Unbridled outrage and the lack of conclusions

Since we're no longer members of the Michigan Theater, we've been seeing fewer films, as you might expect. So when the Oscar nominations were announced the other day, I decided I/we should try to catch up on a few things. We've seen four of the ten Best Picture nominees but had seen none of the documentary feature films, so I figured we'd start there. I'll cover the first four (The Perfect Neighbor, The Alabama Solution, Mr. Nobody Against Putin and Come See Me in the Good Light) here. The fifth, Cutting Through Rocks, is only available on the Sundance Channel so I'm not sure when we might get a chance to see that.

The Perfect Neighbor- This one was about the killing of Ajike Owens in Ocala, FL in 2023. Susan Lorincz was Owens' neighbor who complained constantly about Owens' children and the children of other neighbors playing near her apartment. Those complaints included repeated calls to the Marion County sheriff. On June 2, 2023, Lorincz allegedly assaulted some of the children by hurling objects at them and calling them names. When Owens came across the street and knocked on her door to protest that behavior, Lorincz shot her through the locked door, killing her. Lorincz later cited Florida's "stand your ground" law as an explanation for her behavior. Public protests followed swiftly and Lorincz was eventually convicted of manslaughter, among other charges, and given 25 years. The film is yet another tragic example of basic racism and the idiocy of these so-called "self-defense" laws that allow our gun-happy society to exercise their "rights" to kill other people. But the fascinating thing about the presentation is that the vast majority of the film is comprised of the sheriff's officers' bodycam footage, as well as internal cameras at their HQ. Those bodycams give us insight as to their views on the absurdity of the situation (frequently walking away from visits to the neighborhood muttering about how the only one causing problems is Lorincz) but also to how they're basically unable to do anything about a person who is clearly not stable (she's arrested during the film for destroying the gate of a local business that had been closed on the area where she'd illegally parked her truck) but isn't doing anything that would enable them to either act directly or, at the very least, find some mental health resources for her that might help her situation (if those even exist at that level in the state of Florida.) It's on Netflix.

The Alabama Solution- should leave any decent person with a fine sense of outrage (similar to what you should be feeling over events in Minnesota these days.) It's about the systematic mistreatment within and injustice of the correctional system in Alabama, which basically serves as those of many states do, which is the perpetuation of slavery under another name (i.e. unpaid labor by prisoners who are systematically denied any genuine case review for release.) What makes that worse are the number of deaths that take place in that state's system that are simply waved away by the public (there are a couple great moments when the local shock jocks are heard dismissing an inmate being beaten to death by guards with essentially: "Shouldn't'a been there in the first place!") and which leaves families no recourse as to accountability or even explanations as to why their loved ones end up never returning from behind bars. It's infuriating, but really well done, since most of the footage comes from cell phone recordings from devices smuggled into the prisons (by guards, so they can make more money, as they are also systematically underpaid and abused by the system.) Some of the best parts are in recorded conversations with Robert Earl Council and Melvin Ray, two prisoners who are the leaders of the Free Alabama Movement, which the Alabama dept. of corrections despises because it exposes their perfidy in the most basic of ways. It's on HBO. 

Mr. Nobody Against Putin- This one starts out far more lighthearted than the first two, as it's initially presented as the story of a young man, Pavel Talankin, who is the videographer and event coordinator for the largest school in Karabash, a town of 15,000 people in the Ural mountains, once solely famous for being the most polluted town in all of Russia, thanks to the local copper mining and smelting operation. (See Mark Twain's Roughing It for a detailed description of just how awful copper mining- and mining, in general -really is.) Pavel loves his job... until the invasion of Ukraine begins and his job and that of the teachers becomes one of spoon-feeding propaganda to their students to encourage them not just to support the invasion, but also to indoctrinate them to the idea of fighting for Russia being their highest possible mission in life. It becomes an hour-and-a-half excursion into the concept of "patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel." It's also told entirely through Pavel's equipment, both at the school and his home and reveals not only his personal misgivings, but also how he starts to translate those objections into actions at the school (At one point, where the school is now required to start each day with a march through the hallway to the Russian national anthem, he replaces it with The Star-Spangled Banner.) Eventually, his actions attract the attention of higher-ups and things begin to get really dark in this small town. Once again, the primary emotional reaction of most watching should be some level of outrage, followed by shaking one's head at the stupidity of it all. It's on Apple TV.

Come See Me in the Good Light- And, finally, what is easily the most personal of those presented and what may be the best of them, as well. This film is the story of Colorado's poet laureate, Andrea Gibson and their wife, Megan Falley, as they struggle with Andrea's cancer. It follows them through treatment, the changing tides of their progress and regression and how it changes Andrea's outlook on their work, their relationships, and their life. Having grown up in a strict Baptist household, Andrea's poetry orbits the topics of identity, gender, and self-determination (and the emotional impact of all of those) pretty regularly. In the early 00s, they began performing as a spoken word artist and became something of a rock star in the poetry scene, but retreated from all of that after their diagnosis. Neither Andrea nor Megan are inhibited by the presence of (plain, old regular) cameras and so this ends up being a surprisingly intimate depiction of two people struggling with the concepts of mortality while still trying to maintain their normally hopeful (Megan) and determined (Andrea) demeanor about life and everything in it. When it came to a close without displaying what the resolution of Andrea's struggle was, Tricia complained that we didn't find out "what happened." My response was that because this was a film about life, whether they had died or not wasn't relevant. The film had shown what they wanted and that was life and everything in it that was to be appreciated and sometimes endured. It's also on Apple TV.

Piercing the American religion

A friend asked a question on the board last night: "Psychologically, what makes 'us' hate protesters so much? What causes people to be more viscerally upset by people marching and yelling and waving signs or taking a knee or even doing property damage than they are by straight-up murder?" Putting aside the obvious racist implications for a moment, by response was this:

The simplest answer is this: Pointing out that something is wrong with America makes people uncomfortable because patriotism is the national religion of this country and it essentially lacks foundation. When you question someone's religion, if they're a committed believer, then they rely on their faith in the tenets of that religion. They believe in an idealized set of principles that are embodied by faith in a higher power or mysteries that can neither be easily explained or easily disproved. Neither you nor they can prove that their god does not exist. Similarly, neither you nor they can prove that said god exists. Their faith is based upon the idea that there is a higher purpose for themselves and for everyone.

Patriotism, OTOH, is based on ideas that are rooted in reality. It just may not be the reality that everyone wants to face. Mo Wagner, former University of Michigan and current LA Lakers basketball player, was tweeting yesterday about how when he first came to the US, everyone greeted him with: "Welcome to America, the greatest country in the world!" Everyone. It happened so often that it went from surprising to funny to kind of weird. There is a mindset that exists among Americans that the US is the pinnacle achievement in socio-political history; that since this is the "land of the free" and the "birthplace of democracy" and the "land of opportunity" to which so many wish to come, everything about it must be good and proper.

But the truth is that the US is all of those things for really only a very few people. For everyone else, it can be those things, but often is markedly different, in both degree and substance. When people point that out, many people react viscerally, as if you've questioned their personal character. Colin Kapernick was attacked for kneeling during the national anthem when he attempted to call attention to racism and police brutality. But for many, he wasn't pointing out racism. He was defiling the anthem! He was disrespecting the flag and the troops! He was despoiling our football, that most American of games! But what he was really doing was pointing out that it's only the "land of the free" for part of the population and people really don't want to hear a contrary opinion to what they've been taught since they were young and have had continually reinforced on a daily basis from news and entertainment media, every time a politician opens his or her mouth, and from every flag-waving sports entity that insists on playing the national anthem before every game.

Hell, they make young children recite a pledge of allegiance to a piece of cloth at the start of every school day. What greater sign of religion is there than everyone mumbling the national psalm together? It ends with "... with liberty and justice for all." But any casual experience in many American communities will tell you that the "liberty" part is often based on your skin tone and there sure as shit ain't no justice for anyone who doesn't have the money to buy it. But if you question the national religion, you're "unAmerican." You've stepped outside the illusion and are implicitly mocking anyone left within it. Many people object to that because, unlike actual religions, their belief isn't rooted in an idea about a higher power. It's rooted in the concept that America is the best thing ever and can't be questioned in the first place. Any evidence to the contrary must be based on the people being wrong; not the place. That's a lack of foundation. There is no faith there; just an insistence that a mirage is real.

Donald Trump is the walking manifestation of that insistence. His contradictory message- that America is the greatest nation on Earth and yet needs to be "made great again" -is the perfect embodiment of a population that knows the core is rotten but insists on shining the apple. It's like sports fans insisting that their team is the greatest ever, while fans of all the other teams chuckle behind their hands. Samuel Johnson said that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" because he knew that vermin like the current president and Senate Republicans would continue to flog it as their lone defense against the perfidy of their actions. He also knew that much of the public would respond because, just as with organized religion, most people need something to believe in. Not everyone can be comfortable living in a Hobbesian world. But, at the very least, people should be willing to argue the point without sheltering in a bunker of distractions from the reality that faces us.

Contrast in motivation

We had a bit of a hiatus over the holidays, so I actually wrote the review for Uncut Gems before I did one for Dark Waters, which we saw before Christmas. The problem I ran into was that I didn't feel like there was much to say about Dark Waters. It's a good film. It will make you angry, since it's the same sordid tale of corporate greed and the suffering of everyone around them (employees, local residents, investigators trying to uncover their crimes to the detriment of their lives and relationships) when it's finally uncovered and admitted to. In fact, part of my low motivation to write about it is that it's quite similar to another film about the same, damn thing: A Civil Action.

In the latter film, it's the story of a successful personal injury lawyer who gets sucked into a massive case of multiple companies poisoning the drinking water of a small Massachusetts town. It's kind of a lesson in what really matters in life, as the lawyer in question, Jan Schlichtmann, went on to become something of an environmental activist, pursuing that type of case around the country. In Dark Waters, the lawyer in question, Robert Bilott, is actually part of a firm that defends chemical companies from precisely the type of lawsuit that he ends up bringing against DuPont. So, it's a different "man comes into the light" type of tale, but not really that different. It's a good film. It's an entertaining film. But there was nothing in it that left me thinking about the story or the way it was shot or Mark Ruffalo's performance or basically any aspect of it. Maybe it's because I've been too close to those stories in my life or read about too many of them, but I didn't find myself with much that was compelling, in the end. Thus, the limp recounting here.

Strangely enough, I had the same trouble with the film we saw this week, which was 1917. I'm not particularly motivated by war films these days. I know too much about why they're started and why they're stupid to derive much entertainment from tales of heroism based in or around them. World War I is perhaps the stupidest of modern wars, based almost solely on two things: 1) Europe having gone a few decades without a large combat and 2) as Jack Reed (Warren Beatty) notes in Reds: Profits. (Aren't they all?) Now, there are differences from Dark Waters, in that I think some of the technical aspects of the film were fascinating. They attempted to show it as one continuous take; a technique that showed up most prominently in recent times in the fourth episode of True Detective (there is only one season, trust me) when an action sequence was shot in one almost seven minute take. They actually shot the sequence three or four times, but when it was finally "printed", it was done all at once. Sam Mendes, the director of 1917, tried a similar approach with this entire film, in an effort to try to include the audience in the immediacy of the action, the urgency of the plot, and the desperation and emotion of its main characters. If you pay attention, you can see the transitions where they smoothed over separate takes with CGI, but unless you're a technical nerd like I am, you likely won't notice them because the action, in truth, is compelling.

While the framework is simple (average trooper must save others in the midst of pointless violence), the delivery is excellent. You can feel the despair at the nature of the zero sum game that they're all engaged in; where men give their lives for yards of territory, only to lose it back to the enemy days later. In a way, bringing the audience past that despair with the constant nature of the production and action is probably the best way to deliver a story about World War I, without falling back to the naiveté of 1914, when everyone's heroes marched off to win a little squabble that would last six weeks. You can combine the dolor of the people involved, fully aware that their lives were irrelevant to the high command and knowing that virtually nothing would be improved for them if they emerged victorious, with the compulsion to perhaps make it so a few hundred more lives weren't senselessly wasted, at least for today. George MacKay was excellent as the lead, adding thoughtfulness to a role that required a lot of desperate panic and emotion. It was also nice to see Mark Strong show up in a small role, as well as Richard Madden for the first time that I've seen him since his performance as Robb Stark in Game of Thrones.

I also enjoyed the detail that Mendes indulged in for the trench scenes and the realities of warfare over a century in the past. While I thought, at one point, that the trenches might be a little too clean and/or dry than the reality, the truth is that region of France doesn't particularly have a "rainy season", so it was as likely to be dry as not. There was enough dirt present to make the audience aware of what a struggle it was to live in the ground, without having to deal with mud. In at least one respect, both films were about determination in the face of daunting odds; one told rapidly and the other slowly, but both with the intent of showing some degree of hope at the end, even if challenges remained. What that says about my lack of motivation to write about either of them is beyond me, at the moment.

More is always better. God says so.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings that took place in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater hours earlier were a result of "ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs" and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter.
During a radio interview on The Heritage Foundation's "Istook Live!" show, Gohmert was asked why he believes such senseless acts of violence take place. Gohmert responded by talking about the weakening of Christian values in the country.
"You know what really gets me, as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of terror like this takes place," Gohmert said.
"Some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedom, that that was important," he said. "Whether it's John Adams saying our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people ... Ben Franklin, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters ... We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country."
Ernest Istook, the host of the show and a former Oklahoma congressman, jumped in to clarify that nobody knows the motivation of the alleged Aurora gunman. Gohmert said that may be true, but suggested the shootings were still "a terrorist act" that could have been avoided if the country placed a higher value on God.
"People say ... where was God in all of this?" Gohmert said. "We've threatened high school graduation participations, if they use God's name, they're going to be jailed ... I mean that kind of stuff. Where was God? What have we done with God? We don't want him around. I kind of like his protective hand being present."
Gohmert also said the tragedy could have been lessened if someone else in the movie theater had been carrying a gun and took down the lone shooter. Istook noted that Colorado laws allow people to carry concealed guns.
"It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?" he asked. (HT: HuffPo)

Emphasis mine, of course, because when one is in a dark room, packed with people, many in costume, under the flashing lights of a two-story movie screen, and filled with tear gas, what better solution to the situation could there be than MORE GUNS? After all, it was doubtlessly a room full of trained police officers and combat vets there to see the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, right? All of those people would have understood the chaotic situation into which they were discharging a firearm, just like the individual who sowed said chaos, no? Personally, I don't give a damn if the room was filled with the local law enforcement convention. Under those circumstances, I'd rather be in a coop full of armed chickens who just got doused with water.

Newsflash: The solution to guns in our society is not more guns. It's less of them. Less access, less numerous, and lower rates of fire. Those hallowed Judeo-Christian values ("all who take the sword, die by the sword") should tell you that.

UnEgyptian

My assumption (a safe one, I think) is that you'll never hear the title word used except as satire: "That's unEgyptian, man."

By contrast, one can hear or read the word "unAmerican" on a regular basis here in the homeland. The offending action or opinion varies based on the speaker's homegrown determination of what does and does not qualify, but it's often employed to designate anything that doesn't conform to the "common man's" idea of national identity, firmly (and commercially) delivered to him as something along the lines of baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.

Nowhere else in the world is national identity so twisted together with self-identity and, consequently, national government. Consequently? Yes. Because despite all the rantings of Tea Parties from every corner of the country, Americans tend to self-identify with their government moreso than almost any other nation. This is something that's been drilled into the collective head of the American public since the late 18th century. They've been told that they are the government and, since the government is them, it not only embodies them in dealing with other nations but also creates a peculiar stumbling block that other nations aren't burdened with.

No one would suggest that the course of events in Egypt (and Tunisia) over the past couple weeks was "unEgyptian"; as if some sacred principle of the Egyptian state were being violated by people demonstrating in the streets of Cairo and demanding the dissolution of state bodies and offices in order to create a brighter future for themselves. On the contrary, they tend to call it something between "democracy in action" and "chaos in the streets", often depending on their socioeconomic status. (As an aside, nothing is more entertaining than watching the US State department's dance over the past two weeks, always one step behind the music, as they attempt to keep up the facade of the scion of liberty and democracy, while not wanting to completely step away from the strongman they've contributed to keeping in power for 30 years. Both the hypocrisy and the US media's willingness to turn a blind eye to it are as hilarious as ever. A friend asked me at one point: "How does this make us look?" I replied: "Like Satan, but retarded.")

But it's not completely reviled in the way that it would be here, because it's not considered to be "unEgyptian." Egyptians are not tied to the state in the same way that Americans are. Egyptians are largely tied to each other moreso than to the bureaucracy that identifies the nation of Egypt. Consequently, when conditions deteriorate to the point that they have and people have reached a sufficient level of anger, they pour into the streets and demand redress from the government for the lack of basic freedoms, from the security apparatus that has kept many of them cowed for 3 decades, and from the rich that have helped keep a vast chunk of the population in dire poverty for just as long. No one will accuse them of violating some enshrined philosophy that says that the people (of whatever nation) simply do not do this because it's unEgyptian, unFrench, unRomanian, unMalaysian.

Why is that?

One answer might be ethnicity. With a largely Arabic and "Egyptian" population, it's more difficult to blame the neighbors for one's problems rather than the rich and government-supported persons that are really at issue. In the US, you can convince poor white people that poor black or Hispanic people are causing their problems, rather than the government which is owned by the wealthy and, thus, serves their interests. It's tougher to convince poor Egyptians that other poor Egyptians are the reason that wealthy people have all the opportunity and the rest of the population can simply suffer.

Another possible answer is that Egypt does not have a national identity based on sanctified statements from 230 years ago. The Egyptian state is a system that is imposed on the people. They have no philosophical attachment to it. But Americans... Americans are taught from birth that they are the state and the reason they embody the state is because a couple pieces of parchment say so, despite all evidence to the contrary. Consequently, to revolt against the state is to revolt against oneself, even in the face of one of the primary figures behind those pieces of sheepskin, Thomas Jefferson, stating thus:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure." 

What he meant was that the people should never become too placid about the state; that the latter entity should always remain within their direct control and, if it were ever to escape it, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it". Somehow, people always seem to forget about that line in the Declaration. But Jefferson was largely alone in those sentiments (James Wilson of Pennsylvania being one of the few delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 who was of like mind.) Most of the other learned men with whom he associated to start the whole mad venture were convinced of the same thing in the thirteen colonies that the US government is convinced of now on the streets of Cairo: democracy is bad.

Democracy lets people actually make choices. If they can do that, they'll often make choices that the people who own them don't like. The US Constitution was written with the express intent of denying actual policy-making choice from the citizens of the United States. US culture has since perpetuated the idea that whatever the government, as an edifice, does is in the name of and to the benefit of the citizenry. That's why it's unAmerican to criticize US foreign policy. That's why it's unAmerican to consider trashing the whole construct and starting anew. That's why it's unAmerican to consider the idea that other nations may have made some improvements on the model (since, y'know, we did it first and, therefore, best.) That's why the TV told you that America's favorite cars were shitty Chevrolets and you believed them because there was a guy selling hot dogs in the stands at a baseball game somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania.

Despite all protestations to the contrary, most people swallow it whole. Check out the slogan of the majority of the Tea Party movement: Take back our government. They're not offended by the fact that the government serves only those people who've bought and paid for it (read: Goldman Sachs.) They're not offended by the idea that the government was designed to exclude them unless they fell in line with whomever the approved "representatives" were and are. They're offended that people inside said edifice aren't spewing the right platitudes and making life better for them by making it worse for the black people or the welfare queens or the atheists or whomever shouldn't be enjoying the American dream by dint of being "unAmerican".

The Egyptian poor revolt against the state and the rich people that benefit from it. The American poor (granted, relatively speaking in the face of the poverty that afflicts much of Egypt) revolt against particular figures within the state or the mythical beneficiaries of those bureaucratic criminals who are manipulating the perfect system that would otherwise make life a Caribbean cruise for the average Tea Partier. You know, if things were right and American with the world and all. Egyptians revolt against the sham government they've been under for 60 years? That's OK. Americans revolt against the sham government they've been under for 230 years? That's heresy.

And if America has been supporting that sham government since Sadat agreed to play ball? Well, that's OK. See, Egypt is sitting on top of (some of) our oil and protecting the western border of the satellite that keeps a US toehold in everything happening there, so if US foreign policy has helped deny basic liberties to Egyptians... maybe that's OK and maybe it should keep happening, too. After all, we wouldn't want the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power and create another overt enemy of the US in the Middle East. Consequently, it's a wise idea to perpetuate the torture and imprisonment of Egyptian citizens who dare to speak out against the state for the sake of preserving the American way of life, principle be damned. Such is the message that has occasionally spewed from CNN and Fox when the daily limit of fear and paranoia had not been reached and viewers were encouraged to apply good ol' American pragmatism to policy. This is how the population continues to embody the government and its associated hypocrisy. Anything else would be unAmerican.