The Agony of the Feet

I apologize.  I couldn't resist using the title to this post.  It, and this post, is a reaction to the remarkable and disturbing commercial shown during last night's Super Bowl courtesy of the entity known as "He GetsUs."

Commercials for religions are, I suppose, to be expected in our Great Republic, where religion is itself commercial more than anything else.  I'm not a fan of them, but think it interesting to consider their merits as commercials, if not as religious.

 How explain it?  For that matter, how describe it?  One can see it in all its creepy glory easily enough, of course.  It's there and presumably will be forever, thanks to the Internet.  Perhaps its should be seen at least once, as a kind of penance, appropriately maybe, though that may not have been the intent of its creators.

Just what was the intent?  According to the Gospels, or at least some of them, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.  It is, or at least was, something the Catholic Church made its priests do on Holy Thursday.  I remember it being done, in any case.  Not by me or to me, happily.  It's not something I would do, I admit, nor would I want it done to me.  Leave my feet alone, please, I would respond to anyone offering to cleanse them.

I imagine that the intent was to make us all reflect on the fact that we're no better than anyone else, as the foot washers depicted engaged in the solemn vignettes were generally stereotypical opposites of those depicted having their feet washed.  We are thus all equally worthy of having our feet washed and washing those of others.  It's a humbling observation, no doubt.  It's also a peculiar one.  Communal washing of feet isn't something normally done, these days, especially if it's done by some to others.  One would think there would be a less odd way of making the point.  HeGetsOurFeet?  Why?  Feet washing isn't what it used to be, it can safely be said.  Didn't people wash their own feet in the 1st century C.E., in Palestine or Judea?

My guess is that they typically do so now, most everywhere, at least where the Super Bowl is shown.

It seems not to have occurred to those who foisted the commercial on the millions watching the game that displays of feet washing, particularly lingering, loving washes, aren't attractive to most of us.  They may be very attractive to some, but I daresay those who find them so are in the minority.  That appears clear from the reactions to the commercial I've seen.  Sometimes people are appalled by it, sometimes they're amused by it.  Inevitably, the fetish associated with feet is mentioned by some commentators, with a kind of leer or giggle.  All these reactions should have been predictable.

This Super Bowl was in many respects unremarkable, even dull, but for the overtime portion of the game.  For someone like me, not a fan of either team and not particularly interested in the much talked about romance which was played up so extensively, the outcome wasn't welcomed; we've seen far too much of the winners already.  As to the half-time show, it was very Vegas, but in Vegas that isn't extraordinary.  

But it was remarkable in the sense that it's now apparent that one must be very rich to attend this spectacle.  It has become like so much in our society a pastime of the only very well off.  That couldn't be said even of the Roman spectacles, which gave the best seats to the rich and powerful but allowed room for those less fortunate.  The very rich  are very different from the rest of us; Scott Fitzgerald's comment is more telling now than it was then.  This is the common state of our social affairs.  

It's is also remarkable, though, because of this commercial.  This Super Bowl will be remembered as the one featuring wet, glistening, and very clean feet.

Homage to W. Somerset Maugham

I wonder whether an artist of any kind can be said to long for success.  Success is something it would seem great artists would wish to avoid, as their greatness to many is defined--if not measured--at least in part by their lack of success.  Great artists are not successful; their work isn't admired during their lifetimes, or sought, and most of all not bought.  This appears to be a condition precedent to greatness in an artist.

I refer to artists of all kinds, to painters, writers, composers, musicians.  The quality of art is thought to increase with failure in life.  Those unfortunate artists who succeed must do so because they appeal to those having money and willing to spend it, i.e. to Philistines.  Philistines necessarily are without the ability to discern great art and are instead attracted to the banal, the clichéd, the sentimental and, worse yet, the bourgeois.

So at least is the conceit of many an unsuccessful artist, I would guess, and of those who discover them after they've suffered through life in poverty or enslaved by drugs or as misunderstood genius-deviants-criminals.  It's curious that the tortured artist has become something of a cliché.  Perhaps the successful artist will come to be lauded and his/her work sought after, and will even be considered great when the artist has passed beyond the allure of genius.  There are examples in history.  Michelangelo, painter and sculptor, who seems at times to have thought of men and God as being as preposterously muscled as modern superheroes, was a successful artist of his time and is nonetheless considered a great one.

W. Somerset Maugham became extremely successful as a novelist, playwright and writer of short stories.  He was a screenwriter too, I suppose.  At least, several of his books were made into movies.  He was also a success as a public figure, that figure being himself as a well-read, knowledgeable, witty and world-weary literary master, of sorts.

Of sorts, I say.  He hasn't been granted iconic status, and has been considered less a writer than the other standouts of the 20th century, such as his contemporaries Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Scott Fitzgerald.  Even Anthony Burgess, who apparently admired his work, poked fun at him in his Earthly Powers.  Maugham himself pretended (or perhaps even felt) modesty about his work, declaring himself to be in the first rank of second rank writers, or words to that effect.  Orwell thought well of him and admired his storytelling and simplicity of style.

So do I.  Perhaps he was a good storyteller because he was very well-traveled as well as well-read, listened and observed.  He experienced much, and was even for a time with British intelligence, working in Switzerland and Russia after the downfall of the Czar but before the Bolshevik revolution.
He wrote a series of stories about being a spy, naming the protagonist Ashenden.  Supposedly, Ian Fleming was inspired by his work to write his James Bond stories.

He has never been considered a great writer.  I'm sure there's a reason why that's the case.  But I re-read recently his novel The Moon and Sixpence and found myself impressed by the story told if not by the writing.  His style of narration is cool, dry and simple, which I find admirable, but the story is a good one as well, although it grows tedious sometimes as he describes the life of an artist apparently based on Gaugin, as related by those who encountered him.  What makes the artist remarkable is the fact that he is what would now be called a sociopath or one with a similar personality disorder.  He's entirely indifferent to other people, without conscience, interested only in painting.  He destroys lives, without any real intent to do so but for merely selfish reasons and is untouched by consequences to others.

Of course, his art isn't appreciated during his life, but he's considered a genius after his death.  He destroys his greatest work, apparently content to have done it but not wanting it to be seen by others.  I wonder if Maugham was having a bit of fun with the idea of what it means to be a great artist, portraying him as a kind of seductive monster, as inhuman, and telling his reader that he's happy not to be a great artist himself, and the reader should be happy for it as well.  Telling his reader that great artists are not admirable, but merely sick.  They're not content to be tortured themselves by life, but wish also to torture those they know.  Perhaps one doesn't have to be tortured to be a great artist.  Instead, one must torture.

I think of Maugham as being similar to Graham Greene.  They have the same interest in far away places and in the grotesque aspects of human nature.  They both tell a good story.  Somehow it's enough, for me.  To what extent is it reasonable to expect more?  Why be disappointed if an interesting story is told and told well? 

Maugham put a symbol on all his books, and that's what is shown above.  It's supposed to be of Moorish origin, a charm against the evil eye and talisman of good luck.  It brought him luck.  I know nothing of the evil eye.