Human Flower Project

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Panagbenga(s)-- Plural

Competing leaders in Bagio double the parades for the 11th Panagbenga flower festival.

Streetdancers at Panagbenga.1
Bagio, the Philippines, 2/25/2006
Photo: Sun Star

The monster flower festival of the Philippines is sporting two heads this year, all the better for spectators.

Last fall, the mayor of Baguio decreed that the 2006 Panagbenga would be run by Nelia Cid, a local businesswoman who’d managed the 2005 event. But the city council swept in with a decree of its own, returning the festival operation to “lawyer Damaso Bangaoet Jr., the acknowledged founder of Panagbenga, who was reportedly eased out of the 2005 flower festival.”

In our experience, leadership roles for community events usually go begging. Is it the glory of flowers or perhaps something less ephemeral driving competition to run Panagbenga?

Whatever the backstaging or backstabbing, the two Panagbengas opened over the weekend, double-delighting tourists and hoteliers. In a spirit of accommodation, the mayor’s parade (under the auspices of Bagio Flower Festival Association/BFFA) went off Saturday, while Bangaoet’s (Bagio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc./BFFFI) took place Sunday.

“A police helicopter dropped rose petals as parade participants marched toward Session Road, the city’s main street.

“Elementary and high school students from various schools pranced in colorful body suits, played musical instruments wearing flower masks, and wore crowns and sun hats shaped like flower petals.”

A BFFA float, Panagbenga 2006
Photo: Sun Star

Saturday’s procession featured 19 flower floats and 13 teams of streetdancers, Sunday’s parade, ten floats and 15 groups of dancers. Bagio police estimated crowds at 400,000.

Another incentive to attend this year’s Panagbenga(s) was provided by Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who had declared a state of national emergency on Friday.

”Except for the presence of Surigao del Sur Representative Prospero Pichay, a staunch ally of Ms Arroyo, and a banner describing the flower festival as ‘petals for love, peace and unity,’ visitors like 70-year-old Luther Arboleda said the two-day festival was ‘just the right antidote to what’s happening in Manila.’”

For lots more on both Panagbengas, including photos, check out the Sun Star’s site.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Closing with Callas

Torino’s Winter Olympics staged closing ceremonies this evening, combining Venice Carnival and a phalanx of brides.

Vowing to return in four years? For some reason, women dressed as brides, with illuminated calla lilies, paraded to end the Torino Olympic Games.
Photo: Grigory Dukor, for Reuters

With, weirdly, a march of brides, the Torino Olympics ended this evening. Perhaps NBC will clarify the nuptial theme; thus far we’ve only seen pictures, showing a phalanx of ladies in white carrying faux callas booms, lit from within.

Are the flashlight flowers reminders of the Olympic torch? (Actually we discovered that the wedding theme was part of planning for the Athens summer games two years ago. Have the Italians copycatted the Greeks one more time?)

Our favorite Olympic moment: when Lindsey Jacobellis who, with a big lead in the first-ever women’s snowboard cross, hot-dogged the final jump, crashed, and then regrouped with a big smile for a silver medal. Who would have thought something so fast and loose could still happen at the games?

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Pretty Flowers or Good Bones

A change in standards—toward environmentalism and design—has flower fans grumbling over “France in Bloom.”

Anjoutey
Photo: France in Bloom

An intriguing article in the London Times today resurrects an old cultural dispute: the designers v. the ornamentalists—those with a taste for structure and those with a love of color.

Happily for English readers, the furor this time is being played out across the Channel, in France. Adam Sage’s story describes the tumult over shifting values in Le Concours des Villes et Villages Fleuris, the Competition for Flowery Towns and Villages, a.k.a. France in Bloom. Some 11,175 French communities from Marseilles (pop. 1.5 million) to Mandeure (pop. 600) apply to be evaluated by a committee of France’s tourism board. “The maximum four-flower rating is a coveted prize that attracts visitors and money, and sets the local mayor on the path to glory.”

Since the competition began in 1957, it should come as no surprise that styles and, if you will, “flower ethics” have changed. “The judges used to be concerned only with the flowers,” one parks official from Saint-Denis-de-l’Hotel noted. “Now they are concerned about recycling rubbish, graffiti, children’s playgrounds and just about everything except the flowers.”

Is the emphasis on community design over blossoms an advance or a retreat, as some allege, to “political correctness”? It depends on your view of petunia cauldrons.

Our friend Cyndy Clark years ago initiated an entirely unofficial competition in Lexington, Kentucky, “The White Flag Award.” (The award was named in mockery of a certain noted and pricey gardening catalogue and was meant to suggest that gardening was an act of conditional surrender to the horrors of existence.) Ms. Clark and her cohorts would drive through the neighborhoods of Lexington, pretentious and down at the heels, cookie-cutter and geodesically domed, naming winners in any number of sponteneous categories. One we particularly remember was a simple brick house on the northside that featured a large black cauldron crammed with purple petunias in the front yard : winner of “Best Petunias in a Cauldron” from the White Flag officials.

Montbeliard
Photo: France in Bloom

Looking over the magnificent website of Le Concours des Villes et Villages Fleuris, we see any number of examples of this ornamentalist aesthetic—though the French clearly prefer wine barrels to iron kettles for folksy container gardening. There have always been and, we can only hope, will always be gardeners who will do everything in the name of living color—the window box afficionados, the sort of gardener who will park a broken bicycle in the soil and grow clematis over the handlebars. We also acknowledge that such gardeners are considered a bit declasses.

Zen gardens, with crunchy gravel walks and stands of clumping (not spreading! never spreading!) bamboo, have the upper hand today. With their “good bones,” xeriscape gardens play Katharine Hepburn against the Mae West aesthetic of marigold beds.

Martine Le Sage, president of France in Bloom, framed the contrast not so much as a difference in taste (which it is) but as something more abstract and political: progress. “There has been an evolution,” she said. “It is important that the flowers don’t conceal a miserable environment. People who go to a four-flower village want to see the flowers, but they also want to see that it is a pleasant place to live. It’s true we’ve become politically correct. We encourage candidates not to have flower beds that consume too much water, for instance, and not to spray them with pesticides. We want flowers, but only in the right conditions.”

Mandeure
Photo: France in Bloom

But what if one’s conditions aren’t “right”? Are, in fact, “miserable”? Are people to be deprived of a rose bush because they can’t afford—or just don’t want—a truckload of white pea gravel?

No matter which side of the petunia cauldron you stand on, the Villes et Villages Fleuris website is an education and a joy. If you’re planning a trip to France, make sure to check it out and “design” your itinerary accordingly. If not, you can delight in splashes of color as well as more subdued environments all across France.

Granted, many if not most gardeners strive for excellent design and luscious color, too. Are we presenting a false dichotemy? Mais non.

“The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, servile—in a word, natural—enjoyment. which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures” (of green reeds, for example) “forever closed to the profane.”

For 500 more pages and insights on the question of taste from a brilliant Frenchman, see Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction. And while you’re getting through that tome, please let us know where you stand (and garden) vis a vis the ornamentalist/designer debate.

Friday, February 24, 2006

For a Better Deal than Kenya

Water shortages and strong local currency are driving Kenya’s flower industry over the border.

East Africa
Map: Welt Atlas

As a friend of ours formerly in the banking business once put it, “Money never sleeps.” Nowhere is this truer than in the highly competitive flower industry, where companies are always looking for—and finding—a better deal.

That impulse not so many years ago rocketed Kenya from nowhere into the heart of Europe’s flower market. Recent estimates put Kenya’s flower exports at $350 million. But how quickly investors move on.

Catherine Riungu’s recent story for the East African reports that Kenyan flower firms are departing for advantages elsewhere. “Kenya has commanded a 25 per cent market share (in Europe) since 2000, after edging out Columbia and Israel and, last year, its share increased to 31 per cent. But now, emerging suppliers such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda have designed intensive marketing programmes to promote their countries as friendly for foreign flower investors.”

Kenya’s farms are beset by several serious problems. There have been increasingly well-organized labor actions on the huge farms around Lake Naivasha. And, we now learn, there are dire problems with the lake itself. Riungu reports that Kenya has been in a drought since 1997, lake levels have steeply declined, and the government has been perilously slow to safeguard supplies of water.

“In 1995, the lake was designated as a Ramsar site, a wetlands of international importance due to its rich diversity of flora and fauna. But with the expansion of the 4,000-acre flower farming sector on the lake, the population around the lake has grown in the past 20 years from about 7,000 to about 300,000.”

A spokesperson for one large flower farm said that unless the government stops issuing more permits, “the flower sector will be wiped out in five years because there won’t be any water for irrigation.”

Further, the strong Kenyan shilling is stifling exports. Farms in neighboring Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania hold immediate competitive advantages. The Kenya Flower Council has joined other export business to pressure the Central Bank to stabilize the shilling.

Meanwhile, the flower industry in Ethiopia is booming.

“The major United Kingdom retail chain Morrisons has announced recently that it would soon stock Ethiopian flowers such as roses, carnations and the red-brown berried hypericum...Indian floriculturist Karuturi Networks was among the latest investors to set up shop in Ethiopia recently with a 50ha farm at Holeta, west of Addis Ababa, and plans to acquire an additional 50ha.” Riungu’s story also reports that five Kenyan growers—unnamed—have bought large farms in Ethiopia.

While Kenya struggles with its labor force, a drought, and the foot-dragging of its national bank, money—with open eyes—is looking elsewhere.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

On Vous Tend La Main

A closer look at Tuesday’s floral protest in Montreal: city workers evoke the impasse and point past it.

Wreath laid at Montreal’s hotel de ville
Photo: Courtesy of Syndicat des Cols Bleus

Merci beaucoup to the Montreal city workers union for sending these close-ups of their floral demonstration at city hall, February 21. We reported yesterday about a discrepancy in news accounts of Tuesday’s ”manifestation.” One source had said the cols bleus (blue collar workers) scattered roses on the steps of City Hall, another reported that the workers left funeral wreaths at the door of the labor ministry.

Apparently both accounts were right.

The workers are seeking to reopen collective bargaining on their contract, but after months of litigation—and a recent internal investigation that allegedly “caught” some of the cols bleus slacking off during work hours—relations have become acrimonious.

On the steps of City Hall
Montreal, Feb. 21
Photo: Syndicat des Cols Bleus

The red roses scattered on the steps of the hotel de ville are plaintive, general appeals, whereas the wreaths are more declarative. On one, with an emblem of shaking hands, a ribbon reads “On Vous Tend La Main.” Scraping the rust off our French, we translate this, “With a Hand Extended”—a message of reconciliation. The ribbon on the other wreath, a circle of red carnations sliced with a diagonal (the international sign of “NOT!"), says, “Lien de confiance”—or “No bond of trust here.” Both wreaths were laid against the big doors of the bureau of labor relations at Montreal city hall.

These fascinating floral demonstrations bespeak two different attitudes toward the current state of affairs: one an admission that good faith has been broken, the other a self-proclaimed effort to bind the tie back. By using funeral wreaths, the union suggests the situation has reached a dead end. So where do we go from here?

Overarching the specifics, of course, is the mere fact of flowers. By arriving with blossoms, the cols bleus stop short of surrender. But they say, “We’re the good guys in this situation”—a political strategy to disarm. Will it work?

The only union news we can report is that ten city workers will be docked pay, stemming from the undercover investigation. Canadian Presse reported, “One night crew under surveillance spent six minutes of their nine-hour shift fixing three potholes....The workers will lose one or two days worth of salary, depending on each individual case.

“Guy Hebert, mayor of the Ville-Marie district where the crews worked, said he thinks the majority of employees do their work very well.”

Perhaps the floral demonstration helped thaw the situation. We look forward to news of future developments from our readers in Quebec. (Many thanks to Jean-Paul Lahaie.)

And we welcome references to other labor actions involving flowers, whether historical or current-day.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

‘Manifestation’ in Montreal—Benign or Belligerent?

As workers in Montreal marched on city hall yesterday, some news sources missed the point of their floral demonstration.

Leaving wreaths
at Montreal City Hall
Photo: Radio Canada

Relations between Montreal authorities and the city’s “cols bleus”—blue collar workers— have been described variously as “strained,” “calm,” “angry.” Adjectives aside for the moment, consider that 1000 workers gathered yesterday at Lafontaine Park and marched to city hall, with flowers.

The high temperature yesterday in Montreal was 28 degrees F., not exactly prime conditions for a stroll or outdoor bouquets. What gives?

The workers, we’ve since learned, have been pressing for a new contract with the city of Montreal since at least 2004, when negotiations broke down. The union asked for an arbitrator to be brought in, but when the arbitrator sided with the city, imposing the existing contract, union members took their case to court. They lost and then appealed. 

In a 2-1 verdict, “the appeals court ruled the contract would remain valid, apart from one clause dealing with the harmonization of working conditions, which will be stricken....That means the contract, which was imposed on the blue-collars union in October 2004, will remain valid until August 2007.”

To make matters worse for the cols bleus, the city recently reported results of its secret investigation of work crews. According to CBC News, the city snoops “found the blue-collar workers spent most of their shifts on coffee break and aimlessly driving around the city.” The union has called the report “a smear campaign.”

Yesterday, in front of the hotel de ville, the cols bleus responded with flowers. But what did the flowers say? News sources were in wild disagreement.

According to CBC news, “The hundreds of workers marched calmly from Lafontaine Park to city hall. They then spread hundreds of roses across the front steps of Montreal’s city hall.” This source interpreted the floral gesture as conciliatory, “a message of good faith for labour negotiations.”

Others saw things quite differently. Presse Canadienne reported, “The demonstrators met at Lafontaine Park and walked to city hall where they deposited a funeral wreath which symbolized the climate at work.”

And en francais, here’s the same story from The Journal de Montreal’s website: “Plus de 2000 d’entre eux ont manifesté dans le calme, mardi, et ont déposé des couronnes mortuaires devant le bureau des relations de travail de Montréal et à l’hôtel de ville pour illustrer le mauvais état des relations avec l’administration municipale.” Note that this account also doubles the number of marchers, to more than 2000.

Thank to this Montreal blog we found a fuzzy photo from a local radio station (above), and indeed, these look like funeral wreaths. Not just one, but at least two, and perhaps many more. Nos amis canadiens, please send us better pictures! One of these arrangements seems an emblem of some kind. Can any of our readers decipher this message better or give us a more accurate report?

The acrimony between les cols bleus and city officials just doesn’t lend itself to long stemmed roses. “Blue Collar Workers Deliver Flowers to City Hall” (the CBC headline) is, in our view, misleading. Rather these wreaths seem apt expressions of a business relationship that’s gone lifeless. The couronnes mortuaires convey the union’s solidarity and humor, with perhaps a shade of menace. 

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Flower Pirates

Thieves broke into the computers of a major flower company in San Remo, Italy, last week, and may have snitched the secrets behind some rare rose varieties.

With all that necessity for light and air, floriculture might not seem an industry vulnerable to espionage. But in fact the trade secrets of major growers are tightly held, and extremely valuable.

Last week, burglars broke into the data bank of Angelo Musetti, a family owned company that has done business in San Remo for 40 years. This region of the Ligurian coast—the Italian Riviera—is justly famous for its floral production, with 450 wholesalers and 6,500 growers. It’s obviously a target for spies, too.  The thieves escaped with a computer, CD roms and floppy disks.

“Following the burglary, security is being tightened across the agricultural district. San Remo grower Antonio Marchese, who unveiled a new hybrid rose called Rosa mystica last year, has always refused to keep valuable information on a computer. ‘I trust only myself and a few of the people I work with,’ he said. ‘I take all the precautions I possibly can because there are a lot of pirates out there, ready to steal your work.’”

A new rose may take seven years as much as a million Euros to develop into a hot commodity. “It can, however, earn its creator 10 times that sum,” according to the Guardian.

Here’s a photo of the Musetti compound, and the story in Italian.

Those who’d like to learn something from these Italian growers, and do it legitimately, might want to consider the European Association for Research on Plant Breeding symposium “Breeding for Beauty” September 11-15, to be held, where else?, in San Remo.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Amendoeira—Taking Portugal by Storm

From January through March, the almond trees of Portugal flower, a “blizzard” that began in the South and will melt next month in a Northern festival.

City seal of Portugal’s
Vila Nova de Foz Côa
(with blossoming almond tree)

In the southern province of Algarve, the almond trees began blooming in mid-January. So now, as every spring, the fragrant “snows” of prunus amygdalus dulcis blossoms will move northward. Some storm trackers like racing after funnel clouds; our hope would be one year to spend six weeks following the almond blossoms, from Southern Portugal all the way to Vila Nova de Foz Côa.

The almond, as so many plants, came to Europe and then the New World from the East. And Portugal specifically has the Moors to thank for prunus dulcis. “About 763 CE Arab traders ventured from their capital in Baghdad to trade with other countries. They set up regular trade with Spain and Portugal” and eventually settled there.  “Because they missed foods from their homeland such as citrus fruits and almonds, they imported trees. Before long people of the Iberian Peninsula were developing a taste for such treats as marzipan and nougat,” and many other delicacies made with almond.

Santo Estêvão, Tavira (Algarve, Portugal, January, 2005)
Photo: Al-Farrob

The Amendoeiras em Flor (almonds in blossom) are Portugal’s announcement of spring, an echo of how China’s plum tree flowers greet the lunar New Year. In fact, the almond tree is closely related to plums, peaches and apricots. You may have noticed that peach pits look an awful lot like almonds in the shell. Rather that wearing its fruit as flesh on the outside, though, almond “fruit” grows within its shell, a supremely nutritious nut.

But what about those flowers? We’ve read that the almond branch, one of relatively few flowers mentioned in the Bible, is associated with Aaron’s rod. This branch, among its many other magical properties, burst into bloom signifying “the exclusive right to the priesthood of the tribe of Levi.”

Susan Heine dances as an almond tree
Mequon, Wisconsin
Photo: The Jewish Chronicle

Though Judaism is not noted for its floral customs, the almond branch is an exception, brought into the temple on sacred occasions and used to decorate “the seven branched candlesticks of the tabernacle.” We discovered a marvelous human flower project at Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue in Mequon, Wisconsin. “Susan Heine of the Firebrands of Praise dancers portrayed an Israeli almond tree as part of the group’s performance of Tu B’Shevat-related dances and music.”

A lovely stained glass design (below, right) depicting a Menorah with almond flowers is installed at a Santa Monica, California temple. While the almond may have originated in the Holy Land, it was brought to California by Catholic friars from Spain. (California growers supply most of the worldwide almond market now, but this year, due to a mild winter followed by a late frost, they’re having a tough time of it.)

Stained glass window with blossoming almond
Photo: Plachte Zuieback art glass

We find especially compelling the almond blossom’s mysterious message, of hope. What a feat of imagination (or faith) that is.

There are many legends of the almond tree in bloom, from the sad tale of Phyllis in Greek mythology, to considerable Persian lore, to a popular Portuguese story: we pass it on in celebration of this beautiful country’s multicultural history.

“A Nordic princess, recently married to an Arab king and tormented by a desire to see her own snow-covered lands once more, became seriously homesick, which brought great sadness and pain to the King. His ingenious remedy was to order thousands of almond trees to be planted. When they were in blossom, he ordered all the windows of the palace to be opened. The princess was amazed at encountering field after field of white blossom.  It reminded her of the snow-covered land of her own country and she was instantly cured.”

For those lucky enough to be in Portugal this season, here’s the schedule of events for Amendoeira em Flor festival, 2006, in Vila Nova de Foz Côa. It runs February 18-March 19.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

For the Winners

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino feature chutzpah and camellias, a Chinese native that thrives in the Piemonte.

Florence Baverel-Robert of France earned a gold medal and
an Olympic bouquet for her 7.5 km sprint in the Women’s
Biathlon February 16, in Cesana San Sicario, Italy.
Photo: Rudi Blaha, for AP

Gold, silver, bronze—medals commemorate. But flower glorify.

At the Winter Olympics, now underway in Torino, all the champions bow to receive their prizes, accept bunches of flowers, stand attentively for the winner’s national anthem, and then, at last, salute the crowd by holding up their bouquets. It’s the crowning moment of the games.

At these Olympics we’ve noticed that the flowers are elegant, tasteful and a bit understated, just as one would expect from Italian designers. Further, the winners’ bouquets feature flower varieties that Piemonte growers have been assiduously hybridizing for well over a hundred years. Some 200 growers from 96 towns in the region supplied the beautiful camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas and other blooms for the Torino Olympics. The flower ceremony thus celebrates not only bobsledders and ice dancers but florists and farmers too.

Castle and garden Isola Bella, Italy
Photo: Priyain Milan

We would have thought the subalpine air a bit nippy for such successful flower production, but we were wrong. “Mild and temperate climate, lack of persistent fog, too hot summers or prolonged intense cold” make this region ideal for “acidophiles” (acid-lovers) like azaleas, the very plants that rarely make one lap around the calendar in our own limey neighborhood. 

As well, this beautiful lake region has for centuries been a favorite of aristocratic types, who built sumptuous gardens and hired skilled horticulturists who could perfect varieties to live happily in this part of the world. Flower growers here have been “in training” a long time for the Torino Olympics.

Thanks to Mauro Gentile of the Commune de Torino. Mauro informed us that Lago Maggiore Fiori is in charge of arranging flowers for the international games. It’s a commission worthy of a medal or two.

In addition to the 3520 bouquets for winning athletes, Lake Maggiore Flowers designs and supplies “5,000 bowls for the reception desks located in the Olympic Family hospitality areas; 120 centrepieces for the buffet areas; 550 floral arrangements for guests and authorities attending the games” and more. There are seventy florists working on the event.

The Bahamian team won the Women’s 4 x 100-metre relay (and some marvelous pink flowers) at Sydney’s Olympic Games, September 2000.
Behind the Scenes

The Italian designers have featured winter camellias, pink, white, and red. (These are the heavenly flowers that Texas gardener Pete Walicek said were “too pretty to smell.") But in contrast with many other Olympics, the bouquets of 2006 are primarily green. Consider the contrast with Salt Lake City, Utah, (Winter Olympics 2002) whose flowers hollered American style with primary colors: yellow sunflowers, yellow roses, a few spots of red and delphiniums royal blue.

Just for fun, we offer a few more Olympic flowers, from Sydney’s games, dominated by something exotic and pink (readers, please help), and of course the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where flowers brilliantly surrendered pride of place to the winners’ classical laurel leaf crowns.

The Italians won the 2006 Men’s Cross Country 4x10k relay, raising their flowers to salute the crowd, as snow fell on Pragelato Plan.
Photo: Anja Niedringhaus, for AP

Initially, we were a bit disappointed that the Torino bouquets were so subdued, but as the days have passed, the winners claimed their honors, we finally see it. These clusters of deep green, dashed with red and white, are the colors of the Italian flag. They also look crisp and elegant against theatres of ice and backdrops of white mountains.

To the growers and florists of Northern Italy, and all the winners, Congratulazioni!

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Cinema Paradaisy

Philosopher Keith Howes, taking a fresh view of cinematic history, finds an “unbroken daisy chain” that reaches from Hamlet to Brokeback Mountain. Amazing, Keith! Thank you.

Drew Barrymore presents E.T. with a pot of flowers
E.T. (1982)

By

Have you noticed that a flower, or rather a family of flowers, has followed cinema from its humble beginnings as a fairground attraction through to its current computer generated/DVD/multiplex splendour?  There is actually an unbroken “daisy chain” linking one of our most pervasive flower families with our celluloid reel‚ life. I call it CinemaAsteraceae.

CinemaAsteraceae is simple:

Movies tell a story, create moods, dramatically underscore actions and feelings. Flowers tell a story, create moods, dramatically underscore actions and feelings.

Someone hands you a single rose. How do you feel? What thoughts, feelings, memories, scents does it conjure up for you?

Flowers illustrated moving pictures long before cinema as we know it began in 1896. From the 16th century onwards, people marveled at magick lanterns and kinescopic devices. It was a universal language.

The giving and receiving of flowers was a language, too - in the Arab world certainly, and also in the European. When Ophelia gave out her flowers in Hamlet each one was a message for herself (’mad’ and therefore in the enviable position of being able to speak truthfully) or for the other characters.

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)
starring Doris Day and David Niven

“There’s a daisy!” she says before giving one to her brother. And it is while picking daisies and other wild flowers that Ophelia falls into her watery grave. In Shakespeare’s time daisies meant premature death, and of course daisies were scattered on graves in order that death would quickly bring forth new life. “Pushing up daisies....”

Through the most popular art of the 20th century (still going strong, thanks to video and DVD), daisies and their relatives hint, underline, sharpen the focus and often “tell” the essential story through the scripts, locations, set decorations and costumes of films, from the cheapest and simplest to the most expensive and opulent.

Daisies will be up there on Oscar night, though no one will see them, accompanying the performances of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand in North Country, Reece Witherspoon and Joaquim Phoenix in Walk the Line and adding extra dimension to Spielberg’s Munich.

Spielberg, in particular, is a great devotee of daisies; he created one of the most obviously daisied films of recent decades, E.T., starring Drew Barrymore, his goddaughter. (Her movies ALWAYS have daisies in them because she loves daisies, is known as ‘Daisy.’) Others actors who co-starred with flowers in classic, key scenes include Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Hedy Lamarr, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart.

Humphrey Bogart!!? Just watch a DVD or good video print of Casablanca and LOOK.

Bogart’s Rick changes from a hard-boiled cynic to a tearful, broken-hearted, betrayed and abandoned lover...and daisies, real or design-patterned, indicate this change. One of the key scenes in the film, in American cinema and in many people’s private cinemas, includes daisies symbolic and actual. When you watch Casablanca, listen out for “As Time Goes By” and start carefully viewing until Bogart says “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Julie Harris and James Dean
fall in love in a field of flowers
East of Eden (1955)

The great thing about CinemaAsteraceae is that it demands almost nothing of you. As long as you know roughly what a daisy looks like (it’s not a carnation) and are flexible enough to extend your gaze to include dahlias, sunflowers, asters, zinnias, cornflowers, dandelions, fleabane (plus the occasional endive or lettuce) then all you have to do is press the “Start” button and watch.

If the film was made before 2003 you have about a 1/3 chance of seeing CinemaAsteraceae; if the movie was made after that date, well, EVERY film is CinemaAsteraceae from chick flicks (In Her Shoes, Rumor Has It...) to guy crash bang wallops (Jarhead, Syriana), from epics (Narnia, Lord of the Rings, King Kong) to arthouse (Joyeux Noel, Goodnight and Good Luck). It makes not one bit of difference if the film was made in Hollywood or Harare: daisies are universal, ubiquitous and play a role in our deeper understanding of human psychology.

In The Wizard of Oz, listen out for “We aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.” Then the daisies will appear.

And in Citizen Kane look for Kane’s chairback in the confrontation scene between one of the world’s most powerful men and his second wife.

Keir Dullea lulls H.A.L. to sleep: “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...”
2001, a Space Odyssey (1968)

And in 2001 when Dave Bowman starts disconnecting H.A.L.

And in The Passion of the Christ when the central and universal message of the film is conveyed in one moment, involving a daisy symbol that goes back many centuries.

When you are tuned into CinemaAsteraceae you get two films for the price of one: the film as intended by the makers, carefully structured so that one detail will not distract from the others; and the CinAst version, which concentrates on one floral object in order to illuminate other aspects of the film (Munich) or to signal certain core elements to the story (Walk the Line) or to act as connective tissue to a film’s time line or time span (Brokeback Mountain) or to make an ironic point which is at the heart of the whole film (Jarhead) or to comment on the warring elements in a leading character and their resolution (Syriana).

The point is not that there are daisies in each of these films (that’s just coincidental window-dressing) but why they appear in each particular scene with each particular character.

CinemaAsteraceae brings the human realms of art and technology across all film genres (yes, Michael Moore’s two documentaries have daisies in key positions) and all countries and all religious beliefs and all emotional and sexual preferences in rough alignment with members of the plant kingdom, a kingdom upon which we humans almost totally rely for life.

The human and daisy realms have been in communication for ages. Now in 21st century films, the dialogue is getting stronger and stronger. You ain’t seen nothing yet!

Hear Keith Howes’ lecture this Wednesday, in Sydney, Australia.

The Sunflower (1970)
with Sophia Loren

CINEMA PARADAISY
The Secret Language of the Screen
from The Sheik & Casablanca to
The Da Vinci Code & Superman Returns

Lecture by Keith Howes

WEDNESDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2006 * 2.30pm

THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
BLAVATSKY LODGE
THEOSOPHY HOUSE
Second Floor, 484 Kent St. near crn Bathurst St,
Sydney, Australia
Tel 02-9267 6955
Suggested Donation towards Expenses - Non-Members: $7, Concessions $3

Email: contact@TSsydney.org.au / web: http://www.TSsydney.org.au