Librari[d]an

Feliz Cinco de Mayo! For the celebration of Mexico’s triumph over the French troops at the Battle of Puebla (don’t worry, the poor frogs weren’t really stampeded by cattle, haha!) I have decided to make a delicious, all American food: Guacamole!

Two days ago, at a rather absurd and expensive party on the NorthSide, I was talking with catering chef Greg ’bout guac. I’ve always had it in my little head that avocados require beaucoup fric ($$$) to acquire, which is why I don’t buy them. In most cases this holds true: the devil Whole Foods, the wonderful but misguided East End Food Co-op, the pedestrian Giant Eagle, etc. are all about swindling - à la Rumpelstiltskin - the everyday shopper. According to Greg, the ever-pragmatic ShurSave - a local supermarket chain with a location within spitting distance of my humble abode - has them for cheap. He was right! On 4 May 2008 I got four for less than four dollars… holler!

This here recipe is “adapted” from Heidi Swanson’s Indian Curry & Cumin Guacamole. I say adapted in quotes because after stripping down Swanson’s recipe, I find that it served only as a very loose base for my own. (However, be sure to read her recipe for tips on recognizing ripe v. overripe avocados. I found it very useful, and was delighted by the condition of my purchase.)

:: Guacamole ::

1 small white onion
1 clove garlic, minced
4 avocados
2 large, firm tomatoes
1 lime
cilantro to taste
salt to taste

1. Chop the onion. Scoop out the avocado flesh, trying to keep it as intact as possible. Throw them, with the garlic, in a bowl.
2. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and remove the central part (the stem’s axis) like you would when cutting apples. Scoop the tomatoes’ pulpy interior out, then chop. (Removing the sloppy interior keeps the guacamole from becoming too wet and salsa-y.)
3. Chop the cilantro. I like to use about 1/2 cup (unpacked).
4. Squeeze the lime and splash the ingredients with its juice. Sprinkle a bit of salt on top.
5. Stir, but be sure not to purée the mixture (unless you prefer it that way).
6. Give it a taste. If it needs more lime juice or salt, add it in now and finish it off with a final stir.
7. Serve, at room temperature or chilled, with tortilla chips.

The resulting guacamole was stellar–easily some of the freshest and best I’ve had. (Although I used pre-minced jar garlic. Lazy!) I whipped up another batch for a photo shoot. I used a red instead of white onion, lemon juice instead of lime, and unfortunately had no more cilantro to toss in. (I’d stick with the original recipe, in terms of taste.) So much guac; what to do with it all?!

:: Bibliography ::

• Swanson, Heidi. A Twist on Guacamole Recipe. 101 Cookbooks. http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/a-twist-on-guacamole-recipe.html (5 May 2008).

Yeah, I’m boycotting the 2008 summer Olympics. And by boycotting I mean not watching them and refusing to talk about them. This photo from the BBC is from a feature about Parisian demonstrators going crazy over Tibet and mucking up the torch run. If there’s one thing that France has a long and glorious history of, it’s student demonstrations and riots.

Highlights include:

• A Green party activist being tackled by security guards as he tried to intercept the torch-bearer (Stephane Diagana) at the Eiffel Tower.
• “On the tower itself, protesters unfurled a huge banner criticising China’s human rights record and depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs.”
• Torch-bearers were repeatedly “targeted” by demonstrators, resulting in the torch being extinguished three times during the run. It was also concealed in the Olympic bus.
• A torch ceremony at the City Hall was canceled entirely.

:: Bibliography ::

• In pictures: Paris torch protests. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7335043.stm (7 April 2008).

You probably haven’t heard of the recent controversy spurred by the new Collector’s Edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The color palette of the film has been drastically changed, darkness greatly increased, desaturated, etc. in comparison to earlier mass market releases. According to the motion picture archivist Robert Harris, this is because American Zoetrope has digitally matched the colors to those of the Francis Ford Coppola-approved answer print. According to fans it’s an unpardonable, deliberate revision of their favorite film incarnation of the Dracula story. I honestly don’t care about any of that… as long as consumers have a choice between the two.

My only lingering concern with the Collector’s Edition is that it has been accused of totally altering Eiko Ishioka’s Academy Award-winning costume designs. From very early on in Dracula’s pre-production, Coppola “decided that the costumes would be the set.” (Dworkin 17) When Eiko Ishioka realized “that the costumes would be the key factor in determining the quality of the film itself, I accepted the job.” (Dworkin 21) So that is what this post is actually about. Not the concern for color fidelity in film archiving, but those beautiful costumes - inspired by everything from the Symbolist movement to the Australian frilled lizard - that were conceived of and created by Ishioka. (Dworkin 19, 70)

One of the most memorable garments from the film is Dracula’s “red Oriental-Turkish robe”, which was created to “emphasize the androgynous quality in his character”, “a haunting aura of transsexuality.” (Dworkin 41) In the thematic color of red, Eiko had Dracula’s golden coat-of-arms embroidered on the breast.

This emblem is Dracula’s “identity, similar to the Japanese family crest. I designed a motif of various animals intertwined into a single form.” (Dworkin 42) These included a dragon, wolf, snakes, and birds, as well as fire. (Landau 37) The robe’s voluminous train was constructed to “undulate like a sea of blood.” (Dworkin 41) Not all of Dracula’s planned costumes made it into the film. Check out this sketch of a brocaded vest with red detailing/piping and handkerchief:

The designs for women are the cornerstone of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And why is that? It’s because the original, decentralized story found in Stoker’s novel - told through every character’s point of view except Dracula’s - has been appropriated for Mina. Screenwriter Jim Hart felt that “The key to writing Dracula was to make it Mina’s story.” (Landau 80) Instead of a fragmented narrative, Mina gives it unity and continuity. While it may seem that Mina’s story is framed by Dracula’s historic prologue, the truth is in fact the opposite. Dracula lacks agency. He can merely react as Elisabeta kills herself, as Mina abandons him to marry Harker, as she makes the decision to become a vampire, as she exploits their psychic rapport to assist her friends, and finally as she delivers them both from the unholy covenant Dracula forged with “darkness”.

Throughout the film, Mina’s costumes convey just as much of the story as the actress beneath all that silk. For example, the dress Mina wears in Rule’s Cafe (the absinthe scene) was colored red - Dracula’s color - to convey that Mina would soon be tainted by vampirism. (Landau 127)

Ishioka “carefully considered Mina’s role in the drama” before she chose green as Mina’s thematic color. (Dworkin 61) The color needed to compass the character’s intelligence, sexual naïveté, stoicism, sense, and strong will. Many of these attributes can be seen in the dress she wears on the streets of London and in the cinematograph. The pert hat represents her vivacity and fortitude, the manly lapels her status as a New Woman with a “man’s brain [...] and a woman’s heart“, etc. (Stoker 266)

Winona Ryder wearing the town dress. Photo by Ralph Nelson II. (Landau 80)

Sketch of the town dress by Eiko Ishioka. Photo by Keith Sherins. (Dworkin 60)

Most of Mina’s dresses - including her typing gown - also sport high collars to reflect her modesty and chastity:

Mina’s typing dress. Photo by David Seidner. (Dworkin63)

The high collar can also be seen on Mina’s three-quarter sleeve dress. This dress is rather domestic-looking because of the contrast between the apron and the skirt and wrap. It also lacks leaf embroidery (whose importance will be discussed later) and is almost always worn while in the presence or under the protection of Van Helsing.

Mina’s three-quarter sleeve dress. Photos by Ralph Nelson II. (Landau 129, 125, 141)

As you can see, Ishioka took a predominantly historical, orthodox approach to Mina’s costumes, only pushing boundaries with her creative embellishments. (Dworkin 94) However, “Costumes should be more than just items that explain the role of the actors who wear them”, she stresses. (Dworkin 27) A costume should challenge the actor, filmmakers, and audience. (Dworkin 27) An example of this type of costume is Mina’s wedding dress, which is featured only briefly in the movie. Rather than a virginal white, it is instead a sombre gray-green:

This type of implicit message can also be seen in the final act of the film, in which Mina wears a historically outmoded style. “I designed her cape in the last scene with a strong Renaissance flavor, a Pre-Raphaelite look.” (Dworkin 91) This costume foreshadows Mina’s realization that she is truly the reincarnation of Elisabeta, Dracula’s 15th century bride.

Mina’s Renaissance cape. Photo by David Seidner. (Dworkin 91)

Elisabeta’s gown, seen at the beginning of the film and later in flashbacks, contains the elements that draw the two (three?) central characters together: Emblazoned on the torso is Dracula’s crest. Elisabeta and Mina’s designs are relatively consistent: On the sleeves and skirt - and even her crown of laurel - is the foliage motif that is often also found on Mina’s dresses. Both have the theme color of green. While Elisabeta wears a farthingale, Mina wears a bustle.

Elisabeta’s gown. First photo by David Seidner, second by Ralph Nelson II. (Dworkin 79, Landau 14)

Ishioka’s desire to design museum-quality costumes and her overall perfectionism meant that making multiple copies of her garments for filming was financially impractical. Richard Shissler, the associate costume designer, said that “We probably should have had duplicates of everything, but we just didn’t have the budget [...] Eiko didn’t want to compromise, so we had multiples only when we really needed them.” (Landau 127) Mina’s costumes were constructed with silk taffeta, imported from France and Italy, by Dale Wibben, a freelance dressmaker from San Francisco. (Dworkin 94) Sally Ann Parsons from Parsons-Meares, Ltd. in New York did the more theatrical costumes for Dracula, Lucy, and Renfield while Vincent Costume, Inc. made the men’s clothing. (Dworkin 94) The elaborate embroidery on many of the costumes was done by Penn and Fletcher and Monogram West. (Dworkin 94)

In retrospect, upon seeing her handiwork, it’s no wonder that Coppola chose Ishioka. However, at the time it was a gamble; she had never worked on the costumes for a film before, only television. Coppola’s “strategy in hiring someone like her - an independent, a weirdo outsider with no roots in the business - it worked in the end. Because I could look at the screen and say, well, these costumes are truly irrational and artistic and absolutely unique.” (Dworkin 93)

If I revisit Bram Stoker’s Dracula again, it will be to talk about the one thing in in the film that is more beautiful than the costumes: Wojciech Kilar’s glissando filled love theme, “Mina/Dracula”. (You can hear it over at YouTube, in this video from 2:00 to the end.)

:: Bibliography ::

• Dworkin, Susan, ed. Coppola and Eiko on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. By Francis Ford Coppola and Eiko Ishioka. San Francisco: Collins Publishers San Francisco, 1992. ISBN: 0002551675.
• Landau, Diana, ed. Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Film and the Legend. By Francis Ford Coppola. New York: Newmarket Press, 1992. ISBN: 1557041393.
• Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1989. ISBN: 0812523016.

L’amour de l’étymologie is a feature exploring the etymology of English words. Today’s definition is mesmerism. You may occasionally find this noun capitalized, for reasons that will be made evident presently.

Mesmerism, unlike most words, is derived from a rather modern proper noun. Mesmer was the surname of an 18th Century Austrian physician, Friedrich Anton Mesmer. The -ism at the end was probably borrowed from the French word mesmérisme, which first appeared in print in 1973.

So what, exactly does this word mean? People often use it as a synonym for hypnosis, but they’d be wrong. (For derivative terms, like mesmerize, the conflation is often considered acceptable.) The Oxford English Dictionary defines Mesmerism as a chiefly historical word, which refers to “A therapeutic doctrine or system, first popularized by Mesmer, according to which a trained practitioner can induce a hypnotic state in a patient by the exercise of a force (called by Mesmer animal magnetism)”. It could also mean “[1] the process or practice of inducing such a state; [2] the state so induced, or [3] the force supposed to operate in inducing it.” (Brackets are mine.)

The adherent of Mesmerism, a mesmerizer, can use mesmerism (1) on a mesmerizee, using mesmerism (3) to induce a state of mesmerism (2). Nyuck!

In 1778 Mesmer relocated to Paris after other physicians in his homeland accused him of being a sham. Six years later, in 1784, Louis XVI of France commissioned a group of scientists to evaluate Mesmer’s claims. (One of which, if memory serves, included sitting in a bathtub full of metal filings.) Some of the top minds of the time participated in the evaluation, including Benjamin Franklin and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. Franklin is the first recorded English speaker to use the word in writing. In 1784 he wrote that “Some think it will put an End to Mesmerism.” I’d like to know what that  something was. But I guess it’s irrelevant: Despite there being no scientific grounds for Mesmer’s practices, they remained wildly popular into the late 18th and early 19th centuries. For example, Edward FitzGerald exclaimed in an 1889 letter than “Miss Martineau has been cured of an illness of five years by Mesmerism!”

However, it is true that one of the most hilariously insane and unspeakably dense humans was an anti-mesmerism crusader. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the cult religion Christian Science, believed that mesmerism was real, but kinda evil. Go figure.

:: Bibliography ::

“Mesmerism.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2008. 11 Jan. 2008 <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/findword?query_type=word&queryword=mesmerism&find.x=0&find.y=0&find=Find+word>

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has canceled France 24! For those of you who don’t know, France 24 is a news channel funded by the French government that broadcasts in Arabic, English, and French. It is also one of my top five primary news sources. The reason for the cancellation is more horrifying than I could have ever imagined. According to Sarkozy: “With taxpayers’ money, I am not prepared to broadcast a channel that does not speak French”. (BBC)

This is insane. If the BBC can offer 32 languages other than English, Sarkozy can scrounge up some euro to support France 24. If anything, they should be expanding the number of languages as originally planned!

In the end, however, this is not a question of money. This is definitive proof that Sarkozy is turning his back on the Arabic-as-a-first-language population within France. These people need more than word-of-mouth news in their communities. Removing an official news source in their mother tongue will further isolate them in, what may seem like and very well may be, a sea of ethnocentrism and open xenophobia.

It also smacks of the effort to protect the French language from the imperialism of the English language. But I don’t really care if Sarkozy doesn’t want to help English-speakers understand “a French perspective on world events”. (France 24) There are more important things at stake.

Encore: What France needs is an official news source in Arabic to reach the mono and bilingual Arabic communities, both legal and illegal, within the country. Tell the French Ambassador so using this form, by sending him a letter via post (to Pierre Vimont 4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, DC 20007), by telephoning the embassy (202.944.6000), or faxing the embassy (202.944.6166)!

:: Bibliography ::

“About France 24.” France 24 9 Jan. 2008. 9 Jan. 2008 <http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/page-footer/about-france-24.html>.

“Sarkozy says ‘non’ to France 24.” BBC News 9 Jan. 2008. 9 Jan. 2008 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7178158.stm>.

Check out this Frenchie playing the song “Stella by Starlight” on the harmonica. Chouette, non? Horror cinemaniacs may recognize this little number from the 1944 haunted house flick The Uninvited. It’s a pretty damn good piece of music composed by Victor Young, although I’m sure I could find someone to talk smack on it:

“His [Young's] film scores are often overwrought and incorporate excessively sentimental string writing, but they are dramatically adequate and occasionally even eloquent.” Wow, Clifford McCarty wasn’t one to throw away a back-handed compliment, was he? It’s the “occasionally even” that really curls my toes. M. McCarty, vous êtes trop roué! (Yes, I just used a noun, which was once a past participle, as an adjective. In French. About a dead man. Who created music reference tools.)

:: Bibliography ::

Clifford McCarty: ‘Young, Victor’, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 11 December 2007), <http://www.grovemusic.com>