Lucky White Girl

Giant (1956)

At work I've been doing a series of interviews with people who grew up in families that migrated and did agricultural work for a living, and who then went on to march with great labor leaders like Cesar Chavez  and dedicate their lives to fighting for farmworkers' rights. 

Two of those people --both of whom grew up in Texas and migrated in the Western migrant stream-- mentioned to me a 1956 movie called "Giant".  They said it was a particularly accurate depiction of the kind of racism they encountered when they were young.  I rented it and watched it tonight and thought I'd share some thoughts

Giant is clearly intended to be, at least partly, an anti-racist film.  It's the story of a young woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who marries a wealthy Texas cattleman (Rock Hudson) and moves from the East out to his sprawling half-million acre ranch.  She soon learns of her husband's unattractive views of the Mexicans who work on his ranch.  Her do-gooder patronizing ways towards the Mexican workers is a foil to his outright hostility.  There's also a young white man working for them (played by James Dean) who falls in love with the lady of the house.  When he strikes it rich (via oil) he becomes the family's arch rival.  Drama ensues when none of the children of the family do what's expected of them by their parents and one even takes up with the arch rival.

Despite the romance and drama of family and rival lovers, the relationship between the white people and the brown people in the story is at least a major theme  It's not just background music.  Multiple scenes depict discrimination and outright hatred towards Mexican Americans.

But it goes beyond being simply an accurate portrayal of a particular kind of racism in a particular time and place.  Without giving away the ending, I'll just say that the message of the film is clearly that this racist reality is ugly/mistaken/wrong.  It sends this message in a somewhat cheezy, crude way but hey, it's the 50s.  The fact that it's an anti-racism film at all goes a long way.  That's not to say that the film couldn't be better if it weren't so contrived in parts, but maybe you can't have it all.

One odd thing about the movie is the god-awful makeup job on the "brown" people.  At first I thought they must be white actors made up to look Mexican (which was common back then but would've led to an interesting question: why would a director making a film about racism, not feel able to use non-white actors?).  But they did apparently use Latino actors.  Sal Mineo was in the cast (he was a sort of 1950s latin heartthrob so I hear, even though he was actually Sicilian).  Sal's character didn't look as bad as the others but the actress who played Juana is an actress named Elsa Cardenas who was born in Tijuana.  Why the need for mud-colored makeup then, you think?  Maybe they didn't look Mexican enough?  Here's a photo of her to the right.

Did they feel they had to uphold white people's stereotypes of what Mexicans should look like by making their skin darker?  Maybe they had only white makeup artists on the set who only knew how to do one shade of makeup ("ivory") and were completly flabbergasted when confronted with a larger palette?  Who knows?  It is interesting though, how a film so clearly conscious of race could still, also be so affected by it.  For a contemporary parallel perhaps consider the 2004 film Crash.

The Next Best Thing to the Man Who Didn't Shoot Liberty Valance

I've been seein' a lot of movies lately.  For the most part really, really good ones.  I just saw The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance last night.  My friend Caz talked me into seein' it.  I don't like Westerns and the one time I was forced to watch a Western (in a film class) I hated it.  It was The Searchers.  Had John Wayne playing a racist cowboy who hates Indians.  It was probably more complicated than I gave it credit for but nonetheless it just wasn't my cup of tea. 

But The Man Who Shot Liberty, Caz said, is a "thinking person's Western" and he was right. It was really good.  It's about a idealistic young lawyer named Ransom Stoddard played by Jimmy Stewart who goes west and runs into a town bully by the name of Liberty Valance.  Liberty's pretty much a hired thug: mean, agressive and in-definite-need of reigning in.  John Wayne plays his counterpart, an equally tough violence-prone "good" guy.  He keeps Liberty at bay (haha) and sorta protects the hapless townfolk from his unpredictable rampages. 

But Ransom's a law and order guy.  He doesn't believe in violence.  He wants to arrest Liberty, not shoot him.  And ain't that a perfect setup for a good story?

Although me being who I am, I was wanting it to turn out to be about the Man Who DIDN'T Shoot Liberty Valance.  The man who found the third way between violence and submission: non-violence.  Then what a parable it would be for the post 9/11 world!  To have someone stand up in a world of ever-escalating tit-for-tat violence and say no.  Here's an alternative.

It doesn't turn out that way, of course and for a while, carrying my international relations theory further in the movie I was afraid that the parable was going to be that it was the John Wayne character who represented the U.S. --the user of "restrained" violence, violence as a last resort-- who comes in and saves the law-and-order weakling from the throes of the terrorist.  Fortunately it didn't turn out that way either.

How it turns out (and don't worry if you haven't seen it, this won't spoil anything) is that law-and-order is NOT what prevails against the Liberty terrorist but what makes it a good movie is that this is not portrayed as an uncomplicated good thing.

Now here is a spoiler alert!  If you want to see it stop reading now.  I mean.  Go look at this.

Okay, for the rest of you:  The idea that men get elected to positions of power based to greater or lesser extents on the fact that they have proven themselves capable of violence is something that is definitely has particular relevance to us today.  Just be careful not to say that out loud or you might end up like Retired U.S. General Wesley Clark this past week, who dared to say that military service in and of itself should not qualify someone to be President.

It shouldn't but too often it does.

Migration stories (part 2)

My second foray into the documentary film festival got cut short.  I only saw one film today I had plans to see at least two more (after all, these are films that I probably will never have the chance to see again) but after I saw the first one at 10:30 this morning I felt so emotionally exhausted I couldn't do anything more.  I came home to think about it.  The story was that powerful. 

The film was Mi Vida Dentro (official site), also known as My Life Inside (Silverdocs site) by Mexican filmmaker Lucia Gajá.  It is the story of Rosa.

Rosa was 17 when she crossed the border (illegally, yes, what can you do?) into this country and at first things were good.  She met her husband, another Mexican, here, started a family, got a job babysitting.  One day she's watching her kid and another little boy in her small apartment.  The kids were both sick, sitting in the living room watching tv with runny noses.  She was in the kitchen cooking lunch.  When the boy came in clutching his throat choking on something she panicked.  She didn't know what to do so she ran to a neighbor's apartment.  The neighbor called 911 and the police came.  The officer blew hard into the boy's mouth.  Nothing.  He tried again.  Nothing.  The paramedics came.  They checked the airway found nothing and did the same thing.  The boy died.

It turned out there were paper towels blocking his airway. They accused Rosa of murder.  And just like that she was caught up in the complexities of the U.S. justice system.  She was barely twenty years old, didn't speak the language, knew nothing about the legal system of her adopted country.  She didn't stand a chance.

A woman from the Mexican consulate here says Rosa's situation is not unique.  Most of the people who immigrate here know very little about the U.S. legal system.  They don't know their rights, don't know what to do when confronted by the police.

Rosa was interrogated by an officer.  She wasn't under arrest so the officer didn't have to read her her rights.  She didn't know she could request a lawyer.  She called her husband who told her that officers had come by and taken their little girl away.  She was hysterical.  The film shows all of this on police footage.  She tried explaining that she had just wiped their noses with the paper towels.  They didn't believe her.  She asks finally "if I say I did it will you give me my daughter back?"  Yes, he said.  You will see your daughter again.

She did see her daughter --for about five minutes.  The she was charged with murder. 

A medical examiner for the defense testified that children do sometimes choke on paper towels.  The child might have twisted these into something to suck on.  The saliva generated from that would have triggered a reflex to swallow. 

Now maybe if Rosa or the neighbor or the police officer had known what to do, had checked his airway for a blockage they might've seen the paper towel, but once the police officer blew into the boy's mouth he just pushed it farther down.

The jury didn't just find her guilty of murder, they sentenced her 99 years.  99 years!  A human lifetime!  Even the boy's family did not think she was responsible for the child's death.  His uncle apologized to her at her sentencing.

What hurts so much about this story --and what I think the filmmaker did so well at conveying-- is that it's not just a case of bad luck for this one particular person.  It's bad luck compounded by that person's particular class status within the society she lives in.  An accident like this would have been tragic enough but add to the tragedy of random luck the tragedy of a grossly inequitable society filled with racism and classism and the sum is just too much.  I can't help but think that if Rosa had been someone like me (white middle class) the result would have been vastly different.  You cannot leave this movie without being outraged at the overwhelming cruelty of a system that failed and continues to fail.

Rosa's might be one of the more extreme cases but as the woman from the Mexican consulate says this is all too common.  At the end of the film there is a series of still shots of the major characters standing within different settings: the judge in his chambers; the defense attorney at the apartment complex where it all happened; the woman from the consulate's office overlooking the city; Rosa's mother in her home in Mexico; her husband in front of his home in the U.S..  And then there are more people, others who were interviewed in the film about their journey to the U.S. ("Was it worth it? Do you regret it?") and then still more people we never heard from, face after face after face.  And then there's a young girl in her jail cell.  My name is Rosa.  I'm 23 years old and I have 99 years.

Mi Vida Dentro will be playing in theaters in Mexico this fall.

Migration stories

"Do you know what it means to leave everything you have as a human being, for you to leave your family to leave your childhood, memories and go to a country where you are a total stranger to start life over again?  -
                                                    -Nigerian refugee

No, we don't know what it means.  Most of us in this country don't know what that means at all.  We cannot imagine.  And so when people here see refugees, we think... I don't know ...I think we think that maybe these people --refugees-- are greedy and selfish, they want what we have.  Maybe they see this country as an easy life, (and for many of us who hate refugees life is easy.  It's so easy we don't see how it could possibly be anything but easy for anyone else).  I think that is what we think.

Forgive us.  We are blinded by our own privilege.  We cannot see you.  We cannot hear you.  You remind us our own complicity in a "dirty rotten" system that gives some people much more than others (adjectives courtesy of Dorothy Day).  We don't like to be reminded of this.  So we hate you.

You think I exaggerate?  You think that people in this country don't really hate refugees?  Let me tell you this: a few months ago I went to a briefing here by a big civil rights group who was revealing the results of a nationwide survey they had done on attitudes of US citizens towards immigrants and you know what they found? 

The word "refugee" now tests worse than "illegal immigrant".  Really.

So don't believe the xenophobes when they say they don't have a problem with LEGAL immigration, that it's only the ILLEGAL ones they hate.  They feel threatened and vulnerable and so they lash out at the easiest target: those who are still more vulnerable than they themselves.  But I digress.

I saw two really good documentaries about migration today at the Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival here in Washington DC.

The first was called The Infinite Border, by Jose Manuel Sepúlveda from Mexico.  It was about the journey of Central Americans northwards through Mexico to hop on trains on their way to the United States.  There is much waiting and hiding to avoid the Migra.  Some get caught in Mexico, in Guatemala and deported over and over again only to try again because in the words of one young man, "what else can you do"?

Then I saw a movie by Paul Rowley called Seaview about a very surreal place in Ireland: an abandoned amusement park on the sea shore that has been converted into a sort of living prison for asylum seekers from all over the world.  You can see a trailer for it below.  The quote above comes from a Nigerian woman who was interviewed in this movie and I thought her words were hauntingly relevant to the immigration debate in this country, they explain so much of the irrational xenophobia that I've had such a hard time understanding lately. 

Both movies were really well done. Excellent cinematography.  Sepúlveda did a great job at capturing the heaviness of time --the time they spent waiting for the trains-- with these long, slow panning shots.  And the sense of isolation and rejection at the end as the camera slowly pans across this endless dark gray wall in the desert --yeah that wall-- which workers are still constructing, just drives the point home even more. 

But Seaview, I thought, had something extra.  Narrative voice overs with still shots of inanimate objects, empty rooms, dusty furniture-- a bizarre juxtaposition.  And sometimes, as in the case of the Nigerian woman, you never see the person's face, only hear their voice.  And when they translate, the subtitles fade in and out in the picture with the person not under it, like they normally are.  It made their words seem less removed, less translated from speaker to audience, more a part of them.  Their words.  Their stories.  Owned by them.  It was very moving.

Just two of the great films you can catch this weekend at the Silverdocs.  Check it out.

oh desire!

I soooo want to see this movie.

Who needs the Golden Globes? LWGs short list of the best movies of 2007!

Forget all the hype about the Golden Globe Awards being canceled; let's just get right down to it.  The best films of 2007 were Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse and the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men.  That's according to yours truly of course and what other movie critic's opinion do you value more than mine?  Okay, if you said Roger Ebert I won't kill you but he and I are cinematic soul-mates anyway so it really doesn't matter.

But seriously, if you see no other films from 2007 you must see these two.  Both need to be added to my Great Films List.  I didn't have time to write up anything about the Coen Bros film but here's my reaction to Grindhouse.  The Coen Bros film is definitely their best film ever.  No Country is the crown of achievement for these guys who never do the same thing twice, but after this one, probably should.  They're obviously very talented at a variety of genres but this one really soars head and shoulders above the rest.  Their portfolio includes O Brother Where Art Thou --cute but disappointing if one expects too much of it being a Coen Bros film; Fargo --which I used to think was their best; the Big Lebowski; Raising Arizona and the one perhaps closest in atmosphere to this new one, way back in 1984: Blood Simple (it's been awhile since I've seen it but I do recall it being particularly grim portrait of humanity as a whole).

I also have a new favorite actor from No Country.  If I ever meet Javier Bardem on the street, though, I would probably have a heart attack and die of fear at his feet.  This is a man who could kill you just by looking at you. It might've been a bad career move for him, though, because he played Anton Chigurh so perfectly that I will never be able to watch him in another movie without anticipating him whipping out an air gun and shooting someone through the head! (but I see he was in El Mar Adentro which is a really good movie from Spain that came out a few years ago --good thing I saw that one first!)

Anyway, just thought you'd want to know these things in case you still needed your fix of movie-focused year-in-review lists!

What's scarier than rampaging zombies?

I live in a little college town in Florida.  Here, we have this local theater company who puts on plays in this historic building downtown.   Currently, in honor of the season, they are putting on a production of Night of the Living Dead.  What could be scarier than rampaging zombies?  We gotta go see it!  And so we did. 

First of all I should admit that this theater is so known for its safe, unchallenging, "fun" plays that I haven't ever been very motivated to go see very many of them.  And on the rare occasions that I do, I always walk away with the same impression: gee, that was mildly amusing and maybe rather cute but not very daring or profound.  But with George Romero's movie as the basis of the script how could they disappoint?

For those unfamiliar with the movie, the original Night of the Living Dead movie was made in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.  Seen within that context, the movie is very daring and provocative.  Fear of something "out there", a great threat to "life as we know it", talk of "containment", and "cures" that are as bad as the disease (the only way to kill zombies is to shoot them in the head and many non-zombies are killed not by zombies but by other humans trying to kill zombies)!  And in the middle of all this is a great power struggle between an older "law and order" white man and a young rebellious black man in which the more sympathetic character of the two is --amazingly enough now remember this was 1968-- the black man.  Wow!

It's one of the greatest films of all time and admittedly it'd be hard for a play to achieve something like the level of ingenuity of the original movie, but the story line is so ripe for biting political commentary updated for the 21st century that you'd have to have your head in the sand to waste it. And wasted it was. The Hippodrome's was a cute version that I really wanted to like --and probably would have if I didn't know how brilliant the Romero movie was-- but it could have been so much more.

The play was fun: the set impressive, the acting superb and the dancing zombies quite freaky-looking.  Ben, the black man, was played by Armando Acevedo, in jeans and a muscle-revealing white tank and to their credit, they did maintain somewhat the social power dynamic of the movie while updating it to 21st century prejudices.  Ben could've been an illegal immigrant or a farmworker.  Mr. Cooper the white man was perfect in his polo shirt and slacks.  I also appreciated it all being adapted to our area with lots of local references (Barbara and Johnny come from Tallahassee and the zombie attack takes place in Gainesville).  But that's about as far as they push the envelope in this one.

Okay you might say, so it was maybe a tad on the bland side but what's wrong with that?  Isn't Halloween supposed to be about having fun?  Sure, but how much fun is it when it's obvious that stuff has been intentionally toned down so as not to offend the funding sources?

Here's an example: At one point in the play a woman in the audience stands up with a microphone and plays a local news anchor reporting on the situation.  In the list of preparations the city has undertaken she tells us that Ted and Linda McGurn, two locally famous wealthy developers, have opened a zombie-free "SafeSpace" downtown.   Now, practically that entire audience would know "SafeSpace" as the name of a one-stop center that the city has been trying for years to open to provide services for the homeless.  The reason it has taken so long is because there are some pretty powerful interests who are aligned against such charitable endeavors in the downtown area.  The biggest and most powerful of those interests are --yes, indeed-- the McGurns!  It was the perfect setup and they just turned and walked away leaving everyone smiling painfully at a lame quip about parking enforcement! 

The McGurns, you see, are one of the largest donors to the Hippodrome State Theater.   Can you spell i-n-f-l-u-e-n-c-e?

Alright, I can understand not wanting to deliberately piss off your largest donors with personal jibes at their heartlessness towards the poor but ignoring the themes of racism, patriotism and militarism that are so present in the movie sunk the rest of the play for me.  There are so many rich parallels to George W's America.  The part, for example, in the story where the other young man trapped in the house is chosen to go out and face the zombies alone.  Romero put that scene in the movie for a reason: He's the young, loyal, good all-American boy going off to fight the good fight.  (hmmm... haven't seen anything like that on the news around here lately, have you?)  They could have played America the Beautiful, for example, during the scene where he's saying goodbye to his girlfriend, throwing red, white and blue lights on them as they embrace for the last time, both knowing they're likely to never see each other again.  Instead, the playwrights here made it a cheezy melodramatic dance scene as if it were a romantic comedy relevant to nothing.

The USA of 1968 and the USA of 2007 have a lot in common.  The climate of fear G.W's America rivals that of Romero's time.  What better way to illustrate that point than with a classic zombie story all about what people will do when faced with an incomprehensible threat of "epic proportions"? 

So you see the first lesson in art patronage: money buys good entertainment but not-so-good art. 

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until they prove otherwise, if you want to be entertained, the Hippodrome is the place to go.  If you want to see real provocative performances, you'll have to look somewhere else.  Because in a country once again so firmly in the grip of paranoia, nothing's scarier than safe zombies. 

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Captialism

Milton Friedman, one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, was a big believer in the power of crises (of the economic sort) to induce a generalized state of shock in a population.  A crisis makes people vulnerable and desperate and thereby opens them up to ideas and changes that might not be in their best interests --such as the restructuring of their economy to a format more beneficial to Western industrialized super powers (e.g. us!). 

"Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change" he said. 

Friedman was talking about economic crises but natural disasters can do the same thing: terrorize a population, make them desperate and open the doors of opportunity for the economic restructuring of a society.  Naomi Klein explains it all in her new book The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism.

When [a] crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, [Friedman] was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo".

Some examples:

After the 1973 coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically elected Socialist president Salvador Allende, 50,000 people were tortured, 80,000 imprisoned, unknown numbers of folks were disappeared and the income of the wealthy rose 83%.

The 1989 crackdown in China killed hundreds, jailed thousands and ushered in a new era of sweatshops and free market capitalism.

And right here at home in the US of A, after Katrina:

"Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed [in an editorial he wrote three months after the disaster], "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity."

[pause to shudder...before Klein explains]:

Friedman's radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans' existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions.

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

Privatize.  Privatize everything, everywhere until the whole world is run by the dictates of the profit margin.   And if people don't want to give up things like public education and national safety nets such as social security and medicare, well, that's where the shock doctrine comes in.  It's brutal but that's exactly the nature of global capitalism. 

But there is hope, she says.  "The best way to resist shock is to know what is happening to you and why". Click the screen below to watch a short video based on the book.   

Putting our mouths where our money is: when food meets profit

I'm so swamped with reading these days. I haven't been writing as much.  I think it's just the natural cycle of creativity.  There can be no output without input and I'm just in an input stage right now.  I don't feel badly about not writing as long as I'm taking things/information/ideas in.  Consuming books and movies.  Right now I'm ingesting a lot of books, some junk, some educational and interesting.  And this one to the left here is by far the most interesting. 

If you haven't picked up a copy yet, wowza! Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma will knock your socks off.  I can't put it down.  It's a fascinating journey about what we eat and why and you don't have to be a nutritionist or a farmer to be interested.  We all eat.  And eating, as the author makes us realize throughout the course of the book is a political act, a matter of life and death in so many direct and indirect ways.

I'm only about 1/3 of the way into the book now but here's a brief overview from what I've read so far.  Starting with the title.  What is the ominvore's dilemma he refers to?  Well, the original omnivore's dilemma was how early humanoids decided what was edible and what was not.  The red berries made you sick; the black ones didn't.  And once you found that out, you'd better remember the discovery or you wouldn't live long enough to pass your genes on.  This takes a lot more brain power than, say, the koala bear who doesn't have to worry: if it looks like a eucalyptus leaf and smells like a eucalyptus leaf than you eat it.  If not, you don't.  No dilemma.  I hope the book will go into this a bit more because it seems fascinating.  Was this one of the reasons humanoids developed higher thinking skills --because we are omnivores?  That certainly seems to be the implication but so far I haven't come across the answer yet.

But regardless, Pollan says we still have an omnivore's dilemma.  The new omnivore's dilemma is how a people with no single discernible food culture like ours in the US decide what to eat.  In many other cultures, it's a non-question.  Those of you in Italy, you eat pasta.  In France, you eat bread.  In Mexico, you eat beans and rice.  That's over-simplifying, of course, and globalizations are changing those things so that now you in Mexico might eat sushi or eggplant parmesan but for the most part you get the idea.  Traditional societies with a strong single food culture know pretty much what they're going to have for dinner on any given night. 

Not so in the US and this is why Pollan says we're so susceptible to food fads.  They decide what to eat based on culture, those of us in the US decide based on the latest fad diet book.  The Atkins Diet and whatever diet trends are popular in a given decade.  Told ya it was interesting!

Of course the author's going to argue that this following of diet trends isn't such a good way to decide what to eat.  He thinks there are better ways.  And to discover those better ways he suggests we look at three food chains: the industrial (what most of us here in the US are accustomed to), the organic-pastoral (what a lucky few of us are accustomed to and what more of us could be accustomed to if we made some huge changes in our agricultural policy) and the good-old hunter-gather (what we used to be accustomed to back in the day).  The three exemplify different ways of eating and relating to the natural world.  Either eating and producing and consuming food is a large-scale business model with profit, not nourishment, as the main goal; or it is an intimate communion with the natural world. 

Deciding what to eat is not a simply a matter of knowing which products to buy in the supermarket of course.  The question is symbolic of one of the most fundamental decisions of the human species: how are we to structure human society in order to sustain (nourish) ourselves?  As my roommate pointed out, many civilizations have died out for not making the right decision there.  Pollan does an excellent job of laying out the structure of this question in a new, insightful, original way and providing the reader with a wide-angle view of history in order to help us all make a more informed decision.   

Two approaches to best films lists.

Last week or so the American Film Institute came out with the same old list of Top 100 movies by US film-makers and as always it's populated with the usual candidates.  Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Apocolypse Now, the Godfather.  A few years back the film critic for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum, wrote a famous critique of the AFI's list and suggested an alternative one of his own.  His column burned up critic's circles and is now an oft-cited list for those who felt the AFI's list was uninspired.

I think the question that divides the two camps, traditionalists like the AFI versus non-traditionalists like Rosenbaum, is this: what do you want from a top 100 list?  Do you want an historical approach that will teach you about the movies that got American cinema to its current state?  Or do you want a list of movies that are challenging and innovative for a contemporary audience today? 

If you want the former, go with the AFI's list.  Citizen Kane is number one because of what it did to send movies off in an entirely new direction back then.  The movies on the AFI list were all innovative for their time.  That's the key.  It's hard for us now to really see that sometimes because they've been so copied and influential that it seems conventional to us. 

This is a pretty good rule for watching and appreciating old movies generally. You have to place them in their context as much as possible.  What was going on in the world back then?  What was the director responding to?  I was reminded of this when some friends and I watched Romero's Night of the Living Dead recently. There's a lot in that movie that it's easy for a modern audience to miss because we're in such a different social context then were audiences in the late 60s. People watching back then, for example, would have picked up more on the parallels between some of the fake news footage about the zombies and the real news footage they were watching every night on the evening news about the war in Vietnam.

Also, an audience nowadays wouldn't think twice about having a black man be the hero in a movie of and by white people but when Romero made Night of the Living Dead, black people were facing police dogs and fire hoses and trying to win the right just to eat in the same restaurants as white people.  Ben, a black man, is the most sympathetic character in the film and when he shoots a white man, the audience is positioned to view the action sympathetically.  In real life, such actions might've gotten him lynched in certain parts of the country.  So in a sense, a really good movie is a victim of its own success in breaking down barriers that then become commonplace.

On the other hand, maybe you're not looking for a lesson on film history.  Maybe you just want to see really good films that have really profound things to say about the world around us.  Then you want a different kind of Top 100 list.  That's what Jonathan Rosenbaum's list is and that's what my own still-in-progress list is.  These are movies that shake us up and challenge us to see the world in new ways.  They have something important and profound to say about the human condition, sometimes that's dark and heavy and sometimes that's light and funny but it's always moving and insightful.  Obviously there will be some overlap with a historically oriented evolutionary list, but generally the films on a list that takes such an approach would, by necessity, be somewhat (though not exclusively) more contemporary. 

I'm not saying that either of these approaches is better than the other; it all depends on what you want to get out of a good movie.  I do suspect though that unless you are a film history buff, sometimes those old classics like Citizen Kane isn't what you're looking for at all.  Better in that case to see something that really turns your world upside down.  After all, isn't that what art is supposed to do?

LWG's Great films List

Review for new readers: I'm writing a 100 Films list because I believe film is a fine art, revealing just as much about ourselves and about human nature as do the greatest paintings, works of literature and pieces of music that people have created throughout the centuries.

These films are in no particular order, other than the order in which they've come into my head.  Like I mentioned in this post, I think there are different sorts of best films lists (those that teach us about the evolution of film-making and what was new and innovative for past audiences, and those that list films that challenge and inspire our own generation.  This list is one of the latter category.   I really think each of these films has something beautiful, profound and insightful to say about the human situation.  Eventually there will be 100.  I will periodically add to the list and repost it as it grows.

41.) The Night of the Hunter (1955)

40.) Me and you and everyone we know.  Miranda July

39.) The Stepford Wives (2004)  I just now got around to seeing this because I had no idea that it was, as my friend described "feminist sci-fi".  It's so funny I don't even mind that it's slightly flawed towards the end (if you carry the analogy out to the end it ends up that it's a woman who is responsible for patriarchy! and a man is required to liberate the women from their robot selves).  Oh and I could see an argument for a better positioning of the gay guy's character ('cause if he's gonna be a comic stereotype shouldn't that be his robot personality instead of his real one?)  Whatever.  The rest of the film is funny enough to make me overlook lots and if you know me, that's saying something!

38.) Pan's Labyrinth (2006).  Guillermo del Toro.  An imaginative political fairy tale for adults who need to be reinspired to never give up even in the face of great evil and that if we resist such evil, the beauty of humanity will most certainly triumph.

37.) Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds  (1984).  Hayao Myazaki.  Early 80s anime about the dangers of war, racism and intolerance.

36.) Sprited Away (2001).  Hayao Myazaki.  A little girl discovers an alternative spirit world populated by creatures in a bathhouse who have to clean up the effects of human greed and carelessness.  Responsible stewardship/ environmentalist themes.

35.) Boys Don't Cry (1999).  Hillary Swank's best role ever.  Disturbing true story about what happened to someone who challenged gender roles a little too much for a small-minded mid-western town.

34.) A History of Violence (2005).  David Cronenberg.

33.) Iron-Jawed Angels. (2004).  What's this? A made-for-tv movie on this list?  Yep, this is really, really good and not just because it has Hillary Swank as an early 20th century sufferagette.  It really shows the sacrifices previous generations made to give us all the rights and privileges we have today. 

32.) Talk to her/Hable con ella.  (2002).  Pedro Almodovar.  An odd sort of love story that has it's own poetry.

31.)  La fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain (2001).  Sweet, whimsical and full of poetic justice.  Watch this when you need to feel re-inspired by humanity.

30.)  El Aura (2005). Ricardo Darin (also starring in #8 below) is one of my favorite actors and he shines in this role of the thoughtful romantic genius who stumbles upon a crime ring in Argentina and can't leave it alone even when his own life is threatened.  A smart film with a smart actor for smart people!

29.)  Starter for 10 (2006).  A smart comedy by Tom Vaughn about a working class kid who goes off to college in Britain in the 1980s.

28.) Grindhouse (2007) Quentin Tarantino with Robert Rodriguez.  Not for everyone but if you are a movie-goer of the very open-minded sort, you'll see the beauty of this double-feature.  An excellent tribute to the b-movies of urban grunge theaters, this film is not for the weak-hearted but I would rate it as the best film of 2007.

27.) Undertow (2004) David Gordan Green.  Roger Ebert called this the best film of 2004. Watch out, fast moving, complex, heart-pounding plot.  A dark and suffocating picture of a dysfunctional family set in the boonies.

26.) All the Real Girls. (2003).  Hot up and coming director from the US South, David Gordan Green made the realest film I know about young love and relationships. Warning: do not watch this film if you've recently suffered heartbreak; it's immensely sad.

25.)  Shallow Grave. (1994).  Danny Boyle again.  If you can't trust your friends....

Zombie flicks..... as always it's other humans who are just as dangerous as the zombies!

24.) 28 Days Later (2002). Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame.  This is a *great* scary movie similar to the premise of Stephen King's The Stand.  Fast spreading virus makes people angry, violent, fast-moving zombies.  Smart plot but not as smartly political as Romero's.  The new sequel 28 Weeks Later is good but doesn't live up to this one.

23.) Day of the Dead (1985)  Last of the trilogy, often overlooked, I have to admit that I also liked the other two better than this one at first but that doesn't mean this one's not worth checking out.

22.) Dawn of the Dead (1978) The target of Romero's biting satire this time is mindless consumerism.  Again, notice the important/heroic roles people of color and women play.  New semi-feminist themes appear also.

21.) Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero's original classic, the one that started it all. Subtle political undertones about the Cold War, "containment" policies, fear of something "out there" and the dysfuntional power struggles that pose almost as much threat as the walking dead themselves!   It's easy for modern audiences to miss the radicalness of a film from that era having a black man as the hero and an audience watching in 1968 would've picked up on more parallels between the cinematography of the film and what they would've been seeing on their nightly news broadcasts about the war in Vietnam but if you are aware of such things and look for them, this film quickly becomes way more than just a "zombie flick"

20.) My Own Private Idaho (1991) Gus van Sant. For those who love playing with liberal adaptations of Shakespeare.

19.) 25th Hour (2002) Spike Lee.  Man has 24 hours left before reporting to prison to serve a life sentence.  What would you do?

18.) Leaving Las Vegas (1995) Mike Figgis.  For anyone who's ever been lonely or all washed-up...

17.) Boyz N' the Hood (1991) John Singleton.  A more traditional storyline about race and poverty than Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing but less innovative than the latter.  See the two together and make your own decision.

16.) Norma Rae (1979) Martin Ritt. Sally Field broke out of the Gidget-mode by doing this working-class hero movie.  Classic union-flick just as applicable to the world today  "The people united..."

15.) Midnight Cowboy (1969) John Schlesinger. The sixties.  Pipe dreams.  Dustin Hoffman.  Gotta love 'em.

14.) The Thin Red Line (1998).  Director Terrence Malick, whose other films appear on this list, returned to the director's chair after twenty years to make this movie about the Battle of Guadalcanal that you won't easily forget. One of the best depictions of what war is.

13.) A Huey P. Newton Story (2001) Spike Lee.  Roger Guenveur Smith does a powerful monologue as Huey P. Newton that, I imagine, is every bit as powerful as the legendary man himself. 

12.) Gods and Monsters (1998) Bill Condon.  A fictionalized drama based on the life of James Whale, the creator of the original Frankenstein movies, an openly gay director in an era where that just wasn't done.  The music, the acting, the set, everything in this movie sings praises to a life well lived.

11.) All About my Mother (1999)  Pedro Almodovar.  Spain.  All about relationships, especially with mothers.  See #1, All About Eve.

10.) Looking for Richard (1996) Kind of a making-of movie about Richard III, kind of an adaptation of the play, but also an examination of the famous play itself with commentary and montages of scenes from various productions.  A Shakespeare lover's dream.

9.) Days of Heaven (1978) Terrence Malick.  Visually stunning film.  Like seeing Ansel Adams photographs in motion and with an excellent storyline.

8.) Nueve Reinas (2000)  If you like chess, you'll love this movie by Argentinian director Fabian Belinsky!  More twists and turns than an Agatha Christie novel.

7.) Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee.  The wakeup call to a whole generation.

6.) Resevoir Dogs (1992) Tarantino.  Contains a scene which is the greatest visual (nonverbal) argument for nonviolence I've ever seen.

5.) La Battaglia di Algeri (1966) Want to see a movie about what's happening today in Iraq?  Watch this one about what was happening with the French occupation of Algeria in the 60s.  Hauntingly similar, this movie sounds an alarm to those who occupy foreign lands in the pursuit of "national security".  Longer post about this movie here.

4.) Swimming to Cambodia (1987) Spaulding Gray depicts the horror of war just sitting in a chair on a stage talking better than any action movie ever made. 

3.) The Vanishing (1988)  A flim by the Dutch director George Sluizer.  Not to be confused with the later US version, which stunk.  This is a modern day existential fable about human meaninglessness, existence and the pursuit of truth.

2.) Smoke Signals (1998)  Real life with funny parts.  Written by one of our greatest contemporary writers, Sherman Alexie.

1.)  All About Eve (1950)  The inspiration for creating this list.  Wow, what a movie! This is the film that saved Bette Davis' career.  In an era when actresses were considered washed up by age 40, Davis snagged this role and made history.  Contemporary movies still make references to this classic.  See #11.

All About Bette Davis and the ugly truth about women and ageing

You know, sometimes I talk about movies on this blog and I even have an on-going (much-neglected) list of what will eventually be my 100 Great Films but it's pretty rare that I pick a film and talk about it in length.  All About Eve is one that is so good and so important I think it merits just that sort of post.  All About Eve is a scathingly accurate and unromantic picture of how women in the West were viewed in the mid-20th century (and sometimes stil are by certain people).

Bette Davis plays a 40 year old aging star named Margo Channing.  Eve, played by Anne Baxter, is an ardent young fan who manages to slip herself into Margo's life and becomes her personal assistant.  The first time you watch the film all your attention is on Eve who seems so loyal and dedicated to Margo it's almost creepy (i.e. What's she really up to, eh?) 

But the second time you watch it you notice just how complex and fascinating Margo's character is.  Horrified of being upstaged by her young understudy, Margo is haughty and proud but also insecure and vulnerable.  Don't be quick to dislike her because of her vanity and obsession with youth.  She knows that the impossible is what's expected of women in the world she lives in and her despair at ever being able to live up those expectations of perfect, age-less beauty is very real and very poignant.

The problem with Margo is pretty well summed up by an accusation slung at her by Lloyd, the playwrite in whose play she stars in: "There comes a time that the piano realizes that it has not written the concerto,".  And that's the harsh, ugly reality of women in the 50s, especially women in film and theater: they were pianos on which the writers, directors and producers played and as one aged and got a few nicks and scratches on it, they could be replaced with newer, younger versions.  Margo's pain is the pain of someone realizing how disposable she is in such a world.

In the film, Margo eventually gives up and retires from the theater world to play the wife role to her man, but ironically in real life for Bette Davis, it was the opposite.  She had something in common with Margo; in 1950 people thought she, too, was all washed up as an actress.  Until she made this film and her career did a 180.  From that point on, she became the commanding screen presence she's remembered for today.

So is this honest portrayal of 1950s sexism enough to say that All About Eve is a feminist flick?  I think so.  The older women in the film are very conscious of their getting the short end of the stick and they don't accept the adage to "age gracefully", quietly exiting stage right as the next line of to-be-objectified women rises up front and center to replace them.  They are angry that their worth in a society so obsessed with youth and beauty has gone down simply because they've gotten older.  Never is Margo's talent as an actress put into doubt.  It's all about the packaging.  And it's not just actresses that have to/had to live with this.  Margo's best friend, Karen, a housewife, also has the youth/beauty standard to live up to.  When her playwrite husband (the same one that lobbed the "you're just the piano" jab at Margo above) tells her that her cynicism is "something [she's] acquired since [she] left Radcliffe!" she retorts "The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!"

This is a very harsh film that is uncomfortable at times to watch, especially if you're a woman and you wish things were more different from that era instead of just slightly different.  For all the misty-eyed romanticism we see of the 1950s, this is a film filled with painful truth and accuracy and that, for me, makes it one of the best.

Egalitarianism of the Internet undermines society says elitest

Oh no, not another polemic about the downfall of humanity via our technology! Not to worry, this one's stupid.   Andrew Keen, author of the new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How today's internet is killing our culture is worried that the democratization of information is undermining traditional authority bases and therefore the downfall of Western civilization is not far off.  "I prefer the wisdom of the professional" he says, as opposed to the wisdom of the masses who are unreliable and potentially subversive and can only result in chaos and anarchy. 

I guess the perspective on it all is very different from where Mr. Keen stands.  (toldja I use standpoint theory in every day life!)

I saw Grindhouse!

I now have 367,843 new phobias!

But that's okay because they'll be watching this film in the next century to witness the stuff of late 20th century North American adolescent boys' violent sexual fantasies.  (C'mon, you know you've always wanted to know!  Now you can!)  The script of this movie could've been taken directly from overhearing a late-night conversation between two pre-teen boys who've read too many comic books! (Dude! And then the guy shoots all the zombies with his AK47 and the stripper chick helps him by...etc.)

THIS is a great movie!  This is the twisted underbelly of North American popular culture and in typical Tarentino style, its excess helps us see more clearly the offensiveness, ridiculousness and mere stupidity of it all. 

So, it's a double feature, you know, and the first movie's by Robert Rodriguez and the second's by Quentin Tarantino (who makes an appearance in both by the way).  It's hard to say which I liked better.  There's a lot to be said for looming pus-filled zombies attacking the planet in the first (Planet Terror) but the high speed car chases and extremely violent limb-amputating car crashes in the second (Death Proof) are not to be missed either.  Plus you get to see trailers for such classics as "Werewolf Women of the S.S.", "Machete" and "Thanksgiving" (where the first to be decapitated is the poor smuck in the turkey suit) not to mention "Women in Cages" (actually a real movie according to the credits). 

Before I saw it, I was wondering if one had to be one of those people (such as the two directors) who had visited grindhouses in their youth to fully appreciate the film.   The answer, coming from someone who grew up about as far from that scene as possible, is a clear no.  I absolutely loved this film.  Grindhouse, you've seen 'em around but might not have thought much about 'em.  What's a "grindhouse"?

"A "Grindhouse" was a type of inner city theatre that would play either all-day matinees or all-night marathons of low-budget exploitation films in the 60's, 70's and early 80's. Mostly comprised of formerly luxurious, old-time movie palaces, these 'down-'n'-dirty' theatres would often show offbeat, ultraviolent and sexually-charged films

And so here's an interesting point that I've rarely said about movies: you've got to see this in a theatre.  Don't wait for the DVD.  I just can't imagine that it would be at all the same watching such a movie in the comfort of your own living room.  The whole point is the experience of being an anonymous voyeur in a large darkened room watching these ultraviolent, supergraphic, hypersexualized gorefests.

By the way my friend and I were surprised to see the name Sydney Poitier in the opening credits for Tarantino's Death Proof and afterwards thought it must've been a joke (is he dead?).  So this morning while doing some internet research for this post I find that Sydney Poitier actually WAS in the movie.  Sydney Tamiia Poitier is the famous actor's DAUGHTER and she played Jungle Julia.

Even though my movie-buddy Chris was surprised that I liked this movie so much and I agree that it might require a certain amount of "expansiveness" on the part of some viewers (read: how wide open can you get your mind?), I can't recommend this movie enough.  Especially for those who love cultural studies and think one of the most fascinating subjects in the universe is our twisted society.

We have Always Lived in the Castle

If you like Shirley Jackson and her grotesque images of humanity, if you're feeling cynical about human society, or just like twisted and stunted characters, check this out. Best known for the creepy short story The Lottery, her novel We have Always Lived in the Castle is another story about the cruelty of humankind, the incessant social pressure of small towns to keep their members in line and the temptation it all produces to wall yourself off in a castle and never come out! The story is told by a mentally disturbed narrator which provides the reader with an uncomfortable though thrilling closeness to insanity and neurosis and not a small part of the creepiness of the novel is produced by this technique. Jackson is a genius of the most recessed and hidden parts of the human psyche and this novel is one of her best.

Spy movie.

I love a good spy movie.  And what could be better than a spy movie that's true??  So they made a movie about Robert Hanssen, the "worst spy in US history" who was finally caught in 2001 after spying for Moscow since 1979.  He's an interesting character to say the least.  He was/is? one of those peculiar breeds of insanely conservative Catholics, Opus Dei and all that which makes you wonder what his motivation could possibly have been but here's the other thing about him: he was/is extremely smart.  He just liked playing games.  He was really good at it.  So the movie suggests that it was all about ego for him.  Could he do it?  Could he outsmart everyone in the State department?  And he pretty much did for the longest time.  The wikipedia article linked to above is really informative and piques my interest to do some more reading maybe.

On a personal note thinking of all the jobs I've applied for recently that are based in DC, the movie made me feel like it's a very surreal city to live in with all that going on just out of sight.  Then again, it could be going on anywhere just out of sight.  Life is weird.

Terri Gross does a really interesting interview with Eric O'Neill, the real FBI agent who caught Hanssen and Billy Ray the director of the movie.

Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945)

Last night I saw a Hitchcock film I hadn't seen before.  (I'm gradually working my way through all of his films.  I've seen all the really famous ones but eventually I'd like to see everything he made.  UF had a DVD of three short films he made in the 1920s but my DVD player broke --and they won't let me check stuff out anymore since I graduated-- so I have to rely on what the public library has on videocassette).  Anyway last night I saw Spellbound from 1945.  It has Ingrid Bergman and a young Gregory Peck who often looked like Anthony Perkins in Psycho. 

It's a pretty decent movie.  Anything with Ingrid Bergman in it is pretty decent and in this one she plays a psychiatrist who falls in love with a man who has amnesia and thinks he may have killed someone.  It's not a typical Hitchcock movie.  Psychoanalysis, though not new, I guess was new to popular consciousness in the 1940s and so Freudian psychology of guilt complexes and phobias plays a major role in the film.

And unsurprisingly there's a lot of sexism in the story.  Being a doctor doesn't mean Bergman's character --Dr. Peterson-- gets a reprieve from male chavinism.  In the first five minutes she has to deal with a severely mysogynistic patient (an attractive woman who claims she hates men while doting on them incessently and is extremely antagonistic towards her female therapist) and some pretty indiscreet sexual harrassment from her colleagues: "Women make the best psychoanalysts until they fall in love. After that they make the best patients" (Dr. Brulov) and "We both know that the mind of a woman in love is operating on the lowest level of intellect" (the same).  Bergman's character is an interesting example of how it's possible for a woman to be a doctor but only by renouncing those traits associated with femininity and femaleness and taking on the traits associated with masculinity and maleness.  For example Dr. Peterson's character is portrayed as cold and frigid when she rejects the unwanted advances of her colleague.  It's like "hugging a textbook" he says when he grabs her.  She's a great doctor and a good looker but they all agree she needs a man.  She only becomes a "real" woman when she stops acting like a doctor and starts acting like a mother/lover (well I told you it had a lot of Freudian psychology!) to this attractive but disturbed stranger.

None of this means I didn't like the movie.  I loved it.  I thought it was fascinating, although not necessarily for all the reasons Hitchcock intended.  I think the portrayal of Dr. Peterson is very interesting.  I think the portrayal of psychoanalysis in the movie is very interesting.  I think the movie's  portrayals of both of those things says a lot more about early 20th century views of women and early 20th century views of psychoanalysis than it says about either of those subjects directly.  So yes, I recommend this movie to any film lover, any Hitchcock lover and anyone just interested in popular perceptions of women and/or psychology.
 

buzzbuzzbuzzzz

El Laberinto del Fauno... aka Pan's Labyrinth ...

--yep, it's as good as you've heard.  So's the music.  And the visuals. 

It makes Spanish history seem like a dark fairy tale.  A brutal dictatorship.  There's a Darth Vader and of course there are the scruffy, noble resistance forces out in the forest.  The good guys.

I love stuff like this.

Pan's Labryrinth is a political historical fairy tale with a classic moral.  Go see it.  You'll love it.

The fragile myth of the deserving rich

"Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law.  It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.  And so, the schools, the churches, the popular literature taught that to be rich was a sign of superiority, to be poor a sign of personal failure, and that the only way upward for a poor person was to climb into the ranks of the rich by extraordinary effort and extradordinary luck.

"In those years after the Civil War, a man named Russell Conwell, a graduate of Yale Law School, a minister, and author of best-selling books, gave the same lecture, "Acres of Diamonds" more than five thousand times to audiences across the country, reaching several million people in all.  His message was that anyone could get rich if he tried hard enough, that everwhere, if people looked closely enough, were "acres of diamonds."  A sampling:

    I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich... The men who get rich  may be the most honest men you find in the community.  Let me say here clearly....    ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest.  That is why they are rich.  That is why they are trusted with money.  That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them.  It is because they are honest men....

    ...I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small.  To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins... is to do wrong... let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings....

"Conwell was a founder of Temple University...

It seemed that despite the strenuous efforts of government, business, the church, the schools, to control their thinking, millions of Americans were ready to consider harsh criticism of the existing system, to contemplate other possible ways of living.  They were helped in this by the great movements of workers and farmers that swept the country in the 1880s and 1890s.  These movements went beyond the scattered strikes and tenants' struggles of the period 1830-1877.  They were nationwide movements, more threatening than before to the ruling eleite, more dangerously suggestive.  It was a time when revolutionary organizations existed in major American cities, and revolutionary talk was in the air"

                                             --Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

GoogleBookSearch

I have a question.  Can someone please explain to me why people are so worried about this Google's Book Search thing?  Remember all the hype about this when it was first announced a few years ago?  Well it's still going on.  It's the end of the book, they're saying.  Oh please!

Book Search is a digital database of books.  You can read an entire book online.To me this sounds great.  Instant access to books?  Of course I support that!   I think it's just a case of people being afraid of change.  As a (now former) grad student  in the 21st century, I've done lots of reading stuff online, including entire books as well as 30 page articles, so maybe this doesn't shock me as much as it might others.  I don't think this threatens the existence of traditional books at all.  Mostly it's nice to read a book without staring at a computer screen, but apparently the book scanning idea makes people upset for other reason.  They say it's copyright infringement, meaning the publishers and even the writers might loose money if people didn't have to buy books.  It's as if these people have entirely forgotten about libraries.  Libraries make no money for publishers or writers either (or not much anyway aside from the intital cost of the book) and nobody opposes them (do they??).  Read the article Scan this book! from the New York Times Magazine.  Some libraries (The New York Public Library) support the book scanning idea.  Others (well, apparently the Bibliothèque nationale de France) are opposed (although I guess in the case of the former it has something to do with language and that most of the books being scanned are in English).  Anyway I don't see why it even has to threaten their bottom line.  What scares me is that they could, if they wanted to, charge for online access to the books which means poor people will still depend on libraries.  So I guess I just don't get it.  The author of the NYT Magazine article sounds right on.  He asks:

what happens when all the books in the world become a single liquid fabric of interconnected words and ideas? Four things: First, works on the margins of popularity will find a small audience larger than the near-zero audience they usually have now. ... Second, the universal library will deepen our grasp of history, as every original document in the course of civilization is scanned and cross-linked. Third, the universal library of all books will cultivate a new sense of authority. If you can truly incorporate all texts — past and present, multilingual — on a particular subject, then you can have a clearer sense of what we as a civilization, a species, do know and don't know. [which seems to me more democratic and harder for the winners to write the version of history they want to write]...

Finally, the full, complete universal library of all works becomes more than just a better Ask Jeeves. Search on the Web becomes a new infrastructure for entirely new functions and services. Right now, if you mash up Google Maps and Monster.com, you get maps of where jobs are located by salary. In the same way, it is easy to see that in the great library, everything that has ever been written about, for example, Trafalgar Square in London could be present on that spot via a screen. In the same way, every object, event or location on earth would "know" everything that has ever been written about it in any book, in any language, at any time. From this deep structuring of knowledge comes a new culture of interaction and participation.

Wow.  A restructuring of knowledge?  Now that's a thought worth pondering!

Pulpy mystery novels

I'm not a big fan of mystery novels.  I've only read a couple, mainly Ruth Rendell.  She's someone recommended to me once to add some pulpy fiction to my diet.  I read 13 Steps Down which I think got a good review by the NY Times (I can't find it online) and it wasn't bad.  Nothing too profound but at least as satisfying than watching an episode of Law & Order (well actually more so because it lasted longer and had better plot development).

So this time I picked up another novel of hers End in Tears.  It's got the same detective, Inspector Wexford who has the same old quirks --such as being very annoyed with the use of gender-inclusive language-- but this time they just seem repetative and tiresome.  You can tell she's an older writer and as a younger reader it might be interesting to see what she thinks of young people through watching how she portrays her younger characters but when you come to a scene describing an old man's apartment, and a rotary phone is described from a younger character's point of view as "black with, instead of a keypad, a dial of a kind she had never seen before," you have to wonder if she thinks anyone born post 1950 lives on another planet! 

I didn't get much further after that point.  I think I do like good mysteries though but I have a hard time finding any that are intelligent and not male-centered.  Any recommendations?

Whiteman

I just finished this book by Tony D'Souza.  Wow.  I wasn't sure I liked it while I was reading it.  I'm only just now concluding that I do.  I really, really do.

It's about an aidworker in Western Africa... I like books about this sort of thing.  White people going off to try to do some good in the world and all the problems that come from that.  Philip Caputo's Acts of Faith was good;. it problematizes various aspects of "helping" (privilege, racism, classism, the concept of development, the painful dynamics of unequal relationships etc.)

But this one is a bit different. It's a first person narrative from just one person's point of view while Caputo gives you multiple perspectives from several different main characters (and I believe his's a third person narrative). So what that means is that D'souza's more focused on the individual psychology of Jack Diaz, who works for Potable Water International and what happens to him there in Africa.  Caputo is more situational.  How his different characters react to particular complex situations kinda results in the book being broader, more general.  I guess I'd say it's like one is an interesting portrait of the psychology of the aid worker and the other makes you question the whole concept of aid work in and of itself.  Maybe you could say D'souza's does this too by default (the guy goes to the village to help dig wells but ends up nearly raping somebody, sleeping with another man's wife and killing an old woman, to mention just a few things) but it almost takes a backseat to the individual psychology of the protagonist.  I think.  If anyone else had read this and has a different take, feel free to comment below.

To tell you the truth this book made me a bit uncomfortable sometimes. It seemed very accurate to me, the uglier parts.  Parts about how it feels to be in another country in another culture reminded me of Colombia, of course.  What was nice about it though was that it certainly didn't glamorize the profession or idealize those who do it, which was a relief.

It's a good book.  It really is.  I recommend it.  The author is about my own age and it turns out he spent three years in the Peace Corps which I guess provided a lot of the material here.  At one point I wanted to write a book like this.  Maybe I still will.

Scotland, PA and other remakes

I watched Scotland, PA last night and it was great!  I used to say that I didn't like remakes of Shakespeare but I think that's an old opinion that I need to revisit.  Back in my undergrad days I saw several remakes (on the stage and on the big screen) I didn't like.  Back then I was an English lit major and I was really into the bard.  I took two classes on him and read most of the plays.  I memorized the entire fourth act of Hamlet.  We had a Shakespeare in the park festival in St. Pete that I used to go to regularly and when I was at Clemson they had a festival too. 

The most memorable play I ever saw was one that was almost more like a dramatic reading of the play.  It wasn't a play in the sense that they had no costumes or stage scenery.  But no, they weren't naked!  They just wore simple black shirts and pants.  The only props they used were three black boxes.  Our professor explained that the elaborate costumes and scenery one normally sees in presentations of Shakespearian plays are more a product of the Victorian era anyway.  What this minimalist presentation did is strip away everything but the words themselves.  You could totally focus only on the language and the pure emotion displayed therein.  It was great.  I'd really like to see another presentation like this one day.

Anyway Scotland, PA is a good remake.  For me a good remake doesn't just represent the famous story; it adds something.  It has to be a good movie in and of its own right.  The best remake ever done in my book, is Apocolypse Now.  It's every bit as important as a work of art as is its inspiration (maybe even better because it lacks the 19th century racism Chinua Achebe pointed out)  The movie goes above and beyond just adapting Conrad's story about the evil inherent in human nature to a contemporary setting.  Coppola uses it to make cutting political commentary on important social issues of his time (the Vietnam war). 

Scotland, PA doesn't aspire to anything so lofty.  It's just an entertaining murder-comedy.  There's no risk of the audience member identifying uncomfortably with the murderous protagonists, but it is cute to think of the parallels of modern fiefdoms in the fast-food business and cheezy 70s popular culture. 

It made me want to have a mini-Shakespeare fest of my own so I put some old favorites on my list, some of which I want to see again:

• Richard III 1995 remake with Ian McKellen set in early 20th century facist Europe (one of my favorite remakes)
• Looking for Richard (my all time favorite documentary about the making of a fictional film version of Richard III with Al Pacino; excellent commentary giving context and background to one of Shakespeare's best plays)
• Hamlet the 1990 Mel Gibson version; I liked it then when I was a kid.  I'm not sure if I'd still like it as much now compared to....
• Hamlet the 1996 Kenneth Branagh version.  This one just blows every other version away.
• Romeo and Juliet Zeffirelli's 1968 classic.  Still the best... so beautiful!!
• The Merchant of Venice Al Pacino plays Shylock, the most problematic of Shakespeare's plays it's unavoidably anti-semitic but definitely makes you think and I love Al Pacino!
• Othello
• My Own Private Idaho... a funky adaptation of Henry IV

Adaptions I didn't like:

• Hamlet adapted to modern day NYC; so painfully bad I almost walked out

Adaptations I saw but thought were just so-so:

• Romeo and Juliet the Leonardo DiCaprio version.

Anyone have any other recommendations to see or avoid?  There are so many out there.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Here's a good gift idea for anyone on your list who's spiritually inclined.  Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.  It won the 2005 Pultizer Prize for fiction.  I'm going to give it to my friend Eve, the pastor of the Mennonite Church here.  I can't decide if I want to give her my copy with its dogeared pages and hightlighting or if I should buy her a new one so she can read a clean version.  I like sharing used books among friends, especially close ones because it's interesting to see the parts they thought were especially good --which passages spoke most to them personally, ya know?  It's a nice experience, a kind of literary intimacy.  On the other hand, it can also be distracting to read a book that's got a lot of notes and stuff already in it and there's something to be said for reading a clean version to put your own highlighting and dogears in and then comparing notes afterward.

I think I'll go with the former just so I can re-read this copy over the next few days.  I had a lot going on when I read it the first time so I read it in spurts, which is fine too because it's one of those books that breaks up easily into nuggets that are good to chew on for a bit, but now I'd like to spend an entire day with it again to get the parts I missed.  Sometimes you miss the connections when you pick a book up and put it down again a hundred times in the course of a reading.

The book is a letter from a dying man --a minister in a long line of theologians-- to his young son: partly reflections on life and spirituality, partly stories of his childhood and his father and grandfather, and partly him trying to work out what to do about his own relationship with his estranged god-son (note god-son, not the son to whom the letter is addressed).  It's like reading the journal of a very thoughtful, considerate, exceedingly honest friend whose writing mirrors the mental process of working things out inside their own head.  I like that sort of transparency in writing wherever I find it.

And then there are these wonderful insights such as this one that I thought was very cool:

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable --which I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.  ... Maybe I should have said we are like planets.  But then I would have lost some of the point of saying that we are like civilizations. The planets may all have been sloughed from the same star, but still the historical dimension is missing from that simile, and it is true that we all do live in the ruins of the lives of other generations, so there is a seeming continuity which is important.... (197-198).

I really like that idea of continuity.  It's a novel idea to me --continuity with other generations-- because in my own life I seem so different from the rest of my family.  Then again who knows?  There were so many of them I didn't ever get to know really.  Especially my grandma Getty.  (She died when I was eight) Sometimes I think we would have a lot in common if she were around today.

"We all live in the ruins of the lives of other generations".   Wow.  I mean even literally my being here today was a result of my grandmother making the decision to leave Scotland and come to the Americas.  She wasn't thinking of me necessarily.  I'm sure she was thinking of a job.  I'm standing in the midst of the remains of her dreams for a better life in the New World.

In a way then I'm right where she was all that time ago.  I could leave this country and go to Colombia or Spain and build my life there and whichever thing I choose is going to lay the foundations for my kids.  They'll (probably) either have Latin American ancestors or European ones.   And they'll live their lives surrounded by the consequences of my dream of leaving the Empire.

See?  You could write several posts just about any one particular reflection contained in this book.  It's like a good collection of spiritual reflections written in the form of a letter.  I think I'll try to check out her other book, Housekeeping to see if it's just as good.

Walkabout.

Did you ever see the movie Walkabout?  I did about five, six years ago.  It was during the summer when I worked picking blueberries with my boyfriend at the time, Chris.  Chris was tall and thin with blond hair and blue eyes.  Classic surfer dude type.

We lived way out in the middle of rural north Florida on a piece land owned by a state peace group, the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice.  An old farmer donated the land which had been part of an old tree farm and they had just built a new community building out there.  Besides the new building, there was a falling down old cracker house with a wrap around porch where we made tie-dyed t-shirts and a double-wide trailer that served as an office and living quarters for the caretaker.  Which was Chris.  Another girl, --I think her name was Elena-- lived out there with us.  Besides taking care of the land, which involved keeping the tractor running, mowing the grass around the pecan trees and maintaining a languishing vegetable garden, we would work during the day on some nearby farms.  Picking blueberries, pruning pepper plants, potting caladiums.  And in the evenings we would rent movies from Joe's Movie Gallery in the stripmall in town.

Watching movies was about the only time we were ever inside that summer.  We showered outside.  We ate outside.  We slept outside in tents because it was cooler.  We had lots of sex outside.  We walked around naked outside.  One day a car pulled up before we could get our clothes on.  I think Elena talked to them.  They were the neighbors who were concerned about the heathen hippies who had moved in next door.  Eventually Chris made himself a sort of wrap around skirt to put on.  It was dark pink with lighter pink stars on it.  I still have some of the fabric.

I think I never was younger or healthier or more full of life than I was that summer.  Or maybe it just seems so to me tonight.  Hands working the bushes, picking delicate berries, $6 a bucket. The owner would come around in a golf cart to bring us drinks and sandwiches on white bread.  I remember burning my fingers on the haberno peppers at Farmer John's.  Eating raw corn still warm from the sun for the first time in my life.  And my friend Jimmy talking to me about philosophy while we potted thousands and thousands of caladiums.

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I am reading Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle (link leads to a good summary on Bookslut.com....here's a link to a review from Powell's which I'm not sure I agree with yet).