Charis Wilson: Meeting with a Muse

Santa Cruz CA–(June 12 2005)

Charis Wilson, former wife and muse of photographer Edward Weston, at our interview in Santa Cruz, June 2005.

photo /Adrian Mendoza)

         The graceful hands that wave in the air like tall grass are still there; likewise the endless legs and fair hair now whitened by time. Even in a wheelchair, Charis Wilson Weston, 91, is what you would call “a tall drink of water.” Those blue eyes still look at you with that direct, reflective gaze seen in the famous portraits taken 60, 70 years ago by American photographer Edward Weston, to whom she was married for 11 intensely creative years.

         I had been working on screenplay about Edward Weston and his previous muse, Tina Modotti, and by chance learned that Charis, who came into his life in a later period, was still alive and living in Santa Cruz, California.  Weston, one of the pioneers of photographic modernism, died in 1958. But Charis, a living link to the famous photographer and some of his essential work, is serenely present when I find her in the sunny cottage  she shares with her daughter,  Rachel Fern Harris, and son-in-law. Numerous cats and free-range chickens picking through the gardens engage her adoring attention frequently throughout our chat.

         “That cell phone ring you keep hearing around here?” she says without prior greeting. “It’s a mocking bird! Bird picked up the sound of Rachel’s cell phone!”

         Born in San Francisco in 1914, Charis grew up among the Bohemian aristocracy of 1920s Carmel. She was nearly 20 when she met the 48-year-old Weston, and she married him at 25.  His nude 1930s and ‘40s photographs of her sprawling in the sand, floating on water, and around the house in Carmel, establish their shared membership in an avant garde vision that was liberated from both moralism and glamour. In them she is supremely comfortable in her own body, an unapologetic child of nature, neither shy nor seductive. This was her charm, and the power of it stuns viewers of the photos even today.

         They traveled the U.S. on a Guggenheim Foundation grant, producing the book “California and the West,” with Weston’s photographs and text by Charis.  She wrote essays articulating Weston’s ideas about photography, and collaborated on their book “The Cats of Wildcat Hill.” But Charis sought a wider range as a writer, and greater freedom to develop her own identity. The Westons divorced in 1946, and she moved to northern California to take part in the labor movement. She married a labor activist, raised their two daughters, worked at a variety of jobs, and at the age of 53, moved on, alone again, to write children’s books and teach creative writing. She suffered the loss of her 19-year-old daughter, Anita, to violence.

         Charis is curious to meet me and does not seem to mind if I question her about her ex-husband, posing nude, or the women in his past. My first question: Does she consider herself to have been a collaborator in the creation of Weston’s portraits of her?

            “No,” she asserts. “I always thought that photography was ‘his thing,’ and that what I did was writing.”

         Apart from Flora [Chandler, his first wife], she says, “I was probably the only one of his women who didn’t want to follow in his footsteps.”

             She describes herself in her 20s as having been “totally taken with him as a man and very rapidly, as a lover, and a unique human being. Photography just came along with it. And as it was ‘his thing,’ it seemed important to me to help him say what he wanted to say, because he wasn’t good at self-expression through writing. And I always knew that I was.”

         Another example she did not comfortably follow was Weston’s presumption of sexual freedom, although she had believed in it prior to meeting him. In her 1998 autobiography, “Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston,” she writes that although she struggled with it,  “I finally figured out that my obligations to Edward included marital fidelity.” 

         Yet Weston’s “smoldering jealousy” for the male attention showered on his young wife was a source of conflict.  It helped her to understand what his previous muse, Tina Modotti, had experienced when she rejected his double standard of sexual behavior, an attitude which absolutely “tore him to pieces,” Charis says.

          “The few times he was jealous of me, I could see what absolutely  unreasoning proportions this jealousy took, just because someone else had a hankering for me, and not that I was doing anything. I did think of Tina at the time – you know: what the men were doing was the problem.”

            Mostly Charis learned to ignore or just field it. But relationships tend to have another face after 60 years of reflection.

            “I think more and more about how specifically male dominant all of his views were and it’s a wonder to me, in retrospect, that I took all this so calmly.”

          At the same time, she sees now that, “Edward had so many good qualities: an appreciation of tenderness, his outgoingness, even his willingness to share cooking and housework, all the things that I hadn’t really found in men up till then…the mere fact that he had this ridiculous idea that men were some dominant element just didn’t bother me then,” the 91-year-old says plainly. “It’s very strange.”        

         Women who owe their fame to an association with a famous artist often struggle to define themselves on their own terms. But Charis Wilson seems to have long ago put it all in perspective. Looking back at her life, it was all hard work: the ostensibly glamorous years of her youth with Weston no less than her later years as a working class activist and mother.

         Her greatest achievement, she says, is just “having stayed alive this long.”

Charis Wilson died Friday November 2o, 2009, at 95.

Economic Rage: Spending into the Apocalypse

All the headlines are urging: Rebates will work only if people spend.
In our local paper, “…Todd Neumann, an assistant professor of economics at University of California at Merced, said there is consensus among economists that a stimulus is needed, but its success will depend on whether people actually spend the checks and how quickly.” (The Modesto Bee, Jan. 24, 2008)

Like most people across the nation I only became aware today of this federal proposal to pacify the economically hurting American people by sending us relatively small rebate checks of up to $600 each sometime BEFORE the next election. This, they tell us, is going to “stimulate the economy.”

What are we supposed to do: rush out and buy some new patio furniture at Cost Plus? Buy next Thanksgiving’s plane tickets? Or (possibly much wiser) take ourselves on a weekend trip to Las Vegas?

I have two words in response: “As IF…!”

Just when we became conscious that every Christmas spending orgy pours umpteen extra tons of wrapping paper and trash into the landfills. Just when some of us were learning that we could live without half the things we thought we wanted. Just when thousands of families are surrendering their hopes of a home; when millions of us are accepting the hard lesson that banks will trump us in greed every time and realizing that we will never, under these circumstances, be able to save — the greatest wisdom that they can offer us is: “Spend more”?

This is when you realize the Emperor has no clothes.

What kind of chumps do they think we are?

If they are really serious about stimulating the economy, let them immediately lower the rapacious interest rates on credit cards.
And mortgages too, where needed.
Let the federal government acknowledge that they should support education, and forgive the college loans of all those who have managed to graduate college and will now be lucky if they can pay it off by the time they retire at age 65 – probably without social security.
Let them take the $100 billion in rebate money and the proposed $50 billion in business tax cuts, and use it to pay people living wages to work in child care and environmental restoration, or to subsidize the development of renewable energy sources for our homes and cars.

Most importantly, let them stop cashing our lives in to pay for their wretched wars. Because it’s not just our futures, or our children’s futures they’re borrowing from. It’s right now.

Rebates? Who do they think they’re kidding?

My Teddy Bear has Something to Say About Sudan

By Baggio Bear
I hope it doesn’t offend anyone – and by that I mean ANYONE – that a stuffed bear like me should presume to speak.

This is my first column; actually, the first time I’ve ever communicated via the printed word. I’ve asked my mistress if I could dictate it to her. She understands how strongly I feel about what happened last week to That Other Bear in the Sudan, and to HIS mistress, so she agreed. I’m not just speaking: I’m speaking out. I have to take a stand.

As you’ve probably noticed, I was also named after a famous figure – the kids in my house named me for the famous Italian soccer star Roberto Baggio, after we had all watched the 1994 World Cup together (I know, my age is showing). They loved him even though he lost the Cup to Brazil. I’ve always thought there was a certain nobility in that. But I digress. It’s hard not to get conversational when you’re dictating.

You might also have noted my hesitance to say I was named after “a man,” although of course my namesake was one (and what a man!). But the “figure” whose name That Other Bear was given, was Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam – and referring to him as a man might get a free lancer in ALL kinds of trouble – as events in the Sudan proved. And we wouldn’t want that.

This is what happened: After a British lady who was teaching at a private school in Khartoum allowed her Sudanese students to name the class teddy bear “Muhammad” – a very common boys’ name in that part of the world – the Sudanese government last week charged her with blasphemy, inciting hatred and insulting Islam. The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, 54, was arrested, and if convicted, might have faced six months in jail and 40 public lashes. Luckily, the British soccer team is better than the Sudanese soccer team, (let’s face it), so they organized a serious offense against the Sudanese case, and brought their player home. (How am I doing on my reporting?)
I’m told that American writers have powerful protections under the First Amendment, but we may not have the kind of heavyweights in our corner, like the British government, who could get us out of hot water if we insult Islam, so I’m cool with not calling Muhammad a man. My point is really about the men in high places who would whip a woman – or anyone — for giving a teddy bear a name.
Never mind that millions of regular boys (who grow up to be men) throughout Sudan are also named Muhammad. (Would the Prophet have even been NAMED Muhammad if it weren’t already a name on moms’ lists of baby names in that part of the world, way back when?)
Never mind that 20 out of the 23 children in Ms. Gibbons’ classroom voted to name my bear brother ‘Muhammad.’ I have a feeling it’s not really about that.
My mistress tells me that last week, it was reported that the British Ambassador to the United Nations asked the Security Council to address warrants against a Sudanese official and militia leader accused of war crimes in Darfur, the part of western Sudan where more than 200,000 people have died in the ongoing conflicts. I’m just wondering aloud: could the Sudanese government have been using that nice English lady as a pawn, a wedge, a warning, potentially a hostage? Heavy thoughts for a bear.
Call me ‘soft’ . . . on anything, really – I AM soft– but I think public lashings are cowardly. They shock me. I mean, these men are strong. They have legs, they have muscles, they have free will. And God (any god) knows they have guns – big ones, and lots of them. More importantly, they have voices. They don’t need to dictate, like me. What I wouldn’t give for a voice, liberated by the breath of pure life! I am offended any time a life is degraded or extinguished as a tool for power. And with 200,000 Sudanese lives lost in this power grab– mostly Muslim lives, by the way – you would think they’d know by now that it won’t work, that their time in power will come to an end.
These are things you have time to contemplate when you lie quietly for hours, days, and years upon a bed.
And I’ll tell you one other thing before I hand over the mic. When I came out of the factory, my brother and sister bears who were created in the same lot as me were dispersed to the far corners of the world. We stay in touch, in ways that shall remain mysterious to you. And I can say with certainty that it is not only in the Sudan that men presume to have the authority to take over people’s lives based on some hypocritical moral judgment. I have my sources. It’s everywhere. Or at least somewhere, always, in different places, in every time.

300 seconds

Just as we were leaving the house for the 5:30 p.m. Sunday matinee of “Zodiac,” Adrian and I realized that the kitchen clock was 30 minutes behind. Dead battery. We dashed downtown anyway, but, believing we were too late to see the beginning of “Zodiac” (anathema to movie lovers), we entered the screening room for “300″ instead. In no more than five minutes, we looked at each other, stood up, and walked out. Three hundred seconds may set a record for the least amount of time I’ve ever allotted to my evaluation of a movie’s worth.
Instead, we snuck into “Zodiac” to see the rest of it – about 5/6 of it or more – and were very glad we did.

Regarding “300″ – I had NOT read any reviews of it beforehand, though I was aware of all the buzz – we were unambivalently appalled by its sadistic, unapologetic images of child abuse – Spartan customs notwithstanding.

I mean, my conscience is very clear on this: you have to
tell these Hollywood schmucks what you will tolerate and what you will not. I just can’t accept entertainment based on violence towards children.

Not that ANYBODY besides us is telling them. Well, film critic A.O. Scott of the New York Times did: (I read his review afterwards) “300 is about as violent as ‘Apocalypto’ and twice as stupid,” he wrote. (Friday, March 9/20007)
But who’s reading? The IMAX showing of 300 at Regal Theaters/ Pleasanton has been sold out, show after show, for days. It’s playing on multiple screens in every theater in the area. My students are raving about it. The film grossed $68 million in its opening weekend.
I had studied the Spartans in high school, but that was a long time ago. So I came home and went to the Web. What we had seen in the first three minutes of the film was all corroborated by the literature. Weak babies left to die at birth: check. Boys sent away from mama at age 7 to be trained as soldiers in an all-male society: check. Toughening rituals, running the gauntlet, manipulation and replacement of the ethical individual ego with a code of subservience to the glory of the State: check. Fascism, anyone? Let’s call it what it is, though the Samurai Code and U.S. Marines Corps also come to mind.
So why is it that the historical violence shown in a movie such as Schindler’s List, for example, is acceptable to me as a film viewer, while that of 300 is not? While I pondered this, Adrian summed up the difference in one word: intention. Is it the intention of the filmmaker to excite us with his scenes of staged violence – or to make us feel – morally, aesthetically, viscerally – repelled by it? I think that’s essentially it.
What worries me is that our revulsion to such scenes in “300,” or in “Apocalypto,” seems to be the response of a shrinking minority. What worries me is that millions upon millions flock to see it, and experience no such response at all.
Sparta is not a place I would have wanted to live, even though women citizens enjoyed more freedom than anywhere else in the Ancient Mediterranean world, and equal attention was paid to the development of their minds and bodies as to those of men. But it was a militaristic, proto-Fascist state nonetheless, and I can’t admire it. Perhaps the film goes on to explore and reveal the nuances and suffering caused by this configuration of society – though that’s not what I’ve read. I’ve read about its glorification of militaristic self-sacrifice in the name of a dubious so-called freedom. Spartans were not free. It was a slave-based economy in which even those on top (the “true Spartans”) sacrificed their lives to the maintenance of state power, immersed in the seductive ideology of the uber-self.
I shudder to think about the thousands of history-ignorant youths around the world who, abused at home or brutalized by whoever holds the power in their lives, will see the film and imagine themselves as warriors in training, ideologically empowered to unleash their justified fury in whatever cunning, macho ways they can find. Adrian also ventured that there might be plenty of abusive parents out there who could find in the film justification for cruel treatment of their dependents in the alleged interests of “toughening” them up.
Normally I don’t believe in criticizing something you haven’t seen – completely. But to my experienced eye, certain things were immediately clear: it was not cinema. It was a video game, without the participation, and with a pretension to history that tries to justify its sadistic anti-soul. I’m not buying it.
“Zodiac,” on the other hand, is a film that is more about obsession, and the desire to arrest violence, than a
vehicle to vicariously ENJOY violence, as are so many movies today. Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. and even Jake Gyllenhaal were all superb.
Of course I also enjoyed the portrayal of that era — not the LSD or hippies or war protests, but the nature of every day life in the 70s, as lived by San Francisco cops and reporters. Having just visited the Chronicle newsroom last week made it especially fresh.
In the late 80s, as a reporter for the rival paper, the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner,  I actually KNEW Paul Avery, the reporter played by Robert Downey – a bit. After burning out at the Chronicle over the Zodiac case he had come over to the Examiner for a spell, while I was working there. I remember him as a skinny, eccentric man with graying hair who had a certain mystique and immunity around the newsroom – he was one of a few “untouchables” who NOBODY told what to do — but I had no idea WHY, since I was at college on the East Coast while all this was happening. It wasn’t until 12 years after my graduation that I worked at the Ex. The end credits say that Avery died in 2000.
I do remember, however, reading the Zodiac stories in the SF Chronicle every time I came out to Berkeley/SF to visit my father in the late 60s and 70s. I recall the spookiness and the generalized fear that infected California because of the Zodiac killer; the sense of the spoiling of the Summer of Love and its beautiful legacy.