PRI's The World » Manhattan

Tibet on the Pages of Comic Books

Bruce Wallace — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:40:16 +0000

The Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan concentrates on art and artifacts from Himalayan cultures—16th century bronze Buddhas, intricately painted murals, and recreated Tibetan prayer rooms are among the collection. Now the museum is looking at the region through a more popular art form. The exhibit “Hero, Villain, Yeti” has nearly 70 years worth of comic books about Tibet.

In many ways the story begins with James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon,” and the 1937 movie based on it. It was the first time many westerners had any kind of vision of Tibet. Of course it’s not really an accurate vision. Hilton conjures a land where mystical powers give people profound insight and unnaturally long lives.

“Lost Horizon” inspired a lot of the four dozen-or-so comic books on display at the exhibit. Beginning with the earliest comics, from the the 1940s, characters go traipsing into the Himalayas in search of the “Yeti,” or abominable snowman, and familiar figures like Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny encounter strange—often completely imagined—Tibetan customs.

Martin Brauen, the exhibit’s curator, says this is particularly true in “Mickey Mouse in High Tibet,” which shows Tibetans greeting people by showing their tongues. “Or when they pour tea, they have a pot of tea on their head and then they bend down the head and the tea goes into a cup in front of them. I mean, such funny things,” he adds, laughing.

In a 1940s American comic book series, a guy uses wisdom gained in Tibet to transform himself into a superhero called the “Green Lama.” In the first issue, the Green Lama uses his powers to unravel a criminal syndicate in New York.

Musical group One Ring Zero rehearsing their score for the Green Lama.

(Photo: Bruce Wallace)

As part of the exhibit, the musical group One Ring Zero composed a score to accompany a live projection of the comic book. The character becomes the Green Lama by chanting a Tibetan phrase “Om Mani Padme Hum.” That phrase becomes a reoccurring motif in One Ring Zero’s score.

Tenzin Dolker grew up in a Tibetan community in India. She’s studying at Columbia University. She says this is actually a real phrase that every Tibetan knows. “We just grew up saying that. Anything that comes to us that’s a challenge or a negative thing, or someone passes away, you hear of it—you’re like ‘Om mani padme hum.’ It’s instinctual now.” She’s not aware, though, of any other instance of the phrase transforming someone into a superhero.

Some of the comic books in the exhibit do seem to actually get Tibet. Tsering Lama, also at Columbia, grew up in a Tibetan community in Nepal. She was a huge fan of Western comic books like “Archie” and “Asterix,” and remembers the joy of discovering the comic “Tintin in Tibet,” where one of her favorite characters travels to a familiar landscape.

“He’s kind of walking around the streets where I grew up,” Lama says. “It’s humorous–he’s making fun of some of the clichés a little bit, like a Tibetan lama floating in the air, then there’s Nepali people drying peppers on the street, and there’s cows walking around, and stuff like that. But mostly it was like a visual thing—to see Tibet portrayed in a visual way by someone I love, like Tintin, walking around in Tibet and Nepal was really, really cool.”

Lama thinks that part of the west’s enduring fascination with Tibet, on clear display in these comic books, comes from the fact that the country has, for so much of its history, been closed off. It allows imagination to run wild.

And she says there really are some things to be fascinated by. “There are elements about it that are kind of strange—ideas of reincarnation, ideas of monks being able to dry an icy-cold sheet wrapped around them just because of their mental power. Things like that. Those are things my parents believe in, and those are things I wrestle with too.”

She finds it ironic that Westerners so often look to Tibet for peace and strength, when the current reality there can be pretty bleak.

“They still think that Tibet, or Tibetans, or Buddhism, can give them something that they can’t get somewhere else,” she says. “So you have a lot eccentric people who get attached to Tibet. But they don’t really ever look at what’s actually happening in Tibet, and what’s actually happening to Tibetans, and what’s happening to our religion, and our survival. And so the whole thing is such a bizarre—totally strange. Because of course now Tibetans, we look to the world to help us. We’re like we need help, we’re desperate for help from everybody.”

The exhibit at the Rubin has inspired Lama and others to start a comic book and graphic novel workshop. They’re hoping it might encourage more Tibetans to use this art form to tell their own stories.

Excerpt from One Ring Zero’s score for “Green Lama,” including Om Mani Padme Hum and main Green Lama themes.

Times Square bomb suspect charged

The World — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:40:06 +0000

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A Pakistan-born US citizen has been charged with terrorism over the failed car-bomb attack in New York’s Times Square on Saturday. Faisal Shahzad, 30, was also charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, according to documents filed at Manhattan federal court. Shahzad was arrested on a Dubai-bound plane at JFK airport on Monday. Earlier, President Barack Obama vowed that Americans would “not cower in fear” after Saturday’s bombing attempt. He said the incident was a “sobering reminder of the times in which we live” and vowed that justice would be done. Matthew Bell reports.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. U.S. authorities have brought formal terrorism charges against a suspect in the failed bombing attempt on Times Square. Thirty-year-old Faisal Shahzad is a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan. Officials say he admitted receiving bomb making training in Pakistan. He is being charged on multiple counts, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Shahzad allegedly planted a crude bomb in an SUV and drove the vehicle into one of the busiest parts of Manhattan on Saturday. U.S. officials say if the bomb had detonated as planned, it would have killed many bystanders. President Obama made a short statement today about the investigation, as The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

MATTHEW BELL: The President said U.S. officials are learning everything they can about the alleged plot, about the suspect in U.S. custody, Faisal Shahzad, and whether he has any connections to terrorist groups. Mr. Obama added that this incident is another sobering reminder of the times in which we live.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Around the world and here at home, there are those who would attack our citizens and who would slaughter innocent men, women and children in pursuit of their murderous agenda. They will stop at nothing to kill and disrupt our way of life. But once again, an attempted attack has been failed.

BELL: The President said the plot failed because a few ordinary citizens were vigilant. They reported suspicious activities to the police and then, Mr. Obama said, authorities at all levels, local, state and federal, worked in a swift and coordinated fashion to apprehend the suspect. He was pulled off a plane at JFK Airport last night, shortly before it was scheduled to take off for Dubai. Finally, the President had some words of praise for New Yorkers. He said once again they have reminded Americans how to live with their heads held high.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We know that the aim of those who try to carry out these attacks is to force us to live in fear, and thereby amplifying the effects of their attacks, even those that fail. But as Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorized. We will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated. We will be vigilant and we will work together and we will protect and defend the country we love to ensure a safe and prosperous future for our people. That’s what I intend to do as President, and that’s what we will do as a nation.

BELL: In the nation of Pakistan, there were reports of several arrests today in connection to the Times Square plot. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was asked about those reports during news conference this afternoon. He said he was in no position to confirm any arrests in Pakistan. Holder declined to say if there were other suspects in the case, or if Faisal Shahzad was connected with any foreign terrorist groups. The Attorney General did say, however, that authorities are looking into a number of leads.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: The investigation is ongoing and I wouldn’t want to reveal at this point any of the information that we gleaned from him other than to say that he has been talking to us and providing us with useful information.

MALE VOICE 1: Has he admitted involvement in this?

HOLDER: He has done that.

BELL: Holder said the failed car bombing was an attempt to carry out a terrorist attack aimed at killing as many people as possible. Shahzad is being charged with terrorism and the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Holder said investigators are looking at evidence found in the suspect’s car and at his Connecticut home. The Attorney General also praised law enforcement and Homeland Security officials for a job well done. Counter-terrorism expert, and former FBI official, Matthew Levitt echoes that sentiment.

MATTHEW LEVITT: The fact that they were able to run down these leads this quickly, stopped the suspect from escaping the country, just hours really after the attack, running down all kinds of leads, to me, as someone who is former FBI counter-terrorism, is impressive. And I think that should give American citizens a lot of comfort. No less important, by the way, is the role that regular citizens played in helping the authorities do their job.

BELL: The Times Square car bomb plot is also stoking an ongoing and highly politicized debate about the best way to prevent terrorist attacks. Levitt says the issue is often framed in a misleading way.

LEVITT: There is this debate which paints a black and white picture between a law enforcement approach to counter-terrorism and a military approach to counter-terrorism. I think it’s a false distinction. Counter-terrorism demands the strategic approach that involves the use of all tools of national power. And on a case-by-case basis assessing in which case the right tool is most applicable.

BELL: President Obama might have had that debate in mind today when he said the FBI and its partners have all the tools they need to conduct the investigation into Saturday’s attempted bombing. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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Owning a piece of the Berlin Wall

The World — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:43:49 +0000

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Twenty years ago, the wall that divided East and West Berlin for decades came down in dramatic fashion. Since that time, the Berlin Wall has been broken up and distributed around the world. Now, there are pieces everywhere, including the chunk pictured here, in downtown Manhattan. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports on what, if anything, owning a piece of the Berlin Wall means.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. IN Berlin today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was sworn in fro a second term. Merkel famously grew up in communist East Germany. And 20 years ago in the weeks before the wall came down she was helping organize protests against the government there. The wall of course was the most potent symbol of the cold war dividing the city of Berlin in two. Many who attempted to cross form east to west were killed at its base. The collapse of the wall signaled the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe. Here’s Dan Rather on CBC.

DAN RATHER: In Berlin this is the definitely the “in” place to be. The sites and sounds – all the joy and the history in front of the Brandenburg Gate with West Berliners partying literally on top of the Berlin Wall in front of the gate.

CLARK: But when the wall came down it didn’t disappear. It just went other places as The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

ALEX GALLAFENT: When I started working on this story I put something up on Facebook which just said, “Do you own a piece of the Berlin Wall?” The answers came flooding in from the United States, Britain, and beyond.

MONTAGE OF VARIOUS VOICES: My husband has a piece in his office. There was some at a lunch I went to last week. I think my brother’s got a piece. My sister owns a tiny, tiny chunk.

GALLAFENT: The Berlin Wall is kind of everywhere now – especially in the West. It wasn’t just bulldozers and wrecking balls that took the wall down. It was hammers and chisels – individuals claiming fragments of history, wrapping them up to keep or sending them home to family or friends – to people like Noah Isenberg. He owns a chunk too.

NOAH ISENBERG: It was just in this little yellow cardboard container that I used to always have on my bookshelves and yet for some strange reason it’s gone missing.

HOWARD ROSENBERG: Well it’s interesting. I sort of feel like I have a piece of the wall too but it’s a different kind of a piece. It’s the piece that’s in my memory.

GALLAFENT: When the wall came down Howard Rosenberg was the TV critic for Los Angeles Times. He remembers how each of the major networks sent an anchor to be live at the wall. As Rosenberg puts it, “to validate the story for Americans back home.”

ROSENBERG: I mean television does this all the time. I always think of these stories as like a whale being carved up by Eskimos in which they use every bit of the whale – every part of it goes for something and everybody takes a little chunk out of it as if they were … . In this case individually taking a chunk out of the wall. A couple of them even climbed the wall on a ladder. You can’t say that they eclipsed this momentous event but they certainly chipped into it.

GALLAFENT: Even as it came down the wall and its meaning were being claimed. It meant the end of oppression or the triumph of freedom or capitalism. Today in Los Vegas it means something … . Well I’m not quite sure what it means. At the Main Street Station Casino Brewery and Hotel there’s a hefty section of the wall positioned behind the men’s urinals.

ROSENBERG: [LAUGHING] Oh I love it. That’s just great.

GALLAFENT: Since 1989 the wall has been sold, bought, and donated. It’s been broken apart and reconstructed. There were the small fragments. Some real. Some fake. And then there are the larger pieces. Entire sections of the wall transplanted to new homes. A few of that type are here in New York including one in the heart of the Midtown Business District. A section of the wall has been placed in a courtyard next to an office building.

JULIANE CAMFIELD: It’s still very intense. It seems so out of place.

GALLAFENT: I met someone who knew the wall when it was still The Wall.

CAMFIELD: It almost seems unreal. It seems like … . It looks like a movie prop. It seems to me like it can’t be really here.

GALLAFENT: Juliane Camfield was born in West Berlin in 1968, seven years after the wall went up. She left in 1989, the year it came down. Now she’s a New Yorker. Camfield is her married name. She studies this section of the wall from a distance. It’s painted with colorful graffiti faces, as much of the western side was. And set behind the wall there’s a fountain, a curtain of water framing the whole thing.

CAMFIELD: I think that’s part of what makes it so unreal for me. To have this weird fountain thing in the background because the fountain is sort of something soothing and you know a little tacky. And I think the wall it’s not beautiful, it’s something very provocative and shocking and symbolizing terror and death and separation and I don’t want it to be smoothed out.

GALLAFENT: Juliane Camfield more than anyone else I spoke to, seemed like she really owned a piece of the Berlin Wall. She had relatives in the East. The wall prevented her from knowing them. Her only link was what she learned from her two grandmothers on walks around West Berlin, a little island of freedom.

CAMFIELD: And we’d eventually end up at the wall because wherever you went at some point you would end up at the wall and they really, I guess, they kept their memories alive. They kept their connections to their nephews, nieces, cousins, uncles, aunts. It was very close to their heart. So when I heard them speak about it I guess these two grandmothers more than anything for me established the outrageousness of that piece of architecture.

GALLAFENT: Not everyone has a story like Juliane’s. Even people in Berlin itself are no longer defined by the wall as they once were.

CAMFIELD: When I think about Berlin it is mostly a divided Berlin because I grew up in a divided Berlin. When I go back and visit I realize it’s a very different city now and the people I knew when I grew up and who did not leave Berlin, for them I think it is much less present even thought hey live there, than it is present for me even though I live away from Berlin. It’s a paradox.

GALLAFENT: But Camfield’s certain of one thing. She will never own an actual piece of the Berlin Wall. In fact she says she doesn’t even think of it as an object. Thinking about its meaning is enough.

CAMFIELD: Do I need to look at it to be aware of that? No, I know that. I don’t need to have it.

GALLAFENT: And so she walks away carrying only the idea of the long gone Berlin Wall. For The World I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.

CLARK: You can see photos of Juliane Camfield and the Berlin Wall at The World dot org.

Guineans in New York City look toward home

The World — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:22:26 +0000

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B & B Restaurant Corp. in Manhattan

Guineans living in New York City do have reminders of their home in West Africa. There are restaurants like the B & B in midtown Manhattan, which serves Guinean dishes and employs a number of Guineans. But given the violence that has gripped their homeland in recent weeks, many Guineans in New York are looking home anxiously, and awaiting news from their friends and family. Some Guineans in New York are even organizing opposition to the country’s military rulers. The World’s Alex Gallafent takes the pulse of Guineans in New York.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. In the West African country of Guinea, a national strike today left streets and workplaces deserted. People were protesting an incident two weeks ago in which soldiers opened fire on a crowd in a soccer stadium. Human rights groups say more than 150 people were killed. Fifty thousand people had gathered in the stadium, in the capital Conakry, to protest the country’s military regime. For Guineans living here in the United States, the situation back home is confusing and frightening. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports from New York.

ALEX GALLAFENT: Mamadou Sidy Barry is a Guinean in New York, and here’s here on his own.

MAMDOU SIDY BARRY: All my family members are over there in Guinea, my wife, my daughter, and my father, brothers, everybody. So I am here by myself and I’m here for political asylum

GALLAFENT: I caught up with Barry at the West African restaurant he runs in midtown Manhattan. It’s a small place, and Barry’s staff is getting for the lunch rush. But back in Guinea, Barry was a political activist, working for an opposition party. He says he was arrested during a local election in 2005 and jailed for three weeks. On his release, he fled to neighboring Mali. He didn’t feel safe there either.

BARRY: So from there I decided to come to the United States of America.

GALLAFENT: He hasn’t seen his family in years. And since the violence of two weeks ago, Mamadou Sidy Barry has found it hard to reach them. He says communication lines into Guinea have been disrupted, and he’s worried about his daughter in particular.

BARRY: My daughter is three years, so she’s a very small girl, and she’s really living on the panic, on the trauma, you know. A little girl of three years, hearing every time sounds of guns, you know. All over the night, they are in the streets of Conakry, blowing up guns, you know. It’s crazy.

GALLAFENT: What does it feel like to be here while your family is there?

BARRY: It is very, very, very hard, very difficult. When they tell you some people lost their beloved ones, they never see their bodies, they never seem them in jail, they never see them in hospital, so it means that these people have been pulled away, or they have been buried, but who knows where and how? What happened to the other person can happen to your own too, so it is really a very hard time for us.

GALLAFENT: Many of the workers in Barry’s restaurant are from Guinea themselves.

BARRY: Ismael!

GALLAFENT: Barry calls one of them from out of the kitchen, where a grill is piled high with chunks of meat.

ISMAEL: [speaking Guinean Creole]

GALLAFENT: He says, “My wife and three children are in Guinea. It’s safe here in New York, but if my family isn’t safe, I can’t be at peace.” Finally, Mamadou Sidy Barry introduces me to a young woman named Mariama. She comes out from the kitchen in an apron smeared with cooking juices and tells her story.

MARIAMA: [speaking Guinean Creole]

GALLAFENT: Barry translates.

MARIAMA: [speaking Guinean Creole]

BARRY: Really I’m very worried, because what is going on back home in my country is terrible. They are raping women, killing them, taking off their clothes in the street in public and rape them in front of everybody, kill children. My family is over there. My husband, my children, my mother, my brothers and even they killed one of my brothers and I am terrified about what is going on.

GALLAFENT: The reports they’re hearing suggest that the violence didn’t spread beyond the events of two weeks ago, but that doesn’t ease the minds of these Guineans in the United States. The Guinean community here is tiny, but Mamadou Sidy Barry says they plan to organize a series of rallies in Washington to protest what happened back home. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.