#just adds context and nuance to that identification

[fagsaporta]

just thinking about how the cobra starship music video for "i kissed a boy" (a cover of katy perry's "i kissed a girl") is set up as a parody to the book/film "girl, interrupted.” bc like... i think despite looking like it was made with 5 dollars, a tripod, and a dream, this song and mv actually have a really interesting political/social position.

i’d like to focus in this post what the mv adds to a queer interpretation of the song, but to do that we should quickly discuss the ways i’m interpreting the song itself.

on the most basic level, the listener is intended to understand that gabe saporta likes kissing other guys, and that his stated reason is that he likes causing problems, as well as because girls like it.

but i can’t help but think about this song in the context of the rest of their discography. throughout their music there this huge aspect of performative hypermasculinity. but because gabe saporta is Like That and in fact categorically not an alpha chad you get this interplay where, by doing the Straight Guy Club Song thing on the surface and having it amped up to 1000, i would argue that cobra starship is asking listeners to think abt the absurdity of the gender roles and culture they are mimicking/playing into, ie that of a cisheteronormative society. therefore one pretty straightforward reading of the song is that gabe saporta is portraying the experience of being a bisexual man who is in denial and dealing with internalised homophobia, who resorts to performative hyper-masculine heterosexuality and violence as a way to reframe his non-normative desires as something that aligns with the narratives of straight mainstream society.

i do think to some extent, given the context the song was written for (2008, right after obama won the presidency) there is also some element of the performativity of it, of doing it to piss off homophobes (who gabe saporta talks about like. being people in his audience at his shows screaming fag at him or finding him after to harass him, which is a context that in 2022 is kind of lost on us, bc it is so easy to consider homophobes this weird outgroup who would never go to a cobra starship show, but that wasn't the case then obviously) it may not be solely a nuanced depiction of bisexuality, but i do definitely believe it is not one or the other, but rather both

with this in mind, the mv adds some pretty interesting details.

except for the opening shots, gabe saporta is filmed mostly alone in a white room. this visually references the psychiatric institution which “girl, interrupted” takes place in. this in itself could serve reference being trapped within the confines of “normal” straight society. one of the themes of “girl, interrupted” is the conflation of social nonconformity with insanity. it’s not much of a leap to therefore read the mv as gabe saporta making reference to the way society enforces a very limited range of acceptable expression of sexuality and gender, and punishes anything that strays too far outside of that.

gabe saporta is also shown through closeups to have various number tattoos (both in roman numerals and in latin numbers) that could reference a patient identification code, or again the idea of being a cog in the machine of straight society

(those are the roman numerals for 69. haha nice. the gay sex number.)

the final shot also has some interesting symbolism. it's the first time you can clearly see that the tattoo on his upper back is a cross, plus the pose and the way the light forms wings around him. it’s clearly a reference to the crucifixion, although i haven’t exactly come to a firm conclusion on what that means narratively. one possibility is that gabe saporta is portraying himself as a martyr, suggesting that he is being open about having queer experiences and dealing with the homophobia that comes from that so that it is easier for other queer people to talk more easily about their experiences in the future. it might also be important that he is very openly exposing a large amount of skin. it indicates a level of sexualisation or sexuality, but also at the same time, vulnerability.

anyway. gabe saporta’s physicality and performance for the mv also strikes me as important. for most of the mv, gabe saporta is demonstrated to be in control. he is physically dominant over the other man, but his power and control are also established by the way he is very purposefully putting on a persona and performing for the camera.

not to insanely over analyse this shot by shot, but there are two notable exceptions.

for example, in this shot he is going to change his whole expression and push the other guy away in a second or two, but in the moment does absolutely not seem to be in control of the impulse to kiss him. and though he still has the power in the situation, with his hands on the other guy's face, he’s moving in almost like it is out of habit or desire, rather than a plan

and then this one.... i have less to say but look how happy they are!! gabe!! what is this!!

it’s notable that these “breaks in character” both indicate a desire for other men, but also for emotional intimacy.

there’s a lot more that could be said about the every single tiny detail of this mv (the baseball bat, the bracelets, the sungalsses) but this post is already way too long so i guess you just have to brainrot about those things first hand

[hell-is-a-teenage-girll]

hi, sorry I just saw your post about autism and self identification. I'm autistic and just call it that. I think people should be allowed to pick what they're comfortable calling themselves as long as there is some nuance to it, the caveat is being conscientious, because words have implications and contexts. I don't think it's fair for people with a disability to use language that harms or implies harm to others in their own community of neurodivergency simply because "well I get to pick what I use for myself", it's like yeah... But also not you nor words exist in a vacuum. (When I say you, it's not you specific, just a way of saying it)

Words and origins of such have a weight to them and considering that, some words with time become outdated and even more so inaccurate.

In a situation like this, I'd consider that being conscientious of your community, especially of those that have a harder time with the disability - those who have high support needs -, comes over our own comfort. So it's important to use our position and privilege as low support needs (or what used to be high functioning, if you are, idk) to show up for people in the community that aren't as hard or as well represented as stuff like that, with our words too.

Overall, it's more complicated than black and white thinking, I suppose.

Oh absolutely!

Tbh I never saw Aspergers as a higher functioning autism when I was diagnosed.

I am from Belgium btw and was diagnosed 10 years ago, so on my official paper, it still says aspergers which is why I'm saying it right now not to be like '' I stand by Aspergers'' or something

But because I read that there's so much difference also in countries apparently in the terminology so thought I'd add that in there.

So I think your way of explaining if very valid and I agree on many points and I really like to hear people's views.

I often ask questions that maybe are a bit more controversial sometimes because I genuinely wonder and not to start things but I often think if we were allowed to ask things more to learn more and talk in an open way, we'd understand eachother more.

I say I'm autistic aswell so dw!

It's sometimes hard to say what I was diagnosed with because my literal mind which comes with my personal autism traits is like '' well Aspergers/autism''

But in general I will just say '' I'm autistic '' because I am, and I'm no more or less than any one else, I never felt that way, the only terms I don't like personally or the high and low functioning, they are again to literal to me and I don't feel like it's true.

Sorry for the long text, but I hope it makes sense!

Anyhow, basically I agree! And again thank you 😊

[slimeinnocence]

Performing Science

Contemporary Americans, incorporating nearly all “generational” layers: Gen Z, millennials, baby boomers, are familiar with the new-wave of “anti-PC” rhetoric within our society; as proliferated endlessly and vastly through social media. They (and their fans) take advantage of social-media craze, usually incorporating some form of textual or visual click-bait along the lines of “Idiotic liberal gets owned in argument,” and so on. Vanguards and their residual “fans” have spawned almost out-of-thin-air, the Ben Shapiro’s--Jordan Peterson’s--Tucker Carlson’s--Steven Crowder’s of our world. A prominent “battleground” which they further their agenda within is gender discourse. Logistically, this is a strategic call, as gender/sex studies are popular within the younger and more progressive demographic in the United States, as well as the field being quite nuanced, abstract, and critical in general. The “icons” have their typical repertoire of “gotcha points,” with nothing much more to add to the conversation, but by then the discussion has rhetorically fizzled out of proportion.

In as much that people’s subjective identification within the boundaries of sex and gender should be appreciated or left-alone in their own right, a “root” of the problem definitely seems to be that the discipline which furthers this research into the social construction of gender is literary and critical theory. Besides the fact that this research is usually experimental and complicated, the author’s themselves are scrutinized quite fervently (one of the most typical arguments by those on the right is that these theorists take too much inspiration from French 20th century philosophy and critical theory, which they deem as too problematic or sexually deviant. Though some 20th century French theorists were certainly divergent in these areas, a lot of their arguments get misquoted or staged without correct context, for example, the case of the 1977 petition against age of consent laws in France). An anchor here, for the left, is the publicly-digestible theory of performance. But, though the theory can be appreciated gently, it does not seem to have wide-application.

Richardson’s Sex Itself could perhaps present another anchor for the left, in the somewhat untypical field of History of Science. Their text is expansive and crucial, displaying the contradictions of science in its natural state, as well as calling for a retroactive appeal towards the original theories of accessory chromosomes. Here, it is not so much that the interpretation of society’s interaction with sex and gender can be criticized, but that the literal science itself is faulty and questionable on multiple avenues. The text is also clear, not relying on some relation to Lacanian psychoanalysis or Hegelian dialectics to work (of course, generalizing here). Estrangement was better handled in Richardson’s text than, for example, a text that Butler could have produced; the foregrounding of sex chromosomes as being gendered is terribly “natural” to American society that its questioning and critique is immediately stunning.

Just as much as the scientists pushed upon their subconscious feelings and ideologies surrounding gender into the progression of sex chromosome research, there is a weird muddled phenomena showcased by Richardson where the scientists themselves are performing science, as well as their future “harbingers of the truth.” These icons’ infatuation with “facts” and “truth” are under direct scrutiny by Richardson.

[armeniaitn]

Armenian Art through the Gaze of Western Institutions

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/culture/armenian-art-through-the-gaze-of-western-institutions-52878-27-08-2020/

Armenian Art through the Gaze of Western Institutions

However, Dr. Vazken Davidian, Faculty of Oriental Studies and Calouste Gulbenkian Postdoctoral Fellow in Armenian Studies at Oxford University, acknowledges these labels lack “an understanding of the cultural networks and exchanges that have influenced Armenian artists or craftsmen and women, and how these Armenian objects, individuals, and visual vocabularies have influenced and enriched those of the wider region.”

In context, they often are encouraged by negligence and contribute to ignorance concerning Armenian artistic creations rather than appreciation for the various populations which have lived within Armenia, the identities of the artists who have created in Armenian styles, the dance of cultural exchange Armenia embraced, and the breadth of ethnically Armenian artists throughout the world, he continues. “Where works are displayed is of course central to how they are displayed,” he notes – and in the West, institutional mislabeling is endemic of academic whitewashing.

Maranci makes it clear that even when there are numerous indicators which would normally signal a work as being Armenian, if the dealer, seller, or curator have not been critically exposed to Armenian culture, they may still be mislabeled. This lack of education often leads to instances of unacceptable oversight when “there is this beautiful object that was labeled as Islamic” with no mention of Armenian maker or origin, “but you turn it around and there’s an Armenian inscription on it.”

This is not to gloss over nuance — there are many unknowns when it comes to art attribution. Maranci shares the status of many beautiful silver vessels which were excavated at Erebuni, an Urartian site occupied during the 4th c. and 5th c. BCE which has been historically Armenian. Though the provenance is known, “We don’t know [who made them]. We don’t know if they were the product of trade. We don’t know if they were commissioned. We don’t know the identity of the artist,” she says. Even when the provenance is known, the identification of its creator may be elusive. For example, as Davidian points out, “if a carpet style is common among Kurds and Armenians in the Moush region, it is difficult to say who the creators were.”

Prof. Keith Watenpaugh

Attributing art to Armenians is further nuanced by ethnically Armenian artists who themselves did not identify principally as Armenian.

“For example, particularly Armenian nobles in the medieval period understood themselves primarily as members of their family,” Maranci contributes. Even in modern times, Hrag Vartanian, critic, curator, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, reveals, “a lot of modern artists in the US for instance, did not want to identify as Armenian because they didn’t see benefits,” due to the initial status of Armenians as non-white immigrants to this nation, which threatened deportation. Attribution is conversely further obfuscated when art is produced by diasporic Armenians, for in these cases the ethnicity of its creator may need to be recognized in addition to its context of creation.

Davidian adds: “Reclaiming what is or is not produced by Armenian artists or craftsmen or women does not mean erecting proverbial ‘walls’ around objects such as the head of the goddess Anahid in the British Museum or a ceramic vase or tile from Kutahya and declaring them as ‘uniquely Armenian.’ It is about understanding the context of their production and the processes and exchanges with cultures near and far which have influenced them — just as critically defined Armenian art has influenced other cultural processes. Only then can we properly reclaim these… mis-identified or stolen objects as part of our own cultural heritage.”

Turkish Influence

“The presentation of an artistic or historical object as ‘Armenian’ or not during the 20th century and today is very strongly intertwined with the legacy of massacre and genocide and how the history of violence” has been and has continued to be “narrated and silenced,” says Davidian. He adds that due to the total appropriation, or Turkification, of Armenian art which followed the Hamidian Massacres and Armenian Genocide, many ethnically Armenian cultural goods including rugs, ceramics, embroidery, woodwork, and other crafts, “especially items lacking signature or identification marks of their producers,” are still “presented largely as Turkish or Kurdish art.”

This history of Turkification and continued academic negligence regarding Armenian art and cultural artifacts has affected the degree to which institutions are able to identify those objects that came to them as a product of theft or state-sanctioned looting. This problem extends to many of the objects remaining in catalogs from the early twentieth century, which are most likely related to the trafficking of goods after the Genocide.

Additionally, Armenia or Armenians may not be mentioned in attributional labeling because of “certain political agendas that would be pushed in by modern states” regarding their relations with the Republic of Turkey, Maranci explains. This motivation has caused Armenian art to be exhibited by ahistorical monikers in Western institutions such as a gallery entitled “Ancient Turkey” in the famed British Museum. (At the behest of a petition organized by Gagik Avagyan, the gallery was renamed “Anatolia and Urartu” in 2013.) However, “one cannot always assume, fairly, that the sort of sinister implications go all the way down from the donor or the seller to the museum to the curators. We can’t implicate the curators necessarily, but we can educate them” – in these cases, first on the history of Turkish violence against Armenians and its subsequent denial, then on the violence committed against our cultural heritage and its subsequent denial.

Until Genocide denial is stifled and the background education regarding Armenian culture is incorporated into curricula, Dr. Maranci expresses these other labels are always a red flag: “They sound like they’re actually pushing something aside… Why is that [label] being used? Why are they not using the term ‘Armenian’?”

The Zeyt’un Bible

Impact of the Western Gaze on Armenian Art

This ignorance and prejudice regarding Armenian art has drastic implications on how it is presented. Vartanian observes, “any discussion of Armenian art becomes very broken, fragmented, and it doesn’t actually take it on its own terms, but often fits it into bigger categories that end up instrumentalizing Armenian art and making it always secondary rather than central to the conversation.” Thus, most of these mis-attributed Armenian objects remain deemphasized in the storage of other cultures – further erasing Armenian art and any chance it has of being seen publicly – let alone through an Armenian lens. Tucked between the cracks, a wealth of Armenian art resides within the palms of those hands which participated in cultural exchange with Armenia for years – utterly peripheral.

This narrative skews perception concerning Armenian art and cultural goods – from their significance in relation to neighboring artistic traditions to “actually developing a real sense of how big this corpus is” Dr. Maranci states. As it stands now, “how can we know how much [Armenian art] is out there?” For scores of Armenian works have already been discovered and stored but remain buried within the storage of institutions which have erased Armenian art for decades. “I would actually say there’s probably a lot more out there than we know.”

Cataloging works through a Western lens which is blind to Armenian culture not only shrinks our corpus but also flattens the vibrance of our historic tangible culture. Mr. Vartanian declares, “We are never going to get a full picture of Armenian art when we use Western ideas around art because all the best Armenian art isn’t just oil on canvas or sculptures,” as is often heralded in the Western canon. “Some of it is handicraft. Some of it is dance. So we have to expand our notions of art to incorporate those worlds within those boundaries.” Vartanian further expresses that this blasé attitude toward Armenian art has “created Armenians that only know little parts of our history and end up feeling like there isn’t a significant history of Armenian art.”

Even our perception of the function of Armenian art has been harmed by the Western lens: “a lot of the most precious artifacts of handiwork and art were actually stored and shown only on precious occasions for people as an almost individual relationship [with them] which is very much against the traditional idea of how we see art, at least in modern American art history,” comments  Vartanian.

Cultural and Artistic Reunion

Sometimes, persistence in correcting the correct identification of a work of art pays off.

This past February, five years after the historic settlement between the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America regarding the provenance of the Canon Tables of the Zeyt’un Gospels, a new model of attributional recognition was exercised in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Md. A collaborative week-long inspection of their 18th-century Jeweled Gun of Sultan Mahmud I was undertaken by Armenian experts and those at the Walters Museum at the request of the National Museum of Armenian Ethnography and the History of the Liberation Struggle in Araks, Armenia to re-examine its attribution. At its conclusion, the artifact’s label was revised to attribute the jeweling of the piece to Armenian Christian Hovhannes Agha Duzian while maintaining recognition for the many other artisans who were integral in its creation.

Davidian identifies that for continued productive change, we must “make sophisticated arguments because the contexts of art production, like all intellectual activity, whether Armenian or not, are complex and don’t take place in a vacuum… We must find a way of proposing labeling practices that are inclusive and true of all their components and contexts in which they were created.”

In the meantime, Maranci declares that Armenian viewers “may be the closest thing to an expert that these objects have ever seen.” She emphatically recommends perusing museums’ online catalogs – which have recently expanded largely due to COVID-19 – for Armenian art, arguing that Armenian communities have both the ability and responsibility to exercise their familiarity with Armenian language and history by educating their local institutions. In this way, Armenian communities have the capacity to, after years apart, reunite these timeless works with the corpus of Armenian art and include them in the legacy of Armenian cultural history.

(Isabelle Kapoian is a student of economics, art history, and international affairs in the Class of 2021 at the University of New Hampshire. She holds professional interests in cultural property law and art market economics, plays the harp, and most enjoys reading and contributing to the Arts & Culture section of the Armenian Mirror-Spectator. Isabelle has participated in the Armenian Assembly’s Terjenian-Thomas internship program in 2019 in Washington, D.C. and the AGBU’s Global Leadership Program during this past summer, is co-president of her university’s Middle Eastern Cultural Association, and sings in the choir at Sts. Vartanantz Church in Chelmsford, MA. She has been the summer intern at the Armenian Mirror-Spectator through the Armenian Students Association Journalism Internship.)

  Read original article here.

[pinayillustrada]

RE: Why Good MCs are Hard to Write

I am writing this to add some points to a blog post at Amino. Read it yourself here.

The title of that article pretty much sums up what the article is about, and the points are listed as follows:

1. Limitations of the Developers      a. Developers try to strike a balance

     b. MC needs to have her development moderated

     c. Otome games are meant to service female gamers

     d. Some MCs just aren’t meant to be

2. Why MCs just don’t appeal to you

    a. We just have different standards

    b. Nuances are lost in translation

These are all interesting points, but in writing this post, I hope to carry the criticism a little bit further.

A lot of the post comments about the writing process in otome games. It should be noted that writing otome games is a lot different from a lot of game writing. In a lot of game writing, writing the mechanics and the world usually come before characters. In otome game situation writing, however, situations and characters are usually decided before anything else. If you are interested in knowing more about the writing process and can read a bit of Japanese (with or without a dictionary), this book by the main scenario writer of Code: Realize can give a lot of context to this. 

Apart from the process, this style of writing also is meant to fit nicely to accommodate the anime media mix (which is basically the Japan’s transmedia infrastructure dominated mostly by Kadokawa), and to generate moe. Since the characters are meant to cater to straight females, the logic here is to make characters that are easily reproducible in various media including anime, manga, drama CDs, toys, accessories, etc.

Moreover, in situations wherein writers add “rape” scenes, one has to understand that the rape too in manga written for women, were utilized widely as a plot device to allow women forms of release from repressed sexualities. Gretchen Jones writes about it here. In this case, we are discussing rape as a fantasy. While that fantasy can be liberating for some, it becomes tricky when one takes representation into context, especially given the widespread discourses that rape culture utilizes to its own advantage (yes, even those that women create themselves).

Indeed, it is important to understand the writing process and the media contexts that otome games are produced in, but if we are to have any hope in changing representation in otome games, critiquing this process is also important.

Firstly, it is a common point that MCs are written as self-inserts, and decisions are made to allow certain game situations to happen. But that is a problem in itself because it does not take into account the complexity of the process of identification. In Adrienne Shaw’s Gaming at the Edge, she points out that individuals identify not through strict gender and race identifiers, but specific experiences. For example, While I am not exactly from a immigrant Muslim background, I identified so much with Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel’s struggles with her faith, family tensions, etc. I don’t think identification with otome game heroines are not that different from that. For instance, I find that it is easy to connect with Collar X Malice’s Ichika, not because I am a Japanese woman or a police officer, but one can understand her everyday struggles with family, her job, and even that desire to create a better just world for everyone around her without resorting to hurting innocent people. Same with Code: Realize’s Cardia, while we’re not exactly monsters who can literally melt everything we touch, we can relate for to desire of hers for human connection. That is identification. Relying too much on self-insert characters denies the complexity of identification, and how we relate to each other as humans.

Secondly, while indeed otome games are meant to service female gamers, we are forgetting that not all players who identify as female are straight, and even straight female players too can be made to feel for non-straight characters who have non-straight romances. I mean, how else would we have BL without a lot of straight women feeling for non-straight men.

Thirdly, while understanding the writing processes and the infrastructure on how these games are created is important, it is also important to know that these systems may be problematic too. Apart from the fact that many game industries are not exempt from crunch culture (yes, even niche ones), it is an industry itself that mainly cares about generating money, so it asks for the easiest way to make money from its perceived audience. So in many cases, this system usually when diverse representation is convenient for it to make money, and it is this way that systems become oppressive, no matter the wonderful things it sometimes gives us.

I am not saying we go full on Daenaerys who’s like:

Sometimes, breaking the wheel may not be possible. At least not yet.

While we may not have the ability to break the wheel, we may be able to change the direction the wheel goes for now.

[sciencespies]

A new act for opera

https://sciencespies.com/humans/a-new-act-for-opera/

A new act for opera

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

More

In November 1953, the Nationaltheater in Mannheim, Germany, staged a new opera, the composer Boris Blacher’s “Abstrakte Oper Nr. 1,” which had debuted just months previously. As it ran, music fans were treated to both a performance and a raging controversy about the work, which one critic called “a monstrosity of musical progress,” and another termed “a stillbirth.”

Some of this vitriol stemmed from Blacher’s experimental composition, which had jazz and pop sensibilities, few words in the libretto (but some nonsense syllables), and no traditional storyline. The controversy was heightened by the Mannheim production, which projected images of postwar ruins and other related tropes onto the backdrop.

“The staging was very political,” says MIT music scholar Emily Richmond Pollock, author of a new book about postwar German opera. “Putting these very concrete images behind [the stage], that people had just lived through, produced a very uncomfortable feeling.”

It wasn’t just critics who were dubious: One audience member wrote to the Mannheim morning newspaper to say that Blacher’s “cacophonous concoction is actually approaching absolute zero and is not even original in doing so.”

In short, “Abstrakte Oper Nr. 1” hardly fit its genre’s traditions. Blacher’s work was introduced soon after the supposed “Zero Hour” in German society—the years after World War Two ended in 1945. Germany had instigated the deadliest war in history, and the country was supposed to be building itself entirely anew on political, civic, and cultural fronts. But the reaction to “Abstrakte Oper Nr. 1” shows the limits of that concept; Germans also craved continuity.

“There is this mythology of the Zero Hour, that Germans had to start all over again,” says Pollock, an associate professor in MIT’s Music and Theater Arts Section.

Pollock’s new book, “Opera after the Zero Hour,” just published by Oxford University Press, explores these tensions in rich detail. In the work, Pollock closely scrutinizes five postwar German operas while examining the varied reactions they produced. Rather than participating in a total cultural teardown, she concludes, many Germans were attempting to construct a useable past and build a future connected to it.

“Opera in general is a conservative art form,” Pollock says. “It has often been identified very closely with whomever is in power.” For that reason, she adds, “Opera is a really good place to examine why tradition was a problem [after 1945], and how different artists chose to approach that problem.”

The politics of cultural nationalism

Rebuilding Germany after 1945 was a monumental task, even beyond creating a new political state. A significant part of Germany lay in rubble; for that matter, most large opera houses had been bombed.

Nonetheless, opera soon bloomed again in Germany. There were 170 new operas staged in Germany from 1945 to 1965. Operationally, as Pollock notes in the book, this inevitably meant including former Nazis in the opera business—efforts at “denazification” of society, she thinks, were of limited effectiveness. Substantively, meanwhile, the genre’s sense of tradition set audience expectations that could be difficult to alter.

“There’s a lot of investment in opera, but it’s not [usually] going to be avant-garde,” Pollock says, noting there were “hundreds of years of opera tradition pressing down” on composers, as well as “a bourgeois restored German culture that doesn’t want to do anything too radical.” However, she notes, after 1945, “There are a lot of traditions of music-making as part of the culture of being German that feel newly problematic [to socially-aware observers].”

Thus a substantial portion of those 170 new operas—besides “Abstrakte Oper Nr. 1″—contained distinctive blends of innovation and tradition. Consider Carl Orff’s “Oedipus der Tyrann,” a 1958 work of musical innovation with a traditional theme. Orff was one of Germany’s best-known composers (he wrote “Carmina Burana” in 1937) and had professional room to experiment. “Oedipus der Tyrann” strips away operatic musical form, with scant melody or symphonic expression, though Pollock’s close reading of the score shows some remaining links to mainstream operatic tradition. But the subject of the opera is classical: Orff uses the German poet Friedrich Holderlin’s 1804 translation of Sophocles’ “Oedipus” as his content. As Pollock notes, in 1958, this could be a problematic theme.

“When Germans claim special ownership of Greek culture, they’re saying they’re better than other countries—it’s cultural nationalism,” Pollock observes. “So what does it mean that a German composer is taking Greek tropes and reinterpreting them for a postwar context? Only recently, [there had been] events like the Berlin Olympics, where the Third Reich was specifically mobilizing an identification between Germans and the Greeks.”

In this case, Pollock says, “I think Orff was not able to think clearly about the potential political implications of what he was doing. He would have thought of music as largely apolitical. We can now look back more critically and see the continuities there.” Even if Orff’s subject matter was not intentionally political, though, it was certainly not an expression of a cultural “Zero Hour,” either.

Opera is the key

“Opera after the Zero Hour” continually illustrates how complex music creation can be. In the composer Bernd Alois Zimmerman’s 1960s opera “Die Soldaten,” Pollock notes a variety of influences, chiefly Richard Wagner’s idea of the “totalizing work of art” and the composer Alban Berg’s musical idioms—but without Wagner’s nationalistic impulses.

Even as it details the nuances of specific operas, Pollock’s book is also part of a larger dialogue about which types of music are most worth studying. If operas had limited overlap with the most radical forms of musical composition of the time, then opera’s popularity, as well as the intriguing forms of innovation and experiment that did occur within the form, make it a vital area of study, in Pollock’s view.

“History is always very selective,” Pollock says. “A canon of postwar music will include a very narrow slice of pieces that did really cool, new stuff, that no one had ever heard before.” But focusing on such self-consciously radical music only yields a limited understanding of the age and its cultural tastes, Pollock adds, because “there is a lot of music written for the opera house that people who loved music, and loved opera, were invested in.”

Other music scholars say “Opera after the Zero Hour” is a significant contribution to its field. Brigid Cohen, an associate professor of music at New York University, has stated that the book makes “a powerful case for taking seriously long-neglected operatic works that speak to a vexed cultural history still relevant in the present.”

Pollock, for her part, writes in the book that, given all the nuances and tensions and wrinkles in the evolution of the art form, “opera is the key” to understanding the relationship between postwar German composers and the country’s newly fraught cultural tradition, in a fully complicated and historical mode.

“If you look at [cultural] conservatism as interesting, you find a lot of interesting things,” Pollock says. “And if you assume things that are less innovative are less interesting, then you’re ignoring a lot of things that people cared about.”

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#Humans