#michael bernstein

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Bernstein and April Bleske-Rechek

Published: Apr 17, 2023

This is a guest post by Michael Bernstein (Brown University) & April Bleske-Rechek (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire). Michael Bernstein is an experimental psychologist and an Assistant Professor at Brown University. His research focuses on: cognitive biases, the placebo effect, pain, and substance use. He is an editor of the forthcoming book, The nocebo effect: When words make you sick.

April Bleske-Rechek is a differential and evolutionary psychologist. She is a full professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where she invests in mentoring undergraduate scholars and engaging students with viewpoints and data they are unlikely to be exposed to elsewhere. Her recent publications and presentations can be found on her personal website: bleske-rechek.com.

--

Let’s play a game. It’s called “Who said it: Robin DiAngelo or Adolf Hitler?” DiAngelo, in case you don’t know, is author of the NYT best-seller book, White Fragility.  We’ll give you a couple quotes and you think about whether it’s from DiAngelo or Hitler. Ready, go.

1)    Did Hitler say: “Not having a group consciousness, Jews often respond defensively when grouped with other Jews.” Or did DiAngelo say: “Not having a group consciousness, Whites often respond defensively when grouped with other Whites.”

2)    Did Hitler say: “Jews… creep up on the workers in order to win their confidence, pretending to have compassion.” Or did DiAngelo say: “Whites… creep up on the workers in order to win their confidence, pretending to have compassion.”

For the record, the first quote is from DiAngelo and the second quote is from Hitler. Though whether you were right isn’t exactly the point, as an astute reader would probably know Hitler is likely to use the language of “workers” and DiAngelo is likely to use the language of “group consciousness”. The point is that DiAngelo and Hitler are both advocating an approach that reduces behavior to group membership. They describe the behavior of all Whites or all Jews in highly critical terms and conclude that this is the nature of Whiteness or Jewishness. 

We know from decades of psychological research that people hold prejudices. But which groups in today’s society are more likely to be the target of expressions of prejudicial attitudes? And who is more likely to express them?

We decided to examine this empirically. Would agreement with the same statement, whether it be anti-White, anti-Black, or anti-Jew, vary depending on which group it referenced? And would political affiliation moderate attitudes?

We took 3 real anti-Jew quotes from Adolf Hitler, 3 real anti-White quotes from Robin DiAngelo, and 3 real anti-Black quotes from Stephen Douglas. (Douglas was a 19th century American politician who debated Abraham Lincoln). Then, we created anti-Jew, anti-White, and anti-Black variations of each quote, and showed it to 428 college graduates or college students (72% White). This means that 1/3 of participants saw the real quote verbatim, whereas the other 2/3 saw a version of the quote that was manipulated by changing the original (e.g., replace “Jew” with “White” or “Black”, or any other combination thereof). This is shown in the Table below. For each quote, participants were asked to imagine that an intellectual or political leader uttered the statement. They then indicated whether they agreed with the statement by selecting: “definitely no,” “probably no,” “probably yes,” or “definitely yes.” Participants answered this question for all nine quotes, and all were in the same frame (anti-Jew, anti-White, or anti-Black).

Table 1:

[ Red font is used to indicate the words that were manipulated across conditions. Quotes were identical otherwise. All quotes were altered to refer to either Jews, Blacks, or Whites for 1/3 of the sample. ]

The results were surprising. For 7 of the 9 quotes, agreement differed according to target group. On each of these, agreement was highest in the anti-White condition versus the anti-Jew and anti-Black condition. The figures below show the percentage of college graduates (left) and college students (right) who either “probably” or “definitely” agreed with at least one statement, broken down by target group and the original author of the quote (Hitler vs. DiAngelo vs. Douglas). You can see that agreement with both Hitler and DiAngelo is much higher in the anti-White condition versus the other two conditions. Hardly anyone agreed with the Douglas quotes regardless of target group.

For the Hitler and DiAngelo quotes we analyzed the interaction between target group and political ideology.1 This was significant for all quotes, and we once again looked at the percentage of people who agreed with at least one of the statements, shown below. Anti-White sentiment was highest across the board – for liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike. Anti-White sentiment was the highest for liberals compared to other political groups; anti-Jew and anti-Black sentiment was highest for conservatives compared to other political groups.

In a sense, our results are nothing new. We simply observed what has existed for millennia: People treat some groups preferentially to others. In the Bible, the Egyptian Pharoah enslaved the people of Israel. And interestingly, even God responded to this tribally by establishing Passover which “The whole community of Israel is to be included on the meal,” but “no foreigners are to eat it.”2  

Sweeping claims about all members of certain demographic groups seem to be on the rise in some circles. But unless you’re tuned into a relatively small number of heterodox writers like Bari Weiss or Coleman Hughes, you will rarely hear someone speculate about the counter-factual (e.g. Bob said all Whites do X vs. Imagine if he instead said all Blacks do X).

Coleman Hughes: “It [cops killing unarmed people] only gets pumped into the media when its a Black person, which gives the false impression that it only happens to Black people.” See also this survey finding that people in general, but especially liberals, massively overestimate the number of unarmed Black people killed by police.

In the language of Richard Dawkins, tribalism and prejudice may be memes. Memes, in this context, are ideas that “propagate themselves… by leaping from brain to brain” (Dawkins, 2016; p. 249). It is easy to see how tribal loyalties evolved evolutionarily (see Clark & Winegard, 2020), though finding that a mostly White sample had anti-White sentiment cannot be attributed to in-group preferences. Indeed, 55% of college students agreed with at least one Hitler quote applied to White people. Still, there is a historical precedent for people acting negatively towards their own group. In Nazi Germany, Kapos, who were prisoners but also functioned as SS guards, were often crueler towards their fellow prisoners (and frequently fellow Jews) than the Nazis themselves. 

This type of tribalism never seems to go well. Why would we expect it to benefit us now?

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An incomplete list of disclaimers that should go without saying:

1)      Nothing in our essay is meant as an argument that DiAngelo is as evil a person as Hitler, or for that matter, evil at all. Hitler is responsible for the murder of 11 million people and the death toll from just the European theater of World War II was at least 40 million. DiAngelo is not responsible for the death of anyone. But we can recognize this fact while still pointing to similarities in their thinking.

2)      Just because a person agrees with a quote from Hitler does not mean that person agrees with Hitler’s genocide.

==

Never forget that the Grievance Studies probe rewrote a section of "Mein Kampf" as intersectional feminist "scholarship" and it was accepted and published.

[vanalex]

🍂🍁🍂

[eternal--returned]

Andrew Bernstein ֍ Michael Jordan guarding Magic Johnson (1991)

[mikyapixie]

Elmo was introduced 39 years ago today on Sesame Street!!!

[lisamarie-vee]

[sheltiechicago]

The Man Who Made Everyone Look Famous: Richard Bernstein And His Iconic Interview Covers

[brokehorrorfan]

Halloween: The Official Making of Halloween, Halloween Kills & Halloween Ends will be published on October 17 via Titan Books. It's written by Abbie Bernstein (The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road, The Art of Godzilla: King of the Monsters).

The 240-page hardcover book serves as an official companion to the recent Halloween trilogy, featuring interviews with cast and crew accompanied by behind-the-scenes photography from the sets.

You can preview several pages below, where you'll also find the synopsis.

Four decades after the original Halloween took the world by storm, Miramax, Blumhouse Productions and Trancas International bring a terrifying new trilogy of films in the iconic horror franchise to cinemas. In these direct sequels to John Carpenter’s 1978 movie, Laurie Strode and the residents of Haddonfield once again fall prey to escaped killer Michael Myers. As the police desperately try to track him down, Laurie, along with her family, prepares to face her murderous nemesis one more time in a confrontation 40 years in the making… The making of this much-anticipated movie trilogy is covered in fascinating detail in this official companion book. The creative processes behind the stunts, costumes, production design and make-up effects are revealed through interviews with the cast and crew, while captivating on-set photography captures the shooting of the key scenes and action set-pieces.

Pre-order Halloween: The Official Making of Halloween, Halloween Kills & Halloween Ends.

[greekabooo]

As someone who overanalyzes music in shows or rly any media in general, Leonard Bernstein's rendition of Shostakovich symphony no.5 in d minor is an interesting choice in Good Omens.

Other people have already dissected the original symphony so I recommend to check that out but TLDR, Aziraphale is basically Shostakovich where the latter pissed off the soviet union because his opera was deemed too inappropriate. Just like how Aziraphale pissed off the entire Heaven by thwarting the great plan. Shostakovich then composed this symphony to celebrate the union and appease the dictator BUT NOPE ACTUALLY it's all sarcasm and this so called worship is fake and the saltiness is turned up to the max. Just like how Aziraphale in ep 6 says that heaven is the side of truth and light but deep down he knows it's not at all perfect because his boss tried to literally wipe him out of existence and his co workers despise him.

Back to Leonard Bernstein, he was famously (or infamously) known for conducting the synphony's last movement twice the speed. Some complained that it took away the original intent of the slow march and the hollow quality of “forced celebration.”

For comparison,

Original tempo:

Bernstein's version:

The other side of the argument (and a side that Shostakovich probably agreed on because he praised Bernstein's take) is that it heightens the sarcasm. That it sounds extremely "happy" and "corny" to the point where it takes a kind of manic and deranged quality.

It's like Aziraphale saying WOW I LOVE HEAVEN SO MUCH IT'S THE BEST but in reality, he's seething in anger at the end of the season where he lost Crowley, his lover and best friend, just because he needs to go back to heaven and fix their shit.

Or maybe it's just that the director of the show rly loved Bernstein's conducting because he was that bored during covid.

[marxonculture]

A Quick Note on 'Jewface', Maestro and Oppenheimer

Given that my presence on this platform is filtered specifically through the lens of Jewishness in film, and that I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the Jewish identity of Leonard Bernstein – the subject of Bradley Cooper’s controversial upcoming film, Maestro – I thought I’d weigh in on the current discourse.

For those who are unaware, one of the biggest films due to premier as part of this year’s autumn film festival season is Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. The film is said to be a non-traditional biopic of 20th century American composer Leonard Bernstein, focusing largely on his complex relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Controversy has arisen around the Netflix production due to images from the trailer featuring Bradley Cooper as Bernstein wearing an enlarged prosthetic nose. Voices within and outside Jewish communities have loudly criticised Cooper for caricaturing Jewishness, using the term ‘Jewface’ which describes the act of a goyische (non-Jewish) actor using prosthetics to make themselves look more like a cartoonish, imagined Jew.

While it is true that Bernstein did own a decent sized schnoz, the prosthetic utilised by Cooper is significantly bigger, and more defined than the nose was in reality. From a personal standpoint, I do find the use of this prosthetic to be pretty discomforting, but I think it speaks more to Cooper’s insecurity about the size of his own nose, which is a lot bigger than perhaps he would like to admit (and not too dissimilar to Bernstein’s actual nose!), than it does about his perception of Jews. That being said whether it was his intention to cartoonify Jewishness or not, Cooper has ruffled feathers in a way that is crass rather than substantive. Bernstein’s living relatives have come out in support of Cooper and his decision to use the prosthetic, saying that Bernstein would not have minded, but I think their statement rather misses the point. The nose is not about Bernstein himself, but about highly visible representations of a tiny minority that are stereotypical and incredibly reductive.

Funnily enough, however, Cooper’s use of ‘Jewface’ is the element of Maestro that bothers me the least. I have been fairly vocal since the film’s announcement about how I believe the production as a whole to be a pretty catastrophically bad idea. Leonard Bernstein is my number one creative hero – as a composer, public intellectual and educator, I don’t think there has been a single Jewish figure in American history who has had more of a positive impact on culture.

As I mentioned, I have written extensively about Bernstein in an academic context, and in researching him, it became clear to me just how vitally important his Jewish identity was to him throughout his life. It informed his music (even West Side Story, which was initially conceived as a story about Jews and Catholics on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), and his role as an educator (he often described his pedagogy as rabbinic in nature), and he was deeply, foundationally affected upon learning about the realities of the Holocaust which caused what he described as ‘aporia’, a state of being where he was too overwhelmed to write a single word for years. Bernstein’s complicated relationship to sexuality was also hugely significant in his life. There is still debate to this day about whether, given an open, accepting environment, he would have identified as a gay man or as bisexual. He had significant, passionate relationships with both men and women, and was an early major advocate for HIV/AIDS research.

My problem with Maestro is that I don’t have faith in Bradley Cooper as a writer/director, to sensitively depict these two massive aspects of Bernstein’s identity. Focusing on his most significant straight-passing relationship as the centre of a film called Maestro does not inspire confidence that the film won’t totally whitewash Bernstein’s Jewishness, or reduce his sexuality to the pain it caused his wife (in a similar way to other reductive music biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman). Cooper’s own identity is significant in that he is starting from a place of remove from the identity of his subject, which isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but when there are other filmmakers out there who are far better suited to a project like this, both from an identity perspective and a thematic one, it’s hard to justify why this project exists at all in its current form.

Some have pointed to the involvement of Steven Spielberg as a producer on the project as hope for better representation, but given that Cooper and Martin Scorsese – a filmmaker who I have criticised in the past for the didactic, Christian morality of his movies – are also credited producers, I don’t think it’ll make much difference. I’m more comforted by the involvement of Josh Singer (Spotlight, The Post) and his contribution to the screenplay, given his Jewishness and his work on thematically sensitive historical films.

I’m not writing off the film entirely just yet. I had similar worries about Oppenheimer, given the significance of the scientist’s Jewishness in his decision to start work on the bomb in the first place. Nolan and Cillian Murphy, thankfully, proved me wrong in the director’s decision to focus on the differing Jewish identities of Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, and I.I. Rabi, and the nuanced ways in which their characters were informed by Jewishness, as well as Murphy’s attention to detail in his performance. It’s certainly possible for non-Jewish filmmakers to consider Jewishness in a valuable way (see Todd Field’s Tar or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza for a couple of recent examples), but the set-up of this project makes it hard for me to believe that Cooper is one such filmmaker.

To end with a little self-gratifying what-if, I thought I’d lay out what would be my ideal Bernstein biopic: a film centred around the relationship between Bernstein and his fellow queer, Jewish composer and mentor, Aaron Copland, the letters they wrote to one another, and the fallout of their brushes with McCarthyism which had vastly different outcomes. I would keep Cooper as Bernstein (without the prosthetics!) because he can convincingly play the man’s charm, I’d cast Michael Stuhlbarg as Copland, and get Todd Haynes to write and direct. Haynes is Jewish, gay, and has a great deal of experience directing sweeping, romantic, dark, and political films. He knows how to portray music on screen and has several masterful period-pieces under his belt, with Carol in particular as a shining example of complex, historical queer romance in America. Honestly, this would be my dream film project.

[bookmaven]

LORD OF LIGHT by Roger Zelazny (New York: Doubleday, 1967) Cover by Howard Bernstein.

LORD OF LIGHT was awarded the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and nominated for a Nebula Award in the same category. Two chapters from the novel were published as novelettes in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – "Dawn" in April 1967, and "Death and the Executioner" in June 1967.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (New York: 1967) Cover by Grey Morrow • (New York: Avon, 1969) Cover by Ron Walotsky.

(London: Panther, 1971) Cover by Michael Johnson. • (London: Panther, 1973) Cover by Bob Haberfield

• (London: Methuen, 1986) Cover by John Harris. • (London: Gollalncz, 1999) Cover by Fred Gambino

. • (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) Cover by Steve Stones. • (China: Beijing Publishing, 2015)

[tv-moments]

Breaking Bad

Season 5, “Hazard Pay”

Director: Adam Bernstein

DoP: Michael Slovis

[mariocki]

Silent Rage (1982)

"John killed him, right? Didn't he?"

"I don't care if he murdered a hundred people. We're scientists, not moralists. You know that we're all expendable. John Kirby is the future. Because of him it's possible that millions of lives can be saved."

"Only if we could have perfected the process, but there's no time. I mean, nobody's going to give us the Nobel Prize for murder."

[cinemaquiles]

Filhos de Twister: duas pérolas com tornados para quem tiver coragem!

[eternal--returned]

Andrew Bernstein ֍ Kobe Bryant attempts a dunk during the All-Star Game (1998)

[mikyapixie]

55 years ago today Sesame Street premiered on television!!!

Happy anniversary!!! Thank you for giving so many children a headstart in life with so many joyful memories!!! Many thanks to the wonderful cast members who are no longer around with us but are in our hearts & in Sesame Street in the sky!!! I know Sesame Street will keep those old episodes forever, for historical sake & won’t let those treasure memories disappear!!! Single handedly the best television program for kids EVER!!! Generations of families, including my own, learned many perspectives in a gentle & straightforward manner on this program!!! Not just academic, but more important socially!!! I will forever be grateful!!! Happy Sesame Street Day!!!

[genevieveetguy]

. There's a saying in Chile about never standing under a bird that's full of shit. And I've just been living under that fucking bird for so long, it's actually become comedic.

Maestro, Bradley Cooper (2023)