calimac

1. Was Sibelius culpably tied to the Nazis? The facts aren't in dispute: he took payments and awards from the German government, did not speak out against their horrors. He was no hero, certainly, but I don't think that's enough to cast him into the outer darkness. If risking your livelihood or your life makes you a hero, then merely failing to do these things does not make you a villain, by the same token that, if praising the Nazis and fingering victims for them makes you a villain, merely failing to do those things does not make you a hero. Both heroism and villainy would be diluted were there not a huge soggy grey middle ground that is neither.

What this story does for me is not to make Sibelius evil, but to emphasize just how evil the Nazis were even in the cultural realm: they dragged everything down with them. It was fairly difficult for a composer to make a living internationally in those days without taking payments from the German government; once that became Nazi, you were stuck to the tar baby. Not impossible to extricate, just ... a huge mess, a quandary. (In any case, better that he should take their money than give them money.) I am struck by one pro-culpability argument presented in the article: "Sibelius's early fascination with Finnish mythology and nationalism resonated with Nazism." But that's not Sibelius's sin; it's the Nazis' sin. Allow me to quote another artist who shared that fascination: "I have in this War a burning private grudge against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler. Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light." (letter by J.R.R. Tolkien, 9 June 1941)

2. For the next few days, you can listen online to a BBC radio documentary on Life of Brian. It's well done, and presents a couple things I didn't know. Naturally, it brings up the question of, is the film blasphemous? Little commentary I've seen on this question addresses what I think is the key understanding of Brian. While there is such a thing as romans a clef about real people thinly disguised under fake names, sometimes even mentioning the real name as a separate background character to add to the disguise, in this film the whole point about Brian is that, as he keeps saying, he isn't the Messiah; he just keeps getting mistaken for one. For a knockabout comedy, it's stunningly historically accurate: the Romans really did hold mass crucifixions, and the Jews were desperate for a savior and latched on to anyone who looked like they might fit the role. (A man named Jesus rode into Jerusalem and prophesied woe unto the city - accurately, I might add. Sticking to his prophecies and attracting followers, he was flogged by the religious authorities and flayed by the Romans ... who then released him, figuring he was a harmless nut. Not the story you know? This was a different Jesus, thirty years later.)

Attention to this context might shed light on how Jesus, the better-known one, could possibly have been a great moral teacher and a nut who thought he was God at the same time, cutting through C.S. Lewis's famous "trilemma" saying that it's impossible for such a teacher to claim godhood unless it was true; but if that's blasphemy, it's the historians' - it's pretty far removed from this film. As Terry Jones (its director, co-author, and co-star) keeps saying, it's not blasphemous, it's heretical. What it's pointing fun directly at is mindless worship, of anything. The church should be grateful for having the foolishness of this pointed out. The digs at political fanaticism and Jewish reverence for the name of God cut just as deep. And lucidly: being Jewish may be why I consider the "name of God" stoning scene to be the film's funniest moment.

3. This isn't moral, just linguistic. It's 2009, and Dick Tracy is still referring to classical music as "long-hair music." This is now so outdated a term that, at first, Josh "Comics Curmudgeon" Fruhlinger, who brought it up, didn't know what it meant. It's true that, back in the 19th century, the more flamboyant classical musicians were known for shaking their shaggy locks at thee. Paderewski may have been the last of that breed, though. Long before the Beatles and the hippies, even before the Beats, the term though still current had become risible. Thanks to my handy CD-ROM of the complete cartoons of The New Yorker, I am able to remind myself that in 1943 they published a cartoon by Mischa Richter showing one audience member at a classical concert whispering to his neighbor, "I don't go for this long-hair stuff." Naturally, the musicians - it's two men giving a violin and piano recital - are short-haired and nearly bald.