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Elaine Showalter and Christopher Benfey

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from: Elaine Showalter

Murder, Bioethics, and the Bolshoi

Posted Wednesday, July 7, 1999, at 1:55 PM ET

Dear Chris,

I'm tempted by your optimistic view that white-supremacist killers like Benjamin Smith are reacting to a deep-seated conviction of the profound inseparability of blacks and whites in the United States. There were similar arguments, I recall, about abortion-clinic killers a few years back--that these awful crimes were last-ditch violent reactions to a lost battle, signs that in some way we had turned the corner on abortion rights. But I can't really accept such a rational explanation of psychotic behavior, and I'd rather put my faith in gun control than philosophy. In London this year there have been 47 murders, which the Brits regard as an alarming and unacceptable figure. An average day for the United States, I'd guess.

The organ-transplant issue seems different to me. In the newspapers here tonight, a columnist says that the decision to accept the kidney was outrageous, and next people will be restricting their donor organs to non-Catholics. But an NHS doctor says that it's an impossible dilemma--to accept the kidney is to be a bigot, but to refuse it, when there is a good tissue match, is to sacrifice a life. I think we will be grappling with many more of these bioethical problems in the future, and words and reason will have to be our weapons.

On a lighter note--the Bolshoi made its debut here last night in La Bayadère. A news story in the Evening Standard on Page 17 is headlined "Applause as Bolshoi Regains Lithe Spirit." The star ballerina Nadezhda Gracheva said after the performace, "The challenge was taken up and the challenge was met. I am very happy." But on Page 52, in a story headlined "Glory Days Are Over," the Standard's dance critic, Anne Sacks, writes that La Bayadère is "so politically incorrect as to be offensive," "the dancing is perfunctory," "many of the soloists are stilted and stylistically awkward," and that despite Gracheva's "strong, pliant legs and flexible back," even she can't get the thing off the ground. The Bolshoi, Sacks concludes, is a former instrument of "Soviet cultural imperialism" that has lost its identity.

I suspect there won't be any defections on this trip.

Best,
Elaine

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112
from: Elaine Showalter

Murder, Bioethics, and the Bolshoi

Posted Wednesday, July 7, 1999, at 1:55 PM ET
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Elaine Showalter, chair of the English department at Princeton University, is the author of numerous works of literary criticism, including Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (click hereto buy the book). Christopher Benfey is a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and the author of Degas in New Orleans (click hereto buy the book). He covered art for Slate for two years.
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