violence

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Violent Valentines
February 13, 2016
charles i. letbetter - violent valentines

The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.—William Wordsworth

 

charles i. letbetter - violent valentines

Sure, relationships are rocky and arguments happen, but at no point is violence justified

Valentines Day has this bad habit of bringing out all the smarmy, cheesy, lovey-dovey ads about relationships that are too good to be real. Chances are, you started seeing them in mid-January and by now are ready to barf at the first sign of flowers, chocolate, or anything that sparkles. Ads for the holiday really ramp up the emotion in an effort to make you feel guilty if you don’t buy something expensive to show your love. Of course, you know that such a philosophy of love having a monetary value is faulty, but each year we buy into the concept more and more, so the ads just keep coming.

This year, Pandora (the jeweler, not the streaming music service) has a new ad that takes a slightly different approach. The concept is not so much that buying your spouse or significant other jewelry is an act of love as much as it is a plea for forgiveness. The general idea is a good one, given the number of guys who typically find themselves in hot water this time of year over some relationship gaffe.

The ad, directed by Martin Werner, is humorously set to music from Verdi’s opera, La Traviata, specifically the duet, Libiamo ne’lieti calici from the first act. The music is familiar, even to those who don’t know the opera. Giving the tenor reason to show off his vocal prowess is the whole reason for the song in the opera, and his first solo can be translated as follows:

Let’s drink, let’s drink from the joyous chalices
that beauty so truly enhances.
And may the brief moment be inebriated
with voluptuousness.
Let’s drink for the ecstatic feeling
that love arouses.
Because this eye aims straight to the heart, omnipotently.
Let’s drink, my love, and the love among the chalices
will make the kisses warmer.

Don’t be fooled, while love is occasionally mentioned, this is a drinking song, which is why the chorus keeps joyfully joining in from time to time. The song is a lot of fun and a favorite among opera fans.

Pandora uses the song, however, as a way of covering up the arguments taking place in the ads. There are multiple scenarios, but they all come to one joint conclusions: guys infuriate women and need to beg for forgiveness by heaping large amounts of diamonds upon their loved ones. Take a look at the ad and then I’ll continue my comments.

https://youtu.be/PRtt0LNm7CI

Okay, so the ad is a bit tongue in cheek, and the different approach to Valentine’s Day is appreciated. I was fine right up until the moment it gets violent and the women start throwing things. Sure, in the ad none of the objects actually hit their target, but what if they had? Were those situations to take place in real life, the outcome would likely be severe enough that all the diamonds in the world couldn’t fix it.

Here’s the thing: domestic violence is a real problem. General statistics run like this:

  • Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Most often, the abuser is a member of her own family.
  • Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.
  • Studies suggest that up to 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence annually.
  • Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a breakup.
  • Everyday in the US, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.

However, one of the things those statistics hide, and which is often ignored, is that men are more likely to be the victims of violent domestic abuse at the hands of an intimate partner. A national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Justice shows that over 40% of victims of severe physical violence are men. The study also showed that men are more frequently, “the victim of psychological aggression and control over sexual or reproductive health.”

No matter how lightly it is treated, domestic violence is never funny and cannot be covered up by diamonds or candy or flowers. Depicting women violently throwing vases at men is just as wrong as if it were the other way around. Obviously, no one at Pandora thought of that tragedy. Men who are the victims of violent abuse don’t like to bring it up.

This is a very bad direction for an ad to take. While it’s too late to do anything about this ad now, I do hope the folks at Pandora show better sense in the future..

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Current Issues  /  PotD
The State Of The Union Through Tinted Glass
January 12, 2016
charles i. letbetter - the state of the union through tinted glass

We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.—Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address, 1862

 

charles i. letbetter - state of the union

Young Kennedys (2012). Models: Erin Rowe and Joel Hoffman. Hair and Makeup: Christopher Thompson

This is a reality check. If you look at this picture and think this represents the United States as it is now, the state of our union, you’re living within a pipe dream. For that matter, if you think today’s picture ever truly represented who we really are, you are a poor student of history. The idyllic, white-bread, everything-is-wonderful world so often attributed to the Kennedy administration never really existed. Just as this photograph is a work of fiction, so is the concept that somewhere back there, between the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, everything was fine and America was perfect.

We are reticent to realize that the state of our union has never been as perfect as it appears when we look back through rose tinted glasses. That era of your parents or grandparents wasn’t nearly as cheerful and happy as some today would make it seem. Theirs was a generation that lived in constant fear, jumping at every sound, constantly diligent in watching the skies and regarding with suspicion anyone who spoke with a non-coloquial accent. Children of that generation, myself included, would have bomb raid drills at school where we would hide under our desks in the vain hope that would prevent us from dying in a nuclear attack. Segregation was real, and inforced. I was in eighth grade before I didn’t have the darkest skin in my classroom. Millions were hopelessly addicted to the cigarettes their doctors told them to smoke for their nerves and they dropped dead in equal number between the ages of 65-70 without understanding why. Retirement was feared because it meant death wasn’t far off.

Do we really want to go back to those days? No, I didn’t think so. America wasn’t as great as we like to pretend.

When the framers of the Constiution decided it would be a good idea for the President to annualy update Congress on how the nation is doing, there was almost certainly an implied sense that if the country wasn’t doing well the Executive just might be replaced. While the impeachment clause was never used until 1868, the threat was always there and with feelings between the Legislative and Executive branches having often been contentious the habit was quickly developed wherein the State of the Union address was made to sound as positive and cheerful as possible, while also being used as a tool for laying out the President’s agenda for the next year.

When President Obama speaks this evening, he’s not going to give us a hard-edged look at reality. He will tout his considerable accomplishments, mention that unempoloyment is down and that manufacturing is up, that the automotive industry is no longer on the brink of collapse as it was when he took office eight years ago. He’ll take about civil rights advancements, specifically the rights of gays and lesbians to marry. and he’ll talk about health care. He’ll give a nod to gun reform but he won’t say anything there he hasn’t said before. Instead, he’ll try to make a case for making his replacement a Democrat so that the country might keep moving forward. In some form or fashion, he’ll say that the state of our union is good, and strong, because that’s what we want Presidents to do: give us a cheery, tinted-glass view of a reality we know doesn’t exist.

Were the President to lay it all out on the table for us, here are some of the points he would have to address:

  • We remain a nation steeped in racism just as severely as we were in 1860. We don’t like to think we are, but our actions prove differently not only in Ferguson and Charleston, but in the very way we’ve treated this President from the moment he was elected. Anyone who says this country isn’t racist is a fucking liar and deserves to be slapped.
  • The gains we’ve made economically are being undermined by global forces larger than we are. Our mistake is a mounting debt, primarily owned by China, at a time when the Chinese economy isn’t doing so well itself. We’re not alone. The EU, Russia, and most of South America is in exactly the same condition if not worse. We’re looking at a pending global economic collapse the like of which we’ve never seen, and we’re largely powerless to stop it.
  • The United States is the most violent industrialized nation in the world. Let’s be clear that we’re making a distinction among industrialized nations. What that designation means, though, is that we should know better. We don’t have any reason to be killing each other at the rate we are. This is more than a gun issue, which is a significant matter on its own. We are actually stupid enough to think that violence solves anything. We teach our children, if not through our words then through our actions, that violence is a solution. Not only is our murder rate inexcusable, incidents of domestic violence and rape are even higher, and we still have some members of Congress who think those matters aren’t really crimes at all.
  • We still pay and treat women as second class citizens. If it happens at all, it happens too much. We should be beyond this.
  • 17.5 million households, approximately one in seven, are food insecure. In 2014, there were 46.7 million people in poverty and that number has been rising steadily despite decreasing unemployment numbers. What that tells us is that the jobs people have are not enough to pay for housing, food, and clothing, let alone transportation, education, Internet service, and other things necessary to actually improve one’s condition. Even some members of our own military live well below the poverty line.(Source: World Hunger Education Services Associates)
  • We remain stuck in the Middle East with escalating situations not only in Syria but in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Israel. We talk big, but the frightening reality is that we’ve tried solutions from both Republican and Democratic administrations and neither have worked. One has to seriously wonder if anyone in Washington actually has a viable solution.

With all due respect Mr. President, the state of our union is not good, is not strong, and it hasn’t been for a very, very long time. What’s important, though, is that this is not a nation that gives up. We may get things wrong more often than we get them right, but at least we keep trying, we keep tilting with that windmill with all the conviction of a knight convinced he can slay any dragon.

We actually think we can improve our country, and perhaps we can. But first, we must remove the tinted glasses through which we’ve been looking, recognize this picture for the myth it is, and then flood the polls this year, including the primaries, with an attitude that we have no choice but to progress and move forward.

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Surviving In 2016
January 2, 2016
charles i. letbetter - surviving 2016

We don’t develop courage by being happy every day. We develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.—Barbara de Angelis

charles i. letbetter - surviving 2016

Model: Sarah Thomas

Welcome to the real 2016. January 1 doesn’t count; it’s that in-between days when people my age and older worry about writing the wrong year on checks while our children and grandchildren stand by our sides asking, “What’s a check?” January 1 is for parades and football and corned beef if you’re in the Midwest, hog jowl or fat back if you’re in the South. January 1 isn’t a real day.

Today, however, is quite real. Bills are due, including rent in many cases. You may  have to go to work. Even if you have today off, since it’s Saturday, there are still things to do such as taking down the damn Christmas tree and tossing a tangled jumble of lights into the closet. Today, the holidays are officially over and the world is obligated to get back to the hectic rat race it left back in November. What will we do, however shall we survive? Fortunately, I have some solutions.

Stay warm.

I am amazed that, every year, people are severely crippled or die due to exposure. I’m not necessarily talking about homeless people, either, though that’s definitely a problem. People who know better and have sufficient means to protect themselves seem to hit January and think that Spring must be right around the corner. Wrong. Especially this year. We’ve got at least three months of cold starting us out here and the rest of the year is really going to suck if you lose extremities because you didn’t take care of yourself. Gloves. Hats. Heavy coats. They’re not just for the holidays, folks. Wear them. Surviving the year starts with staying alive.

Avoid politics (and politicians) whenever possible.

This is a presidential election year and all indications point toward this being one of the most ridiculously stupid campaigns ever. This year’s politicians are totally incapable of telling the truth about anything. Some of them can’t even get their own names correct, “Ted.” The only means of survival is to shut them down, turn them off, and vote for the one least likely to behave like a complete asshole when they reach office. Even worse, though, are people who ardently, feverishly, support a candidate. They will fill your Facebook timeline with some of the most ridiculous article links ever conceived. Unfollow them. Block them if they start getting too pushy. Pay no attention to the slime oozing behind the curtain. Turn them off. Surviving doesn’t mean surrendering your dignity.

Fight terror and violence by loving everyone.

After rampant wandering politicians, the biggest threat the United States faces this year is domestic violence and terrorism. The are some very stupid people out there who mistakenly believe that hate is justified by their religion and violence of some form is an acceptable answer.  Nothing could possibly be more wrong. In response to these very misguided individuals, we can have only one response: love everyone. We really shouldn’t be threatened with violence or terrorism to do this, but if we want to shut down our biggest threats to national and personal security, loving each other is our only choice. That means loving each other regardless of religious affiliation, or race, or sexual orientation, or marital status, or whether they watch Fox News. The Beatles gave us the answer long ago: All you need is love.

Pay cash, save as much as possible.

We’ve been monitoring comments by different economists all year and, while they rarely agree on anything, it seems rather certain that we’re heading toward yet another global recession. Blame China. No, it’s not all their fault, but they make a much-too-obvious scapegoat. This is not the year to be running up a lot of unnecessary debt, especially not high-interest credit card debt, which is never a good idea in the first place. This year, when Samuel L. Jackson asks, “What’s in your wallet?” the answer needs to be, “Cash.” With a recession looming, I wouldn’t even trust banks enough to use a debit card. Sure, it’s not a convenient approach by any means, but it could save your ass when the next recession hits. Surviving means save as much as you can, keep as much as you can out of the hands of big banks.

Take more pictures: hire a professional.

For all the talk about Instagram and other online photo sharing applications, the number of good photographs, the ones worth handing down and saving for future generations, are declining. Why? Because you’re not paying for them. You’re taking lousy selfies instead of hiring a professional and what you’re getting in return is just digital trash. 98% of the photographs taken with cell phones are not worth preserving. Sure, our services are not inexpensive, but the value of a professional photograph grows with time, unlike the garbage on your phone that can disappear in an instant if someone spills a glass of water. Having professional, printed photographs are the best way to preserve your memories.

I can’t promise anyone a good year. There are a lot of obstacles that, quite honestly, have me a bit frightened. We cannot see the future, but we can prepare for the most obvious possibilities. Be safe out there, kids. Love each other. Spend wisely. Book your photo session now.  Surviving 2016 doesn’t need to be difficult; let’s do this together!

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Art  /  PotD  /  Social Commentary
Love, Everyone
October 3, 2015
charles i. letbetter - love everyone

charles i. letbetter - love everyone

Welcome Home (2013)

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.—Buddha

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]What’s wrong with people? I look through the news this morning and all I see is hate. Republicans hate democrats. This religion hates that religion and both hate anyone who disagrees with them. White hates black, black hates white, and they both hate brown. If I were to do a quick, informal estimation, which is exactly what I’m doing right this moment, I would say that roughly 80% of what has been tossed at me this morning ultimately contains a hateful message. Where is the love? Where is the empathy? Where is any attempt at actually wanting to get along with other people.

Here’s the great paradox of the 21st century: we’re willing to spend billions of dollars (collectively) looking for love, trying to find love, improving ourselves so that we’re more lovable, but we don’t do a damn thing toward actually loving other people. We are as selfish about love as we are everything else in our lives. We want it all to come to us, knock on our door, overwhelm us with emotional goodies, and reaffirm our sense of how valuable we are to the world. We define love not as something we feel toward other people, but by the quantity of warm fuzzies other people give to us.

In other words: we don’t have a fucking clue. For all the talk about love, we fail to realize that love is an act of giving, not an act of receiving. Love is not something that happens to you, but something you distribute to others. Love is not doing something based on what you feel, but what you feel based on what you’ve done. Love is active, not passive. Love is not something to be found, but something we create, from the center of our being, so that we might give it to someone else. Love is not narrowly limited to a familial relationship, but an over-arching sense of inclusiveness and responsibility to the greater good of humanity.

Love holds no bias, nor fear, but includes everyone.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]So, we are, and have been for a while, at this point in the United States where we have had more mass shootings (where more than four people are shot), than there have been days in the year. We foolishly ask why this keeps happening. Some want bans on weapons. Some want tighter control on those with diagnosed mental disorders.  Some want everything locked down and stored in a box where no one can get to it. None of those are solutions. We cannot solve with legislation what was not caused by government in the first place. There is only one reason we keep shooting ourselves: we’ve forgotten how to love.

It was a mere 45-50 years ago that we, my generation and those just older than us, were all about peace, and love, and happiness. We were sure that we could change the world with love, and ultimately we were correct, but we didn’t see it in the way we thought we would see it. We thought love would give us things, take away responsibility, make life more relaxed. What we failed to realize is that love creates responsibility and when we fail that responsibility, we fail love. Love doesn’t just chug along like a toy train circling the Christmas tree. Love requires maintenance, effort, and a completely selfless attitude.

Where is the American society failing? Don’t blame government, Republican orDemocrat. Don’t blame religions, present or absent. Don’t blame race or economics. Blame the total and complete absence of love. We’ve stopped loving, we’ve stopped teaching our children to love, and we’ve stopped letting love be the guide by which we live our lives. In a world where we’ve all but thrown love out the window, is it any wonder that society has gone to hell in a handbasket?

Love, everyone. You won’t learn how until you try.[/one_half_last]

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Art  /  pop culture  /  PotD
Learning To Live
August 27, 2015
charles i. letbetter - learning to live

charles i. letbetter - coming clean

Coming Clean (2005)

People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly. ― Andy Warhol

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Late March, 2005, I was preparing for my move to Indiana when a young woman approached me about taking some nude pictures. Her one requirement was that they all be framed and processed so as to keep her identity anonymous. She had recently graduated from a prominent university with her Juris Doctorate, would be sitting for the bar the next week, and had an internship at a prominent human rights organization. I couldn’t help asking, given the direction her life appeared to be going, why she would risk taking any nude pictures at all. Yes, they would be sufficiently anonymous, but should anyone ever see or find her copies of the photos it could be just as detrimental to her career. Her response was nothing I expected.

“How can I defend the rights of other people’s lives if I have no knowledge of how to live myself?”

I have long since forgotten the young lady’s name, so I’ve no idea where her path has taken her, but her statement has stuck with me. Her insight at such an early point in her life was astonishing. Too often, especially when the intent is good, we become so concerned about what other people are doing that we pay little or no attention to the fact that our own life is passing us by. We reach middle age, or later, realize that the flexibility of our youth is gone, and try to compensate with the time we have left, not knowing how much time that may be.

While millennials have been roundly criticized by their predecessors as being too slow to grow up and take responsibility for their lives, perhaps they have more sense than their elders did in their twenties. Young adults today are more likely to postpone marriage and families and long-term responsibilities for one primary reason: they want to experience life before doing so becomes an act of chasing old regrets.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]We have expanded the longevity of life to the point where it is now reasonable to expect a fair number of people to live past the century mark. 65 is no longer the old age marker that it was a mere thirty years ago. Yet, we have to ask ourselves what good it does to exist for longer periods of time if we  continually put off learning how to actually live that life? What good does it do us to argue over when life begins or  ends when we completely ignore the quality of the substance between those two points?

Time is not nearly on our side as much as we may think.  Accidents have always been a risk as long as humans have existed, but an increasing risk is what we are doing to ourselves. Just yesterday, a 24-year-old reporter and a 26-year-old cameraman left television station WDBJ for what they thought was a routine interview, shot live for the station’s morning show. They had no way of knowing their lives would be taken from them on-air. Later yesterday, in Sunset, Louisiana, the lives of a mother and a police officer were unexpectedly cut short. The United States has now had more mass shootings this year (247) than there have been days in the year (238). That we are the only Western, allegedly civilized, country to have such a problem is damning.

I firmly believe that people who understand how to live life neither interfere with nor take the lives of others except as a legitimate act of self-defense. People who learn how to live do not threaten the lives of others. While there are no one-word or single-action solutions to any of the social problems we face, there is something to be said for removing oneself from the mayhem and focusing on living one’s own life. Don’t just learn to live a little; learn to live a lifetime. One never knows what day opens the last page. Embrace each moment.  [/one_half_last]

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Photography  /  PotD  /  Social Commentary
The Thing of Nightmares
June 19, 2015
charles i. letbetter

charles i. letbetter

My Own Nightmare (2009)

“The 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.” ― Andy Rooney

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]A lot of people have trouble sleeping for a number of different reasons; for some medical, others emotional, and for some it is totally because they just watched the wrong movie before going to bed. It happens. Nightmares. We hated them as children because they were so wild and ferocious and creative. As adults, though, what we often hate about them is the fact they are too damn real. Nightmares for adults seldom involve exotic monsters drawn from an over-active imagination but, instead, come from real life, involving people we actually know and love, in situations we seem unable to stop.

I rarely have nightmares anymore. I don’t watch movies before going to bed. I’m careful to time my medicine. I pull my adventurous imagination back a couple of notches. And then, I don’t sleep that long. I’m blaming that on getting older. Typically, I can go a couple of hours before my body thinks we need to wake up and check the house for mysterious noises. But then, there are weeks like this one where it has rained every night, causing already problematic arthritis to go into hyperdrive, making it impossible to find a comfortable sleeping position for more than 15 minutes or so. The dark circles under my eyes are almost as black as my wardrobe. When one doesn’t sleep, one doesn’t have nightmares. A small consolation.

Then, there are the nine families in Charleston, South Carolina who are living a nightmare. Wednesday night was prayer meeting night. I remember what that was like. Every Wednesday, usually around 6:30 or 7:00 PM, the church doors would open and 15-20 people, on a good night, would trickle into the small sanctuary. We’d sing a song, Poppa would read a few verses of scripture, then would come the prayer requests. Every possible concern of the community would be raised, both personal and public. After about 30 minutes, they’d start praying, pray for another 30 minutes, then go home. Except, for these nine people, they didn’t go home. They were shot dead, right where they prayed, by someone who had sat through the whole service. A living nightmare in every possible sense.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Today’s photo was meant to be part of a composite where a beautiful young woman was awakened by a more frightening version of herself. The concept required shooting the model twice, once reclining in various states of slumber, and then again as the nightmarish self. Care to guess which this one is? Unfortunately, we only got one finished image from the set. I totally messed up the shoot, failing to mark my tripod settings correctly and thereby throwing off the perspective. Trying to composite the two pieces consumed days as I tried to correct the perspective and make something work. When I say there’s one finished image, it’s only because I eventually gave up and called it done. You won’t find it on display.

When I opened this file and took another look, though, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the makeup work of Kelly Oswalt. Sara Williams is such a lovely little wisp of a thing in real life and Kelly did an amazing job of creating something a little more terrifying. Even without the accompanying “beauty” piece, this makes for an interesting and striking image. I also had to giggle a bit looking at this, as Sara is now eight-months-plus pregnant, about to deliver her first child any day now. Perhaps Sara can threaten the child when she gets older with something like, “This is what happens to mommy when you don’t take a nap.” Of course, then the baby would have nightmares, and that just doesn’t help anyone, does it?

I wish we lived in a world where all our nightmares were those derived from imagination. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. As long as there is hate there will be nightmares like that of Wednesday night. Such events do not happen in truly civilized societies. In fact, the United States is the only first world country where mass shootings such as this are an issue. Our nightmare has repeated itself far too many times and we fail to even bother looking for a reasonable solution for fear it might keep one person from carrying a gun or somehow diminish the shooter’s rights, despite the fact he’s trampling the rights of others to live peacefully.[/one_half_last]

We can’t put a stop to all nightmares, but we can reduce them. We have no choice. Now is the time to seriously put a clamp on gun violence. This is one nightmare we must end.

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