One Long Day

His face was already bruised.  We idly looked at these men as they came in so very early.  It was probably because their holiday was about to start. They were dragging this man, shoving him, really, into our governor’s courtyard.  They would not enter the building, of course. It might defile them.

The accusation was that he had set himself up as some sort of king--pitiful king!  Even were it not for his bruises, there would be no greatness in his appearance. He was certainly no lord.

He was handed over to us to be beaten, but he did not ask for mercy.  We added to the bruising delivered by his own people. The lash was laid on his back hard.  His back was lacerated, but he did not cry out. We taunted him. The centurion yelled in his face, “Beg for my mercy!  Why don’t you beg for mercy?” and kicked him severely. The man looked at him with compassion.

A couple of us had twisted together some thorns that grew close by.  This false king would have a crown. He was dragged to his feet and held in place as we draped him with one of our cloaks.  We then pressed the crown into this Jew’s head.

“Hail!  King of the Jews!”  They took turns greeting him, striking him with reeds instead of saluting him.  Some spat on his face. Even then, he did not ask for mercy. Even then, he was resolute and, most disturbingly, compassionate.

It was time.  He was called for to be presented to the people, who were close to being a mob.  They would ask for one of their own to be released, and this our governor would do as a generous gesture of goodwill.  

“Behold, the man!”  He motioned to the Jew whom we had just brutalized.  The Jew was still wearing the soldier’s cloak and the crown.

The crowd was roaring a chant, “Crucify! Crucify!”

Our governor yelled over them, “You take him and crucify him!  I find nothing in the accusations against him.”

Some of the men who had brought him in so early that morning motioned for the crowds to quiet as they spoke, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because--he claimed to be the son of God.”

Our governor motioned for the Jew to be brought back inside.  Once away from the crowd, who were beginning to chant again, he asked the man, “Where do you come from?”  Blood was drying on the man’s face. He was bruised and his eye was swollen. The man’s expression was serene.

Our governor asked vehemently, “Do you refuse to answer? Hm?”  He took one turn, and then said into the man’s face, “Don’t you understand that I have the power of life and death over you?”

“You have no power over me but what is given you from above.  Nonetheless, they who handed me over to you have the greater sin.” This is what he stated.  In spite of his bruises and bloodied body, in spite of the beatings and the mockery, he was calm. Our governor was pacing and looking out to where the crowds were calling for the crucifixion of this impostor and trouble-maker, as they were calling him.  We awaited orders.

Our governor had a servant bring water, while he went to face the crowd.  Like a tragedian, he motioned the basin of water to himself. “I wash my hands of this innocent man’s blood,” he said as he rinsed his hands and carefully dried them.  The mob roared, “His blood be on us and on our children!” And the man was sentenced to death.

We jostled him down and took off the cloak.  We left the crown in place and put his own robe on him, but, when we were going to put the cross on his back, he reached for it.  His eyes said he knew what he was doing. Once again, they seemed to see straight through me.

We took to the road.  We had a couple of criminals to execute that day along with this man, so we made quite the procession.  The mob was shouting more than its usual imprecations.

The man fell.  It was a wonder he had not fallen earlier.  We picked him up and he took back his cross and plodded on, leaving blood and sweat on the road where he had fallen.  A woman dashed out of the crowd; we did not stop her. She wiped his face, weeping for him. He smiled tenderly at the woman and we urged him forward.  

He was stumbling some more.  I caught the eye of a Cyrenian and called him out.  “You! Take up his cross!” He came forward, and took it grudgingly, but his face changed after the man looked at him and said something I did not understand.  After the Cyrenian served his mile, we released him.

On we went.  If he fell, we picked him up and kept going.  At the gates the women mourners greeted the criminals, but when they got to the man, He told them, “Do not mourn for me, weep for yourselves and your children.  For the day is coming when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the womb that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’  For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

We finally reached the hill outside the city.  The crosses were laid down and the criminals had to be held to them.  Not The Man. He laid himself down. When the nails were driven into his hands he did not cry out like the others.  He sighed once they were in, along with his feet. He looked sorrowful, but it was not for himself. We tacked up the accusation: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

We raised him up between the other two, and one of the men who had brought him in this morning began jeering with his companions, “He saved others, why cannot he save himself?”  and “Let this Messiah, ‘king of Israel,’ come down from the cross that we may see and believe.” This and more they said, while a smaller group of Jewish women and one man stood by weeping.

The man on the cross spoke to the heavens, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

He also spoke to the small group; one of the women was his own mother.

It was as though the shadow of a snake writhed in agony across the ground, and the sun went black.  There was less talk. We watched.

It had been three hours.  The man cried out in a language I did not understand, but it meant something to the other Jews.  “He’s calling for Elijah!” They got him some wine, but it was too late.  As the sun came back, he cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”  The earth trembled. The people scattered; only the criminals were left to cry out weekly or to gape in horror, while we stood fast.  I knew then that the man was dead.

Surely, this man was the Son of God.

Conformity in the "Mona Lisa Smile"

An art teacher from California goes a prestigious women's college on the East coast only to discover that it is a glorified finishing school.  This is after she discovered that her class already knew the material and at least a few of them did not consider her UCLA degree worthy of respect. Oh, yeah, the administration and some of the teachers are not fond of her either.  She it was with whom they were left when the preferred candidate took a job at Brown.

As the class already knew the names of the pieces of art along with their artists and the textbook described significance of each one, Catherine Watson decides to ask them “What is art?”  She presents them with modern pieces starting with the “Carcass” and asking, “Is this art?” Her next piece, though, is of a lamb on a field of green, primitive in style, very childish. The girls say that they suppose it must be art because it is being presented.  The teacher says that one person even identified it as a masterpiece. That person was her mother. She had painted it as a child. As she identifies the “critic”, the next slide is a photograph of her mother. She asks the students to consider whether the photograph is art.  They are more cautious now, and one half scoffs that it is “just a snapshot.” She asks them, “If I were to tell you that it was taken by *important name*, would that make a difference?” She sets a new goal for the class; they are going to study the question of what makes art art, who gets to say? They are also going to look at modern works.

One of the most powerful scenes in that regard comes when she takes them on a field trip to a museum or art gallery, but they do not go through the main halls. They go “backstage”, so to speak, where the artifacts are being brought in and unwrapped. There they are when this great, big crate is brought in. It could easily be a wall. They loosen a whole side of it, which then appears to be a sideways lid which crashes down to reveal a paint splattered canvas, immediately recognizable as by Pollock. The thing is, it is so massive. Miss Watson walks up to it with face alight. It dwarfs her. Her assignment to them is to consider the painting. She does not ask for a paper for this one, just for them to consider it. The view dips in close so we can see the textures and the depth of the paint, it takes on an emotional quality--the colors in soft lavender and gray over soft crimsons almost evoke a sunrise.

On the personal side, though, the stories take a devastating turn.  One could receive the impression that Miss Watson came here to clear her mind concerning a somewhat dominating lover.  The lady who runs the house where she is boarding is a very desolate woman whose fiancée left during the war, but stayed away to marry someone else. She never moved on. The other lady in the house is the school nurse, clearly indicated to have been had a female companion. She provides birth control for the students and is fired when she will not publicly apologize and promise to not continue doing so.  

Among the students, Betty Warren is a young woman groomed to be manipulative and controlling by her mother. She has a venomous tongue. She marries, her husband is unfaithful, and she lashes out at people close to her.  Joan is her best friend. Joan had an interest in going to law school, applied and was accepted to Yale, but she chooses to marry her boyfriend/lover and go with him to Pennsylvania.  She gives a powerful defense of choosing motherhood that is undercut by the way the scene is set up. Giselle is the bad-girl-with-the-heart-of-gold. She carries on two different affairs in the film, not concurrently, one with a teacher the other with an older, married man.  She flirts with everybody and is very affectionate, and very lost. Her father had abandoned her mother and her when she was young. She is the one through whom it is revealed that the nurse is distributing birth control. Then there is Connie. Connie is regularly put down by Betty and thinks she is not attractive.  She is attentive to others’ needs and is genuinely funny. One of my favorite lines comes from her. A young man was dancing with her and talked about how his mother said his life was opening up in front of him, just on the horizon. She says that he should tell her, “that the horizon is an imaginary line which always recedes as one approaches it.”  The dance being over she says good bye, but he asks if she is brushing him off politely. She thought he was just doing a favor in dancing with her, but he really wanted to dance with her. So they dance some more. Their story, even with a misunderstanding thrown in due to his cowardice and Kirsten’s maliciousness, is sweet.

Meanwhile, Miss Watson carries on an affair with the Italian teacher after breaking up with her former lover who was about to railroad her into marriage.  Her one condition to the Italian teacher is that he not carry on relations with students. She leaves that situation after she discovers that he has been living a lie. He had never actually left the states during the war, but because he knew Italian and did not correct people's false assumptions, he had the reputation of having served in Italy with distinction.

When it comes down to basics, the women are almost all of them either excessively domineering or excessively desolate and needy, and the men are almost all passive, with the exception of a couple of controlling and jealous men.  It was pitiful. Surely, there are good men and women in the world, even in the late 50’s in academia, but where are they? Lost.

I did enjoy the movie, and I appreciated the main character, though she seemed confused in her personal life.  The overarching message of “question everything, because tradition and traditional constraints are suspect at best and likely evil” combined with self-determination is not what we need to hear today.  We are perhaps too aware of 50’s conformity and lack an awareness of today's form of ironic conformity. “To question is the answer” is almost taken for a truism. Self-determination has been radicalized to accept people’s self identity even if that identity is delusional.  The message of the movie is generally accepted as truth with little questioning. And, oh, the pressure to conform!

The thing is to live a considered life, which is why I hated that they made Joan’s defense of her decision seem hollow.  She points out that Miss Watson had encouraged them to think for themselves and make their own decisions. Joan may want to study law, but she wanted to be a wife and a mother even more.  She also observes that being a wife and a mother did not make a woman less intelligent. She had learned much and was grateful for her education, but this was what she decided she wanted--to get married and raise a family.  She was not entering it blindly. In all, I think she could have been one of the better examples of femininity, but it seemed as though the directors wanted the viewer to think she was cutting off a part of who she was, rather than that she was simply choosing among different good options.  They, with Miss Watson, wanted her to take it all--Yale, career, marriage, family--and but for her boyfriend, they tell us, she could have. Maybe they are right about Joan, but maybe a woman can also have a highly satisfying and happy life as a wife and mother. Maybe a human can have a better, more whole life by giving up some dreams in order to live out the dreams they most desire.