"Ethics trumps aesthetics."

Sendero Luminoso

"...that make the pathway glow..."

(Image from Wikipedia)

From articles such as this one, "Cameron's bag raises a few eyebrows" (Breitbart.com, June 23, 2003), most readers have by now learned that a bag carried by Cameron Diaz on a publicity tour in Peru offended perhaps more than a few Peruvians:

Actress Cameron Diaz appears to have committed a major fashion crime in Peru.

The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians. They suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency by touring there on Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong's favourite political slogans. While she explored the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in Peru's Andes, Diaz wore over her shoulder an olive green messenger bag emblazoned with a red star and the words 'Serve the People' printed in Chinese on the flap, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao's most famous political slogan.

While the bags are marketed as trendy fashion accessories in some world capitals, the phrase has particular resonance in Peru. The Maoist Shining Path insurgency took Peru to the edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations and bombings. Nearly 70,000 people were killed during the insurgency.

A prominent Peruvian human rights activist said the star of There's Something About Mary should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories. "It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims," said Pablo Rojas about the bag's slogan. "I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology" did so much damage. (© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved.)

Diaz has since expressed regrets:

Cameron Diaz said she was sorry for carrying a Maoist handbag in Peru.... "I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended. The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it," Diaz said in a statement e-mailed to the Associated Press. (Ray McDonald, "Actress Cameron Diaz Apologizes to Peru for Fashion Faux Pas," VOA News, June 25, 2007)

Diaz has more extenuating circumstances in her case than I did for a similar fashion crime, a false step that I took way back in my Berkeley days. In the spring of 1985, my friend Carla Koop and I took a Saturday excursion by way of the BART subway system from Berkeley to San Francisco, and in our walk out from Chinatown heading beyond the intersection of Broadway and Columbus Avenue, we hiked uphill in the direction of Telegraph Hill's Coit Tower, perhaps to see the feral Red-Masked Parakeets that inhabit that area.

Along the way, we encountered a fellow from the Communist Party, I suppose, who had a table set out on the sidewalk and covered with books and badges. Since the two of us were relaxed and at our leisure, we stopped to chat and look. The man wasn't getting much 'business' -- which may have been personally disappointing if ideologically more correct -- so he seemed happy to indulge our political tourism. At the time, I was reading Karl Marx's Capital -- working my way through all three volumes, though I confess that I couldn't finish volume 3 -- so I was familiar with Marx and had come to see some of the problems in his system. Still, I was curious about the left and what sort of analysis it had to offer, but I didn't know much about the various Marxist splinter groups, so I drew a blank when I saw a colorful badge that announced Sendero Luminoso! The fellow selling the badges told me that "Sendero Luminoso" meant "Shining Path" and that it was a Maoist revolutionary group in South America. Aesthetically, the badge was appealing to the eye, and the name "Shining Path" sounded cool, so on a whim, I purchased one and tried it on. A few days later -- as I recently told Kate Marie in my reminisence about this experience -- I was sorry that I had taken one:

In my younger, far more naive days, I actually tried on a badge by the Shining Path. Whoever designed it had an eye for color, so I kept it on -- knowing nothing about the group beyond vaguely being aware that it was 'Maoist' (whatever that meant).

I was later confronted by a student -- half Swede, half Greek -- who asked me if I really supported a terrorist organization that had killed thousands of Indios. I read up on the Shining Path and took the badge off.

And learned a valuable lesson: Ethics trumps aesthetics. Also: Know what you're 'endorsing.'

Kate Marie commented on this:

I like the lesson you learned. Ethics trumps aesthetics. I wonder if part of the problem for intellectuals and artists (of either the real or the Cameron Diaz variety) in the twentieth century was that so many of them came to believe that aesthetics trumps *everything,* no matter how they tried to dress up -- or dress down, as the case may be -- their aesthetic enthusiasms in ethical garb.

Cameraon Diaz can perhaps be more easily forgiven than I can, for all that she did was purchase a bag in China, whereas I knowingly bought a political badge from a Marxist vendor and wore it despite not knowing what the badge actually stood for. Lucky me that I wasn't a celebrity. And I suspect that more than aesthetics was involved. There was also a bit of the politics of revolt in my action, an irrational desire to feel myself a rebel.

But I see that I've left my friend Carla standing at that table on the slope up Telegraph Hill, so I'd better attend to her. I should note that in her natural beauty, Carla needed to make no artificial fashion statement -- nor did she feel an unreasonable compulsion to rebel -- and so declined to buy anything from our Marxist fellow, who seemed a bit put off by her lack of revolutionary fervor ... or perhaps more from missing out on an extra buck.

We didn't, however, trouble ourselves to find out which, but continued on our blitheful, youthful way up toward Coit Tower and the rumor of feral parrots.