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Mickey 1 by Gottfried Helnwein

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 19, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: July 19, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Beloved Characters Turn into Nightmares

1. Introduction Why I chose to share this reading.
2. Focus: Main point of this reading.
3. Reading Full identification of source for reading AND excerpt.
4. Concepts: Concepts and Key Words.
5. Discussion Discussion questions.
6. Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses What this has to do with our class.

* * *

Introduction:

• I chose to share this reading with you because the paintings and artists are some of my favorites, and that surprises me, because they can be very unpleasant. As one reviewer says of them: they are the darker side of childhood. Now, some of you may recall from previous discussions that I don't like things that "scare" me, that bring to mind awful things, terror. But somehow these comic characters, when showing their darker sides, at least by these artists, retain some of the charm of their better moments. This is one way for me to remind myself that we all have our dark sides, and that such dark sides are manageable if we live in a world where we wake up from most of our nightmares, and where ethics and morality keep them as nightmares, not socially constructed reality.

Focus:

• I would like you to come away from this shared reading with a sense of the ease with which art can say things that we can and do hear, even when we'd like to pretend not to hear them.

Concepts and Key Words:

• socially constructed reality - real because we collectively agree to let it be - alone we may not have a choice, but as a community, we do - the darker side can come out of its nightmare when community members maintain silence when it does so. We call that complicity.
• complicity - refers to our playing a part in letting bad things happen, often through silence, and our responsibility for having done so.

Reading:

• The Art of Gottfried Helnwein and the Comic Culture Austrian Artist, Internationally known. Lives in Ireland. Speaks of his cintense committment to children and the oppressed and dominated through his art. Backup. Includes highlighting
• All Hail Moore By David Brooks, right perspective columnist of New York Times. Compare his comments about Michael Moore's objections to American superficiality to Helnwein's American Prayer.

• Yoshitomo Nara Exhibit Site. Backup

• Online Gallery of some of Yoshitomo Nara's work.

Discussion Questions:

1. How?

   Things to be considered in answer.

2. Why?

   Things to be considered in answer.

3. Do you think?

Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:

• Agencies:
  Sample linking: Ways in which underlying assumptions of assimilation affect services offered and clients' ability to access and use those services. How does this reading illustrate the need for social agencies, for more generalized agencies, for what Bolman and Deal would call "leadership" AND "management"? How does this reading suggest ways in which we could be more effective in rendering help, and what is the reading's relationship to a "safety net" for those who need help?

• Criminal Justice:
  Sample linking: Ways in which some groups are underrepresented in the unstated assumptions of our theories. How does this reading serve to illustrate adversarialism, mutuality, retribution, revenge, illocutionary understanding, the definition and operation of the criminal justice system?

• Law:
  Sample linking: Extent to which laws are made on the assumption that we are all essentially assimilated to the dominant culture. How does this reading help us see the need for contextual readings in law? How does it relate to our natural instincts to seek some kind of natural law? What facts and principles does the reading offer for discourse that could clarify for Others validity claims presented by an Obscure Other?

• Moot Court:
  Sample linking: Ways in which to make validty claims of harm understood by those who have never experienced many of the world's different perspectives. How can this reading enlighten our praxis in terms of different kinds of discourse, like instrumental, illocutionary, governance?

• Women in Poverty:
  Sample linking: The culture of poverty and assimilation. How does the reading deal with our underlying assumptions about poverty, especially poverty of the exploited, the NOT- male? What does the reading suggest of the interrelationship between our society and its children, generally cared for by women, often poor?

• Race, Gender, Class:
  Sample linking: The extent to which silence has been imposed by these affiliations so that domination and discrimination have entered our unstated assumptions in interpersonal relations and the structural context arising from them. What does the reading tell us about exploitation and alternative ways to deal with one another? What does it tell us about institutionalized -isms and our denial of complicity? What does it tell us about our common humanity?

• Religion:
  Sample linking: The spiritual component. Humans are spiritual creatures, creatures that recognize moments that go beyond ourselves to God, Allah, Isis, Gaia, the Universe, or a deep sense of responsibility to create our own meanng. How does the reading fit into our ability, our need to create such meaning in life?

• Love !A:
  Sample linking: What's the aesthetic link in this reading? How does it bring us closer to one another as humans? What does it tell us about our need for love, unconditional love, not rewards for doing well or being well, but caring and acceptance for being who we are?