Shocked! Shocked!!

Just how many times can a country lose its innocence?

{A daylong symposium}
with Harry Berger Jr., Ian Buruma, Tom Engelhardt, Helen Epstein, Annette Gordon-Reed, Richard Halpern, Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman, Ken Jacobs, Greil Marcus, Errol Morris, Katha Pollitt, Sarah Vowell, Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Schell, Lawrence Weschler, and others

Saturday October 6, 11am - 7pm
NYU's Cantor Film Center, 36 E 8th St.
Free and open to all, on a first come/first in basis

With metronomic regularity, the United States, for one, always seems to be losing its innocence—the Kennedy assassination, the urban disturbances of the sixties, Vietnam, the Church committee's CIA revelations, Three Mile Island, the smoking cancer scandals, the John Lennon assassination, Iran Contra, the priest pedophile imbroglio, September 11, Abu Ghraib (to detail just one recent trill)—and yet Americans never seem to learn anything, repeatedly emerging as resolutely innocent (which is to say, unknowing) as they were before the latest brief seizure of lucidity.

Or is that the right way of thinking about things? Richard Halpern, the Johns Hopkins literature professor, in his recent study of one particular nexus in what he characterizes as the country's "Innocence Industry," Norman Rockwell: The Dark Side of Innocence, considered a series of Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers depicting his perennial boy perennially shocked at his discovery of the true identity of Santa Claus—when, for example, burrowing about, he happens upon Saint Nick's outfit in his father's dresser drawer, regarding which, Halpern glosses:

There are sometimes moments of shocked discovery, to be sure, but these usually release a built-up reservoir of previously unacknowledged doubt. Otherwise, they can always be explained away. And this gets at a crucial truth about shocked recognition: it is not the moment of emergence from disavowal into enlightenment. Rather, it places the seal on disavowal by insisting (falsely) that up until that moment one did not know... The protecting of a factitious innocence by pretending (to ourselves) to be shocked is an infantile stratagem of which people never seem to tire. Our dresser drawer is Abu Ghraib prison, from which we extract not an empty Santa suit but hooded, naked prisoners, and we stand there with the wide-eyed surprise of Rockwell's boy. Who knew?

Who knew, indeed. Except that we all of us always knew—a hearty, seemingly indestructible bad faith seeming to be at the very root of our country's national identity.

But just how unique is the United States in that regard? (Consider, by contrast, as Ian Buruma will at this symposium, the counter-example of Japan.) And how specifically does that bad faith play out in the American instance? Several of the day's panelists will consider other aspects of the Innocence Industry (Ken Jacobs on Frank Capra; Molly Haskell on Gone with the Wind; Annette Gordon-Reed on that generationally evergreen shocker: the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relation; J. Hoberman on "morning again" with Ronald Reagan; Art Spiegelman on Peanuts and other aspects of comics culture). Tom Engelhardt, in conversation with Jonathan Schell, will consider (in the words of the title of his 1995 book), The End of Victory Culture—notwithstanding the stubborn persistence of that same ethos in the world of George W. Bush. And Academy Award winning director Errol Morris (The Fog of War) will focus more specifically the "shocking" scandals of Abu Ghraib, the subject of his next documentary.

Working Schedule

(subject to change)

Saturday Oct 6
NYU's Cantor Film Center, 36 E 8th St.

11 am - 12:30 pm
The Innocence Industry (I)
Ken Jacobs on Dead Indians from Sea to Shining Sea
Molly Haskell on Gone with the Wind
Greil Marcus, respondent

12:30 - 1:30 pm
Lunch Break

1:30 - 3:00 pm
The Innocence Industry (II)
Richard Halpern on Norman Rockwell
Art Spiegelman, respondent
Harry Berger, Jr., respondent
Marita Sturken, respondent

3:15 - 4:45 pm
The History of American Obliviousness
Annette Gordon-Reed on Jefferson and Hemings
David Blight on slavery and the civil war
Ian Baruma on the counterexample of Japan
Sarah Vowell, respondent

5:00 - 7:00 pm
Recent Instances
Jonathan Schell and Tom Engelhardt on Victory Culture
Errol Morris on Abu Ghraib
Helen Epstein on smoking and AIDS
Katha Pollitt, respondent

First Base Coach & Utility infielder: Lawrence Weschler

To arrange interviews or for further information on the New York Institute for the Humanities, call 212-998-2100 or visit www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/nyih.

The NYU Humanities Initiative sponsors research, collaborative teaching, conferences, working groups, and outreach by way of fostering a university-wide community in the humanities at NYU. Launched in 2007, its mission replaces and significantly expands that of the former Humanities Council. For further information on the Humanities Initiative, visit www.nyu.edu/humanities.council or call 212 998-2190.