this update lends some spice to the scenes depicted below:

Egyptian police frustrate stream of Palestinian shoppers

Barcelona weeps for Gaza:

Thu Jan 24, 7:47 PM ET

Gaza vigil : Demonstrators take part in a candlelight vigil in Barcelona to protest against the Israeli blockade of Gaza. (AFP/Joesp Lago)

Too bad it wasn’t the Israeli blockade of Gaza but rather a Hamas propaganda production that turned out the lights. Note that Gaza’s “leaders” are working in candlelight despite the fact that behind the curtains, there is full, blazing sunlight.

(via NewsBusters)

Palestinian lawmakers attend a parliament session in candlelight during a power cut in Gaza January 22, 2008. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

The Jerusalem Post reports:

But some of the [Palestinian] journalists noticed that there was actually no need for the candles because both meetings were being held in daylight.”They had closed the curtains in the rooms to create the impression that Hamas leaders were also suffering as a result of the power stoppage,” one journalist told The Jerusalem Post. “It was obvious that the whole thing was staged.”

Are we surprised? No. By now even the Washington Post is decrying Hamas’s media manipulation and using quotation marks when referring to the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza:

Hamas took advantage of the blockade first by arranging for sympathetic Arab media to document the “humanitarian crisis,” then by daring Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians portrayed as Israel’s victims. …

Mr. Mubarak and other Arab leaders have to resist the urge to roll over every time they are challenged by Hamas and al-Jazeera television. Would Mr. Mubarak allow tens of thousands of Darfur refugees to illegally enter Egypt from Sudan, where a real humanitarian crisis is underway?

Breaking the Waves—an incoherent and sadistic movie—pretty much sealed my interest in the so-called “transgressive”*** back in 1996. Sadism posing as art isn’t my cuppa. Am I surprised to see that the flirtation with sadism continues unabated in 2008? Not really.

Report from Sundance:

Worst Sundance Film: Sex and Self-Mutilation

The worst film …? “Downloading Nancy,” …

Mari [Bello] one of my favorite actresses, plays Nancy. She hires a murderous pen pal on the Internet to come and kill her. (I think it’s because she’s depressed.)

While she’s waiting to be offed by [Jason] Patric, Nancy self-mutilates with a razor blade. She cuts herself all over the place. Not even her shrink, played by “Judging” Amy Brenneman, can talk her out of it. Nancy’s husband, played by British theater star [Rufus] Sewell, has no luck either.

By the time Nancy meets up with Patric’s Louis, she’s cut herself to ribbons and bleeding all over.

Long ago, I stopped wondering why anyone would greenlight such a picture—the reason is obvious: because some insecure idiot, repelled by the movie but compelled by the notion that he might be missing out on the next best thing since Pulp Fiction, said yes. It’s the same instinct that animates the art world and the world of culture: people don’t understand the “new” but don’t want to be thought of as old school, so they go along with a trend, even if it’s repulsive (because they think it’s sophisticated).

I’ve got no argument with the people making these movies. If they can find backers to fund them and actors to star in the movies and film festivals to showcase them and reviewers to write about them and audience members to pay for tickets, I will lay down my life for their right to make their gross-sounding movies.

But I do ask myself who would want to muck around in the darkest of the dark side and spend years of his/her life writing, directing, producing, editing, and acting in such a film. Not my cuppa, either.
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*** I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time but can never find a moment. In 1996, David Denby published a piece in The New Yorker called “Buried Alive” in which he talks (in retrospect, it looks like a warning) about the effect on our (baby boomers’) children of a pop culture that wallows in the transgressive. Here’s an abstract of his piece.

Also, it’s never a bad occasion to bring back my favorite cultural reference:

Inspired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s German Expressionist show of the same name, I wrote about Glitter and Doom here and here.