paean

The Oscars ceremony opens with a cinematic paean to Los Angeles, then Ariana Grande sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

But the admiring, even celebratory, tone of these paeans to hot actresses remaining hot well past Hollywood’s traditional expiration date masks the shadow side of this phenomenon: The wizened, terrifying hag.

It is a resonant paean to darkness and death, modern but also eager to build on the worlds created by its predecessors.

The lyrics are a pop-song paean to colonialism, reminiscent of Hegel’s 19th century thinking when he dismissed Africa as “unhistorical, undeveloped” and “devoid of morality, religions and political constitution.”

And Mike Gold, author of “Jews Without Money,” sings a paean to an empty, garbage-strewn lot in his neighborhood that doubled as his beloved playground.