Monday 11 December, 2006

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 11.12.2006

A year after the cartoon conflict, Aldo Keel analyses the relationship between Muslims and western society in Scandinavia. The clash of cultures it seems is raging on. "In the cities, Muslim enclaves are expanding. In Copenhagen's Nörrebro district, the Jordan-based Hizb-ut-Tahrir organisation founded in 1953 is fighting against democracy and for theocracy. The annual gay parade had to be rerouted and the Copenhagen Imam Ahmed Akkari has announced that he endorses the death penalty for the practice of homosexuality, in line with Sharia. And in Oslo a spate of attacks on homosexuals by Muslim youths has prompted a debate among Muslim intellectuals. The Oslo lawyer Abid Q. Raja made an unequivocal statement in Aftenposten: 'In non-Muslim countries there is no place for violence against homosexuals.' But even Muslims should be allowed to voice their disapproval, Raja said, because after all, the Bishop of Oslo's 'crude homo-rhetoric' did not prevent him from getting where he is today."


Frankfurter Rundschau 11.12.2006

"Much Ado About Nothing" might not be Shakespeare's best work, writes Peter Michalzik, but it has rarely been staged better than under Jan Bosse at the Vienna Burgtheater. "Jan Bosse's production is a fantastic, a triumphant start to the Shakespeare cycle, which the Vienna Burgtheater has undertaken for the last season under director Klaus Bachler. "Bosse is no visionary director, but in recent years, he has emerged from the shadows of a verdict that had him dubbed a goody-goody, as one of the most sensitive theatre ticklers around. In Zürich he staged a wonderful 'Zerbrochene Krug' (by Heinrich von Kleist), his 'Werther' in Berlin is supposed to be breathtaking and his 'Faust' in Hamburg was out of this world."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 11.12.2006

Gerhard Stadelmaier also saw the "Much Ado" premiere on Friday but for him, it was the product of "lazy thinking and lazy feeling". "The actors slip naked into South Pacific straw skirts and straw wigs (cool pre-civilisation!) because they have to make it through a fancy dress ball (stupid civilisation!) There's lots of running about through the audience and you can hear the actors breathing and smell them sweating. The stage hands erect palms, cliffs and bits of meadows, and the technicians project a circular tropical rainbow onto a moon. Beach party in the Burgtheater." Which writes Stadelmaier is "ever so sweet, easy and stupid. But it's not Shakespeare. Because the drama has been eradicated and has not been replaced with comedy."


Die Tageszeitung 11.12.2006

The little private photographs that Annie Leibovitz took of her partner Susan Sontag left a far more enduring impression on Daniel Schreiber, than the photographer's famous glamour shots like the one of a heavily pregnant Demi Moore. "But you have to gulp when you first see the photo which Sontag took of Leibovitz when she was pregant aged 51. She has adopted the same pose, covering her breasts and supporting her stomach, but with none of the actress' body control, without her beautiful thighs or her perfect skin. Liebovitz' insecurity is plain to see, as is her loving and uninhibited relationship with her partner who is holding the camera. It is the pride about her late pregnancy which makes this picture potentially scandalous – that of an ageing, naked, pregnant woman." The Leibovitz photos are currently showing in New York.


Saturday 9 December, 2006

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 09.12.2006

Anne-Marie Vaterlaus sends a wonderful reportage from Les Minguettes in the suburbs of Lyon. "Saturdays there's a huge market with coriander and tomatoes, meat, most of it halal, and fish, religious writings, and overly fashionable boots for thirty euros. People meet each other, know each other, hang around with each other. African beauties with polished finger nails wear skin-tight T-shirts. White housewives bustle about. So there's black and white, and brown too, of course: elderly North African couples, he in a light grey suit, she in a traditional kaftan. Young Muslim women, many wearing headscarves, some with veils. Integrism has increased, markedly so, and especially since 9/11, people say. More and more women cover their entire faces with veils. But you've got to make a differentiation as far as headscarves go. Women wear them for all kinds of reasons. Because they get on the nerves of the fromages blancs, for example."

Nike Wagner interprets Thomas Mann's intense rapport with Richard Wagner's music in Freudian terms: "Wagner could well have effected Thomas Mann like an amplified echo of his own schisms. His conflicting desires could find the symbolic location of relief in the medium of this sexually charged music. Here Mann could thrive on its debauchery but at the same time get the masochistic gratification of being punished for it. Wagner's characters atone, purge and die in the place of the enthralled audience."


Die Welt 09.12.2006

Turkish-born author Zafer Senocak, who has lived in Germany since 1970, compares modern Turkish culture with a prefabricated house set down on rich historical terrain: "It was evidently not possible to find a solution to the problem of mythological sources in Turkish modernity. People have not overcome the feeling of foreignness regarding the roots of Occidental culture. The attempt to introduce Greek and Latin in the schools was quickly dropped. But as Modern Turkey also cut off all connections to the Arab-Islamic world, the result was a modernity with no mythological basis. Certainly, in the early phases of modernity, many authors made an effort to introduce both Ancient Greek and Islamic myths and legends into their works. But with time the 'Oriental' heritage got the upper hand, and references to the Ottoman-Islamic tradition are especially frequent today, for example in the works of Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk."