there is the possibility of letting what is really important slip away. (Oops, I lost Bobby McGee. Oh, well.) But then again, we might prefer not to--when we can help it.

For the remainder of my Roman stay, I hope to put in words, if I can, some of what I have seen here in Italy that interests me and might be of interest to USIH readers. And I just might comment on an interior monologue or two of Woody Allen's. As we all know, he conducts them solely in Italian.