Defending The Banality Theory

This article was published in The June 17, 2013 issue of The Jerusalem Report magazine.

Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt in “Hannah Arendt” (courtesy of Zeitgesit Films)

Toward the end of noted German filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta’s new feature film, “Hannah Arendt,” we see the famous philosopher and political theorist speaking to a lecture hall full of students at New York’s The New School.

It is 1964, and she has just been asked by her colleagues to relinquish her teaching post following publication of a series of highly controversial articles she wrote for The New Yorker about the Adolf Eichmann trial (the basis for her 1963 book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem”).

Click here to read the rest of this article, which is behind a paywall. You can be in touch directly with me to request a pdf copy.

© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

 

63-Year-Old Israeli is NY’s Model Street Fashionista

This piece was first published in The Times of Israel.

Photo by Ari Seth Cohen

The idea of throwing on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and running out the door is anathema to Tziporah Salamon, who never leaves the house unless she is fully dressed. And by fully dressed, she means a multi-piece, multi-layered outfit with matching hat, scarf, shoes, earrings, purse, gloves, glasses and other accessories that may take her years to put together.

“It took me seven years to put together one outfit, because I couldn’t find the right earrings for it. I wouldn’t wear it until I found the earrings,” she said in a phone interview with The Times of Israel from Los Angeles, where she, a New Yorker, was visiting a friend whose house had enviable closet space.

The Israeli-born Salamon, 63, has made dressing her life’s work, and it’s hard not to take notice of it. Bill Cunningham, The New York Times’ fashion photographer and others have snapped her picture as she tools around Manhattan on her bike (without a helmet, because it would ruin her outfit) wearing one or another of her unique, colorful, eye-popping ensembles.

All those photos of her on street fashion blogs brought her to the attention of French high fashion house Lavin’s Israeli creative director Alber Elbaz, and he recruited her to model for the company’s 2012 fall-winter print ad campaign. Not long after, London’s Models 1 agency signed the trim, 5’7” Salamon as a model for its classic division.

As exciting as finally getting her first professional modeling gig has been for Salamon, it’s really just a validation of her one-of-a-kind sartorial style. And while she waits for more modeling offers, she keeps busy with wardrobe consultation and style education work. Using her own expansive clothing collection as her instructional material, she offers both group seminars and one-on-one sessions with clients on how to dress, sometimes renting out some of her garments. She is also a performance artist, sharing her personal story and passion for dressing in a one-woman show.

Click here to read more and watch a video.

© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

The Banality of Movies About Google

This review was first published on The Arty Semite blog at the Forward.

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange stole my intended headline for this post: “The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil.’” Or maybe it was a New York Times copy editor, who gave that title to Assange’s opinion piece accusing Google of technocratic imperialism. Either way, now I can’t use it for fear of plagiarism… or at least, a perceived lack of creativity.

The headline, a riff on the search giant’s motto, would have been perfect to sum up my impression of the new comedy, “The Internship.” “Wedding Crashers” duo Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play nearing-middle age buddies and out-of-work analog-era watch salesmen, who manage to get into Google’s internship program, improbably prove themselves (who says you can’t teach an old dog some new hi-tech tricks?), and teach a group of geeky misfit college students some life lessons along the way. The movie is such a banal, formulaic and predictable comedy that it most certainly did not merit rushing to catch an advance screening at a movie theater located literally next to the Google campus in Mountain View, California.

I guess I was hoping for a meta-experience akin to the one I had while watching “The Social Network” at the very same theater, which is also not far from Facebook headquarters. But then again, what was I thinking? This is a story co-written by Vince Vaughn and directed by Shawn Levy of “Night at the Museum” and “Date Night” fame. Director David Fincher, Academy and Emmy Award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin and Oscar-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg came nowhere near this production.

Click here to read more and watch the movie’s trailer.

© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.