A Sparrowhisperer's Musings ... on film, film criticism, and of course sparrow whispering

none.

2011-05-03T03:43:00.001-05:00

Our nation's best and the brightest catch a bootlegged version of Atlas Shrugged (up yours movie studio exploiters of talent and imagination!).

Super Bowl Ads: Groupon Genius

2011-02-09T02:14:00.009-06:00

Ah, aside from rising a bit out of an otherwise unfunny crop of Super Bowl ads, Groupon got its troll out and reeled in a great deal of good ol' American Moral Outrage (TM). And for being such good sports, the average Super Bowl party-goer wrinkled his nose, shook his head, and snuck a few furtive glances at his neighbor, and after pausing for an awkward silence doled out the usual tripe about bad taste. And if our party-goer happened to be some first-rate hack he would churn those words out the next day for an editorial piece.

But of course what was exactly in bad taste? Surely it was not the disgusting flavor of first-world hypocrisy that we greedily lick off our greasy plates. Perhaps it was that of having the knife tickle our ribs a bit too much for our liking. But even then the point was still put rather tacitly (tacitly enough to let the superficial outrage make a couple of rounds among those less perceptive). Perhaps it was a sense of infringement on a spiritual time uniquely marked out for consumerism worship epitomized by a pop music star selling luxury cars by milking the last drips of oozing pus out of an already dead city. "Raw emotional impact" indeed.

At heart, as the Groupon ads suggest, all we want to buy, eat, sight-see, wax, but not before purchasing the relevant bits and pieces to convince our neighbors of our moral standing. Perhaps it's time to stand-up, own up, and to take a side. As the commercials show there are two sides: the first half or the second; Liz Hurley doesn't hide from the fact that the ad pays her bills. On the other hand, what has been pointed out is all so true that I really don't think that there is a lesson to be learned at all other than to laugh, shut the fuck up, and visit groupon.com. Job well done.

Groupon "Tibet" ad:

Groupon "Rain Forests" ad:

Groupon "Whales" ad:

Missing (Costa-Gavras; 1982)

2010-11-04T04:12:00.031-05:00

I saw Costa-Gavras's Missing (1982) pretty much thinking that I knew everything that was going to transpire. And after seeing it, my expectations concerning the political message and the whole story of the father trying to find the son turned out to be largely correct. In most cases this predictability would be good enough mark out a film as a poor one, yet in the case of Missing this wasn't the case. Instead, Missing is a good film precisely for this reason.

Gun Shots

Missing's plot of an American father finding a missing son in a country (presumably Chile) undergoing an American backed coup comes dangerously close to falling into the traps of a banal conspiracy movie. Yet what stands out with Missing is that most of it carries genuine bite. For instance, the intermittent shots of gunfire are not merely part of the soundtrack to bring atmosphere, but each and every one has the intended effect of getting the audience to jolt up as if to the crack of a whip; it is meant to bother us. This response is also well-mirrored by the figures inhabiting the screen. Every gunshot seems to conjure an awkward moment of silence as if to mourn whichever poor bloke was brought face first to the pavement. As a reminder or a representation of how the violence cannot be shoved into the background, the gunshots are equivalently not something we, and the characters, can be desensitized of over the course of the film.

It is quite interesting how the above weaves in with the father's quest to find his son. In the film it is often the case that when Jack Lemmon's character wants to say something, there is a violent background reminder of the strife. At first, Lemmon's character treats these distractions as annoyances, or as one might imagine as problems of the natives. Yet as the film progresses, the line between the big picture and the small can no longer be drawn. The father's single-minded quest in search for his son dissolves into an acknowledgment that finding his son is not simply a matter of pushing the right buttons in a sea of chaos; the chaos determines what buttons can be pushed at all. This in turn gives the gun shots new meaning, any single shot could be the one that brings his son down, and every shot is one that brings someone's son down.

The essential progression of the father character is his coming to terms that the power of the state and its manifestations of violence cannot be dissociated (or ignored) from the livelihood of each and any individual subject to that power. Thus, the film provokes the idea that here is no apolitical or indifferent path to be chosen, where there are innocents, perpetrators and victims; there are no innocent bystanders because everyone is or will eventually become a victim.

Titles

Another interesting point about Missing is how the "based on a true story" titles is treated. Instead of opting for merely written titles, they are accompanied here with a narration by, I think, Jack Lemmon. As a result, it is another rather ingenuous way of getting that done and over with. The narration clearly lends the element of opinion rather than the intention of presenting fact. Coming from the mouth of the father figure, the realities proclaimed to be depicted in the film are leveraged by the intended effect of the audience's acknowledging the narrator's subjective bias. In Z, of course, there is famously also the use of an intrepid method to deal with the insipid assertions of factual reliability.

When compared to a great film such as Z and without Raoul Coutard, Missing appears to lack the sorts of virtuoso moments and energetic camerawork. However, Costa-Gavras's Missing is in many ways more unsettling. Perhaps the most memorable shot in the movie is the one in the corpse ridden morgue that gradually lifts up to the glass ceiling revealing the darkened forms of even more bodies. The slow deliberate upward movement of the camera isn't meant to surprise us or offer commentary but to merely depict with a certain deliberate resignation that this is what men do to one another and what power does to many thousands.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Loach, Ken; 2006)

2010-11-02T03:43:00.007-05:00

The biggest problem that I had with The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Loach, Ken; 2006) was how sparse it was in filling in the social-economic and political climate of Ireland in the 1920s. Like a painting done in water colors when it should have been done in oil, the film lacks the lush brush strokes of style, atmosphere, and worse of all content. The narrative elements that are present hardly cover the film satisfactorily. And even where it does there is nothing special with how the material is presented, which is somewhat of a surprise given that it won a Palm d'Or at Cannes.

The plot is pretty much as follows. The British are painted as brutish oppressors who beat, torture and murder the rural residents of hamlets. The Irish are the not-so helpless oppressed who quickly organize themselves in resistance and exact an equal amount of violence on their oppressors. When the British are finally evicted, the Irish start to fight among themselves and literally brings meaning to the phrase of 'brothers killing brothers'. When we need to see footage of guerrillas training it is given, and also when they are tortured as is the customary scene with the pulling out of finger nails. Throw in a socialist message and that pretty much sums up the film (as well as the history and will-be history of the third world).

But all this isn't quite enough to prop up a film about the conditions that gave rise to the IRA, the war of independence, and the divergent politics found within the IRA. In the film, when the first Irish court is set up the first judgment is against a local businessman who has accumulated 500% interest against a helpless old woman. How very glorious. Yet the whole scene smirks of pitiful Marxist propaganda. Thank you, but instead of telling us how it is like why not show us what it is like to live in Ireland 1920. Show us the abject poverty and from there we can understand the circumstances that gave rise not strictly to a nationalistic movement but a social one. Instead, the usual tripe of the oppressed v. the oppressor is fed to us and the revolution loses anything that would render it distinctly Irish. In spite of the nice costumes, accents, and shots of the green hills, the film doesn't place us there, and this is the element that it desperately lacks.

The presentation is also helplessly episodic and I had a problem feeling the constitutive parts gel together into a cohesive whole. As a drama, there were no climatic moments or ones that dragged at ones heart. Even in the torture scene, hardly anything registers; we've seen that before countless of times, now let's move on. The same goes for the final execution. As a whole, the movie failed to hit a note and was considerably less fun than something like The Patriot, though regretfully I must say.

Thorbjorn Jagland's talks bullshit, therefore he is a cow

2010-10-23T01:28:00.017-05:00

In my previous post I have already written on the issue of why Liu Xiaobo winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize makes a complete farce of and denigrates both the Nobel Peace Prize as well as Mr. Liu's cause. There is also the inevitable controversy with the PRC, especially concerning her somewhat heavy-handedly orchestrated political/economic fall-out with Norway. Arguably due to this matter, Thorbjorn Jagland (the head of the Committee) has felt obliged to write an explanation/defense of the decision, which was recently published as an Op-Ed on the New York Times website.Unfortunately, in the piece Mr. Jagland merely takes a further step to demonstrate what an utter disgrace and humiliation he is to civilized and reasonable people around the world.

This painting is my biggest accomplishment, so says my mommy.

The piece, titled "Why We Gave Liu Xiaobo a Nobel", allegedly offers a defense of the Committee's decision. Yet this begs the question of why they should feel obligated to defend themselves at all. It is their award after all. Even more so, shouldn't winning a Nobel "Peace" Prize inherently say something about the "why"?

In my previous post, I pointed out that Mr. Liu's being awarded the prize was that he had no accomplishments to warrant it. Simply put, that is the problem. And from what I can understand, the title of Jagland's recent piece clearly suggests that this massive elephant has not yet left the room. If we were only to award the Peace Prize to people who undoubtedly helped make strides in global human development, then the explanation of "why" would only need a line or two and a big "fuck you" to Beijing. However, Mr. Jagland's explanation takes thirteen paragraphs of sophistry to respond to the equally silly and insubstantial accusations by the dictatorial committees in Beijing.

In the piece of sophistry there are two points to which Mr. Jagland responds: i) the argument that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has no right to interfere with China's internal affairs; and ii) the argument that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo only sets China's human rights development further back. Yet as silly as these arguments might seem they don't touch on the real issue of Mr. Liu's accomplishments. In regard to the PRC's points: i) people can interfere as much as they want in as much as romping around a fire in tribal uniform counts as interference; ii) the persons/group most capable of setting back human rights development in China is the CCP. So naturally, Mr. Jagland attacks the CCP's whinings with a relish, far more preferable than to sit face to face against his own inanity.

So where exactly is evidence of Mr. Jagland's stupidity? Look no further than the ammunition he himself provides: "China has every reason to be proud of what it has achieved in the last 20 years. We want to see that progress continue, and that is why we awarded the Peace Prize to Mr. Liu." But there is no logic here short of the assumption that Mr. Liu will somehow manage to sustain Chinese progress into the future. Giving the Prize to Mr. Liu will "see that progress continue" because ...? What reason do we have to think that this is the case? From all known facts, Mr. Liu has had no hand in helping China "progress" in the last twenty years (a least not the sort of base progress insinuated). Furthermore, Mr. Liu has not demonstrated any capacity for assisting China's development into the future. I cannot identify any element of Mr. Liu's past behavior that would suggest Mr. Liu being causally efficacious in China's future development (and he is after all in jail). If what was really desired is "that progress continue", then there are surely better candidates. And among better candidates why look further than whoever was responsible for the past growth, the proviso being that an individual can be identified at all.

Perhaps we should read more into Mr. Jagland's words. Could it be that what Jagland really meant was that if one were to make a sacrificial goat of Mr. Liu then this would trigger further progress in China. Having the blood of Mr. Liu drip onto a sacrificial altar would surely appease our wrathful Gods. Supposing that the Gods also seem to agree with this line of reasoning, Mr. Liu would really be quite useful in affecting change and progress. In spite of the Gods, the reeking smell of thoroughly unscientific reasoning makes me wonder whether we should abandon it. Nonetheless, or at least according to Mr. Jagland, Mr. Liu's hidden magical attributes seem to have surpassed our wildest expectations. If that is so, a close eye must indeed be kept on this as Mr. Liu might be of some use after all.

Alas the whole point goes back to the simple question of: "Why We Gave Liu Xiaobo a Nobel." A sign that something has clearly gone ajar is when awarding a prize of this magnitude needs a belated op-ed explanation. Picking "human rights" off of a tree and taking a bite out of it is not a justification. Then realizing that the fruit tastes like bullshit should not trigger a feeble attempt at explanation that speaks eloquently about one thing while evading the matter at issue. Yet this is exactly what Mr. Jagland has done. Giving the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Jagland, the explanation for this behavior could very well be mind-control nanobots, or mysterious magical properties, properties that make Mr. Jagland completely incomprehensible to an ordinary human being. Or he could just be dense.

Peace

2010-10-11T00:00:00.001-05:00

Blame me for having the brain of a beauty pageant contestant, but doesn’t everyone just want world peace? Surely, and without question, this is the ultimate end for all of humanity. Would you like to hold hands and dance to some Strauss? I would. I would also prefer living on Sesame Street to MLK Jr. Drive, and I'm gonna stick my neck out and conjecture that so would others. Even the evil folks, say, the Chinese Communist Party love peace, or at least this is what their diarrhea of “harmonious society” slogans would suggest. But then again they have the easy way out, with all their pruning, trimming, and locking up of political dissidents, while we have to suffer the ignominy of sitting with rustic firebrands with names like “Sarah Palin” on the adult table. Supposing that we don't have access to the dark arts in solving these problems, though many would love to cut and paste this "Palin" character back where she belongs, we are left with the serious questions of how to positively arrive at the desired ultimate point. What should one in the twentieth-first century do to bring about world peace?

As a start, we could fight fewer wars; quarrel less in general; identify a way to better mitigate economic cycles; design better technologies to feed, heal more people; improve efforts to eliminate Malaria; devise incentives to get people to use condoms; eat less; read more books; burn fewer ones; design useful technologies to reduce carbon emissions; use the sun to dry laundry; car pool; spend more time with our families, spend more time with our neighbors; learn more about them; learn more about other religions; learn more about tolerance; text less; blog less; watch less Fox ... and so on. I stop because my imagination is so limited.

Unlike me, there are wonderful imaginative people who spend their lives dedicated to making our world a better place. And among these, there are those who have, aside from their dedication, proceeded to actually affect the world in a way such that ours would be a significantly worse one independent of their existences. In this class, there are those scientists, policy makers, philanthropists, scholars, etc. who have made substantive contributions instrumental in bringing peace to our world. And in recognition of their accomplishments, fellow human beings clap their man/woman paws and/or give those wonderful people a prize, which is sometimes attached to a briefcase with cold hard cash. The most prestigious of these human awards is called the Nobel Peace Prize, which is somewhat ironically named after Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite, although the substance was probably intended for purposes other than converting humans into red mist. The Prize is very useful because winning the Nobel means winning a lot of cash. Thus the award is only slightly more prestigious than winning America's Got Talent, because Simon Cowell pays out the same amount but only over the course of 40 years. People like cash.

In years not so far away, the Nobel Peace Prize has become more known for eliciting butt-scratches (when you've scratched your head for long enough, you get bored and scratch your butt instead). When the greatest accomplishment of a recipient is, aside from creating offspring, is the Nobel Peace Prize, then something clearly has gone astray. Thanks to this, the recent history of the Prize raises some delightful conundrums. If, for example, Barack Obama's reign is one of peace and not terror, should Thorbjørn Jagland be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for contributing to world peace by motivating an American president in the right way? Perhaps Jagland can even make an exception and award a posthumous Nobel to his mother for making the accomplishment that is he, the one who contributed to world peace by gifting Obama a Nobel, who as a result did not extend our imperialistic-flavored tentacles, which in turn is conducive to world peace. But what should Jagland do if Obama fails to get re-elected and moves back into his mother's basement?

Furthermore, since most of the recent Peace prizes have been awarded for effort, struggle, or lion-taming with a toothpick, why should someone stop short of giving every member of the human world a Nobel? Even pageantry contestants know of the virtues of world peace, and with the sum of humanity's eyes aligned at the same target we could all do with some additional encouragement. This would be akin to being awarded a conciliatory prize on America's Got Talent and be paid a million dollars over the course of a couple hundred millennia. But hey it's the effort that counts. Right?

By "handing" this years Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, possibly the most ridiculous committee in the world has managed to outdo itself. The question is what exactly has Liu Xiaobo done to facilitate the democratization of China? Has there been a single step forward that can reasonably be ascribed to him, or any other Chinese political dissident for that matter? Aside from participating in Tiananmen and sitting still for the past twenty years, Liu has written a charter calling for democratization and greater freedoms, and more human rights. Wikipedia claims that as of now 8,600 people have signed the charter, which would be awesome if the PRC only had a population of ten thousand. So why the award? "For his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”. Yet the last time anyone checked, the PRC still isn't a democracy and Liu is currently jailed there as what one might call a "political prisoner". If China's current status is testament to Liu's magical abilities of having reshaped the nation, then his skills are pretty pathetic, and yes, people aren't magical. So it goes back to this: could we have done without Mr. Liu, courageous and virtuous he may be? Sorry, but yes.

The argument that awarding the prize to a notable political dissident is likely to precipitate some sort of internal change to the PRC is quite misguided. Like the masses that arose in Beijing 1989 and those who hunger-striked on Tiananmen Square, the hard lesson is that the CCP does not spontaneously combust simply because there is too much heat. The only place where that seems to happen is Japan's crispy quarterly cycle of Prime Minister rotations. Even in the America we have to wait four years before popular pressure kicks in. And in the case of China the story is tells itself. Deng Xiaoping was not going to relinquish power because some kids whose balls had barely dropped took to the streets. For God's sake, he survived the Long March. As humanity has learned from its fair-share of historical examples, you topple fascism by beating it to death. And even if Fascism isn't the issue in this case, giving out a little prize (hoping that it isn't benign) isn't going to help especially if no one cared enough to begin with.

Nevertheless, the fact is, as of today, that Mr. Liu's most notable contribution to the democratization of China is his having won the Peace Prize, which despite being a fact says nothing about democracy in China being fulfilled. Quite simply there is no especial distinction to Mr. Liu's name other than that fact which alone gives him precedence over his then-contemporary Tiananmen dissidents, say, Wei Jingsheng. Unhappily even among dubious honors, this one could have equally and rightfully been awarded to any of the many Chinese political dissidents. Ask: What are the criteria to mark out any one as being particularly exemplary? The contest clearly isn't one of courage and virtue, jailhouse tats, or electric burn marks. If democracy in China is a serious issue or an achievement in the works, then no tussle-of-the-hair can seriously be dealt to an individual especially since the project/movement, aside from not having lifted off, has no single symbolic leader or entity.

In preparation to broadcast the event, NBC found the most sexy picture of Mr. Liu they could find. The story was then announced by Brian Williams who didn't even have the decency to learn how to properly pronounce Mr. Liu's name.

Instead, and fuck-all, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee comes riding on its gleaming white horse guns-a-blazing to anoint a king to Chinese democracy (o, I lament, how undemocratic!). The irony, which is painful to my heart, is that now the solidarity of the movement has its origin not in the work of any of the men and women who have thrown themselves selflessly against a brick-wall cause, but in the hands of a couple of former Norwegian politicians. A five person Committee of all things, and we thought the CCP was abominable! Order yourself an orgy, give yourself a big congratulatory hug Super Friends, because the real agent of change is in you!

It should thus be made clear that the point of this gibberish is not to belittle the work of many who have tried to make the PRC a better place, though little they individually may be. Those who have done enough to belittle righteous causes in order to pawn cute little photo-ops are those various joke Committees. We know this: applauding the CCP for taking the PRC down a shit hole and then back up is a no-no, despite any genuine accomplishment made in the later years that have brought hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. Whenever it strikes the Committee's fancy, or whenever China bashing is at it's most sexy (it always is), they jump on the wagon (they never left). For instance, the Dalai Lama's cause wasn't good enough for them until it became necessary to capitalize on Tiananmen (30-years after his exile for heaven's sake). And clearly the Committee has run out of ideas since giving the award to Obama.

All this naturally begs the question, what exactly has the Dalai Lama been up to since 1959? Aside from storming the world with a massive PR campaign and accumulating the most dignified and reputable Hollywood disciples, his pseudo-compromise/unwillingness-to-compromise stances has only helped the CCP maintain the status quo over the disputed regions. Peace, sure, but its precisely the sort of peace that is so desired by the allegedly nefarious CCP. We're now in 2010 and the Dalai Lama is worth more dead than alive even on his own people as the younger Tibetan exiles are twitching to move off Sesame Street. If peace means making no practical ripples but only talking something to death, then the Dalai Lama is most deserving of his blue ribbon. At the very least what the Tibetan cause has accomplished, I pray to God, is that most Americans know where to place the Autonomous Region of Tibet on a map.

Back onto point. In this year's Peace Prize press release, an entire paragraph dedicated to China's astounding progress from Communism:

Over the past decades, China has achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal. The country now has the world's second largest economy; hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Scope for political participation has also broadened.

Then comes the slap to the face. Progress becomes a footnote to "human rights" and "freedoms" (thank you, you real commies!), despite the most basic human rights being economic ones: the ability to choose independent of the most primitive material constraints, i.e. to escape poverty. The backhanded manner in which the press-release is formed is precisely the type of ammunition that has been arming the growing hordes of Chinese "shitty-youth" who have nurtured sympathies towards their own brand of fascism, with the target being to challenge the "West" as the next superpower in Chinese style. Furthermore, the China System, untenable and silly it may be, is already being advertised as the next political-economic system substitute to a liberal democracy. And people are seriously buying into this, especially younger PRC nationals.

Blame the matter on Cold War-esque propaganda, but the radicalization of China's politics and populace built on suspicions of the so-called "West" has well-grounded historical precedents. The list of reasons to be cynical of foreign intentions runs deep. Simply consider the fact that after the Second World War, the glorious American nation funded and armed a self-titled "Generalissimo" dictator to rule over the "democratic" Republic of China. Too many times has China been burned by the pretense of a pseudo-democracy and the hypocrisy of weaponized "human rights", which in turn has lefts its people nauseated and tired of it. Sadly in today's China, "freedom" and "democracy" have become synonymous with "Western imperialism" and is seen as the only stick left to beat China on its inevitable ascension to ultimate superiority. Although the whole idea frightens and troubles me deeply, it is nevertheless far from an unforgivable offense. Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to an individual who has made insignificant contributions to the PRC only further compounds these suspicions.

Perhaps it is worth pointing out that one of the biggest misconceptions about China's single party rule (or any single party rule for that matter) is that it equates to an unified concentration of power. Whereas reality seems to point at a plurality of divisions along the lines of politics, economics, and other interests. The point is that there is no single man, in the form of a Mao or a Deng, in Chinese politics that can command the future of China according to largely his will. Eventually, the parties within the Party itself will undergo a form of mitosis, where the avenue for peace, the means to stability, wealth, and flourishing of China, will be through appealing to the factions of the CCP that stand opposite to the hardliners. At least in my opinion, the liberalization of the PRC will have a cause of motion from within the party itself and from its moderate and liberal members.

A sign of this, and one of the more invigorating moments in recent news, is Wen Jiaobao's interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria where he hints at eventual reforms :

I believe that while moving ahead with economic reforms, we also need to advance political reforms, as our development is comprehensive in nature, our reform should also be comprehensive.

I think the core of your question is about the development of democracy in China. I believe when it comes to the development of democracy in China, we talk about progress to be made in three areas:

No. 1: We need to gradually improve the democratic election system so that state power will truly belong to the people and state power will be used to serve the people

No. 2: We need to improve the legal system, run the country according to law, and establish the country under the rule of law and we need to view an independent and just judicial system.

No. 3: Government should be subject to oversight by the people and that will ask us, call on us to increase transparency in government affairs and particularly it is also necessary for government to accept oversight by the news media and other parties.

Critically and naturally, we have to take this with a bit of salt. Yet even skeptically, the divulging of any information concerning political reform has been extremely rare for a government known more for its prickly ways with such issues. The message that is being conveyed by Wen is that the Party, or at least some elements in it, are open for change as well as open to discussing it. Both of which are quite unheard of.

But even independent of second guessing Wen's intentions or the impact of the statements given that he is on the downswing of his political career etc, what we can glean from the interview is the acknowledgment that China can no longer operate with its populace not invested in the country's political future. This stems from the simple idea that one cannot run proper free-market economy and at the same time deny a populace of economic agents access to the market that is a political one. The problem for the Party is to both subscribe to a certain model of economic development as well as its assumptions, and then to pretend that some of the assumptions are not in play. Choice and responsibility cannot be denied on one hand politically and on the other asked to buy, sell, consume, and so on, without running into a fundamental contradiction. The current monopoly system has its faults and they are clearly showing.

Arguably biggest problem in China today is still a persistent lack of transparency, which cutely plays into the stereotype that Chinese people are generally inscrutable. However, it is doubtful that the origin lies in Chinese culture or genetics as opposed to the various market inefficiencies of the current system. Lower level civil servants, cadres and provincial politicians are currently running amok because the system has become so bloated that the head can no longer see its toes. With large amounts of government money tied up in public spending with limited oversight, throw in the vices of a free-market mercenary system, then no wonder corruption is rife. The lack of transparency is one thing and the lack of a proper feedback system of governance is another. Both, taking social stability/harmony/world peace as an end requires a system in which people can be properly responsible for each other and what they do. There has to be justice, a free media, and elected officials all which are supposed to better reflect realities of the world and public opinion. Lacking such a system, collapse is inevitable. And to recognize and admit this impending doom is to understand the importance of reform.

If not Liu Xiaobo, then whom? Disregarding actual contributions to peace, here is a rhetorical question: is Liu Xiaobo or the Premier of the PRC a better candidate for initiating genuine restructuring of China's political system? If an award were given merely to galvanize a cause or to initiate forward progress, then ideally this years award would be an iteration of last year's: give it to the person who has the most damn power to change things. If instead having a cute sexy message or to lob a nasty little contraption at those blasted communists is the point, then I too would vote for Liu Xiaobo.

(Photograph: Zheng, Xuebao, Unknown. 2006, photograph. From China: 1949-2009, ed. Zhu, Ling, Beijing: China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing, 2009.)

Karen Owen makes me think of this ...

2010-10-09T01:13:00.002-05:00

Postcard by David Rusbatch. From The Guardian: Feminist postcard art auction

Name the films challenge ... and win a prize

2010-09-24T02:15:00.012-05:00

A pretty nifty short film from the Guardian website. Name all 26 films referenced in it to get thrown in a draw for a DVD. So guess (and help me out):

My answers after the break ...

In order of appearance within the short film (I am missing 6 not counting the probables/conjectures):

Goldfinger (A Bond film at least)
Edward Scissorhands
?
Dr. Zhivago (??)
Up
?
The Godfather
The Usual Suspects
The Birds
The Big Lebowski
Indiana Jones (forgot which one, but not lost crusade and the most recent)
Babe (?)
Airplane!
?
?
Mulholland Drive
American Beauty (the flag colored bullet + the rose petals)
The Blair Witch Project
The Matrix
Pan's Labyrinth
Singin' in the Rain
Ben Hur
Silence of the Lambs
Borat (???)
?
?

Stories on faith: God and Miracles

2010-09-20T03:20:00.004-05:00

From an article on the intersection of God and association football:

When Barcelona starlet Bojan Krkic ... failed to convert a chance to score the winning goal against Chelsea in a Champions League semi-final, he questioned his Catholic faith. After heading wide at 0-0 with only three minutes remaining when it looked impossible to miss, he said: “That’s a goal God would have normally helped me score. I don’t know what happened. I crossed my chest as I came onto the pitch, so this doesn’t really make sense.”

His team-mates consoled him, assuring him that God still loved him. Coach Pep Guardiola (allegedly) revealed: “He was pretty down in the changing room. We reassured him that if God didn’t love him, he’d just be a normal person, probably working in an office or cleaning the streets of road-kill or something.”

To which God (allegedly) dropped a few tears for humanity and subsequently arranged to tweak Messi's ankle in petty retribution.

Films: Goodbye Solo (Bahrani, Ramin; 2008)

2010-09-15T02:10:00.211-05:00

In the movies, when a boy and a girl meet serendipitously it's usually a romance. When two people of the same gender come together in such a way it’s an “… and they changed each other’s lives forever” sort of a deal. Using these as a makeshift barometer, one might venture to say that Goodbye Solo (Bahrani, Ramin; 2008) fits halfway in between. In some sense, it does. Yet any gross categorizations of this sort fails miserably as Goodbye Solo is refreshingly quite unlike any movie I have ever seen.

Goodbye Solo begins on a long shot set in a dimly lit taxi with two protagonists. The cabbie, Solo (in an inspirational performance by Souléymane Sy Savané), is an immigrant from Senegal whose dream is to be an air steward and whose accented English is bookended with freshly acquired colloquialisms such as “big dawg”. The passenger, William (played by Red West a once-upon-a-time Elvis bodyguard), is a depressing image of a weathered and agitated old white man with tired eyes. As strangers, a proposition has already been made, at a given date in the future Solo is to drive William to a remote natural park location called Blowing Rock (in NC) for x amount of cash. It is, however, only to be a one-way journey. Initially reluctant to accept the offer for it is strongly implied that William is going to Blowing Rock in order to commit suicide, Solo doesn't know how exactly to help. As the only means of keeping his eye on William, Solo accepts the offer and gives what little he can -- his unconditional generosity and kindness. In the days leading up to the suicide, the lives of the two men converge.

First off, these aren't the kind of characters that usually end up in the movies. Aside from their peculiar backgrounds, it's clear from the very start that Solo doesn't really have a plan and it isn't particularly clear whether he even sets out intending to stop William from killing himself. In Goodbye Solo you won't find rousing speeches about the sanctity of life or any little stratagems to get the suicidal man to change his mind. What Solo does is invite William into his life, introducing his family, and serving as a personal driver. One might mistakenly interpret this to be done with some scheming intention of deliberately showing William something or another. Yet the hospitality is awkward not because it is forced, but because we, the viewers, are lured out from behind our well-insulated cynicism. This fine line is hard to draw. But with a complete lack of adornment, the performance by Souléymane Sy Savané is fascinating in its simplicity, gentleness, and sincerity. I was at least willing to adopt that what moves Solo isn't some burden of conscience that would if without remedy prevent his ascent to heaven. Instead it is a purity of soul that is depicted without the slightest shade of caricature. Solo does the right thing because he genuinely cares as a human being.

Sadly, the above sketch of a plot doesn't even begin to touch the complex inner workings of the film. What makes Goodbye Solo full of soul or complete is that there are other dynamics involving Solo, his dreams, and his own family issues that fill out his motivations. Solo's own struggles with latching onto the American dream perhaps fuel the fancy explanation that his attachment to the old man is a remote extension of his will to instill in himself the faith to struggle on. Is Solo looking for confirmation that his eternal optimism is well grounded? What about William? Who is he, what was he, why does he want to commit suicide? The questions lend the film a level of complexity and un-saturation that draw us in like a puzzle would, although we know that this pursuit will inevitably be frustrated by the lack of easy explanations.

The manner in how Goodbye Solo is both loaded yet surprisingly sparse is in no small part attributable to the genius of director Ramin Bahrani. With the blanks opened by an elliptical form of storytelling, Bahrani is able to hold up a world that exists beyond the screen without sacrificing efficiency in plot. The complete lack of ostentation combined with a restful camera, quietly draws out the emotional force of the images with a surgical precision. Words are given a rest. And with a gaze or a look by the leads capturing perfect moments there is nothing fancy or wasteful, everything comes off as natural yet calculated.

Stylistically this is all further represented. The lack of words and events mirror the setting of an urbanish sprawl of Winston Salem isolated in its dark nights, typical of a sleepy midsized American city seething a desperate loneliness. (Personally, there is something vaguely nostalgic about the ambient wheezing of cars that sets me back in the states.) For all the talk of how such-and-such a cinematographer might draw out a city as a main character, the characterization of Winston Salem in Goodbye Solo is masterful in how little deliberate attention is paid to it. This is in stark (and obvious) contrast with the stylistic heavy weights of the City-Taxi 'genre' such as Scorsese's one or Michael Mann's Collateral. In Goodbye Solo there is obviously a lack of that sort of vibrancy; after all, Winston Salem isn't NY or LA.

On the topic of New York, some of the same techniques used by Bahrani in Man Push Cart appear to be in play. Using a zoom lens to shoot from distances, across highways, roads creates the sense of isolation, a man stationary (relatively) behind the buzz of traffic. These observational shots give off the flavor of a longing glance. There are also those moments like how Ahmad occupies his cart in Man Push Cart, where Solo is often captured alone in the space of the image, walking by himself or in a closeup in his taxi. In contrast, the images in Solo that are least melancholy and most comforting are when he fills the screen with his stepdaughter.

After watching Goodbye Solo, instincts led me to wonder whether I have seen any other films remotely like it. The first thing that comes to mind is Mann's Collateral for obvious but wrong reasons. Then there is of course Man Push Cart, not simply because they were directed by the same man, but because they utilize the similar metaphorical prisons of occupation i.e. cage and taxi, issues on suicide, existence/subsistence and so on. Yet the quality of Solo is considerably less gloomy, equally melancholy, and far more optimistic

Theme-wise, the closest thing I could come up with was Jean Renoir's Les Bas-Fonds (1936), adapted from Russian playwright Maxim Gorky's play The Lower Depths. In Renoir's adaptation, the connection between men of different vectors in life is made when a Baron (Louis Jouvet) who having lost his entire estate through gambling is about to shoot himself drops in on a thief (Jean Gabin) who is in the process of robbing his mansion. The night takes a rather jovial turn when the Baron reveals that he has nothing of value to steal and is open to the thief taking anything of his desire. So instead, they settle on a fine meal and conversation. By the end of it they are convinced that their entire lives have been set off in the wrong direction. Relieved of his wealth, the Baron moves into the shady boarding house where the thief lives and continues to indulge in his only passion: gambling, but without anything to lose. The thief gives up his immoral ways and moves onto a new life with the girl he loves and so on.

The similarity between Goodbye Solo and Les Bas-Fonds isn't so much in the congruity of the characters or their crossing paths but in the sort of manner how both directors treat their movie characters (at least in most of his movies). Bahrani's gentleness in handling Solo and William is somewhat paralleled by Renoir's sympathetic and unjudging eye (is this the way directors play God?). I don't think I'm would be the only one to comment that Renoir loves his film apparitions like children. There is also something deeply humanistic about both films and the way in which human beings live and get on, albeit Renoir's film being heavily political and Bahranni's being completely devoid of it. In both cases, the romanticism of both films rest on somewhat troubling moral grounds. The choices of the characters are not pruned to acceptable social conventions and are instead permitted to go along their own ways if not even endorsed by their corresponding 'partners'. Perhaps this is the source of the romanticism.

Renoir's socialist politics are tied in with ideas of a bonded brotherhood of men, a common ground (thus the grand illusion that there are boundaries). And at its core, Goodbye Solo is a non-sexual romance of two male strangers. Yet in its case the blossoming love isn't the sort of thing that "changes their respective lives" or forms the grounds of a lifelong friendship, because eventually William does what he sets out to do. Instead the bonds are, ironically, deeper. This is made apparent by the most beautiful moment in the film where Solo decides to take his stepdaughter with them on the final voyage. With good reason, William strongly resists. However, Solo replies that he wouldn't possibly bear to make the return trip all alone, and William gives in. With this simple sequence, the relationship between the two men is consumated. Solo has acknowledged that the inevitable will occur and he is permitting not through resignation but through love. And William recognizes that Solo has completely acknowledged his final wishes thus bringing both to a complete understanding. The final act of love is learning how to let go, but Solo still needs his stepdaughter because he has to live on.

Fingers could be pointed that this is where Goodbye Solo goes wrong. The moral ambiguity would lie in placing euthanasia in a positive light and rousing speeches would be in order so as to remedy this. But taking it this way would a mistake. The final voyage of Solo and William doesn't mark out Solo as being complicit in a man's suicide as much as it does of his role in palliative care. There is a better interpretation. Perhaps a comparison would be James Stewart's second drive with Kim Novak to the steeple. The inevitable ending marks a resolution that forms the closing out of a chapter; Déjà vu is only when you something exactly twice and Scottie has to see it through or it isn't Déjà vu. In Vertigo, Novak is already dead, or is at least supposed to be (in Scottie's mind at least). Likewise, there is something surreal about William's death since it isn't depicted; as far as we know, William just doesn't appear again. But his death is written in the first few scenes and ends just as soon as the movie begins. We should take Solo's 'complicity' as nothing more than making the final steps with someone he sincerely cares about. It is a rite for spirits and better in his cab than another driver's. Like for Scottie, Solo's final ritual is something for the living; it's for himself.

It takes little imagination to comprehend that one of the worst thing about having a loved one commit suicide is the agony in believing that one's love wasn't enough to sustain life. The difficulty then is in finding someone to blame, whether it is oneself or the victim. In relation to this, a question that Goodbye Solo poses is whether at all the depths of lifelong suffering can be appropriately filled in or mended by the care of others. The answer that can be found in the film is in effect an exorcism of the suffering: when there is loss there will be pain, but if there is pain there is also love. Again, the final act of love is learning how to let go.

From Taj Jones with love ...

2010-09-15T00:29:00.004-05:00

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2010-09-11T03:55:00.005-05:00

Review: Hidden Agenda (Loach, Ken; 1990)

2010-09-02T03:05:00.001-05:00

Since I couldn't find any interesting screen-grabs for the movie, I chose a picture of Ken Loach because he has such a beautiful smile.

The average conspiracy theory movie/political thriller has the following elements. A killing. The victim who knows too much or is in possession of some material that would permit her to know too much. The distraught friend/fiancee/spouse who is unpersuaded by initial investigations that round off the incident as an accident or mere killing. People who think that she is nuts. An investigator who is intrigued by the mysterious circumstances of the death. The friend/fiancee/spouse who now has the investigator as a confidant. Therefore, love affair. Investigations going on. The unveiling of a conspiracy of immense proportions that makes one hurl objects at the screen. Ending: Revenge and the triumph of truth! Or cover-up and complicity by the investigator i.e. the triumph of evil!

Give or take a couple of the above elements, throw in the political and social turmoil of 1980s Northern Ireland, a couple of bastard Englishmen conspirators, then you pretty much have the idea of what Ken Loach's Hidden Agenda (1990) is about. An American civil rights lawyer, Paul (Brad Dourif), with an international panel of civil rights people are in N. Ireland to survey and compose a report on human rights violations committed by British police and armed forces. On the eve of their departure Paul is shot and a mysterious audio tape is taken off his body by the gunmen. What follows is apparently a cover-up. Paul's fiance, Ingrid (Frances McDormand), who is accompanying and serving with him on the panel, assumes foul-play. Given the possible international repercussions of the incident, a head investigator from the CID, Kerrigan (Brian Cox), is brought in from the mainland. Equally skeptical and eager to get to the source of any dirty business, Kerrigan is unhesitating with the "stepping on toes", or so he cordially informs Ingrid. A possible conspiracy is then investigated and so on.

Despite winning the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1990 and being laden with the correct politics (or how else would it have won), Hidden Agenda is at its core an unhappy type of formulaic nonsense. The unfortunate thing, however, is that the movie has all the markings of what otherwise would have been a great one. Shot in a fresh naturalistic style that has made Loach famous, the first half of the movie is both engaging and full of intrigue, or at least I thought. On the side, it also helped that the film's subject matter turned out quite thorny. Subjecting a allegedly modern democratic nation to scrutiny for its various abuses of human rights doesn't come along often (although we shouldn't exactly be surprised given Britain's less than stellar record for, as the movie puts, "800 years"). Signs of governmental injustice naturally suck the audience in and as viewers we want the proxy retribution that movie plots can offer us. In this sense, parts of the movie worked well for me. Add good acting into the mix and the ingredients for a serious grown-up movie are all in order.

Where Hidden Agenda starts to go wrong is in straddling the conventions of its genre while playing the critique off the bench. Typically for the conspiracy thriller, the eventual unveiling of what the conspiracy actually is leaves the audience having problems stomaching whatever fancy thing the writers have written up. The issue with Hidden Agenda isn't so much a matter of the conspiracy being completely ludicrous but that it is simply boring. The film serves us the usual lot: behind-the-scenes right-wing forces conspiring to hasten the demise of a lefty government through nefarious means. Regardless of one's politics, this isn't interesting stuff nor is it particularly surprising. Worse yet, much of this has nothing to do with the politics of Northern Ireland as much as it has to do with the dirtiness of politics in general (not even distinctly British). The nature of the conspiracy throws the strife and politics of Northern Ireland into merely a volatile and convenient backdrop, while stepping up the volume to complain about quite something else. But as always there has to be a large-scale conspiracy pitching dark against light, right against left!

Furthermore, why is it that all the conspirators in conspiracy movies flake off from the same cookie-cutter, pardon my abusing of the cookie-cutter cliche. In Loach's movie there are again those usual interchangeable elderly white men who mask their slimy insides with the proper posh and polish. And by custom they have their suit pockets lined with all that same sophistry about the greater good, national security, etc. etc. Perhaps its about time someone made a movie about the motivations of these conspirator types and not in the biographical format of ascension to power, a villain in a super-hero movie, but as in an accurate depiction of how those men actually live with themselves.

When compared to a more dynamic and hard-hitting film of arguably the same genre, such as Costa-Gavras's exemplary Z (1969), the end result of Hidden Agenda is severely lacking not only in flair but in effect and identity. By forsaking any virtuoso moments in favor of realism, it is understandable that Loach tries to hedge the agenda of Hidden Agenda on an apparent lack of bias. Yet as a film like Z has shown us it doesn't really matter; Z has no hidden agenda because it wears everything on its face. To not do so by playing it straight risks the movie comes off as a disingenuous political thriller and not much more. Again, as I mentioned before, this is unfortunate given that a great movie was almost at hand.

And the award for achievements in subtitling goes to ...

2010-09-02T01:05:00.005-05:00

Note the degree of detail involved in the Chinese subtitling of The Lives of Others (2006):

Can't confirm whether these have been photo-shopped but impressive if not.

(tip)

Essays on Koko: I passed the mirror test, have you?

2010-09-01T02:12:00.012-05:00

M.C. Escher, Hand with Reflecting Sphere (1935), lithograph

Since having recently watched Barbet Schroeder’s documentary Koko: the Talking Gorilla (1978), I have been excited to write a series of short essays concerning the film’s subject matter. The following essays touch generally, and I admit cursorily, on issues of animal intelligence and the connection to human language. If a film is to be measured by the discussion it engenders from its viewers, then the most interesting thing to be said about Koko was that I simply couldn’t resist constantly grasping for the remote and its “pause” button.

In the documentary film Koko: the Talking Gorilla (1978) by Barbet Schroeder, a part touches on how Koko the lowland gorilla is able to recognize herself in a mirror. This is naturally followed up with an interview segment featuring some scientific authority who informs us of that event’s significance. To recognize oneself in the mirror (or to behave as though one does) is allegedly a demonstration of self-consciousness or, more insipidly, self-recognition. And certain animals, using the mirror test, have thus been determined by humans to be in possession of this faculty. Among animals, the great apes, dolphins, killer whales, elephants, and magpies are thought to have passed this test.

Yet what I find most fascinating about this is not that Koko, or any gorilla for that matter, can recognize herself in the mirror, but that human beings have an obsessive fascination with placing poor creatures in front of a mirrors. There are surely too many videos placed on the internet by the casual behaviorist who has captured the hilarious aftereffects of dog/cat v. mirror. The only difference between these and the serious scientists is that the casual ones don’t publish in peer-reviewed journals.

In light of the recent Marc Hauser scandal, one might get the sense that interpreting such data is a fairly open-ended affair. Yet the signs of this being a pseudo science (at least alleged) are emitted more by a lack of clarity in objectives than a lack of both rigorous protocol and systematic treatment of the data. What exactly is being tested? Even if we establish criteria for self-recognition among human beings, are we applying to animals no more than “criteria for self-recognition among human beings”? Having not lain out correctly what they are looking for, the traps of our own human language lie unchecked. For instance, if one were to say, “Koko does not recognize herself in the mirror”, one is strongly implying that she does recognize things. If I were to imply that a great ape is capable of recognition, not to mention cognition, then why should anyone be surprised when I adapt her to mirror (and also cosmetic) usage? In the movie, Koko not only uses a mirror, she uses a mirror to do her makeup. That’s very cute, but is it a matter of science to point that human beings aren’t that far off?

There are of course other problems that touch on the heart of all this. Suppose I furnish myself with a mirror and ask how I would go about attempting to explain the phenomenon now present to me. When I use the terms “representation” or “reflection”, I have merely assumed that what lies in front of me is in fact a mirror (or other reflective object). If I am not capable of discerning that what is in front of me is a mirror or reflective object, I simply won’t be able to determine correctly that the phenomenon is a reflection; it would then have to be something else, and something quite different. Thus if we take knowledge of reflective objects as primary then it can hardly be surprising to deduce that the image displayed on the mirror when I look at it is myself (no different from when there is an apple on the mirror as it is, say, on the table). The matter of certain animals reacting strangely to mirrors could then be explained by their lack of capacity or custom in using such devices and not by some lack-of-self-recognition-flaw.

On the contrary, it might be argued that if I did not know the phenomenon (the reflection) to be a reflection, I wouldn’t then be able to identify its cause to be a reflective object. For instance, if I were to walk into a room and encounter many identical active versions of myself, instinct would lead me to believe that these were merely reflections, independent of my knowing what caused them. This would be taken as some rudimentary grasp of both self and reflections. The problem, however, is whether my convictions are to be revised if I were revealed to the fact that there were no mirrors in the room despite the “reflections” being there. In that case, the exact quality of the “reflection” changes, and as said before they would then have to be something quite different.

The matter of which comes first – knowledge of reflections or knowledge of mirrors – isn’t all that important in regard to the mirror test. However, what is revealed, in my opinion, is that either way one presupposes knowledge that there are such things as reflections in our language. This is naturally evident in the way we talk. Talk does not differ when we deal with reflections of selves or with other objects. “this is a reflection of the moon”, “what you will see next is a reflection”, and so on. There are also rules governing the correct application of what is or is not a reflection. Note that it would be false to look in a mirror and exclaim, “a ha, that is I!” Properly speaking, one should say “a ha, that is a reflection of myself” or “that is an image of so-and-so, the so-and-so being me at this moment”. And from these reflections, though being mere images, we can draw inferences of the like that one is indeed “the fairest of them all” or not (despite being inverted). We should observe that the terms “reflection”, “image”, “representation” all play some general role regardless of what exactly is being reflected or represented. And as far as this goes, all reflections, as well as how we determine them, are on the same level.

When we say that something is a reflection of such-and-such, the language doesn’t change to discriminate a reflection of selves from a reflection of external objects. The same rules and correctness apply in a way that that is for the concept, “____ is a reflection of A”, to have an extension. To see things this way is to deny any uniqueness one might ascribe to recognizing oneself in a mirror as compared to the reflection of, say, an apple. The key point is simply and irreducibly that we know how to use mirrors and know what reflections are. When a human being looks into the mirror there is no more she can say about the reflection of herself than what she can say about the reflection of an apple in the same image. And if that is the case, a mirror study merely tests a subject’s competence with mirrors.

It might be pointed out that certain variations of the mirror test do differentiate between competence of using mirrors and self-recognition, namely whether an animal can use a mirror to pick out an object on itself versus to one at a remove. Perhaps an interesting product of the mirror-tests research is that it has been shown that pigs can identify hidden food using mirrors, but not whether pigs can recognize themselves. The assumption is that the test in that experiment wasn’t sophisticated enough. There are, however, other tests that have animals locate artificial markings on their bodies, using the reflection as a visual cue. Allegedly, this would effectively discriminate between self-recognition and mirror competence. But I think by now we should realize that it is only an illusion. If a crow picks at a marking on its feathers by using a mirror image, then it has demonstrated no more than basic mirror awareness. The body, not the self, is an external object and the crow has shown no more than a pig’s ability to use a reflective device to identify an outside thing.

Drawing the matter back to our mirror use, there is the obvious question of what counts as self-recognition among men. Come to think of it, when it comes to human self-recognition, the criterion is simply the answer, “That is a reflection of me”. Naturally, this doesn’t convey the accurate and entire “feeling” of what we mean by the self, but I would imagine one to be hard-pressed in giving an explication of what that feeling really is. Even considering this, it would be obviously wrong to think that we must hold animals up to that standard of expressing self-recognition. Animals certainly cannot talk in a human way (although in the case of Koko, one might imagine that such an utterance could possibly be taught to her). Therefore, what we must return to the circumstances that permit a truthful utterance of “That is a reflection of me”. That, I would imagine, would simply be in the presence of a mirror (or other reflective object). And this would be a set of circumstances that could be extended towards animals, provided that they have demonstrated mirror competence i.e. by using mirrors to find food, identify markings on their bodies etc. etc. etc.

Proof that Obama isn't a Muslim

2010-08-21T03:04:00.016-05:00

Out of touch with your constituents? Try doing the right thing!

2010-08-19T04:01:00.002-05:00

From The Guardian via Google search:

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, caused outrage suggesting Islam as a whole was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and drawing parallels with the second world war. "We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor," he said. "There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Centre."

Gingrich has also claimed that the imam behind the proposed community centre, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a "radical Islamist" even though the US state department flew Rauf to Saudi Arabia this week to promote America by telling audiences "what it's like to practise Islam under our regime of religious freedom and equality".

Dang, the Japs must be forgiving. Not only do they host our army bases in Okinawa, sell us tons of stuff on credit, suffer the humiliation of being a protectorate/American colony, but they also relinquish any possible future plans of "putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor" (those two nukes were just hors d'œuvre btw). Let's also throw in the teeny Gringrich pseudo-analogy rhetoric to remind them that almost seventy years later we have, using victor's justice, rinsed ourselves of any wrongdoing.

And now again the fearsome ignorant voter hicks that fall under the grand title of "we":

A common theme of the Republican attacks is Saudi Arabia's ban on non-Muslims from Mecca. "Ground Zero is hallowed ground to Americans,'' Elliott Maynard, a Republican candidate for Congress in West Virginia, said. "Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?''

Mommy ... can we make them? Pretty please?

Looking good ...

2010-07-27T21:38:00.005-05:00

On banning the burqa: My point of view

2010-07-13T00:33:00.002-05:00

Setting aside Prof. Nussbaum's arguments and other problems, my own issue with a ban on burqas is quite simply the applicability of a law that would have no purpose other than to target the religious traditions of an extreme minority of women; not to mention a minority that simply chooses to dress differently. Remember that the discussion does not concern radical and oppressive regimes, but those of allegedly enlightened European nations such as France, Spain, Belgium etc. So the matter doesn't boil down to promoting the representation of allegedly oppressive Islamic cultures. We are dealing here with nations where even only a minority of Muslim women in those countries adhere to those forms of Islamic religious dress under debate. In the following I hope the reader won't begrudge my presupposing my own complete misunderstanding of the Islamic faith, which is just as well given the little knowledge I have of it.

Take for instance, the estimates of the French government itself. Less than 2000 women, that is in entire France, opt to wear the full burqa. There is surely a greater flood of two thousand Muslim women living in France, as rightist elements in that country would have us believe. So let us compare that number with the actual Muslim population living in France, estimated to be between five and six million, with an observant Muslim population believed to be half of that. With fewer than 0.1% of French Muslim women wearing the burqa, the evidence is surely against there being an oppressive Islamic culture in France. And at so few a number and no evidence of it being deleterious to the health of oneself or others, there must surely be some fantabulous reason to ban the burqa. Perhaps there is a cosmetic reason like my having to smooth out the minute wart that blemishes my otherwise tender and impeccable skin. But silliness aside, why is it that so few women of even the Islamic faith choose this type of dress? At some point or another we have to address this fact and why it is so.

The obvious reason, I suspect, is that it is one of the most extreme inconvenience in regard to social mores and various modern desirables. It is perhaps by a similar type of inconvenience that most Catholic women do not join a convent or choose to wear the full habit in the heat of summer (or dress like a pilgrim). The keyword here is choice. It is surely much easier, and more expedient, to live in the mainstream, wear comfortable clothes and bathe in all the wondrous liberties (as well as depravities) that democratic nations around the world have to offer. My bet is that Muslim parents living in France have just a difficult time getting their daughters to don the burqa as we might get our own to join a convent (or dress like a pilgrim). But of course why should a parent, in those nations, possess such ridiculous attitudes such as of having their offspring join a convent (or dress like a pilgrim) or retain a faith that would be adverse to their economic prospects. Do we really need to remind ourselves of the reasons for immigration? At the least, the problem is general across all religions.

Yet by scanning the New York Times reader responses, the feeling is that the 'indigenous' populations of liberal democracies have a complete lack of faith in the virtues of democracy. The frequency of the lapses into hypocrisy betrays a insecurity and pessimism concerning the survival of their world. It is as if their liberal democracies and free-market economies were to collapse under the slightest touch of the external forces of injustice, of oppression, of vile Islamic radicals, and so on. First, are you kidding me? Second, what are we so afraid of? Is it the posting of that eventual 'STOP' sign where the 'outsiders' will begin to learn to refuse the allure of our Big Macs and Cokes? Or that they won't thank us for them? That one day our superior culture will lose its wonderful allure to all those pathetic masses of the Third World? That they won't be enticed by, love us or our silly ways of life? That our nations shall fail to make good on those promises of the American (French ... etc.), as mirrored by the dashing of many of our own dreams by the frequent recurrences of economic crises?

Now if I had a daughter, in France or in the states, the last thing I would worry about is her wearing a burqa. But when it comes to surrendering herself to skank clothes, even more skanky Disney pop puppets, cosmetic surgery etc., I'm pretty much helpless. And this is the force our culture. And it is a culture far more contagious and virulent than any of the most radical form of Islam has to offer. Heck, they should really be afraid of us.

We, people of the West, don't need burqas and vicious sharia laws to oppress or objectify women, because we have the greatest weapon of all: the perception of freedom. Sure the difference is that if we don't succumb to the seduction of fashion we won't be punished by stoning or be culled on the basis of some silly honor business. But that is frankly because it would be both wrong and illegal. And in the same way it would be both wrong and illegal, in a liberal democracy, to physically and/or mentally coerce a woman into wearing the burqa. However, as with various norms, we have no problem with the more subtle forms of persuasion. And by the looks of popular opinion, we certainly have no problem with the hypocrisy of leveling laws to ban the burqa just because we deem it to be symbolically contrary to free choice. It is in the dirty navels of democracy that we find the opinionators that deem that there are people who ought not be respected in their rights of choice because they were indoctrinated in such and such a way. And that by restricting their freedom we hold ourselves glorious in having imparted a valuable lesson on the essence freedom. Of course, we're free to make these decisions, aren't we?

The most vile thing of all must be that complete lack of respect given to the two-thousand individuals in France (or other European country) who choose to wear the burqa. Has anyone for moment taken a breath then set aside the issues of indoctrination and coercion and simply asked those dear women what they want and how they justify their choices? No, of course not, they are merely feeble objects molded by Islamic propaganda. Quite clearly, the burqa is much more than just clothing or a fashion choice, it is clearly the symbol of a religion that oppresses women. But who is to say that it is a symbol of what, to impart it a significance other than those women who choose to wear it give it. Too many times have I heard fashionistas telling me that fashion is more than just fashion. And much to my horror, I find myself agreeing. Could fashion very well not constitute the essence of our abhorrent consumer society, that it is much much more than just a style?

But what do the women who wear the burqa in a democracy have to say? To be honest, I don't know. And most likely I never will, at least not beneath the clamoring of politicians, women's rights activists, self-righteous upholders of democracy, fascists, my own childish presumptions, and God knows what else. But what I do know is that if I were to ask my daughter to explain why she thought she needed to dress so immodestly and inappropriately, she would not possibly have a better answer. Then again even if she gave a good answer, I probably wouldn't comprehend it. But at the very least I do know this.

Refuting the arguments in support of banning the Burqa: the most ridiculous New York Times readers' counter-responses

2010-07-12T04:41:00.577-05:00

In a recent post on the New York Times The Stone blog, Martha Nussbaum, an academic philosopher of considerable reputation, offers a short essay refuting several standard arguments frequently used in favor of a ban of the burqa. It hardly requires much effort to see that Prof. Nussbaum's arguments are both obvious and correct, and 'that [any policies of banning the burqa] are utterly unacceptable in a society committed to equal liberty'. Yet it is to my great dismay to have found that a apparently large proportion of New York Times readers have problems comprehending the arguments of the matter. But first, the issues.

The five most frequently arguments used against burqa wearing, as summarized by Nussbaum, cannot be justified without intentionally discriminating against strictly that type of Islamic religious dress. The case made against the burqa is frequently exaggerated or treated with a bias that does not conform to what we should find as acceptable grounds to construct a legal ban. The five are:

1. Security: The necessity of completely showing one's face in public spaces on the grounds of security.
2. Social Interaction: The face plays a important role in human/social interactions. The burqa/face veil would impede any effort conducive to transparency/reciprocity in those interactions, thus discouraging it. (related to point 1.)
3. Sexism: The burqa as a sign of female objectification and dominance by men installed by religious traditions that encourage the discrimination of women.
4. Coercion: That the tradition of the wearing the burqa is fundamentally rooted in coercion and abuse. (related to point 3.)
5. Injurious: Wearing the burqa is uncomfortable. Women ought not wear uncomfortable clothing. Women ought not wear the burqa. (related to points 3. and 4.)

Nussbaum's responses to the five are:

1. & 2. Reasonable accommodations can easily be made i.e. when requested to by an officer of the law proper identification documents with unobstructed facial photos could be provided for identification. Furthermore, there are plenty of occasions in public spaces when people covers their faces. In the dead of a Chicago winter is a great example (scarves, balaclava etc.). Nussbaum also gives others of skiers, football players, doctors. My own example would be one's wearing a surgical mask if one has a cold or other transmissible ailment (and not even to mention the sunglasses everywhere! I don't even know what Wong Kar-Wai looks like!). And none of these experiences are particularly unique to the US.

3. I won't bother with Nussbaum's response here. But see the post pictures for my self explanatory interpretation.

4. First, domestic violence is illegal in the US as things stand. Second, there is no statistical evidence to show that Muslim households in the US are more likely to experience domestic violence than non-Muslim households. Furthermore, even if wearing the burqa is a result of coercion, there is a lack of grounds for constructing a legal ban strictly on the notion that there are crimes/violence being committed against women. There is a difference between a government ban/restriction and that of a private institution i.e. a university may forbid any college fraternities, but a government cannot altogether ban drunken stag parties.

5. Can there be comfortable wearing forms of the burqa made? Most likely yes. Do women wear uncomfortable clothes? Yes, see heels (high). Ought the government ban all uncomfortable/impractical clothes? Most probably not.

For any citizen of a democratic and freedom loving nation this should all be fairly intuitive. Yet the enlightened readers of the New York Times find themselves rather befuddled. It seems like quite a lot of people take offense to Nussbaum's post. The following are some of the nonsense response all-stars (NYTimes reader recommended). As of July 13, 348 recommendations:

What a bunch of hogwash.

What does Professor Nussbaum think of the fact that these poor women have NO CHOICE about wearing the burqa? They have been brainwashed into wearing it since they were little and they might be subject to honor killings if they refuse.

The burqa is not clothing. It is oppression. And it's all very well and good for someone who's never faced oppression to philosophize endlessly about nothing in particular, but these women NEED OUR HELP.

Europe should ban the burqa.

I love the comment about being women wearing the burqa being 'brainwashed'. They don't/can't choose, but we do/can, right? Aren't we all 'brainwashed' into wearing skimpy tops and tight jeans by our base consumer culture. For instance, Nussbaum writes and asks: 'Every time I undress in the locker room of my gym, I see women bearing the scars of liposuction, tummy tucks, breast implants. Isn’t much of this done in order to conform to a male norm of female beauty that casts women as sex objects?' Female empowerment is dying a slow death and it isn't at the hands of radical Islam. 341 recommends:

What an eloquent defense of the right to wear a burqa in public places. I suggest that Professor Nussbaum now make the same presentation publicly, anywhere in Riyadh, without wearing a burqa while she speaks - and then report her ensuing experiences to us. The burqa is a symbol of religious repression, not religious expression. It has no place in public places in our country.

France, baby, France. At this speed, we will catch up to Saudi Arabia pretty soon and not in a good way. Also, I wouldn't bet on Prof. Nussbaum chances if she were to give the presentation in a backwater town in our beloved American nation either. 305 recommendations:

This is not an intellectual argument, dear lady. The French, Spanish, Belgiums and Dutch simply want to retain their traditions and heritage, much like majority northern Euro-based Americans. Immigrants should adapt to the countries that have gracefully welcomed them, not the other way round. You, and they, should get with the program. Stop intellectualizing. This is about the gut.

Of all the rubbish on the internet, the above might just be the worst. I'm gonna have to return those slices of New York pizza from my gut, along with the Chinese take-out. 257 recommendations:

Then following thesame logic western women should be able to wear whatever in Islamic countries.

Frankly doubt that that would work.

192:
The west should treat muslims the same way that muslims treat non-muslims in their countries.

These are naturally good points, but aren't we ignoring the fact that we aren't exactly like them? Have we forgotten that we live in a liberal democracy that does value the equality and liberty of all its members?

Furthermore, that 'women should be able to wear whatever ...' is an incorrect understanding of the problem. The fundamental notion is that women have the right to wear whatever they deem appropriate or suitable for themselves. But they do not need to exercise that right simply to demonstrate the point. The opposite to banning the burqa is obviously not enforcing various forms of Islamic law and this need not even reflect an indirect endorsement of those religious laws.

225 recommends:
The heck with religious accommodation. If the Western countries are indeed at war with Muslims over the next 3 to 5 decades, (and there are serious foreign policy experts who think we are) then if we make their culture less welcome in the US and in Europe so be it. We do not have to be gracious hosts to those who want to destroy our societies and kill our culture. My politics are liberal. But killing people in public places is not acceptable either and protecting our nations is more important than providing a welcome mat to other cultures that want to destroy us.

112:
secular democracies have the right to promote their values. The veil is a security threat as well as a symbol promoting the oppression of women. Just because there are a lot of Arab women with Stockholm syndrome who fervently support the veil and chaddor by no means indicates we should respect that choice. The burqa and all it stands for is simply a symbol for female abuse and control. Karl Popper once said that if a free society that promotes toleration tolerates those who are against it, then that free society will fall. We do not have to tolerate the intolerant and the symbols that represent intolerance. A paradox I and Mr. Popper agree, but we must promote a free secular republic and there are limits of tolerance.

Voila, New York Times, these are your readers!

Criticizing To Kill a Mocking Bird?

2010-06-25T03:07:00.128-05:00

If it were novel to criticize To Kill a Mocking Bird as simplistic and naive, then one might find sportswriter Allen Barra's article on The Wall Street Journal interesting:

Atticus is a repository of cracker-barrel epigrams. He actually seems to believe the fairy tale about the Ku Klux Klan that he tells Scout: "Way back about nineteen-twenty, there was a Klan, but it was a political organization more than anything. Besides, they couldn't find anyone to scare." They gathered one night in front of a Jewish friend of Finch's, Sam Levy, and "Sam made 'em so ashamed of themselves they went away."

It's impossible that anyone who grew up in Alabama in the mid-1930s, when the book is set, would believe that story, but it's a sugar-coated myth of Alabama's past that millions have come to accept.

In all great novels there is some quality of moral ambiguity, some potentially controversial element that keeps the book from being easily grasped or explained ... There is no ambiguity in "To Kill a Mockingbird"; at the end of the book, we know exactly what we knew at the beginning: that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad. As Thomas Mallon wrote in a 2006 story in The New Yorker, the book acts as "an ungainsayable endorser of the obvious."

It's time to stop pretending that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated, as pristinely preserved in its pages as the dinosaur DNA in "Jurassic Park."

Harper Lee's contemporary and fellow Southerner Flannery O'Connor (and a far worthier subject for high-school reading lists) once made a killing observation about "To Kill a Mockingbird": "It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are reading a children's book."

I have always found it is a rather peculiar that To Kill a Mocking Bird is treated as a literary work of great moral significance. It is even more peculiar for it to be criticized for this appearance (or 'pretending' as Barra might say). And as Barra points out, it is a sad fact that people do. But Barra's criticism itself appears unnecessary (his quoting Mallon), for he seems to be stating that the obvious is in fact quite obvious, which happens not to be so obvious to a good many.

I myself first read Mockingbird as a child, though not in school. I still have that tattered copy, which was then given to me as a gift. Over time, I have come to realize that it is the sort of gift I would now be glad to give any child. On the back of my tattered copy of Mockingbird there is a short line stating that Harper Lee never intended the novel to be anymore than a simple love story. And that was how I always understood it. For me, Mockingbird was a great book about a father's love, filled with the nostalgic tales of childhood and innocence (hence the title). At the same time, it was no less an elementary education in racism, justice, lawyers, and the court system. This is what made it great, and it still is.

As an adult, Mockingbird works differently because it tells us things we already think we know but are nevertheless tireless to hearing over and over. A part of the joy in reading the novel again over time is that nostalgic feeling of having read it in one's youth. There is a wonderful feeling in remembering how one once read it. But for every adult who read the novel as a child, it is difficult to deny that it was the same book that helped frame many of those concepts -- the things we now claim to find obvious. Now, surely this counts in some way as a contribution to our human development. And even if we were to permit a solid maturation of those ideas, we re-read Mockingbird with a mind grown from the seeds that it sowed.

Now, Barra's writing disturbs me when what he claims to find obvious in the book - 'that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad' - fails to accurately identify what actually conforms to the contents of the book. The question as to whether Atticus is a good man forms the center of my criticism of the novel, which I shall discuss further below. As to whether Tom is really innocent the answer is implied but not straightforwardly given within the book. Atticus's legal defense of Tom didn't require it to show his innocence, but merely demonstrates the extreme unlikeliness that Tom committed the rape and the lack of evidence to convict him. This is, I suppose, a useful lesson on legal justice for children. Furthermore, there are no overt references to lynching or the depravity of lynching, which is once again only implied by the appearance of the mob outside the jail. We come to make these connections when we are older, and yes things appear obvious.

However for me, the moral issue that takes center-stage in Mockingbird isn't the injustice of racism or lynching, but is one of parenting. The question is how to show one's children the value of living justly in a world largely devoid of it. This brings me to the topic of Atticus as a good man and what I call Atticus's gambit (or dilemma).

Atticus knows that he has to defend Tom Robinson, both because he is a good man and also because he is the most competent lawyer in town (anyone charged is entitled to the best legal defense available). The decision would be incredibly simple provided that Atticus was single and childless, like his brother. All he would have to risk was his own life and that of his reputation in defending a black man against the word of a white man.

However, the decision becomes more complicated when he has to take into consideration the livelihood of his two children. If anything unfortunate were to happen to him, then his children, under his sole custody, would very possibly be passed on from relative to relative, not much unlike Dill. There is the added risk of something happening directly to his children, a possibility that Atticus somewhat irresponsibly refuses to acknowledge. Atticus must weigh these considerations against the first two pros in addition to the fact that as a parent he must behave with utmost virtue so as to set an example for his children. The gambit comes in here: Atticus must prove, not only in this case but in all, that he is an embodiment of human virtue so as to be worthy of his children's love (the exact words, I think, are 'I cannot risk losing them, they are all I have.'). His love for his children and his need to be loved by his children must be gained at the risk of something that could at the same time obliterate their love and happiness. When Atticus takes Tom's case, he gambles that nothing bad will happen either to himself, Scout or Jim.

Whether or not Atticus can be justified in representing Tom is a tough question that deserves to be tackled critically. Oddly enough, and apologies to Barra, it isn't obvious, simplistic, or easy. Taking a critical line, Atticus must also be held responsible for acting irresponsibly when he is nearsighted concerning the possible threats against himself and his children. Atticus had thought it wise to guard Tom's jail in the middle of the night, but had the auspicious arrival of his children been delayed, it takes little imagination to wonder what the mob would have done with him. Furthermore, Atticus easily dismisses any possibility of retribution by Ewell against his children, even though, in hindsight, both the Sheriff and Aunt Alexander appear to be aware of this possibility (that Ewell was really a coward and wouldn't think of making a move against Atticus). None of this is made any better by Atticus's refusal to confront Ewell physically. Perhaps we should ask what exactly we would do if we were in his shoes (to borrow from one of those 'cracker-barrel epigrams').

Now what exactly might we do? I think something rather heinous comes to mind. Contrasted with his career-defining role in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), in Cape Fear (1962), Gregory Peck plays, curiously enough, another lawyer whose family is under threat from an evil maniac. This time around, the lawyer takes matters into his own hands by coming up with an intricate but harebrained plan to murder the offender. In this case, the offender acts within the system of the law but not the lawyer. The American public, if I were asked to conjecture, was probably less sympathetic with this character (later portrayed by Nick Nolte as a cowardly weasel in Scorsese's 1991 remake). Please make use of the relevance for yourself.

Barra criticizes Mockingbird for its lack of ambiguity, more accurately the lack of moral ambiguity, but there is a whole world to Atticus's course of action that he fails to see. I hate applying hypotheticals to fiction, but would having something terrible happen to Scout and Jim render the novel morally ambiguous enough for his taste? The whole point is that as adults we can look past the simplicity and find a terrifying world where, yes, children are unsafe. We should be able to see, although not all that obvious, that what Atticus chooses as the right choice is an equally precarious one. He is courageous but perhaps in the slightest bit reckless. My suspicion is that few of us have what it takes to make that decision and even less to justify it. We would very much sit at home and protect our children. After all, we can't all be saints like Atticus or want our children to look at us in that way.

As it turns out, the only viewpoint that is simplistic or naive is Barra's own. Barra cannot perceive any ambiguity because he can only look at the novel in simplistic terms that confirm what he already knows. In short, he cannot read To Kill a Mockingbird like an adult because he hasn't yet taken the steps of maturation. Instead, like an impatient child who is easily bored and impressed by his sponge like capacity for fragmented pieces of knowledge, Barra is infatuated with the sound of his own 'so what?' His own perceived intelligence is merely the knowledge that he is ready to toss aside Mockingbird to enter a world where 'bloodless liberal humanism' is dead. The sad thing is that he probably isn't fully fledged to even understand what 'bloodless liberal humanism' really is.

Erroll Morris on the Dunning-Kruger Effect

2010-06-22T04:32:00.006-05:00

In Errol Morris’s newest piece on his excellent New York Times blog, he touches on what is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, as the part one precursor of a five part series on Anosognosia. The effect is named after David Dunning a social psychologist at Cornell and graduate student Justin Kruger for their work and experimentation on the phenomenon, according to Prof. Dunning, that ‘our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence.’ Essentially human beings are often stupid or ignorant enough such as to hinder the cognition of their own stupidity or ignorance (the blog piece utilizes an outrageous bank robbery example of how this sort of case does exist in reality). The piece itself mainly consists in large part segments of Morris’s interview/phone call with Dunning and is a great read.

The following is Morris’s own “non-fancy, non-pretentious” attempt at making sense of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is a good explanation:

A “known unknown” is a known question with an unknown answer. I can ask the question: what is the melting point of beryllium? I may not know the answer, but I can look it up. I can do some research. It may even be a question which no one knows the answer to. With an “unknown unknown,” I don’t even know what questions to ask, let alone how to answer those questions.

Now, one might remark that there isn’t anything particularly new about this, the Dunning-Kruger Effect and all. And I agree that there isn’t. The wiki page for it even supplies a quote from Bertrand Russell, thus reassuring us that prior to Dunning and Kruger the human race has at least been clever enough to identify the phenomenon itself: ‘In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.’

Yet what’s fascinating about the Effect, at least for me, is how it relates to communal human life. By communal, I mean how through the collaborative efforts of human beings both problems and solutions become manifest. The first thing that comes to mind when dealing with the problems of unknown unknowns or which questions to ask is the so-called Socratic method. (Even Morris alludes to Plato's Socratic wisdom in one of his references (ref. 4), about how wisdom comes only in the resignation that one knows nothing.) My conception of the Socratic method (though not always how Plato's Socrates practiced it) is to have two human beings leaning against one another as mutual building blocks towards a common unknown solution. The idea that we are often in possession of blind spots concerning our competence over certain matters lends further credibility to the idea that human beings genuinely need each other when tackling tricky problems. So even idiot crooks should be better off working together.

There are definite analogies here in terms of psycho-therapy and psycho-analysis. For instance, is it possible analyze oneself in a constructive fashion, or is it possible to analyze oneself at all? An answer in the negative here assumes that there is a blind spot in the human subject in perceiving itself (see excerpts from Kant at the bottom [though of course Kant is saying more than just his]). Freud might perhaps have argued that from the perspective within it would be impossible to know when and where the analysis would end. And even if the appropriate ending (key) is provided by the patient, the independent psycho-analyst would be cognizant of assisting in its identification. But who would then be an authority on the independent authority?

Perhaps a more personal example would be my own experience in writing. There are moments when my doubts over what I know, what I am competent about writing about get in the way of whether or not I can produce at all. For the most part the known unknowns worry me to death because I constantly undermine my own confidence in whether or not I know the literature, have done the research properly, or have even read with a clear mind and not missed anything. And here I haven't even gone into my fear that I am writing poorly or ungrammatically. The least I can do is try and the only way I can possibly try is to stick with the known knowns. And the obvious solution, as is constantly advertised, is to get someone to read your work, bounce off ideas with.

When it comes to the communal aspect, even concerning grammar there seems to be the question of how certain we can be about the correct applications of rules governing our usage of language. There doesn't appear to be anything I can find within myself to justify the correctness of my language use, but only doubt and skepticism. And even if we find the solution in appealing to a competent user's usage, how do we know that that user is competent if not an expert has divined the competent user? And who in the world divines experts?

So in a sense we are only buttressed and pulled together by one another, standing collectively in a circle and pulling the next person's bootstraps, if you will.

The following are also some bits and pieces of philosophy that might have some relevance to the whole matter. From Kant's General Remarks on the Transcendental Aesthetic in his Critique of Pure Reason:

Consciousness of itself (apperception) is the simple representation of the I ... In human beings this consciousness requires inner perception of the manifold that is antecedently given in the subject, and the manner in which this is given in the mind without spontaneity must be called sensibility on account of this difference. If the faculty for becoming conscious of oneself is to seek out (apprehend) that which lies in the mind, it must affect the latter, and it can only produce an intuition of itself in such a way, whose form, however, which antecedently grounds it in the mind, determines the way in which the manifold is together in the mind in the representation of time; there it then intuits itself not as it would immediately self-actively represent itself, but in accordance with the way in which it is affected from within, consequently as it appears to itself, not as it is. (tr. Guyer & Wood, 1998, p.189-190)

There seems to be a difficulty in terms of how the eye must see itself, for surely we have to assume that it is in fact an eye! I don't see how this necessarily fits, but I have typed it out anyway for the sake for further use and commenting.

Can't wait for the rest of Morris's five part blog post!

LifeQuacks: Life by Design

2010-05-27T20:55:00.012-05:00

Now, when did Aristotle ever say this?

Aristotle said the formula for happiness and success is to "first, have a definite, clear, practical idea, goal or objective. Second, attain it by whatever means available, whether wisdom, money, materials, or methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end."

Live by design! For only $24.99! Life coach quackery by Mr. Tom Ferry (WOW, positively reviewed by Mark Victor Hanson, co-creator of the Chicken Soup)! Order one now and get a life for free!

(In regard to product endorsement, Aristotle has always trenchantly stood by: "try NE instead [even the W.D. Ross version will do fine].")

Review: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)

2010-05-20T02:55:00.161-05:00

Surreptitiously and in the rooms of poorly lit hotels, Mr. Bebe performs abortions out of a suitcase. The time and place is Romania, 1987, where by the decree of communist dictator Nicolae Ceasescu both contraception and abortions are illegal. Since sex never goes out of fashion and neither do abortions, abortions are carried out by black-market ‘travelling salesmen’ like Mr. Bebe. Given the risks imprisonment, the price for the procedure is naturally quite steep. And in the case of Mr. Bebe’s clients, youth and attractiveness are additional requirements. For pregnant women that haven’t resigned themselves to motherhood and marriage, the determent clearly isn't going to be enough

Two college girls, Gabriela (or Gabita), four months-three weeks-two days pregnant, along with her helpful friend and roommate, Otilia, require Mr. Bebe’s services. They arrange for Mr. Bebe to perform the abortion in a hotel. The questions that naturally form: Do the two of them go along with their plan? Does Mr. Bebe agree to the abortion? Is the abortion successful? Are they caught? And as such, we have the disturbing and suspenseful scenario for Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s film, 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile).

Simply put, 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days is an agonizing film to watch (try imagining one’s daughter going through it). Shot with dark hues that call to mind dreary winter days following snowfall that excrete a damp unsanitary coldness, the film is an exemplary synthesis of narrative and style. Blending the gloomy unnatural undertones of a horror film with a surprising naturalism performance wise, 4 months keeps the viewer roped in at every turn of the corner with the dread that something will go awfully wrong. And of course, what couldn’t go wrong? These are perverse circumstances.

We could settle the root of this perversity as the prohibition of this or that which in turn leads to shady and dangerous substitute channels of supply. But the film isn’t simply about the problems of twisted market forces meets sexual expression in East-Bloc economies. In 4 months, the destructive consequences of artificial implants to curb natural human behavior are far more pervasive. Ceasescu wanted more citizens to extend his dominion over, but as usual, the results inconveniently diverge from surgically cut ideals. The film invites us into the resulting abomination, a nightmarish world where not just sexual expression is repressed, but where the possibility of communication at all is severely inhibited. The inhibition in 4 months takes the form of a heavy shroud that leaves us groping in the dark and with this stroke paints the mist that leaves only a mood of dread and uncertainty. It represents everything wrong with government hegemony over society and its souls.

Mirrored by failed communist economics, the shroud forms the core of the film’s critique of society under communism. The element of failed economics is immediately apparent as the black market dealers of American cigarettes, brand shampoo, and cosmetics. Casually but amply shown in the film, play a large role in supplying our heroines with their daily toiletries. Communism or not, as long as there is the requisite demand, supply and prices trail not far behind. The question is never what ‘is or isn’t available’, but what one is willing to pay for.

However much the similarity in the market forces operating likewise in the outside world, the prices here take on a special significance. They become a sign of what is wrong, formed on the question of what they would be independent of the market abnormalities caused by a communist run economy. Amplified by the illegality of the types of trade and hand-to-hand, mouth-to-ear information, the lack of transparency of how the prices are arrived at in Romania 1987 forms the crux of how the film depicts people interacting with one another. If we were to take away the communist regime, everything would be the same, with the exception that everything would just be a hell of a lot easier.

Applying this to the illegal under-the-table transaction of the abortion procedure, the lack of transparent and regulated channels means that the parties on either side have to come to an individual one-off agreement. The arrival to the point of that agreement clearly isn’t the same as going to an abortion clinic and reading off the price. Instead, negotiations and bartering are quite necessary (especially in the case of girls who have never patronized Mr. Bebe before). In that case, it is in the interest of either party to keep matters as opaque as possible concerning matters that are important in determining the charge of the good or service (this is the shroud). For instance, it is in the interest of Gabriela to keep the fact that she is four months pregnant a secret because the duration of the pregnancy greatly increases the risk of the procedure and thus the cost (even Otilia, her confidant, doesn’t know the duration). Who knows what Mr. Bebe wants, but I can assure you that it isn't just money. The result is quite naturally deceit, and spades of it. Since everyone plays his or her hand close, telling the truth becomes the exception.

The consequence should be obvious: anything easily straight or proper is turned sideways, where even the most basic things require complicated maneuverings to get at. When Otilia goes to retrieve the keys to the hotel room that Gabriela reserved, she engages in a formality that we would find illegal: she conveniently places a pack of cigarettes on the reception counter. Quite naturally, two girls getting a room raise suspicions, especially in a country guarded by all sorts of peculiar regulations. The pack is what it is worth to her to get the thing done and without any questions. When the receptionist doesn’t accept the bribe, inquires, and denies that a room was ever reserved by Gabriela. We don’t know whether it is because a pack isn’t enough, procedural incompetence, inefficiency or some other reason. Otilia lies her way out of it, but the whole feather dance doesn’t make good sense to us. What does make sense is that even the simplest of things and processes are made incredibly long-winded.

The source of the suspense in the film is that it presents us with scenarios that shouldn’t really keep us on edge in the way they do. It is a bizarre world that upends and undermines our conventional understanding of what will or will not transpire. While we are forced to reconcile all this, Mungiu then shows us that there is really nothing to it.

First, the abortion in the film is itself a safe and relatively simple operation, even when performed in the insanitary confines of a shady hotel room. Furthermore, aborting the fetus is the obvious choice; at least, in comparison to marriage or single-motherhood. Save the inconvenient matter of illegality, the girls encounter little moral hindrance in opting for an abortion. All things considered, it is the best solution to a problem. The real pain in the ass, however, is setting up the appointment with Mr. Bebe and getting to negotiate the price. And for that, we know whom to thank.

The masterstroke is how the film sets up a side-plot involving Otilia’s own turbulent sexual relationship with her boyfriend, a medical student. Invited to a dinner at his parent’s, Otilia is presented with an obligation she cannot shirk even under the circumstances of Gabriela’s abortion. Of course, she can’t complain about the poor timing or give an explanation. They argue. She gives in. They are just kids, like kids anywhere.

As Otilia leaves Gabriela’s side during the abortion, so do we. Under the constant apprehension for Gabriela’s uncertain condition, we sit through the festivities of a middle class dinner party that in offers the only bit of warmth and coziness in the entire film. The boyfriend’s family of doctors transfers us into a haven far from the dim realities of the outside world, where the communist state is distant as the family sits round taking in the fine produce, alcohol, and cheese. While the camera sits fixed on Otilia, quietly seated at the table, as voices, hands, dishes, and wine are passed around in a naturalistic long take (observe Last Supper-ish construction below). The scene is an unusual one in terms of its freedom, the freedom in which words are exchanged among the actors who seem all too comfortable and familiar in one another; they are really sound like old friends.

Yet like Otilia, the torture is that we can’t savor a single moment of the burden free banter, the happy faces, and the laughter. How can we with the ultimate question is still at stake: how is Gabriela? At this point, 4 Months becomes crystal clear. The distorted world places throws any notion of happiness in discord. Otilia is desperate to escape the perhaps the only place of warmth in the entire film, and we too feel the pull. But for what? That she should find her own sacrifices justified by the success of the procedure? That she loves her friend? For the sake of leaving the audience dangling as to the outcome?

When Otilia is finally "released" into the night, she finds herself disorientated by the blacked out night with scarcely a road light to guide her way. Shrouded by the darkness she wanders in vain to find transportation back to the hotel. Without revealing any spoilers, as I written above, there's really nothing to it.

The contemporary significance of the film, aside from the fact that it won the Palm d'Or and FIPRESCI at Cannes in 2007, is that the political issues over abortion and contraception are still in play. 4 Months is hardly important as a critique of political ideologies that have long expired or as a condemnation of Ceasescu. Instead, I think it responds to the threat of any resurgence in how human beings are tempered into unrealistic forms, regardless of conformity to ideological or religious types.

The message, if any, to be absorbed by an American viewer ought not to be taken as pro-abortion. The heroines respond to their circumstances naturally yet they are in multiple ways irresponsible when it comes to their own bodies. Otilia, for instance, depends on her boyfriend to 'pull it out'. These aren't exactly problems that abortion can solve (perhaps only as a cure to the symptoms), and the film isn't particularly shy of pointing this out.

Poland: Totally tricked out movie posters

2010-04-30T03:26:00.002-05:00

Quite something to behold.

(Tip: Huffington Post, wellmedicated.com)

Can Video games be art? Part II

2010-04-30T02:25:00.009-05:00

Link to Can Video Games be Art? Part I

IIa. Are Art and Games Compatible?

Let us commence to Ebert’s position. In his blog post, Ebert responds primarily to a lecture given by video game designer Kellee Santiago. She argues that some video games are already art and have 'crossed [a] boundary into artistic expression'. What Ebert takes exception to are the games Santiago cites as examples of game/art. He maintains the very sensible and most likely true stance that 'no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.' Specifically, Ebert characterizes his position concerning the difference between art and games as this:

One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.

Ebert has clearly gone astray even with the first sentence when he uses the ‘obvious’ win component to separate games from art. He is wrong because children can be said to be playing a game even if it is the mere mimicking of one another, playing dress up with their dolls, or giving orders and having others obey. These games don’t involve winning and thus have no such ‘obvious difference’ along those lines. Even if he intended this distinction to serve as a definition of games, and not as a mere deduction, he is still mistaken. My example with children’s games already illustrates how this would sails away from ordinary usage. As Wittgenstein says of definitions and games in the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations, 'you can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those [sorts of] games.' What is difficult for us is that there are things we would still call games that don’t fit under a given (so-called) definition. This in turn would mean that an alleged 'immersive game' would not be automatically shift categories and 'cease to be a game' if it simply did not involve winning. (A short note: by 'points' I think Ebert implies the possibility of winning. As for rules, they apply indiscriminately to stories, plays, films, paintings etc. How else would we interpret them if they defied every possible convention of what we would expect or find comprehensible?)

Even if Ebert is wrong about winning as an essential element of games, is he correct about excluding anything that has the objective of winning from art? Looking deeper, first I think we can distinguish what is meant by ‘an objective in a game’ and ‘an objective of a game’. An objective in a game could be to win, for instance in a high-school debate. On the other hand, an objective of that game can be taken as extending beyond winning, but as practice for all sorts of things that should be needless me to emphasize here. This could be extended to all sorts of sports games intended to help children improve physical prowess.

The point should be clear enough. I can design a game that will help kindergartners learn about civil competition and cooperation, which they can learn by competing to achieve a goal (winning). The objective of my game cannot, in capacity of my having designed it for a purpose, then be said to strictly have an objective of winning. In this manner, although winning is not merely incidental to the purpose of my game it is strictly an element in the design. This would mean that it is conceivable for a work of art to involve 'winning' in the design without it necessarily detracting from the objective of creating art. Thus, I cannot see any reason to consider 'winning' as an ingredient inimical to a work being art. Instead, 'winning' could serve as something that could be played with in art, that could be used to express ideas, or even have aesthetic meaning. Overall, the possibility of winning in no way designates that what is in hand is a game, and even if it is a game we have not identified anything thus far that separates it from being art.

But what does Ebert have to say about what is art? We should first note that he doesn't like 'play[ing] all day with definitions, and find exceptions to every one'. This turns out quite convenient for himself, since Ebert is quick to dismiss most of Santiago's propositions of a definition and asserts:

Kellee Santiago has arrived at this point lacking a convincing definition of art. But is Plato's any better? Does art grow better the more it imitates nature? My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision. Countless artists have drawn countless nudes. They are all working from nature.

Ebert essentially argues for art (or what nurtures it into better art) as the expression of an individual's soul. What he says of 'improves or alters' can be equated to an artist's vision, his mode of seeing the natural world. But there is anything in Ebert's 'notion' that excludes games as art. Could there not be a game designed to express an artist's deep idiosyncratic perception of the world, its rules and its objects, while at the same time conveying ideas? Does every last game fail to attempt to improve or alter nature 'through a passage' of an artist's soul? Would Ebert's 'notion' exclude a sophisticated artist from employing games as a possible medium for art? Does Ebert know anything of games? Does Ebert have a better idea than Santiago of what art is? No, I don't think so.

IIb. A Provisional Condition for Determining Art

We all know that children's games, sports, and debating are not a form of art, but what exactly then separates them from art? To continue any further, we must be able a provisional condition that operates as a workable sieve. In the case of a children's game, we should find the creation to have more to do with leisure or educational purposes rather than that of generating aesthetic value. Furthermore, when children come together to play a game, even if there is anything beautiful, let's say, about it, we would find the aesthetics accidental rather than intentional. What I will therefore propose as a basic condition is that any work of art must be reasonably conceivable, from an audience's point of view, as being created primarily with the intention of producing a work of aesthetic excellence. A child’s game obviously does not satisfy this condition, neither do sports nor debate. But then the question is what is ‘aesthetic excellence’ or ‘aesthetics’?

In the above I use aesthetics in a way that extends beyond an audience's applying the term of 'beautiful' as justifying art. A work can be beautiful, but if it is reasonable to suppose that that it being so is merely incidental to a creator's intentions, then we can still rule it out as art. So what comes to mind when I think of something in possession of aesthetic value is its ability to move me. This must be the first step. It would be antagonistic to any concept of art if what one considered great art does not, in experiencing it, resonate within oneself any emotion. In most cases, when we talk of great art, even basic emotion isn't enough. There must be a significance of being emotionally touched or moved in a rare and almost irreplaceable way. What great art does is a guarantee a way of feeling when we are exposed to it, placing us in a state that other artworks, or non-artworks are incapable of placing us in. Extreme beauty is of course one of those things that makes us respond in these ways. But as I have already emphasized, in art we are looking for aesthetics that the result of intentional human creation.

Hence, it is without a question that there could be no topic of aesthetics or art independent of our capacity to be touched. This is what we mean by subjectivity. But in many ways 'subjectivity' is often confused with mere taste, which is taken as instantly placing an issue beyond argument. Disagreement about what is or is not art on emotional grounds does not exclude us from understanding the perspectives of how others might see the work. Men are empathetic enough to understand what it would mean for others to find a work emotionally compelling. We can project the aesthetic significance of a work of art on others, and can also reciprocate the emotional resonance of others on ourselves. Here, empathy gives way to reasons. If my friend makes a claim that a certain film is great art, she can defend and articulate her own emotional responses using reasons. In the process, she is effectively explaining to me why I should see the film or how to open my self to appreciating it. Given the above discussion, I want to supplement my above condition with: An aesthetic quality in a work is the quality that can be taken, within reason, as what will have an emotional significance on a person or group of people.

Together, the basic condition requires that for something to be a work of art it must be capable of being reasonably conceivable that it was created with the intention of achieving excellence in the realm of providing an audience with an experience that would be emotionally significant. I hereby disclaim that this flimsy condition should be taken as a definition of art. Instead, I intend it to form an acceptable basis to judge what counts as art thus enabling us to move on. I also don't mean by it to trivially state that art is what we now already consider to be art. By using 'reasonably conceivable', I indicate the concept of art to be discursive. The basic condition requires ongoing discourse and argument for any and every art form to validate itself and to open new forms to discovery. The condition itself is at this point merely satisfactory. The following will deal with several possible counter-examples and problematic cases in order to demonstrate the strengths of the condition.

First, any proposed basic condition for art must exclude works or crafts that are more the products of artisans than artists. We generally itch to omit Ikea furniture, or any furniture for that matter, as art. Although, we need not exclude the possibility of Ikea furniture being designed with aesthetics in mind, we do find it hard to accept that furniture is created some purpose other than being useful furniture. Furniture is at first a commodity. By this, I don’t mean that furniture (or a commodity) can never be art. Aged (the longer the better) pieces of furniture sold at auctions are collected for some aesthetic value, I would suppose. What is in doubt is that just any ordinary piece of furniture, i.e. those generic looking ones that come in brochures or sold at the mall, was created with aesthetic intentions not to mention aesthetic excellence. If there was to be a piece of furniture that exceeded all our expectations of simple functionality and was designed with painstaking innovation and an effort towards creativity, we would of course have to revisit the question of whether it is art. It's case would be helped if we were to find it more than capable of affecting us. Sadly, most furniture isn't.

Second, the basic condition must also be sufficiently lax to rule in works of art that are done under commission. Unlike standard crafts or commodities, the basic condition must be able to distinguish between different forms of getting paid to do work. For instance, we have the case of Mozart who wrote several operas and he was paid to do it. But can we give the furniture/commodity treatment to Mozart’s operas just because money was at stake? We must ask what it would entail to satisfy a commission for an opera or to whom the commissions for operas (and other crafts) are rewarded. A person who wants to commission an opera would, I imagine, have both aesthetic and financial considerations in mind (no different from a movie studio). And the financial considerations could be taken as parasitic on the aesthetic ones, provided with the assumption that affective work (as well as effective) would benefit the patron financially. Furthermore, for anyone who has actually listened to (note: not simply heard) any of Mozart's work would find it highly dubious that aesthetics was a side consideration. I am also certain that there are those learned people who can cite all sorts of exact reasons why Mozart's music at the time exceeded those of his contemporaries. Given all this, we should find it reasonable to believe that any aesthetic excellence in the undertaking of the task was not merely incidental but also the crucial element of what it would mean to satisfy the demands of Mozart's patron

Finally, this basic condition can also be used to rule out replicas or copies of already existing works of art. We want to say that an exact imitation of Van Gogh's Sunflowers (1888, Oil on canvas, 92.1 × 73 cm) hanging in my living room is kitsch, not art. As long as we know that the work was a deliberate copy, we can rule out any intended aesthetic purposes. But supposing that one were to argue that an imitation of the above work were to provide the same aesthetic experience and was intended to provide that experience. We can refute this outright with the question of whether a audience could possibly be moved in the same way if they were informed of the true nature of the work. And if there is this constant threat of revealing the truth, I doubt that it can be said that the "artist's" intention was aesthetic excellence as opposed to mere replication. We don't find it surprising that the deliberate lack of a creativity and vision is inimical to art. The work may be beautiful, in the exact way Van Gogh's actual work is, but it fails to be a genuine work of art. Thus, the basic condition guarantees this.

This isn't a work of art, it is the digital representation of a work.

However, I think another objection can be raised on the lines that Van Gogh did replications of his own aforementioned work in 1889. Would those copies count as art? My intuition is that we want to answer in the affirmative. I also think that the basic condition secures this for us. The difference here with another person's copying is that we are more willing to concede an artist's reformulation of his work as an improvement or revision. The fact that many of Van Gogh's replications of the above work are not exact facsimiles goes to support the above point. We are also willing to extend artists the benefit of the doubt if their work belongs to a series of similar works employing their distinct styles (think of Manet's waterlilies), or if their individual works have to be viewed as mere parts of a collected vision (the auteur theory in film has something to say here). These are possible defenses that we would reject for would be imitators.

Nevertheless, it is apparent that we have touched on contentious ground. I by no means claim to have an answer for whether Picasso's draft copies count as art, although they do fetch a pretty price nowadays. Again, I must refer back to the purpose of this exercise, which is to provide something we can work with. And from what the basic condition provides us with, I think we have no evidence to reject the possibility of games as art. I can vividly conceive of the possibility that a game is designed with the purpose of aesthetic excellence - to use the idea of a game as a basis or medium to create works that can experientially be emotionally significant.

Continued in Part III.

A few leftover notes on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001)

2010-04-29T12:00:00.000-05:00

The way I love to think of Mulholland Drive is to compare it to a puzzle. We, the attentive audience, are given the glorious task to solve it. But why should we want to do any work (damn those lazy and pretentious filmmakers!)? Aside from being accompanied by those two wonderfully sexy amateur sleuths, I believe it's because we anticipate a nice little picture of accomplishment (but can we hang this one on the wall?).

The problem is that once we settle on tunneling towards some alluring completion, we are only really provided with the motivation to get started. Is there an ending? A completed puzzle? Somehow, I don't think we will ever finish this one. But how do we arrive on the conclusion that the game is flawed, broken, or incomplete? Well, some piece always seem to be missing. We have a coherent picture or when the picture looks just about right, we say "ah, it's almost done!" But how do we know that it is complete if it really isn't? Are we consistently frustrated when we realize we are always just missing that single piece? Or because we are already cognizant of the possible outcome, we have the confidence that it is really such, missing piece or not?

Anyhow, here is another attempt at rationalizing the Mulholland Drive plot in a way that just doesn't quite fit:

After arriving in Hollywood, Diane and Camilla Rhodes, both aspiring actresses, begin a turbulent sexual history of some sort. Camilla gets big after being cast in The Sylvia North Story. Diane doesn’t get the part and her career fails to take off. Camilla is engaged to the director Adam Kesher, which Diane only finds out from the party at his house. Jealous, Diane places a hit on Camilla Rhodes in Winkies. The hit takes place at the beginning of the film as Camilla, on the limo, is taking the shortcut home on Mulholland Drive. The crash happens. Camilla loses her memory and makes her way to Ruth’s apartment (Betty’s, not Diane’s, aunt). Betty arrives in L.A. on a plane along with the parents of Diane. The parents eerily ride off in a limo to see Diane, while Betty goes to her Aunt Ruth's apartment. Betty then discovers Camilla in her Ruth’s apartment. Camilla, in her amnesia, now calls herself Rita. The parents of Diane arrive at house #17. Diane in a fit of anguish shoots herself in the face. Betty and Rita (Camilla) go on their little quest to discover the identity of Rita. Kesher is forced to re-cast the lead in his film after the disappearance of his star (Camilla) in The Sylvia North Story (a remake!). Betty and Rita discover the body of Diane in #17. They go home. They have sex. Afterward they go for a late-night visit to Club Silencio. They find the blue key. When the key is inserted in the blue cube, the story begins all over again.

Betty, Diane, Camilla Rhodes, Rita are all substitutable component parts caught in a cycle. That's why people can tell them apart etc. etc.

Throw out any details that don’t fit.

Can video games be art? Part I

2010-04-29T09:07:00.000-05:00

I. The Background Story

Well, can video games be art? To this Roger Ebert recently replied 'never' on his blog and consequently found himself wearing out the remains of his aging eyes peering over every last one of what has amassed into a torrent of three-thousand comment replies (I also happen to be guilty of this). Had we not known what ground was being fought over, one might have expected it to be a topic of great consequence. But no, politics and ethics take a back seat when it comes to video games and their aesthetics, both of which the blogger himself and most of his readers admittedly have no clear definition or concept to begin with. But setting aside the muddleheaded-ness, why would there be an audience for this sort of debate? On the motivations of Mr. Ebert, I don't really want to conjecture because his only contribution thus far has been to light the fuse. On the matter of his opponents, there appear to be far too many young adults invested in a life-style that they wish to be accepted as aesthetically meaningful, if not simply meaningful with the aesthetic component as validation. Anyhow, both sides have their reasons for being thoroughly engaged in the arguments. Yet for a question that I find genuinely deserving of serious discourse, I hate the fact that it has been tackled inadequately and in such poor spirit.

My stake in the issue, as will be fully elucidated in this essay, is a firm conviction that there is great potential for serious art in a medium that would otherwise be dismissed by people such as Mr. Ebert as being subsumed under the derogatory classification of 'video games'. The medium I shall be discussing and defending against Ebert's 'never', will be one of interactive internet browser-based games. The reason for selecting this medium for discussion relates both to my passing interest in emerging mediums for art in the technology age as well as with my long-running enthusiasm with innovative (and free) internet games (often in the Flash format). Those interests, as well as provocation by Ebert's blog post, led me to go searching for some good examples of where they are headed. And voila, Feed the Head fell into my lap.

Designed by artist Patrick Smith under the name of his company Vectorpark, Feed the Head is without exaggeration the Lamborghini equivalent of a flash game. Stylishly crafted to go along with a taste of the absurd, the game provides the 'player' with an interactive two-dimensional blue head (see above). Handed down some elementary clues about how to interact with it (but no tutorial), it's up to the user to explore what to do with the head, if 'explore' is the goal at all. And aside from obviously “eating”, what the head can do is plenty. The gravity, movements, and expressions are all extremely detailed despite the abstractions. The head’s eyes follow the cursor, squint, and even cry as you interact with the head. The experience, in perhaps ten minutes or so, turns out surreal, engaging, slightly extended in depth, and most deserving of a few lighthearted chuckles. If you can spare the time or deserve some relaxation, please try it out yourself. It’s good fun and is anything but like those video games that have given electronic gaming a bad name.

Patrick Smith's Migration, 2005, oil on canvas

Now, here comes the big question: "but, is it art?" Since the reader has perhaps just played the game, I will leave the question momentarily open to whatever tender opinion he/she might have formed. We will return to this later. Instead, first I want to tackle the main question itself: 'can video games be art?', and explore what we mean by art. I won’t here pretend that I have any answers to this, but merely hope to give whatever it is I have to offer. And in order to get into the details of my position I shall address some of Ebert's arguments against video games as art and his understanding of what counts as art (arguments derived strictly from his aforementioned blog post). I find these important and worthy of response because these tend to reflect general misconceptions of video games and games simpliciter that will nevertheless be propounded by many like-minded detractors of video games as art. And before we pester ourselves to death with what exactly constitutes a 'video game', we can simplify the primary question into 'can games be art?' while preserving the essence of the problem by setting aside details that can be dealt with in time.

The form of my argument will be as follows: I shall try to show that from our working concepts of what is a game that there is no evidence of any essential quality that separates games simpliciter from a general concept of art. Quite simply, it is false that games and art are fundamentally incompatible and exclusive of one another. In the process, I shall fashion a provisional criteria of sorting out art from pseudo-art capable of sustaining basic problems as well as counter-examples. I shall then point out that the possibility of games as art cannot alone establish a concrete position if certain aesthetics grounded in taste can be used to argue that the possibility is nevertheless wholly unrealizable. In response to this, I shall then argue that we cannot construct aesthetic grounds strictly in terms of taste, which can then be used to exclude games as art or defend a restricted view of what constitutes art on a subjective basis alone. I shall then conclude by arguing that some sophisticated interactive flash games such as Feed the Head point us in a direction beyond the mere possibility of games as art but towards a concrete realization of an exciting emerging medium.

Link to Part II.

LOL whut? US regulators okay trading box office futures

2010-04-17T03:58:00.006-05:00

Although I don't have a firm grasp on what the consequences of trading futures tied to box-office receipts will be, but it hell doesn't sound like a good idea. Hollywood is greeting it like warm beer:

The Motion Picture Assn. of America, joined by the National Assn. of Theater Owners, the Directors Guild of America and the Independent Film and Television Alliance, has waged a campaign in public and behind the scenes to stop futures contracts related to the movie industry. They have argued that the markets are ripe for manipulation and will create negative publicity for films before they are released.

... The MPAA and its partner groups have argued that, because box office futures are not directly connected to a product, trading them amounts to gambling and that negative perceptions based on upcoming movies with a low trading price could harm the industry.

"[We] remain united in our opposition to a risky plan that would be detrimental to the motion picture industry and the 2.4 million Americans whose livelihoods are based on this industry," the group said in a statement.

(Via: The Wall Street Journal Online)

Some observations on His Girl Friday

2010-04-16T22:51:00.009-05:00

Some observations: (My review of His Girl Friday)

One of the details in His Girl Friday is the ubiquitous telephones and their involvement in both composition and narrative. What immediately jumps out is that at least half of the shots are littered with a phone or someone hammering his voice down one. For instance, an early shot (above) showing female operators working a switchboard hints us towards this feature and what is to come in the film.

It is without a doubt that the telephone functioned as a journalist's best friend (and no different today). And the phones, which all look very much like massively over-sized pawns, are clearly a sign of power over information and communication. It is noticeable, for instance, that Walter Burns has three sets in his office (though only two are viewable in the grab above, which are still more than enough for just one person).The fact that Walter is in possession of quite so many phones takes on some overt significance later on as many of his little tricks to keep Hildy in town are ordered by phone.

But back on track, one of the interesting details, unless one is acutely attuned to the differences in fashion from the 1920s to the late 1930s, is how the telephone props establish the bygone era we're told in the opening titles.

For a 1940s audience it would have been clear that the candlestick-style phones littering the film were already being washed out, thus depicting the past for them. There is the irony established in the opening titles about how far along late 1930s-early 40s society has distanced itself from the '"dark ages"' and how the press of the then-today would in no way resemble their predecessors. The candlestick telephones in the film establish that distance, but at the same time assert that it was just in the passing. (See: A picture of a Western Electric dial phone circa 1921.)

Now the narrative significance of the phones is quite subtle. An instance is that after the scene at the restaurant with Grant, Bellamy, and Russell, the film cuts to the above master shot of a table in a room, five men, four of them sitting and playing what appears a game of cards. At this point we don't exactly know where these men are or who they are. We are only revealed to later that it's a press room at the county court. But if we were paying any attention, the fact that everyone at the table has a phone would indicate to us that they are journalists (the fact that all of them are wearing hats indoors also leaves a clue to the nature of their work and the place).

What is also interesting about the above shot is that it sets up some players in the film. But if we notice carefully, the shot is at the level of the table (slightly below the players) as if it isn't the players that we are supposed to notice. Rather, the focus becomes the setting itself. And this is intended. The dominant player in the room is the room itself, with the table demarcating the center of it. The significance of the press room is that it is where the rest of the film will be played out, which is something retained from The Front Page's single set. There is more to this significance that I will get at later.

Furthermore, we should also notice that the shot incidentally establishes the hierarchy of the men in the room. Those playing the cards on the table closed to the camera form the central adornment, with the background players literally in the background. These features are given more emphasis in the following shots.

And once again there are those phones looking like massive pawns. In some shots, they appear prominently in the foreground sandwiched with an overhead lamp, almost the sort of staple composition that one might expect from Ozu (see the one at the top of the post with Grant and Russell).

A thing that Hawks does rarely in His Girl Friday are close-ups for conversations (I can't say that I have noticed this for his other films). Instead, you get the two shots like the ones at the beginning of the post pairing Grant with Russell. Also prominent are the sort of shots shown in the grabs above. The first thing one notices is how crowded the compositions are. The room itself isn't actually crowded, but it is made to look like the entire space is condensed at the table.

Second and related, the emphasis is placed on the table as well as on the perspective from the table. The importance of the table in establishing the hierarchy along with the perspective winks at us how the film is going to be seen; top to down as well as from a journalist's eye perhaps? And if we bring this together in relation to the comments further above, the table signifies the gravitational center of the room (something also indicated by the number of phones on the table). But more on this later.

Something a meticulous viewer should have also payed attention to is that there are only a select few shots in His Girl Friday that call attention to themselves. Of what I can count there are only three: the opening sequence, the dolly shot of the phones after the chaos following the lock-down (capture above in a still), and the one above showing the cage containing Earl Williams, the cop killer (below).(Please inform me of any I have missed, I am quite sure there is another one lurking out there.)

The first prison shot shows Hildy being let into the prison by the guard. The film then cuts to a downward looking shot at the small cage, immediately emphasizing its size in relation to the scale of the room. It is striking how ludicrous this image is (remember the film is a comedy). First, it defies our expectations of what should really be in its place when Hildy walks through the door; we expect a generic prison instead of a bird cage.
Second, there is the exaggeration and absurdity of scale. And our perceptions are justified, because we are soon shown that Earl Williams is a pathetic bloke with a sad face and a couple IQ points shy of average intelligence; Williams is the opposite of Hannibal Lecter (there is a visual quotation of the cage somewhere in Silence of the Lambs).

The function of this shot as well as why it's meant to stand out, I believe, is to call attention to the press room. In a similar manner, our attention is drawn to the center of a large room. Also, the cage in the above shot forms the gravitational core (even the guards are seen orbiting it). It is almost cute how the story himself is being kept under lock and key. And a visual analogy, I think, is there. In both cases, a person or people are trapped in a small room trying to make sense of what is going on outside. The reporters in the press room wait for their calls, jump out for a while, come back and reformulate the outer world into ink on paper, while the real stories are locked up in their minds. What Hawks is showing here should be clear to anyone who has seen the film.

Furthermore, this analogy also works in another way, Hildy is literally trapped in the press room by the outrageous events that happen in the film. She can't leave because whenever she picks up her hat, something happens and she is off chasing the story again. And if we ask what exactly is keeping her there, the natural answer is the desk, the phones, her typewriter, and the story -- they are all there sitting at the center of the press room pulling her in. If one fancies interpreting the image descriptively, the gravity forms a cage that traps her in along with the story.

There is much more in the film, but I think all this goes to show the subtleties and details imbued in His Girl Friday that make it much more than just a regular screwball comedy with witty bantering. If you need any more evidence, aside from what I have given, then divert your eyes to the carefully worn out and bandaged phones. Could any detail in a film better implicate a journalist of being a workaholic story machine?

Link to my review of His Girl Friday.

China: an eye on and of progress

2010-04-15T20:40:00.112-05:00

With an eye on the recent tragedy, I was reminded of a few sentences written by the Chinese diplomat and scholar Hu Shi during what was then called the New Culture Movement (sometime between ~1916-1920s):

At present the most unfounded and more harmful distortion is to ridicule Western civilization as materialistic and worship Eastern civilization as spiritual ... The modern civilization of the West, built on the foundation of the search for human happiness, not only has definitely increased material enjoyment to no small degree, but can also satisfy the spiritual needs of mankind.

[...] The civilization under which people are restricted and controlled by a material environment from which they cannot escape, and under which they cannot utilize human thought and intellectual power to change [the] environment and improve conditions, is the civilization of a lazy and nonprogressive people. It is truly a materialistic civilization. Such civilization can only obstruct but cannot satisfy the spiritual demands of mankind.

from The Selected Writings of Hu Shi, Vol. 3.

Translation De Bary, Theodore & Lufrano, Richard; Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 2, 2nd edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 386-387.

Taking appreciation of the radically different historical context under which he wrote it, what he was responding to, the fact that China couldn't be more different from the one he returned to in 1917 after tutelage under John Dewey, as well as whether one needs to agree with Hu Shi point to point, his words are elucidatory and ever so resounding on how China must move forward despite all of its economic success. The current state of China's subsiding material problems, though never at a rate quite fast enough, cannot be equated to a state of control over one's material environment. If anything, the sort of thing people often complain about nowadays is how the situation has been made worse in terms of restriction and control.

I have little doubt that in the future, given an extrapolation of current progress, when China's material satisfactions trend towards the point of saturation these problems will naturally subside in the face of spiritual or intellectual demands. But the question is one of when or will it ever reach that point? And as matters have shown, and what everyone is already cognizant of, the country has made strides in certain directions but also considerably less in others. Can it really move faster than the slowest step?

The issue isn't strictly material progress. The eye of progress must instead be focused on something independent and beyond manipulation of the material environment itself, which is to be taken as a means but not as an end. The direction of attention should be towards what could only possibly satisfy the wants of highest importance for man. And I think Hu was correct in identifying that form of human happiness as an Aristotelian one; one that is at its core a form of attainment that is beyond mere material satisfaction (though it is a point of contention whether it thus has to be spiritual).

Review: The Life of David Gale (Parker, Alan; 2003)

2010-04-12T02:23:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I decide to write a short review on something that I have just seen. The film doesn't necessarily have to be any good. I just need a quick justification on paper as to why its bad. So I start off 'A review of only a few pithy paragraphs ...' But before I realize it, I find myself churning out quite a bit. This is basically what happened here.

Alan Parker’s The Life of David Gale (2003) is an unapologetically dumb thriller that radiates the delusion that it is smart by mixing in a convoluted plot to go along with a heavy political issue that sings. It's bad.

Set in Huntsville, Texas, the execution capital of the USA, David Gale (played by Kevin Spacey), a philosophy professor and death penalty abolitionist, is convicted to be executed for the rape and murder of his former female colleague and fellow abolitionist, Constance Hathaway (Laura Linney). In his final three days, Gale grants an interview to Bitsy Bloom (Kate Winslet), a controversial journalist for a news magazine, in order to give his side of the story so that she can help exculpate him. Bitsy’s subsequent investigation into the mysteries of Gale’s case unravels the mystery, and hopefully before it’s all too late.

I apologize for disappointing anyone but Alan Parker’s The Life of David Gale (2003) isn’t about the life of a man named David Gale nor is it about capital punishment and how wrong it is. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Alan Parker was, after all, the man who directed Mississippi Burning, a film that was more of a sanctimonious rouse-up-the-audience vengeance flick than one about a 'Mississippi burning' or the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. Thus taking precautions, we ought to be careful not to characterize The Life of David Gale as an anti-capital-punishment film; for this, it simply lacks the intelligence and nuance. The whole point of the film is to hijack a hot agenda and milk it for cheap dramatic effect.

Among the worst things about the film is the miserable script by Charles Randolph (he was allegedly once a philosophy professor. And for whom I cannot locate publications on Jstor). For instance, I am usually willing to meet Hollywood expectations half-way when it comes to characterizing academics. But The Life of David Gale made me squirm with lines like “The guy's the Immanuel Kant of the N.F.L. Consistent, accurate, effective, and boring …” Does the constant name-dropping of Socrates, really convince us that Gale is a philosopher? It's something all so sophisticated and erudite that I cannot possibly, possibly comprehend it. As the great Louise Brooks once remarked about Hollywood: "I found myself looked upon as a literary wonder because I read books." Sigh.

Setting aside the worthless philosophical references, of all the frequently propounded arguments against capital punishment the film is themed on the weakest one: the one of executing an innocent person. [See note below.] As I mentioned, the film isn’t against capital punishment, it’s a leech. So naturally, the point isn't going to be one about good arguments. Nevertheless, it has itself have us believe that Gale and Hathaway bought into precisely this argument as a cause that they were willing to martyr themselves. If Gale was really innocent, his execution would provide the exception to the death penalty’s perfect record (so it says in the film). We know that if Bitsy finds the real murderer in time, Gale will be exonerated. If not in time, he will be executed. Whatever the result, there is the artifice of thinking that something really is at stake.

Without revealing any spoilers, I warn that the film strives for further low points. It’s all very absurd and ridiculous. Yet for what it’s worth, it isn’t a bad thriller if you throw pretty much everything out of the window. Well filmed and more than competently edited to excite, The Life of David Gale is an off-the-mill thick-headed thriller. In the end, all the pointless posturing and drama give us precisely what the filmmakers want: a showy piece that puts to the stake any meaningful discourse for the sake of engendering a couple thrills. It must be deja vu because to me it’s Mississippi Burning all over again.

A short note on the ‘innocent man’ argument:

The point is all very simple. Even if we assume that a given justice system is infallible (not to imply that it is or ever will be), there is still the issue of whether we ought to condone the death penalty on moral or other grounds. This shows that fallibility is only a secondary consideration.

Furthermore, the fact that our current justice system is fallible does not in turn provide an argument against the death penalty unless we should wish that it also be applied to incarceration or to the system as a whole -- flaws we are willing to tolerate. Our acceptance of justice does not in turn require perfect results, and this does not necessitate the acceptance of imperfect results as just either. It is merely the best way to cut the pie.

Review: His Girl Friday (Hawks, Howard; 1940)

2010-04-08T01:38:00.011-05:00

In Howard Hawks’s great film His Girl Friday (1940), Cary Grant plays the devil. No, he doesn’t really play the devil, but he comes close enough. Grant plays Walter Burns, a big time newspaper editor with no scruples when it comes to getting a story. A whatever-the-means slicker, he’s as charming as a snake and so nonchalantly smooth you’d mistake him for an honest respectable man. Walter isn’t exactly a bad guy, which is I suppose what anyone would say about him (how could they not?). And although he’s never up to any good, you just can’t help but root for him and whatever master plan he is hatching up to puppet those around him. It almost seems as if you weren’t paying attention, he’d sell you and you’d still be glad to count up his winnings. Thus, the devil, I imagine, would have a harmless name such as Walter to go along with the face of Cary Grant.

Walter’s ‘girl Friday’, aka his slave, is his star reporter and ex-wife, Hildy (played brilliantly with a lively soulful elegance by Rosalind Russell), who has gone AWOL after divorcing him. Hildy, the paradigm of the independent modern career woman, returns to the office after her sabbatical with quite a surprise, a tame groom-to-be named Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), marriage the very next day, and a new unopened life of wifehood tucked away someplace in Albany. Walter decides that he must save her from herself, and also keep her all to himself, by preventing her from leaving on the evening train to a place too far from anything interesting. Of course, Walter gets what he wants as he tries to seduce the ambitious Hildy with the biggest story in town – that of an ‘innocent’ cop-killer set to hang the very next day. Through a series of stratagems, he sets off a succession of events that delay Hildy and Baldwin from leaving town. The consequence is that Hildy must choose between a life of domestication with Baldwin or a career with Walter. With an irresistible face like Cary Grant’s, is there even a question of what happens?

His Girl Friday is a great comedy and one of the most exhilarating American films I have seen in a long while. Adapted by Charles Lederer from the Broadway play The Front Page, the film is a snappy smart battle-of-the-sexes screwball comedy that puts to shame most you’ll ever see.

Right from the start it propels us head first into the bustle of a newspaper office that sets the tone of the frantic energy that gets everything going along with the laughs. Aside from unleashing two considerable performances by Grant and Russell along with their high-octane verbal bouts exciting to watch on their own, His Girl Friday does not shy from stinging social satire. By working in women’s issues concerning the dilemma of career versus family life cleverly paralleled with the incest between crooked local politics and popular media, the film leaves us smarting in between the laughs. Hawks turns the brand of American equality, and its so-called democracy, on its head in vibrant fashion. Women and the plebian public, the usual subjects of equal rights talk, are fleeced as suckers by the politico-media complex staffed exclusively by a bunch of good old boys. It’s never exactly a battle of the sexes or for equality. Yes, there is a bit of a fight, but in the end, it’s just like one of those films with suffocating romantic endings where the heroine resigns herself to a final submissive kiss.

Now, Rosalind Russell‘s Hildy isn’t that sort of heroine. A formidable woman as well as reporter almost every bit of a match for Grant’s Walter, it’s tragic that she’s just not quite. In the case of the woman, it’s never really about the will or the ability to fight. The professional girl’s quest for equality, which at its core is a fantasy to be accepted as a man, is a slave’s task of attempting to achieve the impossible. And this is superbly played out in Hawks’s film. Through the objective of parity motivated by sheer ambition, Hildy wills her own degradation to become Walter’s Friday and he never even pays attention to the fact that she is or ever was a woman. Sure, he knows what a ‘woman’ is, along with all the tricks of tenderness necessary to win them over. But Walter never lights a cigarette for her, he never even bothers to offer her one, never opens a door, or offers a hand in hauling heavy baggage. So, Hildy achieves her fantasy, perhaps he takes her as a chap. But the result isn’t some feminist utopia of mutual self-respect. Walter doesn’t think of her, for that matter, as a man either. She becomes merely an extension of his will, never his equal, like just about everyone else in the film.

Although the film is a comedy, the underlying feminist themes in His Girl Friday are essentially tragic. The subjugation of Hildy as Walter’s ‘girl Friday’ is formed with Walter as Hildy’s Pygmalion, though his is a tough love if he loved her at all. In the film, Walter brags to Hildy that he took her in as a “doll-faced hick.” The result of a ruthless pawn of a reporter was his achievement, and he says it as if he was reclaiming his authority over her. This subscription to an almost biblical imagery of the woman as created from the man leaves the fatalistic impression that the she is imperfect in relation to man and can never exceed him. Hildy as Walter’s creation means that she is forever flawed to the possibility of meeting her instincts as a woman with those instincts that strive for equal footing. The secret catch is her inherent drive, the desire to become on a par that Walter, who knows all about this, can forever use to entice her with; all he needs to do is dangle the objects of her ambition and watch her squirm. This is what makes Hildy Walter’s slave.

Even though Hildy is Walter’s slave, we sincerely feel that they deserve each other; Walter and Hildy are a natural born pair and any waltz needs two. And I am not saying this because Walter irrepressibly likable and we thus cheer on his nefarious attempts to control Hildy, but because it couldn’t be any other way; Hildy is always going to be running after Walter as his errand boy. The sharp bite of the film rests on conveying this resignation to the uncomfortable facts of how things are. When we question ourselves whether Hildy could be happy raising kids in Albany or whether she can have a fulfilling life with Walter, our inquisition unveils the biggest question of all: why does there have to be a compromise? If our resignation indicates that we live in no perfect world, then we have to be content to accept the choices that people make even if we find them to be tragic. His Girl Friday offers us any answers. I don’t think there are any at all, but the film does engage us with the problems, which don't tire us even seventy years on.

It’s hard to believe that there was originally no female Hildy role for The Front Page, which makes me wonder whether there was an adaptation at all. It is claimed that Hawks decided on a female lead because he liked a woman reading the lines of the Hildy role. But frankly, if Hildy was no girl, then there could not have been His Girl Friday. The entire construction of the film rests on the idea of women in the modern workplace, which is obvious from the very first tracking shots in the newspaper office that tune us into women handling office duties. The genius of the script and the film is to bring out this feature prominently and to handle it so playfully. The dynamics of man and woman, Cary Grant versus Rosalind Russell is so authentically lively and engaging, so comical because of how they mismatch and ramrod into each other. They argue and talk over one another back and forth with the staccato of witty dialogue forming the sparse musical score that couldn’t possibly deserve any better.

Yet despite all this intermingling of voices and noises, which call to mind the naturalism of Altman, Hawks's style is rarely oppressive. He sets the stage, usually a room, and lets the action roll. By letting Grant and Russell play it out, it almost doesn't matter if we can't follow them every way of the heavily condensed and convoluted plot of the to-be-hanged murderer. All that we want to see are the two of them chained together. We smile because we know that they are enjoying it, we laugh because there couldn't be anything more pleasing to watch than them locked in their non-fatal duels. And before we know it we are pushed out at the other end. Great films are always too short.

Some additional observations on His Girl Friday.

What other people have written on His Girl Friday:

David Bordwell fleshes out the film history context of the film in depth and style that few could do better.

Jim Emerson touches on the film's opening shots and how it sets the tone for the rest of the movie (citing That Little Round-Headed Boy, which is unfortunately no longer publicly available on the internet).

More notes on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001)

2010-04-07T00:00:00.005-05:00

Some additional observations on Mulholland Drive:

Naomi Watts is cast as both Betty and Diane Selwyn.

Ditto Laura Elena Harring as Rita and Camilla Rhodes.

This shows that they are different characters at least in the script, which is all the difference. If we want to interpret Betty as an idealization of Diane (same goes for Rita and Camilla naturally) using dream terminology of some sort then we still have to account for the fact that Watts plays two different characters. But how then can there be two different characters if they are the same? Should one still press the point with the argument that this is merely a trivial detail that can be overcome by the notion that they are not the same person and one is really the idealization of the other, we come to realize that there is no clue in the film of which is merely an ‘image’ of the other. By this I mean, how can we draw the line between reality and dream reality if we don’t have the resources of distinguishing Betty as Diane or Diane as Betty?

I don’t think the statement that they are ‘not the same person and one is really the idealization of the other’ has any currency because we can’t fix ourselves on who exactly is the idealization. The fact that Watts is cast as both helps further undermine these approaches to understanding the film.

This post also serves as an excuse for this photo:

Some notes on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001)

2010-03-29T21:43:00.012-05:00

I just saw the Mulholland Drive so don't begrudge my naivety over the wonderful things that may have already been said/written about it. Anyhow, the following are some of my observations.

The moment when the facade of the film itself begins to slough off, i.e. when we become acutely aware of our disentanglement from our immersion into the narrative and view Mulholland Drive qua film, takes place during the first audition scene in the film. The audition degenerates quite uncomfortably as Chad Everett insists on 'playing it close' and then pulls Naomi Watts in by the waist. When they do end up playing it really, really close, the feeling becomes distinctly that it isn't an audition. Everett and Watts did do this at sometime or other. Instead of viewing it as an audition it becomes full-blown acting. Now, it is acting and this isn't exactly surprising. Most films with in-film auditions have these meta-filmic effects that form the locus of interpreting the film.

Why this is important in Mulholland Drive is that as I mentioned above is that our commitments to the narrative become undermined. This for instance makes it a different type of junction from the screen test viewing in Fellini's Otto e Mezzo. In Otto e Mezzo the goals are far more modest. The film becomes entangled with the film within it as Guido's art starts to imitate his life. Some of us would very much like this to say something about Fellini's own troubles, but I agree with Kael's assessment that the film is nothing but pure fantasy (I don't buy the catharsis through film).

In the case of Mulholland Drive, we begin to ask questions that push the limits on exactly what we are watching. It is unsettling because by that time we are already half-dazed/half-absorbed by what's going on. The entire process has been one of our figuring the going-ons like as if watching a good noir. But Lynch has in fact managed to draw us in with the most tenuous connections on the thinnest thread. For those who claim that the film has 'no logic' or more correctly 'no rational structure', they should simply be reminded that they were never totally lost. As long as there is an experience or a feeling, we have evidence that we are in the hands of a master craftsman who has created an illusion that preys on all the psychological tricks and connections we aren't aware of. But this isn't manipulation, not manipulation in any way different from any other film. Ask yourself what makes any given film work. What is the psychological relevance of a cut from one shot to the next? David Lynch pushes the envelope and in a way sets the limits of what is possible for a film, the medium itself. The importance of all this comes into play later during the auditions for the Sylvia North Story.

In the auditions for the Sylvia North Story, which follow almost immediately after Betty's (Watts) first audition, the first thing you notice is how queer the singing is. When Camilla Rhodes starts singing (or whoever the previous actress is), the question that naturally occurs to the viewer is whether she is really singing. Is it too brilliant? Does it match her lips? And with the camera slowly moving away we get a better picture of what's is going on. If you have decided that she is lip syncing, for whatever grounds, the follow-up question is 'on what grounds?' But this all becomes incredibly silly after the revelation (the key) at the Club Silencio. No hay banda. There is no band. It's a movie, everything is synced, so what's singing? The illusion is ripped apart and it becomes obvious that it could not be any other way unless it was intentionally so. That is to say unless the trumpet continues to play even after the trumpet has stopped playing we are not revealed to the difference. It is the sound of a trumpet playing. Better: it is a sound, to which we are told it is that of a trumpet.

Applying this key back to the Camilla audition scene and further back to the first audition, we jarred by what exactly transpires. We aren't illuminated to differences in fact and fiction within the screen but to the film as an object of intentions. We are shown precisely what we are meant to be shown. And this is what Mulholland Drive shows us. It can only show us this if it is a film, which it quite obviously is. But to be a film goes beyond the simple recognition that it is something projected on a screen. As I have written above, it does give us a feeling an experience, even a compelling one perhaps. What exactly the feeling is I have not yet managed to grasp in its entirety. It's not merely a dream, a fantasy, something that transcends comprehension, an [insert interpretation]. For me, it's a film with something that keeps me up at night. Isn't that all we ask for from the movies?

More to come.

Not that anyone would care but ... this is a good a read

2010-03-29T04:26:00.008-05:00

Really old (circa 2005), but I just managed to dig this up today. Good stuff. Jim Emerson writes:

Warning: What you are about to read may thrill you, may shock you, it may even… horrify you.

Here it is: Movies are not “real.” They’re movies -- images on a screen orchestrated to express ideas and emotions. They are not “reality” (even documentaries are carefully constructed fictions); they are representations, myths, metaphors. Don’t even try to take them literally. They are not made to be viewed that way, and to do so may be hazardous to your mental health.

It’s silly how many moviegoers and critics insist upon making an artificial distinction between what is “real” and what is “unreal” in a movie – often at the expense of what the film itself is actually about. It’s as if, to them, the predominant idea behind any given picture boils down to nothing more than: Did It Really Happen Or Was It All In His/Her Head? Well, look at it this way: If it’s on the screen, it’s there for a reason – to convey something about character, story, theme. And that is all that matters.

I have being telling other people the above way too often. The silliness of my even having to say it sometimes bothers me. But people still go on and on about 'reality' and 'dreams' in films. Stop it. Stop it now! Come on everyone knows this. The problem: they don't think about it.

Just saw Mulholland Dr. and thoughts along these lines have excited me again. As the cowboy says in the film: "did you really think about it or did you just give me the answer you thought I would like?" Can't wait to write more about this.

I shall leave you with a bit more from the above article (Ebert is a frequent offender btw):

In 1976, the ironic ending of "Taxi Driver" – in which Travis is hailed as a hero by the tabloid press and the grateful parents of Iris (Jodie Foster), the runaway teen prostitute – was hotly debated. Was this Travis’s wish-fulfillment fantasy? And what about that disconcerting final moment, where he glances in the rear-view mirror and then disappears again into the hellish neon blur of The City? Is this all some kind of fever dream?

“Is this a fantasy scene?,” wondered Roger Ebert, re-reviewing the film on its 20th annniversary. “Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true? I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence plays like music, not drama: It completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level.”

Review: Pineapple Express (Green, David Gordon; 2008)

2010-03-29T03:18:00.114-05:00

According to pothead lore, combining weed with a bad movie yields like a totally awesome experience. Most certainly, you would have to have seen the crappy movie at least once before to know that it was actually bad. In the spirit of film appreciation, it’s probably best not to test that one out. Then again, one could really be missing out on something seriously mind-blowing unless one tried it out, empirically I mean. Would it really be that bad of a movie if it turned out better … upon second viewing … under drug altered circumstances? A dilemma most deserving of stoner flicks!

Cutting to the chase, David Gordon Green’s Judd Apatow-produced pothead fantasy Pineapple Express is the worst movie I have seen in a long time. A movie that I suspect will not be enhanced by the viewer’s level of tripping. It is truly dreadful. I disclaim that it is so because I am an uptight self-righteous prick repelled by its crude humor and depicted drug use. I also disclaim it so because I was unfortunate enough to have Express sandwiched between Germi’s Divorce Italian Style and Hawks’s His Girl Friday. It is so because the movie is a fucking bore to watch.

First off, the scenario isn’t miserable. With a whip, the plot could be beaten into shape by a Godard or a Tarantino. A pothead process server (Seth Rogan) witnesses a murder committed by a drug lord. Tracked by the rare type of weed he was smoking, Pineapple Express, he and his buddy dealer (James Franco) go on the run. They are excessively high most of the time. Car chases, explosions, gang war with the off-the-shelf Asians, shoot-outs, and bromance ensue. In the end, the drug lord is killed and the heroes are afflicted with the munchies. It’s all very cute.

Since, it’s a Judd Apatow product, we aren’t asking for sophistication. But we are asking for funny. So what’s funny? There is the usual scatological and cheap sexual humor exemplified by the intermittent shot-to-the-nuts shots that have as much freshness as ‘eating skittles out of a whore’s ass,’ as one very lovely character confesses to ever so delightfully. As fresh this all may be, that’s pretty much it.

On the downside, the slacked out script sags for every moment of the film’s 112 minutes. That’s the 112 minutes we spend meandering through a checklist of sparsely dispersed “funny” one-liners. So yeah, 'it's almost a shame to smoke it. It's like killing a unicorn... with, like, a bomb.' Pretty much sums up the problems. Bad script overkill. If that isn’t enough, the understatement would be that there is absolutely no point to most of it. Asked for a justification of this or that script element I can only imagine the filmmakers’ response being more or less ‘because it would be so cool, dude.’ Yet in the end, so little of the film is cool.

Admittedly, Express has a few hilarious moments. Any form of humor that is liable to make grown men giggle is amusing in its own right. Yes, mostly guys will see it and promptly laud Rogan for his comic genius. Critics will claim that James Franco is quite a revelation in it, which he is in an adorable way. Frat boys will slobber over the ‘bromosexual’ elements and all will be cool.

But it isn’t all cool. Not to be rude, but those whoevers who wrote all those good reviews for Express were totally tripping. I hereby disavow any playa hating, but the only reason I can decipher for some critics hauling-ass to write a good review for the film is to express support for David Gordon Green’s mainstream debut.

For instance, Roger Ebert praises the David Gordon Green as well as the cinematography:

David Gordon Green, that poet of the cinema, is the last person you'd expect to find directing a Judd Apatow male-buddy comedy about two potheads who start a drug war. But he does such a good job, there's a danger he'll become in demand by mainstream Hollywood and tempted away from the greatness he showed in "George Washington" and "Undertow." ... As always, even in their zero-budget first effort, Green and Orr use wide-screen compositions with graceful visual instincts, although you may be excused for not noticing them, considering what happens. The movie even transcends the usual chase, this time between two squad cars. To my amazement, I found it exciting and very funny, especially the business about Saul's leg.

But the issue over the film isn’t simply whether it is a well directed or a ‘well-shot’ one or not. As far as the whole 'great director' business goes, it has to be something indicated by more than the device of a leg through a windshield. Eeeek!

Some critics in all seriousness actually found the movie funny. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers writes:

You'll go limp from laughing ... It's hardcore hilarious. Pineapple Express slaps a big, fat, goofy smile on your face that lasts for days. I already have the munchies for more.

I apparently had the munchies for His Girl Friday i.e.a 'funny' movie that was not at the same time actually exciting to watch and had an script that was as tightly drawn as a knuckle-fisted punch. Again, I'm not complaining about Travers's sense of humor (... taste ... whatever). We are entitled to think whatever is funny to be funny, la-di-da, proviso it has nothing to do with eating dogs, dolphins or other really really reprehensible thingies. I'm complaining about how Travers writes a review that makes Express sound like he hasn't seen a funny film in years.

It has also been mentioned elsewhere that Express is a 'head-trip movie' with potheads casting themselves as imaginary heroes of their own weed-fueled fantasies (the second link inside of the link is worth reading. I just read it). But even if we are meant to find the whole thing an extension of a hazed out mind (i.e. a script excreted from under the influence (most probably) generates an accurate mood), so what? The assessment that Express plays out as a pothead’s fantasy of, well, a stoner adventure, provides the oh-so-hard-to-find excuse for incompetence. And incompetence it is. Please go back to making films like George Washington.

Role Models

2010-03-23T04:06:00.005-05:00

Self-explanatory.

[Tip: Chinasmack]

Haven Hamilton's watermelon

2010-03-15T22:58:00.015-05:00

Haven Hamilton, his wife Lady Pearl, and Tommy Brown -- the "whitest n***** in town"

There is an overly in-depth 'conversation' between Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard on Robert Altman's Nashville over at the Slant Mag blog The House Next Door. The whole thing is done with a bit of a competitive sting to it and each of the guys try desperately to out-analyze the other one. The result is an adventure into a series of conjectures about Altman's intentions and even more peculiarly sometimes the intentions of the characters in the film; all in all masquerading as analysis or something meaningful. This gives rise to things such as Howard's: "Haven is aware of the song's naïveté, that he has his own internal doubts and insecurities about what he's singing." Well thanks a lot, but who doesn't have misgivings and insecurities? This isn't analysis! And God knows what is going on in Hamilton's furry little head of his. That is partly the point: it is difficult to read him.

Altman's gift to his film characters is that they are often difficult penetrate. The audience is presented with caricatures of an approximate authenticity to the degree that the beings residing in the screen feel alive to us. In most of Altman's films the autonomy for characters to behave, speak, and be motivated in ways seemingly transcendent of script determinism gives us an awareness to the idea that we really don't know (or can't know) the projected people. The question then is precisely who don't we know? The answer to this should be obvious. Our manner of approaching them resembles our methods towards real people: we find delight in speculative and gossipy assertions about them. Though this activity is better compared to an nonconstructive one of smearing rather than filling (for instance like the once upon a time past-time of 'uncovering' Marienbad interpretations).

In the flavor of the aforementioned 'conversation', the following is my exegesis of one of the many little gems in Nashville: the often misinterpreted watermelon scene between Haven Hamilton, Lady Pearl, and Tommy Brown. For instance, Ed Howard from above has this to say about the scene:

"There are few directors as detail-oriented as Altman, whether he's ... making a blink-and-you'll-miss-it satirical jab about racism when, in a tossed-off dialogue-free scene, he has Haven sarcastically offer Tommy Brown a watermelon, with the subservient Tommy purposefully ignoring the racist jibe and asking for something else instead."

If you are one to ask who gives a crap about whether Haven Hamilton is a racist or not, then you are right on the spot. No one cares. Nevertheless, the scene alone doesn't provide the grounds for labeling Haven as a racist.

No matter how one looks at it, it's safe to assume that Altman was aware that the image of a white man offering a black man a watermelon implies racism on the part of the white man. How this has become racist -- that (southern) black folks, as opposed to folks in general, relish watermelons -- is something that continues to defeat me. Well, only in America as they say.

Now that we have this assumption in place, isn't it more reasonable to suppose that something more is being said than simply Haven Hamilton is a racist? It is a natural reaction for me Altman that was making a statement on overdoing racial sensitivity -- that past a certain point it instead becomes manifest racism. (At least in our age of affirmative action, this has become very popular.) It's hot, dusty, and your friend (or servant) is requesting something to eat. You have a juicy quarter of a watermelon. Do all the cogs really need to go to work? Nevertheless, exceptions will have to be made when your friend (or servant) is black. But these exceptions serve no purpose other than the attempt to give off the impression that one is properly non-racist. Personally, I don't know anyone who would refuse a watermelon on a hot dusty day. My guess then is that everyone likes watermelon.

The only person who apparently doesn't like watermelon is Tommy Brown, the Oreo cookie country singer with black filling inside the white in God knows how many inter-segmented layers. But does he like watermelon? If the Robert DoQui character is right about Tommy Brown being the "whitest n***** in town" and I am wrong about people generally liking watermelon, then there surely is nothing wrong with a pseudo-white man refusing a piece of watermelon. It's a matter of taste (only black people like watermelon remember?). How then does it become Brown's "purposefully ignoring the racist jibe"?

I take it that Altman's Hamilton is post-racial. Get me a white guy sound of mind who would hand a black man a piece of watermelon. But imagine the inconceivable: Haven genuinely takes Tommy Brown as every bit his equal. 'Equal' in the way that Connie White is equal to Barbara Jean (equal being merely inferior but replacement quality).

It's called making amends to mend the broken bridge of poor racial relations, Haven declares ever so quietly. From now on, Haven decides to himself, people shall be free to offer watermelon to whoever they wish. Lady Pearl flashes an angry glance at him and kills the proposal. Look at the screen grabs above. Haven is asking himself "what the fuck is wrong with this perfectly good watermelon?" He is visibly perturbed. Lady Pearl offers some pathetic looking lettuce to Tommy Brown, but soon forgets about him altogether.

Altman wants us, through the sequence, to label Haven a racist. But if that is Altman's intention, it seems more fitting as a snark-ish remark on all-American priggishness. The Altman-esque "satirical jab", if there is one at all, would be the latter made more firm by the obviousness which we hold of the former. Our instincts, a la Ed Howard, are nurtured to take away the scene as an under-the-table duel over a watermelon. Tommy Brown can't possibly accept the watermelon can he? And in Opal's case, a black man couldn't possibly be a country singer, not to mention a star.

But who exactly is Tommy Brown? Here is a black country singer who surrounds himself with black people and is bored to death by all the honky festivities. Yet when time comes to put out he has no reservations for bojangling. In spite of all this, this caricature of an Oreo cookie contains just as much complexity as the DuQui character who takes offense to Brown's singing to white folks (yet who himself chases white women). These aren't simply good guys or bad guys. Over the course of the film we take them as who they are in ways that shatters whatever superficial image we have of them. They have an integrity of their own and in some peculiar way we come to respect their choices. Haven Hamilton has his final performance; DuQui shows up at the Parthenon looking for Sueleen; Tommy Brown is a bearer of Barbara Jean in her final moments. If you ask me, Tommy Brown just doesn't like watermelon.

So what is Altman getting at? The silliness of our cultural conventions, the significance of watermelons? It's satire. It doesn't matter whatever you take away from it as long as its funny. And as Ed Howard has it, Haven Hamilton is a sensitive guy. Don't refuse his watermelon. That is unless you don't like it.

Buster Keaton's The Scarecrow (1920)

2010-03-13T02:53:00.009-06:00

Google video find: Buster Keaton with Joe Roberts in Keaton's 1920 short The Scarecrow. Like another Keaton short, The Electric House (1922), Keaton the filmmaker goes nuts with all sorts of delightful inventions. Since the absurd gadgetry is still funny in our world filled with absurd gadgetry, I wonder how 1920s audiences reacted to the film.

Review: Che: Part One -- The Argentine (Soderbergh, Steven; 2008)

2010-03-12T03:03:00.009-06:00

A moment of peace: enriching oneself in the confines of a sweaty jungle

If all I could come up with to describe Steven Soderbergh's Che: Part One (starring Benecio del Toro as the legendary revolutionary) was that it was 'interesting', I would in turn be implying that the film was all things said and done simply mediocre. Yes, it is an interesting film, I most likely won't be seeing Part II, so good for me.

Now that I have made my feelings known about the film, let us take a step back and venture along the lines of why I, or any one else for that matter, would be motivated to watch a biopic about Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. The following considerations I will take reasonable to approaching a film about a controversial figure whose mystique has permeated popular culture in ways I won't even need to bother making clear.

First, I fancied the thought that watching the movie would enlighten me of facts (or whatever movies intend to convey instead) regarding Che and the Cuban revolution that I did not already know. And of what little I knew, I knew enough not to entertain any overly romantic illusions of revolutionaries that at the end of the day found themselves on plastered over consumables. Whether or not Che was portrayed as a glorious revolutionary or a dastardly murderer did not concern me as long as the film would pique my attention sufficiently without turning me off. This would most certainly rest on the quality of the film.

Second, Steven Soderbergh has indeed a history of making quality films. I had little want of watching a feeble political film directed by an under-educated white man decrying the evils of capitalism while kissing the feet of a Marxist icon. If any film about Che Guevara was worth financing it would be because there was some interesting story to tell about Che; although this is in reality a fantastic assumption. However, with Mr. Soderbergh on board I felt a good deal more comfortable that the whole thing wasn't going to sink within the first ten minutes.

Taking the above points into consideration, Che: Part One was 'interesting' because at a minimum it instilled in me the relevant desire to seek out literature on the Cuban revolution. By painting out the general context of the revolution, the landscape of Cuba, its people, one gets a satisfactory account of at least one aspect of the Cuban revolution -- the Castro led guerrillas in the rural mountains and country-side of Cuba that made up the major source of armed resistance against the Batista regime. Even better, Soderbergh does this job all very admirably. His grasp of sidestepping cringe-worthy sequences is outstanding. There is also the added bonus of a sophisticated looking final product that isn't a simple-minded adulatory exercise. So far so good, we have the 'interesting' settled.

However, what bothered me about the film is how stingy it is in offering anything else and how self-conscious it is about what little it really has to say about Che. There is barely a moment that Benicio Del Toro does not adorn the screen, but his character is merely what gives the film a face, a story arc; Guevara becomes the excuse of drawing the film tightly around the history in the way that it is portrayed.

An example of the film's awareness of the aforementioned fault is its splicing together of three separate events all involving Che that are mildly relevant to the narrative of the film: Pre-Cuba, Che in the sanitary confines of an apartment in Mexico City; Cuba, 195X, Che in the mountains; Post-revolution, 1964, Che in NYC to the UN general assembly, interviews etc. The inter-mixed structure to tell the story is all very cool and fancy, but does nothing to help escape its own artificiality. The relevance of the sequences is determined somewhat tenuously by their being there and not by their necessity. In the NYC sequences, all shot in b/w, we are revealed through interviews the political, social, and economic climate of pre-revolutionary Cuba. It is strongly implied that the just path is revolution, which is most easily said in retrospect of a successful one. The pre-Cuba sequences give us a glimpse into how Che, an Argentinian, gets caught up with all this revolutionary business. However, none of this relieves the Che character of his merely instrumental value.; occupying time and space on the screen doesn't necessarily convey more about the character. The title character could be anyone, but Ernesto 'Che' Guevara just so happens to be most convenient to getting the story told as if the story were not one about himself.

Concerning Che, we are still left to ask: who is he? I don't mean this in a way that demands a ridiculous Rosebud of an answer. But it wouldn't hurt if a film on the man revealed something more. It is mentioned, for instance, that Guevara had wife and child in Mexico. Yet the film lends us no hand in deciphering why such a man would desert his family, his occupation as a doctor, and risk his life to fight for a foreign country. What makes a man do such a thing or go down such a path? A resolved man, sure. A just path, perhaps. But most definitely a man with the conviction that the path before him was just. But how does he arrive at this point? These are conjectures we are forced to make independent of the film's examining of them. Even if these are obvious conclusions they are still ones of importance that would be well-served by some good fleshing out.

But no, the film's version of Che remains as ephemeral as ever. A psychological exploration of the man is not neglected merely by the paucity of subjective shots and close-ups, which the film does use sparsely. If the film asks us to simply observe his behavior, for that could tells us everything we need to know, then the burden is on the film to show us something. Yet what the film depicts Che going through, what he says, what he does all fail to compel us into thinking that there is some inner life to the man. The film shows us his coughing fits, his asthma without a doubt exacerbated by the labors of trekking through rough terrain, his exhibitions of love and comradeship, his paternalistic efforts to instill discipline, literacy in his fighting comrades and so on. It's good that Che Guevara was a leader, but what separated him from his fellow revolutionary helmsmen? There is nothing indicating that he was a better fighter, more dedicated, more violent, more passionate or anything from his comrades. The film merely depicts a generic revolutionary, albeit an educated doctor, on the screen.

Furthermore, it is depressing that when Del Toro's Guevara opens his mouth our being impressed becomes an afterthought. In the NYC interview sequences all he does is spout some inane quotable about the capacity to love as the highest quality sought in a revolutionary, about American imperialism, or that the spirit of an individual soldier is of utmost importance. With these mashed in with sequences of fighting and exhibitions of comradeship the nausea begins to set in for the audience. But even if one isn't tired by Guevara's ramblings about US imperialism, apparently forming the center of his belief of what is wrong with Cuba and the world, one becomes disappointed when he declares that there is no better concoction for national solidarity other than an American backed invasion. And if this convinces us of the US as a mere excuse, then how must we revisit our previous conjectures about the hero's ends? We get no closer to him.

I hate films that provide ready-made explanations for everything or "tell it without respecting the audience", but what we have here is a plain destitution of material. If the argument is put forth that we are just not humanly capable of closing the distance with Che Guevara or anyone else for that matter, the whole project then boils down to a defusion of just one of our romanticized fantasies about a supposedly great man. But is this all that the film intends to convey? That Che was just another guy caught in a world desiring of counter culture and pop culture icons to be eventually pasted on to contemporary capitalist t-shirt billboards? With the end point being that he is nothing more than a figment of a fantasy, or better yet merely a phantasm further diluted by high-tales and welcoming anecdotes.

No, I don't think so. The film is telling us something about Che Guevara, the problem is that it is just pathetically thin. The script repeatedly places Che in a sympathetic positive light; whether it is in his execution of deserters that end up terrorizing the peasantry or his address at the UN. He is in some sense heroic. The film wants to give off a good impression without over-doing it. It wants to say very pleasantly and deliberately that this is just what the real Che was like. And with its restriction of subjective shots it strives desperately for objectivity. But by stripping away the mystique and aiming to depict the real Che, the film ends up supplying us with a formless hero -- a hero who nevertheless becomes more mysterious and ends up even less real.

Perhaps the saddest thing about Che: Part One is that it has a less memorable characterization of Che Guevara compared to even a generally inferior film such as Andy Garcia's The Lost City (2005). Garcia's film is a mess propounding an anti-Castro message, but with his bit-part Che as an arrogant butcher Garcia spares nothing to show an aspect of a man that too many people nowadays find uncomfortable to talk about. It isn't as if biopic filmmakers have to probe at weakness and ugliness to make their pictures worth watching, but the film has to be revealing to something about the person at the center.

I will stick by my assessment that the film is merely an interesting one, perhaps even commendable in conjunction with low expectations. But how Che: Part One has anything of substance to offer about Guevara other than 'he was here and he did that' I have little idea.

If Pauline Kael reviewed Avatar ...

2010-02-16T19:13:00.013-06:00

[…] Lieutenant Dunbar (Costner) , a Union officer, sees that the Sioux have a superior culture – they’re held up as models for the rest of us – and he changes sides … This is a nature-boy movie, a kid’s daydream of being an Indian. […]

[…] Once our hero has become an Indian, we don’t feel torn or divided. We can see that white men are foulmouthed, dirty louts. The movie … is childishly naïve. When Lieutenant Dunbar is alone with his pet wolf, he’s like Robinson Crusoe on Mars. When he tries to know the Sioux, and he and they are feeling each other out, it’s like a sci-fi film that has the hero trying to communicate with an alien race. But in this movie it’s the white men who are the aliens … Luckily we Indians are part of a harmonious community. Dances with Wolves has never seen people “so dedicated to their families.” […]

[…] Instead of helping us understand the Sioux, they simply make the Sioux like genial versions of us. The film provides the groovy wisdom of the Sioux on the subjects of peace and togetherness … Each of the Indian characters is given a trait or two; they all come across as simpleminded, but so does the hero. Even the villains are endearingly dumb, the way they are in stories children write. […]

[…] Mostly, the action is sluggish and the scenes are poorly shaped. Crowds of moviegoers love the movie, though – partly because the issues have been made so simply. Maybe, also, crowds love this epic because it’s so innocent …

Pauline Kael, "Dances with Wolves" from For Keeps (pp. 1245-1246)

(All emphasis in italics is mine)

Chow Yun Fat as Confucius: Fails, Han Han weighs in ...

2010-02-12T03:18:00.038-06:00

lol.

"[...] I want to say that the movie Confucius, whether it is from the perspective of cinematographic meaning, business profits, artistic merit, what it explores, its educational qualities, its historical accuracy, its entertainment value, its emotional resonance, etc., is completely unnecessary. It is a film that could be completely done without." - Han Han

Picture this: typecast action-flick man cast in the role of a scholarly figure of just some historical importance. Now, what's inherently wrong with Chow Yun Fat playing Confucius in a 'Confucius' biopic? Right. Perhaps we should be able to rule this out as an idiosyncrasy of Chinese audiences not replicated by our desires to go watch Bruce Willis play Aristotle. Yet this doesn't sound quite right. Nowadays Mr. Chow has universal appeal (thanks to John Woo, Ang Lee ...). Then it must be something peculiar about the general demography of modern movie-goers that would lead marketing experts and studios to pitch Chow Yun Fat as Confucius. Or let us entertain the thought that something somewhere isn't properly screwed in.

Would Mr. Chow make Confucius so awesomely cool to a younger audience that they will be induced to go see a spruced-up movie about an ancient philosopher's life?

Anyhow, the film has already been released and its fair to say I never had any intention of watching Chow Yun Fat as Confucius in "Confucious" directed by Hu Mei (a woman director of all people, if there is anything good to say about the film!). BUT ...

... what justifies this post is the insightful critique of the Confucius biopic and the relevance of its failure to the flourishing of the Chinese film industry by renowned Chinese blogger, writer, race-car driver, celebrity ... Han Han. (Tip & translation: Chinasmack)

On how the success of a "Confucius" film would be destructive for Chinese cinema:

It’s just that the film itself, aside from the actor’s passable performances, is a complete mess. If this kind of film was successful, it would definitely lead to a surge of [films like] Lao Zi [famous Daoist philosopher], Zhuang Zi [another early Daoist philosopher], Mencius [another Confucian philosopher], Mo Zi [founder of the school of Mohism], and these movies would certainly be quite boring, use up a lot of resources, and would be a great step backward in the development of Chinese cinema.

On the perverse obsession (in China) with historical epics loaded with latent propaganda:

There has never been a country that likes making movies about things that came before the country existed the way the People’s Republic of China does. There has never been a country with movies like ours, where as soon as you hear the title without even watching the film you can tell the fate of the protagonist in the end. [Historical] Epics make up only a small part of classic films. Moreover, the only historical epics I’ve seen that are classics are about humanity fighting for freedom and revolting against fate. I have never seen a historical epic about resolutely upholding the rule of an emperor, educating the people, and abandoning one's home and woman become a classic epic. [Always] returning to ancient times is the largest problem with Chinese film.

Criticising the filmmakers' response to criticism and poor box office results:

[In response to criticism:] “Chinese people all want to see Confucius“, “I trust everyone will make the correct choice” — to the screenwriter’s rejection of all criticism (actually, the screenwriter’s failure is the film’s biggest failure), to the filmmakers claiming the criticism was because another domestic film was spending money trying to frame Confucius, to the lies about box office results, and finally, to the filmmakers saying that all the audience members who questioned the movie are very disrespectful towards the ancient sages, don’t respect Chinese traditional culture, and are immoral cheats and bullies causing trouble. This is probably the worst quality, most disrespectful, biggest PR failing, least resembling Confucianist group of performers [and filmmakers] in the history of New China. This group of people, each harboring their own personal ambitions, when put together created Confucius; perhaps their greatest understanding of Confucius is wanting to help the ruling class by teaching the people. In actuality, they are also doing this.

Couldn't agree more. Anyone still excited for some Confucius?

If one does have a yen to watch a film on Confucius's life (or a Chinese film of some importance) my recommendation would be Fei Mu's "Confucius" (1940) (that is if it does indeed come around at some film festival). Having seen parts of it, I can't argue that it is terribly good film, but that would be neither here nor there. Once thought to be a lost film, it is now considered to be somewhat of a landmark film of that era in Chinese cinema. And if I'm not mistaken, at the time, it took quite a phenomenal sum of money to make.

(David Bordwell has also some nicer things to say about the film.)

Super Sunday: If movie directors did the Super Bowl

2010-02-07T19:14:00.019-06:00

Featuring directors:

Tarantino Lynch Wes Anderson Godard Herzog

(Tip: With Leather)

Placing faces: Director version

2010-01-27T00:11:00.005-06:00

Can you ID all of them?

Answer key after the break.

(Via: Jim Emerson's Scanners Blog)

Row I

1. Victor Erice

2. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

3. Agnes Varda

4. Robert Bresson

5. Robert Aldrich

6. Robert Altman

7. Youssef Chahine

8. Michelangelo Antonioni

9. Gillian Armstrong

10. Dorothy Arzner

11. Stan Brakhage

12. Mauro Bolognini

13. Peter Bogdanovich

14. Blake Edwards

15. Carl Theodor Dreyer

16. Doris Wishman

17. Ingmar Bergman

18. Craig Baldwin

19. Mario Bava

20. Catherine Breillat

Row II

1. Luis Buñuel

2. Charles Burnett

3. John Frankenheimer

4. Maya Deren

5. Ken Loach

6. Jacques Demy

7. Su Friedrich

8. Robert Flaherty

9. Arthur Lipsett

10. Joseph Losey

11. Kenji Mizoguchi

12. Francis Ford Coppola

13. Mikio Naruse

14. Antonio Margheriti

15. Georges Méliès

16. Guy Maddin

17. Joseph H. Lewis

18. Sergio Leone

19. Howard Hawks

20. David Lean

Row III

1. Tim Burton

2. Federico Fellini

3. David Cronenberg

4. Werner Herzog

5. Krzysztof Kieslowski

6. Clara Law

7. Abbas Kiarostami

8. Stanley Kubrick

9. Fritz Lang

10. Shohei Imamura

11. Satyajit Ray

12. Woody Allen

13. John Waters

14. Margarethe von Trotta

15. Idrissa Ouedraggo

16. Jacques Rivette

17. Nicolas Roeg

18. Raoul Walsh

19. François Truffaut

20. Otto Preminger

Row IV

1. Jane Campion

2. Sam Fuller

3. Joe Dante

4. Jia Zhangke

5. Alanis Obomsawin

6. Preston Sturges

7. Pier Paolo Pasolini

8. Don Siegel

9. Zhang Yimou

10. Preston Sturges

11. Robert Siodmak

12. Leslie Thornton

13. Yasujiro Ozu

14. Nicholas Ray

15. Claude Sautet

16. Tsui Hark

17. Eric Rohmer

18. Edward Yang

19. Sam Peckinpah

20. Don Siegel (again)

Row V

1. Leos Carax

2. Lucio Fulci

3. George Cukor

4. Chuck Jones

5. Idrissa Ouedraogo (again)

6. Carol Reed

7. François Ozon

8. William Wyler

9. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

10. Fred Zinnemann

11. Michael Winterbottom

12. Jean Cocteau

13. Kon Ichikawa

14. Tomu Uchida

15. Jonathan Demme

17. Roberto Rossellini

18. Alfred Hitchcock

19. James Whale

Row VI

1. Claude Chabrol

2. Lucio Fulci

3. Melvin Van Peebles

4. Akira Kurosawa

5. Jacques Tati

6. Jerzy Skolimowski

7. Glauber Rocha

8. Bernardo Bertolucci

9. Richard Linklater

10. Jerzy Skolimowski (again)

11. Hiroshi Teshigahara

12. Paul Verhoeven

13. Luis Garcia Berlanga

14. Werner Schroeter

15. Steven Spielberg

16. Tsai Ming Liang

17. Roberto Rossellini

18. Jean-Luc Godard

19. Michael Almereyda

20. Francesco Rosi

Row VII

1. Chang Cheh

2. Vincente Minnelli

3. Jean-Pierre Melville

4. King Hu

5. Mamoru Oshii

6. Martin Scorsese

7. Richard Franklin

8. Mitchell Leisen

9. John Schlesinger

10. Theo Angelopoulos

11. Melvin Van Peebles

12. Anthony Mann

13. Roger Corman

14. Peggy Ahwesh

15. Terry Gilliam

16. Arthur Penn

17. Bertrand Tavernier

18. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

19. Clint Eastwood

20. Emeric Pressburger

Row VIII

1. Henri-Georges Clouzot

2. Michael Haneke

3. Terry Gilliam (again)

4. Lars von Trier

5. Andrei Tarkovsky

6. Bertrand Tavernier

7. Sergei Eisenstein

8. Brian DePalma

9. David Fincher

10. Edgar G. Ulmer

11. John Carpenter

12. Phillip Noyce

13. Yoshimitsu Morita

14. Wang Xiaoshuai

15. Sadie Benning

16. Kira Muratova

17. Wong Kar-Wai

18. Margarethe von Trotta

19. Jean Vigo

20. Andy Warhol

Row IX

1. Joel & Ethan Coen

2. Terence Malick

3. Michael Mann

4. Takeshi Kitano

5. Nagisa Oshima

6. John Sayles

7. Willi Forst

8. Mike Nichols

9. Yvonne Rainer

10. Orson Welles

11. Bill Forsyth

12. Wim Wenders

13. Jerry Lewis

14. Steven Soderbergh

15. Gaspar Noé

16. Jim Jarmusch

17. Maria Novaro

18. Leo McCarey

19. Michael Powell

20. Billy Wilder

Cheerio!

Should we be concerned about unlimited political donations by corporations?

2010-01-21T21:26:00.028-06:00

Equal Justice Under Law

If you haven't already read about it, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US government "may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections." The argument in favor of what would on the face of it be unconstitutional is that limiting corporate political donations is a violation of the First Amendment.

President Obama, in a statement, made the following rebuke, "It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans," and vowed to make a "forceful response."

Yet this is the same man who basically hammered the nail on the coffin of campaign finance reform. Leading as an impeccable example of rationality, Obama who, despite promising the reform in some manner or another, had at the time accumulated a war-chest of epic proportions; then only if he were insane would he endorse the use of public funds and cap how much money he could raise and disseminate. Whoever happens to be winning the game isn't going to lay down on the grounds that are guaranteeing his success. That's just not happening.

Yet the question that remains is whether the Supreme Court's ruling is as disastrous or terrifying as one would imagine. Most of our recent presidents and their adversaries have been put on the big stage by -- let's face it -- big money. The claim that the ruling leads to a corruption of democracy seems far from the truth -- assuming that our democracy is already corrupted. All that it really does is liberalize the current mode of operation. At least we can stop being hypocrites.

But seriously, supposing that more money is flowing in by big corporations with various and, let us assume, diverse political interests, the real inequality is created between the have and have-not political candidates. The consequence is not what President Obama described as a "drown[ing] out the voices of everyday Americans." That would be the consequence only if the public were undeserving enough to have a spineless President who yielded to every whim or whistle of a "sponsor". If I am not incorrect, the American public does elect the eventual winner.

As I have said, the real inequality is created between the have and have-not political candidates. By enlarging the whole pool, the bigger fish simply get the chance to get bigger. But this is hardly anything new, no independent candidates are going to win in the near future anyhow and the deviant Mike-Huckabee-esques are doomed before they even begin. The margins were big to start with -- an inequality from birth.

Do the Hal Phillip Walkers of the world ever get elected?

But there appear to be several issues here. The first is whether certain candidates would be artificially propped up for no reason other than their abilities to concede, make promises, to sponsors and kiss a whole load of ass. The second is whether American corporations owned by foreign entities pose a risk to American interests:

In 2006, USA Today reported: "Nearly one in five U.S. oil refineries is owned by foreign companies. Foreign companies also have a sizable presence in running power plants, chemical factories and water treatment facilities in the United States." It was also reported that, "Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying." In 2008, it was reported that foreign ownership of U.S. companies "more than doubled" between 1996 and 2005. To get a fix on the spending power, consider this: "The total receipts of foreign-owned companies were $1.7 trillion in 1996 and just $39 billion in 1971."

But I think, with good reason, that these concerns are dealt with satisfactorily with my following comment.

The money from big corporations is naturally going to flow to those who are most expected to win -- the front-runners. The bets are always on one's expected winners, those are the ones you eventually have to count on for favours. And it is also hardly any news that big corporations or Wall Street toss money both ways. Better to diverse the risk than sink the whole ship on just some guy you like. Thus there is no reason to endorse a guy just because you would like him to win, again the results, if I am not mistaken, rest on the preferences of the voting public. So all that the Supreme Court ruling has really done is raise the stakes, for big donors.

The above point also relates to the foreign manipulation issue. If the argument is that through corporate donations the eventual President will lose sight of the country's own interests then our problem goes deeper than the Supreme Court ruling. First, if there is any reason to suspect that any elected president will not serve his country' interests then the whole system can be done away with. Second, if the American public is unable not to vote a non-back-bending worm into office then the shame is on our voters. As I have said, there is nothing "drown[ing] out the voices of everyday Americans," that is unless the president should have it that way. If there is an obligation to return favours to one's sponsors, then there is definitely an interest to return favours to one's biggest sponsors of all, the American people.

"You say that as if you own the people", but do we own our politicians?

So does all that make me unopposed to the ruling? Frankly, no.

I find it unhealthy that a nation with a population that makes substantial claims on democracy and the freedom of opportunity restricts equal competitive grounds on which candidates run their campaigns. The fight ought not be on who can raise the most money (though this does appear to be a prima facie indicator of who has the most support), if a corrupting influence is ever lamented. I suppose that we all have some naive conception of how these nice little competitive grounds ought to be laid out. What is to be done, however, is to force that alleged naivety into accepted realism rather than have it constrained by so-called facts of the matter.

If the system needs changing, then something radical has to be done.

Update: Johann Hari has a very nice post on this. On the whole I think he agrees with me that the situation is so dire that it requires drastic changes. Also on Obama:

He said: “It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americas.” But he has spent far more time coddling those interests than taking them on. (My emphasis in italics)

So there lies the problem.

Yes it is Avartarded: What viewers from China are saying; white dudes and oriental chicks

2010-01-18T20:54:00.351-06:00

From Andy Yee's aggregation of Chinese blogger comments on James Cameron's Avatar, is an interesting (and translated) comment by blogger Huang Zhangjin (黄章晋) who complains about the eurocentricism/orientalism exhibited by the film as pertains to the view that the Orient is feminine and receptive while Occident is masculine and protective: (I have corrected the grammatical errors and improved, where able, on the translation ...)

I believe that if Edward Said were still alive, and seeing Jake saved by the Na’vi princess, he would, just like me, have said to himself: "So is this cursed screenplay writer is going to subsequently have the princess fall in love with Jake, and have Jake lead and save the Na’vi race? Really?? …

From Madame Chrysanthème to Last Samurai to Avatar, when will Westerners be able to start resisting their cultural narcissism of identifying foreign cultures as female and themselves as male? Why is it that the most worthless piece of shit Western dude will always be loved by the Oriental woman?

(Tip: The Arts Beat Blog at NYtimes)

That white men (or black!) tend to get Asian chicks has always been a prickly point, although it is something that frequently finds its way into American film (an emasculation of Asian men?). This isn't exactly what Huang is getting at though, but it is tired material anyway.

What I think Huang incisively observes and is correct in pointing out is that the pathology behind Orientalism is something more disturbing than the off-the-mill ignorance or superiority complex. The narcissism is grounded partially in a latent sexism that paints the foreign as female and submissive. But why and how is this troubling?

Firstly, let us get the conventional self-love/white-man superiority bit over with, the white messiah stuff of New York Times op-ed columist David Brooks. As Brooks has it, the white messiah fable, as offensive, rests on:

... the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

Here we have the standard off-the-shelf contrasts of science v. witchcraft, guns v. spears, etc. what Brooks takes as the so-called grounding of this fable. But what Brooks is missing out on is the sexual element. There is something very sexual of being over someone, or being in control. The followers, or supporting players, aren't given the sort of autonomy to reign over their own destinies; they must play the white man game. (I don't intend to use white man pejoratively, as you will see it is one of those place holder thingies ...)

But what is this game? The recurring image that I have at the least is that of the domination of man by nature, man over woman, the conquering over the receptive and passive, rationality over the passions. Something is wildly out of control and the white man is gonna slap some sense into it. It's going to be tough love.

Now I am going to go out on a limb here and say that orientalist stereotypes (among others) of Asian cultures (or generally alien cultures) have become the outlet of latent sexual rage (please resist any facile Freudian interpretations). The exotic mysterious woman of the exotic mysterious "culture" becomes the vessel of all the anxieties of the culturally alienated "Westerner". The objectification of the oriental (or Na'vi) lies in identifying the oriental as completely detachment from an independent thinking human form. Their sole purpose is for the release of the westerner's most repressed fantasies, the depraved exertion of which has become already impossible or impermissible in his own "civilized" culture.

Why do a lot of white men "escape" to the orient (or exotic) for all that forbidden fruit? What sort of "artistic" inspiration was Gauguin looking for that required his leaving his family and children?

Part II: Hollywood and the endorsement of oriental stereotypes (even though there is no Part I)

The fact that in The Last Samurai the widow of the samurai that Tom Cruise's character kills accepts Cruise (eventually) is absurd. We are given the basic explanation that Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) the brother of the samurai that Cruise's character kills needs him for some purpose (the white messiah purpose). Thus, Watanabe has Cruise live with the widow.

The fact that this is unacceptable in our own "culture" only enhances the feeling that we are dealing with something foreign. Japanese view honor differently, they are different (How could they not be? They are short, yellow skinned, have poor eyesight and have black hair!), and this must be the reason that Watanabe does not take revenge. The widow willingly sits, shuts up (other than the occasional vicious lamenting), and kindly permits the beastly white man who murdered her husband live under her roof because ... wait for it ... she is Japanese. Oh! How alien!

Throw in the underlying love story between the two (which requires a stretching of the imagination and considerable beating down of one's disbelief) and The Last Samurai is a truly revolting American film. It is the film equivalent of taking something Japanese home, as if something Japanese could be put in a nice little pot and stowed away.

In reverence to Hashimoto and the great actor Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, we celebrate our orientalness by postponing the use of firearms when engaging white dudes with guns.

The Last Samurai was made in 2003, some sixty-two years since Pearl Harbor, sixty-two years of outstanding Japanese cinema, and yet sixty-two years later someone is still producing infantalized garbage.

The fact that Hollywood can't grow up and continues to hand-feed the movie-going public with orientalist bull-crap signifies something more than stupidity or ignorance. As Huang mentions in his blog, this resistance to development and growth is a form of narcissism. But I feel that it is more than just cultural narcissism -- it plays into it but is something more.

What seems to be clear to me, at least from what I have written about the objectification, is that the exotic oriental is perceived as a mindless sex toy. There is no matter of consent or sexual harassment. The chicks are drawn in like moths to a candle light. The delusion is that the outside world is structured so as to cater to the whims and desires of the white man, something that has since the end of imperialism continued to persist and even flourish. It is the whole mentality of going around the world fucking and expecting no consequence.

So despite Avatar's alleged anti-imperialist message (and here it is again as "anti-imperialist canon") it propounds those very attitudes that are consistent with imperialism. Despite the onscreen carnage of American marines, cheered on by abominable members of nation-wide audiences, the whole frat-boy dude thing won in the end. The ugly American saved Pandora and won over the princess chick, god damn it.

"Stop!" said the Chinaman, "I can carve it up myself, thank you very much!"

On a side note, what is hilarious about Huang's comment about "Westerners" (and my placeholder "white man") is that the application of the cultural narcissism isn't limited to occidental perspectives. It isn't as if the "white man" is the only culprit.

The (beautiful and un-twisted) logic of a prominent American Economist

2010-01-14T20:18:00.020-06:00

Homo economicus

Nothing to do with film, but ...

Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business is interviewed by John Cassidy of the New Yorker in Mr. Cassidy’s series on the Chicago School of economics and the current financial crisis. I here rudely interject with some written comments.

Annotated (and chopped up) Excerpts: [Italics: Mr. Cassidy; Standard: Mr. Fama; Red: my annotations]

Many people would argue that, in this case, the inefficiency was primarily in the credit markets, not the stock market—that there was a credit bubble that inflated and ultimately burst.

I don’t even know what that means. People who get credit have to get it from somewhere. Does a credit bubble mean that people save too much during that period? I don’t know what a credit bubble means. I don’t even know what a bubble means. These words have become popular. I don’t think they have any meaning. (Here Mr. Fama most probably means (is there any doubt about this?) meaning in academic Economic discourse, since he uses “bubble” fairly fluently later on as we shall see.)

I guess most people would define a bubble as an extended period during which asset prices depart quite significantly from economic fundamentals.

That’s what I would think it is […] if you could identify it. It’s easy to say prices went down, it must have been a bubble, after the fact. I think most bubbles are twenty-twenty hindsight. (Many phenomena turn out only retrospectively or how else would I know that Mr. NN is a jerk (that is unless he acted like one.)) Now after the fact you always find people who said before the fact that prices are too high. (So Mr. Fama does acknowledge bubbles!) People are always saying that prices are too high. When they turn out to be right, we anoint them. (So turning out to be “right”, acknowledges that possibility … also note the use of “we” …) When they turn out to be wrong, we ignore them. They are typically right and wrong about half the time. (Wait, doesn’t the sentence “they are typically right and wrong about half the time” mean that they are actually right half the time? But doesn’t this in conjunction with my previous comment validate the claim, by self-admission, that bubbles do exist? If I predict that there are fairies behind the shed, but am correct only half the time, there are still fairies behind the shed. So bubbles exist?)

Are you saying that bubbles can’t exist?

They have to be predictable phenomena. I don’t think any of this was particularly predictable. (I will here give Mr. Fama the benefit of the doubt that he does not straight-out contradict himself about bubbles (‘abnormal’ deviation in asset prices, “too-high” prices … whatever). What Mr. Fama appears to be correctly saying is that any useful scientific phenomenon has to retain the possibility of being explained (thus, predictable). The explanation of which is essential to understanding that phenomena as having a causal position in the scope of things, a position which alleged economic phenomena must have (assuming that the field of economics is at the very least scientific).

Therefore, we do not here admit “after the fact” phenomenon. This is fine but we are still left to deal with the so-called bubbles that are nevertheless prima facie incompatible with Fama’s efficient market hypothesis. Just because they cannot be readily explained presently does not mean that they cannot be explained. It would not only be begging the question but wrong to argue that bubbles cannot be explained because they are only identifiable after the fact. How does one know whether a phenomenon can be predicted or explained if one is to sit dogmatically on the conception that they are indeed only identifiable after the fact?)

In the following excerpts, Mr. Fama gets even more confusing:

Wasn’t the subprime mortgage bond business overwhelmingly a private sector phenomenon involving Wall Street firms, other U.S. financial firms, and European banks?

Well, (it’s easy) to say after the fact that things were wrong (This, I suspect (but perhaps wrongly), dangerously pushes what economists take as ‘rationality’ to the brink. But this is not the place to deal with this). But at the time those buying them didn’t think they were wrong (well of course, this is dogmatically essential given the previous comment on “(it’s easy) to say after the fact …”. Now we know who finds it “easy” to say). It isn’t as if they were naïve investors, or anything. They were all the big institutions—not just in the United States, but around the world. What they got wrong, and I don’t know how they could have got it right, was that there was a decline in house prices around the world, not just in the U.S. You can blame subprime mortgages, but if you want to explain the decline in real estate prices you have to explain why they declined in places that didn’t have subprime mortgages (absolutely correct, and that is why we have people who are economists (see Mr. Cassidy’s next question)). It was a global phenomenon. Now, it took subprime down with it, but it took a lot of stuff down with it.

So what is your explanation of what happened?

What happened is we went through a big recession, people couldn’t make their mortgage payments, and, of course, the ones with the riskiest mortgages were the most likely not to be able to do it. As a consequence, we had a so-called credit crisis. It wasn’t really a credit crisis. It was an economic crisis.

But surely the start of the credit crisis predated the recession?

I don’t think so. How could it? People don’t walk away from their homes unless they can’t make the payments. That’s an indication that we are in a recession. (That’s awesome reasoning, but didn’t we just have to go through that bit concerning those annoying ‘backwards’ phenomenon of “bubbles”? Thank god Mr. Fama only says that was “an indication”.)

So you are saying the recession predated August 2007, when the subprime bond market froze up?

Yeah. It had to, to be showing up among people who had mortgages. Nobody who’s doing mortgage research—we have lots of them here—disagrees with that. (Scratch it “yeah” instead of “that’s an indication”.)

So what caused the recession if it wasn’t the financial crisis?

(Laughs) That’s where economics has always broken down. We don’t know what causes recessions. (… ? So in the same way we can’t explain bubbles, what causes them, can’t predict them … we can’t do the same for recessions? Surely, economists know what recessions are. Let us give Mr. Fama a little break here. All he does is only admit that the current recession (whatever) predates August 2007, fine. However, at the same time he says that when people start not being able to pay their mortgages we have an indication that we are in a recession. But if people aren’t paying their mortgages and we can’t cite the recession as a cause (only as a concurrent phenomenon) then why aren’t people paying their mortgages? Mr. Fama is correct here in saying that we can't really explain, at least not with "recession", what is going on. When people can't pay ... we make the claim that we are in a recession. Fine. But we are still left scratching our heads as to what caused the whole thing, we can't explain it or anything. We went through an economic crisis, which is just one of those things that happens. This naturally leads to the thought that there aren't any proper economic crises, it is all part of how things work [although we have no actual idea of how it works!].) Now, I’m not a macroeconomist so I don’t feel bad about that. (Laughs again.) We’ve never known. Debates go on to this day about what caused the Great Depression. Economics is not very good at explaining swings in economic activity. (How helpful this is this? So now Economics is not good at explaining economic activity? Are swings in economic activity not apart of economic research?)

Let me get this straight, because I don’t want to misrepresent you. (God forbid …) Your view is that in 2007 there was an economic recession coming on, for whatever reason, which was then reflected in the financial system in the form of lower asset prices?

Yeah. What was really unusual was the worldwide fall in real estate prices.

So, you get a recession, for whatever reason, that leads to a worldwide fall in house prices, and that leads to a financial collapse...

Of the mortgage market…What’s the reality now? Everybody talks about a credit crisis. The variance of stock returns for the market as a whole went up to, like, sixty per cent a year—the Vix measure of volatility was running at about sixty per cent. What that implies is not a credit market crisis. It would be stupid for anybody to give credit in those circumstances, because the probability that any borrower is going to be gone within a year is pretty high. In an efficient market, you would expect that debt would shorten up. Any new debt would be very short-term until that volatility went down.

But what is driving that volatility?

(Laughs) Again, its economic activity—the part we don’t understand (the part no one understands …). So the fact we don’t understand it means there’s a lot of uncertainty about how bad it really is. That creates all kinds of volatility in financial prices, and bonds are no longer a viable form of financing.

And all that is consistent with market efficiency?

Yes. It is exactly how you would expect the market to work.

Summing up:

Spoken interview, so I wouldn't read too much into it. Despite the fact that Prof. Fama is an excellent economist, it does create the doubt whether leading financial system experts are capable of speaking coherently.

Where art thou Sharon Stone: Tragedy and the Vultures

2010-01-13T20:38:00.018-06:00

Via Huffingtonpost:

Televangelist Pat Robertson said Wednesday that earthquake-ravaged Haiti has been "cursed" by a "pact to the devil."

Where art thou Sharon Stone?

Enjoying films without using one's noggin'

2009-12-22T02:26:00.341-06:00

The audience at Cannes for the 1959 screening of Francois Truffaut's "Les quatre cents coups"?

On occasion one might hear a typical mindless and annoying person utter: 'Just enjoy! Don't analyze!' when referring to a passing or upcoming cinematic (or any other aesthetic) experience. Yes, it is true that mindless people do have a tendency to spout off this sort of nonsense. The mindless endorse less thinking, how inconvenient! And as a virtuous knight of critical thinking (here is another one), one might react rather violently. Those insufferably righteous among us would gather their pitchforks and shove their share of insults in (as I have just done). Hail the almighty rational faculties!

But should we really proceed as if something incomprehensibly stupid has been uttered? Or is it that our knee-jerk reactions have clouded ourselves from something not quite so dumb? In my humble opinion, I don't think so. Hopefully this post will defend my reasons for advocating a little less thought and a bit more enjoyment.

First, it is hardly surprising that there are cases involving this sort of thing, this just enjoy, use your brain less thing, that go beyond the arts or just aesthetic experience. It isn't as if aesthetic appraisal is just the sort of thing that is consistently under the threat of the denial of justification. I suppose why people are touchy about art, music, and films preferences is because some little brat always pops up and goes "a ha! I didn't enjoy it", with the judgment formed purely on those evaluative grounds. The threat of lack of justification or lack of defense of certain aesthetic preferences from this sort of assault are not unique. There are all sorts of brutish people who deny all sorts of scientific phenomena and conclusions that arise from those observations. So yes, there is a threat at least to people who find it dangerous. The response would then aptly be to advocate thinking more, and thinking better.

Having got his out of the way, and perhaps not feeling very threatened, we can move on. When is advocating less-thinking a recommendable principle?

There are certainly cases resulting from anxiety, depression, or other unfortunate states or events outside of the arts. Perhaps one might have had an intimate experience with this sort of 'just enjoy, don't over-think it'. Or there might be the psychiatrist who upon introducing a patient to a wonderful new SSRI, warns her against over-analyzing the matter unless she wished to render the medication useless etc. etc. A little less worrying would be better for all of us, especially if we know that no sure-handed answers are in sight.

Even more simple are those things that are basic pleasures such as eating certain foods, spending time with one's children and so on. If I continuously fret over the saturated fat content of foods I am going to eat anyway, I might as well not think about it and enjoy it (though I do agree that we should be more critical about what we put in our stomachs -- one can't be too careless). The same thing goes for "wasting time" with my kids when I have work to do. But since its going to happen anyway and with a great deal of pleasure, why ruin it?

We also tell jokes without having to explain them at the same time. Otherwise I don't think jokes would be all that funny. We take enjoyment in all sorts of things that do not require our having to justify them at every single interval, though we may have reasons to do them or enjoy them.

Now, back to film. Surely, we do the same thing, and it might even be helpful supposing that we can always go back and think about the matter. I often offer judgment of a film (though not all too wisely) without having deliberated about the relevant means of backing up my assessment. Perhaps I don't mean to offer my judgment as an argument, but can it be said that I am giving an infelicitous opinion? It is just an opinion, "I didn't like the film, just because. But ask me some other time and you will have the arguments lined up and ready to go."

There is something dangerous in doing this, a critical assessment of a film perhaps shouldn't be guided in this directed manner. Should we issue the verdict and then give reasons for it?

The answer is no. But there is a difference between where we are now and the sort of petulant brutish responses I discussed earlier. The reason for this is of course in the spirit of constructive discussion and sincerity. When we issue aesthetic judgments in a constructive manner with promise of justification we are in a sense giving our reasons up front. It isn't as though we don't have reasons, but what requested is time for an uncovering. We have our intuitions over the matter and whether or not we enjoy it is reflective of where we are at. It would be highly unusual for there to be a person that whereupon uncovering his justifying reasons revealed them to be consistently incongruous with his enjoyment. The fact that we enjoy something usually indicates that we having something good to say about it. And in fact what we enjoy says a lot about how we are rationally constituted and is certainly informative on those areas that may need pruning. I find it hard to believe that humans are not naturally reflective beings.

So who or what have I been responding to? (Or what has piqued my interest over this entire matter?)

A recent blog post by Mr. Emerson at Scanners, cites some rather crude remarks by an io9 contributor Moff who takes some serious issue with this "Enjoy, but don't think" principle. If anyone happens to read Mr. Emerson's blog, then you will know that he is a 'critical thinking' advocate like almost any sensible person on the planet (that is assuming if they were to think about the matter).

Moff seems to be in agreement with what I have said above:

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to think about a work of art. I don’t know anyone who thinks every work they encounter ought to only be enjoyed through conscious, active analysis — or if I do, they’re pretty annoying themselves.

... but then takes off like a little rocket:

So when you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one’s capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated — you are not saying anything particularly intelligent ... And most annoyingly of all, you’re contributing to the fucking conversation yourselves when you make your stupid, stupid comments. You are basically saying, “I think people shouldn’t think so much and share their thoughts, that’s my thought that I have to share.” If you really think people should just enjoy the movie without thinking about it, then why the fuck did you (1) click on the post in the first place, and (2) bother to leave a comment? If it bugs you so much, GO WATCH A GODDAMN FUNNY CAT VIDEO.

Now, supposing that we did have an individual who did justify a positive assessment of a film by appealing to some significance of the 'Just enjoy! Don't analyze!' line, we wouldn't, not unlike Moff, form a very high opinion of her. But what I find surprising is that people are genuinely threatened by these low types. But wouldn't it be fair to simply ignore them and put them in the category of brutes. I really can't say I run into these people all the time.

So what exactly is the argument, where does the criticism lie? What in the world is there that seems so threatening? That there are really people as described in the first sentence of the above quotation (and they are aplenty)? That there are people who wave the 'Just enjoy! Don't analyze!' like an argumentative cudgel and that they are stupid? It hardly seems to be fresh or urgent enough to wave around f-bombs or launch a diatribe.

But let us take a step back here. What I found most unpalatable was moff's complaint that "[certain people] go out of [their] way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one’s capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated." But surely we do say to someone who is about to see a certain film for the first time to "just take it in, enjoy it, don't think too much, you can always watch it again later." If in saying this I am endorsing the view to think less, then so be it. To watch a film or examine a work of art requires at its core a degree of enjoyment. If there was any lack of enjoyment, I strongly doubt whether anyone would be motivated to take the means to analyze the work.

Where do we begin, how do we even get interested, started, if we are not in someway drawn to a work of art by apparently non-rational features of the piece? The fact that I am drawn primarily to a painting or film because I find enjoyment or pleasure in viewing it does not automatically throw me into the child-like category. Perhaps the term sensory masturbation fits, but only if eating delicious food would fit under the same title. (And even so, what makes us think that rationality ought to be so narrowly construed? Perhaps I am wrong is calling the features that generate our enjoyment "non-rational".)

This doesn't mean that there are no elements of enjoyment in a work that can only be discovered by analysis. There certainly are. But this way of "seeing" is perhaps better understood in terms of refinement in thought or a mode of disciplined analysis. And that is why I watch films and take great pleasure upon reflection and criticism (though I may not often do that particularly well).

"We have a class called painting the response on our faces, we are the emotionally attuned critics."

It is not by any accident that we enjoy films that touch us deeply or motivate us to cry or laugh. If a film was enjoyable then something speaks in favor of it. The ecstasy, however, comes when one fully embraces it and dives into the material analytically. But with plenty of excuses, weariness, work, there is nothing to forcibly commit one along this path. And if one has nothing to say but speaks nonetheless, then the risk is on her.

Concerning the last bit of moff's comment about posting/commenting on internet forums and film sites. Dammit, it is the internet, chill, the moderators will take of it.

Film Review: The Sun (Solntse) (Sokurov; 2005)

2009-12-22T01:00:00.023-06:00

The Showa Empereror: Hirohito in Sokurov's The Sun

There is a moment in Alexander Sokurov's film The Sun (Solntse) (2005) where the Emperor Hirohito, upon lifting a crab specimen from its preservation fluid, remarks with utter sincerity, “What heavenly beauty!” Beautiful it clearly is not, but as a critic Manohla Dargis correctly observes, "you sense that he is acknowledging a fellow specimen." For the duration of the film, we too will have observed a fellow specimen, the human ‘specimen’ that is Hirohito.

The question then is whether he is as interesting as his little crab, whether the film portrayal even begins to open us to that level of admiration. Perhaps in the end, the film is itself deserving of the praise: “What heavenly beauty!” Though I suspect it will be said with only half the sincerity.

The film begins with Imperial Japan on its deathbed and Emperor Hirohito kept securely tucked away in his underground bunker. The Americans are closing in and the world is awaiting the impending end of a war in East Asia that has cost well over twenty million lives. Yet the Emperor, played by Issey Ogata, is hardly a creature trapped; his existence is at its essence sheltered and his current predicament can hardly be described as an exception.

The image that Sokurov paints is of a specimen sitting patiently by itself at the bottom of a murky fish tank with the water being slowly drained away. With fish we don’t take the liberty to speculate about its thoughts. Fish are, as one might imagine, concerned only once water runs out, but certainly not before then. The same can be said of Sokurov’s Hirohito.

The film moves at a torpid ‘emperor-ly pace’, a luxury that ordinary folk with things to do and places to go can hardly be said to afford. At this speed, we are impacted with the full glory of the imperial mundane: Hirohito gets dressed by manservant; Hirohito rebuffs claim by manservant that he is a living God; Hirohito traverses through murky looking tunnels; Hirohito writes letter to son; Hirohito writes against unconditional surrender; Hirohito dictates observations on “heavenly” crab specimen; Hirohito gets a thorough dressing-down by MacArthur etc. etc. This is an Emperor’s insipid life.

Some people have described the film as beautiful, but I just don’t see it. The aesthetic taste is questionable, deliberately so even. It is neither outwardly manifest nor part of Sokurov’s intention to render the film an aesthetic master piece. I suspect that for reasons other than cost, Sokurov acted as his own cameraman. The film is meant to be shoddy!

However, this lack of aesthetics is more than compensated by acuity of mood, which is developed through an almost tactile stench that emits from the visual dampness. We are meant to detect the unmistakable festering atmosphere of the Emperor’s world: the hazy darkness of the underground bunker with the flavor of mold captured perfectly. In comparison, this sort of feel is lost in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Der Untergang in which camera discipline presides; it is all about the grey tunnels that elicit drabness, a sort of stereotypical Germanic austerity and sterile precision.

Though there is nothing beautiful about this film or Ogata’s portrayal of Hirohito, we are kept under a spell of wonder. For much of the time we are trapped along with the Emperor in his confines, gaping at his impassionate face, listening to his barely audible mumblings. We take fascination at his uncontrollable fluttering upper lip, his claim of a nasty taste in his mouth. One is handed the role of a zoologist and then presented with one heck of a hideous creature.

If one were to complain about the film’s lack of critique concerning Hirohito’s role in the Second World War, I am afraid that this criticism is misplaced. I have heard it been said elsewhere that Sokurov was not interested in strictly depicting Hirohito with historical veracity. Whether or not Sokurov’s Hirohito played a role the prolonging the war or knew of any atrocities, we could hardly be satisfied in convicting him of having such knowledge given the film's characterization (see my analogy with the fish).

There is a memorable scene in the film that summarizes any political message if any. As Hirohito emerges from his house on his way to his meeting with MacArthur, an American GI tries to grapple with the Emperor’s sacred imperial crane harassing it as though it were some pathetic turkey. There is a new world order whether one likes it or not, the world has been 'saved' but it may also just live to regret it.

The Sun trailer/preview:

Belated Film Review: Valkyrie (Singer; 2008)

2009-12-16T03:11:00.064-06:00

The plotters

Given the well-known fact that Adolf Hitler died by suicide at the end of the war, Valkyrie (Singer; 2008) offers little suspense in terms of an uncertain result of an assassination attempt on Hitler; we know very well that any assassination fails. If one were to la-di-da away any knowledge of the actual attempt and how exactly it failed, we would perhaps be left with a reasonably interesting film.

But as has become apparent in the above paragraph, none of this bodes well for a film advertised as a thriller -- based on the most famous attempt on Mr. Hitler's life. What bodes even less well for the film is that it lacks any intriguing psychological premise, i.e. a compelling exploration of the motivation of the men who decided to go about killing one of the worst dictators the world has seen. The conjunction of these two faults makes a film such as Valkyrie on the most part worthless.

(Right: the actual carnage which Hitler miraculously survived)

The title of the film derives from Operation Valkyrie, the set of protocol established during the Third Reich to mobilize reserve army forces to secure Berlin in the event of a coup. In the film and in the actual July 20th plot, Valkyrie serves as the second phase in the consolidation of power in the Third Reich, that is after Hitler has succumbed. A Valkyrie is an angel equivalent in Norse mythology. In the film, Hitler proclaims: "The Valkyrie; handmaidens of the gods, choosing who will live and who will die, sparing the most heroic from an agonizing death. One cannot understand National Socialism if one does not understand Wagner". And the film has us believe that the naming of Operation Valkyrie was inspired by Richard Wagner's composition Flight of the Valkyries.

Altogether Valkyrie is a pleasant enough film, but this is no complement. The predominant reason for this is that the film plays off the dynamic of having a massive Hollywood star receiving top billing. With Colonel Claus Stauffenberg, a key plotter in the 20th July 1944 assassination attempt and protagonist of the film, played by Tom Cruise, one could care less of whether or not Hitler received his comeuppance. Instead, our little beady eyes are diverted to just how Mr. Cruise meets or does not meet, thanks to the star system, his demise. This point is further accentuated by Mr. Cruise being the only American on a cast dominated by Britons -- we are meant to look at him. Altogether this sort of anticipation is rather morbid, but offers perhaps the little bit of suspense that there is in the movie.

Overall Valkyrie looks decent, is put together almost like a "heist" movie, and is well-acted by a solid cast. Though not much need be said about Mr. Cruise's acting in the film, he plays the role satisfactorily and looks remarkably like the genuine article.

Note: The film is in English, so the Germans speak it. And at one awkward moment, an American-accented German officer announces to a British-accented German general that British and Americans troops are impinging on their battlefield position.

Still Life and the Existing Problems of Sanxia

2009-11-19T23:21:00.009-06:00

Via Reuters:

BEIJING, Nov 19 (Reuters) - China's huge Three Gorges Dam has left a backlog of problems that may need 170 billion yuan ($24.9 billion) or more to solve, adding to the burdens of the controversial project, state news reports said on Thursday.

Now exactly why?

"During the construction period of the Three Gorges project, investment in a range of projects in the reservoir area was far from enough, and the lack of funding for the many remaining problems has not been properly resolved," the report said ... "Much of this will be spent on settling down and bringing prosperity to migrants (displaced by the dam)," the report cited Weng and other experts as saying ... Earlier this year, a Chongqing official said that the sprawling municipality alone would need 163 billion yuan to cope with migrant resettlement and geological hazards, it said.

All this just goes to show the relevance of the problems depicted in Jia Zhangke's film, Still Life (Click here for some of my thoughts on the film). The fact is that the human costs (not even to mention environmental costs) of large-scale social, economic, and infrastructural transformations in China are still only in the process of being tallied.

Update: Also see the photo journalism piece at the New York Times Lens blog.

Werner Herzog's Favourite Films

2009-11-18T00:15:00.013-06:00

The only thing I really like about Rotten Tomatoes are their featured interviews with the who's whos of the film industry (and film criticism: 1, 2). In the process they get the interviewees to reveal their favourite films. In a recent interview with Rotten Tomatoes Werner Herzog reveals his five favourite films:

Freaks                                        (Browning, Tod; 1932)
Intolerance                            (Griffith, D.W.; 1916)
Where is the Friend's Home (Kiarostami, Abbas; 1989)
Rashomon                             (Kurosawa, Akira; 1950)
Nosferatu                              (Murnau, F.W.; 1922)

Herzog on his reasons of remaking the 1922 Nosferatu:

... I needed to connect to the great films of the grandfather generation, because our parents, our father generation, was a complete disaster and many of them sided with the barbarism of the Nazis. Somehow, you can only really make films embedded in the history of your own culture, and history was disrupted dramatically by the most barbaric regime you can ever find anywhere. So for me it was important to get some solid ground under my feet, connect with the grandfathers, connect with the greatest of them, and in my opinion, the greatest of great films is Nosferatu by [F.W.] Murnau ...

On working with Cage v. working with Kinski:

... Kinski never had any humor; in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, it is absolutely hilarious. He's so vile and so debased that it really connects with an audience, and there's a very dark humor about it ... When you see Kinski, it's never hilarious; he's just driven by whatever. And Nicolas Cage, I told him there's such a thing as the bliss of evil; that's what we are heading for.

On why his new film, Bad Lieutenant: Port Call of New Orleans, is some sort of "new step in film noir":

... film noir, when you look at the late 1940s, early 1950s -- Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, whom I love, and others, James Cagney -- the abyss of the human soul is always something oppressive, oppressive on human beings, oppressive on society, something really dark. And here, there's a lighter touch to it, something that gets so bad, so debased, so vile, that it's just completely hilarious. The joy of doing evil.

Not that anyone will care but ...

2009-11-16T06:21:00.025-06:00

Not that anyone will care but ... in Il Posto (Olmi, 1961) when adolescents Domenico and Magali go for a company-entrance-aptitude test they are asked a simple mathematics question to which they both give the the answer of 24.

That answer is wrong. It should be 26. Nevertheless, they are both accepted to work in the company.

Discussion on this film, a delightful little gem, and the math problem in question have been sparse on the internet, just check IMDB.

Though profound and heartwarming, the film has a devilish comic touch to it. The period of adolescence of a delightfully innocent teenage boy is ironically reduced to the length of the film: he emerges from his sleep (the cocoon), gets a nice new raincoat for his job (sheds his skin), meets a girl ("mates"), and is promptly stuck behind a desk for the next 20 years (dies).

As they say, the most beautiful things are fleeting.

(Update: The Math problem and solution, from memory, after the break.)

Problem:

Suppose that you are in possession of a roll of copper that is 520m in length. 3/4 length of the wire is removed from it. From what is left of the roll a further 4/5 is cut off and used. How much of the original roll is left in centimeters?

Solution:

520 x 1/4 x 1/5 = 520/20 = 26 m

(1 m = 10cm)

Therefore: 26 x 10 = 260cm

The protagonist is given an hour of exam time to work this out.

Films Available for Free-viewing on Youtube

2009-11-04T02:59:00.015-06:00

Not on youtube all that much, but discovered some nice movies that are officially on there -- so hopefully no removals! -- including John Ford's Battle of Midway (1942).

While working for the OSS photographic department Ford was situated on Midway during the battle itself and was caught in the heat of the battle as the first wave of Japanese bombers made their way over the island June 4th 1942.

An interesting propaganda film and rare Midway footage by one of the all-time great directors.

Update: Some other nice finds after the break.

1. Buster Keaton's The General (1926)! (Albeit no sound ... )
Use the link, there is no embedding feature available for this.

2. Desert Victory (1943) - A British old war/propaganda film. Won a special Oscar in 1943. I think some of the footage might have been reused in the British TV documentary The World at War (1973; narrated by Laurence Olivier).

Enjoy!

Oversimplification

2009-10-08T03:02:00.007-05:00

"Keep pouring, he still won't admit that torture is wrong."

I first viewed Rendition (Hood, 2007) some time ago but only recently stumbled upon its horrific 34% cream of the crop on Rotten Tomatoes. It was also rather unpleasant to find that the consensus read, “The impressive cast cannot rescue Rendition, which explores complex issues in woefully simplified terms.” Since Rendition deals with the issue of Extraordinary Rendition, essentially quasi-legal torture or torture by proxy, I will take exception to the terms “woefully simplified terms” and “complex issues” used to describe it. If torture is not simply wrong, I am confused as to what is.

A rather simple problem has been fudged over as a political one. For instance, this is done by otherwise respectable film critics. James Berardinelli of Reelviews writes in his review on Rendition:

“The film will likely receive some positive notices because critics will applaud its politics. While I personally have reservations about the policy of extreme rendition, they are not going to cause me to be lenient on this sloppy production.”

The “policy of extreme rendition” has a nice sanitary ring to it. But I suppose it would be considerably less tasteful to remark over a friendly dinner conversation that one merely entertains “reservations” over the use of torture. Does Mr. Berardinelli mean that extreme rendition is condonable, except that sometimes it isn’t? Does he merely find it in bad taste?

Mr. Berardinelli continues:

“Instead of experiencing a movie that’s seriously interested in getting into all of the pluses and minuses of the policy of "extreme rendition," we are ambushed by a simplistic storyline that’s more interested in sermonizing and demonizing than existing in the real world where things aren't as clear-cut as the movie would like us to believe. The film's disappointingly black-and-white approach robs characters and situations of badly needed ambiguity.”

Perhaps the movie wasn’t all that good, but the comment that it is “[not] seriously interested in getting into all of the pluses and minuses of the policy of "extreme rendition"” begs the question of whether anything serious can be said about it that has not been already said by Jack Bauer. Do we really have to start at first principles? I suppose we should have to go through why other human beings are essentially deserving of rights.

Furthermore, I cannot identify what exactly Mr. Berardinelli sees as being “black-and-white”. Are our common sense morals suddenly supposed to implode down when it comes down to entering “the real world”? The last time I checked, torture is illegal in our country, not to mention the illegality of detention without trial and counsel. Has the real world somehow morphed into one where the sacred words of "national security" do all the commandin?

The point isn’t that extraordinary rendition is a non-issue. Like abortion or capital punishment it very much is. The difficulty I have is with how a film can be vilified for presenting a human drama about the wrongness and consequences of torture and have it accused of being an oversimplification.

Other boneheaded reviews:

No gray area in 'Rendition' - Christy Lemire

Rendition - Kirk Honeycutt

And thank god for these (this?) reviewers:

Rendition - Roger Ebert

Ebert writes: 'As I wrote from Toronto: "It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong."'

Some Thoughts on Jia Zhangke's Still Life (2006)

2009-10-05T06:04:00.015-05:00

Inaugural post!

Having recently viewed Still Life (三峡好人) by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, I suddenly felt awakened to the bright future of Chinese cinema. For something in which I have previously entertained only scarce optimism, this was a moment of exaltation. It has troubled me for a long time that very few domestic Chinese films deal explicitly with problems resulting from China’s rapid modernization. Rarer still are those that touch on the controversial and urgent issues of the present. In a country where there are so many untold stories of the plight of ordinary working folk caught in the derangement of modernization, Still Life captures the essence of just that sort of thing.

Released as a feature film in 2006, the winner of the Golden Lion at Venice that year, Still Life’s depiction of radical economic and social change in modern China remains acutely current as well as assertively political. But what makes this film so important is not just critique. The film itself occupies a political space in the liberalization of Chinese media. Rarely, have Chinese films been given permission to shoot potentially controversial subjects.

It is quite a feat in itself that director Jia received permission by the State Film Bureau to make a film (the Chinese title of the film translates into “the good people of Sanxia”) about the massive displacement of villages during the massive Sanxia Dam project (The Three Gorges Dam project). It is even more surprising that he shot most of the film on location in Fengjie. At times mildly satirical and at other times uncompromising in its depiction of societal ills, how did it survive unadulterated after rounds of censorship?

It is not the case that there haven’t been any recent controversial Chinese films or recent Chinese films about current social and economic change. It is just that so few have been as effective as Still Life. Very little is not brazenly explored and put on screen. It touches on familial dissolution, peasant laborer migration, the displacement caused by Three Gorges Dam project, societal backwardness, lawlessness, the estrangement of youth, economic growth, economic disparity, the amassing of wealth by those willing to capitalize, illegal coalmines, Chinese pop culture, and more.

Despite all of the above there is at most reserved finger pointing. There is no attempt at giving the viewer ready-to-serve explanations. Nothing to really indulge one's urge of China-bashing. This is what makes Still Life respectable. The concern is with ordinary people who make a living, acclimating themselves in a world that seems to fly by. A world where modernity is seized by the fetid old life that isn’t ready to subside. Even the manual laborers of peasant stock pull out their handsets, exchange phone numbers and get a good laugh out of their nostalgic ring-tones. For the viewer there is something surreal about this, but it is real. The characters wade through the rubble-covered moonscape of deconstruction and beat at the buildings with hammers. Although they are pulling down memories of a life past, all they care about is the sixty Yuan they are paid at the end of the day. But resignation and apathy are wrong descriptions of those people. When offered with the prospects of a higher paying job in the Shanxi coalmines, they follow knowing very well the risks involved. They follow, turn, and move because this is what life asks this of them.

Although Still Life lacks the artistic flourish of many of contemporary Chinese films (think Zhang Yimou 's films or Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death), Still Life commands attention because it has grasped on something important. Here is a film that just gets it. Just like how the neo-realist films of post-war Italy got it, Still Life has brought to screen what matters, or at least should matter to viewers who care deeply about the world they inhabit. I will refrain from calling Still Life a great film because it is not quite there. Some of the imagery is simply ridiculous and gratuitous (a UFO, a spaceship … what?!).

For a country that has recently celebrated its 60th birthday, in the usual manner of pomp and spectacle, it is even more pressing that films like Still Life are made. What needs to be captured is not just the testament of spectacular economic growth (not just the glitzy stuff i.e. the Beijing Olympics etc.). It is vital for China, as well as for the whole world, that it glimpses at a slice of Chinese life no one really wants to see.

Hopefully, better Chinese films will be a means to this.

An excellent synopsis of Still Life is available on Wikipedia.