Creative Maladjustment IV: Jujitsu & Beautiful Tools

It has occurred to me (and possibly to some of you) that I may never arrive at a functional definition of creative maladjustment, or specific instructions for carrying it out. But, as the saying goes, I know it when I see it. And I'm hoping it'll be possible -- or entertaining, anyway -- to tease out a few basic principles by looking at some examples.

Take the Miss Landmine Project, a beauty contest in Angola for women who have been maimed by the thousands of landmines that are leftover from nearly four decades of civil war. Norwegian director Morten Traavik visited Angola in 2004 and was struck by the tragic prevalence of amputees there, and also by the local passion for beauty pageants. In a stroke of genius, he put two and two together to create a fabulous celebration of ten proud, stunning, one-legged women. The pageant is an empowering reclamation of their bodies and their beauty, and also a staggering demonstration of the effect of landmines, and the war in general, on the people of Angola. Two winners were crowned in April by the First Lady Ana Paula de Santos (do yourself a favor and check out the pictures); each of them was also presented with a brand-new prosthetic leg. Traavik plans to take the contest to Cambodia next year.

One of the many things I love about the Miss Landmine pageant is the way it takes the most horrific aspect of an awful situation, grabs it head on, and turns it inside out to make it a driving force for change. This whole turn-the-power-of-the-thing-you-abhor-against-itself trick has been used by heroes from Odysseus to Brer Rabbit to Harry Potter. The Japanese martial art jujitsu is based on it. (I'm looking for more examples -- feel free to contribute any you can think of.) It definitely features heavily in many of my favorite instances of creative maladjustment.

They say that when the Nazis ordered the Jews of Denmark to wear yellow stars, King Christian declared that every Dane would wear one, starting with himself (this may be an urban legend, but it's such a good story, I don't care). I've heard of abortion clinics that ask their supporters to "sponsor a protester" and then go out to inform the pro-life picketers outside that each of them has raised $100 for the clinic today (this is a little snarky, but apparently effective). And I suppose using black slime mold as a canvas for wave art might conceivably fall into this category.

Or -- getting back to landmines -- a Danish company is developing a landmine detecting plant that blooms red when it is exposed to nitrogen dioxide -- a gas released, as luck would have it, by buried landmines. So you can sow a field with these seeds (from the air, if necessary) and then when the plant blooms, the red flowers show you where the landmines are. I have to thank my friend Alex Steffen and his World Changing crew for turning me on to these landmine flowers. As Alex points out, "the tools we use to change the world ought to be beautiful in themselves."

Which I would definitely put down as another principle of creative maladjustment that Miss Landmine hits squarely on the head & out of the park.

(More examples & principles soon... I'm reading up on trickster tales and soulless bureaucracies, not sure where it's taking me yet.)

PS: Here's Part V: A New Story
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